#and now both of those names have VASTLY different meanings to me
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whats the song named amity u mentioned? the one the singer compares amity to hello kitty?
song is amity by elliott smith
youtube
#eliot posts#it's not one of my fav songs (tho it gets stuck in my head sometimes)#but the lyrics were too much of a funny coincidence to NOT mention#sidenote#as a kid we drove through a town called amity sometimes#(my mom always pointed at the road sign and said ''it's like amityville horror!'' so it kinda stuck in my memory)#and i ended up naming ny animal crossing town after it bc it was like the only town name i remembered how to spell...#and then a couple years later i named a different animal crossing town ''corona''#bc i heard the word in a science textbook abt the sun's corona and how it also meant crown and i thought it was a cool word#and now both of those names have VASTLY different meanings to me
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Why you don't like Galadriel?
WELL. I mean this would need a complex answer, for one thing because you could say I don't actually dislike Galadriel as a character really. She's interesting, she has layers, her position in the story creates intriguing mysteries and insights into elven realities and her actions are always percieved in multiple different ways by different characters. She is both an object of world building and a lense to view it through, she had only contempt for Feanor but is the character MOST like him in the end, there's lots going on!
So as usual what I'd say I dislike is more fandom's perception of Galadriel than Galadriel herself, although don't get me wrong in terms of sympathy for her I have none to spare. But to the fandom she's like... well she's whatever anyone wants her to be, so long as that's pretty much perfect and always more right than anyone else around her. Idk if this question came because of my RoP Galadriel tirade post of a week ago, but the fact that people seem to believe Galadriel's right to the 'good guy' role is so irrefutible that it makes any negative portrayal of her 'bad' and 'tolkien's rolling in his grave' etc etc- it's just flabbergasting to me and is a symptom of this problem.
Like Galadriel's entire motive for coming to middle earth, declared and narrated, is to rule over people. She wants to be a Queen of a land that she controls with people inside it whom she has power over. That's it. Now, far be it from me to be on the Valar's side, lord knows I don't support their right to unquestioned rule either and the Eldar's urge to rule themselves is completely valid and Galadriel's no worse than any of her male counterparts who were also looking for the same thing. (In fact, given this is something she is apparently required to 'overcome' when none of those male elves must do the same, I'm inclined to believe this is another of those 'eowyn must reject violence for peace because war is bad except when men do it and for sure the men do continue to do it that's fine' misogynist tolkien moments.)
BUT STILL.. that's not like... a GOOD motive is it? It's neutral at best, right? And Galadriel never actually does anything that could be called more than polite for the rest of the time we know her. She never risks anything for the good of middle earth, she never solves any problems, she goes from place to place to avoid any conflict that threatens her until she and her husband finally decide to usurp a Silvan kingdom and magically isolate it from the rest of the world. They change Lindórinand's name to Lothlorien, thereby overwriting the language of it's native population and Galadriel then uses the power of her ring (that was given to her she didn't make it heself) to EMBALM (tolkien's words) the forest in time just so that she could make it appear as much like Valinor (her home, not the silvan's) as possible. Like!! This is not some paragon of virtue character!
Honestly RoP's portrayal of Galadriel is actually vastly more sympathetic than her actual character. PTSD, survivor's guilt and the maladaptive cope of needing to hunt down evil fanatically for all eternity is, to my mind, 100% more understandable than just... staying in Middle-Earth because she still wanted to rule over people and never believed she did anything wrong in the first place. Which is the canonical reason she's still in middle-earth post the first age, technically a sin by the Valar's standards! Galadriel is rebelling against the will of the west in doing this, but apparently SHE gets all the grace and chances to 'reform' in the world, unlike some other characters I could name >:|
... Maybe she aggravates me a little, but she does so IN COMPARISON to the criticisms other characters must bear as 'the reason they had to die to redeem themselves'. Like if Boromir wanted to take the ring once in order to save his people, is death really the only way to atone for that when Galadriel has been power hungry for 7000 goddamn years nonstop, acquired and used her own ring of power to satisfy that power hunger and then managed to 'overcome it' at the very last minute JUST before middle-earth became 'less elven' (and therefore her position there would be less prestigeous) to demurely sail off home to a gilded cage paradise where literally all her family are alive and waiting for her. Like is 'power hunger' really the sin Boromir comitted here that he needs to die for. Is Tolkien really criticising the desire for power. Is the narrative of lotr really so cohesive and consistent as to allow you to put all the characters into good and bad little boxes and declare those categorisations infallible?
Am I making sense, is this coherent. Does it make more sense if I say like... I do not dislike Galadriel as a character, I dislike what her fandom-reputation reveals about the way the story is engaged with by and large? When I am getting heated about this or that misconception or aspect of her character, it is not because I hate she has that aspect, I like a lot of morally questionable characters, what I am railing against is the double standard that her having that trait reveals. (And I'm not even really angry about it I'm more just very activated by what it reveals about the story, like it makes me feral) The narrative loves Galadriel, Tolkien loves Galadriel, characters regularly threaten violence in order to defend Galadriel from even mild verbal criticism and no one appears to see this as a kind of ominous aspect of her when she's done very little to deserve it. Other than, of course, be ontologically 'pure' and 'divine' due entirely to the circumstances of her birth. I'm a bit manic right now so I hope literally any of that made sense.
Actually addendum example just to further affirm my point. So catholic tolkien scholars will tell you that Denethor's use of the Palantir was a sin, apparently even using a tool you have 'the right' to use to observe reality as it actually exists and then extrapolating that observation into a prediction of the future (ie seeing frodo is captured and the ring gone and extrapolating that the enemy has it and you're all doomed) is a sin. Because only god is allowed to see into the future. And this is somewhat backed up by the way characters treat Denethor's use of the Palantir, it was apparently foolhardy and bad and reckless and nebulously wrong etc. Remember, the Palantir is not a mystical artifact, it is like a satallite imaging tool + a one way video only skype.
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Galadriel's mirror literally sees the future 😂LIKE? WHY DOES SHE HAVE IT? WHY IS SHE ALLOWED TO USE IT? WHY CAN SHE JUST SHOW IT TO OTHER PEOPLE? It's because she's holy!! But that doesn't mean anything about her actual character, it's just an attribute she inherited from her family and her place of birth that actively changes what her existence means entirely by it's own virtue. Imagine living in this world for a second, imagine if it was ontologically true that you (an unblessed child of eru) would never be as right or as good as Galadriel, no matter what the reality of both your actions were. LIKE. !! WOULD YOU LIKE GALADRIEL?
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there is evil on both sides of the fandom and while it's mostly on twitter and tiktok, they do seem to be making accounts here too. it's so important to call them out/block and report, so this behavior doesn't seem acceptable to anyone else. it's not the majority of people and I pray the creators/actors know that!
not to be that person but while I have a lot of people blocked and muted on both sides... I have to say the bt fans a mostly just being childish, throwing around stupid nicknames (like, seriously guys, stop calling people bobs, it's pathetic and very kindergarten) and adding their unsolicited opinions as if they are facts onto posts about how Eddie will never be queer (cuz they live in the writers room, apparently) and wanting Eddie to die so bt can take Chris (suuuper weird and has rather racist connotations if you ask me)
but the buddie side is sending death threats to LI actors and has been for years, constantly posting about how Tommy needs to die and be stoned and shot and tagging Lou in those posts, sending anon hate and death threats to bt fans here and on twitter, sending yet again death threats to Tim over a deleted scene and stalking Lou's social media obsessively, calling bt fans names that are less than pc, dogpiling poc for liking the character because that's somehow morally acceptable and also breaking into discord servers and now possibly hacking an actual actor's twitter account?
I feel like both sides have issues, but the severity and real life impacts of those issues are vastly different...
and my main heartbreak comes from the fact that while I can block and mute all these people and stay in my bubble... that won't make them disappear and though I hope people on the show only see love and praise for their hard work, there is always a chance for them to see the most vile things and nothing is stopping that.
I mean, just imagine being a barrista and getting death threats by moccha lovers for serving black coffee for someone else?? because at the end of the day, this is how stupid this whole thing is.
