#There's also weapon concepts to all of them

[yanderes-galore]

Can I request platonic Mewtwo hc’s? Maybe Mewtwo could also communicate with its trainer through telepathy, similar to the anime.

Ohhh, Mewtwo could be fun! Sorry for the long wait :)

Overprotective! Mewtwo Concept

Pairing: Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Overprotective behavior, Manipulation, Mind reading, Violence, Murder, Blood, Slight gore, Forced companionship.

Before meeting you, Mewtwo spent most of its life in isolation.

It was created from Mew's DNA to be a weapon... a powerful Pokemon devoid of compassion.

When it escaped the labs, creating destruction where ever it went, it fled into one of the deepest caves in the Kanto region.

Mewtwo didn't expect to be found... It didn't want to be found.

Humans only caused trouble....

But then, years later, he met you.

You were Kanto's newest "Champion" who had heard rumors of a rare Pokemon deep in Cerulean Cave.

Once you managed to surf your way through to the cave and crawl deep within... you were greeted with Mewtwo.

Mewtwo wasn't fond of you, the idea of humans still finding it down here irked it.

"You are a foolish human to come down and find me."

The voice of the Pokemon rings in your head, its tail flicking.

"Begone with you!"

So battle ensues.

Your team was trained to deal with strong threats like this so you mostly handled things quite well.

By the end of it, a ball was tossed and Mewtwo was sealed.

Your "bond" with the legendary starts rocky.

Mewtwo was used to violence and being used.

It often ignored you and the little communication it did in your head with telepathy was usually cruel.

You often tried to get along, feeding the Pokemon and trying to touch it.

Mewtwo usually batted your hand away with a snarl.

"Stop trying to be nice! I am at your command, aren't you going to use me for your pitiful ideals?"

However, no matter how cruel Mewtwo was with you... You were never cruel back.

Mewtwo often observed how you treated your own team.

Despite how strong they were trained, it was done with care.

Mewtwo never understood compassion...

Not until it grew closer with you.

You surprisingly rarely used Mewtwo in battle.

You stuck with your team but kept Mewtwo around.

It had no idea for what... for chatter?

Why do you enjoy talking to it?

Mewtwo wonders if you know about its true nature.

Did you know that it's killed before?

Are you naive?

Mewtwo had no idea why it even decided to play along with this.

Did it really enjoy your company?

You treated it more like a fellow human than Pokemon.

You often wanted it to speak with you through telepathy... and it felt comfortable with this.

Mewtwo eventually began to see you as a companion.

You were technically its master, but it didn't see you like that.

Soon enough the powerful legendary even allowed you to pet it.

It felt nice... it has trouble admitting that.

Mewtwo has a vague sense of what compassion is, but it's still a weapon.

Compassion is only given to you and maybe some of your Pokemon.

You have tamed Mewtwo for the most part.

However... all that comes crumbling down the moment you're attacked by Team Rocket.

Mewtwo already had issues with other trainers.

The Pokemon would glare at those you communicated with, still not used to human contact.

Although, Team Rocket was a group Mewtwo couldn't cooperate with at all.

Mewtwo remembers what they did to it.

Which is why when it senses you in danger and comes out of its ball... the Pokemon freezes.

Team Rocket heard that the Champion had managed to tame Mewtwo and wanted to utilize that.

The thought makes Mewtwo shake.

Not from fear...

Rage.

It's at this point you lose control of the legendary

"How dare you touch them... I am not for you to use! I belong here... and I plan to stay beside them."

You can imagine that the end result isn't pretty....

Mewtwo has killed before, if you didn't know that before... this was proof.

Mewtwo doesn't feel any remorse when it attacks.

By the end of it there's corpses on the ground and Mewtwo's covered in splatters of gore.

"They'll blame you... You know that, right?"

Mewtwo's voice echoes in your mind, turning to you with a piercing purple gaze.

"Let us flee. I can find somewhere they'll never find you or me."

When you don't move, the Pokemon frowns.

"You see me as a monster, don't you, Champion?"

When you stare, Mewtwo steps closer before using telekinesis to drag you close.

The Pokemon mimics an embrace, even if you fear it.

"Let's be honest, human... I was always a monster... something that shouldn't exist..."

Mewtwo pulls you along, away from the murder scene.

"You may have changed me slightly..."

Its grip tightens as it carries you.

"But I will always be that very same monster."

#yandere pokemon #overprotective pokemon #overprotective mewtwo #yandere mewtwo #platonic yandere

[tzthrowbacks]

Damn Z is right art is the biggest snake, its not solely b/c of that one scene but the way he uses his submissivness and his "niceness" his dullness to take advantage of those around him all so they can service his needs. Nah this man is mass manipulator, like how he uses his sick grandmother to convince patrick to throw the final ( obviously that changes when tashi comes into the picture) and then in atlanta we find out that tashi is engaged and wearing arts grandmas ring implying subtely that the he used his grandmothers death as a way to rush into an engagement with tashi. Nah art is a loser truly the worst. I dont think its simply that tashi can easily control art but that he uses submissiveness to his advantage to get what he wants. Patrick and tashi maybe more brash and in your face about things but art also knows how to play the same game of ruthlessness as tashi and patrick.

he was absolutely manipulative and to some extent a snake yeah, but the more i think about it, the less im convinced he was THE worst out of the three

i'd love to hear z thought process in details behind her VISCERAL hate toward art, more than the other two somehow😭 her reaction in that one interview cracked me up lmao

my opinions about them keep getting more nuanced as i'm reading other people's opinions, and i think it definitely depend on what you consider "worst" -from betrayal and adultery to manipulation and weaponized submissiveness (? pretty sure that's not even a concept but you get what i mean).-..but for now i'm just on team everybody is wrong in their own way, no one is better than the other

#spoilers

[evostrashbin]

Yeah, that checks out. Also, I wasn’t meaning the mun/admin/whatever it’s called. Though now I want to see your Kiran’s alt outfits. XD

Here's a little sheet of all the FEH inspired alts I designed for her so far!✨

I love all of them alot and it's one of my greatest enjoyments to design alts for her (and thematically matching ones for Grima) that fit the themes, my personal preferences and also small bits of her overall lore & personality!

