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#Except it does sound kinda weird when I say that my two favourite characters are a Psychiatrist and a Catholic Priest
so0ppa · 4 months
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"Live blogging" (not really kind of more like a thread but alaso not. really.) about the new TWA episode because this is a thing i just do nowadays i guess?
Like 25 seconds in and I already really like this it's so sillay stupid teehee lit rpg... noo its on firee... sorry bad joke my . bad.
can he stop saying ghetto. not really a term id use when talking about just genres i find that. weird. weird use of words.
WHEN DID HE QSK FOR RECOMMENDATIONS FHJGJG I FEEL STUPID. FUCK. (time to spend more than double the time of this video to find wtf he's talking about) ok can't find it in any outro or description from the last 11 months so it might be in like a video itself but. im not rewatching so much of twa rn.
ahem anyways. continuing the video. ooh. nooo. fuck. the harem. awesome (sarcasm)
POINTING OUT THE INHALE PSLFJSG holy fuck my favourite item the kitchen sink is here /j oh ok that eldritch horror book design is actually rlly cool i think. YEAHH PET SNAIL.
guy who hates stats like in general (me) i can't stand them my autistic ass does not understand what actions would fall into what stat group like I am too stupid for rpgs maybe.
oop subtitling mistake there's a "?" between "skills" & "the rng" when its actually a continuous sentence. smh smh (might not be the case in the youtube upload idk) OH another mistake. "out with" instead of outwit.
the description to this author's pet ability is rlly funny WAIT HEAD EXPLOSION & SUMMON KITCHEN SINK ?!?€&×[/*(@(=
omg.. singularity liek in... aeon legio- [gunshot]
idk why but the "but im special!" line is rlly silly to me ♡ like yes for sure absolutely
ok the sx stuff is kinda tiring like cool shut up we get it BUT. counter argument just the word "Boobies!" on an otherwise completely empty two-page spread is REALLY funny. (aand nvm its ruined. man i should stop pausing so much)
euahfkjsijfj man that super exaggarated overly sexualised sprite really freaks me out like eughhhj .. unnatural...
"women characters" sorry this is one of those cases where i need someone to just say female like pleasplesrlgsig IT SOUNDS BETTER . AGRHT /lh nsrs
ok kinda disagree with the fanservice thing. 99% of One Piece's female characters are all the same body type and this is grounded in sexism as women apparently shouldn't be allowed to have anything except an hour glass body type lest they be made fun of in the media. but whatever maybe he's referring to something else than this and it's more about sexualisation rather than the same cookie cutter design but tbh I personally still find that iffy (and kind of feel that's the same thing really. since those body types are usually the one's sexualised. but whatever) maybe its because im one of those loathed femoids though who fuckin knows /s
oh hm ah erhm uhm . oh no. eroguro. hey another subtitling error!
THE OBVIOUS DISDAIN IN JPS VOICE WHEN HE SAYS JOY SHFKJSJFKDKG
didn't he already go through this power stuff in the stats section. whatever whatever its fine. i guess.
WHY DID HE SAY OOH LIKE THAT SORRY FYCKQJJF weirdo /j affectionate (somewhat)
so many subtitling mistakes... s-so hard to keep up.....
wow so many SAO references ♡ my inner 12 yr old is violently vibrating rn /j
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tears0fsatan · 2 years
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LOL that's just how i work i just get into anything that interests me no matter how drastically different they are. for the sonic franchise, it's bc ive been watching the snapcube sonic fandubs and they made me interested in the actual games and idw comic. as for nu carnival, i really like the character designs and well if im being honest...the nsfw scenes help satisfy my libido without me having to actually do anything, i can just watch the two men go at it and i'll be satisfied lmao. libido's a bitch when you're ace 😭
well i guess ive been experimenting with that side of myself when i turned 18...it kinda makes me feel like a late bloomer tho T_T even been daydreaming about doing The Activity with geo gramps and my brain is weirdly not opposed to it much which makes me question things more,, still wont actually read smut tho, the weird terms intimidate me
the green haired guy's name is olivine!! he's a very nice and gentle priest ^_^ and also very um...yknow. im not comfortable saying the word but yeah. he's very neat!! my fave is yakumo tho, he's just so sweet and cute 🥺 he's the shy type ehe. dante is very gender tho
and thank you for your encouraging words, honestly im just attending uni so i can get a good job and get the hell out of my country bc it's a hellhole 😭 i am getting that top surgery goddammit!! binders are cool but permanently getting rid of my boobs sounds so much better
anywayz thank u for reading my rambles again, i literally have no one to talk to nowadays lol
- 🔶
HOLY FUCJ YEAH!!!! being ace n a teenager is so awkward n nO ONE ever talks about it...... like i can't help the wave of guilt i feel whenever i feel *cough* even though its nORMALLLLL urghurghurgh
n .. omg i never thought that i'd meet someone similar to me in that regard,, i grew up homeschooled n isolated so i never rlly got the chance to learn abt that sort of stuff along with my peers??? so i always felt like i was left behind (in a lot of ways rip </3) n it sucks but at least now we know that we're not the only ones right? anww pls don't feel too burdened to figure things out!!! get comfortable with that sorta stuff in ur own time my dear!! nd help i can't picture myself doing it with anyone except some of my favourite characters too 😭😭 real life people are just :thumbs down:
my love,,,, does yakumo remind u of a certain... geo spear wielder by chance..? LMFAO IM PLAYIN BUT DAMN OLIVINE IS CUTE AS HELL AND HIS NAME??? IS SO PRETTY??? AND WHAT THE FUCK... DANTE.. HELLO??@#?@#@?# im gnna collapse and dry heave why are all the characters so damn gorgeous,.,.,. at this rate i might as well play the game myself 😭
nd fuck yeah!!! away with the tits!!! i am in full support of that movment!!!! hope that opportunity comes ur way soon my love!!! n help pls literally me too... the few friends that i still talk to are all busy with exams n stuff n so we don't have the time to chat lololol feel free to ramble or wtv in my inbox whenever!!!!!!!!
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gayness-and-mayhem · 2 years
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Right, I'm slightly drunk, but I just want to say that I love Sidney Freedman so fucking much.
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angelguk · 3 years
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omg so i sent in an ask re angst jock jk n oc ! but then i also realized its highly possible these 2 break up at one point while in uni mostly bc of the "are we dating bc its convenient" kinda dilemma and then it just pushes them apart bc they think theyre losing theirselves while being in such a close relationship,,,cue save ur tears by theweeknd BUT i just know when they grow up a lil bit more, theyll end up together <3
here we go! (the beginning of the end....may be...)
didn’t include save your tears as the soundtrack but may haps for the follow-up :3
pairing: jock!jk and oc
warnings: angst, yes the break-up scene, jaykay being an ass (a very huge one motivated by his own insecurities and selfishness – translation: he’d rather break her heart and carry that weight than be the heartbroken one), chayoung is no longer Seed of Doubt but something else (still up for debate but she’s fairly nice here), not edited but hey atp that’s part of my branding (also i would like everyone to consider that oc is not the greatest gf ever like guys don’t hate jk alone!!)
soundtrack: bags, clairo + stay, gracie abrams + say you know, alina baraz
(titled — honeymoon fades)
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Jeongguk’s contact name hasn’t lit up the screen of your phone for six days now and you haven’t seen his face for just as long. It’s weird to go from constant incessant  communication to complete and utter radio silence. Not a single meme deposited in your Instagram inbox, no random notification from his Twitter. Just silence, quiet brewing silence. 
It breaks two days later when Chayoung finds you coddled under your duvet, mouth stuffed with the saccharine sweetness of mint chocolate. (Jeongguk kept a stash of it at your place but who was around to eat it anymore apart from you?). 
“And why do you look like you live in a dumpster?” She’d hummed, ripping open the curtains you’d involuntarily welded shut. 
“Because that’s how I feel inside,” you’d retorted, pushing aside your laptop. The screen is stuck with an image of an idiotic character named Nabi kissing the spawn of Satan. You hope for her sake it works out. Chayoung had huffed at your response, fondly whacking your head with a stray pillow. 
“Well get over that feeling cause we’re going out tonight.” A declaration, the fierceness in her feline eyes a warning that you’re not allowed to even think of saying no. That doesn’t mean you hadn’t tried – sorrowful eyes and pouted lips as you begged her to spare you. But Chayoung is a force of nature, one that could easily wreak havoc on your delicateness. And she does though, with a string of comments that propels you out of the miserable burrow you’d dug up. 
“You’re killing everyone, you know?” She’d supplied, yanking open your closet. “You’re sulking, Jeongguk is shutting down. He’s said like five words since this whole...thing...you have going on.” 
You couldn’t help but scoff at that, toying with the corner of the large grey shirt donned on your body. Jeongguk’s shirt. One of his favourites actually. You’d thought about stealing it after spying it on his obsessively neat laundry pile, but after seeing your wandering eyes he’d given it to you instead. 
“He always does that,” you’d said after Chayoung had whipped her head in your direction, curved eyebrows perplexed. “I mean, shut down. It’s his emotional response to things that bother him. Complete detachment so it hurts less.”
She had just stared at you, a long meaningful look at left your skin prickled. 
“Huh.”
“What do you mean ‘huh’?”
A measured step forward, her body weight sinking into the edge of your mattress a moment later. “I mean, you know him so well.”
“Of course I do he’s my best-friend,” you’d said, indignation coating your words
“No–No you're not getting me. You know him. You know he wouldn’t make the move to reconcile–”
“But he should!”
“You told him to go away! He’s trying to listen to you even though he’s hurting!”
And maybe that was it, that simple implication that you were causing him pain that had you pausing, reviewing the things you’d said to him – the things you’d felt. 
“But,” a timid rebuttal, “I just–I just need him to show me that he cares.”
“He does,” Chayoung had returned. “So much. And he misses you. He’s probably just afraid that you don’t feel the same.”
“But I do! He knows this.”
“Does he?” A question in her eyes, one that you’re afraid you know the honest answer to. 
You say things and never mean them, he had said, eyes hard.
That had hurt you but perhaps he was right, there are things you hadn’t told him, feelings you hadn’t truly expressed. And Jeongguk had always been good to you, so understanding and caring, trying to fill the places were you lacked. Wasn’t he the one who planned the majority of your dates? Remembered all the important milestones of your relationship while you contributed the bare minimum. You hadn’t even told Chayoung about the surprise he had planned for your one-year anniversary, the shame of your own choice hanging heavy over your head. 
So that’s why you’re here, staring at the back of his head forlornly as the music drifts around you, flashing florescent lights bathing him a hazy glory. He hasn’t seen you yet (something you’re thankful for because oddly enough you feel sick to your stomach). It feels like you’re skating on thin ice, waiting for the impending crack to sound through your heart, ice water swallowing you whole immediately. Chayoung is the one who pushes you forward, gingerly plucking the idle drink from your hand, Jimin aiding her efforts with a soft smile your way. 
It’s time for you to try the way Jeongguk has, put aside that bumbling ego that oversees your actions and adopt the humility he’s always granted you.
“Go,” she murmurs. “He misses you.”
And God you hope he does because you’ve missed him too. 
Except the moment his honey eyes land on you you know he hasn’t.
“Jeongguk,” you mumble. Yoonoh is frozen beside him, concerned gaze flicking between your faces. Your own eyes are stuck on him, the shape of his nose, the curve of his lips, the subtle hint of the dimple in his cheeks. 
You’ve missed him, and it slips from your heart and brims in your eyes, vision blurry as your blink those stray tears back inside. 
“Hi,” you add, when his silence doesn’t break.
“I should probably go,” Yoonoh lets out, awkward words bumping into the wall of tension standing firm between you to. He settles a hand on Jeongguk’s shoulder, sending him a look that feels loaded. “See you guys later, right?”
You nod, finally noticing the lump clogging your throat. “Yeah, sure.” Jeongguk just hums, the edge of his cup caught between his lips. Yoonoh flees within seconds, leaving you to wade through this alone. 
“I–I know you’re not happy with me right now, but please, can we just talk?” He blinks at you, it feels like a premonition. “Please?”
“Okay.” The simple word fills you, like a hollow you weren’t aware of finally found the cure needed. 
“Okay,” a small smile on your lips. Jeongguk’s face is still unreadable. He guides you up and away from the deafening sound of the song bleeding from the speakers, into an empty room, the door closing behind him muting the music and giving way to the own pounding in your head. Nobody says anything for a second, both of you navigating this uncharted territory of animosity. Until Jeongguk sighs, melting into the bed at the centre of the room. You follow suit, allocating enough space between the two of you. You’ve ever had to do that before.
“You said you wanted to talk?” Jeongguk finally cuts through it, eyes unforgiving when he glances at you.
“I did! I do–Just Jeongguk,” you can’t help it drifting out. “I miss you.”
Nothing, not even a flicker in his eyes. He eyes shift to the floor instead. “Okay. I that what you wanted to say?”
“No–No not just that! I’ve missed you Jeongguk and I’m sorry. I’m sorry that i went off on you like that and I’m sorry I haven’t been the best towards you and I’m sorry that I’ve made you feel like I didn’t care about you–or made you feel like the things I said or did had no meaning behind them. Because they do–they do because I love you. I love you so so much and I’m sorry if I made it seem like otherwise.” You automatically extend out for him, hoping to grasp on his thing floating to fast away from you. Jeongguk shifts and you hand tumbles down to the empty space between you instead, halted by his hesitance. 
His head drops into his palms a second later, a broken exhale leaving his lips. The motion cause the silver bracelet on his wrist to slip down the length of his arm. It jolts something in you. Jeongguk had given you a matching one but you’d ripped it off after the last argument and hadn’t considered putting it back on. But Jeongguk was still wearing his. 
“Do you really?”
“What?” He’s staring at you know, doe eyes cloudy.
“Do you really love me?” There, that stupid evil vile question that you thought you had the answer to but the words vanish in your head the longer he looks at you.
“I do–what? What are you implying? Of course, I do.”
“Of course, you do,” Jeongguk echoes. His eyes turn to the window located over his shoulder. You can see his head working through something, and you’re suddenly terrified fingertips itching to wander through his curls and coax those thoughts from his head. 
“Jeongguk? What the hell are you talking about? Talk to me, please.”
He sighs again, at it feels like your heart splinters. A sudden shake of his head and Jeongguk twists back to face you, a silent tear falling down his cheek.
“You don’t love me.”
“Wh–What are you talking about? I do! And how can you decide my feelings for me?”
“No. You don’t love me the way you think you do–the way you should.” It feels like he’s saying it to more than you, like he’s saying it to himself. “Maybe this the wrong choice to make. You know. Maybe we shouldn’t have done this.”
You shatter just like that, shards on the floor as you stare him, this person that you thought you knew. And maybe the feeling is mutual because Jeongguk is staring at you in a similar way, searching for the courage to say the words you know lie in his heart. Like a loaded cannon, waiting for the match to strike and leave you lying in pieces. 
“I think we should break–"
“No,” you cut him off with an adamance that you didn’t know existed until right then. “No, you’re not gonna say that and we are not doing this.”
His eyes narrow then, jaw set. “This is not about ‘us’, I’m doing what’s right for me.”
“How is that right? Huh, Jeongguk? Don’t you care about this? Don’t you care about me?”
He looks away then, ignoring your questions, his throat stuck. 
“Jeongguk...” You reach out again, and he allows it, shoulders sinking with the weight of your hand on them. “Don’t you care about me?”
Another heavy exhale, his eyes blinking hard. “I do. And that’s why this won’t work, not the way it should at least. I really think we should end this, or at least reconsider the reasons why we’re together. You say you love me–you say you always have but really–really think about it. About me and us and what we are. I’m sorry, I really am but I just can’t do this anymore.”
He rises then, your outstretched hand tumbling down to the empty space he’d left behind. You can’t move it, can’t breathe, your heart hurtling out of your chest and onto the ground where it lies, fragmented beyond repair and bleeding bare. You glance up through tears, watch him open his mouth and then it and look away. 
“Do you mean it?” You finally ask, and his eyes snap to you. He knows what you’re saying. There’s a pause that stretches out for eternity, coloured by the sound of the ringing in your head.
“Maybe.” It cuts right through you, lodging itself deep with intent. And then you just have to nod, swallow the scream clawing at your throat. He murmurs one more apology before his feet carry him away, and you watch, forlorn as you burn his frame into your memory, as your whole world walks out the door.
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meichenxi · 3 years
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Hey! I hope you feel better soon
We haven't had a good long linguistics rant from you in a while!! How about you tell us about your favourite lingustical feature or occurrence in a language? Something like a weird grammatical feature or how a language changed
If this doesn't trigger any rant you have stored feel free to educate on any topic you can spontaneously think of, I'd love to hear it :D
ALRIGHT KARO, let's go!! This is a continuation of the other ask I answered recently, and is the second part in a series about linguistic complexity. I suggest you check that one out first for this to properly make sense! (I don't know how to link but uh. it's the post behind this on my blog)
Summary of previous points: the complexity of a language has nothing to do with the 'complexity' of the people that speak it; complexity is really bloody hard to measure; some linguists in an attempt to be not racist argue that 'all languages are equally complex', but this doesn't really seem to be the case, and also still equates cognitive ability with complexity of language which is just...not how things work; arguing languages have different amounts of complexity has literally nothing to do with the cognitive abilities of those who speak it.
Ok. Chinese.
Normally when we look at complexity we like to look at things like number of verb classes, noun classes, and so on. But Chinese doesn't really do any of this.
So what do Chinese and languages like Chinese do that is so challenging to the equicomplexity hypothesis, the idea that all languages are equally complex? I’ll start by talking about some of the common properties of isolating languages - and these properties are often actually used as examples of why these languages are as complex, just in different ways. Oh Melissa, I hear you ask in wide-eyed admiration/curiousity. What are they? By isolating languages, I mean languages that tend to have monosyllabic words, little to no conjugation, particles instead of verb or noun endings, and so on: so languages like Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai and many others in East and South East Asia.
Here’s a list of funky things in isolating languages that may or may not make a language more complex than linguists don't really know what to do with:
Classifiers
Chengyu and 4-word expressions
Verb reduplication, serialisation and resultative verbs
'Lexical verbosity' = complex compounding and word forming strategies
Pragmatics
Syntax
I'll talk about the first two briefly, but I don't have space for all. For clarity of signposting my argument: many linguists use these as explanations of why languages like Chinese are as complex, but I'm going to demonstrate afterwards why the situation is a bit more complicated than that. You could even say it's...complex.
1) Classifiers
You know about classifiers in Chinese, but what you may be interested to learn is that almost all isolating languages in South East Asia use them, and many in fact borrow from each other. The tonal, isolating languages in South East Asia have historically had a lot of contact through intense trade and migration, and as such share a lot of properties. Some classifiers just have to go with the noun: 一只狗,一条河 etc. First of all, if we're defining complexity as 'the added stuff you have to remember when you learn it' (my professors hate me), it's clear that these are added complexity in exactly the same way gender is. Why is it X, and not Y? Well, you can give vague answers ('it's sort of...ribbony' or 'it's kinda...flat'), but more often than not you choose the classifier based on the vibe. Which is something you just have to remember.
Secondly, many classifiers actually have the added ability to modify the type of noun they're describing. These are familiar too in languages like English: a herd of cattle versus a head of cattle. So we have 一枝花 which is a flower but on a stem ('a stem of flower'), but also 一朵花 which is a flower but without the stem (think like...'a blob of flower'). Similarly with clouds - you could have a 一朵云 'blob of cloud' (like a nice, fluffy cloud in a children's book), but you could also have 一片云 which is like a huge, straight flat cloud like the sea...and so on. These 'measure words' do more than measure: they add additional information that the noun itself does not give.
Already we're beginning to see the outline of the problem. Grammatical complexity is...well, grammatical. We count the stuff which languages require you to express, not the optional stuff - and that's grammar. The difference between better and best is clearly grammatical, as is go and went. But what about between 'a blob of cloud' versus 'a plain of cloud'? Is that grammatical? Well, maybe: you do have to include a measure word when you say there's one of it, and in many Chinese languages that are not Mandarin you have to include them every single time you use a possessive: my pair of shoes, my blob of flower etc. But you don't always have to include one specific classifier - there are multiple options, all of which are grammatical. So should we include classifiers as part of the grammar? Or part of the vocabulary (the 'lexicon')?
Err. Next?
2) Chengyu and 4-character expressions + 4) Lexical verbosity
This might seem a bit weird: these are obviously parts of the vocab! What's weirder, though, is that many isolating languages have chengyu, not just Chinese. And if you don't use them, many native speakers surveys suggest you don't sound native. This links to point number 4, which is lexical verbosity. 'Lexical verbosity' means a language has the ability to express things creativity, in many different manners, all of which may have a slightly different nuance. The kind of thing you love to read and analyse and hate to translate.
