#these two perspectives can and do exist :0)

[blorb-el]

Psssst does the au superbat fic exist bc I waaaaaaaaant it

I want it too 😭 tragically it only exists in about........4.5k scattered scenes which I try to poke at in between working on my main project rn!

misc worldbuilding scraps that are currently rotating on the back burner:

(omegaverse) human instinct relies on scent > hearing > taste > sight to find compatible partners, kryptonian instincts lean on sight > hearing > scent > taste, hence the mating markings

omegaverse humans have a much higher degree of face blindness than we normal humans do lmao

helps clark pass, the more he pulls his scent back the more it fades away, clark kent smells so dull/insignificant/mild that it seems like he's got a medical condition (hypomyrodia). jonathan kent had this. when jonathan and martha found bby kal, he was scared and tried to match scents to the two humans who found him, which caused his kryptonian scent to quickly fade. a hypomyrodic pup would probably face high abandonment rates and low adoption rates, so it was probably a relief that two willing parents brought the pup in

kryptonians all pretty much exist along a relatively smooth spectrum of sexual characteristics and can transition somewhat like clownfish if there's a hormonal imbalance in their community. having zero (0) other kryptonians around does things to clark before he grows the fortress and is able to synthesize hormone stabilizers

humans meanwhile have ten major sexes because betas can be true beta, alpha-leaning, or omega-leaning depending on their recessive genes

poison ivy is x100 more horrifying in any omegaverse world. she only manages to zop clark though bc the pollen is enchanted. however it's enchanted to induce primal alpha hindbrain, which means something very different to lone kryptonians than packbonded humans

it would have been the norm on krypton to have one's facial markings out. kryptonians would pull them back if they were sick, or perhaps terrified... primal hindbrain clark looking around and seeing nothing but non-glowing faces, and it coming across as everyone around him fucking terrified of him

for the first few months of their acquaintance clark is like. im not sure what gender batman is and at this point i'm not sure its ok to ask (he can smell past the concealing patches to bruce's strong omega scent but the patches could also be doubling as, like, the equivalent of binders, could be that batman's gender is null, but he mixes in diluted alpha cologne, but that could just be for concealment/intimidation....???)

sun-powered kryptonians have a strong, distinctively alien but somewhat alpha-smelling scent (when they're not pulling it back) but barely leave any on people they try to scent with, and scents barely stick to them. when clark politely explains this to bb dickie hes just like well i guess ill just have to scent you for longer! and clark goes 🥺

at this early point in the timeline barry is the only known omega superhero so the tabloids are huge into superflash

anyway all that's just kind of fluff/details... the core theme i've been rotating around is overcoming real and genuine barriers to intimacy. the loneliness of knowing you're a square peg in a world of round holes, the necessary compromises of sanding away your corners, the joy of meeting someone who will stretch to meet you where you are. there's a fair few excellent fics of bruce uncomfortable in an omega's role and body, i want to come at it from a perspective where a xenomegaverse clark has to define what gender means to him, in the heightened roles of the omegaverse. we are looking also at layers of passing. when parts of your closet become your armor that protects but encumbers you, and other parts become your exoskeleton, which grow into who you are. we are looking at that comic about the orchid that has the pattern on it meant to appeal to an extinct species of bee. we are looking at compromise made of love and compromise made of fear. and we are looking at tentacles baby.................

#OR WE WOULD BE LOOKING AT IT IF I HAD THE BRAIN SPACE FREE TO WRITE IT DOWN!!!!! #once wsbf is done. and the various pwps. and the kryptonian superbat au..... god that one's been on the back burner over a year lmao....... #reddest-x #thanks for the ask :^)

[mymarifae]

i just want to share my thoughts about akito and Death. because even now—even off the back of an event like burn my soul—people STILL talk about him like he's an explicitly depressed, suicidal character whose every action is cause for concern.

i think the idea that akito is suicidal has been floating around for a very long time. and while it's not entirely without merit (more on this in a bit), it's still a misconception. and it really feels like kashika exacerbated the issue. which is unfortunate! it's sad to see such a beautiful song be misinterpreted like this.

now don't get me wrong! kashika is about death. but two things:

1. kashika may have been written for akito, but it's not just for him. it's also deeply personal to ryo haruka. there are certainly similarities and haruryo undoubtedly understood everything akito felt during the events that led up to the crawl green incident, but i don't think it's entirely fair to equate his very real emotions and struggles to those of a fictional character. he and akito share kashika! you can interpret it through either lens, but trying to do so through both is where things start getting messy

2. whiiiiich leads me to my second point. who decided that the only way to interpret kashika and its themes of death is literally?

i think it's pretty common for people to automatically interpret any themes of death literally—or at least very negatively. we're naturally conditioned to fear death, and then we're taught to fear it even more. it's the change. it's the unknown. it's the very idea of an "end." most people aren't very fond of these things! understandably so. but personally? i think the symbolism that can exist behind death is beautiful.

Death is the 13th card of the major arcana. above all else, it symbolizes change (positive change; it's always, always about what's ultimately best for you). Death tells you it's time to move forward; this part of your life is done. there is more waiting for you—new opportunities, new experiences, a brighter, more fulfilling future—but you must be prepared to let go.

the habits and routines you have now? the mindsets that have kept you alive? your current sense of self? whatever it is, whatever Death is asking for, you have to let it "die." it won't serve you anymore. it will only drag you down. and it might be terrifying and you might not be able to comprehend what lies ahead and you might want to kick and scream and struggle, but you can't cling forever. endings are never easy, and sometimes they hurt like hell, but with each end comes a new beginning.

and yes if you've read burn my soul this should all sound very familiar lol:

looking at death from this perspective, kashika and the entirety of find a way out should read a lot more like akito caught on the cusp of a monumental transformation. suspended between "life" (the old) and "death" (the new) so to speak.

up to this point he's been fueled by spite and desperation. two very intense, very negative emotions—but it's an intensity that worked. everyone else on vivid street had years of musical experience, and he had 0. he needed to catch up and he needed to catch up quickly because it's not like he could put the whole world on pause. he could take his time to learn the basics, sure, but every other vivid street musician would continue improving and growing while he did that. there would always be a gap between him and Them.

unless... he worked harder—WAY harder—than all of them combined.

and maybe that wouldn't do it either. maybe he would be stuck in place forever, always playing catch-up, always struggling to stay afloat, always being left behind. he knew this. and he knew the amount of destruction he'd end up inflicting upon himself if he went down this path. but in his mind, it was okay. it was worth it. because he'd rather die endlessly pursuing what he loves most than live not trying at all.

but in find a way out, when facing off against his old bullies, he starts to realize that he was wrong. he's not just stuck in place. he bridged the gap a long time ago, and he almost didn't even notice. and where he's going now, spite and desperation are the wrong emotions to sing from. he needs to let the unhealthy, extreme mindsets die, but also it's hard to let go of something when you would have given up a long long long LONG time ago without it.

but with time, and enough poking and prodding from ken and luka, he does it. he lets go. he lets the old parts of him die, and he passes on to the next stage of his life.

akito's character arc has always been about growth. improvement. learning. Becoming Better. and not just in a musical sense although Yes That Is A Huge Part Of It. his arc is also about his growth as a person. it's about him becoming more confident, and learning how to be kinder and more patient with both himself and other people. it's about him learning how to let his walls down and let his loved ones in. and to trust that they won't start kicking him to death once they're in there.

it's about him learning to exchange the Spite and Desperation for Passion and Love.

it's about him becoming happier.

which is why it's so fucking startling when people talk about him like he's suicidal and on the verge of a breakdown. like, woah, what?

as i said though, kashika isn't the only source of this misconception and i find more merit in the other sources because they're actual aspects of his character and scenes in the story and not song lyrics that shouldn't have been read so literally in the first place. like, yeah. we've seen a ton of unhealthy behavior out of akito. he's had a very extreme perspective on his place in the world from a super early age, and while the severity frequently gets exaggerated in fanon spaces, the shinonome household isn't exactly sunshine and rainbows.

he's been moody, he's been prickly and abrasive, he's lashed out. he keeps most people at arm's length and builds walls so high not even toya can get through them at first. he had to! he wouldn't have survived if he didn't! like, he was targeted and bullied by a group of adults when he first started singing on vivid street. that is actually a genuinely traumatizing thing to happen to a kid!

so no, i'm not against the idea that akito has experienced depression and suicidal ideation in the past. kinda comes naturally with the territory he ended up in. but that's the key word: past.

i get confused when the idea is dragged into the present. because again! the whole point of his character arc is he's overcome all that PAST adversity! recovery isn't linear but we're not about to see him hit rock bottom any time soon. or ever, actually. you know why? because we've already seen his rock bottom. stray bad dog. that event was his big breakdown moment. that's what opened him up to try to start healing.

we're not getting another stray bad dog. stop expecting another stray bad dog.

he's alright, i promise. he's growing up. he's gotten better. he knows he belongs in vivid bad squad. he knows he's loved. he knows his friends will be there to catch him when he falls. he's always been strong, but now he's even stronger. he's excited for his future, and i think we should be too.

