#i would totally make one myself if i could find enough screenshots

[ekingston]

Your reply on ao3 about your wife’s screenshot and being a cheerleader stuck with me, because I’ve realized I don’t actually articulate enough how amazing some writers (read: you) are. I finished the most recent chapter of soup (after eleven-thousand unacceptable distractions), and I was going to plunk together a quick comment that would absolutely not do enough justice to express the genius I find your writing to be. So instead I opened a google doc and started smashing my keyboard which resulted in a pretty long-winded... something, but allow me to fan-girl for like, a second:

The quality and style of your writing floors me every time. There is an effortlessness about it that makes it totally and completely bingeable but also something that gives a little more each time I read it. For me, it’s the most replayable form of literature: I can go back for the plot, for the character rapport, for the punchy dialogue, or for the voice of the narrator. It fits all the moods. It charms me. It amuses me. I want to hug it.

Your work excites me, and when I think of authors and works that excite me, I’m lumping you in with like, Heartburn which is an all-time favorite for that exact reason: I can binge it in a day or go back and sip on it and discover something clever and witty and just impossibly gorgeous in execution.

And speaking as someone who CANNOT for the life of me write something that doesn’t eventually tumble into a vat of angst, I also just adore the way you manage tension without losing the light-hearted reading experience. Holiday wine is a masterpiece, AND I think Soup is almost better because you juggle so much more: the chorus of characters are taking on their own plot lines, the stakes are higher, you add danger and adventure, you weave a more complex, interconnected storyline, and you massage it all beautifully to act as a supporting cast to the core of the story.

Which brings me to the trope (and a complete tangent): miscommunication. Like, ok look… I usually can’t stand it. But that’s mostly because of the execution: the obvious interruptions, the clear misdirection and disregard for natural intuition, the not asking the right questions, the very blatant ham-fisted forcefulness of it just… I can’t.

AND THEN YOU WENT AND MADE A MASTERCLASS OF IT.

You took every complaint you didn’t know I had and put in the work to make it believable. Kara is charmingly oblivious but not for lack of trying. She perfectly talks past Nia and Alex and Lena not just once but every. time. and every time is just so well-conceived and articulated and *gesticulates hands in the air wildly trying to find the right word* gah. The world of her confusion and misguidedness is so believable and commendable and *gesticulates again* gah. This is the absolute genius of the work. I will give kudos till I’m blue in the face about the story as a whole, but I will die on the ‘Easter crushed the miscommunication trope’ hill.

And this is just ONE EXAMPLE of how you knock it out of the park every single time. I could go on about how solidly you write the characters, how charming your prose is, how epic your one-shots are, or how I don’t even care that I can’t trust your chapter count anymore but this is already a run-on and I'm running out of air.

I don’t know how you write, if there is one draft or a million, if you just stream–of-conscious this into existence, or if you summon the words through a ouija board, but it’s brilliant and commendable and THANK YOU for doing what you’re doing.

so. this message is. a miracle? and you are a GIFT. and i’m not going to be able to elaborate much beyond that, because unlike you, i am terrible; at writing attentive notes, at handling compliments, and—hilariously, maybe, since i’ve finally started thinking of myself as a writer again after a decade of self-loathing false starts—at writing down my thoughts in an easily digestible way.

can i say it’s the nicest thing i’ve ever gotten from someone who isn’t (yet?) a close personal friend? that the timing of it was almost implausibly perfect because it arrived in the middle of the deep breathing exercises i was doing after being made aware of some deeply stupid twitter discourse around Soup that was going on right as i was getting ready to post its final chapter?

i think i’ll stick to the important stuff: like THANK YOU. like how your (AMAZING) note completely obliterated the bad stuff and made me excited not just to wrap up this fic, or even to jump into the next, but about doing it all in the first place. that it was a very needed reminder of what an immensely privileged position i’m in to be able to put something out online that brings people (you) enough joy that you want to come tell me about it. and, obviously, that the specific things you chose to highlight are extraordinarily flattering, and i am absolutely not immune to that kind of thing.

i went back and forth on publishing this ask because it feels almost embarrassing, and boastful. but whatever, you know? you made me feel good about my writing again and provided important perspective and ultimately you put thought and effort and overall awesomeness into it and i’m not going to hide that away when you intended it to be shared.

thank you. SO MUCH.

#also i’m totally going to cheat and add: #MISCOMMUNICATION MY BELOVED #if you’d told me a few years back that i was going to write a slapstick-adjacent romantic comedy of errors #i would have died a little inside #i LOATHED drama that only existed because people refused to open their mouths and speak to each other #you don’t know how thrilling it is to hear that you do too & that you think i got it RIGHT 🥳 #anyway you. are a hero. #i’m going to be thinking about this one for a while! #ps it’s the ouija board. 100% #ask me things! #eqt-95 #TSOS #YMHW

[babbletaels]

After playing sky for a while and not going through the elder cutscenes since the first time, I decided to do just that. I had such a powerful experience my first time in eden that I didn't want to let that experience go, I based my theories around it even. Right. I thought I was meeting myself, offering myself forgiveness for not being able to save everyone, forgiving myself and being forgiven all at the same time. But I have some more lore heavy ideas and theories now. Though I still don't know everything there is to know, so take it with a grain of salt.

I watched the Vault elders cutscene last, of course, and I realized that I had completely forgotten this one after all this time. Maybe you have too, so let's go through it a little.

You get to see all the elders constellations light up with more detail, then they all gather and bow to you to thank you, then you're shown.. A constellation that looks like a crown.

All the realms have constellations: this must be edens constellation of course. A crown. A king?

A king in a castle, what else could it be? I don't know what orb he is holding. When I saw this, it went really fast by and I got the feeling that by his expression the king is distraught, stuck in his castle, and immediately after you're teleported into the room that leads you to eden. All the elders showing up, bowing to you, showing you a distraught king in a castle and then taking you to the gate to eden, it seems clear to me that they're sending us on a mission: You saved us, despite what we did, please save him too.

So the next time I went to eden I would keep this in mind, I'm going there to find and save the king. But I've been to eden many times, I already know that I'll never meet the king, even if I save every single statue I won't save the king, because I never have saved him any of the other times.

I go to eden to fail my mission once again.

But with the king who I'll never meet in mind, things seem different. This time in eden I just so happen, maybe it was a glitch, to make it to the very last petrified friend with 18 winged light left. What do I do, just sit here and wait for death by falling rocks? I'm down to 10 winged light and I start crawling toward the giant crystal that never seems to get closer. Maybe.. What if I did make it there? Would I find him? But I didn't make it to the crystal, of course. I fall. I go through the painfully slow limping towards my winged light. I reach my savior.

And I stop for a moment to think. Why IS he sitting there, looking sad.. looking.. guilty? I reach my hand out and he takes it hesitantly. Of course maybe he is lonely but then wouldn't he be happy someone is here to get him? But it strikes me.

I'm not here to be saved from my doom, I'm not here in this room with a winged light who I need to revive myself. This light needs something from me. I help him up from the floor. He looks at me. I have the option to offer him a silent hug. I imagine if I had been here for the first time, what did I think this was? A hug of forgiveness to myself. Maybe I wasn't totally wrong after all. Because the light hesitates as I extend my arms to him, as if he's thinking

I don't deserve forgiveness

But I have already forgiven him. Does he know you don't need to think you deserve it for another person to forgive you? Because he accepts my embrace, and as he accepts being forgiven, he saves himself at the same time as he saves me. He's with me now, there's a crack where light streams in, and we fly out of the darkness together finally reaching the place beyond the crystal. His castle.

Idk.

Some people say the "winged light" in there is prince alef. I never understood why really. But I always for some reason believed the prince and the king to be the same person (obviously at different points in his life) so I kinda see it now.

(screenshots from sky wikis youtube channel because I wasn't fast enough to screenshot the actual cutscene)

#sky: cotl #sky children of the light #sky cotl #skyblr #sky: children of the light

[kitkatsudon]

KitKat reads the TKEM Novel: Introduction & Prologue & Chapter 1

Hello all! Those that have seen my account over the past couple of days will know that I have recently come into possession of copies of both volumes of the TKEM novel. I always had the vague idea in my mind that these would contain information that we don’t see in the show, characters’ inner monologues and such like, so as someone seemingly on a quest to find out everything there is to know about this show (how did it end up like this? I’m not going to dwell on that before I start regretting all my life choices), I have taken it upon myself to read these books and share this knowledge with the rest of what’s left of this fandom.

These books, of course, are in Korean, which is a language I do not speak and don’t have any intention of learning in the near future. I definitely couldn’t learn Korean in a quick enough time frame to be able to read these books in a satisfyingly short amount of time, so instead I’m utilising the power of the internet and using two online translation services, and then sort of combining the two with my preexisting knowledge of the show to create a usable translation that feels mostly right. So here’s my disclaimer: some of this stuff could very easily be mistranslated, because I’m embarking on this journey with just the powers of the internet, homosexual audacity, and autism to help me along.

So! Here’s how this is going to work. For every chapter of the book I manage to translate, I’m going to make a new post where I summarise the events of the chapter, share my thoughts on it, and then share any specific new details that we’ve learnt. All of them will be tagged with ‘kitkat reads the tkem novel’ so if you want any of the information in this series for whatever reason, hopefully these posts will be easy to find. In this post I’ll cover the prologue and chapter 1 because the prologue is barely anything at all, but from here on out it’ll be one chapter per post… whenever I finish the next chapter.

Ok then. Shall we begin?

Prologue

The novel starts with a bit of preamble about the show’s lore, not much that anyone who had already seen the show wouldn’t know, but I suppose it makes sense to open like this if they were trying to appeal to people who hadn’t already seen the show? It’s an interesting choice, though, because some of this stuff is information we don’t find out until a little later in the show, for example how the two worlds split thanks to the life/death of Crown Prince Sohyeon. However, without the visual nature of the show to keep it appealing, having a little bit of backstory about the Kingdom of Corea would be nice to have so new readers aren’t totally confused about the setting of the novel when it begins.

The only semi-new thing we really learn from the prologue is that the palace (which I will call Haeungung Palace from here on out as part of my personal mission to spread this information) is located specifically on Dongbaekseom island in Busan. This is something I had pretty much figured out already by being a big nerd and looking at screenshots of the show and comparing those to maps of Busan, but it’s nice to have this for real confirmed by a canon source. Another thing to maybe mention is that the flower symbol of the royal Jeonju Lee family is a plum blossom, but this is also something that you could probably work out beforehand.

In conclusion, this is a good introduction… but a little useless to established fans of the show, who I think would make up most of the demographic of this book. Still, it’s best for them to cover their bases.

Chapter 1: Find the clock rabbit

The first thing to mention here is that “clock rabbit” refers to the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, which the English subs on Netflix call “the white rabbit with the clock” but I’m going to say “clock rabbit” because that seems to be the direct translation, and it makes all Yeong’s lines about “Is it a rabbit or a clock?” make a lot more sense in my mind. This chapter covers four scenes from episode 1 of the show: the scene where Gon is being dressed by his new attendant Park Gyubong and he catches the talismans that Lady Noh put in his room, the scene where Gon and Koo Seoryeong have their meeting after Gon goes riding, pretty much all of the rowing scene sequence from the race to Gon going to chase after the “clock rabbit,” and then Gon very briefly in his study alone, looking at his Alice in Wonderland book.

What stood out to me the most while reading, getting over the fact that they’ve changed the order of the scenes from the show (Cheonjongo in 1994 is happening next chapter), is how much extra dialogue they’ve cut out. Again… I guess it makes sense, if they’re trying to condense a sixteen episode drama into two volumes of a book then of course they’re going to want to get straight to the point, but this is disappointing for me personally because a lot of what they cut out are the fun, familiar conversations that Gon had with Yeong throughout episode 1. For example, Gon and Yeong never have their conversation after Gon finishes his ride where Yeong reveals that there are more talismans than Gon thought, and they also cut out the conversation between Gon and Yeong in his study after the race day, which means we don’t get “are you having fun, Captain Jo?” and we don’t get their following conversation about Gon wanting to find his saviour, and Yeong assuring him that he’s grown up well and he doesn’t need anyone to save him anymore. Which is… fine. It’s fine, but it’s still disappointing. Even without coming at this from a Gonjo angle, their friendship is still very important to me, and it’s disheartening to find out that where the show abandoned it very quickly, the book doesn’t seem to be developing it at all. That’s not to say that there aren’t moments, but it’s not as much as I would have liked.