But it is important. If we look at the systems that make up the grand total of a language, vocabulary is obviously one of them: a language with 1 million root forms is clearly more 'complex', if all else is exactly the same, than a language with 500,000. Without even getting into the whole debacle about 'what even is a word', a language that has multiple registers (dialect, regional, literary, official etc) that all interact is always going to be more complex than one that doesn't, just because there's more of it. More rules, more words, more stuff.
Similarly, something that is the backbone of modern Chinese 'grammar' and yet you may never have thought of as such is is compound words. We don't tend to traditionally teach this as grammar, and I don't have time to give a masterclass on it now, but let me assure you that compounding - across the world's language - is hugely varied. Some languages let you make anything a compound; some only allow noun+noun compounds (so no 'blackbird', as black is an adjective); some only allow head+head compound (so no 'sabretooth', because a sabretooth is a type of tiger, not tooth); some only allow compounds one way ('ring finger' but not 'finger ring': though English does allow the other way around in some other words), and so on.
You'll have heard time and time again that 'Chinese is an isolating language, and isolating languages like monosyllabic words'. Well. Sort of. You will also have noticed yourself that actually most modern Chinese words are disyllabic: 学习,工作,休息,吃饭 and so on. This is radically different to Classical Chinese, where the majority were genuinely one syllable. But many Chinese speakers still have access to the words in the compounds, and so they can be manipulated on a character-by-character basis: most adults will be able to look at 学习 and understand that 学 and 习 both exist as separate words: 开学,学生,复习,练习 and so on.
I'm going to sort of have to ask you to take my word on it as I don't have time to prove how unique it is, but the ability that Chinese has to turn literally anything into a compound is staggering. It's insane. It's...oh god I'm tearing up slightly it's just a LOT guys ok. It's a lot. There are 20000000 synonyms for anything you could ever want, all with slightly different nuances, because unlike many other languages, Chinese allows compounds where the two bits of the compound mean, largely speaking, very similar things. So yes, you have compounds like 开学 which is the shortened version of 开始学习, or ones with an object like 吃饭 or 睡觉, but you also have compounds like 工作 where both 工 and 作 kind of...mean 'to work'...and 休息 where both 休 and 息 mean 'to rest'...and so on. So you can have 感 and 情 and 爱 and 心 but also 感情 and 情感 and 爱情 and 情爱 and 心情 and 心爱 and 爱心 and so on, and they all mean different things. And don't even get me started on resultative verbs: 学到,学会,学好,学完, and so on...
What is all of this, if not complex? It's not grammatical - except that the process of compound forming, that allows for so many different compounds, is grammatical. We can't make the difference between学会,学好 and 学完 anywhere near as easily in English, and in Chinese you do sort of have to add the end bit. So...do we count this under complexity? And if not, we should probably count it elsewhere? Because it's kind of insane. And learners have to use it, much like the example I gave of English prepositions, and it takes them a bloody long time. But then where?
Ok. I haven't had a chance to talk about everything, but you get the picture: there are things in Chinese that, unlike European languages, do not neatly fit into the 'grammar' versus 'vocabulary' boxes we have built for ourselves, because as a language it just works very differently to the ones we've used as models. (Though some of the problems, in fact, are similar: German is also very adept at compounding.) But as interesting as that difference is, the goal of typology as a sub-discipline of linguistics is to talk about and research the types of linguistic diversity around the world, so we can't stop there by acknowledging our models don't fit. We have to go further. We have to stop, and think: What does this mean for the models that we have built?
This is where we get into theoretically rather boggy ground. We weren't before?? No, like marsh of the dead boggy. Linguists don't know it...they go round, for miles and miles and miles....
Because unfortunately there isn't a clear answer. If we dismiss these things as 'lexical' and therefore irrelevant to the grammar, that is a) ignoring their grammatical function, b) ignoring the fact that the lexicon is also a system that needs to be learnt, and has often very clear rules on word-building that are also 'grammatical', and c) essentially playing a game of theoretical pass-the-parcel. It's your problem, not mine: it's in the lexicon, not the grammar. Blah blah blah. Because whoever's problem it is, we still have to account for this complexity somehow when we want to compare literally any languages that are substantially different at all.
On the other side of things, however, if we argue that 'Chinese is as complex as Abkhaz, because it makes up for a lack of complexity in Y by all this complexity in X' (and therefore all languages = equally complex), this ignores the fact that compounding and irregular verbs belong to two very different systems. The kind of mistake you make when you use the wrong classifier intuitively seems to be on another level of 'wrongness' to the kind where you conjugate a verb in the wrong way. One is 'wrong'. The other is just 'not what we say'. It's the same as the use of prepositions in English: some are obviously wrong (I don't sleep 'at my bed') but some are just weird, and for many there are multiple options ('at the weekend', 'on the weekend'). Is saying 'I am on the town' the same level of wrongness as saying 'I goed to the shops'? Intuitively we might want to say the second is a 'worse' mistake. In which case, what are they exactly? They're both 'grammar', but totally different systems. And where do you draw the line?
Here's the thing about the equicomplexity argument. As established, it stems from a nice ideological background that nevertheless conflates cognition and linguistic complexity. Once you realise that no, the two are completely separate, you're under no theoretical or ideological compulsion to have languages be equally complex at all. Why should they be at all? Some languages just have more stuff in them: some have loads of vowels, and loads of consonants, and some have loads of grammar. Others have less. They all do basically the same job. Why is that a big deal?
Where the argument comes into its biggest problem, though, is that if a language like Chinese is already as complex as a language like Abkhaz...what happens when we meet Classical Chinese?
Classical Chinese. An eldritch behemoth lurking with tendrils of grass-style calligraphy belching perfect prose just behind the horizon.
Let's look at Modern Chinese for a moment. It has some particles: six or so, depending on how you count them. You could include these as being critical to the grammar, and they are.
A common dictionary of Classical Chinese particles lists 694.
To be fair, a lot of these survive as verbs, nouns and so on. Classical Chinese was very verb-schmerb when it came to functional categories, and most nouns can be verbs, and vice versa. It's all just about the vibe. But still. Six hundred and ninety four.
Some of these are optional - they're the nice 'omggg' equivalent of the modern tone particles at the end of a sentence. Some of them are smushed versions of two different particles, like 啦. Some of these, however, really do seem to have very grammatical features. Of these 694, 17 are listed as meaning ‘subsequent to and later than X’, and 8 indicate imposition of a stress upon the word they precede or follow. Some are syntactic: there are, for instance, 8 different particles solely for the purpose of fronting information: 'the man saw he'. That is very much a grammatical role, in every sense of the word.
The copula system ('to be') is also huuuuuuugely complex. I could write a whole other post about this, but I'll just say for now that the copula in Classical Chinese could be specific to degrees of logical preciseness that would make the biggest Lojban-loving computer programmer weep into his Star Trek blanket. As in, the system of positive copulas distinguishes between 6 different polar-positive copulas (A is B), 2 insistent positive (A is B), 19 restricted positive (A is only B), and 15 of common inclusion (A is like B). Some other copulas can make such distinctions as ‘A becomes or acts as B’, ‘A would be B’, ‘may A not be B?’ and so on. Copulas may also be used in a sort of causal way (not 'casual'), creating very specific relationships like ‘A does not merely because of B’ or ‘A is not Y such that B is X’.
WHEW. And all we have in modern Chinese is 是。
I think we can see that this is a little more complex. So saying 'Modern Chinese is as complex as Abkhaz, just in a different way' leaves no space for Classical Chinese to be even more complex...so....where does that leave us?
Uhhhhhh. Errrrrr.
(Don't worry, that's basically where the entire linguistics community is at too.)
The thing is, all these weird and wacky things that Classical Chinese is able to do are all optional. This is where the problem is. Our understanding of complexity, if you hark back to my last post so many moons ago, is that it's the description of what a language requires you to do. We equate that with grammar because in most of the languages we're familiar with, you can't just pick and choose whether to conjugate a verb or use a tense. If you are talking in third person, the verb has to change. It just...does. You can't not do it if you feel like it. There's not such thing as 'poetic license' - except in languages like Classical Chinese, well. There sort of is.
The problem both modern Chinese and Classical Chinese shows us to a different extent is that some languages are capable of highly grammatical things, but with a degree of optionality we would not expect. Classical Chinese can accurately stipulate to the Nth degree what, exactly, the grammatical relationship between two agents are in a way that is undoubtedly and even aggressively logical. But...it doesn't have to. As anybody who has tried anything with Classical Chinese knows, reading things without context is an absolute fucking nightmare. As a language it has the ability to also say something like 臣臣 which in context means 'when a minister acts as a minister'...but literally just means...minister minister. Go figure. It doesn't have to do any of these myriad complex things it's capable of at all.
So...what does this mean? What does all of this mean, for the question of whether all languages are equally complex?
Whilst I agree that the situation with Classical Chinese is fully batshit insane, the fact is most isolating languages are more like Modern Chinese: they don't do all of this stuff. And whilst classifiers and compounds are challenging, they're not quite the same as the strict binary correct/incorrect of many systems. I'm also just not convinced that languages need to be equally complex. However.
HOWEVER. In this essay/rant/lecture (?), I've raised more questions than I've answered. That's deliberate. I both think that a) the type of complexity Chinese shows is not 'enough' to work as a 'trade off' compared to languages like Abkhaz, and b) that this 'grammatical verbosity' and optionality of grammatical structures is something we don't know how to deal with at all. These are two beliefs that can co-exist. Classical Chinese especially is a huge challenge to current understandings of complexity, whichever side of the equicomplexity argument you stand on.
Because where do you place optionality in all of this? Choice? If a certain structure can express something grammatical, but you don't have to include it - is that more complex, or less so? Where do we rank optional features in our understanding of grammar? It's a totally new dimension, and adds a richness to our understanding that we simply wouldn't have got if we hadn't looked at isolating languages. This, right here, is the point of typology: to inform theory, and challenge it.
What do we do with this sort of complexity at all?
I don't know. And I don't think many professional linguists do either.
- meichenxi out
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taones · 4 years
Text
𝐓𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐤𝐚 𝐍𝐒//𝐅𝐖 𝐀𝐥𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐭
Pairing: tanka x gender neutral!reader (afab)
Note: Its 1am this probably sucks
Warnings: Smut (duh), mentions of public sex
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A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)
tanaka is the sweetest and you cannot change my mind that he is touch starved. therefore, aftercare is the perfect opportunity for him to cuddle you and tell you how good you did or the other way round, depending on your preferred dynamics. If he's doing the aftercare, he always has a sports drink next to the bed for you and makes sure you drink it and have come down from your high before he drags you into the shower with him.
B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)
It's his abs. Not to be predictable but they're something he worked hard on and it definitely payed off, so what if he likes seeing the look on your face when you see them?
Ryu is an ass man through and through, he matter the size his hands are all over that thing. Even when you're making out his hands are squeezing and rubbing your ass like it's his personal treasure.
C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)
He is lowkey a messy person when it comes to cum, yours or his. He likes yours all over his face and in his mouth sk he can taste you. However, he prefers his to be over your ass or the back of your thighs if he isn't allowed to come inside you (his first choice).
D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)
He kinda likes pain. It isnt really a dirty secret cause it takes him a while to notice but he can't help but shiver and moan when you scratch your nails down his back or bite his neck to muffle your moans. Tanaka even likes pressing down on them to feel some pain when he gets off.
E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)
I feel like he has a decent amount of experience maybe a couple of other people but he does research this kinda stuff and tries his best to adhere to any feedback you give him.
F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)
Any position he can see your ass in. Just the visual of his hips hitting your ass and it jiggling could make him come so he prefers reverse cowgirl etc. Not picky though, hes Tanaka.
G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)
I feel like its 50/50 with Ryu. He could totally go for giggly sex and a lot of the time it is. If you start laughing about something he'll join in and he even laughs at himself a lot during it too. However, if hes super worked up then it's all about ramming you/getting rammed into the mattress and giggles can come during aftercare thanks.
H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)
He probably shaves. If it's not almost completely hairless then it's very well groomed and kept short. Couldn't care less about your body hair, he just doesn't like it on him.
I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)
When he really gets into it, especially when hes about to finish, he gives out more and more praise. This can range from complimenting your body and making lewd comments to straight up repeating goes much he loves you. Apart from that, hes fairly romantic but not really if you get me. He'll praise you but he isnt exactly laying out verbal rose petals.
J = Jerk Off (How often, what are they thinking about, …)
Hes a horny bastard, he jerks off a lot. With your permission, he probably has some photos saved of you that he uses to get off and if not he has plenty of memories of you that he can use as inspiration.
K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)
I firmly believe he is up to trying anything at least once. However, does have a thing for quite literally fucking you stupid. The whole eyes unfocused, drooling and unable to say anything but his name makes him hard just at the thought.
L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)
Anywhere and everywhere. Has literally no shame but hes a little possessive so, if you're doing in in public, he's making sure nobody can see you because that's his and his only to look at. This being said, he has a thing for shower sex. The way the water flows down your body makes sure that he is at least a little hard and you can't really take a shower together without it ended with probably a blow job.
M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)
When you wear certain clothes. For example if you're wearing something tight or short he can't help but oggle a lot. God forbid you decided to wear some of his clothes or walk around in nothing but his tshirt and underwear. Tanaka really won't be able to control himself.
N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)
Like nasty degradation. He doesn't like anything that could potentially emotionally hurt you, even if you like it. Insulting you, sexual or not, will always leave him with a feeling of guilt and he just can't carry on with whatever you guys were doing
O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)
Now, he likes getting his dick sucked cause duh. However, he lives for giving you oral. Tanaka can and will be between your legs all day if he could and this means face sitting is an amazing experience. His skills are nothing to blink at either, be can get you to be a moaning mess within seconds and he probably gets a couple of piercings just to make that experience better for you.
P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)
With the exception of when you're upset, Tanaka is usually fast and rough. He cant help himself, sometimes you're just too hot and he always fucks you like there's no tomorrow.
Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)
He is up for anything, like I said earlier. Plus he's very easily turned on so quickies are a fairly normal thing for you guys, they're not his favourite though because he tends to prefer a lot of rounds.
R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)
Like I said before, hes up for anything once. If you want him to do it, he'll probably give it a go! Risks are a thing he's willing to take as long as you're comfortable with it.
S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)
His stamina is no joke. Seriously, he can go for a good 3 rounds before he even starts getting tired. Most of the time, you come more times than him cause you're the main focus so he tries to limit the amount of rounds for you two.
T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)
Very basic toys like a vibrator and a pair of handcuffs for either of you. Most of your guys sex isnt actually pre planned so the handcuffs are more common than other toys but he enjoys when he gets to bring them out.
U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)
Little shit thinks it's funny to pull away to 'stretch' just when you're about to come. He is in this mainly for your pleasure but he can't help but rile you up sometimes and get you whining.
V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)
I'd say hes relitavely loud. Loud enough that public sex isn't often but not loud enough for that many noise complaints from the neighbours. He can't help but get caught up and start spewing dirty talk in your ear between grunts and low pitched moans and your response usually increases his volume a little.
W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)
Let him leave hickey hearts on you! Seriously, he has a thing for it and likes seeing them when you get changed in front of him. It's like a weird possession thing or maybe he just thinks it's cute, who knows.
X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)
I'd say he's slightly bigger than average in length and has a good girth for him. His dick has a few prominent veins that are sensitive.
Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)
Higher than average, definitely. Can and will have you every single night if you let him, even after a long day.
Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)
I feel like he gets kinda hungry after sex and his aftercare is kinda long. After your shower, he probably makes a sandwich or something, eats it and comes back to bed after. Might spend a little time talking to you before he's out like a light.
Tumblr mobile likes to be annoying so sorry for any spelling mistakes! Requests are open and enjoy
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gaymershigh · 3 years
Note
How about Deuce, Azul, Idia and the Leech twins' if it's not too much, (smoll)male s/o saying "I love you." for the first time ? Thanks !
Sure, annonie! Since I also have a smol boi I can imagine this scenario in my head and It's! SO! CUTE! o(^▽^)o
Triggers: None
Deuce, Azul, Idia, Jade and Floyd small male s/o saying "I love you" for the first time
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Neither of you two have said the phrase "I love you" no matter how much you two really want to say it because you two are too nervous to initiate it. He never had a romantic relationship before and is also as nervous as you so it's not really a surprise if you said it first.
He was always taking good care of you and always showing you physical affection. He enjoys hugging and cuddling your small figure, always nervously complimenting how pretty you are petting your head and everything. Yes, he has the balls to do all this but apparently not brave enough to say "I love you". Yes, very tragic.
So when you first said those magic three words, he was startled. Not sure what he really felt at the time but all we know is that he's shocked. When those words came out of your mouth, he made a dramatic gasp and stood like a statue, staring at you with his eyes all bugged out.
Despite him being probably ticklish, poking him even at his most sensitive areas won't even make him flinch, this is the most life changing moment for him. (almost correct, he's just being dramatic at the moment) He's aware that you love him but you saying it is still a shocking thing, this feels just like the time you confessed that you also have feelings for him. It takes a few minutes to go back to reality and when he does, his face is as red as Riddle's hair and fuming face combined.
He would feel ashamed about not being able to say it first. He would spit out thousands of apologies for not saying it first or not being not good enough because he didn't say it first. So he decided to spill all his feelings and what little things he loves about you in such a quick pace to the point he sounds incoherent. He'll get weird stares from other students and will get teased by both Ace and Grim later if they coincidentally walked pass you two.
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Azul has said his love for you multiple times but it's not often as the others as he either doesn't have that much time to spend with you because of work or because he despises saying those words in public. Of course, he still wants to say his love for you but he has a reputation to hold and being overly affectionate is not something a gentleman nor a businessman would do! No matter how much he would love to hug your smaller figure from behind, it's just unprofessional.
He really doesn't give one if you haven't said you love him back but if this lasts until months, then he's getting anxious and antsy. He knows you love him back but he would appreciate it a bit more if you said it as well. He really craves to hear those three words from his s/o when dating. Plus, he has said it so much to you, why haven't you said it to him? He has these thoughts, thinking he was ready to hear it any moment but when he did hear it from you, he was caught off guard.
When you do say it, he stopped whatever he was doing. Yes, it was very unprofessional for a businessman to get so surprised over something so simple as that but give him a break. He might not be human but he still has the feelings of one. Plus, this is the first time he heard it from you. He managed to cover up his slightly shocked expression by clearing his throat and saying he loves you back, acting like nothing happened and tried brushing it off.
When he's in his workroom with both of the Leech twins there, he is having a hard time. Both having a hard time to focus and a hard time to keep his cool from his cheeks reddening in front of the devilish pair. He really cannot get that thought about you declaring your love for him, looking really cute and extra points for your shorter height making it seem more innocent and cuter. He kept adjusting his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. The two do realise that something's going on inside the mind of the octopus boy and decided to pester him about it later.
In his bedroom, a place where nobody is sure to see him doing whatever in there because he had forced the good habit of knocking and asking permission before entering to his dorm members, he's more of a mess since there's nothing restricting him from showing his true emotions. He's shifting all over the bed to the point of no return, all blushed up and still trying to cover it despite that nobody's there. It's always fresh in his mind and just prays for it to go away as fast as possible. It will, spoiler alert but it'll take a few couple of weeks or even months for the memory to fade away for now.
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He has said his "I love you" to you before but it's not really that surprising or anything to be that shocked as he only declared it in text form. There's no way he's going to confess it verbally on irl because that's such a "normie thing to do"! And also because he's just anxious to say it in general. Yeah, it's just three words but they say so much and it's easier said than..actually saying it, especially in front of the person you want to say it to. Except he can't even say it in voice chat either.
It's like saying it in front of a cute anime girl character that every fan probably adores. You even have the cute height of an adorable move shoujo manga deuteragonist, the protagonist's love interest! cute, short and just the character's fan favourite, you know? It will either always take some time or it takes the end of the manga for the protagonist to confess. It's like the same thing except they're already together!
It was a normal day of voice chatting after a nice match of an online fighting game. He kept praising your amazing skills and tricks for playing for the first time and hoping that you two can play again. Then from that, he kept wanting to read these mangas he thought was interesting with you. He was very excited and filled with energy, how can't you not think that's straight up adorable and not express how you love that part of him?