#i posted this on twitter when find a way out ended but i realized i never put it over here :0 #project sekai #akito shinonome #vivid bad squad #long post #i love love love love when media isn't afraid to tackle Death as a positive theme #it's so rare. it's so refreshing #because like . i don't think we should be afraid of Death. i don't think Death should be seen as some horrible terrifying despicable End #it's as much a part of life as life itself. it's not a bogeyman out to get you. it's not a harbinger of misery and doom #it's life. it's okay to be a little scared - it's impossible to comprehend what lies beyond after all #but it's okay. Death is here to guide you. it's just time to move on. nothing more. nothing less.

[cellarspider]

12/?? Things come to a head

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⛬

We return to that shambling mass of a film, Prometheus.

Content warnings for body horror, contagion-y stuff, something that loosely be described as medical horror, It’s Been 0 Days Since Our Last Incident, and me, going on a ramble about movie gore to distract myself from The Madness.

There's a lady in this scene who's had a number of speaking lines so far–the maybe-chemist. She has a name, but it doesn’t matter.

But I'm going to call her Doctor Frankenstein.

They have just got the helmet off the head, revealing that it’s truly, unmistakably humanoid. They have noted that there are “new cells” on the head. In the business, we call that “decomposition”, but Doctor Frankenstein is not concerned with this. In fact, she immediately proposes a new plan.

Doctor Frankenstein has had the brilliant idea to plug a big cable into the head like it’s a guitar amp, and zap it with electricity to wake it up.

Yes. This is what the movie goes with.

You know, Alien included a similarly shambolic first examination of an alien subject, but it was performed because said alien was attached to a man’s face, and all they had to try and fix that was the contents of a cargo ship’s medbay, with the only qualified personnel being the corporate android who had been ordered to consider the crew expendable. The crew of the Prometheus has no such excuse.

Well, except for David, he has precisely the same excuse, but he’s not trying to poke wires in anybody’s ears.

Doctor Frankenstein calls for enough amperage to run three electric kettles (cite 3), then all the way up to two Titan RTX graphics cards before the head starts to get what appears to be a massive migraine. 

I know this expression well, migraines can feel very much like someone is subjecting me to unnatural horrors.

This is getting a little extreme, though. Yes, when the head starts pulsing, they realize they may have made a mistake. 

I’d say this was inexplicable behavior on their part, unbelievably hasty and foolish–and I will say it, actually, it deserves to be said. But in context, this is the team that did so little prep for entering the alien structure that they didn’t notice the giant fuckoff skull carved into the outside of it.

Knowing how much Shaw and Holloway read into the intentions of the Engineers from the depictions they found on Earth, they probably would’ve interpreted this as a good sign, somehow.

Anyway, they put a sneezeguard down over the head before it explodes.

Good job everyone. This is like what would’ve happened if Napoleon’s savants took one look at the Rosetta Stone and decided “maybe we should try hitting it with hammers. Surely that’ll make the knowledge fall out.”

From a horror perspective, this scene only works in two contexts: First, gross-out. Generally found in schlock, exploitation, and outsider art flicks, the tone of gross-out content can be highly variable, but there are two general trends I'd mention, which are of relevance to this movie.

First, gross-out tends to exist in that weird alternate space where lots of comedy movies do: characters will behave in unreasonable ways for no apparent reason. Within the film, this is treated as the universal norm, besides maybe a straight man character who highlights the absurdity. Gross-out is often like that, but pushes different boundaries of acceptable behavior than a traditional comedy.

This is, bafflingly, what Prometheus increasingly feels like. It feels like it's transitioning into gross-out schlock, and yet it never goes all the way.

Second: the audience for gross-out is largely self-selecting. If you're watching John Waters' Pink Flamingos, you expect things to get messy. You are looking forward to things getting messy. A head exploding is perfectly par for the course in gross-out horror. One might even be disappointed if there wasn't an exploding head.

But again, this movie was not marketed on gross-out. It was marketed as a tense, Alien-esque horror movie. If you followed that premise like I did, you're not in the theater to view a debauched spectacle, you're there for the movie to put a well-paced squeeze on the characters and your nerves, where half the horror comes from having the room to really think about how frightening the core concepts of the series are.

Does Alien involve some shocking gore? Sure does! But in Alien, Kane's fate is not there to make you laugh and exclaim "ewww!" at how far the film's gone, the film tries to make you very aware of how horrifying his demise is.

So, there's an alternate way this scene works, if you're coming in from that perspective. I don't think the movie intended this as much as the gross-out, but it's what I drew from it at the time: the scene works if you decide not to focus your sympathies on the human characters at all, or even David, and think about it from the perspective of the head. 

It’s patently impossible that what they did actually “woke up” the brain inside that skull. But if we sink to the movie’s level and entertain the idea for a moment, what in the hell have they just done to this Engineer? The last thing the head would’ve remembered was running, falling, decapitation, and then this. They just tortured this poor bastard for no adequately explained reason. There’s none! “I think we can trick the nervous system into thinking it's still alive” is the entirety of the explanation. It makes about as much sense and seems as thoughtlessly violent as anything in Mad God (2021, content warning for body horror). 

I already spent all my anger about desecrating bodies in the name of shambolic pseudoscience, I have no more rage to give for now. And similarly in the theater, I hit my limit. I’d already hit a different limit back when they landed the Prometheus on top of some archaeology, but now I’d fully given up on this movie being what I’d hoped it would be. 

The maddening thing that keeps me obsessed with it is that it keeps throwing random scraps of that hypothetical movie into the mix anyway, bouncing me like a yo-yo between scenes. 

But for right now, the yo-yo is still on the descent. Having exploded the first sample of alien biology ever touched by science, they apparently stuck some of it in a generic, science-y DNA machine. What does the DNA machine tell them? 

“DNA match”. 

The movie does not actually explain what this means. It thinks it does, but in a very vague and handwave-y way that ends up being even more hilarious than if they’d just been out-and-out wrong. Because this is what I do for a living, I want to science at this for a bit. 

But I’ve written enough about it for an entire post on its own, so that will wait until next time.

⛬ 

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⛬ 

Citations for alt-text rambles, as well as some text-text rambles:

1. https://www.behance.net/gallery/78297841/Semiotic-Standard (contains a high-quality download for the symbols, should ye wish them for yourselves)

2. https://www.sculpturedepot.net/clay-wax-tools/product.asp?Steel_Tools 

3. Doctor Frankenstein calls for 30 amps first, then 40, then 50 in the space of several seconds. According to wikipedia, an electric kettle is about 16.6A, and a 288W high-performance graphics card would require 24A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(current) That graphics card isn’t mentioned by name, but it matches up with the wattage reported by Tom’s Hardware for a Titan RTX (cite 4). Running with two of these things, you might be able to run 4k Ultra settings on some games without tanking your framerate. They could’ve been playing video games and seen way more exploding heads.

4. https://www.tomshardware.com/features/graphics-card-power-consumption-tested 

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)#Design

6. https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/f4rf63/for_the_chestburster_scene_in_alien_1979_the/

7. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8e/2f/9b/8e2f9b0716746aac7ce5b2f369bf4082--aliens--scene.jpg

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karyotype#Human_karyogram 

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centromere 

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centromere#Telocentric 

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_banding 

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteinogenic_amino_acid 

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hula_language

#Prometheus 2012 #Prometheus (2012) #This movie is a study in so much tonal dissonance #It was so pretty and yet so broken #insert Benoit Blanc “compels me though” meme here

[tokiro07]

Did a Medaka vs. Andy post a while back, now it's time for Hitoyoshi vs. Fuuko

First off, I think it's important to establish what everyone's working with:

We'll be assuming they're at their peak, so L101 Fuuko and post-Ajimu Hitoyoshi

Fuuko's got G-Liner, her two guns, and 200+ years of Shin Hakkyoku experience

Hitoyoshi has up to 20 years of Savate experience, Devil Style and Altered God Mode: Model Zenkichi, but consequently does not have Parasite Seeing, as it was changed from a skill that let him see from other's perspectives into a skill that lets him see his own limitations. He also does not have access to Contradictory Conjunction Style, as that was a temporary ability that he was essentially borrowing

With this in mind, I think we can get a good idea of the flow of the battle

As demonstrated in his fight with Munakata, Hitoyoshi is skilled in disarming and dismantling guns, so we can reasonably assume that the moment Fuuko brings out the guns, she's losing them

Hitoyoshi is able to keep up with Medaka physically, who we can reasonably assume is above world-champion-level fighters given The End, so even if he needs to use AGM match her actual strength, Hitoyoshi should feasibly be able to fight on par with Fuuko, who is able to defeat world-champion boxers and kung-fu masters

