#bonus points if he uses both of those in different contexts (maybe one is casual and the other is only used as a threat of various nature) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

solomonish · 3 years

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Solomon Headcanons

I didn’t like my old headcanons for him and I think I have a slightly better feel for him so I’m posting these bad boys. Maybe at this rate I’ll just post Solomon HCs every month

Also this turned into more of a “I’m going to talk about Solomon in depth and maybe throw in one headcanon about kissing him” and is no longer “lol what kind of dates do you go on? <3″ so uh. do with that what you will. It’s also SUPER LONG (or feels that way) so make sure you have a hot second to read them

you can find my for real headcanons for him here but I don’t necessarily stand by them anymore? They’re just there for fun now lol

Solomon’s Relationship With Relationships

Solomon has been alive for...a long time, and with that naturally comes a lot of experiences, negative and positive. It’s also natural that it would also have him break out of traditional structures regarding...everything, but especially things regarding relationships and specific other people.

(Not to get sociological or philosophical about society or whatever, but the way we view everything is accented heavily by the end. With exceptions, and this certainly varies from culture to culture, but as a general idea, we view things expecting them to take place over the span of 70-100 years. Certain positions in politics or business or something try to look at things generationally, but how capable of that are we and how far ahead can we truly see?)

(What I mean to say is that immortality naturally shifts the entire context in which you would view things that were expected to be “lifelong.” What once existed to enrich a life is now a tether to a system that doesn’t necessarily suit his existence.)

Psychologically, however.....I don’t think Solomon has tried to (or even can) rewire himself entirely to the point where he doesn’t feel love. He’s already got a fondness for Simeon and Luke (always crying about him calling them “dear friends” in the circus event i don’t know if he says anything in the lessons because i’m only on like 21 LOL) so he’s clearly capable of fondness and affection.

Not that those should equate exactly to romantic feelings (because they shouldn’t), but there’s undeniable similarities between platonic and romantic affection and, for the purposes of speculating about an immortal’s capability to still feel both, I think they can be equated in this regard.

There are a lot of assumptions I’m making about him to make this post, namely the following: that there is still reconciling to be done internally between his immortality and humanity, that Solomon’s composed and confident nature is a bit of a front (only a bit - I’ll explain more later), and, related to these two, that he even cares about humanity and that he still wants to preserve his humanity.

While this might be my perspective as a regular human, I really don’t believe that the desire to be human and fully encompass what that means has left. If anything, I think his intrinsic desire for knowledge and power stems from it, and he’s just suppressed the “mushier” emotional parts of that as a sort of....defense mechanism, if you will.

SO the tl;dr of this is that you know how alloromantic people just like feel in love and they get their romantic crushes and it’s natural and they can’t control it? Solomon gets that! He just isn’t the type to swoon over someone or really make it known.

He also as a person is big on being manipulative shady and in control, so if he were to just be super obvious about having a crush on someone and not being able to do anything about it, that would sort of tarnish his whole image.

So yeah, I think Solomon just has his emotions on a tight leash when they probe to be out of control. Clearly, he doesn’t have every part of him under this sort of watchful eye (whether that’s because he still wants to feel genuine happiness or he knows if he came across as emotionless and calculated people would trust him even less, I haven’t decided), but those that cause trouble stay behind locked doors.

Additionally, I don’t think Solomon is opposed to falling in love. I’d bet he’s had lots of different partners over the years and remembers them fondly (you know, assuming they ended well)

I also think his immortal status makes dating different? I feel like doesn’t really date to find a life partner because. well. (gestures).

That’s not to say that he doesn’t date casually sometimes or something. In the terms of a serious romantic partnership, though, it’s rare that it happens because he knows that it’ll die with them (and stay within him for probably forever, even if/when there comes a day he can no longer remember their name or their face).

Another assumption I’m making that I forgot to mention: I think it’s rare that Solomon’s serious, long-term partners know the true extent of the magic he dabbles in. Maybe he lets them know it’s real magic, or he pretends it’s all show magic and parlor tricks. Sometimes he pretends his pact marks are tattoos, sometimes he tells the truth. If ever these confessions are laughed off, he laughs them off too and creates a cover story.

He doesn’t intend to lie, but it’s very difficult to meet someone and explain........all of THAT. On which date to you mention that you can control 72 demons? Do you send a card explaining how you’ve been alive since Biblical times and you’re not even sure if you birthday is your real birthday anymore, let alone how old you are? And should that card be store bought or homemade?

So while it’s rare for Solomon to have a serious romantic partnership, it’s even more rare for him to be entirely understood or accepted for EVERYTHING that he is because he can’t get into it. Arguably, that hasn’t happened since his “death” in his original timeline.

A crush for Solomon isn’t a hopeless affair, either. Should you choose someone else, he’ll allow himself the disappointment and move on.

With Solomon, romantic love sparks naturally, but genuine true love isn’t some all-powerful, unstoppable force. He falls more in line with the people who believe it’s a choice and a decision, somewhere between “it’s purely a biological impulse we just gave a fancy name” and “it’s the magic that makes life more enjoyable”

With MC

In the case of MC, however, I think he might initially see it as bothersome or a hinderance to whatever his plan is with being down there for the exchange program. Maybe he convinces himself he’s just naturally attracted to you because you’re human like him. Once he comes to terms with his feelings and gets to know MC a bit more, he might even see it as a lost cause seeing as you already have several of the brothers vying for your affections.

For Solomon to act on a crush that he’s already decided is hopeless, it’ll be up to the MC to show that THEY are interested in HIM

He finds no particular pleasure in being someone who is chased after or “playing hard to get,” but he already has a complicated relationship with complicated relationships. He’s gonna need a down payment of affection a sign that there’s anything even there to pursue

Traditional flirting, while he’ll have his fun with it (and probably enjoy it at least a little - who doesn’t like feeling desirable?), doesn’t really work for him. Lots of people and creatures have used it to try and charm him, plus he has a pact with Asmo, so at this point he really sees it as more casual fun then an indication of true interest.

Honestly, to get him to realize “oh shit I actually have a chance,” you’re going to have to do two main things: 1) make him feel chosen over the others, and 2) respond to his displays of affection

Making Him Feel Chosen

This isn’t really a competition thing, or some selfish hoarding of your time. The thing is, Solomon knows he isn’t the only one in the running and he knows that anything he has to offer, somebody else could give you a portion of it.

(You won’t get the same experience or combination of traits with somebody else obvi, but with 11 suitors and an added chihuahua, there tends to be a little bit of overlap with everyone)

A crush for Solomon is a romantic interest, but if he intends on pursuing a serious relationship (which, I feel, is what he intends to be the final goal of his crushes as opposed to more casual affairs), he needs to see SOME reciprocation

Being with him is an ordeal, maybe a lifelong one for you, so he needs that assurance that it’ll be worth it and there aren’t better avenues

Basically, this means that ✨ quality time ✨ is of the utmost importance

At first, it doesn’t have to be anything big. Sit with him at lunch when you see him in the cafeteria, meet him in the library while you wait for your demon escort to be finished with their extracurriculars, chat him up in the one class you have together (and then ask him to help you study what you missed in class by talking. it’s a required transfer class but you already know everything about it, right, Solomon? 🥺)

As your relationship progresses, that’s when things start to get harder. Invite him out to things that you think he’ll enjoy, and say yes to as many excursions with him as you can. Bonus points for making it clear that you want to go when you’re unable to attend.

(He finds himself a little embarrassed how happy it makes him when instead of just a “no” or a “sorry, not today” he gets something like “I’m on dinner duty so I have to spend that time preparing :( but we should definitely make a date so you can tell me about it later!” It makes him feel like a priority.)

It isn’t until you find yourself comfortable enough to ask him to accompany you to something you want to do that he starts to realize you’re hanging out with him for him and not because he’s just offering up a bunch of fun new experiences for you to try.

You don’t even have to say “hey, i’m pretty sure you know all about the birds in the Devildom aviary but I haven’t had a chance to go and would really like to spend the day with you. Wanna come with?” If it’s something that he knows you know isn’t in his wheelhouse, he’ll be able to figure out that OH.....you’re inviting him for HIM.....oh

Make him feel like a priority, like he’s the one that you want, even out of all your choices. You can be as enthralled by the birds in that aviary as you want, just as long as you make it clear that your enthusiasm to be with him is on the same level and he’ll finally kick himself into gear.

Responding to His Affections

Now, you don’t have to do anything you don’t like. I hear in his dame card devilgram he’s a consent king, and he stands by that every day of the week

He also isn’t the type to need an exact equal to everything he does. Yes a relationship is a two way street, but this isn’t saying that if he gets you a gift you need to present him something with equal or greater value within the next 24 hours. he’s not mammon haha i’m so FUNNY

Just...let him know that he’s doing things right. His serious relationships are few and far between and people change as often as the times do, so make sure that he knows what he’s doing is landing. He’s not insecure per se, but he would like to know that he isn’t making a fool of himself entirely, you know?

Don’t brush him off in front of the brothers or he’ll think he’s read the situation all wrong and you’re back to square one. If you do it because you don’t like touching and he put an arm around your shoulder or something, that’s fine, but if he thinks you’re uncomfortable being with him in front of the brothers he’ll wonder if you even liked him at all.

To him, a secret relationship isn’t really feasible. First of all, those brothers are ALWAYS in your business so bold of you to think you’ll have ANY secrets by the time the exchange program is done, and secondly, don’t you both have enough on your plate that you shouldn’t make something that makes you happy needlessly complicated?

He is an odd case and knows there’s a lot that comes with him, so if you’re uncomfortable simply showing that you’re in a relationship and reciprocating, he’ll think you aren’t equipped to handle.....All That.

In case you haven’t noticed, he’s weird. He’s a weirdo. He doesn’t fit in. And he doesn’t want to fit in. Have you ever seen him without that stupid cape on? That's weird.

If you respond to his affections in a similar way, such as putting you arm around his waist or a hand on his back when he puts an arm around your shoulder or reaching up to fix his hair when he reaches to mess with yours, it’ll make him happy for sure. He doesn’t have any specific expectations for you but he’ll like to feel like you’re on the same wavelength.

A lot of his affections are morphed into specific and targeted teasing (but not like *gently bullies u* teasing). It’s a lot of inside jokes at your expense (and the more inside jokes he has, the more he probably likes you)

It’s also a lot of messing up your hair, sharp pokes and frustrating games like “guess what?” “i don’t know, what?” “i told you to guess, MC.” “ugh...you won the lottery” “guess better” “please don’t do this to me Solomon”

He probably responds best to Acts of Service and Quality Time (though at any stage in the relationship he’s a flexible man). While he’s trying to woo you to solidify his spot in first place against everyone else, if you continue to make the effort to be around him or like. recognize he’s taking time out of his day to romance you and do something for him in return he’ll cement the fact that oh yeah, this is happening between the two of you

(not to say that romancing you is a chore, because it’s not, but man if it doesn’t make him happy that you’re wanting to make his life easier on him so he can pursue the other things he enjoys, too.)

What a Relationship with Solomon is Like

He isn’t the biggest person on PDA, or at least not on purpose. He won’t see you and immediately be like ‘oh there they are i need to kiss them kiss kiss kiss’ or whatever, but he’s not averse to it?

He doesn’t want physical affection to be a big deal, or at least not in public. unless that’s what you’re into ;) If the two of you are out and about and you kiss his hand, or you’re a generally physically affectionate person he’ll smile and respond and be generally unbothered by it, but don’t expect him to ever really have the desire to like make out in public or something. Really, you probably won’t get much more than a quick kiss because he DOES always have other things on his mind.

You will NOT be able to get out of him messing with you. If you need him to tone it down that’s fine, but the more you let him get away with, the less energy he’ll have to redirect into other troublemaking activities

Has a weird thing with licking too probably? like he’s not gross about it and it’s not like a NSFW fixation but he’ll do that mom thing where he licks his thumb because “you’ve got something on your cheek” and then reveal that he’s a LIAR

or he’ll put his face really close to yours and stick his tongue out when you turn your head so it hits your cheek

it just gets such a DRAMATIC reaction out of you so that’s why he does it? if you ask him genuinely to stop he will but if you comment on it he’ll just give you a small smile and not say anything then continue to do it

when he messes with you, it’s ok if you say he’s doing something weird but don’t make him feel childish. setting boundaries (and making regular observations - he is kinda weird) is more than alright but admonishing him just feels......off and will turn him sour for a bit

VERY appreciative of someone who supports his adventurous side. Also fond of someone who’s happy to tag along but knows that some things he has to do on his own.

Even if you don’t want to go, he’ll appreciate the support or the interest you show in what he does. Ask him where he’s going and what he’s doing there, but ask him because you’re interested and not because you’re overly worried.

Please be there for him when he gets back to talk about it. He really likes feeling important or cool when he tells his tales, even if all he did was go and catch a few magic salamanders or something.

PLEASE be a soundboard for all of his ideas. He knows that sometimes he’ll talk about things that are way over your head that he hasn’t learned yet, but he really does want your undivided attention. It doesn’t matter if you’re encouraging him, debating with him, telling him the idea is stupid (though don’t pull this one too often unless you intend to ask to be let in to the fun) or just watching in confusion. It’s important to him that you value what he has to say, and he hopes one day that he’ll be able to tell you anything and you’ll have a response to it all. (Even if you don’t learn magic to the degree he knows it, he hopes you’ll get to a point where you understand what he wants, even if you don’t know what magical elements he’s talking about or something.)

A relationship with Solomon is one where you’re both independent, but also can’t imagine not going to the other at the end of the day. It’s startling how quickly you become constant in the other’s life despite being in COMPLETELY different stages of magical development and learning about the demon world.

The relationship will be lots of fun, but there will be many serious moments, too.

They’ll happen randomly. Maybe something from a class or a spell reminds him of something from his past, or maybe he’s reminded that he can’t remember so many things that he knows were important to him.

Sometimes, his Tuesday night blues will feel like a life-changing existential crises for you, but please, do what you can to be there for him in these moments. It worries him how much love and happiness he’s lost, especially when he knows he promised to remember it.

Once you get him to think aloud, he’ll say super heavy stuff life “What if I’ve forgotten who I really am and now I’m just something other people and magic have morphed me into?” or “When will the human race evolve or go extinct and leave me behind?” and it fucks you up, really. It fucks him up too

But please be patient with him, because there’s something important he has to get off his chest eventually. He’s worried already that he’ll forget you the way he’s probably forgotten so many others, but he doesn’t want to offend you and know that saying it would come off as uncaring.

You won’t have an answer for these moments, and he knows it. It’ll be best if you just hold him tight, stroke his hair if you’re laying down, and reassure him that you don’t care.

With how long he’s been alive, you’ll have to get past caring if you’re his “one true love” because he doesn’t have that. He gave up the right to having a one true love in exchange for never-ending life. But he still loves and he does love deeply, it just has a lot to cut through to properly be articulated.

So tell him. Tell him you know he’s had other loves, that you know you might not even be the best partner suited to him that he’s had. Tell him that you know when your time has come, he’ll find someone else eventually.

Tell him that what matters to you is that he loves you now, that he’s making things work with you now, and that he isn’t secretly yearning for some lover that’s come to pass or yet to come when he’s with you.

You can’t control what happened in the past or what happens in the future, but right now he’s yours and you’re his and he needs to learn to take things one lifetime at a time. Right now is YOUR Solomon time, and what happens after is just a consequence of time and you’ve already forgiven him for it.

instead of “mom says it’s my turn on the xbox” it’s “god says it’s MY turn on the Solomon”

send that to him for real and he’ll probably never forget you lol

How to Make a Relationship with Solomon Work

With all this in mind, the key to a good relationship with Solomon is keeping his head on his shoulders.

He’s ambitious, powerful, scary smart, and capable of so much more than you can even guess and he knows it. It’ll be good for him to have somebody to keep him on the ground.

Now, don’t be overbearing. If you try to stop him from going places or try to hinder his pursuit of knowledge out of fear for his safety, that’ll cause unbelievable strain on him. You will have to learn to let him work his things out the way he wants to, and it won’t always be the safest or most responsible way either.

He doesn’t mind a gentle scolding if he gets hurt. He won’t say it, but he kinda likes to be reminded how important he is to you.