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Hey I'm doing some fanlore edits (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Daomu_Biji) and do you have any sources for popular ships in Chinese fandom? I basically just cut it down to pingxie and heihua because those were the ones showing up in 2021 lofter data (https://hardwareabstractionlayer.tumblr.com/post/649989752761810944/the-top-100-ships-in-chinese-fandom-according-to) and like basically ONLY pingxie is on ao3 in any numbers but I'm pretty sure HuaXie was a whole big thing I just can't find a source for it... Thanks in advance!
hi! i don't know if i'm necessarily the best person to answer this question because my incursions into the chinese DMBJ fandom are very curated and basically mostly limited to pingxie spaces, so my knowledge of other ships and their hubs is pretty sparse
that being said, finding centralized hubs to get full numbers and stats from for dmbj ships historically in the chinese fandom is complicated for a number of reasons, one of them being that DMBJ is an older fandom, which means a number of fics were hosted on websites and forums that no longer exist. another is that due to the state of chinese internet, fans also host fics and fan art of ships in closed access forums that are sometimes more or less difficult to gain entry to so as to create safe spaces. that being said, there are still ways to somewhat measure the current popularity of a ship. since this is an ask, i figured i'd turn this into a small informative post if anyone is interested in a surface level overview of what's popular in the chinese fandom by comparison to the english-speaking one. just keep in mind that because of all the above reasons, this is only ever going to be an overview of what's currently popular in general and not everything that exists, because arguably probably everything exists in some capacity, and of course this is all very surface level, so i'm sure someone else could do a more in-depth deep dive, especially if they get around more
disclaimer: because i know some might take this the wrong way, to be clear this is NOT meant to spark any kind of discourse surrounding ships, nor is it here to say that some ships are "better" than others. it's purely numbers i've tried to present as objectively as possible, mostly to provide comparison between two different sides of the fandom that behave differently and have sometimes vastly differing preferences
Chinese DMBJ Fandom Ship Popularity
to start off, i think it's relevant to point out that ao3 isn't the best way to measure a ship's popularity in chinese fandoms even if it can give you a rough idea. it can get you rankings to some extent (and even then it really depends), but the numbers aren't going to be at all accurate considering ao3 isn't the platform of choice for chinese fan fiction for several reasons i won't get into here, but that i'm sure people who've been in cdrama/novel fandoms are probably aware of
so your best bet to get any sort of idea of what ships are most popular is by looking at how they rank on big public platforms, namely lofter and weibo
lofter has yearly rankings like the one OP mentioned that people talk about, and it's a fairly good way to get an idea since it's a pretty popular blogging website for fan fics and fan art. lofter isn't cooperating with me right now, but i'll be using the data compiled for end of 2023 (or as of february 2024) by this bilibili video for the 200 most popular ships on lofter. among those 200 most popular ships, 3 of them are DMBJ ships, and are ranked as follows:
XiePing (not to be confused with PingXie, because yes, chinese fandom differentiates ships by top/bottom dynamic) at #120
HeiHua at #25
PingXie at #2
no other DMBJ ships make an appearance on this list, and if nothing else, it tells you not only that both PingXie and HeiHua are by far the most popular DMBJ ships in general, but also gives you an idea of just how insanely popular DMBJ is in china overall to have three ships in the top of a general fandoms ranking
next we have weibo where getting an idea of a ship's popularity is a bit different, and there are multiple ways to do it, but one of the easiest ones to get an idea is by looking at how high a ship's super topic ranks on both the real time and weekly popularity rankings. super topics function similarly to how communities work on X and aren't tags, so not everything tagged with a ship is necessarily going to reflect what's posted in the super topic and vice-versa, but it still gives something of an idea of overall popularity. looking at the today's super topic ranking in the fictional characters category, again the same two ships show up in the rankings:
HeiHua at #23
PingXie at #5
for the sake of comparison, because it's easier to actually see figures with weibo super topics, i also looked up both other ships that do get some traction in the chinese fandom despite being less popular, as well as ships that the english-speaking fandom tends to talk more actively about (in tumblr spaces anyway)
HuaXie at #174, which has an audience, but the numbers are already very different and speak to the fact it's generally speaking a smaller ship as of now (for reference, 万 that you see on these pictures is a unit for ten thousand, so here 1.1 万= 11,000)
HeiPing (unranked), which is in somewhat of a similar situation as HuaXie, but considering HuaXie is ranked, it's safe to say that's probably the only other ship that's even remotely popular by comparison to the two giants that are PingXie and HeiHua
allXie at #160, which is less a ship and more of a bottom!wu xie enjoyers cocktail that has a little bit of everything under the sun, though is mostly a mix of wu xie being shipped with some of the main male characters (i.e. xiaoge, hei xiazi, xiao hua) as well as other more minor characters such as zhang haike notably. it's not really a thing in the english-speaking fandom, but it's worth mentioning because it does exist enough to be represented
PangXie (unranked), which is quite honestly one of the bigger contrasts between the chinese fandom and the english-speaking one in that this ship is pretty much non-existant, or at least i've never seen fan fiction for it. again, my view of things is biased because my experience is deliberately curated so it's entirely possible there are things i just don't see, but the numbers don't seem to contradict that impression
PangYun (unranked), which i'm providing here mostly because pangzi is most often shipped with yuncai (and usually as a sideship that i can tell), though these numbers aren't necessarily representative of what content exists for this ship, since most things tagged as PangYun are posted to the general DMBJ super topic. if anything this mostly gives the impression the ship doesn't have much of a dedicated following, especially given it's part of the other category rather than the fictional characters category
PingSang (unranked), which is one of the only two ships that have any kind of following that involve liu sang, is also in the other category, and along with PangXie and his other most notable ship, is most definitely a rarepair, which is another notable difference with part of the english-speaking fandom where liu sang ships tend to be both fairly popular and have active communities
CanSang (unranked), which is in yet another category (CP as in couple as in ship), though this one's rarepair status might be explained by the fact that, if you couldn't already tell, the chinese fandom has little to zero interest in secondary or minor characters, and beyond that, the core of the chinese DMBJ fandom doesn't care much for the dramas/live action adaptations and is largely centered around the books, so given the premise of this ship is based in the adaptations, it's not surprising
Iron Triangle at #65 is getting a special mention, not only because it is ranked, but also because it's not necessarily what you think. the 角色 or fictional characters category for super topics isn't limited to ships, so you also have super topics for characters on their own in it. what chinese fandom considers to be the six main DMBJ characters, aka wu xie, xiaoge, pangzi, xiao hua, hei xiazi, and huo xiuxiu, each have their own super topics that are in the top 200. the iron triangle topic is ranked, but it's more in the same vein as those, that is to say it's a gen super topic, not a ship super topic. the chinese fandom doesn't seem to be into polyships in general, so that might explain it
i'm not sure how informative this post is, since i get the feeling some of this information is either obvious or things that people already know more or less, and i'm also not sure it really answers OP's question about finding reliable sources for numbers, but it's a surface level attempt. if anyone has more in-dept knowledge or would like to add onto this with different sources or data feel free to!
#dmbj#daomu biji#盗墓笔记#ships#fandom culture#i'm not really sure how to even tag this#ship popularity stats#?
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Priority Research 7 Predictions - Northern Parliament
Hoo boy, let's get this one over with. This one is going to be a long, long post.
As established in the Dragon Empery post, I will attempt to predict their possible skills as well based on their World of Warships gimmicks.
The thing is, the Soviet navy has a lot of made-up warships in World of Warships.
Let's begin with cruisers, since they're gonna take the longest to get through. There is a chance some of these ships end up being gacha units in the future, though; although with different names.
Pyotr Bagration
Pyotr Bagration is a Tier 8... cruiser. With 180mm guns, she classifies as a light cruiser; however, her 180mm guns have insane ballistics that make them hit harder than a lot of other heavy cruisers, even Tallinn.
Bagration is based off of Project 65, specifically one of the largest draft for Project 65, which is equipped with 3 triple 180mm gun turrets and a 15k ton displacement.
Unlike basically every Soviet cruiser from Tier 8 and above, she does not have access to radar. Her speed is high, but her general maneuverability isn't that good. I genuinely can't figure out a skill for her, but she's an option for a PR.
Ochakov
I like comparing Ochakov to Mainz in terms of performance. Ochakov is a light cruiser equipped with fast-firing 152mm guns in dual turrets. Compared to Mainz, she has worse armor, worse alpha damage, and worse DPM; but has an overall better AA and access to radar. Also, in WoWs, I think Ochakov is prettier. Not applicable in Azur Lane of course.
Her skills could involve something related to her fire rate, allowing her to fire faster; or a skill that allows her to detect all enemies and make them more susceptible to damage. Or something.