If their physiology and technique lead to a stalemate, the battle comes down to their powers - Unluck vs. Devil Style

Immediately, Devil Style counters Unluck by negating Hitoyoshi's luck preemptively: under its effects, no good or bad luck can occur around Hitoyoshi, meaning that no matter how much affect Fuuko feels for him, there will not coincidentally be a source of Unluck to draw in

Even if there was, the current interpretation of Unluck is that it takes away the luck that a person has within them; if Hitoyoshi has "zero" luck rather than, say, 10 luck to prevent disasters, then his existing luck cannot be taken away and he cannot be made vulnerable to the disasters summoned by Fuuko

However, if Fuuko were to realize that Hitoyoshi's view of luck is "good luck=positive, bad luck=negative" rather than her interpretation of "good luck = >1, bad luck = 0," she could theoretically use Unluck to drag Hitoyoshi into the negative

Moreover, since Devil Style merely prevents acts of fate, it has no impact on the direct results of deliberate actions - in other words, if Fuuko does not rely on the random factor of Unluck and instead sets up a specific sequence of Unlucky events to draw in, then her efforts to enforce Unluck on Hitoyoshi will be rewarded so long as he himself is unable to thwart them

While this makes Unluck like meteors or earthquakes much more difficult if not impossible, it makes sources like slipping on liquids that Fuuko purposefully spilled in the vicinity very plausible and simple to execute so long as she already has access to them

Of course, we have to consider Hitoyoshi's interpretation of Unluck as well - if Fuuko's efforts to draw in Unluck are to be rewarded, then the mere existence of meteors should make them something that she can reasonably incorporate into her strategies. Since Hitoyoshi isn't the type to accept a handicap in a fight, he would likely never deliberately prevent Fuuko from fighting to her full capacity. He may need to learn the mechanics first to allow it to happen, but since Devil Style is meant to be a way for him to prove that he's capable of overcoming foes on his own and without relying on nebulous concepts like fate, then defeating an enemy who manipulates fate would be the ultimate proof of his fighting abilities

From there, it's just a question of what the writer in question wants: do they want Fuuko's ability to understand others to win the day, or Hitoyoshi's ability to overcome any obstacle under his own power? Either way, it's unavoidable that by the end, Fuuko's Unluck would be in full swing, it's just a matter of whether Hitoyoshi can personally find a way to avoid it. Perhaps he'd manipulate Fuuko's Unluck against her, deliberately taking a second dose to summon another meteor that would collide with the first and destroy them both?

Again, like with Medaka vs. Andy, pick your favorite to win, but know that in my head, they both come out of it as friends because of how hard they pushed each other

#undead unluck #fouryearsandananime #medaka box #fuuko izumo #hitoyoshi zenkichi #uu spoilers #long post

[rpedia]

Hello, I have a question about combat roleplaying. Is there anyway to counter someone trying to wipe your character from existence? I have a character whos high 1-A, just wondering.

I cannot tell you how wild of an ask this is because of how much of it must be entirely contextual to your current situation. A-1 means nothing to me, this isn't a universal term in RP, but after some looking around it seems to be a categorization used in the vsBattle fandom to allow people to rank character power stats against each other like classes of heavyweight versus lightweight. And it seems to have been very thought out by a bunch of people who are very very serious about it, so it's a well-thought out thing. So, I'm assuming if this is the right power ranking to go off, your character is an "High Outerverse level" character similar to God/Death in some series.

Whew, back in my day we just had Marvel Mutants being Omega class, or Naruto Ninjas being S-Rank... Looks like you're in somewhere with a lot more math and intensity than I'm used to considering I just had to read "structures with a number of dimensions equal to the cardinal aleph-2" with my own two delicate innocent baby boy eyes. This means whatever advice I am about to give you is unlikely to be useful, but fuck it, I'm game.

So, you're getting wiped out of existence...

Your character is, as far as I can tell, able to manipulate all of existence, including every multiverse, hyperverse, and whatever-the-fuck-have-you because they can fuck with but infinity times infinity, except they're a step below the ultimate Boundless, and one step above the guy who can mess with infinity times three. Really getting back to the playground "infinity plus one" argument. You must be going up against someone who is going a little faster than you or doing better than you to have them cockblock your entire existence. I think I have the scenario broken down for more feeble minds like me can figure out what the hell this means.

Logically, the answer is you can't do shit. Guy is faster/better/more tactically sound, so he wins. He's managed to outdo you on every level, and made your existence just stop, you can no longer be who you are, you're a never-was similar to Cul from the Thor comics. Absolutely buckshit wild stuff here. This suggests to survive, someone has to remember you, which may be a way through if there's space where you still exist while you don't exist. How does time work in your universe? What's the standards here for how to change existence? Is there a ripple effect, or is it impossible to change the timeline? Are you forced into an alternate universe where you DID exist, and how is the other guy handling the obvious issue that if you never existed, he would never have gone back to erase you, and shit— we've got either a figure eight loop forcing us to repeat these two states of 0 and 1 endlessly, or a paradox.

So go for the throat, make them explain the paradox. Make them fix the paradox, which can paradoxically never be fixed because that's what them boyes do. You might have to live one step ahead of them in only alternating universes for the rest of existence and be satisfied with that. Or, I suppose, find someone bigger and stronger than old Jokey-poo here who is putting you in the un-birth grave, and have them de-powered or something to end the rigamarole. Maybe you have a good trap for them set-up where the state of your birth is a fixed point, and them entering it makes time stop entirely so they can never reach the point at which they actually delete you.

But this is all just Watsonian fuckery, stuff from within the perspective of the story. If you go Doyalist, we can ask the question "What kills a vampire?" and come up with the answer "Whatever satisfies the narrative." because those blood thirsty bitches be fictional. This is all fictional. You are imagining a story. The only truth of a story is the satisfaction of those who write/read it.

Therefore, if you are happy with the end of your character, and you feel like it's been given weight and meaning, and you like the outcome. You win, you finished the story, they are gone.

If you are unhappy, you can make up whatever bullshit you want because it's all in your head anyways, and suddenly your character survived going over the falls due to some vague handwaved plot point far in the misty difference that is really an in-universe cover to 'they made me write Sherlock after the Reichenbach Falls was supposed to be the end of the damn serial'. It all comes down to what you're happy with as a player and a writer.

You think any Shonen writer had the good sense to end their series after the bad guy seemed all-powerful? Absolutely not, these other guys had trickery and even more power beyond the power that is infinite power to call on, and they sure did win because they said so. Same thing here. As long as no one is upset, you can do whatever you want. "Blue fairy said I could come back." "Some Boundless Character found me beyond the universes and pulled me back into this world." Seriously, make shit up, it's all you've been doing anyways.

I recognize at this point it's more of a thought experiment, kind of a highbrow push against the mundane realities of our existence. It's where philosophy meets story. Making something that really sticks to the bones of your story, and gives you something to work off can be a huge ask when it gets to these extremes. You're working with a framework outside our actual existence, a thing we can comprehend only because we've pushed so hard against the limitations of this world we've given concepts like infinity not only a limit, but a word for when that limit is breached and repeated.

Being able to truly understand what you're asking, and whether there's any rules to it is more than a simple roleplay help blog can give you. You're bending rules that aren't even confirmed to exist, that have been developed to create a framework by which people can enjoy fighting tiers to simplify things that are wildly imaginative and unusual. Certainly you are at the moment asking me if I can conceive of a situation in which literally Death themself, if they were a character, could be erased from existence by something just as powerful or even more powerful than themselves, and then get around that somehow. It's mythical. It's entirely a toy that you, yourself, are defining the rules for play with. I can simply say "this Roleplaying Blog is actually a Boundless level character and has rebuffed that attack" and it would be equally true because the canon of this blog now says so.

So you can do whatever works for you.

Just make sure it's satisfying, so you can do it again next week and relish it all over. The point of RP is to be fun. Keep having fun. You do you, in whatever style makes you happy. Even if it's a lot of math and now I know there's a term for approaching the infinity after Real numbers run out of integers because someone made their character so powerful they ran out of numbers for them and somehow this is the same power level as Those Who Sit Above In Shadow, which means Loki's punked their ass plenty of times in-comics by saying he's the Storyteller who tells them into existence anyways. God damn Beyonder ass...

But you're the Storyteller now, so write something true to your heart, and see how far you can take it. See if your character can manage to break reality one more time, and level up to becoming Boundless themselves. You have the power, because that power is imagination. The true Boundless power.