#Ask #summoner kiran #I'll most likely do more over time but I wanted to cover my absolute favorite seasonals/themes first and I have c: #My favorite one is halloween due to heavy bias with not only being my favorite banner and theme #But also in terms of design and concepts I popped off with it #A slightly altered versiom of the halloween alt is also what she wears in the Fallen!Timeline because it just fits #And it's funny to me how it's a glimpse as a harmless costume to another universe where she literally murders people with Grima #Also please don't use any of these designs without my permission I worked hard on them and they're very personal to me #The plegian one is only a concept doodle for now but it's for something ™️ #There is so much thought put into all of the designs you guys won't believe it #Like how the white lily bouquet in the bridal alt and the white lily print on her hoshidan summer outfit #There's also weapon concepts to all of them #Basically I just really really really love coming up with concepts and designs it's alot of fun to me 🥰 #The plegian one is just the concept doodle still but

[haliaiii]

These are some in-universe weapon/tech concepts for Retrograde, I actually had a lot of fun drawing these! Most of them are used for as references for when drawing the actual comic. The in universe lore is that the weapons that Sam and Val use are actually weapons commonly used by soldiers in the military but were modified by Eli (their friend who runs a mechanic shop, she also fixes Val's bike and any random things that comes by). In Retrograde, many weapons are made using lasers and laser blades as they're more powerful than your average steel/metal. However, they take up a ton of energy and have really low battery life. They are great for cutting down robots and droids though.

Last image is just what their phones look like. In this universe, after the giant cataclysm that destroyed the previous era, the world kinda overwent a giant technological set back. Basically most things never really made it out of the analog systems and so a lot of the tech is similar to most tech from the 90s and early 00s. Sam and Val's phones don't have a touch screen, they use a joycon and buttons to navigate around the screen and a pull out keyboard to type messages (like an handheld game console, the inspo was mostly from flip phones and the DS lol). The computer on top is probably the closest you'll get to a laptop, it's pretty clunky and is mainly used by field researchers for analyzing data. Sam and Val do end up doing a bounty for a group of researchers so I was trying to figure out what they'd use for data and stuff.

#I think im gonna make a long masterpost with links to all the lore i talk about for my own convenience 😭 #I keep losing where I talk abt certain things #this post is more abt world building if anything #it's also lots of fun for me cause I finally know how to draw these kinda objects that don't exist irl #btw Sam and Val's phones are color coordinated with their designs ofc #how were they able to get customized phones that matched their appearance and aesthetic while on a tight budget? #idk man they probably had Eli do it for them #retrograde #haliai art #oc lore #concept art #my art #sketch #worldbuilding #weapon design

[good-wine-and-cheese]

Gambling Apocalypse Tenma AU

As I rewatch Kaiji I inevitably end up wanting to combine show I like with other show I like and stuffing fav characters into show. So here we are.

This was uh going to be a short summary type thing but I accidentally wrote a novella about it sorry

This AU starts off with a much more depressive Tenma. After Tobio's death, rather than immediately pour his grief into developing a robot version of his son, he recedes into himself, psychologically paralyzed, likely turning to alcohol to drown out his anguish.

His mental state is taken as an opportunity within the Ministry of Science to have him ejected from his position; Tenma was never the most well-liked director, and there were those with ambition to usurp him that would jump at the chance. Not that he especially cares in his state.

He's eventually dragged out of his stagnation by Ochanomizu - who, inadvertently, becomes the very catalyst pushing Tenma to develop a robot replacement to his child. This was not what he meant by encouraging Tenma to fill the void left by his son.

...But, well, he is no longer the director of the Ministry of Science. His access to limitless government funds and resources for "scientific research" has been cut off, and this is a project he cannot finance on his own. He can't ask Ochanomizu for help, but...interestingly...a representative of a certain shady organization known as the Teiai Corporation reaches out to him, offering to finance and support his project. A sane and well-minded Tenma might think better of it, but grieving and desperate, Tenma accepts their offer and is able to create a robot in the image of his beloved Tobio. For a while, there's joy in his life.

But the bill, as ever, comes due: Tenma must pay up, and the very resources that had been at his disposal will certainly ensure that he will, or else. Of course, he doesn't have the money; instead, he is given a choice. He can relinquish the robot Tobio in order to wipe out his debt - the child is a sophisticated and powerful robot, after all - or he can participate in a certain illicit event hosted by the Teiai Corporation.

It's nothing major...just a four-hour gambling cruise with a collection of desperate, damned souls that were also swept into debt with Teiai. The conditions are simple: Those who choose to participate are given a chance to clear their debts wholesale should they win. And should they lose...?

Well...no one really knows what happens to the losers seized by Teiai. It's said that they labour away their debts under Teiai's watchful eye and are freed once their work has covered their debts, though it's rumoured that most perish before they reclaim freedom.

There's only one answer Tenma can give, of course; he's not willing to lose Tobio again.

Thus is Tenma's debut into the Gambling Apocalypse, where he must become cutthroat in order to survive; if he wants to see his son again, he must make choices that will doom the hapless to miserable servitude, with a nonzero chance it ends in their death.

He survives the cruise, but of course, it was hardly enough to clear his debt; the cruise was never going to be the end of it. Teiai doesn't let go of its victims that easily. He will be called on again: this is a weight that hangs over him, all while he returns to his son Tobio. The same hands that have pushed innocents into hell must now be the hands that can embrace his child.

He wants to protect Tobio from the truth and enjoy what peaceful moments he's allowed with his son, but it's difficult. It's difficult to be the parent of a child who cannot understand the danger that looms ahead; this "happy" home is not to last. Tenma angers quickly and easily. He turns that anger onto Tobio.

As Teiai's games become more and more vicious and unrelenting, as his conscience holds onto the last vestiges of thread that remain, Tenma even threatens, once, to give the boy in: it would all end, then; the debt would be clear and no longer would he have to endure Tobio's childish annoyances, his ungratefulness.