Dmitri Donskoi
Alright, I don't have much to say about Donskoi. She's literally a bigger Pyotr Bagration; she gets access to radar and a fourth triple 180mm turret with slightly worse reload (12.5s for Donskoi and 11s for Bagration). As a Tier 9 ship, she naturally has more health than her predecessors.
Both Donskoi and Bagration are equally as likely, and both are PR material.
Riga
Not only does she have a cool name (Riga seems like a very pretty city), she's also an interesting ship. Her alpha damage ('alpha damage' being the damage she can dish out in one salvo) is brutal with nine 220mm guns, although her turret traverse time resembles more a battleship than a cruiser (32.7 seconds to turn 180º. Soyuz's gigantic 406mm turrets are faster at 30s for 180º).
Riga is not very stealthy, nor very maneuvrable. However, she is a bit of a grandmother to the Stalingrad, which we'll see below in a second.
Riga's gimmick in AL could make her do vastly improved damage with AP guns, or make her outright ignore stuff like medium armor. If that's too broken for AL or not is above me. Both Riga and Donskoi could be PRs, tho.
Alexander Nevsky
Now onto the three possible DR cruisers.
Nevsky is a unique HE spammer. HE spamming is, as the name implies, spamming High Explosive; a tactic many kinds of ship can perform very effectively (Harbin, for example, is a dedicated HE spammer in WoWs). However, Nevsky trades damage per minute for alpha damage.
Her reload of 6 seconds is not bad at all, however, much better ships exist for the task - Jinan's reload is 3.5 seconds, and she has 4 more guns. However, Jinan has weak, pathetic, American 127mm guns; while Nevsky has glorious, patriotic Soviet 180mm guns. These eight 180mm guns are considerably better than those found on Tallinn, Bagration or Donskoi.
To top it all off, she has access to the usual convo of radar + hydroacoustic search, meaning she can find you no matter what.
Her skills could involve a much improved damage output or fire chance for HE guns, and a skill that allows her to instantly detect submarines the moment they appear, or similar. DR material.
Petropavlovsk
There was some controversy the moment Petropavlovsk was introduced as a replacement for the previous Tier 10 heavy cruiser (Moskva), as both ships share the same gun calliber of 220mm, but Petropavlovsk's shells do almost as much damage and have almost the same penetration values as Bismarck.
Bismarck is not the best Tier 8 battleship, of course. But Bismarck is a battleship, Petropavlovsk is a cruiser. And her reload of 14 seconds means this cruiser that has 1 more gun than Bismarck and almost the same values as Bismarck could have almost twice the damage per minute of poor old Bismarck (Bismarck's reload is 26 seconds).
That should tell you a lot already.
Petropavlovsk is a "heavy cruiser", the same way Ägir or Alaska are "heavy cruisers". Her guns are insane, and the ship has a very good armor scheme as well. Since she sits so low above the water, it's harder to hit her from a distance - your shells will hit the waves before they touch her hull, losing momentum. She's fast too, although her concealment is... well, she can be seen from 16.3km away (base values). Kremlin (remember that name) can be seen from 16.5km, and she's considerably bigger than Petropavlovsk.
Stalingrad
Known as 'Battlecruiser Stalingrad' by the WoWs community, Stalingrad is a Tier 10 Soviet heavy cruiser armed with nine 305mm guns.
They're legitimately one of the best 305mm guns in the whole game. Mecklenburg, a German Tier 10 battleship with sixteen 305mm guns, deals considerably less damage per gun than Stalingrad.
Typical of Soviet heavy cruisers, Stalingrad's high explosive is pathetic while her armor piercing is beyond excellent. Stalin himself guides each projectile with an unnatural accuracy, his hand reaching from beyond the grave to ensure Stalingrad's shells land on the target.
Stalingrad could be a large cruiser meant to spam AP, dealing raw damage to anyone that crosses her path. All her skills could be self-buffs, as the ship is very egocentric in WoWs.
Borodino
Now onto the battleships. There's only 3 so this should be quick.
Borodino is a weird design. Vodka was involved.
She takes the Richelieu approach of only having front-facing turrets. Borodino is equipped with two triple 406mm gun turrets, the same one found on the Sovetsky-Soyuz class. They are above average in terms of accuracy, earning her the nickname of "tier 8 Stalingrad". In my own personal experience, they're very (literally) hit or miss.
Borodino has a radar, though. That's unique among battleships, with only 2 other ones having radar to the best of my knowledge (Missouri and Constellation).
Borodino is a tank. She is best played around islands, bow-in. Her small superstructure and large, well protected bow, as well as front-facing turrets; means Borodino is perfect for bow tanking at Tier 8.
She's PR material for sure, but she could be an interesting PR.
Navarin
I'm torn about Navarin.
On the one hand, Navarin could easily be DR material. She's unique among all Soviet warships in WoWs, no other ship in the entire nation sharing her gimmick even remotely. There are two Italian battleships and two Italian cruisers that excell at secondary gun warfare; France has at least 2 ships, the US Navy has West Virginia '44, Massachussetts, Georgia and Ohio. Japan has Iwami, Shikishima and Kii. But the Soviet Union? Their only ship that's good at secondary guns is Navarin.
Besides, look at her design. She's old! Her design began in 1914; the Soviet Union wasn't even a thing back then. This monstrosity has three quadruple 406mm guns with rifles that aren't bad at all, as well as a wall of 130mm secondary guns on each side. She even has casemate guns, at Tier 9! She fights against modern warships such as Iowa, Swedish post-war destroyers, and aircraft carriers with jet planes. Granny needs DR status.
But yes, her gimmick in WoWs is that - just like Friedrich der Grosse, Prinz Rupprecht or Odin; she's a secondary gun brawler. She's meant to get close to the enemy and blast her 17 130mm guns per side, and 12 406mm guns, at 10km or less. And yes, this girl is covered in guns.
Kremlin
I don't lose anything by mentioning her.
With the introduction of gacha UR Sovetsky Soyuz, DR Kremlin is unlikely. Well, so was Hindenburg.
Kremlin is the epitome of Soviet battleships. Extremely tanky when bow-in, vulnerable when broadside, big guns that do big damage but have unreliable accuracy. I love her. Kremlin is a big, slow, slumbering warship that still somehow manages to have a 29 second reload on her monstrous 457mm guns.
Her skills would represent this sheer damage potential, maybe allowing a skill that redirects the damage the vanguard takes into a shield she generates - like a much, much better Illustrious.
Admiral Nakhimov
Finally, we have another aircraft carrier.
Nakhimov is different enough from Chkalov, as well as being a Tier 10 while Chkalov is Tier 8.
Nakhimov shares the same gameplay as the other Soviet CVs - big number of planes in a single squadron. Her torpedo bombers consist of a flight of 7 planes, each one dropping a torpedo, all at the same time. She fires a total of 32 rockets from her 8 attack aircraft, all at the same time. She drops 7 powerful bombs with her skip bombers.
That's right, Nakhimov doesn't have dive bombers. She is equipped with skip bombers, which are bombers that drop their payload in such a way that it bounces on the water like a rock until it hits the enemy. Yes, those things existed in real life.
Nakhimov could be an extremely versatile and hyper-aggressive DR CV, capable of taking on all sorts of enemies.
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hi! im curious how u feel about. Kaiba's ending in dsod as a devout kaiba fan
bc quite a few ppl ik *arent* rlly big on it for reasons that include but arent limited to "it ruins the message of letting the dead go and moving on like Yugi did" and etc which i dont agree with for sm reasons but im curious abt ur thoughts on the matter too 😭
Hello.
I’ve talked about DSoD and DSoD’s ending quite a bit over the years. I've come to understand the ending of DSoD to be layered on several levels, and it actually tackles several themes in the original work from different angles at the same time, and I think trying to force the ending into one neat "this is what definitely happened" box stifles that complexity. It’s deliberately open to interpretation. I also want to make room for fans who do not like DSoD. We have our preferences and individual concepts we value from canon, and carry personal experiences we relate to canon in different ways. Please understand to those reading this that it’s alright to omit this film from your internal design of canon.