#rpedia #ask rpedia #roleplaying #rph #fight rp #vsbattle power levels #seriously just have fun #but also this is wild #my man I have trouble deciding if my lil guy should win against a big dog #because I want the narrative to have weight #and be fun #and I don't wanna be overpowered #fighting a dog #that wants to eat me #this stuff is beyond my pay grade #and I play Loki #the fuck #exactlypleasantsuit

[isa-ah]

EXACTLY

Like adore Tulin but what I loved about BOTW was we had two groups of champions: the ones from the past Link has to remember, and the unofficial new ones you have to bond with in this new Hyrule to get the job done ( Teba, Sidon, Riju, and Yunobo) and it was a neat way to present 2 storylines in a single go while letting the player learn about Hyrule at the same time Link is. We're both discovering and rebuilding but TOTK plowed over everything, making some new older "champions" that remains literally FACELESS because the onus is supposed to be on the people you connected with previously (and though I adored the wind temple, I hate that Teba got pushed to the side in favor of Tulin. He was a counterpart to Revali and we don't get to explore that enough as it is...)

teba is one of the parts of botw that really bothered me LOL all of the other champions have in depth memories and plotlines and characterization and arcs and then you get to tabantha and teba just goes ugh. fine. lets go. and then leaves as soon as you get up there and thats it! thats his whole plotline. he has next to no lines, characterization, or relevance beyond helping you breech vah medoh. and even MORESO in totk where he just goes hey go find tulin. and thats IT LOL

the ancient sages having 0 personality or relevance, especially when it comes to their individual awakening cutscenes, is SO confusing to me. why are they all reading the same script? why are all of the cutscenes identical? is there no culture or perspective you can offer? you experienced the battle the exact same way across the board? why even show them? they dont interact with zelda beyond being asked to put their bodies on the line. they have no narrative weight. they show up and die and thats.. it. why were they even there

but i honestly feel that way about the entire past segment of the plot. idk how into zeldatube you were in the years after breath of the wild, but the zonai got picked up as a topic a few years after botw came out and went through a huge burst of content and theories that went on so long it became an in-joke to mention them- or their characteristic swirls and architecture- and back around to being an earnest exploration of their vague presence in botw... to. that.

they were characterized first and foremost as an exploration of how ruins of a "mysterious tribe" would have worshipped the triforce. secondarily, if we are to believe the barbarians armor was zonai in origin, theyre identified as a "warlike tribe". thats what we have. their architecture is HEAVILY influenced by birds / dragons / boars for the triforce iconography, and they fought their way across hyrule (leaving ruins all over the place).

but in tears of the kingdom, what thorough line do they have? at all? their architecture is COMPLETELY different. they never once mention the triforce. they were seemingly an a-religious tribe that deified their ruler more than any goddesses or golden power. theyre shown to be puritanical largely passive figures, "inherently good."

its at complete odds with everything we knew about them. and its not ever broached. they dont talk about their culture at ALL. the snippets we get are erroneous. the youth partook in tests of courage. the temple of time exists. all of the zonai are dead or left. they can draconify with their stones of power. and thats... it. really.

there are the labyrinths- iirc they were headed by the lord of boars, dragons and? owls? and thats really it. they utilize the same uruborus statues and constructs, but seem like a completely different (and much more familiar) flavor than rauru or mineru. but.. to what end? (and why.. are the labyrinth rewards... meta callback armor???)

why even use the facade of building upon the zonai if youre not using anything established or establishing anything new LOL bizarre use of resources honestly

[starry-blue-echoes]

I’d love Polnareff to stick with Kakoyoin and Jotaro in the “Holly doesn’t call” au.

Because that makes Polnareff the closest thing they have to adult supervision in this entire fifty day journey. And that is a hilarious thought.

This man can barely keep himself alive during Stardust and now he has to babysit two teenagers.

GNDBFBDBFBDF Y E A H -

And what’s even funnier is that neither of those teenagers know ANYTHING about Stands or the Stand Community. Kakyoin somehow managed to go his entire life not meeting any, and Jotaro got his literally a few days ago and calls it “an evil spirit” which is a WHOLE mess of issues he didn’t think he’d have to deal with

And to add even more chaos, what if he and Kakyoin’s argue about the Stand Magentism. Kakyoin denies that it exists because of how long he was alone for and all the Stand Users they’re fighting is because Dio is sending them after them. Meanwhile Jean Pierre “Can’t Even Go To The Bathroom Without Getting His Ass Kicked” Polnareff is adamant that Magnetism does exist and keeps trying to explain it

And then Joot’s just. Stuck in the middle because he really can’t make a judgement call on this.

I’d imagine from an outside perspective it sounds like the two are having a really intense religion/philosophical debate, and then they just see Jotaro and Anne sitting off to the side

aND SPEAKING OF ANNE

you bet your ass Polanreff is going to Older Brother the hell out of her. It’s just his nature, he sees Child and goes “:0 new sibling :D” and there’s nothing she can do to stop him

#dual trip #jjba #jojo’s bizarre adventure #stardust crusaders #sdc #jjba part 3 #jjba polnareff #jean pierre polnareff #jjba jotaro #jotaro kujo #jjba kakyoin #noriaki kakyoin #jjba anne #anne #sb answers #curlyhairednerd

[johannestevans]

Hi, this is the anon who was asking about the afab term stuff 👋

Firstly thanks for the longer explanation, I hope it wasn't too frustrating for you, I really don't mean to bother you, so if this is too many questions feel free to ignore it

Secondly, this has actually kinda explained a couple things about my own experience with the terms, like how people asking if I'm afab/amab (which doesn't really apply to me in a binary/dyadic sense) has always felt a little like someone asking my deadname. So thanks for making me consider that more from a different perspective

Thirdly, my experience from having my identity heavily medicalised (intersex healthcare in the UK is a mess) and from being raised by a doctor is that female sex vs female gender were two separate things, and that one doesn't always correspond to the other. I never really approached the idea that female/male sex weren't useful/real categories because their meanings to me were entirely anatomical definitions of a collection of parts that are usually found together. To me it would be completely the same to refer to them as Sex A and sex B, with the understanding that there are people who fit neither category. Intersex anatomy is often talked about as if its the crossover in a Venn diagram of characteristics, between the two categories of 'male sex' and 'female sex'. For this purpose having those categories for communication purposes, is somewhat helpful, e.g to say that an increase in my testosterone will cause my male characteristics to become more prominent. The categories serve a purpose for communication more than anything else.

If the categories weren't using the words female/male do you think it would be any better of an experience for you? Aka if the terms used to describe them had no relation to any gender identity, but there was still two prominent categories.

Of course I can see the issue with when people assume that you fall exactly into one category or another, so regardless of name/language no number of categories should ever be assumed to be a universal set, but that doesn't mean that the terms don't have positive uses. Our language exists for us to communicate, so if terms to describe a category of anatomical parts help us do that, surely they still have meaning/usefulness?

Nope, don't worry about it, Anon! If anything bothers me so much that I don't want to answer it, I'll say or I'll just delete the ask.

I absolutely think that some people do ask after ASAB because they want to just find out what people "really" are and whatever, have just internalised the whole gender aspect and do think of some trans people as being female (good) and male (bad), and there's so much transmisogyny baked into it, but also just... misanthropy, you know? Like a real distaste for the variety in humanity and a desperate desire to force everyone into particular categories.

The thing about current medicalised perceptions of intersex identities is that there are dozens of so-called "intersex conditions", but we literally have 0 way of knowing how many people are the "pure" standard of female with the exact female anatomy and the "pure" standard of male with the exact male anatomy without like, MRI-ing and later dissecting massive swathes of the population and comparing them all, and we don't do that because people want the male/female divide to exist when like.

It doesn't, not in the way people want to imagine it does.

These are broad categories people have projected onto people, and while I agree that medical professionals knowing someone's physical anatomy is valuable, I actually think that the M/F binary actually is more likely to harm them than otherwise.

Many doctors will meet someone who they assume was AFAB, and therefore they must have all this anatomy, and then they'll just put any abdominal or even chest pain down to their period, on top of not really caring how much pain they're in - and then they won't even check for shit like appendicitis or gut problems or even more significant uterine problems like endometrioisis, but also like... testicular torsion.

I frankly don't agree that "female sex" and "male sex" are genuinely useful categories. They're just weaponised too much for me to believe that - I think we should do away with M/F categorisations on birth certs and medical records, and that doctors should have to fucking, God forbid, examine people to see what their problems are.

I'm so sorry that you've received shitty treatment for intersex medical issues, several of my friends are intersex and experience just roadblock after roadblock - even as a probably dyadic trans dude with a few chronic issues it's just painful to navigate, and I just get pissed off because it's complicated by doctors religious devotion to a cis medical binary that's not nearly as important as they desperately want to believe it is.

#musings #anonymous

[a-clouded-moon]

So I was thinking about what helped Louise got through the day in her childhood, and what is still helping her now. Both answers are the same: the people surrounding her, doesn't matter if they are close to her or not.

First day of Lunar New Year and I choose this sad thing as a character study topic. Woah me. Let's hope I haven't jinxed this year lmao.