So when you did, he went immediately silent. There's not even a noise of a ceiling fan. Just dead, utter silence. You kept calling out for his name no matter how many times he hasn't answered. Out of nowhere, he cut the call, leaving you alone. In just a few minutes later, he went offline. You were worried, what the hell just happened? You knew that kneading freakout about your sudden words but you for some reason didn't expect it to affect him that much. You might have to contemplate whether you should visit him to check if he's ok or not.
He's not ok, at all but not like in a bad way. He's happy but he's panicking. First, he's such a wimp for not saying the words first to the point you have to declare it first. Even if saying 'I love you' is such a normie thing, he's aware it's something important to say if you're in a goddamn relationship. Second, what was he supposed to say after that? 'I love you too'!? How? As much as he wants to spit it out, he couldn't. Though, one day. Maybe he could learn to say it back? Through the teachings of a shoujo mangas of course!
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Jade is wonderful at saying his love for you verbally. His words can go from simple "I love yous" to a list of 150 reasons why he loves you in alphabetical order. Though he won't say it as much in public, his love language from both physical and verbal are endless! If you're a cheesy, affectionate man then he would be the perfect man for you! (though, he's always perfect for everyone in general)
There's no way for him to describe his love for you, especially his love for your small frame. It's obvious that he's a giant when compared next to you and he has pride for that. You unintentionally give him power and dominance just by staring at you. Just by holding you, he's amorous. He's always holding you close on his bed, whispering sweet nothings and the three words that never rolled out of your tongue until now.
It was another casual cuddling session after the long day of work of Jade. He was doing the normal thing, complementing your tiny body and saying his 'I love yous' and that. You were hesitant but after all this time of him praising you and after a long day of work, shouldn't he receive his reward and the thing that he should hear after months of being together? When you say the magic words, his eyes widen for a few seconds only for his face turns into his iconic toothy grin. He kept teasing you to repeat them as he pretended that he couldn't hear you.
He expects you to say these words more often now that you finally said it. For the entire time, he secretly waits for you to say those words because as much of a gentleman he is, he anticipated that you're supposed to say those words back not just because you're boyfriends but because he deserves it after all those comments he tossed to you. (don't worry, he means his words, it's just that my guy wants affection too) and when he finally gets it, he's very and finally satisfied, like he finished his final mission or something.
He might not show it since he's a master of hiding his emotions but he's genuinely joyful about it. He finally got one of his dreams about or with you finished and he was way more satisfied at the result. You're small innocent self finally saying I love you back is kinda like the dream for him for some reason.. Please say your love for him more without him begging because the last thing he wants to say to you is saying "say you love me"
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Knowing Floyd, he doesn't care about what anyone has to say about his affection towards you. No matter where you are, if he's in a good mood then he has no resistance to just fling and run himself into your comfy arms. There's a reason as to why he chose you as your boyfriend after all.
He has a thing for people smaller than him and it's shown by bullying Riddle till he's about to blow up like a volcano (or already blown up, depends on how he feels or what he said) and you being his boyfriend won't make you immune to his teasing. If anything, he will bully you about your height even more but he knows where to cross the line unlike with other students. He's very touchy so expect him to touch your small torso every time he has the chance.
He doesn't even realise that you haven't said your love for him if your love language leans more to physical. He wouldn't mind if you don't say it if you're also returning his hugs and super invested in cuddling sessions. Kiss him, hug him or do anything that's physical and he would be just as happy but if you don't do any of that, then he might say something about it or puff his cheeks out, pouting.
You were on his lap, cuddling like always, ignoring the judgemental stares you two are getting. Brave enough for them to try staring down at your giant monster of a boyfriend. He pours everything interesting that has happened to him or he has witnessed, aka the normal things he does everyday (surprising of how consistent he was) and it was adorable especially with his cooing voice when he mentions something he really thinks is cool. You accidentally said that is what you love about him and he stopped and looked at you for a second.
"Oh, Is that so?" oh, get prepared to be teased for that by the way. He's more in love with more than ever when you said that, especially the way you said it confidently, knowing that well it's unintentional. He has no shame to ask you to say it more or he'll squeeze you. Unsure if that's just a joking statement or not. I mean, he's technically squeezing the life out of you, screaming "I love you" at a ridiculously fast pace so he's probably not. Unfortunately or fortunately for you, he will ask you where's his daily "I love you" if you haven't said it yet before you separate your ways to your dorm for the next day to rise.
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Can you tell I panicked when writing Floyd's part? Don't know why I panicked in the first place though, lol~
~𝕸𝖎𝖗𝖎
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spencstan · 3 years
Text
Six of Crows re-read
(i also did this for the shadow and bone trilogy so read that if you want to)
spoiler alert obiously
i'm SO EXCITED FOR THIS this is my comfort book (with crooked kingdom of course)
JOOST HI
oo fun fact this was my first grishaverse book and i read it with no context whatsoever except that the mc is an emo boy and morally grey
so IMAGINE my pure confusion when JOOST appeared
i was like ?????? weird take on morally grey character but ok
joost trying to figure out how to flirt with a girl is a mood
anyone wanna teach us how to???
i kinda wanna skip this part so i can see the crows..
but i won't don't worry
(won't I?
"I think Yuri may be quarantined"
aaaand?
so are we you are not special
i feel like it's very important for me to mention that i read this book in spanish first
and then i got into the fandom and i was like who the fuck is the wraith? i only know El Espectro
Heartender who??? ooo you mean Cardio
Tidemakers? nope, i only know Maremotores
for real i was so confused i had to re-read it in english (not that i mind tho)
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say whatever you want about the spanish version but we have to agree that this design is pretty af
another one yay: "Retvenko was a Squaller" vs. "Retvenk era un Impulsor"
(should i also say that in my pfd english version the book is 294 pages long and in my pdf spanish version its 532????) (i think it's because in the english one the speces are way less like the lines are so close together wtf
i've decided that i'm bored so i'll be skiping this chapter
anya is super badass tho
skdgfalsdgfliaysvfascvhjl yesssssss inej
Kaz Brekker didn't need a reason.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
KAZ
INEJ
I MISSED THEM
omg now i can picture amita and freddy SDJGKASKGLASG THIS IS AMAZING
we interrupt our regularly scheduled program to watch the shadow and bone trailer once again to hear freddy's beautiful voice
ok moving on!
now hear me out i'm giving you all permission to make fun of kaz for this one: Dirtyhands = Manos Sucias
hello i am Kaz Manos Sucias. nice to meet you!
AAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
JESPER FAHEY
JESPER LOVE HI
SJDGHFKAHSGDLAJSDFSJ,AHFLHDSGF
I MISSED HIM OMG
OMG NOW I CAN PICTURE HIM AS KIT
can you tell jesper is one of my favourite characters?
i really love the fact that kaz is pissed about the murder of that ambassador ONLY because he can´t figure out how it happen
he´s such a nerd
i can't believe one of the firts things we hear jesper say is threathen to kill someone by writing "forgive me" with bullets
AND HE CALLS HIS GUNS "BABIES" OMG
picture saying hi baby and wylan thinkin he's talking to him but actually jesper's talking to one of his guns
Jesper rolled his eyes. "It's about sending a message. What's the point of a dead guy with forg written on his chest?."
"Compromise," Kaz said. "I'm sorry does the trick and uses fewer bullets."
ooo thank god we have kaz to come up with creative solutions /j /s
honestly i love how they talk about kaz's cane like it's the scariest weapon ever (which it kind of is)
nothing will ever disappoint me more than finding out that in english their gang name is "the Dregs". like i don't even know for sure what that means
in spanish is "Los Indeseables" (the undesirables?) which sounds a lot more badass
no hate tho i like the dregs
but i was confused af bc i expected it to be sometihng like "the undesirables" or"the unwanted" or whatever
and it said "the dregs"
which in the translator means something like shit or something
anways moving on:
If he'd (kaz) ever been a little boy
i love how lowkey all the crows think he was just born exactly like he is now
imagine a baby kaz all dressed in black and threatening people
cute
"No mourners," Jesper said as he tossed his rifle to Rotty
"No funerals," the rest of the Dregs murmured in reply. Among them, it passed for "good luck".
YES
YESSS
i wonder what wylan's doing right now :))
i can't wait for the next book where he has a pov
the first time i read this book i literally looked at the title of every chapter to see if he ever got one (i was disappointed to say the least :((((
Besides, she was the Wraith - the only law that applied to her was gravity, and some days she defied that, too.
ma'am
marry me please
i'm gonna cry so hard once the show is out and we get to see inej omg
me simp
That Kaz had chosen Jesper to be one of his seconds was no surprise. Twitchy as Jepser was, with or without his revolvers, he was at his best in a fight, and she knew he'd do anything for Kaz.
idk why but i just love it every time kaz implies or shows that he cares or trusts jesper
it makes me soft
But every one of Inej's senses told her that was not how this was going to play out. Her father would have said the shadows were about their business tonight. Something bad was going to happen here.
underrated saying from Inej's father right there
"I'm a business man," he told her."No more, no less"
"You're a thief, Kaz."
"Isn't that what I just said?"
i-
i see no lies here
not to be annoying but i hc jesper as adhd (i mean is pretty much as canon as wylan's dyslexia) so i'm gonna write here every time i see evidence :)
jesper with adhd part 1: impulsivity
Jesper snorted. "Stomach, spine. What's next, spleen?"
"Shut it" Oomen snarled. The rules of parley dictated that only the lieutenants could speak once negotiations had begun. Jesper mouthed "sorry" and elaboratedly pantomimed locking his lips shut.
he know he couldn't speak but couldn't stop himself from making a comment (i relate way too much to that lmao)
hoestly poor jesper he had to watch hid friend get shot and kaz do nothing about it
i would've been mad too
"I like it when men beg," she said. "But this isn't the time for it"
KAHGFAHLGSFGASFLGSAFS
this is one of the best quotes in the book by far
YASSS KAZ POV
Kaz could have tol Jesper that he knew he wasn't dirty, reminded him that he'd trusted him eough to make him his only real second in a fight that could have gone badly wrong tonight.
cute
but kaz is petty af
he didn't even have a reason not to tell jesper that!
i love that kaz knows inej is following him but doesn't say anything because he wants to wait until she's ready
i LOVE the scene where kaz in in the van eck mantion /srs
idk why but it's so good
And, of course, there was the mystery of Van Eck's son.
wonder what that could be!!! /s
He grinned at her (...)
"Hmm." she said noncommittally, pretending to examine one of her knives, determined to ignore that grin.
KANEJ YESS
HE'S BASICALLY SHOWERING IN FRONT OF HER OMG
this is so funny poor inej is getting flustered
"And I'll need Wylan waiting at the Crow Club tomorrow night."
YES WYLAN OMG
One minute he made her blush and the next he made her want to commit murder
happens to the best of us :/
"Please, my darling Inej. treasure of my heart won't you do me the honor of acquiring me a new hat?"
if kaz doesn't say this on the show we riot
agreed?
it's so amazing how nina found a way to use her powers to get money instead of having to like steal and murder like the rest in the gang
NINA'S POV YESSS HIII
nina and inej omg
their friendship is just perfect
POOR MATTHIAS HE HAS TO FIGHT THE WOLVES
i would straight up cry
Matthias was dreaming again. Dreaming of her
i'm gonna cry damn it
this is the enemies-to-lovers we all needed
jesper has adhd part 2:
"Jesper was supposed to wait until three bells." said the pale boy
"It is three bells, Kaz." replied a small girl (...)
"Since when is Jesper punctual?" the boy complained with a glance at his watch
the time blindness come one
(btw i love the fact that kaz plans around jesper's time blindness instead of like threatening him to be on time)
i really love how every one feels the need to take the time to say/think that the masks are ugly
its so unnecessary lmao
yessss inej is a badass that kills monster we stan
and matthias is lowkey impressed lmao
as he should
"Thank you, Jesper," said Nina
"You're very welcome, gorgeous. See, Kaz? That's how the civilised folk do"
THESE TWO OMG
JESPER IS THE LOML
INEJ OMG LOOK:
She stepped aside as if she's known he was coming, languidly hooking her heel behind his ankle. Matthias let out a loud grunt as he landed on the stones
(...) "Clumsy, this one," the bronze girl said impassively.
i-
that's what happen when you underestimate her bitch
AAAAAAA
PEOPLE
PEOPLE
TIME TO FREAK OUT
WYLAN IS HERE
AND HE'S DOODLING STOP IT'S SO CUTE
ok jesper has adhd part 3 i think:
"Just how crazy is he?" asked Jesper, fingers drumming on the pearl handles of his revolvers.
ok first of all: stimming
second of all: hyperactivity
i rest my case
ok 2 or 3 things here
"I believe you know Nina," Brekker continued. "The lovely girl freeing you is Inej. (...) and this is Wylan, the best demolitions expert in the Barrel"
"Raske is better," Inej said
The boy looked up, ruddy gold hair flopping in his eyes, and spoke for the first time. "He's not better. He's reckless"
"He knows his trade"
"So do I"
ok 1: kaz calling inej lovely omg kanej
2: YES WYLAN STANDING UP FOR HIMSELF
2.5: kaz calling him the best cute af
3: honestly why do people think wylan is like an innocent soft boy or whatever. he's in a room full of murderers and thieves and the first thing he does is correct them and stand up for himself
like i wish i could do that
i would be crying like a bitch
AAAAAAAA
"Meet Wylan Van Eck"
KHDSGFALSGFIASGFAL
HI WYLAN BABY
YESSS JESPER'S POV NOW
I'M SO HAPPY also look at this it's the first thing in his pov
Jesper stared at Wylan
do i sense some wesper?????
ok everyone is being so mean to him right now
they are aclling him useless and an idiot and other shit
poor boy honestly he had to deal with this + taking part of a heist he is definetly not ready for + he has to hide the fact that he can't write or read
it so distrubing that kaz is literally the nicest one to wylan right now
"See that? Hidden depths." (...)"He's good enough at demo, and he's got a fine hand for sketching, thanks to all those pricey tutors."
(...)
"There you have it," Kaz said to Jesper. "Marketable skills. Wylan is watching you, Helvar"
GET READY
ARE Y'ALL READY?
OK THEN:
"Scheming face," Jesper whispered to Inej.
She nodded. "Definetly."
THEIR FRIENDSHIP OMG
AND THIS QUOTE
I NEED IT ON THE SHOW THEY BETTER GIVE IT TO US
"Who's Mark" damn wylan (but pretty good comeback to jesper tho)
"What's the easiest way to steal a man's wallet?
"Knife to the throat?" asked Inej.
"Gun to the back?" said Jesper.
"Poison in his cup?" suggested Nina.
"You're all horrible," said Matthias.
tag yourself i'm jesper
KJSFGAL kaz just told wylan to tell him everything he know about his dad's company
and he said he doesn't know and kaz was like "and you never looked trough his documents????
AND THEN HE GOT SAD AND SAID HE HADN'T (and kaz believed him this is sad)
AND NOW JESPER CALLED HIIM USELESS
ok you know i love you jes but if you keep this up
idk i can't do anything you're a sharpshooter
but stiiiiiil
LMAO MATTHIAS ACTUALLY THOUGHT HE COULD BEAT KAZ
nice try
demjin
*insert spongebob voice* demjin
WE'RE GONNA TAKE A MOMENT NOW TO APPRECIATE INEJ GAHFA
BECAUSE KAZ DOESN'T
The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.
*ugly crying*
Many boys will bring you flowers. But some day you'll meet a boy who will learn your favourite flower, your favourite song, your favourite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.
*uglier crying*
TANTE HELLEN IF YOU DON'T GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE
SOMEONE PLEASE STAB HER FOR ME
jesper has adhd part ?? (i have dyscalculia you can't expect me to remember the number):
That sound - the swift, shocking report of gunfire - called the scattered, irascible, permanently seeking part of his mind into focus like nothing else.
do i really need to explain this?
ok just in case.. an adhd brain doesn't actually have a deficit of attention(the name just sucks) it's problem with controling that attention. the brain is always looking for new sources of dopamine which is why it shifts its focus so much
i love that jes thinks of matthias as "tha giant"
like sir
have you seen yourself?
you're tall af
HE GOT SHOT
WHY DID I FORGET JESPER GETS SHOT IN THE LEG HERE
"Close your eyes!"
"You can't kiss me from down there, Wylan"
"Just do it!"
i love the energy BUT NOW IT'S NOT THE TIME JES
YESS WYLAN SHOW THEM THEY WERE WRONG CALLING YOU USELESS
inej just stabed some guy int the d
good for her!
KAZ YESSSS HI
AWWW SHE'S WORRIED HE DOESN'T HAVE HIS CANE
KANEJ FOR LIFE
oh no wylan got shot too???? (just barely but stilllll por baby)
my Wraith omggg
ok 3 things about this:
Without another word, he tipped Oomen into the sea.
"No!" Wylan shouted, leaning over the railing, his face pale, stunned eyes tracking Oomen in the waves. (...)
Jesper set his hand on Wylan's shoulder. "Let it go."
"It's not right-"
"Wylan," Jesper said, giving him a little shake."Maybe your tutors didn't cover this lesson, but you do not argue with a man covered in blook and a knife up his sleeve"
1. wesper yasssss
2. wylan just argued with a mant hat had just tacken the eye out of someone. he literally called him out for being an asshole. like damn wylan is brave af i love him
3. do you think seeing kaz trow the guy out of the boat reminded wylan of when the same thing happened to him???? this makes me sad
he's brave and a good person and i just-
"Man with a knife, remember?" he said over his shoulder.
"Man with a gun!" Jesper called after him
this had no right being so funny
AND THEN KAZ GAVE HIM THE MIDDLE FINGER STOP I CAN'T
nina is the biggest kanej shiper no one can tell me i'm wrong
unrelated but if jesper had gone to the Little Palace and had studied there with nina they 100% would've had a crush on Zoya and bonded over it
like you can't tell me those two bisexual disaster wouldn't be absolutely in love with Zoya
jesper has adhd part ??:
Jesper scrubbed the back of his neck, touched his hands to his gunds, returned to his neck. He always seemed to be in motions
hyperactivity right there
and restlessness
"Do you know the best way to find Grisha who don't want to be found?" (...)
"Seems to be if they don't want to be found, you should just let them be" (jesper says this)
this conversation must be so stressful to him omg
LMAO JESPER CUT MATTHIAS HAIR THIS IS SO FUNNY
AND HE SHAVED HIM
ok you all know i love all of them but they can be sooo stupid
like wylan wrote no names on the drawing and he's excuse is that he doesn't know fjerdan?
AND THAT'S NOT EVEN TRUE he literally said he learned school fjerdan which means he should know how to write it too (we know why he can't but the tohers don't)
and even then like the excuse doesn't make any sense. why would having the original name be usefull if no one can fucking read it????
the worst part tho? NO ONE QUESTIONED HIM
THEY WERE LIKE "yup makes sense" AND WENT ON WITH THEIR DAY
i wondered how they didn't figure wylan's secret sooner but now i now
it's because theya re idiots
"I'm just doing my job. Stop glaring at me"
wylan baby let's not make the gigant mad
Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. "Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I'm going to get Wylan's ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost."
Brekker's lips quirked. "I'll just hire Matthias ghost to kick your ghost's ass."
"My ghost won't associate with your ghost," Matthias said primply, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
i had to put this here i don't want to get murdered by the fandom
jesper, inej and nina have the BEST friendship
I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE JES AND INEJ TOGETHER ON NETFLIX
"I know some people don't understand, but Kaz told me ... he said it was my choice, that he wouldn't be the one to mark me again."
i love this because it happen when they had just met
he did it because he understands her trauma and he respects her not because he loves her (i doubt he did at the time)
Kaz had been impressed with the sketches. (...)
"Just learn to take a compliment. Kaz doesn't hand them out often."
I'M SO PROUD OF WYLAN
and yess kaz only compliments wylan (and inej but that's sarcastic so it doesn't count) because he's a proud dad
"And you don't belong here, either."
"I beg your pardon, merchiling?"
"We don't need a sharpshooter for Kaz's plan, so what's your job - other than stalking around making everyone angsty?"
He shrugged. "Kaz trusts me."
Wylan snorted and picked up his pen. "Sure about that?"
DAMN WYLAN DESTROYED HIM
also
"If you aren't born with every advantage, you learn to take your chances."
"I wasn't-" Wylan left off and set down his pen. (...)
aww cute neurodivergent boyfriends bonding
Wylan had turned back to his work, his disappointment obvious. For some reason, Jesper felt disappointed, too.
ajgflasjgfjagslfiuusgflgdfsgdflasdgfsd
wesper
aww jes checks on inej every morning and every night i love him
"Thank you for keeping me in this world when fate seemed determined to drag me to the next. I owe you a life debt."