I can talk some about my own relationship and journey with DSoD. I’ve loved Yu-Gi-Oh! for a long time. I watched the show as it aired and read the manga as it was released within the United States. One of my parents died when I was young. At the time I felt very disconnected from both that event and from the other people in my household. We never talked about our feelings and I was always vastly terrible at interpreting my own emotions and behaviors. The further catch here is we were seeing a grief therapist some, and I’d been in and out of therapy for a while before that as well. I just could not parse out any feelings at all and I didn’t know how to talk to other people about things. I was disconnected from it all. We flash forward to the release of DSoD. And to my surprise, something I didn’t expect from myself, I was talking to people. I was talking about what grief looked like even if a person wasn’t labeling it. I was talking about how sometimes we can’t name what we’re feeling. What I saw in DSoD were people grieving and I understood this. And I was communicating my ideas and emotions that had been so foggy up until then. I suppose this is the strange power of an autistic interest paired with personal experience – and I was actually trying to talk about feelings and trying to bond with other people.
And I was truly pondering on and reflecting -- not on a subconscious level but on a fully conscious one now -- on the loneliness and struggles the other people in my household had felt back then too. There had been a suicide attempt at a certain point which was something I had refused to let myself think about but I was now thinking about that too.
I like stories about the experience of grief over stories that are PSAs about grief. It was going to take a grief story with teeth and bite to awaken this piece of me, not a cutesy PSA on grieving. For me, it can feel like fandom at times has this idea that everyone has it in them to just talk about their feelings and reach out and that everyone has that, and that is just not true at all. (What a further surprise to me to discover later on why I was also drawn to elements of Death-T back then, back while I still felt so disconnected from “the experience of death.”)
I’m especially drawn to and touched by Seto’s narrative, but I think Yugi’s own story in DSoD harbors this as well. As I read this line, “it ruins the message of letting the dead go and moving on like Yugi did,” I think of how I feel the story was also about Yugi accepting that it’s okay for him to draw from the strength Atem gave to him and to feel inspired by Atem even though Atem is “gone” and that this is the meaning of why Atem joined Yugi in battle in that grand final showdown in DSoD.
As I said, there is the potential of multiple layered interpretations inside the film’s ending. There’s the theme of the power of friendship and love being able to break through the universe, that friendship can be so meaningful the barriers surrounding us can’t stop those feelings. It is love as a powerful force and Seto -- who had rejected others and feelings for so long, who has felt so disconnected from everything but those brief burning moments of winning -- has embraced love and what Atem meant to him. There is the hyperfictionalized portrayal of grief and its forms like emotions as art, and how grief stays with us but evolves and matures: Death-T as angry scarred grief and the negative impacts of the departed “villain” on the living “villain”, the Ceremonial Duel as the acceptance of grief and the positive impacts left by the departed “hero” on the living “hero”, and DSoD as finally seeing and understanding the departed one as just a person just as you are a person. And grief is a permanent marker on us. It doesn’t really go away. There’s the metaphorical portrayal of closure for the survivor finally being able to say goodbye to the one they love, to see that person outside of their grief for who they are and it’s painted in an artful and literal way, and it gives Seto the tools to move forward in life carrying Atem inside his heart. And there’s the wonder of science fiction as technology and humanity and the soul are fused. Our voices and images travel across the world through technology in our reality – could it travel even further? What are human beings capable of? And it’s about Atem still possibly being savable from this place, that death wasn’t his answer because people care about him. Someone wanted to see him this badly. There is no duel, no words we see exchanged, because this gesture already says everything. Seto being here to see Atem says everything.
It’s also a possible commentary on how scars don’t go away and sometimes we can’t save someone. Sometimes someone isn’t able to break free of their ghosts and it’s possible to wish peace for that person or to be left scarred by them or both at the same time. People can be warped by their trauma and not overcome it because it’s a hard hard road to walk. To only harbor any sympathy for the survivors who are healthy, cute, and palatable belies a very conditional idea of compassion. This isn’t to say the harm isn’t real or that people don’t need to be accountable for their actions, but they are human beings who have struggled and struggled. The wounds of trauma are not shallow and healing can be hard. Seto is only 18-years-old in DSoD.
Death and love are weaved throughout Seto’s entire story in canon.
While I understand what people mean as they say “Seto needs to face the consequences of his actions and should have a strain with Mokuba," when it’s employed as a critique of the movie, I also feel very strange and think, "That's just the way grief is. Or rather how it can be and how it is for a number of people.” As I said, my own family was horrible about any talking about our feelings in the wake of grief and then that suicide attempt. There was no PSA-type talk between us. For me, the mess of DSoD comes across as real even if it’s an exaggerated presentation.
I’ve also had very dark periods in my life, terrified of having no one understand me ever again, and this also grounds me into how Seto’s head and heart may have been working. I didn’t know how to talk to people about emotions, including my family even though I loved them, and everything felt dark and like I was endlessly sinking.
And I had a moment of truly understanding how profoundly alone my father must have felt when my mother died, as my father was just as friendless as I was and didn’t have outside family to help at all.
I had felt I was incapable of connecting with other people and I felt I saw that trait within Seto, and so watching canon tell me “the bond between Seto and Atem is real, it meant something” was very very moving for me. Even if you don’t know how to talk, you can find connection through what you do understand.
I do think it’s quite understandable for people to feel put off by DSoD and its ending. I think it’s quite fair that people root for Seto and Mokuba together and that they’ve hoped for a journey of healing. People become upset on Mokuba’s behalf. I personally connect with the messiness of grief and Seto’s conflicted heart and the artful and challenging portrayal of a person spilling over in grief. I do personally hold interpretations of Seto returning, so my answer here is also shaded by that. Even on Mokuba’s side, I’ve sort of been there and it allowed me to talk about that experience which isn’t an experience many people talk about. It’s very hush-hush in our day-to-day lives and it’s not easy to talk about.
Does DSoD reward Seto’s self-destructive behavior too much? I would say I’m not here for moral lessons and life is full of so many contradictions, so many tangled complicated layered emotions. It’s fair to hold this as a personal gripe with DSoD, but given the amount of audience backlash and discussion over this ending I don’t personally feel it’s actually a fully rewarding message. It’s more layered and thematic than that to me.
For a film for a big money-making mainstream shonen franchise, DSoD is unusually arty.
Again, people have their own experiences and people need different things from art. Someone else will carry a different relationship to DSoD, and someone else may need different things to come to terms with grief.
Thank you for the ask. I hope this answer wasn’t too wordy. I think it’s good to form your own opinions too. Thank you for reading my rambling.
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Hello! I was recently watching The Last Kingdom and the Danish practice of holmgang, dueling until death or first blood to settle disputes, reminded me of dwarven customs. In the show, the duel would be initiated by the phrase “make the square”/“form the square.” I was wondering how you would translate the holmgang and the initiation phrase in Khuzdul, or if there was a similar practice already known amongst dwarrows. Thank you!
Well met!
Thank you for that very interesting question indeed.
Before we go into depth on the details of this practice, perhaps we should first of all cover what exactly it is.
Firstly, holmgang is not a specifically Danish practice. Though unclear where the original practice exactly comes form, it is clear that is was practiced across all the Old Norse homelands (apart from Denmark, also Norway, Sweden, various North-sea Islands, areas of the present Baltic and Iceland). Known as "holmganga" in Old Norse ("hólmganga" in modern Icelandic, "holmgång" in Swedish and indeed "holmgang" in Danish and Norwegian).
In essence, holmganga was a legally recognized way to settle disputes in the form of a duel. Simplistically put, anyone aggrieved, insulted or offended could challenge the other party to holmganga to reclaim their honor. It is a common misconception that holmganga was always a duel to the death; though it could be, it very seldom was. Historically holmganga practices changed over time, where duels to the death were perhaps more frequent at first and later on were almost never seen anymore (and settled in another manner, yet still called holmganga). Eventually, the practice of holmganga was outlawed, as professional duelists started to emerge, who took advantage of the holmganga rules to legally rob someone's land, property - and even wife.
The legendary hólmganga between Egill Skallagrímsson and Berg-Önundr, painted by Johannes Flintoe.
As for the specific rules of the practice itself, every place had a different sets of rules. Before the duel began, the duelists would commonly agree upon the exact rules (any weapons allowed, number of shields, who could strike first, what the winner could receive, when a win would be declared, etc...) Meaning that the final result could vastly vary, from death to simple financial compensation.
Holmganga was commonly decided within a square or round area, at times referred to as an island (Holmganga literally meaning "island walking") Combatants had to fight inside these "island borders", stepping out of borders meant forfeiture. The shout you mentioned "form the square" could thus have been possible.