The next time that Tenma is beckoned, Tobio takes matters into his own hands. He does understand, now; and he would have, if only Tenma had bothered to explain sooner. If it's a debt that needs clearing, he will work. He will help his father clear his debts however he can. Of course, it's difficult to find work as a child; but a circus troupe finds amusement in the idea of a child robot, and takes him in. He is whisked into a certainly unpleasant working situation, but he remembers his father, and what he must be enduring. Tobio, also, will endure.

When Tenma returns, Tobio is gone.

All that held Tenma back from becoming something monstrous has disappeared. All that kept him going has disappeared. When he is called upon by Teiai, there is no knowing what sort of person might come out the other end; whether a monster clawing his way to freedom regardless of what actions he must take, or a desolate husk surrendering defeat.

There is still a light, however dim: Found by Professor Ochanomizu and rescued from the circus, Tobio - now Atom - is able to shed light on the situation which Tenma took great pains to keep hidden from his old friend. With time running out, Ochanomizu and Atom must do what they can to save Tenma - from Teiai, and from himself.

-----

UHHH and that's a wrap!!!! I couldn't quite decide which way Tenma would go after hitting Rock Bottom in this AU, and tbh it would really depend on the kind of mental state he's in at the time. On the one hand I like the narrative of Ochanomizu and Tobio racing to prevent Tenma from crossing a line (actual outright murder probably) - or having to pull him back into humanity (and yknow, his ensuing penance)

But on the other hand having him get sent to Teiai Evil Hell Prison would be interesting because a) there's a lot of narrative potential having Tenma faced with what Teiai is doing with the people that lose the games and b) need him to decimate the foreman at chinchirorin Kaiji style

Tenma's whole character is definitely a much different guy in this AU, he starts off pretty sympathetic, the guy you wanna root for, he just ends up having an inverse character arc where he gets worse instead of better. His conflict with "Tobio" is also kind of reversed, less about being unsatisfied with Tobio as a son and more not being able to handle the fact that he probably has intense PTSD now and isnt capable of coping with it in a way conducive to being a parent (or like, coping at all)

Anyway that's gambling apocalypse tenma!!!

#umataro tenma #long post #well that became a novel. sorry lmao #in my mind teiai's evil hell prison in astro boy verse would probably be quite a bit different than regular kaiji #like. fuckin. weapons manufacturing for teiai or something like that. or scary bad danger robots. horrifying concept #Tenma would be a valuable asset to them whether by giving up Atom or by losing in death game hell and being forced to work for em #and if he dies? they can just take atom #get him out of there. #I'm also thinkin of who Teiai would be represented by.....the snakey loan sharks u could easily put skunk in there. #but who is an evil fucked up sadist billionaire. theres probably someone who could be fucked up enough I just dont know offhand #and im allergic to mischaracterizing in AUs lol im not gonna make a slightly bad guy into an evil freakguy. so. Hyoudou is just himself. #if you squint this could be considered an 80s astro boy AU..has a cruise arc & not actually giving atom away #but man. that tenma LEAST of all deserves this fate lmao #do I want to write fic of this? yes. will I? not likely! #I can just smell it dude this would be some crazy fuckoff 100k shit I am not ready brother #also it would just be soooooo so so so so so edgy. I dont really enjoy writing intensely grim stuff w/ little to no respite #also tbh. I am too stupid. LOL. I cannot write clever gambles alas

[arolesbianism]

I recently decided to semi revive some of my crusty dusty splatoon ocs from when I was like 12, so here’s all of the goobers! Meet Cherry (she/her), Slosh (he/they), Egg (they/them), and Blast (she/they)

#keese draws #splatoon #splatoon oc #inkling #inkling oc #octoling #octoling oc #since they were from me being like 12 I. barely remember anything abt them. #I remember the most abt cherry and slosh but that basically amounts to their names and gender #the other two I only rember existing through vibes lol #anyways! I am never drawing splatoon weapons again! holy shit that fucking sucked! #on the bright side I got to mess around a bit with some hair style concepts I’ve been rotating in my head #also I’m still working on giving these guys an updated story but my basic idea is that they’re a professional tower control team that has #been facing some conflicts as of late due to them all getting old enough to start having aspirations outside of their team #cherry is from the domes but her parents left with her when she was around 10 #blast went to the same school as her and the two became pretty close friends as selective mute buddies #then at some point cherry caught wind of this cool new sport called tower control and was like woahhh I wanna do that #so she just went up to the first person near the battle lobby she could find and was like hey how do I join? #and he got super excited since he has a reputation for being incapable of shutting up so someone willing coming up to him came as a shock #they showed her where to get weapons and how to join battles and the two became battle buddies real quick #this lead to blast getting super worried and anxious as she didn’t want to see her only friend get hurt or stolen from her #at which point cherry was like oh I know! why don’t you come battle with us? #and blast was like wait wait wait no what if I die and dont come back and then die again :[ #they managed to come to a compromise for a while tho and eventually blast was able to just barely squish past her fear enough to start #being kind of interested in tower control as she had started watching the other two play #and while she was still anxious abt the idea eventually she sheepishly admitted she wanted to give it a try #and she ended up really liking it! so the three kept playing together #and eventually they started to feel more and more like an actual team and egg noticed #they had been scouting a team to join for a lil while now and after getting to play with the three quite a few times and getting on friendly #terms with them they were like hey what if we became like an actual team who do tournaments and stuff

[phoenixcatch7]

If there's one thing I like more than time travel it's crossover reincarnation, so.

Botk link reincarnated as Damian Wayne.

An incredible weapon master of all types, but especially prodigious with a sword - he was beating knights at the age of 4 and with his memories as intact as they get for him I can see that goalpost moving even further (probably with traps and tricks, a 3yo doesn't exactly have great bodily control).

He's an excellent survivalist, agile, strong, durable, cunning and creative. He can move like a feather in the breeze, strike from behind with ease. His first kill, an animal, did not stir him as it did the other children. With his poise, grace, skills, obedience, he ought to be ra'as' finest assassin in the making, a jewel in the crown of the league.

