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isaksbestpillow · 3 days

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Ossan's Love Returns eng sub masterpost

The legendary queer ossans who paved the way for the post-2018 Japanese bls are back! Haruta and Maki have progressed from coworkers to husbands but their life is still as chaotic as ever and the people around them all kinds of unhinged.

Please watch my favourite show! This is an independent second season so you can jump right in without having seen the previous material. The acting is top-notch, the writing clever and the editing hilarious. This is a laugh-out-loud funny, feel-good show about aging, love, and chosen family.

You can also watch the show on Gagaoolala, but their subs are somewhat incoherent at times and leave a lot to be desired. There are also many jokes and references to Japanese language and popular culture that may go unnoticed, which is why I have included notes for all episodes in this post.

I have a kofi but I appreciate a little comment just as much.

Links and notes under the cut.

How to download:

Download all files onto your computer. Make sure they are in the same folder. You cannot stream the subs on Google drive.

The subtitle file will auto-play on VLC Media Player as long as it has exactly the same name as the video file. It may not be supported by some other players.

Do not reupload to any streaming sites.

Episodes

Episode 1

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Episode 2

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Episode 3

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Episode 4

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Episode 5

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Episode 6

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Episode 7

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Episode 8

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Episode 9

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Special episodes

Haruta & Maki's first night as newlyweds (Tver special)

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Telasa spin-off part 1

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Telasa spin-off part 2

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Episode notes

Episode 1

The first dream of the year (hatsuyume) is said to predict the year.

Shiritori is a word game where you can’t say a word ending in N or you lose. For example: imo - mori - risu - sushi - shio - ossan (lose)

Bashauma Cleaning literally means Carriage Horse Cleaning, but it's a reference to the idiom bashauma ni hataraku, work like a (carriage) horse, so I've translated it to include the joke.

Yabusame is Japanese horseback archery.

Nandeyanen: a classic reply in manzai (stand-up comedy with two people). I had to replace it with something situational.

Hierarchy between supervisors goes kakarichou (Haruta), kachou (Maki), buchou (previously Kurosawa, now Takekawa). I’ve translated buchou to chief just because it’s short, so my translations may not correspond to anglophone hierarchy.

Episode 2

Kurosawa uses hyper formal and humble customer service language at all times, which is weird coming from your old boss since seniority plays a big part in Japanese communication. I’ve tried to retain some of it in the translation since it’s a running joke and a huge part of his character in this season.

In Japanese rock paper scissors (janken) the winner can hit the loser on the head with a toy hammer and the loser has to guard.

Urusee kuchibiru: Kuchibiru is lips. Urusee can have a million meanings from noisy to annoying to picky to fuck off so it was hard to land on a single translation when the full context of this line isn’t yet given. I decided to go with pesky lips since it kind of covers all bases.

Episode 3

Hirugao (japanese bindweed) was a popular drama about cheating that aired in 2014. Hirugao is a reference to a somewhat new idiom heijitsu hirugao tsuma (weekday japanese bindweed wife) that means a wife who cheats while her husband is at work. It was also nominated as one of the trend words of 2015, so I decided to keep it as it is.

Kin'youbi no tsumatachi e ('to friday wives'), also known as Kintsuma, was a popular relationship that aired in the 80s. Making references to popular culture seems to be Kurosawa's thing.

Sontaku: A word that became popular after the Moritomo gakuen political scandal in 2017 and is often used jokingly. I didn't translate it because there is no simple translation as it is a cultural concept rather than just a word and I wanted to maintain the scandal link. Here is a wikipedia page about sontaku. Basically it means to do something the other person wants you to do without them saying they want you to do it.

Convenience store restrooms usually have a poster that says something along the lines of thank you for always keeping the restroom clean.

Dogeza: the ultimate kneeling apology. Not actually used anymore sans some press conferences after a major fuck up.

Before you become a memory, show me your smile one more time: This is actually a Spitz lyric. Takekawa-san's Twitter account is also a reference to Spitz. Here is the song:

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Episode 4

Akito & Haruta: Aki means autumn, haru means spring

Kikunosuke: Kiku means chrysanthemum, the flower of the emperor, so it’s a very regal name, as is Kiku-sama.

Oniisan: Kiku has a habit of calling everyone oniisan/older brother. It’s normal to call strangers oniisan but Kurosawa is a bit past the oniisan age lol.

Soiya, soiya, sore, sore: These are cheers. The scene is a reference to this song from the 80s:

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The bachelor is a cameo by Dean Fujioka.

Shougi: Japanese chess

Teppei’s pun song: o-shiri, o-shiri, hey Siri, douka o-shirioki kudasai ore wa omae no otousan janai. O-shiri means butt so that’s the pun here.

公安 kouan ‘public safety’: I’ve translated this to NSB (national security branch) because I needed a short word that people might repeat many times without getting the meaning. In a previous episode Haruta had to google what kouan is. I dont know how security and intelligence services differ across countries so please don’t pay too much attention to this particular word.

Vivant: A popular suspense drama that aired in 2023. Hayashi Kento who plays Maki actually appears in it haha.

Winter Sonata: A Korean drama from 2002 that was immensely popular in Japan and started the Korean wave

Yong-sama: Japanese fans’ nickname for Bae Yong-joon who starred in Winter Sonata

老々介護 rouroukaigo: Literally 'old old caregiving’. This means an elderly person caring for another elderly person. It’s becoming a social problem in Japan and Takekawa-san is haunted by it at the moment.

Episode 5

The raffle guy is a cameo by Dave Spector. He’s an American tv personality based in Japan and known for his puns.

Happi is a tube-sleeved coat worn during events.

I made everyone swear quite a bit in the ryokan battle scene because they were using the vulgar speech register (except poor Izumi-san).

There were many puns in this episode. I tried to translate them all to the best of my ability, but here they are in Japanese:

akan desuka aka wa ‘is red not good’, translated not red not your color

Wariine Dietrich 'Thanks Dietrich’, translated to thanks a latte

Atamitte attakami 'Atami is warmth’, translated to Sea You in Atami

Hageshiku doui: strongly agree; hage doui: bald agrees, translated to nod nod nod, bald nods (or something along those lines, I forgot lol). This is an iconic line in Japanese and got used a lot in the fandom. It's really common to come up with portmanteau words in Japanese so hage doui sounds like a valid abbreviation for hageshiku doui but the meaning is unfortunate. Hage is commonly used as an insult.

When Kurosawa is not in his customer service mode, he uses a lot of zoomer and internet slang. Kibonnu: internet slang for please originating on 2chan. Ma: short for 'majide', seriously. Kawachii: a new way of saying kawaii, cute. I tried to recreate his speech patterns the best I could.

Daruma-san ga koronda 'the daruma doll fell over’, a game similar to red light, green light.

Nanmaida: colloquial namu amida butsu, a Buddhist chant

Azatoi: Haruta gets called this by Kiku. I translated it to coy due to lack of space, but it’s a cultural word so the meanings may not match entirely. Azatoi is someone who performs cuteness for personal gain. The official subs translated it to 'idiot’, so yeah that’s what you’re paying for…………………..

Episode 6

Valentine's Day is a pretty big deal in Japan. Traditionally, women are supposed to give chocolate to men and men are supposed to return the favour a month later on White Day. Many people actually find this exchange stressful because of giri choco, 'obligation chocolate' given to all male co-workers. In recent years the popularity of giri choco has been steadily falling and it has even been banned in many workplaces, and now many women are instead giving friendship chocolate to their friends. The opposite of giri choco is honmei choko (true love chocolate) given in a romantic setting.

The wedding planner is a cameo by Crazy Coco. She's an ex flight attendant who does comedy videos on Instagram. Please pay attention to the non-Japanese pronunciation of English loan words in this scene.

Sukima Switch: This is the name of the band who contributed the theme songs for both seasons so I left it untranslated. Revival from season 1 plays in one of the scenes.

Nukazuke: A type of preserved food made by fermenting vegetables in rice bran (nuka). The pickling bed is called nukadoko. Nukadoko is a living organism that you can keep using forever as long as you take care of it. There are nukadoko that have been passed down for generations.

Takenoko no sato & Kinoko no yama ('bamboo shoot village' & 'mushroom mountain') are two types of chocolate by Meiji sold at every supermarket. You have dog persons and cat persons, mountain persons and beach persons, takenoko persons and kinoko persons. So it's not just any random chocolate, it's an ordinary everyday product that everyone has an opinion on.

Episode 7

The title of the episode (How do you live) is also the title of a novel by Yoshino Genzaburou and the Japanese title of Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. I’ve been lazy and not translated the previous titles but this one felt important enough to include.

Fukuro/bukuro: bag

Isshou isshoni itekureya: When Izumi completes Haruta’s sentence after asking him about Maki, the line is a lyric from Lifetime Respect by Miki Douzan. It was a big one hit wonder in 2001.

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Single mothers are some of the most socially disadvantaged groups in Japan and their plight is only worsening. 50% of single-parent households live in poverty.

Drag/drug are pronounced the same in Japanese (doraggu).

Anta: This is a rude second person pronoun that stands out because Izumi is usually well-mannered at work and never calls Haruta anything but Haruta-san. I obviously couldn’t translate it literally since it literally just translates to you, so I made Izumi say bullshit.

They make you drink barium at the annual health checkup to screen stomach cancer.

Episode 8

Ending note: This is an English word made in Japan. It’s a bit like an informal will with no legal standing to reflect on your life or express your wishes for your funeral.

Toketsu: blood vomit Tooru futatsu: two talls (Kiku-sama’s rice ball size), hence the slip of the tongue

When you fall, fall forward: originally said by 19th century revolutionary Sakamoto Ryouma

Tabelog is the biggest restaurant review site in Japan.

Episode 9

There were once again numerous puns, word plays and funny expressions in this episode, I did my best. The squid game one was impossible however so I’ve explained it in the subs.

Pokapoka: Onomatopoeia for something that’s nice and warm, such as a mild sunny day. I feel like this line lost some of its charm in English unfortunately. :(

Haganezawa Iruka: Iruka means dolphin. This character has a painfully fake American accent.

The book Maika is reading is titled Heya to Y-setsu to watashi, Room and Y-setsu and Me. Y-setsu is code for waisetsu which means pornography lol.

The Japanese title for My Neighbour Totoro is Tonari no totoro, next-door totoro.

Makkuro kurosuke are the soot sprites seen in Ghibli’s films.

Engacho: Maki does this to Kurosawa. It’s something kids do after touching something disgusting.

TVer special

It’s common in Japan for the wife to handle all family finances and only pay the husband an allowance. I’ve seen some queer couples do it too.

