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remderance · 1 year

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so...few days ago I've created a hermitcraft mermaid au. and here ya go, some of my thoughts about it and also my drawings.

first of all, cub, grian, zedaph, tango, joehills, xisuma and impulse are humans, when scar, doc, pearl, skizz, cleo are mermaids(I didn't think of other hermits yet)

here's also a bit of lore happening, so let's talk little bit about every hermit.

•xisuma

- he is an owner of this whole circus oceanarium and ocean research center.

- he is a strange guy, once he even stole a bone from rendog to chew on! but nonetheless, he is a hard working man and he does all the managing work better than anyone else possibly could

•scar

- cub and grian were the first to find alive mermaid, which happened to be scar. scar, as the most kind and innocent soul, of course, most of the time spent saving sea creatures from fishing nets, plastic junk and etc, though got a lot of injuries himself. he had been in an accident just before he was caught, so he didn't have a chance to escape due to movement issues, because his tail and fins were badly injured

- scar is an orca! but he won't eat you, don't worry. he might try, though

- most of the time there is only one scientist watching him, and it is cub. even though at first cub was too serious about his job, depicting scar more like an object other than a living creature with thoughts and feelings, it was gone in a little while when two of them had a chance to actually know each other more. you could say, scar softened cub's heart

- he is a silly boy, trying to escape his aquarium probably every day at first, thinking of place as a prison. none of his attempts were successful, to be honest, but he never stopped trying

- also, once he even got in a physical fight with grian, being mad that he was in the team who catched him. who won? for some reason it was grian, who is smaller twice in size and not so good underwater

- grian got in trouble many times because of his experiments and especially testing human food on scar. once he had serious food poisoning because of it, and cub never let grian be alone near scar's aquarium again

- scar once asked for human meat and got a "cubfan live reaction". canniballism is pretty common between mermaids, so he was expecting the same from humans

•doc

- doc is a giant moray eel.

- you could say he is the most intelligent and smart fish you've seen! not just by mermaid standards, but by human too. before the oceanarium he was living in an old warship, where he found a room with books that were not touched by water. that's where from he knows chemistry, physics, engineering and other, that's also where he learned english better, as he is originally from german waters(scientists where really impressed that mermaid could have an accent).

- but this ship happened to be in a military zone, where people one time were testing a bomb and underwater explosion happened. doc nearly made it out alive, though got almost incompatible with life injuries. he couldn't be healed by wrapping wounds with seaweed, so he decided to go to humans to the research center by himself, making a deal: he agreed to be studied for science purposes but got a proper treatment for his injuries in return.

- by that point, he was second one to be "caught"

- he is really smart and he will not be missing an opportunity to squeeze out everything from people working there. he got the best aquarium with the best accessories, rocks, corals and filters. it took almost over a year to figure all of this out and a lot of pressure on workers, but doc is not feeling guilty

- he really likes to eat tomatoes

- he also really likes to get out of his tank and go on an adventure to other mermaids. scar is living nearest to him, so you could often see these two hang out

- he created the word "scitties" and scar likes to use it (especially in situations when he is suggested to wear clothes. he says his scitties are too precious to hide them)

- after some time doc became the first mermaid scientist. his high intelligence just couldn't be ignored

- doc helped to create prosthetic fins and tail for scar

- eventually there was created a special gadget just for doc, so he could easily speak with other scientists even being under the water

- scientist connected to him is grian. they are in good terms and grian totally acknowledges his cleverness. gridoc nation rise up

•ren

- oh sweet, sweet rendog! you just couldn't guess what he is. he is... a dog, simple as that. but a smart one!

- although, he doesn't like meat. he is a vegetarian dog!

- his duty mostly is to deliver food to mermaids. he doesn't like to deliver food to scar as it's mostly chocolate chip cookies and lots of raw meat, and he totally adores to visit doc because of his love for tomatoes

- doc likes to escape, and ren likes doc, so he always goes after him with a mop in his teeth to hide water paddles he is creating

- ren is well-trained and all of the staff knows him, so he has access to almost every room in both oceanarium and research center

- he likes to sleep near doc's aquarium. sometimes doc goes out of water at night, waits for his hand to dry and gently pets him

- oh. and ren also has a very specific addiction. this little fur boy always steals people's sunglasses. why does he do that? why does a dog even need sunglasses? nobody knows. but that is such a common thing, that nobody even cares anymore. yep, there's a dog running around in sunglasses, what is wrong with that?

•here's the fun part. beloved zits!!!

- impulse is the only one true ocean scientist in their group

- zedaph lived most of his life on a farm and knows pretty much everything about farm animals. he is a crazy zoologist and has basically zero idea how to deal with fish

"that's a weird looking chicken", - he says, looking at any mermaid

- tango is an engineer and a drummer in his own band. he slays and also he has a lot of tattoos

- although tango's band isn't zit band, they were playing together in college! they all had their rock phase, zedaph even has scars from piercings made in that time

- the star of our show... skizzleman!! skizz for short, he is a manta ray, and he is going mental. he screams, he bites, he fights, he likes to bother others and especially impulse

- skizz made impulse fall in his tank for countless amount of times

- skizz and impulse often fight, verbally and physically, but also for some reason their bond is very strong. they like each other, just in a different way, but their way to this was very hard

- and yep, he is the reason why all of the zit are here. he's just too strong and uncontrollable for one human to handle, so impulse had to get his friends

- skizz is very clumsy and can't exist out of water due to being a manta ray, so trying to escape he makes just one step and then is found right outside the aquarium angry and waiting for someone to come and put him back

•pearl and gem

- pearl is a blue-ringed octopus!

- she spent a lot of time near the shore at the port and most of the time was listening to people, trying to guess meaning of unknown words and adoring strange human stories. it happened in australia, that is the place where she got an accent. it is an exceptional case too, but unlike doc, this accent is not natural, but a learned one

- pearl's only and favourite piece of clothing is a hoodie with oceanarium logo

- as a natural enemy, doc fears to go near pearl. when he is asking her if she's safe, she never gets him a clear answer

- gem is doing mermaid shows! yes, she is not a real one, she just has her costume and adorable coral horns

- oceanarium got gem a tank to exercise and to rehearse her shows. it appeared that pearl was basically living alongside. they liked each other at first sight, but for months weren't able to communicate well, it was only through body language

- pearl sees gem as a goddess for her elegant, exquisite and beautiful movements. no real mermaid moves like that, so that's just something so exotic and unreal in pearl's eyes, it makes her stare without blinking every time

- once impulse was in charge of caring for pearl and he saw what happened between two. he got a permission for gem to visit pearl's aquarium, and that was the first time they got to really know each other. it was the happiest day!!!

- gem is the only one who can calm down skizz and make him feel fear. nobody understands how, but sometimes impulse asks her when skizz is getting unbearable

- impulse, gem and pearl are often seen hanging out together. they created a trio called "soup group". the name was created because of pearl's unexplainable love for soups of any kind

• cleo and joe

- cleo is a sea snake

- she has fish hooks and spear parts in her on places where in canon she usually would get stitches

- she is basically a nature miracle, because she is a zombie, literally dead creature, but for some reason she keeps on going

- half of her organs are not working properly or are not working at all

- because of doc and cleo scientists guess that mermaids are far stronger and tougher than people, as they tend tο survive even in the most dangerous and unreal situations

- also doc and cleo are extremely big

- not to mention these two are really fond of each other. their tanks are located far away, but doc sometimes gets to cleo and they have the best time in the whole world

- joe is an ocean geek who once won an excursion behind the scenes of oceanarium and research center. that's where he met cleo, and for some reason she caught his eye

- he was very persistent and got a permission to sometimes meet cleo under supervision. it was said, that it is good for experience in interspecies communication, so scientists didn't mind

- though, he didn't do anything inappropriate. he was basically just finding a friend in a strange zombie mermaid! he showed her his favourite shows, comic books, was teaching cleo how to read, they were drawing and scrapbooking with her. just a couple of ocean besties!

- although joe cooks and brings mostly exotic or strange foods, cleo likes it a lot

- cleo likes to scare people and mermaids, but when she tried to scare joe she saw only pure excitement in his eyes

•honorable mention, mumbo, who is a plumber and engineer. everyone keeps calling him mario. he even got a big m on his head!

also: it is canon that all of the mermaids are kind of buffed

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft mermaid au #cubfan #gtwscar #grian #docm77 #rendog #zombie cleo #joe hills #tango #zedaph #impulse #skizzleman #xisuma #geminitay #pearlscentmoon #mumbo jumbo #my art ꮚꆤꈊꆤꮚ

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quirkwizard · 10 months

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I'm not sure why I made this. I just thought it would be fun to do and now all you have to see the fruits of my labor. So, without further ado, the Pro Hero Parent Tier List. Hope you all enjoy it and try not to take it too seriously.

F Tier: Gran Torino, Recovery Girl, and Yoroi Musha: The simple fact is that these three characters are way too old to be parents. Maybe if this were a grandparent tier list, they'd be higher, but it isn't, so they're all going in the F Tier.

D Tier: Endeavor: Look, do I even need to explain this one? You all know what he did. One of the biggest problems in the story is the result of all the messed up stuff Enji did as a dad. His attempt at redemption was to remove himself from his family. Easy bottom tier.

Nana: While I'm someone who tries to understand Nana's position and decisions in regards to her kid and her role as a "One For All" user, she still didn't seem like a very good parent even when she was around. She herself even admits that, so that is what puts her so low.

Gang Orca: What few interactions we see him having with kids is screaming about their failures and throwing them when he is dissatisfied with their answers. That is bound to cause some trauma later. Like some Pavlovain response when they think of Free Willy.