Let's talk about when she was still under her parents' direct influence. They never did acknowledge her for who she was, as they morphed her into this version of the idealized child they had in their heads (resulting in her current diminished sense of self). She had no outlets to express who she was, and no time to discover one because her daily schedule was filled with classes of different things from early morning to midnight. It was a mental prison.

The only reason she got through it was because of others' moments of joy. Not hers, never hers, but others' - because those moments were proofs that her existence could perhaps bring something good to others' lives (finally something different from disappointment & resentment). These moments of joy were simple: it could be the smiles she was given after doing a simple kind act like holding the door for a stranger, buying a small meal for a homeless elder she came across (using the money she had been given by her parents to buy breakfast & lunch herself that day). Or it could just be the stray cats coming up to her to ask for food, letting her pet them. She held on tightly to those moments to convince herself that it was worth it to continue onward & she did indeed make it, although by living solely for others.

Now- well, it's hard to unlearn the one thing she was taught for the first 18 years of her life, but she's improving bits by bits. She still lives for others, but not for solely one or two person like she once did for her parents (she's learnt her lesson, and she's not going to repeat that) - instead, now she lives for everyone. This forms her attitude toward her work & it is the reason why she uses her spare time to get involved in her community: she knows that as a public servant, her actions have a lot of impacts, and she tries her best to make those a good one. She doesn't really care about herself and where she will end up (again, very little sense of self & 0 ambition), hence her fearless attitude towards her own co-workers & bosses. They can help themselves, so yeah. What she does care about is the people who have no voice in the matter, and yet get affected by her actions otherwise. She was from a poor neighborhood herself (although not one in the States) & her family's poverty was a direct result of the government questionable policies (the Land Reform Act of the former Vietnamese government) so she somewhat gets the struggles and frustrations.

About her volunteer activities, besides helping her getting another perspective of what's going on around her (a constant reminder of the fact that people aren't just words and statistics, that struggles don't just exist on newspapers and reports), it helps her get through the days - the same way how those small moments of others' joy did for her when she was young.

Goodness, this woman will be the death of me.

#• musing • #• character study •

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

I was reading through your Jacob meta, and came across one ask that really intrigued me - I COULD write it but your perspective is literally a drug to me. Let’s say Jacob WAS a woman (I think a cute name is Jocelyn), and she did imprint on Edward, wouldn’t he have…’imprinted’ back? Or at least felt a connection he doesn’t have control of?

What if Bella refused to intervene/forced Edward to give her chance or at least spend time with Jocelyn after seeing what it did to Sam and others? How would that go?

Anon's referring to this meta, written by @therealvinelle, actually but that doesn't matter.

This meta's also relevant.

Wouldn't Edward Imprint Back?

No.

By all accounts, imprints seem to be one way. Emily, while attracted to Sam, was horrified and confused per his actions towards Leah and initially rejected him.

Claire is a toddler who does not seem to be acting anything unlike your usual toddler who gets a somewhat regular babysitter once a week.

Kim was delighted her crush noticed her, but didn't seem to be any different than before and just thought this imprint thing was cool.

The only person who thinks imprints are a two-way street is Bella Swan, who finds the idea of soulmates to be very romantic, and convinced herself that being imprinted on means that your imprinter must be the person best suited to you in the whole wide world. They'll become whatever you want!

(And Jacob says what he says because he's imprinted and needs to not look like a pedophile to the Cullens who could in theory ditch him at any moment.

I'm her friend! I'm whatever she needs to me! We're meant to be together, Bella! Forever!)

Edward, who has less than 0 interest in Jocelyn here, is not so easily won over by "I'LL BE WHATEVER YOU WANT! TAKE ME, EDWARD, TAKE ME!"

What if Bella Insists?

Bella, in weeping terror, realizes that this means that Jocelyn is Edward's true soulmate. Bella will never be able to do what Jocelyn can, in becoming whatever Edward wants and needs in a particular moment. And no one wants or needs Bella Swan.

Bella, to preserve Edward's happiness, tells him to give it a try with Jocelyn. She clings to the hope that Edward might just need her as a friend but she knows deep in her heart that Jocelyn will always be the most important person to Edward.

Well, Edward doesn't want to break up with Bella at this point (we're post New Moon) and is infuriated that he's losing her because of stupid Jocelyn Black who he barely even knew existed.

...

I imagine Jocelyn has 'an accident' and Edward in 'his grief' turns to Bella for comfort. "Oh, my love, it seems my imprinter is gone. You must comfort me now. Somehow, we will get through this."

Otherwise, Edward frankly tells Jocelyn that what he needs from her is to get fucking lost and never bother him again. He has this thing going with Bella and she's just getting in the way.

Edward then tells Bella that Jocelyn went to live on a farm and found trule love with, er, someone else. Yes, Bella, she imprinted again/never imprinted on Edward. Funny thing, imprinting, isn't it?

#twilight #twilight meta #twilight headcanon #twilight renaissance #jacob black #edward cullen #jacob/edward #anti jacob/edward #bella swan #edward/bella #anti edward/bella #meta #headcanon #opinion

[therinde-dreams]

How big IS Bichen, really? Bonus: Baxia

tl;dr Bichen is LUDICROUSLY huge, probably something to the tune of 5.5kg/12lb and towards the upper end of 1.6m/5′3 to 1.83m/6′0 - taller than MXY!WWX. Baxia would be something to the tune of 79cm/31″, but could plausibly be larger.

So Bichen is explicitly stated to:

1) Be carried on LWJ’s back (Novel, Chapter 14)

2) Be too heavy for non-cultivators to wield (Novel, Chapter 7)

On sword weight, generally:

Importantly: it is too heavy for a non-cultivator to wield, not pick up.

Because wield vs pick up are two very different definitions. I can pick up a 1.4kg/3.1lb German messer sword with no problem. Can I wield that thing? Not one-handed like it was meant to be, with my scrawny arms.

The upper end of usable weight for a regular human sword or polearm is around the 4.5kg/10lb mark, and I am pretty sure that's really only wield-able by someone who's already in decent shape, trained, and using it with both hands. 

It doesn't sound like much, but imagine swinging that much weight from one end of a 6ft/1.83m long barbell - since most of these weapons were 6ft /1.83m or longer - repeatedly, with enough agility and speed to not die in combat. Or better still - holding it above your head for a couple of minutes in a ready/guarding position.

Heavier swords and polearms did exist - for ceremonial purposes. They're deliberately designed to be ungodly huge and impressive, not for practical, combat use.

A sword that's too heavy for a non-cultivator to wield could just be something that's like, 5.5kg/12lb. Too heavy for them to pick up would be... look I'm scrawny as hell, I’m not athletic and I have joint problems, but using both hands, I can pick up at least 16kg/35lb no problem, probably north of that if I tried.

For a sword to be heavier than what an active non-cultivator can even pick up, so we’re talking north of 20kg/44lb, it would have to be made of depleted uranium along with whatever xianxia magic is going on with the sword. But too heavy for a non-cultivator to wield is entirely reasonable.

On cultivator swords:

I figure most cultivators would wield swords that are at the larger end of sensible to begin with, a little longer and heavier than they should be for the double-edged jian they’re shown using (extra cutting/penetration power in their favour! And they have the strength to negate the extra weight making it less agile and more tiring!). Say, 80cm/31″ and 0.9kg/2lb, for the average cultivator. 

This would be well within “strap it to your hip and call it a day” length - and frankly strapping it to your back is not a great idea unless you absolutely cannot find a better way to carry that kind of size and you’re sure you don’t need it quickly, because there’s - not really a good way to unsheathe it as quickly if you do. Frankly I don’t think this was really done historically unless you were like, transporting gear, and didn’t expect to be attacked at that moment - even the famous giant-ass Zwëihanders weren’t back-strapped into battle situations.

On  Bichen specifically:

Now consider how big a sword it has to be that LWJ, 1.88m/6′2 tree, goes “... nope, I can’t possibly hip-strap this” and straps it to his back.

Supposedly, irl jian got up to 1.6m/5'3, though this wasn’t very common. The average height of a Chinese man born in 1810 - the earliest date with data - is 1.66m/5'5, and this stayed pretty consistent for a long time, which means the 1.6m/5'3 jian was most likely constructed with a roughly 1.66m/5'5 wielder in mind.

So according to the historical record, LWJ could wield a 1.6m/5′3 sword and be within the bounds of what was done historically.

Or, if he got it when he was at or nearing adult height, our boi could decide to leverage his probable future height and strength into wielding an obnoxiously huge sword for maximum possible reach and stopping power. 

Bluntly - Bichen could easily be 1.83m/6′0 and still make complete sense from a historical perspective - an exceptionally large sword made for an exceptionally tall and physically powerful individual.