The other big thing that stood out to me is… well… how do I put this? The book really wants you to know that Gon is perfect and amazing and handsome and the best man in all of Corea and no one else could ever compare and he’s just so incredible and wonderful and everybody loves him so much and every woman is in love with him because he’s just that good. Which is hilarious to me, as a loser (affectionate) Gon truther, because this man exists in my head as an adorable mess of mathematical equations, overthinking, and pretending to be fine, and it’s just… no matter how many times they tell me how perfect and shiny he is, I’m just not going to believe it. Let me give you an excerpt, so you can see the tone of this and know what I’m talking about.

Gon’s body, which he trained to protect himself against any danger, was perfect because his safety was the security of the kingdom. Gyubong was impressed anew by a glimpse of his hard and wide shoulders.

Gyubong glanced at the pride of the Kingdom of Corea before he could meet his indifferent eyes. His sharp nose, smooth lips, and sharp jawline stood out under his straight eyebrows. The third king of the Kingdom of Corea boasted an appearance that deserved the love of the kingdom’s people.

Like— it’s so unserious! They’re really trying so hard to ram it down your throat how utterly perfect Lee Gon is - and in this scene it reads like Gon’s eyebrows may be straight but Park Gyubong sure isn’t. They also mention Gon’s “long legs” when he’s running after his clock rabbit and… wow, does this answer that age old question? Is this what Yeong knows that Gon uses his long legs for - running away and giving Yeong a headache?

So, after all this, what have we learnt so far?

Park Gyubong is either very confident in his heterosexuality or he has a huge crush on King Lee Gon

“The royal courtiers often found the principled Captain of the Guard more difficult than the easy-going king” which… hurts me, a little, to imagine the palace staff bitching about Yeong behind his back. Does it make sense? …yes, to be fair yes, yes it does, it makes a lot of sense for Yeong to rule Haeungung palace with an iron fist as he tries desperately to take care of Gon’s safety, so I just hope that none of the other members of staff are being too mean about our beloved Yeongie :(

Yeong’s naval rank is confirmed to be a Soryeong/Lieutenant Commander! If you’ve seen my post about military ranks in TKEM then you’ll see that this is something that you can see in the show by looking at his epaulettes, but it’s nice to have it confirmed in writing here

Yeong was described as being “born and bred to serve the king.” This is something we knew already, but having it said explicitly here… it’s doing something to me, so it’s getting its own point.

Yeong specifically says to Park Gyubong that “His Majesty doesn’t like other people’s hands touching his body.” It’s not just any touch, he specifically mentions hands. Fanfic nation, do with this information what you will.

Mentioning the moment where little Yeong joined little Gon in crying after Lee Ho’s funeral is something that hurts Yeong’s pride. We can only assume that Gon knows this because he has brought it up in the past and Yeong has got very flustered about it.

On that topic, Gon thinks about that moment after his dad’s funeral after Yeong is like !!!!! when Park Gyubong mentions covering Gon’s scar.

Lady Noh has been noticeably anxious about finding Gon a partner ever since he turned thirty (Korean age). Gon isn’t sure if it was before that, but thirty is the age that he mentions. The Korean word for partner used is 짝, which Wordreference tells me means “pair, mate, buddy.” Interestingly, not necessarily wife, very gender neutral. This is in Gon’s internal monologue so again, fanfic nation, this one’s for you.

It’s also said that Lady Noh is more like a mother to Gon than his own mother was, which again is something we already knew but it’s very nice to have it written.

It’s crossed Lady Noh’s mind that Gon might have a secret mistress and that’s why he has never been interested in getting married, but she figured that this was illogical because Gon is always being watched while he’s in the palace. Thank you for your hard work, Jo Yeong!

The issue of marriage is apparently the only duty of Gon’s that he ever abandons, which… idk, there’s something there.

Gon feels like he’s free of all his worries when he goes riding, especially with Maximus, so riding is basically like Gon’s therapy :D

Maximus is his “favourite horse” which is something else that’s just nice to have in writing

It is mentioned several times in this chapter that Gon “is the favourite of every woman in the kingdom.” It’s giving… heteronormative, but that doesn’t surprise me. However, Koo Seoryeong doesn’t count herself as being one of these women because she can see up close how Gon is putting on as much of an act as she is.

Koo Seoryeong’s ex-husband was not only from a chaebol family but also a conglomerate leader. This is interesting to me because it’s mentioned in the show that he’s the second son so… what happened to the first son? Is he the leader of his own separate corporation? Was he just not as good as his younger brother?

Gon finds the way Koo Seoryeong is clear about expressing her desires uncomfortable because, as the king, he’s never been able to have his own desires or express his own desires freely

“Yeong’s nerves were on edge” while Gon was rowing in the competition, because it was an outdoor event. He finds these things stressful because Gon already came close to death once, and you never know if it’ll happen again

As soon as he hears a gunshot, Gon is immediately transported back to the night of the treason. Even if he doesn’t show it outwardly, it’s crossing his mind at the slightest trigger.

That time at the rowing competition is the first time that Gon has run away during an outdoor event. He runs away often and he knows he causes trouble for the Royal Guard, but this is the first time he’s done it at an event like that.

Gon can recognise Yeong just by his footsteps

Gon leaves his duties in the palace once or twice a year - either because he wants some personal time, or he’s in desperate need of it because he feels too overwhelmed by his regular life. I already assumed it was because of that, but to have it confirmed… fanfic nation, this is for you again

Gon was still thinking about the night of the treason when he got his Alice in Wonderland book out at the end of episode 1, and he could still vividly feel the sticky blood on the soles of his feet, and the feeling of something constricting around his neck. He felt like it could still happen again at any moment. Clearly, Lee Gon needs some better therapy than just going riding with Maximus.

Final thoughts: I’m very much enjoying seeing into the characters’ minds like this, especially Gon, since we’ve had a lot of him this chapter. I like how the book is able to show how often Gon is thinking about the night of the treason, making it and therefore his PTSD a much more present thing than in the show. It remains to be seen whether the currently hilarious Gon-worshipping is going to become annoying after a while, or whether or not seeing the characters’ inner thoughts is going to start annoying me when the main romance plot gets going. If it’s in the same tone as the Gon-worshipping… yeesh. That’ll be an experience.

My main thought so far? Not enough Yeong. There’s not as much Yeong as there was in the show, and there isn’t even much Yeong there. This book could be greatly improved with more Yeong. I suppose we’ll have to stick to fanfiction for that.

#kitkat reads the tkem novel #tkem #the king: eternal monarch #I can’t help but think… if Gon is always being watched by Yeong #and Lady Noh figures that Gon can’t have a secret mistress because people would have noticed #the only person that Gon can be alone with without Yeong being too overprotective is… Yeong himself #idk guys that’s just a silly little thought haha #these posts are of course for everyone in the fandom and not just the gonjo side of it #but I know that most of my audience also suffers from gonjo brainrot soooo…

[probablyhuntersmom]

Ok, I was told about this.

emerald-entrails-hunter,

I'm gonna show a total of four screenshots in this post, and I don't wanna force what people think of me or twist any narratives. You readers can decide 😔 It would be good though, if readers have a look at both her post and this one that I have written. Before deciding what kind of person I am.

After the first boundary you put up in September, I still sent you an absolutely insensitive ask shortly after you ended things on Discord, and I wrote a physical letter to send to you. In both, not only I did not give a proper apology, but I violated your boundary of "Do not contact me again". In no way am I justifying what I did but, I was desperate to try and get us to reconcile, even if it was executed so poorly. And re: the matter that even led up to the end of our friendship to begin with.....I was cowardly. I am so sorry for my hurtful behaviour in that situation too. For all this, I am truly sorry. 😔

And I know that people have varying opinions about vagueposting. But like, if people see my vagueposts, wasn't that a conscious choice they made to seek out my vagueposts, policing what I put up?

Look. Even putting up this post, is terrifying to me. But to quote you, I to a degree also need to stand up for myself here, or else I'm going to spiral badly just before a vacation that's in 5 days. I am not like your abuser. It has taken me many months to even begin loving myself again after what happened. 😔

There was absolutely no way that I was going to show up outside your door at all.

I am definitely not that person. I put in my vagueposts that any reminders of rural Japan would be triggering e.g. even imagining tatami flooring in my head would make me gag, so why would I spend a huge chunk of $ to even go there now, in the first place (far more so now, since I'm in remission for cancer)? That would make me feel sicker to my stomach than the set of multiple triggers I already had. One of my posts also speaks about me cancelling a hotel booking. Which means I was NOT going to go to Japan to find you.

Proof from my email inbox:

And I would have done this much earlier. But I got diagnosed with cancer.

So, I suspect that you and your group have deliberately not factored in info like that in your callout. Because you really want to push a certain narrative here. If you have been monitoring me, you would have seen that info. But you do not appear to have incorporated said info into how you are viewing this whole thing.

This group has assumed that my motive was about inserting messages and about reaching out to connect, when instead I was just processing my feelings. Is there not a difference between those? I feel that this group has created their own definitions for things.

This group has actively chosen to peek at a blog they don't want to follow (mine), like hate-watching something to feel righteous, and then got ticked off - idk about internet culture differences, but you could have chosen not to look? Esp after I said I cancelled my hotel booking? AND even when I did not speak ill of you at all in my posts, it still wasn't good enough for your group's set of rules. This feels like any phrase I type is going to be seen by them as "*hisssssss* she broke our rules!!", so I have a very bad feeling about continuing.

Whether you believe me or not, I already felt so so awful and guilty upon sending off the letter. And, seeing your art in my suggestions sidebars was not something I sought out. I didn't want to see your art. But the previews of your art still made their way past Tumblr's blocking and filtering system, and they would trigger me. This means I would definitely, absolutely, never want to show up begging you for anything, or write you anymore letters, after the wrongdoings from last year that are going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I would not dare to at all, because the guilt is still eating into me every day 😔😔😔

How ashamed do you think I feel now, now that I have learnt that what I did caused you to move apartments? And I do not want to say this in any manipulative manner at all. I say it from a place of utter sadness and shame.

And importantly, you sent me these from a new sideblog you created, back in February when you heard about my cancer:

In your callout post, you say there was absolutely no misunderstanding that went down between us. But in your February ask, you said "a grand misunderstanding".

If you've changed your mind, then ok, it's perfectly valid. But it really sounds like two completely different people who sent me this long ask in Feb, versus the callout post from 12 or so hours ago.

You said, "You don't care about how you've made me feel". But if I carry this much guilt, every single day, doesn't that mean that I care about how I have made you feel?

Or, are you wanting me to care about how you feel, in a very very specific way? I'm not you, and at this point I really don't think I can be.

You saying "this happened last flipping September" and "we only knew each other for 2-3 months tops"...means you have given my grief a timeline and deadline. I will really, really have to disagree about this. You may not understand it, but this is one area that I definitely can't change my mind about.

Grief is as unique as fingerprints are, and my grief has stretched on for 9.5 months now because the 2-3 good months we had? They mattered. They. Mattered. That. Much. To. Me. Those short months were real. It's not that I was scheming with some long-term plan, to be power-hungry or hungry for control in the friendship.

I still loved you all this time and mourned deeply, though now that you've put up that post, I'm really not so sure anymore.

You have every right to feel frustrated that I'm still mourning after almost 10 months. But if you are trying to say here that I must grieve in a way that you want, I'm very sorry but I really can't. Reading your callout post, I also do not feel like you have acknowledged the heavy guilt I have been carrying, which I am not lying about. I am acknowledging your pain, even if you cannot trust that I am, but don't see that you have acknowledged mine in the callout post.

Why couldn't you use a more balanced statement e.g. "I understand you are guilty, but your vagueposting makes me extremely paranoid and uncomfortable"?

Instead, you are saying "You don't care about how you've made me feel".

I am very very sorry, and could not be more sorry, for all the hurt I have caused you. This is the theme of the ask that I wanted to send to you this coming Monday, to that same sideblog of yours. But I won't send it anymore because you don't want that. You acknowledged in the February ask you sent, that you hurt me as well. But I fully acknowledge that I was the one started it: this is true.

In your callout post, you said "now you're trying to [break my trust] again soon?" Well, in your February ask to me, you said I could rehash what happened in September with you if I wanted. And I was prepping to do that this coming Monday, though I won't anymore.

I feel that your callout is presumptuous, filtered through your lens without checking with me first. Though at the same time: I fully understand why you wouldn't want to trust anymore, even if I'm telling the truth. I acknowledge this fully.

You have pointed out via DM that you are prone to all-or-nothing thinking and you KNOW it can be unhealthy:

And I believe this is what was in play again here, with what has happened.

I'm just. I am really, truly sorry. 😔😔😔 Now I feel that I'm gonna have to 100% block from my side as well, so that I don't start having serious symptoms, because the ring of "You have no right to X/Y/Z" in your callout post, and how you're implying to me how to navigate my grief...this has changed the impression I now have of you too, after almost 10 months 😔 So, this is goodbye.

