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leog4u · 2 months

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Game Design and Porn Pt. 1

or, How To Fuck Up The Best Intrinsic Reward Ever

Hi, I'm Leo G, veteran pervert. One time while chatting in a server exclusively made of porn artists, I brought up the game design of a porn game I enjoyed. One of them laughed, saying "Who cares, it's just a porn game?" Being unwell, I never let this go. Since then, I have played many adult games and took each one as serious products made by professionals. Fast forward to today, and the demo for my porn game, Joker's Trip, is nearing completion. I also have some sci-fi erotica you should check out.

So you wanna make a porn game. You heard they make money, and hey what’s more fun than making a video game AND porn? But you don’t know where to begin! Well don’t worry, Leo’s got you covered. We’re gonna walk through the line of thinking you should have when designing your porn game. There's gonna be at least three parts to this, with part 1 focusing on how to reward your player.

Define "porn game" for me, Leo.

There are porn games, and then games with porn in them. A porn game is a game where you won’t last 5 minutes, where everything exists solely to meet and, subsequently, fuck. A game with porn in it is a game where everything exists for the purpose of the game, and also, you fuck. Fate Stay Night, for example, is a VN with a story that just so happens to have some CGs where the protagonist rails Saber, but is mainly about Shirou and the Holy Grail War. Much like how I would call Castlevania a game with horror in it, but not a horror game.

Porn games are a lot like horror games. They both get a bad rap for being cheap to make, appealing to base instincts, and generally being low quality. They're also both not actual genres of games, but genres of content. Think about it, if I asked you what a horror game is, you'd say a game that's scary. But what's the actual game part? The unfortunate answer would most likely be "walking sim," but there are a lot of examples that are FPSes, puzzles, driving sims, platformers, deck builders, the list goes on.

The most common genres of game I see for porn games these days are by far RPG Maker RPGs and VNs. I won’t be talking about VNs because they’re closer to writing than game design, which isn’t a flaw but a feature. What used to be everywhere, in days of old, were breakout games, where the more bricks and levels were cleared, the more of the sexy image would be revealed in the background. Other arcadey type deals like shoot ‘em ups and mahjong were also around, and had a similar “strip ‘em down until you have sex” gameplay loop.

Okay, so what’s an intrinsic reward?

There’s intrinsic rewards, and there're extrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards, generally, are the number go up rewards. Things that make your character stronger, or give you more resources to buy new gear or whatever. Intrinsic rewards in games can cover a large swathe of things. It can be the feeling of satisfaction of completing a puzzle, a piece of lore or world building, or a new dialogue option with a character you want to fuck.

I like fucking characters, are we talking about porn now?

Yes! I’m of the opinion that you literally can’t make a better intrinsic reward than pornography. On top of setting the tone for the entirety of the game., at its best it can add to a story, add to someone’s character development, or be a beautiful piece of art to look at. AND you can jack off to it! Unfortunately, that’s at its best. Let’s talk about how porn is delivered in a theoretical RPG porn game. (As a head’s up, there will be talk of “bad end” scenes, but this is under the assumption that the player is the one consenting.)

So you’re playing an RPG and get into a fight. Maybe you were underleveled or too cumbrained to remember to buy healing potions. Then your HP goes to zero, and instead of going back to the title screen, you’re getting fucked by orcs. That’s right, let’s talk about Game Over CGs.

You get to watch porn when you lose?

To someone making a porn game with a battle system, this delivery method makes sense. The characters in this world are driven primarily by lust, this is just the obvious conclusion. And it doesn’t even have to be non-consensual! Games like Future Fragments show that it can be presented as a sexy inconvenience rather than anything uncomfortable for the player or our hero. Game Over CGs even have the benefit of softening the blow of defeat, by giving the player a chance to reflect on their defeat and jerk off. Even better if losing a fight isn’t lost progress, but rather a bump in the road. However, there’s a problem here. The player is a dog, and we’re rewarding bad behavior.

The porn is an intrinsic reward, so why are we giving it to the player for losing? Incentivizing losing on purpose isn’t just bad game design, but a waste of time. And to that end, a lot of porn games try to give solutions to this. One being a kill button on the keyboard or a skill that instantly KOs our hero to get to the lose screen faster. What might seem like a convenience is really just expediting failure.

What it says is that the gameplay doesn’t actually matter. You’re just here for the porn, right? In that case there’s plenty of places I can go to see a chick with huge knockers get railed by an orc, with the added bonus of not having to play forgettable and mid turn based combat!

Another solution I’ve seen is the game outright telling you, “hey don’t bother killing yourself to see the porn. Once you beat the game all of the scenes you missed will be unlocked!” At first this seems like a reasonable way to go about it, but it comes with another problem: your game better be fucking good to make me play through the entire thing before getting to see cock. Like I said earlier, porn at its best can reveal things about the world and drive character development. I uh. Just beat the game. I don’t care anymore. Showing me a scene that’s taken out of context by a factor of 5 hours or more isn’t what I’d call great game design or story telling. It’s also too little, too late.

What if we made the porn actual rewards?

Now we’re getting somewhere! Let’s make the reward…a reward! What if, every time the player beats a level, we get some porn? If we tie the CG to beating the boss, we’ll be tying the reward to game progression. That’s good right? So now, on top of the extrinsic rewards you’d normally get for beating a boss (a lot of EXP, better gear, opened areas) we also get that sweet dopamine rush of pornography! So we’re good, right?

There’s 1142 words left in this post, so I’m assuming no.

Well. It’s a start. It has the problem of predictability. If not handled properly, it comes off as lazy. As a game designer, one of your goals is to not constantly remind your player that they’re playing a video game. Get through the level, get porn. It feels a little too “mouse in a maze looking for cheese” for my taste. And much like the game over method, if the actual game itself is mid, the player will start to question if the reward is worth it, and might be afflicted with the worst condition a player could receive: boredom.

Of course there are exceptions. In puzzle or arcade type games where you don’t get extrinsic rewards, giving the player porn as another form of reward per level or whatever is perfectly reasonable (though it does have the issue of being predictable.) This is a perfectly good way of doing it if your game is short, or if the game is, y’know, good and fun to play. Bad Color’s game, Heroine Conquest, is a level based puzzle game with porn as the reward, but only when you do good. Combining the actual challenge of mastering the game, with a genuinely unique game loop makes for a feeling of accomplishment when beating a level. Pair that up with a sex cutscene, and the dopamine rush will hit.

So! Let’s combine giving the player a power trip, with a less rigid structure for giving the player porn. Instead of tying the porn to purely progression gates, let’s tie it to the progression.

Plot milestones

In Third Crisis, sex scenes are peppered throughout the regular game’s plot, starting with some lesbian bondage before introducing the protagonist, who goes through a tutorial before having their own horny encounters. It’s not just given when you win or lose, but is a natural part of the game. Beating bosses, losing to enemies, and exploring dialogue options in sidequests all lead to unlocking new CGs.

Now what’s nice about that, is that the sex isn’t placed somewhere extremely predictable. It isn’t just a reward for beating The Boss Of Forest Zone, Now Go To Ice Zone And Beat The Ice Boss For More Cock. Because that’s the biggest issue of predictable rewards, you know you’re not getting anything until that checkpoint, which will make the player weigh whether or not it’s even worth continuing. This is fine, again, for an arcade type game, not an RPG or adventure game. By sprinkling sex throughout the plot itself, the player will not only want to progress, but their curiosity will have them wondering “what else is out there?”

Rewarding exploration

By putting sex scenes behind optional side quests or encounters, the dog that is the player will scour every single corner of the map, and leave no pixel unturned. Personally, that’s more exciting to me than what you’ll get in the main progression route. In Future Fragments the player can find their rival Faye in sexual situations if they explore the map enough. These are completely optional, and don’t give any direct rewards like more HP or an item, but they’re by far what motivates me to explore the maps as thoroughly as possible, more so than the plot macguffins the game is named after!

So now the player is excited. Sex can happen anywhere. Maybe that daunting off road path with stronger monsters isn’t just hiding a secret, but a sexy secret! They’ll be more likely to venture down those optional paths you painstakingly made.

If we’re using sex in game overs, boss fights, and just randos, why not put it everywhere?

So now I want to talk about the concept of a “sex stat”. It’s not a bad idea! Say, the higher the player’s sex stat is, the more opportunities you unlock for fucking. It could even be tied to the player character’s personality, and affect the story! Instead of using a sword and shield, they’ll end any conflict with sass and sex. They open their eyes to the horny world around them and stop being a hero, and instead become a succubus, and the ending is a massive cum filled orgy.

That sounds excessive

Yeah, it does, doesn’t it.

I’m not a fan of “corruption” systems in porn games. Corruption as a kink is totally fine, and having it be a part of the story lets you incorporate more sexuality into the plot. But as I alluded to, it snowballs pretty fast (and I’m not talking about spitting in someone’s mouth). It ends up being like a cheat code, where you’re bypassing parts of the game for no cost. It stops being a reward, it stops being unexpected, and it stops it from being sexy.

Wait, what? Stops being sexy? What’s not sexy about a succubus orgy?

Alright, listen, we gotta rein it in for a minute. This isn’t so much about game design as it is about writing erotica, but if you have a world where everyone’s fucking and sucking 24/7, there’s no contrast to make what would normally be a hot taboo a hot taboo. If everybody’s naked, nobody’s naked. The aforementioned snowball effect of a corruption system can be seen if you play literally any game that has one. It won’t take long to not have to engage with any combat or adventuring system if you can just press the “Submit to the big dick warlock” button and watch porn to progress.

Which, now that I said that, is exactly the problem. Imagine any other rpg you’ve ever played. Now imagine if every encounter and dialogue option had an option to just watch a short cutscene to skip the encounter. That would suck ass, right? Literally no difference here.

It would. Hey, I’m sort of lost now.

Don’t worry, we’re wrapping this up.

So what did we learn? We learned game over CGs have a critical design flaw that shouldn’t be relied on. We learned that predictable rewards can lead to boredom. We learned to keep sex as a reward and not devalue it.

To summarize, here’s a neat trick to know where to put your porn scenes.

”Would I put an Xbox Live achievement here?”

It’s that easy. “Lose to Goblins for the first time,” that’s an achievement. “Beat orc commander,” that’s an achievement. “Find Hubert the Magical Dickhead,” that’s an achievement. Using that as a guideline is foolproof. Almost.

This sounds like it’d take a lot of resources

It sure does! But don’t worry. I’ll cover that in the next post talking all about how to deal with the resource management of a porn game.

(Shoutout to Taylor, my guy for editing!)

#Leo Gab #game design #game dev

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sil-te-plait-tue-moi · 2 months

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Lovers' fevers.

Quick summary: Rust tries to overcome the night you spent together.

Word count: 655 words

Warnings: Mentions of smut; don't chain-smoke???

A/N: Last drabble before I actually commit to a longer story. Read context for this (and eventually that) here!

***

To remove himself from his tendency to think and think and think, Rust smoked, slumped over the wiry railing of the upper balcony outside his place. His first instinct had been to drink, of course—but, once he had opened the fridge, he was consumed by the image of your fingers curled pretty over the neck of the Corona he really shouldn’t have given you.

So far, he had made his way through half a pack, sucking down smoke as if he’d be nearly as lucky enough to be granted his silent death wish. At least, then, his skin would stop buzzing like a halogen bulb, give way to true silence.

It was evil, really: if there existed a God, He sure loved violence. Rust would’ve loved to blame it on external possession: it had not been him reduced to an animal, really, but something other, and that something had touched and been touched and had indulged in that pointless hunger. Selfish.

He shuddered quietly at the memory, which pulsed thickly, rhythmically, just behind his eyes, an all-consuming vibration. Half-convinced that there was something supernatural about your touch, Rust hastily lit another cigarette, crushing the previous beneath his matted work shoes, counting on the habit to numb this inconvenient distraction. His skin was thick. So thick, in fact, that there were times where Rust felt it was really a suit, some aspect he could step out of and inspect for maintenance. No sensation, no pain, could ever compare to the fact-based knowledge that everything happens in the head. Manage the mind; manage the self. The mind outlasted the self. Nostrils burning, eyes blown wide, Rust would tell that to Crash before receding, so that his brain would not leak from his ears. It usually worked. Here, he felt acutely aware of every temperature shift, every varying texture upon his skin, writhing secretly with near overstimulation.

Still, you remained, like a ghost. He dragged a hand across his face, like he might manually remove the anguish there.

He should’ve liked to blame you. Temptress, Eve in the garden. Only, in what world would that ever be fair? Rust only existed to deliver what was fair, what was just. He refused to align with the supposed blameless. Marty considered himself blameless, and some unmanaged part of Rust loathed him for it, itched to apprehend him.

Rust was not blameless – far from it. Every bad thing that happened to him, he knew he deserved. Call it karma. Nature carried out its dues – why shouldn’t he?

You had smelled so fresh.

You were trying to quit – he had almost felt guilty, smoking so openly in front of you. Then too, it had been a last-line defence against the craving that only grew every time he allowed himself to look at you, that gnawed and tore at his gut when your tired voice had quietened to a low drawl. You: threat to his realm, soft, wanting. When you had opened yourself to him, took him in deep, you were close and warm and wet – Rust would have liked to have blamed it on his programming, the way he responded. He knew, though, that it was just him.

He would not sleep tonight, he understood. He would not even approach his bed. The whole place still smelled like you, even though the linens had been to the laundromat’s, even though he had had the windows cracked open to Louisiana’s summer heat every night since.

Maybe Rust would drive to a bar. Maybe he would stop at a gas station, stock up on Camel Blues. Then, he would shower. In the morning, he would shower again, knowing that, in any proximity at work, he could risk weakening your resilience to quit with the cigarette smoke that seemed infused into his very being. Or perhaps he would let you be tempted by this – perhaps you would then understand what was happening to him.

