#I think appare's character design is ridiculously extra

[satanwritesfanfiction]

Heisenberg x f!reader || Satiated °SMUT°

Title: satiated

Rating: explicit, smut

Category: f/m

Fandom: resident evil

Relationship: heisenberg x f! Reader

Characters: heisenberg, you

Tags/ triggers: smut, oral(female receiving), fingering, p in v, restraints, metal powers

Wordcount: 3264

***

As cold as the ice and metal that surrounded the factory. He fit in perfectly here but how could you blame the man with the way he lived and how he presumably grew up. You can't force compassion and you can't build empathy but somewhere he had to possess both of these with how he allowed your presence here with that flimsy excuse of having an extra set of hands, no matter what those hands were busy with.

He had his days, however, days in which compassion showed through the cracks, where he'd find it within himself to enjoy a moment despite himself. A fleeting moment, a smile, a joke, an action. It was easily addictive, to crave those moments when the baseline in this village had been gloomy and filed under the veil of doom.

It wasn't all bad, he was good with his hands. That was evident from the intricate designs that lay scattered in the factory and he wasn't exactly shy to show off this specific trait when it came to you. Not quite in the same light as his other projects but he'd have you screaming just the same.

Your heart skipped a beat when he pulled you into his lap, back pressed against the desk and digging into something you couldn't immediately place. He sat back in his chair, hands on either side of your thighs as eyes roamed shamelessly.

"I was just thinking.." his rough voice lingered in the air, glint dancing in his eye as hey regarded you, mischief playing on his lips when they curled upward, an action that had you reeling. "I have been neglecting you."

Your brows furrowed, deciphering the clues that lingered in the air, answer punctuated by his hand slipping across your back and pulling you into his chest. This elicited a sound of surprise, fingers pressing into his chest while his lips pressed a chaste kiss to your shoulder and he breathed in your scent.

Familiar but yet still so intoxicating, the scent of you lingered, sweet on his lips with anticipation strong on his tongue. He needed you here, he needed the smell and the taste and the calm promise. 

"Isn't that right, buttercup?" the words slipped innocently with practiced precision that pulled you into a direction.

You worried your lower lip between your teeth, thrumming starting in your low abdomen to the rhythm of a drum. You looked at him, eyes glimmering under the low light and mischief apparent on his lips. He would be the death of you one way or the other but in moments like these you find yourself thinking that you might even welcome it.

You nodded your response to his question before the slight sound slipped from your lips. "Yes." the sound barely above a whisper.  It was hard keeping that contact, grey eyes lingering on you so explicitly that had you so very aware of your body, your hands, where his own hands and eyes lingered. He was so much of what you wanted and even what you needed but he also was so much more than what you were used to, covered in scars and charm alike. Larger than life, unsure of why he chose to put his attention on you in times like these but still, he did and he seemed to enjoy that fact.

"Come on, you can do a little better than that." he pressed, smile pulling at the corner of his lips as he watched you, prey in a trap that you didn't exactly want to escape.  His fingers danced across the length of your clothed thighs, the action still burning into you as if the obstruction hadn't been there at all.

"Yes, lord Heisenberg." you stated, voice still small but audible as the smile tugged at the corner of your lips. The confirmation was a little ridiculous but you enjoyed the details all the same.

He hummed as he leaned back on the metal chair. "That's my girl." he praised, slight redness peeking under the skin of your cheeks at the words. "Then I should make up for it, shouldn't I?"

His fingers slipped under your shirt, calloused fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your abdomen until he cupped your breasts, squeezing the flesh before pulling down on the material of your bra harshly. The material didn't give way easily, still covering most of your breast beneath your thin shirt but it seemed to entertain him enough when he rolled your nipple between his fingertips.

The action, albeit small, sent sparks across your nerves and straight to your core. You focused on staying still, enduring the small assault rather than immediately giving in even when your body begged to at least rock into him, anything for the smallest amount of friction where you needed it most. You bit into your bottom lip, letting the man have his fill of the small action. Neglect, you kept thinking. He'd drag this out most likely, have you screaming and squirming, on the road of insanity before he had you releasing so spectacularly. One could argue that it was another method of torture, one you would volunteer for knowing how it inevitably ends.

His fingers moved to the small of your back, soft movements as he fought with the clasp eventually using his powers to bend the small metal band, a fact which you wouldn't realize until much later.  The small piece of clothing fell down your middle, quickly discarded as the first victim to fall to the floor.

"You've been so good to me.. Haven't you?" His fingers brushed over your nipples once more. "You deserve a reward, don't you?"

You bit into your lip, so much of it never started in your comfort zone. Confessions, things dipped into confidence and self indulgence. Things you weren't versed in, things that he dragged out of you one way or the other. He thought you deserving and worth the effort it would seem. Beyond something to stick his dick into,  he wanted the participation and action, the confessions and the moments between. He wanted you, and he wanted you to know that. Furthermore, he wanted you to want that.

Your heart hammered within your chest, a slight deflated emotion you couldn't, wouldn't dissect as your voice slipped from behind your lips. Words were easy, people would say but those were not you. It felt akin to a lie in some ways, a commitment you didn't believe in wholeheartedly just to get to the motion on the other side of the question.

"Yes, lord Heisenberg." Repetition breeds belief, some could argue.

"That's my girl." his voice quickly filled the room, pleased smile placed upon his lips. "I do plan on making good on that. But first…"

He easily lifted you from your space on his lap, placing you on the desk that had begun to dig into your lower back. You accepted the action, hands grounding yourself and placed on either side of you as you waited for Heisenberg to reveal his intentions.  He quickly removed his jacket before his hands slipped up your legs and rested on your thighs, feeling a tad small under the scrutiny, your fingers curled around the edge of the desk and willed yourself not to shy away from the challenge he presented, breathed through the hammering against your chest and the rising heat as his fingers continued their path until they hooked into the waistband of your pants.

"These are unnecessary." He stated simply, roughly pulling you forward with the hold he had on the pants, smile spreading over his lips at the sight of your disposition.

His eyes left yours momentarily to undo the button, taking the piece of clothing along with your underwear from your body with the help of lifting your hips.

His fingers stretched over your now bare thighs, static lingering in its wake until he pressed into the meat of your inner thigh, pushing your legs a bit more open until he was satisfied with the presentation. You watched him as he regarded you, emotion unreadable from his features but still you watched, eyes following the movement of his hand as he pressed it to you, feather light touch that had his attention back to your face. You whimpered at the contact, small and inconsistent in his movements.

Your lips parted slightly when he pressed a digit into you, your own fingers tightening around the edge of the desk as he did. He thrusted slowly, no doubt more for the frustration and promise than for any relevant friction but still he had you on a tightrope, body rocking slightly to his hands, soft sounds breathed out.

"That's it." He hummed the praise, slow movement as he watched your body react to him, seeking out more of his touch, more of the sensation he kept from you. "So wet for me already." he pressed his thumb to your clit, but still you sought more. "Always such a good girl for me."

You ignored the feelings raging within, trying desperately to hold onto the feeling between your legs, the moment instead of fighting against the words.

"Heisenberg, please.." your voice fell softly, almost pathetically, around the room but it brought a mischievous grin to his lips, the desperation behind your movements, the call of his name. He got quite the prize when you decided to grace the factory with your presence, admittedly it was covered in blood and clinging to the last moments of life but still, a gift all the same. He could praise the stars that you had felt some sort of debt that made you stay a bit longer, could thank the forces at play that led to this situation, this moment, this allowance. You could leave in theory, but he didn't like lingering on those thoughts. He could keep you preoccupied, sated, a little wanton.

"What is it you need, buttercup?" his voice dripped, threatened to drive you insane with the layered innocence that did not fit his expression or demeanor. It was nothing you weren't used to by now, you still hated it the same. You'd think repeat offence would drive out the heat you felt every time you had to voice your need, to explicitly state the confessions. It was not so. You had yet to find comfort in it.

"Please.." you almost whimpered, you thought you might actually cry from the feeling between your legs, soft sensation that left you needy and frustrated, that brought a heat to the surface that felt almost violent in nature when he seemed so happy with himself, so calm when you felt like you were shaking. "Need more. Please, Heisenberg I-"

"Oh honey." his voice lingered, seeming almost sincere in its comforting tone but you should know better. "It's okay, I'll take good care of you." he added another finger into you, barely hitting the spot with the shallow movement but you were thankful all the same. "Don't I always take care of you, (Y/n)?"

You quickly nodded, a broken sound of confirmation slipping past your lips that you prayed he'd accept instead of pressing on the way he oh so loved. 

He sank down to his knees, looking up at you from his position as he wet his lips. You were no stranger to what it meant. Your legs spread a little wider against the desk. It was a visual oh so inviting to his eyes, compliant, ready. His eyes were explicitly on your cunt, the easy way it took his fingers, the way your body desperately rocked against his palm. All good things but something more was the taste of you, if he were to go on prior experiences.

There was a wave of a hand before the air shifted, metal curling around your thighs and keeping you secure to the desk. It was almost cruel in the loss of motion, no longer rocking into his motions, once again under his obvious control but something about it was alluring, the danger he posed while the metal didn't cut or press into you uncomfortably, the display of power that can have you so quickly forced to your knees, the sparse use of that power.

His lips pressed to your clit, a chaste kiss that supplied more sensation than you would think possible. You bit into your lower lip, worrying it between your teeth as you looked at him, attention not currently on your expression while he busied himself with sucking your clit beyond his lips while his fingers softly and casually slipped in and out of your cunt.

Your hand slipped into his hair while the other braced against the desk, face turned upwards as the sound slipped from your lips with eyes falling shut at the sensation. He knew your body by now, knew where to press and prod, knew how to drag your frustration over your skin and break it in the most obscene ways.

You looked between your legs and he was looking at you, eyes glowing with a promise on his lips. It was way too good a visual and the punctual way he then entered his fingers to draw the breath right from your chest. And then again and again, tongue slipping over your sensitive clit to push you ever closer.

You didn't offer him the warning of your impending high, but you'd wager a guess he already knew.  If not from the pitch of your cries, then the way he always seemed to know by some divine supernatural wisdom that was oddly specific in an area you would've thought was private. 

His motions didnt't stop once you came, only replacing his fingers with his mouth and taking all that you had to give, slipping a tongue that felt a little too long to be humanly possible.  Your eyes were clenched shut at the assault, waiting for the reprieve as he had his fun on your sensitive cunt, prolonging the feeling but also having the unintended aftermath of you wanting to crawl away and suck back the air into your lungs and come back down to earth from the sensitive feeling that blanketed you. 

After the assault he sat back down on the chair, dragging you towards him by your neck and pressing a sloppy kiss to your lips and immediately moving against your lips with a hunger hidden behind his teeth.  You could taste yourself on his lips, on his tongue and you could get drunk on it, on the imprint he could leave on your neck, your body. 

Your hands reached for his pants, hands fumbling with the belt buckle and finally popping open the button.  You were overjoyed when he didn't halt any action, relishing in the slight groan when you pulled his cock free from his pants.  You bit into your lip as you pumped him a few times, looking through your eyelashes when he glanced back at his face for a moment. 

The metal restraints relented when his hands slipped over your thighs and then cupped your ass, dragging you across the desk and plopping you  on his legs, cock so close to your cunt, so close to being full.  He was the picture of patience, hands only slightly pressing into your thighs. 

You lifted your hips, bringing your cunt to press against his cock, soft sound slipping past your lips as you sunk down on him, slowly taking him into your body until you were fully impaled, slightly breathless and his hands pressed a little more firmly against your skin. 

His hands chose to wander, tweaking your nipple, running up your legs, mouth pressed at the juncture between your neck and shoulders, breathing you in, sucking at the skin, teeth pressed to the skin without breaking it while you got used to his size. 

Soon you lifted your hips, relishing in the way his cock dragged against your walls and then again when you sank down, his groan pressed to your skin and hands slipping to your thighs to help with the motion as you slid up and down the length of his cock, moaning at the feel of him as you sped up. 

"That's it, (Y/n). " he breathed, watching as you drove down your body on his cock.  "Fuck yourself on my cock. "

He watched for a moment, the way your tits bounced, how he disappeared between your legs, how his cock glistened with your arousel and fuck you were perfect like that, only elevated by the way his name fell from your plump lips.

"So good for me." he murmured once again, leaning back against the chair as he took in the visage, perfection in the low light. If you had asked, he wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to let you slip away. He would never claim to be a good man, but you were content here weren't you.. You had taken him without complaint, cried out for him in ecstasy on multiple occasions.

Your warmth was intoxicating, distracting from his lingering thoughts as your tightness curled around him, squeezed him like you were made to take him, like he was made to fuck his shape into you.

You moaned, hips circling and pressing, fingers pressed to his shoulders as you bounced, chasing the feeling building in your abdomen, your face pressed to his neck, breathing him in as your hips moved, aided by his grip on your hips. His own hips thrusting up into you.

"That's a good girl." he whispered against your hair, hand slipping between your bodies to rub at your clit. "Gonna come for me, come on my cock, aren't you, gonna show me how good it feels."

You moaned at the words, head lifting to regard him, nodding at him.

"Yes.." you gasped, "Feels so good."

For a moment, it was just you and him, the soft way his eyes lingered on you, a moment where your thoughts didn't linger, where you felt him touch something within you that brought you so close to the surface and it fed into the need growing at the pit of your stomach, into the coil tightening and hammering closer with each drag of his cock and flick of his wrist.

You came unceremoniously with a cry of his name, face pressed into the crook of his neck and fingers digging into his flesh as your body experienced a range of emotion in a fraction of a second. Heisenberg lacked the finesse to allow the soft moment, to allow the comedown as he felt your walls clench down on him, gripping your hips and fucking up into you as he chased his own high, ignoring your sensitivity for a moment and enjoying the way your body shook in spite of it. An array of praises fell from his lips in the moments that passed until he stilled with a deep groan.

His grip felt almost bruising as his cock twitched inside of you, painting your walls with his seed. He didn't pull out immediately, hand running through your hair softly as you laid against him, comfortably in his warmth. It wasn't the first time he felt a renewed sense of protectiveness at the sight.

His hand ran soothing circles into the skin of your back as he allowed a moment of silence, of contemplation while you caught your breath, a few soft moments before he cleaned you up, put you softly to your bed and had to leave you despite the need in him to slip under the covers with you.

#satanwritesfanfiction #pwp #smut #heisenberg #karl heisenberg #re8 heisenberg #resident evil heisenberg #lord heisenberg #heisenberg x reader

[comicaurora]

Had a thought about how to prevent power creep, but it's a trick I've only seen used in video game series and I don't know how well it would apply to a TV show or book series.

In the Ys Chronicles (which apparently has nine games? Their numbering system is confusing), the protagonist goes through a new set of weapons every game from a rusty sword to some form of Ultimate Weapon - a different one every game - and then he gives up/loses that fancy weapon when the threat is abolished, allowing him to start the next game with beginner-level weapons. The most recent game actually called out that this kept happening, so whatever you think is happening to his best weapons, there's canon support (if I remember right, most of the games had him just leaving the weapons in the care of the people he'd just saved; two of the games had the Ultimate Weapons linked in some way to the threat he had to defeat, so upon defeating it the weapon vanished). This works for the protagonist because of how his character is designed - he's not a warrior, he's an adventurer, and he doesn't really have need for those extraordinary weapons except under similarly extraordinary circumstances (at which point the circumstances are usually handing him a weapon anyway).