I am truly sorry. I don't want to hide anything on here

-------------

Here's my conclusion:

- They filled in a massive gap with what they think my motives were, to push a particular narrative to suit a specific agenda, to make them feel a certain way that they wanted.

- E.g. being rather sure that I was gonna spend a huge chunk of $ to go and fly somewhere and, still talk to a person that I fell out with? That would be a really huge waste of $, time and sanity. But hey, they already spun a story to put out there.

- They also left this out on purpose: I spoke about the nausea I'd feel when I images of tatami flooring and anything Japan would appear in my mind. So...imagine how unpleasant it would be for me to even look at the real scenery and locations. So why would I take a huge chunk of $ out of my savings, to go somewhere and make myself feel worse than I already have felt about the imagery in my head whenever it pops up in my head? - The ask sent to me in Feb allowed me to rehash the fallout again. And when I wanna do the rehashing, I then get slammed for it. Uh? I could not read your mind that you had changed your decision: the change in decision was NOT communicated to me in private first. Then waywardsunlight, her friend and attack dog, shrieks at me asking why I put up screenshots of the February ask. If she put my username out publicly, and then demands that I don't put up that ask (which acts as proof) publicly.....what does this therefore imply? That this group doesn't want me putting out context that they wanna make sure they leave out? Feels like a double standard to me.

- Importantly, she has conveniently said "Well, how was I supposed to know all that?!?!" only AFTER she put out this story that she wanted to tell.

I am repulsed. Thank god

#negativity tw

[ask-the-latibule]

Alright you little shits open your ears it’s time for the pope

A couple things for clarification: 

This is about the 2007 Sweeney Todd movie. There are enough differences that I am going to be largely disregarding the musical. Also I have not seen the musical, only the film.

Under no circumstances is any of this reasonable. Get used to it. There are no gods here, only wikipedia pages and a probably neurodivergent teenager.

I cannot read roman numerals. Unfortunately, those are kind of essential for the pope. Spare me some patience here, I am but a fucking idiot.

I understand that Pirelli lied about literally everything. I do not care.

Okay get a warm drink and a cat because this is long

So in Sweeney Todd there is a scene where Mrs. Lovett takes her local emo(one Sweeney Todd) out for a nice walk. They run into a cart where a small child(Toby) starts yelling at the crowd about a magical elixir that made his hair grow and how he’s selling it with this dude named Pirelli(remember that name) now. He tosses a few bottles out into the crowd to check out and a bottle makes its way to our coveted cannibalistic couple. Sweeney smells it and realizes that it’s not, in fact, magical and is instead made out of piss and ink. He kindly lets the crowd know and then this fuckin man bursts through the curtain and starts screaming. 

Look at him. Look at him and tell me that god exists. 

Anyway his name is Adolfo Pirelli and he brags a bunch about being a really good barber(see the sign behind him that I didn’t actually realize existed before taking that screenshot for this). Sweeney calls him out and says that he could shave a face better than Pirelli could and you can’t really back down from a challenge like that (actually Sweeney put him in a really tough spot there where he couldn’t say yes or no without destroying his reputation, it’s neat) so Pirelli flips his cape because his hair has so much gel in it that it’s basically made of stone at this point and agrees. Thus, the Pirelli Shaving Contest. They get two random dudes to be shaved and this dude named Beadle agrees to be the judge. 

Pirelli does a shit job and loses but we don’t care about that right now because while he is singing about how good at shaving he is he says, and I quote(without writing out the horrible italian accent because I hold myself to a higher standard than that) 

“Signorini, signori, you look at a man who have had the glory to shave the Pope! ‘Mister Sweeney-Whoever’, I beg your pardon, you’ll probably say it was only a cardinal no nope! It was the pope!”

Now this was a mistake on Pirelli’s part because he didn’t know that I have had a long-time obsession with learning about popes. I don’t even know how this started but I decided I would find out if he did(spoiler alert: he didn’t but this rant devolves into time travel so hear me out)

Luckily for me, Pirelli shows a picture of the Pope that he supposedly shaved.

Now this further cements that no. his ass did not shave the Pope. Infuriatingly, the pope only signed his name as “The Pope” and did not disclose which pope he actually was, so I was not told exactly which pope this could have been. I started my research.

First step in my descent into madness: Find out when Sweeney Todd takes place. Sounds simple right? Wrong, nothing is ever simple. I will spare you the anguish of trying to figure out when the movie takes place and tell you that it takes place in 1846. The Pope at the time was Pope Pius IX. He looked like this.

This could reasonably be the dude that Pirelli shaved. But in 1846, a fascinating event happened. The Pope changed. Now this doesn’t happen a lot because it is custom that when somebody becomes pope, they’re pope until they die. Technically, popes can retire but only two ever did: Pope Benedict XVI who retired back in 2013, and Pope Celestine V(one of my personal favorite popes, which is a totally normal thing to have), who retired in 1294. 

Back to the topic at hand, the previous pope was Pope Gregory XVI. He looked like this:

Now, along with having all of the characteristics of one of God's least favorite creatures, he does not look like the pope that Pirelli claimed to have shaved. He died on June 1st, 1846 and Pope Pius IX promptly became pope afterward.

So Pope Pius IX became pope in June. Neat. That raises the horrible question: When in the year does Sweeney Todd take place?

Throughout the movie, it’s seems to be getting warmer, though true to london weather, it’s never actually sunny unless you’re in Mrs. Lovett's weird beach-dream-thing. As far as I know, it’s never stated what month(s) it is, though feel free to fact check me on that. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in March-May.

Now, time to put all of this together.

Pirelli claims to have shaved the Pope, showing a picture of future Pope Pius IX when the pope at the time would have been Pope Gregory XVI. Even if the Pirelli Shaving Contest happened after Pius became pope, he would not have had the credibility yet that shaving him would have meant much of anything. 

The conclusion I have reached? Pirelli is a time traveler from a future time, possibly even being an older version of Toby himself, who, when he looked up who the pope was in 1846, found a technically correct answer and was lazy enough to run with it. 

Alright I’m done. Technically there are a few more details to this that I found and a whole other story with the dates, but they aren’t actually as relevant as I would like and were removed for the sake of my sanity as I am writing this when I should be sleeping.

If anybody does want to hear my explanation of the plot of Sweeney Todd I would be happy to give it, it’s genuinely one of my favorite musicals. I’m sure my friends/boyfriend are getting sick of it at this point.

#sweeney todd #popes #im trying my best #Fun Fact! I was going to write and post this last week but the morning after I first talked about it I was struck down with a sickness #I couldn't even put on my glasses to see things or i would throw up #I can only assume that the world decided this did not deserve to exist #Fortunately I'm a dumbass who has never listened to anyone ever #frothing at the mouth:h.hey who wants to hear about my stupid little ideas #one of my hobbies is reading entire wikipedia pages #I've read the entire page on soup before

[astralsweetness]

hellooo, i am here to annoy you a little bit with the suju ask game 💙

1, 11, 12, 42, 70, 99, and 100? spill all the details, and add anything you want, i'd love to know :3

This is referring to this post. Yeah sure! Absolutely not annoying me at all, it's fun! I wish more people would talk to me about Suju :( Put beneath a read more cut bcs it will probably be long haha

1. When did you become an ELF? This is sort of hard to quantify, bcs even now I'm not totally sure if I'd consider myself a hardcore enough fan to call myself an "ELF". I first got into Suju when they released Don't Don, bcs that was 100% my shit - rock/metal with a VIOLIN? And a pretty boy screaming??? Bro. So good. When Hangeng inevitably left though I sort of stopped paying attention to them closely - I felt like they were probably going to go through more difficulties and I didn't want to get attached. I kept an eye on Heechul though, bcs I have always loved his voice and tone, whether he's doing screamo in Don't Don or singing rock for M&D or astounding us with rock ballads with Kyunghoon. So if anything I guess I'm not technically an ELF but can classify myself as a Petal since I am definitely a fan of Heechul and always have been. I am only really getting back into them now, so I guess you could say I've been a baby-ELF since Don't Don era and have just never progressed out of that stage haha

11. Your ult bias? & 12. Your bias wrecker? So, @funkywinkyboy and I talked about this recently but I feel like with Suju there aren't ult biases or bias wreckers! I've decided there's a whole different classification for Suju:

The "first and forever bias"

The "they appeared out of nowhere and like a cancerous growth have irrevocably ruined me forever" bias

The "I don't even find them physically/mentally attractive and yet I am drawn to them like a moth to the fucking imploding sun" bias

And then "electron biases" that just float around forever as your little baby (plural) but are not aggravating enough to become the moth to the sun one but also make enough sense that they aren't the cancerous growth one

So if we're following my new classification system lol, Heechul is my first and forever bias, Hyukjae is the cancerous growth bias, Kyuhyun is my moth to the sun bias, and Donghae is my electron bias!

42. Sexiest song or performance? You had to see this coming, considering it's.. well, me, but Hyukjae's VCR from their STYLE tour where he has all the sex toys and bondage equipment and men in heels with floggers chaining him to a bed, etc. That VCR has a grip on my fucking soul. As a domme it is one of my favorite things in the world, and I like the opening performance he does as well, with the chains. You can see the VCR + intro I'm talking about here if you're interested. I am actually in the process of taking screenshots from that VCR and color-correcting them + unblurring them bcs I am so obsessed with it. I'll make one post with them later when I'm done lol, so not gonna add them here 👀 Just gotta keep an eye out for them when I'm done!

70. Funniest or most iconic SuJu moments? God, there's so many. Suju's comedic sense is absolutely phenomenal. Shindong in particular is great at really out of pocket comedic lines. Currently I think my favorite lil moments are Donghae's incessant "Hyukjae~" during their 'Bout You performances, or Leeteuk fighting for his life during No Other while trying to find the camera. Just lil cute things like that I like a lot. Honestly any of the energy of watching Heechul's solo MV behind the scenes too, they're all so unhinged, he just absolutely does not want to be seen as vulnerable and the mental gymnastics he will go through to avoid that is funny lol

99. If SuJu could do anything you wanted, what would you want them to do? (E.g, perform a song live, bring back a member, etc.) I miss Hangeng and Kibum 😭 And ofc Sungmin, but if he was wanted by the group to come back that would have already happened. I feel bad for Kibum bcs he really missed out on all the success Suju had, and Hangeng... just a shitty situation all around for him. I am glad he seems to still be on good terms with the boys tho, and is leading a happy life! Let's see, aside from that... I want SM to do SOMETHING with Zhoumi omg, he wants a Suju-M comeback, give him one :( I also would like a sub-unit with Heechul and Henry doing rock shit, so like.. M&D but with a violin. Obviously that won't ever happen since Henry left but.... pls give me more rock songs! And with violins! ...Man I miss M&D. Pls revive it Heechul, it was so good, I listen to your two albums on repeat still

100. Your favorite thing about SuJu? Burn the Floor? Lmao but seriously, I think my favorite thing about Suju is how they are clearly more than just an idol group. They were originally only supposed to be idols as a sort of back-up to augment their other skills in things like acting and comedy, and it really shows, bcs they excel at those things now too. I love my groups that are attached at the hip and have a close-knit bond that's more than a family, but something about Suju's realistic relationship with one another, where they've grown up and don't always see each other but still (for the most part) get along is nice. It's like being able to see the more realistic side of the industry while still keeping the rose-tinted glasses since they still like one another. You've got to have both to survive I guess - on the one hand you have a group like Pentagon, that will literally waste away into nothingness if they have to be apart from one another, and then on the other hand you've got a group like Suju who is like... I haven't seen one of our members for MONTHS now, I assume he's alive 😂

#god this was fun #talk to me more about suju i dare you #elf-bot #ask #<33 ily thank you

[inkabelledesigns]

Splatoon 1 and 2 Amiibo/Amiibo Cards: What you need to know about using them in Splatoon 3

Hey fellow lovers of Splatoon! It’s your girl Kat Alyst, here with some funky fresh findings about amiibo cards.

These are the mini amiibo cards! Very small, am I right? I got them from ebay (link for those of you who want to see for yourself: https://www.ebay.com/itm/195386966549?ViewItem=&item=195386966549), and I’m happy to report that they work! But there’s a few things I think are important to know if you want to use them on multiple consoles/get the gear faster.

So a little background info: I share my amiibo collection with my little brother, who has a switch of his own, so I had to make sure that I could use these both for myself and for him (he really wanted Pearl and Marina’s gear). We ran into some interesting complications though, with both the figures and the cards, and this is where my advice comes in.

If you have a copy of Splatoon 1 or 2, register your amiibo there first. Here’s why.