Nina blushed deeply. "I was teasing, Inej"
LJFGALKGFALGA another cute friendship right there
(and i can see why people ship them romantically)
STOP INEJ AND JES ARE BONDING SO MUCH (page 127 so i can go back and read it lmao)
Van Eck writes to Wylan every week, and Wylan doesn't even open the letters
"They just said the same thing again and again: If you're reading this, the you know how much I wish to have you home. Or I pray that you read these words and think of all you've left behind."
should i kill him? anyone want to join me?
Inej bumped her shoulder against his."Then at least we're both the same kind of stupid." (...)
"You're too good for him, you know?"
"I know. So are you"
jes and her bonding over their stupid crush on a white boy
Because I've been looking for an excuse to talk to you for two days.
jfsfdajdhmgkfutdjrgsg ok i can't blame them for having a crush on him anymore
this chapter is full of kanej i love it
"What do you want, then"
You, Inej. You forever.
jksdgfoagsdfgsdgfklasgdflaghsldfgksdgfkahgsdfghjlkf
kaz's backstory makes me sad
"When we get our money, you can burn kruge to keep you warm," said Kaz. (...)
"I´m gonna pay someone to burn my kruge for me."
Kaz fell into step beside him. "Why don't you pay someone else to pay someone to burn your kruge for you? That's what big players do."
"You know what the really big bosses do? They pay someone to pay someone ...". Their voices trailed off as they tomped ahead, and Matthias and the others followed.
JES AND KAZ HAVE THE BEST CONVERSATIONS
i can't believe we get to see nina and matthias meet and their whole backstory in less than a month omg
"It's not natural for women to fight."
"It's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you stand."
QUEEN
YOU TELL HIM
oh no the dead grisha
this part breaks my heart every time
"Do you have a different name for killing when you wear a uniform to do it?"
.....i'm just gonna leave this quote right here
anyways acab
stop nina tried to kill the survivor so they wouldn't suffer but she couldn't do it
and jesper did it for her without hesitation i wanna cry
and inej didn't want to do it either i want to hug them
"Because our crime is existing. Our crime is what we are"
..........
i'm gonna leave this here again
do with it what you will
"Don't mock what you don't understand."
"My mockery offends you? My people would welcome you laughter in place of this barbarity"
i- this conversation is so important
AAAAA JES AND WY ARE A GREAT TEAM I LOVE THEM
WYLAN TROWS BOMBS TOGIVE JESPER TIME TO GET READY TO SHOOT
INEJ AND KAZ ARE A GREAT TEAM TOO
THEY LITERALLY DID THE SCENE LIKE IN THE AVENGERS (but without the shield WHICH MAKES IT BETTER)
Jesper shouldered his rifle. "Wylan earned his keep."
Wylan gave a little jump at the sound of his name. "I did?"
YES BABY YOU DID GREAT
kaz getting self-conscious for his hair is pure comedy
but nina how can you say that have you see his hair on the show???? it's perfect
"Remeber our friend Mark?"
HELP I CAN'T
"Any other impossible feats you'd like us to accomplish?"
The bearest smile flikered over Kaz's lips. "I'll make you a list."
once again jesper and kaz being besties
unrelated but nikolai and jesper would love each other
the amount of sass they have between them it's unparalleled
"Mmm," Inej murmured, taking a sip from her mug. "Maybe you're just not enough."
DAMN
ma'am marry me please
kaz fainted damn poor boy
unrelated unce again but this is so much betetr than shadow and bone
like you can tell leigh improved so much
her characters are better and their arcs are better developed
the writing itself it's better
or maybe i'm just biased because i love soc so much but i think she definetly improved
INEJ IS TRYING TO GIVE HIM SPACE EVEN WHEN SHE'S TRAPPED AND LOCKED ON THE WAGON
I JUST - THEY KNOW EACH OTHER SO MUCH
Though he'd trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with his shame.
Inej had once offered to teach him how to fall. "The trick is not getting knocked down," he'd told her with a laugh. "No, Kaz," she's said, "the trick is in getting back up"
inej is smart af
Kaz was usually unshakeable during a job, but now he was on edge, and Jesper didn't know why. Part of him wanted to ask, though he knew that was the stupid part, the hopeful farmboy who picked the worst possible person to care about, who searched for signs in things that he knew deep down meant nothing - when kaz chose him for a job, when Kaz played along with one of his jokes. He could have kicked himself. He's finally seen the infamous Kaz Brekker without a stich of clothing, and he'd been too worried about ending up on a pike to pay proper attention.
ok i got a couple of things to say about this part
first of all it makes me so sad that jes cares so much for someone who dosn't deserve him. because no hate to kaz but they would never work as a couple and kaz already treats him like shit most of the time
i think this part shows who a lot about who jesper really is. a boy that grew up having to hide parts of himself, who thinks he's worth nothing but it's smart and capable, who's loyal and brave and caring but doesn't even know it himself. he's someone who feels he doesn't deserve good things and thinks he's not good enough, and that's why he unds up in all the wrong places with the wrong people. he left uni bc he fell in with the gangs, because he didn't think he was smart enough or even prepared to be in studying in the university. jesper is constantly hiding behind a mask or running from things because he's scared of not being enough
an kaz is everything jes in a way wishes he could be. kaz is secure in himself (at least on the outside), he's stable, he's smart, he's "unshakeable". and most of all, he doesn't care about others (we know that's not true but that's how he presents himself)
and that's the thing that causes jesper all his problems. because he's insecure because he thinks he's not good enough for the poeple or things he cares about. and he's always trying to do what's best for his loved ones: he went to the ice court to pay his debt for his father, he follows kaz everywhere beacause he cares about him, he offered to read to wylan (knowing it wouldn't be easy for him to be still that long).
and yeah it often doesn't work out becuase he's messy and he has problems but he tries. and he hates that. he hates that he cares so much about people because at the end of the day, that's what makes him feel like he's not good enough
one more thing and i'm done i promise
unpopular opinion but i love that leigh made jesper have a crush on kaz. 1 beacuse it's refreshing to see someone not get otgether with his first crush. and 2 because i love that it shows that we sometimes get attached to people that are not good for us, but that we can learn to move on. jesper ended with wylan who respects him and values him, unlike kaz
ok i'm sorry that was probably all bs
oo one more thing, jesper definetly has rsd (rejection sensitive disphoria), which is something most poeple with adhd have
"My father used to take me everywhere with him"
this is so sad. bc they probably had a good relationship when he was little. and then they figured he coudln't read and now his father treats him like shit
it's even worse than if he haf been horrible from the beginning because wylan knows he can be a good father. and so he thinks it's his fault and he deserves to be treated like that. i hate van eck
"You're cuter when you're smart"
(...)
"Definitely cuter when you're smart"
wesper yesssss
i love them so much
ok but why do people think jesper is stupid. like the boy just made a bunch of criminals pass out by mixing some chemicals
and he was going to the university at like 15
AAAAND NOW THEY KNOW HE'S A FABRIKATOR
amazing plot twist
also:
Wylan coughed. Flirting with him might actually be more fun that annoying him, but it was a close call.
oooo come on jesper we all know you just love getitng him to blush
and you love him
who said that? definitely not me, nope
awwww jesper misses being around animals that's cute
imagine him coming home to wylan one day with a puppy because he just couldn't resist
cute
Better terrible truths than kind lies
just leaving here more of inej's wisdom
ok this may be a reach but jesper has adhd part ???
Yellow Protocol? Red Protocol? He couldn't remember which was which. (...)
"The alarm was Yellow Protocol, a sector disturbance."
Jesper pushed at his temples. "I don't remember what that means"
a bad working memory? sounds familiar
kaz loves puzzles
it's canon
"I love puzzles. Trickery is just my native tongue."
this part where wylan and jesper see the banner made with grisha's kefta kills me every time
I would have worn purple, Jesper thought, if I'd joined the Second Army. (...) He'd beenwilling, even eager to risk capture and execution as a thief and hired gun. Why was it worse to think about being hunted as a Grisha?
this makes me want to cry so much
another thing super sad: the fact that since his father is Kaelish and had some supersititons towards grisha, jesper grew up wondering if his own father was scared of him. he had to hide his powers and he was almost taught to be afraid of them
"Is it safe to leave them, you know-"
"Alive? I'm not big on killing unconscious men."
"We could wake them up"
WYLAN
NO
damn the boy needs therapy
it's amazing how nothing went like they planned
not a single thing
PEOPLE GET READY
ARE YOU READY?
NEITHER AM I BUT WHO CARES
"What do you like?"
"Music. Numbers. Equations. They are not like words. They...they don't get mixed up."
ok dude the clues are right there he's basically saying it
"If only you could talk to girls in equations."
There was a long silence, and then, eyes trained on the notch they'd created in the link, Wylan said, "Just girls?"
Jesper restrained a grin. "No. Not just girls." It really was a shame they were all probably going to die tonight.
wylan really said a straight man?? couldn't be me
this is the definition of bi panic "jesper restrained a grin" bitch we saw that
btw i love the slow burn
like they hint something here but they don't actually start liking each other until much later and they don't get together until almost the end of ck
i also love that the fact that they both like guys is like out in the open now. bc i'm not a fan of when queer characters have a crush and there's the whole thing of "are they queer too or not?"
like they both know htey are queer. but they don't get together right away bc they have to start liking each other before. they don't get together bc they are the only queer mlm characters
matthias fake betrayal killed me
i tought it was real
I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept fom this oath.
this is just-
also foreshadowing?
YAYY KUWEI HI
There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.
She's laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and got drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.
if i ever have a s/o and they don't tell me this at least once i don't want it
He needed to tell her... what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn't pull himslef together into some smeblance of a man for her
THIS
THIS IS LOVE RIGHT THERE
they are the only straight couple that matters
everyone else go home
Wylan had scratches all over his cheeks and neck. He was beaming. Inej grabbed his hands and sqeezed.
so cute omg
"You can explain why our illustrious Shu scientist looks like one of Wylan's school pals along the way"
KAZ
i mean it's true but you didn't have to say it
KAZ IS SMILING OMG
EVERYONE FREAK OUT WITH ME
HE'S "grinning like and idiot" STOP I LOVE HIM
"We are all someone's mosnter, Nina"
"I will have you without armour, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all"
this part breaks my heart and i love it
"Stay," she oanted. Tears leaked from her eyes. "Stay till the end"
"And after," he said. "And always."
i just- helnik is perfect
AWWW JESPER MISSES WYLAN
my daily dosis of wesper :)
ok but in like 2 pages jesper tought of wylan like 10 times bc he's sad wy isn't with him
Jesper scanned the empty deck. He's assumed Wylan would come up to see them off. (...)
Jesper knew he was being selfish and stupid, but some petty part of him wondered if Wylan had deliberately kept away from him on the journey back. Maybe now that the job was complete and he was on his way to his share of the haul, Wylan was done slumming with criminals.
*charles boyle's insinuating voice* and why do you care so much???
btw YOU ARE WRONG. HE'S LITERALLY GOING OUT OF HIS WAY TO BE WITH YOU EVEN THOUGH HE CAN'T SPEAK
this scene where we find out the truth about wylan hurts so much but it's one of my favourites idk why
I LOVE THAT EVERYONE IS AS MAD AS I AM ABOUT THE LETTERS NOW
"Your're a fool," Jesper snarled. "He smarter than most of us put together, and he deserves a better father than you."
YES TELL HIM
the fact that wylan just heard him say that omg
"Deserved" amended Van Eck. He blew the whislte twice.
SOMEONE BETTER GRAB ME BEFORE I KILL HIM MYSLEF
THAT IDIOT
I HATE HIM SO MUCH
I'M GONNA CRY CAN SOMEONE KILL HIM FOR ME
Jesper screamed in rage and raised his guns.
YES EXACLTY WHAT I MEANT
JUST KILL HIM RIGHT NOW
"I'm not big on bludding, am I Inej?"
"Not as a rule"
Van Eck's lip curled. "And why is that?"
"Because he'd rather cheat," said the boy who was not Kuwei Yul-Bo in perfect, unaccented Kerch.
THIS WAS PERFECT
THE BEST WAY TO REVEAL THAT
(...), and Jesper flinched
baby he recognized wylan's voice
The Shu boy held out a hand. "Pay up, Kaz"
BITCH THIS IS AMAZING
THIS BOY MADE A BET WITH A CRIMINAL THAT HIS OWN FATHER WAS GOING TO TRY TO KILL HIM
AND HE WON THE BET
A nearly perfect replica of Kuwei Yul-Bo stood before them, but he had Wylan's voice, his mannerisms, and - though Kaz could see the fear and hurt in his golden eyes - Wylan's surprising courage, too.
i love it when they compliment him
my boy deserves all the compliments ever
AND KAZ IS PROUD OF HIS SON WE ALL KNOW THIS
Wylan cuold draw a perfectt elevation. He's made a drill that could cut throu Grisha glass from parts of a gate and scavenged bits of jewellery. So what if he couldn't read
this is taking me to some real places
i may cry you've been warned
WYLAN DIDN'T CARE THAT HE MAY BE STUCKED LOOKING LIKE KUWEI
this is making me cry
"A fool would have been waiting to be smashed to bits on that ship. And as for "traitor", you've called me worse in the last few minutes alone."
EXACTLY
YOU TELL HIM WYLAN
Instead, in that moment of threat, when he should have thought only of the fight, he looked at Inej.
BABY
i would've done the same tho she's pretty
amita is sooo pretty i'm gonna die when the show comes out
Jesper was staring at Wylan, his eyes roving over the black hair, the golden eyes. "Why?" he said at last. "Why would you do this?"
nothing to say here except: wesper
You... how many times was it you standing beside me on the deck at night when I tought it was Kuwei?"
"Every time."
i want to cry so bad
"Why does it matter?"
"I don't know!" Jesper said angrily. "Maybe I liked your stupid face."
a very staright and platonic thing to say of course
i know jes we all liked his stupid face
"Jesper made a mistake," said Wylan. "A stupid mistake, but he didn't set out to betray anyone."
YES WYLAN DEFEND YOUR BOYFRIEND
And maybe he'd kept him in the dark about Wyllan because he wanted to punish him a little
even kaz know they like each other come on
Jesper sat with elbows on knees, head in hands. Wylan deside him wearing th face of a stranger.
wylan give him a hug fro me please
he needs it
"Scheming face," murmured Jesper.
"Definitely," agreed Wylan.
i miss inej already
And I'm going to get my girl. Inej could never be his, not really, but he would find a way to give her the freedom he´d promised her so long ago.
i'm ugly crying and so what?
and now we're done....
i want to read this book again omg this is unhealthy
79 notes · View notes
skymagpie · 3 years
Note
Rank your favorite daedric princes from best to worst? At the top of my personal list is Peryite mostly because of those 2 cultists in Summerset who panic when you accept their offer to join their Peryite cult.
Actually those are the only valid cultists in the game, I hope we get to see them again in Blackwood because that legit made me cry laugh when I saw them appear in Summerset and then in Elsweyr too 😭
Okay but I think I more or less separate the Daedric Princes in two categories: Bad and Molag Bal. Everyone goes into Bad because they all suck, Molag Bal sucks so severely he gets his own category. If I had to rank them based on who I like for various reasons, from most liked to least, it would be something like this (also WARNING for various spoilers below):
1. Meridia - I think Meridia is actually pretty bad. Like she is against free will, she was fine with the Ayleid owning slaves and her purification is basically enslaving people by wiping their free will, dreams and desires and leaving them only serving her as they say "body and mind". She is 10/10 Bad. She is also a weird fav of mine because I would love to see her fail? I would love her to be the big bad villain in ESO because I love light-themed villains. Like with her entire fall from grace lore you can even argue she would be a tragic villain. I exist in this space of simultaneously loving and hating Meridia. I have OCs who are followers of hers and who hate her too. Like I really love villains who think they are good and serve the greater good and are saving humanity from itself but are actually very evil in doing so. Great concept. Want more Meridia content in general.
2. Azura - everyone that thinks the Tribunal sucks is my friend. I have nothing against the Tribunal, I love them in the same way I love Meridia. Also the moon and star theme is 10/10. I mean she looks like prime 2015 tumblr aesthetic with the flower crown and all. I don't know what she even does? She sounds like your shady aunt that definitely killed someone but would come pick you up from a club at 4 am. She should've ranked higher.
3. Nocturnal - NOCTURNAL USED TO RANK 1st! SHE USED TO BE MY FAV! SHE WAS MY FAV IN SKYRIM! She is down here because she killed one of my favourite characters in ESO and I can't forgive that. I love her Blackfeather Court, I love her Shrikes just being these naked topless feral women, I love her goth woods. She is a whole Nightwish song. And Nightwish is my fav band. Everything about her is made for me to stan her. But I just can't forgive her stupid Summerset arc. I hate it. She was good in CWC though.
4. Jyggalag - Now listen. I just really like light/order/"good" themed bad guys. Bad guys justifying being shitheads with doing "good" or bringing "order" or just looking like knights and paladins in shiny armor? Yes!
5. Sheogorath - I am basic okay, of course I like Sheo. And I really like what he has going on with Jyggalag. Like their whole 15th century knight and nobility act they have going on. Really great aesthetic. Love the Alice in Wonderland feel. Love the sexy lady warriors. It's that kind of wacky movie concept I can appreciate. Not a big fan of your character becoming Sheogorath, I feel like it's a huge burden to bear as good as that DLC is, kinda hate the outcome. I hate him in ESO and steal his stupid hammer in PvP.
6. Mephala - She sucks. But she is a huge sexy spider lady. I still think she sucks but I have an OC that has this love-hate relationship with her so I have to rank her up high like this.
7. Peryite - So far he has done nothing serious except having Zaan the Scalecaller serve him in ESO and I don't know about the other games but he is like a skinny dragon. And his followers are funny. Like some king of plague Timon and Pumba. So he gets a pass.
8. Clavicus Vile - Like a annoying little dude with his dog? It's funny, I give him that. I have a Clavicus Vile demi-prince in ESO actually, used to be a joke character but I am now serious. I think he is mostly harmless too, except for the whole Morrowind - Summerset thing but they kinda had it coming there.
9. Mehrunes Dagon - He sucks. He will cause me a lot of grief in this new ESO chapter. Generally evil demon guy. But-- them back muscles tho. 👀
10. Sanguine - His like Skyrim quest is funny and I like it. I don't know what he does actually? One of my friends used to have him in their url on here. I've been told he is as bad as Molag Bal, but I can't say I remember what specifically. So might reevaluate this.
11. Hermaeus Mora - Had to copy his name from the UESP. Anyway he is cool I guess, I love those knowledge type of bad guys. Though when it comes to floating eyes and knowledge, I do prefer Vel'koz from LoL. But still 11 is high ranking in my book.
12. Namira - Because one of my friends loves her. I don't know much about her so she really is getting ranked low here because I just don't know the lore. She seems to like the outcasts and the ugly and I fit right in there so that's pretty cool, someone will care for me. If she is recruiting I think I am qualified for the job.
13. Vaermina - I honestly mix her up with Namira and Boethiah. I thought they are the same till like few months ago. Anyway I don't know her but I will play the ESO Stormhaven quests soon and I heard she is the Daedric Prince of Nightmares so it might be fun!
14. Boethiah - I hate Dragonstar Arena. That's it. Sorry you are ranked this low because I hate farming that motherfuck-
15. Hircine - Yes I know. I am one of the rare people ranking him this low. People usually like Hircine. He seems to be pretty cool. Actually he isn't all that bad? He is one of the better daedra. You deal with him and you know what you are in for. I love werewolves. I just got really pissed off that he turned Vykosa in ESO into a werewolf against her will. I know Daedric Princes are like this, but I really like Vykosa and I have an OC who was turned by her experiments so in honor of my character, I rank him this low. He looks cool. Like Herne the Hunter. I like that.
16. Malacath - I will be honest I actually don't know anything about him. Orc lore isn't my forte. The orcs are mad about him so I guess he is their local town boy playing in the big leagues? I don't know, I am sorry I didn't rank you higher.
17. Molag Bal...I guess - I hate Bal. His voice in ESO is really good though, kudos to the voice actor. But I hate him. Who doesn't? Even if ESO tried to sugarcoat his shit he is still like an entirely different brand of evil from all the others. I would vibe with any Daedric Prince but him. I have a Xivkyn OC and he hates him too. -1/10 I hope he stays dad after I anime slashed him in ESO xoxo
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ryttu3k · 3 years
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Hello naughty children it's Gehenna time.
