#i kinda hate this cause its so much different from my initial idea

[basslinegrave]

so i had an idea because i work with fur and have 3 dogs and all of my clothes end up covered in fur. i thought about these two just going thru lint rollers rapidly - but no, they wouldnt. everything is covered in fur. paired up with a dingy sofa.

unshaded (and unfurred) under the cut

#i kinda hate this cause its so much different from my initial idea #for one. two i hate how i framed this. but i didnt wanna crop out too much since i already colored it #3 the pose couldve been so cute but it ended up too stiff and weird idk. #4. i might get dumb asks about drawing feet again lmao #5 i hate the couch!! i was like oh yes lets make it super gross. but after i finished it i was like. oh fuck that #anyway #my art #basslinegrave art #sam and max #actually i went back and cropped the pic. help #well they are gross. so its ok. the sofa can be disgusting lol

[anameistoohard]

Oh boy, lets open that can of worms

There's a LOT of discourse with endo vs anti-endo stuff (endogenic system=plural system not formed by trauma if you don't know 🙂). Like, death threats coming from both sides kinda thing. We try to stay out of it. But it's easy to accidentally stumble into it if you're not familiar with some of the nuance. So we want to share some observations as like, a crash course. (And apparently we had a lot to say lol.)

This post isn't really to debate how plurality forms. Just to give some context as to why so much hate is flying between these two groups.

Basically, you have 2 extremes. (And everyone in between obviously)

On one side you have people making up extra rules on top of the diagnostic criteria to exclude and gatekeep anyone who doesn't meet "their level" of disordered. (I've literally heard people say "you can't be a system, you're not as traumatized as me"). A lot of accusations of faking come from this bunch. Too much internal communication? Faker. Too many non-human alters? Faker. Too many or not enough alters? Faker. You can't win with them even if you have a diagnosis.

We've noticed a lot of parallels between this group and transmeds. You need to have x level of dysphoria to ride this ride. You can't be trans if you don't want xyz treatment. You need to reach my arbitrary bar of "trans enough". Enbys and everyone else are fakers. That kind of bs.

But on this side you also have a lot of people who just want to be taken seriously. They want to be validated by their diagnosis and feel hurt when people say or do things that they think will compromise that validity. They, at least initially, come from a place of sincerity not malice. But they fall into the trap of trying to be "one of the good ones".

On the other extreme you have the wild west. Things people treat as fact aren't codified with the same scrutiny as the DSM-5 or ICD-11. This breeds its own confusion and misinformation. We've seen people conflate plurality with things like maladaptive day dreaming, lucid dreaming, adhd, and (applying it to other people with ferocity to the point of harassment) metaphors of all things.

They have a spaghetti at the wall approach that reminds me of a less extreme MOGII (an attempt to define just about every possible form of gender and sexuality). It's a messy patchwork of ideas. We've seen 8 different labels that all mean the same thing and are being used by exactly no one. Redundancy and hyperspcificity, that's the name of the game. But frankly we like this if for no other reason than we want to see what sticks, what becomes mainstream.

We've seen people from this group attack people as badly as the anti-endo group. Openly mocking people for having trauma or saying vile shit like "traumagenics kys". They feel threatened by the exclusionary nature of diagnoses. But instead of taking their frustration out on the systems of power they take them out on normal people. After all if you're diagnosed, you "represent the system"... I guess. Equally bull shit.

But this is also where the edge cases go, the exclusions, those that don't fit into a neat little box. The DSM excludes people whose plurality is accepted as part of their culture or religion. These people don't suddenly stop being systems just because they're accepted, but they're distinctly not disordered. They don't meet the clinical definition of DID or OSDD. Same goes for someone whose symptoms are mild enough to not cause "clinically significant distress". You also have people who don't want to be pathologized or have been failed by the medical system.

So lastly, a warning: When dealing with plural stuff, it's very easy to go stumbling into a mine field.

Tldr: I would always rather land on the side of letting too many people in than exclude people who needed the support. However, no matter your in-group, some people take things too far. Like, ffs don't attack people. 

-Taylor & Mark

#not giving this any proper tags cause I don't want a fucking maelstrom of hate coming at us lol #long post #this might be a bad idea

[daylighteclipsed]

1/ 'my immediate thought was late-KH1 Riku being like ‘I hate you. Die.’ and his daemon rubbing up against Sora’s and being really affectionate with it, betraying the love in his heart' LMAO my thoughts exactly. also Riku's daemon being the chillest entity out there while he's having teenage angst.... poetic cinema. honestly, while dream eaters being daemons would be cool I kinda have a hard time imagining them talk? too much of the "not from our reality" vibes ig.

2/ A dog for Riku would be nice, considering the lengths of his loyalty to Sora. I was also thinking big cats? like snow leopard. my brain kinda malfunctions when I try to come up with something for Sora, but bunny!Sora concept that Canary has really grown on me (also one of the characters from HDM who had a rabbit daemon kinda left a hole in my soul). Sora really makes it a point to help ppl he meets so figures his daemon would be friend-shaped.

3/ More of an afterthought, but I also like the idea of Namine having a bird daemon 'cause she's a "witch", and witches in HDM always have bird daemons to fly along with them. And Sora and Roxas having extremely different daemons just to make it a point that they're different people. And while I'm not certain about Riku, Terra DEFINITELY has a dog daemon.

Ig since Nomura constantly associates Sora w felines (initial concept lionboy Sora, lion cub Sora in the Pride Lands, his Meow Wow dream eater, catboy Sora in Monsters Inc, tbh even anti-form is reminiscent of a feral cat) my brain goes to cats for him, even though he doesn’t really have the personality of a cat… Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. Some cats are cuddly and social… They’re really funny when they get wound up… Sora’s curious and does like to nap a lot in the sun lmao

Sora also wants to be like big and imposing, but he’s so small and cute instead, which reminds me of a cat. That doesn’t mean he should be underestimated, though! All cats have claws…

I asked my bf and he said Sora reminds him of a monkey, which makes me think of those later-concept sketches of Sora like walking on his hands and having a convo w Kairi while he’s hanging upside down from a tree branch dhhfhdhs Later-concept Sora was very acrobatic. He’d fit in at a circus.

A bunny’s cute… Something aquatic might be interesting, too, since Sora loves sailing. Maybe a seal or sea lion or something. They are very friend-shaped, can be trained to do fun tricks, and also like to nap in the sun. And even though they look cute and are usually friendly, they’re still predators. (They’re also bouncy like Meow Wows!)

Yeah, something loyal and hard-working for Riku, like a canine. I already said wolf, but it’s true! haha Wolves especially are fiercely loyal and protective. They’re big and sometimes scary, but they’re quite playful and caring w their pack. Sometimes a wolf wanders on its own, which is where we get the phrase “lone wolf” from, but it never wants to be alone, which also reminds me of Riku.

A swan also comes to mind for Riku. They’re big, graceful, beautiful birds, but they’re not timid. They’re fiercely protective, and they mate for life. Google says they can pair bond v young, which makes me think of how Riku’s been dedicated to Sora since he was like 5. Swans are also a symbol of light and sacred to Apollo, which is why his chariot’s often pulled by swans or composed of swans in art. (Wolves are also sacred to Apollo, apparently! Haha)

Also, the phrase “swan song” comes from the belief that swans sing beautifully upon death, which reminds me of Riku’s light singing or ringing when Sora calls out to him in the tunnel... Idk 🤷‍♀️

I can totally see a bird for Namine! Idk what kind… but maybe a songbird? She’s always kind of reminded me of a caged bird singing… And yeah, I can see a dog for Terra, too. What kind of dog were you thinking of?

Oh! And I figured you’d want to see this reply from @lah-reina

Someone else has thought of this concept, too! It’d be great if we got their name

#this is hard. it’s hard to assign one animal to a character when ppl are so complex and always growing #sora technically has his canon-assigned fursona though. he’s a lion #shdhrjdhdhg

[beneathascorpionsky]

vent-ish? not like. super serious. just. thoughts

So a few days ago my grandfather asked me where I see myself in 10 years and I kinda struggled. Cause as a rule I avoid that. I avoid thinking too far in the future to keep myself from combusting from an overload of anxiety. I eventually kinda cobbled some kind of answer along the lines of 'well it would be nice to have a decent job and to have published one or two of my stories'

and that was kinda it until like. right now when i got in the shower and it came back to worm through my entire brain. i was like. Where DO i see myself in 10 years? And its a really hard question cause like. I can see myself in. a lot of different places actually

like one of the best ones I've published my books and they've taken off amazingly. I have lots of money and I buy a cabin up in Alaska and I go live up there to be away from everything and I write more books and I have money to fly my friends and family up to visit me all the time.

Or maybe I move upstate to a nice town I like, I have a job I can support myself off of, I have friends, and I write and maybe my books never make a big splash but I could be proud just having the strength to actually finish them and let them go out

or I could be dead. Yknow, car crash or I get sick or the world just. Ends. I'm gone. I'm in heaven and i don't really think you can goal project into the afterlife very easily.

Or I could be married and I could be really happy or my husband's job could have taken us somewhere I'm utterly miserable and I could have 3 kids that I'm dedicated to but try as I might I can't love them. or maybe I love them more than I can possibly imagine loving anything and I give up oh my ephemeral joke of being a storyteller and I'm happier than I could ever be even though at the moment just the idea makes me tear up.

Or. the most stifling and most realistic one, I haven't gotten anywhere. I'm still in my hometown, with a job that isn't' getting me anywhere, relying on my parents who love me but wanted more for me, too tired to open a word document much less string together a coherent plot. And idk. I feel like I hate that one most of all, but at the same time it feels like the most likely. Like Lot's wife I'm frozen in the salt, looking backwards and never forwards.

I feel like my default is just to say 'It's all in God's hands!"v but even that feels cowardly in a way. Let God deal with it, I don't even want to think about it because it's too scary. It's too hard. I don't want to do the work. I just want God to drop a job or a husband or a publishing opportunity on my doorstep cause I'm too scared, I'm too stuck to take any initiative myself.

uh. anyway. I think I can tell it's about that time cause my depression goes from mild apathy to I'm actually feeling emotions. wee.

#my posts #reflective #idk man i just #it all kinda came up in my head and it came out here #i don't really like to post anything really personal on here cause it is the hellsite tm #but #yeah #whatever #vent

[yedamismymom]

Reaction to you teasing them (legal line)

lmao i finally wrote something for treasure..hope ya like this and thanks for requesting!

Treasure’s Reaction to you Teasing them

Pairing: Legal Line x Reader

Genre: Reaction; Suggestive, Sexual Themes

Words: 900+

Warnings: Sexual Themes. Please read at your own discretion. I tried writing for Yedam in this, wasn’t so bad, his part will be under the read more in case anyone wants to read it.

Hyunsuk

You squeeze his thigh and drag your nails over it

I see him getting very flustered initially

He doesn’t understand why you did whatever it was that you did

But when you do it again, he gets the memo right away

Suddenly he doesn’t know what to do

You’re being very explicit with your actions

The longer you tease him the more it’ll turn him on and the harder it’ll get for him to stay still

It won’t take him too long to give in

He’d probably want you to go down on him and give him a nice suck before really getting into things

He can’t resist teasing for the life of him

Jihoon

You sit on his lap, facing him and leave a feathery kiss below his ear

He knows exactly what you’re up to and he refuses to give into you so easily

There’s no point in teasing the biggest tease ever

He’s just going to make this harder for you

He’ll grab your waist, preventing you from going anywhere and start kissing your neck

But the kisses will be very restricted, like he’s not giving you as much as you want

He loves hearing your needy whimpers

Its not easy to tease him

If you want him to fuck you all you’ve gotta do is ask

There’s no guarantee that he won’t continue teasing you though

Yoshi

You wrap your arms around his waist and slip your hands under his shirt

Your touch certainly isn’t subtle so he gets a faint idea of what you’re up to

He likes when you take incentive to initiate things 

So he’ll let you continue for just a bit before turning to face you

Once his lips are on yours you know he isn’t going to disappoint you

Maybe he’ll take you right then and there (depends on where y’all are at though)

He will never pass up an opportunity to satisfy you

So just know that even if his reaction isn’t immediate, he will still give into your secret demands

He’ll most probably treat you better than you’d imagine, simply so that you know he’s always gonna give you everything you want

Junkyu

Maybe you whisper something naughty in his ear and give him a certain look

He might scream

So be careful

Mainly because he’ll be caught off guard

Teasing him can be very entertaining

He’ll be so conflicted and say things like “really? now?” or “omg someone might hear you!”