Hound Dog: He may be a guidance consular that works with kids, implying some understanding of child psychology, but if his first reaction is to yell and growl at any emotional problems in front of him, he probably isn't going to communicate with his own kids.

Thirteen: I get that Thirteen is someone who takes a lot of care and consideration with her power and is quite safe to be around. That being said, I don't think that someone who is at risk of destroying their own child at the atomic level should really be handling children.

C Tier: Edgeshot: There really isn't a lot to say about Edgeshot as we don't get a lot of personality outside of being stoic, which could certainly be an issue for a parent. That being said, being willing to sacrifice yourself for a kid does push him above the bottom of the tier list.

Mount Lady: If we're considering her early in the series, she'd definitely be at the lower tier given how irresponsible and self-centered she is. Though considering her development and how mature she's gotten in general, she barely scrapes by as an average parent.

Kaumi Woods: Kamui Woods is just kind of average. There just isn't a lot going on with him that could give or detract merit from the little hero work he's done. He's here by default. His inability to hug his kids without giving them splinters would certainly be an issue.

Manual: Again, he's average. The most we have is that he seemed to do pretty well with handling Iida's whole situation but didn't seem to notice it in the first place. Otherwise, he's pretty plain. I could see him being the lame dad his kids don't want to talk to or be around.

Miruko: Definite Tiger Mom. She'd be making her kids do all kinds of sports stuff and getting them to exercise all the time. She cares, but she shows it by trying to make her kids excel at what they're doing. Great if they're into that, but I can see it fostering a lot of resentment.

Sir Nighteye: Like Miruko, but at the other end of the spectrum. He would be the kind of dad to make his kid study a lot because that's what he would think would be best for them. Cares and can loosen up when needed, but is emotionally distant most times.

B Tier: Ms. Joke: She is a teacher, meaning she must have some understanding of kids. She'd definitely be the "Fun Mom". She'd always try to keep a smile on her kid's face, even if that meant making terrible mom jokes. Be ready, she has been working on them for years.

Ectoplasm: He seems to be pretty good with kids, but the real clencher is his power. No matter what, he could always be around to be present in his kid's life. And hey, family dynamics are always changing. Who is to say a family can't be just a kid and their thirty-six identical dads?

Ryukyu: She can be hard on herself, but she seems to have a soft spot for children and do well with her wards, given how well they have turned out, being commanding without being harsh. And let's be real: who wouldn't want to have a dragon for a parent? That alone would put her pretty high up here.

Eraserhead: This may be a controversial pick putting him so low, but hear me out. I think Aizawa would try to be a good dad, but he's married to his job, being too tired and absent to really make it work. And did you see what he bought for Eri to wear? What self-respecting father would ever do this his child?

Fourth Kind: A good role model to any kid who tries to foster strong moral foundations and understanding of community in his wards. All around, a pretty stand-up guy to have as a dad. He loses points because punching kids is not a good way to punish them, even if it hurts him more than it hurts them.

Midnight: This could be because I read Vigilantes, but Midnight actually shows quite a few parental traits, like being highly empathic and understanding of those younger than her. Then again, I can only imagine the kind of teasing and general awkwardness that would come from having the R-Rated Heroine as a mom.

A Tier: All Might: If we're counting him without "One For All", otherwise he'd be working too much to be a dad, I think that he'd be a parent. If his students are anything to go by, he'd be a pretty effective parent. We can also tell that he plays favorites with his kids, and that knocks off a few points.

Present Mic: This may be a surprise pick, but I can see him doing pretty well as a parent. He can be the fun, comic dad that plays with his kids and can get on their level, but he can instantly go into serious mode if he needs to. The fact that he can do both so well, which you kind of need as a parent, puts him pretty high on the list.

Best Jeanist: Another stand-up guy, just trying to be a good role model and look amazing while doing it. I mean, the guy had an actual positive impact on early series Bakugou. That has got to count for something. Probably has all kinds of weirdly good life advice if you can understand fashion metaphors.

Rock Lock: One of the few real parents on this list, Rock Lock just seems like a responsible parent. He did try to call out the kids for being on missions, but he was kind of right in that regard and just looking out for them. Probably try to keep his kid from doing stupid stuff. He'd be a good, but restrictive father.

Hawks: Like Present Mic, I could see Hawks being a chill dad who doesn't seem to know what's going on but actually knows everything that happens and always has one eye open when it comes to his kids. He'll give his kids their freedom, but he's going to be there to catch and guide them when they really need him.

S Tier: Mandalay: Another one of the few real parents here, and one with a pretty bad hand. Mandalay not only had to take over as a guardian out of nowhere but had to do it with a heavily traumatized child while trying to lead a team as a pro-hero. The fact that she seems to be doing as well as she is puts her this high without question.

Fat Gum: No one should be surprised that Fat Gum is this high. He's super protective without being overbearing, tries to instill valuable lessons to make them develop, and does his best to encourage his wards to be the best they could be. And could you imagine him giving hugs? That would make any problem vanish.

Tensei: Tensei is just such a good guy. He's a good role model and leader for his team without it being detrimental. He knew Koichi for about a day and he was able to understand Koichi and tried to set him up for success. Imagine how well he'd do with his own kid. Plus, he's an older brother. That's like a being a parent with training wheels.

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fuckyeahpunkflower · 1 year

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Guys guys guys its AU time! With older Miles(18) and older Hobie (20). (Also no spider man powers, normal times)

Miles is attending a prestigious University in Northern New York after years of studying and applying for scholarships at Visions. Rio and Jefferson are super proud of him although a bit sadden that their baby boy is now a young man leaving the house.

On the plus side, Miles is SUPER stoke to finally FINALLY have his very own dorm ALL TO HIMSELF! no more cramped spaces, uncomfortable bunk beds or missing shoes (that somehow always made an appearance again when Ganke returned to the room) Miles admits he will miss Ganke but they'll definitely catch up over some games on the PS4 and summer breaks.

But the best part about this university in Mile's opinion is the fact they allow pets on campus and in dorms. Which means he can live his dream of owning a dog. He's always wanted a dog since he was a kid but his parents never thought he was responsible enough to take care of it ( but mainly because Rio and Jefferson didn't want to deal with a toddler and training a puppy at the same time) Now that Miles is grown he's decided its time to make his own decisions. And that decision was to get a dog the moment he moves into his dorm. It took him 2 weeks to get settled in with his belongings and getting familiar with his classes around campus but after that he was heading towards the nearest pet shelter he could find.

And here we enter Hobie Brown! He works at the local pet shelter which houses all sorts of abandoned and neglected pets. From your typical cats and dogs to reptiles, birds, and even fishes, Hobie is there to take care of them all! And on the weekends he playing with his band mates.

Anyway Cue Miles entering the pet shelter and he's immediately greeted with the site of Hobie. They make brief eye contact and Miles freezes in place lost in thought *Damn, I was not expecting to see someone so fucking cool and hot today oh my gosh get it together you're here for a dog you're here for a dog you're here for a-*

"You know usually people tend to rush straight to the pups and ignore me but with the way your staring at me right now I can't say I'm complaining. your face is the same shade as the pups little red rockets back there" Hobie snickers

"Bro WHAT!?" Miles yelled in utter shock. He was NOT prepared for any amount of what was said to him in that moment. "What- I mean- like man- that was the wildest response I've ever-" He stops rambling to gain his composure back. "Look man, I came in here hoping to adopt a dog, can you help me or what?"

Hobie looks at Miles with amusement in his eyes "Sure thing love, straight to the back we go!"

And that was Hobies and Miles first interaction at the pet shelter.

Back to the p o i n t!!!

This is basically a college Miles and pet shop worker Hobie (except its a shelter) AU merged into one. Basically Miles visits the shelter every week looking for a dog to adopt and Hobie shows him around. With each visit Miles begins to learn more about Hobie and his relationship with the animals at the shelter. Like how Hobie absolutely adores this grey African parrot that was left in the cage on the street. Its feathers are sparse and sheds but it loves to mimic Hobies Cockney accent.

Eventually Miles adopts a cute senior black Labrador named Orca due to the white and gray furs around her eyes. Even after getting his dog he still visits the shelter between classes to talk to Hobie.

So like yeah in order to keep this short before I literally write the first fucking chapter of this AU on here.

Miles is in college and develops feelings for Hobie while he helps him adopt a dog. They hang out sometime later and Eventually BOOM they're boyfriends :D

#punkflower #miles x hobie #i NEED to see more domestic stuff with these two #WHERE ARE THE COFFE SHOP AUs?!#THE TATTO AND PIERCINGS PALOR MEETS FLOURIST AU'S?!#come on yall i belivs in us

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qibilette · 11 days

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HI apologies for just rbing a bunch of your posts, but I saw your tags about rewriting of the Seawing Royal Family & specifically Tsunami & Corals relationship, I’d love to hear your rewrite thoughts on that if you’d open to share. ! ! !!

howdy! please don't apologize, it always makes my day when people reblog my stuff & leave such kind notes!!! tysm :]

and yesss i love the seawing royals!!! in my rewrite, tsunami has the most family focus out of any prophecy dragonet. i removed clay's sibs from the first book, so the lost heir is the first time any of them meet family members! i have a lot of thoughts about them so this is going under a readmore LOL

when tsunami first meets her mom, it really does feel like coming home. they're both incredibly happy to be reunited and coral showers her with tons of special treatment. at this point, tsunami sees coral as sweet and powerful and fun to be around - she's the mother that the guardians never were, and that tsunami has been wanting her entire childhood.