Also be down to have fun and be a little reckless. Your safety will always be a priority to him, but nobody ever got anywhere without a little struggle, right? Sometimes adventuring with him and following him into the darkest magical corners of the world will require multiple (sometime literal) leaps of faith, but he’ll always be there to catch you.

Let Solomon work for you and the relationship, and you work to keep him sane and remind him that he can belong somewhere, even when he’s been himself for who knows how long and nowhere ever really stays the same.

You’ll always have to remind Solomon that not everything revolves around magic and power. He’s not been mortal for some time, so he gets caught up in the heady and lofty topics and ideas.

Remind him about the simple joys of just having fun and goofing off, that not every moment not spent on homework has to be spent on potions. Remind him (in the human world) how cool a sunset is, or convince him to go through a museum and pretend he’s seeing everything for the first time.

As much as he lives for understanding the grand topics most people can only dream of beginning to grasp, remind him of the little things. Remind him of human indulgences that he’s abandoned. Get him back in touch with that part of himself.

Solomon as a character feels like he’d be really aloof, but he’s honestly extremely devoted to what he invests his time in. He shows this devotion in small ways that feel more like riddles sometimes, in the way he always comes back after a rather dangerous magical excursion, in the way he shortens his time away so he can get back to you, in the way he learns to quiet his mind so he can properly take care of you and what you need and strengthen your relationship.

One thing that I think is a hallmark of a relationship with him is that Solomon loves things that can teach him more about what he doesn’t know. You don’t need to be the smartest person on the planet, or have a specialized and thorough education in some bizarre topic, or come from somewhere entirely different than what he knows to keep his interest.

You are uniquely human, and you help teach him about himself, the one thing that he can never seem to properly grasp and understand the way he wants to.

More importantly, you are you, the one who made pacts with all seven demon lords, the one captured his heart and promised to take care of it when you could throw it away for anybody else.

And you are the only one who could say those words that he believes. Hopefully, you’ll believe him when he says them, too.

#i feel like i was toeing a line that might have like. disrespected aromanticism and if i did i am so sorry #i just think that like. personally as someone who is alloromantic but not necessarily super OBVIOUS about feeling romantic attraction #there is a line between just being casually romantic or something and aromantic like #yeah i wanna marry my best friend but i still wanna MARRY them you know #marriage being taken here in a romantic context and not just a social institution #i don't know. maybe i just want him to be romantic so i can be romantically involved with him and i'm digging too deep with it #tldr aromantic rights!!!#obey me #obey me shall we date #swd obey me #obey me swd #solomon #obey me solomon #solomon hcs #mine #solomon fluff #?#long post

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bbq-hawks-wings · 5 years

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I want to express an unpopular opinion. I hope for your understanding, because such things don't like to listen. Why does everyone think that Hawks is a bird? I couldn' fit my logical arguments into the askbox :( (about how he sits on a pole "like a bird", supposedly likes jewelry and so on). Even his quirk is called Fierce Wings, not a Hawk, not a Red Bird. Do you remember the names of the quirks of Hound Dog and Tsuyu-chan? We haven't evidence to believe that Hawks is behaves like a bird.

I do believe very much he’s a bird, and if you would let me friend, I would love to try and prove it to you because I think the evidence is overwhelming. I’ll make a TL;DR at the end but I’d really like to take the opportunity to perhaps teach others at least one method for literary analysis since it can be a really dry and boring subject to learn in school but is SO useful not only for getting good grades but getting into colleges as well as interpreting both entertainment and genuinely important information like the news, history, laws, and scientific papers. Using fiction - especially such a rich, engaging one like HeroAca - is a great way to try it out without the pressure of a grade. I don’t have the qualifications to teach in any formal capacity, but as a “peer” tutor I hope I can be helpful.

I’m going to put everything under the cut from here because this is going to get LONG, but I promise the TL;DR at the end will be very easy to read. If you liked this sort of unofficial tutorial please let me know. I’d love to help make “academic” skills like this more accessible for those who might benefit from it and enjoy it, but it doesn’t make sense to put in all that effort moving forward if I’m garbage at it.

Before we get too into things, I want to lay out a few notes to keep in mind as we go.

I will only be using the official translations from Viz’s Shonen Jump website when available. Fan translations are more than close enough to casually enjoy and follow the story, but professional translators are paid to know and get various nuances correct and some of the trickier cultural background behind certain phrases (for example, the phrase “where the rubber meets the road” might make zero sense in a foreign language if translated literally, so an equal cultural phrase should be used instead) that give more exact information. Rarely is this too important, but sometimes it helps, plus it supports the source material.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you might know I’m very fond of doing this kind of thing in my spare time and that I’m a huge fan of YouTube channels like Game/Film Theory, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Extra Credits, and Wisecrack that do this kind of thing with popular media as well. If you like this sort of content, may I encourage you to check them out after this to see how else you can apply these kinds of analytical skills to things that aren’t homework.

My writing style tends to meander, but I do my best to cut out the fat and only include relevant information so even though there’s a lot of information here, please know that I’m trying to be thorough and explain things to the best of my ability. If I seem to go off on a tangent, I’m trying to set up or contextualize information to explain why it’s relevant and then come back to the point. In other words, please be patient and bear with me as I go.

Now, to start, I want to explain at least my method for analyzing a text/piece of media. There is a set order and number of steps to take, and it’s as follows:

Read the material all the way through.

Come up with a hypothesis about something you’ve noticed when reading it. (In this case, it’s “Is Hawks actually supposed to be a bird?”)

Collect as much relevant information as possible and test the evidence to see if it supports the hypothesis we’ve made.

Step back and look at everything again with those points in mind.

Determine if we were right or wrong with the evidence we have.

If we were wrong, go back to step 3 to figure out what fell apart and see if we need to go back to step 2.

If that sequence sounds familiar it’s because it’s the scientific method! Aha, didn’t think we’d be pulling science into all this, did you? Don’t worry, we won’t be putting numbers or formulas anywhere near this discussion - the scientific method is just a way we can observe something and test if what we thought about it is actually true; and it applies to almost everything we as humans can observe - from the laws of the universe, to arts and crafts, to philosophy and religion, and so on! When you think about it that way, whole new possibilities can open up for you when it comes to understanding how the world works.

So with that set let’s (finally) begin!

Steps 1 and 2 are already done. We’ve read the manga and want to prove that Hawks is a bird. (We’re going to try and prove he IS a bird because in the context of the series there’s a lot that *isn’t* a bird and less stuff that *is* which will make our job easier.) So now, we’re onto:

Step 3 - collect data and see what conclusions we can get just from our evidence.

Now, to pause again (I know, bear with me!) there’s a few different kinds of information and considerations we have to keep in mind as we collect. There are four kinds of information that are important to know about in order to determine if it’s good data that will help us with the testing phase in Step 4. The kinds of information to keep in mind are:

Explicit information - this is information that is directly spelled out for us. For example, Hawks says, “I like my coffee sweet.” and his character sheet says “Hawk’s favorite food is chicken.” That’s all there is to it, and it’s pretty hard to argue with. This is the easiest type of info to find.

Implicit information - this is info that isn’t directly spelled out but is noticeable either in the background or as actions, patterns, or behaviors that can be observed. For example, Hawks has mentioned in at least three very different places his concerns over people getting hurt while he tries to get in with the League:

Chapter 191 when confronting Dabi about the Nomu he says, “You said you’d release it in the factory on the coast, not in the middle of the damn city!”

Chapter 191 again in a flashback with the Hero Commission he asks, “What about the people who might be hurt while I’m infiltrating the League?”

Chapter 240 when discovering how much influence and power the League has gained, “If someone had taken down the League sooner, all those good citizens wouldn’t have had to die!”

Hawks never says in so many words, “I never want innocent people to get hurt under any circumstances!” but the pattern of behavior and concern is consistent enough to form a pattern and clue us in that this is a key part of his character to keep in mind.

Peripheral information - this is information that isn’t directly to do with Hawks or maybe even the series as a whole but is still relevant to keep in mind for his character and the questions we’re asking. This may include extra content that isn’t the “series” proper, but is still an official source like interviews with Horikoshi, etc. but it can go even further. For example, while we try to prove that he’s a bird, we should have some knowledge about what makes a bird a bird, some specific and notable birdlike habits/behaviors/features, etc. This is just to show how wide-ranging we need to cast our informational net.

Contextual information - this will be important when we get to Step 4, but it’s good to keep in mind now. This is when we compare evidence against the broader scope of the series and consider the circumstances under which we find the information. For example, if I told you, “Harry kicked a dog.” you might think “What a jerk! What decent person kicks a dog?”; but if I said, “Harry kicked a dog while trying to keep it from biting his kid.” suddenly it re-frames the story. “Is the kid ok? Why was that dog attacking? Harry put himself in danger to keep his kid safe - what a great dad!”

I’ll go chronologically to make it easier to follow my evidence as I gather and give references as to where I found that information. I’ll go through the manga first, and then any peripheral sources that are either direct informational companions to the series (like character books or bonus character information sheets) and interviews with Horikoshi. Please note the categories these details fall into may vary based on opinion/interpretation, but I did my best to list them out for reference.

Chapter 185 - Explicit Type: Feathered wings - regardless of the specifics of his quirk it’s undeniable his wings are made up of feathers which is a distinctly birdlike quality. There are many mythical creatures and even dinosaurs that also have feathered wings, but this is our first big piece of evidence.

Chapter 186 - Peripheral Type: Large appetite - birds have an incredibly fast metabolism because flying takes so much energy. They’re constantly eating. Plenty of young men are big eaters, but it was specifically pointed out and works towards our hypothesis so we’ll keep it in our back pocket for now.

Chapter 186 - Implicit/Peripheral Type: Fantastic vision - Hawks senses the Nomu coming before the audience even is able to make out what’s headed their way. It could be implied his wings caught it first, which might be the case, but he looks directly at the Nomu and brings Endeavor’s attention to it. Birds have fantastic long-range vision, especially birds of prey that mainly swoop in from high in the air to ambush highly perceptive prey. Also good to add to the pile.

Chapter 192 + Volume 20 Cover - Implicit/Peripheral type: Wears jewelry and bright colors - birds are well documented to be drawn to bright colors and are known for decorating their nests with trinkets. Scientists actually have to be careful when tagging birds with tracking bracelets because they can accidentally make him VASTLY more popular with the ladies by giving him a brightly colored band to the point they can’t resist him! Male birds are also known for having bright, colorful displays for attracting and wooing mates. While Hawks isn’t the only male character to wear jewelry in the series, he’s the only one (to my recollection) that wears as MUCH jewelry so often both during and outside of work. It may not be obvious, but the illustration on Volume 20 is actually an advertisement for his line of (presumably) luxury jewelry. In other words, Hawks on some level is synonymous with style and flair to the point he can make money by selling jewelry with his name on it.

Chapter 20 Volume Cover - Explicit Type: Hawk emblem on the watch face - If the name “Hawks” didn’t give it away, he’s very clearly trying to align himself with more avian qualities if his merch has bird motifs. In other words Hawk = “Hero Hawks” and “Hero Hawks” = bird.

Chapter 192, 244, clear file illustration - Peripheral Type: birdlike posture. Chapter 244 isn’t quite released yet on the official site as of writing this, but when Hawks swoops in and beats the kids to the punch apprehending the criminals trying to subdue Endeavor, his hands are clenched in a very talon-like manner similar to a swooping eagle. When walking with Endeavor in 192, he holds his resting hand in a similar fashion. On the clear file illustration he’s not only perched on his tippy toes in a pose that has been famously called “owling” (remember that trend/meme, y’all?) but his wings are slightly outstretched to catch the breeze to keep from falling over which a lot of birds can be seen doing when they don’t have great purchase on a surface in a place that’s a little windy. The fact that he seems to gravitate to high places like birds are often seen doing might also be a noteworthy indication.

Extra sources:

Hawks Shifuku: Horikoshi describes Hawks as a “bird person” and says that his initial design was based off of Takahiro from his old manga.

Takahiro’s design:

Current character design: The banner image on my blog was commissioned from a friend of mine who doesn’t follow the series. When I showed her reference images of Hawks, you know what she said? “Oh! His hair is feathers!” Even his eyebrows have that fluffy/scruffy texture to them that his hair has. The markings on his eyes can also be seen on him as a young child in Chapter 191 which means it isn’t makeup meant to tie in a theme or look. He has those dark, pointed eye markings like many birds do. So on some genetic level he resembles a bird.

Step 4: Testing our hypothesis with the gathered evidence.

There’s already a lot of compelling evidence that already closely aligns him to birds which is promising. However, to really prove our point we should try to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt he is a bird. To do that this time around I’m going to see how the series treats people with animal-based quirks and see if it’s consistent with the way Hawks is portrayed.

You bring up Hound Dog and Tsuyu, and they’re fantastic examples. Let’s start with Hound.

He’s pretty straight forward - he’s like a dog. He has a dog face, has dog-like tendencies, and dog-like abilities. Superpower: dog.

And in Tsuyu’s case - quirk: frog, just frog. She’s stated explicitly to have frog-like features, frog-like tendencies, have frog-like abilities, and even comes from a “froggy family.”

So with these two very explicitly animal-like characters the common theme seems to be “If they’re considered to be like a specific animal, they have to physically resemble that animal, act like that animal at times, and have abilities like that animal.” Let’s see if another animal-quirk character matches up and then put Hawks to the test.

Spinner’s quirk is Gecko. Based on our criteria, is he a gecko?

Does he look like a gecko, even vaguely?

Yes, he’s covered head to toe in scales, and his face is very lizard-like.

Does he occasionally act like a gecko?

Unclear. We haven’t really seen any evidence of this, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t. For the sake of our argument, we’ll just say no and move on.

Does he have gecko-like abilities?

Yes! Though most of his abilities are limited to things like being able to stick to walls, it’s still gecko-like in origin and qualifies.

Spinner hits clearly hits ⅔ criteria and our standards seem pretty consistent, so let’s see how Hawks stands up.

Does he look like a bird?

Not all of his features may explicitly scream “avian” at first, but upon closer observation and with his clear previous inspiration this is a resounding yes.

Does he act like a bird?

Many of the mannerisms and behaviors he displays can just be chalked up to him being a little eccentric, but with the sheer number of them that also parallel birds in some way this is also a pretty convincing yes.

Does he have bird-like abilities?

While most of the emphasis is on his wings and what they can do, it does seem that he not only possesses things like heightened senses which could be attributed to avian abilities but he also very much possess high intelligence and incredibly fast reaction times which birds are also known for.

Even if we only gave Hawks a “maybe/half a point” for those last two, he still meets the 2⁄3 that Spinner did. So we have another question to ask: Does a character have to have an explicitly named “animal” quirk to be considered to be/resemble a specific animal? Let’s look at Ojirou and Tokoyami for reference.

Ojirou’s quirk is just “tail,” but he’s been described by his peers and classmates as a monkey and does seem to share some more monkey-like features. It isn’t lumped in with his quirk because the only notable monkey-like quality he possesses is a tail. He doesn’t have fangs or an opposable toe - he just has a tail. For quirk classification as far as hero work goes, that’s the only important thing to note.

Tokoyami, on the other hand has an entire literal bird head, but nothing else. He has a beak, feathers, and even in illustrations of him as a baby he had fluffier feathers on his head. Even with only those details, he just screams “bird!” However, his quirk is classified as “Dark Shadow” because that’s what sets him apart for hero work.

Back at Hawks we see his quirk classified as “fierce wings” but like Ojirou and especially like Tokoyami, the emphasis on his wings is what sets his abilities as a hero apart. Otherwise, he’s just a guy who looks and acts a LOT like a bird.

But astute observers may have noticed I’ve left out a detail that’s more or less a nail in the coffin on the whole matter, so let me ask a question: Tsuyu in particular has something else of note that solidifies in our minds that she is, indeed, a frog - she explicitly calls herself a frog. Could we say the same about Hawks?

Chapter 199 - Explicit Type

Bingo. Hawks has known himself for as long as he’s been alive. He knows his habits, his impulses, his family/genes, and so on. If he calls himself a bird, are we going to call him a liar? In fact, he calls himself a bird not once, but twice!