Telasa spin-off 1

This is Sumikkogurashi:

Yakatabune: a fancy Japanese boat for cruises

bubble generation: the generation that entered the workforce at the height of the bubble economy

Telasa spin-off 2

Tsumagoi is a town in Gunma prefecture known for cabbage.

Ikebukuro (‘pond bag’) is a commercial district in Tokyo.

Hotei Tomoyasu is a renowned guitarist. I think Takekawa-san was maybe trying to perform the theme from the yakuza film Shin jingi naki tatakai/New Battles Without Honor and Humanity. I don’t recognise his lyrics from any Hotei song lol.

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Akito and Izumi talk to each other using vulgar speech. It's very different from how Izumi interacts with others.

Maro calls Kikunosuke too kenage. I translated this to persevering but honestly there isn’t a word in English that quite captures the full meaning of kenage. Kenage means heroic or brave but it’s used to praise a weak or powerless person showing courage in the face of adversity, such as a child, so it's not really a compliment.

Ribbon and Nakayoshi are shoujo manga magazines.

The lifetime together line is again a reference to the one hit wonder Lifetime Respect.

#ossan's love returns #my subs #my translations #Youtube

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qqueenofhades · 3 days

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Hi Hilary! I could use some help with something. Do you know some topics for historical tangents a history professor (Hob) could go on while talking to some students? Like some interesting discussion ideas? I was not a history major and I’m now drawing a blank 😅 I’d appreciate it greatly!

"Right, morning everyone... MORNING... yes, we all do know it is morning and I would like to remind everyone that it's not my fault we were scheduled at eight bloody AM. Consider it building character. Great. Let's get started. Can we put the phones down, please. In my day we didn't even have phones. No really. We didn't. Really didn't.

Anyway, so where were we? Ah, yes. End of the Western Roman Empire circa 476 CE, which stands for the secular Common Era, which historians now generally use instead of the Christian A.D. Anno Domini, which trust me, they used when I was born, because I am very old. Ah, you're laughing again, because you think I'm joking. Which, er, I definitely am. Anyway, the so-called collapse of the Roman Empire is one of the most mythologized events in the Western historical canon, and there are accordingly a lot of misperceptions about what happened and how. As we covered in the last class -- well, can anyone tell me what we covered last class?

Anyone?

Come on, one of you, just raise your hands. I don't bite.

Fine, all right, I'll do it myself. Again. Last class, we covered the eventful fourth century in Roman history, where the empire split into western and eastern halves, eastern Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, and established his capital in Constantinople, which would later get the works from the Turks and become Istanbul. The western capital moved to Ravenna in 402, and it had been in Milan before that, not Rome. No longer the center of power as it had been for many centuries beforehand under both the empire and the republic, Rome was infamously sacked in 410 by the Visigoths under King Alaric I. The Supergoths. The Ubergoths. The Verygoths. The Turbogoths. All right, I'll stop. The Visigoths had formerly been a Roman client kingdom in the south of Gaul, which is the modern country of -- anyone?

Anyone? Anyone? Oh come on.

Yes, thank you Sarah, it was in fact France. See everyone? Not that hard. Now that we're up to speed, right, the so-called End of Rome in 476, when the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer, general of the Ostrogoths. Not the Visigoths. Definitely different thing here. The Alsogoths. The Othergoths. The Ohgodthosegoths. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I swear I will actually stop. But the common narrative from then is that Rome just bloody disappeared altogether, the Dark Ages started, it was grim and miserable and murdery all the time, everyone forgot how to do scholarship or art or religion or anything else, and then miraculously a thousand years later, woo, the Renaissance! Everyone sorted their heads from their arses and could do maths again! I'm sorry about saying arses. Please don't report me to HR, they've had enough of me already. Anyway, this argument, despite its long-time supremacy in the Western historiographical canon and Western popular culture, doesn't make sense on any number of levels. And that is because? Can anyone give me just one reason to start with?

Anyone?

Sarah again, yes, thank you. I appreciate you greatly, Sarah. Yes, for one thing, the Eastern Roman Empire still bloody existed! It was literally that meme where we're announcing that Rome is dead, Constantinople wants us to stop telling everyone that they're dead, and we sigh that sometimes we can still hear their voice. Yes, I know what a meme is, don't look so surprised. The city of Constantinople became the center of Roman culture and power, though we call it the Byzantine empire to distinguish it from the pre-476 Roman empire. It used Greek instead of Latin as its primary culture and language, it was Orthodox Christian instead of Catholic Christian, and while it was no longer the multinational power player that its predecessor had been, it still produced some heavy hitters. Such as Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, who actually, albeit briefly, reconquered the territories of former Rome in the west, and was married to the very fascinating Empress Theodora. We'll have to get back to her, but anyway, in the territories of Former Rome, such as modern-day Spain, France, and Germany, there were still client kingdoms who were directly descended from Rome and who premised their new independence on their Roman inheritance. The Visigoths -- yes, them again -- in Spain, the Merovingians and the Franks in France, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Germany, and other. So tell me, can we really say that Rome collapsed, exactly, and/or disappeared, instead of just dissipated and re-formed? We still had Latin as the language of state administration, the Roman Catholic Church as the supreme religious and cultural arbiter, and other major innovations that would last through the Middle Ages. Where does this whole Dark Ages thing come from?

Anyone?

Anyone aside from Sarah?

Oh, God's wounds. All right then. The idea that Rome disappeared overnight and took everything good with it is a projection, a fiction, popularized by proto-Renaissance and Renaissance writers who wanted to legitimize their look back into the past. We're getting ahead of ourselves, but the idea of the Dark Ages as this backward slovenly time of idiocy and misery -- it just gets me very worked up, all right?! Yes, written texts and certain other traditional markers of historic narrative became much scarcer than before, and we don't know as much about it as we do the more meticulously documented societies on either side, but it's only dark because we've decided that Rome, the brutal excessively slave-owning militaristic expansionist violent empire par excellence, was the marker of all culture and the peak of Western civilization for all time and nobody else could ever come close! This is how we get bloody Game of Thrones insisting that the medieval era was always filthy and dark and full of rape and violence and morally awful people -- so tell me, George, which part of your fantasy novel, the dragons or the ice zombies, were we expected to read as actual literal truth? It's just because we want to protect the idea of ourselves as so much better than people in the past, and the past itself as full of terrible violence that is somehow worse and more primitive than our violence, and that surely we could never do that because we're so much better! Which is total bullshit! Bullshit!

...yes. Thank you. Right. I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine, I apologize for that. Just a bit of a trigger for me. We'll get back to the lesson now, yes. I'm warning you, though. If you use Dark Ages uncritically in your essay, I am knocking you down a full grade. No matter what."

#acedragontype #ask #history #hob gadling #you're welcome to use all/parts of that as you wish XD #ahem #or: how the fall of the western roman empire gets Hob to blow a gasket about game of thrones

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pixl-place · 3 days

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rereading aftg for like the millionth time but i’ve seen a lot of neil characterization discourse on here lately and i just wanna throw some of my thoughts out into the void

one thing i find so interesting is that there are multiple times when one of the foxes or Wymack asks Neil something along the lines of “are you stupid” and he says yes. one of the first things we find out about Neil is that he knows signing with the foxes is a bad idea but he does it anyways. i think this little detail about him is so important because it gives more depth to all the choices he makes that the even the reader is nudged to believe are “stupid”. even when he lays out his plans perfectly to the reader we are still supposed to go “well that’s a dumb plan that’s never gonna work” but i think part of Neil makes these crazy ass plans on purpose because they will work and they almost always do to some extent. he knows what he’s doing is conveniently unwise but he’s calculated the exact steps he can take within that “stupidity” to survive. he also knows how he’s going to be perceived and lets people think this is just part of his personality to add realness to the fake persona! i feel like yall don’t give him enough credit sometimes. yeah he’s a little crazy and feral bitch which is why he and Andrew get along but their main difference and part of why i think they don’t get along at first is because Andrew takes risks first and figures out how to clean them up later whereas Neil has all the steps laid out in his head and waits for whatever to wrap back around to him so he has time to figure that out too. he’s a really smart boy! so much of his character is really complex and goes beyond surface level but i think people take a lot of it at face value. they see his silly mouthing off to reporters and forget that he literally was running away from mobsters for years and watching his mom have to find ways to outsmart them

#idk if i articulated this correctly lol #or if someone has already said this #i just think he's neat #squishes his brain #the devil works hard but neil is gonna work harder to find his way outta some shit #aftg #all for the game #the foxhole court #neil josten #character analysis #andriel

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buckttommy · 2 days

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hrmm. i feel like. there is a conversation to be had about whether or not a storyline is racist that a lot of you are not having and that conversation has a lot to do with intention.

i'm seeing a lot of people call this mara storyline racist and as a literal black woman, i just. do not get it. is mara a brown/black girl? yes. has she been traumatized/retraumatized beyond belief? yes! and that is horrible. but the question i don't see anyone asking is why? was there precedent? did the story just come out of nowhere or was there build? does the event make sense within the context of the story overall? and like. i mean. yeah. it does.

the groundwork for mara's introduction was laid last season with a different little girl, though the premise ("hen and karen are going to be adopting a girl") remained the same. the groundwork for conflict was also laid in 7x2 when ortiz's (an established person in power) son died under hen's care. these events led to the rising action and revenge we saw play out last night. this is a clear arc with a clear and defined progression that could make sense if exchanged for a predominantly white family without any significant changes and with all the same emotional (soul crushing) beats.

versus noah's storyline last season, which existed solely to prop up maddie as the hero white woman while coloring noah—a sweet, black boy—as a criminal. that was it. there was no build. there was no tension. there was no story, except to say "here is a black boy and he is bad." there wasn't any real cause, reason, or structure and that is what makes that storyline rancid. that is why i roll my eyes every single time. it is racially lazy, not to mention just kind of boring, and 9-1-1 can do and has done better.

so. on the topic of, like, "is this story racist or not?" the conversation should not be these characters are black and multiple bad things are happening to them, therefore this story is racist. but rather, the conversation (or critical analysis) surrounding the story should be does this storyline make sense within the context of the story itself? is there enough narrative and structural build to support this storyline or is/are the black character(s) being scapegoated? is this trauma porn for the sake of trauma porn or is there a legitimate story being told for a legitimate reason? (*non-black people are not equipped to answer that last question, as the topic of trauma porn is multifaceted and layered, but that doesn't mean the question still can't be asked and considered)

anyway. the point is. well. the point is, i really don't think you guys are asking the right questions tbh. lol. and that's frustrating to me because every conversation about racism gets swallowed up by what you guys think is racist and none of it ever really amounts to anything except to make people painfully reactionary and angry. both which i'm sure we can agree is not conducive to having a productive conversations about anything. so you see. anyway. that's all i have to say. back to bucktommy posting + eddie/bobby spiraling.

