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head---ache · 8 months

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New character charts!!!

Edit: Added new info to Lash's section + Added a link to Emmie's section.

They're here!!! The only new info is in the charts themselves btw, the long text under this is the same, except very minor changes. I just thought it would be better than having to go to the old charts to read all of this.

Emmie: She's now officially the one and only Tube Baby of the group!!! I imagine Tails will later use the big fucking tube in his lab, just not for any of the kids in this group (here's three posts about it: First, second, third).

Just to quickly mention it, her full name is Emily, however, everyone in her life just calls her Emmie, because, according to her, 'it goes with her vibe' (first talked about here + in universe explanation here).

She has Black Arms DNA, and although it's uncertain how it affects her, they (Emmie and her dads) know she has green Black Arms blood (shown here) and has access to the hivemind, which as a baby she used to communicate with Shadow (here), but as she grew older she stopped using it, and now finds it harder to access to it.

She also, of course, has Chaos Energy. She can perform Chaos Control (in this one) and turn Super (that second thing they don't know until she's a teenager, shown in this comic). She also has all the abilities Sonic and Shadow share (such as spindash).

Sparks: Like I've said before, Sparks is a Belly Baby, Blaze carried (here's context).

Sparks has fire powers, similar to Blaze's, though they find it a bit harder to control. They get Blaze and Espio's help to learn to use said powers, since they require a lot of concentration. Also, again, like Blaze, they can turn into Burning Sparks (here), but that form is more unstable and drains their energy pretty fast.

I am also taking this space to clarify this about the entire family (including Tulip). Since Blaze is a princess, Amy, Sparks and Tulip do acquire royalty related titles, however, they're very informal and don't hold that much power, since Blaze didn't want them to have any responsability simply because they're related to her. So they're royalty just by name.

Lash: Another Belly Baby, your local surprise baby representation.

Like is said in her chart, her main ability is acrobatics. She also has some sort of super speed but she doesn't rely much on it.

It's not said in her chart but she has both mommy and daddy issues and is often at Aim's house. The first time she stepped into that home and Tangle and Whisper welcomed she immediately felt glued to that family (here).

She also has two younger siblings, Strike and Decay (post introducing them here), and at first she didn't have that much of a relationship with, since they're younger than her and closer to each other, and since Lash spends a lot of time away from home, however, she eventually steps in and tries to be a part of her siblings' lifes as their parents' should've been.

Aim: I finally decided that he's also a Belly Baby, mostly because the timing didn't add up, since him and Emmie are the same age and there's only one Baby Making Tube.

Like it says in their chart, he does archery, which is his main fighting technique, however, during battle they also use their tail to move around faster (otherwise he just keeps it under his cloak) and teams up with Whisper's wisps in very rare occasions.

He does not speak, unlike Whisper who simply speaks quietly. Aim doesn't speak at all, but everyone around him eventually just finds a way to understand him (because I think it's funny). He very usually is the braincell carrier of the group.

Bria: Bria's a Belly Baby as well, it just felt like something Sonia would want.

They don't have any special ability, but they did learn martial arts as a way of self defense, consdering the group of people she often is surrounded by.

Even though Bria's hard of hearing, his biggest passion is music (over being a hero). She plays piano and guitar.

He's also the extrovert of the group. The loudest and friendliest there is. (Should I also add they're Emmie's cousin?)

Tulip: I was a bit more indecisive with him, but in the end I decided to also make him a Belly Baby, because otherwise it felt weird for that to be the one thing he has in common with Emmie. (In-universe explanation here!)

He hasn't shown any special ability yet -he's the youngest of the group though, being only ten years old-, so he isn't allowed to be around the other kids when there's danger, however, he's very sneaky and often gets things to work in his favor anyways. He does have an interest in tarot though, thanks to Amy, and he also shows to have an impressive intuition.

When he's not around Sparks he is often found next to Big, probably complaining to him about something.

Destiny: One and only Code Baby!! She's basically made from the same programming as Nicole, but more advanced and sophisticated.

Being an AI herself, she can hack robots and similar things, which helps during battle. They can also get into anyone's computer if they want to (they rarely do).

She usually takes the leader role very naturally, immediately making a plan on the spot and guiding the rest of the group. However, she's quite shy (even while being an extrovert. This forms a bit of a problem for her, wanting to be around people but being too shy to do it). Her more confident side mainly showing when assuming the role of the leader. She has great friends tho, who encourage to speak up and lead:]

Spades: She's a belly baby just because of the timeline, there simply wasn't a way without changing her age to make it make sense for her to be a Tube Baby -and I like her being 16-. Unfortunately I backed myself into a corner here JSKDJSKFJWKFKS I don't have many details on how she came to be because, guess what!! There's no real way for her to be the way she is the way I want it to happen:]]] So let's just use our imagination and say that it's possible for two amab people to have a kid who's biologically related to both of them because this is a world where magic color changing hedgehogs are a thing so this isn't super crazy, okay? Okay.

Like I said in this post, Spades has trajectory manipulation, so basically she will never miss her target, and can move away whatever is thrown at her, so that's pretty handy:] She also trains with Espio, so she has a lot of his abilities. She doesn't really want to be a ninja but has many of the skills.

She's the mom of the group!!! And the braincell carrier. She is very sweet and caring, but also quiet and calculating. Her strategy is the best, and her stoic appareance makes her look a bit threatening, but she's actually a total sweetheart!!

Also about swimming!! She really likes it because she finds it relaxing. You can't hear anything underwater so she likes to close her eyes and just swim around.

She gets along with everyone in the group, but is usually hanging out with Aim and Lash:)

And that's it for the individual kids!!

Here's some other links of interest:

-1. Character reference sheets for all the fankids, including a height chart.

-2. Voice claims!!!

-3. The old charts!!

-4. Ideas for weapons:)

#sonic fankid #sonic fanchild #sonic oc #sonic au #live & learn au #Emmie the Hedgehog #Sparks Rose #Lash the Hedgehog #Aim thr Lemur #Bria Mongoose #Tulip Rose #Destiny Acorn #Spades the Chameleon

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khytal · 9 months

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ok gamers I rewatched tristamp one more time in order to write a post about the soundtrack, and some of the stuff I found blew my socks off (even though I've seen every episode like 6 times) so buckle up because oh my god. oh my god

this will cover most of both volumes of the OST (which you can find on spotify), with a focus on wolfwood, and a little bit of vash, meryl, and the eye of michael

...and a very thorough breakdown of "drain arm" :)

notes before I get into it: -I won't be analyzing the plant song because I. already wrote an entire separate thing about that haha (a link to that doc will be in the replies section of the notes if you're interested)

-you won't need to know anything about music theory, because I'm just pointing out where certain themes come up (with the exception of "duet", but I'll explain terminology there). timestamps will be included so you can listen for them as you read

-if you're obsessed with the OST like I am, most of this probably won't be anything new x) but I hope it's enjoyable regardless

-my credentials: I was a pianist for 10 years and an oboist for 7.5 years and I only had 1 semester of intermediate music theory but I got to analyze the 1st mvt of tchaik 5 and I think that permanently altered my brain chemistry

-the tracks I recommend being familiar with to have a better grasp on this post are: -> "whistling/blues harp in the wasteland" (vash's leitmotif) -> "reality" -> "childhood memories" -> "duet" -> "human subject" (eye of michael, or EoM, leitmotif) -> "drain arm" (technically optional)

-please don't take any of my interpretations/speculation as fact! you are absolutely free to come to your own conclusions I just have a lot of thoughts about the soundtrack lol 👍

here we go :]

EP1: -you can hear a variation of the plant song in "immigrant space explorer" (0:36-1:00)

-vash's leitmotif is first heard in "no man's land" (0:41-0:48)

-only about half of "mystery man" plays, and his leitmotif (0:38-0:51) is actually cut from the scene so it's not heard at all

EP2: -"escape" has vash's leitmotif from 0:18-0:31. they also took out the lyrics in the episode's version of the track x)

-it's possible that we'll hear "might is right" or a new arrangement of it if we get to see the rest of the nebraska family in future episodes, since there were posters of marilyn. I think people largely associate the song with EG the Mine but due to the track title and the fact that it first played in this episode, I feel like it's more about the nebraskas

-I'll talk about "childhood memories" in ep12 because it's related to rem's themes

EP3: -the plant song can be heard in "compatriots" (1:01-1:11)

-"reality" is first heard here, right before the episode in which wolfwood is introduced. keep this in mind for later :')

EP4: -"undertaker" has a dissonant sax part (0:48-0:54) that's similar to the one found in "irritation" (1:05-1:11), but it's an ascending passage rather than descending. it doesn't show up anywhere else so it might become a motif we'll hear in the future, but there's no way to know until the next part is released