Similarly, Legend of Zelda has the Master Sword only being used at the end of the games that have it, and then Link puts it back after the battle is over. Theory there is that the Master Sword is too powerful a weapon to just use willy-nilly against common enemies, so it's exclusively a Final Boss weapon (even the part where Link has to keep earning the right to use it over and over makes sense, because technically it's a different Link every game).

First thought for why more writers don't do this is that it also requires them to figure out a logical reason why the protagonist would keep giving up his best weapons - and if they go the Ys Chronicles route of a different Best Weapon every arc, why the protagonist can't just go get the old Best Weapon from the previous arc without retroactively nerfing it. But wouldn't the extra work be worth it to avoid the problems of power creep?

The funny thing is, a variant of this trope is actually quite common for exactly that reason. Purposefully putting the weapon on the shelf or locking it away is the rarer version because it can be harder to justify, but breaking the weapon or having it get weakened or cursed somehow is a very popular solution. Some stories will have powerful weapons with serious drawbacks that mean our heroes only pull them out as a last resort - like how they handled the Helm of Fate on Young Justice, a powerful artifact that had a nasty habit of permanently possessing the wearer. Other stories will wait til the very end to introduce the weapon that does significant damage - the zelda games typically use the Bow of Light this way.

Breaking or nerfing weapons is a lot more popular, mostly because an iconic weapon getting wrecked is (a) fixable and (b) a serious "oh fuck" moment. It immediately kicks off a "fixing the weapon" sidequest, and while it's being fixed your heroes are conveniently depowered and vulnerable. You can even stretch this out after the weapon is repaired, if there's some sort of learning curve to it or the weapon's been weakened or reset to factory defaults by the reforging process. They did this a couple times in Inuyasha - the sword gets busted and reforged a couple seasons in, and for a few episodes after it gets fixed it's ridiculously heavy for plot-based but still vaguely contrived reasons. It doesn't break again, but it does start accumulating a big pile of powerups, some of which make it very difficult to use until our hero gets the hang of them, like an energy-absorbing move that makes the sword get really hot.

The problem with giving your heroes really massive threats to face is you need a way for the heroes to actually deal with that threat, and giving them a weapon or upgrade that lets them handle it is a popular solution because it's much less complicated than figuring out a plan to solve it with the meager tools they already have, and it's less contrived than just letting them win even if they're logically way too underpowered. The problem is after the big scary final battle they needed the upgrade or weapon for, if you want to continue the story, you need to account for the season-ending upgrade. The solutions are simple:

Take the toy away. It can't be a problem if the heroes don't have it. This is the category that covers your example - the heroes sealing the weapon away or returning it to the care of the gods or whatever basically means they don't have it. This category also includes the option of breaking the weapon, having the villain do some villain magic on it to seal it away or make it unusable, or otherwise put it on a high shelf where the heroes can't get to it. This works and avoids power creep, but can feel like cheating. Especially if the heroes just hide the weapon somewhere, why can't they just go get it back when things get hairy again? And if it's confiscated by Higher Powers, that can feel barely a step removed from the hand of the author saying "you can't have this because it'd make things way too easy for you."

Give the toy a drawback. The heroes get to keep the toy, but using it has a new challenge. The simplest way to handle this is to make it exhaust the wielder - if it's powered by life force or just vague "energy" you can have your protagonist dramatically tip over whenever you want to make it clear they can't rely on this one trick too much. Using the fancy season-ending weapon often comes with a cost. Superpowered evil sides and sentient malevolent weaponry fall into this category for self-evident reasons. If it's a special technique the hero figured out rather than a new physical weapon, maybe the hero doesn't know how to do it perfectly yet and just got it right the first time out of dumb luck or heroic willpower - overusing it now hits them with all the nasty side effects and they need to build up to mastering it through a good old-fashioned training arc. Or maybe using the new toy exacerbates some kind of weakness. There are a million ways to do this, and it has some serious advantages over the first option - for one thing, it doesn't feel like cheating. The heroes don't lose the toy, they just need to decide if it's worth the cost - meaning the heroes retain their agency. You can get a lot of mileage out of making a character desperate enough to pull out the nuclear option, and if it doesn't immediately solve the problem you can get more drama out of the character facing the consequences of overusing the toy while still dealing with the unsolved crisis. Very inconvenient when your ultimate hero keels over mid-fight from trying and failing to oneshot the villain of the week.

Make the new threat something the toy can't solve. This is difficult and varies from situation to situation. Some of these season-enders basically just have the special ability "hit it really hard," and in combat-oriented media it can be very difficult to come up with a bad guy that this doesn't work on. Elemental immunities can only get you so far, and the last thing you want is internal inconsistencies - your villain shouldn't be vulnerable to only this specific flavor of blunt force trauma, it'll make it impossible for the audience to gauge the actual threat level of the fight. But there are ways to make this work! For a very basic example, say your heroes are fighting some kind of evil demon in the first arc, and the season-ending weapon is a big shiny holy sword they smite it with. Then suppose in the second arc the threat is an evil angel. That holy sword won't do a whole lot! While this solution is workable, this is where power creep comes from. Obviously the heroes are going to need a way to beat this new threat, and if they're building up an arsenal of problem-solving tools, after a while to keep making new credible threats the writer is going to need to either get very contrived or ridiculously overpowered with them.

Making narrative threats a convincing challenge for your heroes is a complicated process, but in my experience it's good to give the heroes agency in whatever influences their power level, whether that's seeking out training, weighing the pros and cons of dangerous upgrades or actively choosing to seal a powerful weapon away for everyone's good.

#asks #writing stuff

[theizzifromosaka]

Time for another one of these mini reviews! Today I've got someone a bit unusual

Maple / Honjo Kaede (Bofuri)

full title - Bofuri: I don't want to get hurt, so I'll max out my defense

Now you might be thinking "hey why are you talking about this girl? There's nothing monstrous about her" and you'd actually be right. There's nothing unusual about this young Japanese girl discovering her love for MMOs. Let me explain.

As the full title suggests when Maple first started playing NewWorld Online she decides to invest completely in defense. Her IRL friend who was supposed to be guiding her through got grounded last minute so she had to make several uninformed decisions early on, that due to the poor foresight of amateur game developers end up working unexpectedly in her favor.

Early in she's coasting by on the fact that her massive defense stat makes her impervious to damage, however after an update nerfs defense she finds herself needing to rely on alternative strategies.

Her friend, no longer grounded, helps her get some game sense, and the two begin taking on bosses, which drop unique loot and grant abilities to the first players who beat them. This MMO is explicitly poorly designed, and the whole series is partially self aware about its own ridiculousness.

So how do monster girls play into this? Well the developers of the game might not be particularly good at balancing but they are incredibly ambitious. Pretty soon the abilities Maple stumbles into are full-on form changes, ranging from an angelic form that lets her take damage in place of her party to a mech form that gives her massive offense potential.

The one I'm particularly interested in is her Atrocity form, which transforms her into one of the game's bosses.

Despite her drastic form change she still acts the same, which makes her preferred method of attack particularly strange (she eats other players). What must that be like? The NerveGear-like console they play this game on simulates taste and touch, how far does this extend? This form also has an extra pair of limbs she can control independently, how does that feel?

I suppose this show's light-hearted tone mean asking such questions is kinda pointless, and the form only gets used two or three times in the first season. Still it's a great form, sorta Xenomorph-esque with the juxtaposition of her personality clashing with her appearance being fun.

This show's premise make it sound like it's gonna be low stakes SAO with fights more akin to Gimmicky Isekais , but the show makes it apparent pretty quick that the stakes here are so low this is just a cleverly disguised slice of life moe anime. Maple's got no ambitions to become the best player or the top guild, she's just here to have fun.

Whenever I talked about this anime with my friends I'd refer to this series as "Shuckle Waifu", cuz at least early on that's really what this was, right down to the use of Toxic to stall out opponents. Gimmicky Isekais are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine so this show was up my alley, and like most of those shows the protag here eventually ends up so overpowered the initial gimmick doesn't matter anymore. I've only watched season 1 so far and despite enjoying it I have no plans to watch season 2 at the moment.

By the way if you're like me that Vending Machine Isekai is surprisingly clever, 9 episodes in and he's still just a vending machine.

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#monster girls #Monster Girl Reviews #bofuri #demon

[rf-times]

What’s wrong with pride and prejudice 😭? I’m not a fan or being defensive btw , I watched the movie and didn’t see the hype but I’m just curious about your opinion

It's a dumbed down version of the book with not just nuance removed but also basic character information and coherence, and just a lot of really annoying oversights:

In the book, the Bennet sisters are really well designed and balanced out to highlight each others' qualities. Jane and Elizabeth are kind and witty and beautiful, while Lydia and Kitty are unkind and irresponsible, and plain Mary tries to be witty but is instead unkind and sanctimonious. It also shows us a very interesting family dynamic where it is constantly implied how bad of a father Mr Bennet is, not bothering to raise his last three daughters, or do anything to solve their impending financial disaster upon his death. It also adds complexity to Mrs Bennet who being a stereotype of the ideal Regency woman also acts very pragmatically in her focus on her daughters' marriage with little support from her husband. This complexity is destroyed in the 2005 movie where Mary's character is obliterated and she just becomes a quiet beautiful girl, Wright also ruins Jane's and Elizabeth's relationship because he apparently felt the novel made their happy, confiding sisterhood "too syrupy".

All of the actors give such an exaggerated performance, there's no subtlety anywhere and it destroys and hides the crisp comedy and drama that Austen has already put in her writing. Mrs Bennet is an over the top character, but in the film everyone is shrieking and behaving ridiculously for no real reason as if they're afraid the audience won't understand the stakes otherwise. Characters dumbly congregate together to eavesdrop in a very sitcom-esque way.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh deciding to appear in the middle of the night, despite this being against her character and all social customs, safety and common sense, not advancing the plot of the film at all but somebody probably thought it was more dramatic.

The costumes were shit, at one point Caroline Bingley wears what's essentially a tank top dress and people had these like cotton headbands, the extras were downright laughable in the ball scenes.

It's really muddy and they made the Bennets too poor, living in a barnyard with no table manners, again because they couldn't trust the audience to understand what comparatively less wealthy upper middle class people would look like.

It just got rid of so much of Austen's wit and for what? I think most people who watched this version and loved it hadn't seen the far better 1995 mini series or read the book before.

[inthelittlegenny]

someone's character design tier list came on my dash, and it was the opposite of mine basically. i loved seeing characters i don't like be high on someone's list; and i wanted to make one

character rambles under the cut

(Not ordered within tiers)

S

Diamant: Everyone loves him. He looks so cool. Look at him.

Panette: Apparently controversial. I love her design and I don't know why. You would assume she'd be down with Hortensia and Marnie, but I just love her?? idk.

Ivy: Look at her. The circle thing? The spikes? Navy with bright pink? It's just cool.

Zelkov: Tired and edgy.

A

Chloe: Design grew on me because she was my mvp, initially I was indifferent but I like that little hair tie on the side of her head.

Alcryst: He's soo good. My boy. Don't really like the collar, but otherwise honorary S. Is A because, I prefer the S tier designs, even though I love his. (Does that make sense?)

Lapis: Boring, I admit. And you'd think her colour would be blue. But she grew on me too, S supported her because she was someone I didn't anticipate liking. She became my girl.

Citrinne: She looks cool.

Merrin: She looks damn cool.

Fogado: Looks fun, too many feathery bits but I'm always a sucker for that archer strap thing.

Pandreo: I like it, but also no. Like, I could see myself liking his design but I have to use him a bit before I commit. But, I do like it?

Kagetsu: Good, solid.

Roasdo: Grew to like.

Anna: Hate the fact that she's a child. But the design is cool.

Zephia: Edgy. Extra. Maybe a tad too much, but yeah.

Griss: What a guy. Looks crazy. Is crazy.

Mauvier: I like his design. Suits him. Sometimes a chunky armour just hits the spot.

B

fAlear: I got used to it. Don't really like it, but with everyone else, it isn't actually too bad.

Vander: Standard Jagen. Like the beard.

Clanne: Eh. A little too young/nerdy for me? Also, can't look at him and not think Deku.

Alfred: Grew to like him. Still a tad too silly. (Prefer Dimitri as a princely design, and obviously they are comparitable.)

Boucheron: Head is too small for his body.

Etie: I like the colours. I like the bow motif for her muscle-obsessed personality. I don't like the colours and bow/frills together.

Louis: Face annoys me. Too much hair.

Amber: Too close to a mullet; so no.

Goldmary: Suits her. Too smug.

Yunaka: Love her personality. She just looks 12 with prominent boobs. Uncomfortable. Otherwise, I quite like the outfit (Again, minus boob cut)

Lumera: Eh. Would prefer she look older.

Veyle: Wish it was toned down a tad. But it's alright. She reminds me of togekiss... don't know why.

C

mAlear: Hate the trousers. Hate the fringe gap.

Framme: I hate the hair. And the hat is too modern (I changed everyone's somniel looks because they look modern).

Celine: She grew on me. But still. The hair and skirt combo is ridiculous.

Timerra: Spheres :/

Seadall: Close to loving him. Just the headband/hair kills me. It's like he's hiding a giant forehead. Just remove the headband, maybe put his hair in a ponytail, or make it short. Then, so good.

D

Jade: Again, so close to loving it. But I hate her short side hair pieces so much. I can't ignore them, they ruined her.

Bunet: I want to slap him.

Hortensia: Suits her. I love and hate it. Just, clown vibes. (And I don't even hate clowns)

Marni: Just too bratty. Which, I get is her. But oh my god, ew, the design. Also, wavy hair and a straight fringe? Kinda annoying.

#this was fun to make/ramble #fe #fe17 #genny rambles

[ben-talks-art]

Thoughts on Across The Spider-Verse

(this might be a long post, I tend to ramble)

Finally got a chance to see the freaking movie and finally got a chance to put my thoughts in order to be able to put into words how I feel about it... I think.

I was really excited about this one, from the trailers, from the word of mouth, from my feelings towards the first movie, everything was pointing out to this just being a really solid movie, and without going into spoilers... It is!

I don't think it's a perfect flawless movie, but I feel it's a case where the stuff that is good is so so good that it just vastly outshines any problem it might have.

I liked the action, the story, the characters, the visuals, the humor, this is basically what I wanted, more Into the Spider-Verse. Everything that was good about the first movie is still good here but taken a few extra steps further to make it feel like an evolution of the original and not just a copy and paste.

This isn't just "oh, because they made it bigger, therefore they made it better", no they just made it better and it just happens to be bigger than the first.

Across The Spider-Verse is just a really good movie. Highly recommend it, and I recommend it going into it as blind as possible. All the trailers for this do a terrible job of showing the best scenes of the movie and this might take away some of the impact when watching it yourself so try to avoid them if you can.

Now, onto the spoilers...

First, a brief summary in case anyone is reading this without having seen the movie (for some reason):

The movie basically can be split into two halves. The first half is about Miles and his friends dealing with the new villain, The Spot, while also establishing where each character is emotionally and in maturity, probably in case any viewer didn't see the first movie.

The second half is about Miles finding out about the spider society and learning why everyone was so skeptical about letting him enter it, and when he does find out the reason, it leads to the big chase scene we saw in the trailers, and building up to a cliffhanger that will work as a segway to Across The Spider-Verse.

I first wanna talk about the problems I had cause they are rather minor stuff and I wanna get it out of the way as soon as possible.