Except he never speaks a word. Half his targets escape unscathed. He skates by true punishment on the merit of his skills and achievements in other missions. Testing has shown it is not a physical deformity that prevents his speech, but not even talia has been able to coaxe a word from him past his second birthday.

It is a defect ra'as is growing more and more frustrated by, as each attempt to fix these two final flaws ends in resounding failure. Less extreme solutions are running dry.

Talia fears those solutions. Her child does too, she knows. For them, there is a possible solution, more extreme than anything ra'as would tolerate.

She sends him out of the league. To his father.

To Gotham.

#'gee phoenix that sure sounds like that dp x dc you're normally rattling on about' yeah lol I steal tropes and sell them on the black market #Anyway this has been slowly rotisserie-ing in my head for a while I just like shaking canon like a magic 8 ball #I'd love to explore how link would react to Gotham and how he might see getting suddenly dumped in a found family as the youngest #And how that contrasts with both his expectations in the league and his role as the saviour last hope of a whole country #Because that kid cannot have a modern interpretation of killing. Like monsters? Kill with prejudice loot the corpses. #The yiga might have a little more hindsight understanding and he never killed them anyway but zero hesitation blowing them up #And ganon is so far removed from the concept of 'killing is bad' because a) human??? Monster??? B) literally the problem #C) he's been killing people so it'd even out d) everyone wants him dead So Bad e) been killed already like a dozen times what's one more #I get the feeling he'd assign the same role to the joker like 'widely considered the source of all evil. 'died' several times and came back #personal source of absolute misery for several heroes. Killed many' = slay the monster. Straightforward. #Like yes link always chooses kindness and has a strong morality and Opinion on killing people it's just a lot would be solved #By hitting the joker until he stopped making life miserable for everyone and if that means permanently well that's kind of link's job. #And like with Jason the bats understand that a lot better than they pretend to. But that is a 10yo who should not be thinking like that. #I think it'd be interesting to see how that'd change their reactions to 'Damian'. Like he holds a very similar opinion to og and Jason he #Just goes about it completely differently. #And I'd love to explore the differences between two fictional worlds and how they can go from pretty much the most black/white morality #To probably one of the greyest areas while still holding near identical themes and methods of dealing with that. #Found family compassion as a weapon against evil and copious amounts of weapons and cool gear lol #Also link should keep the arm he's earned it. Reincarnating with all his memories knocked a few other things loose I'd imagine #Mostly because all the loz games I've played have absolutely altered the way I view any link and also I love referencing them. #Damian with telekinesis and infinite glue would be great. A tiny 10yo sword master choosing instead to drop a dumpster on you #In between hurt comfort link beginning to bond with his family and begin to speak and learn sign language from cass #There's also the sound of explosives and a small figure clinging to a flying door as it crosses the Gotham night skies #Speaking of cass I bet her and link would be great friends in this au. #batman #batfam #bruce wayne #loz au #Loz #loz totk

[6-2-aestheticsofhate]

hhh i wanna say something but i KNOW im just being a little hater. whatever putting it in the tags of this post

#guys v1 isnt like. uniquely evil? #i keep seeing memes calling them evil or getting mad at them for the stuff they do but #all the other machines are trying to kill THEM too #what do you think v2 would do to v1 if v1 was the one who lost? would it let it run away? no it wouldnt it would kill it and take its blood #and parts. every single machine is looking out for itself in hell #either theyre all evil or non of them are or they have no concept of morality because they are tools/weapons #its just. weird to me that everyones like awww poor baby v2 and evil mean v1. hey quick question where do you think v2 got those arms from. #thats definitely not the arms they were made with #on one hand they COULDVE scavenged it from someone already dead but.. how has v2 lasted so long in hell if they hadnt been killing for #blood? #killing husks maybe but thats still. killing people? #its just weird. theres such a disconnect between how people see v1 and v2 when theyre both weapons of mass murder who live off blood #also when hakita said v1 isnt actually the protagonist and the story isnt abt them #and theyre just who we're seeing the story from #i think this also applies. #v1 is just one in a legion of blood thirsty machines. theyre not uniquely mean/evil theyre just following their #own programming like the other machines

[collegeoflore]

i’m holding xarrai in my hands like a baby bird. my weird angry little court jester. little fool who thirsts for blood and revenge. extremely normal little clown who desires only retribution.

#‘bard who thirsts for revenge’ is an extremely funny concept when i think about it too long #ur telling me the guy singing a dirty lil drinking song down at the blushing mermaid is also full of fury #and wants to dismantle an entire religion brick by brick? #that weird lil lady in the leather pants trying to convince a drunk patriar to pay way too much to take him to bed #is fueled by anger and fear and paranoia above all else? #oh okay yeah the tiefling who just told a funny lil story in the elfsong is a weapon of tyranny forged in blood and tears. cool! #extremely funny character. i like them. #i didn’t plan this. like it works out well bc who better to amass knowledge and sit right on the edge of power without anyone noticing than #a bard or a courtesan. the type of person powerful people wouldn’t think twice about because what kind of threat could they really be? #but. also if u take a step back they are just a clown who wants to kill. #okay i’ll stop blorbo posting about my own blorbo now. i am at work LOL #oc. xarrai

[disquietedpalefish]

Last photos of my unfinished Resident Evil blanket (which I started making in my teens and eventually abandoned overwhelmed) before I take it apart for yarn and space.