Nervous gulps x 100

He might even start sweating because of how anxious it makes him

He obviously wants to listen to you and give into your demands but the time and place is too sudden for him

That’s why you’ve gotta leave him an ultimatum

Do that, and he’s running behind you without another question

Mashiho

You wear something revealing on purpose

You know he loves catching small glimpses of your body

He’ll just smirk shamelessly

Maybe he knows what you’re up to, maybe he doesn’t

It turns into a whole game 

Who’s gonna make the first move

Eventually one of you gives in 

Everything that proceeds from there is incredibly rushed and super needy

All in all, he can put up with teasing, but not forever

Jaehyuk

Please you literally just tell him that you’re horny and want to ride him

He giggles

And then he realizes that you aren’t joking

So now he’s like super expectant

You probably have to tease him some more to rile him up

Cause he’s just gonna be fascinated by your straightforwardness

I think I’m going on a different tangent with this (hit me up if you wanna know where)

So yeah I think if you tease this boy first he’s not gonna know what’s happening and when he finally gets it he won’t know what to do

Super clueless but at least it gives you a chance to top him

Asahi

You lean in to kiss him but just before his lips can touch yours, you pull away

He hates it

You can see it on his face, all that dissatisfaction 

But instead of getting what he wants he’ll be super stubborn and just sit there

You could’ve gotten what you wanted but its your fault that you decided to be a tease

So even if you apologize and start begging, he won’t give in

That’s a lie actually, if you keep begging then he’ll get impatient, stop holding himself back and give you what you want

Well not what you want but more whatever he wants to do to you

You just need to shut up and take what you get and stop being a greedy little whore (i’m sorry i went off)

Tease him and face the consequences my friend

Yedam (this is so vague lmao fuck me)

So you both are cuddling and you rub you ass into his nether regions (i’m sorry)

He doesn’t know if you did it on purpose but he definitely felt it

But since he’s unsure about if you were trying to initiate something, he doesn’t say a word and tries his best to control himself

However, since the action was intentional, you keep doing it

Kinda embarrassed, he grabs you hips and stops you

He doesn’t know how to tell you that he’s got a boner, even though he’s pretty sure you can feel it pressing into your ass

Eventually you have to turn around and face him, asking him if he wants you to take care of it

He’s so thankful for that…lmao 

#tm.network #hoehousenet #wkcnet #treasure smut #treasure reactions #treasure scenarios #treasure imagines #treasure x reader #kpop smut #kpop

[luvnami]

𝐜𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬!

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 - aa my first time writing for kny!! i hope you like it~ the title is a play on the word ‘pillars’ lol hopefully that makes sense... enjoy!! likes, comments and reblogs really help me a lot <3

𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 - @/amjustagirl​ (muacks)

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 - mention of food

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 - what if the pillars were... cats?

𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐣𝐢𝐦𝐚 𝐠𝐲𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐢

- the CHONKIEST fella you’ve ever seen in your entire life

- seriously, this cat feels like a brick when you try to pick him up

- yes, his fur is dense. no, he does not get any skinnier when he’s matted down with water

- a lovely, calm cat abandoned by his previous owners because they were moving out of the country

- he loves lazing in the sun and his brown fur turns golden in it!!!

- is a lap cat but doesn’t understand that your legs turn numb way too fast when he’s purring away like a little truck motor 

- (his purrs are so deep……. put him on an asmr youtube channel already!!!!)

- once, you had a dream that you were drowning. you found him sleeping on your chest when you woke up gasping for air

- broke a flimsy cat tree once and is now terrified of heights 

- a big baby :( kind of needy, always welcomes you at the door when you come home with chirps and gets frisky when you don’t return till late

𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐨 𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐢

- …

- the quiet cat that seems like it might murder you in your sleep

- you adopted him together with kanroji because he simply wouldn’t leave her side and wouldn’t leave your side so… yeah

- this cat HATED you at first

- like… he even refused to eat the food that you tried to give him :/// you had to lure him out with some churu 

- you once woke up in the middle of the night because you were thirsty and found two glowy things at your bedroom door

- yeah, he was staring at you while you slept

- you didn’t dare to get a glass of water and just went back to sleep

- dark gray short fur with heterochromia! you think that he might be kanroji’s sibling but the centre said that they came in at different times

- he goes crazy for catnip oh my goodness

- he rolls himself in it and purrs so LOUD……….. ok iguro……..

𝐤𝐚𝐧𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐢 𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐢

- so! affectionate!

- you adopted her from a local centre… seriously, who abandoned this pretty baby!!!!!!!

- (iguro insisted on being adopted as well. they come in a pair, do not separate.)

- is a white short fur with heterochromia <333 she looks so magical omg

- when you visited the adoption centre, she wouldn’t stop meowing and curling herself around your legs

- how could you not take her home!!!!!

- she tries to steal all kinds of food (even yours). please don’t own any plants, she will try to chomp them as well

- one time you came back home and heard some loud rustling from the door. you were terrified that it was a thief but when you switched on the lights, the cat had somehow managed to raid your pantry :/

- loves loves loves cuddles!! will even let you touch her soft tummy and play with her toe beans (only for a while though!)

- you wish she’d stop jumping around and getting into the hardest to reach spots…….

- loves trying out new collars, toys and even outfits!

- grooms iguro a lot and loves playing with him <3

𝐤𝐨𝐜𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐛𝐮

- y’all know the cats that play nice when you’re petting them and then bite your hand immediately after… yeah

- the childhood cat that gives you trauma after it scratched you one too many times

- but very lovable and social!! loves meeting new people and then giving you a smug look as she crawls into their lap

- is not tempted by treats… she will do a trick when she wants to

- siamese, brown to white with a tail that flicks too much when she’s irritated

- this cat pushes your glass of water off of the table while looking you in the eye

- will lay herself over your keyboard when you’re trying to work

- has and will chew up your socks again

- scratches your furniture even after you sprayed it with that ‘no-scratch’ spray

- HOWEVER she will occasionally let you scritch her chin when she feels amiable…….

- tries to groom you sometimes

- jumps around too much for her (and your) own good. has caused the shattering of many things and now you cannot place fragile objects on shelves

𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐨𝐤𝐮 𝐤𝐲𝐨𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐨

- the most!! active and happy tabby cat you’ve ever seen!!!!! 

- meow! meow meow meow!

- man i have no idea what you’re saying rengoku but you look happy and adorable so have a treat

- probably a family cat that your dad brought back home (much to mom’s dismay) but he’s part of the family now

- VERY vocal at night no matter how much you try to tire him out in the day… rip 

- will wake you up because! human! it is night time and my water bowl is an inch out of place!

- has the most gorgeous coat ever… really. it’s an envy for many cat owners

- he struts around with his head in the air and demands many pets from you while yowling and pawing your leg

- loves outdoor walks, actually. will attack a dog on sight if given the chance so please keep him on a leash

- give him little booties to keep his paws clean!!!!!!!! he fell over the first time you put them on but now he’s used to it and he looks so cute omg

- very nurturing!! takes to other cats very easily and is a joy to have around if you’re fostering other animals (besides dogs)

𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐳𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐰𝐚 𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐢

- this bastard cat

- hisses if you pat him for too long

- hisses if you don’t give him attention

- hisses while you’re pouring out his food and will NOT hesitate to bite you

- if you touch his paw pads, you can goodbye to your fingers

- i’m thinking……. gray shorthair with green eyes!

- probably a stray cat that you took in (which came with a lot of coaxing, snacks and wrangling) who got into one too many fights 

- he took a while to get used to staying indoors, often hiding in obscure places and was oddly possessive of your sofa

- no, he did not let you sit on it for a whole month

- he’s very protective and territorial! when he’s feeling like it, he’ll rub against you and get into your closet to curl up and scent your clothes (getting fur all over them)

- once, when you had some friends over, you had to lock him in your bedroom because he wouldn’t stop snarling at them

- no one dares to come over to your place after that

- (he’s secretly addicted to butt pats)

𝐭𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐨

- black shorthair that literally appeared in your house one day

- you have no idea where he came from but you let him stay for a few days and he’s never left since then

- sometimes, he wanders outside (while chasing a butterfly or something...) but always comes back in time for dinner

- has the clearest emerald eyes!!

- he’s so quiet oh my goodness. you swear you’ve never heard him meow or chirp or purr once………. you think he might be a ghost cat sometimes 

- moves around silently too. has scared you on more than one occasion when you turned around and found him staring at you, or felt something furry brush against your leg while you weren’t expecting it

- doesn’t initiate affection much but will let you pet and smother him with love!! he kinda just… chills lol

- loves snuggling in the warmest places! sometimes you’ll come home and find a suspicious bump under your covers… lift it and you might find a friend within <3

- hates hate hates collars

- will literally bat at you if you ever try to put one on him

𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐨𝐤𝐚 𝐠𝐢𝐲𝐮

- loves water so much its crazy

- you have to lock your bathroom door because he’s somehow managed to figure out how to open the doors in your house

- like, he’ll actually jump into the shower with you 

- you brought him home one day when you found him as a kitten in the rain outside :c (ur the hot anime character now)

- he’s really quiet! rarely meows and prefers to headbutt you (which can be slightly inconvenient, like that one time you were pouring coffee and nearly scalded the both of you)

- his fur is always messy. sticks up everywhere no matter how much you try to brush it

- black fur of medium length and thickness!!! puffs up SO MUCH when winter comes though

- it’s insane, he looks like a ball of soot

- exceptionally fast. when you try to play fetch with him, all you’ll see is a black blur darting back and forth

- easily scared

- you have to be careful when rounding corners or petting him because if he doesn’t expect it he’ll jump like five feet in the air

𝐮𝐳𝐮𝐢 𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐧

- if you do not change his collars or outfits at least once a week or brush him daily he will start yowling

- you decided to adopt him after your neighbour moved to an apartment that didn’t allow cats

- unfortunately, your neighbour was also the most outrageously extravagant person you’ve ever met and spoiled uzui too much

- a good chunk of your monthly spending goes to the cat

- will not eat cheap cat food (how can he tell the difference…?)

- occasionally buries himself in the back of your closet because it’s dark and smells like you but please help me i’m entangled in a scarf and can’t get out!

- loves posing for photographs and being cooed over!! if you run an instagram account for him you’ll be sure to get popular really quickly

- he just… knows the camera is there lol

- hates having his nails clipped omg

- he will run around the house just to escape you and will only be bribed by a fancy new outfit or a churu

#kny fluff #kimetsu no yaiba fluff #kny headcanons #kimestu no yaiba headcanons #demon slayer headcanons #demon slayer fluff #kimetsu no yaiba #himejima gyomei fluff #himajima gyomei headcanons #iguro obanai fluff #iguro obanai headcanons #kanroji mitsuru fluff #kanroji mitsuru headcanons #kocho shinobu fluff #kocho shinobu headcanons #rengoku kyojuro fluff #rengoku kyojuro headcanons #shinazugawa sanemi headcanons #shinazugawa sanemi fluff #tokito muichiro fluff #tokito muichiro headcanons #tomioka giyu fluff #tomioka giyu headcanons #uzui tengen fluff #uzui tengen headcanons

[lilxberry]

The Guilt Of A Lover - Natasha Romanoff

Synopsis;

You tend to be quite off-put by other women when you’re with the love of your life, even feeling guilty when there truly is no need to for you to feel so. Natasha herself tells you as such.

Warnings: Lil’ bit of language. Jealous Natasha. Oblivious and paranoid reader. Pretty much it tbh.

Words: 2,072

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

_______________

You sat there, admiring your red headed girlfriend as she took down yet another agent in training. You were always in awe of how he body moved when she was up against an opponent. Plus, you had a great view of her ass right now so were as happy as can be during your break from training. 

Natasha looked at you and sent a cheeky, subtle wink towards you. You grinned at her like a fool. She was in every way the perfect woman for you. She’s the woman 

Just as you stood up and took a final gulp of water from your bottle, ending your break, one of the trainees, a young blonde girl, steeping in front of you, blocking your path.

“Hey, I was wondering if you could train with me and help me out with my stance.” Josie-Jessie-Jade, you hadn’t really cared to remember her name, asked as she played with a strand of her hair, twirling it around her slender, manicured finger. A tell-tale sign of flirting which you hadn’t noticed.

But Natasha did.

The girl had been flirting with you non-stop during the training sessions you helped lead. She had always found an issue which you just so happened to be the only one who could fix it. ‘Not like there’s any other superiors she could ask.’ Natasha thought bitterly as she watched on from the corner of her eye.

“Uh-sure. Why don’t you get into position and I’ll see what needs you’re doing wrong.” You instructed the young girl who giggled as she turned to get back on to the matt.

Once there, she plants her feet atop the cool surface, raising her arms out in front of her and bending her knees ever so slightly, sticking her ass further out than nessicary. 

You sighed heavily through your nose as you witness her positioning. ‘How did this girl even get as far as she has with S.H.I.E.L.D..’ You leisurely walked towards her, noting what she should do to make improvements.

“For starters, your knees are bent too much, that can throw you off balance.” You tap her knees until you’re satisfied with the amount they’re straightened. You proceeded to move her feet so they face a more efficient direction. Lastly, you moved to behind her, ready to correct her flimsy, half-arsed positioning of her arms.

“Your arms should be more bent. Bring your elbows towards your body, this will help you protect yourself.” You gripped her elbows with a gentle but firm grip, pulling them back inwards towards her torso. 

As your arms reach around each side of her, she pushes herself back into you, her back being forced to come into contact with your chest. “Like this?” She feigns innocence as she asks in a sickly-sweet voice, puffing her chest out, making them fall into your line of sight. 