#rust cohle x reader #rust cohle x reader smut #true detective season 1 #rust cohle #he is such crazy pussy #he makes me SO

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wontontrap · 5 months

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Fast & Loud | 18+

90s Eddie with a goth raver

AU where they won and everything is normal 🥲

This is my first smut, enjoy! ♥

Word count 2.6k

TW: rough sex, choking, manhandling, semi-public sex, hallucinogenic drug use (descriptions of uncomfortable trip symptoms), unprotected sex (fuck responsibly irl folks), mentions of knife play, mentions of gangbanging, mentions of human sacrifice

Middle of nowhere and fucked in the back of a van by the Hawkins Cult Killer. Yet she was the dangerous one.

♰ smut under the cut ♰

Once the charges of '86 were dropped, everyone wanted to see Corroded Coffin live, and every girl with a bad boy fetish wanted to fuck the Hawkins Cult Killer.

Eddie was a lover at heart, and it took him a while to get used to the women who wanted it violent. He retired his handcuff belt a few years ago. It both aged him and made him look kitsch, but he realized now that the past groupies who complimented him on his belt leaned towards the more macabre ways in the bedroom.

He remembers the night a bombshell blonde asked him to put his bowie knife to her throat in the back of the van. She was completely bare with a body like a playboy centerfold. Sick in the head with the wettest pussy he'd ever been in. He came quick that night, railing her hard. It was absolute abuse. He never played dangerous games in the bedroom again but when he was alone at night, or when he was having trouble finishing with a partner, he'd remember it. It always made him wonder if he was really the terrible person everyone still thought he was.

He eventually tired of the women who asked him and the other band members to sacrifice them, gangbang them, or worse. He quit the music scene and dissolved the band in 1990, after four years of touring the small circuit. They could've been big, but he hated to be thought of that way - to sell out in that way. To sell his soul he worked so hard to save, that others had laid their lives and reputations on the line to protect. He took the money from the two years of touring and bought he and his uncle a real home, allowing Wayne to retire early. He took a respectable job at a local factory and even joined the union.

It was now 1994 and the metal scene was almost non-existent. It had been choked out by the monotonous drone of the grunge era and something called nu-metal was beginning to seep into the zeitgeist. Cobain was gone and labels scrambled to fill the Nirvana void. Some months ago, Eddie received a phone call from someone claiming to be a label scout wanting to discuss rebranding Corroded Coffin to "Corroded", and dampening their sound. He impolitely declined.

There was one new genre that Eddie didn't mind.

Trance.

House.

The music played at raves. It was fast and loud like metal. Booming base and intricate electronic melodies reminding him of the solos he used to play on stage. The more illegal the venue, the better. He loved to lurk within them, a wallflower. The drugs were free, and the people were freer. Tonight he drove all the way to downtown Indianapolis. A large abandoned building in the old coal district.

No one was ever watching the door at these things. He made his way up to the main entrance and heard a hushed toned behind him say, "Do you think that's really him?"

A much harsher but just as hushed tone responded, “You'd think he’d at least change his look. Sad really. How obvious.”

He was used to still being a pariah back home, but hearing that interaction made him feel a moment of deep despondency. Still, he persisted through the crowd, finding the perfect spot to smoke the rest of his cigarettes while feeling the deep base within his chest. He was incredibly lucky to have found another genre as cleansing to him as his first love of metal.

He scanned the dance floor, raves being a perfect place for so-called people watching. His eyes fixated on a young woman dancing atop a metal platform. medium height and black hair dressed in a leather skirt and corset. Already she had his attention. The sleeves of her cropped sweater were torn to shreds, held together by a scattering of safety pins and her torso was somewhat exposed, the corset putting her chest on full display for him. She had on the darkest of makeup, and her hair was gathered into two small buns, chopped up bangs framing her doll-like eyes. She looked liked something out of a corner store comic book, he thought. Her movements were quick and fluid and the flashing lights matching each beat gave the illusion that with each new sound she was magically in a new position.

She was entirely his type. The industrial gothic style reminded him of the metal babes he enjoyed so much back in the day.

She noticed him noticing her. And after a few glances she began to stare at him. He felt exposed somehow and turned his eyes away. He began looking for a path out of the crowd.

She jumped from the platform, jogging over to him. She grabbed his arm and called out “Wait, I know you!"

He turned to face her.

"You're Eddie Munson. You were Corroded Coffin's guitarist. She says with a smile, "I'd know that face anywhere.”

He responds with a crooked smile, bringing his nearly spent cigarette to his lips and taking a final drag. He flattens it between his thumb and forefinger as he begins to answer her, "Listen, you're not one of those-"

"I'm not a true crime groupie," she says, "I swear. I just recognized you from your band. I saw you play in ’89."

“Granted,” she begins again, “I used to dream about that face between my legs."

She laughed now, a bit awkwardly, which he thought was adorable.

He stays silent, letting his eyes do his talking. He scans her body from her cleavage, to her hips, hugged by that poor excuse for a leather skirt, and back up to those bright eyes.

She smiled ever so sweetly at him before saying, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look lonely. I can fix that."

He watched as she carefully placed a small tab of ecstasy on her tongue.

"Take this" she said, cupping his face in her hands.

She pulled his face to hers and he immediately opened in submission to her kiss. He hadn't tripped in some time, and there was no better time than now. This dark beauty already so down for him. When she pulled away he felt the tab begin to dissolve on his tongue, bitter and electric. She placed a different colored tab on her own and took his hand, leading him to dance.

His tolerance for harder drugs had diminished now that he was practicing the art of the upstanding citizen, rather than the depraved rockstar. In only minutes, the music began to muffle in his ears and his arms and legs began to grow heavy with tingling in his fingers and toes starting to follow. He felt the sweet swell of his cock hardening as she moved her body against his. He was never much for dancing, so he stood there with his head thrown back, basking in the flashing lights. He was only her prop and he was enjoying it. She put his hands where she wanted them, moving them closer and closer to the band of her leather skirt. She was only teasing him before she turned around to face him. She wrapped her leg around his waist and leaned backwards, dipping herself almost to the ground. In a flash, she was now inches away from his face, hands on his chest.

She kissed him again, deep, and he responded in kind. She pulled away from him and took his hand. They threaded themselves carefully through the crowd as she led him out of the venue and into the field of parked cars.

"Where's yours?" she asked, breathlessly.

Eddie tried to get his bearings, the cool night air returning some semblance of coherent thought to his mind, but his whole body still throbbed with ecstasy. He sounded the van's alarm and they soon made their way to the rear doors. He opened them and ushered her into the back. Once inside he fumbled with the latch, the drug she'd slipped him now in full effect. In the enclosed space he began to breathe heavily, and flopped himself on a heap of nearby dusty blankets.

He felt as if he were cooking from the inside out, and he needed to touch himself. He shed his top layers before unzipping his jeans and wrapping his hand around his cock. He sighed in relief. He stroked himself and continued to sigh and hum.

"You sound so sweet, killer." he heard her say.

In his haze he'd forgotten she was there. He turned to find her laid on her stomach, ass up and moving it up and down slowly as her soaking wet cunt swallowed her fingers over and over again. Her heavy boots thrown into the corner, she hadn't taken off her fishnet stockings. Nothing was stopping her from delving her first two fingers into herself through the large holes. No panties, he thought.

In complete drug lust, he crawled over to her and tasted her. She removed her fingers, sighing deeply. She raised her body into a better position, giving him full access to her. He quickly brought her over the edge with his tongue while she let out the most gorgeous moans. She returned the favor in kind, swallowing his cock over and over again until her makeup ran from her doll eyes and he dripped from her chin. Still reeling from the X, he wasn't surprised he was ready to go again so soon. Those damn tights, he thought, as they laid bare her center. They were perfect for him to push right into her, but he couldn't help ripping them from her body.

“Has anyone ever told you,” she starts, “that you are the most beautiful color.”

He stares into her eyes, her blown pupils threatening to overtake those bright irises.

"You sound different than I feel,” he remarks.

"Because I didn't take X,” she says laughing, "I dropped acid."

"Brat", he rasps.

"What're you gonna do about it, killer?" She asks, undoing her corset and tossing it to the side. She gave him the greediest look.

He lifted her hips to his and easily pushed into her soaking wetness. He began a relentless pace.

“Such a sloppy cunt,” he told her.

"Such a sloppy, sloppy cunt for such a gorgeous, gorgeous girl.”

She mewled for him, reaching her hand down to rub her clit.

“You like to fuck criminals?” he asked her, “You like to fuck killers? That turn you on?”

His tone was reprimanding.

“No,” she replied, with a small giggle, “I like to fuck musicians.”

He cracked a smile then and pounded her even harder. She screamed and moaned and somehow wound up on top of him bouncing on his hard cock. She squeezed him hard like this, cumming with a small gush onto his pelvis. His rough hands played with her tits. Her cropped sweater was still on and without the corset it landed just at the swell of them. She leaned forward to grind against him as he continued to pound into her from below, both feet on the floor and back arched for leverage. She came again, shaking.

"Get on your knees for me,” he says.

She obliged him and once in position, he entered her again. With his pants still around his thighs, the metal of his belt made a rhythmic *clink* sound with each hard thrust, grazing the back of her thighs. He noticed when it did, she gave him an extra, more delicate moan. Just like all the rest of them, he thought.

The new position giving him better purchase, he continued to punish her sweet cunt the way she deserved. She showed him her appreciation by gushing again all over the van's carpet, while she screamed obscenities.

He leaned forward and whispered into her ear harshly, “Some mouth on you.”

She nuzzled into the side of his neck then, and he turned her face to his and kissed her deeply once more.

She let herself fall gently forward, rolling over, her legs still spread wide for him. He entered her more slowly this time, wrapping his hand around her neck and giving a small squeeze.

"This alright?" he asks, "You like this shit?"

She gave a small nod of approval before saying, "Do it, killer. Use me up."

At that, he relentlessly pounded her.

Through her loud whines and those mewls again, he asks, "You ever shut your mouth?"

"Shut it for me,” she snaps, and he continues his assault with one hand on her throat, and the other covering her mouth.

It's things like this that always did it for him, and he felt his end approaching. Quickly he pulled out of her and came on her still flushed chest. He continued to stroke his cock, riding out his own orgasm as his drug addled body shook and his brain drenched itself in every pleasure chemical. Below him, she reached her final orgasm by rubbing her swollen clit while looking him dead in the eyes.

Middle of nowhere and fucked in the back of a van by the Hawkins Cult Killer. Yet she was the dangerous one, he thought.

"Do you know what color you are?" she asks him, after a few moments of silence.

"Go on, tell me" he says, as he tucks himself back in.

Legs still spread, fingers ghosting over her sensitive cunt, she says "You're fire, killer. Fiery red, but sometimes you're all orange embers and black ash."

He had to get her out of here. The X threatening to creep up on him again. He didn't think she could take another round, not with what he'd want to do to her now that he'd tested her waters well beyond his imaginings.

The complete surprise of this night began to set in as she sat up to dress herself with what was left of her outfit. No, he could never settle for lackluster head at the edge of the dance floor again.

He intently watched her finish dressing, and immediately after she threw open the van's rear doors. The chilled air ran over him and he put his flannel back on before hopping out and lighting a fresh cigarette. He offered it to her and she took her fill before starting her walk back to the ongoing rave.

"Hey!" he called after her.

She turned around to face him.

"What's your name?"

"Miranda," she says, through that adorable laughter.

"Lemme see it one more time, Miranda.”

She leaned back on the hood of the car next to her, and spread her legs wide. No panties and no stockings now either. She teased him by spreading her pussy for him. He flicked his cigarette onto the ground, and crossed the space between them.

He dropped to his knees and gave her pussy the sloppiest kiss. Soon he was flicking his tongue over her clit while her cunt swallowed his fingers knuckle deep, stopping at his large rings. She shivered at the cold sensation each time.

“You ring so red!” she cried out.

She grabbed a handful of his curls and started to grind on his face. He removed his fingers from her and she heard the distinct sound of his belt being unbuckled. He stood up, cock ready once again. He grabbed her corset at the plunge and ripped it clean in half, revealing her tits to him again. She gasped at the action.

"That's better,” he whispered.

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brainworms-all-night-long · 3 days

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Based on this post and another one (that I cant find for the life of me but I'm sure exists!!) about Sonic also doing graffiti because he vibes with it as a form of self expression, Aka Sonic and Nine banter fluff with a grain of plot somewhere in between

[2,281 words]

---

"Still find it so pleasantly surprising it was so easy to convince you." Sonic said after he vaulted over the railing while keeping his hold on it with one hand, his words now slightly muffled through his respirator.

"Says you! I didn't know you were up for vandalism."

"It's not vandalism, It's art." The hedgehog replied in a sassy tone, accentuating the 't' at the end and then shaking his spray can. "Without it, all this would be just a sad gray slab of concrete."

"Tch, sure."

Nine scoffed but the smile in his tone was evident while he rummaged through the bag of sprays and paints and finally settling on a few eye-bleeding colors on the yellow-blue spectrum he wanted to use.

"That one's almost empty." The hedgehog pointed towards the turquoise can that Nine flipped in his hand. He deadpanned as he must've felt it was unusually light.

"No wayyy, I couldn't tell."

"And wear the mask."

"My lungs are destroyed already, what's a few more whiffs of spray paint. No need to pester me."

Oh, Sonic will have exactly none of that backtalk, nor will he rely on the fox's habit of saying no but doing what he was told anyway, because this is not putting away the salt after a lunch, but genuine health concern.

"Nine." he added just a bit more insistence into his tone.

The mentioned fox was now staring at him unimpressed through the railing, a silent challenge as neither of them dared to blink for a good minute.

Nine eventually gave in when his eyes started to dry out and sighed, pulling out the respirator from his pocket and tying it behind his head.

"Thank you." Sonic finally shook the spray can and gave a couple short splashes of it into the open air before putting down the first lines of his soon-to-be masterpiece.

"Didn't do it for you."

"Ah but didn't you "don't" need to wear it?" Detecting the immediate loophole in the other's baseless complaints Sonic continued to focus on his outline, not lifting his head to look at the fox.