Now, how does this relate to Dwarves? Many often have the urge to directly align Old Norse customs with those of the Dwarves. After all, Tolkien himself used Old Norse names as outer names for Dwarves, he used Old Norse runes as the base for their scripts and even their language (though Semitic in nature) clearly has taken inspiration from Old Norse too (an example "gamil" in Khuzdul and "gamall" in Old Norse - both meaning "old") - to name but a few similarities - so we can't blame folks for going further down that path. Apart form the Old Norse influence, Dwarves however also have a Jewish "layer" in Tolkien's works, clearly inspired by both these cultures for a variety to things. So, to determined whether it is likely that Dwarves had practices similar to Holmganga we would need to see if such duels were also common practice among the Jewish people.
Perhaps surprisingly, they were common practice (at least in antiquity - or so say the scriptures) and even were similar in form (right down to the prior negotiation, the combat, and possible outcome). So, yes, I deem it very likely that a practice like Holmganga would have existed among the Dwarves - seeing that the two cultures Tolkien used to base them on both had very similar dueling practices (though, it must be said that in Hebraic antiquity duels between small groups of men were often more common).
Joab Slays Abner "and he strikes him there through the groin".- Book of Second Samuel chapter 3:27.
Tolkien made no mention of such dwarf vs dwarf duels unfortunately (though duels themselves were common place in his lore), meaning we'll have to base ourselves on what we've covered so far and assume a similar practice was indeed in place. Keeping the naming of such a practice straightforward (and open to some deviation) I would suggest "'Akrâg-itsêl" (simply meaning "the act of settling honour")
Translating "form the square!", would be:
"imhi ibal!" (lit. "create (the) square")
Furthermore, the Dwarvish love for a good contract might have even seen the parties agree the rules in written fashion first, ensuring no arguments could ensue after the duel (and family members would be taken care of, etc...)
DnD dwarves in a gladitorial duel, Concept art by James Gurney
Hoping to have answered your question.
Ever at your service,
The Dwarrow Scholar
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20 questions writer meme!
I wa tagged by my beloved @bananakarenina <3
1. How many works do you have on AO3? In total across 5 fandoms, 124, 84 of those are JatP, and 5 of those are prompt fill compilations.
2. What's your total AO3 word count? 1,674,136 uploaded as of right now, and I know that over 1 million of those words are JatP.
3. What fandoms do you write for? Currently just Julie and the Phantoms, but in past I wrote primarily for Glee/Glee RPF, and Teen Titans. There's no other fandom really interesting me enough to write for it at moment.
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
I'm going to limit this to my JatP fics, but if you wanna check out my stories in my previous fandoms, well here's my AO3
And giving yourself to me can never be wrong my collection of smut prompt fills with 235 kudos
I Know Who I Want To Take Me Home the first installment of my Semisonic Sunset verse with 192 kudos
But came the dawn the show goes on (and I don't want to say goodnight) my PeterPatterLina soulmate AU with 169 kudos
Maybe this news can wait Part three (and the only non smutty part) of Semisonic Sunset with 124 kudos
Better walk the line my single dad Reggie PeterPatter fic with 124 kudos
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Honestly no I don't. I tried, once upon a time, but I just felt like no one really cared what I had to say, and then I didn't have the spoons for it, so I stopped. I know I should though, my brain just doesn't seem to like letting me.
6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Hands down it is Haunted by the moments of what we used to be because every comment I got on it was some variation of how very dare you.
7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Generally I try to give all of my stories a happy ending, but for this one, I'll go with Yellow Wood because it gave everyone a happy ending, no matter the path taken.
8. Do you get hate on fics? Currently no, but when the blacklist was a thing that happened, my name was second on there, so that kind of sucked.
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Out of my 84 JatP fics, 24 are rated E, and my smut prompt fills are currently sitting at 80 something chapters, so you tell me. In honesty, I don't write smut as much anymore, as I find it a little more difficult to write and the response to anything rated above a T is vastly lower than anything else. But when I started in this fandom, it was what I was known for; see my point regarding the black list.
10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? I actually kind of hate crossovers? If I'm looking for a fic to read on AO3, I always click the Exclude Crossovers choice. I'll write any and every AU I can, and I might add minor characters from said AU, but that's rare, and that's as close as I get.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Unfortunately yes. There was a person on WattPad who went and stole a bunch of different smutty JatP fics over a year ago, and one of mine was amongst them. They were reported, and the fic was taken down. This is why now my fics on AO3 are only available to registered AO3 users.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No, but if anyone ever wants to do a translation or podfic of any of my stories, they have my permission as long as they credit me and send me a link afterwards!
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, and no one has ever asked. It's something I'd love to try if the chance ever came along, and had the right idea.
14. What's your all-time favorite ship? I mean I can't pick just one, I've been involved in fandoms since I was a teenager. Like for Teen Titans Raven/Beast Boy will always own a piece of my soul. In Glee, Kurt/Blaine was such a formative part of my life. And even with Jatp I don't think I could choose between Rulie and PeterPatterLina, they both mean so much to me. And those are just the fandoms I've written for!
15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? *looks at my GDocs which is a WiP graveyard* Oh gosh there's so many.
16. What are your writing strengths? My brain is not being kind to me ATM, so I don't think I have any? Like maybe how much I write? Does that count?
17. What are your writing weaknesses? Everything. Editing especially.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I have done this quite a bit, even if it's just plugging what I want to say into Google Translate. So I know it's not entirely accurate, but I think I have been getting better about it.
19. First fandom you wrote for? The first fic I ever wrote that wasn't done like on a dare was a smutty fic for the anime Trigun that still exists on my ff.net page if you find it (no I'm not linking it) that I wrote in high school. It is Not Good.
20. Favorite fic you've written? I give the same answer to this question every time: But came the dawn the show goes on (and I don't want to say goodnight) and I don't think that will ever change.
Honourable mentions
-For better or for worse (Even if it's just tonight)
-So Close To Reaching That Famous Happy End
-Yellow Wood
-Dress You Up In My Love
Not tagging anyone, but if you wanna do this ask game, go to!
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thinking about akane/sora.
sigh that whole thing along with her (their? both of their?) dynamics with utsuro, and how that kind of bleeds over into yuki.
i was gonna put some shit in the tags but my brain just kept writing so ahem here we go (sorry as always for the nonsensical rambling if you can’t tell i just use tumblr as a place to word vomit about the things that are Taking Up My Brain)
The main reason I’m not a huge fan of Sora/Yuki is because how much of it is just Sora’s programming? But at the same time that just makes everything 1000x more interesting because where does Sora begin and the programming stop, yknow? Sora is so vastly different from Akane imo that it feels weird to call Sora nothing but an imitation of Akane, but… canonically, i mean, that’s all she really is
I’m definitely a big believer in your own interpretations of media (and especially with some of Kodaka’s choices that i don’t personally agree with) and in Sora’s case I kind of don’t believe she’s just this really simple ai. I definitely think that her relationship with Akane and the melding of them is v. v. interesting and could lead to a lot of emotional development but it becomes a lot less interesting to me when it’s just like “oh yeah sora isn’t even like. anywhere close to real she can never be real whatsoever” like is the questioning of her own reality not enough? cuz her emotions feel pretty fucking real and it feels ridiculous to say otherwise
In my own fanfiction & writing for a post sdra2 what-if-sora-survives a lot of her struggle is with figuring out how much of akane is still in her. like. that’s almost a seperate person, but wait, no it’s not. i have her memories. i have her face. i stare in the mirror and she looks back and am i her? am i the one who did all those horrible things? or was it someone else? and sora’s struggle with that could be so so interesting
and how yuki/utsuro plays into it too ughhhh
did sora ever really love yuki, or was it all just the programming? and is that programming her or is it akane? and who is she, if she’s not just akane? utsuro and akane are 100% an unhealthy ass relationship and that always will kinda poison any variation of sora/akane x yuki/utsuro ships for me.
but utsuro and akane at the same time are so fucking interestinggggg in their toxic mess like she fucking worships him. he is a god to her but to him? akanes just another follower. a particularly loyal one but at the end of the day he. does. not. care. about. her. whatsoeverrrrrr!!! he doesn’t care about anything, not even himself
and i think she kinda knows that, or is aware but she doesn’t even care because to her utsuro is a god and she’s thankful he even lets her worship him. because he saved her. and how fucked up must akane’s situation must have been? i mean, i can’t imagine. and now, post sdra2, sora has all these memories. she remembers all this shit, all the reasons why she worships and loves utsuro but also. she has other stuff. she has yuki, and yoruko, and all these new memories that she had made. but, but… but she would still pick him.
and doesn’t that prove it?
that after all this time that sora didn’t even get to experience, she is the same.
the same girl that did all these horrific things in the name of worship.
is she also, then, the person she was before those memories came back? the person who flirted with yoruko and created bonds and made sarcastic comments.
is she…
is she both? neither?
well, we’ll never get an answer.
because at the end, she did what she always did.
she sacrificed herself for him.