...which means I'm going to read the book properly this time and write notes on each scenario, partially for my own reference, partially in answer to an ask from @rayshell22livejournalcom​ from about a zillion years ago. Sorry about that!
Mood soundtrack: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞; Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven; Yanqui U.X.O.
Prelude: Netchurch is an interesting character. Very skeptical, despite, well, the entire setting, although that's definitely, uh, broken by the end. Feel very sad for Afifa, who was a pawn in all this. Creepy babies galore!
Introduction: "While Vampire favors that futile, tragic, and - we'll say it - angst-heavy conclusion" - lmao you don't say. Although I do like how they have the consistent golden rule that if you don't like it, just ditch it! (Of course, the Gehenna scenarios as a whole have been completely retconned anyway by v20 and v5, so this entire book is a good example of taking what you want from it and ignoring the rest.)
"Some people are on opposite sides of this thing. They're elders who don't want to knuckle under to the Antediluvians (most elders will accept their proper place in the heirarchy again with the rising of their progenitors) and poor, misled souls who bought into the lie and are pissed about it (paging Mr. Pieterzoon). Bottom line: the Camarilla collapses like Enron/WorldCom as the worthlessness of its foundation becomes public knowledge. Chaos ensues among the vampire community, princes find themselves besieged by their own locals, and it's all a big clusterfuck."
Have I ever mentioned I love how VtM phrases stuff? Also F to Jan.
I like how they have a masterlist of what's actually going on with the Antediluvians. Spoilers ;D "For example, note that [Tzimisce] is simply referred to as [Tzimisce]. Even here at the game studio, our limited mortal minds weren't able to comphrenend the creature's real name." Lovecraft only WISHES he had eldritch abominations this spooky! Ennoia is 'Active and scary' and apparently spooks the devs just thinking about it. Makes sense. "Giovanni (Augustus Giovanni): Augustus is a pig, and he should probably die as one of the early events of Gehenna. He's the youngest of the Antediluvians and probably possessed the greatest ego (in mortal terms), so it'll be cosmic justice when he eats it." I love how no one likes Giovanni, even his creators. Malkav may or may not BE the Madness Network, in which case they cease to be an Antediluvian and just become... a part of the Malkavians, I guess? Absimiliard may or may not be chilling at the bottom of the ocean, because mood. Tremere / Saulot is definitely a fun one to play with, yeah. Although, oof, if Saulot ever gets control of their shared body, he's going to be fucked up if [Tzimisce] activates, so. Probably better to create a nice fresh body, like what BJD suggests with the child Saulot.
Chapter 1 - the lead-up: Basically a rundown of the signs and how they're interpreted. "An angel dies: How does an angel die? Who has the gall to rise up and slay one of God's firstborn? Or perhaps this is another metaphor. An angel could be a pure and gentle creature, or then again, it need not be one of God's angels (not that God's angels are necessarily pure and gentle). A feared and particularly vicious Necronomist Tzimisce, Sascha Vykos is sometimes referred to as the Angel of Caine. Many would rejoice the night that Vykos died." Hey rude :( I vote they kill Michael instead. He wants to be an Archangel? Fine, he can fulfill a prophesy XD
Honestly I really do dig that Ennoia Earthmelded with the entire planet. You can go so many directions with that, good or bad! Ennoia as The Beast Below, or Ennoia as Gaia? (Wow, that'd really fuck with the Garou XD) I love how the general consensus on Haqim is like, no one knows if he exists or not but lbr Ur-Shulgi is bad enough. Kinda dig the idea of the Toreador ante, Ishtar/Arikel, being genderfluid? I mean yeah essentially demigods have no need for gender anyway, but the constant debates over whether the Toreador ante is the female Ishtar or the male Arikel (or, uh, was it vice versa?) does lead to some interesting concepts. Ooh, similar to [Tzimisce] being linked to its entire clan (and the Tremere, anyone who's ever taken part in the Vaulderie, and anyone who knows Vicissitude), [Lasombra] may be connected to anyone who knows Obtenebration? [Ravnos]... yeah, probably dead. F to the clan. And yeah I think [Tzimisce] is flat-out the scariest one of all, and probably the one most likely to actually start the apocalypse, lbr.
Ugh this is one of the books that calls Sascha 'it' :-\ Do not like. ...Also do not like the suggestion that they're an unknowing agent of the Eldest, given, uh, the last chapter of the DA Tzimisce novel. Shoo! Shoo! You've ruined their unlife enough as it is!
Epistolary material! I do dig those. Most interesting: a letter to Sascha mentioning apocalyptic visions of New York but with the Carpathians in the background, and an anonymous letter to Hardestadt warning him of one of his line tearing down a castle that the writer feels believes the Camarilla. GO JAN FUCK IT UP.
And on to the scenarios themselves!
Chapter 2 - Wormwood: This is an interesting one. Literally a Biblical vengeance - God takes a good look at the Children of Caine and goes, "Well, this is fucked up", acknowledges that Caine never really sought true forgiveness and repentance, and sets forth Wormwood, the Red Star. The truly repentant are saved, the rest just. Die.
Herald here is a dhampir girl named Alia - thinblood father, human mother. When she's twelve, she becomes God's chosen, basically. Traveling with three thinblood guardians, one night, she's approached a Gargoyle named Ferox with True Faith, who sees himself as a fallen angel. And Alia offers him a way of redemption - find the chosen true believers, wait out Wormwood, receive judgement. Anyone can seek sanctuary, only the true believers and the ones genuinely willing to repent will survive the judgement itself. Alia and Ferox set out to find the other chosen ones.
Whew. Very full-on - the players remain in one place with a whole bunch of other vampires for forty nights. I mean, that's a test in and of itself XD All welcome! (Except infernalists and the antediluvians and Caine himself. They're fucked no matter what.)
Like. All welcome XD "Some Storytellers might feel that this character roundup could get too silly, suddenly having all these celebrity Kindred get together for a big slumber party, and they would be correct." Fuck that give me a slumber party AU XD
Am very glad about the note that the vampires inside only lose one blood point per 10 days, rather than every day. Otherwise, uh, it'd get gory.
Yeah, this is a really interesting scenario. Very character-focused, very introspective. All about the characters trying to work out what it means to be good people - not the strongest vampires, not the most powerful, but good people. Are they worthy of salvation? That's the crux of the story. Of course, it's very, uh, Biblical, heh, but it's first and foremost about morality and redemption. I dig it.
Also, giant vampire slumber party.
Chapter 3 - Fair is Foul: Ooh, this is a Lilith vs Caine scenario.
This one has the Withering hit in weird ways, including clan-specific ones - like the Banu Haqim only able to feed on vitae, then only able to gain sustenance from diablerie. Gangrel turn even more animalistic. Lasombra take to the seas, Obtenebration ripping holes straight to the Abyss. Malks, uh, leak madness. Nosferatu get even uglier, Toreador devolve into debauchery. Tremere develop third eyes, and yes, I did laugh out loud when I read that. Tzimisce... hmm... get a bit, uh, uncontrolled. And Ventrue find they can now only feed on... other Ventrue. Fun times!
"At your discretion, Lilith might be particularly vulnerable to Jewish True Faith, as the Jewish tales about her are the source of nearly every negative sentiment ever directed against her in writing. As a result, most orthodox Jews bear Lilith great contempt for defying her husband and her God." Yeah ngl I think she's pretty dang cool and I can just see, like, most of my ancestors facepalming at the idea XD;; Fuck obediance you do your own thing.
"Trying to work out traits for Lilith, Lucifer, Caine, or any of the Antediluvians would just be a waste of our word count and your time." I like the time they published a guide for fighting Caine. It was two words. "You lose."
Ah. Okay, Saulot in Tremere's body being taken over by the Eldest = scary, because have you ever been attacked by an Antediluvian wielding Thaumaturgy, Valeran, and Vicissitude at the SAME :) TIME? :) Yeah :)
Really dig the idea of Abel showing up as the first Wraith. The forgiveness element.
Overall, this isn't my favourite scenario, I think? It feels very chaotic, and while it's probably the most traditional to play, I'm not sure how much it literally challenges the characters, unlike the sheer soul-searching...ness of Wormwood?
Chapter 4 - Nightshade: Chapter starts with, "We all wear masks" and my first thought was "boy you have no idea" XD
Awww yes this is the masquerade break scenario! See here for my thoughts on that and how the Nephtali could be adapted to v5, heh.
Yeah okay earthquakes, volcanoes, and riots are normal enough. A horrible blood virus where it appears some flesh-like thing is living in people's veins and feeding off their blood sounds like something that starts with T and rhymes with Shzimitze. ...Probably. No one knows how the fuck it's pronounced anyway. Oops, those riots are apparently over the existence of vampires. Yeah that'd be... unfortunate. And more earthquakes, this time due to Kupala vs the Eldest. Whew. Red star, yep, standard. MORE earthquakes, this time due to the Second City rising. Sounds legit. Bad times all around!
The details on breaking the Masquerade are interesting. Basic emotions: denial, rationalisation, fear, anger, acceptance. The acceptance one is interesting, because I can definitely see some jumping to it straight away.
So, on to the scenario itself! Jan recruits the players to fight the... uh, mass under NYC. This is the corpse of the Eldest, which is more or less a giant fungal infection held together with Vicissitude, which frankly is just icky. This actually is  canon-compliant with BJD, since it apparently has only just... dissipated? or whatever there, or if it still remains, it's no longer conscious. In this one, its soul flicks back to Tremere's/Saulot's body and wakes up, and basically every Tzimisce, Tremere, and anyone who has ever drank Tzimisce blood (which would be the entire Sabbat via Vaulderie) spontaneously frenzies. Godspeed. Cyscek, a Tzimisce methuselah, helps defeat the, uh, blob at the expense of his life, and warns with his last words, "The Dragon rises. You must stop it. Find Vykos. [They] know." (Okay yeah the text says 'it knows' but also fuck that.) Ooh, plot point!
Aaaand then they retreat from the battle, exhausted, only to find the whole damn thing broadcast on every TV screen, vampiric Disciplines and Cyscek dusting and all. W h o o p s.
Lots and lots of details of a major masquerade breach here. Hardestadt shows up and tells Jan he's proooobably gonna get Final Death for, you know, trying to save the world. Gonna share this bit because it's Very Satisfying.
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Please refer to my tag #hardestadt has no rights ;D
Anyway! The characters now recruited, Jan leads them back to London for the Convention of Fire. He's working with Calebros and... like a bunch of others, probably anyone can end up here, so long as they want to actually help and not just fall apart like the remnants of the Camarilla (trying to diablerise their way into keeping power) and the Sabbat (...ditto tbh). Those definitely in attendance are Ambrogino Giovanni, Hesha Ruhadze, and Fatima! And lbr the Nod Squad are probably there too. As if Beckett would pass up the chance to NOT witness what's happening with Gehenna. And Anatole is literally a prophet of Gehenna! They found the Nephtali, led by a council of twelve, with Jan at the head. Name means 'the highest point' or 'no further' - as in, Gehenna goes no further than this.
Oh lmao here we go, the scene I mentioned earlier - Jan vs talk shows.
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F to Jan.
Tremere's body (inhabited by Saulot) disappears from beneath the Vienna chantry. Tremere's body, with [Tzimisce] now well in control (having overtaken Saulot; Tremere, meanwhile, has taken over Goratrix's body, with Goratrix's mind stuck in a mirror... it's complicated), wipes out the Vienna chantry. RIP to the Vienna chantry, which doesn't survive in either timeline tbh. Hey, I wonder if that means that Saulot (in Tremere's body) is dead in v5? Etrius manages to escape and reports that the Eldest is now on the way to Ceoris, where it'll call all the remaining Tzimisce to it to become, uh, a part. Pleasant.
Everything between Krakow and Bucharest is straight fukk’d. Ceoris is the centre of all this - IIRC it's somewhere in the southern Carpathians, nearish Brasov. Either way, hell of a fight results with what can only be described as an eldritch abomination, finally both managing to destroy Kupala (the Eldest's goal) and reducing The Thing down to a human-looking body. This bit is interesting! Tremere (in Goratrix' body) and Etrius take one look at each other. "Master..." "I... I know. But where the hell is Saulot?!" Good question, because he sure ain't in Tremere's, uh, former body any more, which was in fact what was fighting them the whole time. Either way, Tremere-in-Goratrix'-body leaps at [Tzimisce]-in-Tremere's-body and diablerises his, um, former body, which must be weird as hell, then tries to turn on the characters and his powers fuckiNG FAIL. EAT SHIT TREMERE. And then the players kill him too and realise that over the course of one night they've destroyed the demon Kupala and two Antediluvians, Tremere and the Eldest. Not bad. This is the battle that causes that second lot of earthquakes I mentioned earlier.
Back to London! They find the mirror containing Goratrix amongst Tremere's belongings. Poor fucker sorry not sorry.
And now the players receive a summons to escort someone from Montreal to the Nephtali headquarters in London! Namely, a Tzimisce named Myca Vykos~ They've recently defected from the Sabbat and want to help take the Antediluvians tf down. (Note: the book here has reverted to using he/him pronouns since they're back in their original form, I'm going to keep using they/them because biological sex does not determine gender identity or pronouns goddammit. ...Anyway. I AM going to use the name Myca since that's the name they're using themself, mostly because, uh, 'Myca' is a bit less noticeable than 'Sascha Vykos', haha.)
So Gehenna has started. Myca's woken up in their original form and being like, "Hey you know what I am preTTY SURE I don't want to serve the Eldest" and promptly joins the Nephtali.
From New York to London to Romania to London to Montreal to London (...London is a hub world apparently), now off to Turkey, to Kaymakli! Which is actually a real place, my brother's been on a tour there. Anyway, this is the part of Kaymakli that they don't show the tourist and that's been sealed shut with lots of angry Cappadocians instead, so that was fun. Presumably Kapaneus hasn't been chilling out there in this one.
Also Colombia has completely been overtaken by the Sabbat so that sucks.
Into Kaymakli! Which usually doesn't let Cainites back out so it may be one-way. Don't worry, there's a ritual for that. At the bottom, they find Augustus Giovanni! Who is pissed off he never actually got to eat Cappadocius' soul and so wants to eat God instead.
As you do.
The book very strongly encourages the players to kill him. Just 'cause. Which is a mood, tbh. Killing him also reveals a beaten, bound Nosferatu, having been Giovanni's most recent food source. An F for Okulos. He's been there for four years, having managed to get a lost fragment of the Book of Nod for Beckett, who promised to come back for him and. Didn't. Which is just rude tbh and I can kind of understand why Okulos ends up betraying Beckett in the Gehenna novel but anyway. (Not canon as of v20, he's perfectly present and chill in BJD.)
End results - the fragment that Okulos went to retrieve shows how to restore the Second City, which holds a complete Book of Nod and may hold the key to stopping Gehenna. It's in Enochian so your player characters probably won't be able to read it (book suggests asking Sascha or Ambrogino). Next stop, Egypt, and a meeting with Hesha Ruhadze! Man this scenario has a lot of signature characters. It also suggests getting third parties in here too, so Beckett would actually be a really good choice. Either way, they find the probable site, and suddenly, a Second City.
Archeologists make grabby hands. Beckett, somewhere, is probably crying in joy. They find a vial with some very old blood in it that they definitely shouldn't drink because otherwise they'll explode (the book uses Sascha as the example here XD;; ). Along with some mystical enscriptions, they return to London and get to work on the prophecy - namely, it suggests that 'the gentle one' (likely Saulot) will die at the hands of another, but arise in a new form, and will stop Gehenna that way. Etrius, one of the only Tremere left and having joined the Nephtali, goes 'fuck it what do I have to lose?' and goes to find whatever new form Saulot is in (potentially can also involve Goratrix here).
Hm. Well. Saulot is apparently in a research centre outside Sydney. Apparently we're mostly chill with vampires, aside from Christians XD Go figure!
Apparently it's a cloning facility. One of the rooms had, past tense, a child, successfully cloned six-year-old, who was in perfect physical form but vegetative from birth. Religious characters will pick up that it's because the kid's body didn't have a soul. Now, it does - Saulot's. Having been thrown out of Tremere's body when the Eldest took over, his soul fled until it could find the most suitable vessel - a soulless cloned body. No actual soul to have to subdue. Saulot ends up reborn, albeit in the form of a six-year-old and without any memories. Turns out, the child was taken by a cult of Thinbloods, believing him to be the messiah.
Sydney's messy situation gets described here! Short version, Sydney's Prince is/was Sarrasine, who was a Toreador. Except he wasn't a Toreador, it was a fairly open secret he was only POSING as a Toreador - he was actually a Caitiff. (Except he's not actually a Caitiff. He's a sixth-gen Setite. Sydney is Like That, yes.) Given Sydney's independence from the sects and its apparent Caitiff Prince, it's become a major site of Caitiff and Thinbloods, which Sarrasine is just thrilled about but can't do anything about because he doesn't want to actually go 'lol I'm a Setite'. Anyway, either way, everyone is unaware of Saulot's return, so the players seek out the little boy, who's pretty spooked and confused. Asks the characters, "Who are you? What is this place? What do all these people want?" and his third eye opens. Tada! Salubri Antediluvian, and like the prophecy mentioned, he's 'unholy' and 'a mockery in the face of God' - a clone.
Back to London with kid!Saulot. The Nephtali have been trying to work out what tf is going on. A researcher tried drinking from the vial. It was messy. The characters might get some downtime. Sarrasine's followers may attack to try and get the kiddo back. Either way, everyone goes to bed, and wakes up to find a Darkness having overtaken the sun, which is generally not good for anyone, and Lasombra characters are just, feels bad man. The Veil of Darkness means vampires can be up 24/7, along with other things that don't like sunlight, and I imagine things like... plants not being thrilled. Also probably very confused animals. I'm not sure if it's like a dark atmosphere, or a physical body between the sun and Earth that just eclipses it whatever vantage point you look from, or what? Disciplines like Auspex, Obfuscate, and Obtenebration go a bit fucky. Then, a few days later, everyone feels a... Summons. For low-generation vampires with still-living Antediluvians, it's strongest. Higher gens with destroyed Antes, not so bad. So I'm sure you can guess what's summoning them.
Yep. Antediluvians. Banu Haqim are getting summoned to Alamut instead so Ur-Shulgi can turn them into an army against the Antediluvians, so godspeed resisting that, Elijah.
Off to the city of Gehenna (it's nearish Jerusalem). Elders of all stripes have been heading there to kill their childer in hope of being rewarded by their Antediluvians to get their powers restored, which is terribly rude. Indeed, the Antediluvians basically go, hey, can you not, and also can you start Embracing more childer for our armies, because they're not very nice either. Pretty much all the characters have been summoned for their crimes against the Antediluvians, and now they're gathered before them - Set, [Lasombra], Ennoia, Absimiliard, Malkav (as like... a cluster of identical little girls with glowing eyes because of course Malkav would use the Creepy Child trope), and [Toreador], who's so beautiful no one can tell if they're male or female. When the players and child!Saulot get there, they question him, but he's literally a six-year-old boy and is spooked. He also has the vial, somehow. Set takes it, and Kiddo says, "Don't drink it. You'll burn up." So Set makes Kiddo drink it instead, because he's a nice guy like that.
Kiddo's third eye opens. A giant black throne appears. The dozen small girls that are Malkav say, "Father's home." Kiddo!Saulot says, "No, Father's dead." Girls start screaming so loud people start bleeding thick black blood from their ears and doesn't stop until Set kills all twelve. A random stranger, now with their glowing eyes, steps forward and basically goes 'wow rude'.
Powerful beam of light appears. The Antes (aside from Kiddo!Saulot) writhe in pain. Angel appears, asks Saulot if he's willing to atone for all vampires. He agrees. Throne explodes, Antes fuckin' die, and everyone promptly frenzies and tries to eat each other, because vampires. In the aftermath of that, vampirism basically... ends. The player characters may be rewarded by becoming human again, as do a lot of Thinbloods, but most everyone older just, uh, dies. Vampirism ends, but the Earth has been saved.
That is... hmm, bittersweet, I think. It's a pretty compelling chronicle, very dramatic, but it's much less character-based and is more, 'the characters get dragged along to Do Shit'. I kind of like the idea of it being a story involving the characters we know, but for original characters, I think Wormwood is a much more compelling scenario so far.
Chapter 5 - The Crucible of God: Okay I'm tired now and this is the 'rocks fall everyone dies' scenario so gonna skim-read this one.
This is the chapter that introduces the level 10 power for all disciplines - Plot Device. The Antediluvians can do shit because they feel like it. Whew. Also, if an Ante spots anyone of their blood line, they can just make them... explode and their blood gushes into their mouth. Monch monch. Spot another clan mate? Roll to avoid frenzy. Just woke up? Roll to avoid frenzy. Good times!