Number 1: When you register an amiibo on Splatoon 3, you will only be able to get gear from it on your account. When my brother tried to borrow my amiibo and cards that were freshly registered on 3, he did not receive the option to get gear like I had, he could only take photos. If you want to share you amiibo with your friends/siblings/cousins/pet rabbit so all of you can get the gear, this is crucial. You can just go and delete the amiibo save data every time you want to use it on a new console, but it’s still better to register them on an older game, because of the next point.

Number 2: If your amiibo reads as having save data from 1 or 2, it will give you all three pieces of gear right off the bat instead of having to level up and tap them multiple times to get all three pieces. We found this out because I decided to use 2 to overwrite the data to see if that would be enough to get them to work for my brother’s switch, and unlike when I tapped them on 3 for the first time and got one piece of gear, he got all three of them. The only amiibo we haven’t gotten this to work with are Callie and Marie, and that’s because I never beat the story mode of 2, and you can only use those amiibo in 2 once you’ve done that. I imagine if you have story mode beaten, the same can be said for them. I say this having tested it with regular amiibo from 1 and amiibo cards from 1 and 2.

Here’s the downside: You won’t be able to take pictures with any of your amiibo in photo mode unless they’re registered in 3, which is a bummer, but I get why. Important thing to know: using amiibo in photo mode is the only way you can pose your player character, so that’s one reason why people are searching amiibo and amiibo cards out. So do everything you want to do with them in the way of gear with save data from 2 before you register them with 3, and you should be golden. I’m actually gonna keep mine with 2 save data on them for a bit, since I have a sister that also plays 3 who’s visiting soon, and it makes more sense to re-register them with three once she’s gotten the perks. The only thing I will say is that if you register them with an older game first, you miss out on what the character dialogue is in 3, which is unique and different from the previous games and for each individual character, but if you don’t care about that, then it doesn’t really matter. Though I will say, it’s very interesting on the Octoling amiibo that came when 2 got Octo Expansion, their dialogue has changed significantly, screenshots below.

Octoling Boy in Splatoon 2:

Octoling Boy in Splatoon 3:

I didn’t know they spoke like that, totally missed out on that last game! And it makes sense if you know what the DLC story is in 2, what an interesting detail to tie it all together! Also he is so sweet and I just want to hug this guy so much!

One thing to note if you’re new to Splatoon amiibo is that some amiibo have the same function. For Splatoon 1, there was a second three pack introduced with a green inkling girl, purple inkling boy, and orange squid. I don’t know why they did this, but I happen to have those figures since I didn’t know any better, considered using them for customs at some point. These three amiibo give you the exact same gear and dialogue as the original three from 1 and are completely unnecessary unless you want those colors/are sharing with a friend. Unfortunately on my set of mini cards, the renders for green inkling girl and purple inkling boy are incorrect. They’re both wearing gear that isn’t featured on their amiibo, and the boy has the wrong skin tone. Also, my set of cards includes 17, and that’s because there’s an extra orange inkling girl for some reason? No idea why, but hey, I’ll take it!

In conclusion, the amiibo cards are well worth your time if you want to get the gear and take fun photos without having to pay the astronomical scalper prices for the previous game’s amiibo (or if you just don’t want/don’t have room for the statues themselves). All 17 cards cost me about the same as one regular retail price amiibo ($12.99, not including tax and shipping), that is an absolute steal. I haven’t collected amiibo in a long time, not since Smash Bros where I was casually on the hunt. It’s actually kind of ironic, I first got an ebay account because of Smash Bros amiibo, my other sister found a set of Sonic and Shulk from Japan that was a good price,  so one character for me and one for her, and that was my journey into looking for stuff preowned online. I’m really happy with these, can’t wait to throw on the witch gear for spooky month. Hope you found this helpful! Have fun out there squiddos and octokids, see you on the turf!

#splatoon 3 #splatoon 3 amiibo #amiibo #amiibo cards #splatoon 2 amiibo #splatoon 2 #splatoon 1 #amiibo mini cards #splatoon gear

[lgcsoyoun]

Episode 2: Ideation + Moodboarding

ASTRID’S ATELIER EPISODE 2: Ideation + Moodboarding

This is the first time Soyoun gets to show off her designing process since she graduated from university, so she's both excited and nervous to see how this goes. She's in the comfort of her studio as she sets up the cameras for today's video.

"What's up? It's your girl Astrid and welcome to yet another episode of Astrid's Atelier! I'm glad you guys aren't sick of me yet." She winks at the cameras as she shows off the space around her.

"After I got all your votes, the most I got was for techwear, so we will be dressing up my mystery muse in that aesthetic. And honestly, you guys chose well. I can't wait to see how my lovely muse will pull this off." Soyoun winks at the cameras. "But before we can get there, I'm afraid we'll be going on a long and creative journey before we have an actual outfit."

Soyoun then pulls out the scrapbook which she uses for mood boarding. "Before anything else, the first thing I do is brainrot. As the designer, it's up to me to create a cohesive design. To do that, I have to organize my ideas and inspiration into a mood board." She then opens her scrapbook to reveal several mood boards she made back in college. "As you can see, I organized my past ideas and inspirations into a mood board so I didn't lose sight of the vision I had for those outfits. Though I tend to use digital mood boards more, some of my less tech-savvy professors wanted a physical mood board hey could touch."

Soyoun then shows all the material she already gathered for this mood board. "As with every mood board, I collect inspiration. I look at magazines, books, photos, nature, and social media for images. It doesn't matter where you find your inspiration. It's totally up to you where you find it. In fact, for this one, I turned to lots of sci-fi films." As someone who isn't a fan of the genre, Alize would know how much of a sacrifice this is for her. "But wherever you choose to find your inspiration, you should house it in one location you can easily find. It can be a P*nt*r*st or M*l*n*t* board, a notebook, an album on your phone, or in this case, a scrapbook."

Soyoun then shows off what she has so far. When the camera zooms in, the viewers can see screenshots from sci-fi films and outfits worn by female video game characters. Then the camera pans to runway outfits from designers who have done techwear, as well as photos of weapons, sci-fi aesthetics, and blurred photos of Soyoun's muse. There are also song lyrics and movie quotes to help set the mood of the outfits. Finally, sharp-eyed viewers will see blurred doodles of Soyoun's muse in various poses and positions.

After this, Soyoun fears she'll lose the viewers once things get a little bit on the technical side. "Now that I have enough research material, it's time to compile them all. I like writing down and sketching my ideas for a design, silhouette, construction, material, and color of the outfit. It's a bit more on the technical end, so I will do a separate video of that if I don't bore you." Instead, the video shows a sped-up version of Soyoun through out various days, sometimes, the venues changing from her private studio to the dorms, and sometimes even during schedules, writing copious notes and doing lots of sketches until she comes out with one she's satisfied with.

When that's done, Soyoun is seen back in the studio, standing in front of a huge corkboard as seen in those police films. "Today, I'll be showing you guys how I do my moodboards! I'm making them bigger than usual so it's fun to film. And i also like the whole vibe of it looking like those suspect boards we see on TV. You'd think we were committing a crime after this." Laughing to herself Soyoun then starts assembling her mood board with the images she found for the look. "I don't just confine myself to fashion images," she admits to the camera. "I also included materials I think I could use like leather, metal, and other things that would fit." She gestures to the part where several fabric samples are pinned, as well as a few metal chains. Even several keychains of anime weapons are displayed.

"As you can see, this techwear look I'm going for is a futuristic, cyberpunk with a hint of video-game badass female protagonist," she says with a laugh. "This is hardly my usual style, so I am curious to see how my final look will turn out."

"To see what happens next, I hope to see you in a future episode of Astrid's Atelier. In the meantime, I better clean up and head to practice, or else Yamapi will have my head!"

Chuckling, she throws in one more thing for the audiences. "While waiting to see what happens next, I am curious to see who you all think my muse is! Those who get it right will get a... uhm... I don't know yet, but I will talk about it with my muse and the powers that be known as the managers. I really gotta go now. Skrrt skrrt!"

#lgc:cyshow #msy;astridsatelier #msy;ideation+moodboarding

[identity-very-big-deal]

You know that pregnant video where it’s just some guy reading terrible misspellings of the word pregnant (such as pregante and gregnant) yeah there NEEDS to be one of those but for Embalmer man I go on IDV amino and I just die of laughter from mostly the polls

Some typos I remember seeing:

Emblamer

Elbamer

And my personal favorite:

Alabamer

ALABAMER

AESOP CARL THE ALABAMER

#identity v #idv #embalmer #aesop carl #idv embalmer #i would totally make one myself if i could find enough screenshots

[fu-yao]

#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Thank you so much for tagging me @lan-xichens​, I’ll try my best to explain how I made this set from start to finish hehe ♡ and also a big thank you to @suibianjie​ @highwarlockkareena​ @nyx4​ @aheartfullofjolllly​ and you as well Kris for putting this all together! Content creators get a lot less recognition than they deserve for all the time they put into their content, so getting everyone to see the (sometimes excessive) process we all go through to put our content in our blog, I hope it creates a positive change!! 💖

1. Planning

The set in question was actually requested by someone so they could celebrate their friend’s birthday! At first I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to be able to finish it on time (college is very hectic right now) but I was able to finish it three days before the deadline which was may 1st! ^-^

The first thing I did was decide what characters I wanted to use in the set, I first reached out to the person who requested the set if there were certain characters they wanted me to use but they said they didn’t know enough to really give me any directives outside of the quote. I decided, since the quote is applicable to the entirety of the show, that I would try to put in as many characters as possible.

Thus, of course, came the hunting for scenes. Those of you in the net discord surely know I came into the content help channel a few times to ask for certain scenes here and there, and eventually I had to download an additional 10 episodes to the back then 20 or so episodes I had in my CQL episodes folder.

As you can see I have 30 random episodes of CQL downloaded (slowly but surely getting to the point where I have all 50 episodes downloaded) and I think I ended up using scenes out of at least 20 of those episodes.

I planned out beforehand what characters I would use per gif. I knew obviously I would start out with Wangxian, them being the main characters of the show, and then would work my way down the list. The second gif consists of Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning. They’re all family pairings, two being siblings and one being a married couple. The next gifset consists of the Yi City characters, then the fourth gif consists of the juniors, and the final gif has Jin Guangyao, Mianmian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Xichen in it.

I have to admit though that when I had made the first four gifs I’d forgotten who I would put in the last gif and the when I thought about it the first time around I could only think of Lan Qiren and the very cursed Yaoyang ship 😭 it was only at dinner time that same day that I remembered I hadn’t put Jiang Cheng in my gifset yet and that’s when I thought of the other characters as well.

I had already made my first two gifs when I went to check Hanyi’s blog for layout inspo and eventually I decided I wanted to try a triangle-ish layout, which I doodled below. I eventually ended up changing the layout of the last gif in the final design. It was also the first time I would work with a triangle-ish layout so I was a bit nervous as I was scared it wasn’t going to work out...

2. Creating

I use Avisynth 2.5 and Adobe Photoshop 2021 (the paid version, unfortunately, I need it for school except I didn’t need it this year but I wanted it so I paid for it with my own money ouch) to make my gifsets! I always start out with trimming down all the scenes I’m going to use into three to five second videos and putting them through Avisynth. This time around I did it separately for each gif I made, simply because I needed so many scenes. I would include a screenshot of my “gif vids” and “temp” folders but I’ve already deleted all the videos, which is what I usually do immediately after a set is posted.

I’ll try my best explaining this gif by gif since each one had a different layout!

2.1 Wangxian

I think I had up to five different designs of this gif 😭 it started out with the gif on the left originally being more centered and the quote right smack in the center but somehow it felt a bit too... empty? I changed up the design and pulled the gif over to the right and put the two closeups on the left, the exact opposite of the gif I eventually ended up with. I switched things around one more time and saved the gif as you can see it right now, except I didn’t include the lines yet. It was only as I finished up my fourth gif that I decided this gif needed lines as well so I added them ^-^

2.2 Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning

I got the inspiration for the font layout on this gif from this Wenzhou post! I hadn’t tried it before and when I did for this gif I was very happy with the way it turned out :D I wanted to portray that life is a pile of good and bad things, as the quote says, in CQL by mirroring these happy scenes side by side with the sad scenes

2.3 Yi CIty

My first time working with the triangle layout!! Putting in the lines and making sure they would line up with the second gif took me the longest of all actually  😭 I think once I got the line on the left in I just copy pasted it and flipped it horizontally so I didn’t have to fiddle around with angling it anymore :’) my original idea was to get a happy Song Lan scene and a sad A-Qing scene, but when I stumbled upon this A-Qing scene in ep38 I just had to put it in there because her smile is so precious 🥺 Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen in the center are also supposed to be mirrored, with Xue Yang embodying the “bad things” and Xiao Xingchen the “good things” ! I also think the Yi City characters fit this part of the quote very well!!

