#tldr i would describe it as a bit of a mess

[kleeradragon]

how would you describe your dragonkin identity (appearance, personality)? do you have one or multiple? completely fine if you don’t know, just curious!

So... this is a little complicated. I do know, more or less, but I don't really know what to make of the info I have. Let me explain: years ago I considered myself a spiritual otherkin. A wyvern. I found plenty out about myself between when I awakened and when I joined my first alterhuman community, and unfortunately part of the findings were memories that weren't... great. In addition, when I got into otherkin groups for the first time, they weren't the best, and I ended up bitter and feeling lesser about my wyvern self as a result of all that happened in those spaces. As a result of these I sort of slowly tried to dissociate from it and tell myself the memories were false all along. I have preferred a psychological approach since then... but that's seeminly only out of desire, not experience. Experience still points spiritual. Not to say all the wyvern is gone - the memories still haunt me and the feelings of "rightness" crop up often enough for me to work on a VRChat avatar of it. But the feels and the thoughts are all kinda tangled up in "well maybe's" and it's tough to pull them all apart to figure out what the deal is. To complicate things, after stressful life events had me not feeling my nonhumanity for long enough to think that maybe I was wrong from the get go, trying on a western dragon avatar in VRChat (the ZDragon, for any who are interested!) brought those feels rushing back, complete with a prey drive I never got before. They haven't gone away since. So I wondered, maybe I was supposed to be a western the whole time! But that still doesn't line up fully, cause the past tells me I'm a wyvern, and the present tells me I'm a western. Heck, could very well be both in some weird roundabout way.

That's quite a ramble I just did, thanks for sticking with! You asked about personality... I think I'd have been very animalistic, if we're going by memory. Treading on no matter what. Hard to explain the vibe I get beyond that. In most memories I have, I seemed to be an adolescent or so, so there was a curious nature to me before everything turned sour. I don't know a lot about after that, save for some noemata and one sorta flashbulb memory of an environment.

And you asked about appearance, which is nearly the same on either one save for the number of limbs. This might be a bit weird to explain, but bear with me. Here's an art piece I got of my wyvern back in the day from a dragon called Rhaeloth (western is too recent to have gotten any art):

The description: greenish-blue scales with a sandy-yellow underbelly, green eyes, two brown or grey horns pointing directly back from the back of the head and one curved snout horn (snorn, if you will). 6 digits on each wing - three claws and three for the membrane part of the wings (on western, just the one wingspur and three or four for the wing membrane) - and four claws on each foot, three forward and one back (on western, four claws with no dewclaws, and pawpads). I suspect either my left wing (wyvern) or my left foreleg (western) was permanently injured so I'd likely keep that close to my chest most of the time. If wyvern, I'd have a bipedal posture much like a raptor, as I've mentioned in a previous poll response. If western, I'd have been quadrupedal. And for either one, 6-7 ft tall has always felt right (which has carried over onto my dragon sona, in fact! The one in my icon, kind of a glorified me).

...And that's why I figured it would be weird to explain.

#tldr i would describe it as a bit of a mess #but that's too par the course #thanks a ton for the ask though! #I've been meaning to get writing about this mess of identity for a while #may write on it again in the near future to go into more detail #especially now that i'm back to not knowing what the heck is going on #dragonkin #nonhuman #dragonkind #snorn #kleelore #kleerawr #when i finally get this heckin wyvern model done itll be a much easier way to see the whole form #defo gonna be my weekend project. i need to figure things out more and this is a way to help myself do so

[oddballsducks]

I saw your post about bringing comic Della Duck to her full potential, so I gotta ask; do you imagine the Della Duck from the comics has the voice of Paget Brewster or did you have someone else in mind?

Hoo boy, you’ve really put me on the spot here, y’know?

First off, I keep imaging my version of the Duckverse as if were to be an official, Disney-licensed creation. That’s completely ridiculous, but it’s how my brain works. So I’m picturing myself selecting the voice actors for my show/movie, and selecting someone new for Della? Like holy crap, I can’t imagine doing that to Paget Brewster. If you look up anything about what she thinks of Della you’ll know she was an incredibly important role to Paget, and she was especially proud of and excited to be the person to bring Della to life after eight decades of Della barely counting as a character. As much as I love comics!Della, I have to admit that DT17 is by far the most important event in her real-world development- and that it wouldn’t have happened without Paget.

If I chose someone new to be Della it would break Paget’s heart. Even if it’s a different version of Della, my interpretation of comics!Della is that she actually isn’t too different from DT17 in personality- not enough to justify replacing her voice actor, at least.

While I know I couldn’t replace Paget in practice, in my selfish heart I would want a new voice actor’s interpretation of Della Duck. I can’t describe voices, I don’t now what fancy words like “intonation” mean, so I can’t describe what type of voice I want, but I want something a bit different for comics!Della. Also, I don’t know anything about voice actors, so I can’t give you an example of somebody else specific I would like.

I feel really bad about saying I don’t want Paget, cause she did a really really good job as DT17 Della, but I think since it’s a slightly different version of the character, I want a different voice actor?

Anyway, I’m tired and this has turned into an incoherent mess.

TLDR; I’d like someone new to be comics!Della, but I have no idea who that someone would be, and I’d feel terrible for taking away the role of Della from Paget when Della is so so important to Paget.

#ducktales #duckverse #disney ducks #duck comics #ducktales 2017 #della duck #ask #writebackatya

[granulesofsand]

If this ask is too upsetting then you can leave it alone for a while. Bodily we are an adult. We do not want to intrude in the space of RAMCOA survivors but this has been on our mind for a few months. TWS: Sexual, physical and emotional abuse, BDSM, lots of kinks. We've been abused by two different people in our life, both were minors around our age at the time. The first one was coercive for sure but we don't think he had any sort of complex plan. He would hit and insult us in front of friends, and flashed us a few times when we were alone. Second abuser was our ex, had more access to us due to us dating. They didn't know we have DID and we didn't know at the time either. This is where we suspect possible programming happened; even though they weren't aware of our condition there was a lot of focus on control and different roles. Even before we were officially together they "introduced" us to a lot of BDSM concepts, mainly through writing smut with us. When we started dating, they started actually acting on those concepts though. Almost always they were the "dom/top" while we were the "sub/bottom". Some of us tried to fight back and were punished while others gave in entirely. Which led to us developing a lot of alters dedicated to specific sexual "tasks", so many that I believe we've just barely scratched the surface on member count. The list of stuff they made us do (aside from "traditional" lesbian sex) included breath play, pet play, impact play, and watersports. Just to maintain some privacy I won't say how long this went on for, but we were both (older) minor teens and it lasted long enough to be a clearly established pattern. The persecutors will randomly re-enact trauma, both inwardly and outwardly. Even if we try to resist at first there is NO way out of it. The reenactments will happen and we just have to weather the storm. tldr; Abusive ex used BDSM as a means on control, questioning if we were programmed or mind controlled somehow.

Thanks. -🐊

Bare-Bones Programming

Always important to say that we are not experts on your experience, and the information we provide is ultimately for your decision.

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA, SA, programming and deprogramming

Programming has two basic requirements:

The perpetrator(s) intend to control you

By creating self-states or conditioning self-states to cues

The second situation you described sounds like it aligns pretty neatly with that. It’s not as extensive as what a group or a practiced programmer might produce, but there are bits of advice aimed towards survivors that might help you.