And then the Tzimisce Antediluvian awoke as a mass of Vicissitude flesh fungal infestation with tentacles and lampray mouths and stuff and ate anything in reach until it ate, uh, every living thing in Manhattan. In one night. Bad day tbh. Eventually it burns when the sun rises, but what's left underground is still there and shit's still messed up. Like picking a leaf off a dandelion and it starts bleeding. Trees with faces, swarms of insects forming into eyes and watching. Nice and creepy. In the aftermath, it's basically infecting every life form on Earth with Vicissitude, which is distinctly uncool.
Absimliard has an animal army and currently looks like a giant humanoid jellyfish.
Oh boy here's the Banu Haqim part XD;; Interestingly, it's a lot better for them! Haqim doesn't eat his childer, they feel themselves strongly bonded to him but still maintain their own minds and wills. Downside, anyone who doesn't follow Haqim alone gets hunted down so he can eat them, so Ur-Shulgi's probably having a field day at being vindicated and poor Pyre/Elijah is hiding tf under the bed. Plus side, it only lasts a few months before something kills Haqim, so hey! And there's genuinely a way to become human again, especially for high-humanity, high-gen vampires, so that actually would be a genuinely good outcome for Pyre/Elijah.
Malkavians end up as a giant hive mind. Like, more than usual. [Lasombra] covers the world in darkness, then it stops. Ennoia merges with the entire planet and starts eating people. And vampires. And Methuselah. And other Antediluvians. She's kinda hangry at this point.
Tremere attempts to rule the entire world using the Human Genome Project as the true name of the entirety of humanity. It lasts about two minutes before [Tzimisce] turns him into a meat crime, along with, uh, the entire rest of the world, aside from the players, who were part of Tremere's ritual and thus immune from it.
Also Saulot, who they just met in the form of a little old man.
Turns out, he planned it all along. Lured Tremere to him, knowing that his body was tainted by using Tzimisce blood to become a vampire. Knew that when the Eldest returned, he'd be succeptable, and Saulot would be able to bounce out when the Eldest took over. Now, he can lead the characters in the only way to stop Planet Tzimisce, which is, uh, prayer and letting themselves get eaten. Could actually work! And you end up human again in the bargain!
End result - all vampires gone. Some of the more human ones do end up human again. Either way, world's still fucked. Open Antediluvian rule for several months has destroyed most of humanity. There are still remnants - former Malkavians who are still a bit weird, former Tzimisce who are a bit... Vicissitudey. Ennoia's still around! She's mostly chill except when she occasionally feels like rearranging landscapes. Otherwise, it's time to recover.
Alternate endings - that last one wasn't depressing enough, so here's a scenario where All Is Tzimisce, here's one where there's global extinction of literally everything except the player characters who gradually drop into torpor and never recover (or just flat out burn if they're outside), or there's one where the players are the only vampires left and start a new cycle with them as the new Antediluvians or something, oh and Caine's still kicking and is Very Displeased that God won't let him die already. Gooood times!
Rest is how to basically play it, and character sheets. Which go back to calling Sascha ‘it’ again *sigh* (And using the whole alien look despite explicitly mentioning that they look human again. Of course.)
So, final thoughts! Gehenna is... an interesting scenario. Lots of possibility for introspection. It’s very... apocalyptic, and that may bother a lot of people, since, well, for the most part, it’s going to be the end of playing your character as a vampire. Which I figure most people are playing Vampire the Masquerade for. So it’s basically either a hell of a finale, or you just don’t make use of it.
Favourite scenario did end up being Wormwood. I just really like the introspection and opportunity for hope. Did also enjoy Nightshade, but in a different way, I think? Like for Nightshade, I’d rather read it as existing characters working together, maybe as a novel, whereas for Wormwood I’d want to play it since it’s such an intensely personal kind of thing.
(I also still want a slumber party AU ngl.)
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clarste · 4 years
Note
Sorry if you've been asked this explicitly before, but what are your thoughts on Penguin Logistics, specifically in comparison to the other organisations/factions in Arknights? I recently started and managed to grab everyone within a few pulls, except Sora (and I guess Mostima, unfortunately.) and I think they're easily my favourites. Would love to hear your thoughts. Cheers.
No one's ever asked me that, but they probably should have since I've gone all-in on Penguin Logistics ever since I pulled Exusiai and Croissant early on. I then proceeded to never pull any of the others, forcing me to buy Texas and Sora in the shop and much later dump all of my accumulated gacha currency getting Mostima. Anyway, my goal in life is to use the entire team and also max them all out. PL4life!
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Anyway, my initial impression of them was that they were the cast of a 90s anime like Cowboy Bebop or Bubblegum Crisis (...Tokyo 2040). Like, they're an eclectic band of hyper-competent misfits working for a small company operating at the edge of the law. “Penguin Logistics” itself sounds like a euphemism for being, like, smugglers or something. "We'll get your package where it needs to go, no questions asked." Then Code of Brawl came out and I was totally right except they are also very dumb in a funny way. Like, they accidentally got into a turf war with the mafia, but apparently that's just business as usual.
Anyway I want to talk about each of them individually now so apologies if this starts rambling.
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Texas is pretty clearly the main character of Penguin Logistics, and you can tell because she's the hub of their whole relationship wheel on the in-game chart.
She's also kinda Spike from Cowboy Bebop, although less laid-back I guess. She's a former mafia assassin on the run from her past, but her past won't leave her alone. Incidentally, "mafia" in this case refers to the various wolf families from the fantasy Italy equivalent in this setting, although they make some interesting comparisons to wolf packs in the profiles. However, Texas's family is dead, which should make her a "lone wolf" that will supposedly never have another place to belong. Except PL itself is proof that that's wrong.
Theoretically she’s just the team’s driver, but because PL is always getting into ridiculous anime fights she’s also good at that part too, using dozens of little... lightsabers(?) that she throws around willy nilly. It would probably look super-cool to see in action, except this is not that kind of game so we’ll just have to wait for the anime or whatever. It’s noted in her profile that her fighting style shows that she unconsciously sees as the only purpose of a weapon as being to kill, and heck, she’s right.
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She's cool-headed, adaptable, and the serious one you can always count on, but she's not above getting into friendly(?) brawls just to take out her frustrations out.
Her name comes from the extinct subspecies of Texas Wolf.
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Next up is Exusiai, the angel who loves nothing more than guns, god, rock and roll, and apple pie. In that order. In other words, a stereotypical American. Even though she's from the fantasy-Vatican. Basically she's a cheerful, friendly, laid-back person who never really fit in back home where people are expected to be more serious and orderly. Not enough to be, like, shunned or anything but she's always been a weirdo. All angels have guns though, that’s like standard issue. She wishes she could have more though.
She's also super religious, but interestingly never brings it upon her own. I feel like she probably realizes how uncomfortable it can make people who don't share that religion to suddenly bring up Jesus all the time in casual conversation. Like, she's not ashamed of it or anything, but she won't shove it in your face either. Personally, I find that a pretty cool characterization for a fictional religious person.
Which is also sort of a hint that beneath her goofy exterior she's a thoughtful, deliberate person who doesn’t let anyone in by accident. Texas notes that they're exact opposites in this respect. She also has an extremely interesting relationship with the next person.
Her name comes from the Greek word for the order of angels in Christianity often translated as "Powers."
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Mostima... where to start...? I guess first of all she’s a fallen angel, apparently because she pointed her gun at her own kind under MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES. Probably related to the whole war in Kazdel thing, where many of the other MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES in this game took place. Long story short, stuff happened in the war, she pointed her gun at another angel, Exusiai’s sister is dead under mysterious circumstances, and Mostima gave up her gun and now wanders the world delivering long-distance packages for PL. But that’s mostly an excuse for to be alone as much as humanly possible. She can also use time magic because I dunno why not. MYSTERIOUS.
She’s friendly enough, talkative even, and has a hobby of visiting new places and trying out the local food, etc, but her real defining trait is that she just doesn’t need other people. She’s explicitly aromantic, saying she has no interest in love, but she also has no need for friends or family or apparently coworkers either. Because of the way the world is, she spends most of her time driving through the endless wastelands between cities, with nothing but a truck, some packages, and her thoughts. There’s something... romantic about that (in the other sense of the word), but even she admits that the romance of watching the sun set in a desert with no one else around for hundreds of kilometers gets old after a while.
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I feel like I should note that she has a very “best friend of her big sister” relationship with Exusiai, by which I mean she’s known Exusiai since Exusiai was a kid and to her Exusiai will always be that kid. Also Exusiai only joined PL in the first place to hunt her down and get answers about her sister’s death, but Mostima just laughs it off and leaves town for another year or five. 
Her name is probably a corruption of Mastema, a rather infamous fallen angel in mythology.
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Croissant is... well, to be honest everyone past this point is more of a minor character. Which is actually a weird thing to say since none of these people are actually major characters in Arknights, but I guess these are less important people even within the group?
Croissant’s gimmick is that she’s always trying to make money by selling stuff. I guess she’s a merchant? But not, like, a formal one who runs a shop, she just gets her hands on stuff through her connections and sells it. But in like, a friendly down-to-earth way, it’s even said that she lives paycheck to paycheck. She’s a girl trying to get by with a second job, I guess is what I’m saying.
Team-wise, she’s the muscle of the group, being a minotaur and all. She lifts the heavy packages and also smashes things with her MAGNETIC HAMMER which I don’t know why I find that name so amusing. Gameplay-wise her special move can knock all the enemies around her halfway across the map and I smile every time she does it.
Her profile notes that she’s really just living her best life as a normal-ish person, and that helps make everyone around her feel normal, and that’s important in a setting where half the people around you are dying of magical cancer (no one in PL is Infected though).
Her name comes from the French word for Crescent and also a type of Pastry. Leaning more towards Pastries in my opinion.
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Sora is an idol singer. Because, to be perfectly honest, what ragtag band of misfits is complete without an idol singer? She can’t really fight, but I guess Texas must have saved her life at some point or something because she bullied both her agency and PL into letting her work there part time. And also she is obsessed with Texas. I guess saying it like that makes her sound kind of annoying, but she really isn’t, she’s just an earnest girl chasing her dreams.
There’s also this interesting thing where a lot of her basic information is censored by her agency in order to protect her privacy (”do not dox the idol”). Even including her race. She presents as a wolf, but her promoted E2 art has her as a rabbit, which raises some interesting questions that don’t really get answered.
Her name comes from the Japanese word for Sky.
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Lappland is not really part of PL, but she’s PL-adjacent enough to be worth mentioning here. Basically she’s an old acquaintance of Texas from back in their mafia days, and she’s obsessed with hunting her down and... fighting her? Killing her? But in, like, a sexual way? She’s kind of a crazy psychopathic killer. Maybe. She can also be very calm and polite when she wants to be, although with a taste for gallows humor. That just makes her scarier because you don’t know when/if she’ll snap.
There are two kind-of explanations for her being like that: A) her family is dead and she has no “pack”. As a wolf, the stress of living without a pack is supposed to be maddening. B) She’s infected with Oripathy (magic cancer) and there are crystals growing in her nervous system. Which... can’t be good. The answer is probably a combination of both.
But the most important thing about Lappland is her base skill and how it interacts with Texas. Basically, in your base there are various jobs you can assign people to and different characters get different bonuses for them. Most people in Penguin Logistics get bonuses for working the Trading Depot, for obvious reasons. Lappland gets a “bonus” where if she’s in the depot at the same time as Texas, she loses morale slower but doesn’t actually get any bonus to productivity. Meanwhile, Texas gets a bonus to productivity when Lappland is around, but loses morale way faster. In other words, Lappland is slacking off and making Texas so uncomfortable that she works twice as hard just to get the job over with so she can leave. This is their relationship as defined by game mechanics.
Texas also has another bonus where she loses morale slower if Exusiai is there, which completely cancels out the penalty she gets from Lappland. In other worlds, Exusiai being there too calms her nerves enough that she doesn’t feel the need to immediately escape.
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Oh yeah, I forgot to talk about Emperor, who’s the owner of Penguin Logistics. He’s a world-famous rapper wearing a Tupac shirt and also literally immortal.
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cutietobio · 4 years
Note
HC’s for Ushijima, Bokuto, Kageyama, Nishinoya, & Kuroo with an S/O who fosters kittens / has lots of pets cats. Like sis just can’t seem to say no to an animal in need. How would they react?
Sure, anon! Hope you like it :’) I apologize for the inconsistent length, but I get more ideas for some characters than others at a time.
USHIJIMA
- He’s a dog person (confirmed by my group chat, very reliable source) so he’s used to more energetic pets. He does admit that your cats are very calming, and he finds himself smiling at the sounds of their purrs. All of your cats are drawn to him like a magnet, he doesn’t understand why and he sits with a stoic face, hands on his knees while dozens of cats are rubbing up against his legs, chest and one even found its way upon his head. He would remain as still as possible, hoping they find it comfortable up there.
- He’s not very talkative when playing with your cats, but you see the soft smile which graces his features at the funny antics of your furry friends. It’s all very calming, your favourite moments is during a rainy evening when Ushijima cuddles with you upon your couch and all your kitties join in on the love. (catch me crying in the club rn, your head is resting on his chest, legs intertwined, blanket over the both of you and your cats are scattered everywhere. One is nestled upon your feet, a few on the armrests and on top of the back while a very tiny kitten is curled up on Ushijima’s sternum, underneath his warm hand)
- He would spoil them a lot, bringing over treats and exotic-sounding food. The once he came over with cotton candy flavoured meat treats and you soon realized his obsession with strangely flavoured items. Each week he comes back with something weird and you fear that your cats won't like it but you give it to them anyway, to your surprise, they almost never turn their nose to it, and if they do, Ushijima is able to get them to eat it just by holding it out for them.
BOKUTO
- He’s surprised upon first visiting your home, only to be greeted by seemingly dozens of cats staring back at him. He lets out a sudden noise of excitement, causing all your furry friends to scatter in multiple directions. Yeah, they’re kinda scared of him and yes, Bokuto looks extremely dejected about it. The whole visit he attempts to warm up to your cats who keep a wary eye on him and pouts when none of them warms up to him. Feeling bad for him, you brought him your newest addition to your cat family which had been a tiny little kitten which you distanced from the rest. It had no power to fight back and instantly curled up into Bokuto’s chest. You swore his eyes grew misty and his smile was absolutely contagious. 
- Eventually, your cats warm up to him after his constant visits and he never fails to bring them gifts. These include treats, toys and even costumes. He buys these all unironically, he’s genuinely so excited to see what they will look like in the cute sparkly dress he bought because his heart swelled upon first seeing it. Unwilling to disappoint, you dress up one of your more tamer cats in the outfit and Bokuto is almost brought to the verge of tears at how cute they look. He’s very enthusiastic when it comes to your babies :’)
- Frequently questions when you’re considering getting your next cat. You make the mistake of asking him if he would like to tag along with you and pick out a cat to foster, you return home with four additional kittens all snugly asleep in Bokuto’s arms. (...can ya’ll imagine seeing him carrying a bunch of sleeping kittens in his muscular AF arms... I-) 
- Your love for cats is so endearing to Bokuto, he catches himself staring at you whilst you play with them, admiration gleaming within his eyes. Seeing you so gentle towards them makes his heart swell with pride at the thought that he managed to meet and date someone as loving and caring as you. He doesn’t even play his staring off as something else when you catch him and instead he openly admits what a lovely person you are. (your cat is sitting there like...human...proceed giving me attention with the delightful chase of the feather string...why do you love this owl-head anyway)
KAGEYAMA
- The only experience Kageyama has had when it comes to pets is his own fish which he sometimes forgets exists. This is proved canon by my group chat members and I. He’s pretty overwhelmed by the sheer amount of cats you have and finds himself awkwardly stroking one who comes up and rubs themselves against his legs. He looks a bit uncomfortable, not sure what to do. You help him ease up by putting your hand on top of his and guiding it over the soft fur of your cat. 
- Kageyama finds your will to help cats admirable, not that he would do something like that himself, but he can tell a lot of hard work goes into it and he thinks you’re amazing for being able to cope. Many times he finds himself willing to help you clean up or even help bathe one of your cats. His hands are full of scratches afterwards and you feel sick to your stomach with guilt, only for him to offer you a small smile of reassurance and tell you he didn't mind - it was fun, in fact, seeing as he never had the opportunity to take care of his own pet in such a way before. 
- He’s only close with one of your cats. For some reason, this cat eases him and whenever he comes over, he’s instantly greeted by the cat upon stepping through the door. The one time, you caught Kageyama falling asleep upon your bed with the cat curled up against his chest, both of them with seemingly content smiles. You managed to snag a picture and it will forever remain your profile picture because what on earth can top a sleeping Kageyama with his favourite cat snuggling on top of him. (me thinking about Kageyama cuddling with a cat.)
NISHINOYA
- Your poor cats.
- In the beginning, Nishinoya is in awe at how many cats you have. He doesn’t make an attempt to rush towards them but he definitely thinks their cute. He’s more interested in how he can entertain himself by playing with them. You show him some tricks they can do and he’s immediately hooked, oohing at every minor thing they do. 
- “Whoa! that was so cool,,” 
- “Uh..that wasn’t a trick.”
- Lowkey terrorizes your cats ngl. He’s gonna test out the theory that cats are afraid of cucumbers like he’s seen so many times on youtube and laugh his ass off when one of your cats jump nearly ten feet into the air. He records the whole thing and likely uploads it to social media. He likes to set up pranks for them. The one time you wanted to walk into the kitchen, only to find the entrance blocked off with clingwrap and all your cats sitting expectantly before it, their heads bouncing around in sync. Peering around the doorway, you find Nishinoya sipping on a milk box as he waves a toy around, holding back the snickers at how funny your cats look trying to get through.
- Overall, he thinks its really cool of you to do such a thing. Despite pulling pranks on your cats, he’s really endeared by them. Knowing how much you want to help, he often sends you posts he finds from animal shelters who are looking for foster homes. It makes you happy knowing he keeps your interests in mind when you’re away from each other.
- He’ll come over with catnip one day, saying he wants to see how high your cats can get. “Damn, pass the joint du-” *hiss* “I just want my hit, man.”
KUROO
- He’s in his element whenever he comes over to your house, your cats literally swarm around his feet upon barely taking a step inside the door. He’s their cat daddy, and you have zero say in the situation. Your cats probably like him more than you and you can’t even be mad at them tbh. Of course, you get a bit salty when your cats, which you have handpicked and rescued from a terrible fate, turn their nose to your cooing and tempting treats and instead find comfort in curling next to Kuroo who is watching youtube videos, not even making an effort to coax them into doing so.
- You have that one cat, the true OG, your loyal disciple who refuses to leave your side. They turn their head at Kuroo like he’s a walking infestation inside your house and they refuse to look at him with their nose up in the air. You don’t pick favourites, you love all your kitties equally, but you do find yourself loving that specific cat more during those moments. Kuroo doesn’t really mind, he just ruffles your hair teasingly and sarcastically comments that it’s good at least one of your cats love you. (yes, you did attack him with a pillow afterwards.)
- He truly doesn’t mind your mild obsession with cats. He loves them and they love him, with the exception of one. He doesn’t encourage you out of the blue but if you talk about potentially wanting to rescue a new cat he’s totally there to support you. This dude buys you so much cat food! You hardly need to go out and buy any, it’s like an unlimited supply. The one time he burst your front door open, carrying two bags of cat food over his shoulders whilst posing theatrically. “Come to me, my sweet children,” he says loudly over the deafening meow’s of your cats that circle his legs.
- He would likely ironically buy your cats these stupid looking costumes and dress them up with literal tears of laughter in his eyes. He lowkey makes fun of your cats and even YOU feel personally offended. But you gotta admit, he brings home really funny outfits and you feel bad for laughing at times. Kuroo is there for all the fun things, but as soon as it comes to bathing your cats or cleaning out litter boxes, he’s outta there.
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irisrecs · 4 years
Text
buzzfeed unsolved fanfiction recommendations
This is all Ryan/Shane— so don’t like, don’t read.
PSA: I am not in any way stating that Ryan and Shane from Buzzfeed Unsolved and Watcher are together, or that I want them to be together; this is for entertainment use only. I urge you to not contact them or @ them on twitter or instagram making comments about their relationship, as they are humans just like the rest of us. Some things are none of our business!
This is a masterlist of my favourite fanfictions in this fandom! Thanks to @gigaledom for cheering me on. Never thought I was going to do more RPF, but here I am.