That’s pretty much it. With the evidence stacked to that degree, I’d be hard pressed to NOT believe he’s a bird.

That was a long amount of text to get through, so if you’re here at the end thank you for sticking out with me to this point. I really appreciate it. This is more or less the process I use when analyzing anything and everything whether it be HeroAca related or not. Maybe it’ll help you if you’ve struggled with literary analysis, or at the very least I hope you got some enjoyment out of it.

TL;DR If Hawks looks like a bird, walks (acts) like a bird, is based on a bird (character), and calls himself a bird, he’s probably a bird.

#hawks bnha #bnha hawks #hawks #hawks mha #mha hawks #she writes #let's talk hawks #bnha meta #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #manga spoilers

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apassionfortranslation · 4 years

Text

Ambesi’s Winter Corner - Figure Skating

I’m a figure skating fan, I’ve been a casual one for some years now, and since last year, I’ve got more involved with groups and everything. I love learning new things, so I took the opportunity of being surrounded by so many people who know TONS about it and ran with it :D. I’m on an international fan group and one of the best commentators about the sport is the Italian Massimiliano Ambesi, who is really so interesting to read and listen. So sometimes, with other Italian fans, I help people in the international group by translating Ambesi’s commentary or articles. This is an extract from Winter Corner, where he talks about severl winter sports, and I translated the part about figure skating. I hope it’s useful somehow! This is the original article: LINK Q: Massimiliano, let’s start with one of our features in the feature. In your opinion, who was the ATHLETE OF THE WEEK? A: “Forever and ever Alena Kostornaia: in the Grand Prix final in Turin she was the clear-cut winner of the competition, with the highest technical level ever seen in the history of the sport, and she even allowed herself the luxury of establishing a new World Record. By the way, it is possible that in the sum of the components she could go even better, allowing her to get more than 250 points in a spotless competition, and all this without quadruple jumps. At the moment, she represents the best synthesis between technical skills and artistic quality. The only minor flaw in the final was that she was not the winner of every single segment of the competition, as she had been before. In the free skate her training companion Anna Shcherbakova preceded her by mere tenths of point. For this, it was determining the triple axel + triple toeloop combination although from a negative point of view, that she completed with less quality compared to the one at the NHK Trophy some weeks ago. In any case, Alena improved her personal records in every segment of the competition, both TES and PCS, and this, at the end of the game, is definitely resounding because, we can say it now, she competed with a problem of unknown gravity to one shinbone. The victory in the Grand Prix Final will probably guarantee her a place for the European and World championships regardless of what will happen at the Russian National Championship.”

Q: A question arises then, if you want a bit obvious. Who can beat her? A:“There are three skaters that can have the chance to compete with her at the same level, both in this moment and in the future. As for the future, it’s impossible not to mention the Japanese Rika Kihira, although she needs to recover her full physical health, and, consequently, the triple Lutz she had to forcibly put aside. In the short-term, instead, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova, who were preceded by Kostornaia at the Grand Prix Final and are ready to get their re-match in the imminent national Championship at the end of December. The other skaters, in a way or another, are several steps behind as demonstrated not only in the Grand Prix Final, but during the whole season, in which three of Eteri Tutberidze’s students have annihilated the competition in any context. Obviously, the staff directed by the coach with Georgian origins deserves a mention because they established a long series of records that, from now one, can only be matched.

Q: As we opened with Figure Skating, let’s keep it as a topic. I’d like to have your comment on the results of the other competitions on the other Grand Prix Finals that were held in Turin. A: “We witnessed four competitions with clear-cut results, besides the final leads. In the single competitions, the victory went to two skaters, Kostornaia and Chen, who completed every planned element, improving the world record. In the Ice Dance and even more in the Pair Skating, the indisputable favourites of the eve won, Papadakis/Cizeron and Sui/Han, although there was some minor mistake here and there. The most problematic segment of competition was the Rhythm Dance: during that you could feel the competitors’ tension, but everything got back to normal for the free dance.

Q: You haven’t mentioned it, but I'd like to know your opinion about the multiple complaints about the scores in the Men's single competition. What is your idea about it? A: "First things first, Nathan Chen is the worthy winner of the final, and he deserved his result on the field, but his skating isn’t worth the scores that he gets. Right now, there's a clear problem on the attribution of the GOE and on the evaluation of the program components. More quadruple jumps can't automatically mean more PCS, and especially when the necessary requirements are not present, over-scoring the jump elements should not be possible, but it's not just that. The current score system doesn't work well right now. It's not only a problem of lack of proportionality between the TES and the PCS, which is well known, I also think that the situation was way worsened when they changed the GOE attribution system at the beginning of this Olympic four-year period. In my opinion, the current rules are not applied correctly because no judge, and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise, is able to evaluate in real/almost real-time the many elements of the programs, with precise references to the six bullet points that are to be referenced in the rules, to the possible deductions that may happen, and don't forget that at the same time they also have to evaluate the five scores of the components. With this statement, I'm not saying that the judges are not competent to do that, but simply that the current GOE assignment system is not applicable in such a short time as what they have. The example, in this sense, can be represented by any segment of the competitions in this season. I invite everyone to compare the quad Salchows made by Hanyu and Chen in the free skate in Turin, jumps that, inexplicably, obtained the same GOE. Thus, if it is not possible, for reasons that I think are understandable, to apply the rules as they were thought, maybe it would be better to create something different, so that anyone can adjust accordingly, and they can avoid losing credibility. Obviously, my premise is that there's no deceit, although, after having seen some people at work, I might have a doubt about that. In any case, I'll ignore it for now, and go forward, even if I'm quite perplexed. We need corrective measures, and we need them as soon as possible, but I'm not convinced that those who are in charge of these decisions may be able to intervene."

Q: With an answer like this, I cannot help asking you if Yuzuru Hanyu can beat a Chen who, in fact, is able to carry out every planned element. A: "In a competition with spotless programs for both of them, the victory would go to the Japanese skater. I have no doubt about it, because he is one step ahead in every score entry. In the free skate in Turin, the base value planned by Hanyu, counting the highest GOE possible, was 0,8 points above Chen's. Thus, they are on basically even ground on this. It's clear that Chen is more at ease in completing five quadruple jumps. The American skater, in this sense, is favoured by his skating: he spends less energy because he clearly covers less ice and has more two-footed skating, and this advantage still remains even though Hanyu had to simplify his free skate, compared to the previous ones, to be able to put in five quadruple jumps as well. In any case, it needs stressing that the Japanese man's jumps are better in quality, which means more height (in the final, the height for every jump was measured and the difference was embarrassing), the width, the entrance, the exit position, and a lot of other elements. Chen demonstrated to be superior on the athletic point of view, and on this part Hanyu will have to work in order to overcome this situation. Besides, another important difference is where the jumps are placed. Chen starts with his three most difficult elements in the first half (not in bonus zone), and two of them are combination jumps, and has a second part that is lighter than Hanyu's, who instead wants to execute three difficult combinations as the last three jump elements. I think that in Toronto they'll need to think about this. In general, I still think that the comparison on the PCS is out of the question, because the Olympic champion has an advantage on every item, in particular on the less subjective ones, like skating skills and transitions. Especially in the short program, the difference is even higher. It is clear that it's still necessary for Hanyu to complete every planned jump. In Turin, for the first time in his career, he was able to complete five quadruple jumps, of four different kinds, Lutz included. Surely, this is an important starting point for the future. As for the rest, we can only wait for the next competition.

#figure skating #yuzuru hanyu #nathan chen #alena kostornaia #alexandra trusova #anna shcherbakova #english #translation #massimiliano ambesi #winter corner #ISU #ISU judging system #men's single #ladies' single #free skate #short program

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fae-fucker · 4 years

Text

Zenith: Chapter 52-55

Chapter 52

Valen interrogates Andi about his father’s decision to make her his rescuer, and instead of going “take that up with your dad because I don’t know his reasons for doing this,” Andi tries to be all apologetic about all the Kalee stuff and saying how she’s changed and Valen’s like nu-uh!

“It was a mistake,” Andi said again. “If I could take it back—”

Valen gritted his teeth. “Murder isn’t a mistake.”

Have I finally gone off the deep end or is this fucking funny?

“If I recall, you were the one who allowed your little sister and her friend to sneak out for a joyride on your father’s brand-new transport,” Andi replied. Her words were soft and casual, but her eyes were on fire.

“Spectre,” Valen said. “Spectre first, and always. You failed her as that.”

“Again,” Andi said, “it was a mistake. I’ve had to live with the cost of it.”

“Kalee didn’t!” Valen screamed. “She didn’t get to live, Androma!”

It’s honestly impressive that whenever I go into a chapter that’s relatively short and think it’s gonna be fine and I’ll just skim over it, Shinsay proves me wrong by including more bullshit that I just have to talk about. But hey, part of the reason I have this blog is so that people know what not to do and examining why certain things just don’t work, with the added bonus of having the context for it.

It’s also impressive how two women somehow keep making the wrong choice for the same one book, over and over and over. Every narrative choice in this book is wrong.

So, what’s wrong with this particular bit? Remember when Dex and Andi were having their stupid argument and Dex, right after trying to apologize for what he did and explain himself, turned around and started blaming Androma for it instead? Here it’s even more jarring, because Andi genuinely believes she was to blame for Kalee’s death and genuinely wants to atone (or she claims to want that, at least). So when she, out of nowhere, starts trying to defend herself and shift the blame onto Valen? That shit don’t make no sense, y’all.

I think this is a result of the book having too many pointless POVs. We’re in Valen’s right now, so obviously he needs emotional triggers to react to and start monologuing over. He needs to be provoked and damn logic and character consistency, he’s gonna get provoked! Andi’s words make no sense and will not be examined closer once we’re back in her POV, she just said this OOC shit for the sake of drama, yet given everyone’s awful characterization, even small things like these serve only to undermine the characters and their motivations even further.

Shinsay don’t understand that sometimes, no arguments is far more impactful than a dramatic verbal battle of cheap witticisms. Instead of this, Andi could’ve just sat there, quietly, letting Valen dunk on her because she feels she deserves it. Hell, this entire conversation could’ve been saved if only Andi’s blame-shifting line had been given to someone else! I didn’t even read it as her saying it at first and had to double-check and that’s when it fell apart to me.

God, I could go on like this forever. Feel free to send me asks if you want me to elaborate on dialogue and characterization, I guess? Let’s just move on.

The others try to figure out how Valen was taken and what happened when he was, asking him if he knows anything about Queen Nor, at which point Rage Unlocks Within Him, and he gets up and leaves.

I also want to mention that Valen talks about “things being tense after Kalee was gone,” but Kalee’s been dead for four years, while Valen was taken two years ago. Sooo uh ... huh? He makes it sound like it was two months after and not two years. He could’ve said things “changed” after her death and it would’ve sounded better. Idk just a preference I guess.

Also ... I just realized Valen’s been missing and tortured for two years. How he still talks normally is ... pretty bonkers, to say the least.

Chapter 53

Andi goes out to find Valen but finds Lon instead, his blue tiddies out.

Lon leads Andi to where Valen is, all while dropping hints that Lira has something to say to Andi and that Andi shouldn’t try to influence her decision. To her credit, Andi says she won’t, and that she loves Lira as her sister.

Andi and Valen sit around in nature for a bit and talk about Valen’s art. I don’t hate it?

“When I was locked up, I almost forgot what colors looked like,” [Valen] said, lazily brushing the stick back and forth against the mud. “Did you know that black is more than just a single shade?”

Anish Kapoor would like to know your location.

Valen says he can’t forgive Andi for what she did, but he can also not forgive himself for being part of those choices(????). Andi speculates that her accusation earlier must’ve struck him deep, but that’s all we get on that, no explanation as to why she accused him at all.

“In Lunamere, I had nothing to keep me company but my pain and my thoughts. I had lots of time to think about that night, and everything leading up to it. Time to realize that we were raised in a society where perfection is the only option. But that doesn’t mean it’s always possible. We all made bad choices that night, not just you. She got on that transport herself. And I chose to stay behind.”

Andi wanted to speak, but she feared it would shatter this strange, heart-wrenching moment they had somehow found themselves in.

Thanks for telling me it’s heart-wrenching, lest my idiot self got lost in all this emotion and forgot to realize what was happening.

Christ, even when Shinsay have a decent dramatic and emotional moment going, they just can’t keep their grubby little hands to themselves, huh? I know it’s your book but can you shut the fuck up for a moment and just let the prose stand on its own?

God, if only there had been an editor.

Both Andi and Valen admit they wish they’d died with Kalee and in any other more competent book this would’ve been quite touching.

“Without Kalee...” Andi began, finally voicing the realization she’d come to terms with these past few days. “Without Kalee, there wouldn’t have been a sentence for me to run from. And without that running, I never would have found Dex. And without him...”

“You wouldn’t be the Bloody Baroness,” Valen finished for her. “My father would not have hired you.”

It was a vicious cycle, one that Andi wished she could have undone before it had ever started. But it was her story. Her life.

Her life is a series of reactions to things outside of her control? Love that for a protagonist.

Listen, I know it’s supposed to be sad and stuff, but even Andi’s backstory reinforces her reactionary personality and the way the plot is driven by things completely outside of her control. It’s hard to feel invested in a character when they never make choices and instead only react to whatever happens to them.

Anyway, Valen and Andi seem to have gotten over their differences and go to the festival together. That was easy. I guess it’s to throw us off the scent and make it more surprising when he suddenly turns out to be evil? I’m honestly not sure. It’s pretty bad either way, but I don’t have to tell you that.

Chapter 54

We’re with Lira again and she’s staring off into the distance thinking about the festival. Lon appears again, tiddies still out, but now his muscles and “sculpted” chest feels kind of weird to comment on since we’re in Lira’s head? Whatever, maybe Adhirans are weird like that.

Lon says some cutesy shit about how technically Lira is this planet’s princess but she doesn’t reply or even think about how that would make him the prince? He just says he’s her brother and has to guard her. Maybe Adhirans also don’t let men have political power because that’s what Shinsay think feminism is.

Anyway, they join the other girls and head to the festival while Lira mopes about her decision and how she can’t have two families. Except you can. But whatever. Logic isn’t dramatic enough, I suppose.

“It’s time to let loose,” Breck said. “Lir, you look like you’ve just puked up a pound of Moon Chew.”

“Lira doesn’t puke,” Gilly said.

“That’s ridiculous. Everyone pukes,” Breck added.

“I’ve never seen her do it. And I spy on her, like, all the time.”

Lon chuckled beside Lira. “I see it,” he whispered. “What draws you to this crew.”

I don’t.

Also they’re in the same close space it seems, so I have no idea how they 1) don’t bother to ask Lira what’s going on and 2) don’t notice Lon being all whispery and shit. Convenient!

Gonna gloss over the spying bit as well, I see. Hey, they do have those eye implants that you don’t need consent to activate. Maybe Gilly’s been using it to perv on the rest of the crew.

Lira decides ... not to decide, and just fuckin party down for tonight. I guess in this universe it means she’s gonna get blackout wasted, because That’s What Adults Do. I should also mention that she decides not to decide and then never has to decide anyway because the plot intervenes and the choice is made for her. Love that for a character.

*sigh*

Chapter 55

We’re in Dex’s POV and we get some decent descriptions of how cool the festival is with more incidental aliens and traditions. Dex spots the crew and thinks about how they’re his crew now and realizes he’s bonded with them. I’m glad this is spelled out because I would not have noticed it myself, and frankly I both do and don’t mean it this time.

They’ve only been together for a couple of days, tops. I guess extreme situations make people bond faster but I really feel like we’re jumping the shark here. At the same time I can tell that Dex clearly fits into the crew pretty well, and this just feels forced and redundant. All in all, this comment is just unnecessary. Let the characters evolve and grow closer naturally, Shinsay. You don’t need to convince us they’re a crew, you can just show us and we’ll believe it!

Dex spots Valen and Andi and of course we get a horny description of how cool and sexy Andi is and how impressed Dex is that she and Valen are already friends. Then he decides to get drunk and eat some meat.

Frankly? Relatable. Chapter? Pointless.

#eff reads: zenith

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thundersolstice · 5 years

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I loved your headcannons for season 2 character development, how do you think kit and Kat's conflict would have planned out?