You clear your throat and quickly detach yourself from her, making sure you advert your gaze from her eyes as she turns around. “Yeah, just like that. Keep practicing.” With that, you walk out of the training room hastily, leaving Josie-Jess-Jade confused and frustrated.

Natasha notices your quick departure and frowns, concerned about the one she loves. 

She turns her gaze towards the younger girl, a burning anger in her eyes as she stares for a moment. Natasha swore she would find out what was wrong later. 

Oh boy, she sure did. 

_______________

Natasha had yet to see you all day after training had concluded. She could tell something had upset you and had a possible reason as to why you were so quick to exit the room.

Ever since you two had started dating, you had always been mindful and concerned of your girlfriend, putting her before yourself. She knew that you hated the idea of hurting her or betraying her and whenever you thought you had, you would be over cumbered with guilt and then profusely apologize after some time to scold and punish yourself with horrid thoughts.

For as long as Natasha had known you, you had never betrayed her once. The multiple occasions you’ve said you had done so was purely an overreaction on your part. 

--- flashback ---

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to look at her. You know I’d never look at anyone else in the way I look at you. I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive me.” You spoke as you buried your face into the crook of her neck, holding her tightly, afraid that if you loosened your vice like grip around her waist for a millisecond, she’d leave in an instant. You’re breathing was erratic, clearly panicking about whether she’ll leave you ‘cause of your ‘slip up’.

“Y/N, seriously, you’ve done nothing wrong.” Natasha soothed into your ear, stroking your hair gently. “Just because you happened to look up from your phone the same time as that girl bent down, it doesn’t mean you messed up. It’s not like you were actively looking at her tits baby.” She cooed, trying to add humour into the situation but you clearly felt just as guilty as you did before.

“Babe, the fact that you looked away instantly just shows you not only have respect for me and our relationship, but to other women as well is one of the reasons I love you but please stop feeling guilty for something that’s not worth it.” Natasha continued.

You planted a small kiss upon Natasha’s shoulder before fully raising your head to look down at your girlfriend. “I love you.” You spoke quietly, afraid what would happen if your voice raised even a decibel higher.

Natasha looked into your eyes, still seeing the guilt you hold behind them and sighed. “I love you too, Y/N. Now, how about we finally head down to the living room for movie night?” She smiled as a small smile had broken on to your face also.

“Sure.” You grabbed her hand, interlocking your fingers with her before leaving your shared bedroom and heading to the elevator, ready to wrap your arms around your girlfriend on the couch whilst you and the rest of the Avengers watch Short Circuit.

--- end of flashback ---

Natasha has always loved your honestly and dislike towards disloyalty within relationships but sometimes, she felt as though you sometimes overreacted when someone flirts with you. 

She hates how you beat yourself up when you feel guilty about something you couldn’t have done anything about in a situation you were thrown into unwillingly.

As she walked along the hallways of the compound, she noted Steve, Bucky, Sam and Clint further up in the direction she was headed towards talking. Once Natasha got closer to the quartet of men, she asked of your whereabouts. 

“Last I heard, she was down in the lab, sitting quietly with Bruce and Tony.” Clint had answered his friend. The other three men nodded in agreement.

Natasha smiled in thanks before making her way towards the main lab that usually occupies Tony, Bruce and yourself.

finally reaching the lab, she was about to open the door when she heard the voices of the three of you talking clearly.

“I still feel bad, man. Whether something was on accident or not shouldn’t be an excuse for that.” You said in a solemn, guilt-ridden tone. “What makes you think she’ll say yes to marrying me if I’m constantly looking at other people!”

Natasha’s breath hitches at the mention of marriage. You wanted to marry her. A huge grin made its way on to her face, cheeks nearly splitting at how far her lips had upturned. The rest of your conversation was all but muted to her as she thought of being your wife.

Before the three could continue with their conversation, Natasha had opened the door and alerted you and the science bros of her entrance. She smiled widely towards you whilst you looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an on-coming truck. She paced quickly towards you then surged forward to connect her lips to yours.

Your eyes had widen in shock before quickly closing as you melted into the kiss, responding to the affection with just as much emotion. You held on to her hips with a feather-like touch, as if afraid she’ll break whilst her arms snake their way around your neck, pulling you deeper into her kiss. 

Before either of your lungs could collapse in on their selves from lack of oxygen, you broke apart. She grinned up at you as you looked down at her with a dazed expression embedded into your features. You hadn’t even noticed the pair of scientists leave their lab to give you two some much needed alone time.

“So, you wanna marry me, huh?” Natasha whispered in a playful tone. The blissful and content expression was quickly wiped off of your face as she said that and was quickly replaced with a deep red blush and a look of embarrassment at the fact that you had been caught red handed.

“I-uh-I,yeah, I uh-I’ve been meaning to ask you for a month now but I guessed it was never the right time.” You chuckled and smiled sheepishly down at your girlfriend.

“Or is it because whenever you plan to ask, you “mess up” and have to apologize.” Natasha had added air quotes around mess up as she truly believed that you have never done so once. Obviously, you’d beg to differ.

You looked down guiltily, scared to look the red head in the eye. “I’m sorry. I know I messed up again. She asked for my help and then I just kinda saw them. I’m so sorry. I get if you want to bre-”

You were cut off by Natasha gently pressing her soft lips to yours, them moulding together perfectly. She pulled away just as quickly as she had initiated the kiss and leaned her forehead on yours. “Ask me.” She whispers, eyes searching your own for something neither of you knew truly what for.

“What?”

“Ask me. That is, if you still wan to marry me.”

Realisation quickly crossed your features. It was almost comical how your eyes had widened and your mouth drop open into an ‘O’ as you frantically search your pockets for the velvety box.

Soon enough, you found the cuboid container and grasped it into your hand as you retracted it from your pocket in a tight grip. You dropped down on to one knee and cleared your throat at least 20 times before you attempted to speak. 

“Natasha,” The clearing of your throat had apparently not mattered as your voice had still broken into a higher pitch when you spoke her name. Quickly clearing your throat of the dry lump, you attempted your proposal once again. “Natasha, will you marry me? I did have a whole speech about two papers long but I forgot it, sorry.” Your sheepish smile barely concealed your nervousness as you waited for an answer.

“Yes, Y/N, yes I will marry you.” Natasha spoke as she nodded vigorously. You were stunned for a moment before speedily recomposing yourself and pulled the ring from the box to place upon your now fiancé’s finger. 

After you slipped the simple yet elegantly beautiful ring upon her slender, pale finger, she tugged you up with a huge burst of strength before once again plummeting her lips on to yours, kissing you feverishly, conveying both of your love for each other.

The kiss was soon broke and both your eyes had opened to reveal each others beaming smiles towards their loved one. “I think we should tell the others.” Natasha suggested.

“We already know. congratulations. Now, don’t fuck in my lab.” Tony spoke, soon followed by a scalding from Bruce and congratulations from the rest of the Avengers.

“Maybe we should do Banner and Stark a favour and keep their lab sanitary.” You chucked as you spoke. “There are a million places more comfortable that a lab for those kind of activities.”

“Well then, lead the way.” Natasha spoke with a hint of playfulness.

You smirked and grabbed the back of her thighs, signifying her to jump, which she did so gracefully, wrapping her legs around your torso and your hands move to hold her up by her ass. “Yes ma’am.”

And with that, you left with your fiancé to consummate your engagement with the love of your life, leaving behind the guilt of a non-existent issue.

_______________

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Yo I am in love with every female marvel character I swear

My first Natasha fic which I really enjoyed writing

I hope you enjoy

And as always, constructive criticism and requests are welcomed and greatly appreciated :D

#natasha romanoff #natasha x reader #natasha romanoff x #natasha romanoff x reader #x gender neutral reader #gender neutral reader #jealous #jealousy #fluff #marvel #marvel fic #marvel fanfiction #marvel fandom #marvel fluff #mcu #mcu fic #tony stark #bruce banner #steve rogers #clint barton #bucky barnes #sam wilson #the avengers #black widow #black widow x reader #x reader

[felassan]

Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.” 

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game 

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively 

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’” 

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’” 

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.” 

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde 

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine 

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures 

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

#mass effect #mass effect: andromeda #bioware #video games #jade empire #Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development #Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development spoilers #Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development spoiler #spoilers #spoiler #lul #dragon age #garrus vakarian #best boy #feels #anthem #long post #longpost #drugs for ts #drugs mention #drugs cw

[pangtasias-atelier]

Shrunken Summoner Supports

So while I absolutely hate the idea of loyalty FEH pass perks and think it's pretty pathetic of I$, the fact that summoner supports are being extended to allow for 5 slots has me thinking a lot lmao. Cause I have been wanting to support Seteth for so long and also Freyr has grabbed me by the throat out of nowhere. Also, I am a whore for like stories with bunches of characters (or any sort of media in general) and I am double the whore for harems so expect at least some more stories involving these six ahsvsjsbsj

Decided a story with micro first cause micro kinda cute at times and also I find it a bit easier. This is a sorta continuation to this story. Anyways, hope y'all enjoy my usual bullshit lmao.

"I've got some new roommates for y'all," Kiran barges through his own door to his room, a spring in his step as he makes his announcement.

The receivers of Kiran's news remain seated even as he rushes towards them. Though they have little choice in the say, unable to get up long ago. Kiran's summoner supported heroes are far different from their once normal size. The heroes are absolutely diminutive, Grima, Tibarn, and Corrin shrunken quite some time ago. While the three had been varying degrees of pudgy back when their heights were normal, the already portly heroes had been forced copious amounts of food. At least relative to their pocket-sized figures, a meager morsel of snacks far more than adequate to fill up their gullets and more.

Kiran suddenly able to summoner support even more heroes, his decision had been immediate. He formed a support with all three of Seteth, Freyr, and Duma only a few moments after the discovery. Spending time with them to strengthen his bonds, his next decision upon reaching an S rank had been acted upon just as swiftly as his decision to support them. Deciding to have them meet his original summoner supports, Kiran had shrunk the three down as well.

Seteth squirms in Kiran's hand; the tiny, green haired man is easily overpowered simply by Kiran's gentle grip. The world of Zenith a strange place, even Seteth had never expected quite such a strange sudden occurrence. Summoned after Kiran's initial supports, he had no idea that such a thing even existed right until he had been promptly shrunken down after Kiran's confession to him. Seteth's figure has a new bit of heft from his time with Kiran. His flat stomach is now a paunch; the small, chubby belly is incomparable to the others, however. His belt is no longer nipped at the waist to help accommodate for the extra bit of plushness to his body. His buttons are slightly strained from the small mass of fat, but his appearance is overall the same minus his new miniature body. Held in Kiran's hand, Seteth's entire body is firmly yet carefully wrapped by the summoner's digits. He huffs in frustration, unable to move at all.

Freyr in Kiran's other hand, the dream-king maintains a complete sense of composure. Dreams a possible portal of insight to the future, the weft and weave of the summoner's fate was impossible to fully predict with all its interlinked intricacies of multiple universes. Though he had seen even this possibility, such off shoot opportunities all seen by Freyr. But even he could not imagine that Kiran would follow through with such a miniscule possibility, his tiny body now resembles such odds. Rather portly, his gut rests in his lap as he serenely sits in the summoner's open palm. Wearing much less clothes than usual, the lower half of his pristine, white garment drapes over his lower half. The slit of it exposes most of his thick left leg. An array of gold jewelry is overlaid his upper body.. A strip of fabric is draped over his right shoulder, his doughy onset of a chest covered alongside most of his arm. He has a gold bracelet on both arms and legs, a gold strap holding his shawl in place. Though his bit of flab is slightly squeezed by all the metal adornments.

Right next to Freyr in Kiran's open palm is Duma. Too everyone's surprise, Kiran included, the divine dragon takes the change in stride. Or moderate stride, considering his immense pride and ego. With a deep scowl on his face and crossed arms, Duma's dissatisfaction is something he doesn't act upon. Duma can at least understand when he is unable to do much. But he is far from pleased with the situation. As he stews in his anger, Duma grimaces while he looks down at himself. All of Duma's armor is now gone. The ornate gold could still be worn back when he used to be 6'6", even with the added heft from his chubby figure, but simply wearing his clothes underneath his armor made things much easier. So now, all Duma wears is his black mockneck — a typical outfit due to Rigel's harsh cold — and a pair of thick pants more akin to leggings than anything. Duma's clothes are filled out nicely by mostly muscle. The miniature dragon still holds a beefy, muscular body. He just now has a small layer of flab to accompany his now miniature figure.

"And here we are," Careful to not raise his voice too much, lest he hurt the tiny heroes' eardrums. Kiran brims with contentment, his chest puffed out as he places Seteth, Freyr, and Duma down.

Grima, Tibarn, and Corrin having originally been placed on Kiran's desk, the small wooden space had become a tad bit too confining for their growing bodies. Rather than cutting back on feeding them, Kiran had made the easy decision to upsize their space and gave them a whole king mattress to relax on. However, the once ample room is no longer as plentiful as it once was; Kiran already plans another upsizing to help with the addition of three more tiny heroes. Though the astonishing weight of the current inhabitants plays a bigger part of the issue of space.