Under 10k
and i’m puffing my chest, getting red in the face by pissedofsandwich- 6k, Teen
Summary: "Zack's going to be there?" Shane asks, masking his... whatever it is he's feeling in his chest, with nonchalance.
Ryan blinks. "Yes?"
Well, never mind dancing with the fucking sun. He’s Icarus, wings melted and falling face-first into the asphalt.
Or: Shane is definitely not at all jealous of how close Zack and Ryan are getting during the making of Sports Conspiracies. Except that he is.
My notes: They’re both so jealous of each other and so bad at communication. Thank goodness they have their friends to help them out! Really funny and entertaining!
lay your demons at the door by abovetheruins— 7k, Teen and Up
Summary: Ryan had been so careful. For months he had learned to train his face into a semblance of normalcy every time a spirit got too close or he was overwhelmed with some indiscernible emotion on location. He had learned to channel his fear into something more manageable, something entertaining enough for the cameras but not so severe that anyone would be able to tell he wasn’t just jumping at shadows or groaning floorboards anymore.
Shane wasn’t supposed to find out. He wasn't supposed to know.
My Notes: The Seer!Ryan AU that I wasn’t expecting to like so much. A lot of pining and caring! Shane with a lovely ending!
First Impressions by luxbuhree— 9k, Mature
Summary: The chance to work with and sit next to THE Shane Madej was one of the things Ryan was looking forward to, now that he's starting his first day in BuzzFeed. But while he was expecting a charming and friendly guy, he was instead met with someone who couldn't care any less.
Will the case of why Shane hates Ryan remain unsolved?
My notes: In which Shane is really bad at feelings and Ryan has the hots for a certain person who pins him against walls. Awesome ending.
a short history of almost something by cooliohoolio— 6k, No Warnings
Summary: "I think I'll wait another year."
Shane's in love with Ryan, and will get around to telling him. One of these days.
My notes: A lovely short high school! AU with mutual pining. They’re best friends ahhh
only happy accidents by barnes— 8k, Explicit
Summary: In hindsight, Shane is too old to have thought that friends with benefits was something that the two of them would be able to pull off. He’s had friends with benefits before that worked beautifully, but they were not with people whose jobs were tied up in his own, whose friendships were as closely interwoven into Shane’s everyday life as Ryan’s is. He’d thought these were the very things that could keep it from getting weird, because they were such good buddies, Ryan would be solidly cemented as his pal that nothing could shift him.
This was a miscalculation, on Shane’s part.
My Notes: I’m not usually a fan of friends with benefits to lovers, but this had so much mutual pining and fluff that I enjoyed it so much! A must-read.
Gurl, Imma Marry You (ryan is a mess) by orphan_account— 2k, General Audiences
Summary: Ryan is perpetually doing dumb things. Starting a ghost show? Dumb. Going to demon houses? Dumb. Talking to ghosts? Dumb.
But those are all new dumb things. Ryan's known he wants to marry Shane forever. That is an incredibly old dumb thing.
My notes: Really cute and fluffy and I love it so much. It’s a kind of read-to-make-yourself-feel-better kind of fic!
Por Favor, Sweetheart by carrieonfighting— 8k, Teen and Up
Summary: Two dorks raise a baby and don't even realise they're doing it together until it's too late
Alternatively, Ryan Bergara is Trying His Best Thanks
My notes: Normally not a raising-a-child-fic person, but holy smokes this was written so well and the fluff! the domesticity i-
Pushing All Your Buttons by beethechange— 9k, Explicit
Summary: Ryan and Shane get stuck in an elevator at Buzzfeed HQ. There is tension. They relieve the tension. That’s it, that’s the fic.
My notes: I was literally able to see the tension floating off my laptop in front of my face, it was so palpable.
Under 20k
like you want to be loved by poetdameron— 16k, Teen and Up
Summary: "Settle down with me", Shane says without thinking and as Ryan looks at him with wide open eyes, all he can think of it's how many of Ryan's secrets he knows, how Ryan likes his coffee, and the fact that he has loved him since the moment Ryan first looked up at him and smiled.
My notes: The PINING and CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT and ANGST my god. Really well written and lovely happy ending.
ships that pass in the night by beethechange— 20k, Explicit
Summary: The more Ryan thinks about it, the more he thinks he just needs to return the favor, that’s all. And then it’ll be done, like it was meant to be done weeks ago, and they can both move on for real.
It’s not that he wants to. It’s that he won’t be able to stop thinking about it until he evens the score. He has to restore balance to the Force or order to the universe, or—or whatever. It’s a karma thing.
“I think you have to let me jerk you off,” Ryan tells Shane one night. They’re working late, alone in the Watcher office, one of many such late nights these days.
“Wh—here?” Shane asks. He looks around, baffled, like he’ll have been magically transported somewhere else. “Have to?” And then: “Let you?”
My notes: haha what if I dare you to jerk me off dude haha don’t be a chicken
Do you not know how love works? by leylines— 12k, No Rating
Summary: “Fuck you, man,” Ryan growled, rubbing his tailbone where he landed on when he fell down just moments ago.
“I’m pretty sure that’s what Devon already thinks we’re doing,” Shane said cheerfully, not at all sounding bothered by the thought.
“Oh shut up, dude.”
My notes: One of my favourite things in this cold, dark universe is when two characters are dating but they don’t know it but everyone else does. This is so hilarious and warms my dead heart
Full-Court Press by beethechange— 12k, Explicit
Summary: To be clear, these are not tactics Ryan would recommend. Being an athleisure-obsessed pervert, and lying, and clothes-sabotage: these are not things he’s proud of.
But they have undeniably worked.
Shane’s standing next to him in the hotel lobby while Devon checks them all out of their rooms, and he's wearing a sleeveless purple Lakers jersey and the world’s softest, clingiest sweatpants. It’s so exactly as Ryan pictured it, so precisely in line with his fantasies, that he has to pinch himself.
My notes: Really hot and funny and p i n i n g
may your days be merry and bright by bodhirookes— 19k, General Audiences
Summary: “Your turn, Ry Ry.”
Ryan looks down to find only one piece of paper remaining. “Wow, so much selection to choose from.”
“No time for your negativity, Scrooge. Your Secret Santa deserves a better attitude.”
Ryan sticks his tongue out, but takes the slip of paper. He’s loudly yelling Give me Jen, please please please give me Jen as he unfolds it, but he’s too busy begging for her to be truly prepared for what he ends up getting:
A simple but damning SHANE in Andrew’s scribbly handwriting.
Or, Ryan gets Shane for Secret Santa and has a subsequent breakdown about what to get him
Notes: This is so sweet and cute and I would die for both of them. A lovely classic christmas fic!
want you in my room by beethechange— 13k, Explicit
Summary: As they watch, Tall Guy takes his beanie off, revealing a mess of thick, shiny brown hair. He runs his hand through it to shake out the hat hair and Ryan feels like he’s stuck in an Herbal Essences commercial, except he’s the one making inappropriate lustful noises.
Ryan adjusts his snapback, determined. He is, after all, wearing his very finest basketball shorts, without even a single hole at the hem, and the knowledge puts an extra spring in his step.
“I’m gonna climb that dude like a tree,” he tells Curly.
My notes: Just really dumb, cute pining in a wonderful frat boy/nerd college AU!
Long boys
Muscles Better and Nerves More by beethechange— 26k, Explicit
Summary: “I’m serious,” Ryan says. “Don’t go fucking up my body. I want that shit back in the same condition I left it.”
“The same condition—Ryan. I’m not spending hours in a gym every day so you don’t lose muscle mass.”
“I want you to treat my body with the respect you would a national park. Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories.”
***
A certain meddling Voodoo Queen of New Orleans thinks Ryan and Shane need some new perspective on life. After an inadvisable ritual deposits Ryan in Shane’s body, and Shane in Ryan’s, the ghoulboys pursue some soul-searching and self-discovery to put things right. Sometimes in a sexy way.
My notes: This is so sexy and in character! A freaky friday kinda scenario where they only switch back when they pull their figurative heads out of their asses. So wonderful.
Dreams to be daring for by allonsy_gabriel— 24k, General Audiences
Summary: On May 11, 2018, Eleanora Rose Austin was born in Chicago, Illinois.
On May 20, 2018, Shane Alexander Madej agreed to act as the godfather to his best friend from college's daughter.
On October 26, 2018, Olivia and Michael Austin were victims of a mugging gone sideways.
On October 29, 2018, Shane Madej found himself in the possession of one real, actual, human child.
My notes: Accidental Baby Acquisition is now my favourite trope because of this fic. The fact that they’re already acting like a couple with the baby before they actually become one is sooo beautiful,,, give it a read im begging you
Fifty Shades of Gold by beethechange— 21k, Explicit
Summary: Shane tires of doing the same bits over and over. He tires of telling the same stories until they all, him and Ryan and the fans, have every beat memorized. Whenever Ryan pulls out his Ricky Goldsworth impression, ah yes, that old chestnut, Shane plays along only begrudgingly. He’s bored.
That’s his official position: he’s over Ricky Goldsworth.
Shane’s unofficial position, regrettably, is that he’d rather be under Ricky Goldsworth.
My notes: Shane’s got the hots for Ricky Goldsworth and that’s the TEA. Lots of sexual tension and cute and unsure! Ryan!
Precious metals by StrikerEureka— 73k, Mature
Summary: Ryan and Shane have been moving around something that is coming to a head between them. After a car accident, on the way to an investigation, Ryan slowly starts to become suspicious that Shane might not be what he seems. He realizes, though, that he just might not care.
Shane sits forward suddenly. “Hey, pull over up here.”
Ryan follows the instruction without questioning it, which probably says something about either his willingness to listen to Shane or his sanity. Maybe both; they go hand in hand. He puts on his blinker, even though they haven’t seen another car in a couple of minutes, and pulls off onto the shoulder.
“Are you gonna puke or something?” he asks, putting the car into park, as Shane takes off his seatbelt with one hand and tugs off his Ray Bans with the other.
“You better hope not,” he murmurs as he leans over the center console and kisses Ryan solidly on the mouth.
My notes: My favourite Demon!Shane AU ever! Really sweet and loads of tension and pining... must-read.
darling it’s a faded notion by varnes— 28k, Explicit
Summary: The sun is too bright and Ryan’s whole body is alight with something that is eating him all the way up from the inside out, but he keeps his eyes open and he makes himself look, and he tells himself that once he finds Shane, he’ll think about it. Once he finds Shane, they’ll make a plan. Once he finds Shane, and only then, he’ll let himself have the thought he’s been swallowing down like bile since he came to: that they didn’t fall.
They were pushed.
OR: Ryan and Shane get cursed by a ghost, and now they can't be not-touching. It's ... not great.
My notes: They get cursed and have to be touching all the time!! and they’re pining so hard y’all like what more could one want
Bed-warm Hands and the Ghost of Elvis by MiraclesofPaul— 21k, Teen and Up
Summary: They get used to sharing a bed while filming the show. Ryan's just trying not to let his feelings get in the way.
So Ryan tells himself he’s going to ride out whatever it is they’ve fallen into, but he’ll bow out gracefully when the time comes. He can just enjoy the now.
My notes: They share a bed!!! And their hearts!! so much lack of communication, it’s wonderful
Hope that someone will enjoy these fics that I did so very much! If you want more buzzfeed unsolved fics let me know because i’ve read sooo much fanfiction...
—Iris
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thewhaatever · 4 years
Text
BE MORE CHILL LONDON
My brain was very bad at processing things that day but seeing the show on Saturday was honestly the best experience of my life and here's why:
First of all: Joe Iconis was sitting two rows in front of me.
I was freaking out a little and my friend was laughing at me but I didn't want to annoy him so I tried to chill
But then he was standing behind us in line for merch (he was buying a whole bunch of his own merch which was kinda funny) and some other people talked to him so I did too and I'm not entirely sure what I said to him but he was SO nice and then I got a picture and... yeah I was just really happy.
Now to the show:
The set was incredible. Absolutely amazing.
The screen was used so perfectly and made everything seem like a videogame, honestly.
It was basically the only set. The only furniture they had was a desk for Jeremy's room, chairs for the school and some other minor things (I have to say it did seem a little bit empty at times and I wish that would have used a bed at least - didn't make sense to me that Jeremy falls asleep at his desk - but I'm probably just too used to the Broadway set)
More Than Survive was SO good! Scott puts so much emotion in his portrayal of Jeremy... I can't really describe what exactly he did but something about his Jeremy felt so real and yeah I might have cried a little... (I honestly think he’s my favourite Jeremy so far)
Also: Blake's Michael is very different from George's but in such an interesting way. I loved him the second he entered the stage. He really did capture the "Doesn't care about what anyone thinks, but deep down he does a little" - Energy.
Play Rehearsal was.... wow.
Miracle's Christine had no chill. At all. She was so unbelievably weird and quirky. (Also, she seemed much colder / not interested in talking about anything except theatre and when she didn't want to talk about something she was really showing that by acting uninterested... I thought that was an interesting take that definitely worked for the character) Every normal person would have been a little freaked out by her energy during the song probably but Jeremy was just staring at her the whole time with heart eyes it was really cute.
Favourite part was how Jake said: "Rich is doing it cause he's MY BOI!"
Squip Song was great, his VOICE!! WOW. I love James's Rich. Like, you could really see that even though he's the school's bully, there's something underneath that's not right. Everything he did felt very forced and I loved it (also, I told James at the stage door that Rich is my favourite character and that made him really happy apparently)
Now that I am thinking about it, I think they changed that scene a little and Rich didn't pee (so that conversation was missing) but that was probably due to the set bc the toilets were just projections on the screen so it would have been weird if he pretended to pee on the screen 😂
Also really loved the use of the screen during that whole scene, it was flashing and glitching when Rich's Squip was acting up
They brought back the bean bags for Two Player Game!!
The staging for this was so cool because at the end when Jeremy and Michael were dancing the screen made it look like they were the characters in the game (but differently than on Broadway) and I loved it (I'm sorry I'm really bad at explaining this)
Also, Blake's 'Is it really true, I'm your favourite person' was so funny, he did like a model pose or something and was sliding off the bag.
Scott was basically sitting on the floor the whole time because he somehow didn't manage to properly sit on that bag
Also, I think they changed the dialogue about Jeremy's mum a little bc when Michael asks him if he's heard from her Jeremy said "A little" and I'm pretty sure he didn't say that before
I feel Blake's Michael is that kind of person who's really bad at expressing how he feels... like, you could see in his face that he didn't like Jeremy's idea about going to the Payless and that he was genuinely scared about being too uncool for Jeremy afterwards but he really tried to say the "will u be to cool for... videogames" kinda jokey and yeah I'm overanalysing but I loved it
One thing in general: Everyone seemed really young on stage, definitely much younger than the Broadway cast. Especially Jeremy and Michael. I really believed that they were teenagers!! And I really love that.
Scott was fidgeting a LOT with his hands and I feel like that was very in character for Jeremy. I thought so often that he would drop things.... (like the money in the scary stockboy scene.. it took him so long to give it to Michael)
Jakes favourite restaurant is Pizza Hut now
When the Squip was activated Scott was screaming and rolling across the entire stage and it would have been funny if it didn't look like he was actually in pain
Because the stage was different the Squip had to walk on for his entrance and somehow that was incredibly funny to me but I can't explain why
Stewart Clarke. Holy shit. I'd totally swallow a supercomputer if it looked like him! I loovveeed his take on the role. I've seen interviews with him where he was talking about how he has to think of so many weird questions like how does a computer act, does it feel, how does it feel etc. And I really saw that he was thinking about those things. At the beginning his Squip was very robot-ish, simply focused on making Jeremy cool, without any secret plan or anything. But throughout the show, the Squip clearly evolved and became more... human, I guess? Like it was showing more and more human traits/emotion which peaked in The Play (later more on that)
In conclusion: I loved the Squip so so much
Squip: "Everything about you makes me wanna die!"
Jeremy: "Uhhhhhh this is intense!!"
The Brooke/Chloe scene in the mall was so funny and the part where the Squip tells Jeremy what to say (u know, in bmc pt.1) might have been my favourite part of the show. Scott looked so awkward and confused by everything but he did his best to mirror the Squip (they did identical movements the whole time which I don't remember from Broadway but my memory is shit so...)
Millie's Chloe was so over the top I love it.
They changed the dialogue a lot here, so that there's no mention of Madeleine at all so Chloe wasn't pissed or anything (I'm not sure if I like that) Jeremy just said something along the lines of "Oh you wouldn't know her because she's French" and that's where Brooke picks up her trying to speak French- thing
I THINK (not 100% sure tho) that Millie said "Jeremy?" Instead of "Jerry" At the beginning of that scene and that Scott was a bit confused for a second but he just continued with "It's Jeremy" and then Millie had to duck away because she was laughing (but maybe she did say it right and was just laughing at Jeremy in character idk)
I loved how Eloise's Brooke was so awkward. From the second that Jeremy noticed her she tried SO hard to impress him and it didn't work very well but it was so cute. Chloe tries to show her the whole time what to do but that doesn't make it better.
During Do you wanna ride, Jermey got so scared of the girls that he climbed onto the table with the t-shirts (actually now that I'm thinking about it he was climbing on things a lot)
Guy That I'd kinda be into was so cute!! I never particularly liked that song but Miracle somehow gave it a very different flair and I loved that. They changed the staging a bit and there weren't other people with hearts (there were hearts on the Screen) but at one point Rich was coming on stage with a helium heart balloon for like a second and then he disappeared again 😂 that was a bit weird but...
now lets get to the Act 1 Finale which was SO GOOD
Okay, so they changed it up quite a lot: After the whole "Eminem is dead?!" The Squip tells Jeremy that Brooke likes him (and Christine doesn't, yet) and Jeremy is so shocked that he turns to Brooke and says "You like me?" And she's like confused but nods and he's like: "Why???" (I loved that, Scott delivered that line really funny) and then Brooke explains the whole thing with Chloe, that she always gets noticed first etc. (That whole scene was really cute Jeremy and Brooke really seemed to actually like each other and I was really able to relate to Brooke - good Job Eloise!)
Then Brooke starts singing the "I'm tired of being the person that everyone thinks that I am" Jeremy repeats it and then she starts Upgrade with the tres magnifique bit. It's like on the OBC until Jake's and Christine's part. They do their verse but run off after "Gotta get an upgrade" (Miracle was singing this up the octave which sounded SO cool) so they didn't have their conversation about Jake's parents (I did miss this a little but I get why it was cut) and then Jeremy ran back on stage followed by the Squip (you can see in Stewart's performance that he's already much more persuasive in a human way than before) who starts to sing the aggressive "C-c-c-come on Jeremy can't you see we got a plan, now be the man..." From the original cast album (I loved this SO much). Everyone came on to sing the "Christine" part in that and was surrounding Jeremy. He then shouts "Arghh too many voices in my head" the Squip leaves, Michael comes on, they do their "Jeremy that's amazing" dialogue, the Squip explains optic nerve blocking and says that he has to cut Michael off if he wants to be popular (Squip: "Cut your ties... or you'll both drown" I remember that because it sounded so unbelievably dramatic), Michael asked "Are you coming" and leaves the stage for Jeremy to sing Loser, Geek, Whatever.
I loved all of that so much because Scott puts so much emotion into this song, it nearly made me cry!! He really conveyed Jeremy's inner struggle without making him look like an asshole, more like a stupid kid that's going to make a really stupid decision
The second verse and chorus of LGW were cut (the "Dad taught me follow your instincts..." part) which I really liked (I never enjoyed the chorus of this song tbh).
"THE PROBLEM HAS ALWAYS BEEN.... .... me" the way Scott sang that truly broke my heart.
AND THEN (Loved this SO SO MUCH) after "ever agaaiiiiinnn" He went straight into that part that I guess you could call an Upgrade reprise from the Original Cast album ("And I wasn't sure before but now I wanna go all the way and more so give me that upgrade" etc.) AND it tied in so perfectly with Michael then asking again "Are you coming" and "Optic nerve Blocking on" and as much as I loved the "I'm tired of being the person that everyone thinks that I am" chorus, this was SUCH a great way to end act one, I might even prefer this.
I just love how they mixed in the old parts from this song that I was really missing on the OBC.
When the Squip came out in his first dress (is it a dress?) Costume people were cheering, loved that. (I mean that costume IS gorgeous and Stewart Clarke looks absolutely fabulous in all the costumes)
That was Act 1!! (I am so sorry if you actually read everything up to this point...)