Members who have ‘jobs’ or ‘tasks’ or similar are a fair indication of Mind Control, and it might serve to ask who assigned them this task, even if you already have an inkling. Their responses will determine whether they feel the obligation to the perp or themselves.

What to Do

The first step towards decreasing reenactment is guidelines. Establish for every member a set of standards, most negotiable and some required. Maybe y’all agree to clean up your own messes (negotiated and with exceptions) and understand that no member engages sexually before discussion (required).

This sets a clear precedent for what is expected and what members agree to when they interact with one another and the world. Sometimes it’s a matter of not knowing, and with practice the issue is no longer. It’s not likely everything is solved like this, but better to start early.

Next is demonstrating healthy interactions. Many collectives prefer to start outside, to gain experience they don’t already have. A friend is a good goal, someone y’all trust or a few people certain members confide in.

If it’s not too big a trigger, look into consensual BDSM. Start with reading, maybe novels or SFW explanatory websites to avoid too much resemblance to trauma.

Not every collective feels secure enough with each other to do this, but consider having two members with matching preferences to try a safer encounter. One member could also practice on their own if that’s preferable, or with a predetermined safe outside person.

Experiencing more non-abusive (or less abusive, but file that away until you’ve failed with other methods) BDSM— and plain sexuality— provides more data to work off of in the future. A truly healthy scenario may take time, but even lots of breaks and slow-going is better than remaining where you are.

None of these are required, but sexual reenactment is not fun. You could always start with something like sharing (or not sharing) food or belongings to get in some basis of consent without including relationships or sex.

With that or as an alternative, work on shame and disgust. Shame is what you feel for yourself, disgust is what you feel towards another. This could look like positive affirmations, telling or writing down stories you haven’t yet, getting to know members without judgement.

I don’t remember who said it, but there’s a phrase: “Hating having others doesn’t have to mean hating the others”. Not every collective has the phobia of other members, but it is well-documented and a necessity to overcome for teamwork.

Later

There are methods of working through memories and integrating them, maybe to remove barriers between members or fuse them. It helps take steam out of flashbacks and urges, putting a memory together.

It takes trust, though, and a willingness to work with and support other members. Once you make progress with those, you can decide together how to proceed.

You can find resources on the Legion System’s TikTok LinkTree, no account required to get there on a web browser.

Some are pushy for fusion or integration, and there is a theme of brokenness. We found Safe Passage to Healing and Becoming Yourself helpful. They do have good information, but take breaks and skip what you have to.

I hope that helped, even if it was maybe one paragraph of the question you actually asked.

#ramcoa #tw ramcoa #tw cocsa #tw sa #ramcoa programming #did osdd #osddid #adaptive system

[anonymous-dentist]

i absolutely love bad romance, it's my favorite qsmp fanfic and i mean it!!! i love reading roier's povs and i feel like there's so little of it so i really feel spoiled with this one, his madness is ON POINT!!!!!

love the way you describe and write dialogues, even if it's not their mother language i STILL CAN SEE THEM SAYING THAT. i'm brazilian and idk, reading the dialogues feels pretty natural so i think you should be proud of it!

also. i'm so normal about the fact that cell thinks he has everything under control like, he has the capacity to just leave this poor maniac man behind if he needs to. but. he really doesn't know he can't and roier is just sooooo normal about him that every little interaction messes with his head like alejaoakKLSJAKEJALEDB MAN I DON'T KNOW, I LOVE THEIR DYNAMIC AND IN MY OPINION bad romance is the best fic in exploring both f!cell and c!roier

one thing that got me confused is when cell pointa at roier's shoulder and asks “it wasn't you, was it?”, when they're having dinner. indon't know if we're supposed to be confused or if i'm just dumb and i wanted to know kajeoajpsakle

ANYWAY SORRY FOR RAMBLING MAN IDK THIS IS EMBARRASSING but i get very excited about the things i really enjoy and i like your writing and works a lot so!!! thank's for the update 😳👍

So about the “It wasn’t you, was it?” it wasn’t supposed to be super clear because Roier was kinda going through sepsis atm and wasn’t able to like. Think. But it’s actually Cell thinking back to when Roier sliced his own neck open to try and get his attention in chapter two. Cell was gonna be pissed if this dude slowed their road trip down for that, but, luckily, it was just a gunshot wound. Yay?

Meanwhile with the dynamics, I kinda just looked at the twitter art that inspired me and I was like. Cute, but there’s no way it’d be that cute. Because I’ve seen three whole episodes of Fuga Impossível and I figured that Cell would 100% try and be on top of every single situation he’s put in, even this one, but, like he did with Pac and Mike, he’s severely underestimating Roier rn. Because Roier is literally so unstable that he’s completely unpredictable, and Cell is a very logical man. He can tell there’s something up with Roier, but, again, like with Pac and Mike, Cell’s ego is getting a bit ahead of him. He’s going through this huge emotional turmoil rn and Roier is completely oblivious because he’s decided they’re already engaged. He’s just waiting for the proposal. And if he doesn’t get one, then he’ll just make Cell give him one. He has nothing to lose except for Cell, and he’s never going to give him up. Ever.

…If that makes sense. Tbh this fic is a struggle to write sometimes because I haven’t really seen either Chafaland or Fuga Impossível and I don’t speak either Spanish or Portuguese, so I’m working entirely off of vibes. So I’m glad to see the dialogue is coming off okay? Lol

TLDR; there’s no shot fcell and croier would both be disgustingly horribly in love with each other at first sight, give it a couple of weeks

#asks! #jagged broken little mirror au

[theproloser34]