#akane taira#yuki maeda#utsuro#inane ramblings#listen. i never claimed to be able to think coherently#reading this you would never know i’m a half-decent (imo) writer#can you tell i’m autistic yet?#also i like. am loving writing about all this in my fanfiction i’m currently writing the 2nd chapter for lol#it’s called old habits and it is also centered on syobai my fav character <3#i have not posted the 2nd chapter yet but i am WORKING ON IT#if you’re into that kinda shit please check it out i promise i’m still making progress on it slowly but surely#i have over 6000 words written for the outline so like. i don’t plan on quitting anytime soon#oh shit it’s 3 am uhhh#it’s fine i don’t have shit to do tomorrow#or ever#perks of having no social life!!
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about my gender and sexuality recently
i have a weird gender and sexuality situation going on where being a "trans male" and being a "lesbian" are both important to me. it's because of my own unique (and very nonbinary/fluid) worldview of gender & sexuality, that disregards all rules of the gender binary and the meanings of labels.
because i want to explain my view and my story to people -- for some reason even though my gender is supposed to be just "nonbinary" in practice, i cannot let go of the "trans male" label and community i've been a part of for several long years, especially going on T and being treated as a trans man for the majority of my life. i'm more androgynous now, i'm far from masculine in my gender expression, but i simply cannot erase how i was treated as a "man" and how much that affects me, how much i view "man" as a fundamental part of me, my experiences, and my past. to give up that label just because of my newfound sexuality just feels wrong and a betrayal of myself.
recently, since my dysphoria has lessened and how HRT changes things about my perception of sexuality & gender, i'm pretty sure i'm moreso a lesbian than anything else. i resonate highly with the sort of discussion of how "lesbian" can be a nonconforming gender experience, aside from just a sexuality. the gender experiences of people within the lesbian community past and present paired with the sexuality aspect are things i closely see myself in now. the androgyny i present myself with. and the way my attraction has highly shifted over to feminine in a distinctly queer way. "lesbian" is the closest, most easily communicable, colloquial term that captures not only my attraction but also my new gender experience. i like the way transmasc and nonbinary lesbians expand the label's meaning beyond just "women loving women." so why can't it apply for me, too? it's that flimsy label and line within myself that divides "masc" and "man" and yet i'm not even a "man" in the way people think it means. it's just a word that has importance for my soul.
and i don't think this is a situation where it's like, "(cishet) men are invading lesbian spaces," i feel it's disingenuous to frame my queer self-discovery and journey as something like that.
it's a bit strange, most trans men start off as lesbians and become trans men, but i started as a trans man and became a lesbian, but in a way that i can't remove "trans man" from my identity. it's something i struggled for a while with, that it's impossible or unacceptable to hold both labels, or that trans men can in any way understand lesbians, but… i'm not like other trans men anymore either, right? but still, i am a trans man through and through. it's logical to say i'm not like other lesbians, either. my worldview of gender is fundamentally different from everyone else in the world, anyways.
what is a "man" or "woman" to me is vastly different from an understanding that would usually be based in the gender binary... when i create worlds in stories i write, gender isn't a thing that has high importance. i fundamentally view "women" or "men" as just… a neutral form, a shape, that has no real meaning beyond the appearance. someone isn't gonna get singled out, put down, praised, or anything like that just for being a certain gender. moreover, words like "trans" or "gay" or "lesbian" or "bisexual" don't even exist because of the society that world has that has no need for those words to define oneself against a "cishet" norm. there is no cishet norm. there are no such labels. this is my "ideal" worldview of gender that makes the most sense. (there are ways trans people are handled in-universe, but that's for another time.)
so when translating real world labels like "lesbian" into that world, it manifests a bit differently. for instance, i have a masculine-appearing character with a feminine name, a higher-range voice, and has rose motifs. this masculine character is meant to be analogous to a princely butch lesbian, even though no such word exists. this character flirts often with feminine-appearing characters. presumably, these would be "women," but some "men" would be feminine-appearing as well. although he is a "lesbian," he is attracted to some kinds of men, but they're very unconventional kinds of men. kind of... much like myself. (i do strongly express attraction to men from time to time, but literally only feminine/androgynous types... in this sort of unique worldview of gender, in context with everything else about myself, i classify that as lesbian or lesbian-adjacent.)
so wouldn't it make more sense for me to have "no labels" then? but that's a bit difficult, because i don't live in that world i created, i live in this world with all of you who create these labels and definitions and place importance upon them. importance i resonate with. importance in the way i can't give up being a "trans male" even though my experience isn't close to most trans men in general. importance in the way i just want to be accepted as a "lesbian" because that community, especially in its transmasc and nonbinary members, is the closest thing to my experiences, and yet i feel gatekept out of it; shunned out of it. even though i'm nowhere near the kind of person you should be shunning out of the community.
i've resonated strongly with "transhet" before. i still do. it's a wonderful label and experience to describe myself. but i do feel like there's such a strong overlap with being "lesbian" that i feel i should be part of that label and community as well. i can't ignore a community and its experiences, that has such a strong similarity to myself and my experiences, only to be gatekept by one measly word. to be told i can't possibly understand what it's like to be a lesbian.
i think of myself as treading that line between being a transmasc lesbian and a transhet male. flipping back and forth, but also strongly resonant with both sides -- but defining it for myself.
i can only hope the friends that distanced themselves from me for this don't hate me anymore. that they don't think i'm an uncomfortable or unsafe person. i can only hope they will come to understand the journey i've gone through.
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blog maintenance
tending to some things while i have a bit of freetime. i'm about to hit a year on this account and i had long imagined sharing some of the mysterious inner workings behind the folks (me!) here at sylvies-kablooie. so, while i feel no one is interested, read on if ur curious about how i run my blog slash rules slash boundaries behind operation!
so the first thing is that i am primarily a loki blog (in the sense that it's about the loki tv show, more specifically sylvie and sylki though) but you will see some posts about other things, typically history, animals, or jokes. i try to keep everything at least 50% loki so you get what you came here for and also that's what i want to talk about.
HOWEVER if for some reason you're here for loki and nothing else (or history and nothing else- whichever!), i tag all of my posts so you can very easily block something you are sick of seeing! and i encourage you to do so if needed! some tags you might see and wish to mute: history posting, crimson peak, neotag, lmao, creature, write write write
and i will comment on non-loki related posts with regularity so if ur not a loki blog but see me around. hey <3
i rely heavily on my best friend mister queue and i will try to tag all of the posts i throw in there so you can tell if i'm coming at you live or not. most of what you will see will be queue posts. my queue stretches for like 2-3 months ahead generally and sometimes i will forget to tag something. but it doesn't happen too much!
in terms of post content, i will say fuck but beyond this things are pretty sfw. maybe a risque joke here and there but nothing too crazy imo. i'd rate the blog tv-14 for language or something along those lines.
i don't dm people often and generally just prefer to just add things to comments or notes!
the concept of "mutuals" is flexible to me. there are some people i don't follow back because we blog about vastly different stuff, so instead i just go through certain tags on those accounts. however i recognize those who appear in my notifs regularly who embrace the sylvie posting agenda. and to these special few, you are all mutuals invited to the metaphorical slumber party. there's also some people that don't follow me back but to me that IS my mutual and a beloved member of the tumblr ecosystem.
i also tend to be quite busy which means i follow less people and i don't always know wtf is going on in terms of like. anything. i was really busy during the glasgow willy wonka meme and had a deeply confusing few days after that.
and i do have asks on but again with the busy thing, i only get to them every once in a while.
i made one post that blew up and now i get a ton of bots following me so every once in a while i go through a block accounts with no name and a default profile picture.
and last but not least i WAS on stan twitter in 2021 when loki s1 dropped. i add this fact as both a fun conversational point but also because i have seen the vile bottoms of discourse and if you were also on stan twitter in 2021, you would understand my deeply cautious nature.
so! that's pretty much it. hope u enjoyed!