2.4 The Juniors

Ah yes, the junior quartet!! :D I had this planned out from the very beginning, that I would include happy versus sad juniors in the “vice versa” part of the quote, and I think it worked out quite well! My first idea was to put the “vice versa” completely in the special font and have it typed out over the gifs like I did with the “vice” but as I typed out the “versa” I realized it had one letter too much to be able to do that 😭😭 it took me a while to come up with how I would position the “but” and “versa” and after some moving around I decided to just place them the way I did in the final gif! For the font, I duplicated the “vice” and added a stroke to the duplicate, then I changed the fill setting to 0% so I could slightly drag the duplicate away from the original layer to create the effect that’s in the gif — also, finding a scene in which Jin Ling smiles is really difficult.... he barely even smiles in the scene I ended up using :(

2.5 Jin Guangyao, Mianmian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Xichen

The final gif!! I feel like this might come a little across as “I promise I didn’t forget these characters” because they’re a very odd quadruplet to put together, but they were the most important characters left to put in the set! I was thinking of putting Nie Mingjue in here together with Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen, but I did feel he fit more with his brother up in the second gif. Mei @mylastbraincql​ cheered me on making this gif for which I was very grateful :D <3 the layout came to be after I googled “how to evenly split a rectangle in four” because I didn’t want a repeat layout in the set  (*/∇＼*)

2.6 Coloring

For the coloring I pretty much did all of the tweaking on the first gif and then copy pasted all of it onto the second, third, fourth, and fifth gif. This is usually the way I go about my coloring, I will always edit certain gifs if necessary but I don’t think I had to change the coloring much on any of these gifs? Maybe I added in a curve layer here and there, but nothing major! This is really one of my preferred coloring styles, even though I try to step outside of my comfort zones with other sets ^-^

3. Posting

I will always upload sets into my drafts and edit the caption in there as well, clicking on “preview post” a couple times to check everything looks good on my blog as well, before I post a set. However, this time, since there was a deadline and I finished before the deadline, I put this set in the queue so it would automatically post on the 1st of may! Knowing myself, I would’ve forgotten to do so </3

Whew that was... a lot 😭 did it make any sense? Probably not, but it was fun to ramble （ ´∀｀）

I’ll tag

@blinkplnk​ with this set !

@wuxien​ with this set !

@wendashanren​ with this set !

@wanyinxichen​ with this set !

@yibobibo​ with this set !

@mylastbraincql​ with this set !

@sugarbabywenkexing​ with this set !

@yiling-recesses​ with this set !

@jiancheng​ with this set !

Please feel totally free to ignore this if you’ve already been tagged and don’t want to do it again!! <3

#showyourprocess #tag game #this got so long i'm sorry ;-; #very curious to see everyone else's processes!! #thank you for the tag kris <3

[everything-laito]

hey,,, i've seen this controversial opinion about laito not being sexually assaulted by cordelia. . .as the only opinion of laito that matters, what are your thoughts on it? i know you've made some posts in the past about cordelia and laito's relationship, but i think that now would be a good time to i guess, remake a post or clarify your thoughts so people could follow along?? i hope you enjoy your day.

*proceeds to crack all my knuckles at once*

This isn't really my own "response" cuz oh boy I'm sick of this petty ass drama lmao. To begin, SKLDJF I'm very flattered that you hold my opinion in that high of regard! I'd say there's others that have interesting interpretations of him too though :) but again, thank you :') glad you enjoy what I have to say!

I know I've already kinda responded to this via a screenshot here, just to hold you––and others reading this––over. As much as this is a great time to talk about a how-to-analysis, I’ll still put that as a separate post eventually, but I still will go over the philosophy of truth and writings etc. But anyways, to answer your initial questions, they’re under the cut!

And no, I’m not specifically calling anyone out here. These are just issues with the fandom that I find as a whole, along with some extremists. Thus, I’m not going to be putting tags for people to easily find this post because I don’t want to be wound up in this drama––once again this is just more commentary on the fandom as a whole, which hopefully you can apply to people you find!

I have a lot of my own thoughts about Cordelia and Laito’s relationship here (just in case if people need it):

1. Goes over potential grooming of Laito, facts about Cordelia and what happened before she did stuff to Laito, and when did she rape Laito for the first time?

2. Stuff about incest and how any relationship out of a parental/child relationship is abuse even if it’s not penetrative sex, more incest stuff, and just more thoughts on their relationship

3. Neuroplasticity, trauma, Karlheinz, and isolation

4. What does sexual trauma look like? And some stuff on Laito’s facade

5. More stuff on his facade, and projection on Yui

6. My thoughts on Laito’s dark fate vampire ending + Conclusion

7. Answering some inbox stuff relating to Cordelia

Sure I realize I might be missing some stuff but that’s just my whole analysis on them. I’ll probably make some follow up posts eventually but I’m not sure when that will be.

But as for this analysis/ramble, I’ll divide it up into sections:

The issue of hypocrisy in the Dialovers fandom:

I- oh dear god. Ok, just saying, there’s a lot of people being like “oh I hate Cordelia because she was abusive” then ??? yo??? Why do you like the boys?? They’re abusive and we see more of them than Cordelia??? I just personally hate hypocrisy. However, it’s okay to hate Cordelia! It’s okay to love Cordelia! It’s okay to hate the boys and it’s okay to love the boys too. But recognizing that you don’t like one or the other just because “they’re abusive” is a fallacy at that point.

The reason why so many people hate Karlheinz/Cordelia/Beatrix/Christa/Richter (or at least start off hating them) is because they are written as the villains of the story! Karl’s the main villain, and the rest (including the diaboys and Yui) are kinda just tragically wound up in his plans. You sympathize more with the boys because you spend more time with them and watch them grow! It’s a whole “us vs them” situation. Since those people were awful to the boys/the boys hate them, you’re like “yeah they’re bad!” But the issue with the whole “us vs them” situation (as in real life) is that people tend to excuse the actions done by the “us” party.

Same thing goes with extreme Karl/Cordelia/Richter fans (I’ve never seen a hardcore Beatrix/Christa fan but they’re probably out there). Some hate the diaboys but love the people in that party. They’ve also done some shitty stuff too! Bro, even Yui has done some terrible stuff! But that’s because she was a product of the events she was thrown into––and same with everyone else.

Karl has been the mastermind of all this, and for me I don’t have any sympathy for him, mainly because we’re not shown anything to sympathize with (except that he just is tired of living but idk why he wants to create a whole new race like lmao science nerd ig, I feel that king). A lot of people like him for his looks, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing––he’s a fictional character, objectify these characters however you want. This is more of a personal opinion of mine though. And maybe people do just sympathize with his outlook on life, that’s totally fine.

But since these characters are all attractive in their own regard, they all get the treatment of “pretty-boy” syndrome (Idek if that’s the exact name for it). Which is just the privilege pretty people get. But again, this is fictional, so it’s not necessarily important in this case. Bro I got into DL cuz of “ooga booga hot vampires” and stayed for the complex lore and characters (especially one complex character, wonder who that could be). I imagine most people got into DL because of that, or out of sheer curiosity.

Ok, I’m throwing out a lot of points but not really connecting them. Lemme give you an example: I don’t like Reiji. His character doesn’t vibe with me most of the time aside from the fact that he’s hilarious. But I just am very neutral/neutral-negative on his character. But I’m not like “oh cuz he’s mean/abusive” cuz LOL EVERYONES MEAN IN THIS GAME. Sure you can still say that, it’s just not a very strong claim. Hypocritical claims tend to be like that. Same with a lot of Yui haters. In this case, they’re more jealous that she’s there and not them, which I’ve explained a lot in this post about toxic femininity and Yui in the fandom etc. But it’s ok to just not like a character! It’s alright! I know someone who just doesn’t vibe with Subaru. She doesn’t know why, she just doesn’t vibe with him. There’s no need to defend it either. But the use of hypocrisy is my main issue, and I’ll get to that in the next section.

(There’s a really good post explaining this too but I cannot find it for the life of me. I think it was made by @/abottleofkarlheinz or @/the-madame21)

How opinions of fictional universes left unchecked can effect real life:

I’ve said this a little bit in that Dialover PSA post I’ve made about Yui that I linked a couple paragraphs ago. But the reasons why people say they hate Yui is concerning. If you don’t like Yui, that’s totally fine! Again you don’t need reasons to hate on a character or defend it. But if you do choose to defend those characters, make sure what you’re saying isn’t out of some other place in your heart. Let me explain.

In that “Yui PSA” post I made, I say how your attitudes in being critical of a fictional universe usually does reflect on who you are as a person, at least when you’re making certain claims. In that Yui post, I say that the hatred on Yui is a result of the “other girl” mentality. On top of that, it erases her experience as a survivor. Yes, this is a fictional character, but bringing that into real life can have some dire consequences if you don’t differentiate them. If you have the same attitude of Yui with other survivors if the “abuser is hot” then thaaaaaat’s so fucked up.

For example, there’s people who have crushes on real life serial killers! That- that’s absolutely disgusting! Those real people killed living people and effected so many lives and families. Dude I have fictional crushes on fictional serial killers, and that’s different, because it is a removed universe. It’s why I can still call myself a lesbian but still have crushes on fictional male characters, for a further example (and vice versa! I have straight friends who crush on fictional characters of their same gender! But that doesn’t make them any less straight. And no, I’m not erasing bi people here either, just clarifying in case if you needed that).

Not being able to differentiate your opinions of a fictional universe can get very toxic. Like I love Laito, but I’m not like “omg I wish he was real so he could do that stuff to me uwu” like no!!! UH!!! I wouldn’t want to date anyone like him in real life! That’s literal abuse! And if Laito was here in real life it’s not a controlled environment, he’d literally be able to do anything with you, etc. That’s what makes a fantasy, a fantasy. They’re controlled.

Also vice versa, some people get really triggered by Dialovers, specifically Laito’s route. A lot of non-consensual acts that he does have been experienced by people in real life in any extent, myself included. For me, it’s a personal escape from that, because it is an environment where I am prepared for those events and can control my exposure to it. For some, they are reminded of the reality they had to experience. Fictional universes are inspired by real life, no matter what way you look at it. Real life people are making it, after all.

I feel like I’m going in so many circles, but trust me, I’m getting to the point.

I- I can’t explain this enough but it is most definitely implied that Cordelia had raped and sexually abused Laito. If it was explicit, DL would be an 18+ game, but they cannot do that in Japan. I’m not going to like defend this point because so many people (myself included) have defended this point. It’s implications carry over into Laito’s character and why he’s like this. He’s a textbook sexual abuse survivor. I just,,,, cannot explain this enough. Same thing with overwriting the abuse of Yui. They get jealous of Yui. Sure I’d say a good chunk of people have ravishment fantasies here. At least the 18+ people in the fandom who are into that stuff. But oh my dear god, ravishment fantasies are super super dangerous to enact in real life. It’s possible to do them, but it would take years of building up to that point in kink. That’s a whole other discussion though and I’m not incredibly comfortable talking about it knowing that minors read my blog (I’ll also have to say here: no minors in kink--its alright to educate yourself but pleaaaaaaaaaase don’t enact on any of those activities until you are of age, and even so that still can be dangerous right as you turn 18).

But anyways, saying that Yui should enjoy this because she’s experienced the ravishment fantasy you’ve dreamed of? Oh fucking hell, if you leave that opinion and mentality unchecked and it goes into real life, that’s incredibly awful. Abuse apologists are absolutely terrible people, almost as much as the abusers themselves.

If you twist the narrative that Laito loves Cordelia or Yui loves the boys at the end of the first game, that’s still––ughhhhhhhh. Especially when it’s so obvious that Laito has so many mental issues with Cordelia. His whole monologue and breakdown at the end of Dark Fate definitely tells us that he has had such an issue with Cordelia. And MB+ Laito is still Laito. As for Yui, dude she literally goes through stockholm syndrome in the first game like it is so goddamn apparent idek how to explain this at this point.

Ok dear god lmao wow, uh I think that’s answering the first couple of questions?

The philosophy of truth:

“Truth” has been an incredibly debated topic in philosophy for years. Truth is more of a subjective item rather than objective. Sure you can have personal objective truths, but they may not be the same truths for others. For example, a tomato is red. However, that tomato is red to me, because I am not color blind. A red-green color blind person may see the tomato as being brown or more muted in color. That’s their truth. They can’t really imagine what red is (ok depending on severity of their color blindness), considering they have not experienced the color red in the same way people who don’t have color blindness do. God uh, here’s a whole ass essay about truth, I’m cherry picking some of the things in there that are relevant to this.