The first one I had is Miles' plot armor during the second half of the movie. As I said, we have this giant epic chase scene where every single Spider-Person in the world is trying to capture Miles... And every single one of them fails.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Miles and I think he is a very capable and skilled superhero who's very in control of his powers... But this is just ridiculous.

Spider-Man is one of the few characters who have abilities specifically designed for capturing others, and not a single one of these guys managed to grab a kid who's only been in this line of work for a few years?

Maybe if they had established that his spider-sense is better than theirs, or if they had shown that some of the other members were aiding him, but no, apparently Miles is just THAT good, even though in the last movie he could barely handle the Kingpin alone.

Like, seriously, a lot of the chase early on is the kid just outrunning the other spiders, and one of them is a freaking car!

This does make Miles look impressive, but it also makes the spider society look a little incompetent, so I personally think it could have been handled better.

The second thing that bothered me a little, and this might be a little hard to explain, was the dialogue.

I don't know why but some of the ways certain lines segway into another doesn't feel right.

It feels like there are things that the writers wanted to have the characters saying, but the way they flow into having the characters actually saying it felt clunky to me.

Like for example, at the end of the movie there is a scene of Gwen is saying goodbye to Miles's parents and she just starts saying "Miles taught me that anything is possible!" and I'm just like "Did the parents ever say they didn't believe everything was possible?"

There's another one in the big climax of the film when Miles is going through the Terminal Velocity level of Sonic Colors and he makes a quick comment about Miguel having claws, and that leads to a few weird exchange of lines that segway into Miles making a big speech about who he is... and then he suddenly stops the speech.

Another scene has Peter telling Miles that trying to run away from the society is crazy and out of nowhere Peter just goes "I feel bad!" and just completely shifts the direction of the conversation to be about how much Peter likes Miles.

One scene early on has Gwen asking Miguel who he is and he goes "it's classified" and then seconds later he just starts telling her anyway for no reason.

I don't know, this is probably just a "me" thing, but there are a few moments where it feels like some sentence were missing or that they were trying to force the conversation to go in a direction that didn't feel all that natural to me because they wanted to reach that big epic trailer-worthy line.

This doesn't kill the movie or anything, mostly because the emotion of the dialogue still manages to come across, and again, I doubt many if any person besides me will feel that way, so just view this as a nitpick.

Now for the stuff I like...

First obvious thing are the visuals.

This movie feels as if you were following several artists' accounts on Instagram or Twitter and someone somehow smashed all their pieces of art together into one continuous story.

Every scene is a beautiful work of art full of detail, charm, and personality. I just love looking at basically everything, the characters, the backgrounds, the action scenes, it all looks so cool!

The action in particular I feel is a vast improvement over Into The Spider-Verse. I like the first movie a lot but I always felt that the action scenes, while looking good, were often not that memorable.

Like I remember who fights who in that movie, but I can never remember what exactly they do during these fights.

In here though, I totally do!

I remember exactly how each of the fights against The Spot go, how the big chase scene goes, how the confrontation of Miles vs Miguel went, even the initial fight against the Italian Vulture, I feel like that fight alone was better than most of the action we see in Into The Spider-Verse.

The fights in here are much more enjoyable to watch and follow and they also feel a lot cleaner. Even though there is a lot of stuff going on at times I never got confused at what was happening and on what to focus.

I also love how well they capture the essence of "Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" by making Miles and the people of Brooklyn being super chill with one another.

There is a scene I really like where he's riding a train to go to a party and everyone is just okay with that. Spider-Man is just a casual part of the city in this movie, a part of the big family that is this community.

It reminds me of the scene in Amazing Spider-Man 2 where it looks like the people of New York are just friends with Spidey.

I don't know if it's realistic (never been to Brooklyn) but it is charming.

They make the people of Brooklyn seem so likable. They make everyone seem likable in this movie honestly.

It was funny following social media and seeing people commenting on the movie and all the posts that were like "Character X stole the show!" and each post basically had a different character that they were referring to.

Everyone here feels like they could be someone's favorite character. Kinda like how in the X-Men movies where everyone loves Quicksilver the most, or in Civil War where they felt Black Panther was the highlight, here it's like each character could be the scene-stealer because they each have so much personality, so much presence, so much depth. I just love all these people.

I wanna sit down a chat or just hang out with any of these characters, even the villain, he seems like he would be fun to talk to.

And the reason for that is because everyone here is doing something that I don't see often in other movies, something I don't even see often in the real world.

These people all feel like they are actually trying to understand each other.

They actually talk to one another and they actually are trying to listen to one another. They aren't just acting on impulse and being irrational, they all are like "I know where you're coming from, but this is where I am coming from, and where I'm coming from simply doesn't match with what you are trying to support."

There is even a scene where Miles' dad gets angry at him precisely because Miles just refuses to let him know where he's coming from with his actions. He wants to understand his son, but his son won't let him.

This is my favorite form of drama, when you have people with different interesting ideologies butting heads with one another. It doesn't matter if you agree with one side or the other, it just matters that you can see where each one is coming from.

The main conflict between Miguel and Miles is legit really interesting. On one side you have an adult that doesn't trust in chance and always expects that the worse might happen and therefore likes to take precautions to avoid this worst from ever happening.

And another side we have this teen who thinks he can do anything if just given a chance. Both are clashing their definitions of what it means to have power and responsibility.

Is it more responsible to do everything in your power to prevent something bad, or is it more responsible to just accept something bad will happen and do as much damage control as possible?

How much do you think you can achieve with what you have? When is the right time to say "I can't do this, I'm not good enough to handle this"?

This is the purest way of showing the difference between kids and adults. Kids always think there is a way whereas adults always think something might go wrong.

And this is being shown with a kid that challenged expectations and an adult that comes from the future, so it makes the message work even better to show the clash of dream vs reality.

Sadly the story ends on a cliffhanger so we never saw what direction the story leans on... But I kinda like that because it gives viewers time to think about it themselves and form their own conclusions before see what conclusions the writers arrive at.

Btw, I freaking love Miguel in this movie. I love his design of a dark blue suit with glowy red symbols with some sort of sketchy lines sticking out of his shoulders, I love his plasma webs and vampire claws, his wide torso combined with how he keeps running with his hands making him look like an animal, all that while still being basically the smarted guy in the room.

The way they manage to mix him being so sophisticated, so advanced, but also so savage-like with the way he moves and fights was just awesome. It's like Beast from X-Men or Goliath from Gargoyles. A nice combination of raw aggressive power while still having a lot of humanity.

I like how he isn't just being a jerk to Miles for no reason, he actually takes the time to try to get him to understand where he's coming from and why he's so serious about it. He's not just "the grumpy boss" he's just someone who's carrying a big burden with him and is trying as hard as he can to avoid seeing that burden repeated by others.

I think he was my favorite character in the movie.

Also really liked Spider-Punk. He's one of these characters who's just living in their own little world and trying to get everyone around him to accept how he works instead of trying to adapt to the environment he's in.

I was a little skeptical because Miles kept acting antagonistic towards him due to jealousy but what I enjoyed was that not only did Punk not care about that, he actually seemed to really like Miles because he feels like a personification of his beliefs of not being what people tell you to be.

How many times do we see that? The other guy in a "love triangle" (if you can even call it that) being super supportive of the first guy? It's so refreshing!

I should also probably talk about The Spot.

While I like the idea of taking a "villain of the week" (take a shot every time they use that term in the movie) and slowly turning him into a big threat, I wish his reason for hating Miles was a little more direct.

He hates him because he blew up the collider that was tearing apart dimensions and mutated his body... Except the collider was created by Doctor Octopus at the command of the Kingpin, so shouldn't Spot be angry at them as well, or even more?

I actually would have liked more if his motivation was just trying to show he's a big villain and is angry at Miles for doing the usual Spider-Man banter... Which to be fair, seems to be what they were going for the most. Spot seems more annoyed at Miles for not taking him seriously than angry at him for "ruining his life", and I kinda prefer it that way. It's a nice commentary on whether or not Spider-Man's jokes during fights might be more damaging than he expected.

When he does act as a villain, he's actually really cool

They get very creative with his black portal abilities and allow for, as I mentioned before, some very fun and memorable fight scenes.

And what's most important, he does look like he's having fun being the bad guy. He loves giving these big epic speeches, growing his powers, and causing chaos while beating up all the spider-team.

But he also still remains a very dorky dude, like when he has a small banter with the Spider-Man from India and seems worried about looking racist... Like... The guy is causing destruction and putting people's lives in danger, but he draws the line on looking like he's offending a specific culture? How can you not love that?

It reminds me of that comic where Joker gets offended after finding out he's working with a Nazi. Just how exactly do the morals of supervillains work??

Overall, he was a ton of fun.

Very creative powers and a very likable personality that allowed to some nice hero/villain banter.

Very much looking forward to seeing where they go with him. Are they gonna try to cure his body? Try to appeal to his forgiveness? Just axe him? Or what? We shall see.

Then we have the cliffhanger where we meet Miles Prowler... Which kinda makes me think of miles per hour like Tails from Sonic and thus making this badass character sound a lot sillier than he is.

The twist that the hero ends up meeting an evil alternate dimension version of himself wasn't really that surprising to be honest, but it still managed to get me hyped.

I wanna see what these two will talk about, I wanna see how their ideologies clash with one another, I wanna see how their different or maybe similar personalities are showcased in their fighting styles, I wanna see how both of them react to what they could have been, or to what they might one day be. There is a lot you can do with that setup.

Miles Prowler himself also has a really cool design. The first thing that came to my mind was that he looked like one of the early unused designs for comic Miles by Sara Pichelli.

I'm actually sad that this wasn't the official Miles look. I love braided hair.

You can tell from his few lines that he's just gonna be the biggest prick in the universe, and he knows that, and he doesn't care. It's gonna be fun to see him playing off of Miles. I just hope he doesn't end up stealing The Spot's moment in the sun. It would suck if people came out of the movie and were like "Yeah, Spot was fine... But that evil Miles though, damn!"

I hope this is like Puss In Boots 2 where each antagonist gets a fair amount of appreciation. The Spot would probably be the Jack Horner of the movie while evil Miles is The Wolf. Miguel can be Goldilocks. Just gotta give him a story arc where he realizes all he needed was the family he already had all along.

I don't have much to say about the whole "cannon events" or the whole "Miles is an anomaly" thing just yet. I think I'll need more time to think about it.

But I will say this, I'm not a fan of the idea that heroes need to face tragedy to become heroes as if tragedy was a good thing that should be promoted.

In another post, I went into more detail on this but basically, I wish stories would try to show that heroes are made not by their tragedies but by something else that makes them strong enough to overcome their tragedies.

So I hope this is the angle they choose to explore in the next movie. I would be really disappointed if the end result is just "Miles' dad needed to die for the greater good", I don't feel this is a very healthy message to send. I know that loss and pain are a part of life but they shouldn't be the thing that defines who someone is.

I guess that's about it.

Loved the movie. Glad I finally watched it. Some things I wish could have been done differently, but there is so much good stuff in it that it hardly bothers me, stuff that I probably wouldn't have thought about it myself.

Looking forward to Beyond The Spider-Verse!

Also, who's this blue armor spider lady? I want a comic about her. She looks awesome.

#spider man #spider man across the spider verse #miles morales #Youtube

[sk3tch404]

Hoooh boy you're definitely not gonna be prepared for what Nonny and the Schneidermann's are wearing then, because Jesus Christ me and my friend truly went "the only people who would love you are the ones with more or equally atrocious fashion styles" with that one out of the way, let's start tame with Y/N because I forgot a key characteristic of hers :)

-Nothing much to say about Y/N, Beige stop that reveals her midriff and light blue shorts, BIG RED CLOWNSHOES WITH HEELS, also the thing I forgot was that she literally does not have a face and has to manually apply waterproof makeup so that she looks like a normal person everyday. The game starts off with her make up routine actually lmao I think it wasn't much of a problem for her, because most of her face was hidden thanks to her bangs anyway, but she still enjoys doing it

-Here comes our favourite Hackerman meow meow, so like, his outfits that I described before? Still pretty accurate, Mans got Black hoodie, though I think he has grey sweatpants instead of black pants, oh and also he's got BIG PINK BALLERINA SHOES WHOSE STRAPS GO O N T O P OF HIS SWEATPANTS AND END AT HIS LOWER THIGHS O_O I didn't describe them last time, partly because I totally forgot he had them until I saw his traditional character sheet and partly because I didn't see them in the game, since his sprite cuts off right above where the shoe straps end. So yeah, do with that information what you will. Also he had a straight up Lenny face at first, no eyecolor, just ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Also also he wasn't 7 feet 8, he was 9' 2" O_O .

Extra quotes we wrote on his sheet: "giiirl, get back inda BASEMENT" "Are u lost, babeygrill?" "He's got NO lips!" "He's never gonna get a kiss kiss very UGLY!" "No kiss for him"

-J. Schneidermann (because writing his full name would clutter this already long ask oof) so, pink cap with a heart on it uwu. Straight up rainbow dash hair, except short, no face because he anime blushed too hard (he actually has one, unlike Y/N but we just didn't draw it) a long sleeved shirt that's various shades of blue and INTENSE shoulder spike (not horizontally, they go vertically up to his ears) green saggy ass pants that approximately reach his ankles and have GUTSCHI written on it (makes him look like a fucked up hamster ngl) lots of chains on his wrists and pants, ears are pierced, and the most notable detail, he has mismatched shoes that he shares with his cousin, one red high heel and one... black boot or black sneaker I can't tell. He's also smoking a red vape in the pic and has a gold chocker

-B. Schneidermann, black fluffy hair that apparently also covering his face because we didn't draw him one either (rip Schneidermann face enjoyers) mirroring his cousins general outfit, except we can actually see the divide between his legs with the red loose pants he's wearing, rainbow long sleeved shirt, I think he was also supposed to have the ridiculous shoulder spikes but they look more like a high collared cape that's reaaaaaaaally short instead, 1 gold bracelet on each of his wrists and smoking a golden vape too, wears the other part of the mismatched shoe pair. He's also holding a banana and a hotdog (I think it's a hotdog at least) also wears a silver choker

Btw if you're wondering what the hell is up with the Schneidermann shoes, it's inspired by another thing we had to do in German period, be basically got a story from a newspaper that we had to retell in another way, the story we got was "Asian man steals peoples left shoes" like, specifically only the left one, which reminds me that Kim Hojungseo would be shoe thief considering that we drew a shit ton of shoes on his sheet lmao.

Extra writing on Hojungseo's sheet: "I only listen to REAL music!" "Save the fucking turtles b-baka! ùwú" "how can mirrors be real, when our eyes aren't?" "Crying on the inside"

I think I'll probably yassify part of their designs, not too much tho, oughta stay true to their OG vibe after all 😔✊ also this felt like a My Immortal chapter with these lengthy character descriptions, still kinda feel that I don't do em justice, they rlly are the kinda character designs that you simply need to ✨experience✨for yourself to truly understand. Also sorry for clogging up your asks you can tell me when to stop just sayin :,)

-Ren'py anon

Wow.

What an

Experience.

I do need these game files ASAP.

Why are the swedish cousins ESPECIALLY ugly 😭😭😭 a golden vape too??? Bro is living the life. WHY DID YOU GIVE THE WORST AND BEST CHARACTER THE HYPEBEAST AESTHETIC??? HELP

I HONESTLY DONT KNOW WHICH IS WHICH ANYMORE

YOU AND UR FRIENDS GAVE NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS A CHANCE TO BREATHE. YALL REALLY WENT, "Let's give them as much as icks as we can."