Three hundred pounds sounding like a low-ball on Tibarn's weight back when he was an adonis of a man, the current two hundred or so pounds on his miniature frame leaves him as nothing more than a completely butterball. His fat, blubbery thighs and ass give him some extra height as he sits down. Though his great, wide gut surges out far in front of him, his cherubic face obscured from the other's sights. The sandy skin causes the mattress to sag, the overfilled gut surging out fat from where Tibarn’s face is. His overstuffed breasts and arms rest atop his gut, giving him somewhat of a shape. Albeit the shape of bunches of lard stacked on itself. Unable to move on his own dozens of pounds ago, his wings serve the same exact purpose as the rest of his body. None. His backside is littered with an abundance of backrolls, they seep on down to his ass, the two overstuffed buttocks lacking a semblance of shape. His once great wings even seem laughably small, what with his doughy back spreading out farther than them to contain so much mass in such a tiny, compact form. Only able to give them the occasional flap before tuckering himself out, Tibarn's wings remain nothing more than an adornment. His hands stuck in the same situation, the sausagey digits are mostly sunken into the billowing fat of his arms. His thighs have the same effect on his legs. Unable to do anything besides eating, Kiran had embraced it, feeding Tibarn non-stop. Thankfully, even at such a titanic weight for his size, the cost effective nature of it means that Kiran only has to feed Tibarn around the same amount of food as a regular person. A feeding tube is permanently affixed to his mouth. The tube is nothing more than a straw. Kiran has a jar holding some liquid attached to it, the substance forced down Tibarn's throat during every waking moment and even during each sleeping moment. Though Kiran guesses it isn't all that forced as it once was with a few moans escaping Tibarn every once in a while.

"Kiran!" Seteth shouts at the top of his lungs but the impassioned yell that comes out is more akin to an adorable squeak. "I demand you change us all back! Such depraved inanity is ill-befitting of you!" Craning his neck to stare directly at Kiran's face, Seteth holds his glare.

Duma makes zero demands. Duma is seated, his neck straining to look up at the towering Kiran in front of him. Duma is completely silent. He refuses to debase himself by begging, even if he knows Kiran can easily revert his situation and the others with a simple action. So he simply waits for an opportunity, not that expects one to happen.He smirks at Seteth’s actions, the lesser dragon only making himself an easier and louder target.

Freyr remains impassive at the sight, this too a foreseen possibility involved in his glimpses into Kiran's future. But he figures calling it a possibility is a mistake, this path now one set in stone just like his own future that'll soon follow the same path. No real danger or harm coming out of said visions, the same lack of threat present in all other now debunked possible futures, he has no reason to fear or be concerned. Even as Seteth implores Kiran, Freyr maintains neutrality from knowing that such a possibility of Kiran giving in doesn't exist.  

“I presume you two understand the sheer ridiculousness of this?” Seteth abruptly turns to Duma and Freyr. Kiran refusing to budge, a cheery smile stuck to his face as Seteth argues, Seteth turns to the only possible help he has. “And the violations of our own agency to do this against our will,”

“To speak of agency when all of us are ultimately bound to a contract is fruitless. I have seen the rifts of fate and while we can shape what comes next, know that there is nothing to be done about the current predicament we find ourselves in. Though regardless of our actions, no harm shall befall any of us,” Figuring anymore is pointless, Freyr sits down.

Bewildered, Seteth’s mouth is agape for a few fleeting moments. One last hope left, he expectantly looks at Duma.

“Hmph,” Duma crosses his arms, his biceps bulging against each other. “There is nothing to be done, the weak have no right to make demands from those stronger than them,” Duma’s lips tighten. The veins on his biceps seem more prominent as they press more tightly against each other. 

“See, they get it,” Kiran extends a hand. He pats Freyr’s head with his index finger. He hands him a small piece of chocolate, the tiny portion filling up Freyr’s entire lap. Freyr nibbles at it, slowly chipping away at the chocolate with zero care. Kiran passes a similar chocolate to Duma who ignores the snack that is so gigantic next to him.

“Well,” Seteth straightens his outfit with an indignant huff. “If no one is going to help me, I am going to resolve this some other way then,” Walking off, he only manages a sad three paces before Kiran grabs him by the collar of his shirt.

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere,” He fails to stifle the small burst of laughter. “You just gotta relax and enjoy yourself,” Placing Seteth back down, Kiran knocks him down with a mere tap on his stomach. Holding him in place with his thumb, he rummages around with his free hand. “You shouldn’t be as big a problem as Tibarn since you don’t have any wings, but better to be safe than to be sorry,” Kiran grabs a clear plastic tupperware to place on the bed. He then plops down Seteth right in the middle of it. “You gotta be kept in here ‘till you come around. Or you can’t move either works,” A cheerful smile remains on his face throughout the entirety; Kiran has zero ounce of malice despite detaining Seteth. “Tibarn’s always been unruly and since he can fly,,, Well, you get what I mean,”

Seteth pounds away at the plastic holding him back, the tupperware refusing to budge an inch. He continues this for some time even as the only thing that changes is his increasingly tired state.

“It won’t be so bad. Even he gets a kick out of it now. And Grima didn’t need convincing at all,” Kiran points to another miniature blob for a person.

Where Tibarn could somewhat be claimed to have the barest passing of a person, Grima has none of that. Fat simply billows out in all directions it can. His feet and hands are completely smothered under dozens of rolls of ringed fat that meld into one another. Not that there is any need for his appendages, Grima only requiring his mouth to obtain sustenance. The pale blubber of his arms and legs ooze out on the sides, the massively wide limbs stuck on top of his jutting handles and stuck below his mammontine thighs respectively. His gut alone takes up nearly half the width of the mattress’, the humongous stomach stuffed with so much lard. An abundance of rolls line the entirety of it, slabs of fat making up his rolls that only stack on top of each other in a pathetic attempt of fighting for space. His overtaxed ass cheeks take up the other half of the mattress’ width. Lumpy rolls litter his backside just as it does his front. His breasts remain affixed to his great stomach, the two plush piles of pudge oozing out on top of it. Grima’s face is obscured from all of his billowing fat. Though his fat pair of cheeks and seeping rolls of backfat don’t help either. A straw permanently attached to his mouth as well, it leads to a different container from Tibarn’s. The liquid sloshes violently as Grima voraciously drinks away, the only sounds coming from him besides his gurgling gut being his huffing and moaning.

“I think he just likes being the biggest but I don’t mind,” Kiran gazes fondly at Grima. “Anyways, back to you,” He peers down at Seteth.

“Surely your time would be better spent managing Grima and Tibarn!” Seteth stammers out in panic. "You must have your hands full just taking care of just the two of them!"

"Fool. You have the audacity to pointlessly struggle without knowing the situation," Duma’s bit of chocolate has only a few bites taken out of it. Though even those few bites are a lot for his shrunken figure, his paunch a little bit more distended.

"There are three of them," Freyr chimes in addition. His chocolate completely gone, a few huffs escape his lips. His soft jiggly tummy is marginally firmer, the doughy flabby pudge has some resistance as Kiran pokes it.

"Yup. I knew you'd have pieced things together," Another pat offered to Freyr's head, Kiran hands him a single saltine cracker. "Eat up!" Appreciating Freyr’s complacency, Kiran keeps an eye on the much more silent Duma. He doesn’t expect Duma to attempt anything, so he simply allows him to do as he pleases so long as he doesn’t act up.

Getting tired of the situation, Seteth speaks up. "Don't tell me, he's even bigger than the other two or something?" He scoffs in frustration as he takes a seat.

"Hmm? Oh no. Corrin, come on out!" Kiran calls for him, expectantly waiting. Originally hiding behind the masses of fat that Tibarn and Grima are due to the sudden arrival of extra guests, Corrin peers his head out from behind Tibarn's lard. "Oh, no need to be afraid, you can't possibly hurt anyone at your size," Kiran beckoning Corrin forward, he does so upon the light soothing.

Far from the shapeless stack of pancakes like the other two, Corrin is still mobile —albeit at the near cusp of immobility. His great plush lard jutting out in all directions, his clothes are in complete tatters. His waterfall of a gut sags on down to nearly touch the floor even as he stands, the sagging fat reaching all the way down to his calves. His thighs are thicker than Seteth twice over; the blubbery cylinders for legs are stuck to one another. His arms rest at an angle from his plush love handles that jut out form the sides of his fatty stomach. His ass juts out from behind him, the sagging mounds of fat obtaining a squarish shape due to the pounds upon pounds of lard crammed inside his rear. His chest somehow maintains a sense of shape, the two soft, plush breasts not quite sagging as the rest of his corpulent frame. His face is absolutely round. His cheeks puff out as he slowly begins his waddle forward. His entire frame wobbles with each precarious step forward. Slower than molasses, he has to carefully swing his legs to the side for each step with his massive gut in the way. And even then, the meaty flab slaps against his thighs. Every single portion of his doughy figure is jostled from every arduous step he takes, fat slapping into fat. A couple of steps is always followed by a pause and a bundle of wheezes and pants. His draconic tail that once was always in the air now simply is dragged behind him, Corrin's extra appendage even a bit heftier from his weight.

"Come on, just a little closer," Kiran coos. "Then you can have some nice refreshing treats,"

Corrin lazily nods his head, his chins and necks mushing together.

Seteth not as shocked upon Corrin's size as Grima's or Tibarn's, he still remains flabbergasted from the sheer sight of seeing such a massive man still able to walk despite Corrin's pathetic lethargy. His shock slowly vanishes as Corrin plops his obese self down in between Freyr and Duma.

"I knew you still had it in you," Kiran ruffles Corrin's silvery mop of hair. He places a large cup right besides Corrin, in front of him too far away with his gut in the way. A scoop of strawberry ice cream inside, Kiran also hands Corrin a teensy spoon. "Something to cool you down," He also hands Freyr a spoon who promptly goes to stand beside it and dig in as well. Although he takes smaller, more restrained bites whereas Corrin grabs and eats as fast as his fat arms allow him to. Duma still takes small bites of his half eaten chocolate.

"So, anyways, I already got three to look after, doubling up won't hurt one bit. And I especially don't mind looking after you," Unwilling to wait any longer, he places a slice of cake inside the tupperware. A regularly sized piece of carrot cake next to Seteth, the cake completely dwarfs him. "Now, make sure you finish every last bit!" Kiran stands up. Stretching his back a bit, he heads off somewhere else.

Seteth's little tummy grumbles; he stares at the slice of cake. Having skipped breakfast due to Kiran’s insistence on needing to speak with him, Seteth can feel his hunger worsening. Realizing that this too had been part of Kiran’s plan, Seteth holds off for a few minutes before tearing off a small chunk of cake to eat.

A few months passing by, the extra three additions of shrunken heroes had effectively changed nothing for Kiran or for the rest of them. Food, food, and more food available for all of them, most of their days entail that and only that. Grima and Tibarn titanic compared to the rest, Tibarn had actually managed to catch up to Grima's crushing size. Kiran had brought another mattress for the group of five. Their fat billows out on all sides. Their limbs are buried under their blubber. The same is true for their heads, their swollen cheeks taking up most of the space and the fat from their backs rolling up to partially obscure their foreheads. Tibarn and Grima are nothing more than miniature blobs of fat, the two tiny heroes take up the near entirety of one of the mattresses, Corrin, Seteth, Freyr and Duma being relegated to the other mattress. Not that Tibarn and Grima care, the two in complete and utter enjoyment of their size as they try to outdo the other. Corrin is far from the size of the other two, the tiny dragon immobile as well. A straw for a feeding tube is always attached to his mouth just like Grima and Tibarn. He happily guzzles away at his food. Sharing a mattress with the other three heroes, Corrin is the largest of the four by far, his fat oozing in all directions unlike the three smaller heroes. Seteth brought to immobility as well, he had outgrown the tupperware a fair amount of time ago. Not quite on the same level of excitement as the rest of them, he has a near pout on his face from his overstuffed state, Seteth groaning and wheezing often. His clothes useless long ago, his fair skinned lard is a neat blubbery pile of lard. Freyr is the second smallest out of all six of them. Unlike all the others besides Duma, the dream-king is actually still mobile. Only rather obese, his clothes still fit him, the massive slit skirt and half-shawl still wearable despite his bottom heavy figure. His accessories all gone now, he has a single new one, a radiant blue medallion for a necklace. Currently not eating anything, his willing nature had meant he wasn't force fed around the clock like Seteth. Duma even thinner than Freyr, his smallest size out of the six doesn’t mean too much considering his once muscular form is now replaced with plush fat. He is past chubby or pudgy and is now fat. Duma is large all around. He has a doughy plump stomach that presses against his too tight shirt and a pair of round, flabby moobs that are no longer new. His arms are also wide from the added poundage, the sleeves of his mock neck straining just like the rest of his top. His lower half is also equally as doughy with thighs that press against each other and an ass that bounces and wobbles with any sort of above average physicality. Just like Freyr, Duma has a new accessory as well, The same silvery shape and design, his is the same as Freyr’s in every way besides being crimson red.