And from a weight perspective? Let’s compare a hypothetical 1.83m/6′0, 5.5kg/12lb double-edged jian to a cousin, size-wise:

The Zwëihander, which ranged from between 1.4m-1.8m/4′7-5′11, and something to the tune of 2.5kg-4kg/5.5lb-8.8lb. Bichen would actually be heavier than its hypothetical German counterpart, which is saying something, because at those lengths the Zwëihanders have MASSIVE crossguards and are often intended to be half-sworded - you grabbed the blade about halfway up to better control the point and say, drive it into a joint in the armour.

I would compare it to the odachi, but 1) that’s a single-edged blade, and I don’t know enough to say if the weight will differ 2) I cannot find any solid info for how much a 1.8m long odachi would weigh. Claymores - yep, ditto. I can’t dig up info quickly enough.

tl;dr Bichen is probably 1.83m/6′0 and north of 5.5kg/12lb - it’s taller than MXY!WWX and weighs more than a small dog. No wonder he has to back-strap it.

Now, remember that incense burner scene? Yeah, now remember that Bichen is quite likely as tall as WWX is.

---

Bonus: Baxia!

On a side note, the art of Baxia in the MDZS official artbook looks like it's based off the 大刀 da dao, lit. Big Saber. Yes, very creative naming. The da dao is also surprisingly short, going off the specimen in the British Imperial War Museum which is a grand total of 79cm/31″, but given that these are 1) cultivators 2) NMJ 'actual ox' rather than relatively short interwar-period Chinese (when this originated), just like... add 15cm/6″ or something to the length I guess if you want.

#mdzs #cql #godc #gdc #mo dao zu shi #chen qing ling #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #the grandmaster of diabolism #grandmaster of demonic arts #lwj #lan wangji #lan zhan #bichen #hanguang jun #the untamed #nie mingjue #nmj #baxia #meta

[lemonhemlock]

I personally don't even think the kids are going to be Aemond's on the show (but it's a super fun fan theory to explore/write about), but the arguments zero-ing in on the kids being bastards and Aemond "never risking Helaena and Aegon" like that especially after what happens to Rhaenyra are so nonsensical. No one would be able to tell those kids are not Aegon's by appearance alone. Quite literally no one. If we are trying to think about this from the characters' perspectives, Helaena and Aemond (and Aegon if he was in on it like some fan HCs have hi be) would KNOW and REALIZE that. Also thank you for bringing up jaime and cersei because those two were shamelessly popping out blonde ass babies with no concerns before ned got too nosy.

the children don't even have to be his, they can be 100% aegon's or no one can even know for sure, it's such a wide beach of opportunity to play around with. people fixate on this like it's some gotcha argument, when it's really very sweepable-under-the-rug. also the insistence that the greens are not hypocrites - why? i love them and i stan them but they are not perfect angels, even beyond the unfair bias against their faction. some duplicity in regards to a crime no one can prove anyway and allegations that do not even exist is really not the end of the world. like someone was saying, they have bigger fish to fry than worrying about accusations no one is making

people believed cersei's lies 100% and rhaenyra's 0% for a reason. rule #1 in committing treason is don't get caught.

#ask #anon #helaemond #they're schroedinger's (il)legitimate children

[hamliet]

Okay I have a question for you re Brian/Michael. Now I'm no huge fan of Michael's mostly because I just find him boring overall as a character. His personality traits aren't something I enjoy in my faves he's just meh.. each to their own nothing to do with Brian at all. Michael's just screams safety and vanilla to me whereas Brian/Justin are excitement and danger yk.

Whilst I don't hate Michael as some people do or completely despise his friendship with Brian. I can see why they're friends and I understand the importance of them in each others lives - that's not to say I enjoy it. There are aspects on both sides I find irritating and make me roll my eyes.

But the one thing I've never been able to understand are the Brian/Michael shippers. Like what do these people find appealing about shipping these two romantically. How does it scream reciprocal to them? I mean on both sides they would absolutely be the worst couple purely from a non biased shipping stand point just no...

Could you ever see them as an actual couple to root for?

Yay QaF ask!!

Oh dear GOD no to the couple thing! I absolutely could not.

To backtrack a bit: no worries about not liking him--to each their own! To that extent, I imagine something appeals to people about their dynamic. If it appeals to some, like, you do you boo I don't care, have fun. From my perspective, though, there was 0 way to make a Michael/Brian romance work from a storytelling or character perspective.

But I do think the fact that the original British show does have their counterparts (Stuart and Vince? was that his name?) getting together might have created the expectation. But ultimately, Stuart and Brian, Vince and Michael, and especially Nathan and Justin were very different characters. Also, while the UK version is very well-done, its themes are much less idealistic than the US version, and it's a bit more realism-based in terms of tone.

I honestly don't think Michael was ever in love with Brian so much as he was in love with the idea of Brian. Brian was this... idea of safety and childhood to Michael, a hero. Of course, this is ironic because Brian and safety do not fit together lol (well. Besides condoms). Essentially, it's a paradox (and a complex one, which is why I love Michael actually--I loooove complexity!):

Michael truly loves, but is not in love, with actual Brian as he is, flaws and all. Michael wants this Brian around forever as his BFF.

Michael is in love with an ideal romantic image of Brian that does not exist and which he knows damn well does not exist. But:

Michael genuinely, from season 1 episode 2, states that he does not want Brian to change. So if Brian changes to Ideal!Brian, Michael wouldn't actually have the person he actually loves anymore.

Hence, it's impossible for Michael and Brian to ever end up together. Michael was pursuing what he knew he could never have. He does this partially to avoid having to grow up himself and partially out of low self-esteem (not believing he deserved to be loved back).

Michael's relationship with Brian is a good foil with Justin and Brian's, because Justin's is more like:

Justin is in love with Brian, but needs to learn who Brian is and what loving Brian means. It doesn't mean loving Ideal!Brian.

Justin knows his own worth--to an extent--and thereby is able to push Brian to grow into a better version of himself while still accepting flawed Brian.

But, demonstrating that Justin is actually in love with real!Brian, flaws and all, Justin insists in the end that he doesn't want Brian to entirely give up his vices for him. The Brian he loves and the Brian he wants around are the same.

Of course, in the end the Brian Michael loves and wants around are the same too, it's just not romantic. While Michael links Brian to childhood, Justin links Brian to growing up (losing his virginity, etc.) In a story that is essentially about Brian's Peter Pan Syndrome, that's significant.

Anyways, that's some convoluted rambling that I'm not sure if I conveyed well, but yeah. That's why I think they had 0 chance of every working together.

#ask hamliet #michael novotny #brian kinney #qaf #queer as folk #qaf meta #queer as folk meta #britin #justin taylor #brian x justin #queer as folk us 2000

[datastate]

current tierlist! all in relation to one another. i'm still working on the more detailed reviews for each & i'm very sleepy atm, but here's the gist:

S TIER - YAKUZA 0:

the story was well done! i really loved each character and how everything came together by the end. it was really impressive how they managed to foreshadow so much within the first chapter, only ever expanding off of what was already introduced. even as the story continued, there still left enough doubt in each player's mind to wonder if there's another factor/motivation they haven't yet found out, really putting them in the place of each protagonist. the game did well with handling two protagonists, and the culmination of their overlapping arcs was very interesting to see - even if it was something the player already assumed, it wasn't frustrating seeing the characters in the moment not realize its true importance... you looked forward to seeing how it'd be revealed to them. as this prequel was made in retrospect, i understand there are some characters/systems they cannot carry over due to the limitations of the first few games without creating inconsistencies. however, my main critique was a narrative choice toward the end which was needlessly tragic. more salt in an already-existing wound, when this incident could very well have been pushed off - especially with pre-existing chronic conditions the character in question had, and the fact this moment was precisely what had been driving the entire story. i am not particularly disappointed with how it ended, but i do feel that there was much more that could've been done before jumping to the next act. it was admittedly disappointing, and something i preemptively feared the story would do. while i enjoy dark/emotional topics, this felt like a senseless, unsatisfactory narrative choice that could've been easily avoided or explained away. however, with the story choice they took, i appreciate their confidence in how they used this to wrap up the story. overall very good! characters were definitely its strong suit and they created a lot of interesting dynamics.

A TIER - YAKUZA 3:

again, characters were the main draw of this one!! i enjoyed the mystery of the first arc, and how the tension steadily built as we finally got to see the effects of yakuza on civilian life. it was nice seeing how characters took yakuza loyalty to heart - even to the point of doing the horrible things they ended up doing, against the wishes of the very one they're devoted to, if it's for their 'health' ... that sort of dynamic is always interesting to me. i liked seeing another aspect of kiryu's compassion here, and i'm always a fan of older mentor figures giving advice to younger ones who look up to them. with the nakahara family as well as those within the orphanage, i feel it did a wonderful job establishing kiryu's experience & his new goals outside of the yakuza. it's very nice seeing him settled down and feeling so much more joyous/thankful - especially with everything else he's already gone through, it feels like. a well-deserved break, and it's nice seeing him fight for something that isn't necessarily what the tojo clan asks of him, but something he personally chose. it just happened to fall in line with the tojo's priorities, meaning he's of use... my main gripe with this game, despite how much i enjoyed it, was the ending & how the yakuza games treat disabilities as temporary (makoto & saki). but i will mainly focus on the ending for now: it was very cheap to kill someone as soon as they came to the realization of how much harm they've done. i will not dig into every last detail here, but i feel as if it would've added much more to keep this character around for a longer amount of time to grow as a person and possibly fuel further (eventual) internal conflict for the clan if the chairman recognized points of contention. we have seen how ruthless this antagonist can be, and letting them return to the clan with a new perspective in mind could've really improved making the games feel connected & create natural conflict for future games considering what we already know about this character & the lengths they can go to.

