#i kept as much of the original tweets as i could

[anachronistic-falsehood]

Vash and Femininity: Trigun Stampede and its Themes of Bodily Autonomy, Exploitation, and Vague Gender Fuckery

alright sit the fuck down. we're gonna talk about THEMES

I was on Twitter- terrible idea usually, but a couple people I follow made some tweets that got me thinking about Trigun's overall themes, and here we are. So let's talk about some themes in Tristamp! And I'll take a couple looks at Trimax as well, just for fun :3

Let's look at how the showrunners utilize gender roles and exploitation of feminine characters to show how unhealthy Knives' obsession with his ideal of Vash is, and how horrific his exploitation of Vash and the Plants is.

Vash, from the beginning of Tristamp, is someone who cares about people's choices. When people kill others in front of him, he reiterates that whether someone lives or dies is not another person's choice to make. This is something he learned from Rem (a prominent female figure in his life). He refuses to kill people because that is not his choice to make. To kill someone is the ultimate removal of their bodily autonomy. They can no longer make any choices at all; they're dead.

Vash is also someone who has almost no choice in what path his life takes. He's constantly dragged around by outside forces, namely situations that are caused by Knives (which we'll get into later). Vash doesn't make things happen, things happen to Vash. The majority of events that occur are not his fault. He's pushed and pulled in a thousand different directions. His entire life is completely out of his control.

This can be seen as early on in his life as the Fall, something he had no control over and had no idea he even had a part in. Even later, in the ship with Luida and Brad, after he's been rescued from the desert, he's kept in handcuffs right up until he's shown to be of use to them and the Plant on their ship. After that, he could theoretically say "no, I don't want to go to other ships and heal their plants," but he doesn't. He's Vash. He's helpful and nurturing at his core, and these people have done so much for him just by letting him stay, so he'll do whatever they ask, no question.

This carries over into his adulthood. At Jeneora Rock, he goes to look at their Plant at one simple request, doesn't protest when he's dragged into a duel-- he doesn't take initiative unless someone's life is immediately at stake. He lets people tell him what to do and lets himself get dragged around by the wrist. He doesn't even pretend to have control over his life like Trimax Vash does, which I mean. Fair. Why pretend to have a grip on your existence when it's impossible to do anything without a gun pointed at your head?

Vash is a very passive character. He's nurturing, kind, gentle- he's a guy that fits a lot of very typical feminine character stereotypes. If you wrote this same story but made him a woman, I wouldn't bat an eye (but I would definitely be looking at it a lot more critically, what with the amount of stereotypically nurturing/motherly female characters in media already.)

This contrasts directly with Knives. He makes a decision and carries through no matter what stands in his way. He takes initiative. If Vash is a passive character, Knives is an active character. Wherever he goes, he leaves a lasting imprint. He makes shit happen! If outside forces make things happen to him, he'll go out of his way to make sure that particular force doesn't affect him again.

These two tweets I saw are what got me thinking about this originally. I just feel like here's a good place to put them as a segue into talking about episode 11.

Episode 11 is where a lot of this feminine imagery really just. Explodes in your face. IT'S RIGHT THERE. You can't dance around it if you try. And it kind of reaches a peak when the connection reaches 100%, the gate opens, and. well. THIS happens to the Plants.

Plants, in both Trimax and Tristamp, are almost always typically feminine-looking. Knives and Vash are the only two who are male or even masculine at all. Knives, as the most masculine out of all of them, is the one trying to take charge, and mould the world as he sees fit, to a degree that is detrimental to both him and everyone else. And Vash-- passive, feminine, kind and nurturing, whose Angel Arm in the manga always sprouts decidedly feminine-looking Plant parts-- is the one being exploited for Knives' plans. It's no mistake that they made the giant plant formation at the end of ep 11 look like a giant woman that almost resembles Rem.

Vash wants people to make their own choices and keep their autonomy when it comes to their bodies and lives. Knives is the exact opposite. He wants all Plants to become independent and he uses Vash to achieve that goal, without asking what Vash wants or even knowing what the Plants themselves would prefer. He exploits Vash for the soul purpose of trying to make these Plants have Independent Plant babies. He's completely incapable of seeing that his choices are not for the greater good! He thinks he's saving them, but none of his actions are for the good of anyone but himself. He’s just violating them for his own gain.

They're really leaning into gender roles for these guys, but in a way that screams "HEY, LOOK AT THIS! ISN'T IT FUCKED UP? LOOK AT HOW FUCKED UP THAT IS. LOOK AT THIS, AND BE UNCOMFORTABLE, AND KNOW THAT IT IS FUCKED UP."

Because it is! It's so extremely fucked up. They're using this imagery and these roles, something that makes most of us intrinsically uncomfortable, to drive home how unhealthy Knives relationship with his ideal of Vash is. That's the point. We're supposed to be uncomfortable with this.

Now of course there's some nuance to it. Like, you could see Knives as somewhat of a feminine and/or queer-coded figure as well, ESPECIALLY if you look at some of his panels in the manga, which could in turn lead to themes about infighting and control within marginalized communities, but that might be something for another post. :3

And there's definitely different ways you could take this! Vash, with all this feminine imagery, could be either transfem or transmasc coded, depending on what way you'd rather see it, which could lead into themes of how people outside the norm constantly face a lack of bodily autonomy and are exploited for purposes outside their boundaries. We could also look at Wolfwood and his lack of choice over joining the Eye of Michael and becoming the Punisher, and how masculine men (particularly men of colour) are often forced into violent roles against their will. If we look at Trimax, the exact same could be said for Livio/Razlo and people with disorders such as DID/OSDD.

There are many different ways you could spin these themes, some of which I don't feel personally qualified to discuss. If anyone who is qualified to talk about Wolfwood or Livio/Razlo or even other characters related to these themes, then god PLEASE add onto this post or make a post and tag me or something. I would love to read it!

Anyway, in conclusion: Vash is a feminine figure constantly taken advantage of and exploited and and he's so incredibly trans/nonbinary-coded that it drives me insane. Thank you

#whiskeys word soup #trigun #trigun stampede #HI. HELLO. THIS DRIVES ME INSANE PLEASE READ THIS #and seriously if anyone wants to make a post about wolfwood or livio/razlo or any other character exploring these themes of bodily autonomy #on GOD. lemme know i wanna read it #well aware that some of this is probably me digging too deep for things that aren’t there but still!!! fun to look at #what is media analysis other than putting on ur queer glasses and picking out trans allegories within stories #it’s been a while since I’ve made a full analysis essay kinda post!! this is how i normally format them bc it’s easier for me to read

[captain-mj]

I really hope this isn't too weird... I saw a tweet recently talking about a trope of "Just the tip" porn where they promise they won't put it all the way in and then do.

Completely understand if this isn't something you're comfortable with! But I'd love a SoapGhost version (if you are cool, I might ask for other ships too)

Consent is dubious. Consent is shy. Consent is in the other room but they can kinda hear it.

Ghost was just fine with their current sex life. He gave Soap a blowjob or a handjob anytime Soap got hard. He'd think he'd would be happy about that. Unlimited pleasure with no need to give anything back.

But Soap was not. He was constantly begging Ghost to let him please him too. Ghost always brushed it off or insisted not right now.

Ghost was well aware if he actually told Soap no, he'd stop. He'd be upset, maybe a tiny bit of pouting, but he'd stop. Still, he let the little game continue.

Soap stopped mentioning it for a while. Funnily enough, he never sought Ghost out. If he really thought about it, all of their sexual encounters were initiated and started by Ghost. Ghost just didn't get off.

Soap had his fingers dug into Ghost's hair, panting and whimpering as he tried not to come yet while Ghost mused. His fingers were working him open.

In all honestly, he hadn't had sex in years. After Roba, he barely had a will to touch himself, let alone allow anyone else to touch him and see him so vulnerable. It took him this long to be able to do this. In his opinion Soap should be grateful instead of greedy.

Though, that wasn't fair. Soap hadn't even seen Ghost fully undressed.

Johnny sobbed as he came, throwing his head back. Ghost kept his legs open so he could keep going for another minute before puling away.

Soap groaned softly and his hips jerked. He looked down just fast enough to watch Ghost swallow.

"Fuck, Simon. Finally going to let me return the favor?"

"Nah." Ghost stood up.

Soap looked a tiny bit defeated before looking at the bulge in Ghost's pants. Quietly, he leaned forward, mouthing at him. "Don't you want something?"

Ghost felt his cock twitch. It was a pretty picture. But he grabbed his mohawk and yanked his head away. "Maybe later."

Soap made a sinful fucking sound. He ran his tongue along the bulge in Ghost's pants. "Thank you so much, Si." Ghost wanted to think it was his excellent head giving that he was thinking him for but it was instead the idea of later.

He just didn't get the big deal.

Ghost finally gave in though. As he always did when it was something Soap wanted. He found himself surprisingly less comfortable than he expected, but he only gave off confidence, refusing to have Soap seeing him anything but. The idea of Soap finding him weak was nauseating. He didn't want to mess up.

Soap didn't know yet that Ghost was going to give in that, so he started up on it. "If we did fuck, who would top and who would bottom?"

"Don't know."

"Guess we'll have to go by dick size. You know, its completely fine if you're smaller than me. Won't think any less of you." Ghost could tell it was supposed to be a joke but also reassurance. He rolled his eyes as he looked through his drawers for new boxers for Soap.

Soap sighed. "Simon, come on. It's not fair."

"To me?" Ghost unzipped his pants, being silent so he wouldn't know.

"To me! I like helping. I don't get why you're...." Soap trailed off. "ah..."

Ghost was big. He was well aware. Judging by the look on Soap's face, Johnny hadn't thought of that yet. "There. I'd top."

Soap nodded. "I can... use my hand?"

"Where did all that bravado go? Huh? Suddenly get nervous?"

Soap laughed nervously, proving Ghost's words. "Listen.... sure I can't top?"

"Your rules." Ghost started to fix his pants again, going back to his original idea of finger Soap until he came from that. He could let Soap think about it for a few da-

"Wait... I could blow you?"

"Soap, need you speaking the next few days. I've seen the way you handle fingers." Ghost rolled his shoulders. "We don't have to do this."

Soap groaned. "You have too much self control when it comes to sex."

"I get you off and then we can move on."

Soap swallowed and looked at Ghost's cock again. Ghost could see the wheels in his brain moving. He chewed his lip and it was already clear he wouldn't let this go until he got Ghost off.

"What if I promise to just put the tip in?" Ghost asked, curious on if he'd even go for it.

Soap thought about it. He wanted to please Ghost so much. "Yeah. Just the tip. Promise just the tip?"

Ghost laughed. "Yes. Just the tip. I promise." He doubted he'd have that big of an issue with it.

Soap was already prepped which is perfect. He laid back down and let Ghost get on top of him. Slowly, Ghost positioned himself. At this point, he was praying to himself that he wouldn't come immediately. It was definitely a possibility. Gently, he started to push in, feeling the tight walls around his cock.

Ghost hear the whine that came out of him and his eyes rolled back. It felt so good. He forgot how good it felt.

Soap groaned and clenched hard. "Fuck. You're so big. Feel nice?"