Both Duma and Freyr glance up as Kiran's attention shifts away from his inventory papers and over to them.

"I may be able to ponder into untapped possibilities, but that offers me no insight into such streams of fate," Freyr opens his eyes, the golden sheen of his irises peering up at Kiran. "So why is it that you decided upon this?"

"Cause I think it's cute," Kiran responds without a pause. He smiles down at Freyr. "Besides, I could always reverse all this at any time,"

“Cute? Nonsense,” Duma scoffs at Kiran’s admission. The admission completely unsurprising, he still refuses to accept the reasoning despite Kiran’s actions completely falling in line with it. “What could possibly be cute about becoming useless piles of lard,” 

“What? People have different tastes,” Kiran pokes Duma’s flabby gut. He puts up no resistance besides a grumble in the back of his month. “And you may be loath to admit it, but even I know that you would have attempted something no matter how impossible the odds. And well,” Kiran smirks down at Duma, the dragon in flustered silence.

"Kiran,,," Seteth groans out upon hearing the summoner. His stomach churns from the taxing food stuffed down his gullet.

"It's okay," Careful to not disturb him too much, Kiran gently rubs Seteth's distended gut with his pinky finger. A few small burps and huffs escape past his lips as Kiran works his magic. Freyr and Duma watches as Kiran coaxes and calms Seteth's turbulent tummy for a few moments before Seteth's stomach soon calms down.

"Thanks,,," Seteth burps out once more, his stomach already less overly filled as it was earlier.

"Anytime," Kiran turns his attention back to the other two. "I'll be back soon, gonna grab some actual food for y'all. Hold down the fort for me," Kiran snaps his fingers with a small trickle of magic infused into the action. Freyr's and Duma’s necklace glow, the enchanted gem placed in the two meant to call Kiran in case of an emergency. Freyr and Duma left on their own, Freyr simply rests against the side of Corrin's soft billowing gut. Duma is partially off to the side though he eventually moves in a bit closer. The two glancing at the others, the mountains of blubber for four men fill most of their vision. Partially finding enjoyment in this himself, Freyr just pats his gut in anticipation of more food while Duma huffs with a blush.

#my writing #male weight gain #fat emblem #feeder emblem #maleweightgain #fat fiction #extreme weight gain #fat!Grima #fat!Tibarn #fat!Corrin #fat!Seteth #fat!Freyr #fat!Duma #my phone already autofills them in absnsbs #the S supports

[spongebob-connoisseur]

What are your thoughts on the Birthday special?

I had to rewrite this because tumblr deleted my answer like 3 times. I hate this shit app but here we go aaaagain.

I really adored it because it introduced us to Slappy my beloved💗🌸💗🌸💗🌷💗🌷💕💖🌸💗🌷🌷🌸💗💕💗🌸🌷💗🌷💕💗💕🌷🌸

My heart beats for youuuuu✨

Jk jk but I do remember my initial reaction to him was basically "tf is that thing" oh how times have changed.

Spongebob's Big Birthday Blowout is easily the superior anniversary special. Truth or square kinda sucked ass (no offense to the people who enjoyed it tho) When Patchy said he hoped to see us again for the 20th anniversary special, my 9 year old self was like "you better because WHAT WAS THAT"

anyways they well delivered with this special.

I really enjoyed this episode, it was amazing because you don't see SB and friends interact wirh the human world. Yeah they've been to the human world surface for the SB movies but often times just for a mission. They never had a chance to really interact and explore with the human world which is what makes this special so enticing. The bikini bottom is a reclusive world with no contact with the outside so its their first time encountering human culture and contact. Like aliens in a way.

Its also really amusing that they're getting wrong information from the tour guide since it shows how fish folk makes sense of things they don't quite understand about the surface world. It's just guesses, even though those guesses are very wrong.

Also I've really grown to like Rube. He's AMAZING✨

It was also very cute how the tour bus trip is just Sponge and Patrick. We need more episodes of their friendship!!

I also think it takes place from the fishes's POV and the human world isn't that weird. There probably isn't a gorilla mask office meeting😔

That's just how they make sense of the hustle and bustle of the human world. Which is a bit obvious enough. Either that or this is an alternate reality where the weirdness properties of random land leaked into the human world as well.

Anyways shout out to can-o beans. A true icon.

Oh also this episode raises the morality question of if its ethical to own fish. Probably as a joke but it was unusual. I actually wanted to talk about it! In the episode Feral Friends, Neptune's moon turns the fish folk of the bikini bottom into less evolved versions of themselves which is pretty much the realistic versions of fish in the wild. In SB's Big Birthday Blowout, they end up at a place that sells pet fish, those fish also look really realistic. Which was basically like encountering a horror show for the fish in the tour bus. They recognize the fish in the tanks as their own people. Despite looking different. Patrick even has a crush on one of them. How does that work??? I have a lot of questions about that scene. I'll dig into it another time.

The Trusty Slab is the best part of the episode. They are exactly the SB characters. Tom Kenny really embodies Spongebob (which is obvious since he's been playing this character since before I was born) This is the most acceptable Humanbob out there. Nothing can top this. The energy is unmatched.

Same goes for all the characters. It's kinda funny how the voice actors all kinda look like their characters. Rodger Bumpass looks like Squidward. it's too funny to unsee.

Also Charlton (human Plankton) is adorable and the icing on the cake! Trying to rob the Trusty Slab but failing. This wouldn't be complete without Plankton. Though I wish Karen could have been there too :(

Though how would human Karen work? Why am I imagining one of those AI gf app thingies. That's a terrifying thought.

B plot for this episode is where a lot of the flaws come in. It falls pretty flat because it's just Sandy dealing with people fighting and causing a mess for the party which gets old fast. I liked seeing everyone's different ideas for the party and certainly they'd disagree but often times it feels like it's only Sandy holding this party together and dragging everyone around since they're so nonfunctional. Sandy deserved better.

I did enjoy the fact that they brought back old characters whether nonverbal or whatever. The guy from rock bottom, the whale from ripped pamts. Even princess Mindy! I wish they brought back Stanley though. There was a lot of guest stars in this episode too! Though unlike Truth or Square, they don't take much of a huge focus of the story. If you notice them then its just a fun thing to see. If you don't then you didn't really miss anything.

Spongebob's parents also wondered about Spange's huge array of friends. They barely know their own son lol

Regardless of the B plot, the episode was still really enjoyable. When spongebob came back from the trip and the end of the episode where they sing happy birthday to him was so so adorable!! They even redid the theme song just for his birthday! I love it!

Oh also! It was so satisfying to see Patchy meet spongebob. I've waited my whole life for this. But it does raise a question. Patchy is a spongebob (the tv show) super fan. Patchy actually got to visit spongebob (the character) so in universe there's both a show and the real character existing at the same time? I feel like this would fit into skin theory 🤔

This episode was such a joy to watch. They didn't reveal spongebob's age but we know it since his birthday was revealed on his drivers license. He's getting old. this episode actually aired the day before SB's actual birthday. Mainly to avoid it conflating with Bastille Day for international releases. But that also means this episode aired on Tom Kenny's birthday. Think of it as a birthday present to the irl spange. I think that's just a neat fact to share.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the special too!

#Ask #Princess-Unipeg #spongebob #spongebob squarepants #sb #spongebon squarepants #the spongebob connoisseur #spongebob meme

[skiyoosmi]

if fate permits

⤷ chapter three: puppy face

previous < masterlist > next

“I just don’t understand… how can ya stay in this hell hole for so many hours?” Atsumu exasperatedly sighed for the umpteenth time as he sulked on the seat across you. Says the one who’s often stuck in the gym, aka 'hell hole' to me, practicing volleyball, you thought.

Opting to keep your mouth shut to prevent any banter with him, you only rolled your eyes at his rather dramatic antics, starting to feel quite annoyed with how he was distracting you from the novel you were currently trying to read.

Realizing your indifference, he huffed and began tugging on the ends of your uniform’s sleeves, “Y/N! Come on, let’s go home.”

Like a child beginning to be scared of his mother, he gulped upon seeing your eyes twitch. Oh god, I am utterly sorry, he mentally prayed as his tugs began to slow down in fear.

“If you hate the library so much, why did you insist on going home with me? I could’ve gone with Kiyoomi,” you were filled with confusion when his eyes suddenly lit up, as if he remembered something important the moment you asked him about his reason. He, finally, released his hold of you and began rummaging through his sling bag.

“Ah! Here, here… take a look of this! Ta-da!” he exclaimed when he took out what looked like a flyer for the upcoming campus festival. You looked at him with amusement as he shoved it into your hands, eyes sparkling like an excited puppy as he watched you scan the piece of paper.

“Looking for… a playwright?” you slowly uttered, eyebrows furrowed when he nodded, “you want me to be a playwright for the play of the theater department?”

“Yes! Isn’t that a bit obvious? Unless ya want to be one of the actors on stage?” you pursed your lips, reminding yourself to be patient and not get irked with his ‘trying-to-be-a-smartass’ response.

Thus, you just handed him the flyer back and shoo your head ‘no,’ surprising him because he seriously thought you would agree in a heartbeat. You stood up and grabbed your things, I need to go home before this foolishness worsens any further.

“What do ya mean no?! Y/N! This is a one-time opportunity!” he whined as he followed you, listing endless reasons why you should say yes to his request. More like a once a year opportunity, not one time, idiot.

You let out an annoyed sigh and turned to him, glaring so hard he almost whimpered. Nonetheless, he backed away when you stomped over to him.

“I am way too busy for those things, Tsum! Besides, I want to be a BOOK writer… not a playwright!” you groaned at his confused face, making it way too obvious that he didn’t even know consider anything when he grabbed the flyer.

“Is there even a difference between those two? I mean… ya will still become a writer though,” he pouted, scratching his nape and shrugged. You gaped at him in disbelief, I swear to god, this kid must be nuts.

“Of course, there is a difference! Books do not work the same as theatrical plays, baka! And like I said… I’m too busy for all those shits.”

You went back to briskly walking, thanking the heavens when the apartment you and Kiyoomi shared with them finally came into view. Once again, he sulked as he followed you with his back slouched, like a puppy kicked by its owner.

“What is she even busy with? As far as I can remember, she finished her essay days ago,” he whined to his twin as they lounged in the kitchen bar, initially talking about their volleyball plays before it turned to Atsumu-rants-about-you moment again. Osamu only looked at him with a somewhat disinterested look, shaking his head at Atsumu’s idiocy.

“You do know she’s busy with writing her book, right?” He monotonously asked the blonde who only looked back with bewilderment. Ah, knew it, this boy is really an idiot sometimes.

“But… but she’s still in college?! And she’s broke… What is she thinking… writing her own book? Can she even afford the publishing if it ever happens,” Atsumu grumbled as he played with the flyer that was still lying on the table in front of them.

The grey-haired lad only shrugged, she loves writing as much as you love volleyball, there’s technically no difference between the two of you.

“That’s probably the exact reason, you know. As early as possible, she wants to gain her reputation as an official writer. Or maybe she wants to earn money while doing what she loves. Or... I don’t know. Ask her,” Osamu suggested, quite expectant deep inside that his twin will listen to his advice. He silently cheered when the blonde hummed in agreement, grabbing the flyer before trudging towards the direction of your room.

He just hopes that Atsumu will not be more than the idiot he already is.

“Don’t you think I should punch that dummy so he realizes the truth? I want to do it more and more each day that passes,” this time, your twin brother asked as he entered the kitchen area. Osamu could see bits of irritation swimming in Kiyoomi’s eyes as he went back to cooking your dinner.

“I hope it won’t get to that point though, Kiyoomi. Violence is never the answer after all.”

You stared in your laptop’s screen, mind flying in all directions as you tried to finish one of your homeworks. I need to get back to writing the book, you thought… but then Atsumu’s puppy face as he begged you to agree flashes in your mind for the umpteenth time that night. You loudly groaned in frustration, rubbing your face in distress.

Damn the soulmate bond that’s making you impossible to refuse him and his requests.

“Gosh! This is so frustrating! Why does he have to be my sou–”

“Was my suggestion that bad for ya?” you yelped in surprise as you turned around, finding your one and only soulmate leaning against your doorway. He snickered at your face before sauntering towards your bed, plopping face down as he spoke, voice muffled by your pillow.

“I can’t hear you, baka,” you commented as you watched him fondly when he turned his head to you; that damned puppy face staring at you with the same fond look.

“Yer right, I'm an idiot. I just had this foolish idea that maybe you’d like to write for them. The idiot in me really thought they’re just the same thing so I said ‘Ah, this can be a stepping stone for Y/N if the play becomes a hit to people even those outside the campus!’ Now, I realized I was wrong,” he sheepishly explained while you giggled, shaking your head at his silliness.

“It’s alright. I kinda figured that’s what you wanted…” you smiled as he nodded, eyes lighting up when he realized you’re no longer frustrated at him. Unbeknownst to him, your insides were in a dilemma as you contemplated, “… is the offer still up though?”