#I'm not answering asks about this #If you're going to be a dick fuck off #If you legitimately want to talk send me a DM #if you're going to agree with me: thanks #white people can reblog #but mostly I just want to say my piece and be done #tv: 911 #jack.txt

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niko-sasaki-dbd · 3 days

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Queue Interview with the Dead Boy Detectives Cast 👻🔎

This is going to be a long post! (These are my favourite parts from the interview!)

George Rexstrew as Edwin Payne

Acting Inspiration

Oh, gosh. Well there are so many. Meryl Streep, obviously. Viola Davis, obviously. More recently, I was blown away by Enzo Vogrincic in Society of the Snow. And Eden Dambrine in Close.

Cast Camaraderie

I loved working with all my co-stars. I’m practically related to Jayden [Revri] and Kassius [Nelson] at this point. Yuyu [Kitamura] is a dream. Jenn [Lyon] is mother hen. Bri[ana Cuoco] is the cool older sister. Josh[ua Colley] is the cheeky cousin. Ruth [Connell] is the godmother who gives you a card and £20 for your birthday. It really is one big happy dysfunctional family. I’m grateful for all of them, on and off camera.

Jayden Revri as Charles Rowland

Dressing The Part

These heads of departments, and Monique and Kelli, [they’re] unbelievable. They were so collaborative. We went through different hairstyles and different things we could do with the makeup. We added a bit of eyeliner for [Charles] just to make it feel more 80s. And then Kelli, I mean, it was like she did her research on me. She added badges to the jacket which kind of represented me as Jayden, before I even got there. It wasn’t until I got the haircut, put the makeup on, put the costume on, and I was like, Okay, this is Charles.

Cast Camaraderie.

The vibe was just incredible. Me and George, we really wanted to set the tone for the series and make sure that everyone’s having fun and it’s an environment where we could all talk about how we’re feeling. We were just such a big support blanket for each other. If there was ever a time that somebody needed space, or they wanted to prep themselves for a certain scene they were going to film, we all respected that and we were each other’s cheerleaders the whole entire time. And it’s still the same to this day now. I think it really shows when you watch the series that we all knew what we were making and we wanted to make something that we would want to watch, which we’ve all done. I cannot shout out my castmates enough. Forever grateful.

Kassius Nelson as Crystal Palace

Acting Inspiration

I watched a lot of animation. I used to watch the Addams Family, the black-and-white one, because I didn’t have Disney Channel or anything. Monk, Murder She Wrote, I was watching those things, so maybe I was actually destined to play a detective, now that I’m thinking about it. I watched a lot of cartoons and animations. I just liked the idea that I could be engrossed in another world. And I always wanted to know what happened next, or when the film finished, I would be like, “Okay, but then what? What happens after that?” And now I get to be part of that question or that answer (...).

Dressing the Part

We have a fantastic costume designer, Kelli Dunsmore. I always say that she literally wove the story into the fabric of the clothes, because there are things that she foreshadowed in the clothing that happened episodes later. Or, if characters start to get in some sort of relationship with each other, that will be reflected in the clothes that they wear or the colors that they have. Or, if they’re feeling any type of emotion, (...)l. Crystal wears these massive platform boots that must be about four or five inches. They’re huge, very heavy, but it’s funny because they change the way that you walk. (...) She’s not very light, which makes sense with the things that she’s going through and the experiences that she’s having. Practically, it helped, because Jayden and George are like six-foot-something. So, if I film a scene and I’m at the bottom of the lens and they’re up there, that helped. I’ve got a good couple inches on my feet.

Yuyu Kitamura as Niko Sasaki

Acting Inspiration

Sandra Oh is a woman that I will forever be indebted to because who she was on Grey’s Anatomy was so formative for me. The most interesting thing about her character was not that she was Asian, but that she was such a fully fleshed person with flaws and amazing qualities. And her work ever since I think has been iconic, so she’s a woman that I deeply look up to.

Landing the role in Dead Boy Detectives

I auditioned from Hong Kong and my dad was my reader because all of my acting friends were in New York. My dad was able to carve out time and be an amazing reader. And in that audition side, it’s the scene where Niko gets to see the “Dead Boys” for the first time, and there’s a line in there that was something along the lines of me talking to Edwin and asking, “Do you two make out with each other?” And my dad stopped the tape and he was like, “What are you reading for?” And I was like, “Don’t give me notes, it’s fine!” And so that was the audition process! I think within a month I found out I got the part and it’s been an absolute dream ever since.

Dressing the Part

(...) I think on paper Niko can seem like a certain type of character, but even in the choice of every costume we did, every color that she wears, every meticulous little piece about everything from her nails to her room, it’s so well curated and thought out. Through her journey, we also find that she’s a woman that wears what she feels. On the surface, she might seem like the most joyful, young, optimistic girl, but it’s the inner confidence and bravery where we find that she’s layered, and she is very much a young woman coming of age.

SOURCE: MEET THE REAL DEAD BOY DETECTIVES (AND FRIENDS)

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chaotic-orphan · 2 days

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Hey! I've just read your defiant leader x confident villain story and HOLY SHIT is it good. I love the personalities that you've given the characters, and how the villain doesn't really want to hurt the leader and is trying to ignore all of their feeling. Ugh!

I would love it if you could write more of the story. I have a feeling there's a lot more twists and turns on the horizon 👀✨

Defiant Leader x Confident Villain (5)

Read part one here

Continued from here

Guys… i am so sorry to everyone who has requested more parts for this series… it has taken literally months, I am only finished now because I queued it when I discovered it again! I am very sorry, it is an active WIP again!! I hope you enjoy!

TW: NEEDLES

~*~*~*~*~*~

Leader woke to the door of his room opening. He was still sitting in the chair in the room where Supervillain left him. The last thing he remembered was staring at the wall to pass the time, limbs still tied down tightly. Sometimes, when he was feeling adventurous, he’d glare down at the hammer that mangled his hand, but even that got boring. He didn’t realise he fell to sleep until he was waking up with the click of the lock in the door.

He didn’t have time to wake up, so his mind shot alert, clearing the fog that usually came with waking suddenly. He felt his body come alive at the thoughts of Supervillain coming to destroy his other hand. His limbs were asleep but still Leader made a fist with his free hand trying to get feeling back into it just in case.

What he could do to fight against Supervillain he didn’t know, but… but who was he kidding?! Supervillain seemed to smash every bone in his good hand, his strong hand, his punching hand.

Leader wanted to cry out as he tried to make a fist with his hand on instinct, but swallowed the cry to a sharp hiss as loud, quick footsteps thundered behind Leader’s chair and they froze.

Those footsteps were unmistakable, and there was only one set. A swift slap to the back of the head and Leader let out a startled: “ow!”

“You deserve more than that, you fucking idiot!” Villain hissed, coming to stand in front of Leader, setting a doctor’s bag down on the floor in front of Leader and dropping to one knee, unzipping it. “What were you thinking, pissing Supervillain off, Leader? Do you know how difficult you are making everything for me?”

“How about you just let me go and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Villain jerked their head up, piercing gaze furious and accusing. “Would you? Be out of my hair?” Villain challenged. Leader was the first to look away, and Villain scoffed, before dipping their head again and searching through the bag beside him. “Yeah. Thought so.”

“Villain… I…” Leader began, searching for the words to express themselves, but none came, and Villain didn’t seem to be in the mood to hear them even if they did somehow miraculously find the words to defend themselves. “Look, you don’t have to keep coming to my rescue.”

“Clearly I do,” Villain ground out, accusing eyes finding Leader’s again. “If you keep riling Supervillain up, Leader, he will kill you. I’m not fucking around. He will murder you, but you won’t die quickly. It will be long, drawn out, torturous.”

Leader’s brows lowered over their eyes, hooding the sockets in shadow. “I know that, Vil.”

“I don’t think you do!”

Leader’s eyes widened at the intensity colouring Villain’s voice, the slight fear in their eyes as they spoke. It was almost… desperate, almost helpless. Villain scoffed and looked away, running a hand through their hair, pulling slightly at the end of the strands.

Leader frowned. “Villain… what’s that look?”

Villain didn’t answer right away but a million different thoughts seemed to flash across his expression— doubt, fear, disgust anxiety. Every time Villain opened their mouth to speak they seemed to pause, chew their words, search for a better way to say what they wanted to tell Leader.

Eventually a grim resolution moulded their features and they looked at Leader again instead of through them.

“Supervillain,” Villain began hesitantly not quite meeting Leader’s gaze, and instead running a nervous hand through their hair. “He didn’t exactly trust me when I wanted to join his side so he devised a sort of… test, or trial run and he gave me the job he thought I would run away scared from.”

Villain risked a glance at Leader’s expression, then let out a long sigh and pinched the bridge of their nose, rocking back on their heels.

“It’s not something I’m proud of but I had to prove myself and if I didn’t do it someone else would have—”

“It’s okay, Vil,” Leader told them. Startled eyes found Leader’s and Villain’s expression softened slightly, shoulders losing tension. “Go on.”

“He made me the interrogator… or that’s what he called it, he made me his torturer,” Villain said quietly and it was as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the room. Leader stared at Villain, studying their face. Villain let out a shaky breath. “Every Hero we captured, or enemy someone brought in I would take care of them. Get information, work the confessions out of them, or just make them suffer— whatever Supervillain told me to do.”

Villain licked their lips, their eyes looking down to their hands before continuing.

“That’s not even the worst part, Leader,” Villain continued, tightening their hands into fists. They raised their head, gaze steeled and said: “The worst part was that I was good at it.”

Leader would rather Villain pick up the hammer and smash their other hand, or every single bone in their body rather than tell them this. Rather than this be true, because Villain wasn’t… Villain couldn’t— Villain… it felt like all air was robbed from their chest as they stared at Villain and for the first time since they came, Leader finally saw Villain.

They saw how much Villain changed. The little moments that were shining through of the old Villain were only that. Fleeting moments. Villain looked the same, although they had a new haircut and a crueller smirk. They carried themselves a little taller, but they looked like Leader’s Villain, but there was something now that seemed to finally let Leader see the real Villain.

The new Villain.

As if a blindfold had just been taken off Leader’s eyes.

Villain looked older, not by much but they had a less innocence in their eyes. Instead they were hard, certain kernels of experience. They didn’t just carry themselves taller, Villain had a new confidence about them as if they had finally found their calling. As if they were born to be a Villain, to be an… interrogator.

Villain’s expression softened and they turned away, letting out a shaky laugh. “You hate me now, don’t you?”