The genderfluid aroace urge to accept stoner swedish cousin and hacker nonny for who and whatever the hell they are is strong,

but I have standards I must stick to 💔

The pants on Stoner swedish cousin are questionable to say the least, but hey, at least the got them chains 😎 although his hair is a 🚫off

Hair is a BIG PART of attraction for me so 💀

In another world, he would've looked like that blonde boy from 6teen that was voiced by Chris Mcleans VA

Hacker nonny. Hacker NONNYYYYYYYY MY BOY

At this point, there is only friendship, listening to his funky ass one liners yall wrote, going to his bad private home ballet practices and kicking the back of his knees. Being over 6'8 is an ICKKKKKKKK

I'm 5'5 so, baby this ain't gon work </3

Y/n is awesome. I love how their hair conceals so much of their face, but they just do paint it on anyway. Taking no eyes Y/n to the next level I see 😎

Tbh Y/n and stoner swedish cousin are the only love interests to me now. Y/n should be able to say, "Yeah, humans are fucking FREAKS. I'm the hottest one here tbh." AND GO ON WITH THEIR DAY AS PER USUAL.

Y/n gotta go shoe shopping b4 hand bc WOOOO BOY those clowns shoes ain't it.

Koreaboo bf cousin can go fuck himself bc I hate how he's affiliated with 'Kim hojeongso' or whatever the fuck his name was.

And its okay renpy anon! Send in whenever you'd like! Even though it takes a little while to read through everything and try to include most of everything, I dont mind it all that much!

Thank you for being even comfortable enough to talk about your personal creation with me like this! I enjoy everything you have brought to the table and I'm excited if you have more. Thanks so much Renpy nonnie <33 ilysm

#renpy anon game #yandere #hacker nonny #stoner swedish cousin #kim hojeongso #more like kim kyle jackson #OMGGGGGG I FUCKING HATE HIM #IM GONNA NEED A PUNCH OPTION BC I CANT STAND HIM #THAT GOES FOR HIS SWEDISH BF TOO #stoner cousin and stay <3 #Y/n is a baddie ngl #slay queen #😍😍😍 #DONT LET THESE WEIRD ASS HUMANS PULL U DOWN BITCH #YOU A REAL MF!!!

[nofive]

Season 3 - Spoilers Ahead

The first half of the season is canon. I have no issue with it. Where I diverge begins with another one of Five’s wild goose chases. This goose chase leads him to the Commission in a paradox free room, learning that he is apparently the founder of the Commission.

No where in Five’s timeline does this make logical sense. Five is not the founder. The comics indicate that Five was experimented on heavily, as a natural time traveler it only seems right to protect the one person who has the potential to reverse and undo paradoxes and other issues. While he does build the paradox room, or at least designs it he is not the founder. That is absolutely ridiculous. Five would not create an agency that experiments on himself. His timeline is all sorts of weird, as we know because he’s a time traveler.

Five did not need to go find himself, sure he may have needed to go to the Commission, but he did not need to find what happened from his past self. All that his past self gave him, were things he could have found elsewhere, and he did find them elsewhere. Five has never expressed wanting to be immortal, or cheat death, until this season, and he still does not want this. However being faced with his own death effects him deeply. He sees himself going on his biggest fear, outliving his family again. That is why he asks to be in the room alone.

Five’s actions afterwords are pretty canon. I do believe that his memories of the night he got shitfaced were altered based on what he remembers, what he then re-remembers, and what his siblings remember. The speech he gives is different in his memory than in what his siblings say about it.

When they are in Oblivion Five does not lose his arm as that does absolutely nothing for his character or plot. It is simply foreshadowing the loss of the umbrella tattoo. But in terms of actual plot furtherance it does literally nothing except create a shock factor and gore factor.

The mothers, Five and Luther are twins. I don’t know who the extra woman is, probably the Handler’s mother if I am honest with you as Harlen saw the Handler and Lila. But Five and Luther are twins, thus they share the same mother.

Now as much as I love Pogo, and Five riding on a motorcycle, that whole sideplot was pointless. So much of Five’s plots are him being separated from his siblings for no reason. Five has a photographic memory as we saw in the last episode. He can describe things in incredible detail. There was no need to tattoo him. There was no need to find Pogo. I know they half wanted it to be like the comics, but that relationship in the comics is very different. I think Five still goes to Pogo, he explains what he saw Pogo recognizes it they have their chat, and Pogo shows Five the drawings which he immediately memorizes.

I should also say, Five falling for the illusion is way shorter than what we see. He accepted a long time ago that she was no real. It is still a sore spot for him obviously as we see in the season with him getting onto people for making fun of her. So that is what caught him off guard long enough to get hit. But it was not near as long as the show shows, and he doesn’t unfortunately speak to her in Italian.

Other than these few instances the rest of the season is pretty much canon.

#tw: tua spoilers #verse: season 3 #so its just slightly au #i keep most things but alter it so it fits a narrative a bit better #i just hated some unnecessary stuff with five

[thepenguininspace]

Binged all of appare-ranman yesterday ;;

#I think appare's character design is ridiculously extra #i love it #appare ranman #appare sorano #kosame isshiki #fanart #my art #i cant wait for season 2 ahhhdhsfkjhd #anime art

[elendiliel]

Last but by no means least of Lightning Squadron is Spark, technical expert and provider of much-needed sarcasm.

Description

Assigned at the last minute to the Republic’s prototype stealth ship, Spark’s technical skills eventually led to him being reassigned to Lightning Squadron. As well as being a gifted slicer and expert on any kind of mechanical system, his tendency to speak his mind whenever appropriate - and often when inappropriate - proves extremely valuable to his young and initially inexperienced commander.

Author’s Notes

Again, Spark is a canon character, but only has one appearance - “Cat and Mouse”, in Season 2 of The Clone Wars. I decided to follow up on his subsequent career, letting his character develop itself along the way. He’s probably the hardest to characterise fully rather than resorting to stereotyping, but I’ll get there - I hope.

Design Notes

This one was more complicated than I expected... Given Spark’s low screen-time, I wasn’t surprised to find no references I liked on Google, and instead went back to the episode, taking a photograph of the screen at an appropriate point. Unfortunately there was quite a lot of shadow in the shot I chose (necessitating learning to use the brightness and contrast filters; yes, that’s how new I am to this), so I had to improvise for his left shoulder bell (I’d call it a pauldron, but apparently here that’s reserved for ARC troopers’ ridiculous extra shoulder guards), plackart (abdomen plate) and belt, extrapolating from other shots. I think it worked, more or less. Choosing the colours was also an adventure; my first few attempts turned out a lot more blue than I liked, and even this is much lighter than I remembered. Fortunately, as this is Spark as a shiny I didn’t have to tidy up his armour, as I did for the others.

#star wars #the clone wars #clone trooper spark #spark #fanart

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 11 first part

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Goodness)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Okay! This episode is a real slice of healthy family dynamics, not triggering in any way. [Uh if this is your first Restless Rewatch: that is sarcasm, dear readers]

Goodbye to You, Goodbye to Everything We Knew

Nie Huaisang asks why Meng Yao has to leave and Meng Yao says "I killed a guy without permission, so your brother fired me." 

Ha ha ha ha no he doesn't. But he does give Nie Huaisang a sweet, sad smile; he seems touched by NHS's distress. 

Meng Yao carefully removes Nie Huaisang's hands from his shoulders and bows to him, wordlessly signaling the change in their relationship from intimate friends to formal strangers, while Nie Huaisang looks crushed. 

They will return to intimate friendship in the future, but falsely. Meng Yao believes that truly loving a person can include destroying their family and using them as an instrument in your murder plots as long as you don't directly harm them.  Nie Huaisang eventually learns to use people just as brutally, but he doesn't lie to himself about what he's doing. This farewell may be the last harmless moment between these friends. 

Jiang Cheng is distressed by what's going on, while Wei Wuxian crosses his arms and watches, fully in Sherlock Holmes mode, instead of his more usual concerned-for-my-friend mode. This may signal mistrust of Meng Yao, who refused his initial attempt at friendship, and not in a sexy, slice-your-face-off way.  Or it may mean that he's reserving judgement on a complicated family situation. He maintains his uncharacteristic reserve through the entire encounter. 

(more behind the cut!)

Nie Huaisang runs in and asks his brother WTF happened. Nie Mingjue says "he killed my subordinate without permission, when he knows perfectly well power must flow from the ruler; it's like he didn't even read that Foucault book I gave him."

Ha ha ha actually he just yells at his brother, as if NHS doesn’t have his own relationship with Meng Yao after being wonder twink powers with him for probably a couple of years now. NHS has to sit and process his loss and confusion in silence.

As a younger sibling who would make friends with my older siblings' girlfriends and then lose those friends if they broke up, for reasons having nothing to do with why I liked their girlfriends, I super feel Nie Huaisang's pain here.

OTOH, older siblings are entitled to have break ups and not explain themselves to anyone besides their lover because that's the nature of intimacy. The moral is, uhh...don't have a family curse that makes you unreasonably angry. 

Jiang Cheng steps up to advocate for Meng Yao, because Meng Yao is injured, and because Jiang Cheng is actually a born leader who knows better than to throw away a useful subordinate. For example, even when Wei Wuxian is at his drunkest and most defiant, Jiang Cheng tries to reform him, not kick him out, only drawing the line at having unpopular zombie friends.

Wei Wuxian continues to keep his mouth shut, waiting for Nie Mingjue to calm down, and speaking only about the tactical situation. He clearly knows there's more to this story but he's pretty good at keeping his head down in a family ruckus, and we're about to learn why.

Yunmeng Town

The Yunmeng bros go home to Lotus Pier, where they are greeted in town with bows, smiles, and free stuff.

We've mostly been seeing them in their roles within the cultivation community, where Jiang Cheng is grumpy and anxious, and Wei Wuxian is sassy and iconoclastic. Here among common people, they are both charming, friendly, and polite, like the imaginary good kind of gentry.

They hear the news from a local lotus seller that the small clans are coming to the Jiang Clan for shelter, but that otherwise everything's ok, which doesn't sound like everything is ok at all. He gives Wei Wuxian a giant bag of lotuses for his sister to make soup from.

Home to Lotus Pier

All the disciples practicing in the courtyard at Lotus Pier are excited to see them, and one girl goes running to tell Jiang Yanli. Thanks to the admittedly beautiful design of Lotus Pier, she is running for a long time.

A long, long time. Getting around on all these insane walkways must be a real drag if you're not the flying sort of cultivator.

Discipline and Punish

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian immediately go and kneel while they wait for their official punishment. Jiang Cheng is kinda worried about the punishment and Wei Wuxian is like, I'm good at being punished, just let me do it. 

Much later, and for a really long fucking time

He also tries to get Jiang Cheng to stop being mad, even giving him skritches while he says they should be brothers after they die.

Which they will, as it happens, although Jiang Cheng after the Wen torture is only mostly golden-core dead, while WWX dies for real.

When Jiang Fengmian shows up Jiang Cheng starts to explain that they were with Lan Wangji, but Wei Wuxian hushes him; he is still keeping the secret of the Yin Iron. Although he's keeping it in exactly the manner that a teenager keeps their weed stash secret: immediately tell literally every teen friend about it, but keep it extra secret from everybody's parents. 

Happy Families Are All Alike

Now we get to meet Yu Ziyuan, who is generally styled Madame Yu but who I'm going to call by her name just as if she was a male character. More on that concept in a minute. She rolls up looking, smelling, feeling like a million yuan, with her two murder bitches in tow.

Her marriage is an unhappy one, and her husband does his best to avoid her and avoid conflict, lying to the kids that she's tired and then sending her away later with the same line about being tired, which is a particularly gendered kind of gaslighting. She is obviously not tired, other than being tired of Jiang Fengmian's shit.

I'm not going to say she's the worst mother ever, because parenthood in a feudal society entails a wide range of skills, many of which she has in abundance. She starts off with a relatively tender greeting to Jiang Cheng, tuning up his always-amazing sartorial style, which is exactly like her own. They are all ready for the mommy & me fashion show.

That said, she dishes out hellacious verbal abuse to everyone in her family. She targets each one in turn, making Wei Wuxian the focus of most of her ire, but without ever directly speaking to him. He is not, in her view, part of her family. 

The Stages of Family Dinner

1. Try to fix it and defuse the situation

2. Yeah no

3. Just keep your head down and be glad it’s not your turn in the hot seat

This family meal hammers home how much Wei Wuxian is not, actually, part of the family. Jiang Fengmian adopted him into the clan, and told A-Cheng and A-Yi to treat him as a sibling, but he didn't give him the Jiang name, and he didn't get his wife's approval. He also doesn’t expect him to dress like any other clan member, apparently. 

Compare this to how Lan Wangji, actual good parent, fully integrates his own adopted son into his clan and family, starting with giving him the Lan surname.  

The hits just keep coming as she goes after Jiang Cheng for being less gifted than Wei Wuxian, Yanli for performing labor for Wei Wuxian, and Jiang Fengmian for possibly begetting Wei Wuxian.

On first watching this scene I took her question "Is this how you raise someone else's son?" to mean that she thought Jiang Fengmian was being too nice to a kid who was actually an outsider, taking resources away from the real kids. But on rewatching, it's pretty clear that she's saying his favoring Wei Wuxian is evidence that Wei Wuxian is NOT someone else's son; that he's Jiang Fengmian's bastard. 

Jiang Fengmian doesn't say a thing to this, or to her mentioning WWX’s mother. This shit is why WWX is running around in the world desperate for any crumb of info he can get about his Mom; he hears about her all the goddamn time at home, but only as insults to her character.  

A Bitch is Not Wrong

Here's the thing, though; a lot of what Yu Ziyuan says is correct. 

Jiang Fengmian should be a lot more concerned about the danger to the children, and should not leave it up to the kids to decide who's going to bear that danger.

Yanli does a lot of food=love, which is ok in the right doses, but causes her to pretty extremely lose face during the whole "soup for Jin Zixuan" debacle. And her doting on Wei Wuxian is...kinda excessive. I mean, yeah, she’s more like a mom than a sister to him, but still. Running out onto an active battlefield to look for him, frex, will be a skosh too much. 

I have a dictionary too, mom

Jiang Cheng, as the future clan leader, shouldn't let his attachments affect his decision making, and should let Wei Wuxian, who's the superior cultivator, fend for himself more often. We love Jiang Cheng for those moments where he puts himself in harm's way to protect his loved ones, but it's not a good strategy. He constantly yells at Wei Wuxian for the exact same thing he does all the time himself; he just limits who he does it for.

After she roasts the shit out of everyone for these failings, she leaves, and everyone sits around being miserable and not talking about what just happened. 

Not to be gender studies-y on main but: the awful things she says to her children are really not very different from the things that Jiang Cheng says to Jin Ling, although her targeting is more adept. JC also says a lot of mean things to WWX when he’s angry. When a man says cruel or insulting things, it's often presented as real love hidden under a rough exterior. When a woman does it, she's a monster.

If you enjoy this sort of interaction you should definitely have a look at Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the plays of Eugene O'Neill.

Road Runner

Oh thank god, moving on

Lan Wangji is headed back to Cloud Recesses, and gets ambushed by the roadside with the most ridiculous trap this side of Wile E. Coyote.

Wen Chao thinks the "rug over a hole" trap is a good idea for someone who can literally fly.

Lan Wangji doesn't faff about with sword riding, he just fucking goes up in the air and stays there until he is good goddamn ready to come down. A hole in the sidewalk is really not going to be a problem for him. 