-"planet zaji", from 0:55-1:04, has that one part from "time left" (1:02-1:09). it's heard while wolfwood's spinning the punisher around but I think it's just something that sounds cool, and you can't really hear it anyway because of the sound effects/dialogue. if zazie gets any additional themes in the future I might have more to say on this

-vash's leitmotif kicks in in "hungry !" (0:21-0:43) when wolfwood introduces himself at the end of the episode. I really like this track I hope we'll get to hear it again x)

EP5: -I don't think there's any meaning behind "shadow" borrowing from "worms network". I'm pretty sure it was just for mood (and to be fair it is a cool track)

-you can hear vash's leitmotif at the beginning of "boy and vash". this is the part where vash is escorting rollo back to the village

-"cyborg" introduces a new 4-note pattern (0:07-0:14) that I'm calling the eye of michael leitmotif. if hearing this reminds you of episode 6 then you already understand what I mean

-"dud" has vash's leitmotif as well (2:20-2:59), which starts playing when vash is begging rollo to wake up after wolfwood kills him

-only a small part of "human subject" (0:25-0:35) is used for the final scene, right when the windmills start turning. using the EoM leitmotif as a sendoff to the empty village is. really haunting

EP6 (this is a long one I'm sorry): -the EoM leitmotif can be heard in "reborn" (0:09-0:14, but it's easier to hear in 0:26-0:30). this is the opening scene where wolfwood guns down the deserter

-they do reuse "worms network" when livio first opens fire on vash but that's more for mood in my opinion. you could say it hints at zazie monitoring the sand steamer though

-we're probably going to hear "the desert rogue" again when the bad lads gang shows up in a future episode, possibly with a new arrangement for brilliant dynamites neon (this is one of my personal favorite tracks actually. it's a shame they didn't get to use the whole thing because 0:45 to the end is really cool)

-"boyhood" contains the EoM leitmotif and it's very in-your-face in this song (1:15-2:19). in the episode itself the track gets cut at around 2:10, but in the OST the piano motif from "orphanage" can be heard one more time right at the end of the song at 2:18-2:20. which is an evil thing to do. anyway

-"nicholas the punisher" is an arrangement of "reality". let that sit for a second, maybe go listen to those two tracks or something.

okay so we can look at this in a few different ways:

-> the end of episode 3 is of course a reality check, supported by the corresponding track being titled "reality" (even though it's fabricated by nai: to suggest and then prove to the people of no man's land that vash is indeed deserving of the $$6mil bounty; and to tell vash that his presence will pose a threat to humans). you know who else is supposed to be* grounded in reality? the pragmatic nicholas d wolfwood, who's introduced at the start of episode 4 *tristamp wolfwood hasn't quite found his resolve yet, as shown by his hesitation when livio appears

-> in the scene where "nicholas the punisher" is heard, vash is insistent on rescuing livio while wolfwood pushes back and says it's too late for him. he's clearly wishing he wouldn't have to eliminate livio though, and with "reality" as the foundation of this song, it presents wolfwood's inner turmoil in a new way for the audience: vash, who is physically right there trying to persuade him that there's still hope for his brother, vs his role as "nicholas the punisher" in sound, in his mind, and the "reality" that developed along with it (death is/can be a mercy, and sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice one life to save many)

(I also want to add that while legato's dialogue shows he intended for the orphanage to be eliminated through livio's death, it seems wolfwood didn't even realize that killing livio would mean more kids would be taken by the EoM for experimentation. he thought he had to choose between livio or the children, but it was a "test" of loyalty; and legato was attempting to obtain said loyalty by force)

-> outside of the episode, if you were to just listen to this track within the OST it's very representative of his character. contrary to "undertaker", which is fairly laid-back and....honestly kind of playful (and equally reflective of wolfwood's personality, when he's relaxed), "nicholas the punisher" is a more somber and contemplative piece. the fact that it's built on "reality" already suggests that he's someone whose beliefs conflict with vash's; and even without knowing that, both of wolfwood's themes contrast with the energy of "vash the stampede" quite clearly (even if I personally don't consider that track to be vash's official theme, it's still associated with him). I think it's really interesting that vash, the quieter one, has more raucous songs while wolfwood, the one with a sharp tongue, has calmer tracks :)

you might be wondering if "orphanage" is in "nicholas the punisher" and the answer is......yes, but actually, no. but kinda if you're delusional like me. this little pattern from 0:29-0:42 in "orphanage" is found in the low brass from 0:57-1:11 in "nicholas the punisher" (although it's in a different key and has a slight variation in the 2nd half). it's not quite the same, but both phrases start by going down a half step, then down a P5 interval (D->C#->F# for "orphanage", F->E->A for "nicholas the punisher"). lastly the sand steamer's leitmotif (I guess) is also present but that's. obviously because this is happening on the sand steamer lol

-"whom to kill, whom to let live" is just a faster/more tense arrangement of "orphanage" with saxophone over it. starting at 1:07 you can hear the worms leitmotif (1:31-1:34 in "worms network")

I can't say whether or not legato is already represented in the OST because he's currently not associated with any unique tracks, but they might tie the dissonant saxophone passage from "irritation" to him. it's first heard when legato stops wolfwood from escaping the facility, and as far as I can remember it's not played anywhere else. if he plays a bigger role in the next season, which I'm sure he will, I'll be keeping an ear out for this x) (I only mention the sax thing because I don't think he's represented by the sax solo that plays in "whom to kill, whom to let live")

EP7: -a little more of "the desert rogue" is heard when the bad lads make their way onto the sand steamer but it's very hard to make out over the gang yelling in the background lmao

-we're treated to the entirety of "human subject", for the scene where livio briefly returns to himself. if you somehow weren't convinced that those repeated 4 notes had anything to do with the eye of michael, this is the last instance where it's heard: the moment livio's overcome by whatever brainwashing was used on him by the EoM

-I think most people associate "time left" with ep12 but it's first played in this episode and I believe that it was primarily composed with the ion cannon sequence in mind (though a majority of the tracks in the OST only play once for specific scenes, with some songs being cut short and getting different parts played across 2+ episodes. "irritation" and "human subject" are examples of this)

EP8: -this one's a little hard to hear because the 1st note is implied in the C drone but vash's leitmotif starts at around 0:09 in "complicity" and runs all the way to 1:06

-it's also in "home" (1:38-1:57), playing at the moment luida hands vash the red coat :)

EP9: -I've talked about this before but I really like that there's 4(?) measures of polyrhythm (2 or more differing rhythmic lines that are played within the same time signature) when vash joins in, before the brothers come together on the same even rhythm. you can see how vash's quarter-note pattern doesn't line up with nai's quarter-note triplets, and in fact, neither of them ever land or start together:

(for the sake of comprehension I wrote it out with a faster tempo to stretch the polyrhythm part over 8 bars instead of the slow tempo/4 bars. I'm not sure what the official tempo is. I think a sane person would write it at a faster tempo so that the part doesn't look stupidly cluttered but a good musician would be able to play it regardless. anyway-)

it sounds even more stilted because vash is playing on the offbeat. polyrhythm's such a great way to represent the brothers' relationship because it seems so chaotic but both lines are still in time together, following the same beats. they're so different but in the end they're still brothers who (are trying to) understand each other. and I love that vash is playing secondo, a more harmonic/supportive part, while knives has primo, where the melody/ornaments are. it says a lot about their personalities :')

since I don't know what the original sheet music looks like I can't say if this is true but you can hear that the plant song at 1:03 is played in octaves (2 notes that're the same pitch with one higher than the other). because of the nature of a duet, and the fact that this was played by the twins when they were little, the octaves were probably split between the parts. so vash was playing the lower octave of the plant song with his right hand, and nai played the upper octave with his left hand (we don't get to see this because it cuts to nai playing the song alone at that point). also: vash favors his right hand while nai favors his left

-now for something far less interesting: "last run" is a medley combining "ethics and morality", "compatriots", and "millions knives"

EP10: -"a cruel sight" seems to be unused. it was probably intended to lead into "bio-power reactor" in the scene where meryl and roberto meet elendira in the tank (given that it ends the same way "bio-power reactor" starts), but they cut it and just played a version of "bio-power reactor" without the melody

-elendira's themes ("elendira the crimsonnail" and "which is the monster?") seem to have some lyrics that're most audible in the beginning of the tracks but they're almost impossible to make out without some kind of editing software, which I don't have lol. they're already very quiet in the background and they echo, on top of sounding like they were put through autotune

also this is entering speculation territory but it makes me wonder if elendira's theme is going to evolve with her. we've seen some concept art with her having a more teenage appearance, so I think it'd be really cool if the vocals also changed accordingly

additionally she doesn't have the EoM leitmotif anywhere but she DOES have a proper 4-note chromatic pattern that descends from D in "which is the monster?" (1:32-1:35), which is the same note that the EoM leitmotif starts on. if we consider EoM's broken chromatic passage to represent the failed experiments, then elendira, with an actual chromatic passage in her theme, is a success