Ghost bit his lip to try to shut up and just nodded. This was so much better than he remembered. Soap always wanted more... It wouldn't hurt.

"Ghost? Wha-"

Ghost pushed in more, moaning properly. He whimpered. "Don't make me pull out, fuck, please don't make me pull out."

Soap panted. "Fuck, fucking hell. You're so big. How do you even...." He clenched hard and gasped for air. "I don't think I can fit it."

Ghost started to rock his hips. This is what he had been telling Soap no over? He started to work himself in deeper as Soap continued making sinful noises.

"Si, Simon, Simon." Soap bit his pillow and let Ghost keep going. He started to thrust in with no abandon, hearing Soap's noises being swallowed.

Ghost kept pushing. He knew Soap would tell him to stop if he actually wanted to. That's how they worked.

Ghost moaned when he finally bottomed out. "Fucking hell, Johnny." He panted softly as he started to fuck him. He never wanted to pull out. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

Soap arched his back and let him keep going. Ghost heard, and felt, him come around him. He finished and came inside him.

Soap fell into the sheets and whimpered as Ghost pulled out. His hole gaped and Ghost groaned.

"Sorry."

Soap panted softly. "Don't worry about it. You can do it again, any time. I promise."

Ghost nodded and groped his ass. "I didn't mean to be so rough with you."

Soap moaned and pushed back against him. "Felt so good. So good." He relaxed into the pillows. "You got off right?"

"Yes, Johnny. Sorry for not asking."

"I loved it. Don't even worry."

#call of duty #call of duty modern warfare #simon ghost riley #johnny soap mactavish #call of duty modern warfare ii #cod mw2 #ghostsoap #cod #soapghost #ghoap

[sleepykyupid]

original callout post is by @menheratic !! if you want more info, please ask them. i am merely reuploading the original callout post of ezaki. please do check out the link of the jp community calling him out in 2019 ^^ https://togetter.com/li/1327770

! The following post talks about the various bad things that Menhera-chan's creator, Ezaki Bisuko, has done.

Here a japanese summary of all the shit he did so far, including but not limited to:

• registering Yamikawaii as trademark

• sending his fans after gyaru YouTuber Usatani to harass her into a suicide attempt over unknowingly buying a shirt with stolen PPG fanart he drew

• himself buying products with stolen art, even promoting their sales, because it’s totally ok when he does it

• the reason why Usatan’s original design was changed aka it was a ripoff of Cult Party’s iconic rabbit mascot that was designed by their artist Maromika-chan

• wrote a whole guide on how to legally get away with sex work as child

• proof of him tracing art for the more detailed MCH artworks

• how he attended the Menhera Exhibit only to smear misogynist bullshit with blood on maxipads

• complaining about how anime for little girls are evil feminist agenda TM because ain’t nobody need men to be saved anymore

• boasting about being a fashion designer only selecting the finest fabrics for his merch when it’s actually made by the japanese equivalent of Redbubble

• “parody” works featuring child characters like Chibi Maruko-chan prostituting themself, the message being all women are whores regardless of age for the right amount of money

• the small “terms and conditions” shield he has at his con booths where you agree that you need to buy anything you touch

• how he setup an earthquake victim fundraiser only to keep the money

• telling his english fans they are not allowed to use any of his art for private use, like as icon, unless they pay him

• how he wants to move to the US when he turns 30 because of all the evil haters TM in Japan

• copyright claiming everyone left and right

• japanese Menhera speaking out about he keeps hurting the community

In regards of the maxi pads:

TW, CW // nooses, misogynistic text in red on maxipads

Our favorite being the second row second one, “Abortion is murder”.

Some more recent event: When he started harassing and hating on disabled people after Tokyo Fashion translated a Tweet of his because being disabled is discriminating yourself.

It’s like a trainwreck that refuses to end, now with 100% more crypto on NFT while shitting on those who warn about the dangers.

His NFT sales can be found here: https://foundation.app/@bisuko_ezaki

For some reason, after 7 years, he also decided to re-release the infamous wrist-cut bracelet to sell at events. The leader of the Neo-Decora group bought one for example:

TW // Bracelet that imitates sh, includes blood

Also keeps doing collabs with “Tokyo Uragawa” under Yamiko so Seigi (Mental illness is justice), which focuses on self-harming girls as fetish objects.

TW, CW // drawn sh

Recently, he also wrote a long-article on his definition of Yamikawaii:

https://harajuku-pop.com/67775/

Still not sure where overseas people got “this is about mental health awareness” from, might be based on mistranslations because the word for mental health and illness is one in the same, and his definition is about glorifying mental illness. In fact, this is why he was banned from Tumblr because he kept posting other people’s self-harm photos to his aesthetic blog Menherabusu.

Next up: Made suicide baiting posts over his following decreasing in the hopes of getting attention, fans sent him photos of cute animals to cheer him up, and he decided to post about destroying the pictures.

Tbh, this list could go on forever as he does this kind of bs on an almost daily basis now, but apparently people don’t care enough to stop throwing money at him.

Meanwhile the Japanese community made a whole Wiki for tracking all of his drama considering how much it is by now.

https://ezabisumatome.wiki.fc2.com/

TW // mention of shotacon

Decided to nickname himself Shotabi, the name being a combination of Shotacon and Bisuko, while using nsfw anime edits of male child characters in sexual situations as decor for his selfies.

𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐞𝐝:

Is it ok to still like Menhera-chan?

𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫:

Sure, the problem is really only Ezaki himself and his increasing problematic remarks fueled by his ego, the manga is a lot older than him being like that.

Fun fact: Ezaki actually hates Menhera-chan because it's the only thing he ever gets approached for by the media, he constantly rants about this on Twitter. If you have noticed, he barely makes new MCH content anymore (unless he gets paid for it) and mainly reposts old artworks and fanart (without permission) instead because it's the only way he can still get attention as his other works, like the misogynist Manapisu, which is just him hating on women as "dumb wh*res" as a manga, flopped badly.

Just try to not fund his bs by buying new goods.

#menhera #menhera chan #bisuko ezaki #archived #yamikawaii

[seekers-who-are-lovers]

Some people are a bit panicking. They like to know if Yana Toboso encounters pressure concerning the upcoming release of the anime. Yana T is very open the last few days. She resumed posting her thoughts today. Particularly going back to the past adaptations of Kuroshitsuji.

When I say, ``I've never had my dignity as a writer violated or my contract violated,'' it's sad to hear people say, ``It's gross to have such an obvious appeal.''

If a work is said to belong to the original author, I wish they wouldn't tell authors who accept changes that they have no love for their work or that they are being dishonest to their readers.

During the first season of Black Butler, the first question was, "Can I let Ciel die in the final episode?" I was surprised, but thought, ``If an anime that is mostly original can end in an interesting way.'' Thankfully, it turned out to be an interesting anime and a sequel was made. Regarding the second season, he requested, ``I would like to see a final episode that is completely different from the first season and the original work.''

For the live-action movie, I heard that ``Ciel will be a woman,'' and although I had no say in the casting, I asked, ``I would appreciate it if there was no romance with the butler.'' It was just a verbal promise, but he kept it. I am still grateful to Mizushima-san, Gouriki-san, and everyone else involved.

There are many things that surprised me, made me angry, made me sad, and made me happy about anime, live action, musicals, and games. But I don't regret any of it, it's all about me. This is not a story about telling or forcing anyone to give a correct or incorrect answer. I told you that you should take a break and not push yourself too hard. ( to herself )

I only met Ayame Goriki (the “Ciel” in the live action ) once after cranking up the engine. She was wearing a chic and lovely black dress, and when I told her, ``It suits you very well.I would be happy if we could use this as an opportunity to get more opportunities to see you in fashionable clothes,'' she happily shook my hand with trembling hands. Please give it to me. It was beautiful.

Hiro Mizushima and the other performers' hands were shaking when they shook hands in greeting. I was at a loss for words when I thought about how these gorgeous and beautiful people were dealing with so much stress and pressure. I am very grateful to have been given this difficult experience.

This is the end of this story.

There were many people who expressed concern after that sad incident (Hinako Ashihara’s death must have shaken the core of this problem among the mangaka community), so I took this opportunity to speak to them. Of course, readers are free to make their own opinions. I am me, you are you. I would be happy if you could enjoy it together with me in the future. [Toboso]

[ x x x x x x ]

Reading this litany of Yana’s tweets, Ashihara’s suicide made her contemplate of the past and talked to people about it.

Remember that Yana was younger (and probably inexperienced) when they adapted her work into an anime and the pressure was immense. And now that she is an established manga author/artist, popular and well respected, this gave her the opportunity to think back. Especially considering the amount of feedback that she received. I just hope that she’s doing self-care as often as she needs it be.

#kuroshitsuji #black butler #yana toboso #twitter

[boxturret]

"One Sec Lol"

[disclaimer]I'm not insulting anyone's work on the project, everyone did amazing work and the project was shaping up to be amazing with everything I had seen.

I worked on the fan game Bionicle Masks of Power for nearly 2 years. I worked really hard on it, learned many things, used a lot of programs I'd never done before, actually worked up the nerve to use a mic for the first time, etc. Over time I got promoted to the head of two departments, 3d art and level design, basically because I was around a lot and kept things organised.

Then one day, with a "One sec lol" I was completely demoted, in a dehumanising, buzzword filled message. It called working on the game a "Journey". Now the reason I was demoted I won't really dispute, I was under a lot of stress, and sometimes I'd get upset, but these things don't happen in a vacuum, I don't get stressed for no reason.

The team was for the most part a bunch of really good, talented people that I enjoyed working with immensely, but there were some who were more focused on the glory (of making a free fan game for a 20 year old dead toy line... look, getting 200k views on the teaser went to their heads) so there was this constant push to get things...not done, because that wasn't really their concern, it was get things in a state where they could be shown off. And not a "here's a work in progress asset" sort of shown off, a "2 Paragraphs of fluff about the game, talking like it's already done, not actually mentioning the assets we're meant to be showing off" sort of thing.

The image in this tweet was meant to show off the newly (semi) completed UI, you know, that thing on the edge you can't see?

The 80/20 rule seemed foreign to them, where 80% of the work takes 20% of the time, and the final 20% of the work takes 80%, so someone would get a quick rough draft of an asset done in like a day, and they'd start pushing us to get it complete so we could show off, even though it would normally be months for something to get there.

This image here, of Pohatu in the desert. Do you know what it was supposed to show off? If you guessed the desert, no! That whole scene was thrown together by one person in like a day, it's completely fake, no work had been done on the desert at all. It was supposed to show off the Toa, as we'd just reached a pretty big milestone of completing and texturing all the parts and most importantly the masks. You know, that tiny thing that's facing away from the screen?

Originally the idea was to just show off the Toa in all their glory in their biome, but it mutated in to that...thing. There was work on a second one, but everyone finally realised that it was just looking bad so it was cancelled, thankfully.