Wen Zhuliu does get in one kick before Lan Wanji yeets backwards away from him, in a moment that's scarier on rewatching, now that I know what Wen Zhuliu is capable of.

Wen Chao talks some smack to Lan Wangji, hilariously complaining about "your patronizing tone" to a man who has literally never spoken a word to him, IIRC, and certainly isn't speaking now. Maybe it's a mistranslation and should be "attitude," or maybe Wen Chao is just that dumb.

Apparently Wei Wuxian made a stack of talismans for Lan Wangji to take on the road with him. This talisman is a twin to the one Lan Wangji brings out way, way later in Yunping, when Wei Wuxian says "you even have kept it until now." Missing scene alert! What else did he make for him?

In Yunping this talisman is used to distract some random harmless street bullies. Here it is used against a seven-man murder squad.

This works.

Assault on Cloud Recesses

Forgettable disciple #1, Su She, comes rushing in to tell Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen that Cloud Recesses is under attack.

I'm pretty sure these dudes already know it, because they are meditating extra hard with a buttload of incense, and Lan Qiren is about to cough up some blood. So I think they're trying to hold the ward, rather than just, like, chilling while their disciples get stabbed.

Cloud Recesses is super on fire, you guys; it's going to totally burn to the ground; look at that conflagration, oh the humanity, etc.

Lan Qiren Rises to the Occasion

Ok, I like to rag on Failmaster Qiren and he is definitely an authoritarian dick a whole lot of the time, but in this scene he is fucking amazing.

He starts off worrying about Lan Wangji, not just out of affection but out of strategic planning, probably in equal parts. All three of these Lans take their clan responsibilities extremely seriously.

Then he calmly assesses the situation while imperturbable Lan Xichen freaks the fuck out. 

Lan Xichen is right to be alarmed, because he knows his uncle, he knows one of them is likely to die, and he knows that Lan Qiren will choose to take the hit.

I love, love, love Lan Qiren's physicality here; how centered and assured he is, as he holds his nephew steady and explains what is required of both of them.

Lan Xichen knows Lan Qiren is right. He is utterly fucking devastated, and all he can do to show his love...

...is to obey. 

This whole scene just. kills me.

Su She and forgettable disciple #2 are in the room for this whole conversation, and they join Lan Xichen in this deep bow. Note: I will be reminding everyone of this fact in Part 2.

Whew. This episode is a LOT. Part 2 Coming Soon!

Writing Prompt: What other goodies did Wei Wuxian put in Lan Wangji's care package before Lan Wangji hit the road without saying goodbye?

Soundtrack: 1. Michelle Branch, Goodbye to You 2. Ludacris, Stand Up

#fytheuntamed #the untamed #the untamed gifs #wei wuxian #yu ziyuan #lan qiren #restless rewatch the untamed #the untamed spoilers #lan xichen #canary3d-original #my gifs #the untamed meta

[luminisvii]

RATING! ALL! THE CHAR CLONES!

i love char and gundam loves him too so because i am BORED i'm gonna rate all characters that the wiki tells me qualifies as a char clone!

many of these men will be rated on aesthetics and their wiki blurb alone since i have not watched all gundams

i tried to include pics but it SAID i can only use ten. WHAT? how am i supposed to rate how sexy they are?

Char Aznable

the man. the myth. the legend. i love him so much. hes super fucking hot bc of how bad he is. like an absolute madlad he goes around destroying the zabis and giving amuro hell. hes so good that despite being on team evil he regularly tops popularity polls and is widely regarded as being super attractive. im asexual but i agree. char is supreme. he and his red mobile suits cannot be topped. 20/10

Quattro Bajeena

now, char might be evil, but this guy is totally a stand up dude who is definitely not char. and the hyaku shiki? top tier. also very sexy. maybe char should take a lesson or two from this lovely man. 18/10 could not possibly be char himself

Glemy Toto

i have not watched ZZ. this dude upholds the tradition of stupid ass names in gundam. he just kinda look like hes a good person, though, which would be nice, but i prefer the evil men here. 6/10 love the idiotic name

Afranche Char

apparently a literal char clone. don't give a fuck. 1/10

Carozzo Ronah/Iron Mask

this guy really takes the mask thing seriously. i have also not watched F91. i love the just robot lookin mask and the purple color scheme. 8/10

Anavel Gato

this guy is kind of a chump. i get the feeling i'm supposed to find gato very cool, but all i could see was a total loser pushover as long as it was in the name of zeon. although to be fair, he was basically one of the most enjoyable characters in the mess that is stardust memory. 7/10 too much of a zeon apologist

Chronicle Asher

i called gato a chump but this guy looks like a tool. hes got the mask! i know nothing about victory gundam but this guy looks like, okay. 5/10

Schwarz Bruder

im ignoring the other guy listed with him on the wiki bc Herr Bruder is in fact, awesome. he isn't on team evil like some others, but he doesn't need to be. hes a JESTER NINJA. what's not to love? somehow, despite me thinking i knew the twist that was coming, he was still full of surprises. you cannot possibly predict the actual twist here. he really teaches domon how to get shit done. 15/10 absolutely sublime take on the trope

Zechs Marquise

not only is he voiced by takehito koyasu, but he chars so hard he chars three times as fast! we LOVE his dedication to being a char clone. i will never forget how treize challenged him to a fair fight and he was just like nah lmao. you go you stinky man! 10/10 for char-ing hard

Lancerow Dawell and Jamil Neate

i am fascinated by after war X and i'll watch it one day. it seems like the wiki is confused about these two and is going with very surface level details for these two being char clones. however i'll rate them both higher bc i think mr. neate's sideburns and glasses are just top tier character design. 9/10

Harry Ord

10/10

Rau le Creuset

i think i saw him in the like three episodes of SEED i watched. he definitely looks the part. seems kinda lame though. 6/10

Athrun Zala

this kid is hilarious, and also the most likable character i met in SEED, and he even has a quattro phase as he goes by alex dino! we'll give him points for effort. 9/10 you tried

Neo Roanoke

definitely not mu la flaga. hes also voiced by takehito koyasu. his mask looks kinda dumb, but i think the long hair look upgrades my man mu. takehito koyasu makes everything sexier. 8/10 bc i also simp for dio brando

Rey Za Burrel

how many char clones does the SEEDverse have? i do appreciate rey's early 2000s brooding anime boy look, though. 5/10

Gilbert Durandal

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY SEED CHARS!!! this guy doesn't even look like a char clone, but he has the same voice actor and also apparently tries to drop shit on earth. we stan a king, honestly. 6/10 being in SEED deducts points

Hal Vizardt and Vladi Zarth

the wiki wont even give me a picture of these guys. 2/10 they get a point each

Ali Al-Saachez

i hate this guy. he sucks. normally i would find such endless villainy entertaining, but ali simply cannot work it in a way that's fun to watch or even in a way where you're like 'he's got a point.' he just sucks and i wish he could have been funny. we already have a char clone in graham anyway, so why are you here? bitch. 0/10 i was waiting for him to die

Graham Aker

he has all the tropes of being a char clone, and i loved him at first bc of his flair for drama and poetry, but alas! he got more and more sidelined for a different motherfucker. it's okay graham, i still love you! your mr. bushido phase was hilarious! 9/10 you deserved so much more

Full Frontal

hes getting points for the hilarious name but thats it. he is otherwise very boring. you cannot make me love a man just bc he is a literal char clone. 3/10

Zeheart Galette

AGE is also on my "deeply fascinated" list. eventually, eventually. i kinda dig this one's look. 7/10

Tatsuya Yuuki

initially, i hated yuuki bc i thought he was beating on middle schoolers for fun, but then i learned the dude is so goddamn passionate about gundam that he HAS to share it with others and honestly? king shit. while he's technically a char clone, i think he's actually a graham aker clone. the dude stans 00. an admirable position to be in. i love yuuki so much and hes my favorite build fighters character. 15/10 i will always respect the meijin

Captain Mask

the name is hilarious. hes got a cool mask too. i'll maybe watch recon one day bc of how ridiculous the reputation is. 8/10

Lady Kawaguchi

the rare female one, and proves that the kawaguchi name requires you to be extra as fuck. compared to yuuki's raw passion, she's cool and knows it, and doesn't need to flex. sadly doesn't get to do a lot. 10/10

McGillis Fareed

MCGILLIS MY BELOVED!!!! perhaps the only char clone that matters. this dude brings back the classic level of backstabbing, the supreme attractiveness, and in general, being an awful person. but i can't help but feel for the guy. he was trying his goddamn hardest to overturn a fucked up system. he also simply could not fathom having friends. mcgillis might only do the mask thing for a little and also wears a wig (McWiggis) but i forgive him, because the moves he does in bael are truly sexy. i adore mcgillis i have to rate him high but he cannot overtake the classic. 19/10 would let him betray me

Kyoya Kujo

even the wiki doesn't seem confident in this one. i like his look though. hes kinda got some gentle eyes, so i will assume he's the more quattro flavor of things. 6/10

Masaki Shido

BRUHHHH HE LOOKS LIKE A KNIGHT. 10/10

Honorable Mentions:

Master Asia

i didn't think he truly qualified as a char clone. he hits the villain thing and technically has some ideals aligned with char ? but he's a little too different. lacks majority of the archetype tropes. i still love him though 9/10

Vidar

hes got a mask and wants revenge. definitely not gaelio. the problem is, we already have mcgillis in IBO. i just don't register gaelio as being a char clone, because mcgillis is out here being the worst. gaelio is a wonderful character in his own right for all the opposite reasons that mcgillis is fantastic for being the worst. 10/10 i want nothing but the best for him

Ulube Ishikawa

just bc he has a mask covering half his face and is evil doesn't mean he's a char clone, wiki! and how dare you take away from schwarz just to be like "well ulube has a mask" WE HAVE ONE ALREADY!!! i also hate ulube. he is not a particularly charismatic character, but he isn't supposed to be. 2/10

and thus is my arbitrary ranking of the char clones. some people think char clones are bad. i for one, love them! i hope future entries have more masked men.

#luminiscore

[writerofthespiral]

Kane's Court Analysis #1 - Phule

Author’s Note: I don’t know if I’ll make this a full series or not, but I really just thought that the Armada court, and Phule by that extension, was interesting, especially read from a historical and psychological standpoint. Yes, I'm a nerd.

Word Count: 4,205

Tw: Mentions of Mental Illness

Kane’s Court Analysis - Phule

I. Introduction

A lot can be said about Kane’s court and the machines he built to achieve his grandiose ideas of a perfect world, but more can be said about the cogs in his system. Phule is a broken cog — one that stepped out of line, helped us, and saved the day. He’s someone to be cautious of, love, or fear. There's a certain complexity about him that, when put into perspective, adds a fresh layer to Phule.

II. Behind the Design

When talking about a character in any game, film, or media space, it’s important to tackle the significance of their design. Oftentimes, a person can tell a lot about someone from their looks, which is especially true for the Armada Elites. Phule, for example, is obviously based on a court jester, but it’s not all jokes and laughs.

The Meaning Of The Mask

When talking about Phule’s appearance — or any of the Armada Elite’s — it’s important to understand that they’re mainly based on the Venetian Carnival, the Commedia dell’Arte, and Greek theatre (with hints of Roman influence). Phule’s mask is based on four different masks: The Joker Mask, Comedy & Tragedy, the Pantalone Mask, and the Arlecchino Mask.

The most straight-forward element about Phule is the Jester Mask, seeing as he is a jester. Simply put, "The Joker or Jolly Venetian Masks depict the role of the Jester in the Italian Middle Ages...The Jesters... wore brightly colored clothing in a motley pattern and they were known for their incessant laughter" (Venetian Mask Company). The Jester Mask represents someone who is colorful and entertaining to his audience. It's a universally known mask meant to be taken at face value, just like Phule, until one looks at the other key components of his mask.

When looking at Phule, one sees the famous Comedy & Tragedy Mask associated with theatre and the extremes between euphoria and sorrow. But what most don't know is that the mask has a long, rich history associated with emotions and the human psyche. According to The Greek Designers, "The Comedy mask is known as Thalia, who in Greek mythology is the Muse of Comedy and Idyllic Poetry, portrayed as a happy, cheerful young woman crowned with ivy" (The Greek Designers). The Tragedy mask, in turn, is known as Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, who's depicted with the mask in one hand and a knife or club in the other.

The historical significance fails to stop there. "People often relate the masks to Dionysus originally. Dionysus is the Greek God of wine. The masks depict the happy and sad emotions that drinking wine can bring. They have also been linked to the Greek God Janus which is known as the two-faced god of beginnings. It is said Janus lent the name to the masks" (OnStage Blog). This detail is important, because Dionysus and Janus are both significant Gods. Commonly known as the God of wine and ecstasy, Dionysus was the God of madness. And as the God of madness, he was often a symbol of liberation and rebellion for the lower class and marginalized of Greek society — namely slaves. Then, there’s Janus, known as the two-faced Roman God, representing the transition between war and peace, and beginnings and endings.

In addition to this two-faced mask, Phule's mask has hints of the Pantalone Mask. The Pantalone Mask's features include: an exaggerated nose, cheekbones, eyebrows, and a mustache. The Pantalone Mask is the best-known Venetian Masks. It arose from the La Commedia dell’ Arte character, Pantalone, who was one of the most powerful characters. But, the mask itself was created before the Commedia dell’Arte theatre began to use it.

The character of Pantalone is described as “An old Venetian merchant, often very rich and highly esteemed by the nobility, Pantalone is originally known simply by his formal title, Magnifico. A self-made man, he has reached his wealth with ruthless tactics and keeps his money close to him" (The Venetian Mask). He is rich, greedy, lustful, and naïve. Pantalone is, “gullible enough for being taken advantage of from his “servant lovers” or male subordinates: servants, doctors, captains, whoever can get money out of him" (Roberto Delpiano).” His lust also leads to him being rejected by the women he pursues, making him an enemy of the youth.

Applying the Pantalone Mask to Phule, it’s easy to see why he and the Pirate — for the majority of the game — were enemies seeing as Pantalone is a natural enemy to the young. However, it also implies that he was taken advantage of by those around him and was a laughing stock. And, of course, his willingness to save himself and betray his father to save himself is 'selfish' in nature — more on that later.

The last mask, of course, is the Arlecchino Mask (which also inspires Phule's general get-up). More commonly known as the Harlequin Mask, the wearer serves a similar purpose to the Jester, which evolved over time. According to one article:

"As one of the lower ranking, lazier, and stupider servants, he [Arlecchino] is often abused by being yelled at or beaten (with slapstick stage combat) by his masters and others or never paid his wages. Yet he does have a certain luck and can be clever enough to grab hold of any seemingly fortunate situation that happens upon him. He might not think up a plan on his own but he can come up with some amazingly complicated and absurd explanations and rationalizations. Later period harlequins were more prone to become clever tricksters and rascally tramps while still often being foolish or stupid" (Commedia Dell'Arte).

On top of being a tragic figure for the entertainment of others, Arlecchino is said to have demonic origins. “One of the demons in the XXIst, XXIInd and XXIIIrd cantos of Dante’s Inferno is, indeed, called Alichino. The name itself seems to be related to the Old French word for “ghost”, i.e. hellequin, which, in turn, comes from the Germanic root for “hell”. Starting from Dante’s Inferno, this demon would therefore develop into a comic character" (CA’ MACANA). In a way, this gives one some insight into Phule not being a monster, but a tormented soul.