the first crack in this view is when tsunami gets to know her many brothers. coral insists they aren't "as important" as tsu, because they can't take the throne - tsu doesn't really like this, but she grew up with unhealthy parental figures, so she can't quite put it into words. parents always have favorites, that's just how it is, right? she also feels some sort of way about anemone being kept on a literal leash (and how anemone is often told she needs to be "like tsunami"), but again, she believes coral's defense that she does everything for her chicks' safety. tsunami wants to trust her mom; she wants to believe that coral is good and kind, and that she's everything tsunami didn't have growing up.

there's also a moment in here where tsunami visits the royal hatchery and coral tells her about orca. coral remembers orca as a perfect daughter who just snapped one day. coral compares tsunami to her, in a bittersweet way... also, all throughout the lost heir coral tends to treat tsunami like a child, insisting she be More Formal but also laughing when she messes up social norms & insisting she's Just Fine How She Is. tsunami is clearly her favorite kid, but tsunami also doesn't feel totally enough, like her youth under the mountain left coral disappointed in her.

what really cements tsunami's doubts is when coral pulls out a hatchery guard's teeth for failing to protect the eggs (the egg of auklet's clutchmate is smashed). tsunami is horrified - this is the kind of baseless violence she saw (and hoped to leave) in the sky kingdom. coral says it's only fair, though, and says that tsunami will have to make "tough decisions" too when she's queen.

tsunami meets with her brothers afterwards but it doesnt really help, because they just share more of coral's flaws. after this she goes back to the surface and finds the rest of the prophecy dragonets & fills them in on everything that's been going on. they understand immediately and she finds more comfort in them than she ever has in the sea kingdom.

this is a major realization for tsunami! coral is not a perfect mother, and there was never a dream family waiting for her in the sea kingdom... but that's okay, because she already has her family: the other dragonets.

so overall, tsunami does love her mom, but she's also very aware of coral's flaws and how she hurt her other children. coral treats tsunami better than anybody else but also tends to baby her, as if she's catching up on lost time or doesn't see tsu as her own person. its hard to summarize their relationship but i hope you like the block of text anyway!

o superman by laurie anderson is THE coral + tsunami song, by the way

#TYSM FOR ASKING!!!!!#askbox is always open!#keeb roars #ask #the lost heir #tsunami #coral #wings of fire #keeb wof

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one-vivid-judgment · 1 month

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Hi hi! An aquarium date h/cs with Joongi and Tomi pls! Thx! <3

My baby boy and my wife whom I love dearly 💙💙 (and want to see get destroyed in a sexy way)

Joongi Han

- He probably has never been to an aquarium himself. Only ever seen it in movies and thought it looked pretty, but never actually gone to one because work always comes first. He doesn't even take that many days off to begin with.

- His face visibly lights up when you ask if he wants to come to the aquarium with you. "Oh, of course, I'd love to" he says, but you can tell he is vibrating from excitement when you hand him the ticket.

- Get ready for him to start infodumping if he sees a fish he has eaten before. He can go on and on about nutritional value and health benefits for hours if you let him, and even if he has never eaten a specific kind, he can always start speculating. You'll have to beg him not to ask for clownfish next time he goes to the fish market. That is NOT food, Joongi.

- Absolutely fascinated by the sea creatures. He never had a proper childhood, never did any activities like this ever and only really started doing fun things when he met Kasuga. Needless to say, he LOVES it. Expect him to ask to come to the aquarium again. He probably loves the dolphins—they are beautiful, but also very fucking unhinged. Sounds like someone you know, actually.

Eric Tomizawa

- He knows his way around Hawaii like the back of his hand, so you bet he knows an aquarium or two. He used to go with Marie all the time, since she loved it so much, but to be honest, he always paid more attention to her reactions than he did the animals, the lovesick fool.

- It doesn't go any differently with you, honestly. He knows he is supposed to be watching the jellyfish show, but he'd always end up looking at you instead. You're so fascinated by the little guys, and really, if he wants to see jellyfish, he can swing by Aloha Beach whenever, so why not get his fill of your beautiful face?

- The type to get super offended if you point at a random fish and say "This you". Like, okay, a putterfish is cute, kinda? But also, just why? Does he have bug eyes too? Or is it the 'small but deadly' part? Then again, he's probably gonna join in on the "Hey, this fish looks like someone we know" game. That orca is Yamai, that clownfish is Ichiban. You? An angelfish. But only after jokingly saying you were an aggressive ass piranha.

- Take him to an animal encounter experience and feed penguins or stingrays. He'd be extra cautious at first, because hey, it won't kill him but that stingray over there may not like his face, and that could get dangerous. After that though? He has the time of his life. Those little guys are so cute. You still have a pic you took without Tomi knowing of him petting a penguin with the biggest grin on his face.

#ryu ga gotoku #yakuza like a dragon #like a dragon infinite wealth #lad infinite wealth #.txt #anon ask #yakuza headcanons #yakuza imagines #joongi han #eric tomizawa

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a-lilacsong · 1 month

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Since we never see him in the show, except for his hat, I have decided to make my own design for Birk Balthazar, Miranda’s first husband!Using what little we know about him from sources outside the show and combining them with my own headcanons, I am really happy with how this all came together.

Since he is Sofia's biological dad, I think she must have inherited her hair colour and texture from him, so I wanted to show that. Since he is from Freezenberg and is a sailor I thought he should have a big beard and mustache. He is wearing a long coat that he ripped the sleeves off so his sailor tattoos could be seen. On his right arm he has tattoos of an anchor (because he sailed across the ocean to the western kingdoms many times before), a polar bear (his favorite animal, and one of the main animals of his homeland), and one he keeps covered with a scarf Miranda gave him. On his left arm he has a carnation (the flower of Miranda's homeland), and an orca (given to him after he saved a ship from a sea monster as a token of his bravery).

#Sofia the First #Birk Balthazar #Queen Miranda #Princess Sofia #sofia the fandom #stf #a-lilacsong art #my art #pencil sketch #That little sketch in the top right hand corner of the 3 stick figures is a height chart of Birk Miranda and Roland respectively #I've always thought that Birk would be shorter than Roland but taller than Miranda

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galaxyseclipse · 4 months

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alright, gonna try to be slightly more organized than last time about my thoughts/theories/observations about Side Order also this might be a shorter post than last time because there isn't a whole ton of trailer, it'll mostly be about the artwork tbh

so I'm just gonna start this by saying I really dislike the "it's all New 3's dream" theory, it feels like a cop-out. I'm not saying it is 110% untrue, just that I don't like it and hope it isn't

how do I explain the transition from the train to Inkopolis Square? New 3's on the train to Inkopolis Square(which is fully unlocked after beating Side Order; the option just takes you to SO until then) and falls asleep, one matrix-y transition later and we're in Eight's pov inside of whatever simulation they got dragged into. it's purely to transition the player from New 3 to Eight, and the events are completely unrelated

or I'm utterly, wholly wrong! who knows!

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another thing I noticed on my millionth trailer rewatch was this

it's just to the right of the tower in the shot where everything materializes. it looks like a filling cabinet? it's in the last trailer we got too, I checked, but not the first teaser(granted, a lot of stuff wasn't)

I dunno, probably not anything super important, but it's not there in the Square in 2, so I thought I'd point it out

edit: look at reblogs, it's probably actually a set of lockers

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I've seen a shockingly small number of people bring up this guy

so far(maybe there's more talk of them on twitter or something idk)

they're clearly pretty prominent, they're next to Acht, Pearldrone, and Eight, so they have to be important, right?

my first guess is that they're something a la CQ Cumber or ORCA, just the one who explains the rules of each level and splats you if you fail. but it feels redundant to have both them and Acht, who already knows a good amount about this place, explaining stuff to you

I dunno I also see twist villain potential from them, just because we haven't seen them before now. like, "hahaha! It was I who fucked up this place, and now that you've helped me hack the mainframe, I can take full control!" or something idk lol

I'm not even gonna try to guess what kind of sea critter they are lmao

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now onto the real stars of the show

these fuckers

hopefully y'all already know that I am a firm believer that the one in the center is Agent 4, seeing as they're the only one of the group with ears and tentacles, and those two features bear resemblance to "canon" Agent 4. the rest don't have those, so that one is clearly important, right? am I being delusional? probably

setting that aside, what are these things in the first place? they're most likely related to the fish guys in some way, both being covered in black goo with glowing red eyes

I personally think that they're either mobile versions of the copy machine from the lobby, or some weird, goopy creation of the simulation used to replace enemy Octolings in gameplay(which is a fun twist, haven't had enemy Inklings before) otherwise I have no idea lol. they're enemy units and that's all I've got

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there's also this thing

featuring a lot of Acht's head

kinda looks like the Octowhirl to me, but like, less octoweapon-y and more coral-ish, with the same red eyes as the fish; probably a boss of some stripe, or tougher enemy

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something else that's probably inconsequential I noticed in the artwork

the different colored color chips have different text on them, probably stating what kind each one is?

notably, the blue one(the one used in the trailer) doesn't have the same text on it, that moved to the red one

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I think that's it for now; I have picked apart the artwork as much as I can/want

I'll bet if we get a direct before the 22nd, we'll get one more small trailer or maybe just a repeat of this one. though judging by the trailers Nintendo's been releasing lately, that feels oddly unlikely to me

but idk I'm just a weirdo who likes staring at fictional cephalopods

#splatoon #splatoon 2 #splatoon 3 #side order #splatoon 3 side order #octo expansion #dedf1sh #acht splatoon #agent 8 #agent 4 #side order theory #i think this might be longer than last time actually lol #i dunno i'm just rambling at this point

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riding-the-sunset-bird · 12 days

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hi!! i know this depends a lot on personal taste but i thought i'd ask you because you know the game so well, which dlc do you think is the most worth it?