C TIER - YAKUZA 2:

interesting concept, poor execution... it wasn't necessarily terrible, but the characters weren't as compelling as they could've been to make me care for furthering the story, and i had been stuck with knowing (some of) the twists from the earliest chapters, where... this story definitely relied heavily on the air of mystery over all else. you can definitely tell y0 was made after a few of these yakuza games with how they've improved their storytelling, because this just. did not live up to its potential. i liked the remaining dojimas & it was fascinating seeing kiryu realize how wrong he's been due to his trust of people, but still choosing to accept the responsibility of what comes with more caution rather than giving up entirely. majima was a treat here, & i did enjoy seeing his story through. he really is a man of extremes when it comes to that malicious compliance, and i really did enjoy how he naturally tied into this + his assumptions were justified due to previous experience being manipulated by people within the omi alliance. the recontextualization of y0 made this match up very well i always like seeing moments where he's more perceptive than he usually lets on. (& this may just be me, but the mafia they were against felt a bit. more like caricatures than people with a drive/resolve to thrive against hardship - partially because we weren't even given reason why they chose to form here, or how the yakuza previously wronged them to make them charge so heavily. especially after the treatment of other asian countries in y0, even if they were foreign mafia, this gave me a lot of whiplash...)

D TIER - YAKUZA 1: cw for spoilers & brief reference of sexual assault

not in F because we meet haruka... but everything else really does feel a bit cliche and the descent of [main antagonist] just made me feel like this

corruption arcs can be really good! i usually really love reading up on them, but... this particular one felt very forced. i feel like there was more that could've been done to prove how the remaining yakuza were pushing nishiki's paranoia over what kiryu would do once he left, pushing him to doubt kiryu (despite him. going to jail for him), and if there was more given over how he became possessive and demanding over time, eventually culminating in another impulsive murder where he realizes... he can't go back, and then loses those morals entirely if only to keep himself & yumi safe, damn whoever gets in the way, then. it'd work much better because he's now become someone who he would've once considered worthy of death, as dojima's possessiveness was, but he's more 'righteous' now. there was some pushing from others for him to be better, some shows of manipulation, but never quite enough specifically centered around kiryu as to 'prove' he couldn't trust him. i also feel that jingu was a very. poor replacement. this sounds. horrible, but i believe yumi's disconnect with haruka would've been better off if haruka was dojima's daughter. this would also contribute to why she visited her under an alias, as well as the idea that kazama & yumi felt the need to hide haruka from tojo/nishiki, for fear of his reaction. as yumi begins to recognize nishiki's becoming more of a lone conspirator, maybe if she's again been put in harm's way under threat for the nishikyama family, that's when she abandons him for a safer life with kazama's help. but because nishiki's had to take up kiryu's mantle, prove he's much more than kiryu could've been, he can't follow yumi into a peaceful life and resents her for that as well. for abandoning him, too, and instead going to kiryu who took the fall for both of them. kiryu just always has to be better, doesn't he? & that's also why nishiki ends up surveying kiryu as soon as he leaves, because he's searching for yumi through him because. even in the end, they're inseparable. and kiryu hasn't changed in the least: he still wants to trust both of them, as deceitful as they've become. (though both disallow people to be close to them anymore; yumi's is more for safety, nishiki's is because he's. lost & is actively destroying his support system lol) maybe, nishiki works with jingu's information network to try to find yumi again, not realizing that jingu would accept this because he'd also realized the tojo clan was suffering after being stolen from - he didn't know this guy knew that, meaning he was putting yumi in more danger when he gave him the money for his silent search. yumi stole the money for when nishiki's finally disposed of (he's painted a target on his back, begun to brute force things as kiryu had), so she can send haruka somewhere safer (if kiryu's still out of the life, then with him; even sera would be a better choice considering how calculating he can be & carefully hide her w people loyal to him alone), etc. etc. there are still ways to tie him into this and be so selfish, but. honestly, i feel like his corruption arc is a bit more nonsensical than nishiki's already. nishiki's constantly in an incredibly stressful environment and lured in by greed/praise/allure of safety, but jingu had. solely wanted money. no other factor. if he went into the business looking for money, he'd stay looking for money... nothing out of the ordinary there, is it. we already have nishiki betraying the people he loves, we don't need this business man out here too. but. to do all that, it requires upheaving most of the story. and it is not the game we get, sadly. so here it remains.

#jestersvaguely #ykza tag #put cws for the last one but the rest are relatively spoiler free & in-line w typical violence

[reallyintoscience]

Trope Game

Tagged by @notallsandmen 💖

Rules: How much do these tropes affect your decision to click on a fic?

* -10 -> very dissuaded

* 0 - don't care either way

* 10 -> very enticed

* nope -> if it's a hard no and you'd never click on a fic with that tag or or you even have the tag blocked or you'd insta click out of the fic if it wasn't tagged

Bonus points for explaining the rating and whether it's conditional.

Age gap: -8 ( -10 — +5)

Oh this does open with the difficulties doesn't it.

I don't care one bit either way about age gaps.

I care very much about emotional experience gaps, which sometimes but not always correlate to age gaps.

It's all about the awareness and the agency. Would the younger/less powerful character be able to understand the situation and would they feel able and willing to say no? Would the older/more powerful character respect that? If yes, no problem.

Because this dynamic can squick me so hard, it is occasionally a kink, because brains do be like that.

For instance I'm totally insane about Anonymous' Lucy Locket, where Dream the Prince of Stories loves to play pretend with Hob in the form of an exploited sugar baby. Key here is that Dream and Hob are roleplaying and this isn't their whole relationship. (CW: CNC warning applies for Chapter 5.)

Codependency: +5

I love it when the pairing is a matched set, particularly from the perspective of an outsider. It's really fun if the character's don't realise themselves how much of a set they are. But I like this best when they *can* function well enough on their own - they usually start out as lone wolves, it must be said - but they are *miserable* without their person. They can survive but not thrive.

Obsession/Possessiveness, jealousy: +10 (0 - -10)

Toxic trait to love toxic traits in my fiction? Oh well, here we are. I want my guys feral for each other and I want them to love that about one another. I'm here for the making each other worse.

Buuuut not if one of them is being controlling of the other. I hate that and I'll drop it right away if that dynamic shows up.

Opposites (grumpy/sunshine etc): 0

Neutral. I do tend to end up with this kind of pairing but it feels incidental rather than the instigating factor.

Enemies to lovers, Enemies with benefits: +7

Okay so I need for my pairing guys to like each other, to enjoy one another as people, but the absolute best version of that? Is when they really really don't want to like this dick. Or this dick, if you know what I mean.

Friends with benefits: +10

I love this because I'm like this but my favourite flavour is when this is the most important relationship each of them have even if they do not treat it as romantic. They might have other hookups this is Their Person.

Sex to feelings: 0

Neutral. I like it fine but don't seek it out.

Fake dating/relationship: +8

I like it but the reason I like it is that it frames two of my favourite tropes very well: pining, and "we're a team against the world". But the setup has to actually make sense, and not have everyone around them holding the idiot ball.

Friends to lovers: 0

Neutral, it's the setup for most fic I read just because there's where we start off.

Found Family: +5.

I love this in a very certain dynamic, my lone-wolf, everything-is-my-responsibility characters finding community and acceptance. But I love it when it manages to stay close to canon, and it's hard to do this with a lot of canons in a convincing way. There has to be a large enough cast of characters that I care about, and being a picky little creature as I am this isn't often the case.

Hurt/Comfort: 0

Eh. It's fine, but I don't like whump and depending who's tagging sometimes h/c is whump in disguise. More comfort than hurt pls.

Love Triangle: -5.

Very rarely does this exist in a satisfying way and when it does it's not a triangle anymore, it's a threesome. Now, if one of the characters *thinks* there is a love triangle and they're just so very wrong actually, aka the love is requited they're just idiots, then that's fine.

Poly, open relationships: 0

Open relationships tends not to work that well with my "totally feral about each other" kind of favourite dynamic, but it does work with the friends with benefits but still ride or die for each other kind. Poly is just fine but it depends on the fandom. The longer I'm in a fandom, the more OTP I tend to get. I start out shipping my One True Character with half the cast, and then I find the OTP and that's that.