“Not even a little bit,” Leader said without hesitation. Villain let the shock show across their face as they met Leader’s eyes again.

Leader forced their resolve to show on their face, as sure as anything. “You did what you felt you had to do, Vil,” Leader continued softly. “You did what I always knew you could: you survived everything that life threw at you. How could I hate you for that?”

Villain looked so vulnerable in that moment, and Leader wished that they had seen it sooner. They wished they noticed how lost Villain was within the team, how sad they were. Always lashing out, always a little more distant and reserved.

“I should have done more, Vil,” Leader said and Villain rocked back on their heels, shaking their head side to side. They opened their mouth to reply but Leader beat them to it. “No, I should’ve, I’m sorry you felt like you had to leave the team. I’m sorry about the way things ended… I— I miss you, if I’m honest. But sometimes…”

The words were rushing out of Leader’s mouth now, all emotion. “Sometimes when we start out life presents us with opportunities and we just go along with them because, well, what other option do we have? But you… I’ve never seen you more alive, more at peace. You really seem to have found your place in the world Villain and I couldn’t be more happy for you.”

“You can’t say that, Leader,” Villain whispered.

Leader laughed. “Says who?”

Villain frowned. “We are enemies, we’re on the opposing sides. We can’t— there is no world where we’re friends.”

“Just because I don’t agree with you, Villain, doesn’t mean I don’t know you. I don’t still care for you, that the years we shared mean nothing.”

“It does,” Villain protested. “It has too.”

Leader leaned forward in their chair. “If it does, then what the hell are you here for, Villain?”

The question was like a slap of reality that stunned Villain for a moment before they sighed. They glanced down to the bag they brought in and rummaged through it, pulling out a small black case and flicking it open.

Inside was a needle and a small bottle of something. Villain reached in and grabbed the needle. Villain reached into the bag and drew out two medical gloves and slide them onto their hands, snapping the band at the end of one and grinning up at Leader.

It unnerved Leader a little as they stared down at the bottle, trying to read whatever it was Villain was so happy about showing them. Now with the knowledge that Villain was the resident torturer.

Not that it was particularly news to Leader. When rumours started circulating about Supervillain’s new vicious agony agent it was Rogue who brought the idea of Villain to Leader’s attention. Rogue ran with other people before Leader; heroes, vigilantes, villains… probably the one with the most contacts across the city.

“How certain are you?” Leader asked them.

Rogue shrugged one shoulder. “I trust contact with my life. They’re not the gossiping type.”

Leader didn’t show it then, but the thought, the very possibility that it could have been Villain terrified them. How wrong did they go with Villain to make them want to hurt people? But looking at them now, Leader couldn’t help but see the same Villain they had always known. Maybe just more grown up and sure of themselves. The way they were working so deftly with the needle and vial. Drawing some liquid into the needle and spurting it back out again to re-draw.

They smiled up at Leader once they were satisfied and started rubbing Leader’s hand with cotton balls covered in rubbing alcohol. Leader hissed jerking their arm back, but Villain continued as if Leader was sitting quiet as a mouse.

“I know, but you gotta hurt to get better. No pain no gain, right?” Villain asked with a grin. Leader smothered their anxiety at that grin. Villain’s old reassuring grin, the same one they wore before they ran recklessly from the group to defend them. When they directly disobeyed Leader’s orders to intercept their enemies before it was time.

Now, it wasn’t any of that. It was reassuring and light, so Leader nodded and set their jaw into a tight line as Villain smoothed the skin on Leader’s hand. Leader clenched their teeth as their bone rubbed off bone.

“Okay, this will hurt.”

That was all the warning Leader got before Villain plunged the needle into their hand. Leader jolted forwards, swallowing a scream to a mewling whine in the back of their throat instead.

They felt the liquid being injected into their hand, it was a strange sensation but not one that was unfamiliar. Once Villain had thumbed down the plunger and injected all of the liquid they pulled it out gently. They replaced it with a cotton pad the dab the blood away.

Leader stared at Villain. “Okay. That actually wasn’t that bad,” Leader told them.

Villain grimaced. “Leader, that was the easy part.”

Leader frowned and then the pain came. It was a simmering kind of burning at first and Leader’s wide eyes shot to Villain’s.

“Vil… what is this? What is this?” They rushed out, gasping between the questions.

“It’s okay, Leader. It just resets the bones in your hand.”

“It what?” Leader shrieked, closing their eyes as they felt their bones start to move in their hand.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Leader cried as their hand ignited in agony. They gasped and shot forward as far as the ropes would allow them, their neck muscles straining as they tried to not scream but their hand was on fire.

“Hey, Leader. It’s okay, I know. I know.” Leader only very distantly heard Villain whispering assurances and comforting words to them as they writhed beneath the ropes.

“Villain!” Leader gasped, throwing their head back as a guttural scream was torn from their throat. Leader kicked out and tried to buck themselves out of the chair but the ropes just remained firm as Leader screamed louder than they ever have before. The pain ricocheted from their hand — where their bones were moving and mending under their skin — all the way to their shoulders and then deeper into their chest.

It was too much.

Stars burst behind their eyes as they felt their bones crack into place.

Villain was speaking to them. Lips moving but Leader couldn’t hear a word they said. Villain’s eyes widened as Leader let the blackness swallow them, the last thing they saw was Villain lurching from their crouch.

*~*~*~*~*

Orphanage roll-call (tag-list, lmk if you wanna be added or removed): @nameless-beanie @aarika-merrill @criohfreeze @bandnbookbag @gala1981 @theonewithallthefixations @libellule888 @cardboardarsonist @shywhumpauthor r @written-by-jayy @memepsychowhowantsuperpower-blog @whump-is-love-whump-is-life @icarusignite @shirtzip @honeyed-euphrates @shameless-dumbass @dutifullykrispyland @starlight-hope @thatlittlefirestarter

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thebestsetter · 19 hours

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Which Blue Lock character should you date based on your MBTI? + some relationship headcannons

~ A/n: this is TOTALLY based on my opinion about the characters' MBTIs. You can desagree with me and give me suggestions on how to do better in the next part! (Assuming there's gonna be a next part lol)

Isagi Yoichi

◇ I feel like Isagi's an INFJ, since he's overall a selfless and kind person (off the field of course). He's also perceptive and creative to find solutions to his problems in the field and in life, but he may also end up overanalyzing and overthinking things a lot

◇ Based on that, Isagi would be attracted to someone with a great sense of humor and who would show interest in what he has to say about something, be it football or any other topic

◇ He would also enjoy being with someone lively and ambivert/extroverted, who would encourage him to be the best version of himself and would brighten up his days

◇ So, I think ENFJ and ENFP would work PERFECTLY with Isagi, since they tend to be more extroverted and care A LOT about their partners, and show it openly (something tells me Isagi would love to be babied by his partner)

◇ He would be one of the greatest Blue Lock boyfriends imo, a real sweetheart. He would 100% take you to the best dates ever and would probably ask his mother for advice about how to act around you☝️

◇ He would die for a supportive girlfriend who would cheer loudly for him during his games, he'd feel so appreciated!

◇ 10/10 boyfriend.

Karasu Tabito

◇ Karasu's 100% a ESTJ. Don't argue w/ me, you know I'm right.

◇ He's loyal, rational, objective, practical and responsible. He's also reliable and extroverted.

◇ Even with all these qualities, Karasu can act a little hasty and not be respectful when hearing opinions contrary to his own beliefs.

◇ In a relationship, he looks for someone who is supportive and respectful, patient and understanding

◇ He's a great boyfriend and brings out the best in his partner, helping them achieve their dreams and goals

◇ So, Karasu would have a great relationship with someone who would offer a balance to his somewhat "commanding" nature through a more sensitive and adaptable personality, such as an ISFP, or someone who would also be as methodical and rational as him, like an ISTJ

◇ He would LOVE if his partner watched his football games and, in return, he would watch theirs too, no matter what sport they played

◇ If you're an artist, he loves complimenting your art pieces and says you're like a modern-time Picasso (even though some of them may look like they were drawn by a 5 year old with crayons)

◇ Overall, the best boyfriend ever (literally the loml)

Rin Itoshi

◇ Rin's a very reserved introvert, for sure, but he's also very ambitious, determined and self-confident

◇ With that said, he would be an INTJ

◇ Imo, he would need someone to balance his "cold" personality with a cheerful and outgoing personality, like ESFPs or ENFPs, or a more reserved partner that's still a little ambiverted, like an ISFP

◇ To date an INTJ, you must understand that there are times when they just want their personal space and tranquility, which also applies to Rin

◇ He would try not to be so hard on you, but sometimes the feelings would "escape" (old habits die hard Ig) and he might come out as a little harsh. Don't yell at him, he would definitely regret it quickly! His ego is just too big to admit it sometimes....

◇ Not a bad boyfriend, just needs someone patient with him!!

◇ I think his love language would be acts of service, since he's a little shy about expressing his feeling with words

◇ So, your relationship with him would be based on "little things". Like grabing something you can reach from the top of a shelf or tying your shoelaces for you

◇ Overall a very good boyfriend!!!

Pls someone tell me the easiest and quickest way to become an ISFP or ISTP 🙏😭

#blue lock #bllk #bllk manga #bllk x reader #bllk x you #blue lock x reader #bllk isagi #bllk rin #rin itoshi #bllk karasu #karasu x reader #mbti types

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lemon-natalia · 3 days

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Harrow the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 52

Augustine & Mercy are having a very intense convo about how they just murdered GOD and are dooming themselves, and Gideon 1.0, Gideon 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Ianthe are just … standing there

oh shit and Dominicus is gonna die and become a black hole? i mean given there’s a whole other book not sure where this is gonna go, maybe he was lying to everyone about that as well?

when Ianthe of all people is the one advocating to try and save people out of the goodness of her heart, you know you’re fucked

‘Well, Augustine, there’s something you should know’ could someone please say something in this series that isn’t ridiculously cryptic. also i totally forgot this guy was wearing Gid’s sunglasses the whole time lol

OH WAIT THE BITCH IS BACK. i knew it was too good to be true

also YIKES poor Mercy, she was not my favourite character but god she did not deserve that

also ah. hm. the above comment did not age well

oh this guys whole persona has just shifted. He’s still got that kinda irreverent jokiness & affability but he’s also evidently very pissed off, a lot less ‘lets have tea’ and more ‘do what i say or get fucked’

'then he looked at us, gave a crooked half smile’ ohhhh he has the same. fucking. crooked smile. that Gideon has in the BARI-star dream what the fuck

and he WAS the one who ordered Gideon-Part-1 to kill Harrow, for fucks sake. at least Harrow had Ortus be nice to her briefly cuz she’s three for three on her other parental figures trying to kill her at some point

Gideon found out her bio dad is GOD, saw him die, saw him come back to live naked, and now found out he tried to kill her (kinda maybe its complicated) girlfriend. thats just ... so many different levels of traumatising

also i keep forgetting Gideon is literally looking like Harrow for all of this

GIDEON 1.0 ISN’T GIDEON, ITS PYRRHA DVE HIS CAV?!?!? yknow what so much else is going on rn i barely have the capacity to process that

and she was also sleeping with Commander Wake, was everyone just fucking eachother????? and i thought the love quadrangle in the last book was complicated. i’m guessing she shot Wake to stop her from potentially revealing the whole ‘i’m actually alive’ thing to the Emperor then?

also wow there’s a lot of consent issues being raised in the last couple chapters and this one, not just with dios apate major, but also like … you’re having sex with someone while possessing someone else’s body without their knowledge, but also also its the only body you have because they (presumably) killed you to absorb your soul. like what.

the drama and vast existential horror of this scene is only mildly undercut by the fact that the Emperor is having this crazy fight wearing only what is essentially an opalescent bathrobe

also why are there fucking TEETH at the bottom of the River? and Tongues?? and it thinks he’s a Resurrection Beast? i feel like there’s so much more to the River that we haven’t uncovered yet

and Augustine wasn’t wrong with what he said wayy before, the Emperor really did grant him more leniency than he did Mercy, at least he gave him a chance before murdering him

also cmon Ianthe you’re really gonna save that guy, really?