(note: this anon clarified in another ask that they meant all DLCs but were most interested in the Cove Step DLCs; thank you!)

Hi!

First off, gonna give you massive credit here because I think this is a super fascinating ask, so much so that I want to do a bit of a deep dive!

(skip to the end for the summarized/basic stuff)

Personal Preference

I'll begin by saying that if you just ask me this question outright and it comes down wholly to my opinion and my opinion only, then I'd say that Baxter's DLC was the most worth it to me. The actual reasons for it are a bit too extensive - I'll leave it at me simply adoring Baxter and what his DLC contributes to the story's narrative - but that would be my answer.

However, I'd really like to go into something that I find more objective. We'll do this by splitting that idea of "worth it" into different categories and going from there, because it could mean so many different things depending on player preference.

Story Relevance

This just boils down to what DLC adds the most to Our Life's story, which I'm defining as "moments/scenes that would feel natural in the base game" as opposed to a DLC that comes off like extra content but not necessary content.

For this one, I'm going to award the points to the Step 3 DLC, mostly for Reflection, Late Shift, and Serendipity. All three of these moments provide something for what already existed in the base game, to the point where I almost think it's odd for them to be DLC content.

Reflection gives both backstory to Cove's scar (something that had been talked about before but not fully explained) and closure on Cove's conflict with his parents over their divorce. It also shows character development for Cove as he moves past all of that.

Serendipity follows up on Liz meeting Shiloh in the Step 3 intro. Even if the player doesn't care about Shiloh, I think it makes sense for Liz to go searching for him even if you didn't have the DLC, and then the DLC just lets you actually see what comes from it (that's not how it works in-game but I'm just making a point).

Late Shift follows up on what the MC's job is if they chose to have one, as well as showing Cove at his job. It expands the initial choice of "job"/"no job" during the intro into an actual moment, which gives it more meaning. I'd consider it an equivalent to Charity in that way (which is impacted by whether or not the MC volunteers at ORCA).

So yeah, Step 3's DLC, no contest.

Consistency

This is what I'd imagine to be the DLC that is the most "all-around" of the DLCs; maybe not too high of highs, but not too low of lows either, just an all-around solid product.

I'm giving this one to the Step 1 DLC. While it's the shortest of the DLCs, I think the content is consistency good throughout all moments. All feature the MC just doing assorted kid things and satisfy MCs who might be Indifferent to Cove early on (all except two allow the MC to mostly ignore Cove if they'd prefer to spend time with others), whereas the Step 2 and 3 DLC can be more mixed.

For example, Reflection - while solid and emotional if you're invested in Cove's backstory - is a lot of talking and not a lot of doing, Happiness is hilariously short if you're Indifferent to Cove, and Serendipity is probably a total skip for players who aren't interested in Shiloh. For the Step 2 DLC, Soiree tends to be a standout moment that overshadows the rest and other moments are largely out of the MC's control (Escapade if the MC isn't having fun, which has little impact, and Summerwork if the MC isn't the type that would lead to the drama in said moment).

But the Step 1 DLC is the one I feel would be most consistently enjoyable throughout the whole thing, at least when keeping in mind the limitations that would naturally be placed on the MC given that they're a child. I always enjoy playing each fairly equally.

Fun Factor

This just comes down to the highest highs - the DLC that provides the most fun - and I'd say that the Step 2 DLC does that.

Mall allows you to spend roughly equal amounts of time with Derek, Lee, and Cove (both a different experience from the base game and gives the MC a new location to mess around in).

Birthday lets you engage in various games and meet with Miranda (which could be something fun for the player, either meeting Miranda early if they haven't played the full game yet or seeing younger Miranda if they have). Plus, that this is the moment where the MC can retaliate against Jeremy (dooting Jeremy into silence is one of my personal biggest non-Cove non-Baxter highlights of the game) which gives the moment worth all on its own.

Soiree being a big win whether you want to bring Cove or not and giving the MC multiple different ways to experience it (including having a dance with Baxter, regardless of whether they go down his route or not). This allows MCs who might not be Indifferent to Cove but still don't want to bring him for whatever reason the full freedom to do so (unlike Happiness), which allows for more replayability.

I've expressed points about Summerwork and Escapade already, but even disregarding the potential fun of those, I think the highs of the others outweigh the lows, which I don't think the Step 3 DLC would do with the ones I've gone on about. The Step 1 DLC is overall more consistently good and I think a player is more likely to enjoy all of the steps, but I think the Step 2 DLC is more fun.

Other Matters

These are a few details I don't want to get too much into but still wished to address. The Step 3 DLC, content-wise, is unquestionably the largest out of all of the Step DLCs (provided that you play all of the moments in each), even though all Step DLCs are the same price. Likewise, the Step 2 DLC is larger than the Step 1 DLC.

Goes without saying that quantity does not equal quality and, while not pointing to any specific target, I want to add that I don't think it's acceptable for things like CGs to not be up to par with the ones in the base game when you're paying for the DLC while not paying for the base game.

Additionally, I think it's strange for the moments that feature the alternative guys to be locked away (Mall and Summerwork for Derek, then Late Shift and Boating for Baxter; Derek won't even join the player at their house if the MC is Indifferent to Cove and Terry/Liz will jump into Cove's place in Late Shift/Boating respectively rather than the MC potentially getting Baxter). This can make Derek's proposal in particular at the end of Step 2 confusing to base game players because they will have only seen Derek in the intro and ending, thus making his crush come out of nowhere.

It doesn't change the quality of the DLCs themselves, but I just wanted to point out that both Derek and Baxter kind of have an extra price tacked onto their DLCs because most players would probably want to see more of them before buying those.

And yes, it does indeed give the Step 2 DLC a few points towards the story relevance category because Derek's proposal is there no matter what, but I thought the Step 3 DLC still outweighed it.

Just wanted to get all that out of the way.

Addressing the Cove Wedding DLC

I sometimes call this the "Wedding Planning DLC" because that's what you'll spend a large chunk of time doing. That's not a criticism if you like that, just stating an observation.

Unlike most DLCs where I can weigh the various moments' pros and cons, the Wedding DLC is just one long "moment" where you plan your wedding with Cove, have the wedding with Cove, and then have the reception.

Also, Baxter is the wedding planner, so if you hate him then prepare to hold your breath before diving into it.

I think it does well for what it's trying to do (it's a little sad that there's no CG but there are so many mini-CGs that I get it), so it really is just a matter of whether you want it or not.

The Step DLCs are $4 each and the Wedding DLC is $3, so do I think that the Wedding DLC is worth 75% of any of the Step DLCs?

Not really (I eventually got tired of the planning part to the point where Baxter giving dance lessons became the most exciting thing that happened, as it felt like there was some development going on, lol), but I can see why it'd be worth it for other people. I recommend it if people are just very dedicated to planning a wedding in addition to seeing the wedding and reception.

Derek's Story DLC and Baxter's Story DLC

These two are another case where it very heavily leans on personal preference. I've already said that I like Baxter's DLC the best, but I might as well talk about Derek's too.

My feelings on his DLC are... complicated. Basically, it's the Derek and His Family DLC and I think that's great, but when it comes to plots centered around families, my attention tends to drift (this includes the moment titled Family in Step 2, by the way). Found family holds my interest a bit more though, one example being a potential plotpoint you can go down in Derek's DLC where you consider Mr. Holden a father to you.

While I do enjoy the personalities amongst Derek's family (barring Nicolas until Step 4), I think it might end up being a problem for some because the story stops being about you and starts being about Derek due to the amount of characters exclusive to his DLC all connecting back to him and not you. You take a backseat to the plot and Derek's issues in Step 4 actually end up being resolved without you during an argument/conversation with his brothers.

Which is good if you just want to kick back, watch the plot unfold, and listen to Derek talk about his problems, especially as his major issue takes place between Step 3 and 4 so the player doesn't witness it. Me personally, I had a lot of my agency taken away during key moments, such as Siblings where I didn't think going to see Elizabeth was a good idea, nor Boardwalk where I missed out on seeing Jorge (who is my favorite Suarez) and Elizabeth's relationship develop because the game has you go with Derek, nor the ending of Step 4 where I wouldn't have just run off with Derek due to wanting to spend more time with the family.

Another awkward little detail is that Derek will crush on the player and try to get them into a marriage proposal regardless of the player's own feelings, which can lead to some awkward moments (like Nicolas wanting to see the player in a swimsuit "because that's what Derek wants").

Baxter's DLC is the opposite because his family is only mentioned occasionally and not even seen on-screen. You largely spend one-on-one time with him and characters tend to focus on the player rather than Baxter (and when they do focus on Baxter, it's often as an extension of the player's connection with him).

It's very high drama/angst for a typical Our Life story, which can naturally turn people away who prefer the slice of life nature of most moments. It's a very different feel from the rest of the game and not just because the player is spending time with someone who isn't Cove. Cove is set up as the character that the player is with for all steps and in-betweens, inevitably meaning that Derek and Baxter won't stick around after their step until their Step 4; it's just that one of them makes far bigger drama about it than the other.

The DLC also lets you meet Miranda's brother and you get a psuedo Wedding DLC mashed into Baxter's Step 4 where you're part of the wedding planning process without being one of the people the wedding is for. Miranda gets a mini-plot for herself involving her relationship with Terry in addition to already getting one of Baxter's moments centered around giving her a birthday party.

On the downside, the interest system in Our Life does not function towards going down in interest (doesn't function well in general with how Baxter's DLC works, really), so going into Baxter's Step 4 with the idea of never forgiving him or not at least becoming friends again won't work. The game assumes by the act of choosing Baxter's Step 4 that the player wants to eventually hear Baxter out and becomes friends/lovers again, otherwise they'd be doing Cove's Step 4 instead; it's just something to keep in mind.