#Resident Evil #crochet #I started this way back when I was first reading the S.D. Perry novels #it was gonna be inspired by the cover of the first book #with the characters standing with their weapons and surrounded by different monsters #naturally I was gonna add more monsters cuz I loved them all #and I was gonna put the mansion in the distance and some crow silhouettes in the sky #and ''RESIDENT EVIL'' in big red letters #also in the sky #naturally I was in over my head XD #I'm sure I would have kept at it if I had been able to get all the colors and amount of yarn #early on #but it was a slow process and I was having difficulty putting the concept image together #and eventually realized ''wow it's crowded this is gonna be awful'' 🤣 #so yeah that was that expedition #ramble babble fafafa

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

man i fuckin swear to god the inconsistencies in LL are making me want to resurrect @wtflorienlegacies. getting to the end of FoF in my reread and being reminded that they completely retconned five's entire backstory without a word like

#lorien legacies #LL number five #LL crit tag #FoF: he was found by the mogadorians immediately after landing on earth; and they raised him from when he was a toddler #every single other piece of source material since: he had a roughass life and only ended up with them eight months ago #SOWHATISTHEFCKINTRUTH.GIF #like you might say he was lying; because he does lie a lot #but again; this was during his frantic climactic reveal; where he was exposing everything all cards on the table #he did not at all seem like he was intending to lie about this or thought it would help at the time #and this is the series that has casually retconned shit like 'the mogs found The Only Weapon in the Universe that could break the charm' #'and it's a sword being carried by a random soldier' #at the very beginning of the /first book/ #so it is clearly not beneath them but also i am amazed that this one wasn't just poorly handled early installment weirdness #that could be quietly waved off as a nonsequitur #this was like. a major plot point not just that a prominent character's concept was built around #but that massively impacted pretty much every other major character's arcs and dynamics with each other #/bruh/ #they also can't be assed to keep shit straight like the spelling of vatborn; or whether maggie grew up in scotland or ireland #for the space of a single book #truly incredible #anyway i'm gonna write a crossover au where the two versions of five meet; cause each other and everyone else trouble; and make out #watch this space #lorien legacies tag #the crit files #shipping #dyn: five squared

[justanotherbirdbrain-blog]

A Workshop for Creating Magical/ Fictional Crystals: A Guide from a Geologist

Hi folks, its me, here to talk about fictional writing again! Today I'm just tackling the idea of magical stones/mana stones by looking at existing minerals today and some neat properties that they have, and how you can apply these things to a fictional world. The goal is mainly to help you if you are stuck trying to come up with a unique magic system, or a unique identification/characteristic of your mineral.

First Things First: Mineral Shapes

I am exhausted, petered out, down-right fatigued by seeing every mineral depicted with having the crystal structure of calcite and quartz. There are soooooo many cooler, more interesting crystal structures, don't you think you would stop and take a look at a perfect cube in nature? It is completely unsettling.

Second: Color

Color within minerals can either be really important, or not important at all! It is your choice to decide if color is going to be something that means something to your mineral. But what are some times when the color is important? Well.... there are some elements that are called chromophores, this classification just indicates that these elements, when present, will determine the color of whatever they are in. So, if you wanted to treat mana like a chromophore, you could say, "Oh everything that contains mana turns green!" This could mean that regardless of the mineral, if that mineral is a specific color, it means it contains mana. This concept is exciting because you can just stop here and use minerals that already exist! You can also use it as an indicator for a magical ore! Chromophores are typically metals, so if you are making a new metal weapon, making the ore of that metal a unique color would make a lot of sense!

However, your mineral can also just be every color of the rainbow like quartz and perhaps that's what makes identifying your mana stones elusive and create an illusion of scarcity that your character can solve.

There are other things that can change the colors of minerals, like radiation damage, and electron exchange, but I think that is beyond what would be helpful! So lets talk about some unique color properties that happen in nature that seem magical in the first place! Maybe you don't need to design a mana stone, but you want a unique gemstone that only the royal family passes down or something (IDK).

The first one is the alexandrite effect! This is where a mineral can change color in natural light vs. incandescent light. (the mineral itself is not changing, but the lights contain different amounts of different colors that then get absorbed by the stone). Even if you don't use electricity in your fictional world, you could have the colors change in the presence of light magic. This could create fun misunderstandings about what the mineral is reacting to!

Pleochroism

Pleochroism is something that most minerals have, it is frequently used to help identify minerals in thin sections, however minerals are usually not pleochroic enough for it to be visible to the naked eye! Pleochroism is just a fancy name to describe the change in how light is absorbed based on the angle of the mineral! So if you scroll up to the first image where I showed a lot of crystal shapes, most of them have angles where they are longer and shorter! This will effect the way light travels in the crystal. Tanzanite is a popular mineral that does this.

Photochromism

This is when a mineral will change color (in a reversible way) when exposed to UV light (or sunlight), I am not going to go too into the details of why this is happening because it would require me to read some research papers and I just don't feel like it. The mineral that is best known for this is Hackmanite!

Alright! These are all the really cool color effects that might inspire you or maybe not, but now I am going to talk about how you might find your minerals within a rock!

When I see a lot of magical caves/mines, typically I see them with some variation of a geode honestly, but most minerals are not found like that! Now I am sure most of you guys have seen a geode, so I will not really talk about those, but I will talk briefly about porphyroblasts which is when the mineral grows larger than the minerals around it, this happens in metamorphic minerals!

sorry random stranger, but this is an image of garnets inside a finer-grained rock at gore mountain in New York!

Another way you might find minerals is in a pegmatite! This is when all minerals are really large! This is a formed from really slow crystalizing magma!

But something else to think about is that your mineral might just be massive, it doesn't have to have distinct crystals, it may be similar to jadeite where small grains grow together which leaves it looking smooth and seamless! A note about all of these is that you would have to mine into the rock to find these, there would not be any natural caves in these rocks! Caves are only ever really formed in limestones and maybe marbles (rocks that react with acid).

How can your characters identify these minerals?

Typically when you are out in the field you will look to see what type of rocks the minerals are found in (The overall texture of the rock will tell you how it formed). If you know how the rock formed, it will narrow down the amount of minerals you need to think about by quite a bit! Next, you are going to look closely at it and observe its crystal structure, does it have an obvious crystal? if so what is the general shape? If it is broken, how did it break? Did it fracture like glass or did it break along uniform planes. Some minerals have a thing called cleavage (breaks along planes of weakness). If a mineral exhibits this habit, it will again help narrow this down. Next we can look at color. Color can be misleading, because minerals like quartz can be any color imaginable, but minerals like olivine will always be green! The next thing your character can do is test for hardness, minerals all have a specific hardness that can help identify it as well.