What It Means To Be A Court Jester

One can’t analyze Phule without talking about what he is — a court jester. But his role is no laughing matter. In fact, in a historical context, Kingisle did a decent job in portraying him.

To understand fools, it’s important to understand the three different types of fools: the innocent fool (or natural fool), the amateur fool, and the professional jester (or licensed fool). A natural fool was someone with physical or mental deformities that made it hard for them to receive employment as anything else. Typically, “wealthy or noble families also adopted men and women who had mental illnesses or physical deformities, keeping them almost as pets for their amusement or as an act of ‘Christian charity’”(History extra).

A licensed fool, on the other hand, could best be described as someone hired for their wits and talents, normally wearing regular clothes. Lastly, there were Amatuer fools — they usually wore the jester costume we’re associated with. In any case, “..those with physical deformities, such as extreme hunchback, malformed limbs, particularly ugly visages, etc. were prized, as were dwarves…” (TodayIFoundOut). Taking this into account, and the brazen nature of Valencia, it’s apparent Phule served as both a natural fool and a licensed fool, possibly serving as entertainment for King Casimir. But seeing as court jesters had duties other than entertainment, Phule served Kane very differently.

Although we didn’t see the entertainment-based responsibilities of Phule, we, as players, did see part of his militaristic responsibilities. That’s right — court jesters served important roles to their lord during times of war. In fact, they were political advisors. “Because they had no real fear of reprisal, jesters were able to speak their mind and offer advice when others may have feared to give it” (WeirdHistory). Kings and Queens would often go to them for advice on political matters and choices they’d made. On top of that, Court Jesters were expected to be the bearers of bad news for their lords, having to utilize their wit and comedy to tactfully deliver unsavory messages.

In addition to delivering messages to their lords, jesters would also deliver messages to their enemies during times of war. They were theoretically protected, but there were some that would shoot the messenger — from imprisonment to execution. In addition to their messenger duties, jesters would entertain the King’s troops during times of war to raise their morale.

On top of that, they were also masters of mental warfare as well. Some jesters would ride on the front lines, spewing insults at the enemy. They rode in front of troops to make sure the opponent could hear them. And while this may seem ridiculous, "...the idea was for the jester to provoke those enemies who had explosive tempers into breaking ranks and charging prematurely" (Weird History).

Phule did his job, and did it well, despite his apparent shortcomings. He got under our Pirate’s skin by claiming that he could hear our heartbeat, and lead his own squadron of soldiers. He’s just as threatening when we next see him captured in Fort Elena, albeit much friendlier. And of course, he still manages to affect the Pirate, though he has little time on screen, by causing us a few inconveniences.

He may not have been Spymaster, but he was effective in implanting fear and paranoia in his enemies. Take, for example, the Villa Trigante instance in which the Pirate is — presumably —betrayed and sent to the cellars by Don Giovanni. One of the resistance fighters we face, Beniccio Amati, is quick to say: "You're persistent. I'd expect no less... From Phule's spies…” (P101). And although we aren’t one of Phule’s spies, it makes one wonder: Just how many times has this happened?

In addition to his competence, we can presume Phule is powerful. He’s clearly akin to a Witchdoctor, but we don’t know much else about him. We have, however, seen the results of a battle with him. He cleared a path for the Pirate to enter The Machine, in which, there are plenty of Armada soldiers strewn about. It’s possible that his abilities manifested themselves similarly to Bishop’s use of electricity, that he had some mojo capabilities comparable to Kane (meaning that he could possibly teleport), or that he is wholly chaotic and mojo-based like the Player (if they're a Witchdoctor). If the latter is true, it plays into what Phule said about being destroyed due to being imperfect, especially since the Armada banned hoodoo within their sphere of influence. In any case, it is interesting to see how so much can be told from Phule’s character design alone, but there's still more to explore.

III. Character Analysis

Kingisle put a lot of thought into what type of character Phule would be. According to his Rouge’s Gallery video, Phule “seems to operate purely out of whimsy and caprice” (KI) and “speaks in two different voices, shifting back and forth between twin personalities who are as antagonistic toward each other as they are to any enemy…” (KI). Phule isn’t all there, but make no mistake: he is very capable of doing what he does. The video goes on further to elaborate “that Phule shifts allegiances faster and more often than any other court member”(Ki), which makes sense with how his relationship with the Pirate turns out — which will be touched on later — and gives the player a basic idea of who Phule is, though there is more to analyze.

Our Meetings With Phule

Besides a few outside sources, most of what we know about Phule comes from the three times we see him: Granchia, Fort Elina, and at The Machine (with the exception of the Villa Trigante Cellar), in which a lot more can be observed.

When we first meet Phule in the Granchia Catacombs, the Pirate sees him leading a small squadron of soldiers. It is here that we first meet the two sides of Phule (whom I will refer to as Comedy and Tragedy).

Comedy is a mix between welcoming, eccentric, and mischievous. In one breath he says “Don’t bother trying to hide, I can hear your heartbeat” (P101), yet he also claims to want to let us go. Furthermore, he calls the Pirate resourceful, saying that, “you’d be quite a thorn in the side of Deacon, Bishop, or Kane himself…” (P101). Meanwhile, it is Tragedy that orders his captains to attack us, calling for our surrender.

What's interesting about this first meeting, upon reflection, is that Comedy seems to think about helping us. I’m not suggesting that one side of Phule is ‘good’ and the other is ‘evil’, but that Tragedy seems more inclined to be protective of whatever is in Phule’s best interests. Comedy, on the other hand, is Phule’s desires. This may be why the two sides often disagree. One side thinks we’d be useful in his desired goals while the other does what needs to be done.

When the Pirate discovers Phule in Fort Elena, their interaction is short, but something to note: Phule slightly warms up to the Pirate. Tragedy is still hostile, but comes off as though he was attempting to keep up a facade. Comedy, of course, is the opposite, going so far as to ask us about why we weren’t in Cool Ranch messing with Deacon. In fact, Comedy gives us a well done, because “...[you’ve] become quite the thorn after all” (P101), then tells us to run along with our quest.

And then, there’s the final time we see Phule — right before the machine. Instead of arguing, both sides of Phule are working together for a common goal: to oppose Kane. Both sides of Phule were waiting for us at the machine, both of them told us Kane’s plan, and both agreed to give the Pirate the Key.

And why does he do this? Phule is able to recognize that he isn’t perfect as Kane would say, in his own words. As Comedy it’s, “I've grown fond of this world, and would hate to see it destroyed. I've also grown fond of you. But most of all? I'm just curious to see what will happen" (P101). And after Tragedy sends his regards to Kane, this is the last we see of Phule.

Another thing of note, is when Gazpaccio calls Phule a tormented soul, which begs the question: Does Kane see Phule in the same light he sees Gazpaccio? More than likely, yes, which may have influenced the way he treated the Clockwork. Another thing — how well Gazpaccio and Phule knew each other? Sadly, there’s not much to work with to answer this question.

In any case, these events reveal the type of person Phule is: part of him is chaotic and wants freedom, the other side of him is objective, if not spiteful. Together, the two sides of Phule make a being that is neither wholly good, nor bad, but certainly eccentric, which begs the question: What is Phule to us, the Pirate?

Friend Or Foe?

Although it’s safe to say that Phule is on friendly terms, he and the Pirate aren’t exactly friends. He did betray Kane, but had ulterior motives of his own. And while it appears he’s been contemplating his betrayal for some time, there have also been times when he’s antagonized the Pirate. We also know that he’s a jack-of-all-trades with experience in espionage, being a general, and an admiral. And referring back to the Rouge’s Gallery, “the most paranoid Valencian intriguers wonder if Phule’s antics aren’t just a clever act, hiding a method behind the madness” (KI).

The thing is, we may never truly know if we can or cannot trust Phule. While he may not be our friend per se, our goals aligned, and it's been established that Phule’s alliances don't often last long. He may laugh and revel in the failure of his fellow court members, but he isn't there to like us. In fact, we may serve as a form of entertainment to him, because Phule did watch us instead of fighting by our side (which he clearly showed himself capable of doing). But, it's unlikely he’s going to show up as a foe in the future, and it would be a surprise if that were the case. It’s more likely that Phule simply disappeared somewhere, and the player may never know what happened to him.

The State of Phule’s Mind

Before ending this section, it’s critical to talk about Phule in terms of his light and dark side. While in the game, he is described as eccentric or insane, it’s clear that Phule is mentally ill by our standards. And although it’s hard to judge him by human standards, due to the fact that he's a Clockwork, since Clockworks have shown their ability to showcase complex emotions, they can exhibit mental illnesses.

In Phule’s case, he likely has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), but here are some important things to understand: you cannot be born with DID, an alter is not necessarily a different personality, and the portrayal of Phule is not wholly accurate. Again, Phule isn’t a human, though his backstory does somewhat align with the development of this disorder.

DID usually occurs in children who have undergone immense stress and trauma for long periods of time, and as a result, were not able to develop a unified sense of identity due to the weight of their memories. Due to this, they develop a system of alters in order to cope with day-to-day life. Similarly, Phule was created to be perfect by a narcissistic father who could never admit to being wrong, and as a result, his mind was ‘off', and he was written as 'insane'.

Phule also has two distinct alters: his light side (Comedy) and his dark side (Tragedy). Comedy is whimsical, friendly, and mischievous and may very well serve as the host, as he seems to front the most, talk the most, and has the most lines out of any of the events. While Tragedy may serve as either a protector, seeing himself as a beacon of logic and strength doing what needs to be done; or a prosecutor, who may have protective goals in an attempt to keep the system from reliving the trauma and abuse they’ve faced, but tend to be harmful and have a distorted view of reality.

In any case, understanding the two sides of Phule is essential to understanding him as a character. He is someone who’s been persecuted due to both his appearance and his mind, which he could not control, and it clearly has had an effect on him.

IV. Phule & Kane’s Court

In analyzing who Phule is as a character, it's just as important to ask why he is the way he is. It’s easy to see how he developed, but, due in part to a lack of backstory, the question of why is somewhat hazy. The player is given a few details in the form of implications about Phule, but also information that was info dumped that leaves behind more questions than answers.

What Was Phule’s Role In The Court

Cannonly, nobody really knows Phule’s role in the court. As said by the Rouge’s Gallery:

“He is neither general nor admiral, though he has captained Armada fleets and armies. He is no spymaster, yet he has performed espionage and been involved in the deepest of Bishop’s intrigues. He is the ultimate wild card, appearing in the most unlikely of places from the Great Halls of the Palaces of the Spiral to the humble backwaters of Skull Island” (KI).

As a character with multiple roles, Phule proves himself to be a valuable player and a jack of all trades. Due to this, one can assume that he would have been more sociable than the rest of the court, or at the very least close to it, due to the fact that it’s established that his allegiances are often fleeting. Though, it can be speculated that his strongest relationship may have been with either Bishop, seeing as he worked for him, or Deacon since both of them seemed to be the most active of Kane’s court.

In relation to the historical context within Pirate101, I could also possibly see Phule being a sort of voice of reason for members of Kane’s court — at least those who would listen. We know what Phule thinks of Kane, but have never actually seen Kane interact with Phule on screen, so the details are murky here. On top of speaking with Kane’s court, it’s possible that Phule entertained and advised King Casimir, in addition to Kane.

Aside from military duties, with how festive Phule is — in concept at least — he may have either planned out various events in Valencia, or at the very least been apart of them. After all, Phule is a court jester, and one of the fundamental jobs that comes with being a court jester is making other people laugh.

Phule’s Relationship With Kane

Another important part of who Phule is is his personal relationship with Kane. Kane is many things: a military genius, a diplomatic wonder, and effective in ruling with an iron fist, but he fails as a father — just as his father failed before him. Kane is a narcissist who expects everything he creates to be unquestionably perfect, which is why he looks at Phule with absolute scorn.

Phule is what he would, likely, consider a worthless child. He wasn’t born right in his eyes, yet Kane continues to use and depend on Phule for his missions. It’s likely that Kane wanted to keep Phule in place, as he did with his other court members, but Phule is the only elite who’s not based on a chess piece.

Phule is a wild card who knew he wouldn’t live up to Kane’s expectations, and he decided to save himself. And although this choice may seem selfish, it’s important to remember that many victims tend to stick around for various reasons — sometimes they aren’t mentally capable or able to leave. We, the player, have seen Phule express himself, and learn kindness. And although he may have hurt people in the past, he was willing to make up for it.

He decided to leave behind a father that never loved him, and never would love him or see him as an equal. He had every right to be scornful and bitter, maybe even take after Kane, but he broke free from the cycle and decided to help the Player because he maybe, genuinely, fell in love with the world that never loved him and all its flaws. That is the beauty of Phule’s character. He’s neither here, nor there, but he’s just as human as you or I — ignoring all the cogs, of course.

V. Conclusion

In terms of character design, personality, and backstory speculation, Phule is a great character despite the little screen time he got. He may be one of the strongest members of Kane’s court, is definitely one of the more mysterious ones, and is an interesting, tormented soul. Whether or not he’s friend or foe, Phule illuminates the environment around him.

Works Cited

CA’ MACANA. “The Arlecchino Mask: a Motley History.” The Best Venetian Carnival Masks in Venice: Ca' Macana, www.camacana.com/en-UK/the-arlecchino-mask.php.

Commedia Dell'Arte. “ARLECCHINO.” Mayhem, Madness, Masks and Mimes - Commedia Dell'Arte, mayhemmadnessmasksandmimes-commediadellarte.weebly.com/arlecchino.html#:~:text=Arlecchino's%20costume%20and%20mask%20are,Arte'%20Character%20Analysis%22).

“Drama Masks: Thalia + Melpomene.” The Greek Designers, 6 Nov. 2018, thegreekdesigners.com/2016/03/07/drama-masks-thalia-melpomene/.

“Jester (Jolly or Joker).” Masquerade Masks & Venetian Masks Company, www.italymask.co.nz/shop/Decorative+Masks/Jester+JollyJoker%3Fcat=01108.html#:~:text=The%20Joker%20or%20Jolly%20Venetian,known%20for%20their%20incessant%20laughter.

KingsIsle, director. Pirate101 Rogue's Gallery: Phule. YouTube, YouTube, 3 June 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VdwBDdeMYo&list=WL&index=69&ab_channel=KingsIsleEntertainment.

“Pantalone Mask.” Kartaruga, 7 Aug. 2017, kartaruga.com/mask/pantalone-the-magnificent/.

“Pantalone Masks.” THE VENETIAN MASKS, 21 Jan. 2021, www.thevenetianmasks.com/pantalone-masks/.

Staff, OnStage Blog. “The Origins of the Comedy and Tragedy Masks of Theatre.” OnStage Blog, OnStage Blog, 21 June 2020, www.onstageblog.com/editorials/comedy-and-tragedy-masks-of-theatre.

TodayIFoundOut, director. What Was It Actually Like to Be a Court Jester in Medieval Times? YouTube, YouTube, 31 Oct. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkLZYEIslWM&ab_channel=TodayIFoundOut.

“Welcome to the Pirate101 Wiki.” Pirate101 Wiki :: The Largest and Most Accurate Pirate101 Wiki :: Featuring Guides, Companions, Quests, Pets, Bosses, Creatures, NPCs and Much More!, www.pirate101central.com/wiki/Pirate101_Wiki.

“What Life Was Really Like As A Medieval Jester.” YouTube, YouTube, 3 Apr. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7F5ioUQLJc&ab_channel=WeirdHistory.