AJR - The Maybe Man

So finally got around to listening to AJR's newest album. AJR is very weird to me just cause I either love their songs, or the subject matter is just way too corny for me to listen too. Despite that, I really liked their past album, OK Orchestra so I went into this one with an open mind. I'm happy to report that I see this album as a good 7/10. Not great, but an enjoyable listen. Maybe Man: Definitely a great opener to the album. I enjoy the melody and the outro "Here I go again" refrain makes me wish that the song was longer, because it's my favorite part Touchy Feely Fool: This is a perfect example of the thoughts about AJR. This song is incredibly cheesy but also too relatable to myself so I end up loving this song after two listens. Definitely one of my favorites of the album. Yes I'm A Mess: It's an alright song. I'm not too sure if I enjoy the sea shanty vibes I get from this song, but it is really catchy and an earworm. I didn't think it was a great single, but I enjoy it a bit more in the album The Dumb Song: I feel the same about this as I feel about "Yes I'm A Mess". Has a catchy chorus but nothing else about the song particularly stands out after listening. I do enjoy it a little bit more though. Inertia: I don't have anything really to say about this song. I can see how someone would love it, but this song does nothing for me Turning Out Pt. iii: Same thing, doesn't do anything for me. I'm not really a fan of AJR's more slow songs, so this does not hit hit, but easily could be someone's favorite. I appreciate the message of the song, but the song itself does nothing Hole in the Bottom of My Brain: It's a song about fame. I know some people don't like famous people complaining about being famous, but I think this is a nice little deviation than the usual complaints of fame. Also is a nice upbeat and catchy tune. The DJ is Crying For Help: Another one of my favorites. Immediately liked this song when it was released as a single and it has just grown on me more. The only bad thing is this is again another song where I wish there was one more chorus or just a little more development before the outro. The "Don't leave me out" vocal run is my favorite part and I wish it happened more than twice in the song. But still a highlight for sure I Won't: A song I didn't think I would like but soon became the one that was repeating in my head the most. Nothing too special to say about this song. Just seems like a fun anthem for antisocial people, which sometimes you're in the mood for. Steve's Going to London: This is a song I want to like, but I just can't. I find the subject matter interesting but the song itself is too long and just does not sit in my ear well. The bar chant vibe the song is going to just doesn't hit as it should. The bridge is the highlight cause it strips the song down and is most clear about the subject matter, but it doesn't make up for the rest of the song. God is Really Real: I can't hate this song. It just feels wrong to. This isn't a song made for their audience but for themselves. I can't make myself say anything about a song about their dad dying. The line "This kind of thing happens to other dads, It doesn't happen to mine," kills me every time I hear it. It may not be for me but I appreciate this song a lot. 2085: A great outro that I think ends on a appropriate thematic end for the album. The album starts at wondering who you are, to examining certain parts of your emotions and thought processes, to examining outside forces in their lives. To end the album on the lines, "I gotta get better, I'm all that I've got" is such a good way to describe the whole entire album. TLDR: I recommend a listen whether you're a fan of AJR or not. I'm sure you'll find a song or two to like off this album. Also it ain't to long, only 45 mins, so not to much of an investment to listen to. 7/10

#music review #ajr #ajr band #music #the maybe man #long post #Spotify

[feralmoonlight]

Oops today has turned into me musing endlessly on the spooky season Vampire Sun and Werewolf Moon (Same body, more like different mindset enough for Sun during the day to give Moon his own personality in the back of his mind, but it’s one single mind/consciousness and not two individuals) SO I’m just going to wordvomit the various blurbs ive been throwing at people today down here, enjoy. TO RECAP Good afternoon I am here to throw a horribly indulgent and stupid AU into the void of vampire!Sun and werewolf!Moon as a messed up 2 for 1 deal because this universe is painfully lacking on vampires afflicted with lycanthropy and in this essay I will-

You hadn’t wanted to move to a new town. This move was not by choice. But since you were still living with your family, when the decision came down hard with no room for arguments, and the roof over your head was in danger, what other choice did you really have? It wasn’t like your job was one of a kind, boring minimum wage that you could throw a stone in the new city and find something just as good. All of your best friends were online so that at least wasn’t a problem… One upside to this new location was the town itself at least? It was Old with a capital OH. The kind that made you imagine history was walking beside you on the streets as you explored. Details you never saw in today’s modern building decorated every facade, houses that were older than any of the residents reigned in their own unique glory. Some so opulent you couldn’t imagine moving in them, and some so run down it was a wonder they were still standing. You’d admit it was pretty cool, if you weren’t still fighting your ire at having your old life uprooted from under you. From up on the veranda of one of those more fancy looking houses, the occupant leaned against the railing, openly watching you with wide eyes as you meandered down the street. It was weird. Really weird. Weirder still when his hand shot into the air in an enthusiastic wave, way too much energy for such a hot fall afternoon. You offered a timid wave back. Interesting neighbors…

Unrelated, non robo au where sunny is this sweet daycare worker dude that is also a part time florist(MAYBE? possibly scrapped?) but he's also a full time werewolf and moon doesn't like company. Because spooktober

TLDR Vampire Sunny hires you on a whim to maybe do some casual yardwork for him cause the sun is icky and also maybe as a snack when he gets bored ish? But you manage to charm him enough the first time or two that he only takes a sip and is like. Mm Yes Good, I’ll keep this one around for a bit.

Unrelated I've decided that for the vampire/werewolf thing, I'm not going to really 'describe' human Sun, cause it feels weird. A seemingly ever grinning face, tall, large hands with long fingers, almost unnervingly thing but somehow way stronger than the lean frame should be capable of, an eccentric ruffly wardrobe that leans towards rich deep reds and vibrant golds... yes. But details about hairstyle, skintone, anything like that ain't gonna happen More ramblings under the cut~

I don’t know the source of this image, friend linked it to me off pintrest but it’s so spot on I love it so I cry. Also, sun is absolutely going to tie a little ribbon around your neck with a little sun/moon charm. Both a 'this is mine' and a 'leave it alone' billboard to others in the area Friend also linked me this Lunar Clock Thing

He has you doing all this work to make his yard look usable and welcoming and stuff but he only ever looks at it. Doesn't enjoy it. And no one seems to ever visit even though he's super friendly, what gives? You'd think such an old neighborhood everyone would know each other but no one seems to really talk about Sunny much Like at all. No one knows Jack about this guy Yet without fail, every time you pass by, there he is, stepping outside to wave hello and tempt you over for a chat[2:43 PM]Eventually finds out you do schooling at home and offers you his tutelage. Apparently this dude is also stupidly smart about a lot of things??

More excuses to make you visit, to have you linger. Sit closer. Definitely not lean against you with a slow deep breath, definitely not smelling you for some creepy reason. Not that you pick up on it. But he is a little less warm than you expected. The closeness is enough to set your cheeks on fire and he pulls back immediately, excusing himself to put on some tea(and get a soda for you. He started keeping those around just for you, you realized)

Always rushes you away before dark though. Says the streets are dangerous.

Very dangerous

Were!moon is basically a feral beast under the full moon but as it waned to nothing he has a cold clarity to him. Suns happy self sombers and while it's still the same mind, it's a different personality that takes over at night that pushes him to give into his more instinctual urges of all kinds

Sunset is a toss up on if he's safe or bordering into dangerous based on time of the month. You could probably survive when the night is dark with only some minor nibbling but after the halfway point your life is on the line. He will kill. For now. Time may change this

Oh, don't be fooled, this is already the case, and the reason (second reason) he didn't turn you into a one time snack. The fact you're absolutely delicious is definitely a first, an exquisite treat to be savored slowly, but it's after the second or third visit that the reason he was excited to see you come by after that wasn't purely because he had the hungies. The times you come in to sit down and spend time with him, at ease around him,  laughing with him even... It's something he hasn't gotten to enjoy in years, if not a couple decades. The inner voice of Moon in his mind that tells him to protect himself, remember how humans hunted him, would still hunt him if they knew, the danger of it all... it's something to be wary of, but you... You don't shy away(much) when he rests a hand on your shoulder(without his influence), you come to him willingly, stay longer than is necessary, and what should have been just a simple effort to keep things tidy in his yard has, of your own doing turned into making it nicer.  You've brought new flowers, he's seen you scrub old moss from some of the little statue figures that hide around the bushes, you even asked him about paint to touch up parts of the fence that had begun to rust to keep it in good condition(something you were meaning to do one of these nights, but just hadn't bothered the motivation). It's a friendship, true and true, even if you're unaware that you're befriending an actual monster that isn't out of the woods of ruining your friendship yet. He would truly be upset with himself it if happened.

Again.