'Hands pressed. We died’ AGAIN?? i mean at least this time there’s a chance for her to come back given she’s done it once before?? also i do not know what to make of her seeing Alecto before she dies at all

#lemon natalia reads the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb #the locked tomb liveblog #harrow the ninth

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icedragonlizard · 3 days

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What if Kirby characters could drive cars?

Let's just assume gijinka versions of them because otherwise most don't even have the proper anatomy to drive, LOL.

Anyways, here are my thoughts on the matter:

-Kirby is a funny case because he's shown decent motoring skills such as piloting a Robobot Armor, but he's also a literal child. So therefore, no license for him.

-Susie would be the most skilled driver in the cast, I feel. But she'd also be unhinged in the way she drives. She'd make all sorts of crazy "advanced" maneuvers that would terrify someone in her passenger seat. Basically, she has such high confidence of her driving capabilities that she's arrogant on the road. You'd think that this would lead to her easily getting into accidents, but she does have good enough reflexes and reaction time to dodge a lot of potential accidents. Not at all to say she's untouchable... she'd absolutely get into accidents on occasion, but she often gets away with her overconfidence by reacting quick enough to escape many dangerous moments. Still would be nerve wracking to be in the passenger seat with her though.

-Magolor would be good at driving as well. Probably even the second most skilled driver in the cast, but he'd get into accidents a lot more often than Susie would. Him canonically crashing the Lor Starcutter more than once makes me believe this. He'd also speed in a lot of instances where he thinks he can get away with it. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised if he'd be mischievous enough to sometimes honk his horn with the sole intent of pissing other drivers off because he thinks it's funny.

-Marx should not be allowed to have a license. The reasons are fairly self explanatory. He'd instigate chaos in traffic and cause accidents on purpose. He'd be an absolute menace on the road. Don't let this shitfaced lunatic drive a car. I love this jester but I would not under any circumstances trust him to drive. Well, maybe I wouldn't trust a lot of others in the cast to drive, but especially Marx.

-Daroach would probably be decent at driving, but you know damn well that if you see him driving then he 100% stole the car he's using. Although I think it'd be funny if car theft is something he did pretty often. Like every time he finds a new favorite car, he then just takes it and drives off with it.

-Taranza is a strange case. His six hands would make him seem like he'd be stellar at driving, but I also imagine he's someone that's just not great at using tech appliances. Give him enough training and I think he'd be good at driving, but overall he'd be the least skilled driver out of the Wave 3 triad because the other two are just much better with tech.

Funny scenario: Taranza is in the passenger seat with either Susie or Magolor driving, and he gets nervous of their arrogant driving mentalities, despite him being less skilled than them in driving.

-I'm not sure if King Dedede would stand out as a driver. I guess he'd be alright at it? Not great but not awful. Although I imagine he'd probably just let waddle dees drive for him.

-Reminder that Meta Knight himself does not pilot the Halberd, it's his crewmates. I think they'd be better drivers than him, LOL. I think he himself might be alright in terms of driving capability, but would also notably suffer from road rage because of how easily combative he is.

-Speaking of road rage, I actually see many in the cast suffering from it. Meta Knight, Dedede, Susie, Zan and maybe Magolor would all be road ragers sometimes. I think the biggest road ragers, however, would be Flamberge and Dark Meta Knight... those two would lowkey fall under the "get out and fight the other driver" levels of road rage. I guess Meta Knight might occasionally do that too, but not as vehemently as those two.

-Would the animal friends bother driving, even in gijinka forms? I imagine ChuChu and Pitch are kids so no for them. Not sure about Nago because he seems lazy. Rick... sure, probably, albeit not often. The idea of gijinka-ified Coo and Kine piloting aerial and aquatic vehicles respectively sounds cool, but I'm not sure how likely they'd actually do that lol. Kine seems pretty air headed for that.

-Gooey driving would be the funniest thing ever. It'd obviously go very poorly but I think it'd be entertaining to watch just to see what happens. LMAO.

-Depending on if you headcanon Bandana Waddle Dee as either a child or an adult, I think he'd be a serviceable driver if the latter. But in my case, he's a kid. So no license for him.

That's... practically all my notable thoughts for this matter. What do you think?

#kirby #susie haltmann #susie kirby #magolor #marx #marx kirby #daroach #taranza #king dedede #meta knight #dark meta knight #the mage sisters #rick kine and coo #gooey #gooey kirby #bandana waddle dee

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deluweil · 6 hours

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Oh God yes, I am so for Tommy being gone just to have people stop being stupid about Eddie. Which is a pitty because at first I was intrigued by Tommy. Now i just want it to end.

And lol at your tags. I have blocked so many people lately, too. Not even stupid takes during TK era made me block so much. Some of them really take the cake now. All this hate towards Eddie is staggering. And to have the audacity to call eddieblr toxic (and yes, I have seen that and not only buddies are being called toxic these days).

HI there,

I have to say that I was intrigued and even excited for Tommy at first too, but there were a lot of things that just ruined it along the way, amongst them the last minute joiners and Eddie haters fans who just set out to make this place unbearable.

I wouldn't have minded Tommy so much if not for all the toxicity that brought with it and the poor writing and the money for specs from Lou.

Like wth dude, didn't anyone teach you to be correct, you can't justify Tommy's behavior in S2 and pass it as teasing. It's like punching someone in the face in rage or nearly break someone's ankle for attention and call it roughhousing. (not joking, I literally had an ask with someone justifying the white man railroading the POC for attention as roughhousing. - When Buck himself said he wasn't sure it wasn't done on purpose. like wtf?)

lol I live for those tags, everyone say their real thoughts and be funny in tags, it's so much fun.

I literally bonded with that block button, I haven't blocked so many ppl since early S4 and the porn bots attack lol

Ppl need to chill, everyone is entitled to their opinions but are not entitled to force it upon others.

Ship who you want but tag properly and don't be toxic about.

A lot of ppl read X's posts and come to rant about it here, Tumblr is not X, most of the ppl here are ppl who hate X's toxicity. I have deleted my account so many years ago.

We are here to have fun, so I say ship who you want, TAG PROPERLY, and leave us the hell alone.

Eddie/Ryan haters are all blocked so thankfully I don't see those, but if after everything they still hate on Eddie for something Ryan apologized several times for, learned from it and has bettered himself to the point that Aisha posted a thankful for Ryan story once and they have so many pictures together where she hugs him like he's one of the most precious ppl to ever live, than I have to call pure racism.

And that would explain the sudden admiration to the new white man on screen to be paired with the other white man who is by chance also the fan favorite.

Don't get it twisted, I love Oliver and Oliver loves Ryan and Eddie, but one has to wonder about the audience's choice of favorite even as they call against racism and for equality and with the same breath hate on a regular poc character.

I'm hoping this bizarre season ends on a good note, because otherwise S8 may be the last season.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

#911 ask #anti tommy kinard #anti bucktommy #it wasn't always like this but I am ready for it to be over #some brutal honesty #fandom hypocrisy #toxic fandom #ryan guzman #eddie diaz #oliver stark #not tagging the third wheel #911 spoilers #911 speculation #buddie #not really #don't come at me at my inbox I will block you at this point I don't care what you think #do not repost just to counter my post make your own #and block me on the way if you so strongly disagree #not directed to the asker obviously thank you for the ask :)

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genericpuff · 2 days

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oh boy it's that time again

when rachel posts 'video progress' of her work and we proceed to dissect it like a frog in 9th grade science class

like ok first the caption of "is persephone the chicken and hades the egg" makes no fucking sense except to anyone who overthinks it and goes "wait is that a reference to the popularly-perpetuated version of the myth where persephone went down to the underworld willingly and hades didn't actually exist???" because if it is ima scream lmao

but MORE IMPORTANTLY-

Here's the transcript of what she's saying in the video:

"I think I've always wanted to write Hades' and Persephone's story because obviously I really like them. It's like very much a chicken and egg situation because I think in the beginning I thought that I was going to use a very abstract black and white style, and I realized it wasn't very enticing or fun for me, um... and I started drawing these very like vibrant characters and as I drew them I understood more about the story the more that I explored the art style, um and I guess an example of that is, y'know, Persephone is like a very bright color um, and the Underworld, is a very dark dark blue, and so when she says she really sticks out so it's just environmental uh processes like that that really helped inspire the direction of the story."

(despite her expanding on the "chicken and the egg" bit it still doesn't make sense imo lmao)

But what we're seeing isn't S1 LO, it's actually from S3 of LO:

But um... you notice anything interesting about the screenshot I just showed you?

That literally looks NOTHING like what we see in the final panel. At the VERY least I think this goes to show how overcooked it becomes in post-production, when they add the canvas layer and hypersaturate the shit out of the colors, but even the blending technique just isn't matching up?

A lot of what she's doing in this video also feels very... non-existent, like she's brushing her pen around but very little is happening so it feels more like her just putting down random brush strokes to try and make it seem put-together but really she's just kind of pushing colors around and/or doing nothing. Especially when, again, what she's painting here looks nothing like the final picture (so at best it's a lot of wasted work??)