This constant push to get things done to show off was so pervasive, and always seemed to fall on my shoulders, being the 3d art and level design lead, even though the real bottle neck was programming. We only had 3-4 programmers of very limited availability. When I first joined the team as a 3d artist I was basically given makework tasks to do, things of no real consequence, most of which got thrown out. (why make random set dressing objects for Ta-Koro, a place that hasn't even been roughly sketched out yet, for example)

This only got worse when I was put in charge of level design. The levels themselves are the prime thing to show off things in, so there was this constant push to get the levels finished, which I always pushed back against because, and I need to really stress this, the game was in a suuuper early state, and still is. If you've played the stand alone game Trials of the Great Spirit, that area was initially supposed to be the intro to BMOP proper, but the gameplay evolved so much that it became unplayable. At one point there was even the suggestion of keeping the TOGS area with the old player movement. As this was supposed to be the player movement tutorial this was dire and shows the danger of putting work in to making a level look nice too early, you run in to the sunk cost fallacy. Making a level look nice takes a lot of work, it's very fiddly, moving around little decorative objects and getting textures right, and you don't want to have to redo it a lot, which is why most games are blocked out first, meaning that the basic level geometry is created with basic shapes, and once everything is refined then they move on to actually making it look nice. As level design lead I insisted that we do this, because most previous attempts at making levels had spent way too much time worrying about the looks.

One of the first things I was tasked with as a 3d artist was to make a series of modular tree bits:

I was given nothing but a pair of images as guides of what they wanted.

So I worked really hard to try and make a modular system that would allow some interesting level layouts. Once I made the rough version pictured do you know what I was asked to do? Texture it. Make them in to final assets. No testing at all, no time to see if they'd work for the levels they wanted, nothing. Just rough>final for platforming assets immediately.

Well I knew that if I did that it would just end up getting tossed out eventually so I refused, and guess what? These were made before the movement refactoring so they're completely useless now![emphasis added because people keep missing the important part]

So now you see why making sure everything was finalized before doing final art was so important, which is why I would always fight against moving on to set dressing in the demo, because the demo wasn't and still isn't done, not even close. Having been put in that situation where I was told to work on something that would inevitably be tossed out later, I didn't want to put anyone in the teams I was responsible for in that situation, it's not like there wasn't a shortage of things to work on anyway.

Basically I was put in the situation where I had to constantly say no to all these, I'll call them what they were, marketing ideas, due to the game not actually being in the state it was being presented as. The video released on 8/10 this year was cobbled together from a bunch of unfished assets, barely functioning in an area that was designed just as a goal for set dressing to reach in a real level. It took the poor dev who had a computer good enough to run it hundreds of playthroughs until they got one good enough to show off, avoiding most of the bugs. And now seeing all this, know that I had to spend literal DAYS trying to convince everyone we should have that tiny disclaimer on the screen (every one else was worried about the aesthetics).

So this was the source of most of my stress, trying to focus on making a game while fighting against those that wanted instead to act like we had made a game. That's what lead to my stress and occasional outbursts, and me just in general getting fed up with working on the game.

After I was demoted, for the next week or so I was miserable. The way it was done just completely destroyed any sort of comfort I had in the team. I'm very shy and introverted, it takes me a long time to warm up to people or a place, and when something like that happens, it's all gone in an instant.

I didn't feel comfortable in the chats anymore so I left, I tried to explain myself to the person who demoted me and they just ignored me for several days at a time, leaving it to all spiral out of control in my head, another person said conflicting things that just made it worse. "It's not a punitive measure" "We appreciate your work" "You should be thanking me you didn't just get kicked off entirely" forcing me to grovel at their feet etc. It was all so much.

The final straw, and what got me kicked off, was do do with a document I had spent 9 months creating, that outlined a possible way of structuring the whole game. Before I started trying to get some structure in to it, the game design just seemed to be a big question mark. 6 playable characters needing to collect 11 upgrades, it's quite a complex thing that doesn't really track to any other game I've seen. The first version, Legacy, was simply a fully open map with the masks scattered about, but that wouldn't do with the level of detail and gameplay complexity we were aiming for. I eventually worked out something I thought would work, using a system of context sensitive gates, and I wrote and did many diagrams on the subject.

After I was kicked out of the leads, not a week later they announced big sweeping changes that were basically what I had been pushing for for months. There was something I was unclear on, a sort of gate for Kopaka involving wind, and I asked what it was. The new level design lead, the person who I had explained the concept of gates too, then proceeded to tell me what a gate was.

This was it. I was done. A week after I get kicked off the lead team and I'm treated like I didn't do anything. Then later I was confronted by another lead, and forced to post PROOF that I'd actually posted this document I'd spent 9 months publicly working on, that we'd had a whole meeting about with the story team, the document that got me promoted to level design lead.

In the moment, was too much for me, with everything going on with the game project and stuff in my personal life being stressful at the time, I genuinely didn't want to be around anymore, it was too much for me, I wanted to disappear. I tried to tell one of the leads this, and was ignored, I tried to speak openly to the team about it, I was censored, probated, then the next day, before I'd even woke up, kicked off the team. For being "negative". I was then told that if I didn't want things I'd made to be used I could ask them, but the only things they listed were the makuta totems and some jungle assets which I didn't even know what they meant.

So 2 years of work, and all I'd done for them by their account was a noodle and some wood.

[clarification]I'm not implying that they stole anything or are using assets without my permission, it's more that I've worked on this game for nearly 2 years and made sooo many things, yet all they could list were the things I did in the past month. Sorry for any confusion.

Just keep working like a good little drone, no matter how much disrespect we throw at you. This is Team Kanohi.

I wanted to put this all behind me, but someone on the team had the gall to request the very document I was accused of pretending to have made (I mean who ever asked for it on the team, not who asked me personally, just to be clear) , so I'm just so fed up with them. I was paying to host the bulk of the parts and 3d assets out of my own pocket, and it took them like a month to bother moving things, by which time I got charged.

Here's a quick overview of some of the things I worked on, it's not comprehensive at all, it barely mentions the atlas system, but I'm so emotionally drained that I don't really want to bother with all that. It's also not just a noodle and some bits of wood though.

I want to reiterate that I genuinely enjoyed working with most of the people on the team, and I wish them well.

I just want to add one more note: I was personally asked to join the team, I was asked to be 3D art lead, I was asked to take on the Level design leadership role, and even after I was demoted it was still seemingly thought that I would do everything I had been doing up until that point. I never asked for these roles, I accepted them because I believed in the game project and wanted to do everything in my power that I could to make the game as good as it could be.

#Youtube

[p-redux]

Update on Emily White, the fan who Tweeted yesterday that she'd had drinks in Key West "with a certain Scottish actor." Sadly, in researching her, I've come to the conclusion that she is a FAKE, and is simply a fan looking for attention. I'm posting the evidence I discovered for info purposes and truth purposes. I don't want to bash her. Read on for what I discovered.

So, yesterday, I was alerted in Anon Ask about this Tweet from Emily. And in doing a quick perusal of her account, it did seem like she had worked with Sam on Bloodshot, and could have met up with him for drinks, since they both seemed to be in Key West, Florida.👇

And then today she Tweeted this. 👇 But Sam asking an extra from Bloodshot to travel around with him on his Sassenach tour seemed VERY farfetched. So, I decided to dig deeper into Emily's background.

In my reblog of my original post yesterday, I posted I already had my suspicions Emily was a fake. And what led me to start thinking that was the case, was this account. This Twitter account "alerted" her that Sam was in Key West, and they tagged both Emily AND Sam. 👇

If you look at this Jamie Frances account, it was created to ship Emily and Sam!. Read Jamie Frances' Twitter bio. And LOOK at when it was created-- April 2022, the same time Emily created her Twitter account! Folks, this is what is called a person creating a fake account to promote themselves or promote what they want out there. NO ONE knows who Emily White is, let alone that she was an extra in Bloodshot with Sam. Why would some random woman then create an account that is ONLY for fans of Sam AND Emily specifically? And then put out there #findeachother S&E? Come on now. Obvious is as obvious does. 👇

But still, I could chalk it up to being a coincidence. So, I kept looking. Emily Tweeted that she's originally from Scotland and then moved to America 10 years ago. Okay, I guess that could be true. Her Backstage acting bio says she lives in Detroit, Michigan. 👇 Not exactly the acting capital of the US, but okay.

She now has an Instagram account with the same username as her Twitter account, but she also has an old Instagram account with her initials. 👇

And from looking at the old Instagram account, she had a man she was in a relationship with in 2021. Not sure if that's her husband or boyfriend, and of course, they could have broken up. But, she definitely has two kids, a girl, and a boy, and she no longer posts them on her new accounts. But she definitely did a couple of years ago. I whited out their faces since they're minors. 👇

I guess she used to be a brunette and she's definitely a fan girl. Here she is with her daughter going to a convention to meet actor, Stephen Amell. 👇

If you look at her accounts, she posts a lot about Sam and Outlander. Sooooo, it's looking like she met Sam as an extra on the movie Bloodshot and that's IT. 👇

Here are some fandom people calling her out as a FAKE 👇

So, unless I get some CONCRETE proof to the contrary, the evidence shows Emily White is another woman caught up in Samshiness, and is projecting wishful thinking out into the universe. Trying to manifest her Sam fantasies, but nothing more.

As for her recent Tweet about traveling with Sam on his Sassenach tour, I'm thinking she means following him from city to city, and standing in line with other fans to have a bottle signed.

I do feel slightly badly calling her out, but the truth is important. I hope she finds things in her real life to fulfill her.

This is also means that the jury is still out as to whether Sam was traveling alone in Miami and Key West, or with a date, since the "Emily had drinks with Sam in Key West" NEVER HAPPENED.

PS. Obviously I had a free weekend with plenty of time be blog, but tomorrow, I'm back to work, and won't be on much until after work. But for today, I'm here.

I need to go lie down.

#samheughan #sam heughan #emily white #fake #key west #michigan #extra #bloodshot #samshine #samshiness #miami

[suzuran777]

Revisiting Gakuen Handsome: Backstory + short review

I think every BL fan has seen something related to Gakuen Handsome at some point in their lives, it's a parody BL visual novel with quite the legacy. It was originally released in 2010 by Team YokkyuFuman and it also got its own OVA and anime adaptation in 2015 & 2016. The protagonist, who is an unnamed seventeen year old boy, moves back to the city after a seven year absence. He enrolls into Baramon High School, a prestigious all-boys school which takes pride in being the best of its prefecture. From now on, his life will be changed forever...

First of all, the developer team's backstory is probably one of the most unique ones. In 2008, eight film students from the Tohoku University of Art and Design formed Team YokkyuFuman (チーム欲求腐満). Their blog mentions that a year later, they attempted to submit the Gakuen Handsome opening movie to the 9th edition of the Niconico Film Festival (their submission was completely ignored). After that, the opening movie was uploaded on NicoNico Douga, where it was quite well received. The description of the video mentions “to be released in 20009”, as they originally probably had no intention to create a full game.

After it became a hot topic on NicoNico Douga, their university gave them permission to organize an official exhibition: Gakuen Handsome Matsuri (or just Gakuen Handsome Festival). Visitors could watch the opening movie, learn more about the characters and take pictures together with the life-sized cardboard cutouts. The exhibition also featured rare merch: A drama CD which would be released in "20009" and canned bread.