After you go through all of this, your mineral might have some special property! This could be magnetism, fluorescence, reactions to acid, or any of the color changing effects I mentioned above! Other than that, your character can take it back to a lab and do a number of things to identify it, but the most typical thing would be for them to make a thin section (very thin piece of the rock) and observe it under a cross polarized microscope!

On that note folks! I hope this helped in some way in thinking of new magic mineral properties! I have other guides that explore some different fictional worldbuilding issues you might run into, but if you have any topics you would like me to cover please that I haven't mentioned already, let me know!

#geology #rocks #creative writing #fictional world #worldbuilding #dnd #dnd worldbuilding #worldbuilding stuff #writing resources #info post #information #writing

[emmafrostyyy]

y'all sleeping on Astarion/Lae'zel bc this moment is so...the way the flippant demeanor drops and he doesn't hesitate to call her out for sticking with her version of Cazador like their relationship is so underrated fr...

sitting down writing this bullshit like let me peel it like an onion a bit and elaborate why this pairing is fascinating to me

It's really interesting how during the most cathartic, life-altering moment in Astarion's questline, the reactions of the other companions are more about the moral wrongness/guilt of sacrificing innocent lives. Lae'zel doesn't do that and instead relates to his hurt.

She knows what's he's feeling, the lack of control, the unfairness of being powerless for too long. This is a woman who just found out her entire life purpose was built on lies, discarded and hunted by her own people after outliving her usefulness, and groomed to basically die for an insane power-hungry lich queen. She knows all too well that power isn't always real freedom. Her first instinct is to empathize with Astarion to steer him away from his hate and resentment.

Astarion/Lae'zel is so interesting to me because they're such a classic "can we make each other worse or make a better person out of the other?".

They both have genuine appreciation for violence and respect each other's ruthlessness. Astarion was used as a weapon of seduction while Lae'zel was of warfare. Sex with people is meaningless and not real intimacy for them, and while both have little understanding/experience of interpersonal relationships beyond the physical, they still feel and love very deeply. They have no frame of reference for things like friendship and warmth, but they badly want all of that and more, even if they don't know it yet.

In-game they can sleep with each other, which is basically the foundation of the normal Tav/Astarion romance. Lae'zel saw him during combat and got horny, who knows. Astarion who's used to luring people with his charms, takes up Lae'zel's blunt offer because she's a strong hardened warrior that can provide protection and be a worthy ally, and he doesn't know how to say no. Navigating the complications between one who wants to be seen beyond as a sex object, and one who comes from a totally alien culture with no concept of love/family/connections and only sex is honestly really compelling to me. It's a transactional, mutually beneficial thing with no emotional expectations. Once you get past the skeevy rockiness of their early relationship, I really like the idea of them slowly seeing something past the exterior and realizing they may have harshly misjudged the other, an unspoken friendship blooms, and in comes the realization that they are essentially loners longing for kindness and a comforting touch in the most desperate of situations.

Lae'zel is prideful, direct, has no sense of courtship talk, and doesn't hold back her thoughts the slightest--she's not sweet/agreeable and what you see is really what you get, which I imagine would be disarming for Astarion who's used to vacuous flattery and has difficulty trusting others. But she's also insanely protective, passionate, loyal, and an initiator-- every romance scene is triggered by her first and she's always showing effort towards her relationships, which would mesh well with Astarion who does need someone to nudge him.

She doesn't purposely suppress her feelings, she's just simply at loss at how to express them sometimes due to her wildly different upbringing. She stops the sparring match you agree to and an easy vulnerability slips instantly out of her: "I don't want to hurt you. I want to protect you, and for you to protect me." and "Thus far I've taunted you, devoured you, battled you. Now I want more than anything to soothe you." are romantic as fuck and Astarion of all people really needs to hear that tbh.

Astarion is also someone who struggles with reinforcing his boundaries, and a key theme in Lae'zel's romance is that she encourages and wants you to challenge her and learn to stand your ground. It's not gentlest method, but hey, relationships are about having to make an effort to learn each other's language.

I think he also would take pleasure "educating her on the matters of Fay-run" (I believe there's a whole banter with him teasing her and teaching her pet names) and would get a kick out of coaxing Lae'zel out of her shell with her shyness at showing public affection, and making her blush. Also it simply would be fucking funny to see Astarion who's used to easy seduction, trying to pass a persuasion check just to get a smooch and generally having to work to earn regular kisses from Lae'zel lmfaooo

Lae'zel also initially struggles to see her chains as chains. When she learns about Vlaakith's betrayal, she copes instantly through denial and shuts it down. Astarion is NOT having it and calls her out, he knows her well enough to recognize that she would value blunt honesty above all.

I imagine he also despises her lack of self-preservation, the way her entire identity is tied to duty and being in service of others, and doesn't understand her desire to still help/liberate the people that want her dead and are hunting her down. He wants to make this duty-bound soldier realize that looking out for herself, and putting herself first may not be the worst thing in the world.

They're so similar to each other but are also polar opposites in some ways that make a more equal, balanced romance I think. It's not a simple, one-sided, feel-good "she/he can fix her/him" fantasy because both of them have to earn each other's love, actually cut through the other's flaws, and actively motivate each other to be better versions of themselves.

They're not at all the other's ideal guiding hand. It's rough, jagged, and imperfect, but that's how healing goes. It's so far from being the healthiest relationship -- but even if their belief systems differ, their moral compass does often align. I imagine it's a slight relief for them to have a partner where there would be less shame and judgment when they expectedly, occasionally slip up and fall into their bad habits.

Also, man, the "You showed me the betweens and beyonds. Beyond war and peace, beyond passion and obsession, most importantly, you showed me freedom.", "First you were my wound, now you were my cure.", "But you saw something else in me - someone else I could be. Someone who could break the cycle of power and terror that started centuries ago.." lines really hit hard when applied to them.

Of course, they can also make each other worse, feed into the other's negative traits that will bring out the worst part of themselves. It's this duality of their pairing that is very interesting to explore, the way it can steer in either direction because it's an intense, fraught relationship at its core.