-"meryl's regrets" is ALSO an arrangement of "reality" :') this is the track that plays during roberto's final moment, which was. you know. the consequence of meryl running off in pursuit of the truth. the "reality" roberto had warned her about several times prior to episode 10. interestingly, while "nicholas the punisher" expands on the original track, "meryl's regrets" is a reduction--it's mostly just the baseline with some notes here and there. she doesn't have a theme yet, but 1:23-1:33 might be something we hear again if/when she gets a track associated with her

EP11: -"nicholas and meryl" is an arrangement of "boy and vash", with erhu echoing vash's leitmotif. I think it's a neat way to show through music that both of them are here because of vash :]

-the tracklist goes slightly out of order at this point for some reason. after "memory retrieval", "memory of geranium" is what plays in the final memory, when nai decapitates rem

EP12: -"memory of rem" is a combination of "childhood memories" and "memory of geranium". "childhood memories" is also found in "knives's piano", which is based on "duet". one fun way of interpreting this is that the "childhood memories" part of the duet is actually from rem, if she was the one who taught the twins how to play piano, which would make "duet" a musical representation of vash and nai's roots (pun intended. sorry). this also suggests nai misses rem, with how often he plays the piano, even if he thinks he hates her.

but "childhood memories" can also simply be seen as a theme that's associated with rem, nai, and vash's brief time together x)

-okay this is the part where I get to rant about "drain arm" because THIS SONG was literally the reason I decided I needed to rewatch stampede. I was listening to "drain arm" a couple weeks after the finale aired and I heard vash's leitmotif near the end and I was like "NO WAY!!!! HOW DID I MISS THAT"

as it turns out, it was cut from episode 12.

not to worry though, I still have plenty to say about it. even if I'm a little disappointed. just. a little.

-> from 1:13-1:25, you can hear vash's leitmotif in the cello. this DID make it into the scene, and it plays when vash rises through the clouds

-> 2:44-3:10 is where some of the lyrics from vocal version of "millions knives" play: "remember how / we used to be / no turning back / sky's (skies??) falling down". although you can't actually hear the "remember how" in "drain arm" (at least not without blasting the song into your ears, which I don't recommend), it starts right when the image of vash and nai sitting in the geodome appears

-> we finally get the plant song at 3:36, when the condensed energy starts to leak out/charge. and then after it fires, but before nai dives into the beam, we hear "I still care for you" (3:44-3:52). and while it's originally from the vocal version of "millions knives", in the context of the scene I think it's a sentiment from both brothers: vash, who pleads for nai to let go and releases the energy away from him; and then knives, desperately reaching for the cube because he believes the success of his plan will ensure his family's (and especially his brother's) safety, the only ones he's ever cared about

in other words: plant song in cello = vash -> "I still care for you" -> continuation of plant song in low brass = knives. they're connected by this single sentence

-> knives's leitmotif (I didn't talk about it because it's only found in songs that signal his appearance, so it's really obvious, but yes he's got one of those) plays at 4:03 for the "nai is dead. you killed him" exchange

-> it goes back to a variation of the plant song at 4:29 (I LOVE the piano at 4:40-4:49 btw. it's so good. I could cry about it. probably)

if you've read my plant song analysis you might be wondering how to tell when it's being associated with the name millions knives instead of the plant race. since we know that a good chunk of the songs in the OST were written like a film score, the visual context (and/or the song titles themselves) can clue you in. "drain arm"'s use of the plant song is meant to highlight that vash and nai aren't human, so it's the latter

-> now here's the part that was removed, probably due to the runtime: vash's leitmotif in the cello again, from 5:03-5:09. if you revisit the part right before nai lets go of the cube, you'll hear that it skips these 6 seconds and goes straight to knives's theme ("but that's the plant song!" yes. we'll get to that in a sec). this missing bit right here?? fucks me up EVERY time. it's the most mournful his leitmotif has ever sounded, appropriately so, and it's absolutely criminal that it wasn't included. especially because knives's theme, the plant song melody, follows it up on violin as the cello continues to play a line in harmony.

and it's knives's theme because in this moment it's about him dying, not the plants. they spent a whole season tricking us into thinking that the plant song was knives's theme, and then they used it to send him off.

-> and then july city explodes o7

as much as I'd love to hear "drain arm" again for another chance to let the weight of vash's motif come through, I think it's too intertwined with this scene to be recycled. like. maaaaaaaybe they could use it for fifth moon if that's supposed to be the climax of the next part but they kinda?? already did the "fire a really big laser at the sky" thing? anyway yeah I'm totally normal about "drain arm". so normal

Extras: -the punisher and the double fangs have these cool sound effects when they transform and it kinda makes me think that their guns are built from lost tech, if the punisher's laser cannon wasn't evidence enough of this

-there's no equivalent of "sound life" in stampede, and I don't think there's going to be one. however, I do think that it would make a lot of sense if rem taught the boys how to play piano, because we could get something like:

-> rem asks vash about the plant song (the memory in ep12) -> she gives the boys piano lessons -> she helps them compose "duet"

-they didn't use "stampede out" for this season but I really hope we'll hear it in the next part. I know it's just a longer version of "escape" but it's a fun song :]

-this is. obvious but you can hear "gate" in "millions knives". no idea if they'll put "gate" into more songs, especially for vash now that he seems to have some control over it

-there's also something kinda fun with key signatures too: -> "millions knives" is in b minor -> vash's leitmotif is in d dorian (of course this changes depending on the key signature of whatever track it's used in) -> "undertaker" is also in d dorian -> I think songs associated with no man's land/humanity are usually in some dorian scale or specifically the key of a minor but this is solely based on jeneora rock since july city had its own unique theme so I'm not totally sure yet. "duet" is in a minor by the way -> "nicholas the punisher" is in d minor. if "undertaker" is tied to humanity (which is tied to vash) then "nicholas the punisher" is linked to the other side: knives, through the EoM. it adds another interesting layer to the contrast between wolfwood's two themes, but I don't consider this to hold any meaning lol -> I WILL say that b minor is the relative minor of D Major, so having knives and vash's songs be written in those keys was likely deliberate. and what makes it really interesting is that to get d dorian, you take a D Major scale and lower the 3rd and 7th notes by a half step

-I'm not 100% sure but I think plucked piano strings were used to create the low, scratchy string sound effect in some of the songs (one example is literally at the beginning of "irritation"). I think it's really cool that piano is everywhere in the soundtrack, but not necessarily by hitting the keys

-I am unbelievably excited for livio's/razlo's themes because they have the opportunity to do some REALLY COOL things with the music for them. we might not get them in part 2 (though I think we will) but whenever it happens I'll be so ready for it >:)

and that's all!! o(-< thank you for reading! if you actually took the time to go through all of this with the soundtrack pulled up, I'm. impressed. i think. anyway I'm a big fan of OSTs with strong storytelling and tristamp's OST is no exception :]

if you've got questions, feel free to ask ^^ I definitely didn't cover everything I just picked out whatever I thought was worth mentioning. which was uhhhh quite a bit x)

(also again if you're interested in reading the plant song analysis I did it's in the replies section of the notes 👍 I recommend reading it on a computer though)

#trigun stampede #gods above this is the longest post I've ever written. there's so much text it started lagging #did you know i've listened to drain arm over 100 times in the past 2 days. while I was writing this. anyway #khyt.art #(because i drew the little vash for this sdfLHGSLDJFHGS)#khyt.3gunposting

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seyfertgalaxy · 1 year

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Collector rant again :p except im sleep deprived

The fact that the collector knows the draining spell would kill people is so,, out there. but its also so fucked up because he also believes that people, mortals, are like toys. i think this mindset of his started with Belos. because whenever the archivists took the baby titans from collector all those years ago, i dont doubt he tried to get them back since he did that with Luz as well. so he knows, to a degree, that you cant just snap your fingers and have everything be all rainbowy and cheery again.

but then, he met philip. and philip likely explained everything to the collector in order to get what he wanted in a more efficient way. one of those things being grimwalkers! clones.

That's probably when it started. i think after the third or fourth grimwalker, Collector made this connection that mortals are similar to toys you can just break and then "fix." Because it's the same exact person! hey! didn't he just disappear? and now he's back?? good as new? wow!!

and after so many years of this, it's likely ingrained in his mind. he pulls the head off of his doll, and then it's back on. That's his example and his understanding.