This exhibition was apparently not only held once, but many times according to their blog. The game was finally released in 2010 and many fans were happy to finally play it, supporting the team that created it. Togo Mito, who many of you know as the creator of (in)famous BL game Hadaka Shitsuji, also collaborated with them. These are some pictures I found on Togo Mito's old blog, Mizoguchi and Juro drawn by Togo Mito and the Hadaka Shitsuji cast drawn by Team YokkyuFuman.

Even after graduation, it seems like they would occasionally invite some of Gakuen Handsome's creators. In 2014, the university tweeted that they would not be able to host the exhibition that year due to renovations, but visitors could take pictures with the cardboard cutouts. There's also an interview from 2016 on the university's website, in which they talk about how things have been after graduation! I absolutely love how the university supported all of this.

Now about the game itself... Where to even start? You'll have to trust me, but the game is actually good. Many parody games can be quite a hit or miss, but this visual novel is something I still catch myself laughing at years later. The inconsistent art, pointy chins and strange jokes really create an experience unlike anything else. I don't think any commercial company would be able to create something like this, even if they tried. One detail that the anime adaptation doesn't really show is that many different artists worked on this, whose styles widely vary from each other, making absolutely no attempt to create one consistent artstyle. Most characters have at least 2 ~ 3 sprites that often look completely different from each other. For example, sometimes Saionji sensei looks like a clean-shaven teenager/young adult, but in the CGs he suddenly turn into an older looking man with a stubble.

Yes he's talking about eating paint in the screenshot above, why not. Anyway... the voice acting in this game is something else I wanted to talk about, because it adds so much to the game. Of course it's not professional, but I think that's what makes it amazing. You can sometimes hear the voice actors trying really hard not to laugh, and they will occasionally completely mess up their lines. Of course all of those lines are kept in the game and they didn't re-record them. I also loved it when they started swearing in English for seemingly no reason. Also, instead of just avoiding the name of the protagonist (who you can give any name you want) they pronounce it... by improvision. Just imagine how one would try to pronounce a "adfgdf" keysmash and you'll get an idea what it sounds like.

There are 6 characters in this game who you can romance. The protagonist's childhood friend Takuya, who is a bit obsessed with the protein bar Calorie Mate (which is censored in the new version of the game, so you just hear a BLEEP sound), outlaw teacher Saionji, school principal Juro who basically only functions as a save point, student council president Kagami, chuunibyou transfer student Shiga, and last but not least, the captain of the soccer team Mitsurugi, who also murders people with his chin sometimes. The protagonist's sister also has a (non-romantic) ending, which you need to play in order to unlock the extra scenario (which... is a ridiculous murder mystery story for some reason). I also could not find the guide I used a long time ago, so I just looked at some videos on NicoNico to see what others were doing and that worked pretty well...!

My favorite scene is probably still that one scene in Mitsurugi's route, in which he stabs people with his chin. It's also one of the scenes that gets referenced the most in fanart. The context makes it even more ridiculous, Mitsurugi gets really upset that some people like the chunky variant of red bean paste (tsubuan) and decides they should die. After stabbing his teammate and multiple other people he runs outside. The protagonist however, isn't safe either and also gets accused of being a "tsubuan supporter". If you survive though, you get a chance to marry Mitsurugi!

Honestly one of the reasons I wanted to write about this game is because many people only know the OVA and/or anime, but the game is so funny I think everyone should play it if they're interested. I also think the team behind it has such a funny backstory and I love seeing how supportive their university is. Right now the team is still active on their Twitter account and they sometimes create new content. Last year they released Gakuen Handsome Fighters, a short fighting game featuring the Gakuen Handsome characters.

If you are interested in purchasing it, I recommend getting the "Special" edition which can be purchased on DLsite! I couldn't find a working download link anymore of the older version, but I think the creators deserve the support, so I don't regret buying it (it was about 15 USD). It includes the original game and 5 shorter stories which were originally released as smartphone apps. While I think the original game is still the best one, it's fun to explore some of the extra scenarios as well. One of the shorter games takes place in an alternative universe in which the boys live in the Heian period, and for some reason some of the sprites are animated... yeah.

#gakuen handsome #blvn #blvnreview #visual novel

[incorrect-mtg]

Flavor Text Highlights

So, one thing that I did two years ago (and have kept updated since) on twitter was my flavor text thread, where I went through each set in Magic history and picked the top 4 (or, for some exceptional cases, 8) best pieces of flavor text in my opinion.

Since then, I have regreted some choices and very much dislike the fact I can't edit the original tweets to reflect changes on the rules I followed for card selection... So I might as well use Tumblr as the place to correct all that.

Every day from now on, I will re-post a set from the list until I catch up to it, then eventually update it as new magic sets come out. The rules for selection can be seen after the linebreak below (as well as a full list of sets I've already gone through, with links). The first one can be found here.

1- Categorization

I will always try to select a diverse list of cards so as to fill the following 4 categories of flavor text types:

Cool - Boasts and descriptions that serve to make the subject matter of the card seem powerful and/or interesting.

Funny - Dialogue, descriptions or epigrams meant to get a laugh out of you

Worldbuilding - Flavor text whose biggest strength comes not from what it says on its own, but how it helps build upon either the world the set takes place in or the story of the set in question

Emotional - This one could conceivably be separated in two whole categories, but it encompasses cards that would fill the same niche as the "Cool" category but with a specific focus on either sadness or horror.

However, there will be situations where there might be a number of good flavor texts within a certain category while another is found lacking of any truly great options. In such scenarios, I will simply remove one (and in rare cases more) of the categories and repeat one of the remaining options. For an extreme example, the first Un-sets barely had any non-Funny options, so when picking cards from those sets most/all of the picks will be from the Funny category.

2- Card Selection

Cards will be reviewed only if they have new flavor text (using scryfall's "new:flavor" filter) and only if it's original flavor text (aka no real world references or quotes from literature) while sets will either be reviewed alone or grouped up depending on the amount of eligible cards in the set. Although I don't have a hard cut-off point for how many new flavor texts a set needs to be reviewed alone, the general range is around 150.

For sets that don't reach that number, they will either be bundled with an associated set (i.e. reviewing Commander precons with their associated Standard set) or bundled with a lot of other smaller products until a suitable number is reached (i.e. bundling all early Masters sets and Duel Decks together, since the amount of new flavor texts in those products is very low).

2.1 - Cycles

For some sets, a collection of cards (usually a cycle) will have flavor texts that work together, expand on each other or combine into a single theme. If said interaction is particularly good or if there isn't already a good flavor text that can stand up on its own, a cycle might be picked for a specific entry. Below, I will try to set up a list of every post for this, in order:

1. Alpha/Beta/Unlimited 2. Antiquities 3. Legends 4. The Dark 5. Fallen Empires 6. Ice Age 7. Homelands 8. Alliances 9. Mirage 10. Visions 11. Portal 11. Weatherlight 12. Tempest 13. Stronghold 14. Exodus 15. Portal Second Age 16. Unhinged + Unglued 17. Urza's Saga 18. Urza's Legacy 19. Urza's Destiny 20. Mercadian Masques 21. Nemesis 22. Prophecy 23. Invasion 24. Planeshift 25. Apocalypse 26. Odyssey 27. Torment 28. Judgment 29. Onslaught 30. Legions 31. Scourge 32. Mirrodin 33. Darksteel 34. Fifth Dawn 35. Champions of Kamigawa 36. Betrayers of Kamigawa 37. Saviors of Kamigawa 38. Core Sets (4th Edition - 10th Edition) 39. Ravnica: City of Guilds 40. Guildpact 41. Dissension 42. Coldsnap 43. Time Spiral 44. Planar Chaos 45. Future Sight 46. Lorwyn 47. Morningtide 48. Shadowmoor 49. Eventide 50. Duel Decks 51. Shards of Alara 52. Conflux 53. Alara Reborn 54. Magic 2010 55. Zendikar 56. Worldwake 57. Rise of the Eldrazi 58. Magic 2011 59. Scars of Mirrodin 60. Mirrodin Besieged 61. New Phyrexia 62. Commander Precons (Commander 2011 - Commander 2019) 63. Magic 2012 64. Innistrad

#magic the gathering #flavor text highlights

[litgwritersroom]

So usually in UK LI, there's a challenge along the lines of the mean tweets one, but with news headlines (they do both in most seasons). Any season, any point in time, doesn't have to be focused on a particular character or MC, just generalised based on the events of the season + the drama afterwards.

Read It & Tweet

S5 | 3900+ words | @i-boop-you

A mash up of Mean Tweets and the Headlines challenge. Season Five is in full swing, and it's about to be in sull swill, too. As the Islanders play their newest challenge, drinks go flying, and after everything she's been though, Saira isn't going to let this opportunity go without some justice.

Thank you to Kellee, Iris, Audrey, Natalie, and Suzi for letting me use their usernames in this fic! And to Chrys for giving it a look over for me🥰

How much more did Saira have to endure? Already everything was a shit show. Literally, a show of shit. At every turn, everything went wrong. From the moment her ex was revealed to be a fellow contestant, to her first pick partner being chosen, to the backstabbing and bitches, and above all, after the weeks Saira had spent in the Villa, she didn’t feel like there was a single person she could truly call her friend.

At every fucking turn, it was like they were all looking to screw her over. Her fellow Islanders were always so hot and cold, though that ratio was growing considerably more arctic as time went on. Week after week she had to endure steaming piles of shit heaped at her feet only to be told that she should be thankful she was getting anything at all. Madness didn’t begin to cover it.

But endure it she did. There had to be a light at the end of this tunnel. There just had to be. So far, the only miniscule, microscopic pleasure she’d had was seeing Eddie get dumped after Casa. Fuckity bye, bitch.

A text came through a few days later about a challenge.

“Islanders,” Suresh read out, lounging like the gift from God he really thought he was, “get ready for today’s challenge ‘Read It & Tweet’. Time to find out who’s breaking news and who’s just a snooze. Hashtag, hitting the headlines, hashtag, fake news.”

Whoops of excitement for something new to do gave way to nervous, mumbling laughter. Saira couldn’t help but get her hopes up that karma was gonna rain truth down on the others like a hail of rock.

When the news came through, Saira had been sunbathing with the original duo, Shady Comments and Back-Handed Compliments, otherwise known as Dana and Kat, and her fire-fuelled gaze lit up on them like they were made of coal.

“I already know half of these are gonna be about me,” Kat said with prideful confidence, raising to her feet, her fingers at her collar bone regally.

“You’re not worried they’re gonna say something bad?” Dana asked.

“No press is bad press,” she went on as the trio filed into formation with the other Islanders. “All I’ve done is be one hundred percent me. It’s not my fault if people don’t have taste.”

“I like that attitude,” Saira said, “and I’ve got a feeling more than one person will fair better for thinking like that.”

“Babe,” Dana said, “imagine all the secrets that are gonna come out from this?”

With a shrug, Saira kept her lips zipped. Surprises were in store, and karma was checking them out.

As is the way, everyone had to find their partner to film the run out of the Villa, so Saira had Nicolas’ hand as they exited. She held it the entire way to the challenge area, pretending her hands weren’t clammy and sweaty. Nicolas held onto her, but already all those sweet moments in Casa Amor seemed so far away, a distance between them growing that she couldn’t explain.