Aaaand I think that’s all I really have at the moment for this, but take it and enjoy <3

#VampireWerewolf AU #SB Sun #Sundrop #SB Moon #Moondrop #Fnaf #security breach #this has a lot more fucking stuff to it in my brain than is written down #again #it keeps happening #i just love building AUs but the process of writing them out is so fucking slow aaaaa #feral rambles #feral writes #AU hoard

[doodlebloo]

Can you talk more about your c!tubbo origin headcanon?

YESSSSS OHMYGOD I WAS HOPING SOME1 WOULD ASK.

The short version is that Lady Death and Ianite made a bet over who would be the better father, Sparklez or Philza, and Sparklez ended up being the better dad so Lady Death gave Tubbo her eternal blessing (described further below), eventually she realizes that this blessing might lead to a lot of survivor's guilt for him and as consolation she blesses the baby piglin he's grown attached to (Michael), which makes the effects of zombification slowly dwindle until the kid can grow up big and strong.

LONG VERSION UNDER THE CUT :D

Lady Death and Ianite are goddess pals who have tea sometimes and talk about their silly lil champions (Sparklez and Philza). On one of these days the topic of fatherhood comes up. c!Wil is still fairly young and Mumza is talking about how good of a father c!Phil is shaping up to be, Ianite reckons that Sparklez would make a pretty good father too.

Well as gods tend to do they end up making a friendly little wager about this. They'll find a baby, Sparklez gets to parent him for the first 6 years of his life and Phil gets the second 6 years, they see which did a better job. Whoever's champion was the less good father has to use up some of their power to bless the child on their 18th birthday.

So they find little orphan c!Tubbo as a baby and Ianite gives him to Sparklez. She explains everything and is honest abt the fact it's a wager, he's not a huge fan of the idea but isn't gonna NOT take care of the baby, plus he'd rather the kid gain the favor of Ianite than of Death. c!Tubbo has a pretty great early childhood with him, not perfect bc Sparklez has never BEEN a dad before so there's some bumps but overall the new prince of fallen kingdom has a nice life.

At age 6, c!Tubbo is taken, his memory is wiped and he's left in a box on the side of the road for c!Phil to find. c!Phil has no interest in adopting him but Lady Death convinces him to at least try. c!Phil begrudgingly takes c!Tubbo home, but a combination of factors (c!Crimeboys already being a handful, c!Phil's desire to be a nomadic adventurer with c!Techno, c!Tubbo's lingering feeling that this isn't His family) leads to c!Tubbo's childhood being less than ideal. He isn't necessarily neglected, he just doesn't really click with his new family the way Death hoped he might (except for c!Tommy of course, but c!Phil doesn't really consider c!Tommy his son.) Tldr, c!Phil makes an effort but doesn't really bond with c!Tubbo that much and ultimately decides not to stop him when he and c!Tommy (both aged 13) leave home to go exploring.

Now that c!Tubbo is thirteen, it's time to pick a winner, and after some deliberation they both agree that Ianite wins this one. As a result Lady Death must bless c!Tubbo. She ponders over what blessing to give him, and by the time she checks in on him again he's already lost two lives and she quickly realizes that he needs her blessing NOW, not at eighteen like they'd previously agreed upon.

Lady Death blesses c!Tubbo with the gift of survival on the day he becomes president of New L'Manberg. It isn't that he CAN'T die, just that his odds of survival in any given situation are much higher than average. An unintended side effect of this is that c!Tubbo feels strangely at ease when discussing death, not always taking it as seriously as he needs to.

Lady Death figures her job is done and goes about her business for another six months (which to her is like five minutes) before she sees c!Tommy appear in her domain. He's in limbo, and, knowing how important he is to her pseudo-champion c!Tubbo, debates sending him back before he gets yoinked back on his own.

(Lady Death doesn't appreciate whoever's messing with the laws of life and death down there, but c!Phil doesn't seem worried so she leaves it be.)

She checks in on c!Tubbo (she tells herself it's out of curiosity but really she's started to care abt him a bit) and finds him doing an absolutely terrible job of processing c!Tommy's temporary death, and she realizes that because of her "blessing" and the dangerous place c!Tubbo has settled down, he's very likely to outlive all of his loved ones.

She feels kind of bad about it, because while Death is a natural part of life, she figures that since she had a hand in kind of messing with his childhood she should at least help shape his future. It takes her a LOT of power to mess with the code of a Player (blessing c!Tubbo took a lot out of her) but blessing a mob is a lot easier, and luckily c!Tubbo has gotten absurdly attached to a little zombie piglet recently.

Lady Death bestows Michael_B with the same blessing as c!Tubbo, survival despite the odds, and said blessing also applies to his zombie curse. His parents' attempts to cure him work like a charm because of this increased likelihood of survival, and he's cured within a year.

As for c!Tubbo, he continues to be surrounded by death at every turn and has come to think of death like an old friend for reasons he can't articulate. Also for reasons he can't articulate, he feels like he does have someone else out there who cares about him but can't put his finger on it since his early childhood memories are so blurry.

(Sparklez, meanwhile, asks for regular updates on c!Tubbo and has more than once requested to be sent to help c!Tubbo fight. He knows he isn't c!Tubbo's dad anymore but he still finds himself caring about him a lot because they bonded so tightly in c!Tubbo's early years. Quietly, he plans to break into c!Tub's home SMP when no one is looking because he'll be damned if c!Phil gets to meet c!Tubbo's kid and he doesn't.)

((Fuck the canon ending. In this au c!beeduo reconcile and c!Tubbo reconnects with c!Sparklez and his family takes a lil vacation to Fallen Kingdom and all is well <3))

#HOORAYYYY my masterpiece :] #this is like so convoluted for no reason BUT i like it :) C!TUBBO PATRON OF DEATH WOOOOO #asks #anon

[vout-vouniern]

SIDE ORDER SPOILERS AHEAD. PLEASE BE ADVISED IF YOU HAVE NOT 100% THE DLC YET.

tldr: I give it a feesh/10. Would recommend.

So I’ve just beaten the last palette for Side Order and now I just wanna go through my thoughts on each palette, the enemy/level design, you know, a review. I’ll try to keep it organized…

Let’s start with basics. As a roguelike, Side Order does exactly what it sets out to do. You go up 10 floors, getting at least one upgrade per floor, then fight a boss. Do that three times, and bingo you win. Much like any roguelike I’ve seen, the primary difficulty is self-set; you can upgrade your runs to make them easier, or set up unique challenges to test yourself. It’s also quite easy to get an OP run going as long as you find the right chips, which does mean a fair bit of RNG can make or break a run, though with enough permanent upgrades (aka hacks) you more or less can beat any run.

The gameplay loop is mostly solid besides all the ink everywhere except for the zone defense floors, at least imo. Portal destroying is more or less a damage check, and fairly simple to complete. Alla Mambo floors are my favorite, mostly because I adore sunfish and therefore the levels where you get to chase em are real fun! Turbine Tower takes the idea of Tower Control and actually makes it fun! Zone defense, on the other hand, kinda falls apart at higher stages unless your kit has some real firepower in it. It’s not uncommon to see like 3 Drizzling Carpaccios riding Battering Lentos all heading to the zone at once, which means you need both high DPS to take the Lentos down then good paint to fix the mess the Carpaccios made- oh wait there’s 20 Marching Andantes coming, gotta deal with- wait nope outta ink, gotta leave- and now they have zone. AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE ONE FLOOR THAT’S JUST TOWERING NOBILMENTES AND DRIZZLING CARPACCIOS WITH TWO ZONES EITHER SIDE OF THE MAP, WHICH IS PAINFUL TO TRAVERSE REGARDLESS OF WEAPON.