He doesn't even see the grimwalkers as people after a while. he calls them "those things" and finds amusement in Belos hurting them and lashing out at them. but at least he has the basic understanding that they're mortals, living beings. and i also think that's why he was so angry with Lilith whenever she called King her nephew. Belos called the grimwalkers his nephews, and then he would hurt them and make them disappear. while, to Collector, he did fix them eventually. It was a cycle. a cycle that he didn't want King to go through because King is the last titan and Collector's "best friend."

and because he couldn't make the other baby titans come back, he probably figured that King was the same way. so he wasn't gonna risk anything with his new friend.

and with mortals, he's shown to be careless and even reckless. in Watching and Dreaming, whenever he's showing Luz, Eda, and King his favorite games, they're all very dangerous. maybe not for him, because he can shift his size and control the games with his power, but to them! to them, its dangerous.

Pacman: he literally "ate" Luz and could have badly injured her.

Marbles: he was huge and flicking them around! that's harmful. especially whenever King ran underneath Collector's foot to make them fall, that could have ended very differently for King. for example, if the "marble" he was in wasn't very strong, the impact of Collector stepping on it could have busted it open and—you probably get where im going with that.

jenga: do i even need to explain why this is dangerous? giant blocks. small mortals.

whenever he figures out that they aren't enjoying his games and they're actually angry with him, because they keep messing them up, he gets upset then gets rid of the games and retreats to go cry alone. its like he didn't even register that these games were hurting them or could even kill them. especially since his intention was to Wow them with these games and be their friend.

i think they're just "naturally scary." because a few times, their expression and tone is almost contradicting their intentions. for such: asking for grudgy buddies, talking about tag in Kings Tide, and the "Let me show you some of my favorite games" line.

its a bit of a complicated situation because he needs to be around mortals to improve and grow, but he also doesn't understand anything about them. bit of a personal take here; i didn't like the ending they had for the collector. he'll either be alone, or with some shitty space gods. at least its implied that he visits every so often or holds some contact with King and possibly the others. anyways-

to close this off because i keep getting distracted, he doesn't truly grasp death or the gravity of ANY of his actions. he knows people die, but he also assumes you just fix them and they come back. (that makes me wonder what he thought about the baby titans "disappearing" at first).

like this scene here: he didn't understand that Luz was dead until later on. whenever he says "she's really gone". he also tells Eda(and King)that he doesn't want anyone else to go missing and that he's sorry for everything. "Missing", not Dead. because he doesn't understand yet.

and he likely still doesn't understand what happened because Luz came back in a completely different form/look, much like how the grimwalkers did. dissappearing but coming back later on with a slightly altered appearance. but i think he has some sort of idea of death still since he couldn't "fix" Luz and was heavily reminding himself of the archivists

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secretgamergirl · 4 months

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American Politics and Vampires

It's 2024, a capital-E Election Year in the U.S. and I am already starting to see the slow creep in my feed here of posts stressing the importance of voting, and the accompanying utterly infuriating mix of comments beneath them of sad little efforts from neo-nazis to counter that messaging and hot takes from clueless children that are pretty hard to distinguish from the former.

I was a little tempted after seeing a few of these today, but I didn't feel like being a big nag, and so instead I'm going to ramble about how a while back I saw someone ask a question that resulted in a really uncomfortable silence- "Why are there so many stories about vampires where they fought on the wrong side of the civil war?" (And yeah, these are actually very related topics.)

Let's picture for a moment your standard vampire. We've got someone who looks more or less like a normal human being, but is secretly a monster who is compelled to suck the blood out of normal humans, leaving them either dead, or as these sort of out of it, sickly, very suggestible types just barely going through the motions of life, and getting drained again before they can start to recover and escape. A given story might try to give you a more sympathetic vampire as an exception, because we don't generally enjoy reading stories about this sort of monster, but the typical standard vampire also totally loves their inherently predatory nature. They'll refer to the people they're draining as cattle or vermin or whatever, consider them to be lesser beings, and live in some big fancy castle or mansion or whatever, maybe getting all prideful about their ancestral lines or whatever.

Vampires aren't going to actively describe themselves as slave owners. They're going to talk about their familiars or servants or whatever, but let's be honest here. If you're a vampire in the U.S. in the lead-up to the civil war, there is zero chance you don't have a bunch of slaves and the federal government is formally abolishing that, you're not gonna like it and you're probably not going to have a problem killing people to be able to maintain your lifestyle.

Meanwhile, here's the quote people love tossing around about the group of people we refer to with a term that really doesn't fit anything about them: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." - Frank Wilhoit

So... special people who consider themselves above normal humans, insist on being able to do things without facing consequences for them, and in particular being very keen on harming normal people who just have to deal. That kinda lines up perfectly with our description of vampires, doesn't it! And a hell of a lot of things, through the whole history of this country, make a hell of a lot of sense when you realize that roughly half of all politicians from the ones we have now all the way back to the founding of the country have been straight up vampires. Metaphorically speaking.

That's not to say that half the population of this country is comprised of vampires. It's more that vampires, by their nature, feel like they have to be in positions of leadership where they can control as much human cattle as they can, so they're going to claw their way to political power and hold onto it with an absolute death grip, any way they possibly can.

Like, knowing how bad this country has gotten about education on Certain Things, and other countries not having a particular incentive to learn these things, are we all aware of the three-fifths compromise? See, when this country was first founded it was really kinda 13 countries in this weird military alliance, and there was a lot of squabbling about who was paying for what and how to divide up this extra land everyone was collectively starting to acquire further and further to the west and everyone had to sit down and hash out the foundations of what's now the federal government. Part of that was establishing the whole congress deal, where rather than just putting some number of people in the seats from each state, there would be general elections of reps to fill seats based on total population. All well and good, except then a bunch of vampires stood up and went "hey so those population totals count our slaves, right? Because we've got a whole bunch of slaves, and obviously we're not going to actually let any of them vote because they're not really people but like they're mouths that need feeding within our borders so that counts right? We can send more vampires to serve in congress proportionate to all these slaves we have?"

Now you would HOPE the response to that would be "what? NO! Screw you! Quit having slaves!" or at least "what? NO! If you don't let slaves vote you can't count them as citizens for how many people you get to send in to represent your state you monsters!" What actually happened though, because there were already so many vampires in the room deciding this that just telling them all to screw off apparently wasn't an option was people went "OK we are not going to let you have 100 times the voting power of a normal human being because you're a vampire with 100 slaves... how about we just give you 60 times the voting power?" Which is completely absurd! But, yeah, half-vampire-run country. You'd also figure this particular awful disproportionate power grab issue would have died when we abolished slavery, but uh... we didn't actually do a super great job at that. The actual wording of our slavery ban has a heck of a loophole in it.

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." So you know, you're a vampire. You failed to overthrow the government and they made you release all your slaves, AND they're technically allowed to vote now. That's bad for you because not only can you not boss them around or get extra federal votes out of them, they're probably going to vote against your evil interests. Fortunately you argued for these loopholes about people in prisons, and hey, you can exploit the hell out of that! Build a ton of prisons! Pass laws that let you arrest huge amounts of people for... being former slaves essentially. Make huge huge numbers of arrests. Offer to house other states' prisoners too! All these people are totally living in your state, AND they're full citizens with voting rights, so, yeah draw those district maps up to count them all, but oh whoops, none of them can actually cast those votes, because they're in prison and all. Still, their bodies count for population proportion, so the one vampire with a residence next to the prison effectly just gets to vote for all of them. Oh and the way the 13th amendment is written you can totally have them all do any sort of slave labor you need done while they're in there. Dangerous firefighting, horrible no-shade road construction, whatever you like really.

There's all kinds of awful crap like this baked into our laws, and it's imperative that we get rid of it all, both because, you know, basic human rights, and because it's all in there explicitly to give disproportionate power to vampires and make it particularly hard to get rid of them. Meanwhile, yeah, the vampires are also very much aware of that, and doing everything they can to keep us from doing that, so they can continue to, you know, rule forever, kill us for a combination of the enjoyment they get and a means of population control to thwart all this pesky democracy stuff, etc.