Thanks, anon! I am delighted for this excuse opportunity to continue analyzing and speculating about the thundercats and where they stand when the second season would have concluded.

Jeez I really rambled the whiskers out of this one I’m sorry haha.

Going by the interview, Kit and Kat didn’t get much more mention beyond what was already seeded in canon, but I absolutely love what I heard. Wilykit growing into a peaceful and (still!) unconditionally supportive woman makes her the perfect confidant, advisor, and partner for Lion-O. (Bonus: Kit has a tail and eked out a living in the slums, so making her queen can only mean good things for the kingdom at large. I personally like to think of this as ~The Marriage of King and Kingdom~ because the political implications of change achieved are glorious.) I also like the part where her beauty is The Last Straw that boots Lion-O into finally moving on from the betrayal and pain visited on him by Cheetara and Pumyra; nothing like ten+ years and a jaw-dropping bombshell to inspire another attempt at love lol. That seriously just makes me so happy like you have no idea, that Lion-O marries the most beautiful–inside and out!–cat available and they live happily ever after. It’s perfect.

But I’ve already written that meta. *clears throat* So the twins! Let’s start with a quick review of the canon material we know:

+ At some point, Wilykit and Wilykat split off from Lion-O’s company and go their separate ways: Kit to the elephant village, and Kat doubling down on his hunt for Eldara (as seeded in S01E12). Kat is also specifically said to end up in Dog City again. It’s unclear if the twins’ split from Lion-O/each other happens before, during, or after the first timeskip. It’s also implied (enough to make it a safe assumption) that the twins were not wholly stationary in their private pursuits and periodically met up with Lion-O and/or one another.

+ At the start of the second season (post first timeskip), Wilykit and Wilykat are teenagers. They could be in their early teens, but the way Norton talked, I have the distinct impression they’re in their mid-to-late teens, and have not spent most of that time in Lion-O’s company. Also pertinent is that Norton’s memory of the specifics was fuzzy, so that needs to be taken into interpretation. (My tentative assumption, therefore, is that the twins are maybe fifteen when the second season opens, and only see Lion-O when their paths cross; that is, they and Lion-O do not or very rarely actively seek one another out during the timeskip–but I do not pretend my interpretation perfectly aligns with canon without some kind of confirmation by Word of God.)

+ Wilykit’s natural power growth is heavily based in music: she’s described as “like the bard” character. I can’t quote it from memory, but I came away with the impression that she could use her music to control others (which would be a natural step up from putting them into a trance with her flupe); she would also have headphones. Wilykat’s natural power growth included his using all the pockets on his outfit more–pulling out and utilizing tricks/trick-like items, and the like. And that he would change the basis of a fight for better or worse (such as with sneezing powder or the like; I can’t quote the specific items Norton mentioned specifically), and nobody could really predict him.

+ Re growing up–without her brother around to egg her on, Wilykit becomes more peaceful. And without his sister to steady him, Wilykat becomes more wild. Where she finds a new home in the elephant village and continues to adopt the elephant ideals, he ends up back in Dog City and gets caught up with Tookit &c again. Wilykit eventually grows into a peaceful queen figure; Wilykat eventually grows into a “king of thieves” figure. Wilykit, as an adult, is described as beautiful; Wilykat, as an adult, is described as “like a slick villain.”

+ Wilykit is specifically stated to conclude the second season as Lion-O’s queen. Wilykat is specifically stated to believe in Lion-O’s Code (the 2011 Code of Thundera) despite being the/like a king of thieves.

+ The twins do eventually find Eldara, which is (something like?) another dimension and where the soul stone is located. They find their family in Eldara as some kind of (resting place?) before they move on to thundercat heaven. This part of their journey is therefore concluded happily (or bittersweet if they’ll never see their family again). The part about the twins’ family being dead conflicts with an earlier statement by the crew saying they’re alive, more speculating about that below.

Regarding individual character growth as interpreted by fandom–something I’ve noticed fans do to grown versions of the twins is to firmly limit their adult characterizations by where they were as eight-year-olds. I can appreciate why–it’s easier and faster to keep the basics provided by canon and build on just that than it is to analyze and hunt down any hints for the intended character growth and then develop the characters from there–and I’m certainly guilty of doing that sort of thing (especially when I was more interested in pushing what I wanted to be canon rather than analyzing and building on the actual canon material; and I really think that right there sums it up for most fans. Not saying it’s a bad thing to do; this is fandom, not law…As long as everyone is clear on what is and is not canon)–but that isn’t logical character progression, and I’m going to go ahead and spell out why:

On the purely external side, it makes very little sense for, say, Kit to become a cleric or Kat to become an officer in Lion-O’s army because:(a) TCats 2011 is a reboot, not a spinoff; not giving the kids their own unique paths would be blowing off an integral part of the classic series canon; and(b) the twins are part of the principal cast, main characters in their own right behind Lion-O–just like Panthro/Tygra/Cheetara/etc. They’re thundercats (nee thunderkittens). All of the main cast have their own storylines, and while their character development may not be as integral to the overarching plot like Lion-O’s is, they are still independent and complete arcs. Shoehorning the twins into a single path, or paths that are not unique to their personal stories, would be like denying them their legacy. They aren’t The Hero (that’s Lion-O), but they aren’t side characters (eg, Viragor, Hattanzo, etc), either.

On the purely mental/emotional side, those interpretations don’t even make sense outside the context of mental illness or bizarre time-freeze-drama (such as what the classic series Lion-O kicked off the 80s series with. What 2011 Lion-O suffers per the second timeskip is also worth pointing out, although the jump from twenty-something to thirty-something is substantially less severe than the jump from prepubescent to physiological-brain-development-complete).Who grows up to be the same person they were at the age of eight? The twins-as-kittens are absolutely and vastly more mature and capable than your average modern eight-year-old, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to finish growing (and significantly at that). If they do retain any traits from their prepubescent years, most often those traits will have taken root from a completely different place (ie: they’d adopt a mature adult’s concept in place of a young child’s concept, and the similarities to what they believed as kids is therefore coincidental or irrelevant).

I’m just trying to underscore the logic of the twins’ canon arcs as described in the interview here. Basically, I love the plans for the twins and where they both would have ended up as characters. As for my interpretations of their long-term external goal of locating Eldara(/their family)–

Norton didn’t talk a whole lot about that, either, sadly, but we do know the basics: the twins do eventually find Eldara: it’s something like another dimension, and also the location of the final power stone. They find their family there in something like a pit stop prior to the in-universe version of Heaven. The suggestion that the twins’ family all being dead conflicts with an earlier statement by the crew saying the twins’ mother and siblings are alive. I’m inclined to put more weight behind the latter assertion because it was made years before the interview with Norton took place, and Norton himself made it clear he couldn’t recall all the exact details. So my thought is either (a) the twins’ mother/siblings die or in some other way “move on” into Eldara at some point after having survived the fall of Thundera; or (b) the crew was invoking their right of misdirection as they so often did (lol) and the twins’ mother/siblings did not survive the fall of Thundera or have already been dead by some other means. I do not recall if the twins’ dad was part of the conclusion to the Eldara conflict, or if they only saw their mother and siblings.

The rest is pure speculation: I think Kit and Kat would always maintain a relationship as siblings, but that their separate duties and interests would mean they do not meet very often, or at least do not live in the same general area of Third Earth. I think Kat would continue to adventure his way around Third Earth (swashbuckling style!) and would happily never settle down and start a family or the like. I think the twins have never had a super close relationship with any of the other thundercats (essentially, they’re casual teammates, not BFFs), and that this trend did not change with the second season except for the part where Kit and Lion-O start fighting more closely together. I think Wilykit would bear Lion-O at least one set of boy-girl twins because Kit was a twin and all her siblings were twins, and I think Kat would make a mischievous and super cool uncle much admired by his niece and nephew (of which their parents may or may not be especially wary). I love love love the contrast inherent in the troublemaking King of Thieves being the twin sibling of the steadfast Queen of New Thundera, and I think it very possible the crew would have portrayed this fun contrast as an ongoing dynamic.

Apologies for grammar/typos/unnecessary repeating of unnecessary information/etc. I’ll clean up this post later.

#thundercats #thundercats 2011 #Wilykit #Wilykat #meta #asks #thundermeta #lionoxwilykit #discussion of my interpretation is always welcome btw #I refuse to acknowledge myself as the only fan still inclined to dissect this cartoon lol #maybe I should put this one under a cut?#is it El Darra or Eldara or #I can't remember

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unexpectedreylo · 5 years

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Time For More Speculation!

The sizzle reel is out and EVERYBODY is talking about it. Of course that means there are many interesting theories and many more painfully dumb ones. (Sigh.)

Mark my words. TPM turned trailers into events. TROS has just hatched a new phenomenon, the sizzle reel that’s not a trailer but still is. Look for every blockbuster movie from now on to do one.

Let’s get to our top story: Dark!Rey

Who knew that a popular fan trope would actually become canon? I didn’t expect it at all but I have to say, regardless of context (and there are MANY possible contexts), thank God they had the cojones to explore that part of Rey. It’s easy to think of her as the eternal Rey of Sunshine but the movies have hinted at something not quite so pure.

After I saw TFA, I had a hard time figuring out what was Rey’s harmatia, the Achilles heel where if this was a tragedy it would be her downfall or at least in a comedy (in the old sense, not funny ha ha) the one thing that would test her. It wasn’t obvious, whereas in the prequels you could keep score on everything that was going to add up to Anakin’s downfall.

Then after TLJ the picture became clearer. Her loneliness, her aggression, and repressed rage manifested through her defiance, her recklessness, and her tendency to clobber anyone who makes her mad. Luke was freaked out not only at her power but also the casual way she went “right to the dark.” You think that wouldn’t have made the Jedi Council of the PT era a wee bit concerned?

So yes I can now see how Rey could possibly turn to the Dark Side. Remember Kylo’s vision? Maybe it’s what he saw. It would be Alanis Morrissette-level ironic that our two space wizards pine for the other to turn only for them to turn in opposite directions at the same time. Especially since I strongly believe the resolution of this story depends on Kylo/Ben and Rey finally ending up on the same page, balanced within themselves, and destroying Sidious together.

A thought had occurred to me. Chances are if you’re reading this you’re big into Bendemption like I am. I know that in order to do this, Ben must commit a selfless act. What if that act is confronting Dark!Rey to turn her back to the light? What if it’s a replay of Han’s confrontation with Kylo in TFA? Imagine, Ben walking out onto one of those bridges over a bottomless chasm to meet Rey. Imagine he leaves his weapons behind in his first Jedi-like act in years. It’s just him. He knows this story because he lived it before, only he was the one someone tried to save with love. He knows full well his chances of surviving are not good. But he’s the only one who could stop Rey from taking this path and plunging the galaxy into permanent chaos. And then when he’s standing there pleading with Rey, it’s his second proposal to her. He holds out his hand, this time a bare hand, for her to take. He knows Rey could just hack off his hand and then his head faster than she can say “Eff you.” But it’s all he can do and he is in that moment accepting the will of the Force.

It would be Poetic Cinema (TM).

What I think he could offer her? Letting her know again she isn’t alone. She will always have him and his love. And this time it’ll work.

Now Palpatine could try to stop this from happening and kill Ben. But I think if this occurs, Rey will return him to life. Then they go take out the trash.

I may be right or I may have cooked up a good AU canonverse fan fic.

Of course if Abrams is willing to toss us this crumb now, who knows what’s still in the mystery box. Many think there’s more to what we saw and I agree. It could be a vision. It could be a dream. I don’t think it’s anything bizarre or complicated like a clone or a long lost twin sister (that would be a Steven From The Room problem). Many have noticed she wears a ring on her forefinger and either it’s cool jewelry or it is influencing her behavior. Notice also that her red beams are like Kylo’s. Hmm.

Perhaps the whole point, regardless of what this is, is to show that Rey has her own dark side and she is not in any position to think of herself as better than Kylo/Ben. Let’s face it, sometimes she regards him with a touch of self-righteousness mixed in with her anger. I think it might actually sell his redemption better if we understand their differences are by degrees and the grace of the Force. And it gives Rey, who’s got thicker plot armor than a Sherman tank, some peril.

Okay, on to the rest of it.

The beginning of the sizzle reel highlights the previous eight films. I found it very interesting that it highlighted Anidala from AOTC as well as Han and Leia from TESB and TFA, and it included the Magic Hand Touch (TM) from TLJ. It’s the only romantic gesture from any of the sequels. HMMM.

Shot of the gang...I think the first act of this movie is going to be The Goonies or Stranger Things but with adults. I think they’re looking out at the city shown a shot later. Oh look, there’s Leia.

When Rey tossed that lightsaber though the trees, I noticed a couple of things. First off, she looks angry. She appears to be training (there’s a remote in the woods) but it wouldn’t surprise me if Kylo decided to dial her up again and she’s like, “Sod off!” The second thing is the red strip of fabric around her hand. Many Reylos have pointed out this is the red thread of fate. Hmm.

Red-eyed Threepio! I think that since the Resistance is desperate, it needs everyone to be a warrior, even protocol droids. My guess is Threepio is reprogrammed to fight and this is a nod to the Terminator movies.

Judging by how that space battle is shaping up, this is Abrams’s “hold my beer” to the space battle in ROTJ. Geez, that’s like every flying thing in the galaxy!

Kylo Ren’s strut...hoo boy. *Fans self.* Bonus points for the lightning strikes.

I’m calling it now...the rematch between Kylo and Rey is probably the end of the first act and the turning point in their relationship. Again, he appears to be defending himself while she’s attacking and just as in TFA, he uses his stature and body size to press her further and further back. Wouldn’t it be interesting if this time he defeats her (but of course doesn’t kill her)? Or maybe it doesn’t end with someone winning over the other but with a kiss...there’s a lot of um, energy and tension there!

(As a quick aside about the interviews, both previous ones and this new wave of interviews, if you can’t see Reylo coming like a Mack truck 100 miles away at 100 mph, I can’t help you. Now it’s SO OBVIOUS. I think the real reason they conveniently scheduled Adam to shoot another movie during D23 is to make sure he’s not around to spoil it because he can’t help but start laughing in a guilty manner whenever it’s brought up. But we’re not going to see any kissing until the movie’s out.)

Finally, after we see Dark!Rey, notice the ominous tone Rey’s Theme takes at the end. It’s opposite of the triumphant ending of Kylo’s Theme at the end of the first trailer. HMMMMMMM.

#reylo #tros #dark rey #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #bendemption

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mega-reaver-pan-90-2-16 · 5 years

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Well It will be a bit before I submit the full version of this since I have a lot to add still and I have other arts to make on top of that.

Buty anyways I am looking for the Ultimate RP where I am the Lee. I am looking for an F/M tickle RP that isn't afraid to get dark and violant and use heavy boundage. The Theme of the RP is my OC is captured by a Woman intent on having Reaver as her Trophey Lover who she will tickle in differant boundage positions and who's torture she we slowly but surely esculate to break his will.

To the Girl Who can give me the most well detailed, most detailed and Quality thrill of a Tickle RP I will make a pick show casing the victory of her CHarecter over mine in the RP. Someone who is willing to go to any lengths to claim me as hers. And if She's also get's to know me more personaly on the side and shows she can also do non tickle RP's like adventure and such, If we get expecialy close I may even allow her to play as one of my OC's if it is her wish.

I also want to dfo something differant instead of the RP being in one note I want it to function in a segment of notes.

And here is the Order

Befriend and Earn Trust- Get me to Lower my guard so you can learn my weeknesses and strengths. Some people will want to start right off with ticler torture which is fine but I think those who show great enterest in trying to build things up Are the most likely to get things going in an enteresting direction. Get enough info and home advantage in me so that you'll be ready later when it's time to break me in.

Flirting and building ties- Next is a slow one still but it's where you get to get friendlier and even at one point tickle me abit and maybe even get tickled as well. Tickling can be seen as way to form trust and when tickling is you end goal your basicly testing the waters early.

Casual capture- Once you've earned my trust you have the option to continue with casual slice of life RP's or when your ready to go to the next level Send me the Note of my capture or make a journal on it because this won't be RP unless you want to RP my capture out. Once the Capture has been initiated I will know to send a new note in responce. However I will need as much info on the situation and we will need to discuss a few things like forms of boundage we both like and so on.