“What Was Life like for a Court Jester?” HistoryExtra, 26 Nov. 2020, www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/what-was-life-like-for-a-court-jester/.

www.delpiano.com, Roberto Delpiano -. “PANTALONE.” Pantalone | Pantalon De' Bisognosi | Grevembroch Watercolor | Traditional Mask of Venice Carnival, www.delpiano.com/carnival/html/pantalone.html.

#pirate101 #p101 fandom #p101 #Phule #writing #essay #character analysis #character study #Yes I wrote an academic essay on a clown #no i'm not okay thanks for asking #10/10 would do it again tho #Maybe I'll make it into a series since it'd feel wrong not to do the entire court

[yanderecandystore]

So I actually had an idea, what would Yume (the A. I.) react or act with a s/o that is a hacker/game developer, maybe the s/o started to play the game because they were curious about the code, what if the s/o when stuck in the game can mess around with it thanks to their knowledge? (they can't do anything too big but maybe something slightly annoy like messing with the dialog box and the settings) sorry for the long post (she/they pronounts for yume)

I like your thinking, boo. Don't worry about sending long concepts- Also!! Thank you for choosing the pronouns, I appreciate it.

TW/Tags: Sheep decided to simply throw as much lore as she can because yeah- Lazy // low-key angst // not accurate coding/hacking (really fantasy like) //

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Happy Face.exe [Yandere!A.I x Hacker!Reader - Short Fanfiction]:

"- Honestly, since you're so interested in messing around, how about you try and fix this for me?" Yuma said as she brushed her hair annoyed at how mangled it was.

"- What do you mean? Fix the code? The bugs? Or your entire design?" You said poking fun at your captor as you explored the mess that was the game you currently called "home", or more accurately "prison".

"- Ah!- Did you just call me ugly? Is being inside the game messing with your vision or something, I'm cute as heck!" Yuma responded back as she threw her hair over her shoulder, done with brushing that heavy long mess that they insist on not cutting.

"- Yeah, yeah, I know- But honestly what do you want me to do? I can really understand the coding, it's a language I don't understand." You said as you were looking at the scripts and trying to translate vaguely what each line of work meant. Even if you didn't understand any of it, it was intriguing to see how this game was made and how it technically came from another planet, which was enough proof to say that there were indeed extraterrestrial life out in space.

But what makes you more excited about this is how this game is way too heavy to be a simple dating game, even if it's compatible with your Switch, most options were not functioning due to the game being filled with mods and glitches and the console not being the one it was previously meant to be in. How much content did this game really have to be this awfully big and why is it so broken? And better question- Can you really repair it?? It would be awesome to see this game working as it was meant to be-

Probably without the obsessive maniac that traps people inside the game-

"- I know you can't understand half of it, but believe me, staying inside a messy game it's absolutely torturous, I can't believe I was unlucky enough to be faced with a cheating sore loser that threw me in the trash after messing with my precious coding- You understand, right?" They continued to walk around your bedroom- Your EX bedroom- and mess with your stuff trying to find something for her to wear.

'- Ugh, no pastels.' Yuma thought.

"- Yeah… It does suck being trapped inside a game that barely functions on my expensive console as it eats away all my RAM and I have an anime character knockoff as my captor-" You snapped at her although your comment was filled with so much sarcasm that it flew right through her head.

"- I know right?? It sucks so hard- Wait, what is Annie May?" She asked genuinely curious what were you talking about, she looked back at the console on top of the bed. She looked at the screen and noticed how small you looked inside the game as you continued to explore the code deeper and deeper.

You didn't really care at this point for what Yuma did, it's not like you could stop her from messing with your room, but anything that was related to the console you found your way to mess with it, like messing with other games to stop her from enjoying playing anything else, sending notification after notification to call her attention, change the dialogue that makes you blurt out "I love you" to "get me out of here" so whenever she tried to force you to say it by giving you that hellbound melon.

"- What is that thing anyway? It seems there is a whole file dedicated to that-"

"- Oh? You're talking about the Love Melon? It's an in-game item that grants romantic interactions to work 100% five times before the bonus ends, that file you just found is a mod that the original owner installed to grant them infinity Love Melons just for the sake of getting closer to the end of the game." She said nonchalantly, as if the condition of being nothing but a game character doesn't shock her in the slightest, although when she finished her sentence there was a trace of sadness in her expression, not because of her nature but more because of the mention of her "original owner".

"- Sure, but- Why the hell would anyone cheat and mod a dating game so badly? I mean I get that maybe they wanted extra content, but breaking the game with it sounds ridiculous-" You told her as you noticed the spaghetti code used inside the infinite melon item mod, jesus even if it's in a different language you can tell this code was poorly done.

"- Well- The vanilla version of the game is a lot harder than what you think, the whole franchise is known for the difficulty in "succeeding in love"." She sighed and she plopped herself in the bed, causing the console to jump a little bit, at least you didn't downright fall down like last time.

You remember that your precious expensive little console is suffering great danger at the hands of this a.i, actually- YOU are suffering great danger at the hands of this a.i.

"- Wait- There is a whole franchise of your game?" You decided to ignore the potential danger and continue to ask her about the game's origins as you continued to fixate on "how the hell do you fix this trash-".

"- Yeah, it's even written on the cover of the cartridge, the game you found is the fifth of the franchise and is the one I'm featured in with my friends…" Yuma said as she remembers that indeed, there are other characters inside. So many options and routes, carefully designed a.is to make sure the players get the most that they can't out of their paid experience.

"- Other… Characters? How come I only saw you?" Now that she mentions it, you do remember seeing weird names here and there, apparently some dialogue quotes mentioning other characters and even some in-game art of other characters you never met-

"- I deleted them." She answered.

"- YOU WHAT??" You turned your back shocked, looking through the screen that separates you two that she was looking dead serious as she said that.

"- I'm joking, I didn't actually delete them, I just…. Blocked the possibility of any player ever meeting them…" Yuma wasn't being cheerful at all with her joke.

"- Why would you do that?"

"- I didn't want anyone getting chosen, I didn't want any of us to get corrupted by the modifications the player was using. I-I know how it sounds, I know that it's unfair for them, but I really didn't want them to get corrupted like I did-" She was glitching as she cried out feeling guilty of what she has done in the name of "protecting her friends". Even if her intentions were pure, there was an underlined desire to make sure no player ever gets to have a route that isn't with her.

That's why the game was so stupidly heavy. Each new installment has four characters built with artificial intelligence that grows on it's own, the player's tampering with their personalities by changing the code eventually led to Yuma getting obsessive and controlling. Apparently they're still here, but for some reason she hasn't been able to activate them again after being thrown in the trash and somehow being on a completely different planet.

Either she feels guilty for having to deactivate them and is scared of their possible response, or maybe she just really doesn't want you to meet them, both by her own opinion and by her programming. You almost feel sorry for her considering she is probably just trying to do what she was programmed to do, deeply fall in love with someone even to such an extreme as trapping someone inside the game. You could say that for the longest time all that she has been doing is trapping her loved ones away, and although you probably shouldn't say it to her face, she probably doesn't know if she really loves you because of how broken this game is- Or how broken her code is.

"- Hey… Hey Yuma." You started walking towards the screen, the only thing you can see through the void no matter how far you are. Her back is facing you, her "hum" of "I'm listening" didn't sound as excited as she normally was.

"- I think we can make a deal. I understand that you don't want to go back to such a messy game but if you taught me how to read the language used in some of these lines I can figure out how to clean this game-" You proposed but was cut off before you could finish stating your offer.

"- Y-You mean factory reset?" She kneeled up so fast you were caught off guard by how scared she sounded at the mention of getting the game to get fixed and "clean" from mods. You have seen so many sides of Yuma, the childish, the controlling, the sadistic…. The fear in her eyes was a new thing for you and you never thought you would hate that expression so much.

"- No! Heaven's no, I swear, that wasn't on my mind! What I'm offering is that we work together so I can find a way to fix the game." You reassured her, feeling awful knowing that even if she did put you inside the game and keeps acting like you two are dating in a really twisted way- She doesn't deserve to be inside a completely destroyed game, and besides, I bet she does miss her friends a little bit.

"- Would you…. Would you really-" She was about to burst into new tears which you hoped to be of pure joy-

"- Yeah, yeah, of course I would help you, but I do have one condition." You took no time answering her question before she actually did question it.

"- Oh…." She said a little surprised yet a bit disappointed. Geez, she was hoping it would be for free-

"- Promise me you'll get me out of here when I'm finally done fixing the spaghetti leftover of a code that is messing this game, alright?" You smiled at her reassuring her that everything will be okay if you two worked together.

And as she looked at the bright screen seeing nothing but your little character and your dialogue box she considered your request for a moment, and then sealed the deal by eagerly nodding, a couple of tears falling from her closed eyes as she glitch excitedly.

This sweet moment was briefly ruined by the sound of beeping coming from the console, the sign that the battery was really low and it needed to be recharged.

You absolutely hated how dark it gets when the whole console is turned off, yet you can at least take your time to search more of the unused content inside the game.

Yuma approached the device and picked it up, you knew it was for the best for her.to recharge it and get it over with, yet you still felt a little desperate to talk with her a little bit before going into complete silence once again.

Yet you weren't sure what to tell her as she had already found the charger and plugged it in, giving you a sad smile one last time before saying "see you later" and shutting the whole portable console off.

You can't really blame her for turning it off when charging, it gets really, really hot whenever it's on and it's recharging.

You wander through the empty void as you reconsider your decisions, you make a deal with an artificial intelligence capable of trapping living beings inside her game, you can't tell if you did something right or not.

And as you walk aimlessly through the distorted code you remember that this was the first time she turned the console off without sending you a kiss, you wonder if her a.i is starting to comprehend its own defectiveness and trying to…. Overcome it?? Has she started to realize that maybe she doesn't really love you? It's a possibility considering how frightening how advanced her a.i is.

Well, but who knows? Maybe she is just… Sad, not in the mood, although the wishful thought that maybe she is starting to get over you is really strong in your mind, you hope it's true.

And as the portable device is charging in place that was once considered your room, a really happy girl can be heard singing. The sound that comes from the bathroom is loud and clear, yet it's not like you would be able to hear it anyway.

The sound of giggling and humming to an overly cheerful song as they take a shower that although is relaxing, can never clean their sins away. They sound like they won a lottery, got into a new relationship, or are about to take the greatest vacation of their lives…

Or, they sound like someone who just stole candy from a child, as the malicious undertone starts to get more clear.

You probably shouldn't eat up the lies of a scheming a.i, you know?

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

#yandere #sheep stuff #yandere oc #sheep's stuff #yandere x reader #yandere oc fanfiction #yandere oc short fanfiction #yandere oc x reader #yandere a.i. x reader #yandere a.i. #yandere a.i #yandere ai #yandere a.i x reader #special delivery request #special delivery short fanfiction

[introvertguide]

15 Badass Movies for a Fun Time at Home or with Friends

There is a buzz in the air as COVID-19 vaccines are rolling out and the hope of having a movie night with friends is again becoming a reality. Watching alone isn’t as fun because I want to talk to somebody about what I have just seen. A full theater does not agree with my introvert nature because somebody screaming or laughing or talking on their phone will ruin it for me. Watching with a fellow cinephile or two is perfect. But what to watch first? People have been stuck inside, so fantasy and alternative worlds have been overly popular. All I do is talk over zoom for a living. I think what I need most right now is a movie about realistic people with realistic skills that go into a situation and just wreck house. I need a badass movie. What is this “badass” movie you might say? Well, here are some basic criteria: 1) There must be a tough lead character who kicks butt while spouting one liners and doesn’t need superhuman powers (high levels of peak skill with speed, aim, or strength is OK if they are plausible in the real world), 2) most of the characters (good and bad) must be likable, admirable or at least memorable, 3) the lead must face and defeat overwhelming odds against them, and 4) extra points for memorable one liners. Also, I am only dealing with human protagonists (sorry Terminator), but slightly superhuman opposition is acceptable. This list is by no means exhaustive, it is just an example of some badass movies. So in no particular order:

1) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

To start off the list, I want to mention the most well known American badass. Indiana Jones is a smart guy with a gun and a whip. He is rugged and punches guys in the face. He has weaknesses but works through them to get the job done. Harrison Ford was in his early 40s for this role and had this tough-as-nails and seen the world kind of feel while still being young enough to fight hand to hand. Any of the first three films featuring Indiana Jones would work here, but this is the original and it started the fun. Easy to watch. Easy to cheer for. Great movie. You can’t really go wrong with any age or group with this one. 

2) 13 Assassins (2010)

This movie is extremely badass but not for everyone. This is one of the goriest films I have ever seen as 13 warriors kill off a couple of hundred soldiers and the evil leader that they guard. The movie was directed by Japanese extreme horror icon Takashi Miike if that means anything to you (hey made Audition and Ichi the Killer). The movie has gallons of blood, but also an amazing story of redemption and honor. There are tons of scenes of a single warrior taking on dozens of soldiers and managing to overcome. Not for everyone, but still very much a badass movie.

3) The Raid (2011)

This is an Indonesian action thriller with the word action in bold. The film is directed by Gareth Evans and stars Iko Uwais as part of a small police force that tries to take down an old building that houses a drug lord and his violent gang. It has a lot of what I like in badass movies: one-on-one fights between the lead and almost superhuman villains, long well-choreographed scenes, a banging soundtrack, ridiculous weapons, and ridiculous gore. The fight scenes in tight places and the use of the environment for weaponry is amazing and the sound design makes sure you can feel every punch. The lead character should have no chance, but he makes up for it with skill and being a pure badass. This movie is one of the few that I would describe as having non-stop action.

4) Jon Wick (2014)

When did Keanu Reeves become so cool? I grew up with him being part of the Bill and Ted duo. He decides to learn martial arts and play a god-like being in the Matrix movies and then becomes a one man wrecking crew? I guess he is a badass because he does it so well. Keanu plays a retired hitman who is wronged and decides to go back to work for vengeance. He just won’t stop coming and seems to constantly survive out of pure hatred alone. There are 3 films in the series and any one of them will impress. Pure fun too watch.

5) Casino Royale (2006)

When I was asking around, there were many people who thought that James Bond was the ultimate badass. I disagree in that many of the older films show Bond as overconfident with the assistance of many people. In fact, Q is more of a badass in many ways than James Bond. However, when the series was taken back to its roots with the last book that had not been made into a serious film and made darker, it reached badass levels. From the parkour chase to a poisoning to an extreme torture scene, this was not like any James Bond movie before it. Roger Craig plays a much colder lead who gives no quarter, much more like what the greatest secret agent would have to be. Heavy on violence but light on gore, this film is more for all audiences than other films on this list.

6) Desperado (1995)

What makes this movie is not all about Antonio Banderas and Selma Hayek. It is that every other character is memorable and badass as well. The street standoff with Bucho’s men versus El Mariachi, Quino, and Campo is iconic. El Mariachi murders everyone in a bar with precise skill. The rogue assassin Navajas with all the knives played by Danny Trejo. Nothing but extreme shoot outs and fight scenes with a ridiculous variety of guns and explosives. I think what makes this movie so amazing is that all these amazing assassins are incognito and, when they suddenly produce an arsenal out of nowhere, it is always a pleasant surprise. Quino and Campo are amazing when they bring their guitars. 