Speaking of Cove, while Baxter's DLC gives a little more focus towards Miranda and Terry, Derek's DLC has a moment where Cove shares equal screen time with him, so you could consider both DLCs to give extra focus to separate groups of people (Cove+Mr. Holden or Miranda+Terry).

Basically, both DLCs are entirely different and I can't really give them a category because they're so different compared to the base game, so I'll give some bullet points later of who I think would enjoy the DLC rather that putting them in a box.

The only other thing left to say is that, while Derek's DLC pairs with the Step 2 DLC and Baxter's DLC pairs with the Step 3 DLC for getting that little bit of extra time with the respective character, story-wise I think the Step 2 DLC is also good for Baxter's DLC because of Birthday and Soiree.

Recap

Overall, I do believe that every DLC has its own value and anyone could think differently on which is the best to them. I felt like it'd be too cheap to just claim which one is the best, especially since I like the more controversial Baxter DLC (the Step 2 DLC is my favorite Step DLC, for the record).

So to summarize:

Step 1 DLC (for Consistency)

most consistently likable and good all around

if one moment stands out from the others, it's not by much

the "safest" choice of the DLCs, which could be seen as either a good or bad thing

Step 2 DLC (for Fun Factor)

highest highs of the Step DLCs

allows for multiple assorted character interactions

Soiree being a strong moment to lean into the MC's independence

meeting younger Miranda in Birthday and finally retaliating against Jeremy

solid addition in combination with owning the Derek DLC or Baxter DLC as an extra bit of fun

but can have a feeling of the MC being "taken along for the ride" in some moments or doing things that might not seem like something that'd happen to them

Step 3 DLC (for Story Relevance)

includes the most content that adds to the MC's/Cove's story in a meaningful way

serves as an extension of a few happenings in the Step 3 intro

heavy on emotion

works in combination with the Baxter DLC to give the player extra time with him

feels the most natural amongst the base game moments

but can be a mixed bag depending on the MC's feelings on Cove and other characters like Shiloh, potentially leaving at least one moment as a total skip

The Cove Wedding DLC is good for people who:

like the idea of planning their wedding the way people spend hours doing character customization in games

can enjoy or tolerate/put up with Baxter as the wedding planner

are cool with a low conflict/casual plot (as nothing goes wrong during the process)

are fine with having no Cove CGs, only mini CGs

The Derek's Story DLC is good for people who:

like plots centering heavily around family

enjoy young children acting like young children

want extra time with Cove and/or Mr. Holden, as well as Elizabeth (who features in two separate moments and also Step 4)

prefer sitting back on some level and watching the plot happen around them instead of directly from them

don't mind being reminded every now and then that Derek is crushing on the MC if playing a friendship-only route

And the Baxter's Story DLC is good for those who:

prefer one-on-one time with characters

want a change of scenery from the usual Our Life plotlines and a heavier dose of drama than the usual

are seeking more time/development for Miranda and Terry, as well as their relationship

like the potential option of having a fling with Baxter in their story (whether that ends with the MC romancing Baxter in the end, someone else, or no one at all)

wish to be involved in a wedding with a conflict attached, as well as the MC not being part of the couple having the wedding

Hope this answers your question!

#((Sorry for the wait on this one! Definitely ended up being much longer than I thought.))#type: ask #type: opinion #((I might be a little mean about Derek's DLC but hopefully I was more objective at the end.))

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longingforrotkehlchen · 1 year

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My Top 10 of 2022

I thought it'd be fun to share my favourite ten photos from last year. Surprisingly, I found it a bit difficult to narrow them down (I'm never really in awe of the pictures I take, though they do grow on me), but I decided for these (LONG POST WARNING!):

10 - The Leucistic Nilgans (Reblog / See post)

I was counting Egyptian geese when one clearly stood out right away. Nilgans without an eye patch, woah! So, yeah, I gave all of my attention to our friend here, who didn't enjoy that at all. Birds don't like it one bit when you stare at them. They know you're up to no good, but I managed to snap a few shots before this pretty goose (or shelduck) got into the water, and safe from the weird man. The others around me didn't feel threatened - I wasn't looking at them.

9 - The siskin bunch (Reblog / See post)

It was a long winter day when I finally managed to get some decent shots of siskins. These were birds that had always eluded me, first to spot them, and then to photograph them, as they normally forage too high, though usually in flocks. The geography of this lake helped me stay at eye level, and as plenty of them were going from branch to branch looking for food, I got this quite nice shot, even if the light that day was constantly changing and far from the best (and my cheap-ass lens depends a lot on the natural light).

8 - The epitome of a robin (Reblog / See post)

Rotkehlchen was always going to make it in this list, wasn't he? Oh, yeah, I remember that day. I was there to photograph the rare penduline tits that stopped coming to that spot the very same day I decided to go to see them. When my hopes were practically gone, this lovable guy showed up, looking at us the photographers waiting for the birds that never came and probably wondering: What are those idiots doing there? The other two guys kept on their business, while I couldn't resist to get down and picture him. I didn't get any penduline tits, but I got a big reward nonetheless: The epitome of a robin.

7 - Serenity coot (Reblog / See post)

Just a damn coot, right? Nothing special... Well, you see, I have this habit of taking pictures of whoever is there, and this time, Blässhuhn was there. I interrupted my chat with some other guys taking photos that you meet along the way and I decided to just snap this fella, who was actually preening uncontrollably. However, I captured this brief moment where everything seems to make sense, and that gives me tranquillity and inner peace just by looking at it. This should be just some regular photo, but it has something, something that touches me inside.

6 - The 'intersex' mallard (Reblog / See post)

Ever since @namu-the-orca told me about what I had actually photographed, I've been absolutely keen on this little girl. When I saw her again, she had a boyfriend, she was getting harassed by other drakes (because she's actually a female), and I totally had to snatch more pictures of her. In that exact moment, she just happened to open her beak, and I caught a lovely picture I really like. Now, I know she lives there. She's always there, and I pay attention to her, I look at her, and I enjoy knowing she's around, but I don't think I will be able to take a better picture of her than this one.

5 - The making of a wildlife photographer (Reblog / See post)

I don't want to keep raving about this guy, but he was so amazing that I did things I'm not very proud of just to get a snap of him. And I did that because I wanted to tell my little Tumblr world that this bird is amazing. First thing I'm not proud of is getting into a swamp to get close to him, and the second is playing playback (I genuinely had no idea that thing actually works and I was surprised it did) so he would just get furious at me, thinking there was a competitor in the area, and sang from a more visible place instead. The result was really nice, though. It looks like a typical profile photo in a bird catalogue, but I'm no wildlife photographer, and that's stuff some of them do, and I personally would rather avoid doing that kind of stuff. The picture is nice, but I think that what I did was wrong. Birding sadly also means disturbing birds by definition, so we shouldn't do extra stuff. My only comfort is that the guy was already singing non-stop.

4 - Finally goldfinch (Reblog / See post)

You've surely seen better pictures of goldfinches than this one, but it's been a personal struggle for me ever since I started this hobby and I was so happy to finally get a nice photo of one. It looks nice, that's for sure, but no wonder the feeling of accomplishment helped me decide for this one. Goldfinches are common, but in my experience, they're shier than other birds, and for a guy that just walks around with his camera, that's a problem. In this case, I was super lucky, since two goldfinches were having some beef, so they were 'busy', and I also was in the perfect position for this particular shot only because I had just got there (there's a slope to get to the lake and then I'd have been too low).

3 - Jabba the Spatz (Reblog / See post)

I simply thought this was a hilarious shot! Its other photos ended up being way more popular, but I still love this loafing baby sparrow with a dopey facial expression. Also, it was loafing just in the gap of those stones. Also, it was loafing right in front of me and couldn't care less about my presence. Sparrows are usually great models, and they're such cute birds. I always enjoy photographing them.

2 - The not-yet-blue daredevil (Reblog / See post)

This one is very nice. Like, for me, this one and number one are miles ahead of the rest. The story behind this one is simple: I heard baby whinging and there I went. A blue tit chick was chasing mom or dad, while another (this one) seemed to be a bit more independent. After the initial recognition of the situation, I saw that one of them was hanging low and relatively close to me. I lifted my camera as quick as I could, shot, and the moment was gone. I immediately checked the photos out on the display and I seemed to have got only blurry shots. As usual, I cursed my luck, but when I got home, not only this one looked sharp, it looked amazing. The pose, the colours, the whole moment... I realized I had taken a pretty damn good photo, and the difference between having it or not was such a fine line.

1 - Und die Dohle (Reblog / See post)

My current laptop background. It was April 2nd and it was... Snowing! I guess I haven't lived here long enough or it doesn't snow enough for me not to lose my sh*t when I see snow, so as soon as I saw this spring miracle, I grabbed my camera and went out. I wanted to take pictures of birds in the white snow! However, my choice of destination was perhaps questionable, as instead of going to a place with higher altitude, I went to the lowest point in the city... So there was no snow... But it was still snowing!

I like all the photos I took that day with the snowflakes falling from the sky, like this one or this one, but the jackdaw is by far the best. I spotted two jackdaws among all the crows that normally hang around there, and I was determined to finally get a nice photo of one of them. However, they were incredibly shy. No matter how far I was, if I took a step in their direction, they'd feel threatened and fly farther away from me. The snowfall was increasing, it was getting late, but I wanted my jackdaw photo. Eventually, I managed to approach one by making sure a trash can was blocking their view, and it worked! My knees were most likely hurting, but from there, I snapped a few shots, and one came amazingly well.