Kisses and bonds- The Light and playful part of the sessions began, even though you know my body by this point you start out light and playful to sort of get in me the mood in hopes of getting lucky on the first try.

Getting rough- Kiddy gloves are off time to be the bully. If you weren't already picking on me before here your getting not only rough but even a little mean if not alot. At this point your allowed to get violant if you see the need for it. Once you know my secret's you'll know what I can endure that you can use to make life hell.

Make him Cry- Time to be the saddist, you turn from sweet to twisted nightmare and show me I have no hope of escape and that your not playing around no more. Here things can not only get intence with tickle torture but can get as dark as you want it. An extra Bonus is if you know enough about one of my other oc's to act upon that and even make use of what you know there.

Bragging Post- Either you can post an actual Journal about this for all to read or send a Note recapping past rp's and the recent events. Your basicly taking a quick break just to boast about how far you got and comment on how the RP is going as a side note.

Going back to ceal the deal- By this point if I haven't already concented at this point Your final goal is to break me into the role of Tickle Slave boy friend and to acheive complete control, dominance and obediance if not simply undying love and affection.

Talking Spoils- When I finaly give your charecter victory you will know I have been pleased and have been satisfied and then it will be time to discuss the Pick. You get to request How the pick will look and if it's realy mature I will have to cencor it. But point is You will get to have a Pick that shows what a great role play you gave me and that shows your charecter winning her prize.

No need for Permission- Once it's all be said and done and you have your request fufilled You will also get to come back for another if not more RP's if you desire. Here you get to a no limits round were things can get as mature as you wish and you recap on how you have bested me and lament on about love and whatever you feel ceals the deal and best serves as either the perfect close to the adventure or....the start of a new one ;3

My OC is ReaverPan- He has a human form, a semi human wolf form as seen here and his more famouse form is Thunderaknid( an Anthro Wolf with spider legs coming out of his back. There are some other girl Oc's who are into Reaver and one is even already his girl friend. Feel free to break the wall about none of these girls being real persay but just know that will feel weird to my charecter in context.

My OC is verry Powerful so your options include getting to know what his cannon weeknesses are or you can try to make up your own weeknesses but it feel cheap if you don't leanr anything about me, Or you can go straight out to break the forthe wall if you think you can get away with it. You'll find out with your results based on how I replie in the RP's. If you feel like sending me a demo RP to show your experiance with tickle torture go ahead but it won't count. It will however help me to know that you will give me a good RP and that might still help your chances in the actual segmented RP. If your not sure about me yet that's fine the first round can serve as way to get to know me or just send me some random casual RP's to test me out, to see if you want to go after the prize or not ^^.

I'll be waiting for your Repsonce. Have Fun ^^

#f/m tickling #F/M ticklishboy #blindfolded tickle torture #HEAVY BOUNDAGE #RP #TICKLESLAVE #STRAIGHT #ticklish boyfrie #white kidnapped #Kidnappedboyfriend #Breakme #Punsihme

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josephpauldigitalagency · 4 years

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How To Get eCommerce Sales With SEO

Having an e-commerce site nowadays is easy. Dozens of platforms can get your online store set up in a matter of minutes.

The problem is that as it gets easier, the eCommerce space is more crowded than ever.

Even if you have your website ready to take orders, chances are you won’t get much if any traffic at all. So your options are ads on social media or pay per click campaigns on Google Ads.

And the other option, while it’s more of a long-term strategy, is content marketing, which, according to Demand Metric, costs 62% less to produce than ads

Should you abandon Facebook Ads or pay per click campaigns altogether?

No.

But SEO for e-commerce sites should definitely be part of a sustainable strategy to generate traffic.

We are going to take a look at five ways e-commerce sites can apply SEO tactics to improve their online presence and make ad-free sales.

All of these tactics are easy to implement and free. Most of these tools have a paid option to get more results, but for most people, these small but powerful tweaks can make the difference.

Let’s jump right in.

Keyword Research for E-Commerce

Keyword research is one of the most basic ways to optimize your site for search engines.

Targeting keywords still work on regular websites, and it definitely works for e-commerce sites.

In its most basic form, Keyword Research involves:

Finding how many searches per month a particular keyword has

Creating content that caters the intention of that keyword

There’s more to it, of course, but for e-commerce, you get to use two tools that will supercharge your keyword research efforts.

Amazon as a keyword eCommerce SEO research tool – Part 1

Ever meet a stranger and think, “I wish I knew what they were thinking?”

Well, your wish is Amazon’s command.

Amazon is the biggest e-commerce site in the world. And the search bar is a fantastic keyword research tool that not everyone takes advantage of!

Simply type in a broad category term in the search bar. For example, beard products.

Even if you only write the word beard, Amazon will show you a list of searches people are currently using to buy items.

Did you get that?

Amazon will give you some of the most common ways people find things to buy on Amazon.

But Joe! I don’t sell my stuff on Amazon!

Yeah, but if people use a search term on Amazon to buy something, chances are they’ll use that same term in Google.

It would be wise to make that part of your eCommerce SEO plan.

Amazon as a keyword research tool – Part 2

The other way you can use Amazon as your keyword research tool is to go into a competitor product and read the reviews.

Notice what words people use to describe the experience and features of that product. Notice the pain points, what they do right.

Then, plant those words into your own product’s description. This way, you optimize your product descriptions into something that addresses their problems before they have them.

You can use this tip on eBay, Etsy, Home Depot, Walmart, etc. Any big eCommerce website will have a search bar and will give you keyword suggestions.

Honestly, Amazon and eBay will give you most of what you need. So don’t be surprised if there’s an overlap.

The best advice I can give you for keyword research is to go in, get what you need, and take action as fast as possible.

Otherwise, you can get easily overwhelmed with information and get decision paralysis.

Make it Easy to Purchase Your Products

No one wants to feel like a mouse in a maze trying to find cheese. So why would you make your visitors feel like this?

For e-commerce websites, there’s an unwritten rule that says that your products should never be more than three clicks away.

Make sure your website is easy to navigate both in desktop and smartphones, that your categories make sense, and that’s it’s just intuitive.

A good site structure to have is having your home page lead to a categories page. From the categories, have subcategories where specific products are listed.

Being three clicks away means that it takes two clicks to get to your product page.

Why? Because click number three is where the money is. Your ADD TO CART button should be click number three.

If your website is disorganized, I would recommend you work closely with an SEO.

An SEO will make sure that all the proper redirects are in place, so you don’t have dreaded broken links on your website.

Optimize Your eCommerce Product Page

In the context of your website, your product has three elements:

Product URL

Product Title

Product Description

Make sure that whatever keyword you decided you wanted to target is in these three elements.

For example, back with our beard products example. Let’s say we’re trying to target beard balm, and your product is a fantastic beard balm.

Your product URL must be:

myecommercesite.com/product/badass-beard-balm

Your product title must be something like:

Badass Brand – Beard Balm 5oz bottle

And your product description must tell us everything that makes this beard balm so amazing.

How to Write Product Descriptions

Product descriptions are everything for a product. So make sure you:

Describe what the buyer gets from getting your product. How their lives will be better. What problem it solves.

Bullet points, numbers, comparisons, features.

Include photos, video, graphics.

Pay close attention to bullet point one. Do not focus on features but rather the benefits those features bring to your customer.

Technical Tips to Write Great Product Descriptions

If you have two or more products that are mostly the same (ex. different sizes or colors). Instead of making one product for each variation, create one Variable Product with different attributes that modify the product.

If you must have two separate product pages for two similar products, make sure the descriptions are different. Do not copy and paste descriptions.

Make sure they’re at least 300 words each description, but I recommend using 500 – 1,000

eCommerce SEO Audit

Another thing you can do is do a website audit. A website audit will give you a list of things you can fix from a technical and content point of view.

It can get overwhelming, and you may need professional help for some things, but most of them are easy fixes.

To do a website audit, you can use Ubersuggest by submitting your website’s URL.

Once the tool loads your website, click on the Site Audit link to the left, and you’ll get a list of things you can start fixing on your site.

You can pay to get the full list, but the free version gives you enough to get started.

Content Marketing

Know that guy at the high school reunion that won’t shut up about how great he is now? That’s how people feel about content that is only about a company’s product.

Content marketing is about creating content that your audience finds useful. The goal is to create content that is related to the product, but not the product itself.

So, back to the beards example, content marketing is not creating a 1,000-word article about how excellent your beard balm is. That is what the product description is for

You should produce a great article about the best ways to keep a healthy beard.

The way to do it is simple.

You talk neutrally about ways to keep a beard healthy, and oh, by the way, we have a beard balm you can use. Here’s a link and a coupon. But you can also try this other thing you may have at home.

People love to buy, but they don’t like to be sold to. Content marketing takes care of this problem.

Be helpful, be excellent, and people will buy from you.

Create written content or video content. It’s up to you.

But Joe! I don’t know what to write about!

The best way to know what to talk about is to spy on competition or what people are saying.

You don’t need a hacker for this.

All you need to do is, search in forums related to your niche and look at the discussions that are going on. Go to Reddit, Quora, blog comments, the Youtube comment section (good luck there!).

There are hundreds of places you can find what kind of questions people are asking.

Find a question, answer it in a blog post or video, and you have a new piece of content.

**Bonus Tip** Use AnswerThePublic to see what questions people are asking around your product.

Get Backlinks

Let’s go back to your high school reunion again. In this scenario, you’re there, and you only casually talk about yourself.

Everyone else away from you is mentioning how awesome you are. Since the praise is coming external sources, it builds your authority.

Well, Google and potential customers think the same way. Essentially that’s what backlinks are.

Ranking in Google is kind of like a popularity contest. There’s just no way around it.

You can create the most exceptional content on the web about your product. Pour your heart, soul, blood, and tears into your blog posts and videos, and still get no momentum.

Why?

Cause no other website linked to your content.

Backlinks are like votes. The more links you get, the more you get noticed by search engines.

Getting backlinks is tricky. But here’s how you can get started.

Find a competitor’s website.

Steal competitor backlinks by using UberSuggest.

Once you have a list of other websites who already gave your competition a link.

Analyze what your competition did to earn that link. Maybe it’s a graphic, or a tool, or their product page is better.

I tend to do things to the extreme, so instead of only doing a little better, make your page 10x better.

For example, if your competition did a piece of content titled “5 ways to style your beard.” Create a topic that’s “50 ways to style your beard.”

Yes, it will be a lot of work, but the chances of someone trying to outdo you will be unlikely.

Then, reach out to the website who gave a backlink and see what you can do to get a backlink yourself.

Conclusion

It’s important to not overthink your SEO for your eCommerce website. Between your homepage, product pages, and content, there’s a lot of work to be done.

The best way to eat an elephant (so I’ve heard) is one bite at a time. Optimizing your eCommerce site is no different.

Start with setting your foundation with keyword research using Amazon and other eCommerce platforms.

Next, use the research to optimize your product pages’ titles, descriptions, and URLs.

Once you’ve done that, make it as easy as possible for someone to buy your products with the fewest clicks possible.

Uncover all the technical errors on your website to make sure it’s healthy. Once you have a healthy website create educational content, your visitors will love.

After it’s all said and done, it’s time to get others to share your website with the world.

What are some of your favorite eCommerce SEO tips?

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The post How To Get eCommerce Sales With SEO appeared first on Joseph Paul Digital Agency.

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everyonethinksmynameiskayla · 7 years

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Casa to Barca, part one: Random men sitting with me in silence while I eat

I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco, so when I got to Senegal and was putzing around on the internet, as one does, and discovered that flights from Dakar to Casablanca were only like $100 I decided I was going to make it happen before my Fulbright was over. Then, when I was in the planning in my head but not actually scouring travel blogs and booking stuff stage, I downloaded VirtualBox and started running Windows parallel on my Mac (see an earlier post about that) and the default background for Windows was a photo of a beautiful landscape in a magical-looking place. I did some image-based searches and discovered that place was Ronda, a small city in the southernmost Spanish province, Andalucía. So I decided I would go there too. Ronda is indeed a magical place, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

This trip was a bit more than two weeks total so these posts might be a bit long, so I’m going to divide them up into smaller parts. I’ve already posted some of my favorite pictures on Wanderlust and will be uploading a few more as well as some videos shortly.

So! I flew into Casablanca, which I had heard was nothing special from a touristic perspective so I just went to see the big famous mosque, Mosquée Hassan II, hung out in a café for a bit and then took the bus to Marrakech. I flew through Madrid to get to Casablanca (ironically, since later I went to Spain but not Madrid) and I realized while I was tying to sleep on the couch at Starbucks that the last time I was in the Madrid airport was when I was leaving Senegal in 2014. It was raining when I got there, which was bizarre because I hadn’t seen rain in at least seven months (since the rainy season here hasn’t started yet).

Anyway, my taxi from the airport took me right to Mosquée Hassan II. They are not messing around with that thing, it is absolutely one of the largest and most beautiful structures I have ever seen. I happened to be there at the call to prayer, which was deafening from directly below the minaret but I love me a good call to prayer so that was a bonus. I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in a café in the main plaza, marveling both at how I seemed to be the only woman sitting at a sidewalk café out of the hundreds of patrons around the plaza and also at how if I didn’t know where I was and someone told me I was in Europe I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Seriously, Casablanca looks and feels so European. Then I went to the bus station and was totally mind blown by how fancy it was and then was even more mind blown by the bus I took to Marrakech, it had the most leg room I’ve ever had traveling in something that wasn’t a train and maybe even then and each seat was like a small lazy boy recliner with like a foot rest thing that popped up and everything. I guess since I was coming from the Senegalese context I was expecting Moroccan travel to be a bit more similar to the sept-places and mini-buses of Senegal and perhaps that was unfair or presumptive but man, was I wrong. To be fair, even once I got to Spain I kept almost burning myself in the shower because it never occurred to me that there might be hot water. I get so wrapped up in however/wherever I’m living.

Marrakech was kind of meh. The proverbial ‘everyone’ is always like “obviously Marrakech is a must for any trip to Morocco” but everything was the exact same color (seriously, by law everything has to be a terra-cotta orangey color because otherwise sandstorms make the buildings too dirty) and the medina is cool but parts of the newer part of the city kind of look like when rich suburbs try to give their “downtown” that “downtown” feel by unnecessarily putting the shops and restaurants into strips and the parking lots in the back, but all the stores and restaurants are still chains and you’re like “well, you tried”. There was even a Fudruckers. Like. What? What even is Fudruckers? But I digress.

Like I said, the medina was cool as always – every mid-size to large Moroccan city has a ‘medina’, or at least it would seem to me that’s the case, which is basically the “old city” and generally only accessible to pedestrians (except in Marrakech motorbikes were allowed which meant that my life flashed before my eyes every two minutes, it’s okay though it made up for the uniformity of color in the excitement department). The medinas are always labyrinthine and full of narrow alleys and little maze-like paths with vendors selling sweets and tea and scarves and oils and accordingly they’re generally the main tourist attraction. Plus all the cool monuments and mosques are usually inside the medina. The Marrakech medina was the same color as the rest of the city, but since it was my first medina I enjoyed wandering around, until I got to the souks, or market area, which is when I realized what a couple of my friends who had been to Morocco meant when they said that Marrakech is mostly for tourists to shop. In the middle of all of this is a huge square that has at least 50 of the exact same—seriously, they’re all identical—juice stands set up in rows in the middle surrounded by some ladies doing henna on little benches under umbrellas and snake charmers playing for giant cobras which were just casually hanging out on the street which seemed like a good idea. I got a lot of juice from those stands, it was so good and it was so hot outside, but it was always a bit stressful because when you get close they all start yelling and trying to get you to come to their stand but since there is no distinguishable difference between them it’s hard to choose and I would think okay I should go to the first guy I make eye contact with but then it was always too much pressure and I felt bad for the guys that I didn’t buy juice from. As I write this I’m realizing that maybe that’s the point…

The highlight in Marrakech was actually my hostel, which was right in the center of the medina and was exactly how I would picture a hostel in Morocco. It was ‘riad’ style, which meant it had an open air ‘courtyard’ in the middle and then each floor looked down into that, except instead of a garden in the ‘courtyard’ as is required to be an actual ‘riad’ it was a bunch of rugs and cushions and low tables and the whole place was dimly lit with those metal lanterns with the holes punched in them in cool patterns. When I got there I knocked on the door and the guy who opened it immediately said “Kyla?” which surprised me and then he gave me my first thé a la menthe (mint tea, Moroccan signature, so good) and some weird things that were either crackers or cookies. There were only two other people there, a Congolese guy who appeared to be living there while he worked at a travel company call center (probably practical, the place only cost like 3 euros a night) and a Slovakian guy who was touring the world on his motorcycle.