Basically what I’m saying is, truth is very subjective. However, there are philosophers arguing a more objective truth. But that’s a whole other discussion. Also, this isn’t to support any political opinion, but I can use that as an example. Let’s go for well... The death penalty. I’m in America, we have the death penalty in some states. Yes, this is a very controversial topic, and no I’m not arguing the ethics of it here. Just hear me out.

If you live in Europe for example (except in Belarus and Russia––ok when I looked it up they consider Russia in Europe and technically it is but also there’s the whole chunk that is not- lmao even the truth of geography can be subjective), you might be like “yeah what the fuck are Americans doing?” (a common sentiment that I also share lmao). But yeah, what the fuck are we doing? Why is the death penalty still in existence? Yes, there’s statistics that prove that it doesn’t deter crime, but even crime rates is caused by a lot of different things too. Even statistics aren’t always accurate, because of many different factors. They’re not objective either, although good statisticians try their best to get good results and not skew the data. (please try to see where your data is coming from and who it is sponsored by––it matters a TON)

I’d say the closest thing we have as an objective truth to argue the death penalty or not is money. Money, although the concept is subjective, is a very objective currency. It’s why artists hate “exposure” compared to “money” as sole currency. The death penalty is very expensive, and not even used that often.

So, although money is currency made by us, and is technically 75% linen and 25% cotton (in America at least) with some funky dudes n numbers printed on it, it doesn’t sound that special. However, it would be considered as a baseline of some type of “objective truth” in ~society~ because people are typically on the same page of what money’s worth. Even so, this baseline of truth is still subjective! If Bill Gates accidentally has a $20 bill fall out of his pocket, that’s nothing to him! But if someone who’s working very hard to make ends meet loses that same amount of money, it could deal a lot of financial damage to that person.

Ok, hopefully you guys kind of get my drift. There are a lot of theories of truth, I’m just explaining one (honestly I forget the name of this theory) because it is the closest to the types of truth we are dealing with. And in this case, it’s called “canon.”

What the fuck is analysis:

The concept of “canon” is the objective truth that we have when analyzing universes. They’re our bread and butter of interpretation and extrapolation. The art of analysis clings to this notion of an objective truth. It needs a baseline. I’m going off of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle, because that type of analysis I have the most experience with.

This is called rhetorical analysis. Rhetoric is the use of words in a persuasive fashion, and the analysis part is a breakdown of how words are used in order to achieve persuasiveness. I don’t typically use a lot of explicit rhetorical analysis in my personal writings, but I guess a version of it. Which typically has to deal with intention and execution. A lot of analysis on language has to do with this. Language is incredibly subjective. Certain words carry individual meanings to people. I have gone over the difference between real and lexical definitions before, and I’ll do it again.

I’ll just copy and paste what I’ve said before here from this analysis:

To put it simply, lexical definitions are the definitions you find in the dictionary. This is an “official” and “agreed upon” definition. Real definitions (quite a misleading name in my opinion) is the definition that’s more kind of “felt” in a way and how you internally interpret the word in context (these can be through individuals or any niche group). What I mean by this is that when you say a word (for example) to convey a feeling, you usually won’t know the dictionary definition off the top of your head. You say that something’s “savage” for example when you want to describe something violent or gruesomely awesome (it depends if it’s in a slang context or not) but there’s many lexical definitions (and outdated lexical definitions) of the term. But the first definition that usually comes up is “adj (of an animal or force of nature) fierce, violent, and uncontrolled.”

But people typically don’t think of the lexical definition when they learn what a word means; they usually learn the context of it and apply it as such. And that’s what a “real” definition is. Laito has a differing definition of what affection and love is, and that’s his own meaning and what it means to him.

I’ll even add another example to that too. The word “cunt” in english refers to a vagina. That’s just it. It’s lexically synonymous with “vagina,” “pussy,” etc. However, “cunt” has a subjective meaning to it. This is where “real” definitions also come into play. Many people view the word as vulgar and dirty. And that’s cuz we live in a ~society~ lmao. Our use of language has shaped what this word means in a context outside of the dictionary. I’ll do you one more. The Japanese word マンコ (manko) is also vulgar slang that’s kind of like our word “cunt/pussy.” Sometimes I say “cunt” for jokes, but I don’t use it that often to begin with since it’s just a very strong word to most (albeit it’s not that strong of a word for me). However, マンコ is a strong word to many Japanese people, but if I hear it even though I’ve been learning Japanese, it doesn’t have that same effect as hearing “cunt” for me is (which still, idc if I really hear it depending on context) because I haven’t been shaped in a culture that uses Japanese.

Even so, tone, intention, and context is HUGE in this. If someone called me a “useless fucking cunt” when they’re angry at me, I’d be close to crying. If someone told that to me as a joke, I’d be like “lol yeah you right, bitchass” and if someone said that in a consensual sexual context, it would certainly tickle my masochistic heart.

DSLKFJ also sorry if you don’t like hearing that word, I just had to utilize a strong example for this. But anyways, now let’s change the lens to Dialovers.

No, it never explicitly says that Cordelia rapes Laito. It doesn’t. However, there’s this WACKY thing called being able to infer, reading between the lines, and identifying implications. Those are kind of all the same things. However, indirect exposition is used a lot in effective creative writing. The utilization of this type of exposition is more preferred when writing a story, because direct exposition is kind of referred to as “info-dumping” when used excessively. Forgive my jargon: this is just showing vs telling as we’re taught in every writing class. I’m personally very bad at it, which is why I stick to writing these, and stick to reading creative fiction. (NOT SAYING IF YOU’RE NOT GOOD AT THIS TO NOT CONTINUE TO PRACTICE CREATIVE FICTION, I JUST DONT HAVE THE CURRENT MOTIVATION TO GET GOOD AT IT)

Dialovers uses a LOOOOOT of showing. And even so, its “showing” ability is very minimal considering the Japanese language can be vague on its own, it’s medium (visual novel) does not show a lot of things explicitly most of the time (and even when it is shown it doesn’t convey a lot). There’s several CGs of Laito and Yui where it doesn’t show the amount of pain or the dire situation Yui’s in, compared to what she’s saying she’s going through.

When I made my whole breakdown on Laito’s HDB route from Yui’s perspective, I got several comments about how they didn’t realize how bad his route really was. That’s either because people might not have experience with verbal abuse themselves, can’t exactly see Yui’s body language except her head (and even so, her expressions are limited), or don’t know a lot of gaslighting/verbal abuse techniques/have done research into it. Honestly verbal abuse is kind of hard to realize, so I’m not calling anyone dumb here. Despite me knowing a lot of the signs, I didn’t know I went through it––and even so I’ve denied it. And that’s what is so effective about this game though! Especially Laito’s route! Because you’re also sucked in with limited knowledge because you’re seeing this through Yui’s perspective, and on top of that it’s isolating. You can only make so many choices, and I feel like Dialovers is perfect as a visual novel. You get caught up with a lot of shock value things that Laito says, which serves as a perfect distraction for your first time through. But anyways, I’m getting off track.

For example, many people found his Maniac 07 chapter to be very confusing. I broke that one down here as well, and even so I was confused at first (also I was like 14/15, dear god). It tells you SO little, but you know that Laito’s incredibly upset at Richter for some reason, and even so, Yui comments on it a little too. Laito is shown to still hate Richter in DF, but he talks about it a tad more.

Here’s a further example from my writings in that first part of the Cordelia/Laito analysis series but I have bolded the terms I use to convey this rhetoric:

There hasn’t been any flashbacks that specifically show us the first time that happened. However, I believe that there was a flashback in HDB that shows one of the first times. Here’s a scene from Laito’s Dark Epilogue:

Cordelia: ー Laito…Laito… Laito: …Hm? Is something the matter? Cordelia: I have a favor to ask. It just isn’t enough. You can do it, right Laito? Laito: You really are something…So that’s why you came to me again? Cordelia: Fufufu…That’s right, Laito. Come on, quickly… Laito: …Guess it can’t be helped. I’ll love you plenty. Cordelia: Aah…My cute Laito~ I love you. I really do. Laito: I can do it…right? Cordelia: Of course, Laito. Now, quickly…

First of all, ew. Second of all, Laito’s diction implies that this was maybe the second or third time this occurred. He asks a question, and ends it with “again.” We know by this that it is not the first time, but the question also means that Laito might not have expected to occur again. His tone also implies some surprise to it, at least in my ears. His other question, “I can do it, right?” screams hesitance to me. If this scene took place down the line, or after many times he did this with Cordelia, I don’t believe he’d be some level of surprised or hesitance.

That’s what rhetorical analysis is. You take the contextual meaning of the words, the tone they use, and extrapolate what they imply. On top of this, we know that the term “love” here is sexual, implying that they did something sexual. We are not given the details of this, but considering we know that Laito uses “love” before he rapes Yui in the game, we can infer that’s what happened (or something similar) to himself with Cordelia, considering he projects on Yui quite a bit.

I was going to go over what is good/bad analysis, but I think I’ve implied it anyways here. Utilizing separate information from different sources of canon in order to make sense of something is good analysis. That’s our objective truth: canon. I’m not saying I’m the best at analysis, but I am fairly confident in it. It’s how I’m able to attempt to answer some of your “how would Laito react” questions without it being specifically hinted in the game. You cannot cherry pick specific sentences and go off of that alone for analysis. It’s context. It’s reading tone. It’s knowing the characters attitudes towards things, how they speak, etc. There’s a lot going into analysis in general. I know I didn’t elaborate on Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle right now, but that’s for another date I suppose.

Oh dear god I hope I didn’t lose you guys, I know this is a lot of information, but if you have any questions/comments/clarifications, as always, please let me know!

Hope you enjoyed! -Corn

#analysis #ask corn

[botwstoriesandsuch]

DEAR FISH FUCKERS, YOU’RE WELCOME

I’ve done what no other has done before (to my knowledge) and found the aging system for the Zora! 

Ok so this started as simple research for this ask

See, I misread the phrasing of “best educated guess” to “research for 2 hours and come to a conclusive answer” so anyhow before I indulge you into the answers of the universe allow me to explain the research I’ve come across 

[TL;DR at the bottom]

So firstly, we have to look at our conclusive evidence, from which we’ll base our theory/headcanon on, which can mainly be found in the Creating a Champion book, and some dialogue in game. I’ve compiled them all in these bullets here

Zora children are around 20ish years old [as said by dialogue with Finley in her love letter sidequest, I don’t have a screenshot but please just take my word for it]

150ish is considered middle-aged for Zora

Muzu is around 4 centuries old 

Curved claws, weathered fins, and worn noses are signs of an older Zora that is more than 3 centuries(ish) old

Zora that were friends with Link must be around 150ish (not just 100), since you need to also account for the 20+ years of growing from a child stage, to the more normal sized form that you see them in the game, ergo, it’s that age plus the 100 years stasis that we determine the “middle age” of around 150

150 is the middle age, double that for the average old age of 300 years, but I say it could go to 400 too for additional reasons I’ll explain later with examples with my final age system. Anyhow, Muzu is around 400 if you take the 100 years for actually growing up from childhood, additional 100+ years of holding a different job as I doubt you just straight out hire a councilman without experience, and then another century for where he first started working in in the council, training Mipha, which would overlap with the period of the pre and post Great Calamity and Link’s return, meaning that’s 3 centuries plus 50ish years if we’re being generous with the overlap. This would help line up with the “for over a century” line as that doesn’t quite mean 2 centuries of working in the council, but Muzu is definitely getting up there to 4 centuries for his age alone

Now, I thought, this was gonna be my breakthrough, this screenshot here, depicting the traits of the older Zora. The elderly Zora are probably around 3 centuries old (since King Dorephan said they were young men around Mipha’s time, 150ish+100 gives us the range of 250-300), so I was like “Oh l can look at the size of their fins and noses and head/tail things and find a more efficient way to find their age” but nOPE. There is very little variation in that ballpark, the Zora either have exaggerated weathered noses or nice and shiny fins and no in between. The size of their head fins are roughly the same, with again, the only exaggerated differences being with the King and Sidon which doesn’t help at all because the Royal Zora already have a bunch of other difference such as their SIZE to name one.

I even went to the part about their curved toes, which initially would line up with some other Zora like Muzu

And let me tell you

I’ve looked at their toes

This is them from a child, a middle-aged, and an elderly. Color doesn’t matter and the curve? Well there’s

BARELY A DIFFERENCE 

At least not nearly enough to find an efficient way to find age. Even Muzu’s final model didn’t have the exaggerated curvature as seen in the book.