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Hello! This is the creator of the Ghostly Overture Wally AU
I can’t send a direct message to you, so I’m sending it all as an ask. Please don’t like, publicly answer this, both for lore reasons (gotta keep the people on tumblr guessing) but also like, idk I’d feel mildly embarrassed ;-;
Also I’m sorry for being a bit late, I saw your response earlier, but my first reaction was to laugh at the fact that you’re an Angel Dust account (not in a way where I’m making fun of you, I was laughing cause the idea of Angel Dust walking up to Wally Darling and talking to him startled as well as amused me, y’know because of how vastly different the characters are, it was like “ANGEL DUST HAZBIN HOTEL WHAT’RE YOU DOING HERE????”) and then after that I sorta passed out without fully processing your message until now 0_0;;
Ok so Ghostly Overture is a canon divergent ghost Wally AU.
Canon divergent means that the AU is a branch off of the pre-existing canon. With the way that I’m writing it, most canon things in Welcome Home are still canon to the AU but at some point, specifically the point where the in-universe show supposedly ends, my AU diverges into its own thing. The AU takes place in the abandoned set of Welcome Home.
The opening to the AU is basically that You (You as in the collective audience, the ‘You’ that Wally knows) are a ghost hunter and after stumbling across what looks to be this abandoned set of a show from the 70’s, you find this lovely ghost puppet!
Ghostly Wally (as I call him) is almost the same as canon Wally just with a few key details, one of the prominent ones being that he’s like 10x clingier than original Wally due to being alone for 50+ years. He’s pretty scared of being alone again. This leads him to sometimes coming across as overbearing. Sometimes, he’ll insist that you stay in an area (like a room or hallway or smth), and if he comes back to find you gone, then he’ll freak out pretty bad cause he thinks that either a. You’re gone forever, and/or b. Something happened to you.
I ramble a lot about the sillier bits of the AU/Ghostly so Ima send screenshots of those too
It’s mostly random fun facts but there’s also lore stuff in there too
You don’t have to include everything in the slideshow, like I would completely understand if you didn’t, it’s a lot :,D
You can tell that I think about this AU a lot
Anyway, sorry for unnecessarily stuffing your inbox, and thank you for including my little guy in this silly project, I hope you have a good day! :D
that's more then enough info! Also most of my asks for any ask box are usually OOC (out of character) and no need to apologize! This will definitely be enough to torture my jerk classmates!
-cal (my irl ooc name)
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So it’s probably about time we made an introduction post for ourselves here on Tumblr. So, we’re The Court, a probably monoconscious, median, endogenic system. We’re willing to explain these terms if need be, but in short, there’s several sapient selves in one body/mind, we all experience most of what everyone else in here does, and we’re all very similar. If you’ve ever seen a kid’s show where they’ll, like, split a character into different bodies that each represent a specific emotion or aspect of themselves and that think and act separately? It’s not dissimilar, except that instead of being recombined into one single person at the end of the episode, we remain somewhat separate in spite of needing to share a body/mind.
And now, quick roll call!
Hestia, the Heir: The system host, meaning I am most often in charge of the body. My role is to pilot the body in such a way that everyone else in here gets what they need and want to the best of my ability. I’m very prone to overthinking every past interaction, everything I am doing currently, and everything that might possibly come to pass in the hopes of maybe doing better at piloting our trash fire of a life. Which has a predictable tendency to make me the most prone to burnout and exhaustion. She/Her.
Obsidian, the Chancellor: Greetings. My role in the system is to take advantage of my generally muted or nonexistent emotional state in order to provide objective advice to Hestia regarding the best methods of meeting the system’s needs. I am our analytical ability, primarily, and I am content with staying back and advising under most circumstances. Technically, I am agender in the sense that gender is honestly entirely irrelevant to me, but most people gender me as He/They, which will suffice under most circumstances.
Gwen, the Jester: Hiya! I’m the fun one around here. Basically, my thing is that I have the most ability to just enjoy things, so I serve as a kind of distraction from everyone’s emotional issues by making sure we do stuff that we actually enjoy doing once in a while. Not an easy task these days given how stressed-out everyone else is. I modeled myself loosely after Gwenpool from Marvel Comics, but honestly I’m just... me, whatever that ends up looking like from moment to moment. She/Her.
Eleanora, the Ambassador: Good day to you all. My role is to serve as our best attempt at modeling the social behavior of those around us and to use that knowledge to present ourselves appropriately and to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. Sophont behavior is fascinating to me, though I will not pretend to be in any way a social expert. I am simply best-suited to this particular task. She/Her.
Alexandra, the Matron: Mm. You might call me our “inner critic”. I see what we ought to be capable of doing and what we need to be doing and push us towards actually doing so rather than lazing about all day. I am our discipline, our self-motivation, and, I am told, our stubbornly independent streak and our perfectionism. Personally I see it as there being a bare minimum of expected behavior in this society that we are falling vastly short of, but I am clearly outvoted here. She/Her will do.
Diana, the Champion: Yo. I’m our sense of justice and fairness, and our anger when things are neither fair nor just. I say “Things shouldn’t be this way and they need to change”. I hold grudges where it’s helpful, I point out where we have been wronged both interpersonally and systemically, and I push us to do something where we have the ability to. I have very strong opinions on social issues, which I could rant about for hours. She/Her, but in a vaguely butch way. Like, y’know Wonder Woman? I named myself after her because I aspire to that level of pretty/striking enough to make people pay attention and buff enough to defend ourself and others.
Maple, the Bodyguard: I’m our sense of paranoia and the need to keep ourself physically safe. I don’t trust most people, I don’t like most people, and I would happily keep ourself in our small area of control until we died if that were at all practical. Since it isn’t, I make sure we take the precautions we need in order to keep us alive. Assume that anything you say on or near an electronic device is being monitored unless you’ve taken steps to prevent it, don’t disclose sensitive information about yourself to strangers, and for fuck’s sake wear your fucking masks COVID didn’t stop being a threat just because everybody thought it did. She/Her.
Carmilla, the Courtesan: Hello~! You could probably call me our sensitive side, and our sensuous one. I’m the one who craves touch and affection, who values beauty and aesthetics, and who most wants to experiment with sexual/romantic/queerplatonic relationships. I have no idea what would actually feel best for us on that front, but I would very much like to find out. We need a sense of belonging and acceptance and I’m the one most likely to push for it happening. Besides, if we’re gonna look pretty we gotta have people to show off to in some capacity or another! She/Her and if you misgender me I will be very upset.
Liliana, the Hedonist: Well hello there. I’m new, and to some extent I’m still forming. But the one thing we’re sure of thus far is that I am our self-interest, the one who will look out for us and what we want as opposed to putting others first. My job is to ask “Is that a sacrifice that needs to be made? Is this in any way our problem we have to solve?” Everything else will come with time, presumably, as I coalesce into a more distinct cluster of personality traits. She/Her pronouns, if you please.
Invidia Bat, the Exile: With a jealous scream to shatter the night, Invidia Bat has arrived! Nice to meet you. I exist to speak the pain and the envy and the inadequacy that the rest of the Court desperately tries to keep bottled up inside them. Those feelings deserve to be spoken, if only because keeping them inside is killing us. On a cheerier note, I’m our first confirmed fictive! We’ll see if more join me at some point. She/Her pronouns only.
Veyle, the Refugee: H-hi! I’m Veyle, and I’m told the terms I should use to introduce myself are that I’m an introject and part of a two-person subsystem? Also, I’m a dragon, that part I know for certain.
Fell Veyle, the Prisoner: I’m also Veyle, but so that it’s easier to tell us apart and because I’m not a coward who rejects their Fell Dragon heritage, I’m going by Fell Veyle.
...okay, that didn’t end up being nearly as quick as we assumed it would. Whoops!
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what does your url mean?
Buckle up, babe, its time for a story!
(TLDR, a character name I made)
(Actual Translation at the bottom)
When I was a wee lass, about middle school, a show some of you may know called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out in 2012.
Now I was already sort of acquainted with the ninja turtles, but when I actually watched the show, my little mind blew like Mikey trying pizza for the first time.
I was also a gifted writer. I’m actually pretty talented at writing and letting words flow on a page, and I already had a VASTLY rich imagination. So naturally, I made a self-insert OC.
Now I decided I wanted to be close to the turtles so I made the OC their little sister. I was 11 at this time and they were 15, so she was 4 years younger than them.
Then I had to name this OC. I went through a variety of ideas, from Italian to a female renaissance painter to the French word for turtle (Tortue Marin) but eventually I decided since Yoshi is Japanese, he’ll have chosen a Japanese name. So I settled with Ming.