Whatever he grumbled under his nose was inconsequential as both of them finally let the conversation drop and Nine then flung himself over the railing as well.

Albeit Nine had just a bit more advantage than one poor hedgehog hanging on with one hand that will surely fall asleep sooner or later, since he could not only fly, but use his mechanical tails to hold onto the road overpass in case he got tired of that.

For a while the only sounds accompanying them were that of late night traffic and spray painting.

Sonic just couldn't let it go though, it wasn't fair,

"Heh, cheater."

His arm was still doing strong but what was a little salty banter, he was itchinf for a conversation.

"Nah, I just didn't pick a spot where I'm at a risk of falling into a highway."

A fair point, he probably should've done more pre-planning just this once, but come on, how often do you see exquisite graffiti made on the _middle_ of a road overpass? He has to have the bragging rights to it!

"Not like you can just fly."

"Eh, it's more of a hindrance really." The fox waved him off and grabbed onto the concrete base of the road, then anchoring himself onto it with his mechanical tails "Can't get the lines straight."

"Bet those don't get tired either." Sonic's point still stands.

"Done complaining?"

Nine looked at him with seemingly all of the annoyance and indifference he could with just half his face. And Sonic couldn't help but snicker.

"Hey I'm just poking fun! No need to take it so personally!"

Nine sat, stood? something in between, in silence for a second. A silence Sonic recognized as a very bad, not good kind of silence. As in, he's contemplating to either do something stupid he knows he shouldn't do, dangerous, or a mix of both.

And thank Gaia for his light speed reflexes, when he barely managed to dodge a green splotch of paint landing on his shoe.

"Oh it's on."

Sonic reached as far as he could and even if he gave a warning, Nine didn't get to dodge the attacking mist of turquoise that landed on the side of his shorts and an edge of his mechanical tail.

"He-hey! This won't get washed off!" Nine cried, but didn't let the new design bother him for long as Sonic saw a malicious glimmer in his eyes.

Nine reached towards his left-hand glove which Sonic almost moved out of the way, if he didn't remember that was the only difference between him being here or careening bellow onto a highway. Not that he couldn't get back up here in a second but instinct still betrayed him as the glove was no longer white.

"You're lucky you don't wear more clothes." The grin in Nine's voice was heard as he threw the can away "and that it's almost empty."

"What can I say, luck is always in my cards."

Drat, he should really restock his supplies. Ah but when he always forgets and remembers already when it's too late.

He looked at his new paint job and figured it wasn't that bad, good gloves are much easier to come by and buy in bulk than shoes that could withstand his daily running. Not that he would mind a change in color per se, but green just wasn't his.

On his clothes he means, well- ah whatever, he should focus on the task at hand.

Only after getting a last metaphorical word in by sending a tiny cloud of paint Nine's way, who promptly hissed at him.

Speaking of hands though, it was slowly beginning to fall asleep, but he chose to persist, this is gotta be a quick one then.

As he planned to turn his full attention to his own piece of art however, his eyes were dragged by what Nine was painting.

"Woa you can do it lineless?"

"Yea, pretty cool right." The smugness radiated off of him as he leaned back to either admire it or show it off better "Doesn't help that I might have to line it anyway cuz so far it looks like shit."

"Hey don't say that, trust the process!"

"If the process makes it look like a jumbled paint stain what is there to trust."

"Well for one, someone will find it pretty, beautiful even. And second!" Nine raised his spray can, as if to threaten Sonic with a mouthful of neon green spray if he continued. Sonic was not deterred in the slightest though, "It's by a road. No one will have the time or chance to look for every minor mistake you see up close."

And Nine promptly lowered his hand at that and sighed, resuming his work.

"I hate how you make sense."

Nine sighed, almost fondly? Though Sonic ignored that in favor of observing his style, which for some reason rang familiar.

"Hm, were any of the graffiti in New Yoke made by you?"

"Just one."

One question satisfied, yet another popped up, but he could finally turn away and catch up in progress to where Nine was at. Quickly setting down the outline for the idea sitting in his head for weeks.

"And it stayed unfinished because I almost got busted by eggforcers. Didn't have the courage to return to it since."

"Maybe we could someday go back there and finish it." He gave a quick look towards the fox and while he can't say he expected a positive reaction, the other almost recoiled even at the mere mention of going back to New Yoke.

"The city is bound to have changed since the council was dethroned and left to float endlessly in the void I'm sure!" Sonic tried his best to make the proposal sound more appealing despite that. Mostly cuz he wasn't too much against the idea himself, if anything he'd love to go back to check on everyone.

Chaos he missed them all so much actually, there surely has to be a way to get in and out of the Shatterverse. And he knows someone in particular to pick their brains about this.

"Doubt the people have."

"Who knows, maybe they're in a better mood now that they get to see the sun every once in a while. It sure worked on you."

Nine glared at the graffiti before him as if it just called him the most offensive insult, but really sonic found out that was his defensive thinking face.

"Still a no."

"Sure thing bud, won't pressure you. Although..." Sonic started, unsure of just how much more he can push this before it gets too uncomfortable. "I wouldn't be against going there myself."

"Doubt Shadow will let you near the Prism or that you'd want a repeat of the first adventure"

That was, a surprisingly calm and straightforward answer, huh. "Yea but I mean it like, there's gotta be a different way right? Since you're here and all."

Yea he was definitely pushing it, Nine turned away from him and fully concentrating on his artwork in favor of answering.

And the subject dropped after a while of tense silence. It mellowed out back into the more plesant one they had at the beginning, with Sonic continuously reminding himself he can't rush it too much or it will end up looking not up to his standard.

Somewhere along the way he exchanged hands as his left one was threatening to fall asleep and he really didn't want to deal with the aftermath of that. But he could do with a few wonky lines instead, so it was a fair trade-off.

They both stayed without a word, up until Sonic felt confident enough to sign his signature and Nine's voice suddenly perked up

"Nicky?" He questioned while it turned out he was actually observing him for a while.

"Gotta have a pseudonym, my name on itself is pretty famous as is." Sonic could finally release the strain on his arm and leg as he hopped up and sat down on the railing. Then finally put down his respirator and took in a deep breath.

"Sounds weirdly adorable for a street artist."

"Oh come on what's yours then?" Sonic asked with more of a genuine curiosity. 'Nine' was already a pretty cool name in his humble ever-correct opinion, and he could imagine the fox coming up with a myriad of cool variations of it.

But Nine's ears only pinned back slightly.

"I don't really have one." He admitted and Sonic could swear he sounded embarrassed.

"I, well most of what I draw is just for myself," he started slowly, "I never needed a complicated signature or a pseudonym since no one besides me would see it anyway."

"Hehe, understandable" Sonic couldn't help but find that both charming and sad, in a way. A fond memory of Tails trying and in his words failing to draw him a picture or two years back resurfaced. The little kit suppressing tears because he could "never get the lines just right" and later lighting up like a candle when Sonic complimented it up and down, because may the lines not be perfect, it was draw for him, and no amount of technical mistakes Tails decided to point out didn't stop his heart from doing backflips.

"Wouldn't mind seeing some of your hidden masterpieces if that's the case."

Aaand Nine froze again, sucking in a deep breath.

"They're all... in New Yoke. Or the Grim. But since both of my labs were destroyed due to one reason or another I don't think most of it survived." The fox resumed his work, and when Sonic leaned over he could see him most likely adding the finishing touches to what was most definitely a self-portrait with a few artistic liberties. Either Sonic was reminiscing for way longer than he registered or Nine managed to speedrun it.

"Oh well," the hedgehog took a second to mince his words as he properly leaned back a bit, a couple of cars breezed past him as he contemplated whether to try again or leave it be. "I mean, there would be no harm in taking a quick look. I-if not then you could always just make more stuff here! It's just, a shame I think?" He regretted his choice halfway once he heard the fox sigh.

"We both know you wouldn't just go and dip, Sonic." Nine threw the white spray over him into the bag and sat back into his mechanical tails, finally putting down his mask.

"But there's also no convincing you otherwise. So fine." He crossed his arms "But we're dragging Tails along."

Sonic's heart swiveled at that. He kicked up his legs and flipped back off the railing.

"That was the plan!"

And he couldn't help the grin that made its way across his face as he outstretched a hand towards Nine to take it.

The fox only pulled out his phone from the pocket of his pants and let go of the concrete wall, suspending himself in there further away.

"Don't you want a photo?"

"Ohoho, you betcha!" Sonic almost feared he would have to let his hand fall in shame, but he gripped the metal in front of him with excitement instead.

"Do you want my shoes on there or not?"

"Sure, if you want to incriminate yourself."

With a smirk that slowly turned to a genuine smile, Nine took at least five separate pictures.

Afterward, they packed the bags and slowly took off back to the nearby field with a not-so-subtly parked biplane.

#sonic prime #theyre silly your honor #artist nine be beloved <333 #if you see a mention of sonic seeing nine's facial expressions no you didnt #i had to keep reminding myself that Im trying to write this from Sonic's perspective and not Nine's #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #miles nine prower #nine the fox #me when I finish writing #the same but different

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jessepinwheel · 16 days

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Oooh. About your parasitic extraction au? How do force sensitives live in the Mandalorian empire? Like you said conscripted, do they have a bastardization of Jedi culture? Are they enslaved? What is it like? Do canon characters live in the empire or in the Jedi Order in hiding? (I'm thinking Mace Windu, Depa Billiba, Plo Koon, and Ahsoka Tano mainly.) Also! Do other clones exist? Mainly the CCs. Wolffe, Fox and Bly lol

the mandalorian empire love having force sensitive warriors because they're extra strong and have superhuman reflexes so they do everything they can to get their hands on as many of them as they can

general practice is for young force sensitives to be 'adopted' by high-ranking mandalorian clans for training. if they're born into a less prominent mandalorian clan, maybe they can train their kid themself or they can surrender the kid. if the family is not a mandalorian family (e.g., one of the occupied worlds) they're supposed to surrender their force-sensitive child for training and this is considered an honorable thing to do. if they don't want to do that and try to get their child to the jedi order instead to save them from being conscripted for basically the rest of their life then usually their whole family gets killed and the child gets sent to a mandalorian clan as above (this happened to ahsoka and she hates the rebellion because she blames them for her family's death)

mandalorian jedi all wear collars which cannot be removed, and the collar denotes their rank. each mandalorian jedi is also assigned to a handler who is supposed to act as support and also is supposed to kill their jedi if they go off the rails (drink too much dark juice from all the murder and start killing everyone). a mandalorian's jedi armor specifically has an undefended back for this purpose. they're not *technically* enslaved because this is considered an honorable position and they get a lot of privileges but like. read between the lines here.

mandalorian jedi are basically all trained in combat and not so much in the psychic philosophical spiritual stuff because the mandalorians think that 'don't kill people' thing is for chumps and they burned down most of the jedi temple's libraries. they just don't know how to do the psychic stuff and most of the psychic stuff doesn't work very well when you don't teach them emotional regulation first. like a trial for all mandalorian jedi is that they get their kyber crystal and they're not promoted until they've killed enough people that it turns red. if that puts things into perspective.

anyways, the old jedi order is in hiding across the galaxy. they wear normal clothes and they got rid of the padawan braid because they don't want to be murdered on sight. instead of the braid, they use a set of prayer beads, which they carve and add beads to as they go through trials and visit different worlds, partially because prayer beads are really easy to dispose of in a hurry. they do have a base in dagobah though where they take care of and teach the youngest force sensitives.

re: who's who, there are a lot of canon characters on both sides. obi-wan, obviously, is one of the traditional jedi. he was mace's padawan when he got captured by jango. depa, plo koon, jocasta, yoda, and maul are all traditional jedi. obviously there are more, but those are the ones who get mentioned by name.

on the mandalorian side, we have ahsoka (whose handler is padme), anakin (whose handler was rex), qui-gon (who is dead), ventress (whose handler is isabet reau), dooku (whose handler is myles), quinlan (who is a spy trying to infiltrate the jedi order), also aayla and vokara che who kind of just briefly show up

the other clones mostly don't exist. I say mostly because when jango put in a clone order for two sons, kamino made three in case one of them didn't make it, but all three of them did make it and the third one is fox, who the kaminoans then put into the brainwashing factory to turn him into a brainwashed super soldier. and then when jango went back and asked for a new son because cody and rex disappointed him, they made three again and two made it. one of them is boba, and the other one I have named kiki. he is also put into the brainwashing factory.

which is all to say. being a jedi is rough as hell regardless of what side you're on.

ask me a question about parasitic extraction, the role reversal mandalorian empire au that I have

#ask jesse #fic: parasitic extraction

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valtionrautatiet-official · 5 months

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An introduction to VR multiple units, part 2: Sm3

The Sm3 Pendolino. Sähkömato (electric worm) or muovipulkka (plastic sleigh). The temperamental italian lady. Our only actual high-speed train so far. Fast and beautiful – but also unreliable and gives an uncomfortable ride.

An Sm3 at Seinäjoki station, summer 2023, on a decidedly non-high speed connecting service between Seinäjoki and Vaasa – a line which has a 120 km/h speed limit. My photo.

The story of the Sm3 begins in the early 1990s, when our leaders decided we needed high-speed trains to compete with flying and cars, but they didn't want to invest in actual high-speed lines. The answer was a body-tilting train, which supposedly could operate on existing tracks on higher speeds. At the time, there were three options of these in production: the Italian Pendolino, the Swedish X2000 and the Spanish Talgo Pendular. The Pendolino was already in service (unlike the X2000, which would have otherwise probably been a better choice, being designed for similar weather conditions) and it was cheaper than the Talgo Pendular. Thus in 1992 we ordered two six-carriage Pendolino sets, with options for 23 additional sets.

The Finnish Pendolino, later designated Sm3, was not in fact based on an existing design, but a sister class of the Italian ETR 460, which only entered in service in 1994, the same year the first Pendolino set arrived in Finland for testing.

A pair of Sm3's at Helsinki central station in the original livery, summer 2010. My photo.