Lights, Camera, Action. It was challenge time.

For this one, they were split up into two groups, with one of each couple in each team. Saira was in the red team with Alfie, Suresh, Arlo, and Gabi. A particularly cruel combo of teammates that only served to further the narrative of victimhood. Whoever was pulling the strings sure wanted to keep her in discomfort at every turn.

Hosting duties fell to Kat and Finn; the Island's answer to Phil and Holly.

“All right, Islanders, are we ready?” Kat hollered out, putting on her hostess voice, clearly taking this duty seriously. “The aim of the game today is to score as many points as you can for your team. How the game works is, Finn and I will read out a headline or a tweet. Who the caption is about has been blanked out, and you have to guess which Islander you think is missing.”

“Now, before you all start chucking out names,” Finn said, grinning broader than the Cheshire Cat, “first, you’re gonna chuck some drinks. That’s right! When it’s your turn to guess, you come over to the bar and collect one of these brightly coloured cocktails, and you throw it in the face of whoever you think the caption is about! This is sure to make things far more Finn-teresting.”

This perked Saira up after the blow of her teammates reveal. She’d savour each and every throw of the drinks, even if she wasn’t the one chucking it in someone’s face. 

“First up, Alfie, mate,” Finn went on, throwing one arm out to welcome Alfie up to the stage.

Alfie jogged up with a grin on his face, standing between the large podium Kat and Finn were behind and the bar with the vast array of different cocktail glasses, each glass as broad in shape as they were in colour.

“You ready?” Kat asked.

Alfie stood, swinging his arms back and forth, clapping when they landed in front of him. He cracked his neck from side to side. “Ready, geezer. Let's do this.”

Kat held up a speech bubble shaped piece of plastic twice the size of her head. It looked heavy, and was bulky enough to be a bit difficult to manoeuvre holding it up so everyone could see, and actually managing to read it at the same time.

Ever the soldier, Kat overcame her struggle, reading, “From user ChronicComicObsession ‘Blank gonna be pied the minute her back is turned now they’re back from Casa Amor’.”

The low ‘ooft’ from the Islanders was mirrored in Alfie’s face. He screwed his lips into a tight ‘oh’ as he scanned the other’s, his brows furrowed. They lingered heavily on Suresh for longer than anyone else, flickering back up at Saira sat next to him like he was connecting the dots.

Biting his lip, Alfie grabbed one of the martini glasses and headed to the other team. On his way over, Lulu frowned, whipping her fingers to latch onto her nose as those around her dived out the way. “Sorry, Love,” Alfie said with a small, apologetic tilt of his head. He waited until her eyes were sealed shut before chucking the liquid in her face.

Ripples of shocked laughter rang through everyone besides Lulu, who wiped the blue water from her eyes with particular vigour, and Suresh, whose jaw was set tight. The way he refused to look around at Saira made her think he was avoiding her gaze on purpose.

Alfie jogged back to his spot for the reveal. A gleeful Kat held the board up like she was showing off the Queen Jewels while Finn revealed how spot on Alfie’s guess was.

“So, let’s see.” He wiped back the bright pink tape, reading out, “Dana gonna be pied the minute her back is turned now that they’re back from Casa Amor.”

If the ‘oohs’ had been anything when Alfie picked Lulu, they were double that now, as Dana sat there on the opposite bench left to pick up her jaw off the now sticky floor.

Gabi shook her head. She shouted over at Dana. “Guess we’ll just have to prove them wrong, babe.”

“Meera, babe, you’re up next,” Kat said, still sniggering away.

Meera waltzed her beautiful self up in place of Alfie, who came back to his team's bench with his hands still covering his mouth like he couldn’t believe he’d thrown a drink in an innocent girl's face, only to be wrong. He muttered out a quiet, “Savage.”

“It’s a Headline this time,” Finn said, holding up one of the plastic planks now. This one was a horizontally slanted rectangle. “Love Island’s Eddie reveals the shocking truth about Blank’s secret game plan.”

Less elated, the ‘ohh’s this time around were filled with suspicion and ire, shifty eyes on more than one person snaking the others. Meera wasted little time. Throwing her hair over her shoulder, she picked a pretty decently filled glass and marched over to the opposite team’s bench.

Saira sunk into her shoulders as the padding of Meera’s feet on the decking got closer. She got a flash of shocked looks off the other islanders before Meera stopped before her. Already Arlo was diving out of the splash zone, but on Saira’s other side, Suresh didn’t flinch.

“You’ve got to be joking, right?” He scoffed.

Sounding pretty hard done by, Meera said, “I have to pick someone.”

“Literally pick anyone else, then.”

“Fine,” she replied, and without any further warning, she swilled the glass in Suresh’s face.

Arlo screeched with mirth, kicking her feet repeatedly against the decking, a reaction not that far off of everyone else. Suresh hitched his jaw as he wiped his eyes of any excess liquid, his neck a darker shade than before. Saira could feel the steam rising off of him.

Again, he was refusing to look her way, so she wasn’t sure how to go about moving on. He was clearly pissed, but he had just defended her. Tentatively, she placed her hand on his arm, and she said, “Thank you.”

He whipped his head to her.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she added.

In an instant, she felt him soften; the tension dissipated, replacing within Saira a new nervousness. She quickly focused on the stage, where Kat was about to reveal the culmination of Eddie’s scheming.

“Love Island’s Eddie reveals the shocking truth of Nicolas’ secret game plan.”

Heads swivelled over to see his reaction. He was shaking his head profusely, and Saira half expected to hear him spluttering as he launched out a, “That’s bullshit!”

“Hey, if Eddie said it, it's got to be true,” Kat commented, rolling her eyes. Already she had the next tweet in her hands. She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I’m bored of that drama. I want the next! Here is a tweet from bubblelaureno: ‘Never seen anyone as bored with their partner as Blank.’”

“Yikes,” Finn said. “Cardinal sin, being boring. Speaking of boring bastards, Suresh, get up here. This one’s for you.” Finn finished with a wink and a finger gun at Suresh.

Thunder was crackling over Suresh again as he stormed on up to the stage, glaring at Finn like he hoped he’d be struck down by lightning there and then. Without stopping, the cheers and encouragement from the red team at his heels, Suresh strode right up to the bar, effortlessly picked up a fish bowl, and had it upturned over Finn’s head in a flash.

Finn hadn’t flinched, and was grinning broadly as he pulled back the curtain of his sopping wet hair. He threw his hands up in celebration. “That wasn’t so bad,” he said cheerfully, lapping up the applause of the others for being a good sport about it.

The sole person among them who took issue with this was Kat, who stood back with a face like thunder. The look she was firing at Finn was like she was trying to burn a hole into the back of his head.

“Wonder if you’d be as cocky if this was about me being bored with you,” she shot at him.

He turned with a start, like he was just realising who his partner was, and exactly the sort of attitude they’d have over this drama. “Ah, come on, Kat, it’s the opinion of one person. You can’t let it get you down. Besides, I've got to be the least boring person to come onto this show.”

This did nothing to quell Kat. She huffed heavily before ripping the pink tape off, not giving Finn a chance. Her eyes doubled as Finn’s name was revealed, before drawing into thin slits.

If Saira was Finn, she’d be a little bit terrified, but Finn just barked out a laugh, and played it off like a joke. Saira sat with her fingers over her mouth, her legs crossed tight, as she swayed nervously on the spot. How long would it take for this game to reveal what Finn had confessed to her the other night?

He had feelings for Saira, not Kat. This whole thing was just ramping up to get messier and messier.

“First point of the game goes to the red team!” Finn announced, “Lulu, get your lovely self up here. This next one's for you. Another headline, this one reads: ‘Love Lie-land: Viewers claim Blank is faking relationship.’”

Lulu bit her lip, looking genuinely torn over this. For the first time in the game, it took shouts and encouragement from her team before a decision was made, and it had more than a few eyebrows raised as Meera, Nicolas, Pete, and Dana all offered up the other Islander’s name into the ring.

In the end, Lulu chose a margarita glass and ended up before her own partner. “I’m sorry, babe. I’m not doing this with any hard feelings.”

Suresh gave an incredibly forced smile. It pulled thin over his features, more a grimace than a good time. “I’ve told you how I feel,” he said pointedly.

“And I’m still standing here.”

Not for long. She waited until he closed his eyes, and was already marching guiltily back to the stage as Suresh wiped his face with a hefty sigh. The sniggering from the others only stopped once the tape was pulled back, revealing Meera.

Her jaw dropped, and Saira had to admit that it felt good to see the haughtiness she’d returned with taken down a peg. Vindication and all that.

“Alfie, mate, how are you feeling?” Finn called out across the challenge area.

Saira watched him carefully, taking in the shake of his head as he assured them all, “It’s all good, mate. I know what we’ve got, and I know Meera better than any fools watching.”

Hope that feeling lasts, Saira thought, her gaze still laying into him. His smile dropped the moment the heat of the spotlight did, affirming Saira’s suspicions that he didn’t believe what he said. Game face, on.

Like that, it was Saira’s turn. She begged and pleaded and would have fallen on her knees for a juicy tweet. She needed it.

“‘Saira,” Kat read out, eyes twinkling her way, “needs to get her act together and stop giving Blank the time of day because it’s always bitch o’clock for him’. God, I could have written this one, but it’s from user Nqueso-emergency.”

This brought a lot of grinning, some tittering, and all eyes on Saira. She bit her lip, realising there was more than one person who’d qualify here. Her team was a point ahead. Not a great lead, but at the end of the day, what did she care for more? What would the win for the team get them compared to her own self-satisfaction in throwing a drink in the face of someone who really deserved it?

And who was it that deserved it the most? Alfie had left her out to dry, always playing hot and cold, acting like it was much harder having Suresh in the Villa for him as opposed to it being harder for Saira, but how did that compare to Suresh? He’d cheated. He’d lied. He’d schemed his way back into her life. He made sure he was present so she couldn’t move on even if she wanted to. He’d hurt and betrayed her and left her out to dry more times than she could count.

But it was Suresh. There was a reason he was still there, and a reason Saira was, too. A reason neither of them had left. Maybe Alfie had been more right than Saira had realised.

With a hearty sigh, Saira headed to the bar. She pulled a little cocktail umbrella from a blue lagoon and tucked it over her ear before selecting a fishbowl.

Finn clapped eagerly as Kat and the other girls cackled, all eyes on her as she headed to the end of her own team’s bench where Suresh and Alfie were lumped together, eyes on her warily, trying to size up who she was going to pick. Some things never change.

Saira had to be careful about this. She had to angle it just right.

She launched, covering not one guy, but two. She managed to drench the both of them, leaving them both spluttering out the cold water. Oh yeah, that felt good.

Saira stepped back, her tongue sitting just against her top lip, like all she wanted was to lick up this delicious moment, but was trying her best to hold back.

Amongst all the laughter and the hooting, Nicolas managed to ask, “Yeah, but who did you pick?”

“Oh, I picked Suresh,” Saira said, doing her best to keep her shit-eating grin at bay. “Was that not clear?”