“Huh?”

“I said… is your offer still up? Cause I think I’d like to give it a try,” you let out another laugh when he nodded excitedly, jumping up as he approached you for a hug but you help up a hand. He gave you a look of confusion, gulping once more when a devilish smile slowly formed on your face.

“In one condition; you… audition as one of the actors.”

Had you known what was about to happen, you wouldn't have even thought of agreeing to him.

#if fate permits #haikyuu smau #haikyuu x reader #atsumu x reader #iwaizumi x reader #atsumu smau #iwaizumi smau #haikyuu headcanons #atsumu headcanons #iwaizumi headcanons #miya atsumu #iwaizumi hajime #haikyuu imagines #atsumu imagines #iwaizumi imagines

[loser-writings]

Kazuichi Souda Headcanons

{@sally-wonders​} (┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ I JUST SAW THE DANGANRONPA STUFF AND I AM SCREAMING! dlsfhlfhksg I dont even know where to start, so, at first I was wondering if you have any headcanons for my man Kazuichi, I love him so much! I always wondered how he would be into an actually relationship, because the inflatuation he had with Sonia was a thing, but also serving to compensate in his low self steam, even if he was an ultimate, he also has the historic of abuse and bully by their piers and all  with the sharp teeth and pink hair to try and look cool and all that as well, also he would have to deal with all that happened in dispair island (what wouldnt i give to know how they dealt with that man :'3), especially acepting the fact that Sônia does not like him. Because of the whole dream girl with blonde hair and he kinda projects this idea of her instead of herself. Jqrjjgwrj sorry I babble a lot hehe

I hope you enjoy this long list of a variety of headcanons. These may not hit all of the points you were asking, but I hope this is satisfactory!

・・・・✪General Headcanons✪ ・・・・

Kazuichi is a very anxious person so he is constantly fiddling with something. Little electronics, his wrench or tools he has on hands, or his fingers. If he can’t mess with something, his anxiety goes through the roof.

He can read in English! He taught himself how to read English so he could read American comic books before they’re officially translated. He also can understand English since he watched so many English action movies. He can speak it, but it can be broken and his accent is very strong.

He can actually sew. Since he learned by watching his mom, he can fix and alter clothing. He can also sew and throw together blankets and stuffed animals. He actually owns a small sewing machine. It isn’t expensive or amazing by any means, but it can get the job done.

He spends a large chunk of his money on keeping up with his hair and keeping his contacts in check. His hair grows extremely fast so his roots show, and he has a horrible habit of sleeping in his contacts since he can’t stand his glasses. 

When you catch him off guard, he just lies about what he is doing. He doesn’t mean to, but it is just a natural reaction since his dad would get mad at him no matter what his answer was. Because of this, you have to give him a moment to calm down and go through the 3 different answers he has before he can actually say what’s going on. This also happens if he is on his computer or his phone. He naturally hides the screen, even if he is just looking at car parts or how to fix a certain thing.

He can be a bit perverted and oblivious to somebody's flaws if he finds himself becoming attracted to them. Despite this, he is honestly quite the sweetheart and would have a heart attack if somebody were to return his feelings. 

He has pretty bad trust issues and this can cause tension between him and others. This also causes him to believe things that aren’t always true based off of his distrust alone.

He doesn’t actually like his appearance, even after he changed it. He originally changed it to keep away bullies and get the attention of women, but when he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t exactly like it. He didn’t mind his black hair or his normal eye color, he just hated his glasses.

Will flinch if someone raises their hand at him because of his fathers past abuse. He can’t help but flinch, and this is horrible with men who are taller than him. Safe to say that Gundhams mannerisms and weird poses aren't appreciated.

・・・・✪Relationship Headcanons✪ ・・・・

As stated before if someone were to return his feelings, he would be so lost on what to do. He never had anybody treat him with much kindness and the fact that someone he admires likes him back is just mind boggling to him.

I headcanon him personally to be Bisexual. He may have a physical lea for women, but he does find himself genuinely attracted to men as well (@Hajime) I think the big thing that decides if he likes you or not is if he thinks he can trust you.

Due to the past abuse and issues regarding friends and classmates, he would need constant reassurance. He will have sudden doubts and will become extremely anxious at the idea of you leaving him for a variety of reasons. He will ask if you want him to change his appearance or something about his personality, and it never fails that he is shocked if you say you love how he is.

He can sometimes get lost in his childlike fantasies. He will change his personality at times and make himself believe things that aren’t true. The best thing to do when this happens is to just give him a quick kiss on the cheek and remind him that you are you, and not some fantasy. He will apologize and snap out of it (For the most part)

He isn’t the best at initiating things. He would do better with someone who is more willing to make the first move. Be the one to grab his hand to hold it, Open your arms so he can snuggle against your chest, Cup his cheeks to pull him into a sweet kiss, Open the door for him and press your hand against his lower back in public areas so he feels more calm. He really would appreciate it.

Some of his favorite dates are the ones that result in tons of affection. Building blanket forts before having an action movie marathon is his favorite thing. It always results in the two of you tangled impossibly close to each other. If he is the one being held, having you play with the messily chopped locks instantly has him weak. He will rest against your chest while watching the movies, looking up to steal kisses and nip at your exposed skin in an attempt to steal your attention away from the screen. If he is the one holding you, your hair will be played with and expect him to caress your body a lot. If he gets distracted from the movie, he will let his eyes and hands wonder. It’s not in a perverse way, but more curious. 

He actually studies how your body moves and how you feel. He is the kind of guy who is very interested in seeing how your “Parts” move and how things work. It’s not perverted (Usually) but instead it’s very sweet in an unusual way. He will find out unusual things he loves about you by watching how you move. Like how you stretch to reach things on a tall shelf, or how your body curls up into itself when your cold. Just how you move and your body language is something that always has Kazuichi staring. 

If he can’t be with you physically, expect many phone calls and video calls. He calls you every time he misses your voice or feels himself starting to get anxious. The most common phone calls become the ones that happen before bed. Kazuichi gets extremely anxious when he is alone or at his house with his dad. Because of this, it becomes a routine where he calls you before bed and falls asleep on the phone with you. If you love to sing, sing and play instruments on the phone to soothe him. If you like to read, read to him until you hear his soft snores on the other line. If you like to ramble, ramble to him as he hums along til he is asleep. 

Also don’t hang up. Seriously, he will hang up in the morning. If he has a nightmare, or something happens, he finds comfort knowing that you are right there when he needs you most. 

He doesn’t mind chasing after you, but please let him have something so he knows that all of the chasing is worth it. This is the man you go to if you want somebody to control. He just wants your love and attention, even if you are just using him. If he falls for you during the killing game, he won’t hesitate to kill for you.

・・・・✪NSFW Headcanons✪ ・・・・

Aged 18+ and Kink discussion below this post

Souda loves to leave hickeys and love bites. He thinks they’re so sexy and attractive, and will leave them all over you if you let him. He also ADORES having you mark all over him and will whine if you tease him by pulling away before a mark can be made. If you really want to make him feel loved, make heart shaped hickeys all over him. He will cry because he feels so loved.

He is a switch with a more submissive lean, but he does have his more dominant moments. If he is being submissive, expect him to whine and cry about things a lot. He can be a total brat, but its so worth it when you get to hear him moan and beg for more. He may not scream, but he is quite loud.. If he is being dominant, he growls and groans a lot. He doesn’t mean to, he just gets so caught up in the moment that he doesn’t even notice the noises he makes.

He has ended up with you in his lap in his car a few times. He just can’t help it. The most memorable time was at the drive in theater. You both were in the back and it just ended up with your hands being bound by a seat belt as he sat between your legs until he couldn’t handle waiting anymore. 

He CLEARLY is into body worship. He loves watching how you react as his hands sit and press themselves against your body. He will compliment absolutely everything about you, kissing your skin as much as possible, and let his hands and eyes do all of the work.

He is so into oral, both giving and receiving. He can sit between your legs pleasing you until you are shaking and can’t handle anymore. Just how you taste is so intoxicating with him, and he always is trying to get more. If you are sucking him off, he will pant and moan and whine the whole time. His hand is tangled in your hair or the sheets until he can’t take it any more and cums. If you swallow, he will be so turned on, but he also loves cumming on you

Kazuichi will hump and grind against anything. Your ass, your thighs, a pillow, clothing, the bed, anything. He has a high sex drive, so he has to take care of it often. Even when he is sleeping, he will grind against you if he is having a dirty dream. Hopefully you don’t mind, because he is actually quite embarrassed when this happens.

He has a fantasy of you waking him up with oral. He has quite a few dirty dreams, so the idea of you helping him out while he wakes up is a dream for him.

Praise kink. Seriously. Praise this man. He will CRY if you constantly praise him during sex. He was completely unaware of how much it would effect him during sex.

#kazuichi #kazuichi souda #souda x reader #kazuichi souda x reader #Kazuichi x reader #Danganronpa #danganronpa kazuichi #Danganronpa Imagine #Danganronpa x reader #danganronpa headcanons #Kazuichi headcanons #Kazuichi souda headcanons #sdr2 #sdr2 kazuichi #sdr2 x reader #sdr2 imagines #sdr2 headcanons #N/sfw #Kazuichi n/sfw

[argumentl]

The Freedom of Expression - Ep 36 The banning of snacks and sweet drinks displays from next to cash registers.

K: Hi, this is Dir en grey's Kaoru with this week's episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe san, Tasai san, welcome. Ok, today lets get straight on with it. Joe  could you please...

J: Yes, lets have a look at this news. Snack and sweet drinks displays next to cash registers banned in Berkeley, California, USA. In the university city of Berkeley, northern California, a law has been passed this week banning the sale of junk food next to cash registers in supermarkets. According to local media, this is the first of its kind in America. The law, unanimously voted for by Berkeley City council, targets cheap, unhealthy products next to cash registers which 'encourage impulse buying, and burden parents of children who want them', with the aim of promoting  healthy lifestyles. Products with over 5g of added sugar or 250mg of added sodium, and drinks containg a lot of sugar or artificial sweetners have been banned from sale next to cash registers. The ban will come into effect from next March. In the city of 120,000 people it will be imposed in 25 large scale supermarkets. The progressive city Berkeley, on the outskirts of San Francisco has been taking health initiatives before now. In 2014 they imposed a tax on soft drinks, and according to a survey from last year, consumption of soft drinks had halved by 2017.

K: Its true though, the cash registers over there have so many snacks near them.

J: They do, don't they?! They are really colourful. But banning it by law is really stepping in, isn't it?

T: Yeah.

J: The supermarkets aren't stopping it through self-restraint, its been forbidden by law, so if they do it will they be penalised?

T: Yeah, wow.

J: I think this is a warning that in America this kind of health damage caused by excessive additives and sugar in food is becoming a serious problem.

K: Yeah, people just end up picking it up.

J: When im waiting in line at the supermarket, its the same in Japan...in the convenience store in Japan, I wait till the last moment and always end up picking up those little Tirol chocolate squares.

K: Oh yeh, they have those out, don't they?

J: They do! Don't those chocolates just call out  to you at the last minute? I always end up buying a few.

T: I  buy 'Bikkuriman'. For the sticker.

J: Oh yeh. Still?

T: I just sometimes get the feeling like I want to open it. I reminds me off old times, haha. I throw it away straight away though.

J: Kaoru, what about you?

K: I don't buy that stuff.

J: Oh, you don't?

K: No, I just buy what I was intending to buy before I went. If Im walking around the store and I see an interesting new product or something, I might buy it, but the stuff near the cash register seems more like left over produce to me.

J: Ah, close to expiring?

K: Yeh, it looks like they really want you to buy it, so they put it there. I don't really feel like picking it up.

T: Ah, I see.

K: But in supermarkets they have gum and stuff near the registers, don't they?

J: Yeah.

K: I do buy gum.

J: Ahh, yeh...Kami? What do you think?

Kami: I pick all of it up.

T: Nice, Kami.

Kami: I get tonnes. 1000yen worth.

T: Haha

Kami: Maybe 500yen, not 1000.

K: Do you like sweets, Kami?

Kami: Yeh, i do. I pick them up straight away. Um, there's often drinks on display too, right?

J: Yeah.

Kami: If there's cola or fanta, I will buy both.

T: Haha

Kami: If I go to buy tea, I will buy all that.

K: You like sweet stuff, right?

J: Yeah.

Kami: No, its not that. Its just that it all looks delicious. It makes you forget *1

T: I see, yeh.

J: In that sense, its part of the store's strategy.

T: Yeh, Kami seems like he would hate that kind of strategy, but he still falls for it.

J: Yeh, he seems like he would be opposed to it, but he still buys tonnes, right Kami?

Kami: Yeh, I really jump on the bandwagon.

K: This stuff must sell a lot.

J: Yeh, I think so. This kind of food looks visually fun, right? Colourful and stuff. Kids get pulled in by it. Like, 'I wanna eat this!'. Its pretty amazing to pass a law in this. That would be impossible in Japan, right?