^ Lighting wasn’t great for photos, but I tried

While exploring, I came across a café where you could also get henna, which I did because I missed having henna on my hands and arms all the time like I did in India since the girls would practice on me. Then I had my first ‘Moroccan crepe’ from a lady making them on the street, she even put an egg in mine for me and made me a little sandwich and I had that with some tea for lunch for a dollar. Thus began my love affair with Moroccan crepes.

^ My henna, while drying and the next day, and lunch

To get to my next destination, Imlil, up in the Atlas mountains about an hour and a half outside Marrakech, I took a ‘grand taxi’ which is as close as you’re going to get to a Moroccan sept-place except it’s a 2013 model Toyota minivan and it only seats six which means that being in the way back doesn’t break both your neck and your spirit which was good since I was in the way back. As you drive out of Marrakech the mountains quickly come into sight behind the clouds and then all of a sudden you go from the desert to the forest and mountains so fast that I actually missed it because I was selecting a podcast to listen to.

Imlil is tiny and quiet, most people use it as a base to climb Mount Toubkal, the highest peak in the Atlas, which I did not have the time nor the gear to do. So instead I decided to try to find this waterfall that I had heard tell about. However all this hear-tell had not included the factoid that there are in fact two waterfalls, one which is about a mile up the mountain and the other which is about 20 miles up the mountain. So, long after I had passed the impossible-to-see turnoff for the path to the waterfall I was actually looking for, people I was passing in the little villages and trekking teams with their mules were telling me “yeah, yeah, just keep going you’ll come to the waterfall”. Eventually it had been several hours and I sat down on a rock and said to myself okay, you’ve definitely walked more than a mile at this point. Since the hike had been lovely so far, with great mountain views complete with bubbling springs and wildflowers, I decided to just backtrack. I made a pit stop at a rooftop restaurant I came across in a little village that seemed entirely dedicated to housing trekkers preparing for the ascent, except I was the only person there so when I asked the guy hanging out at the bottom of the stairs if the restaurant was open he looked at me like I had just asked him to marry him for a second and then recovered and said uh yeah sure and led me upstairs to the terrace which had a stunning view but all the chairs were on top of the tables and he scrambled to put them down and then came over and asked what I wanted to eat and I said well what do you have and he was like well what would you like and I was like uh do you have tagine and he said no, we only have Berber omelets, which seemed pretty straightforward so I got that. No regrets there, turns out Berber omelets are really good—they’re basically deep-dish omelets made in a tagine (the cone shaped thing that they make Moroccan food in) with tomatoes and onions and all kinds of yummy spices.

^ My Berber omelet and the view

They guy who brought the omelet upstairs, not the same guy as before, put the omelet down in front of me and then pulled up a chair and sat sort of across from me and said absolutely nothing for like five minutes before getting up and leaving while I stared with great determination at the omelet waiting for it to cool down a bit which was really strange but turned out to be a theme in Imlil. When I got back to my hotel, which I had wisely chosen based on the quality of the roof top terrace and view (10/10, plus my room was also on the roof so all I had to do was step outside to enjoy it) I took my first hot shower which was super exciting and then sat outside for dinner, which was vegetable soup and then a vegetable and chicken tagine that was as breathtaking as the view, the guy who seemed to be the sole person running the place also sat silently adjacent to me while I ate for the most amount of time possible without me exploding from confusion and awkwardness before getting up and leaving. I always thought it was annoying and invasive when men outside of a normal social setting in which such behavior would be acceptable (i.e. a party) asserted their ‘right’ to my time and attention but my god this was so much weirder.

^ Tagine and the roof terrace

But anyway to get back to my hike, I was just about back to town when I saw out of the corner of my eye a small path going straight down next to me and a tiny sign that said “waterfall” with an arrow…and so I actually did find the original waterfall, which was full of day trippers from Marrakech and some industrious locals had set up a little restaurant on the rocks next to it and everything. I took a different way back, following the irrigation canals down to the main street.

^ The waterfall

The next day I was pretty tired so I mostly hung out on the roof and read and ate more tagine and Moroccan crepes and drank tea, but I also spent a few hours trying to find and eventually finding the radio tower, to get the panoramic view of the valley. One would think that since you can see the radio tower from almost everywhere it wouldn’t be hard to get to but one would be wrong. I spent a lot of time making false starts up the steep rocky hill below it before I finally found the actual “path” that led up there, and when I got up there I couldn’t stay long because despite the view being beautiful it was so windy that I couldn’t stand up during one of the gusts because of a legitimate and well founded fear that it would blow me clear off the top of the mountain. (My pictures from these hikes are on Wanderlust)

The next day I was heading to Fez and I was a little bit stressed because my train was at 10:45 from Marrakech and it would take about an hour and a half to get there and you have to wait for the Grand Taxis to fill up before they leave which could take five minutes or an hour so I got to the station/town parking lot as early as I could and I walked in and told the guy who had a clipboard and reflective vest and therefore seemed to be in charge I was going to Marrakech and before he could even say anything another older white guy who was getting into a car said “we can take you, we’re leaving now” so I got a free ride straight to the train station from a Montenegrin man and his daughter. Funny how things just work out that. Continuing the trend of things working out, I got to the station and my Moroccan friend had advised me that I should switch out my second class train ticket for first class one since it was usually only a few dollars more and you were guaranteed a seat and it was much more comfortable for the kind of 9 hour ride I was about to do, so I decided to take his advice. I got my new ticket and then went and got a coffee at the McDonald’s in the station and waited to board. When I threw my coffee away I also threw away my old second class ticket because that made sense to me and I can’t read Arabic so I did not know that it said on my new ticket that it was only valid alongside my old one. However the ticket collector on the train could read Arabic and so just when I was settling in to my comfy first class train car and celebrating my good fortune he took my ticket and goes “where’s the other ticket” to which my only response was “uh”. Long story short, he said I had to buy the second class ticket again, which had been $20 and I was basically beginning him to have mercy, like how could I have known?? and so he literally gets on the phone, calls someone back at the train station and has them look in the trash at the McDonald’s, but they don’t find it so in great agony I bought the ticket again. Then the very, very nice older lady sitting across from me felt bad and was like it’s okay I would have done the same thing, you couldn’t have known and then she reached into her purse and pulled out the equivalent of ten dollars and insisted that I take it because she didn’t want my trip in Morocco to be stained by having to buy the ticket again. Then when I came back from the bathroom I discovered that her daughter, who was sitting next to me, had bought me a juice from the food cart guy. Traveling is humbling.

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dustedmagazine · 7 years

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Listening Post: John Cale in Fragments

John Cale is in no way obscure. Over the last 50 years, his knack for hypnotic arrangements brought us the debuts of The Velvet Underground, Stooges, Patti Smith, and Nick Drake, and configured the Leonard Cohen cover that conquered the 21st century TV singing competition. Those marks on pop music have something in common: they took a dozen years or more for their full effect to percolate though the culture. While his time bombs have ticked, he’s worked with provocateurs that range from minimalist composer Terry Riley to maximalist fucks Jesus Lizard.

With his solo work, though, Cale remains the kind of artist even dedicated explorers can overlook. With a reputation that precedes him, delving into Cale’s personal work can be a surprise if one is expecting the confrontations of Lou Reed or the dread of Nico, or moods that live up to the album titles Fear, Guts or Vintage Violence. Indeed, his most recognized album, Paris 1919 is thoroughly pretty, ripe with orchestral accompaniment and literary reference. Dusted’s Justin Cober-Lake, Ben Donnelly, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers and Bill Meyer use the expanded reissue of Fragments of a Rainy Season as a springboard to discuss Cale’s stature as singer-songwriter.

Ben Donnelly: Cale has been refreshing his back catalog, recently dusting off the 1992 European tour document Fragments of a Rainy Season and releasing it on Domino Records. Catching him mid-life, alone with a piano or a guitar for the whole set, it’s a portrait of the artist traveling light, pulling songs from across his career. For an artist with so many collaborations, it a good starting point for discussing him on his own.

What else is special about Cale, and this record?

Ian Mathers: One thing that I think is specifically special about this record is that, as Ben says, it is a good starting point for Cale’s work, and I can’t think of many other artists where that would be true. His full-band work is justly revered, but if someone was asking me about Cale and why I love his solo stuff I would absolutely hand them this album before anything else, and it really just is his voice and an instrument or two. But it doesn’t at all have the vague MTV Unplugged-type associations you might guess from the setup, and the more raucous songs fully come across that way. It does feel like a really nicely fleshed out career overview even though the arrangements are pretty tightly controlled.

And maybe mostly it’s just that we’re so totally in the presence of Cale’s voice, both literally and authorially. Yes, you’ve got his famous (and incredibly often copied) version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, but you’ve also got everything from the bloody-minded “Fear (Is a Man’s Best Friend)” to the wistful “Dying on the Vine”, you’ve got songs setting Dylan Thomas’s poetry to music and assembling unsettling narratives from basic learn-Spanish phrase books (“Cordoba”, which honestly might be my favorite song here). It takes a heck of an artist to have the same live album cover both “Thoughtless Kind” and “Guts”, let alone in similarly minimal settings, and have them register so strongly and yet so differently.

Ben’s absolutely right at how great Cale is as a collaborator and arranger, so maybe the reason I love Fragments of a Rainy Season so much is partly because it has such a tight focus on him as a songwriter and a performer. Are others here as knocked-out by these performances as I am? I’d take many of them over the recorded versions.

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Bill Meyer: For me, the absence of a band allows me to avoid the lapses of judgment that make parts of Cale’s body of work hard for me to love. From John Cale Comes Alive (1984) forward he’s mixed great songs, sublime melodies, and wild man freak-outs with diffident performances and sketchy production that confused state of the art with flavor the week; the auto-tune stuff on his recent records is kind of embarrassing. But on Fragments you get him in good voice, decently recorded, with just his piano and guitar. You don’t get ill-considered reaching, you get his range as a singer and songwriter.

It’s worth noting that this is the second archival effort that Cale has offered recently. On M:FANS he revisited material from Music For A New Society and showed that he had no feel for it anymore. That may be good for him since he’s spent over 30 years of his life in much better shape than he was on that record, but it also felt like needless tampering. With this Fragments reissue he has added bonus material that risked undercutting the integrity of the original album because it isn’t solo (there’s a string section and a steel guitarist) and it repeats songs from the original album. But he pulls it off. The extra instrumentation compliments the songs without dating them.

Justin Cober-Lake: My thoughts fit in with what everyone else is saying. I’ve never liked Cale as much as I think I will, in part because he never sounds like I think he should. Vintage Violence and Paris 1919 are more pop and more accessible than you’d expect. In the context of his non-solo work (as musician or producer), it takes a minute to adjust to hearing that sort of sound. I actually listen to his ‘00s stuff as much as anything, largely because there’s more sandpaper to it.

But part of the fun of listening to Cale has been considering what mode he’s in. What is it that he’s doing on a new album? (And isn’t this sort of the fun of listening for his work within the Velvet Underground, too?) So Cale to me ends up being this figure that’s traceable by his shifts in style, and I’ve never paid enough attention to all of it to follow, to mark of periods or to, like Bill, date a shift to a given record. I put something on it and think about it as a discrete appearance of that mode of Cale.

Fragments, then, has this fun quality of removing all of that. A casual fan gets just to the songs. It’s probably a little reductive, but it feels like getting to the essential Cale; these songs– rather than particular performances– are at the heart of his work as an artist, rather than whether he’s chosen to do the orchestral thing or the autotune thing or whatever. That said, it’s not my favorite sound of Cale’s, but it is a wonderful way to listen to all this stuff.

Bill Meyer: I took the Cale plunge in 1981, not long after first spending some time with the Velvet Underground. So I got to him right at the end of a run of consistently strong records that ran from Paris 1919 through Honi Soit. He had great bands and wrote appealing melodies that contrasted impressively with his wild-man fits. Those are still the records I like the most, but Fragments dates from a time when I thought he might be hitting such a stride again. He made it around the same time as his reunion with Lou Reed and his collaboration with Eno, which sounded pretty good at the time. Subsequent efforts have never quite held together for me.

But I saw him last year, playing mostly songs from the last couple records, and he sounded great.

Ian Mathers: I agree with what you’re both saying here, and in a way I think some of that is what makes Cale both underrated and overrated, at the same time; on the one hand from the Velvet Underground onwards of course it’d be ridiculous to dismiss his work/influence (and honestly even if he’d just been in the VU and produced the first Stooges record that’d still make him pretty significant to me), but there’s a kind of restlessness to his stylistic/technical/aesthetic choices that can come across as a bit glib or uncaring, which means he doesn’t fit the frame of just being straightforwardly genius either. The range means that most music fans will be able to find something Cale’s done that they enjoy… and it’s equally likely they’ll be able to find something they don’t like at all.

And I think for many of us at least some of the production choices on Cale’s studio LPs fall into the latter category, which is one of the strengths of this album. Admittedly I heard the version here first, but at this point I kind of can’t tolerate the album version of “Dying on the Vine”. I don’t think that’s a laudable reaction, but it’s an honest one.

I agree with Bill that I think the bonus tracks largely work. Honestly, as much as we’ve talked about the stripped-down arrangements on Fragments of a Rainy Season are a big part of its success (and rightly so), I may wind up sequencing the string-assisted versions of “Fear (Is a Man’s Best Friend),” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “Paris 1919” in place of the original album’s versions, they’re that good (and still feel very restrained compared to much of Cale’s studio work), especially the Elvis, which gets some ferocious distortion out of those strings. The extra outtake of “Fear (Is a Man’s Best Friend)” is an interestingly slowed-down take, but still feels kind of redundant (glad to have it, not sure how often I’ll play it), and it’s nice to have “Amsterdam” and “Broken Hearts” but those weren’t particular favorites of mine. I do wish this version of “Antarctica Starts Here” had made the original cut, strings and steel guitar and all, because it’s great.

Thinking that I might move those string versions into the 'main’ album when I play it in the future got me to notice something else, too; my old Fragments of a Rainy Season was just the standard CD issue, but the track listing of the original album seems to have been shuffled in this release (for example, “Dying on the Vine” used to be track 2, and now it’s track 13). Has anyone else noticed this, or knows why? I couldn’t find out if the new sequencing is intended to reflect more (or less) of the original set than the previous release, and so on.

There’s also the cover art, a favorite of mine, slightly updated only in that the background color has been changed from white to a dark blue-grey that I’m slightly nonplussed by. Like the actual songs, that cover is stripped down, looking more like a book cover than most albums, including Cale’s name, the title, and then a quote from MacBeth:

Banquo: It will be rain tonight.

First Murderer: Let it come down.

It’s one of my favorite moments in the play; as if one of the men MacBeth has sent to kill Banquo simply can’t resist the opening to say something that incredibly dramatic and foreboding, even though it’s probably what lets Banquo’s son get away. It seems oddly fitting for Cale, someone fond of the dark and the dramatic, but also sometimes capable of getting in his own way.

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Ben Donnelly: This reissue puts the tracks in the running order of the original performance, which is a good idea. I hadn’t heard Fragments until this reissue, so I’m not wed to the old running order, though. I don’t think the extra tracks add much to the free-standing performance, but they do give context to Cale’s other approaches. Which also helps make this a good Young Person’s Guide to John Cale.

One of the advantages of this record is how the minimal arrangements push his voice to the fore, and what a voice it is. On a song like “Fear (Is a Man’s Best Friend)” it pushes him to make up for the dynamics of the missing backing band, moving the song from seventies art rock to something tighter less specific in style and era.