#when he gets called by omeluum “child of the dark” and her “child of the stars” like yeah..the squid man is being literal but he Gets It fr. #lae'zel #astarion #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 meta #astarion ancunin #astarion x lae'zel #lae'zel x astarion #the rarest of rarepairs they dont even got a ship name...this is so tragique we need to discuss the pathos and potential of this pairing #bg3 lae'zel #bg3 astarion #also im a sucker for stoic knight/court darling trope and whatever variations of it yeah #bloodbruise

[sparrowsocks]

Hello gamers, local disabled cane user is gonna teach you how to design a cane.

Tl:dr: design a cane based on comfortability and the disability of the character

First things first, you need to know why you’re character needs a cane. Do they have chronic pain? Unhealed injury? Muscle or joint issues? Do they have poor blood circulation which makes them dizzy? Do they need the cane all the time or does their disability fluctuate? Do they use a wheelchair or a walker sometimes?

There’s a lot you should know about a characters ability/disability in order to find what type of mobility aid they should be using.

There are a bunch of different kinds of canes/crutches. The 4 on the left are crutches. The difference between canes and crutches are, crutches are meant to keep weight off your legs as much as possible, and generally you use a crutch on each arm. Canes are used for stability and you usually only use one. Folding canes are great for people who only use their cane sometimes

Great! You’ve picked either a cane or crutches for your character. I’m done right? WRONG. Cane handles.

This is probably the most important part of canes because if you have the wrong handle your wrist will die.

I gently kiss all the canes on the left, they are all very good for grip and wrist, although the middle left is designed for left or right hand so you cannot switch hands with it.

The ones on the right are also pretty good, they wouldn’t be my first choice but they are still great. The top one is also very good as it has a wristband so you can’t drop it as easily. (Trust me when I say I DROP MY CANE SO MUCH)

Sigh. The middle cane handles… the bottom one I have never actually seen but it looks like it would kill my wrist. The top one is uncomfortable for long period uses, but it is good for if you’re a shepherd. And the pimp cane… the knob cane… it’s awful. Just no. It’s hard to grip, it is unstable it’s bad it’s awful I throw it into a fire. Please don’t give your character, they don’t deserve that pain

Now you know the basic ergonomic things, there are different shafts for canes and crutches

You can really get creative with this type of thing, just as long as it looks stable enough.

Here are some good examples of pretty canes that are ergonomic and good to use! (featuring victor arcane who i adore)

Add some cute details to the cane if you want! You can add stickers, colours, grip support. And while I love the concept of cane swords those are very unstable, if you want a cane weapon you can make it lead weighted, put knives in it. A poison vile in the shaft. Be creative.

Just some of these components are important to consider with a disabled character. There’s a lot more to consider with wheelchairs and walkers which I don’t have the experience with.

If you do have any questions my asks are always open to questions about this stuff! I’d love to help if you’re making a disabled character.

#disability #cane #art #reblog this

[needle-noggins]

(CW for SA, suicidal ideation) Here we go. My favorite and simultaneously least favorite panel of Vash and Knives.

I've seen a few interpretations of this scene and before we dive into the one that really struck me, let's start with the more... chill one. We're finally introduced to the third gun of Trigun, Vash's angel arm. And the way we're introduced to it involves Knives forcing him to pull the trigger. Of course, since no one knows anything about Knives, the people of Noman's Land blame Vash for Fifth Moon, and Vash likewise blames himself (this is kinda a spoiler but if you've been paying attention, it's just par for the course). However, he's not the one who pulled the trigger, Knives is. It brings up an interesting moral question of blame - do we blame the gun (and Vash, who is being used/objectified as a weapon here), or the person who wanted it to happen? Guns don't kill people, genocidal twins do!

Now for the awful interpretation, the one that makes me cry and wish Vash was real so I could hug him and pay for his therapy. And really highlights how awful Knives is and how far he'd go for his brother in his own, fucked-up way. I touched on this in a previous post about Legato and the Murder Cafe, and the whole time I was thinking about Fifth Moon but didn't want to say anything for the sake of spoilers.

So. Pay attention to the way Vash and Knives are standing. Knives, when he first grabbed Vash's head, was standing in front of him. He moves behind him to better control him and yeah, he's still controlling him via hand on head, and now he's got his other hand gripping Vash's chest, where feathers/wings are manifesting. Knives is assaulting him. If you wanna get crazy with it and say that the angel arm is kinda phallic, you could say... yeah. This is rape. I heard that specific interpretation once and while I accepted it I also don't know if that would be generally accepted or if I'd be called out for it, so I'm trying to tread lightly here.

It also doesn't escape me that of course the angel arm has feminine features like the plants - the plants that, again, humans are exploiting for their ability to create. There's a lot of feminist commentary to be made here but many people have said it better than me. Specifically I'm thinking of this one post I saw about gender fuckery and Tristamp Vash. Anyway.

Also, the atomic bomb/black hole/sun/whatever that is in the middle... It's just so powerful. It's terrifying. The eldritch body horror here is a punch to the gut. What the fuck, Trigun? I thought this was a funky space western!!!

Oh, and here's more commentary on the following few panels:

Vashussy shot, Knives is still right behind him. Yeah, I wasn't kidding about how bad this pose is for them. Knives, you sick fuck.

Vash shoots himself in the leg (a key difference from '98 trigun, lol), because of course he does, but it doesn't free him from the arm.

The arm's getting darker/the light inside is getting lighter! Stampede did an awesome job with their interpretation of the angel arm and I don't think I would have understood it without that. Also, on my first read I didn't notice that Vash is literally levitating, which is cool, but also terrifying because ?? he's not in control of that either??

Finally. A super painful, minimalist, double-page spread. Nightow loves 'em. Vash thinks he's dying (maybe?) and he wishes he had never existed. It's not suicidal ideation per se, but he wishes he didn't exist at all because he's already caused enough suffering. This is a low for him, because he believes so strongly in the concept of the Blank Ticket. (Come on, soupy brain bitch boy, get it together!) He's a monster, it's just how he was born, and he's not in control. Very specifically too, he says "we", and then changes it to "I"... he doesn't blame Knives at all, and that's very him. I want to shake him! Stop playing the martyr, Vash!