Act 2
Halloween had such an amazing energy!!! The dances!! Ahh
At his "I don't have a machete but a loaf of bread will do" line, James threw the bread up in the air but didn't catch it and just hit his head as he went to pick it up as if he was blaming his Squip (not sure if that was supposed to happen but I loved it)
I loved how the Squip joined the dance, it looked so fancy with his costume 😂 I know he did this on Broadway too and I never really understood why (the others can't see him after all) but there it kinda felt like it was hinting at the fact that the Squip was becoming more human-ish??? (I'm definitely overthinking this) Like he was having fun maybe??? Idk
Millie's Do you wanna hang was so hilarious!!!
Like I said they didn't have a bed so she was just dancing around him (which looked good but I missed a bed here tbh) and they added a bit of dialogue (I think, maybe it was in the Broadway version) where Jeremy asked her "Are you jealous of Brooke??" And she was like "I'm not jealous I just don't understand why everyone likes her and no one likes me." (Or something like that) and the way Millie delivered that line really gave Chloe a whole lot of character depth. She sounded so heartbroken, I just wanted to hug her.
When the Squip shuts off (it looked really funny), Stewart just trust-falls backwards off stage and someone has to catch him and I was just thinking what if whoever catches him forgets about it??? 😂😂 (No seriously, dear catch person, don't forget this, ever... we need him as a Squip)
And now, the moment we have all been waiting for. MITB
Ahhh I was having so many feeling during this scene. I already told you that I love Blake's Michael and I really loved how rational and smart (?) He sounds in the scene before the song compared to Jeremy who kept insisting that the Squip isn't bad.
They added a bit of dialogue here too I think, because Jeremy said something along the lines of "You said technology isn't dangerous-" "Yeah unless someone uses it like you do!" (Something like this), really loved that as people somehow keep insisting that this is a show about the dangers of modern technology (It's definitely not).
Blake and Scott both did such an incredible job in this scene (and overall obviously), you just knew something bad was about to happen...
At the "Leave me alone" (not sure if that's what he's saying) line Jeremy steps reaaalllyy close to Michael (like there noses were almost touching close) and he looked so intimidating towards Michael and Blake sounded actually a bit scared when he says "Or you'll what?"
Then they just stand there for some seconds, not moving, before Jeremy says the "Get out of my way, loser" and Scott says this with so much hatred, my heart was actually hurting. Michael then just steps away and he looked sooo sad I almost cried.
MITB was absolutely amazing. Again very different than George's version but with just as much emotion and Blake's voice was sooooo beautiful, I can't!!
He sang the last "Michael in the Bathroom by himself" a bit different (can't really describe it but the note on "bath" was higher than usual? I don't know much about music sorry) and I loved loved loved that
The scene with Christine and Jeremy was so sweet. They were so unbelievably weird, I love them.
When the costumed person between them leaves, Christine pulls Jeremy across the stage by his legs and places them on top of hers (like in the promo pic) and it looked so cute!!
After that when Rich comes on and says the "I'll burn you out" I was soo sure somehow that there used to be a voiceover of his Squip but I can't find it anywhere so idk I'm confused... But it's definitely not there anymore.
Smartphone Hour. Holy shit, that was SO good. Renée Lamb's voice OMG!! Absolutely incredible.
(I just had to notice once again how much I hate the costumes in this scene... like the colours are great but what teenager wears THAT to sleep???)
The screen was so cool here again!! It obviously showed Jenna's selfie with the house (which I want printed to hang on my wall tbh) and then at the end it was full of fire that changed its colour and all of that was so fitting for the colour scheme!! The entire set design is just so incredible.
Also, Brooke is eating a banana when Chloe calls her and when she tells her about the fire Eloise just yeets it across the entire stage
They all looked like they were having so much fun!!
Back to Jeremy: For the scene with Mr Heere, Scott was switching back to total asshole mode... Internally I was like "Uhh that little shit" but yeah, great acting!!
I LOVE the pants song! It's so underappreciated!
The "You're burning incense" line got a lot of laughs
"Say it like you're in the army!"
"NO, SERGEANT, SIR!!!" *salutes*
Loved that
Pitiful Children was actually SO intimidating!! The use of the screen here and in The Play was almost overwhelming but like in a good way, I really felt the seriousness of the situation.
Again great acting skills from Scott and Stewart. Jeremy was so torn between giving in and knowing that it's wrong and the Squip really felt humanly evil at this point.
Renée Lamb's riff!! Omg! She did it very different than in the press videos but it sounded so cool!!
Also, I felt so bad for Jenna. Her "No one's ever asked me that before" really hit me.
"Michael makes an entrance!!!!!" was perfect, I love Blake!
The fight between Jeremy and Michael looked SO violent 😂 at one point towards the end Jeremy punched him and he was just lying there on the edge of the stage for some minutes and only woke up to join everyone screaming at the end.
I loved how everyone acted when they were squipped!! They were very obviously not themselves.
Especially Christine was acting very very differently. Her voice sounded completely different and you could see that Jeremy made his decision to give her the mountain dew red the second she opened her mouth.
Jake's "God I love me!" Was just really wholesome. He sounded so surprised about that.
They didn't have the "My Squip says I can go all the way to Broadway" :((( but I can live with that...
The part where the Squip “Died” was SO good!!! This was really the moment where the Squip felt very much like a human being. He was screaming and begging and sounded actually terrified. His acting here was absolutely incredible. I almost, almost felt bad for him a little.
Also, the projections were amazing, it looked like the screen shattered when the Squip died. 
Again, one thing that really bothered me: What kind of hospital doesn't have beds??? Jeremy and Rich were just sitting in wheelchairs which was fine but like... Why no bed???
I loved James' acting in this scene!!! He was a COMPLETELY different person and everyone noticed that right away. Even without the l lisp, you would have noticed simply by the way he was talking. James really did a great job with Rich!!
His "I'm totally bi now!!" Sounded so surprised and got a lot of applause.
Voices in my head is my favourite song and made me cry 😂
Christine's Squip is now Greta Thunberg!!!!
I loved how Jeremy was totally his old self again when he was talking to Christine. He was stammering and fidgeting with his hands a lot and only managed to bring out the "Bowling Alley performance art?" Because Christine kept encouraging him which was so cute. If there are somehow still people out there who think that their relationship is underdeveloped they should watch this version.
The kiss was so cute!! Miracle and Scott have amazing chemistry!
I really think that's all I have to say... It's a lot I'm sorry 😂😂😂 just had to write those thoughts down.. I hope it makes a little sense I was a bit sick in the last few days so excuse me if anything's worded in a weird way...
I loved it so so much and I'm so happy they got the well-deserved extension! I'm definitely going again sometime soon 😊😊
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[image description: a q&a for the webcomic someone always cares. full desc under the cut because its long and wordy sorry]
post chapter 3 Q&A
first - previous - next
thanks for yalls questions!! it was fun to answer! if anyone still has questions feel free to ask whenever i am always 100% down to ramble. even if i did go slightly off topic in some answers
additional: went off topic with the hair question a bit. their bright hair is all part of the transformations. regular hair dye does exist though. best way to tell is that if the eyebrow matches the hair its probably not dyed. also, quartz’s hair is naturally ginger.
also for more on ages, check out the character bios here
also was gonna keep this in the tags but thought i might as well actually try to answer it: the question i found it hardest to answer was someone the song one. my taste in music is. a mess really. ive been listening to like the same 5 songs on repeat all day. more under the cut because i was rambling again and now its uhhh half 1am
if it helps at the time of answering that specific question i had home by cavetown on repeat, and that song reminds me of both rami and lewis. but that may be because i project onto those two a lot, and as a aro trans dude. who sucks with people skills, yeah of course i love that song.
specifically the vibes of like not knowing how to communicate (rami is fine with his friends but other people are different), the lines “ Turn off your porcelain face, I can't really think right now and this place, Has too many colors, enough to drive all of us insane” idk what the porcelain face line is supposed to mean but im picturing it as like. a mask. that you need to take off and stop hiding and rami does tend to hide when hes feeling upset, and the next two lines kinda could tie into that, like the feeling of when youre overwhelemed and just want the world to stop so you just hide somewhere. also the colours could go with chapter 3 with the chromatic abberation.
also the bit with “ my eyes went dark, I don't know where, my pupils are, But I'll figure out a way to get us out of here” just kinda sums up ramis whole hero thing with his powers and all. anyway this has turned into less what songs rami would like and why this particular song reminds me of him and lewis (lewis specifically has the hair cutting/chest hiding, [big transmasc mood], and also messy haired trainwreck who doesnt know who he is yet. also the ghosts bit)
i did end up picking upbeat songs because ramis a dude who like to try and be upbeat even if things arent. even if hes not really feeling it he will pretend to.
[full description: Anonymous said to someone-always-cares: “hi ily!!! do characters like quartz who have colored hair have that naturally or did they dye it?”
“its both natural and not! while most supers can do a magical girl ish transformation, including a change in hair colour, there are some exceptions.”
theres two small full body drawings of rami, one in civilian clothes, one fully transformed.
“if a superhero were to have a biological child, the child will inherit the powers of the parent(s). however, the child will not inherit the full transfromation. they do inherit any physical transformations, but not the outfit.”
theres a drawing of a woman in blue, quartz’s mother, fully transformed, holding her mask in her hand, smiling down at a much younger quartz as a child. hes smiling back up at her with the same blue eyes, pointy ears, and blue hair, but hes still in normal clothes.
“in the case of quartz, both of hisparents had superpowers, and he inherited those powers and the physical transformations.he can also pick and mix whatphysical traits to change.“
next is a headshot of adult quartz, his face split down the middle with one side having hair and eye like his mother, the other like his father. theres a list of traits from each parents, blue hair and eyes and pointy ears from his mum, and purple hair and eyes and pointy teeth from their dad.
 “Anonymous said to someone-always-cares:  Are all the characters the same age? If not, how old are they? Are they irl friends or just superhero friends?”
theres some headshots of rami and his team lined up with ages labelled: cam is 15, rami himself is 17, lin, mateo, and dante, are all 18, and cap is 20.
“rami and xandra were somewhat friends before she got superpowers, so when, after the incident with her old team, she found rami had developed powers, xandra stuck close to him. their other teamates started off as superhero friends but soon turned into irl friends too”
theres a headshot of lewis and jade. theyre both 17
“when lewis first decided to start being a vigilante,jade quickly found him and decided to help train himand offered to be a mentor of sorts, as they both have similar powers. that quickly derailed.”
“ cinder5555 said to someone-always-cares: How long does it usually take to make a comic page? I'm curious because they're so freaking good that they must take FOREVER”
theres a drawing of myself, a fluffy hair tired bastard in a hoodie, smiling
“Thanks! Ive been doing this shit since like 2017 and i still have no idea how long it takes me. i can get a page done in a day if i have nothing else to do or if its a simple page, but if i have work then maybe 2-3 days? i spend like, most of my free time doing this.“
another drawing of me, now looking frustrated muttering “how the FUCK does time work”
“but i can never do it all on one sitting.i will inevitably get distracted and zone out daydreaming mid drawing so its very hard to get an accurate read on how long it takes. so however long a piece of string is i guess“
the only qustion not from tumblr is a discord message from RuneStone Cabin:
“Q: Can you talk about the incidence of superpowers in this world? Like many people are supers, which powers are more or less common, how long they've been a thing for, stuff like that. Also does Omen know I'd die for them “
theres a drawing of omen pointing at a date circled on a calender marked “decembuary”, theyre saying “i know. i already wrote your death in my calender.”
then a giant wall of text reading: “Supers have only existed for a relativly short time, since the early 1940s. momento mori was the second person to have ever gained powers.
Only a small number of the population are supers! the chances are higher in more populated cities, but unusally london has oneof the higher percentages of supers. while nobody in universe has any idea of the origins of superpowers, it does seem that powers are more likely to occur in people who would actually use their powers.
as for what powers are most common, after making a badly catagorized spreadsheet of every superpowered character ive made for this world (70% of which will probably never even be seen), turns out that elemental powers are the most common. although not all elemental powers manifest as the straight up 'controling this element' as seen in characters like lin or tsunami. for example, iris's powers would fall under shadow elemntal powers, but theyre a lot more weird that just controlling shadows.there are some abilities that have never been seen before,such as ressurection or full on time travel (aka anything that could bring a character back to life), but powers are certainly allowed to toe the line eg healing, powers involving undeath, immortality, pausing or manipulating time.
aside from that, anything goes. you could get plain old superstrength, but you could also get the ability to create dogs with your mind. other not quite rules, more guidelines are that supers are immune to their own powers hurting them (unless they were pushing themselves too hard), although the way the imminuties occur may be inconvinient to the super.
while some powers may be 'more powerful' than others, powers dont really get to be way underpowered or overpowered in comparision to others. sure being able to talk to animals may feel a bit useless compared to someone who can lift 4 tanks at once, but nobodys going to end up with a power like 'can turn into a goose but only once' or 'can grow toenails twice as fast' or 'if i sneeze i can change my hair colour'. at the same time, youre not going to get someone with the power to snap their fingers and level a city, or instantly blow up the moon or whatever.
“Anonymous said to someone-always-cares: I love rami PLEASE tell me his favorite song(s) and why. I will die for you”
a drawing of rami saying out loud “i dont really have any specific favourite song, really? i just listen to whatever sounds catchy and then listen to that on repeat for hours until i hate it. i guess i do like upbeat songs? ones that make you feel happy even if the lyrics are sad”
“ un1c0rnhh said to someone-always-cares: tell me,,, please,, cam,,, are they a cat person or a dog person?? ily"
theres a drawing of cam a metre away from a cat lying down. she has her arm out and is making ‘psspsspss’ noises at it. end id]
FUCK i am so glad i didnt hand write all of that, it would have been a major pain in the ass to write it all and then have to transcribe all that next. but nope i could directly copy paste the asks and word answers. cheers if anyone made it this far down. if anyone wonders why this is uploaded late, you know now.
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missholoska · 4 years
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Can we have a sequel to Undertale - Swap MH meetups where Classic Sans and Noodle, Classic Undyne and Axe, etc. (Basically the character taking their place) meet up (With the exception of Frisk and Chara ofc since you tackled those already)? I'd love to see what Papyrus would think of a version of his brother that's, you know, not lazy
absolutely you can that’s even more my jam
UT Sans & Noodle:
chill skells eating garbage food together :’>
despite the weirdness of seeing their own personality in each other and still expecting this version of their brother to start shouting and running off somewhere like they’re used to, they still end up treating each other as brothers (UT Sans being the older bro, of course).
it’s just a nice goofy hangout until UT Sans starts punning and then Noodle’s like “alright i’m out you can have him back now”
UT Papyrus & Neptune:
THE GREATEST, MOST SANSATIONAL HANGOUT OF ALL TIME
UT Papyrus is the more surprised of the two by his brother’s counterpart - a version of Sans who actually does things? incredible. meanwhile Neptune is less surprised by UT Papyrus’ usual energy since Noodle has his energetic moments too, but he’s very excited to meet a Papyrus who’s like that all the time!
UT Paps is still annoyed by the gratuitous bad puns, but clearly something would be wrong if a Sans hated puns so he can put up with it. they’d spend the time rushing around being cool dudes, sparring together and generally being good bros (again, Neptune being older) until Neptune inevitably runs out of energy and has a nap while UT Papyrus carries him. some things are universal constants.
…honestly though Neptune might be a little bewildered by the hotpants. his brother does not tend to show that much femur
“COULD I, UH. OFFER THE GREAT PAPYRUS SOME LONGER SHORTS?”“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?? MY BATTLE BODY IS A LOOK!!”
UT Alphys & Sci-Fi:
one minute the cutest geeking out together, the next a lot of intense nerd rambling about bad anime sequels and Top 10 Shows That Made You Believe In The Power Of Friendship Again
there will be no cross-universe cheating in my house but neither can deny that seeing a version of their girlfriend in glasses is adorable
Sci-Fi and UT Alphys working together would be a Scientific Dream Team and they’d create the coolest gadgets :D
“S-so, um… b-buff girls, right?”“Oh my god buff girls are great.”
UT Undyne & Axe:
meeting a strong version of her favourite little nerd is just the cutest and coolest thing to UT Undyne very relieved that this even more intense version of Undyne doesn’t have access to dangerous chemicals.
Axe isn’t surprised to see UT Undyne still uses spears (again, she’s just glad they don’t explode with poison gas on impact), but UT Undyne’s reaction to Axe’s, uh, axe? damn that’s a cool weapon
they gatecrash their friends’ other meetups just to see who can lift all of them the easiest
UT Undyne plays piano and Axe loves her anime theme songs, so they’d also have a duet where UT Undyne plays piano covers of anime openings while Axe sings the lyrics~
UT Mettaton & Swap MH Napstabot:
like I mentioned in the previous meetups ask, MTT would be so excited to meet a version of his cousin with a robot body. admiring the gadgets on their gauntlets, love this hairstyle darling, floaty legs?? and they’re monsterkind’s beloved music star? he could not be prouder.
Napstabot is much more surprised to meet Mettaton, still instinctively calling him ‘Happs’ at first but they adjust to his new name immediately. they’re still a little shyer about sharing their music compared to MTT showing off his brand, but his compliments double their self-esteem that day.
the show these two put on together would go down in the history books :’D
UT Napstablook & Swap MH Happstablook:
a very… familiar meeting for the both of them :’> it wouldn’t take long for both to start treating each other like cousins, just like when their own respective cousins were still ghosts.
a quiet hangout consisting of eating ghost sandwiches, UT Napstablook working on a new spooktune remix while Swap MH Happsta writes in his diaries, and chilling with the snails.
occasionally one of them has a moment that surprises the other by how similar they act to their robotic version they’re used to, and neither draws attention to it but it warms their ghostly souls.
I did not expect to have this many Emotions about ghost cousins help
UT Asgore & Orchid:
in a word? tense.
UT Asgore would be quietly shocked to know a version of Toriel could do the same things as him, given how against all that UT Toriel is. Orchid would be very quick to mention it was never her choice, but that anger would just as quickly turn into self-hatred knowing she’s no better than him. she’d at least acknowledge that this version of Asgore had the guts to stick to his decision.
and this meetup sounds so miserable even the characters themselves would notice, so UT Asgore would try to say something meaningful about second chances on the surface. but he’d probably word it some goofy way at the end and that’s what gets at least a hint of a smile from Orchid.
UT Toriel & Dandelion:
UT Toriel would still take issue with knowing Dandelion made the call to kill humans, but her opinion of him would definitely be more positive than how she feels about UT Asgore ahah
Dandelion would be quite glad to meet a version of Toriel whose life isn’t as consumed with grief as Orchid’s, and like the previous meeting of Toriels I think they’d end up talking about both their past and present children. also probably a mention of their respective door pals?
…I swear I was just gonna leave that last sentence without going off about Soriel but I had a thought I can’t not mention: in Swap MH’s post-pacifist Orchid and Neptune get together a few months earlier than my headcanon for when UT Toriel and Sans start dating, so if UT Toriel isn’t already with her Sans at that point then Dandelion just quietly sips his tea with his eyebrows raised knowingly at the way she talks about her skeleton friend.
“…What are you smirking at me like that for?”“Ah, nothing, don’t worry about it. }: )”
UT Flowey & Swap MH Temmie:
Swap MH Temmie probably just assumes UT Flowey is another identical Flowey from the village at first and just keeps up her act. UT Flowey is much more suspicious about this living plushie Temmie but tries to figure them out with his usual friendly facade.
if they meet post-pacifist and therefore aren’t still trying to be antagonists, maybe they’d actually talk openly? they’d both be pretty surprised to know who the other used to be, and very curious to know about how the living version of their respective human sibling is doing.
oh also, UT Temmies meeting Swap MH Floweys: a bunch of weird creatures repeatedly yelling “Howdy!” and “hOI!” over and over and calling each other their best friends. anyone witnessing this just walks away in silence. their mind will never know peace, forever confused and haunted by whatever the Heck was going on there.
UT Monster Kid & Swap MH Asriel:
I’m not sure if UT MK really knows about Asriel and the significance of seeing him alive? they might just be like “hey, you’re a kid too! you kinda look like the king and also my teacher :D”
Swap MH Asriel on the other hand - he knew Swap MH Monster Kid before their death, and wasn’t inseparably close but they were still part of his family. so he’d be a lot more sentimental about meeting them :’>
Swap MH Asriel wouldn’t tell UT MK that they died in his world though (that’s just weird), he’d simply appreciate getting to spend time with them again. they both talk about the cool adults they idolise and practice magic together.
“Hey, MK, do you wanna guess how old I am?”“Um… 10? Maybe 11?”“Close! I’m 113. :3”“???!?? YO????”
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