I love everything. The snow falling, the expression, I mean, the jackdaw looks fierce and majestic, and it has such a dramatic aura. Once I checked that I had indeed taking a good photo, I thumbed-up a crow that I may or may not have given peanuts earlier, and that was waiting next to me for an extra treat. There was no treat, but he got a photo too, since he was there.

If you read the whole thing, I hope you enjoyed knowing a bit about the background of what I do for fun, or at least I hope that it wasn't too unbearable. If you also have a favourite picture from this blog, I'd love to hear from it!

#top 10 2022 #year recap #bird photography #birds #birding #my photography #wildlife #bird watching #urban birding #long post

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nxwtonsxngster · 2 months

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waves — a short fic about minho and jorge

(gift to @pr3ttyywh0re who asked me for a sweet fic about my favorite father and son duo <3)

700 words; safe haven, settled found family relationship, minho’s pov

”Qué estás mirando, mijo?”

Minho slightly startled as the sound of his dad’s voice popped the bubble of his thoughts. Jorge’s smile was warm as always, as he combed the back of Minho’s hair with his left hand.

”Nothing much. Just the kids swimming in the sea.”

”Ah, yes. They look like they’re having fun.”

”Mhm, they do.”

”Speaking of the sea…” Jorge fumbled into his pocket and got a hand-sized package wrapped in tissue. He handed it to Minho, who immediately unwrapped it with childlike impatience.

”A crab! I didn’t have that one yet! Gracias, papa,” he smiled, kissing Jorge’s cheek before caressing the soft wool of the plush.

Minho had been fascinated with the ocean since the day he first saw it in Safe Haven. The blue of the water, the immensity of the sea, the hidden life under its surface, the calmness he found in the sound of the waves… In the few months he had been there, he had already stolen and read all the books he could find about it, always eager to know more about the secrets of underwater. Jorge, who noticed the growing passion of his son for sealife, had started to crochet every animal Minho was telling him about. Shark, octopus, orca… His bed wasn’t nearly big enough to welcome all his plushes, but Minho always managed to find a way to make everyone fit. And so Jorge kept crocheting more of them.

“Why don’t you join them?”

”Hm? Oh, no, I’m fine.”

”Little prince, I know when you’re lying. Qué pasa?”

“If I tell you, you’re gonna laugh at me.”

”You think so little of me? C'mon, tell me.”

Minho paused, hesitating despite Jorge’s words. “I just… I don’t know how to… swim.”

Jorge blinked, not answering straight away. “That’s it?”

”It’s ridiculous.”

”Not at all! I mean, unless you missed your swimming lessons at the local pool in the Maze, I can’t think of a moment you could’ve learned,” Jorge said, earning a small laugh from Minho. “I can teach you now, if you wish.”

Minho’s eyes lit up. ”You would?”

”Of course, I’m the best swimmer around,” Jorge winked, before taking his shirt off. “Let’s go?”

Minho followed his father into the water, taking a second to get used to the cold water, while Jorge was already swimming away.

“You should take your shirt off, you’ll be more comfortable,” Jorge said, swimming back to him.

”Nah, I don’t want you to feel intimidated by my abs,” Minho smiled.

Jorge scoffed, splashing him with the back of his hand. “You wish. Now trust me, take it off.”

Minho’s smile dropped, suddenly serious again. “I’d rather not, papa.”

”Porque no?” Jorge tilted his head, visibly not understanding, and Minho realized that was one thing his father didn’t know about him. Because with him, Minho had never been scared or ashamed to show his true self, like he was with everyone else. He knew Jorge was the one person who would never make him feel different or ugly— though that was exactly how Minho was thinking of himself. He had never told him how terrified he was to show his back and arms, so severely damaged by lightning.

“My… scars… The kids will see them…”

“Your scars are beautiful, you know that. I tell you all the time.”

”I know you do, but everyone else… They might not think that. What if they hate me? Or think I’m a monster?”

”Mijo, escuchame,” Jorge said, gently squeezing his hands. “I’d bet my life nobody thinks you're a monster for what you went through. Everyone has their own scars.” He paused for a second, taking a look at the kids laughing a few feet away from them. “And everyone’s taking it at their own pace to accept it. If you need more time, I won’t force you.”

Minho’s heart grew so warm at Jorge’s words. He wrapped his arms around him and pressed against his chest, not caring about his shirt absorbing the dampness on Jorge’s skin. “Te amo mucho,” he whispered.

Jorge pressed a small kiss on his forehead. “I actually know a quiet place where we could swim,” he said. “A small creek I’m pretty sure no one else’s ever been to; it would just be the two of us. What do you say?”

Minho looked up to Jorge, whose eyes and smile were bright and full of all the love he carried for his son, and he knew that one day, he’d be able to swim here. Shirt off, in peace with his body and his mind. But not today. For now, his papa was enough. “Show me the way, old man.”

#hope you like this!#this was written after exams i clearly failed so that might not be my best piece #but hey we never get enough of found family in this fandom so here’s my daily contribution #tmr series #the maze runner #minho tmr #jorge tmr #found family #safe haven

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herofics · 1 year

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Hello :D I saw that your requests are open so if that's okay with you I got a request just for Gang Orca!! Not a romantic one tho- a platonic one since y/n will be a child- lemme explain, so you see how Eri's situation used to be? Can I ask for a similar thing with F(y/n) where she gets rescued from a dark basement captured by villains? :0 so basically Gang Orca was the one who recuses her and they're kinda like a father-daughter type since she's mostly with him- and yeah- may I have some hcs? ,-, I've been imagining this with my Oc and I'm going crazy about it-

I didn't know if I should include it or if it's necessary but if in any chance you're gonna use it can y/n's quirk be like- water body? She can turn her body into water and manipulate a d control the water that she creates using her body(freezing and turning in to ice for example!)

Also, have a nice day and thanks for your time <3 sorry if I broke a rule :') and it's completely alright if you don't wanna do this request :]

A month is a pretty standard time for what it takes me to do requests, at least if I don't get an idea for it that I want to pursue immediately, but I'm still sorry this took so long. I don't write about other people's OCs, but you framed this just generally enough that I don't think of it as writing about an OC, it's just a request. I tagged this as mha x reader, since I don't have a separate platonic tag but it's still x reader

•You had been so sure you would never get sure for the villains that had taken you

•They had taken you because your parents were rich and the two villains were hoping for a pay day in the form of a ransom

•But your parents never paid, they didn’t want you back and you were left with the two villains who had no idea what to do with a kid like you

•But pretty soon after you parents denied to pay for you, you were rescued by a pro-hero and his sidekick

•It was Gang Orca, he carried you out of that basement, and you felt the sunlight in your face for the first time in weeks

•You were crying and clinging onto his jacket for dear life

•Since you’re so young, you still have a bit of a hard time controlling your quirk, so your body turned into water

•You still managed to keep your shape, but you apologized to Gang Orca profusely, because you were scared he would get angry with you

•But he just told you not to worry about it, and that you were safe now

•You never once thought he was scary, even though other people might

•When Gang Orca learned that you had no place to go, since your parents were arrested as well for severe child neglect

•He decided to take you in, because he knew what it felt like to be alone and scared and having no one to turn to for help

•So he brought you home with him, after you got some of your things from your former home

•You brought your favorite plushie, books and some toys, along with clothes and stuff like that

•You set up in his guest bedroom while Gang Orca made you some dinner

•As the days go by and you get to know each other a bit, you seem pretty meek and quiet

•You start calling him Mr. Sakamata after you ask him his name

•He notices your quirk responds to your emotions so, he asks if you’d like to learn to control it better

•You tell him no, and that your parents always told you you didn’t need to control it that well, because you’d never be a hero anyway

•Gang Orca tells you that of course you can be a hero and that even if you didn’t want to,quirk control is always important

•So you start training to control your quirk and he’s helping you to the best of his ability

•When you go out to a store or to the park, he carries you on his shoulders or you hold his hand, because you’re a bit scared of people after your kidnapping experience

•He comes to consider you as his kid and he’s like a dad to you

•He supports you as you go back to school and he’s there to help you with your homework and to cheer you on

•Gang Orca is a pretty strict parent, but he also let’s you learn from your mistakes, as long as it’s a pretty harmless mistake

•He’s not overly protective, but he is protective still, like a dad should be

#bnha #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #gang orca #kugo sakamata #bnha headcanons #mha headcanons #mha x reader #bnha x reader #mha fanfiction #bnha fanfiction

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thoughtfullyrainynightmare · 5 months

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I know you've said you don't have many thoughts about Revchi but I just wanted someone to rant to since that's apparently what we're doing now and your takes are indeed excellent (shout-out to Neige anon)

I genuinely think he must carry a lot sadness and trauma, that he closed his heart so much. When Gueldre said that all the other Purple Orcas hated him and that's why no one took his side when he got set up, he didn't even deny it or even react. For some reason he won't allow himself to open up to others even when he had the opportunity to make friends. That's totally unhealthy (honestly, the other Purple Orcas probably couldn't be counted on anyway since from what little we see of them, they're the BC equivalent of dirty cops).

I don't know how to word it but there's something so sad about him. He reminds me a bit of Zora in a way, like they both hide their inner pain with cynicism and snark. How he calls himself "just a wretched thief" in the first chapter, the way he somewhat hides his scar with his hair, even the way his speech bubbles are drawn all wobbly??? Someone get that man into therapy asap please

On an unrelated sidenote you've actually made me appreciate Fuegoleon, believe it or not. I used to not care about him at all but now I like him a lot lol

I mean "not having a lot of thoughts" is always relative too. Like, I ended up writing quite a lot for Revchi in that one ask game, which surprised even me. So it seems I had more thoughts than what I thought, but I still don't think it's comparatively a lot if we take into account other characters.