I looked at their tail tail fins, (not the tail on their head, but their actual small rounded tail fin by their butts) because the book also mentioned how the grown Zora have more pronounced tail fins compared to the kids, but it was the same for the 150s and the 300s sooo not that helpful

So I kept digging. In the book I found that King Dorephan was crowned around 100 years before the game started. In addition I reread the 10 Zora stone monuments and found that he had killed a Guardian with his bare hands and thrown it off a cliff, which he still had a scar from. 

[and yes I attempted to find his definitive age by seeing how long it takes for a scar to fade but I gave up cause Zora anatomy is too different to find a conclusive answer]

So I was like, “ok Dorephan had to have been around 150 when he came to the throne, then 50 years later the guardians are excavated giving way to the story about the guardian...” blah blah blahbla I even went to the supposed site where that guardian was, but it all didn’t really give me that much more info than what I already knew. I was researching ways to age the rock monuments from visuals alone which needless to say is pretty impossible, so I gave up on finding Dorephan’s age and I kept digging. 

All I wanted was something physical that could properly give way to identifying a Zora’s age was that too much to ask???

Now this is where I had all but given up, it seems that my only answer was this vague note about how their fins move up when they grow

Which, to be fair, held true when I looked at the in-game character models myself, but I can’t exactly pixel measure these things for each Zora.

But THAT’S where the revelation came. I was so focused on finding inconsistencies within the elderly Zora, when I should have been looking at the young baby ones. See, this pictures, literally right next to the page about elderly Zora that I was analyzing for ages, is the key to it all

Now, I was thinking about the rings on a tree, and certain species of banded fish that grow and discard different markings as they grow older, I even counted the neck rings on certain Zora to see if they did that thing where they add a ring for each birthday like some African and Asian cultures do (look it up, that stuff’s pretty interesting!) and that is where it struck me.

Count how many luminescent markings are on their head 

The males have 11, the females have 8  (on the one side, the other side has the same number of dots but for simplicity purposes I’m doing one side)

Now let’s count for these Zoras, who are middle aged-ish

The male has 10, the female has 7.

Now let’s look at the oldest Zora that we know of

3 dots above the eye, four on the tail. Muzu that motherfucker has 7 damn dots and I couldn’t be happier.

MY DUDES, GALS, AND PALS THIS IS IT, I’VE CHECKED AND DOUBLE CHECKED WITH NEARLY EVERY ZORA I COULD AND THE NUMBER OF LUMINESCENT MARKINGS ON THEIR HEAD CORRESPONDS WITH THE AMOUNT OF CENTURIES THEY’VE LIVED, LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY      DOWN     TO     THE     DOT

First we have Muzu, who as I’ve preciously stated is around 4 centuries old. 11-4? Oh, it’s seven, and that’s the amount of markings he has? OOoo??

How about this Zora Lady who recognized Link from 100 years ago?

Seven dots? 8-7 is 1 so shes just over one century which lines up timeline wise. You can even see how the third dot is slowing shrinking on her head so she’s coming up on 2 centuries 

Ok how about the elders?

NINE. 11-9 is 2 centuries, with again, the dot by their head shrinking significantly showing how they’re getting up on 3 centuries.

The part I circled in green there is jewelry, not a marking, however this only goes further to prove my point. What better way to appear youthful than to have jewelry that makes it look like you have more markings than you have, made with luminous stone, no less.

This guy? Seggin? Super close to 4 centuries, those dots are fading away fast. Count your days old timer

Random dude that doesn’t recognize Link but is an new apprentice for sculpture making? 10 dots, a fresh 1 century pal, lookin young

I was a feral child running across the Domain screaming people’s ages in their face like a rude, naive, brat, I was elated to say the least. Especially since this system even works on the King himself

[plus one dot slightly behind the fin here...]

King Dorephan has 7 dots, he’s 400 years old. Which still lines up timeline wise, especially since he’s similar age with Muzu who he has stated is one of his most trusted advisors, beecaaaaaaaause of the years they’ve spent working together the timelines match uppppppp

This system works for almost all Zora, with 2 exceptions. Guards have helmets that cover their markings, so it’s impossible to tell. In addition, Prince Sidon, has sixteen lights on this hammerhead because he’s fancy like that (we already know he’s canonically 2ish centuries old anyhow from the DLC)

EDIT: I WAS WRONG THIS WORKS FOR SIDON TOO. The sixteen markings I was referring to was actually the amount of marking on each side of the head total, however if we look at the markings for only one side, like intended

Ten dots, Sidon’s over 100 years old. I’d say he’s closer to 150 given the timeline

Essentially, the most surefire way to find almost any Zora’s age is to identify a male or female Zora, count the number of lights on the side of their head/tail thing, then subtract from 11 if they’re a male, and from 8 for a female. The number left is how many centuries they’ve lived. You can check to see if their markings are shrinking and fading to get a sense if they’re coming up on the next century anytime soon. Comparing this with the oldest Zora we see in game, we can conclusively say that the Zora lifespan is around 3 to 4 centuries since no Zora has been seen with less than seven markings

Now go and make your Zora ocs with your appropriate number of lights. I’m gonna have a cookie

#botw #breath of the wild #legend of zelda botw #loz botw #zora #zora botw #botw theory #botw headcanon #no fuck that this IS canon

[stxrrywildflower]

for better or for worse (2)

pairing - spencer reid x reader

summary - when the people they love the most are kidnapped and ripped out of their hands, the bau does everything they can to get them back before it turns dire

warnings - mentions of case, angst, injury details

series masterlist

drugs were coursing through your veins. you could tell that from the minute your eyes slowly opened.

instead of being met with bright lights or some random room, you were met with total darkness. the cloth veil over your head prevented you from seeing anything. a second cloth was secured around your face, acting as a gag to prevent you from calling out.

your head lolled slightly, due to both the drugs and actually having some form of control over your movements.

the cloth was violently ripped off, now exposing the environment you were in.

your eyes met andrew’s, who was sitting across from you. through still hazy eyes, you looked back and forth, desperate to try and figure out your surroundings.

penelope was to your right and leslie to your left. next to her was kristy, then andrew, krystall, and finally will.

the seven of you made up an almost perfect circle, one person facing another. you were tied of the same way, arms restrained behind the chair while your legs were tied to the base of the chair.

everyone was still fairly loopy, though penelope was sober enough to have tears already flowing down her cheeks.

“welcome everyone!” a voice called.

the three men, the same ones who delt with the fabric over your faces, stood in a triangle around the edge of your circle. each had on a full face masks preventing you from seeing their identities.

“what the hell do you want with us,” andrew spat out after managing to get the gag out of his mouth. everyone was more than fine with him taking charge, he was the fbi agent after all.

“you,” the one with the blue mask started, twirling a knife in hand, “are going to tear your other halves into pieces emotionally and i’m sure physically.”

he went on for another few minutes, the others chipping in occasionally. the whole thing was strategically planned out, unless the team found you, you wouldn’t be getting out anytime soon.

you were the first one to receive any form of an injury.

your occasional snarky and sarcastic personality trait was coming in force. as the three men entered the room, only to taunt the group, you couldn’t help but call them out.

“imagine thinking your going to get something good out of kidnapping all of us,” you started. “you guys are a bunch of morons who’s heads are pretty much wanted on platters by the team and i’m-” you were cut off by a hard punch to your cheek.

a gasp espacped your lips, pain radiating in both your eye and nose. a thin steam of blood trickled down your face. between the drugs hitting you even harder with the final effects on your body and now this, you were extremely exhausted.

they left the room soon after that, no clues or hints on where they were going.

“you okay?” will’s thick accent took a second to process in your head.

“fine,” you grumbled, moving your head to the side to wipe the blood from your nose on your shirt. “the teams going to get us out of this,” kristy spoke, as if to reassure herself. “i know they will.”

back at quantico, the team all sat around the table, still looking down at the phones. “i really hate to say it, but there’s little we can do until the kidnappers make contact.”

“are you joking?” spencer exclaimed, “do you really expect us to just sit here and wait while everyone is probably being tortured by the bastards who took them?”

they hated to admit, he did have a point.

j.j. led luke out of the room, keeping one hand on his back to comfort the agent who was moments away from breaking down crying.

“spencer, a word?”

the genius grumbled to himself quietly, pushing his chair back before following emily out of the conference room and into her office. “i need you to calm down,” she spoke gently.

that was easily one of the worst things she could have said to spencer.

“no i’m not going to calm down prentiss,” spencer snapped. “i lost maeve to an unsub the same way. how dare you tell me to ‘calm down’ when y/n is missing and we have absolutely no idea where her or the others went.”

emily frowned slightly at the mention of the event from almost eight years ago. while the current unit chief wasn’t on the case, she had heard about it while in london and did everything she could from where she was to help out spencer.

“i want you to take a walk. we need your head clear and ready to work,” emily spoke gently. spencer opened his mouth, wanting to protest but shut it quickly. he wanted to do as emily said, for your sake at least.

spencer shook his head, leaving the office after grabbing his bag and heading towards the elevator. maybe some fresh air would do him some good.

“why not me,” luke mumbled, barely audible to the blonde agent.

j.j. had taken luke to morgan’s old office to help him calm down. her motherly instincts had kicked in, especially as she knew how emotional luke could get in situations like these, stress adding on as it involved penelope.

“why did they take penelope instead of me? i’m apart of this team too,” tears started to flow down luke’s cheeks. j.j. pressed her lips together, wanting to stay strong enough for both his and her sake. her mind creeped back to will, desperately hoping he was okay.

“i don’t know luke, i really don’t. but trust me when i say, we will find them,” she reassured, wrapping an arm around the fellow agent. “thanks j, do you mind giving me a minute alone?”

j.j. nodded, squeezing his shoulder one more time before standing up just as her phone rang.

“my mom is coming down to get the boys. matt, she can take a few of yours,” j.j. announced once she met up with matt and rossi. they needed the kids handled so full focus could be on solving the case.

“joy is also flying in, she was on her way even before this whole thing. she can watch keely and the others” rossi chipped in. emily joined the group just in time to hear rossi’s offer.

matt nodded, the three parents in mutual agreement. “i’m going to meet up with tara and get started on some work. i mean what else can we do.”

“how’s spencer?”

“frustrated,” emily answered. “i’m honestly suprised no one else is on his level.”

j.j. sighed. “emily i don’t know what we’re going to do,” she admitted. “agents aren’t supposed to work cases when they’re personally involved. and with this, i mean we all are. what are we even supposed to do?”

“we really need reinforcements.”

——

“have you heard?”

“yeah i’m about to head over now. you?”

“same. are we really bringing our badges out of retirement?”

“hey don’t say retirement. makes us sound old.”

“true.”

“and yes we’re heading back. they’re family, and they need our help.”

with that, the phone call ceased.

the bullpen seemingly stopped, all eyes going over to the glass doors. none other than aaron hotchner and derek morgan stepped in, bags by their side and visitors badge clipped to their pants.

their styles altered greatly. hotch was dressed down in jeans and a patagonia quarter buttoned pullover, work boots as his shoe of choice. morgan was the same, opting for a t-shirt and zip up instead.

agents nodded as a sign of respect at the two former agents, their legacy with the bau team was still looked up to.

the current bau team seemed empty.

no one jumped up to greet them. no one hugged. no one could even muster up a convincing enough smile.

they all just looked down, going back to their individual work. spencer and luke were at the genius’s desk, chairs pressed close together as they put together information. rossi, j.j., and tara were in the conference room, boards put up with pictures of the phones as well as screenshots from street cameras. that left matt and emily who were engaged in a deep conversation.

emily stopped when she noticed the two men lingering. “go help spencer and luke. let them know to meet up with the other three when they’re done,” she ordered.

“thank you for coming, i wish we could meet under different circumstances,” she spoke, expending her hand out for them to shake. “we can talk in my office.”

the two former agents followed the current unit chief up, not bothering to sit in the chairs, preferring to stand. “bet you didn’t expect to be back in here,” morgan nudged hotch.

“is the team holding up okay? everyone seemed a little numb,” derek commented.

“how’s the investigation going? what do you have nailed down so far?” hotch quickly added.

“nothing, we have absolutely nothing. just broken cell phones and the word ‘love.’ we don’t have a tech analyst so we can’t even figure out half of the stuff we need to. no one can even focus right because we’ve had the people we love taken away with no means of communication or no clues. i think it’s understandable that we’re a little numb. and i just don’t know what to do because i’m dealing with myself and keely and also having to be a leader of the team,” emily stopped herself, running her hand through her hair to calm down.

her rant was pretty all over the place, mirroring the emotions she was feeling.

“which is why we’re here,” hotch stated. “morgan and i have the most clear heads out of everyone. if you say the word, we can lead this investigation and track down the unsubs. it would be the easiest way to make sure we get everyone back.”

emily nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. “okay. just please help us find them,” she pleaded. “we will, i promise.”

it was almost five hours before the mixed team found anything. a postal service worker stepped into the bullpen, holding a box and ipad in the other. anderson talked to him for a moment, motioning for emily to come down.