Mistaken/hidden identity: -8 - 5

I *hate* mistaken identity, it gives me second-hand embarrassment. I will read it if the rest of the tags check out but I'll read it through my fingers and I won't enjoy it the first time. Once I know how it turns out I might love the story on second read but waiting to find out how someone is going to be Found Out As An Imposter is my horror story actually.

Hidden identity can be super fun though.

Monsterfucking: +10

I am a proud monsterfucker and I will read pretty much anything with this.

Pregnancy: -10 (+10)

Okay so I have a pregnancy squick and I do not want to read pregnancy or kidfic ... except if it's Dreamling and then I have a huge kink about it? I've been in fandom 28 years and I have never liked it and NOW. This one ship. I dunno.

Second Chance: + 4

The mutual pining and planning here can be really good. Depends why it didn't work out and what's changed to make it different this time.

Slowburn: +8.

Yes please. Build up those feelings until I want to yell at them, go on.

Soulmates: 0 (Meh)

I kind of love the kind where one half doesn't have a soulmark or has a bizarre soulmark, and thinks they are ~alone forever~ but actually it's supernatural shenanigans. That kind is fun. And I enjoy all the different sorts of worldbuilding that go into soulmate aus, when they're properly thought through.

Tagging @seiya-starsniper, @beatnikfreakiswriting, @ml-nolan , @chaosheadspace , @beholdme , @beholdingthegaytimes, @honeyteacakes and anyone else who feels like it!

#tag games #long post

[inventors-fair]

When Everything Looks Like a Hammer... To Arms Commentary Part 1/2

Alright, sorry for the delay with this, I’ve been a tad busy what with the holidays and work and the holidays impacting work and-

But anyways, here’s the first twelve commentaries for the To Arms contest, the other twelve will come tomorrow along with a brand new one!

@bergdg​ - Ashmouth Crown

I really like the idea of getting an equipment off of a madness trigger. With that being said, I think this should do two different things. One, is giving it a regular mana and equip cost that's overcosted for what the equipment is. That way, players are encouraged to pay the madness cost, rather than pigeonholed into doing so. The second is replacing the current attachment to something similar to Grave Scrabbler, where it checks if the madness cost was paid before attaching. This would allow it to be a bit stronger as a card, especially when played outside of the madness archetype. I love the flavor though, and I don't even hate the discard ability, given we saw it on Hell Mongrel in MH2.

@machine-elf-paladin​ - Cloudsteel Cutlass

Okay, so the flavor hits me real nice. It's a floating sword, so it takes more effort to grab it if you're not flying. But the mechanics leave me wanting more. I get that +2/+0 for three mana in blue isn't nothing, but it leaves me wanting more. I would suggest giving the equipped creature a bonus if it already has flying, but that's not easily viable. Maybe a downshift to common as well as an increase of the equip costs by one each? But I still like the idea that the card explores.

@nicolbolas96​ - Dagger of the Thief

This is an interesting take on morph, and I can't say that I don't like the concept. That being said, I kind of think that there's no real reason to hardcast this. It's just strictly better to hidden-weapon-ify it, since it still gives the benefit as the morph. It's also kind of shallow as a mechanic, since it seems like it's going to always to be used as weird combat tricks, or maybe a Fake Your Own Death kind of card. If this is a mechanic you want to keep using, maybe it would be worthwhile to change it from just equipments to any artifacts. Or, make it morph. That way a player has to weigh the benefits of having another creature as opposed to a buff.

@mastemexeon - Frying Pan

Exiling cards as an equip cost is interesting. This, as well as other cards that use exile as a kind of second hand is a really interesting design space that has been partially delved into, but remains relatively unexplored. I'm not sure how to feel about the equip cost though. It feels like it's a tad cheap, given you can recast the cards exiled, as well as only being able to increment it once each turn. Plus, I'm not entirely sure how comfortable someone would be with equipping this to the creature it's attached to each turn. It's sort of complicated, and newer players might not understand why you're able to do that. In addition, the flavor of itbeing a frying pan is partially lost on me. Yes, it's playing on the phrase "out of the frying pan into the fire," but that seems like kind of a low payoff for a joke with this many moving parts.

@deg99 - Gideon’s Sural

Alright, Gideon's Sural. This is the main weapon of a well-liked planeswalker, so I can really see trying to come at it from a flavor perspective similar to Chandra's Regulator. However, I think that this is kind of all over the place. In addition, you're mixing two different counters, which the only existing planeswalker equipment (at time of posting) can't do by itself. Second, I think that giving out loyalty counters is good, but if the flavor is supposed to be about Gideon lending aid, it should be to target non-Gideon planeswalker. Lastly, I don't like having to equip this to Gideon each turn. Granted, you could always just put it on another creature until he attacks, but... It rubs me the wrong way. I really like the idea though, so if you don't mind me suggesting an alternative version of the card, I would probably play into the fact that Gideon isn't around anymore to use his sural. Treat this less as an extension of Gideon, and more so of a tool that he used that has signiicant value to the ones close to him. In fact, one person who might have found it come into their posession is Taranika, who is established to revere Gideon for his defense of Akros.

@snugz​ - Gilded Fiend//Beguiling Brooch

Ooh, a card that transforms between a body and a weapon. I think that this is a neat idea, and I like how this is meant to be something involving all-consuming greed. One thing that was overlooked though is that you can shut it off if you can kill the creature attached to it. Because of this, this can end up as a dead card on field if you're caught without two mana, which is hard with this card, but still. Perhaps the addition of a standard equip cost would help, or maybe change it to a leaves the battlefield trigger? Either way, I think that this just needs a bit of polish to be a really great design.

@askkrenko​ - Goblin Trenchcoat

God, I really like this card. It's such a neat concept and really well executed, to the point where you even designed around situations like ETB abuse. Unfortunately, I think the fact that all of the phased creatures don't stay phased out is what makes this card fall short. This does pose somewhat of a problem vis-a-vis the inpermanence of phasing clashing with the permanence of equipping, but even still I think that this is a really solid design.

@izzet-always-r-versus-u​ - Hieromancer’s Handcuffs

Usually relegated to Auras, this is a neat take on the Arrest effect. It does the bog-standard thing of restricting attacks and blocks, as well as the recent trends of suppressing activated abilities. This also has the added effect of being reusable, since the trigger to attach it is both on etb, as well as on an activated ability. One thing that worries me, is how it requires the target to be tapped. Maybe the ETB should forego the tapped clause, but to be honest, that's probably when it will work best, since it disincentivizes attacks.

@wolkemesser​ - Mantle of Mystery

Oh my. So, making something unblockable, as well as giving a power boost is not something to be taken lightly. Fortunately, this equipment only attaches to morphs. Unfortunately, this means that you have to be running morph if you want to play this card to the fullest. This is a problem that a few entries for this contest have had, so I think that boradly addressing it here where it's the main gimmick of the card should be fine. It's fine for cards to cater to certain strategies, and in fact, I would say that that's the best way to design cards. However, because of the nature of the game, you must make things usable to most players. Otherwise, the environment around the card has to compensate for it, forcing an overrepresented archetype. Pop equip on this and it's golden, especially with that sickass flavor text you've got on there.

@railway-covidae - Meandering Shellshield

For those unaware, this card is a reference to the card Meandering Towershell. This is, to be frank, a weird card to do a callback with, but that's not to say I don't like it. In fact, I actually really like it. It does things that green usually does, and gives your opponent a chance to kill whatever they want to before it hits the battlefield and makes it tougher to merc. It doesn't give the same p/t and keywords as the original Meanderer, but that's probably for the best given what they are. Nice job

@helloijustreadyourpost​ - Necrotic Exoskeleton

This is another interesting take on equipping the dead. I really like how this takes direct inspiration from both Glistening Oil and Grafted Exoskeleton, giving the whole thing a really nice Phyrexian vibe. In fact, it's so Phyrexian, I'm sort of confused why the watermark isn't on there. Regardless, good job.

@evscfa1​ - Opaline Moonsickle

If I had a nickel for each enchantment equipment submitted to this contest... I wouldn't have enough to buy a new joke. Anyways, this is really interesting, equipping once you get an Aura on it. It also gives a pretty decent amount of protection, causing removal to fizzle while keeping all your things. In fact, I might say that that's a bit too good, because with the right deck, you could end up playing solitaire. Add to that some constellation abilities, and you're kind of set to dominate in constructed. I would consider altering that bounce cost, either by adding a mana cost or something like sacrificing the sickle or an attached enchantment.

-

Thank you again for your patience, I know that my posts tend to come out later than they probably should. I can guarantee though that the rest will come tomorrow, and that this week’s contest should be fairly standard with the others on this page. Thanks again, see you tomor-aSDKLdsjsldkdklx mcm nnnnnnnnnnnn    

#mtg #magic the gathering #Inventor's Fair #custom magic card #to arms contest #commentary