Now onto Palettes. These act as your starter decks, which is a really fun choice though I do wish we weren’t so restricted with possible weapons. I’d love to see a Squeezer or S-BLAST run but alas, there’s no custom runs at all. Anyway, onto each Palette and what I like/dislike about it. I’ll describe them as main weapon-starting sub weapon-starting special weapon-primary/secondary tones (which describe what types of upgrades you’re more likely to see)

Dualies-Curling Bomb-Reefslider-Lucky/Support I don’t know why they nerfed Dualies as hard as they did for this, but they don’t feel all that great to use until you get some good upgrades. On top of that, neither the sub or special are all that, plus why doesn’t Pearl have a tone for, idk, herself!? Oddly enough, the game sets a weirdly bad first impression of what’s to come. Probably my second least favorite palette.

Brella-Sprinkler-Ink Storm-Drone/Power Now this is a fun palette to use, though not for the reasons you may think. Much like Salmon Run, Brella is actually a good weapon here; between having decent damage and all the utility that comes with the shield, it feels great to use straight outta the box! Sprinkler also happens to be one of the better subs for it; helps with painting zones and charging special. Not that Ink Storm is a good special in this…at least Drone makes for a good back-up plan if your Power Brella hits a bad point. Also you can get an upgrade that locks the shield making it play like Undercover it’s so good!

Shot-Splat Bomb-Trizooka-Range/Mobility Wow the shooter is good despite the Side Order nerfs who would’ve thought. Kit is obviously good, though I don’t find myself picking up mobility often…

Roller-Burst Bomb-Kraken-Power/Lucky Power on a roller is…almost everything you’d want out of a roller. See, the biggest problem with this palette is that anything related to rolling is usually in the Mobility tone, not Power, so this palette really should’ve been Power/Mobility imo. Besides that, Burst does burst things and Kraken is solid too, though it does struggle with hitting portals too far off the ground…

Charger-Ink Mine-Triple Inkstrike-Support/Range So this is probably the most busted palette in the game. I’ll keep it brief, but you can essentially get a Grizzco Charger whilst laying tons of mines (which are insanely good against swarms) and you start with what’s probably the second best special in the DLC due to its high damage and utility. If you’re having trouble winning, or just want a breezy time, pick this.

Stringer-Toxic Mist-Killer Wail 5.1-Mobility/Range Stringer plays kinda close to non-grizzified charger but mainly has better taps/partials in exchange for worse full charges over charger. Neither Toxic Mist nor Wail 5.1 are any good, so you might wanna get those replaced asap. Mobility also doesn’t have much synergy with bow so not a great palette overall.

Splatana-Fizzy Bomb-Crab Tank-Lucky/Drone This is kinda a weird palette overall. Stamper does Stamper things mostly, but the luck really just makes this one feel unique. To my surprise Fizzy ended up on the lower end of subs in Side Order for me, but that was more than compensated for with the best special in the DLC: THE ALMIGHTY CRAB. Also my first floor 30 clear!

Slosher-Suction Bomb-Triple Inkstrike-Support/Drone Man, this should’ve been Power/Support it would’ve been nuts. Still, Support/Drone works well enough for it, plus the overall kit is fantastic. Love this one!

Blaster-Curling Bomb-Wave Breaker-Range/Power Ugh, this is by far the worst main weapon of all of them. It’s got no range, fire rate, dps, or aoe despite being a blaster. It just fails in pretty much every way unless you get the right chips. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the sub and special are not great either. This is by far the hardest palette to clear, including the last one…

Brush-Ink Mine-Ultra Stamp-Mobility/Lucky Thankfully this brush is quite good at dealing with swarms, even at low upgrades. Biggest downside of this palette is no range, but since you’re getting Mobility chips it’s accounted for. Solid palette all around (except for Stamp).

Splatling-Splash Wall-Booyah Bomb-Drone/Support I DIDN’T FORGET THIS ONE AND ADD IT IN POST SHADDUP. Splatling is the weapon class I’m worst at but honestly it didn’t feel all too bad. Support’s a great tone for it, and having Pearl slap mines everywhere is always gonna be great. I will never understand how to use wall, and Booyah Bomb feels…surprisingly weak? Like, its damage is not super there or anything. Eh, it’s mot terrible anyway.

Octo Shot-Splat Bomb-Triple Splashdown-Power/Mobility Hoo boy this one’s a doozy. This is the same thing as the Order Shot, but with a different starting special and more importantly, a worse limit on how many chips you can have based on how many hacks you have available. It seems tricky at first, but then you realize the minimum chips is 6 so you get one Main Piercing chip and some Power and boom, done. Honestly feel this final challenge could’ve been done better, not to mention the final boss’s reaction to its final loss was a bit lackluster, to say the least. Ah well, least the weapon’s cool.

Oh, lastly Cipher’s Siftings has some neat stuff to buy once you’re done spending Prlz on hacks. Nice little feature to round off the DLC.

And I think that’s all my thoughts. Guess if you have any questions lmk.

#splatoon 3 #splatoon 3: side order #side order #side order spoliers

[sandinthemachine]

Do you have a celeb or someone that comes to mind when u think of konigs face? personally I imagine him to look a bit like Adam driver, especially in the trailer for the new movie 65 as it came out around the time I joined the COD fandom and he kinda looks like a few konig fanarts I’ve seen. I’m very curious on what you think

This is gonna turn into an essay so I'm just gonna slap a read more so people can skip by it

tldr: I...don't?

Yeah I definitely see where he could be like Adam Driver, also I wonder if 65 will be any good, I hope so.

This is actually a really funny question. I don't really have any celebrities I think of for him. I think part of the reason I go for masked characters is that I don't actually have to imagine a face for them, even with characters like mando where I know what he looks like under there I don't actually imagine Pedro's face when I write for him. I don't really imagine a full face at all.

And with Ghost and König, it's not...necessarily that I imagine just...an amorphous blob where their face is, I just don't always picture details if that makes sense? I picture specific facial expressions far more (regardless of how I picture his face, this grin is burned into my brain). Now that I've written for both of them a lot I do have a slightly clearer picture of what they look like to me, and I'm sure there are celebs out there that match that but I couldn't find any with quick google searches.

If I had to describe how I generally picture König (neck up specifically, body would have to be a whole other post), it would probably be something like this, but I'm not strongly attached to any one interpretation, I see quite a few different ones I like:

I imagine a large Adam's apple (I just think he has a very nice neck) and an angular jawline, and above that,

definitely a pronounced nose with a little bump on it, maybe a little crooked from breaking it one too many times.

I don't think his hair would be too long so it doesn't get in the way of things, but I like to think it's longer on the top, long enough to tangle your fingers in and a little wavy.

When he takes the hood and balaclava off it sticks up and is all messy and fun to play with. I bet he's secretly proud of his hair and puts a lot of time into it when he's at home so it gets really soft, but he'll pout if you mess it up before he goes out.