His voice lets small shifts of tone change the emotion of the song line by line– his longing ebbs and flows with frustration. Then there’s points where he breaks into sarcasm, spitting out a rolling-r with the word “prowl”. His playing barely moves off of three chords while he sings, until lets everything fall apart at the end, like a car crash. But it takes a full electric band to make a real car crash din, so you get this approximation of chaos with howls stretching into a yodel as the rhythm falters. He adapts the ideas behind the songs to make them fit the circumstance.

Cale is an understated singer with a naturally warm register, a complete contrast with Lou Reed and Nico, for whom force of personality made up for the deficiencies of their singing. That’s part of why his output confounds expectations. Born with quite a few musical gifts, he doesn’t fight against them. His voice is never clawing for attention. Yet it’s got it’s own strangeness, injecting calm when the music gets tense. We expect our provocateurs to be cool, but not necessarily calm. He is cool and calm. In this set, the points where he lets his deadpan crack add a dimension to the songs, almost like another instrument.

Most of these performances complement the studio takes, but a few take them to new heights. “Buffalo Ballet” surpasses the original– loosing a backing chorus scales it’s down to the right size.

I did see Cale do a set very much like this one in at the Paradise club in Boston in 1988. I wasn’t familiar with much of his catalog at the time. What surprises me is how much I can tie these performances to my memories of his Paradise set– I can still see him letting “Fear” fall apart with his yells, and I can see him getting up from the piano for the few songs with the guitar. I was impressed how “Ship of Fools” and “Leaving It Up to You” barely left two chords, yet were transfixing. The gig was a few years before Fragments. He’d been refining this stripped down style for a while.

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Bill Meyer: I agree, Ben. His voice has held up really well over the years, but it was never better than in the early 90s. He had put his self-destructive lifestyle behind him (I remember reading a quote by Andy Warhol in the late 80s where he marveled that Cale had taken up squash and was looking great) so there was nothing pushing against the exercise of his gifts.

I saw him open for Pere Ubu circa 1990 by playing a set very much like the music on Fragments. The dignity of his demeanor contrasted strongly with the hostility he projected in the early and mid-1980s.

Jennifer Kelly: I’m having trouble with the piano arrangements, which just seem a little too happy and peppy for the material. Is anyone else getting a piano-bar-on-the-Carnival-Cruise-line vibe or have I completely lost it?

Normally I feel like sparer is better, but the bonus tracks with the string quartet (especially “Heartbreak Hotel”) are the ones that are making the most sense to me.

Bill Meyer: I think the pep is integral to his weird mix of interests and talents– dude has a bit of Paul McCartney in his wrists and he can’t keep it down.

Ben Donnelly: He is the guy who transformed a career-nadir Cohen number into middle America’s favorite B&D power ballad.

This conversation is making me realize parallels between Cale and a previous Listening Post pedestal-dweller: Lee Hazlewood. They have this sentimentality that too odd to be simple pop sentimentality, but still catchy and very approachable, if frequently colored by something completely left field.

In some sense, pop has moved towards Cale’s style of art song, just as it’s moved towards Hazlewood’s eccentric melodrama. The chattering piano and literary references shooting through fragmentary images reminds me of recent Joanna Newsom and PJ Harvey.

I like him best when he’s not trying to be too Manhattan or too Welsh country lad, but someone lost between the two.

For me, his inconsistencies get swept aside by his triumphs. I can’t think of a song I’ve listened to more than “Paris 1919” and I can’t believe I haven’t worn it out– it remains utterly enchanting to me, and I don’t think I’ve even taken much a break from it. The images sometimes seem to satirize between-the-wars naiveté, and sometimes seem to be about something personal he won’t reveal. I love that tension.

But I haven’t worn “Paris 1919” out because I’ve never binged on Cale either - too inconsistent!

Bill Meyer: Yeah, it’s never clear just how personal his music really is. He could be wearing his heart on his sleeve, or embroidering a picture of a heart on his sleeve, or making music that appears like someone’s heart on a sleeve. When he’s good, it’s good enough that that doesn’t really matter. That’s all something that he has in common with Hazlewood.

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Ian Mathers: He’s a ghost, la la la la la la la la (like Ben I’ve so far found “Paris 1919” to be inexhaustible, along with several other Cale songs… and similarly, except for maybe Fragments itself, I’ve never really binged).

Jenny, I hear what you’re saying about the piano playing, but for me it just often enough sounds insistent or even nagging rather than just peppy that on balance I like it, but then you get something like the quasi-barrelhouse roll of “Darling I Need You” and it does feel a little naff (although knowing Cale, and I think the Hazlewood comparison is apt, maybe that’s the point!).

#John Cale #Fragments of a Rainy Season #listeningpost #domino records #art rock #singer-songwriter #velvet underground #1992 #dusted magazine #albumreview #ian mathers #ben donnelly #bill meyer #jennifer kelly #justin cober-lake

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pcinvasion-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on PC Invasion

New Post has been published on https://www.pcinvasion.com/nier-automata-review

NieR: Automata Review

There’s a line in NieR: Automata that’s repeated a few times, in different contexts. To paraphrase it, it’s that something – be it an item or an emotion – “reflects what’s in your heart.” To my mind, that’s very, very true of NieR: Automata itself.

NieR: Automata is ostensibly a game about a war between androids and machines. An alien invasion forced humanity to evacuate to the moon, and the aliens’ machine army still roams the Earth. Humanity have built their own androids to fight back against the machines, in the hopes of someday retaking control of Earth so that the humans can return to their planet once again.

However, saying that NieR: Automata is about androids fighting machines is sort of like saying that Les Misérables is about a guy chasing a criminal. It’s technically true, but it’s drastically underestimating the nature of the thing, because NieR: Automata is about religion, war, evolution, preconceptions, humanity, morality, loss, despair, revenge, determinism, and about a dozen other concepts. It is considerably more than a hack-and-slash game about robots. Which parts of this you consider to be most overt and most important probably say more about you than they do the game; I found it to focus more on a couple of those concepts than others, but I in no way believe I’ve got the “right” interpretation. Or maybe this is just my past as an English Literature student trained to find meaning in everything coming into play.

If that’s turned you off, don’t worry. It’s also a game with a lot of large explosions and over-the-top action scenes. I mean, the prologue closes with a fight against an ambulatory oil rig, which ends when you beat it to death with its own giant arm.

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out has nothing on this.

And it’s hauntingly beautiful. Seriously, the presentation of this game borders on the impeccable, both visually and aurally. In visual terms, different areas are tinted different colours at different times, evoking particular feelings. In audio terms, all of the music in the game is “layered”; you might hear the vocals of particular track slowly fade in as you approach a huge building, or everything but string instruments might fade out as you walk out onto endless sandy dunes. And – thankfully – it’s mostly not ominous Latin chanting. The vocals to the music seem to be a mish-mash of languages; I swear I’ve heard Japanese and French, at least, though it’s hard to be certain.

There are also some wonderful juxtapositions of this stuff. There’s something to be said for having a high-octane battle against 20 machines, dashing and slashing and dodging strikes with perfect timing, while the background music is mostly a child’s humming and the entire screen is tinted grey. Eerie? A little, but mostly it just serves to pin moments like that in my forebrain. And NieR: Automata does this shit a lot. Even the occasional shifts into 2.5D, where you suddenly find yourself playing a side-on platformer, simultaneously feel like smooth transitions of the mechanics you’re used to, while jarring enough that they stick in your mind.

This also makes it a bit of a joy to explore. It’s not a particularly large open world – indeed, it’s mostly a bunch of open-ish areas stitched together through corridors – but some of the vistas are utterly spectacular. Traversal gets considerably more pleasant once you get access to the game’s fast travel system (although, annoyingly, this will probably be after you’ve done the first batch of side-quests), but spending a few minutes sliding across a desert or hopping across a very literal urban jungle still evokes a “wow” every now and then, even when you’re doing some irritating backtracking.

Or you can take a break to do a spot of fishing, if you’d rather.

As with most of Yoko Taro’s games, though, it’s got some fairly obvious flaws. Side-quests are mostly fetch quests that involve a lot of trudging backtracking. A couple of the antagonists are (initially at least) incredibly bland and dull. One of your companion characters, 9S, is so very annoying, and he has a very large role in the game. It maybe says something that I think that’s somewhat intentional, though, and bits of the plot wouldn’t really work without it.

Unlike some (Drakengard) it’s actually fun to play, probably in part because Platinum do third-person hack-and-slash stuff really well, but even that’s got its issues. The hack-and-slash combat, for instance, is a little on the light side; you won’t be unlocking dozens of new combos and memorising attack patterns, despite how flashy and frenetic the combat is, and how challenging it can sometimes be. The exploration is (predictably) a little limited by invisible walls, and things you can’t climb on even though it appears you can. The SHMUP sections are over-long and not particularly interesting. And the twin-stick shooter bits can, on mouse-and-keyboard at least, fuck right off.

I talked about that stuff a fair bit in the PC Technical Review but some of it bears repeating and elaborating on here, having now had significantly more play. This is entirely playable on mouse and keyboard – I’ve gone through to Ending A doing so. A controller is arguably a better option, but there are a few benefits to using default PC inputs.

Combat is mostly a case of mixing up light and heavy attacks depending on the situation, while dodging the instant before an enemy hits you. Being able to hurl a giant sword and have it spin in place several metres away from you may have something to do with how fun it is.

The main one is the camera controls. While the game often opts for a cinematic camera (like the aforementioned 2.5D bits, where it obviously has a very enforced camera) it’s pretty easy to control with a mouse outside of that. The camera does have some inertia, which makes precise aiming a pain, but you can get used to it. Even with these limitations I still prefer mouse camera to gamepad camera, and it meant that using the game’s lock-on functionality (disabled on the higher difficulties) felt far less essential.

The downsides are a bit more regular. Dodging – activated by a directional double-tap on the keyboard – feels less precise than having a dedicated key for it, and I’ve been hit a bunch of times when I know damn well I’d have evaded them on gamepad. Platforming is a bit more problematic with eight directions of movement rather than full 360 degree movement afforded by an analogue stick. Swapping Pods (your ranged weapons) requires you to hold down Alt and press an arrow key. And then there are the twin-stick shooter sections, which are totally unplayable on mouse, but can be played by using WASD to move and arrow keys to aim… but, again, this only gives you eight directions of movement and attack, and these segments are designed around you having more. While playing on mouse and keyboard is possible, then, a controller is mostly the better way to go, and I sort of feel like whoever designed the keyboard and mouse controls only had a cursory play of the game with them to check that they were largely functional. Unfortunately, “largely functional” is pretty different from “good.”

I sneaked one thing in there: “Ending A.” I’ve been doing my damnedest to avoid going into much specific detail in this review, but NieR: Automata does something quite unusual in that it has multiple endings. I don’t mean that in the sense of “make a decision at the end to get a different closing cutscene”, either.

It also does something quite unusual in that I think it looks nicer with motion blur turned on. Madness, I know.

After finishing the game once and getting Ending A, you’re then casually advised to play through again, and that is not the last time you’ll need to play through it. If you feel a little unfulfilled by the time you reach Ending A, that’s not a surprise, because you really haven’t finished. That ending message doesn’t quite hammer home that your second playthrough is most definitely not “the same game again”, and you’ll need to play through the game more than just twice to actually experience the whole story. I’ve played through all of the story endings (as well as a bunch of the “joke” endings) on the PlayStation 4, and gone through to Ending A on PC, which I think gives me a good balance of “experiencing all of the content” and “playing it through on PC”. This also has the upside of me not having screenshots from any further in.

There are lots of other little mechanics that are unusual, too, especially if you haven’t played a Yoko Taro game before. Every weapon has a hilariously bleak story tied to it – usually focusing on murder or arson or the death of an entire family or horrible child genocide or something – which you gradually unlock as you level it up. Death functions in a Dark Souls-esque way, in that dying leaves a corpse and a little message behind, and you respawn at your last save point (manual saves only!) shorn of your equipment and any experience you gained since your last save. This actually makes sense in-universe, since you’re an android: “saving” is uploading your consciousness, so when you die, you’re just dumped into a new body. Go pick up your corpse if you want your stuff back.

I have a whole plethora of really lovely screenshots, if anyone’s interested. Loads.

The skill system, too, is rather neat. You have a certain amount of memory that you can slot skill chips into, which mostly fit into the boring standards of Bonus Weapon Damage or Regenerate Health After Not Taking Damage. These chips can be fused together to upgrade them, but as they all take up a certain amount of memory, you can only have so many equipped at once. Excellently, your HUD is actually part of these skill chips too: you can free up some room for another upgrade by, say, removing your health bar, or taking out the chip that controls how parts of your interface disappear when they’re not needed. It’s a minor touch, but one that neatly plays with the basic concepts of games while making sense for your character, and it’s one of many such touches.

Oh, and you can remove your OS chip if you want to. Don’t be surprised when it instantly kills you and gives you one of the game’s numerous joke endings, though. You kinda need that one in your head.

I’m coming awfully close to divulging minor spoilers here, but one other thing that bears mention is just how much emotion is poured into this game. You’re told that machines are mindless murderbots, constructed solely to kill humans, but this is very quickly shown to be blatantly untrue. Despite many of them being waddling tin cans, they’ve got a wealth of personality, both in terms of individual character and in terms of actually having personalities. Most of the characters you meet might be robotic, but a couple of scenes are nearly guaranteed to bring you to tears. I want to give examples, but my urge to let you experience this for yourself is keeping that in check.

One other thing I’ll note, briefly: I’ve lied by omission in this review. There are new mechanics and adjustments to the existing mechanics that I simply can’t talk about because spoilers. I’m being as cagey about the actual content of the game as possible, because it routinely changes things up, and saying “This bit only happens for this period” or “Also, later on, this happens” would give far too much away.

Although I will say that this early scene, with machines rocking empty cradles and imitating sex, is incredibly creepy. That should give you some idea.

So, how the bloody hell do I score this? As a game, NieR: Automata is pretty damn okay. It’s quite good. It’s entertaining. It’s worth a play. As an experience, though, it’s something really rather sublime. It’s never overbearingly intellectual; you can follow along with most of the plot without having to look for deeper meanings, so don’t worry about that. Still, it’s a game that’s less about its fighty/explore-y mechanics, and more about the events surrounding the fighty/explore-y bits. If you’re seeking a new Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, this isn’t in-depth enough for that, despite the ludicrous acrobatics of the combat.

And then there’s the PC stuff. This isn’t anywhere near a Dishonored 2 level of “problematic port”, but I can’t ignore that its PC controls have some issues they really shouldn’t have (camera acceleration, those fucking twin-stick controls). Likewise, I can’t complain about the crashes and black screens that some have experienced because I simply didn’t hit them, but while they’re still known to be a problem, you may want to wait for a patch. Or at least keep in mind Steam’s refund window.

Still… I really can’t do much but heartily recommend NieR: Automata. It is a very special, unique game; I don’t think it ever really hits some of the soul-wrenching highs of NieR, but equally, it’s a lot more fun to actually play and it hits its own notes. It’s so weird and singular that I honestly can’t say for sure if you’ll even like it, but it struck such a chord with me that if it sounds at all like a thing that you’d be into, you should give it a try. Despite everything, I’d be surprised if this doesn’t wind up as one of my favourite games of the year, and with a perfect PC port, this’d be awfully close to a perfect score. The flaws, obvious and common though they are, aren’t nearly enough to take away from everything else this superlative action-RPG accomplishes.

In the end, NieR: Automata reflects what’s in your heart, and it’s possibly the most playable introduction to the glorious madness of Yoko Taro there is. Whether that’s worth something to you I couldn’t possibly say, but it’s left quite a mark on me.