“It’s been clear since the start,” Alfie said bitterly, but when she spun to throw him a look, his eyes were on the ground, a hard look on his face, like he was trying to hide his real feelings as well. She saw right through it, seeing that it was the truth in his eyes, and it was a truth that was hurting him.

Well, he hurt her first, and they were far from even.

“Come on, lads, be a good sport, there you go,” Finn grinned. He ripped back the tape over the tweet, and it was Suresh’s named, and Suresh who shook his head ashamed.

“I’m doing my best,” he said once Saira sat back down next to him. Nicolas made his way up to the stage in her wake. “This isn’t an easy situation for me to navigate either.”

“But you signed up for it,” she fired back. “I never did.”

“Headlines time again, so, Nick Nickety Nicolas,” Finn went on with his usual boisterous presence, “‘Love Island viewers in a furor over two-face Blank talking Alfie into recoupling, only to graft Saira the minute he got back into the Villa.”

Eyes: wide. Jaws: on the floor.

The game was up immediately, as a stunned Alfie shot Finn a look like he had no idea who his friend was anymore. Kat cottoned on to that look, her own stunned and seething glare digging into a rapidly deteriorating Finn. He was getting a sweat on, his usually white self glowing as red as his hair.

“Oh, whoa,” Nicolas said, and after flickering between Alfie and Finn and the obvious tension there, he stared straight at Saira. “Were you ever planning on telling me?”

Sorry, what? Saira couldn’t believe it. Someone else was unfaithful, but she was the one in the hot seat. No, no, of course! She should have expected this! How else was this going to play out? Finn the notorious skirt chaser grafts after growing bored with someone he claims is clingy, and naturally it’s Saira’s fault.

“I’d like to think that telling me would be higher on the priority list than telling some guy you just met, Sai,” Kat dug, looking pretty hurt, something Saira could admit was marginally more justifiable.

“Before we start pointing fingers, how about we wait until the judge has ruled?” Suresh said coolly. “Go throw your drink at the actual person you should be pissed at, Nicolas.”

Something was swelling within Saira and she didn’t like it. She had to concentrate to pull her eyes off the back of Suresh’s head as Nicolas launched his drink in Finn’s face. This time around, Finn was much more resigned to his fate, taking it less like a champ, and more like someone who wanted to clear their conscience.

“I think Alfie should have been allowed to chuck that one,” Arlo said.

“Really?” Kat snipped. “I think that’s an honour that should be mine.”

Finn kept his head low, turned away as Kat ripped the tape off so hard he almost dropped the plastic board. As his name was revealed, Kat growled. Saira thought she might hit him, but she stomped around him, storming off the set.

Finn’s wide eyes followed her as Dana, Meera, and the other girls called after her. Kat didn’t get far. She grabbed a cocktail. The first one within reach. She fired it at Finn from where she stood, barely spilling a drop as fury screwed up her expression.

“Thanks for telling me, Saira!” She shot out as she blazed back behind the podium, keeping a wide berth between herself and Finn.

“Ah, Kat, darling, don’t blame Saira,” he said. “She was waiting for me to tell you herself.”

“And what were you gonna tell her, mate?” Alfie called out.

Finn’s shoulders sagged the moment he looked at Alfie. “Alfie, mate, it wasn’t anything personal. I didn’t give you the advice to split you up and swoop in. It just happened. Do you really think I’ve got a conniving bone in my body?”

“If you’d have asked me that when I woke up…”

Up next, Arlo got a tweet from user thesepromises that kept the temperature in the red zone for Kat and Finn (‘How clingy is Blank? The more she’s on Blank the more I’m screaming at him to abort! ABORT ABORT!). After guessing right and chucking a drink at Kat and a bonus at Finn, Pete walked up to take his turn.

Much to his chagrin, the headline was about him and Arlo, reading out fully: ‘Love Island viewers claim Pete is settling for Arlo to get into the Villa’. His guesses being Dana and Gabi earned the blue’s no points and some crusty looks from the girls for his efforts.

Last for the red team, Gabi was up. Finn read out, “From user PearlBracelet: ‘At this point Blank should just couple up with the narrator and keep the 50k to herself at the end’.”

To Saira’s surprise, when the swilling came, this pretty positive one ended up in her face. Gabi winked at her as she went back to the stage, something that left Saira as fuming as she was smug.

Not as smug as she was when Gabi was revealed to be right. Saira had never considered her options outwith the Islanders, but she found herself thinking that maybe she should give the illusive narrator a go. Only if he was over his crush on Youcef first, though. She didn’t want to compete with a French model after everything else she’d been through.

Last, and a case could be made for least, Dana came up for the last tweet of the game.

“‘Blank you’re too good for that whole villa’.” Kat read out, throwing her hair over her shoulder. “From BakerBoi95 - holy shit, that’s Bobby McKenzie!”

If the tweet itself wasn’t juicy enough, that it came from the most popular Islader ever to be on the show certainly sweetened the deal.

The last Islander to get anything thrown in their face was Saira, once again. Though out of every single swill she could have got, this was the one she didn’t mind in the least. The madness she was enduring wasn’t normal, and she had everyone who was sitting at home watching this going on in her corner.

When her name was revealed one last and final time, the vindication that swept through her felt like rain on her skin after a heatwave; justice like she had never known. The others could swing whatever shit they had at her all day long, but this quiet and small reassurance that she wasn’t doing anything wrong was everything she needed.

The red team won, but it was Saira who came out truly victorious.

Note: there is a sequel in works, but no word on when it will be out.

#litg #love island the game #litg writers room #writers room #litg suresh #litg alfie #litg fanfic #litg season 5 #litg ex #prompt #asks #litg ex in the villa #litg eitv

[akkivee]

i was going to type out a huge post about the stage since i snuck in one last full watch before it went away but tumblr killed my post as i was making it and i don’t feel like making another one lol

so new encounter thoughts: clifnotes version!!!!! it’s fitting bc that’s what this stage was anyway lol

i enjoyed myself!!!!! i wasn’t disappointed by any performances, tho since i was ride or die for akira ichiro and ayukawa jakurai, i felt those losses keenly lol. i was also surprised how much i felt like i was missing aramaki sasara watching this play lol. there were some changes to the origin stories, ofc lol, but the stage has always had superior bb takes so i really appreciate them changing ichiro’s more shallow dismissal of his bros in canon to him being scared for them after what happened with samatoki and chuuoku. it’s his biggest conflict in these battles so i appreciate them making it a primary focus

i read a tweet from a fan idk who they originally stanned but said they were considering becoming a hama lady after the stage and abso-fcking-lutely LOL uehara-san is incredible as samatoki, yuki-san can also inspire the masses with his looks and dancing and flow and tho stage rio didn’t have much presence in the play, him opening his heart to samatoki thru their battle and then teaming up with the both of them after fighting together is a great slight change to their origin story

*slams thru the wall like the kool aid man* AND THE NEW BAT HAIYUU ARE ACTUALLY MAGNIFICENT like backwards order since i have Things to say about nakanishi kuukou lol but nakatsuka-san’s hitoya is very cool!!!! his voice envokes almost the same amount of hype takeuchi-san’s voice does for me, like it’s deep and rough when he’s going and it’s sooooooo good. stage hitoya in the legends era cared for jyushi certainly, but i don’t think he flat out babied jyushi as much as he did in new encounter like my god lmao. it might be more indicative of the difference between actor’s personalities lol and i suppose hitoya did try to get kuukou to lighten up on jyushi when they first got started. also, there was this look he gave kuukou when kuukou started to goad him into being on his team that exuded cool charisma i think nakatsuka-san might be another actor too cool for hitoya LOL

i didn’t think it was possible for a jyushi to be even more baby than daigo-san’s but goddamn i think sakayori-san managed it LOL and again i do think some of that is bc of the source material they were adapting. i saw reports that new encounter jyushi was kinda spoiled by his team and i could see the undercurrents of that in the way kuukou would pat his back when getting up or the way jyushi would lean into hitoya and hitoya would actually wrap an arm around him lol. but i’m not complaining ITS CUTE. sakayori-san’s silhouette is so crazy like his build i think is exactly the way i envisioned jyushi’s so i kept vibrating out of my seat whenever he did a flourish and i got to see his figure lmao. i saw a report commenting that he needed to work on his vkei mode voice bc it was hard to differentiate and maybe???? idk i could tell the difference just fine, even if his voices don’t have as much of a gap as sakakihara-san or daigo-san’s

i want to throw up out of excitement thinking about nakanishi kuukou which is how i know he’s officially part of the kuukou brainrot LOL he’s kuukou!!!!!! he is so purely kuukou that everything i feel about kuukou is pushed onto him and i feel like i should apologise rn bc that comes with a heaping dose of objectification!!!!!! but it’s chill!!!!!!! *kicks down a wall* HES GOT MUSCLE ON HIS TINY FRAME!!!!!!!!!!!! like when he gets going going, that jacket starts slipping off and the camera caught just the right angle and lighting to show the contours on his arm muscles and i started yelling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thick neck thick calves thick arms HES BUFF!!!!!!! BLESS NAKANISHI-SAN!!!!! and thankfully it’s not for the aesthetic like he’s athletic asf too with jump kicks backflips air somersaults and the like. he is probably the best person to have gotten the role after someone like hirono-san, whose kuukou has shaped the character so thoroughly that even in this new stage, direction choices were made to preserve the hype his kuukou envokes. if the writing on nakanishi kuukou stays the course, it’d honestly be a bonus to have that extra hype kuukou lol. and on that note

I DONT HATE STAGE KUUKOU WRITING LOL🙌🙌🙌

now it’s just an origin story so there’s plenty of time for shit to go awry but rn i’m feeling massively satisfied lol. there were some lines that were raising my hackles but frfr??? that’s just me being sensitive after all these years lol it’s fine. no nod to kuukou’s history with ichiro but tbh i don’t come to the stage for that lol but it made me think of the complaint that nagosaka’s get together story felt rushed compared to the other divisions. and they were lol but i’m not sure if that’s the stage’s fault or the source material. on bat’s side, bc they formed nagosaka alongside the og teams in the stage, ramuda’s development thru bat got axed in favour of jyushi falling for rei’s scam that brought dh together. it’s a choice that further isolates nagosaka so while within the stage narrative it makes sense (does jyushi’s character a disservice tho), it kinda annoys me thinking about the long term lol but it’s probably not going to matter in the long term either so ultimately it’s fine. i guess. maybe lol

one last nakanishi-san ramble and i’m done lol but that fanservice part really showed off his charm lol like when he rolled up on some fans arms spread wide and demanding their ears and attention!!!!!! 😫😫😫😫🙏🙏🙏🙏 and as he was heading back on stage, there was a lone bat fan along that aisle so he paused and leeeeeeeeaned back into that backtrack and flashed the bat hand sign at her and i couldn’t stop my unholy noises even if i tried he’s so cute omfg help he’s adorable like actually 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

#this is vee speaking #this is the clifnotes version yes lol the other post would have been much longer LOL #i didn’t say it but i was also reeeeeeaally charmed by new encounter ramuda lol #like…………… he’s so full of life and cute…………….. he’s so bouncy…………….. cute……………. #i enjoyed the music and production quality like it’s still the stage!!!!! even if it doesn’t have all the flair legends era actors gave it #another complaint i saw was over the team songs not being incorporated into the play and i understand but lmao #those are team songs so it wouldn’t make sense for them to be in the play itself when none were a team yet #the stage even kept the detail of no one having their team emblem in their design UNTIL those team songs #trust these guys lol they know what they’re doing

[skubean]

Ohohoho have you written angst yet?