Plus, now that my exams, and this semester are finally over, I have the next three weeks time to do nothing and sleep. Instead of having my braincells running study stuff in the background on an pinned tab, which might affect how many thoughts I have to spare for the fandom. Also, I like having interactions, even if they might be people feeling frustrated over how unloved their borbo is. (Again, as long as it's like constructive; a mandatory side note, because it's a public blog) I know that everyone doesn't want to interact in the comment section or via reblogs, because they don't want to draw that attention to their blogs, which is fine. But these interactions make me feels less like I'm shouting to the wind, and are evoking my love for the fandom again. And I think that the best way to learn to appreciate and get insight of a character is to talk to someone who likes said character (as long as they haven't like... made the character into pretty much just an oc with the same name, y'know the type and issue generally speaking; it happens in every fandom)

ANYWAYS, back on track and to Revchi

I think there are a lot of characters in BC that do that. Close their emotions because showing emotions isn't... allowed in a lot of circles in BC. Just today in our BC dnd campaign we basically concluded "the Magic Parliament, where justice is scrapped and public image is all that matters; welcome to the heart of Clover Kingdom".

Who knows what happened that caused Revchi to get hated like that, but I'd say that when someone is staged for a crime, there is a good chance that they stood in the way of those who ended up setting said person up. So, it's perfectly possible that Revchi was a "good cop among bad ones" and ended up getting hated and isolated by that, probably along with a lot of other things, that essentially just broke his spirit, and caused him to spiral into a "...if being a wretched thief is what's right in this kingdom, I guess that's what I'll be then" or even "they call me as a wretched thief, so I'll show them one". Which is a kind of a call for help, in a way. The man was spiralling. And when he starts to live up to the rumours, and the reason why he was dismissed, he's not doing any favours for himself, but by then he was beyond caring about it.

Why he won't open up, could be a case of being stabbed in the back, figuratively. So, maybe he trusted someone in that squad, maybe even went to Gueldre, thinking that he could trust a Captain of Clover Kingdom, and Gueldre just threw him to the wolves. I mean... if that doesn't shake your belief into the justice system of Clover, what would?

There is a tragedy in there. He's just a guy who tried to do good (as a headcanon, because all of this is purely speculation ofc), and ended up thrown into the mud.

He doesn't believe in goodness of the world anymore. Or that there can be such a thing as "justice" in Clover. Which is very similar as to what Zora feels. Actually. For Zora it's just about what happened to his dad, and for Revchi it's about what happened to him.

I imagine the wobbly speech bubbles to be a kind of a voice cracking up. Because, deep down, he didn't want to do what he did. But he was in too deep in his own head, the cynicism. Because no one would care. It wasn't the kind of a world where people would care, in his mind. The line between a hardened criminal and a knight was a line drawn in sand on a beach.

Who knows, maybe he even thought that stealing a couple of grimoires and selling them in the black market might earn him the trust of the Orcas again. Revchi just might be yet another character that Clover Kingdom failed.

#black clover #black clover revchi #anon flamelets #I'm also really happy to know that you grew to appreciate Fue because of my silly lil' posts #he's my sexy lamp

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writeforfandoms · 7 months

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I, absolutely love your writing, I think I've read born for greatness like 4 times now, along with all your other shifter stories ;w;

I dont know if you do requests but I had to get this put down somewhere and I feel like you would be the perfect author to present this idea I had to just, prent it to you in a little glowy box with opera coming from within.

So- everyone knows how marine parks like SeaWorld or marine land used to catch their orcas yes? The rounding up of pods and then the separation of calves from their mothers.

I present to you the tidbit of brain that said to me me last night 'Human 141 who work at a marine research/rescue center who get a call about an orca being kept in a holding pen at a dilapidated waterpark that had been abandoned a few months earlier. It's a dire situation as the orca being kept has been alone and starving for a couple weeks. The 141 set out to save this orca and sucsessfuly bring them back to be taken care of and nursed back to health. In this time they find out their a shifter and speak to them about their life. After that they make it their goal to reunite the orca shifter with their pod- because -

(interesting tidbit time) orcas are known to live just as long if not longer then humans, they also have their own dialects! (This is why an orca from Japan can not communicate with an orca from Off the coast of Cape Breton) and this means that technically calves who had been stolen from the wild could (theortically) be rehabilitated and set free once more, they would find their pod and reunite with their family.

The 141 end up reuniting the orca with their family who are absolutely ecstatic to have found them again, the the orca shifter dosent wana leave, so the 141 (who's owns baste amount of sea that they've procured as protected land) propose the pod live in the protected waters. So now everything the 141 steps outside their little cottages they see a large pod of orca shifters happily living right outside their facility, one who regularly shifts back to be around their saviors on land

I just had to get this down somewhere, and thought this would be perfect idea to present to you, even if you dont do anything with it lol! Love your works, keep up the good work!

First, thank you so so much! I know you sent this in weeks ago but I needed to read this this morning. So thank you. This means more to me than you know.

Second, sorry for hanging on to this for a bit.

Third... this is brilliant. I love this. So much. I love the idea of orca shifters! They spend most of their lives shifted but occasionally become human... probably for prank purposes. Its probably like a teenage rite of passage kind of thing. Which is just adorable.

And the 141 finding her original pod for her?? My heart!! And then offering the protected waters and watching out for the pod. Just. All of this is absolutely heart warming. This is absolutely my kind of idea. Good bit of angsty hurt with a solid dose of comfort and happy ending.

I'm gonna put this on a back burner for now because life is a wee bit too much right now BUT trust me I absolutely adore this idea!! I'm writing it down in my ideas folder to keep track of. Because I want to revisit this.

I'm already thinking of why the abandoned park had a shifter, and shift-preventing devices, and the utter callousness of leaving her because anyone else would remove the device and she could get a lot of people in a lot of trouble... mwahaha.

Thank you so much friend!

#if you don't mind #I'm gonna call you 🐬 anon #bc there is no orca #lemme know if you want that changed!#shifter au #🐬 anon

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mariacallous · 9 months

Text

I was grabbing a drink with an old friend when it happened. I told her I was excited about an upcoming reporting trip to Vancouver, to interview Naomi Klein. My friend wrinkled her nose, as if the bartender had just farted. Then she asked why I’d give my time to someone who thought the Covid-19 pandemic was a conspiracy.

I sighed. Turns out, she’d been thinking of Naomi Wolf.

You know Naomi Klein, right? Rabble-rousing leftist journalist and climate activist? Author of Gen X touchstone No Logo and the mega-influential The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism? Decidedly not the former liberal feminist writer turned far-out Covid truther Naomi Wolf? But just because they share a first name—and, I suppose, are both telegenic Jewish public intellectuals who found fame through polemical writing—people confuse the two Naomis constantly. Klein gets mixed up with Wolf so much, in fact, a Twitter mnemonic was born: “If the Naomi be Klein you’re doing just fine / If the Naomi be Wolf, oh, buddy. Ooooof.”

Thus the basis of Klein’s new book, Doppelganger. Writing hundreds of pages based on the Twitter discourse surrounding your evil twin is, of course, a deeply questionable choice. Klein openly admits that her family and friends questioned her sanity. As she is quick to point out, though, Doppelganger is not really about Wolf. Instead, the book uses the experience as an entry point to dissect the “intellectual and ideological mayhem” of the Covid era. How wellness entrepreneurs demonize medicine. How the far right appropriates and warps leftist talking points. How parents insist on seeing their children as reflections of themselves. In all this, Klein writes, there’s a new doubling going on—weird fun house distortions of what used to be more straightforward realities. It’s a lively, slightly unwieldy, wholly vital work. It could only be hers.

Klein moved to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia during the pandemic, a riotously beautiful nook of that vast province, where towns are nestled into fjords. It’s a place far more likely to be visited by orcas than members of the US media, and in the interest of saving me a journey on a ferry—you can only get to her home by boat or floatplane—Klein met me at her office at the University of British Columbia, where she codirects the Centre for Climate Justice. We’d intended to stroll around the sprawling, sunny campus, but the conversation kept such an intense clip, we ended up simply sitting for hours.

Kate Knibbs: Doppelganger is much more personal than your previous work. Why?

Naomi Klein: I thought it was really important not to be on the outside of this story, but to be inside, to fess up to my own disorientation. Having a doppelganger who a lot of people confuse me with is a type of losing oneself, and it provided a toehold into this larger and more interesting set of feelings, of being lost in a world we might not recognize.

You listened to conspiratorial podcasts for research, including Steve Bannon’s. Were you ever worried you’d get lost in those worlds?

I felt that way the first time I went to a climate change denial conference. I was a tiny bit worried I would start to doubt my own understanding of the science by listening to them. But the exact opposite happened, because it was so completely incoherent. One guy says it’s getting cooler. Another says it’s getting hotter—but the sunspots! Another guy says everyone should just get air-conditioning. That’s what it’s like listening to Bannon or any of those “intellectual dark web” types. You can see it right now with RFK Jr. He’s saying Covid was a bioweapon. This is also the guy who told people not to wear masks, not to lock down, not to get vaccinated. So which is it? Occasionally Bannon would have someone on who would claim that people were just dropping dead from the vaccine.

Like the whole #DiedSuddenly thing?

Exactly. What you start to realize is that these people are acting as if we were immortal before Covid. As if no one died from anything. What worries me more isn’t that I’m going to start thinking that the vaccines are killing us or anything like that. It’s that I understand why the things he’s doing are so resonant.

Why are they so resonant?