T: I feel like Japan has more freedom. I had the image since I was small that America is the country of freedom, but recently if you look at America, there is ban after ban...it seems like life there is getting more restricted. And in Japan, even with covid we can still go outside, or go to restaurants and stuff. It made me think Japan is quite free. Its a weird feeling.

J: Ahh, the rules in America are stricter?

K: Overseas, they were quite strict about indoors. Japan is only just getting like that recently, right?

J: Yeh, America was a lot quicker to regulate indoor smoking.

T: Its like that with alcohol too. When one of my best friends was in America during his student days, he once wore a Budweiser tshirt and he was told, 'Its illegal', and he had to change it. I thought that was pretty strict when I heard.

K: You can't carry it around with you either, can you?

J: Yeah, you have to put it in a bag.

K: I stepped outside a venue without knowing this while I was holding a beer can once, and I was told that isn't allowed.

J: Yeh, yeh, yeh. Well, it does depend on how you look at it. Its often said that in Japan, rather than having rules...well, in America there is a kind of society that is governed by rules, but in Japan its more about community, so rather than having rules, peer presure is very strong. People worry about what others think. Its very Japanese, 'other people are saying this, so...', or 'other people are doing this, so...'. People adapt themselves to that first of all.

T: I wonder which style is better?

J: Yeah. They are both different.

T: Its not nice being told by the government to stop something, is it? I understand the reasons though.

K: Well, people do protest that kind of thing.

Kami: But I think this law is good.

J: It is good.

Kami: I think its really good, because you can finish up without buying stuff.

K: Well, it is good.

Kami: Its really good. I thoroughly agree with it.

K: Kids won't pine for sweets either.

J: Yeh.

Kami: I do think its good to buy sweets for kids though.

J: Oh really?

K: Yeh, but just not there, right?

Kami: I wanted sweets when I was a kid.

K: Me too.

T: Yeh, me too.

Kami: I really wanted all those sweets by the register when I was a kid, but I never got them.

K: There are those socks full of snacks at Christmas, right? I wanted one of those.

T: Yeh, me too.

J: If you think about what made you excited as a kid, basically its the sweet shop, right?

K: Yeh, I used to go there.

J: Whenever I ate sour plums and stuff from the sweet shop, my tongue went bright red *2

K: They were crunchy, right?

J: Yeh! I would drink up all the syrup.

K: Haha.

J: I bet that would be no good under that tax in Berkeley.

T: Yeah.

K: Ahh, sweet shops...

T:???

J:???*3

K: I still feel like eating those kind of sweets sometimes.

J: Yeah. There aren't many sweet shops around these days, in the Tokyo area.

T: Yeah, there aren't.

K: But there are sections in other shops that sell those kinds of sweets.

T: A long time ago there was an izakaya in Sangenjaya that only served sweets as beer snacks.

K: Oh, there was, wasn't there?!

T: Yeh. I went a couple of times, cause its unusual, but sweets...

K: You can't withstand it?

J: After you become an adult, right? At first you are like, 'Woah, so nostalgic', but ..

T: Yeh, it gets boring.

J: You start to think halfway, 'this needs to be more tasteful!' Uh, in the precincts of Kishibojin there is apparently Japan's oldest sweet shop or something still there. Its a famous old man, or old woman who runs it.

K: I recently went to Kawagoe.

T: Oh, Little Edo!

K: Yeh, there is a sweet shop street there. The people there were amazing. Well, I mean they were all wearing yukatas and stuff, and eating.

T: Its made me want to go to a sweet shop!

J: Ah, there is a tonne of good places to eat there, isn't there?

K: Oh, is there? In Kawagoe?

J: Yeh.

K: As for sweet shops, the ones that have a downtown feeling are the best. 

J: Yeah.

K: Its nostalgic, going to the sweet shop in the evening, and getting those colourful squeezy things to drink...

J: Yeh!

K: And eating sweets at the same time.

J: Which was your favourite sweet, Kaoru? From the sweet shop?

K: From the sweet shop? I liked Curry rice-crackers, and 5yen chocolate, and those gummy type things in a box, that you pick up with a little stick.

J: Oh yeh.

K: I used to eat that kinda stuff.

T: What about you, Joe?

J: I liked plum jam, I sandwiched it between those kinda soft rice-crackers. And I liked the  Castella.

T: Oh yeh, they had those small ones.

J: Yeh, they were on a skewer. I used to eat them a lot.

K: Tasai?

T: I used to get those squeezy things too. And wasn't there always like a 10yen game outside sweet shops? I would win more sweets with that.

K: You won?? More sweets came out of the game?

T: It was like a 30yen ticket, right?

J, K: Ehh?

J: I never saw that.

T: Didn't you? Like, where you try to get the ball in the hole for ten yen? And if you win, you get a ticket?

K: Ah, I remember something like that where you can win, but I don't remember tickets coming out. It was little freebies. Ah, its nostalgic. Should we try going to a sweet shop on this show?

J: A sweet shop?? Should we??

K: Yeh.

T: Thats a good idea. With 100yen in change.

K: Actually, that place in Kawagoe was closed.

J: Haha, really?

K: I went all the way there, but..

J: Just for that?

K: Yeh.

J: Really?

K: Well, lets go to one on this show.

J: Yeh, lets do it! Film on location!

K: Ok, lets plan something. Lets fill ourselves with unhealthy snacks.

J: Ah, but it won't be that much.

K: Well, yeh.

J: It'll be limited to what you can get at the sweet shop.

T: Sounds good.

K: Is this ok? Us ending up talking about this?

T: Its ok, it feels good to talk about it.

J: It does, haha.

K: Ok, well, we'll finish here. Please subscribe. Thank you very much.

*1, 2 Difficult to hear, but i think its this.

*3 Couldn't catch.

#dir en grey #the freedom of expression #tfoe #kaoru #薫

[cat-sapphics]

Hey!

I follow the" aroace lesbian" tag and your recent posts have come up in my feed so I just wanted to say that being arospec, acespec (demiromatic graysexual, both labels in the aromantic and asexual spectrums) & lesbian is completely OKAY and you should not let anyone tell you the contrary. Especially uneducated people so 😚🤍

Many aroaces use the term aroace to encompass being in both aromantic and asexual spectrums; this means you experience little to no romantic/sexual attraction and that's more than valid. You can be both arospec and aspec! 🔥 Or arospec and asexual. Aromantic and acespec 🥺🤝

The way YOU experience romantic and sexual attraction is just different to the average allo person, & that doesn't make it any less valid. Attraction is an abstract concept and we shouldn't be putting ourselves into boxes but letting feelings be that, feelings.

Your experiences are necessary and important to our diverse & big aro/ace communities as an aroace lesbian! An aspec person is that who experiences little to no romantic attraction. That's it. THAT'S OKAY 🥰

And being an aspec lesbian is more than valid too, it's not a contradictory term because the little and fluctuating romantic & sexual attraction you DO experience, is ONLY towards women/nb so; I don't see why lesbian isn't a term you can't use. A lesbian is a women/nb female aligned person who experiences romantic, sexual and/or emotional attraction towards women/nb female aligned people. Check, check & check ✅

All in all, ace lesbians, aro lesbians and aroace lesbians are ALL part of the lesbian community & our unique experiences with romance and sex are necessary and valid for it 💓

Sorry if this got long, hope I made my point clear. Aroace lesbians have always been lesbians so don't let any exclusionists steal your peace 🧡🤍💖

thank you!! thank ya thank ya thank ya!! i really appreciate it <3

i will say, i think some of the anons i got did make some valid points (obviously not everywhere you look but they at least gave me something to think about in general) but it really took me by surprise how condescending and disapproving they all were. super uneducated too, i said i experience attraction differently or at least less frequently than average allo people and like ?? that doesn't mean i'm secretly a self-hating lesbophobe ?? you don't get to determine that for me if i'm genuinely happy even though i participate in lesbian discourse and am passionate about keeping the definition specific and closed ?? lol i didn't redefine lesbian or take away its initial meaning so it really had me peeved

i think most of their comments reflect on how they don't believe in aromanticism and asexuality being a spectrum, which i guess i invited by my own doing since i have some conservative and exclusionary views on the lgbt community and that affects my following/audience, but my response to that is that i use these labels because they bring me personal comfort. when i say i'm demiromantic i don't mean that alloromantics have zero standards when it comes to a potential partner or are completely mesmerized by the idea of hook-ups, just that the connection they need to start crushing comes within a decent time period with a personal connection, but not a super strong and deep and loving one that makes it exceptionally hard to fall in love despite however much we may desire to. the label doesn't exist to imply something bad about """normal""" people, it exists to name an experience many people have but to an intense degree. so, yes, it's a pointless social construct, it probably means nothing to you and that's fine, but it still means something to me. i'm not crying oppression or marginalization, and i'm not claiming that i'm lgbt on the basis of being demiromantic/greyasexual, but through being a nonbinary lesbian. that's the difference between mspec lesbians and aspec lesbians, is one is actively harmful to multiple groups and actually Does spawn from a place of internalized lesbophobia and/or biphobia, and the other is just "mmk this is just for me and affects nothing at all, it doesn't drag you into anything at all, i still qualify for lesbian the way you (should!) see it as technically even if you do believe it's redundant, so just... leave me alone" cause it reflects more on them than me when they make it their business by unfairly assuming things about me

same applies to me being greyasexual. still trying to figure out if it means that i experience sexual/physical attraction less frequently, less intensely, or both, but does that matter?? genuinely?? this is also redundant but i didn’t wanna leave it out of the paragraph about me being demiro fk;ljslkgbdvhbs. the aro disapproval part isn’t acceptable at all but i can at least see it since romance is so normalized and is a core part of, y’know, lgb relationships; the greyace disapproval however....... i don’t wanna label it as acephobia because i don’t really believe in aphobia being a thing, but it still kinda rubs me wrong to claim that sexual/physical attraction is a requirement ykyk... NOTHING WRONG WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEX OF COURSE (i myself kinda wanna try someday if that works out) i just think frowning upon someone who doesn’t UNLESS they try to claim they’re lgbt on that basis is.................. not really cool. i really hope people who read this understand what i’m trying to say and don’t label me as an ace inclus who thinks aphobia and oppression are real, i was just trying to make a point about my personal experiences oops lmao

and then it became "aroace means NO ATTRACTION AT ALL" okay... so i'm angled aroace, that's a sub-term since aroace is literally an umbrella term, actually (unlike lesbian, shit's complicated ykyk). "YOU'RE NOT AROACE THEN"....... they don't even like the idea of oriented aroace now either, so like, what then, are aroace people just never allowed to feel love or positive feelings from other people ever? jesus christ. i'm not even getting into this, i consider aro/ace identities to be secondary to describe one's attraction so this debate should not be as important as, say, discourse centering the L, G, B, or T. it's just dumb all around tbh

hope i addressed all the arguments against it, but i can't really care at this point if i missed something :/ i'll probably get a mean anon about it so don't worry!! /s jslgjgjkshkj;lhfp

speaking of, i've had to delete so many anons and even turn off the option to ask anonymously because of this discourse. it's so pointless in my opinion, so i've just stopped giving them my time unless i think it's worth answering - but even then, i try to keep it fairly short. i genuinely was not expecting my take on (cishet) ace discourse to turn into myself failing to be seen as a "real lesbian" despite literally meeting its definitive qualifications and then it just kept building up ?? stan behavior tbh, especially since plenty of them obviously come from the same users

i apologize for the rant. i just never really felt like i'd be listened to if i tried to explain my identity, so i gave up and just tried to ignore my way out of it. so i really genuinely appreciate your ask, especially since i can identify you. it really feels like i actually have someone on my side now, so even if you ever disagree i'd know you wouldn't harass me about it. it really means a lot, i really needed this from you and i don't wanna dump more shit but i feel that you deserve to know. so thank you again <3

#ask #thegyusorcerer #not anon #lesbian discourse #aroace lesbian #aspec #demiromantic #greyasexual #aromantic #asexual #lesbian #aro discourse #ace discourse #aspec discourse #lgbt discourse #really sorry for the dump lol i just always have a lot to say about everything all the time #i'm okay i promise it's just frustrating #i've been to twitter for 2 years so trust me cause tumblr cannot do a comparable amount of damage lmfao #and it's literally just discourse. the only thing that really gets to me is the possibility of being hypocritial #if i WANT to take a break i will #again thank u so much for the ask #hope this isn't too much :') #pridecat rants

[vietzuko]

if we used to share a discord server, this post is for you!

hello! i am going to try to do this as anonymously and non-confrontationally as possible. i do not want this to be a spectacle or call out post, but i will say that i am quite disturbed by the way situations have transpired on the server. 

in case you didn’t notice, i left! when i left, i wrote a little goodbye post in #general, which has since been deleted. either the mods deleted my goodbye or they banned me from the server (which automatically would delete my message). in case you didn’t see it, here was my goodbye message:

hi everyone, i’m leaving the server. if you’re a POC who is interested in joining an ATLA server where POC can talk about ATLA and critically discuss race, feel free to PM me for a link! otherwise, this is goodbye. see you all around.