I think he shaves daily and his stubble grows fast. He might grow it out a few days if you asked him, but then wouldn't like the sensation of it (esp. under a mask) and would shave it off. He also might have a couple bald patches on his jaw that he's sensitive about

If I had to pick a hair color it would probably be a really dark dirty blonde, maybe some lighter streaks if you get him out in the sun (please slather him in sunscreen first he for sure burns easily). Not super attached to any hair color with him tho

Honestly that's kind of as far as I picture his face, he's got nice eyes tho as we can all see

I really just think he has a very expressive face where all his emotion is painted on it clear as day

He has a big lopsided grin and that's the one appearance-related thing I do feel strongly about

#idk why but I feel like I'm exposing myself here #könig #anon replies #if this explains it in any way :/

[burning-sol]

idk how other people's dreams are like but mine are always in disjointed plot points that. if i tried to explain every one we'd be here a while or done of them would be completely unintelligible. not that i could remember them all anyways. sometimes they transition smoothly between each other but other times it's like a hard cut, or someone has just stuck the next segment on the previous segment like they're turning up the opacity on a layer. random bits of audio or visual effects will just HAPPEN sometimes. a person will just randomly change to a different person and then back to the first person like you were swapping a character model. it makes it really hard to describe things when sometimes it's just a MESS of information.

there are are also plenty of cases where i will know bits of lore in the dream or will percieve things outside of what i SHOULD see giving me a meta understanding of what is occurring, what tropes are associated with my dream, etc. there's a lot of times where i KNOW im in a dream. and it can vary from being aware but suspending my disbelief for the dream, being aware but viewing my body from the outside, being aware and being unable to control myself despite wanting to, and the worst of all being aware of my dream and having enough control where i can walk up to people and tell them im trying to get out of a dream.

in the last scenario it's really tricky because most of the time people will act like npcs who do not respond to me, they might shrug and ignore me because they think im bonkers, they might listen to me but not quite understand, and very few times will they understand PERFECTLY what the situation is but they can't help me get out. cause the dream is not waiting for a plot point to end, it's running on a timer.

bring on a time is frustrating because sections of a dream might be artificially extended by slowing it down or just repeating segments to draw it out until it ends. this makes it incredibly shitty trying to escape a dream. i might get caught in an important scene where two characters are talking but they won't STOP talking and I'm looking around the room trying to figure out how to get out. it also means that dreams can at many points end in a completely dissatisfying way where plot points aren't resolved and when i try to go back asleep, the story doesn't pick back up again!! it jumps to something else!!! frustrating.

but that's the end of my long rant. tldr; my dreams are weird as hell.

#📚 my posts #📌 thoughts

[kustas]

Thing to ask! for the notoriously bad comic Tokyo Ghoul, to you how much is it a case of wasted potential and how much of it is unsalvageable garbáge??

It's hard for me to be objective about this because a lot of what I don't like in TG fundamentally comes from me not being the target audience for this kind of story 😔 I don't dig modern settings, I don't dig teenager dramas, I don't dig the art style nor the designs but none of these are inherently bad...

What could be improved imo, but again that's the imo and not the one objective truth, is the character writing... it's very edgy, it throws out there horrific backstories for what feels like uniquely shock value and I really dislike how easily it falls into bad taste. An example of this is a kid character which I will use because because he looks and acts like a hyperviolent androgynous neurotic child which would in normal circumstances be a direct bingo to my heart but in practice his backstory is this... frankly not well written MESS of extremely sensitive themes like child sexual abuse and resulting trauma that doesn't really. Matter much in the story at all. It's just there. And that's what most of the character happenings feel like, they're just there and it makes for shocking content and high stakes drama that some people who aren't me fall for

There's another character I remember liking who's gimmick is...being normal. He has no real gimmick asides of being the best friend to the main character and a kind reliable grounded presence and by constrast he makes the wild supernatural shit happening feel way more dramatic and while he does have specific, low stakes character dramas to himself, they still work. I'm bringing this up because the extremely rough and frankly uninteresting bc it's been done so much pitch of "normal guy becomes undead being who has to eat people to survive" becomes way more interesting when you focus on that horror aspect of coping with it. And imo that should be dealt with by contrasting the horrors with the mundane. TG instead goes for anime power scaling edge which I couldn't give a rat's ass about. Make 2/3 of the cast boring people coping with their low stakes while juggling their ghouldom I might care a bit more

TLDR no I don't really think it's fixable if you mean "fixable as in I like it" but with some tweaks including a hefty serving of good taste it could be better written yes

But if you want that ideal premise I described of juggling your life problems and eating people try watching the new interview with the vampire TV show it does that in an actually impactful way

#ask

[systemexploration]

okay uhm this is gonna be hard to explain but i'll do my best. if you need a better explanation just say so and i'll send another anon ask. i'm on anon because i'm too scared to ask on my main blog.

i've been questioning lately if i'm a system. i've started disassociating and derealising more often, and i've realised i have multiple personalities. but not in the way that we're seperate people. it's like... they're just different personas that front depending on the situation. they all have their own pronouns, they all have their own appearance, they speak differently, they handle situations differently, but i just... don't feel like i'm an actual system.

for example, i have a 'true self' alter, a school alter, a 'trauma holder' alter, a punk riot-y alter, a 'cringe' alter, and a 'vent' alter.

i feel more aligned with the term Multiple Personality Disorder because that's all we really are, multiple personalities. i feel more like a work in progress, or still developing system, if that makes any sense. i'm also autistic so i was thinking it might just be masking, but it feels deeper than that. i don't really have a headspace that i can go to, they don't communicate as if they were seperate people, and i'm just so confused.

i don't know where i belong or what's wrong with me. we feel like a singlet in the way we work, but i know from other people that this absolutely isn't normal, and that something is very wrong. i have a decent amount of childhood trauma but i don't remember a lot of it, and i also don't remember ever feeling like this when i was younger. also, the trauma is from multiple sources.

i can't get therapy or any sort of treatment because of my parents, so all i've had to work with is a few systems i've met irl, some systems i follow, and a lot of articles about it.

sorry if this is a bit of an infodumpy rant/vent, and also sorry if i'm being an annoyance or you don't know how to help.

i guess the tldr of this is; i feel like a system but like only half a system. my alters don't feel like seperate people, more like different personas. i'm also autistic so maybe it's just masking?

i am grateful for any advice you can give, any labels/terms you can show me, or any websites/resources you would recommend.

also oh my God i'm so sorry this is formatted/spelled/grammar'ed terribly, my brain just can't process how to explain this mess of a situation.

i hope you have a nice day!