And knowing what we know about the assistants drawing the characters separately so that Rachel can rearrange them in the final episode layout... I don't wanna call foul play here, but this feels like yet another attempt on Rachel's behalf to make her process seem more involved than it is by simply redrawing a scene for the performative aspect of it all. It's like the "sketches" in the books looking way too 'clean' for the final product and giving the impression that she just sketched over the final panels to make them look pretty enough for print.

I also wanna mention that for some reason she's drawing this on her iPad when she owns a Cintiq. It could be because she was drawing this while abroad in the US for her conventions last fall, but despite clearly being ahead of schedule, she still wound up drawing the final episode the night of-

Oh yeah and btw there are like a million clipping layers for what looks like just a simple drawing of Demeter. And this lines up with our previous theories about her using like 128549021809 layers for literally one character.

And aside from all that her commentary, as always, is very nothingburger, just a bunch of word salad. Like she's literally trying to explain LO's color theory as "well Persephone is bright pink and the Underworld is dark blue so she sticks out! That's all you need to know!"

IDK, I'm not coming to any sort of ironclad conclusion based off this one video, but it does feel like yet another desperate attempt to prove that she does work on LO and doesn't just leave it all to her assistants to do at the last minute. But like... she's kind of screwed in that argument either way, because even if she draws the majority of panels in LO, that just further proves the argument that she's stopped trying.

#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical

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inkdemonapologist · 21 hours

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are you excited for the big role sammy's going to play in Cage?? im apprehensive... i love him a feral amount and i was real disappointed with his 2 seconds of screentime in BatDR

also just saying ur sammy drawings give me life he looks wonderful in hats

brought to u by ⭐️ anon

Hehehe aw thank you!! :D

There’s a lot of things in Dark Revival I ended up disappointed about, but despite my love of Sammy Lawrence, Sammy barely appearing was not really one of them. At the time, I’d commented to friends that the complete lack of Sammy mentions in the hype leading up to BatDR meant he was either very important or had only a cameo appearance, and I was actually pretty delighted about the Cyclebreaker cameo – it’s a moment that takes him startlingly seriously, that wasn’t just him quoting one of his four catch phrases; it’s... a kind of moment we haven’t seen from Sammy before. The part where he gets shot was like, where my expectations were, so the cyclebreaker thing was a pleasant surprise.

But like, ever since The Cage was announced… we knew Sammy kind of had to be in it. Like, Henry says “how did WE escape” and it’s set in the SPECIFIC place and time that Sammy also is; literally the only reason for Sammy to not be a significant character is if the creators actually didn’t want anything to do with him. So I have to admit the announcement that WE CAN CONFIRM that SAMMY WILL PLAY A MAJOR ROLE IN THE CAGE!!!!!!! RESTORED TO HIS CHAPTER 2 CREEPY GLORY! is just…… ugh, it’s hard to articulate why this tweet frustrates me so much.

Like………………….. "he's in it more" is not the only thing people care about, surely! What is he doing? What is his role in all this? What does he even WANT? In a review, "he's back to his chapter 2 creepy glory" would be a powerful recommendation; in a tweet from the creator right after preorders go up, it feels more like, "Hey, remember the thing you wanted? we DEFINITELY did that thing you wanted and we did it SUPER WELL so preorder our game please!!" Give us an intriguing line of dialogue or a hint about what he's doing (opposing you? helping you? uneasy truce? trying to find bendy?) and you wouldn't even need to promise us that he plays a major role; we'd be curious to learn more.

So this reassurance ends up doing the opposite, for me, because I still don't know if the creators even understand what I like about Sammy. The thing is that the circumstances of BatDR (there's a little Bendy running around, the Ink Demon is claimed dead but actually it's not, Wilson is trying to become the Lost Ones' new Big Brother) could've been INCREDIBLY relevant to Sammy -- that's why people wanted him to show up in BatDR, to see what he thinks of these developments and how he would react to them!! So if you're interested in Sammy, the character, then it would not be hard to hint at like, what his deal is – "Sammy knows the Ink Demon is out there somewhere and Henry is the key to finding him" or "after the disappearance of his Lord he's become a desperate man who's as much an obstacle as an ally" or even "Sammy was defiant when he went into the Pit -- what will Henry find when he encounters him now?" or w/e -- simply insisting HES LIKE HE WAS IN CHAPTER TWO, THE ONE YOU GUYS LIKE instead of being able to think of a single character-based hint that we might find compelling is, tbh, rather un-reassuring!!!

My complaint about Twisted Alice’s role in BatDR was that ultimately, it felt like they were just trying to capture the vibes that Twisted Alice had in BatIM instead of really exploring what that character would be doing HERE, in THIS situation. Nothing she’s doing really makes sense, and what IS there seems to have forgotten what her actual deal is, but she’s doing it with the right flair, so it feels like she’s in-character enough for the scene to be fun. Like an episodic cartoon that just forgets what happened in previous episodes depending on who’s writing this one. So… I think that’s a real risk for Sammy. For the people who just want him to show up and whisper cult-ish things so we can hear his voice more and go HEHEHE ITS HIM, this isn’t really a concern lmao, that will probably happen. I don’t have high hopes that he’ll make sense as a character, but tbf I don’t know that he ever has.

And IDK, its still early, its possible the cage will come out and I'll look up spoilers and be like OMG NM I LOVE WHAT THEY DID WITH HIM. A game that's supposed to be psychological horror could, in theory, be a really fun place for Sammy!! Maybe the people actually writing him will give him more care, haha. It's a little silly for me to be so worked up about the marketing for a game that I am not going to buy b/c I’m still not interested in giving JDS, Inc. my money. AND YET DESPITE IT ALL I STILL… CARE ABOUT SAMMY LAWRENCE LMAO….. I think my main emotion about The Cage is just curiosity, though. I do want to know what they do with him. I’m curious if he’ll play a major part in the story, or if he’s like Henry or Porter in BatDR, with one big scene where he gets a bunch of lines and then runs off. A lot of people really want to see Henry and Sammy team up in this, but I’m not writing off the possibility he’s an antagonist of some kind, so I’m curious which way that’ll go. But I don’t feel like I have any strong expectations, so I guess we’ll see!

#sammy lawrence #i know you have questions you always do #bendy saltposting #finally makes a tag so u can mute me being salty abt the franchise if ur not here for that!!

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undertheopensky · 1 day

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Forging Tired

Whumptober Day 26: Working To Exhaustion

Characters: Four, Blue, Sky

Trigger warnings: None

Read on Ao3!

---

Sky doesn’t realise it until after dinner, but Four hasn’t banked the forge fires.

“I’m not done yet,” Four waves at the admittedly intimidating pile of repair work yet to be done. A couple of plates from Time’s armour probably need to be replaced entirely, they have such large holes in them.

“It’s getting real late. Don’t stay up too much longer, you need to get some sleep.”

“Nah, I’m fine. Body’s not tired.” Four flexes one arm and gives him a grin that looks so much like Wind Sky’s eyes cross.

“Maybe not,” they sure hadn’t done much physical stuff today, just run around the village resupplying and gathering information, “but your brain still needs rest.”

This time Four snorts. “The brain is fast asleep, but that’s okay, we don’t need it for this.”

No one asks any more why Four sometimes refers to himself in the third person or plural. At best, he’ll pretend you didn’t say anything, and at worst, he’ll look at you like you’re the strange one. The closest they’ve gotten to an explanation is an offhanded, sympathetic “Yeah, we get it,” when Time first told them to stop asking about his timekeeping, because it was a holdover from a quest too traumatic to describe.

So, slightly weird, probably a Quest Thing, doesn’t seem to affect him day-to-day.

That said Sky’s a little concerned about him working with hot metal with his brain asleep.

“Are you sure? We can wait another day or two before setting out, I’m sure Time won’t mind. We don’t want you exhausting yourself over this.”

Four makes a rude noise, which is out of character enough Sky blinks. “I think I know my limits well enough, featherhead. Besides, forging’s not that hard. I wanna take advantage of actually having all my damn equipment for once, and goddess knows we probably won’t be here long. Our shit needs a lot of maintenance done. Don’t worry about the noise. The forge’s been soundproofed since we were little. Go away and sleep, featherhead, you need it more than us.”

He shoos Sky from the forge, polite but implacably firm.

Sky can’t exactly argue. Four is the smith here, and he knows himself best. If he says it’s fine, Sky will just have to believe him.

And as promised, as soon as the heavy door swings closed, the sounds of the forge muffle to almost nothing.

---

With Sky finally gone, Blue feels the tension ease out of him. Finally, some peace and quiet. He loves his brothers, and he supposes the heroes they’re travelling with aren’t TOO bad, but sometimes he just needs time alone in the quiet with his own thoughts and his own projects. There’s not a lot of privacy on the open road, or in a head crammed full of four distinct people.

Vio struggles with it, too, Blue knows, as he sets up the next few pieces of metal to heat and shovels fresh coke into the fire. But unlike Blue, the nerd is soothed by late nights spent reading or taking the darkest hours of watch, where Blue needs to do things to calm the itch in his brain. Armour and weapons maintenance is great for that - but it’s not always quiet. And waking everyone up with his activities would very much defeat the point.

Then, once he’s got things set up, Blue sits down at the bench with pliers and wire.

The worst thing about Sky’s mail is that the links are an eighth of an inch larger than standard - than literally everyone else’s. Blue had had to make a winding rod specifically for his damn mail, and has to double check every time before starting repairs to make sure he’s pulling from the right patch of spares.

If he had more time, he’d just make him a mail shirt from normal links. Standardise them across the board, and improve Sky’s resistance to piercing claws. But he doesn’t - they don’t - and besides that when this is all over Sky will be going back to his home in the clouds with its stupid mail measurements and its barely-there monster attacks and he’ll have no use for the close-set rings of modern mail and they’ll never see him again -

The forge fires burn hot enough that Blue can pretend it’s the air making his eyes sting.

Mending mail is busywork, stuff to keep his hands occupied while he waits for things to heat. It needs doing, and if he does it here then he can rivet the rings shut properly instead of the temporary road fixes (shit he needs to check Twilight’s mail he knows he put in a patch at one point but doesn’t remember riveting it in, need to do that before they leave) but some things can only be done at the forge. Like the plates of steel he’s got resting to the side, waiting to be turned into a new piece of Time’s armour.

He should probably get started on that actually so Blue puts aside the mail and reaches for his tongs. A lot of this is just shaping, forming the metal to the exact dimensions and curvature of Time’s body, and then adding buckle straps and point anchors so it can actually be attached. This is the loud part, metal-on-metal ringing and echoing in the enclosed stone room and making his vision swim just a little. He has to pause to blink it away. Does his head actually hurt, or is it just more echoes from the hammer?