The first two Sm3's entered service between Helsinki and Turku in late 1995. Although the reasoning for buying them was that they could operate without the need to build new high-speed lines, much of the rail line between Helsinki and Turku had to be rebuilt to accommodate the new trains. After just three months, the Sm3's had to be withdrawn from service due to not coping with Finnish winter. While the problems were mostly solved, the Sm3 was have remained problematic through-out their entire careers.

Despite the issues during testing, in 1997 VR ordered eight additional six-carriage sets, which were delivered in 2000-2002. Eight more were ordered in 2002, and delivered in 2004-2006, bringing the total number built to 18.

The original plan was for the Sm3's to be able to operate at speeds of up to 250 km/h. In practice the top speed proved 220 km/h, and it could be achieved only on specifically-built high-speed tracks between Kerava and Lahti (opened in 2006). While on the route between Helsinki and Turku travel time was supposed to be cut to less than 1½ hours, this was never achieved. The body-tilting system, which was to make the high speeds possible, never worked properly and in the end we decided to simply lock them permanently in upright position. With the arrival of the double-decker Intercity carriages, which could be operated at speeds up to 200 km/h, today the Pendolino's operate according to the same timetables as the Intercities.

Interior of the second-class section of an Sm3. My photo from 2014.

Of the six carriages of a Pendolino set, carriage 1 was originally a first-class car (after 2006 ekstra class) with a meeting room at one end. Carriages 2 and 4-6 are second (eko) class ones, white carriage 3 is the restaurant car. Carriage 2 has seats and a toilet for disabled passengers (however, the wheelchair lift is in carriage 3), while carriage 6 has a compartment for passengers with pets.

The two prototype units, 7001 and 7002, were somewhat different from the mass-produced ones, and the 7002 was withdrawn from service in 2015 as a source of spare parts for the 7001. However, the 7001 was also withdrawn in 2021.

Units 7013 and 7016 crashed at Tampered station in December 2021. Both were seriously damaged, and the decision was taken to use the undamaged carriages of both units to create a single working six-carriage unit. Thus only 15 Sm3 Pendolinos remain in service today.

There has been some talk that the new Sm7 units could replace the Sm3's when delivered... but the Sm7's top speed of only 160 km/h makes a direct replacement unlikely.

#railroad #train #multiple unit #vr #pendolino

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ladyluscinia · 8 months

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On a slightly more serious note, "It's just... I'm disappointed in the writers, man. They drank the canyon kool-aid" is exactly the kind of take you get at the end of a 1.5 year hiatus when a very vocal section of the fandom decided a few weeks in that there was one major character in this black humor romcom who was too problematic, too unquestionably bad and wrong and villainous that even attempting to look at the series from his POV or expressing any sympathy / willingness to evaluate his actions in good faith was mostly taken as proof of fans embracing their internalized bigotry and defending it in ways that caused real, active harm to every POC and queer person in the fandom (except, of course, the many of them on the wrong side of this divide). Like it's a very straightforward line from "you are morally suspect for even considering reads of this show that do not take the S1 antagonist's pure self-aggrandizing, bigoted hatred of our good guys into account" to the kind of reinforced bubble discussions that leave people absolutely baffled when canon doesn't follow the elaborate web of interpretations and headcanons and symbolism that they and their friends have mostly made up whole cloth in their heads.

And this isn't a new problem! It's as old as fandom and will last as long as fandom does. And, however clever you are, you are liable to end up on the wrong side of interpretive discourse at some point, and then you will be the one double-taking at new canon and trying to figure out where did they come up with that?!? I've been totally wrong before. A good reason to check in with yourself every once in a while and make sure you aren't going off the rails.

But I do think that fandom - ALL fandom - is getting worse regarding this, especially with all the increased roving anti culture working double-time to tie having right or wrong opinions about the TV show into moral purity / corruption and people's stances on social politics, and the continued and frankly disastrous skewing of the aired content vs hiatus time ratio giving people so much longer to build up their fandom bubble and less canon content to base it on.

So like... general reminder that fandom thrives best on multiple interpretations existing, and any serious attempt at meta / predictions benefits from understanding how to weigh multiple interpretations and decide why you think yours is strongest. And you can't do that if you try to banish one entire branch of thought and all its fans into the sun because you disagree with it. And then you look really bad when those fans were right and you're reduced to bitterly complaining they "got to the writers, too" instead of acknowledging that those Big Blogs you follow weren't righteously dunking on bad, bigoted takes and were, in fact, just being bullies to fans with a valid interpretation that liked a character they didn't for the whole hiatus.

#if the season drops and the bonding with trailer izzy is a bait and swich then i'll own up to that 🤷‍♀️#but i'm not holding my breath to see the same from everyone who accused me of showing my bigotry by thinking ed would say sorry to izzy #fandom culture #ofmd harassment #< but really this applies broadly. it's not just one specific fandom incident #ladyluscinia

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commentaryvorg · 5 months

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The Great Ace Attorney Final Trial Commentary: Day 2, Part 1

This is an ongoing mini-commentary covering the final trial of The Great Ace Attorney (Resolve) in line-by-line detail. It’s written from a perspective of already knowing the full truth of things, so there will be spoilers for facts that only get revealed later on in the trial. This is not a commentary to read along with one’s first playthrough!

(The commentary will update on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Check this blog to find any other parts currently posted, and if it’s not yet finished, follow to catch future updates!)

Now that we’re below the readmore, I can add that this isn’t quite a commentary for everything going on in the final trial. It’s focused specifically on Kazuma and what’s going on in his head, only covering things which are relevant to him in some way (for the most part). I already had a lot to say about him in a big analysis post over on my main blog – but I have even more to say about him during the trial in even more detail, so here we are!

We’re starting day 2 here, aka the first trial day of case 2-5.

Writing the commentary for this day of the trial is going to feel a little odd for me, because I’ve essentially already done it before – just in character as Ryunosuke, instead of as myself. This was a chapter in my AU fic in which this trial day goes off the rails towards the end and Kazuma gets arrested for Gregson’s murder, because he should have been and I am forever salty that it didn’t happen in canon. The purpose of the chapter in the fic, even though it was 90% retreading canon events, was to utilise all the existing buildup the game had that made it seem like things were headed in that direction, so that my AU could actually deliver the payoff it deserved to have. There are so many really good bits that would be so delightful if they were foreshadowing what was going to happen to Kazuma, except for the fact that they aren’t. I am going to be compelled to point all of these out and grumble about them here.

Here's one to get us started, just as Ryunosuke heads into the courtroom.

Ryunosuke: (Today I battle with another in pursuit of the truth. My best friend, Kazuma Asogi, who I trust more than anyone else in the world.)

Like, yes, this is adorable in and of itself, that Ryunosuke still trusts Kazuma that much even after the way he’s been acting since he came back. But! Imagine how much juicier this line would be if it was followed by Ryunosuke getting Kazuma arrested for murder! That is absolutely what I thought it existed to foreshadow on my first playthrough and asghjkghjdghjdfs.

Stronghart: “Yesterday’s proceedings brought to light a shocking and disturbing fact: There was a side to the victim, Inspector Tobias Gregson, that was unknown to his superiors at Scotland Yard.” Kazuma: “Yes, he was carrying out operations in secret, which Scotland Yard knew nothing about.” Stronghart: “And in those clandestine operations, he had an accomplice.” Kazuma: “Mr Daley Vigil, who would be given the inspector’s identification…”

During what is supposed to be Kazuma’s opening statement, Stronghart is having just as much if not more of a part in it, and they’re both practically finishing each other’s sentences. (Here is just one example of their tandem speech extremely coming across this way.) Clearly Stronghart, who is determined to keep Kazuma in line after his shenanigans with Vigil yesterday, firmly instructed him on what he was supposed to talk about, and apparently they may have even spent a while rehearsing this speech together. No wonder Kazuma wasn’t surprised to see Stronghart here at the judge’s bench today.

Stronghart: “Which brings us to the crucial issue of the victim’s time of death. The defence yesterday proposed a suggestion that the victim may have been killed one day earlier. This was based largely on the discovery that the victim’s pocket watch had not been wound.”

Not really! It was also based equally if not more so on the scorch marks on the candle, which have still not been explained as anything other than evidence that a gun was never fired there at all. But nah, Stronghart is just as happy to draw attention away from that as Kazuma is.

(Since he knows the full truth of the murder, Stronghart is also the only person who may be aware of the even more damning evidence that proves a gun could not possibly have been fired in the Fresno Street room. But he’s especially not going to draw any attention to that.)

Kazuma: “The prosecution has something to report on that subject, My Lord.” Stronghart: “Really? Go ahead, Prosecutor Asogi.”

Geez, look at him acting like he wasn’t expecting Kazuma to bring this (the autopsy report) up at all and this definitely wasn’t all rehearsed and planned out.

Stronghart: “But the official opinion of the investigation team was made clear yesterday. That the time of death was 5 p.m. on 1st November.” Kazuma: “There are indications of an attempt to disguise the real time of death, however. It seems that the natural decaying process of the victim’s body may have been slowed by keeping it chilled.” Stronghart: “That’s out of the question.”

Stronghart apparently also elected to put himself on the “nope it’s definitely impossible” side of this little scripted exchange. In reality, the entire first testimony we’re about to have is to examine the possibility that Gregson was killed the day before, and that testimony was very obviously Stronghart’s idea, so he was perfectly okay with this avenue being explored! (because he intends it to end either with nothing substantial or with apparent proof that van Zieks did it anyway.)

Kazuma: “It’s conceivable that he was killed in the course of his secret activities.” Stronghart: “Do I sense that the prosecution has some information regarding those activities?”

Gasp, look at Stronghart’s amazing sixth sense to pick up on this, and not at all that he blatantly knew Kazuma was about to bring this up because he told him to, nope, nothing suspicious here.

Honestly, this is all remarkably brazen, but I guess since Stronghart has a licence to do whatever the heck he wants, he doesn’t care how obvious it looks because nobody’s going to call him out for it anyway.

(Also, look at Kazuma acting like he’s entertaining the idea that Gregson was killed during his secret outing on the 31st, when really he hasn’t entertained that at all because it was definitely van Zieks, okay.)

Kazuma: “Scotland Yard put an enormous effort into investigating that precise matter yesterday. I think we should begin by presenting the results of that investigation work.”

Once again, note Kazuma’s avoidance of giving a direct answer to Stronghart’s question. He sure does have some first-hand information about Gregson’s real secret activities that day, but he phrases his response in a way that shifts the focus onto something he knows full well is a red herring. Again, he is so good at doing this without actively lying.

--- Testimony 1 ---

Ryunosuke: “Smuggled goods?!”

Ryunosuke is quite surprised to hear this brought up out of nowhere – as he should be. It seems he can already tell on some level that this is a complete wild goose chase that has nothing to do with the actual case.

Spare a thought for Kazuma, who gives us a summary of the smuggling case and must have spent some time researching this information to recite it in court, while knowing this is irrelevant and fully intending to throw it all out the first chance he gets.

Kazuma: “There’s no question: the accused, Barok van Zieks, was present.” […] Kazuma: “In short, Lord van Zieks had ample opportunity to murder the victim.”

Kazuma looks very smug about suggesting that van Zieks could easily have murdered Gregson at the gentleman’s club… even though he knows for a fact that couldn’t have happened. Granted, he’s intending to throw all this out by revealing what Gregson was really doing that day, but the fact that he’s looking so smug about the idea that this irrelevant point throws even more suspicion onto van Zieks is a bit much. Kazuma, please.

(This is one of the very rare instances of Kazuma referring to him as “Lord van Zieks”, incidentally! I… can’t think of any specific reason why this one might be an exception, alas. Guess he just ever-so-occasionally slips up and falls back into habits from his amnesiac days.)

Ryunosuke: “But I was hoping to find out the name of the club.” Kazuma: “That won’t be necessary.” Ryunosuke: “What?” Kazuma: “It’s conceivable that the club might be used again by the smugglers in future. Therefore… the prosecution has been asked not to reveal the name in these proceedings.”

Note Kazuma’s wording here – he has been asked not to reveal the name of the club. It’s not actually his decision, and he doesn’t actually want to hide that information. He’s just putting up a token amount of resistance here, presumably because Stronghart instructed him to, but he’s bound to be trusting that Ryunosuke will keep pushing. And when he does…

Stronghart: “The prosecution is rightfully exercising caution, I imagine.” Kazuma: “……… No, My Lord. The prosecution has no objection.” Stronghart: “…!” Ryunosuke: “Kazuma?”

Too bad, Stronghart – turns out, as the lead prosecutor on the case, Kazuma gets the final say whether you like it or not.

Ryunosuke also has an interesting little reaction there, like he’s surprised at Kazuma suddenly changing his tune, or perhaps relieved to see an indication of his friend acting on his own terms and not what he’s been ordered to do.

Kazuma: “There’s no question that Inspector Gregson was looking into these black market dealings. However… it’s not yet been established that he was on that particular trail on the day in question.”

And here he goes, opening up the possibility that Gregson wasn’t there that day at all, to allow Ryunosuke room to prove it, despite what Stronghart wants.

One incidental thing to note here is that Ryunosuke is now addressing Kazuma with his given name in court, and will continue to do so for the rest of the trial, even though he was calling him “Prosecutor Asogi” in the trial yesterday. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the conversation they had in Kazuma’s office yesterday afternoon, the first thing even vaguely close to a proper conversation between friends that they’ve had since Kazuma’s return. It seems like that closed the distance between them just slightly, enough for Ryunosuke to internalise that this is still Kazuma, albeit a Kazuma with a lot of unexpected emotional baggage, and start instinctively defaulting to calling him by the more familiar name again even in court. (Although this must be on a pretty subconscious level, since we still had Ryunosuke in that scene outwardly telling Kazuma that he’s changed.)

Ryunosuke: “The Grouse? What sort of a club is that?” […] Kazuma: “They’re not places where a foreign student like you would be readily admitted.” Ryunosuke: “Have you looked into the mirror recently?”