-paperbag, they/he.

sorry this took so long to answer!! we were having some in system problems so typing a lot wouldve been hard /nmay

this sounds a lot like experiences ive heard from median systems! i want to preface this post with saying: we are not a median system and can only speak on things we have seen from median terms or things median systems have said. if any median system sees this post please feel free to correct or add things!!

heres the pluralpedia link: https://pluralpedia.org/w/Median but ill talk about it too

there is definitely a change you could be a "wip system" but you saying "half system" and "my alters dont feel like separate people more like different personas" sounds a lot like facets which are the headmates in median systems (though ive seen they are sometimes still called alters/headmates)

the "true self" is very similar to a definitions of "core". we have a core but it applies to our headmate that was here before we were plural. but the definition that relates to what you described is

now about the trauma memories, it is possible for median systems to not share all memories. we have certain memories that aren't shared, related to our trauma, but most of our other memories are shared. memory sharing is a spectrum and doesn't need to just be all memories shared or all memories split.

about the headspace, not all systems have headspaces. there are systems with vivid headspaces, systems with semi-vivid headspaces, systems with headspaces that they can only access when not in front, systems with no headspaces, etc.

about the communication, i unfortunately dont know really anything about how median systems communication works. i know that in general, systems can have a range of communication that goes from completely closed off to completely open.

i apologize if this was a bit overwhleming! im not at all trying to force median systems onto you or anything but i think it would be really good to look into! it definitely is possible that you just feel like you adopt a different personality in different situations, especially with your autism and masking. but if you feel like it is more than masking then i definitely think you should look into system/plural stuff!

Resources: Pluralpedia Plural Oasis Discord - Has a verification process Plural Palace Discord - Has a verification process Resources from @/the-plural-archive Resources from @/plural-culture-is

#asks #plural #multiplicity #median system #mod tubbo #endo safe #tips #experiences #long post

[nightroo]

Here are the last pages of my sketchbook+something im gonna put in the new one

First page is concept art for a future location in my comic. I've been doing a lot of renditions of the same place, because I want to try everything before I put it in the comic, since after that I can't change it.

Next is a random doodle I decided to color with my alcohol markers. Have'nt used those in years, but I wanted to add some color to my sketchbook. It worked suprisingly well on this paper, which makes me a bit sad I didn't try it before lol

After that I made some concept art for a robot in Old Blood. If you follow my sideblog you might've seen my huge lore dump about the robots, but tldr there's now a few types of robots, and this one is the "animalistic" type. Considering I didn't sketch at all, the perspective is actually decent. On the right of that is just me using up the left over paint I had. I always do this because I dont want to waste paint. I never plan anything with them, I just throw paint on the page and see what comes out.

On the last pages I have sketches of fantady creatures inspired by Pliny the Elder's animal descreptions. Most of them dont have a real counterpart, except the scorpion. I used the descreptions, the illustrasions, and the real animals (because a lot of times he would describe stuff like "head of a badger", "legs of a stag" etc). Theres a lot of interesting stuff there. Completly innaccurate, but facinating lmao.

Last pics are of a painting I did on a saparate piece of paper, since I'm not 100% sure of which sketchbook should I use next...

Either way I'm gonna glue it there when I choose. As for what I painted, this is more concept art for the comic / Old Blood. The idea is like a fire forest. I got inspired by the practice of controlled fires in forests, and of trees that take advantage of periodic fires to spread their seeds. I just pushed the idea of a fire dependent forest to the extreme.

Next to it is what I used the leftover paint on. I had a sketchbook I got when I finished highschool from my art major, and the paper there is... kinda bad so I knew I'm not gonna choose this one. It ended up looking pretty cool, and I might use this as concept art as well.

Overall I've been really enjoying messing around with gouache, but now I want to get back to digital, and to the comic. It's been... way too long since I worked on it. And the idea of changing the style of it excites me.

#original art #traditional art #sketchbook #i forgot to mention the paper i painted the fire forest on is like beige #so everything has a nice brown tint to it #but you can also see the difference white paper #wouldve made bc i painted with the leftovers on white #btw the sketchbook i finished was number 7 #i used to draw on loose pieces of paper before 2016 #so i did... 7 sketchbooks in 6 years #considering how much i draw digitally... thats a lot #god i also have all the art i did for my major too..... #i wonder how much paper i actually used #maybe it reaches 1000? #im not gonna even try to do the math lol

[ziptiesnfries]

putting under a readmore bc it got Long, but i decided to ramble a bit about my personal relationship to whump/the whump community/my writing

i'll be real, i was really confused when i first found the whump community. i came here from writeblr, so i was like, "...okay, but why is this a separate community? don't all of us writers already torture our characters?" after a little while it became clear to me that there is a difference, because whump is specifically about the hurt, whereas writeblrs do a lot of things with their characters that don't always involve hurt. but i've been writing very angsty, violent stories since i was a kid, so for me it's all basically the same thing.

and for that reason, i feel like i don't consider most of the things i write to actually be "whump," even if they contain violence or characters getting hurt. i could describe it as whumpy, but for me to consider something i wrote as whump is like ... i wrote it for my whump blog, with the intent/main goal of portraying gratuitous amounts of violence or a specific trope or what have you. and most of the stuff i write doesn't fall into that category. i write a lot of stuff (fun fact: i am a Writing Major), and 99% of it is never posted online, especially on my whump blog, partly due to personal preference but partly because a ton of it is character-driven stuff that doesn't qualify as whump and would probably get like 3 notes on here (if my other character-specific blog is anything to go by, lmao).

it took a long time for me to start an actual dedicated whump blog, separate from my writeblr, and when i did that, i decided to just make new characters that were "my whump ocs." partly that was so that no one could identify me by my ocs (which is something i no longer care about; now all my blogs are cross-contaminated with blorbos from my brains), and partly it was just for organizational purposes. like, i have these characters over here on my writeblr, who i'm writing a novel about, and then i have these other characters on my whumpblr who i'm just messing around with and torturing.

more recently, i've kinda come to realize ... i don't care as much about my whump ocs? like, maybe this has to do with How I Make Characters. they have to age like fine wine; i can't just make up a dude on the fly and expect myself to care about them for more than a few weeks before i lose interest. i don't wanna say that i don't care about the ocs i post about on here At All, but my interest in them definitely comes and goes. this is why i sometimes vent about the frustrations of everyone else really liking my One-Off OC Of The Week - because i have characters that i've put literal years into developing, and they never seem to get as much interest. and like, obligatory disclaimer that obviously i really appreciate it when people like any of my writing! it's very validating! i just have a weird relationship with those oneshots, because usually the characters seem very shallow to me and i'm not actually interested in developing them; it kinda seems like everyone else likes them more than i do 😅

so i guess the TLDR here is i write a lot of stuff outside of what i talk about on my whump blog, so whump occupies a pretty specific niche in my writing-life. and that's also why i go for long stretches of time without posting any writing on this blog. like, i'm always writing something, but 9 times out of 10 it's not particularly suitable for here.

#ziptalks #about the author #i'd be curious to hear if anyone else has a similar experience #but yeah i just have a Particular relationship to all this i guess

[audreydoeskaren]

wait, can you go into detail on hanfu being a modern word?

Sure! From my understanding, the word 汉服 hanfu in the meaning we know it as today was first used in the 1990s, when some nationalist historical costume enthusiasts decided to start a movement to revive "traditional Chinese clothing" (in quotation marks because the definition is kind of vague), giving birth to the Hanfu Movement. "Han" is the majority ethnicity in China, and "fu" just means "clothing", "garb" or "costume", therefore "hanfu" linguistically refers to clothing worn by Han Chinese people.