Now, a big part of how all of this has shaken out is that America has profoundly bad system for handling elections. A lot of other countries do stuff where you rank a bunch of candidates and when the votes get tabulated there's this whole multistep process weeding out the ones with no chance and then counting based on people's second choices and all that, but no, we go with "this guy got 21% of the vote and the next highest only got 20.95% so first guy wins who cares about the rest of this" (at least for general popular vote stuff, there's special rules and exceptions for lots of stuff like... amending weird crap that keeps vampires in power where you need various wide majorities, naturally). Anyway all the vampires get this so they pool their resources and pick just one vampire to run for any given thing and throw all the votes they have (bloated by various messed up means of getting extra votes and not counting big piles that disagree with them) without any other vampires splitting the vampire vote. This kinda necessitates the counterplay of having just the one non-vampire run for any given office. So, how do we work out who this one non-vampire is? Well, in the vast majority of cases, people are so disinterested in politics that only one person is going to even bother to fill out the paperwork to run (or nobody will, just letting some vampire run unopposed!) but for higher profile stuff, presidency especially, there's usually enough people interested that we have (technically unofficial) votes to agree on who we're all going to vote for later. Which isn't the worst system? Think of it like a tournament bracket (and really it'd be better if we branched those more, or used one of those better systems other countries have).

Oh and this is also only covering the various government offices where people are voted for directly. There's a ton of others like, you know, the entire judicial branch, which is arguably the most important, because it ultimately doesn't matter what the law says about anything when a dispute, even one in incredibly bad faith, can be brought before a vampire judge who's just going to rule in favor of vampire interests. Nothing for it beyond keeping vampires out of office so they can't appoint other vampires as judges and such.

So... yeah. The most important thing in all this is hey, do absolutely everything you can to thwart the efforts of vampires. They're super well-organized and weirdly open about wanting to enslave or kill the rest of us, along with doing everything they can to get away from this whole voting thing and just kinda rule forever as feudal lords, free to claim the blood of all within their domain and all. Past that, you want people in power who are like... competent? Willing to thwart and dismantle vampire rule, while also actually doing whatever job they're in the running to go and do.

So basically, when it comes to matters of voting, the really important thing to do is not freaking blow everything off until the big vampire vs. non-vampire vote. If the non-vampire sucks at that point, that's on you for not pushing for and voting for someone who doesn't suck when the primary happened. And if all those people suck, it's on you for not opting to run yourself or pestering someone you like to do so. But yeah, if you spaced that long and now it's just a vampire or some jerk you don't like, deal with it, vote for the jerk. We need to protect the weak and vulnerable among us from the vampires first and foremost and keep them from outlawing stakes and garlic, people!

Oh and the other thing with American voting is that yeah sometimes in smaller local elections things get weird and there isn't a vampire in the running or there is but you know from polls that everyone has kind of agreed nobody's voting for the vampire and then cool you can maybe vote for some cool weirdo who didn't get party backing over someone who did. That's never going to happen in a big election though. There's too much infrastructure involved in getting viable candidates propped up, the vampire vote is going to be in play in a serious way, and any sort of third party/write-in candidate is just kinda going to be some weirdo who has no chance at all of winning and is just here on an ego trip, so, yeah just focus on disempowering vampires.

But again, I'm writing about vampires not voting strategy so uh... hey white supremacy kinda works as wannabe vampires with this metaphor. The vampires aren't going to turn anyone new into vampires most likely but they tempt weird pasty creeps with promises that they might get to be vampires later if they help the vampires with their agenda and bring them pre-battered victims and such. Oh and a lot of people would prefer to stake them than deprive them of political power and like, OK, put your money where your mouth is then. Talking about that sort of thing in public is just going to make them post more guards around their coffins. Vampire Hunters gotta work solo or in small well-vetted groups.

#American politics #vampires #history #racism #fascism

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stupidlovergirl · 11 months

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https://www.tumblr.com/stupidlovergirl/718382323745341440/tldr-hes-hot-getting-caught-about-how-attractive

Hey! How’s your day been?

I saw that your requests were open on your pinned post and I was wondering if you write for/would you do a version of one of these for Mephistopheles? I feel like that purple haired nerd would become so smug and smarmy after hearing you say something about him y’know? Anyways thank you so much and I hope great things come your way!

Nonnie... Your brain is so huge... This one is for you bestie. Insufferable idiot, I want to punch him in the gut and then kiss him when he doubles over in pain <3.

Bros Vers

Datables Vers

Not edited

If anyone had asked the demon what he thought of you, he'd say a lot of things, a lot of backhanded compliments definitely. Now, though, he isn't so sure.

"He's dedicated, and he tries so hard. Its admirable. I really like when he doesn't feel the constant need to uphold his reputation and actually starts being his self. It makes me really like him. Also, you not tell him, I think, he's like, super attractive too. His hair is sooo pretty. His eyes make me understand why people wax poetry about their lovers eyes for so many lines it makes you want to die. To be completely honest, I think I'm into him, like, romantically. Ugh, kill me, I'm in love with an egotistical idiot."

No one just says things like that and doesn't mean it. His eyes are wide, a he thinks his jaw is open. He quickly compses himself, and just...walks away. He has to come to terms with this.

The next time he sees you, your bringing him a document from Diavolo, smile big as you hand it over. He smirks, and kept help but mention the converstation he overheard

"A little birdie told me you find me attractive" he simply says. Its funny, how the color seemingly drains and comes onto your face.

"I don't know what your talking about Mehpisto" you simply say, voice strained.

"I think you do. Something about how my eyes make you understand why people spend so much time describing their lovers eyes, or am I mistaken?" He's smug, and he can see the fear and anger all over your face.

"Why would I say something like that?" You've regained some composure, and roll your eyes. Your trying to shake him off, but he's not letting you do that. Oh no, he's going for the throat.

"Because you like me. Romantically." He simply states, and he watches as you crash and burn.

"Who told you?! Was it Mammon, I swear I'll kill him!" Your furious, and lunge for him. That, he wasn't expecting. He panics, and you grasp his arms. "If you do not tell me I'm beating you. Then I'm going bird hunting." You sound so crazed, he might have been scared if you didn't look so...cute.

"It was you. Your so loud, talking about jow much you like me. It was like you wanted everyone to know. Except for me, evidently." He says, voice smug as he rolls his eyes.

Your hand move to hold your head, hands covering your face. He feels a little bad, but only just a little. Yet, he knows he's had his fun, and decides to end this little dance. His hand reach to hold your wrists, and yank your hands away from your face, and uses them to pull you closer.

"Don't worry, I think you're attractive too. My affections for you are also romantic"

The anger and love in your eyes is so worth it is all he can think as you start to yell about his teasing.

#obey me x reader #Mephistopheles x reader #obswd x reader #obey me x you #Mephistopheles x you #obmswd x you #bunny's.game.collection #bunny's.patrons

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mdhwrites · 3 months

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you've said the collector isn't a kid bc he's been alive for thousands of years, but isn't he still mentally (and physically for that matter) a kid though? or at least that's how i think the show wanted us to perceive him as

(though the show never makes it clear if the collector's species just age much more slowly than others, or if being trapped for so long caused this specific collector to never age during that time)

for the record i do 100% agree abt the collector being a monster, so i'm not trying to argue with you on that/excuse the collector's actions just bc """""he's a kid"""""

So... This is one of those things that can't really be proven or disproven. On the one hand, you have the fact that you do not need to be mentally a child to be childish. Also, you can also be a child physically but have had to grow up quickly so you have the worldview of an adult. Not only that but we don't know how his people age. He was apparently old enough to work with his brothers (he knew their guidebook on genocide) but... Apparently a couple thousand years hasn't changed him whatsoever.

The thing that stops me most from claiming he is a child... Is the Draining Spell. In fact, even more than his lines about playing in bones, how Belos likes to torture the Grimmwalkers, destroy them, etc. like that that proves he knows what death is and is kind of extremely evil with how much glee he takes of all of this, just the fact that he KNOWS the draining spell at all is not a good sign.

That is not a spell a kid learns. That is not a spell a kid is taught. MAYBE some very evil or naive kids might accidentally read it but to be able to regurgitate after having been away from such books for literally thousands of years? Let alone to be able to even theorize with someone else on how to do it on a race of people that didn't exist before you were imprisoned. That means you mastered that fucker. You are the draining king! You sapped the magic out of people for FUN. That is how much you like this spell.

Also, if we want to claim he's just a dumb kid who doesn't like death or hurting people, doesn't like mass genocide like his brothers did... What the fuck was the conversation with Belos? What was ANY of them?

"I wish for a spell that can kill all witches upon this land. To make them extinct."

"Oh, you just mean make them sleepy, right?"

"...What?"

Belos is not exactly a subtle person at the height of his ability, let alone as Philip who BARELY is even okay at his job. He used mercenaries and two people who obviously were ready to believe anything he said. MASTER MANIPULATOR! So how is it that the Collector's childish views made him okay with this? It's not like the witches imprisoned him? Hell, he was willing to work with the Titan Trappers who VERY explicitly wanted to murder Titans for him but he just calls them weird. Like... Collector, you had literally NOTHING else to do than talk to these two people. Did you literally never listen to ANYTHING they said?