#Nier: Automata

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thatsnotbeautiful · 7 years

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hi! thanks so much for making me a thing, i’m so excited to see what you come up with!

i tend to be pretty long-winded with my Dear Gifter letters, but please know that all of these are intended as suggestions or as jumping-off points for you to brainstorm ideas, if that sort of thing helps you. i’d say the only thing you “have” to read are my general dislikes, i.e. things i definitely do not want to see in a fic/art.

some of my ideas are nsfw, but definitely don’t feel like you have to include nsfw if you’d rather not.

likes

i really love fics that focus closely on characters, the relationships they have with each other, and the dynamics of those relationships. e.g.s: a character overcoming an obstacle, a character learning something important about themself, slow burn/relationship development, fluff and domesticity, rivals with benefits, complicated dysfunctional relationships - i could go on. (perhaps by extension, i also really like polyamory.) looking at characters and how they fit together is probably one of my favorite things in fanwork tbh.

i like canon-compliant works as much as AUs; i’d enjoy a “deleted scene” as much as a future fic or rock star or space opera AU. cute slice of life is great, but if doing an AU is something you’d be interested in, i particularly love anything involving scifi/advanced technology or magic.

dislikes

please none of the following: incest, non-con/dub-con, abuse/bullying, angst/unhappy endings (i’m fine with hurt/comfort or characters being sad or suffering as long as it’s resolved somehow?), pregnancy/kids/parenting, big age gaps, ageing characters down, gore/torture/graphic violence, character death, infidelity.

~ REQUEST 1: YURI!!! ON ICE ~

some things i love in YOI that i’d like to see more of in a piece of fanwork are: - characters using and keeping up with each other via social media - long-distance friendships/relationships and running into each other all over the globe - how most of the skaters seem to be friends with each other and sincerely cheer each other on while also compete with each other and want to achieve the best result they possibly can - characters developing their figure skating career - some of the costumes are so beautiful?? i’d love to see more stuff involving pretty clothes in other contexts, too (maybe even lingerie if you want to go nsfw, idk)

onto the ships:

--otayuri--

HELLO, WELCOME TO MY YOI OTP. i love both of these characters and their relationship in canon so much

laundry list of ideas: - i like thinking that they provide a form of respite for each other, that they feel comfortable opening up to each other in ways they don’t with other people, that they can really be themselves around each other. (i’m thinking about when they’re having tea with each other and just chatting with those easy smiles.) some kind of scene like that would be lovely - i also like thinking about how both of them go so hard with skating and how hanging out with each other could be a kind of break from that specifically? so: spending time just doing fun things together, introducing each other to things they like, goofing off and being teenagers - teaching each other how to do things, e.g. Otabek teaching Yurio how to ride a motorbike or Yurio teaching Otabek how to cook pirozhki - soft domesticity: sharing a bed, cuddling on the couch while watching a movie, just general taking care of each other - Yurio introducing Otabek to his cat or taking care of a pet together - relationship development! slow burn, friends -> lovers, snapshots of how their relationship develops over time, UST!! bonus points if one or both of them don’t realize their growing feelings for each other right off the bat - rivalry! Otabek challenging Yurio for the gold and how that effects their friendship (if it even does at all)! - getting into a fight or one of them Honestly pissing the other off and then making up again - literally Anything w Yurio acting catlike - rule 63 or any kind of trans hcs - fantasy (actual fairy+hero?) AU - kemonomimi AU

nsfw-ish ideas: (some of the prompts make more sense if they’re older and presumably have more experience) - first times - size difference (Otabek picking Yurio up and carrying him around; Yurio growing taller than Otabek as he gets older seems to be a popular hc, but i actually like him staying shorter/smaller/slighter ;;) - Yurio wearing Otabek’s clothes and Otabek getting flustered at the sight (or vice versa) - Yurio being really bendy and just, casually stretching around Otabek and Otabek getting super Flustered - i love... D/s... i think either role could work wonderfully for either of them. i love Yurio being a bratty, fighty bottom who wants to be pushed around and put in his place, and Otabek being an unyielding top who is so soft and doting during aftercare (pain kink, “punishment”, humiliation, choking, overstimulation, bondage, gags, collars, petplay are all fair game here); but likewise i also love Otabek quietly yet very desperately wanting Yurio to step on him - presentation play e.g. wearing heels, lingerie, other pretty clothes - not used as a humiliation thing or source of embarrassment, though, it is only a good and awesome thing - again, rule 63 or trans hcs are A-OK --Yurio friendships w/women--

Yurio is so, so important to me. so are literally all the female characters in the show, they're all so great and different despite being minor characters. it goes without saying, then, that Yurio and his relationships to femininity, to women in general, and to specific female characters are all very important to me, too.

when i say "Yurio and femininity" i don't just mean in terms of presentation, although that's definitely part of it: i love Yurio's brashness when we first meet him contrasted with the delicate hand-flick right in Yuuri's face; i love that he's nicknamed both the "Russian punk" as well as the "Russian fairy"; i love that his hair and outfits for his routines are pretty feminine and he is totally okay with that.

i love that so much of his strength as a skater ("eyes like a soldier") comes through ballet, which is typically regarded as being very feminine and delicate (despite being one of the most hardcore and brutal types of dance ever)

Yurio & ballet - i'd love to see something about his development over time, either pre- or post-canon, or something about how he feels about ballet and his training in general. something just showing him practicing would be great too

Yurio & women - i have a lot of feelings about how he doesn't really have any female figures in his life family-wise, but ends up having a female role-model/coach in the form of Lilia, and friends in the form of Yuko and Mila. i like the idea of him looking up to them (esp Lilia and Yuko) and deriving strength from them. - with any of the three, i'd really like to see their relationships developing as Yurio grows up

Yurio & Lilia - i love Lilia so much, she's such a no-nonsense hardass and demands so much from Yurio but also gives him such fond, proud looks whenever he's skating. - anything with Yurio trying his hardest to meet Lilia's expectations - them interacting outside of the skating/ballet context (i mean, he lives in her house for a while???) - seeing the post-canon aftermath of Yurio winning gold and breaking Viktor's record

Yurio & Yuko - i love that Yuko was one of the only people who was truly, outright "nice" to him when he came to Hasetsu, i love that she cheered him on before the Hot Springs on Ice exhibition when he seemed to really need it, i love that they still keep in touch. - Yurio visiting her in Hasetsu when he's older or Yuko going to watch him skate - Yurio interacting with her family as a whole (the triplets!!) - Yuko acting as a source of emotional support for Yurio

Yurio & Mila - anything featuring their bickering-sibling-like friendship (but also supporting and maybe even doing nice things for each other through all the teasing!!) - if you like otayuri, i really like the idea of Mila realizing Yurio has a crush on Otabek, and consequently teasing him about it or using it to mess with him. i love Kubo saying that Mila is "into Otabek"; i really like the idea of her being flirty at Otabek or telling Yurio that she wants to be, again, just to mess with Yurio or maybe spur him into making a move but also because, hey, Otabek is pretty damn cute, and flirting with cute people is fun.

--Phichit ships--

i will straight up admit it right now: i love Phichit Chulanont with my whole entire heart, hence i mostly requested these ships with him at the forefront of my mind.

(that said, i do like all the other characters as well, i wouldn't have requested them if i didn't, haha. i'd be more than happy to read fic focusing more on them instead, if that's what you're more comfortable with. any shippy content with Phichit in it is automatically good content, even if he might not be the POV character or main focus.)

Phichit things i'd love to see in any capacity for any of these ships: - Phichit's 5GB external hard drive of blackmail material that he's Too Nice to actually use - Phichit's Internet Thirst; or: ANYTHING involving taking selfies, or photos, or video. getting other characters into SNS or helping them with it. soliciting help from them to get the Perfect Lighting. general communicating via social media (and yes this includes nsfw stuff: sending nudes, taking sex videos and voice recordings, etc) - Phichit attending this year's GPF banquet with everyone - Phichit being That Friend who is always in on all the gossip in spite of it happening, like, on another continent - Phichit who isn't looking for a serious relationship but who really enjoys casual FWB setups, who gets propositioned by other figure skaters on the regular, who loves making out and who considers smooching his friends p much a form of greeting

more ship-specific ideas:

Phichit / or & Yuuri - i am absolutely here for former boyfriends or former FWBs. i do like it happier rather than angsty, though? they dated or messed around in Detroit and amicably parted ways, and by the time we reach canon Phichit is sincerely happy for viktuuri - i also like it purely platonically. their friendship is so important to me. Yuuri calling Phichit at whatever hour in the day, Phichit including Yuuri in his dream of reaching the GPF final, both of them respecting each other a lot as skaters and hoping for the best for each other - i love the idea of them experimenting and experiencing first times together - first kisses, trying out sexual things with each other. even better if it involves a lot of laughter and even awkwardness that results in more laughter - Yuuri telling Phichit Everything regarding him and Viktor, even back when it was just him fawning over the posters of Viktor he had in his room - Yuuri talking to Phichit about his sex life with Viktor in exhaustive detail or asking his advice/opinion on certain things; Phichit doing the same w his various escapades with various other people - you know how there are those fan theories like “the pole dancing moves Yuri was doing at the GPF banquet weren’t easy, he must’ve taken pole dancing classes at some point before” - Phichit taking those pole dancing classes with Yuuri is 100% canon to me. so anything involving that (and potential makeouts after class while still wearing their pole dance gear) - taking sexy pictures together/Yuuri helping Phichit take The Perfect Nude - just keeping up with each other and their daily lives over time and distance after their training in Detroit comes to an end - visiting each other’s homes in Japan/Thailand!!

Phichit/Leo/Guang-hong or Phichit/Guang-hong - all three of them being super into SNS together - for Phichit/Guang-hong, Guang-hong seems so soft and sweet, i really like the idea of Phichit Dragging him into shenanigans and generally being a “bad” influence - Guang-hong having a hidden spicy/mischievous side is also good though - one thing i really like that’s applicable to these three is two people already being in a relationship flirting/pursuing the third person, coming to terms w the fact that they’re both crushing on someone else, enjoying the fact that their s.o. has a crush bc wow it’s hella cute. the flip side is also good: the third person crushing on both members of a couple at once and deciding what to do about that (here it’d be Leo/Guang-hong as the established couple and Phichit as the third) - Leo/Guang-hong is honestly super cute, i love how they were watching the streams while chatting with each other and i love how much Guang-hong outright admires Leo

Phichit/Chris - i'm actually pretty fond of Chris? he seems like a good friend and his over-the-top ice fuckiness is both awesome and hilarious - i like Phichit/Chris because they occupy similar "good friend" roles for the show's protagonists (Yuuri and Viktor), they're also both fun and outgoing people, i think they'd have a lot of fun together - Phichit Loves being in on the Drama and taking incriminating photos of his friends; Chris is basically a walking incriminating photo - viktuuri wedding planning and/or best man shenanigans - POLE DANCING TOGETHER - Phichit taking photo/video of one of Chris's routines (either bc Chris asked him to for reference or bc he just wants to idk) and things get Spicy

~ REQUEST #2: HAIKYUU!! ~ ushishira - (mutual) pining - Shirabu being jealous/possessive - i have been pretty darn fixated on the “will you use me mercilessly in any situation” line from S3 so, uh, anything riffing on that - JUST D/s AND BOTTOM USHIJIMA IN GENERAL - Shirabu who’s dealt w having a debilitating crush on Ushijima for So Long (that he perceived was unrequited) that when he actually starts dating Ushijima he doesn’t know what to do w himself for a good while - ushishira from the POV of a third party, esp get-together fic; other teammates making comments @ either of them about their crush(es)/developing relationship - anything involving devotion, including AUs (retainer/lord, priest/god, etc) - mind-share, mental links, fusion (Steven Universe-style), bodyswap - FAKE DATING!! tenshira - one of the things i love most about these two are their vastly differing approach to volleyball - Shirabu, though irreverent, is also deliberate and conscientious, while Tendou works best when running with his gut and doing things that are considered out of the ordinary by most players. i can see that translating to their approach to dating? e.g. Shirabu doing things Properly and Tendou just swinging in and sweeping Shirabu off his feet - Shirabu clearly finds Tendou Annoying and he’d probably continue finding him annoying even while crushing on him. Tendou probably enjoys bothering Shirabu a little too much. - frenemies -> lovers - both of them bonding over having unrequited feelings for someone else (Ushijima?) and ending up getting with each other instead along the way goshiten - my favorite goshiten dynamic is Tendou enjoying messing with people and Goshiki being perhaps a little too gullible than is good for him. just how much can Tendou get Tsutomu to do. (nothing outright malicious though plz) - Goshiki’s Praise Kink. anything with Goshiki being eager to please or Tendou finding him so cute and being very free and abundant with his compliments - date fic! especially Goshiki being like i am going to take you out on a DATE and aiming to impress and Tendou enjoying every minute of it regardless of whether Goshiki messes anything up (as he inevitably does)

akakuro - they’re both very caring in their ways, and spend a lot of time looking out for other people on their team. i think they’d definitely recognize that quality in each other. - in a lot of my Akaashi ships, i think of Akaashi as a good shoulder to lean on for the other character, but i think Kuroo is one person who wouldn’t need to depend on Akaashi as much, and who Akaashi could let himself relax around? - showing appreciation for each other, spoiling each other, relaxing together. - UST is great. Kuroo being very smitten and sweet and romantic about Akaashi is great. - Akaashi teasing/dragging Kuroo and Kuroo lowkey enjoying every minute of it - flirting, enjoying that in-between period of both parties knowing they like each other but not having actually gotten together or clearly acted on it yet - Akaashi wearing beautiful clothes

~ REQUEST #3: FIRE EMBLEM: FATES ~

Hinata/Oboro/Takumi and Hinata/Takumi - i am so, so weak for lord/retainer stuff and both of them are so clearly devoted to him, holy shit, they even purposefully dress like him and compete over who is better to him, in Conquest route they freaking die for him. and i love how Takumi clearly has soft spots for them and feels more comfortable around them, e.g. doing nice things for them both, being noticeably less prickly around them - devotion stuff aside, though, i’m also really interested in them navigating that space between retainer and friends/lovers. Hoshido seems to have pretty clear shoulds and should-nots when it comes to how a retainer should act yet these three easily seem to bend these (e.g. Hisame commenting that Hinata acts Overly Familiar with Takumi) - if you go the OT3 route - please involve both Oboro and Hinata equally; i’d love to see either a V-relationship with both of them dating Takumi and being close friends with each other, or all three of them dating - if you go the Hinata/Takumi route - i am so tickled by the fact that they’re overly familiar to the point that Hisame notices it and thinks it’s inappropriate, and i love that Hinata’s supports are about him putting on show fights for Takumi to cheer him up - anything expounding on either of those things would be great - any of them doing something super nice for the others - surprising them with a gift or taking them on a nice trip - bathing together, sleeping together - helping Takumi unwind - brushing Takumi’s hair - helping Takumi deal w his nightmares - h/c (bonus points if someone cries) - comfort sex or stress-relief sex - altered states, sex pollen, marathon sex

Mitama/Rhajat - GOD, i love my weird trouble girls, they’re probably my F/F OTP??? their supports are so great, i love how they’re both odd in different ways and kind of alienate other people, i love that they end on this BFF/”us against the world” note - anything extrapolating off of them teaching each other stuff, maybe Mitama even teaching Rhajat about poetry and Rhajat teaching Mitama about summoning the undead - anything focusing on (their different brands of) magic, i love magic - future fic showing them living their lives together, traveling the world together - all of the above sounds like it could easily be platonic but i definitely don’t want it platonic. i want them to kiss and to be so very Overwhelmed by gay feelings (especially Rhajat) - expressing love and affection in ways that look fucking strange to outsiders. Rhajat being her creepy self (like when she has feelings for MyUnit in-game) but Mitama finding that so utterly charming

Scarlet/female!Corrin - oh my god... i’m so frustrated by how this plays out in the game like their supports are pretty much The Most Romantic thing ever but then you can’t marry her if you’re playing female Corrin, and even if you marry her as male Corrin she gets killed off in like 2/3rds of the game routes fjdskhg - post-game fic (but with Scarlet surviving, somehow). how they live out their days at court. they’re both pretty unfamiliar with court life? Scarlet is, well, a rebel, and Corrin has been sequestered away throughout most of her life, it would be interesting to see them figure their new lives out together. - getting dressed up together and going to fancy events like banquets etc - CONVERSELY: Corrin running away w Scarlet on Adventures - get-together fic, date fic, anything involving lots of cute flirting and those first fuzzy blushes of romantic feelings - anything playing with Corrin’s ability to transform into a dragon

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #chocolate box exchange #hq!! /#yoi /#long post /#fanwork event #i'm so sorry mobile users #fates /

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