A common explanation for why they picked the word hanfu was that it was selected from ancient texts describing clothing worn by Han Chinese people. The controversy surrounding this view is that while it is true that the term "hanfu" was used in some historical texts, they were often used in opposition to clothing worn by foreign peoples or 胡服 hufu (literatlly "foreign garb") and not as a standalone term. Kind of like how we humans wouldn't refer to our clothing styles as "Earth clothing" unless we come into contact with alien peoples whose ethnic dress is significantly different to ours. Ok forget about aliens, there's a better analogy. The word "kimono" or 着物 just means "clothing" in Japanese, and it wasn't until Japan came into contact with the West, whose clothing styles were very different, that kimono came to refer to Japanese clothing specifically. If you asked a Chinese person from, say, the 1580s to describe their fashion, they would probably go into detail about whatever garment or style was trendy at the moment and not respond with a simple "I wear hanfu". Whereas if you asked the same person to describe the differences between Chinese fashion and Spanish fashion, they might use the term hanfu. This is not how we use this word today, though.

Another idea I’ve been fascinated by is the theory that hanfu was invented to make a catchy term for historical Chinese clothing comparable to kimono or hanbok. This was probably true to some extent, since there was quite a bit of nationalism among early hanfu enthusiasts and I can see where the need to be “on a par” with Japan and Korea on this matter of representation comes from. A piece of supporting evidence for this claim could be the fact that hanfu uses the word 服 “fu”, which is the same word used in the Chinese terms for kimono 和服 (hefu) and hanbok 韩服 (also spelled hanfu, but the han has a different character and pronunciation), instead of 装 zhuang which was more commonplace prior to the 1990s.

Since the inception of the Hanfu Movement in the 90s, there have been multiple mainstream definitions for the term, and hanfu is a pretty decentralized and leaderless movement nowadays so everybody could attribute to it the meaning they like. Some people considered hanfu to be specifically clothing worn during the Han Dynasty, which isn't a common view anymore. Most people consider it every type of Han Chinese clothing worn from Antiquity to the end of the Ming Dynasty, though some people expand hanfu to include Han clothing of the Yuan or early Qing. Some people consider tv and film costumes which aren’t exactly historically accurate hanfu as well. On a side note, hanfu doesn't appear to be a common word used in academia, where scholars usually just say "historical Chinese clothing", or refer to specific garment styles by name, further adding to the confusion. Nowadays people commonly use hanfu to refer to the community that developed from the 1990s Hanfu Movement and the clothing styles produced and worn by hanfu enthusiasts, and its exact definitions really depend on who you ask. I personally just use it to refer to anything related to the community or Chinese historical clothing pre Qing in general.

Although hanfu styles are drawn from history, the original aim of the Hanfu Movement was to revive traditional Chinese clothing not conserve, making the concept of hanfu a relatively new one. Throughout the Qing and 20th century, people did have an idea of how Han clothing was a unique system different to Manchu or Western dress, but they just went with the flow and let Han clothing do whatever was considered fashionable. Han clothing was more commonly referred to as 汉装 hanzhuang (also “Han garb”) in this period, not hanfu. Clothing styles with a 大襟 dajin or curved front closure which are commonly considered "too Manchu" in modern hanfu discourse, such as changshan, cheongsam, aoqun and aoku, were the poster children for Han clothing for most of the 20th century. When hanfu came along, it challenged this established notion and proposed a different approach to "traditional clothing"----looking for older clothing styles prior to the absorption of Manchu influence. Because most hanfu styles popular nowadays are reproductions made by companies established in the 2010s and not directly passed down to us from older generations, we can't guarantee that they're 100% authentic. This means that hanfu isn't so much as a traditional or conservationist community, but rather a modern, revivalist one. Some people get offended by this notion, which I don't quite understand because it's not a bad thing at all. I'll paraphrase this quote about Gothic Revival architecture I read which also fits the Hanfu Movement quite nicely: "it went in search of origins but came back with originality".

TLDR, the word itself is older, but the use of this term as a standalone word not in opposition to foreign dress is a modern thing. Sorry if this is all a confusing mess, I didn't make the rules😅

#hanfu

[your-dar-ling]

G:L Season 2 Episode 2 Re(Cap/View)

Better than the premiere. Not gonna waste time:

Dri and Roberta

I loved their plot but the slap was a bit much. Dri is great in this episode, and she's pointing out the obvious flaws in her mother's philosophy. Lines like "He's fighting them" just hold so much weight to me. I'm not exactly sure why.

Roberta has a very believable quality to her faith, they all do. She embodies a very common (and annoying) parenting sentiment: The "I'm the parent so my beliefs are ultimately most important" Clause, and its corollary "Fine. You don't have to believe me but here's a ridiculous ultimatum that will either force you under my heel or irreparably alienate us to one another." I think alot of religions play into such a binary system, and I think the Union is most fun when it is finding the commonalities between how religions present higher powers.

Brother Tate

OMG thank God he actually believes in what he's saying. I don't think I could take it if "The Flow" had no merit to it at all. I'm sick of stories that present the "religious option" as just crazy people. Now is it a death cult? Yea, kinda. But there's no self-serving motives. Unlike the Polity, who is legit just making things up, the Union actually thinks they are humanity's salvation. The truth in that is....well it's unclear. And I appreciate that the show doesn't jump directly to the villainization of the Omnifaith.

Chase

Thematically Chase being the cornerstone of the Union is SO good. Julius Caesar, Jesus, I mean Brother Tate's speech at the end perfectly summed it up. Chase's idea of heroism is filtered through his suffering, and the horrifying revelation is that without death, there is always more of himself to lose. The truest of horrors of war stories.

However Chase lacked the emotional depth he needed in this episode. MBJ does a phenomenal job voice acting him for the most part, he shows a remarkable amount of emotion. But the way the show implements it feels uncanny somehow. I can't exactly describe it but the editing is off.

Yaz

I find it very gripping how the Union converts her through breaking her. It's honestly kinda sucky that the nature of the Union -- and many (especially Abrahamic) religions, too -- presents itself as the one and only option. It's such a morbid and cynical servitude. No one is actually concerned about convincing her, they just keep guilting her until submission. And when she finally gives up? The flow keeps her alive? I don't quite know. But yea this recontextualizes alot of her behavior in Season 1 in a positive way (narratively speaking of course. I don't feel good about it).

I don't think the show is in a place to explore this, but I appreciate the irony in the "you have no proof of the afterlife" line from a person of (presumably) Muslim faith. It may have been an oversight, but it's one I feel is thematically appropriate.

(I think it would have been more interesting if she did believe in the Omnifaith itself, but not as literally as the suicide pact demanded by it's organized religion. But I digress.)

Polity

Nice save on Marin, there guys lol. It's too late, I already think she's a bad guy.

I think one thing that makes this show so viscerally unsettling sometimes is its sheer willingness to connect itself to modern day Earth. When I heard that the Polity was a rebranded (and equally useless) UN I legitimately buffered for a moment. How horrifying. How likely. It's almost as if G:L the show itself is prophetic of what is to come. Speculative fiction at this point is just a reality that hasn't happened yet. And from that standpoint, I'm with Chase. I'm scared.

TLDR: The Union is some AMAZING world building. This G:L crew is truly making the best of this mess of a production that they can, and I appreciate that.

Final Score: 7/10

P.S.: IM PUTTING WARNER IN THE DEATH NOTE for messing with reaction videos. RT (the company) is also pretty damn close to filling the blank space. Like are you serious???

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