I love the way Kazuma tries to project his foreign student status onto Ryunosuke alone. Kazuma is above that, right? He’ll definitely be taken more seriously by the British judiciary and not be written off because he’s “just a foreign student”, won’t he…?

Ryunosuke: “As I understand it, they’re places where well-to-do gentlemen socialise with friends and colleagues.” Kazuma: “Don’t imagine for a second that a foreign student like you would be admitted.” Ryunosuke: (Seriously, is your mirror cracked or something?)

And he does it again, just a few lines later. His particular hypocritical insistence on this just really delights me, which led to me figuring out what it’s implying about his feelings on his own foreign-student status.

Stronghart: “If it wasn’t a gentleman’s club… then what was it?” Ryunosuke: “…A steamship.” Kazuma: “You think… it’s a ship…?”

There’s a subtle screen-shake on Kazuma’s line there, which I like, as it implies an undercurrent of something more going on in his head. He knows it was a ship, and on the one hand he must be glad and proud that Ryunosuke’s zeroing in on the real truth… and yet also perhaps a little worried what that might end up revealing about him.

(After all, Kazuma may well not have been expecting Ryunosuke to prove this much, since this isn’t just proving it wasn’t at the club, but also proving where it really was. He can’t have imagined Ryunosuke would randomly have Mikotoba’s steamship ticket on him in order to cross-reference the ship’s name.)

Kazuma goes on to argue that it couldn’t have been the SS Grouse because it hadn’t docked in Britain yet on the day in question. He has to feel kind of torn about putting up resistance to this, too – on the one hand he wants Ryunosuke to prove the smuggling irrelevant so that he can reveal what Gregson was really up to and is just saying this to make Ryunosuke’s argument stronger, but on the other hand, perhaps a part of him doesn’t want Ryunosuke to prove how Gregson got onto that ship in Dunkirk (and that he brought someone else with him…)

Kazuma: “Then show your evidence for that assertion!” Ryunosuke: “…Very well.” Kazuma: “…!”

Kazuma has an interesting little reaction here as Ryunosuke unflinchingly announces he’ll present his evidence. He’s got to have been expecting Ryunosuke to have something and not just be making things up, but perhaps he’s a little worried about exactly what he has and how damning for him it might end up being.

If you’re playing this part of the trial from chapter-select mode (like I’m doing right now for this commentary), the Court Record will assume you haven’t yet examined Gregson’s trunk to find the passport inside it. Which then makes the fact that I have to do so right now to be able to present the passport kind of awkward, because it will be a vital plot point very soon that Kazuma shouldn’t know that the passport was inside the trunk. So uh. Let’s just have Ryunosuke hide behind his bench to sneakily look at the trunk and take the passport out, Kazuma totally won’t see that, it’s fine.

(Of course, we can assume that canonically Ryunosuke took the passport out of the trunk at some point yesterday so that this isn’t an issue.)

Stronghart: “What’s this? A passport for travel issued to the victim?” Kazuma: “………”

Kazuma keeps himself poker-faced as the passport is presented. But as Ryunosuke shows that he’s very much figured out what it means…

Ryunosuke: “…there’s a distinct possibility he wasn’t even in the country!” Kazuma: “…!”

…he flinches back in shock. It’s a little bit of an odd delayed reaction, but I do think he’s realising here that Ryunosuke having seen that passport is a Bad Sign for him being able to keep his own dodgy actions hidden.

(And maybe he also remembers where Gregson was keeping the passport, so the fact that Ryunosuke has seen it means he’s also found a certain metal trunk that a very damning piece of evidence was left in…)

Kazuma: “……… Ha ha ha ha ha hah! I’m impressed, Ryunosuke Naruhodo! I certainly didn’t expect you to get your hands on that passport.”

But Kazuma regains his composure pretty quickly, of course. He’s fine! He’s definitely fine and proud of his friend for figuring things out and just wasn’t expecting him to have seen the passport, hmmmm, nope, nothing suspicious about that specific point.

Ryunosuke: “What? You mean… you knew about this?”

Meanwhile Ryunosuke is several steps behind those of us in the commentary who know everything Kazuma knows, and is only just catching onto the fact that Kazuma was aware of at least some of this all along. He seems pretty shocked here, presumably at realising that his friend was hiding information from him. He never openly picked up on any of the earlier hints at this – of which there were a lot – perhaps because he doesn’t want to think about how underhanded Kazuma’s capable of being.

Kazuma: “The prosecution’s strategy for this trial has been laid down by the Crown prosecution office:”

Instead of directly answering this question, and also diverting the conversation entirely away from the matter of the passport before he gives too much away, Kazuma goes on to explain that this whole angle about smuggling was something he was ordered to do. He says it was from the Prosecutor’s Office, and I guess on a technical level it was, but let’s be real – it was Stronghart. Kazuma probably even knows this, given their blatantly rehearsed opening statement… but it seems like directly calling out Stronghart for this is not a risk he’s willing to take when there isn’t much reward for it.

Kazuma: “I think the Prosecutor’s Office is trying to hide something.” Ryunosuke: “What?!” Kazuma: “And now that you’ve expertly disproven their assertion… I intend to reveal what I believe that something to be.” Stronghart: “What are you playing at, Prosecutor Asogi?”

Stronghart is glaring at Kazuma, clearly Not Happy at him going against orders like this. Again: those orders were so obviously from him, especially since it was all to hide Gregson’s role as the Reaper’s tactician, which Stronghart in particular would quite like to keep hidden, thanks.

Kazuma: “A courtroom is a forum for the truth, My Lord. Which is why it’s my duty to present all the facts, without exception.”

Kazuma’s entire speech here, and particularly these lines, really give the sense that he cares a lot about doing things honourably and without corruption in order to uncover the whole truth. Which, in principle, he does!

And yet. All the facts, without exception? He hasn’t exactly been keeping to the word of that, now, has he – and he still isn’t planning to.

Stronghart: “Let me guess… This was your intention from the outset, wasn’t it?”

Of course it was; of course Kazuma wanted to reveal Gregson working for the Reaper, just to paint an even bigger picture of how completely terrible van Zieks is. It doesn’t take much for Stronghart to figure that Kazuma planned this all along, either. There was a bit in Stronghart’s office during yesterday’s investigation, in which Kazuma was being told off for going off the rails with Vigil in that day’s trial. Stronghart ordered him to stay in line next time, and he mentioned to Ryunosuke that if Kazuma continued not to, “I will be forced to take steps”. Apparently those steps amounted to “script his approach to the trial and oversee it as the judge to make sure he stays in line”. And of course he still didn’t, because Kazuma is stubborn and doesn’t bow to authority for the heck of it.

But like… surely Stronghart would have known there’d be a good chance Kazuma wasn’t going to behave, even being directly overseen like this? What further steps was he planning to take if (when) Kazuma inevitably didn’t?

…Apparently, the answer to this is “nothing at all (other than some displeased glares)”. So that whole mini plotline about this amounted to barely anything. I guess it gives Stronghart an excuse to be the judge for the final trial days, but honestly I wouldn’t have batted an eye at him doing that anyway, minor powerplay with Kazuma or no.

I’d thought, on my first playthrough, that Kazuma’s defiance here was going to lead to Stronghart realising he can’t control Kazuma and that he needs to get rid of him, therefore causing Stronghart to deliberately nudge things towards getting Kazuma arrested once the assassin thing is revealed a little later in the trial. It would have made perfect sense! Kazuma ought to be just as much if not more of a threat that Stronghart would want to get rid of than van Zieks is, given that he’s just proven himself uncontrollable and has a lot more reason to seek the truth about the Professor case than van Zieks does. But somehow, canonically, Stronghart just shrugs and decides, nah, getting rid of van Zieks is totally still the greater priority, for some reason, let’s just let things continue like this.

Grumble grumble Kazuma should have been arrested, look at how much sense it would have made.

(It isn’t even made at all clear why Stronghart is so determined to get rid of van Zieks in the first place. I’ve seen it suggested elsewhere that it’s because, what with him vying for promotion, he wants to put an end to the Reaper at last and pin it all on the poor convenient scapegoat so that none of it can be traced back to him. I guess that’s the most reasonable explanation, but it'd be nice if there was some proper indication of it somewhere in-story.)

Anyway yes, Kazuma dramatically announces that Gregson was on a mission for the Reaper that day.

Kazuma: “The prosecution made an assertion in court yesterday:” Kazuma: [yesterday] “Inspector Gregson was investigating the identity of the Reaper. When he discovered the location of the man’s secret hideout… he was killed. As I’m sure everyone can imagine… by the Reaper’s hand!” Kazuma: “But in reality… the truth is the opposite of that.”

He makes sure to clear up any confusion caused by his previous argument by citing it and pointing out it was incorrect. But conveniently, he doesn’t mention the fact that he already knew it was incorrect when he made it yesterday, because unlike the rest of the police force, he did not learn about Gregson working for the Reaper only yesterday afternoon.

Kazuma: “Barok van Zieks never carried out any of the actual killings. Whenever the Reaper’s victims lost their lives, he always had a cast-iron alibi. Which tells us… that he must have had an accomplice.”

Sure, Kazuma, it definitely tells us that, because Barok van Zieks must definitely be the Reaper, no other possibility. This couldn’t possibly tell us that maybe van Zieks just isn’t actually the Reaper at all.

(Granted, he is thinking along the right lines, since the real Reaper mastermind also does not carry out the killings himself. He also just knows that to be a fact, since he’s had Gregson approach him as merely the Reaper’s tactician. But his logic for arguing this here is based entirely on his tunnel-visioned “van Zieks is definitely the Reaper” premise and not anything rational.)

Susato: “We also arrived at the same conclusion, didn’t we? That Inspector Gregson was operating as the Reaper.”

You and Ryunosuke didn’t exactly “arrive at that conclusion”, though, Susato. Van Zieks told you that he’d figured it out during his investigations, and you believed his judgement, that’s all.

Ryunosuke: “Barok van Zieks is not the Reaper!” Kazuma: “A predictable response… from someone who’s advocating for the man.”

Nice mental deflection there, Kazuma. Ryunosuke’s totally only insisting this because it’s his job to as a lawyer, definitely not at all because he genuinely believes in van Zieks and he might be right to or anything, nope, no need to think about that possibility.

Ryunosuke argues that Gregson couldn’t have been acting as the Reaper on the Grouse because nobody was killed there.

Kazuma: “…Pfft!” Ryunosuke: “What’s so funny?” Kazuma: “You’re right, of course. No suspicious deaths were reported on board that ship. But I think perhaps you’ve missed the point. That’s precisely why Inspector Gregson lost his life!”

It’s kind of painful how Kazuma seems to think this is amusing. Van Zieks murdering Gregson for the oh-so-terrible slight of not killing his target this one time is so obvious in Kazuma’s head that he snickers at the thought that Ryunosuke stumbled into helping him argue that.

Ryunosuke: “What?!”

Understandably, Ryunosuke has no idea why Kazuma seems to think that makes sense, because it doesn’t.

Kazuma: “There’s no question that Tobias Gregson was heavily involved in the Reaper’s activities. You may just be an apprentice, but if you’ve spent any time at Scotland Yard, you must have heard rumours…”

Rumours aren’t evidence, Kazuma! Granted, he also cited just a moment ago that Gregson’s secret notebook contains details of the assassination plots, which is actually evidence, but it is something that he tries to bring the rumours into it too. Perhaps it’s that he knows for a fact Gregson was part of the Reaper for reasons he can’t reveal without incriminating himself, so it’s frustrating him that he still can’t quite treat it as fact in court, leading to him trying to back it up in flimsy ways as well as solid ones. Alas, how much easier Kazuma’s job in this trial would be if he was just willing to incriminate himself.

--- Testimony 2 ---

Ryunosuke: “I know Judge Jigoku! And I saw him the day before yesterday! Here in London! So I know for a fact that the man hasn’t been assassinated!” Kazuma: “As I said… the Reaper failed.” Ryunosuke: “Oh…” Kazuma: “Gregson missed his chance to kill his mark and returned to British shores.”

One thing the narrative never properly discusses about Gregson’s mission here is… was he even supposed to kill his mark in the first place? Gregson was the tactician, not the actual assassin. It’s his job to investigate the marks and figure out the best opportunities to kill them, and then to pass that information onto the assassin who will do the actual deed. If Gregson goes on a trip to investigate a mark with an assassin in tow, surely that’s just an information-gathering mission? Surely Gregson himself would usually try not to be present during the actual killings?

Granted, that’s all moot in this instance since this was never a real Reaper mission, and actually Kazuma was sent along so that he would, in theory, kill Gregson, but still. I guess the narrative just never discusses this because it would unnecessarily complicate things. And clearly we cannot be bringing up any possible flaws in Kazuma’s very sensible logic here, right.

Kazuma: “But the Reaper wouldn’t tolerate the mistake. So he killed the inspector… personally. The Reaper of course being the accused… Barok van Zieks!” Stronghart: “It’s… an undeniably logical argument.”

It really isn’t!!!!! There are so many things wrong with this argument that it’s honestly kind of hilarious.

It’s ridiculous that the Reaper would get so mad at Gregson failing to kill the mark when he’s not even supposed to be the assassin – as I said, this was surely just an information-gathering mission if Gregson was there. Even if it wasn’t, the killing itself is still not Gregson’s job. The Reaper should be getting mad at Kazuma for failing, if anyone.

It’s also just ridiculous that the Reaper would go so far as to kill any henchman of his for one small mistake that didn’t actually have any negative consequences. Gregson can still try again, surely? Sometimes unexpected things come up that make assassinations not safe to go for without getting caught! If he killed his men for every tiny thing like this, he’d run out of men very quickly.

It's also ridiculous that the Reaper, a very careful serial killer who has kept himself hidden for ten whole years, would apparently carry out this retribution by shooting Gregson in a house in a populated street, thus immediately getting himself caught red-handed like the most bumbling criminal imaginable.