Doesn’t matter; he’s got work to do. Blue checks the first piece for fit and moves on to the second; best to get this heavy work done before he gets tired. Working the steel cold takes more effort, but makes it less brittle in the end. Kind of important, that the metal sheets guarding someone’s body don’t shatter under a stiff blow, turning them from a defense into a hazard. You can get away with working horseshoes and stuff like metal fittings hot and then quenching them down, but it’s not worth it with plate armour.

Once he’s got the base curve in place, he checks the lines he drew earlier before his vision started to wobble, then hunts down the blunted chisel he needs. This is the fiddly bit. Blue sets the metal down on the wooden block with the groove specifically for this task, lining it up with the drawn lines, and starts hammering out the ridges.

It’s time-consuming, but the raised metal redirects weapons to less vulnerable points. Blue’s seen a sword swing into an arm then slide off into empty air, instead of an armpit or elbow, because of these ridges. They’re useful.

Time didn’t have any, originally. And while he can’t say for sure - Blue suspects that if he’d had them on his armour that first time a moblin got the jump on him, its spear wouldn’t have slid past the plates into his side quite so easily.

Four’s been quietly upgrading it piece by piece ever since.

The vambrace is harder, more of a curve to force the steel into, but he’s long practised at getting stubborn materials to cooperate. Once it’s done, and added to the pile he’s making of Time’s shit, he pulls the pattern steel Red had spent all day folding and forge welding from the fire. Already the basic shape of it is there: the tapered tip, the length of the blade, the narrow throat and tang. Once it’s finished, it’ll be a dagger for Hyrule. His current one has been sharpened so many times it’s thin enough to use as a lockpick, and they want him to have something good-quality to replace it, something that will last him.

(Will last him beyond this time of portals and black blood, because getting new equipment in his time is so, so difficult and they never want him to go without ever again, and one knife isn’t much in the grand scheme of things but it’s something they can do, and they’ll do their goddess-damn best work on it for him.)

It still needs some more shaping before it’s ready to go under the whetstone, though, so Blue tucks it back in the fire and picks up Wind’s knife, the one with the loose hilt. How the sailor expects to get anything done when he has to hold his entire hand at right angles to keep the thing straight Blue doesn’t know. Apparently he’d been stuffing it with fabric scraps to stabilise it, which, great, now Blue has to dig them all out before he can decide if the hilt is at all salvageable.

It doesn’t help that his fingers are a little shaky. Shit. Maybe he needs a water break.

He sets the dubiously-fixable knife aside while he drinks. He doesn’t feel thirsty. Dry-eyed, maybe, and his throat aches from the forge air, but the water doesn’t really help. Still, hydration’s important.

A sudden clank makes Blue drop his cup, water scattering on the floor as he spins. The fire flares - oh. A coal had - split, or settled, and the still-dull blade of Hyrule’s dagger had shifted and struck the edge. It looks about ready to go again anyway, so Blue grabs it - with tongs! He’s not an idiot! - and starts hammering an edge into it.

As the blade flattens out and becomes more knife than bar of metal Blue takes care to bevel off both edges neatly. He flips it, to make sure he gets both sides, then flips it again to even it out. He wants the balance on this thing perfect, and if it takes a bit of fiddling, all the better. That way he knows it’s good. Blue holds it up, eyeing the straightness of the blade from the side, and then down the length of it, and nods to himself, moving to set it. Good. He’ll let it cool a little before heating it again, and -

Blue stumbles. The blade clangs down on the bench he’d meant to set it on gently, spinning away from the tongs and fortunately not hitting any part of him with the still red-hot metal. Fuck, he’d forgotten to pick up his cup. It’s a good thing it’s so hot in here that all the water evaporated off or he might have slipped. Fuck.

He checks the blade - fuck, he dinged it - puts it back in the fire, then picks up his cup to set it back beside the water barrel. The metal handle is painfully hot under his fingers. Although - he could do with more water. His eyes are stinging again.

Blue drinks, long and slow. The water tastes metallic, or maybe that’s just the forge air coating his tongue. It settles uneasily. Doesn’t matter - his stomach will get over it.

He fixes the dent made when he dropped the half-made dagger, hammering until metal fills the gap and then hammering it out even again to repair the edge. He also spends more time carefully squinting at it to make sure it’s still straight, so long that the metal goes dark and cold.

Then back in the fire it goes.

Blue gets back to mail repairs, working rings into place, then riveting them shut with scraps from broken links. He considers, as he works, if the long-handled riveting pliers could be made to fit into their tool pouch. They can’t bring along the whole forge, that would be silly, but this one thing? They already carry the cutting pliers to make links with so it’s not like they need anything else for the rivets, and it doesn’t need heat treatment -

He pinches a fingertip with the pliers and swears loudly, shaking it and resisting the urge to shove it in his mouth - his hands are covered in oil and coal dust. Squinting at it - no real damage - he shakes it one more time and picks up the mail patch he dropped. It stings a little, to apply enough pressure to hold the metal fabric. Actually -

Checking the dagger, he pulls it from the fire and rests it on the anvil to cool. This is always time consuming, heating and cooling the steel to normalise it before the final edge can be put on. Heat it, then cool it, then heat it again; all part of ensuring the blade isn’t brittle and will hold its shape and its edge for as long as possible. It’s familiar in a way so ingrained he can almost touch it, watching the metal change colour. Fading from yellow, through red, down to the still blisteringly-hot but normal appearance of steel.

Blue blinks, and finds himself sitting on his preferred stool, metal still cooling in his tongs. Shit. When did he sit down? He’s wasting time, here. Back in the fire, back to work, fingertip still throbbing faintly.

Half the plates on Time’s tassets got ripped off during the fight with the iron knuckle, which are fiddly and annoying but not hard to replace. Once he’s got them shaped and punched Blue is tempted to just hand the lot off to Time for the old man to stitch them in place. Teach him to get distracted watching Twilight’s sword form. Shit, there’s so many of them, too. Time’s lucky his leg was in few enough pieces that Hyrule and Warriors could put it back together.

Blue hammers out scale after scale. Get the curve right; adjust the tongs, hammer out the part they’d hidden; set the edge, set the ridge, set it aside, and grab the next one. He piles them up on the metal workbench; they’d be less annoying to work with if he could just pile them in a coal shovel and dunk them in the fire to soften them, but even if they’re small they’re still armour and he needs to keep them as supple as possible.

And speaking of it’s time to pull the dagger again. The tongs grab it, fumble it, dump it back in the coals, then grab it agin. Blue is very careful as he sets it on the bench. He has no desire to set his own boots alight. This is the last cooling phase, though, so he can let the forge fire die down. Finally. His eyes itch and ache in the hot, dry air. He’d rub them if he wasn’t - still - covered in forge leavings.

Punch the holes for Time’s tasset scales; set them in his pile to deal with in the morning. Finally get the hilt off Wind’s knife and decide it is salvageable, actually, if he glues in a wedge of cedar to fill in the split that was letting it get loose in the first place. How did Wind even do that? Rewrap it in leather strips and it’ll be done; another job for the morning. When his hands aren’t so shaky. He’s getting glue everywhere, ugh.

…does he need to pull the dagger again? No, wait, it’s already on the bench. Does it need to go back in the fire? …no, he already decided it was done. He reaches to grab it, half-intending to measure it up for the hilt and crossguard, but hesitates at the heat radiating off it. Right. Fresh from the forge. Doesn’t look hot, but definitely is. He’ll leave it for an hour or so.

Blue shakes himself, hard, feeling the pull of it in his neck and his forehead. His head aches, behind his eyes. There’s a fine grey fuzz at the edges of his vision. Right, with the forge fire dying, he needs a bit more light. Where’s Vio’s lantern…?

By the too-pale magical light, Blue works, and works, until there’s nothing left to do but wind more wire into chainmail rings and weave them into the cuts and gashes left by enemy claws and weapons, tamp down rivets and move to the next section until he needs to wind out more rings -

It’s endless and monotonous and he can feel the screaming under his skin finally starting to cool, as the fire burns itself out.

Something they do need, he thinks as he pulls out the temporary patch he’d put in Twilight’s mail tunic, is a store of fully-finished rings. Hammering out their linking points and punching rivet holes is best done on an anvil. Then, as long as they have a stock of scrap wire for rivets (inevitable, they’re constantly damaging mail), the cutters and the riveting pliers, they can do repairs that are just as strong as the original work itself. Once they run out of wire, well, that’s more of an issue. The drawing plate is much too heavy to bring along with them.

Blue seals up the last ring in Twilight’s mail and sets it aside, then hops off the stool to go in search of the metal rods he needs to make wire. He knows they left a whole stack of them somewhere.

In truth, most forging doesn’t require a lot of raw strength. The weight of the hammer and the drag of gravity does a lot of the work, and all you need to do is direct it. Blue’s got more muscle from wielding a warhammer, honestly. The exception, he thinks distastefully, is wire drawing. That does need some force, since you’re dragging a piece of metal through smaller and smaller holes, not stretching it so much as drawing it out longer and longer and thinner and thinner, and of course it’s metal, it doesn’t want to do that.

Blue finally finds the basket of rods on a low shelf behind a huge box of half-finished nails - Red’s doing, surely - and carries it to the draw plate. There’s certainly no moving the thing to anywhere else. It weighs more than he does at least twice over, solid iron plate set into a heavy stone base.

Choosing a rod, Blue hammers out a quick point, feeds it through a hole that’s just a little smaller than its current size, clamps it, and starts to pull.

His eyes burn. His head aches. His fingers sting, all the little places where slips and cuts and burns have piled up over long hours. Without his mind keeping track of eight timers at once, it’s free to focus on the physical, and oh, he feels so heavy -

Blue breathes deep, metal and coal dust and ash, and feeds the wire into the next hole.

---

Sky is unhappy but unsurprised to find the patch of floor allocated to Four empty.

Weak morning light streams through the curtains. It’s just enough to see by as Sky checks that Legend’s unmoving form on the bed is just due to stiffness and exhaustion, not something more worrying, and tiptoes around scattered bedrolls. Twilight cracks an eye as he’s stepped over.

“A’right there?” he checks, voice low.

Sky smiles. “Just seein’ who’s up.”

Twilight grunts and to all appearances goes straight back to sleep. For all he wakes with the dawn on the ranch, he does enjoy his sleep, when he can get it.

Sky empathises but he’s got a mission.

Through the shop windows he spots Wild outside, running through the carefully prescribed stretches that kept his scars limber. Once he was done with those, he’d be all up in Four’s kitchen, eager to make food more complex than could be managed over a simple campfire. Four even had an oven, which Wild had been very excited about.

Still, breakfast will come later. The forge door still stands closed, just as it had last night after Four kicked him out. Moving slow, Sky eases the heavy door open, hoping to find him passed out in a corner somewhere.