It doesn't make the Collector come off as a child. It just makes it so S2 Collector is literally a different character. The two are entirely incompatible. Even if they acted the same, the knowledge base and morality of the two Collectors is too severe for them to co-exist.

BUT. Like I said: I can't firmly prove that the Collector does not have a child's mind because while S2 Collector absolutely is just childish and gullible, he is not naive nor is he a child, except in physical appearance. S3 Collector though? That's a lot harder of a sell. He literally just wants to have fun and friends and is too self centered to care about if other people are having fun too. His fun prioritizes everything. That... Honestly still isn't actually a kid's point of view. Kids aren't inherently monsters. They do feel bad for their actions, even if they want to be justified in having fun. Admittedly, the Collector does EVENTUALLY do this as well so it's still kind of there but really awkwardly when put beside even everything else in S3.

After all, he presents King with the same book that has his brother's instructions to kill everything. A kid would not pull that out. They wouldn't risk for a SECOND that being seen. At least... Not a ten year old like this. Not unless we want to say that the Collector is a literal toddler, which is not the vibe TOH is going for. No, he's old enough to know what he's doing is wrong, just not old enough to actually do something about it I GUESS.

You're not supposed to think about it, like most elements in the show. Just like how you aren't supposed to think about how Amity bullied Willow for YEARS. Or how Hunter has probably killed wild witches in the past. There are inherent, core parts of these characters that you're just supposed to ignore so that they can be redeemed and given hugs because they never actually did anything wrong. So the show can tell you they're good people, rather than addressing and showing how they've stopped being bad people.

So yeah, we can argue about if The Collector is or isn't meant to be a child. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day, especially when good luck being actually able to say one way or another. I still won't claim it. I will just claim that he is a monster before he is ANYTHING else.

And I think that's way more important.

======+++++======

It is fun how TOH takes a shot at redeeming the gems in SU and how the fandom rallies around killing the villain being TOH's final subversion when the Collector is RIGHT THERE. You know what also redeemed one character who then went into personally decided exile while also killing the big bad but did it way better? Amphibia with Andrias and the Core. *sigh* Just a side tangent from my Discord recently I wanted to share.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #toh #the owl house #The Collector

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eponastory · 30 days

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Why Waterbending is underrated... and how Earthbending can be used on the human body...

It really is underrated, and I hate that the potential was never really explored other than bloodbending bad and taboo.

The human body is this amazing machine of water, organs, cells, bones, muscles, bacteria, acids, elements, and minerals. Just to be clear, everything with two or more elements is either a chemical, compound, alloy, or mixture. Most compounds are solids, most mixtures are gas or liquid, and chemicals can be solid or liquid. Alloys are almost always metals. Anyway, getting off track here with chemistry.

In LoK, we get a bloodbending villain. It's been a while since I've seen the show, and when it was airing on Nick, I kinda stopped watching it after season two because it kinda got boring to me and I really didn't like the writing for the show. It was... well it wasn't that great because there could be more to it that just wasn't explored. It sucks that they didn't. But I really don't care for the show. Back to the bending side of it, the first two seasons kinda explored bloodbending enough to where we got the basis of Bloodbending is bad.

But how can waterbending be used on the body besides the blood? Well, I'm about to tell you.

Starting off with bone marrow, it is the stuff that blood is made in within the bone structure itself. Yeah, I was shocked to learn that too, but if you are in the medical field, you know what I'm talking about. The spleen has the other major blood duty, but it's the marrow where it's made. Knowing that opens up some dialog.

Blood cells, in particular, have a certain amount of water in them. So does the plasma they inhabit. But your muscles, organs, skin, and soft tissues also contain water. A waterbender like Katara could literally tie your small intestines in a knot if she wanted. Talk about a bad day. She could dislocate a joint with the flick of her wrist by manipulating the fluid in those joints. I wonder if she could do something about those ganglion cysts in my wrist? But the point is that waterbenders can do some crazy amazing shit and the surface was only scratched in the show. We get a taste of what can happen with Hama. Imagine pulling blood through skin? Yeah, that can happen, too. Draining the body of blood through the skin, then using that blood to fight... creepy, but really cool.

Actually, it's probably a good thing we only got a taste. No one wants to see Avatar: Bloodwar... although that's a really cool title for a semi horror story in the universe. But I'm pretty sure stopping the heart is only one thing. Exploding heads? Oh yeah, I'm sure that is possible. Not literally exploding the head, but the brain is surrounded by spinal fluid, which is also made out of water... you get where I'm coming from.

Bending also comes from the intent of a bender as well. All bending can be dangerous and used for nefarious reasons. Just like a fork can be used to eat with or to stab someone in the eye... it's the intent behind the person wielding it that makes it a weapon or a tool.

Just like how Toph could use the very small amount of metals in your body to do harm. She's not going to because she is a good person. She doesn't bend to harm. It's the same with Katara.

Now, Ozai and Azula on the other hand... their intent is what makes them powerful. Azula intends to make people fear her. Ozai intends to eliminate entire cultures... that is what makes their fire deadly.

Where as Zuko never intends to harm anyone. He does by accident, but that's really all we see.

I really wish they explored bending in more depth, especially with a hard magic system in place. Waterbending is only limited by morals and intent. Most bending is, but I truly think waterbending is the most powerful form. Earthbending is limited by the land at the benders feet. Firebending's limitations haven't really been explored except by the Sun and Sozin's Comet being the draw for energy. I go more into depth on the lighting post. Air is not really explained much either... but it's similar to water in that respect.

But yeah, more concepts with bending would be lovely.

What do you guys think?

#being an aries makes me a firebender #but i would definitely be a waterbender if i could #waterbending #bloodbending #analysis #zutara fanfic #zutara fanfiction #zutara #atla fanfiction #atla analysis #avatar: the last airbender

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ieatsmallorphansnamedtom · 1 year

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What the Townies Watch on the Television

Stardew brainrot going wild. Clint doesn't get a fancy colour because he doesn't deserve one. <3 Unlike Krobus who doesn't get a colour because he's special and lovely.

Bachelors:

Sam: Something in relation to urban mysteries like UFOs and monsters like Bigfoot. He'd watch shows about ghosts too but he's too scared. Also, those 'Top Twenty Fails' shows!

Elliot: History shows, obviously. They're great for references and also just super entertaining overall! He also dabbles in the occasional gardening show to help him take care of his seasonal flowers.

Sebastian: I feel like he barely watches TV, but when he does it's something comedic. Think Stardew's version of Seinfeld. Any of that trashy TV to pass the time.

Harvey: Like Elliott, Harvey's a big fan of the history channel. He also loves those urban mystery shows that talk about missing vehicles because he gets to learn about all the ins and outs of how they worked.

Shane: He'll watch anything except for the news and romance. The news is too depressing for his already endorphin-drained mind and romance shows feel too trashy. He just has the sports channel on in the background whenever he's doing something.

Alex: We all know the answer: sports. But he's also a fan of the cooking, gardening, and antique shows! That's all thanks to Evelyn. And George has forced him to become used to all his depressing channels, though he tries to avoid that.

Bachelorettes:

Penny: She loves children's shows and antique shows like the Antique Roadshow. They just give her a wonderful feeling of nostalgia and warmth inside.

Leah: All those repairing and art shows. If only she knew Bob Ross... She would be in love. She is also an avid enjoyer of gardening and cooking shows. They give her great foraging tips!

Abigail: Children's shows. But where Penny is more aimed at the littler kids cartoons, she likes the stuff around the age things like Danny Phantom are aimed at. Stardew Valley would also have a ton of monster hunting shows that she loves.

Maru: Science shows, duh. Absolutely anything to do with science - even those UFO shows and lost city programs. Even if she thinks they're fake, she has fun debunking them. She's also a sucker for a good romance series.

Emily: Sewing shows, repair shows, art shows, dance competitions - anything artistic. She's the one who watches the news, so Haley doesn't have to. She handles the stresses shown on there a lot better than her sister.

Haley: She's not really a fan of TV. It's a lot of her aimlessly scrolling through channels of trashy TV programs until she gives up and something grabs her eye. What she usually settles on are some fun ghost hunting shows.

Other:

Jodi: She barely gets time for television. But when she does, she likes to watch kids' shows with Vincent or a good drama. Something to distract her from the business of her life. She's also heavily invested in the news in the hopes of knowing how her husband is.

Vincent: Kids shows, obviously! He's eight, what else is he going to watch? Ever since his father left, he's been banned from watching the news so as not to worry him, but he's caught sneak peaks by listening in on his family's commentary anyways.