And of course, this entire argument hinges on the assumed premise that Barok van Zieks is the Reaper, something Kazuma has still not shown any proof for whatsoever.

And, even if we somehow take everything about this argument as solid, it still only “proves” a potential motive for van Zieks committing the crime! It does not prove that he did it!

But Kazuma realises none of this ridiculousness. No, of course van Zieks is so petty and vindictive as to murder his henchmen for one tiny mistake that isn’t really even part of their job, and of course he’s stupid and bumbling enough to get himself caught for it, and of course he is definitely the Reaper, because he is The Worst Person Ever.

Stronghart agreeing that this argument is logical is laughable – but then, Stronghart is apparently (for some unclear reason) still on the Let’s Get Van Zieks Convicted train, so he’s happy to agree with anything that’ll let him do that so long as nobody questions it.

Ryunosuke: (Kazuma… You planned for the trial to go this way all along, didn’t you?)

Which even Ryunosuke isn’t doing! He’s only marvelling at Kazuma having planned this – if anything, the way he’s thinking this reads as if he feels cornered. He’s not at all considering that this is a terrible argument actually. I would side-eye his response to this the most, since he doesn’t have such a good excuse for being wrong as Kazuma or Stronghart, but… I suppose this just speaks to how much Ryunosuke idolises his best friend. It doesn’t occur to him to ever expect Kazuma’s arguments to be flawed, because Kazuma’s the best at what he does, right?

I love the sheer audacity of van Zieks striding up to the witness stand during his own trial and slamming his leg on it to express his displeasure at the bullshit going on. It’s so very him. And I really can’t blame him right now.

Kazuma: “The accused has no right to speak uninvited in court. You will return to the dock.”

Kazuma is Not Happy. He may have been fine with calling van Zieks to testify unnecessarily yesterday, but in that instance, he was in control and was doing so to prove van Zieks to be a terrible liar. Can’t have van Zieks speaking out of turn and saying things that might make people think he’s not a horrible person.

Also, one little detail I enjoy during this bit is that the angle of Kazuma’s eyeline in his poses while he’s addressing van Zieks is just slightly lower than normal. It gives the subtle sense that he’s not looking van Zieks in the eye. Of course he wouldn’t want to do that.

Van Zieks: “That girl is no detective.” […] Van Zieks: “Repeating rumours heard around the Yard… Reading entries from a notebook of unconfirmed origin… That’s not testimony. It’s practically a script. No doubt the rest of this trial will go exactly as you’ve clearly planned.”

Van Zieks is essentially accusing Kazuma of being corrupt, of having rigged the entire trial to get him convicted unfairly. And it’s not that Kazuma isn’t being kind of corrupt right now, what with his very terrible argument that Stronghart is conveniently choosing to agree with… but it’s not really in the way that van Zieks is suggesting here.

The first testimony we had today, about the smuggling, really was practically a script. That whole line of argument was bullshitted by the Prosecutor’s Office (aka: Stronghart) to come up with something to hide the truth about Gregson acting for the Reaper. And Gina, a very inexperienced detective who doesn’t know much of what’s going on and is the most willing to accept anything that doesn’t involve Gregson working for the Reaper, was called to give the testimony, even though all she was really doing was reciting what she’d been told to say about the smuggling. And Kazuma didn’t like that he had to script that part of the trial, and was happy when Ryunosuke managed to disprove it for him!

This second testimony of Gina’s is a lot less scripted, though. She’s stating actual facts about what’s written in Gregson’s secret notebook (the notebook she found, so she’s a relevant person to testify about it), and the purpose of the testimony is to prove that Gregson was indeed working for the Reaper. This is something that van Zieks knows to be true thanks to his own investigations, some of which involved that very notebook! And Gina is the one person who’s actually trying to argue against this angle on Gregson in her testimony, by adding an unwarranted personal-opinion line at the end about how surely he was really just investigating the Reaper. So she’s hardly a witness who’s biased towards Kazuma’s case.

The actual problem here is that Kazuma is taking the true and backed-up facts that Gregson was working for the Reaper and went on a Reaper mission that day, and using those to spin a thoroughly flawed argument about how this means that van Zieks, who is totally the Reaper, totally killed him. Van Zieks… doesn’t quite seem able to see that. His own hatred of Kazuma is twisting his judgement just a little out of whack on this matter, too.

(It’s pretty amusing that van Zieks’s mistake here is that he’s assuming Kazuma is being corrupt in a more competent way than how he is actually being corrupt. Everybody is overestimating Kazuma’s ability to form a coherent argument here. Which is fair, because Kazuma really is so much better than this the rest of the time!)

Kazuma: “………”

Kazuma’s response to van Zieks insinuating that he’s rigged this testimony is nothing but a silent glare. Maybe he feels somewhat secure here, because at least he knows that he hasn’t really rigged the testimony at all.

(He was trying to bring the rumours into it, though. Van Zieks isn’t wrong to call him out on that bit.)

Van Zieks: “In your mind, I’m sure I am the Reaper… who sent your father to the gallows all those years ago.” Kazuma: “…!”

Kazuma remains in the same pose, but his text box implies a slightly more intense reaction to van Zieks bringing up his father, because of course. I really like how van Zieks is able to empathise with Kazuma to some extent and understand how he must feel about the death of his father, even though van Zieks believes that Genshin deserved it!

Van Zieks: “But you’re in danger of becoming a far more sinister Reaper yourself… by attempting to have me condemned with this feeble excuse for testimony.” Kazuma: “What did you say?”

This is the only part of van Zieks’s words that gets a verbal rise out of Kazuma. Of course he’s especially not pleased at the insinuation that he’s being worse than van Zieks himself in the way he’s approaching this. And, hey, while van Zieks is off about the precise ways in which Kazuma’s being corrupt right now, he’s not wrong to suggest that at all! Kazuma, please take a step back and look at yourself before you become the very kind of demon that you’re trying to fight.

This delightful little exchange gets interrupted by Susato and Ryunosuke, as the latter appeals for van Zieks to remain in the stand for the cross-examination, since he might know important information. It’s almost like he’s the one who actually has proper information on the testimony’s topic of Gregson being part of the Reaper, because he literally agrees with what the testimony’s arguing! Not such a corrupt testimony, really, is it, van Zieks?

(This trial day is short enough that it isn’t split apart with a save point, but I have so much to say about it that I’m splitting it into two anyway! So I’m stopping here, just before we start the actual cross-examination.)

#ace attorney #great ace attorney #the great ace attorney #the great ace attorney chronicles #tgaa #dgs #dai gyakuten saiban #the great ace attorney resolve #the resolve of ryunosuke naruhodo

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lemmilemura · 10 days

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i actually NEED and REQUIRE a reader that is self aware that they’re in a show and is only there for simon because they’re in love with him (i’m also thinking of some obsessive vibes, not like full on yandere but just obsessed)

PINE MY SAVIOUR THIS ACTUALLY MADE ME WRITE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN LIKE MONTHS <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3 Little warning there is violence... If I had to say how bad..... maybe Wayne level? all directed at Jake btw Yeah this went so far off the rails :D

y'all know the drill Based on the show Al lkept gender-neutral

You were just a character in a show. You knew that. Your life was just entertainment. You weren't even one of the important ones, just an extra off to the side, barely any lines. If you looked up into the sky, the clouds formed almost a screen, some days even a face. The face of the person watching you.

You saw the world stand still when they paused the show, time rewinding and speeding when they went ahead or back. You knew you were in a show. You knew that nobody else did. You saw that door that followed you everywhere. That studio door with big, red EXIT text. You knew you could leave.

But you didn't want to. After all, you had everything you needed. You never really had to eat or sleep or even use the bathroom. You knew exactly how it all went, becuase it did so over and over and over. You knew your cues, you knew what everyone would say and when.

Then again, there were of course bad parts. The constant repitition of events and days, the never changing people and conversations... The continuously reoccuring death of the guy you were in love with. You loved him, eventhough you weren't supposed to. You read it in the script- which appeared one morning on your nightstand- nowhere was even a single mention of your feelings for him. Yet they still existed.

You didn't know when they appered, you just noticed they did one day. There was no explanation either. Maybe it was because he looked good, which he did. Maybe it was because of the way he behaved, so different than all the other guys. Maybe it was something more, maybe it was everything.

You saw it every time. You had to, it was in the script, the law almlost. Every restart you find yourself in the library at the same time as their detention, every restart you see the school being egged, the teacher leaving, and him dying. You on the upper floor, putting books away as part of your volunteer librarion position. You could recite it all word for word, you knew the timing perfectly. When the first egg hits the window, when Ms.avery leaves and when he takes a drink and when he collapses and when it's too late.

You started hating your time-loop. You started hating your show. Why were you cursed to know? To be aware? To relive this all over and over. You knew who was behind it. You knew why and how. You could stop it, you were convinced. If you told him not to do it, if you changed one single thing. You weren't supposed to. You didn't know what would happen if you did. Anything could. That, was infinitely scarier than the loop itself. You tried so hard to stay out of it, to fulfil your role until the end. When would that be? You had no idea. Maybe there was no end. Maybe this was purgatory. Eternal damnation and suffering for whatever sins you may have previously committed.

You had started counting the reruns once, but you gave up after 5. You felt as if that was over a century ago. Truly, you were slowly going mad. You just wanted it to end, to finally be able to do what you wanted to do. You wanted change. After countless nights awake you decided.

So you stepped out of line. You went off-script.

The next restart you followed along, until a few minutes before the end of classes, a few minutes until they were supposed to meet to start their dare. Such a stupid thing to die for. A dare. He seemed so much smarter than to ever fall for that. But maybe your version of him was just better in that sense. You waited outside his class. How they let you in this morning is beyond you. How they didn't notice the baseball bat was hilarious, if not a little pathetic. Worrying even.

Your own teacher didn't even notice you leave class early, neither did anyone else. It's as if you weren't even there. But the watcher noticed. They rewind. Let it play. Pause. Rewind again. Pause. They're looking at you, you know it. You could see the camera behind you reflected in the glass of the classroom window. First change.

When the bell finally rang you could see him inside, packing up and genuinely being deuchey as always. You felt as if you would hate him regardless of murder. He was just the kind of guy everyone hated, except the other characters around him.

When he finally started his way to the door, you got ready. Bat laying over your shoulder, foot tapping the floor. You were impatient, insanely so. You just wanted to see what would happen. Sure you could always have just gone through the door, but now you wanted to go out and make a change. Go out with a bang, as they say.

You line up. He exits. You swing. He stood no chance. Crashing against the wall through the force of the bat, you could hear a crunch, a grump, and a thump as he fell to the floor. Good, it only took one hit. Not to say you weren't ready to dish out as many as needed to get the job done.

Everything paused. You got to revel in the looks of your peers, their shocked faces and phones out, the ones caught mid scream, the ones that are somehow already crying. You turned around to face the camera and bowed, a thank you to the watcher for allowing you this moment and watching.

They rewinded it countless times. You got to relive it countless times. Every time you swung a little differently. Once aiming for his chest, once his crotch, so on and so forth.

You were lost, truly. Maybe you had gone mad. Surely you weren't supposed to enjoy this. Surely.

Suddenly, the repitition stopped, everyone once again frozen, and you finally stopped to catch your breath. Turns out swinging a baseball bat full force 10 times over is quite the feat. When you turned to the camera, you didn't see it. Even after spinning for a bit you still didn't. Everything went a little dark. You heard footsteps. Someone else's footsteps.

You turned and saw...

"You're really gonna keep doing that forever?"

He was stood at the end of the hallway, and it made you realize everyone besides you, him and Jake's body were gone.

"I mean" you managed between pants "I've kept this all up for so long. Atleast this is something different."

He stepped closer, until he was on the other side of you. He looked the body over. "You really did a number on 'em."

"Good as I could. Aiming with this thing is surprisingly difficult." You spun the bat around in your hand before resting it on your shoulder again.

"You know what's gonna happen now?" he asked. You just shook your head. You truly didn't know.

"I've got no clue. Hope it's interesting atleast." You sat against the wall, laying the bat on the floor.

"You're surprisingly calm right now. You're not freaked out?" He sat down too, both of you waiting for whatever would happen next.

"We're literally only characters in a show. You being self aware is nothing compared to that." Through your mania it hadn't even truly set in. "Now that you meantion it though, how'd it happen?"

"I think it's because I'm one of the narrators. Or maybe because I died." You were neither of those, so your hopes of finding out why you were self aware died. "Jake died too and he's still a dumbass." you replied, making him chuckle.

"Guess he's just too stupid." "Maybe..."

You sat in silence for a while, small amounts of dread starting to settle in. You truly were scared of the consequences, yet in the moment you couldn't stop.

"I made you self aware, by the way." He admitted. "Being the only one was starting to get lonely."

Maybe that was why you liked him. Why you 'saved' him. Why you just beat Jake to death multiple times.

"I did think you'd step out of line sooner."

"Yeah sorry... I was just scared of what would happen. Still am."

"Me too."

And as the world around you faded more and more, turning into darkness, you sat there thinking of it all. The years of the same loop. The repeating converstaions and days. Your entire life.

You regretted going off-script.

Once again thank you so much pine for the idea!!! I just wrote 1431 words IN ONE SITTING. WHAT THE FUCK. I hope you all enjoyed this, it definitely went so far off the rails xD

~Taglist~ @pine-ferret

#one of us is lying #oouil #oouil tv show #simon kelleher #oneshot #x reader

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bellalegosee · 2 months

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A brief introduction to the lore of Honkai Star Rail (literally just a post of me talking about the Aeons, I am so desperate to have someone to talk to about this.)

"brief" 💀

Anyway, I recently created a EU server account for Honkai Star Rail and had to rewatch the opening cutscene, and I forgot how much happens immediately, how much gets thrown at you, and how much is just left unexplained to new players. The lore gets thrown hard and fast at you, and unfortunately a lot of it isn't explained through dialogue so a lot of people just will remain confused or won't care. And as HSR is actively developing plot line and will be for at least a few years, the time to start getting into the lore is now. (If you are reading this far in the future and want to know the lore without a huge confusing lore dump, I hope this is the beginning of your journey.) Starting with a base foundation of knowledge of what we know now, vs how big the story can get in the future...one is definitely easier.