Instead Four is sitting upright at the workbench. The winding rod in his hands is familiar, though he’s moving far slower than usual, and his hands shake when he reaches for the pliers.

“Four, have you slept at all?” Sky asks, disappointed.

“Huh?” Four turns to look at him, and there’s a distinct pause before recognition flickers. “Oh, Sky. I’m nearly done with your mail. Or…” He squints at the links on the table. “No, mail’s finished. Spare rings. We’re always running out.”

“Sleep, Four,” Sky stresses. “Goddess - have you been working all night?” He eyes up the frankly ludicrous pile of mending that now sits on the other side of the bench from where it started, separated into neat piles by owner. And Four is still going - slowly cutting rings off the spiral, one by one.

“‘M fine.”

He changes tacks. “Four, c’mon. It’s time for breakfast. Wild will sulk if it gets cold, you know he will.”

Four blinks at him, visibly hazy with exhaustion, and finally, slowly, drags himself to his feet. He looks worse, upright. He’s pale and a little haggard, swaying slightly just standing in place. Goddess. He’s going to be an utter wreck today, and they’re supposed to head out for the Castor Wilds later. Maybe Sky can convince Time to wait until after lunch and Four will revive some after a nap -

The smith’s feet tangle. Sky lunges to catch him -

Four catches himself with a quick shake of the head. “Phew, close one,” he mutters. He brushes past Sky into the rest of the house, steps suddenly quick and sure. “C’mon, Sky,” he calls over his shoulder, “help me keep Wild from dirtying every pan I own, I do not want to do dishes today.”

He still looks distinctly unwell over breakfast, but the shake in his hands, the sway in his step, the dull slowness of his eyes and responses - all that is gone like it was never there. He even smiles and keeps up with the conversation. Sky doesn’t know what to make of it.

(In the back of his mind, though, he wonders.)

#whumptober 2023 #linked universe #lu blue #lu four #lu sky #lu fic #skies writes #i swear this was supposed to be a whump fic but it turned into 3000 words of me infodumping about blacksmithing

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bridgertonandchocolate · 15 hours

Text

Now that Bridgerton has been released for over a week and I've had it on repeat since then it's time to process through some thoughts.

Overall this is my favorite season of Bridgerton. It's not surprising because Polin has always been my favorite pairing since season 1 and friends to lovers is one of my all time favorite romance tropes.

While I am loving the season there are still a few beefs I had while watching it that still irk me, but don't bother me as much as they did in the beginning which will be discussed at the end of the post.

Prepare for a long post and if you read it all thank you! Also SPOILERS ABOUND! Let's start with everything I have loved so far:

Mirrors. There are mirrors freaking everywhere in the season and we all know why. A lot of the side characters have mirrors in their scenes. We see Kate has a bunch of mirrors in her study, the Mondriches have mirrors. Mirrors everywhere to be found. Not only is a mirror going to play a major part in the second part, but it's so symbolic of Colin and Pen's journey of really finding themselves and subsequently each other. But Bridgerton is not subtle this season. There's mirrors everywhere you look.

Colin Bridgerton is a cinnamon roll and must be protected at all costs. My previous post already addressed a lot of the Colin hate floating around out there and I won't hear it. Our man is out there fully falling harder for Pen and not realizing how much he's affected by her. Until he does and then he's properly torturing himself.

The main characters this season are so relatable. Being a mid/plus size late bloomer female who has never received any romantic attention I relate to Penelope so much. I nearly cried in the second episode because I've had the same feelings she was having in that moment of believing you'll never have that in your life. At least she had Colin. But besides my personal connection to Pen compared to the previous two couples I think Colin and Pen are the most realistic and relatable characters.

The book references. I was a little nervous about changing the storyline to Colin having lessons with Penelope and helping her find a husband and Pen having another suitor, but I enjoyed it. It allowed them to bring a lot of humor to the show where we haven't really seen that in this show before. But they also incorporated very key aspects of the Polin relationship. The first kiss was nearly verbatim from the book and the very end of the carriage scene was also straight from the book just some dialogue switched characters. More on the carriage later.

Colin realizes he loves Pen much earlier than in the book. So glad for this change since we already knew Colin was the biggest dummy for not realizing what was right in front of his face. I'm glad we saw sparks of it from him before the first kiss. The garden confession? Please. It was practically a love confession as he was talking about all of the things he likes about her. The boy just couldn't put two and two together. And I'm really glad Pen tried to move on from her feelings it really put Colin into a place where he had to imagine his life without her and the man couldn't handle it.

Here are some beefs I have with the season but again they're pretty minimal and honestly I'm somewhat okay with it now except for one of them:

Lady Danbury not being involved with Polin whatsoever. They name their first born Agatha for heaven's sake. I really anticipated Lady D to be involved with Pen being a wallflower and practically just like her, but .... whatever. They gave Lady D other things to do this season instead.

Pen never asked Colin to help her find a husband. Okay this one still actually bothers me still. In episode 4 Penelope mentions to Colin when they're finished dancing that it was a mistake asking for his help and then in the carriage she says again that when she asked him for his help in finding a husband she didn't know he'd also deny her one (I told you guys I have watched this literally nonstop for a week). But she literally NEVER asked him to help her. In episode 1 he says, "if a husband is what you seek let me help you." At no point was she like "Please Colin will you help me?" I couldn't stand this. The only thing Pen asked of Colin was if he'd kiss her and I stand by this. That's sloppy continuity in the writing.

The brothels. Both scenes were completely unnecessary to me. The first one I've come around on slightly, but I will never get over the second brothel scene. I get what they were trying to do, but with the awkward flirting with all the ladies in the ton that was already accomplished for me that Colin was trying to act like someone he definitely wasn't. I didn't need to see Slut Colin for that. And I get it for the first brothel scene they made sure to hit that home, but the second one? The second one comes after he realizes he's fallen in love with Penelope and I don't fully understand his motivation for going there. I also am just sick of the rake storyline and since we know that's not how Colin is I was upset they tried to turn him into that. But characters must grow. To me it could've been done differently or even better yet not at all.

No flashback to baby Polin. I really was hoping for a flashback. There was a flashback episode for season 1 and 2 but none for 3. I really thought they would have done a flashback of some kind. At least Colin remembers and talks about how they met. "Do you remember when we first met?" Bro please. You don't need to ask Penelope if she remembers it's the moment she fell in love with you, bro. I'm hoping for a callback to this in the second part when she hopefully tells Colin she's loved him for years.

Last beef. That the carriage scene and love realization happened with no LW reveal. I get it. They're pushing this off to the second part. Makes sense for the drama of it all, but it fundamentally goes against season 1 Pen when she was trying to convince Marina to tell Colin that she was pregnant. Like hello. Now she's just doing what Marina did by keeping this from him. And I'm sure that's what part 2 will be about, but I don't like it. In the book he proposed to her fully knowing who she was and now in the show there's this huge chunk of who she is now missing and I DON'T LIKE IT!

This is way too long. Stay tuned for thoughts on the carriage scene, other favorite Polin moments and all my hopes and dreams for part 2.

#bridgerton #polin #it’s polin season #romancing mister bridgerton #bridgerton season three #colin bridgerton #penelope featherington

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boyfridged · 1 day

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Do you have any more thoughts about Alfred and how to make him a more interesting character? And there's this tag "Alfred Pennyworth is a Saint", got any opinions about that? And what about some different portrayals like the Gotham Tv version, the multiple versions from comics (usually either harsh, sarcastic and emotionally repressed stoic or openly affectionate, offering actual advice and kind), or the super nice and kind ones from the various movies (live-action and animated)?

there's a lot of contradictions when it comes to alfred's character, even within the scope of individual works (that including current canon... post-mortem too): he's supposed to be both harsh and kind, extremely competent and yet - out of picture to a degree, both fundamentally against the idea of batman (mocking it at times) and supportive of it, professional and a parental figure, conservative in appearances but progressive in acts... most importantly, he plays a role of a "sage" -- he is supposed to be simply right.

but you probably already know -- i'm very interested in characters being wrong.

and i'd say the best angle to approach alfred is simply based on the question of who he needs to be in bruce's story for it to work at all. and one of these requirements is that he is not really there. he cannot enter the action too often, even if writers want you to believe he's invincible. he cannot truly make the residents of the manor a family -- there ought to be some distance, because it's bruce's job to be a father (this is interesting in moench's pre-crisis run also... where it is very clear that alfred leaves raising jay to bruce.) and, most importantly, for bruce to become batman -- alfred ought to fail him to some degree.

and i reckon that's why we don't see much of bruce's childhood. there are some conflicting narratives irt leslie and alfred, even in the 80s - on the one hand, it is suggested that they *both* do not know how to handle bruce as a child; on the other hand, you're supposed to believe that there was no way to do that (and to absolve them of their fault). but i'm interested in a compromise... in acknowledging that none of them were equipped nor ready to take that responsibility, but also realising that there was more they could do. because i think that, for example, alfred's conservatism did intrude on the task of providing care. for example -- in some versions of bruce's childhood (isn't it fascinating that we don't even have one official version at this point in canon... it's always so elusive. but that's a topic for another post) he is sent to a boarding school. and that works. he's an old british guy, of course he'd think sending a child even at age 8-10 would be not only normal but also a good idea.

also -- alfred at times comments on bruce's inability to perform house chores, which is obviously a comic relief. but it's interesting because it's alfred who raised him. if bruce does not do his own laundry, or can't cook - that's quite literally on alfred. and again, i do believe it is plausible that alfred would not teach him any of these things. once more, the reason for that is his conservatism.

what i just said does not negate that alfred is a father to bruce and family to other children raised in the manor. however, i think that his own realisation that it is the case should come with some regret... &that his biases and the role of bruce's enabler are flaws that could make him interesting if it was take seriously.

however, there's still plenty of gaps that are hard to fill - for instance, why alfred is a butler at all, given his background (there were obv some attempts at explaining it -- i wouldn't say they were very successful). i know some of it is simply a matter of editors and writers throwing bits of amusing/surprising lore into the story without really considering the wider picture, but it is frustrating. his development was, after all, quite strange -- if you read first issues of batman/tec, you will notice he himself was mostly a comic relief. the whole concept of his links to military, for example, came later... so i had quite high hopes for pennyworth (the show) in that regards, but it did disappoint me. i wish we simply got a well-written mini?

a complete sidenote -- i also quite like how close alfred & damian grow to be. it makes a lot of sense (i do think alfred would be partial to the "biological" child + the way alfred carries himself & the routine he sticks to would be comforting for damian i think...)

#outbox #i do know the tag. i think by now you know i don't like it!#sorry for not getting into each adaptation... i don't quite have energy for it

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