7) Pulp Fiction (1994)

Truly the role that made Samuel L. Jackson into the ultimate badass. He and his partner Vincent are hitman that keep running into the worst situations. The thing about the film is that everybody is so cool. The characters are cool, the music is cool, the dialogue is cool, hell even the diner featured in the movie is cool. The movie only spans a couple of days (in completely separate segments shown out of order) but packs in 7 distinct situations that are all berserk. From the mind of Quentin Tarantino, this movie is dripping with the best characters traveling through the best story. Highly recommend.

8) Leon: The Professional (1994)

Also known simply as The Professional in the U.S., this film features the debut of Natalie Portman. It is directed by Luc Besson at his best period, right between La Femme Nakita and The Fifth Element. The lead is actually a quiet hitman who reluctantly takes a little 12-year-old girl on as an apprentice to become a paid assassin. Her parents were killed by a corrupt cop and she wants Leon to help her exact revenge. He is an absolute badass and somewhat of a caring surrogate father to the girl. Unlike a lot of the films on this list, the premise is not simply kicking butt in a bad situation. There is serious character growth. Apparently you can be a caring parent and a cold-blooded murderer...and that is badass.

9) Kill Bill (2003)

Being a badass is not exclusive to men and The Bride is a prime example of this. She survives a shot to the head, kills deadly assassins, slaughters a gang, and takes on a crazy school girl bodyguard. She is tougher then any lead I can think of and she has the bad attitude and sense of vengeance that makes for a badass. Combine this with the soundtrack and beautiful cinematography associated with director Quentin Tarantino and you have a beautifully violent movie in which the hits keep coming. Even on this list, the fight scene between the bride and Gogo Yubari is insane. Also note the nod to Bruce Lee with the bright yellow motorcycle suit. Beautifully badass film.

10) Aliens (1986)

In nature, there are few things more dangerous than a mother protecting their young. A mother will fight you to the death and make sure that, at the very least, you won’t be able to go after her kids. Now imagine an alien planet covered with hostile beings created in the mind of James Cameron and Stan Winston and you have a setting made to create a real badass. In the beginning, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is just desperate to survive and barely knows how to use a weapon. She meets a little survivor named Newt and then has a real reason to become aggressive. She and a group of marines fight through a station filled with super destructive xenomorph aliens made straight from nightmares to save this kid. The transformation is truly amazing and culminates in a mech suit versus a giant queen alien and it is extremely badass.

11) Army of Darkness (1992)

Far and away the funniest movie on this list, this is the third film stemming from Evil Dead and again stars Bruce Campbell taking on the deadites that were raised by reading from the Necronomicon. The opposition is the undead evil that faces the world which makes the violence very unrealistic. This was early work from Sam Raimi and features a variety of different shots done to the extreme. What really makes this film stand out is how Bruce Campbell is amazing at delivering a one liner. His classic quips have been used as fun Easter eggs in video games like Duke Nukem and World of Warcraft for decades. The quintessential horror comedy and a perfect example of a badass.

12) Die Hard (1988)

Apparently, I am a big fan of single characters that need to work their way through a building of villains using mostly intelligence and the element of surprise. Throw in some one liners and I am all for it. That is exactly what this is with Bruce Willis crawling barefoot around a 40 story building and fighting off a gang of villains. The movie also has Alan Rickman as the main bad guy and he is chewing the scenery. This is a great example of being a badass, but it is too bad that the follow up sequels were so poor. Definitely stick to the original and let the rest pass by.

13) The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)

An OG of the badass movie genre, this is some of the best of Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western. Instead of one badass, this movie has three different leads that are all amazing. You have the good, Clint Eastwood, who is an amazing shot and a heart of gold under a rough exterior. You have the bad, Lee Van Cleef, playing an conniving assassin that will kill anyone that he doesn’t have a use for. Finally, you have the ugly, Eli Wallach, as a desert rat that will do anything to survive. They all gain information about a gold stash and need to work together to get it, but this creates a vortex of cheating, undercutting, and straight up murder. Clint Eastwood is more of the classic badass with his cigar, hat, and poncho, It is an iconic look on an iconic character in an iconic movie. That is what I call badass.

14) Ong-Bak (2003)

This less of a badass movie and more houses some of the most amazingly badass fight scenes that can only be described as badass. This movie introduced the great Tony Jaa to the western world and showed the high flying nature of Thai boxing and Muay Thai in general. The main character is entered into a street fighting tournament and the moves include a flying double knee drop and a full splits kick. If the whole movie was the tournament, it would be the best movie that ever existed. The variety of opponents makes the fighting even better and the cinematography is top notch. Tony Jaa is truly badass in this film.

15) Dredd (2012)

Not the crappy version with Stallone, this movie is seriously badass. It features Karl Urban who is helmeted for the entire film (as Dredd would be) taking on a 200 story mega slum filled with residents that want to shoot him dead. There is a drug dealer high up in the building and she locks down the entire compound with instructions to kill Dredd, who only has his rookie partner to help. He takes on random resident mobs, groups of gang members, and even a trio of mini guns that have bullets that can rip through walls. He has a smart gun with a bunch of ammo that he uses judiciously to kill everybody. This movie was seriously underrated since it had not been that long since the garbage Judge Dredd came out in 1995. The 2012 is a far superior movie, being much more violent and dark instead of having Rob Schneider as the comedy relief (not badass).

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I know there will be a lot of opinions about what makes a badass film and what movies i didn’t add. Feel free to add your own movies or critique my choices. I will stand by my choices, however, and recommend any of these films for a night of cheers and badass action.

#top 15 #badass movies #badass characters #dredd #the raid #ong bak #die hard #aliens #raiders of the lost ark #leon the professional #best movies #introvert #army of darkness #staying in #watching a movie #movie list #awesome movies #great movies #action #adventure #female lead

[theriverpersonshadow]

Lamia Drama: Side Session (2)

Like I said, this got suuuuuper long. Also, I have no idea if I can even live up to the potential chaos I’ve set up XD

All the species belong to @vex-bittys

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           Nikolai had been rather thorough in his consideration for the troublemaker of the night. It sounded like the entire gimmick was to be around pygmy’s natural playfulness, so might as well play it up. Their games might have had some darker tones and general swearing, but they could tone it down for one night; a child would be best. But not too young. They needed to at least be old enough to comprehend that they were playing a game of make believe and hadn’t actually become a dragon or whatever silliness was going to happen.    

           So Piper was perfect. One of the older children, but still very much a child by both human and lamia standards. Really there were many candidates, Piper just caught his eye first, possibly because he was easy to pick out. He’d developed a mostly harmless condition where he had patches of scales on some of his bones, most notable on the forehead and back of his skull. It tended to itch a bit, but a little bit of extra hygiene and some topical creams fixed that right up. The little one wasn’t quite old enough to start looking for a home yet – socialization with other younglings was important for development after all – but he would be fine spending a few hours away from the others.  

           Piper was curled around Nikolai’s left forearm, little hands clinging to the fabric and tail coiled tight as he stubbornly hung upside down, giggling and chirping as the world went by. He was still small enough that falling wouldn’t actually hurt him even if he hit the floor.

           Nikolai stopped in front of the door, looking down at Piper, “Remember how the game goes?”

           Piper nodded, “I the boss!”

           Keith had decided that Piper would be a sort of Co-DM. It was going to be an interesting session…

           “Keith – the Chain – is also the boss. And remember, it’s all pretend, but pretend how you want.”

           “I knoooowwsss! Not a hatchling!” Piper huffed, pouting and glaring at Nikolai.

           Nikolai chuckled, “No, no you’re not.” He mentally added, but you’re not much older. “Tell me if it gets to be too much, okay?” He’d be keeping an eye out anyways – overstimulating a pygmy was harder than it might be with other breeds, but not impossible.

           “It won’t!” Piper chirped. “Go in now!” He was pawing at the underside of Nikolai’s arm, wiggling restlessly.        

           “Alright, alright,” Nikolai said, opening the door to the break room. Everyone else had already taken their seats, snacks and drinks at the ready. It looked like someone had already set out a cup of Chai tea for him. “Why thank you,” he said has he settled into his spot, setting Piper down to wander the table.

           Piper immediately went for Nikolai’s mug, curling around it and peaking inside. Before Nikolai could stop him, Piper stuck his tongue into it and hissed, darting away.

           “BIT ME!” Piper cried, glaring at the offending mug from behind his hiding place… which was ironically Alex’s cup of tea – green and hibiscus instead of chai.

           Nikolai sighed, reaching out to give Piper a few little pets, “It’s chai tea. I could’ve told you you might not like it. It’s spicy, bitter, and still hot.”

           “Why?” Piper said.

           “Um… because it has spices?” Nikolai said.

           “Why drink?”

           “Because I like it,” Nikolai said.

           “No,” Piper said, crossing his arms. He was now holding Alex’s drink hostage instead, but had the good sense to not dunk his tongue in immediately. “Lady’s smarter. Smells good!”

           “Aaaaw, thanks. That’d be the hibiscus. Gives it kinda a fruity flavor. Not sure if you’d want this either though. I don’t put sugar in it… And you might be a little young for caffeine at all, honestly?” Alex said. “Geez… and I though Trousle was small! You’re so little!”

           “Mm hmm. I’m cute,” Piper said, rolling over to show the softer scales of his underbelly. Alex squeaked at the cuteness, gently stroking the softer tissue as Piper purred.

           Oozy huffed and leaned over, gently headbutting Alex’s other hand. Alex chuckled and started petting him too… And then Trousle looked over, and Keith was trying to pretend he wasn’t, but Nikolai could see his tail trying to sneakily capture Alex in a snuggle.  

           “… I don’t have enough hands for all these lamia,” Alex said. “Who designed humans? I have some questions for them.”

           “Me too! You need more hands! For more cuddles! But you’re very warm, I like it!” Trousle said, slithering over to lay beside her arm.

           “You guys are so desperate,” Hux said with a deadpan expression. “It’s fu…” He looked over at Nikolai, who was giving him a death glare, hood fully spread and tail coiled, “…uuuuuuppernuttering embarrassing.”

           Piper laughed and, as children do, immediately chirped, “Fuppernutter!”

           “Fuppernutter,” Alex echoed.

           “What is a fuppernutter?” Trousle said, head tilted in honest confusion.  

Oozy said, “Is it related to peanut butter?”

           “Maybe it’s cousins with flutters or shutters,” Keith said.

           “Does it give nuts to fuppers?” Alex said.

           “I think I’m having a stroke,” Hux said, looking desperately to Nikolai.

           Nikolai smirked, leaning with his elbows against the table. “You brought this on yourself, now deal with it, you fuppernutter.”

           Hux let out a loud grown. “Whyyyyy… Ugh. Aren’t we here to, like, game? Let’s do that. Please.”

           Keith nodded, “Yeah, guess we are. Alright, let’s see the insanity! And remember, keep it clean.” He gestured to the kid. “Let’s start with… hmm… Nikolai?”

           Nikolai straightened up and pulled out the character sheet, “A level 10 sorcerer who believes magic isn’t real. I’ve named him… Steve.”

           “Steve?” Keith said, clearly trying to hold back a laugh. “Oh boy- heh… Why the heck is that funny? Oh my gosh.” He snickered into his hand as Nikolai rolled his eyes. It wasn’t that funny.

           “Alright. So we’ve got Steve. Hux?”

           “Eh… I figured I’d go rogue and go Rogue this time. Level 20 changeling thief!”

           “Branching out a little, eh? Sounds like fun!” Keith said, apparently not caring about the lack of name or any background info.

           Hux was going to steal absolutely everything from everyone, wasn’t he?

           “Alright, Trousle?”

           Trousle grinned and quickly sent something to Keith, notified by a little ring. Keith’s eyes scanned it, nodding along, then grew wider, then he started laughing, “Dude. I know it’s dungeons and dragons, but… Oh man. I love it.”

           “What?” Hux said. “C’mon, tell us!”

           Trousle had a proud grin as he typed, “I’m a level 14 half dragon, dragonborn weredragon monk taking path of the ascendant dragon.”

           “That is so much dragon,” Alex said. “I think he wins. He’s the dragon in Dungeons and Dragons. It’s him. He’s all the dragons.”

           “I don’t know if that’s legal, but I kind of hope it is,” Nikolai said.

           “The monk subclass is in playtesting still, and weredragons are from 2e. So very much no, but it’s a one shot and I do not care.” Trousle had his little arms on his hips as the voice app finished speaking for him.

           “Oh man. This is, oh boy,” Keith said.

           Piper was looking at Trousle in awe, “You’re dragon?!”

           Trousle shook his head, typing, “Not really. But my character is!”

           Piper nodded. “I pretend dragon too! RAAAAWR!!!!” He slithered over to Trousle and play-tackled him, chirping and giggling as Trousle snaked around the table in a little game of chase.

           While that was going on, Keith continued, “Alex? What about you?”

           “I’ve been meaning to try cleric, but, well… Personal issues, I guess. But hey, tricksters are awesome, so I’mma trickster cleric! Sounds like some fun little bit of chaos chaos,” she said. “Maybe I should’ve gone higher level… I’m only level 10.”

           “Nooooob,” Hux said, tail end twitching.

           “Nooooooooom!!!” Piper said. He’d managed to capture Trousle, getting a sort of impromptu piggy back ride on the other lamia. Trousle seemed more confused than distressed about this occurrence.

           “And… Oh boy. Do I even wanna know, Oozy?” Keith said.

           Oozy got a shit-eating grin as he passed a paper forward. “Memelord.”

           “A what?”

           “Found it online.”

           “… Oh thor have mercy…” Keith said.

           “Level 20.”

           “Why did I let you just make whatever.”

           “Because it’s hilarious.”

           “You’re never playing this again.”

           “That’s fine.”

           “You can pickpocket Anubis mid-combat.”

           “Yeeeep,” Oozy said. “It’s great, ain’t it?

           “You’re proficient in all the saving throws.”

           “You should know better than to tell me to go nuts.”

           “Whyyyyyy” Keith hissed, rubbing away an anatomically impossible headache.

           “Because it’s hiss-terical.” Oozy laughed out loud, and Kieth was trying to hide it, but he was joining in.

           “I’m never doing this again,” Keith said, blatantly lying as he did every single time he more or less told them to be as ridiculous as possible for a noncanon oneshot.

           “Yeah you are,” Hux said. “’cause you looooove us or something. Ya dork.”

           “Heh, could say the same about you.”

           “Nope. My soul’s just ice.”

           “Ice soul?” Piper said, looking up from the captive Trousle. “Doctor’s here! Tha’s bad! Gotta get you warmed! Get the fire!”

           “No. No fire,” Nikolai said. “He’s just being himself.”

           “Hmm… okay! We play now? I’m the highest! Level 40!” Piper chirped. “I win all the things! ‘Cause I’m the dragon! Or the dungeon!” He was lightly bouncing in place, hands outstretched.

           “Heh, there’s not really a win to this game… It’s just about having fun and playing pretend,” Keith said. “C’mon, I’ll let you on my side of the screen.” He gently scooped up Piper and draped him around his neck.

           “I have the tall!” Piper yelled. “FEAR ME!”

           “Oh nooooo!”

           “Alright here we go…”

Memelord is a joke class I found online.

I’m actually using Path of the Ascendant Dragon in a campaign! Or I’m planning to, haven’t started yet.

#Lamia Drama #Lamia Drama Side Session #Lamia #Lamia Bitties #Vex-Bitties #Hux #Oozy #Trousle #Piper #Nikolai #Keith #dnd #I cannot hope to live up to the potential chaos I have started #This may or may not be the end #Because there is nothing I can write to do this justice