Maybe a reader who got assigned a character very similar with a graduated member and everyone gets mad on the reader or smth 🤭

Honestly sounds really juicy

oh my god anon first of all i am SO sorry this took so long, i was a little burnt out and busy but IM BACK (hopefully). second of all, I WROTE THIS AND DID NOT SAVE IT SO MY PROGRESS IS GONE so im starting from scratch again, im sorry if it isnt to your liking T.T also probably a bit controversial ksskkssk

where did it go wrong? ft. gn reader (nijisanji based)

cw: mentions of graduated member, pls dont take this srsly this is a fiction, lots of misunderstandings, angst to the core, this ones short bcs angst sucks!

you were beyond joy, ecstatic even. how could you not when you finally received the news you've been waiting for months. "i got in", you thought. it was probably the most happy you've ever been, especially considering how anxious you were the past few months, worried sick that you were going to get rejected. you were a part of the company now, the company you wanted to work with for streaming, it almost felt so unreal. when you sat in a meeting w the staffs, and went through some designs for your model, you were quick to notice one seeing quite familiar. and it broke your heart. it reminded you so much of them. but what hurt you more was when they urged you to use the exact model that you hoped you wouldn't get. their reasonings being that it suited you best, or that it makes up for the lost of one, something like that. you were shattered, scared, terrified, but lack the guts to reject anything. when you were introduced to the other members of the company, they all welcomed you warmly. the other members who were to debut alongside you quickly became acquainted w the others and it almost felt as if they've known them for so long. worried that you would be left behind, you had personally messaged some of your senpais to seek for guidance and to make conversations, only to be treated so coldly. "oh sorry, y/n. i can't help you i'm busy", while they helped the others earnestly. "you don't know how to start stream? what are you, an amateur?", while they guided your debut mates side by side. "if you want to have people like you, you gotta be more original. don't stoop so low and be a fake like this" you were beyond confusion. what the hell was all this treatment you were getting? did you say something wrong? were you rude? did you offend anybody? why, just why were they ignoring you so openly, and multiple at that too. but you held strong, you stayed calm. if you wanted to debut, then this prejudice was nothing. you could do it. it was going to be fine. except it wasn't. when debut day came, you were the last in line to stream. technical issues, internet problems. you couldn't bare to see twitter, to see the hate that was being thrown at you for being unprofessional. at last, when you finally got the stream to work, you were shocked to see the criticism they were throwing at you in the live chat. "rip-off" "faker" "unoriginal" "give us back what we lost" you wanted to cry. why is it your fault? you noticed how shaky your voice was, and you tried so so hard to hold back your tears. your hands were trembling, and you kept fumbling on your words. it was just so unfair. why should you bear the sins of other people? post debut, you were looking at the tweets and were just so heartbroken to see the double treatment people were giving you. you hated everything at that moment, and were rethinking if you did the right thing. it wasn't fair. you were human too. months passed by and you were never free from the foul mouths of the people on the internet, and it drained you so much. you wanted to make a living, wanted to do your best to provide content for people just as it makes you happy. but if happiness wasn't destined for you, and if people couldn't see your sincerity, then maybe it was all your fault in the end.

a/n: bro can i just say i hate angst skskssksk this sucks

#idk what to tag #nijisanji x reader #nijisanji en x reader #njsj x reader #njsj en x reader #nijisanji en x you

[dalekofchaos]

WWE never treated Sting like the Icon he is. AEW did.

One of the few nice things I can say about Tony Khan as a booker is he understands the value of Sting. WWE never treated Sting with value or reverence or understood what he did for the wrestling business.

They brought him in to be buried. The only reason why Sting even lost was because they wanted to build up to HHH & Stephanie vs Rock & Ronnie Lousey, a match that never even happened because of Dwayne's famous pull out game!

Then Sting breaks his neck in a stupid buckle bomb that never should've been a thing to begin with. Not saying it was Seth's fault, but that move never should have fucking happened.

Never once did it feel like WWE respected Sting.

Sting never should have went to WWE. He originally swore to never go to WWE, a few years after the buyout, Sting was in a documentary explaining why he never went to WWE.

Basically the way they handled The Invasion and how WCW was buried just showed Sting would never be used right. And Sting was right. He never should have went. He should have stuck to his guns and retired from Wrestling. Hell, Arn Anderson’s own podcast admitted that Vince instructed the announcers to bury him and he was buried. First by Vince, then by having the nWo come to his aide. What sense did it make for the nWo to side with Sting? They were enemies in WCW. And then Triple H buried him. Sting was right. When HHH is your main, no, your ONLY angle for everything, you will be buried under the mass of ego and pathetic brand of wrestling he provided. ANd to make matters worse, it wasn't about Sting being a vigilante standing up to The Authority, no they JUST HAD TO MAKE IT ABOUT LOL WWE VS WCW just to bury Sting and the promotion he held out for so long for.

Watch this tweet. It just shows how little respect WWE had for Sting. Fuck Vince. Fuck Triple H. Fuck JBL. Fuck their petty fragile egos and most importantly. Fuck Rock and Ronda Rousey for being the reason Sting lost his ONLY FUCKING WRESTLEMANIA MATCH FOR A MATCH THEY WERE SETTING UP THAT NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED. SO THANKS A FUCKING LOT, DWAYNE

Here are ways Sting could've been used better in WWE

If WWE actually made The Invasion actually feel like legit WWE vs WCW and treated WCW with respect enough to bring in the top stars. Sting could've been the ringleader. The man who leads WCW against WWE and we could've gotten Sting vs Rock. Sting vs Austin. Sting vs Undertaker(unfortunately ABA version) and so many great feuds. Sting could've been a multiple time WWE Champion and Intercontinental Champion and could've had a lengthy career in WWE if Vince wasn't so fucking petty in trying to bury WCW.

Sting could've fought The Undertaker and made it about Icon vs Icon. I even would've been content with a Undertaker vs Sting cinematic match. Just give Sting what he wanted, but Vince never thought he deserved it. And TO BE FAIR. Sting never got that Undertaker match because he kept taking the Dixie money for all those years. We might've got Undertaker vs Sting when it meant something at Wrestlemania 27, but because Sting went back to TNA, it never happened and Undertaker admitted that it wouldn't have been good at that late period in his career because of how broken his body became.

Sting could've been used as the ultimate babyface to bring justice to the heels. Whether it's The Authority, The Wyatt Family or The Bloodline, Sting could've been the one force that could

Sting could've been made WWE Champion. Why the fuck not? They shoved Goldberg down our fucking throats for 6 fucking years, I saw no reason whatsoever why Sting wasn't WWE Champion before that stupid buckle bomb nearly ended his career

Sting could've just been treated with one single semblance of respect and even that was too much to ask for with WWE.

Meanwhile for 4 years Sting has been treated like a legend. Like an icon. Like he deserved to be treated and he gave back. He helped put Darby Allin on the map. He took insane bumps that he didn't have to and he proved he can still fucking go. He is to AEW, like what Terry Funk was for ECW and he's getting the send off he deserves!

#WWE #AEW #Sting #The Undertaker #Triple H #Seth Rollins #Darby Allin #The Rock #Dwayne Johnson #Youtube

[ink-flavored]

Reworking Pride

BTS Series: ⬅ Table of Contents - Reworking Justice ➡ Also available on Neocities! P&J Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @elegant-paper-collection @auroblaze @zeenimf @vacantgodling @foxys-fantasy-tales Banner art by @auroblaze

The first thing I decided needed a rework was, no surprise, the protagonist. Pride would need to change significantly, and not just for the obvious reasons. I needed to have a different visual for him so I could more easily create a separate personality and motivation from scratch, instead of constantly associating him with his alternate fanfiction self. I can’t draw, so I went onto this Picrew and threw together an initial appearance I could work off of.

I wanted to keep some of the punk elements like piercings and alternative dress, both as a kind of homage and to put a big neon sign over his head that reads HAS PROBLEMS WITH AUTHORITY. Same thing with the eyeliner—explicitly not conforming to gender norms, both signaling a problem with authority and implied queerness, which is intentional. The goatee was for fun, since “haha goats and Satan,” but I liked it so much I kept it. I did decide to make him white, instead of Japanese like his fanfiction counterpart, which is a change I did make with a purpose (I’ll get into it). The horns and tail being the classic cartoon devil were the only options available. It wasn’t the look I was going for with the story, but I added them anyway because they were cute.

One big deviation I decided on right away was that this isn’t going to be a stolen body, for Pride or Justice. Their appearances are what they look like, all the time, and Pride will ferry the soul for his contract without hijacking their appearance. I actually changed the way the whole contract thing works, too, but that’s a story for another post.

From here, I began brainstorming his personality. The fanfiction Pride & Justice was very short, so there wasn’t a whole lot of room for character development or action. In fact, Pride has a static character arc through the whole story. The only thing that changes by the end is him admitting that he’s scared to go back to Hell, and the rest of his personality remains exactly the same. That isn’t going to fly as an original character in a longer story.

In this new story, Pride as a character needs to be a shithead, for lack of better description. Not only is he a demon, he’s the embodiment of hubris, self-importance, and the root of all sin. He needs to be loud, obnoxious, arrogant, and outraged, if not violent, when he doesn’t get his way. Paradoxically, he also desperately needs people to like him. It’s well-documented that people with healthy relationships with their pride don’t do the grandiose “look at me, I’m so special” thing—their pride is self-evident, and exudes naturally. The people who do act incredibly shitty like this are compensating for a low self-esteem, declaring that they’re the best, that everything they do is the best, and that everyone should like them for being so obviously the best. This, of course, turns potential friends and companions away, and sends them further down into their spiral.

I took a great deal of (mostly tongue-in-cheek) inspiration from a Tweet by Sarah Hagi (that I can unfortunately not find the link to): “God, give me the confidence of a mediocre white dude.” I want Pride to be a critique of that guy you know, the one who acts like he’s the best thing since sliced bread, but isn’t really as great as he claims, and deep down he knows it. He hurts people to boost himself up, using his position of power over others to make himself feel more secure. Sure, he’s had pain, maybe even trauma, but he doesn’t want you to know that. It would be weak, in his mind, to admit that he has wounds so deep he can’t even look himself in the mirror.

So, as my protagonist, Pride needs to be fundamentally self-absorbed, taking pleasure in the pain of others, because he’s compensating for and masking a very deep emotional pain. I don’t want to be so black-and-white as to make the entire concept of “having pride” a strict evil, so over the course of the story I want to develop him into a healthier version of it. This would give him a very fulfilling arc—he begins the story as the negative expression of pride, hubris and self-importance and viciousness, and ends on the positive end of the spectrum, with genuine self-respect and confidence without needing to harm others. That’s a whole dang character with flaws and potential for growth if I do say so myself!