This is Bannon’s gift, sorry to say, and it’s how Trump won in 2016: by identifying a bloc of Democratic voters who had been screwed over by the party because they lost jobs to corporate free trade deals. So the offer was a counterfeit version of the left, which is what right-wing populism does. They were not rewriting trade deals in any significant way that would help workers. They were offering huge gifts to the already wealthy through tax cuts. But when people are desperate enough, they’ll go for a counterfeit.

I have someone close to me who has definitely bought into that counterfeit populism. It’s been hard to watch the change take place.

I’ve had so many conversations with people describing that feeling. It’s like watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

But I suppose we all have many competing, constantly mutating versions of ourselves. How do you think about your public persona now?

When we think about performing ourselves, we think about social media. For me, that’s Twitter [since renamed X]. And right now I don’t think any of us feel in control of whatever the fuck is happening on Twitter. But we’re still there, hoping to recapture something. I hope my relationship to my public persona is like my relationship with Twitter. I’m not really trying anymore.

Do you think there’s a way for you to have a conversation like this that’s truly authentic, or are you in some sense creating a doppelganger version of yourself to promote the book?

There’s always going to be some contradictions involved in hawking a book when you’re an anti-capitalist author. I’ve been living with that contradiction for a long time. I find talking to people exciting. I have ideas that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I had the idea to write No Logo while I was doing an interview with a student journalist.

Are your students influential in other ways?

One of the really nice things about being on campuses right now is that, if I was just getting my sense of youth culture through media, I’d think that all young people are constantly posing and performing themselves on Instagram. But it’s definitely a minority. A lot of young people feel alienated from it.

I get a lot of youth culture tidbits from my babysitter, which is how I know that super polished and posed Instagram photos are seen as a geriatric millennial thing.

They want it to look really authentic, to be messy.

I reread No Logo recently. It holds up.

Maybe not the Blockbuster references!

Honestly, we need to bring back your concept of selling out. I got in a lot of trouble on Twitter a few months ago for saying the Barbie movie looked bad. I love Greta Gerwig, but I don’t want to like Barbie! I hate the idea of a Mattel Cinematic Universe.

The thing that’s so clever is that it’s shiny and pretty enough to get the normie Barbie fans, but it also has so-called subversive content for the people who don’t want to like Barbie. It’s genius marketing. But the world is fraying. It’s an odd time for us to get excited about pink plastic.

Probably an odd time for me to be really annoyed about it, too.

No, I think it’s time to have some standards again.

Do you ever think about returning to that mode of criticism?

Just to keep you company?

To keep me company, and because efforts to turn cinema and television into capital-B Brands—the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most infamously—are so much more flagrant than before.

And also to keep us in our childhoods in a strange way. This is not kid content, it’s adult content, but it’s feeding on nostalgia for being 8 years old.

What’s a recent movie you liked?

Despite the critics hating it, I thought Don’t Look Up was brilliant. It was taking aim at the culture of narcissism and distraction at this most critical moment. It was broad, like all of Adam McKay’s comedies. But that was not the problem. The problem was that it was right.

Doesn’t everyone die at the end?

That’s the best part. He fucked with the Judeo-Christian trope that the righteous will be saved.

I do think it was broad.

Well, Anchorman is broad!

True. But I don’t necessarily want my comedy to be didactic. I just really don’t want it to be branded content from Mattel. There’s this amazing Canadian filmmaker, Sarah Polley, and she’s doing a live-action Bambi.

My grandpa worked on the original Bambi. He was an animator.

I read about this. Didn’t he get fired for trying to unionize?

He did. And they had the first strike at Disney during the production of Dumbo.

Have you been paying attention to the strike wave happening?

It’s exciting. I’m really glad that there’s the focus on AI.

What else interests you politically, right now?

I think it’s important to think about where the Covid denialism energy is going now that there aren’t vaccine mandates. It’s morphing, going in new directions, and it’s important to try and follow that.

Which new directions?

There are two main wellsprings the Covid denialism movement drew from. One was the anti-vax people. The other group was climate deniers. Now, when you post anything about climate change, you’ll get hit with “Davos elites, Great Reset.”

When we were talking earlier about how people take leftist ideas and make counterfeit versions of them, I was thinking about how that happened to the shock doctrine—your idea that global elites use disasters to push brutal policies to benefit themselves at the expense of the masses. People co-opted the concept to talk about the Great Reset, saying there was a global conspiracy to use Covid to strip away personal freedoms. Has this changed your relationship to your own ideas? Do you feel less ownership over them?

I’ve never felt I had that much control over my ideas in the culture. I remember Arundhati Roy saying to me many years ago, we can’t control what our words do once we release them. I have tried to correct the record and do my own writing about what I think the shock doctrine is and isn’t, but I think I’ve always felt a bit of detachment around it.

Jane Fonda started her Fire Drill Fridays because of you.

That was just getting somebody at the right moment of receptivity. That’s what Jane did. I take no credit.

Do you believe in the horseshoe theory? Are the people on the far left swinging far right because they’re attracted to conspiratorial thinking about Covid?

There are some people who have decided that Tucker Carlson is a great guy and Trump’s better than Biden. But most of those people I wouldn’t consider very left-wing. Someone like Glenn Greenwald. For a while, he seemed to be a left-wing person because he was against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. But he was a libertarian upset about Bush-era government overreach. So it makes sense, when a government has to robustly respond to a pandemic, that a lot of those people got upset. I know some of these people—Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald—I know that they are not deep left thinkers. We have to make the distinction.

Do you think there’s an incentive to shift rightward now to bolster one’s personal brand online?

Yes.

Could there be a positive incentive the other way? Is it possible to build up an ecosystem of independent leftist outlets?

Remember that idea? We need to invest in media, and not be reliant on quixotic billionaires to find one another. I think we need to get serious about independent alternative media and local media.

Meaning, like, a new Twitter?

The problem with something like Mastodon or the smaller Twitter competitors is that they’re not able to offer what Twitter did at its best, which was this feeling of we’re all having one conversation together.

I don’t know if there will ever be one main conversation again.

I wish Twitter could’ve been turned into a co-op. This is labor we’ve put into this thing. We all wrote for free!

A lot.

There was always something self-exploiting about that. Sure, we were able to share our articles and do self-promotion, but I always knew they were going to try to charge us. It’s too valuable.

There’s a co-op movement for media startups, where the writers own their outlets, but I haven’t seen the same thing happen for social media.

And the thing happening now with AI—it was one thing for all of us to be writing for free for Zuckerberg and Musk, but now it turns out that all of that content is being used to create doppelgangers of us by AI companies. Now that’s going to be used to put people out of work, or cheapen their labor.

It’s accelerating so rapidly. Big outlets are already putting out AI-generated articles.

This relates back to conspiracies and why they’re spreading as quickly as they are. It’s a dangerous time to give people more reasons not to believe what’s in front of them. Anything you’re shown now can be dismissed as fake news. “It’s not even Biden, it’s AI.” We’re barely glimpsing the ramifications.

In Doppelganger, you wrote about a South Korean politician who used AI to look younger.

The thing about the Korean example is, it was not hidden. Everyone knew. And it worked for him. So who knows? As our candidates get older, they may rely on AI doppelgangers. It’s being packaged as a way to reach younger voters, because they prefer synthetic reality.

Have you had discussions with your students about AI? Do they actually prefer synthetic reality?

Last semester, ChatGPT was really everywhere, and we were discussing how they were not using it to write their essays. I think we’ve overfocused on the plagiarism piece of things. It’s just one element within a completely unstable and frightening future. Maybe it’s helpful writing essays, but they also know it’s replacing entire sectors they may have been preparing for—between not being able to afford living in the city to the acceleration of the climate crisis to AI changing the job market.

I’m aware of at least one podcasting company hoping to use AI to translate podcasts into a bunch of different languages. It sounds cool, but then you think: What about translators?

The thing I find disingenuous is when you hear, oh, we’re going to have so much leisure time, the AI will do the grunt work. What world are you living in? That’s not what happens. Fewer people will get hired. And I don’t think this is a fight between humans and machines; that’s bad framing. It’s a fight between conglomerates that have been poisoning our information ecology and mining our data. We thought it was just about tracking us to sell us things, to better train their algorithms to recommend music. It turns out we’re creating a whole doppelganger world.

We’ve provided just enough raw material.

When Shoshana Zuboff wrote The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, it was more about convincing people who’d never had a sense that they had a right to privacy—because they’d grown up with the all-seeing eye of social media—that they did have a right to privacy. Now it’s not just that, even though privacy is important. It’s about whether anything we create is going to be weaponized against us and used to replace us—a phrase that unfortunately has different connotations right now.

Take it back! The right stole “shock doctrine,” you can nab “replace us” for the AI age.

These companies knew that our data was valuable, but I don’t even think they knew exactly what they were going to do with it beyond sell it to advertisers or other third parties. We’re through the first phase now, though. Our data is being used to train the machines.

Fodder for a Doppelganger sequel.

And about what it means for our ability to think new thoughts. The idea that everything is a remix, a mimicry—it relates to what you were talking about, the various Marvel and Mattel universes. The extent to which our culture is already formulaic and mechanistic is the extent to which it’s replaceable by AI. The more predictable we are, the easier it is to mimic. I find something unbearably sad about the idea that culture is becoming a hall of mirrors, where all we see is our own reflections back.

You reached out to Naomi Wolf and she didn’t respond. If she had responded, would you want to debate her?

I think it’s important to engage with what’s being said and marshal counterfacts. But the idea of just sneering at people is dangerous. I think we do need to debate, but whether that means creating some kind of theatrical Naomi vs. Naomi spectacle—I don’t know about that.

You could be second billing to Musk vs. Zuckerberg.

Anyway, as you know from reading the book, it’s not really about her. She’s just a case study. I follow her down the rabbit hole. But I’m more interested in the rabbit hole.

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