As you open the game you meet a very important person immediately, Kafka. And just meeting her and understanding why she is on this ship, where an explosion just happened, and loud blaring alarms going off is already a huge amount to explain to any person. And while I could explain the lore as it gets explained to you through the game, I'd prefer, as a world builder, to start with more baseline knowledge.

The universe of HSR has a series of gods, like Genshin, called Aeons. These Aeons are these forms of immortal beings who are a physical representation of different world views, morals, or ideas. (There wasn't always Aeons in the universe but we will get to that and the lore we receive from the Simulated Universe wayyyy later.) For example, we have Qlipoth The Preservation.

The Preservation stands for the protection of all cultures and people. Another example is Qlipoth's almost perfect counter point, Nanook The Destruction.

As his name states, he stands purely for the Destruction of the entire universe. These two are not the only Aeons I will talk about and are certainly not the only ones to exist.

"Why are Aeons important?" Fucking great question, so while the Aeons almost never actually interfere in mortal affairs, they're very existence creates something called a Path. A path, like the Path of Preservation or the Path of Destruction, is a like a moral compass for non-Aeons or the mortal beings who follow them. Once a mortal treads on a path for long enough of strong enough, they receive almost weird powers that relate to the paths they are on. This is kinda the foundation of the power/magic system. While there are religions around some of the Aeons, it is important to note that following the Path of an Aeon is not the same as worshiping them, it's more just agreeing with or subscribing to the morals of that path. (Really fucking confusing sometimes.) So for example the people of Belabog do Worship the Aeon of Preservation, (the only Aeon who's teachings did persevere through a 700 year isolation from the rest of the galaxy) but as individual people not everyone follows the path of preservation.

There is a point in following a path in which you are looked upon by the Aeon of the path and become a Eminator of that path. An Eminator is basically like a extremely favored follower, they have weird fucking powers, and they embody or literally enimate the morals of the path to an extreme. The Eminators of Nanook are feared across the galaxy for this very reason. Nanook uses his Eminators, such as Phantylia the Undying, as generals for his army of destruction.

So these Aeon's also have a bunch of people worshiping them or following their path at any point in time, right? These people tend to fall into factions and almost every faction in the game falls under the different Aeons. But not everyone who follows a certain Aeon will all be apart of the same faction. While I will make a post here in a while explaining a lot of the factions, their interactions with each other and what not, I do wanna very lightly touch on some of the factions here. And I'll use, again, Qilpoth and Nanook as the examples here.

The Amber Lord, Qlipoth, has multiple factions underneath him, the one you will hear the name of first in the game is the IPC, the IPC stands for the Interastral Peace Corporation, an ancient company whose many tendrils go in many directions, they sell weird shit, they create advanced defense technologies, they also...are trying to recreate a very advanced bomb in which to explode worlds... Yk normal corporate stuff. The IPC had good roots, just protecting people under their cars in a militaristic fashion but they definitely got too big and too greedy eventually and it spiraled into what this is now, a mega conglomerate who control everything and are continually trying to grab as much power as they can. The other faction underneath Qlipoth is the Architects from Jarlio VI, over 700 years ago they were the people, the leaders of Belabog, who built the great city in order to be humanity's last stand against the great freeze. They were...not all great, as Cocolia... Anyway.

Nanook has a few factions underneath him as well and these ones are more interesting and fight each other often too. Nanook's favored are among the army of The Antimatter Legion, his Eminators are the generals, and his fucked up creations are at the forefront of every fight, The Antimatter Legion is one of the first villains presented to you in the game. And then there's the Annihilation Gang. The Annihilation Gang is more disorganized, they worship Nanook and follow his path but Nanook does not look upon them, they are not Nanook's favored. If these two factions were like Nanook's kids, Nanook paid for the Antimatter Legion's college tuition, his wedding, went to his graduation and every piano recital, and the Annihilation Gang got left at his soccer practice 7 years ago and no one has noticed yet. There is in fighting inside of the Annihilation Gang too, which is funny. Once I get around to the Stellaron Hunters, we will go over their crimes and dive a little more into the Jepella Rebellion. And in the factions post, I will go over the Jepella Brotherhood and the infighting with Duke Inferno and how Nanook and the Antimatter Legion probably looks at them with distain.

Anyway, all of that to talk about the Aeons without even talking about each one of them...which is insane. So here's a list of every Aeon so far, their paths, and factions underneath them so far.

-Akivili The Trailblaze

Akivili is the source of the path of the Trailblaze, the main followers of Akivili are the Nameless, all members of the Astral Express crew, current and previous are all The Nameless. Akivili's disappearance and assumed death are a mystery in the game thus far. Akivili's teaching revolved around traveling from world to world, experiencing different cultures, enjoying the differences in the universe and getting into mischief. Modern day crew members go around and help out different worlds while experiencing and documenting all manner of information from different worlds.

- Aha! The Elation.

The Elation is known for spreading chaos and insanity through the universe, he takes joy in sharp turns of fate and watching others suffer. Aha! Is closer to humanity then most Aeon's and likes to fuck with people...a lot. Also other Aeons. Think of Aha! as the troll of the universe. They at once point blew the Astral Express in half for shits and giggles. The Elation has two branches of factions which are... different for sure. The Masked Fools are the most prominent ones, they are chaos bringer's across the galaxy, Sampo Koski is one member you meet early on, to the Masked Fools life is but a script they can write and living is a stage made to appease the other members of the Fools and Aha! themselves. And then the Mourning Actors, this faction...hates the Elation, they push away everything in relation for Aha! and their teachings however, The Elation looks upon them and they are considered to be apart of the Elation Factions. Aha! is the biggest troll.

-Ena The Order

Ena was a previous Aeon who lived during the Swarm Disaster. They were ancient being who only wanted to put an end to the endless wars in the universe, she helped to defeat Tayzzyronth The Propagation. After the end of that chapter she was eventually assimilated into Xipe The Harmony due to overlap in ideas and Paths. The followers were called The Beyond the Sky Choir, they created a bunch of records to be played on phonographs and most of the records have been lost to time.

-Fuli The Remembrance

Fuli the Remembrance embodies memories in their purest form, they think that memories of proof of existence. They preside over all memories and all those things forgotten and prepares them for the rebirth of the universe. The Garden of Recollection worships Fuli. They gave up their worldly forms and traverse the stars in the form of memetic entities in search of memories to prepare, Black Swan is one member of this faction. Then there's the Cremators, they are not the antithesis of the Garden of Recollection keepers, but more...they see the Keepers are hoarders. The Cremators rank memories by importance and then steal the memories that they deem, arbitrarily, are unimportant and destroy them.

-HooH The Equilibrium

HooH their followers seek to bring full balance to the universe... whatever that means. Karmically, physically, spiritually, ect. The Arbitrators teach HooH's teachings, and have people try to give up their extremes, like beauty and ugliness, poverty and wealth, ect.

-IX The Nihility

IX believes that existence is meaningless and therefore no action has any meaning in itself. Their existence is a mystery and they never interact with any of the other Aeons. Anyone who looks upon this Aeon feel numbed and dejected. The Doctor's of Chaos are a group of people who have treaded on the path of Nihility and are dedicated to trying to convince IX that there is meaning in the universe. The Self-Annihilators are, on the opposite end of the Doctor's of Chaos, have totally given into the meaningless of the universe. Device IX is a unknown group of people who just...live in the void of the universe, supposedly in an attempt to get closer to IX. Little is said lore wise about these 3 factions. (IX is my favorite Aeon, such a little guy.)

-Idrilla the Beauty

Embodies all that is beautiful and seeks out the inner beauty in all things in the universe. She disappeared well before the game's timeline began and The Knights of Beauty, like Argenti, traverse the universe to find them and on the way protect all things beautiful. The Mirror Holders believe, unlike The Knights, that Idrilla is dead and they seek artifacts of beauty around the universe in order to revive her.

-Lan The Hunt

The Rainbow Arbiter seeks to destroy all undead beings created by The Abundance and seeks to eventually destroy the Abundance. The people of the Xianzhou Alliance fleet of ships follow Lan and help with his search. Unlike The Destruction, Lan The Hunt seeks a singular target and a singular goal. The Galaxy Rangers are followers of Lan the Hunt but don't seek out to only destroy the Abundance, they seek to use Lan's policy of using violence against violence to uphold justice. (As we know for now, Acheron is the only Galaxy Ranger in game rn, she may not be a Galaxy Ranger but we will have to wait to find out.)

-Long The Permanence

Long is deceased from when the story starts off, but Lan's descendants live on, Long was the creator of all dragons and the Vidahardrya, as seen on the Xianzhou Loafu, have their own version of immortality, in which they rebirth every 700 years.

-Mythus The Enigmata

The Enigmata looked upon the Erudition and decided to create even more questions and mysteries in the universe. They challenge Nous at all times regardless of consequence. The Riddlers under them dedicate their time to deconstructing languages, creating metaphors, and generally being really fucking hard to understand. The History Fictionologistics want to enshroud the past and let history remain in the past.

-Nanook The Destruction

I have talked at length about Nanook already here, but yeah, Seeks to end the universe, Fuli is preparing the memories for whenever Nanook destroys the entire universe, probably the main villain of the game if I had to put a face to that title, also creates all of the Stellarons that are creating chaos throughout the universe.

-Nous The Erudition

Nous was originally an Astral Computer made by the creator of the genius society Zandar in order to seek out the answers to the universe. Nous then ascended to Aeonhood. Now the members of the Genius society worship Nous in hopes he answers all the questions in the universe.

-Oroboros The Vorecity

Before the Aeons were the Leviathans, and Oroboros is the only one to be both an Aeon and a Leviathan. They are the unsatisfied devourer of worlds. They have disappeared as well, but are generally assumed to be alive.

(I ran out of photo room on the post...)

-Qlipoth The Preservation

The Amber Lord is one of the oldest known Aeons and is known for their indifference. Commonly sharing their power with the Zealots of the Interastral Peace Corporation.

-Tayzzyronth the Propagation

In their life, they sought to propagate the universe with their Swarm, a huge storm of destruction loving bugs which reproduced a lot (I hate these bugs, glad you're dead Tayzzyronth.)

-Terminus The Finality

Terminus, I believe, may be a bigger part of the story later, but for now, we know almost nothing about this Aeon. They travel backwards through time whispering of a prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled. The Omen Vanguards believe that Terminus represents the end of the universe and seek to derive prophecies from their words. The Creed Exequy, while almost not mentioned at all, are most likely a group of people trying to communicate with Terminus, probably to understand his prophecies.

-Xipe The Harmony

Xipe seeks to encourage all individuals in the universe to fuse together into one melody, by becoming one and joining into the choir they believe peoples will preserve. The Family, which consists of all governing bodies within Penacony and the Dreamscape, follows Xipe, calling out to other worlds to join them in the Family.

-Yaoshi The Abundance

In their search to cure the universe of all sickness and poison, they believe that death is a poison and they have the cure. Creating their undead beings and trying to rid the universe death, they are eternally chased by Lan the Hunt for their precived crimes against the universal balance. There are four factions on the Xianzhou Loafu alone that worship the abundance, The dispels of Sanctus medicus seek to embrace the gift Yaoshi gave them and turn into the monsters of Abundance faster, along with bringing other people down with them. All of the followers of the Abundance are like that in some way or another, protecting the creations of the Abundance, embracing the Abundance, none of them can be just normal and wants to help cure sickness huh...

Anyway if you read this far, you deserve a break. And so do my fingers. The next lore dumb will likely be about the different Factions and how they interact with the Astral Express. All of this to explain the first cutscene in the game, and I haven't even brought up the Stellaron Hunters yet, as they don't, as far as we know, follow an Aeon. It's crazy. Lots of love! Byeeeee~

#honkai star rail #honkai posting #honkai lore #honkai star rail lore #aeon #aeon lore #Bella explains it all

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astrxlfinale · 3 months

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Sparkle thoughts below the cut.

Primarily centered on what their character shows, and how it adds to the story.

I'm certain a lot of you know what this is going to be centered on.

If not, than this has to do with the Sparkle and Aventurine interaction that transpires.

In short, it's one of the first genuine times (in my experience) they let one of the potential playable characters outright showcase some deplorable traits. It was bigoted, pure and simple with this racially charged shot.. Now what I want to dive into is why this is more of a healthy thing in the Star Rail series.

At the end of the day, they're talented in just showing things the way they are. It's not glorified, and its especially not given the 'hand waived' treatment that Genshin likes to do, especially in the name of making their special powered/playable units hold grounds of moral upstanding with atrocities to count. (Sumeru arc Paimon in particular was atrocious.)

I like the fact in a realm where you can have wars, crimes made out of high emotion, child deaths, madness and god knows whatever deplorable act on the end of the earth. There isn't this 'invisible line' of things that can't be given limelight and has to remained unexplored as the 'morally just' thing to do. That always exhibited a case of ignorance to me, and in many ways, pretending that these very real examples don't exist is more disrespectfully than trying to keep the ~feelings~ of the player base in check.

You don't have condone her actions to enjoy her character. Giving the operative faction she's in 'The Masked Fools', and how she's dealing with the underbelly of Penacony affairs, it genuinely should be no surprise that things like this would be used as a tool as well. Jabs, shots and methods to dig into the characters they're reflecting this hostile nature against. From what I seen, organizations that deal with questionable scenarios, to full on crime sure as hell do not give a damn (all the time) on the code of ethics.

So in short? I really appreciate what she brings to the table. Knowing so little on her, I don't really care for her character now, BUT, what she gives in terms of tension, a lens of the universe's affairs, and all these minute details is something I believe is really important.

Also in terms of the Genshin example.

(These moments need to be look in context of how the desert ends of Sumeru been handled with conversation text/thoughts. Not just this solitary moment itself.)