Obviously, I wasn’t quite done. Pride needed a pain to endure, something that would turn him into the vindictive little asshole we see before us. What better pain for a demon to have, what better way to turn them bitter against all of humanity and virtue, than to be cast out of Heaven by God for questioning His authority? Not only is Pride a demon, he’s one of the fallen angels who rebelled with Lucifer when he fell from Heaven.

My wonderful girlfriend, AuroBlaze, helped me solidify Pride’s appearance so I wouldn’t have to use the Picrew forever. The idea of him having the blond roots of his hair exposed was played as a joke, at first, because how funny would it be for him to always look like he had a shitty hair-dye job? But while we were talking, I realized it could be a brilliant metaphor for the very shoddy mask he wears to hide his aforementioned bitterness and trauma—especially if those exposed roots are the color his hair used to be as an angel, that won’t stay covered up, no matter how hard he tries.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The blond roots are still the color his hair was as an angel, but the reason they stick around is because it's essentially a magical scar. His dark hair stops right where it meets his horns, his broken halo. His former-holiness is burned into him, and can't be transformed or dyed away.

While we were discussing what I actually wanted his horns to look like, I solved a few world-building birds with one stone. The demons in this story, instead of just being goth angels, have their wings cut off by the other angels when they fall. Their halos are cracked in two, jammed into their heads, and become their horns, eternally smoking with once-holy fire. They grow tails from the trails of fire they leave as they fall to Hell, like the trail of a comet. They have several permanent reminders of the grace they lost.

Lo and behold, we have our final design:

[Tumblr version] [Instagram version]

Welcome to the world, Pride! You are a menace to society and will cause so much distress to everyone around you.

A few other details that I want to mention before we go: All demons have a secondary beast form they can transform into, either fully or partially (i.e. Pride can summon one monster arm if he wants). Compare this to angels having a human form and a “flaming wheel of eyes and fire” form. His horns and tail are also optional in this way—he can hide them from humans entirely if he wants. I won’t get deep into his powers or how this story’s version of magic works, but there’s a good chance I’ll make a separate post about it later.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can see his beast form here, also drawn by AuroBlaze!

Also, for those of you waiting with bated breath for this: Pride will be explicitly bisexual in this book. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to bring it up yet, but I am very excited to populate this story with a lot of queer and trans characters, so it’ll be a topic at some point for sure.

On that note, there’s an internal war waging within me about whether or not I should make Pride trans. I’ve been on the fence about it for a while. Since he’s a multi-dimensional immortal creature who chose every detail of his body to his exact specifications, he wouldn’t need top surgery, hormones, or anything like that. It would just be the lower half that’s the contested zone. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but this story is a romance and there will be sex in it. So it’s unusually pressing!

The arguments against? I don’t want to perpetuate any harmful assumptions by making a trans character literally on the side of the devil. I already have more than a few trans side characters in the story, but I still don’t want to make any unfortunate comparisons in today’s landscape. There’s the whole “indoctrination” thing, tempting others to sin is a big part of his personal magic arsenal, don’t need to make too many jumps to get disingenuous there. There’s also the matter of my intended commentary—the “mediocre white man” stuff. While being trans wouldn’t make him less of a man, obviously, the kind of behavior I’m trying to critique is seen most often in cis white men. They use toxic masculinity as a shield because they’ve been told all their lives they aren’t allowed to show “weakness” in the form of emotional vulnerability, and hurting others is how they feel strong—like a “real man”—in the face of their pain. I don’t want to mess with the foundations of that critique, risk muddying it, or accidentally send a completely different message than I intended with such a delicate subject.

The arguments for are more self-indulgent. I am a huge fan of adding things to a story just because you like them, and something about Pride screams TRANS! at me. Trans men aren’t seen often in media, especially trans men who are visibly, vocally, and proudly gender non-conforming, and that representation is personally important to me. Also, trans men who don’t feel the need to get surgery are plenty scarce in the media landscape, which is again important to me personally. Beyond my personal investment, the metaphors I could play with regarding transness and fallen angels, and how toxic American Evangelical Christianity is to queer identities would tie in with a lot of other themes in the book. For any other story, that alone would be enough for me to shrug and make the change, but still I hesitate. Thoughts? Feelings? Advice? I’d love to hear it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the time since I wrote this post, I did decide to make Pride canonically a trans man. Once I started viewing him as trans, I couldn’t un-see it, and it became an inextricable part of him as a character. I do plan on tying in all of the above-mentioned metaphors into his character, and more. One of Pride’s arcs in the book is about his self-discovery—about becoming someone he actually wants to be, not tied down to anyone’s opinion of him, and growing into a person who doesn’t need to identify himself with his past trauma. It moves him so powerfully, he genuinely wants to be a human by the end of the book, something he once reviled because of how they stole God’s love from him. I think the growth, metaphor, and representation all come together to be more important than the “mediocre white man” thing, or any possible bad-faith readings of a trans character (which the inevitable dipshits will do no matter what).

WHEW, this one was a doozy. I guess I was really excited to introduce this story officially! Thanks for reading this ramble all the way to the end. And as always, thank you for your continued support!

See you next time for more Behind The Scenes action!

— Annika

#writeblr #original writing #writeblr community #amwriting #original characters #writers on tumblr #queer writers #prose #WIP #annika talks #Pride #Pride & Justice #P&J #P&J: Worldbuilding

[smokewars]

ok ive given myself a few hours to think abt it. i dont think i can accept the apology. the fact that it took him this long to be clear about this is telling and ever since i saw the tweet my first thought was "i wonder why they're apologising now". good faith tells me its because of the director realising how much they've fucked up these past weeks, but i can only wonder if theyd have released this at all if their asses weren't lit on fire by the unions first

because of this many other things have come up as well. whether or not you believe the director saying the worker left on their own violiton (this part reminds me of when angela profusely insisted that the library was fair bc the guests agreed to the terms, ignoring the external factors that could push them into doing that btw), what about the leviathan artist who was unfairly treated to the point that they had to quit? what about the translator who kept getting harrassed and also quit because of it? speaking of the translators in general, its been a bit of an open secret for a while that they're understaffed and overworked to hell. im aware that bringing those up detracts from the original topic and the director will likely never acknowledge it, but theyre things im still taking into consideration when thinking about the company

the end of the apology isnt good either. its not stated who its directly targetting but i think its pretty obvious that theyre going after the pmua. talking about "[taking] action to the end against those who claim to vehemently oppose cyberbullying yet somehow believe that attacking the company and its employees with falsehoods and manipulation and using its fans as mere opportunities to amplify their voices, as stepping stones to larger, more righteous discussions is justifiable" is fucking INSANE when the cause of all of this bullshit (dcinside users) hasn't been brought up once by the director. and its not like apologising will make me forget the dogshit statement he made two days ago

like it or not, the incels who attacked projmoon pretty much won. and they'll do this again the moment they get pissed off at the company for some arbitrary reason because its pretty clear that this worked

#projmoons world means too much 4 me to up and leave it but ur never fucking catching me logging into limbus again after this shit #ill play ruina since ive already bought it and cant refund it. ill watch limbus cutscenes on youtube. but i will not give them more money #text #project moon

[mooncalfe-art]

i wanted to say that, as a huge venus fan and also a next mutation enjoyer, im really glad u were the writer to introduce her characther to the comics, bc based on some tweets i have seen from u is easly to assume u have actually watched the next mutation, and its very clear that u actually know and understand the characther instead of just having a vague notion of who she is based on wikis or articles like so many people do, even with the fact that u werent legally allowed to use some things from the characther, i still think she does justice to the original nm venus and its a incredible take on the charachter !!! (i hope this doesnt sound weird, like im not bashing any other comic writer and saying that they would make venus bad, its mostly about how some fans seen to not exactly know who she is and just add her into their projects without actually caring about her, and im happy that in idw this doesnt happen and she is actually being written by someone that cares abt her as a characther, anyways just wanted to thank u for how good ur version of her is)

Glad you like what I've done with Venus, thanks! I'd been trying for quite a while to get her into the comic but kept running into legal obstacles and false starts, her introduction almost didn't happen but we got clearance at the last minute. Whew! And yeah I've watched Next Mutation, it gets a bad rap in my opinion, it has a lot of cool ideas (Mikey's show in the IDW comic is based off his pirate radio station in Next Mutation for example, I always thought that was such a great idea). I haven't seen every episode but I have the DVD set of it, I really need to finish the last several episodes.

Anyway, I really wanted IDW Venus to treat the original version with respect as much as I could, like you said there are aspects of the Next Mutation version that we're not allowed to use, it's all very complicated, but I tried to at least homage the things I'm not allowed to use. I'm still trying to have Venus join the Turtles/Splinter Clan but it keeps getting pushed back!

Thanks for reaching out and letting me know your thoughts! I hope I continue to do Venus justice. :)

[theloneliestshipper]

What is truly wild to me is that Andor is the most unspoiled Star Wars property since Disney bought Star Wars. I heard absolutely nothing about this show for months. I saw no gifs, no plot spoilers, no gushing about new characters, no spaced-out posts on Twitter.

People kept telling me it was really good but they never said anything *about* it.

And now that I've watched it, it is really really good. This is the kind of show you finish and will still be thinking about a week later. But I think it's maybe important to maybe say why it's so good.

So here's my Spoiler-Free list of why Andor is special:

The first two episodes feel slow and rambling but 90% of what you see will come back into the show as significant character or plot background. The motherfucking storytelling in this show.

The music. Do you like strings? I like strings. Do you like rough and discordant music that heightens tension? Mmm. Me too.

Go ahead and enjoy the petty Imperial workplace drama. This show never lets you forget who the baddies are and they do it without sweeping capes or monologues.

Instead of CGI cameos you'll see character actors absolutely tearing up minor roles without wackiness or fanfare.

Extremely deft handling of oppression tactics like unjust imprisonment and militarized law enforcement. Any scene where ordinary characters bump up against the Empire the danger is real.

There are plenty of references and canon deep cuts, but it's never played as a big reveal that you're required to tweet immediately. It's just part of the story.

And yet I think anyone could watch this show and enjoy it. Zero prior knowledge is required.

There is also a serious investment into creating new cultures that feel authentic and not just a collection of pilfered rituals from various real life cultures.

This show has a few mundane and devastating moments that will rip out your heartstrings and play discordant melodies on them. You won't see them coming. They will hurt.

Mon Mothma. Her arc plays out like a Jane Austen movie with dialogue that is simultaneously eviscerating and exquisitely polite. A+, no notes.

Speaking of character choices, Cassian maintains a solid support system of friends and family throughout and anything bad that happens to them is treated as a circumstance. The narrative point-blank refuses to lay the blame on Cassian or treat it as angst fodder for his story and I find that refreshing!

Cards on the table: I didn't like Rogue One that much. I found the character arcs unsatisfying and awkwardly shoehorned in to the plot, which felt chopped up and hastily rearranged. This show is weirdly changing my opinion of a movie I haven't watched since the original theater release. The motherfucking storytelling in this show.

#no seriously this is a very good show #andor #star wars #grace rambles #I have many more thoughts #I'll save for another post