Kent: For the years leading up to and the first year of the farmer's arrival, Kent couldn't watch television at all. Being a soldier in the front lines and all. But when he got back, he really got into the lighthearted stuff. He needed a good distraction.

Robin: Woodworking shows; specifically, treehouse building. She just thinks it's so cool how people just decide to put these grand houses in trees of all things. She also loves romance and drama series.

Demetrius: He's not one for TV. He tries to avoid it due to how depressing and dependent it can make you. When he does watch it, he's watching the movies.

Marnie: Funny fail videos. She's a sucker for funny cats. And of course, there are the animal shows. She loves shows like Better Homes and Gardens.

Jas: Once again, kids' shows. Her and Vincent are obsessed with them. She also caught a glimpse of a murder mystery show and was entranced. What can I say? She's a bit of a Wednesday Addams.

Evelyn: Baking, gardening, and antique shows. She also loves travel programs. It makes her all happy to see people having a good time. And she gets to daydream about travelling the world.

I would give all my money to let her go on a cruise. </3

George: All the depressing stuff. Murder mysteries, missing person cases, the news, all of it. Then he acts like that doesn't fuel his horrible mood. He's just using his cynical feelings to survive at this point and needs fuel.

Pam: She hates it, but she's addicted to the news. She also loves to watch royal and historical dramas. It makes her happy to know that it's not just her that's suffering (even if those other people are fictional).

Pierre: The Art of the Deal /hj. Nah, he's watching all that conservative stuff. Also loves those shows where they renovate and sell houses. He just wishes he could own a big house like the people on the show.

Caroline: Cooking shows and meditation classes. She needs a bit of a breather, so any programs aimed to help relax are appreciated. She also studies the fitness programs for her classes with the other townies.

Linus: He doesn't watch TV. Firstly, he lives in a tent, and secondly, television isn't all too good for you.

Clint: Romance shows that he self-inserts himself into aka pretends he's with Emily. I'm sorry I just don't like Clint. Also, metalworking.

Rasmodius/Wizard: He doesn't watch TV. Ever.

Krobus: He likes any shows, but particularly fantasy dramas. He gets to enjoy the creativity of humans AND study their social systems.

Leo: He never used to have television, so it's all very new to him. But like the other kids his age, he's all about the children's network.

-~-~-

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avelera · 1 year

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First off, may I begin with screaming loudly about the new chapter of GS because my god, it was lovely! Will leave a comment on ao3 later once I’ve found some words beyond mere key bashing

Second, if at all possible and not inconvenient, could you perhaps share some tips about your process and staying motivated while writing? Especially for such a long fic? Sincerely, a fic writer who can’t manage to get anything finished, let alone posted

Aah, thank you so much!

*Cracks knuckles* OK, to answer your question!

Build endurance. Writing long fic is a marathon in a very REAL sense. Runners who sprint and runners who run marathons are totally different (if perhaps complimentary) skillsets. Writing a really dense, well crafted short story is a unique skill. It is NOT the same thing, in my opinion, as being able to write a long-form novel. (That's why, IMO, a lot of people who get their start in short stories because of the way creative writing education & publishing work in the mainstream these days often struggle to jump to novels and their first novel (*cough* American Gods *cough*) are often densely beautiful but weirdly episodic and not always well connected internally.) Sorry, random soap box moment. TL;DR: Short vs. long fic writing are different skills. Be patient with yourself. Build endurance the same way a marathoner does: with practice.

Do not post before the fic is finished. This is a tip that is largely unique to me and one I've broken recently BUT absolutely nothing motivates me to push through the hard parts at the middle of the story like the realization that if I don't, no one will ever read the story. It'll all be wasted effort (except insofar as I got to practice writing). This doesn't work for everyone, but it is worth a shot!

Do not talk about your fic before it's written. Storytelling is sometimes the same centers in the brain, at least for me, as story writing. IE, by telling someone what I'm going to write, I've drained the enjoyment from writing it. That juicy pleasure is already sucked dry, leaving only the husk of the actual work. Now, this doesn't mean you can't talk at all about your work but one tip is to only talk about parts you've already written. You can say you just wrote a cool passage about XYZ! But stop at the moment where you're about to say what happens next. Talking about your work is a reward for writers who have already written. Set a rule that you don't get to talk about what isn't there yet. You don't get to have the dessert before you've done the actual work.

Bring in a small group of trusted alpha readers. An alpha reader is not a beta reader. Their job is to cheerlead, not to edit. I only bring in alpha readers for very long works (like, over 50k) where true endurance is needed. This is not sharing a rough draft with the world! This is not avoiding the rigors of having a beta reader, thou shalt still use a beta reader when the chapter is ready (if possible) and before it is released to a wider audience! (Because beta readers are about respecting the time of your audience and putting in as much effort for them as you expect them to put in for you at minimum, ie, reading over your own work and asking for a friendly second pair of eyes for anything you missed). Point is, when a long fic is shaping up to be a huge slog, it can indeed be hard to keep the momentum going. Inviting an alpha reader is asking, politely, for someone to give you a small taste of the rewards of sharing your story so you don't give in before it's done. However, it needs to remain a small circle so you don't give in to the temptation of never finishing or publishing the polished work. This is micro-dosing feedback to keep you going, not a replacement for doing the work!

Ok, I think that covers it!

#maggie rambles #writing advice #fanfiction #longfic

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hmshermitcraft · 9 months

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more hurt/comfort, this time polyhermits + a few others and research subject au. i continue my several years long tradition of being The Longpost Anon in whichever fandom i am in.

some of the hermits (zedaph, etho, impulse, xisuma, hypno, keralis, iskall, stress, beef, pixlriffs, lyarrah and TFC) are working at a research lab that has its own server. (there's a bunch of other staff too) the main focus of their research is the new species they're finding through various portals, which is like 33% biology 33% ethology and 33% anthropology because sometimes through the portals is a sapient species.

false and gem are security

cub and scar are high-ranking concorp executives who fund the place.

joe's a member of a poet's club and also a technician who mostly does fixing up arcade machines but occasionally gets called in to fix stuff in the lab

grian, pearl, scott, jimmy, welsknight, bdubs, ren, martyn, tango, jevin, doc, xb, cleo, joel, lizzie, and sloy are various kidnapped or otherwise entrapped nonhumans stuck in a different research facility with terrible conditions.

grian, pearl, and jimmy are the newest ones in - grian and pearl are watchers, and jimmy is a listener.

tango's a blaze-person (a firey techno-organic construct from the nether), joel is a hippogriff, scott's basically a living waystone, ren is a wolfman, xb's a guardian guy, cleo and sloy are obviously zombies, welsknight is a humanoid bird missing part of one wing, martyn is a pufferfish-person, bdubs is just a regular architect who found a plant symbiote, lizzie is a catwoman, doc is a creeper-guy with a little snow creeper in him, and jevin is obviously a slime.

the unethical lab has various ways of preventing escape attempts, mostly regular restraints and stuff but bdubs is kept chronically dehydrated and soil-deprived so he can't spread his plants around and control them to escape, scott isn't fed enough to safely use his energy-draining teleportation powers unless they're needed for the lab (whereupon he's forced to use them), joel jimmy and pearl have their wings clipped (grian is flightless anyways), cleo and sloy have healing potion dispensers set up around their cell, tango's hooked up to a generator and is powering a lot of the lab, and the watchers and jimmy are kept collared and shackled to dampen their powers and keep them from messing with their emotions.

unethical lab isn't sure how to get watchers or listeners to eat in captivity and is pretty sure their claims the collars are interfering are bunk

joe gets called in to fix something in the unethical lab, sees some of the terrible conditions, and goes to tell the hermits lab and also concorp. they manage to get everyone out of the unethical lab and into the hermits' lab.

they figure the rescued people would just stay for a few days or weeks while healing and having some low-pressure research conducted like "sunscreen for zombies: what's the most effective kind" and "what's going on medically with bdubs' plant symbiote, he's a little worried about that let's check" and "watcher and listener feeding behaviour, just, in general" and "since scott is teleporting around cautiously again, how does that work". except then some of them won't leave and the ones that do leave keep coming back.