i won’t rehash everything that happened in the events leading to this, nor will i name names in this post. if you were on the server, you probably saw what happened publicly or you can message me personally, either here or on discord. if we know each other through the server and you want some clarity over names/events in this post, please PM me. 

if you are a POC in the ATLA fandom who is concerned by the events of this post and you would like me to clarify which server i’m talking about, please PM me.

i just wanted to share the very long message that i sent to the mods (on their prompting!) because i feel that it shows my perspective on what transpired.  unfortunately, this message did not result in any meaningful change, except for me getting banned/my messages removed from the server. i suppose that’s a type of meaning! haha. 

anyway. here’s the message. cw for racism, yellowface

hi MOD 1 (and presumably the other mods who will read this message)! thanks for reaching out. i’ve had some time to dwell on the situation and discuss it with other people in the server who witnessed it and reached out to me personally. this is going to be an unbelievably long message, so i apologize in advance and thank you for your time in reading it.

i think the first thing i’d like to do is give some context for the incident and to give my perspective on why i said the things i said.

i have PMed a mod about a racist incident in the server exactly once. it was when i first joined, and i saw a picture of a white person in yellowface in the cosplay channel. i didn’t know any of you personally yet (and this was before some of you even joined on as mods). i have since told SERVER MEMBER 1 about this incident and i’m pretty sure they mentioned it to you because i noticed you’ve changed the yellowface rule. but i think that the context of me pinging a mod about a racist incident and then witnessing another (although less egregious) instance of racism by the mods might explain why i am, in general, hesitant about talking to mods about racism on the server. i am just trying to live my life and experience as few micro-aggressions as possible.

i also think the fact that i regularly educate and push back against white people’s racially harmful messages in the server is also important context. i realize none of you likely know this, but about every two weeks i receive an unsolicited PM from a different white person apologizing/asking for forgiveness/asking for reassurance/asking further questions about their racism on the server. i’m glad people are learning from me, but this is a huge amount of emotional labor that i put into the server and its members because of course i have to reply and explain things and tell them not to worry and thank them for apologizing, etc. i know that these messages aren’t your fault, nor am i asking you to do anything about this. but it feels important that you know the price that i (and perhaps other poc in the server, although i can’t speak to that) pay in order to share space with you.

MOD 2 has even messaged me personally to thank me for educating people in the server and responding to racist messages, saying: “really appreciate how much effort you put in and everything, i was trying to type something up but floundering badly.” it was a nice message, and i appreciated it a lot! it also led me to believe that the mods would prefer if i engage with racist messages myself, rather than ping them, because it felt like i was just going to be more able/willing to articulate a response anyway.

so when SERVER MEMBER 2 messaged the zukka channel “thought that lives in my head rent free: Sokka's hairstyle in canon is just a warrior's hairstyle and has meaning because of that. Sokka wearing the same hairstyle in a modern AU is undisputably queer-coded” and nobody replied for a while, i assumed that it was because they had seen what i had seen-- a racially insensitive message that totally ignores sokka’s indigenous heritage and the history behind indigenous hair-- so i decided to step in with what i thought was a balanced response. 

SERVER MEMBER 2 then replied with a cheery “Fair enough! I will defer to your greater knowledge,” which i couldn’t tell was sarcastic or not, but i decided to be generous and to believe they were genuinely thankful for my reply, so i responded with a “you too can have great knowledge. i only know things because i read things. anyone can read things and learn,” which is something i firmly believe and also a way to divert the conversation away from SERVER MEMBER 2’s mistake, which i felt was the most dignified solution for them. i suppose this message could be read as aggressive because i didn’t use exclamation marks? but that feels unfair and ungenerous because i genuinely did not mean this message in a harsh way.

then SERVER MEMBER 3 jumped in and asked a few questions, which i read as a request for clarification, so i tried to continue to explain my point. it felt like SERVER MEMBER 3 wasn’t understanding what i was trying to explain, or at least i wasn’t able to articulate myself well enough, which was making me a little tired and stressy (and i was also thinking about my own race and queerness in stressful and triggering ways), so i decided to tap out of the conversation. 

me: dude i love u and i respect u and i truly believe that u are trying very hard to understand, but this conversation is making me kinda heated

SERVER MEMBER 3: I’m gonna step back from it because it’s not my conversation to insert myself into, which is what I did initially and apologize for

me: i think it's so important to engage + ask questions & i appreciate that u respect my opinions on these things, but i think i'm just. i have said what i need to say and now must sleep. much love to all.

to me, this felt like me expressing that i was feeling tired and upset and leaving the conversation, while still attempting to reassure SERVER MEMBER 3 that i still admired him as a friend. i felt like the conversation had ended peacefully!

i hope this helps explain why MOD 3’s message came as such a surprise. 

“the escalation to defensiveness and accusation regarding the original (relatively benign) statement was unnecessary and exaggerated. There’s an atmosphere of purity policing that’s been growing, which is why I took away the squick channel, as I assumed that a space that encouraged no repercussions was facilitating irresponsibility aggressive arguments. “

i truly didn’t believe i was being defensive. i was very careful not to accuse anyone of anything. in fact, i tried as far as i could to coat my language in “i” statements-- “i would personally not choose…”, “i would just. stay away from…” in order to avoid “accusations.” i was also trying very hard not to be aggressive, and i (and other poc that i have spoken to about this) believe that the idea that my messages were aggressive is racialized. just because a poc is upset about racism, it doesn’t mean they’re attacking you personally! 

i feel so hurt that my messages were wilfully interpreted in this way, instead of being read generously and from a more compassionate perspective, especially since i voiced my own upset and discomfort during the conversation. it distresses me to think that me expressing negative emotions is seen as aggressive, rather than a cause for empathy or care, and i do believe that this is because of my race.

if a mod had asked me to take the messages to the DMs or to squick or even just let me know that someone was interpreting my messages as aggressive, i would have changed my behavior. (like i said earlier, i spend a HUGE amount of energy coddling white people on this server. i am very used to it.) 

instead, i got the shock of 45 minutes after the fact, being publicly chastised and labeled as aggressive and being told that my conversation was “something nasty or unwanted.” 

the idea that SERVER MEMBER 3 was de-escalating a “clearly escalating situation” feels untrue to me. i was ready to move on after i sent my message to SERVER MEMBER 2, but he kept engaging me on the subject! (no hate to SERVER MEMBER 3 on this.)

i think one of the most painful parts of this whole situation is the implication that i was attempting to “purity police,” as though i am a person who picks fights just because i want to feel good about picking fights?? or to act holier-than-thou???? i do not do this. if you have witnessed ANY interaction i’ve had with a racially insensitive white person on the server, you will know this. 

i am simply a person of color trying to live my life. i do not want to fight about racism. i want to chill out and watch my cartoons. unfortunately, sometimes, someone will say something that i consider racially insensitive and i will do my best to engage and explain why i find this insensitive. that is all. (it is important to note that most of the time, when i see racially insensitive things on the server, i do not say anything because i am tired and it is a lot of effort to engage. i truly only engaged this time because nobody had replied to the message and i was just like, oh, fine, i guess i’ll educate, since no one else has!)

this whole incident has honestly made me really hurt and disrespected. i have enjoyed my time on the server and i have made some good friends there. however, it feels clearer and clearer to me that the server is a space where white feelings of safety (not being criticized for their racist content) are prioritized over poc’s feelings of safety (not having to witness and experience racist content). i sincerely considered myself to be an active and enthusiastic member of the server, maybe even friends with some of you, but it feels to me that all of our previous positive interactions have been displaced by this idea of me as an aggressive, overzealous purity cop who calls things racist for fun. 

i don’t even know how to repair my relationship with the server after this because i really do feel horrible and sick about the whole thing. i have spoken to other poc who also expressed their concerns about the way the mods handled the situation, even if these other poc weren’t directly involved, and some of us are considering leaving the server, if we haven’t already. (i would also like to note that these people reached out to me, unprompted, to make sure i was doing okay after what they and i interpreted as a micro-aggression by the mods. like, we independently read the situation in this way.)

(also, not sure if this matters, but i talked to SERVER MEMBER 3 the morning after the incident because i wanted to make sure he was okay, and we both ended up apologizing to each other and having a really good and productive talk.)

thanks again for reading this. i hope that you’ll be able to better understand my perspective on what occurred. i truly appreciate the work that you put into the server (especially as someone who also puts work into the server lol), and i know it’s difficult to mod a large server (i also mod an atla server!), but i continue to feel hurt about this. i know it’s hard to read tone over server messages, but i really wish that my (and SERVER MEMBER 4′s and SERVER MEMBER 5′s ) server messages had been read with greater compassion. 

...

and that’s all folks! i’m going to be remaking my blog soon, partially because this whole experience has exhausted me and partially because i have been meaning to anonymize my internet presence for some time.

#felix.txt

[pridewhatpride]

I like Higurashi a lot too! Did you like Gou? I liked the opening and the animation but didn't really like Gou overall. But I know people have varied heavily on Gou so I'd love to know your thoughts. My personal favorite season od Higurashi is the first tho or Rei.

Long post alert. Putting a cut right here so people don't have to scroll if they don't care.

Personally I wasn't a fan of the style initially- it's... too pretty and neat? I did change my mind because I rewatched the Studio Deen one recently enough and... well. The polish in the animation does give off the wrong vibe, but not in a 'it's cool because it's jarring' kind of way. In a 'this shouldn't look like pretty candy in a box' way. We all know what Higurashi is. Luckily enough, they managed to make some scenes work- pretty animation oftentimes cancels out the drama because you can't distort it without making it look off (reasons why I love the art direction of Masaaki Yuasa, but that's a different topic). In general I get why people might say that it looks better than it actually is- however.

I could go on about the opening, its meaning and its visuals for like... actual ages. I'll spare you that or save it for another post.

I liked Gou a lot and it's all because of the character drama between Rika and Satoko. I know that apparently there is a strong connection with the gods of Umineko, but honestly I haven't played that (it's... long. Really long). Overall, what makes Higurashi enjoyable for me is the character tension, not the horror per se. I loved the Mion-Shion bits in the original, the big question mark that Rena was throughout the whole first season. Keiichi is there (I don't hate him, he makes the series work, but he's absolutely the least interesting one). Rika turned out to be the protagonist when I thought it would always be Keiichi Maebara... In general, it's the characters. The plot is pretty good, too, you never have a clue what is going on and sometimes nobody tells you outright- I think that's great.

People will shit on Gou and the beginning of Sotsu a lot, I can see why- to some what we had was satisfying and the sequel feels like a glorified remake. Yes. I get it. But Satoko. Try and tell me Satoko didn't come off as the most useless character, with the only nuance to her being that she has a brother and her uncle is trash. Like- that is an hyperbole- I loved the arcs that covered her backstory and her feelings towards Keiichi. But I watched Gou and I thought... hey. She isn't just a child who had bad things happen to her. She is the trickster of the story, the joker. Satoko Hojo is a cool character and I understand her motivations. It's warped and wrong, but it's so human. She doesn't want Rika to leave, as simple as that. Who would want to be left alone? After all that? There is nothing worse to me than the idea of a neverending nightmare that just keeps looping. And from Rika's perspective it's so fucking terrifying. She's been in control, always, all the time. She always knew what was up, or at least more than everyone else. And all of sudden that isn't the case anymore.

... Imagine a bad addiction- one you struggled to get out of. It's been years. You've stopped. You're happy. Then you wake up one morning and your progress is gone. You relapse. You drown in everything that the addiction was to you once more- but you can't do anything to stop, because you're not the one actively acting, you're subject to the course of events. Rika has never been a pawn, but now she is- the pawn Satoko wants so desperately to bring under her command. And she's alone. Hanyuu is gone, because Hanyuu was a mistake that was never meant to happen- Featherine is her real identity and she's the real Oyashiro. She's the one who's to be feared. The powers Rika had were nothing, they didn't mean anything at all.

I love stories of twisted love like that. Satorika isn't and will never be a healthy relationship, but it's the star of the show in Gou and Sotsu. Rika was trying to solve things, she still is. Satoko is a calculating force of chaos who is forcing the hand of fate and is backed by a goddess who will simply giggle at all the misfortune she has to cause.

It's... kinda beautiful, to me. It's all wrong, it's all desperate and absolutely sick. That's what I look for in Higurashi. The first few series were about Rika's hope in escaping Hinamizawa. Gou and Sotsu are about the desperation that comes when the carefully crafted hope born from a shared effort are torn apart by the person you trust the most.

I can see why maybe the execution isn't perfect. I can see why people would dislike it. Maybe I think about it too much. Maybe if I rewatched it I would talk about missed opportunities and bad scenes. Who knows. What I do know is that if I draw art for a series, it's because it's left a mark and has left me thinking about it. Gou reawakened my love for Higurashi and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I am going to enjoy the hell out of Sotsu, too, I think.

#mmmhhh i let myself be carried away oops. #might plug i believe what you said so you can listen to it while you read lol #higurashi #higurashi no naku koro ni #higurashi gou #higurashi no naku koro ni gou #higurashi sotsu #higurashi no naku koro ni sotsu #higurashi when they cry