“i have a package for emily prentiss. you just need to sign here,” he repeated. emily was still hesitant, but leaned forward to write her signature.

emily held the box out in front of her, careful to keep her movements still as one wrong movement could set it off if it was in fact dangerous. she brought it up to the conference room, placing it on the table.

“it’s not an explosive,” derek determined after his examination. silence fell over the room.

tara was the one who leaned forward to open the box. her hands were shaky, directly due to her nervousness. no one knew what was inside, other than that it wasn’t a bomb.

all eyes were on the box, listing as the tape was cut open, them the cardboard flaps lifted.

bloody jewelry was inside; three wedding rings, two necklaces, a bracelet, and finally a helix earring.

spencer took a sharp breath. each piece of jewelry belonged to an individual taken. yours was the earring, an anniversary gift from him. the usual gold piece was now stained red.

the hope the team had for you all being alive cracked just a little bit more.

☆ ☆ ☆

tags - @zozoleesi @emxlyprentxss @spencerreidfanatic00 @mrs-dr-reid @irjuejjsaa @ogmilkis @sageellesworth05 @mortallythoughtfulgurl @brainyreid @ah-blossom @kissessforharryyy @ssareidbby @spencersglasses @spenciepoo338 @mggstyles @emilouu @loki-an-idiot @reidsmyhusband-emilysmymistress @pianofirepirate @ssa-morgan @afuckingshituniverse @spencerslatte @reminiscing-writer

#criminal #criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid x oc #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #emily prentiss #jennifer jareau #david rossi #penelope garcia #luke alvez #matt simmons #tara lewis

[sohoharlem]

I think people give Deuxmoi more hate than she deserves and I also think they over estimate her power and connections and info that she actually has. I think this also applies to the Chris Evans rumors from the past. I’ve spoken to her a few times mod, and I can provide you the info myself if you’d like, and I’ve asked her questions about Seb and sometimes about Ale and we have spoken. Not in detail but enough for me to see that by the certain questions she asks, she is just as in the dark about them as a couple as his fans are. I don’t think she thinks of them anything serious because I also don’t think she knows a lot about it. I think she’s interested in details for his love life as much as we are but she doesn’t know the things that his fans accuse her of like setting up fake tea or spottings. I don’t think she knows more than us. If she’s getting anything fake it’s because someone is sending her fake things, but I don’t think it’s her working with anyone, any team, to make seb and ale look a certain way. I have spoken to her and can say that deuxmoi being this rumor planter working with Ale or Seb’s team that everyone makes her out to be is totally false. Before I go I would like to say that I did also ask her today specifically about that blonde girl spotting and I told her ale is currently kind of a red head and it doesn’t make sense for it to be her. Deuxmoi is so out of it and out of touch that all she could think to say was she had the picture of the blonde girl he was seen with out eating at a restaurant few weeks ago, which was Elizabeth. Why would she give herself out and say it was some one else when fans want to claim it’s a baited spotting? The hate on deuxmoi needs to dial down and also calling everything fake and a lie without enough proof to what even is going on a lie too also needs to stop. Maybe we could use deuxmoi to work with us even, and maybe find out what she actually does know which I’m thinking is not a lot or as much as we think. If there’s ever anything that looks weird or sketchy maybe it is someone Ale knows but I think for the majority of time people need to relax the hell out because I think they are reading into released info too much. Like I said mod, if you want the proof of our conversations let me know. I really do think his stans read too much into these things.

Wow okay. That’s a lot to absorb. Well here’s what I’ll say to this. The one reason I do believe this is because I myself have at times said things that I knew were in fact true or I’ve said that I know certain things and have seen people take that information (that I said is true or that I know) and have experienced first hand them misconstruing it by either saying it wasn’t true or that it was planted by someone from their team or that even I was part of their team, and that always pisses me the fuck off. I can actually relate to what it feels like to know something is true and then watching people say it’s fake or made up and it’s fucking ridiculous. It really puts it into perspective sometimes how mistrusting people can be. It’s fucking annoying. It’s like saying I found out the sky is blue and then someone asks me to show proof or they say someone sent it in to me that the sky was blue, and it’s a plant, etc. I couldn’t have just looked up at the sky? Or maybe had a friend tell me? But again this is for things I’ve said I know for a fact. So do I believe it happens and especially to her? Of course. I mean like you said, we don’t always know one hundred percent what info comes from where all the time, but I do think there needs to be a level of trust somewhere between the reader and the person putting info out there; at least a little bit.

Yes, by all means, I’d love to see the screenshots.

- SH

[sinsbymanka]

Hey. I'm sorry. So. Your post about sunseekerknight is really long and it seems out of date. I thought everything had been resolved and she promised to make amends but this all started back around again and it sounds like your issue isn't solved. Can you update me real quick? Sorry.

Thanks for being polite and coming to me. I’ll try to summarize things to the best of ability while also noting this is kinda a clusterfuck. It got long, so it’s under a cut.

In March 2020, I commissioned @sunseekerknight (I’m blocked so I can’t actually @ her) to do a Tarot Card commission of my Inquisitor for $80. I sent the money via PayPal friends and family as she requested which is something I no longer do for artists, even though I’d done it before with no problems. 

The main post goes over my initial experience really well - the repeated attempts at contact and missed deadlines. This post was made on June 18, 2020 and blew up. I informed Ada that day I was making the post and she told me she’d be doing so as well. 

I’d already filed the PayPal claim which was ultimately denied because I’d sent the money via friends and family, despite SSK’s assurances she’d help me resolve it in my favor. 

I didn’t hear from SSK after this and I didn’t contact her. My father passed away on June 20th and I was busy dealing with the personal fallout of that (he’d been in the hospital the whole month of June as it was) so my priorities swung towards processing my own grief and planning what happens next. 

On July 10th, my PayPal claim was denied. I forwarded the claim to SSK with the following message:

I want to inform you that PayPal has indicated, due to the way you asked me to send the funds (friends and family), they are unable to provide any sort of refund based on their policies. It is your responsibility to make the refund.

Because of the history of fraud I've uncovered, I will be pursuing this further. I am, in particular, asking PayPal to mark this account as one used for fraudulent transactions and scamming money before closing it. My hope is that this account is in your real name and that getting this account marked for fraud has real consequences you have to live with.

I honestly didn’t expect to hear from SSK again, but I did on July 12th: 

Oh, I see. Now the difficult situation has become even more difficult. I'm sorry to say this, but, as I said earlier, I had only two offers for people affected by my actions - a PayPal dispute or finished art. And since PayPal is useless in this situation, all I can offer you - is art. I’m still ready to finish your commission because I don't want you to be left with nothing. I would like to return the money, really, but it will take time and I don't know how much, considering the current situation on Tumblr. I still want to resolve this issue peacefully, despite what is happening now. I know that you don't trust me, and I understand this, as well as the fact that you are disappointed, angry, etc., but still I want to do at least something so as not to leave the situation as it is now. But if this is your final decision, then okay, I understand and accept it.

This message struck me as victim blaming. I am, after all, responsible for the situation on Tumblr which means she can’t get commissions. I reacted with some venom and my tone is not great here, but I do ask you to understand the frame of mind I was in here on July 13th: 

I don't think it's fair to claim that PayPal is being unhelpful in this situation when it is you who are refusing to refund money for a service that was purchased and not completed. I think it would make me feel better if you started phrasing the "situation" in a way that took responsibility for it. Such as: "I cannot refund the money to you myself, because I spent it before delivering what you paid for, and I cannot get your dispute resolved through PayPal because I asked you to send the payment a specific way that precludes disputes." 

I also feel hurt that immediately after I sent my email on Friday, you blocked me from Tumblr and turned all your social media accounts private. I can't think of why you would do this when you claim to still want to resolve this and when I have been more than kind. I find it difficult to believe that you didn't know what my review would cause - it sounds to me like this is something that has been brewing for awhile. Frankly, I'm amazed it took three years. I would also appreciate if, instead of blaming the "situation" on Tumblr for your inability to receive new commissions, you began taking responsibility for that as well. May I suggest: "My actions in the past three years have harmed many people and they are angry about it with good cause. Because I have damaged my reputation to a great extent, I will probably not receive many, if any, people willing to pay me money for commissions." 

I fully expect to receive nothing from you: art or my money returned. When speaking with PayPal on Friday, they advised the only way to shut your PayPal account down is if I file a criminal complaint with the IC3, which is the US's Internet Crimes division of the FBI. I did so and sent them the screenshots I have of all our conversations, your posts on Tumblr, and links to the posts of other people who publicly came out regarding the same behavior they experienced. I'm uncertain I can withdraw my complaints from both PayPal and the IC3, and if I could I don't think I would. I'm sure this isn't something that is high priority for them, but I assume eventually they will contact you to discuss your actions. The way I see it, you have three options at this point in time:

Find some way to issue a refund to me, and any other customers you've wronged. If I am contacted by investigators, I will say a refund was eventually issued in my case. 

Deliver the art you promised to me, and any other customers. If I am contacted by investigators, I will say a product was eventually delivered in my case. 

Continue to ignore what you've done and hope that no real consequences come of it. 

As to the art, I don't want it anymore. It has been tainted by this awful experience and I will not enjoy it. I will, however, accept it if you choose to do it to lessen whatever consequences you may end up facing because, truly, I'd rather you learn from this than end up with financial or legal consequences that are even more burdensome. 

Honestly. I never expected to hear from SSK again. But I did because this is the drama that never ends. On July 20th: 

I must apologize for the long silence. Sorry, I just got home from an unexpected vacation with my family, and I followed the advice of my parents and friends - spend these days away from work and the Internet to feel better. As I said, I understand you. You sound reasonable and you are totally right - it is my responsibility for that. And I'm trying to work it out, even if these are rather strange ways. And it wasn't about you personally. This was part of another problem with a friend I was trying to protect, and I followed the advice to keep the accounts private during the "war" and block some people on the tumblr during this time to avoid any collisions. But still, I was available for correspondence via email, and now all my accounts are again freely available. I know how it looks like, especially for you, when you have really been more than kind to me, and I cannot apologize enough to somehow change and improve this situation. I just fucked up on all fronts and I admit it. And I see, yes. I don't mind returning your art or money, it's just a matter of time. These are not days, these are weeks or months, and it is solely a matter of your patience. If you do not mind waiting, then I will try to return the money to you, since you no longer want art for obvious reasons. I understand and accept it, and it's okay. If you're willing to wait, I'll keep you informed of the refund situation and will do it as soon as I can.

You’ll note earlier I told you I can’t tag SSK cause I’m blocked. I’ve never been unblocked since July despite her saying she would. This is also the last email I got from SSK. I’ve had no communication since to my knowledge.

At this point in time I was tired. Really tired. It was bad news I got this email exactly a month after my father passed because I just didn’t want to do it anymore. This is my second to last email to SSK in response also on July 20th: 

Please feel free to do what you need to do to manage the situation. For my part, I have said and done all I can. I have asked for a refund for a service you have been unable to provide in a reasonable time frame, and thus you are legally obligated to return my money in the same reasonable time frame. That time frame has passed already.

When I am contacted by authorities about this matter in response to my complaints, I will tell them you have promised refunds but have not delivered. The only thing you could do to change this answer is to issue a refund before I am contacted.

This exchange is draining and unhelpful for me. I ask that you please do not contact me again until you are ready to issue a refund. 

On September 25th, I was informed SSK had successfully opened commissions on Twitter and Instagram. This spurred me to send one final email: 

I've been informed you recently reopened commissions to buy yourself something and met your goal, even though you only advertised on Twitter and Instagram. 

I would like to remind you that I'm still owed a refund AND you shouldn't spend that commission money until you deliver on that art. Please do not rip and entire new group of people off. 

There are other people, in the notes of the original post, who can attest to terrible experiences similar to mine. In particular, @starsandskies, @vorchagirl, and @charlatron have all come forward to talk about what she’s done and their experiences. Her pattern seems to be to open commissions, deliver a few, have the rest dragged out of her, and then to not do other ones. I drew the short straw this time. 

I don’t know if she’s reading this - if she is, at this point all I really want is an apology, a list of people who are waiting for art/refunds from her, and a plan as to how she’s going to make it right. If she doesn’t do those things, I suspect I’m going to keep getting dragged back into this cluster for awhile to talk about my experiences. 

If you’re waiting for artwork Non, open PayPal disputes and file complaints if you need to. The sooner the better. 

#manka answers asks #sunseekerknight #this again #I'm tired of it again #sorry guys