It's these kind of options that is that tongue n' cheek backhanded compliment that glazes the interactions. Either a touch of that, or that false-positivity fashion of speech of being like 'Oh, I never knew it like such and such here! Or they was capable of this and that!' Which happened en masse in a lot of the desert sections.

So to see this cast and crew be blunt about the worldly state of affairs in the storytelling of their verse if just refreshing to me. If it's going to be involved in the media, the minimum respect it can be given is just a raw lens of showing this behavior exactly for what it is.

#| OOC Musings #I felt compelled to talk about this #As much as I see media love to tip toe around it

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ri47 · 4 months

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Forgive me if this is already answered, but what does non-pygmalion/jackal transport look like? What's the state of things there?

as a rule, barring extreme top crusts in the places where most people live (a lot of Kishar is inherently an extreme top crust), personal vehicle ownership is rare. spaceships designed for interplanetary travel aren't all that advanced, outside of the ones containing necromatrix-based daemons to regulate the ship's functions, but those are the kind generally used by civilians. FTL isn't really a thing

on planetary surfaces, most civilian centres use trams and trains to get around. in more rural areas, cars, 'cycles, and trucks aren't unheard of, and the exact nature of ownership there varies. for example, sometimes a community shares one bus or plane for transportation to larger cities. sometimes a family has a car that's a bit of an heirloom. sometimes your father just has a cool motorcycle.

you won't find very many "hovercraft" outside of very specific military applications, although some of the KHU upper class do have things along those lines for avoiding contact with the general public

non-human earth animals past a certain size (read: most things bigger than a cat) aren't really common anymore, but at least one breeding stable of horses is kept by a Kishar lineage, mostly for show. somewhat recently on Irra, there were some efforts to domesticate the predators (ophiotaurs specifically, which are about the size of an aurochs) for transportation usage, but this almost immediately backfired and resulted in yet another grey contractor station becoming nothing more than a stretch of stampeded ruins

planes still exist, with maglaunched spaceplanes being a fairly common way to move human passengers to into orbit for ships that are large enough to render landing impractical. civilian air travel is about what you'd expect, except with more VTOL in locations with built-up infrastructure

moving fortresses are a fixture of surface wars, whether that takes the form of enormous weapons platform aircraft that are designed to never ground or city-sized trains that move without rails. some of these get large enough to necessitate their own internal tram systems

#VesalBlood

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beetled-juice · 1 year

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👀👀 would love to hear those "true form" beej headcanons if youre in the mood to share.........!!

@bunnys-beetlejuice-blog I'm always in the mood to share! Though I should clarify that my true form concepts for beej can be on the graphic side, since I enjoy taking each beetlejuice canon and thinking "how can I make this into genuine horror?". So I'm going to throw this under a read more, just to be safe!

These hc's are for musical!juice specifically - I have others for toonjuice and keatlejuice. This also isn't complete by any means - I have pages upon pages of writing on google docs about this stuff, so I'm trying to condense!

Netherworld Form - Dead is the New Sexy

So to start, I should also clarify that I personally view musical!juice as a vessel of sorts, a form that allows him to exist on earth as opposed to in the netherworld. Because of this, I think there are two distinct "versions" of beej's true form - one is the vessel / form you would see upon entering the netherworld with him, while the other is the demonic eldritch horror that he crams into said form(s).

-----

Whenever you go to the netherworld with him, he becomes like a walking corpse - more than normal, that is. Think skin rotting and sloughing off, joints twisted in unnatural positions, perhaps even internal organs trying to become external. It's not entirely clear how he can even move, or how he doesn't just disintegrate into piles of rotten 'juice with a voice, but somehow he manages to shove his mangled body around in a way that's not too dissimilar to that of a zombie movie. If you're used to the mossy and stinky demon as seen in the musical, this would be an immediate shove into a harsher reality - he looks like he's been decomposing for months, and nothing can help with the smell.

This can become even more devastating if we base his backstory for death more on movie canon than musical canon (i.e that he hung himself instead of Lydia stabbing him through the tit), because just like everyone else in the netherworld, he'll be unable to hide the evidence of how he died. In this case, you'd see the ring of bruising left behind, and the shift of the cervical vertebrae under what's left of his skin from where they broke.

The Cosmic Eldritch Horror We Know and Love

Overall, I think of him as having the keatlejuice makeup/effects, but taken to the extreme. Depending on how much I want to crank up the angst factor, I may or may not include the hanging aspect.

-----

This is where I kind of go off the rails in terms of very specific imagery. Have you seen the posts about what depictions of biblical angels would look like, but also the fact that they would try to mate with a telephone/power line? Or the post that’s about how cosmic entities using vessels to interact with humanity is like finger painting? That's beej's true form in a nutshell.

One of the things made very evident in the musical is that the netherworld is a dark place - literally! So I think it would be infinitely more horrifying if the demon trying to give you a little smooch stalking you through the vast abyss was a brilliant, glowing white - like a spotlight turned to its maximum setting, humming with power and electricity and impossible to look at directly. This also makes the name Betelgeuse more fitting - was he named after the star, or was the star named after him?

If you can manage a glimpse of him without blinding yourself, you'll see he's very big - easily dwarfing anyone or anything around him. You'll also notice that he doesn't move quite right. He doesn't walk, but he doesn't float either, instead making a weird lurching dragging motion that sounds like knives scraping on a plate. Don’t let this fool you though, because if necessary he moves like a lightning strike: fast and deadly and gone in a flash.

One of the interesting things about beej in this form is that he can’t really speak so much as convey thoughts and ideas - he has to be very careful though, or he could quickly overload your brain and leave some damage. In your head, he sounds the same as he normally does (if not a little base boosted), but his actual voice? The stuff of nightmares. Lack of speech doesn’t mean lack of sound, and even when he’s utterly silent he gives off a headache-inducing version of the hum you hear from the fluorescent lights at a gas station in the dead of night. Sometimes he sounds like rolling thunder and rattling glass, other times it’s infernal hell-speech and a wailing that makes your bones ache.

One of the unfortunate truths of being a demon is that over the course of millennia, he’s had to fight for his place in the pecking order. There are spots where he shines a little dimmer, his form marred by the thick bands of scars left behind by demons of old (primarily, his mother). Some still weep like open wounds, pouring thick black ooze that sizzles and burns against anything it touches. Only time can heal these - time on a scale living beings could never comprehend.

Even before you could see or hear him, you’ll catch the scent of ozone and the sharp tang of frozen metal on your tongue. You’ll feel an unease blanket you, your body and mind screaming at you to run, but you won’t be able to fight the feeling of heaviness that weighs your body down and anchors your feet to the floor. Out of everything, this is the part he hates the most - even if he just wants to be near someone, his very presence in this form forces them to seek a way to escape. That’s why it’ll be a rare instance to experience Beetlejuice’s true form - he’ll do everything in his power to keep from exposing it to anyone he cares about.

#my stuff #musicaljuice #beetlejuice x reader #musical beetlejuice x reader #asks #sorry if this is all a mess - I wrote all of it out between 3 and 5am :3 #I saw your ask and got really excited!! so I hope it all makes sense

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drysauce · 11 months

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Begging on my knees, may I ask for mr welt lore 🙏 thank you for feeding my silly little fictional crushes lol

there's so much to say where should i even start jshxhhd

(btw, it's obvious but. there will be honkai impact 3rd spoilers below)

so you know that welt is a playable character in star rail right, but i don't know if you know that many of star rail characters are alternate versions of characters from other hoyo game which is hi3 - like himeko, bronya and luocha for example. welt however, isn't like them, he's not just another welt existing in the star rail universe but he's THE EXACT SAME welt that exists in honkai impact AND that's why he's such an interesting guy

so let's start with the basics - his name isn't actually Welt Yang but Joachim Nokianvirtanen. he took that name later in his life, yang was his mother's surname and welt was a name inherited from a guy named Welt Joyce.

as for why he took the name from that guy: welt joyce was a herrscher, herrscher of reason to be precise (herrschers are very powerful entities with powers given by the force known as honkai) - he used to be a normal german boy human but after the honkai eruption in Berlin that took a huge ton of lives, a core made from the souls of people who died was formed inside him giving him the powers of a herrscher of reason

while generally herrschers are enemies of humanity, he was not - after losing past memories but NOT being against humans, he was taken in by an anti-honkai organization known as Schicksal (with Otto Apocalypse as its leader and overseer) and moved from labs to labs where he eventually met Frederica Nikola Tesla and Lieserl Albert Einstein (pic below. they might look young but those are only the looks, they're actually great minds with years of experience), two scientists that later became his acquaintances. around that time he also met joachim and his father

later on, the schicksal overseer otto and joyce had kind of an argument when joyce didn't want to agree to follow the overseer path with him because he grew to love humanity and otto was a guy who didn't mind doing the most messed up things you'd think of just to reach his goal. the conflict of interests leads to a fight, that results in otto's death (or rather one of the clones, long story)

(fun fact! ^ this line is also part of welt yang's ultimate line in hsr, just differently worded)

the thing joyce is holding here is one of divine keys (very strong weapon, long story) known as the star of eden which is the signature weapon of the herrscher of reason. otto was using a divine key as well (called void archives) and before his defeat, he used the key to attack the city where they currently were with the intention to completely destroy it. joyce managed to stop that but 1. star of eden was destroyed and 2. it costed him his life. while he was dying he gave the herrscher core to young joachim who was nearby alongside with the name welt - and so joachim became the second herrscher of reason

later on with tesla and einstein he split from schicksal and formed another organization known as anti-entropy (which was also dedicated to fighting honkai but without human experiments and all that jazz) and recreated star of eden

in year 2000 took place the second honkai eruption, there's a manga telling the whole story how it went, but to keep it short, schicksal and anti-entropy allied and were fighting sirin, the herrscher of the void. the two herrschers faced each other in a fight, welt using his herrscher of reason powers created a whole army or mechs and artillery showing sirin that the humanity can and will fight against her and honkai

there was no victor, sirin was knocked down and when welt was about to finish her off with the star of eden, otto apocalypse intervened, destroyed the divine key and stopped welt (he really couldn't allow things to go the way everyone wanted even once)

later the fight was moved to the moon where sirin made her base and from where kept on challenging humanity. schicksal and anti-entropy had the talk™️ which resulted in the decision that welt will go fight on the moon but he'll take one of otto's agents to collect rock samples that could be used to create new kind of weapons

to go and fight there, anti-entropy started creating a giant mech - arahato (two quick fun facts! 1. in hsr welt has arahato on his phone case 2. to earn money anti-entropy launched an anime series about it at some point lol)

on the moon welt creates yet another star of eden and occupies sirin's attention, while siegfried (the man from schicksal that was sent on the mission and who also was hi3 mc's father) who was piloting arahato could take moon rock samples for the scientists. however for siegfried to leave safely, welt had to directly face sirin and was eventually defeated (star of eden destroyed again), near the end he was planning to detonate his core to destroy both himself and sirin, but she manage to steal it before that happened, leaving welt's body to disintegrate

obviously he didn't actually die, he put his personality inside the core at the very last moment with the souls that already were there. he survives there this way until the end of the whole eruption, and after it ended, the retrieved core fragments returned to anti-entropy and after next 10 years core repairs itself and welt gets back the physical body. that costs him a lot of energy and power though, he isn't able to be the leader anymore. anti-entropy was taken over by force in that time by cocolia, who was running and orphanage and. who also made a few clones of welt joyce

-> next events are described in the manga called alien space, it's about both the events of when welt came back to life and is a direct prequel to hsr telling what happened years later, i won't describe it in detail because maybe you'd like to read it yourself - but if not i'll gladly talk about that too in another ask or message<3 it's mainly about welt and (hi3) himeko (and void archives too, who after otto apocalypse's death took a body of one of his clones)

next should be the events in the sea of quanta (empty space among bubbles with different universes, long story) - during the expedition, he gets separated from einstein and gets stuck there until a girl named Bronya Zaychik enters it to find her beloved Seele who was also stuck there for a few years (long story, another manga). a lot of things happened, bronya encountered welt who took kind of a position of the guardian of the sea and began testing the girl in various scenarios. after she passed all the tests he decided to make her the successor of his herrscher core, thanks to which bronya was later able to rescue seele and all three of them escaped from the sea of quanta. soon after that he became her mentor in mastering the herrscher of reason powers (there's more to bronya as the herrscher which also has relations to welt but. i haven't got there yet in the main story so i have to stop here lol)

next there's a timeskip to a post honkai odyssey - it's a spin off/time skip story from hi3, featuring, aside from the main cast, welt, his son - joffrey (one of joyce's clones that he and most likely tesla (there's a line that might suggest she became his partner later on) together adopted), and void archives. i saw leaks that parts of it that are relevant to hsr might appear in an upcoming hangout mission for luocha (the guy who's a hsr version of otto) so if you're planning to play hsr you'll see it yourself and i won't be spoiling you the fun here<3

^ it's also related to the timeskip events from the alien space manga

afterwards welt ends up in the hsr universe and is trailblazing together with the astral express crew and finally becomes a playable character

^ another fun fact! in his splash are you can see void archives in the back, welt joyce on the right and tesla with einstein on the left

ok and that should be all i think? if you have any thoughs or questions feel free to ask here in the comments or in a separate ask or on discord however you prefer and i'll gladly elaborate even more

also special mention to unfortunately not canon part of the welt lore from the hoyofest videos in which he and two other powerful leaders became idols because they were broke and needed money:

#this is the shortest i could keep it #i already decided to omit apho and alien space because describing them would take another 739363837 words jdhgxhdh #hope this satisfies you ^^#i spent. almost 2 hours on this jshdhd but i absolutely love talking about this game's lore so it was all pleasure thank you for the #opportunity to ramble about it #anyway welt and otto (and void archives) look so gay whenever they're in the same picture lmao #as they should dont get me wrong #anyway no2: im insane for writing all of this but that's what happens when you ask a guy about their special interest ndhdhdh #save #<- it took so much time to write i won't allot this post to get lost forever

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