doc ends up working with iskall (who is Extremely Old in an immortal kind of way) to make a prosthetic eye and arm for himself, cleo hits it off with TFC talking about geology and joe in a sparring match, bdubs doesn't want to go back to renting and starts building a house Immediately Outside the lab and planting a very large amount of plants and mushrooms, grian is actually interested in being studied and is outright offended the unethical lab was so bad at it, scott's trying to teach everyone to cook, tango's determined to learn redstone, etc

this quickly turns into just about all of the rescued people being either live-in research subjects, employees, or both. there is a small amount of very awkward flirting and an increasingly out-of-control prank war, but very little of the flirting is going anywhere. watcher and birdperson flirtatious display looks really similar to threat displays especially when they're really nervous, none of the scientists want to pressure the rescued research subjects, there is cross-species and cross-cultural confusion, lizzie's attempt to flirt with scott in the ancient catperson tradition of cooking them fancy food is foiled by a. everyone is feeding scott anyway and b. scott doesnt swing that way, etc

some of them have gone a little weird - joel spends a month wearing a hippo mask and insisting his name is griff, lizzie keeps wearing a mask of a person's face and claiming to be human to any visitors, grian has become a hoarder, rendog got a paper crown and started calling himself king, and welsknight got extremely into metallurgy and wearing armour all the time

they end up having to hire a new technician, mumbo, because it turns out watchers and listeners can take a humanoid form and grian keeps using this for getting into the walls and making the jankiest redstone ever with jukeboxes in the walls.

aaaand then grian comes up with the idea to defuse the prank war into "we larp a war on the weekends". disstracks are made. welsknight, pearl, grian, and jimmy are all subconsciously reading "friendly disstrack" as "flirting?" and somehow this is what causes the actual communication about relationship status etc to occur. the larp war. not bdubs growing flowers and struggling to conceal when they bloom (a lot harder to conceal than some other signs of arousal), not wels or the watchers displaying their wing patterning at people, not scott's insistence on making sure everyone knows how to cook, not scar showing up shirtless for no reason or doc deciding to wear 3/4s of a labcoat and no other shirt when his job doesn't actually need a labcoat at all, the larp war.

(bonus worldbuilding notes: bdubs' plants can link into the fungal-and-plant-root network to communicate with and control regular plants, as well as providing him a supply of sugars, vitamins, and oxygen in exchange for water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen compounds his body wants to dispose of anyways; watcher and listener humanoid form is actually a feeding adaptation to make it easier to stir up strong emotions; doc's snow-creeper ancestry means he can't explode; listeners have venomous spikes like pufferfish-people and he and martyn are immune to each others venom)

It's not the outcome they expected when they planned to shut down the lab. They went about it the legal route, eventually, but they may have been a little illegal about how they rescued the subjects.

There wasn't much to shut down in the end.

Some of the subjects were already dating each other upon being rescued. Being in close captivity can do that, so the freedom to explore their relationships was nice.

Initially, all the staff that dealt directly with the subjects got trauma response training. It was an important part of rehabilitation, making sure the subjects were comfortable returning to their normal lives. Then they refused to only interact with the staff they were supposed, so now all of them are hands on staff. The amount of times Scott nearly caused an accident by watching people from dark corners or high ledges fills several pages.

A lot of the non-humans and hybrids are happy to help with the research once they're further along their recovery. Many of them didn't have a community to grow up in, so there's a lot they don't know about themselves. Sometimes they're even the ones who propose hypotheses to explore.

They're also a great asset in introducing new people to the lab. People are often scared and unsure coming in. Seeing people like them, being reassured and being able to ask questions helps a lot. Jimmy is particularly good at it, xB as well, but he's less of a people person. He's calmed his far share of rampages regardless.

They make sure their relationships don't interfere with their work as best as they can. After all, funding is still sort of important. With the variety of species here (many not even documented anywhere else) and amount of results they can produce, they're sitting pretty, though. They can mess around and have fun. Hey, dating even lets them document some new things!

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cosmichighpriestess · 2 months

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Chosen ones, many people met you either in real life or behind a screen and they thought they were entitled to your energy because you were kind to them. You are always kind but you don't need to go around telling everyone what a great person you are and all your accomplishments. You just show them instead through who you are naturally. They are so entitled to your energy that they actually think they can say whatever they want to you as if your ancestors and their ancestors aren't always listening. Big mistake. Even Hecate doesn't play about you, chosen one. You always stand on business. You don't play about yourself. You may even walk into a place where everyone ignores you and turns their back on you because they feel triggered by your presence. They learn everyone's name, except yours. They are nice to everyone, except you. They acknowledge everyone, except you. This made you feel like an outcast your entire life, and it didn't matter how many years passed by, still you walk into a room and the room goes silent because you walked in. But there was always that one person, that narcissist who saw you and thought, that one, I want that one.

They made you feel like you were lovable at first. You boosted their ego. They sent you good morning texts. They wanted to know your zodiac sign. They wanted to know how you made money and all of your interests. They wanted to know your childhood and life experience and all about your children and family. Everyone else in your reality seem to not be interested in your mind and who you are, but this person wanted to know everything. You finally felt desired and seen. But because of your intuition and connection to higher intelligence. You even questioned their motives and intentions for you. But you ignored your intuition until they showed you a red flag. This continued on until they even began talking about marriage and being your best friend.

They found their new energy narcissistic supply and you weren't going anywhere. Your energy was going to be siphoned no matter how they could get it. There's a difference between someone who fights for you, is attached to you and loves you unconditionally and doesn't want to lose you. And then there's the narcissist who wants to own you, use you, control you and then discard you when they can't use you anymore. Oops. Big mistake. They didn't know you were a chosen one and not the regular empath that they usually use and deal with. You both felt this deep connection with each other though and you both couldn't explain it, They had their sights on you and you were willing to deal with your energy draining because the love bombing was so intense. Everyday you became weaker and weaker, until you looked like a walking zombie. But the good morning texts kept coming, they kept showing up and you were happy to give all of your unconditional love because you felt such a deep desire to show them your heart and soul. But they mistook your kindness for weakness, and naivety and they mistook your presence as an opportunity to boost their own ego and use your abundant energy as their own.

They started becoming more successful right before your eyes, People started wanting them more because of your energy on them. People started listening to them more because of your energy. They took parts of your personality and ideas as their own. Some of them even started dressing like you, me for instance they started wearing long black hair wigs and became extremely jealous if anyone gave me attention. One even stole my ideas for their business without crediting me and ended up in Forbes magazine. They wanted you to be loyal to them but they were not loyal to you from the very beginning. Because of your inner power and your powerful energy, people think it's an opportunity to steal your energy and use it as their own. Not knowing, the Angels, the Ancestors, the God's and Goddesses and the Demons do not play about their chosen one meant to break all generational curses. They were all sitting back and watching these people talk badly about you behind your back, they heard and saw everything and they watched as they slowly drained your energy and stole from you consistently.

They made demands on your time and energy, and they abused your time. After you continued to give to them, the most valuable parts of yourself, out of pure love. They sought to benefit from all of your hard work, discipline and all of your love and energy while not investing in you. After these people slowly realized they couldn't use you anymore because you were catching on to their ulterior motives, they did everything in their power to downplay your gifts. They did everything they could to gaslight you to make you feel crazy. To downplay who you are and make you feel less then and worthless. The smear campaign began and they told everyone they knew how horrible of a person you are and how pathetic you are and how you were the villain in their story and they were the helpless victim who did everything for you. Oops, they did all of this to a chosen one, who is highly protected. Oops, they didn't know that many, many other people have tried these same tactics on you your entire life.

They can play all their games with everyone else but not you. Your ancestors and their ancestors are both laughing at them. They are fiercely protective of you and after their ancestors became aware of you, they started to defend you because they were embarrassed of their child's immature choices to destroy a generational curse breaker. These narcissists were so entitled, so immature, so full of themselves acting so foolishly in front of the entire Universe and millions of beings who watch them from the sidelines. They did everything in their power to insert their misery own chaos into your life. Because they felt chaos within themselves because they were hard on themselves so they're hard on you. There are people that are sent into our lives, where it is actually their goal to destroy us and get us off our higher path. That is the only reason why you met them, because that is their purpose from a higher level. But you chose to overcome it and not let it destroy your future. Congratulations, curse breaker, You get to reap the benefits of all your hard work and discipline, pure unconditional love that you gave out.

And they get to watch while you receive everything that you deserve. You understand what it feels like to go through real hell and pain in this life and that is why you are the curse breaker for your bloodline because you choose not to behave the same way that your ancestors did, inserting their power and control over others for their own benefit. Your Ancestors are deeply ashamed of their own choices, but they are so proud of you for choosing not to become like them. You get your soulmate and you get to enjoy your life finally. Watch opportunity after opportunity just get handed to you. They will meet more fake people, wearing masks with bad intentions for them. You learned how to love yourself. You will never bend to anyone's will and you will continue to hold the light and be the one to raise the human level of consciousness to raise the frequency of the entire planet. Forgive them, for yourself. They didn't know who you were. They don't know any better. They made a huge mistake, ignoring you and trying to hurt you, you know your worth now and no one can take it away. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. I love you.

#chosen ones #this message is not for everyone #curse breakers #Black Sheep

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