#trimax #trigunbookclub #cw assault #cw sa #ive never tagged content warnings before please help if i didnt do it well enough #cw sui ideation #vash the stampede #millions knives #also if you say ONE WORD about plancest i will kill you with my mind because you have sorely misunderstood the point here #posting this makes me so nervous ngl #dont hate me

[yumeka-sxf]

Japanese Linguistic Observations in Spy x Family - part 2

Part 2 - Anya's "Anya-isms"

I think Anya has one of the most interesting ways of speaking out of all the SxF characters. But like with Twilight's dialogue that I previously discussed, it can only be fully appreciated in the Japanese version. Probably the most noticeable thing about her dialogue is how it's written compared to the other characters.

Written Japanese is comprised of three different alphabets: ひら���な (hiragana) and カタカナ (katakana), which together are referred to as "kana," and 漢字 (kanji). Kanji are the characters that hold the meaning of words, while kana simply represent the various Japanese syllable sounds and don't have any meaning on their own (much like the letters of the English alphabet). There are only about 100-ish total unique kana symbols, however, there are over 2,000 kanji in common use today. So Japanese children will start out learning kana and then learn kanji gradually during their school years. This is why Japanese children's books are typically written only or mostly in kana. This is also why manga and books aimed at a younger audience will have kana "translations" of kanji written above kanji characters, which are called furigana.

With that in mind, it's not surprising that all of Anya's dialogue in the Japanese version of the SxF manga is written entirely in kana. Even though using kanji in her dialogue wouldn't necessarily mean she knows kanji, reading a character's dialogue only in kana definitely gives off childish vibes – it conveys feelings of youthfulness and innocence, like "they're speaking only in kana because they don't know the kanji for these words…they're just a little kid, after all." At least, that's the feeling I get when I read Anya's dialogue. Though I haven't read enough manga in Japanese to say for sure, it seems like this concept of making little kids speak only in kana is not unusual, as there's at least one other example I know of: a manga from the mid-2000s called Yotsuba also has a titular 5-year old whose dialogue is written only in kana.

What's also interesting is that all of the other Eden kids speak "normally," using kana and kanji properly in their dialogue. This helps to convey the fact that, despite Anya being roughly the same age as them, their "rich family" upbringing has forced them to grow up faster. In the below panel, you can see how Damian's dialogue uses kanji (with furigana translations) while Anya's uses only kana, even for words that have kanji.

Interestingly, I found at least two cases where Anya does use kanji in her dialogue: when she's calling out the name of her big "Arrow of Light, Seize the Star" move during the dodgeball game, and when she calls out her "Lighting Bolt, Deliver my Aid" move when she tries to throw Yor's weapon back on the deck in the cruise arc. As you can see in the below panels, the names of these "moves" is written in kanji (with furigana translations). This makes sense not only because this is parodying shonen series where the characters shout out the names of their moves, but because it emphasizes how determined Anya was at these moments.

But going back to how Anya's speech compares to the other kids, another thing that stands out is that she speaks very "plainly." Her grammar is (mostly) correct, except for a few mistakes you'd expect a little kid to make. But she uses pretty much no colloquialisms, almost as if she knows the language but lacks the experience for using it in normal social interactions. I don't think this is unusual for a kid her age who's still learning, but it definitely stands out when compared to her classmates. For example, in the below panel, Becky uses normal interjections and other colloquialisms in her speech, like "ne" (ね), "wa" (わ), and "yo" (よ), which are all standard Japanese linguistic devices for softening or emphasizing your sentences. However, Anya doesn't use things like this in her speech. Again, this makes her speech come off as very plain and abrupt, almost like she's not a native speaker.

She also refers to herself in third person all the time in the Japanese version. In fact, I don't recall her ever using an "I" or "me" pronoun. I don't know why the English version of the manga doesn't keep this characteristic of her speech. I think it's very important in highlighting the childish aspect of her personality.

Putting all this together – the fact that she doesn't use typical colloquial speech and refers to herself in third person – really emphasizes the childish, naive, and almost baby-like nature of her character. I'm curious if Endo made her speak this way simply to show what a little kid she is compared to her classmates, or if it will somehow tie back to whatever roots she has in classical languages that he keeps hinting at. Regardless, as I mentioned in my full Anya analysis, what she lacks in speech and school smarts, she makes up for in empathy and resourcefulness.

Besides all this, Anya does make typical speech mistakes a normal kid would make, like mishearing words or saying things wrong. She mostly uses casual speech, but does try to use keigo (polite speech) on occasion, though not always correctly. For example, she says "ohayaimasu" (おはやいます) for "good morning" instead of "ohaiyou gozaimasu" (おはようございます).

But the most consistent "mistake" she makes (though it's not really a mistake) is what she calls Loid and Yor – "chichi" (ちち) and "haha" (はは) respectively.

Japanese has many different words for relatives depending on whether you're talking about your own relatives or someone else's, and whether you're talking to them or about them. "Chichi" and "haha" are the general, neutral terms for "father" and "mother," and are also used when talking about your parents to someone else. However, they're not used when talking directly to your mother and father. There are many other words for that, the usual ones being "o-tou-san" (お父さん) and "o-kaa-san" (お母さん), or some variations of these with different honorifics. Damian refers to his dad as "chichi-ue" (父上) which is very formal, while Becky calls her dad the actual English word "papa" (パパ) which is very informal and normal for kids to use. But again, "chichi" and "haha" are typically only used when talking about your parents, not to them the way Anya uses them. This started from the very first chapter where Loid asks her to call him something that sounds "elite." He originally suggests the very formal "o-tou-sama" (お父さま), but when Anya says "chichi," he doesn't bother to correct her.

Hearing a little kid call her dad and mom "chichi" and "haha" is kind of like calling them "my father" and "my mother" even when speaking to them directly – it's not wrong necessarily, just strange. But again, this serves to further emphasize the childlike nature of Anya's character.

<- Return to Part 1

Continue to Part 3 ->

#spy x family #sxf #spy family #spyxfamily #anya forger #sxf manga #sxf analysis #sxf meta