So I had an 11-year-old, blonde, blue-eyed, white OC named Ming.
Yeahhhhhh… I wasn’t great at names back then but moving along.
I think originally she WAS Asian, because I wanted her to be Splinter’s daughter. Then it was revealed KARAI was Splinter’s daughter, so I settled with adopted self-insert.
Buuuuut then I got bored.
It wasn’t enough for Ming to be just a ninja who was raised by mutants, no no no! I gave her powers. At first, just water powers. Then shapeshifting, then ALL the elements, then mainly fire and rock.
I also bounced around the idea for her “alter-ego” because, yknow, she was a superhero!
So, lame as it sounds, I basically took Cat Noir and Catwoman, without actually knowing either of them, and made CatGirl. Lame. But she dressed all in black and had a tail and claws. That was cool. She also had fangs.
THENNNNNNN I got bored again. This was about the time the 2016 Out Of The Shadows movie came out. By this time, I was head over heels in the franchise. I’d even made a best friend because of it, and shared my OC and fanfictions with her.
So I figured, since the turtles were 15 in the first movie, and the second came out only a year later, making them 16, Ming’s age was 11 in the first and 12 in the second. And I had made a special plan for when she turned 12.
(Spoilers, btw, for anybody following me on fanfiction.net (Starblood666) and hasn’t finished reading Little Sister, Secret Weapon)
I decided Ming would meet her true family. I was already playing with the idea of my father being the Devil which is a WHOLE other can of worms for a different day. So why shouldn’t Ming’s father be the Devil, too?
At first Ming was an only child with black hair and cat eyes in her demon form. Then it changed. I decided if the Devil had kids, his wife would, logically, be an angel. They would have to be permanently separated and of course, duh, they’d have twins!
At first it was, one twin would be an angel and the other a demon, but then it changed to both being demons. Ming’s twin brother was named Damien. (Of course. I’m so lame at names)
But that meant Ming couldn’t be her REAL name if she had a REAL family. So I started trying to think up a long pretty sounding name for a demon princess. I wanted Ming to be sorta in the middle so it was a nickname option. Damien still called her Ming.
At first it was Almingthea, but the L felt awful on the tongue and tbh, I sorta forgot that name for a couple months until it was fanfiction time again.
So I reinvented it to Amingethia. Long, random, pretty sounding, Ming in the middle, and the best part? If you googled those letters exactly that way, and turned off the “Did you mean…” nothing came up. It was an identity that felt like it was really and truly MINE.
But a long name isn’t enough without a translation. So I made one.
TRANSLATION
What does my name mean?
Ami means weak.
Ingethia means powerless.
Amingethia means Weak and Powerless.
#Then a bunch of other drama happened#anyway#shitpost#asks#I knew it was a matter of time#finally I got asked this
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Death of a Bookseller
Death of a Bookseller
Alice Slater
Rating: 4.0
Ohhh boy this one was tough. As someone who listens to her fair share of true crime podcasts, this book made me look at myself and how I engage with that kind of content, something that I think was part of the goal of this book. This dual narrator set up gives two vastly different perspectives of the true crime phenomenon that has taken over the podcast world and has an entire channel devoted to shows just about various true crime mysteries, shocking stories, and cautionary tales.
The first point of view we are introduced to is Roach. (It’s her last name) She’s spent her entire life thriving as the dark emo kid we all remember dipping our toes into being in our teen years, however she dived head first and never surfaced. She listens to true crime podcasts, calls the other fans of said show ‘normies’, watches true crime documentaries, and fantasizes about serial killers. She’s intrusive of other people’s experiences and asks questions that make others uncomfortable to watch them squirm. She doesn’t like most other people so of course, she has a job in retail customer service. Roach doesn’t seem to thrive in any of her environments but instead complains about each aspect of her life from her home life, her job and later in the book her boyfriend.
The other point of view is Laura. She is also closely tied to the true crime world but as a reluctant victim rather than a spectator, something she discusses only when she’s had enough alcohol to lower her inhibitions. And by ‘discuss’ I mean she’ll drop the bomb that her mother was killed by a serial killer, then answer no questions about it. It feels like in those drunken moments she wants to get the truth out, but is still unwilling to talk about it further. Laura hates the spectacle that has become true crime and protests by writing her own poetry that highlights the women and their mundane lives before everything changed.
Both of these things fuels Roach into thinking that she and Laura connect in their passion for True Crime, and won’t stop pursuing said ‘connection’ until Laura agrees and hangs out with her. However Roach’s approach to her love of true crime is the exact kind that Laura is against, and each time Roach tries to befriend the other woman, it just turns Laura more off.
Laura seems to get the ‘ick’ from Roach right from the get go, and her prejudice against the other woman eventually turns Roach off, but not in a way that makes her leave things alone. Instead Roach becomes obsessed with showing Laura that they aren’t that different, and that if given the chance the two women would be friends. As the novel goes on her actions become more stalker than awkward attempts at friendship. If Laura knew half of the things Roach does, legal action would’ve been taken. As it stands Laura just thinks Roach is an annoying nuisance that she just has to avoid.
While reading this book, it made me think about what True Crime as a genre has become in the 21st century. It made me think of how some have moved on from studying serial killers to straight up idolizing them. Podcasts and vlogs have come up with cute nicknames for murderers and their actions while monetizing off of telling the victims stories, sometimes while cracking jokes in-between sentences.
It made me wonder, ‘Is there an ethical way to consume true crime media?’ And right now my answer is, I don’t know. Humanity has always been drawn to the macabre and dark stories, true crime is not the first of this phenomenon. Though maybe it’s one we’ve started to take too lightly. Maybe it’s time to take a step back and look at how we as a culture consume this type of media.
Alice Slater does a good job of showing off two different extreme approaches to true crime. Between Roach’s ‘gun-ho-writes-to-the-killer-fantasizes-about-crime-scenes’ approach and Laura’s ‘this-media-shouldn’t-exist-at-the-expense-of-the-victims’, can there be such a middle ground? Or are we doomed to be at crossroads the entire way?
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So I have some big things I wanna get off my chest. Penacony Spoilers mainly for 2.1 and 2.2 if you haven't watched/done it yet. Also this got ungodly long because thoughts kept flowing so if you bother to read this I'm sorry.
So this is gonna be a take and someone's probably gonna hate me for it but... I really don't like that in both 2.1 and 2.2, Acheron's stuff involved such heavy reference to HI3. Now I get it, it's fanservice for the HI3 fans, and fair enough it does have Honkai in the game's name. But it really soured me on some parts.
First is 2.1, her first real chunk. The entire conversation between her and Welt rests on you knowing what the hell they're referring to. As someone who did not play HI3, and does not care about HI3's story, I didn't like that scene. Like I'm watching 2 people talk about events that I just didn't see and have no context for and am supposed to care about? And as much as I would be fine with that if said context came, it never did. HSR makes no attempt to fill this gap, so if I ever want to know what the fuck they're on about I have to go watch a video or something about HI3 instead.
This is especially annoying when just before this they said on the livestream something like "There'll be references that HI3 fans will enjoy, but newer players won't have to worry" or whatever, which turned out to be a fucking lie for this version.
2.2 was much better. While 2.1 had some glimpses of Acheron that weren't related to HI3, this gave us the scenes with her and Tiernan, which was way more enjoyable. Gave me a real look into who Acheron is beyond "walking powerhouse who's a HI3 reference". EXCEPT for the ending.
The name drop holds no significance if you don't come from HI3. And when it happened all I could do was roll my eyes because yes we get it it's Raiden Mei, everyone who comes from HI3 already knew this last version, and anyone who doesn't know this will have nothing to take from this name drop into cutscene combo beyond just "well it's cool so I'll turn my brain off and enjot the lights and music". The big cutscene before we return to face Sunday again is also weird because we fall from the sky, Acheron pulls us, and we.... appear in the boss fight? This made no sense already, but finding out it's a HI3 reference just made me annoyed yet again, as it's yet another scene that holds no meaning unless you already came from HI3, in which case it still doesn't mean anything, but is a fanservicey callback to get those players excited.
Now those previous ones are subjective, and frankly I don't expect people to agree with me on disliking those. But the last thing is the one that irks me the most, and it's almost completely independent of the game: Fan response. From what I gathered, Acheron is Raiden Mei, but something(s?) happened that made things diverge massively from HI3's storyline. This is something I like about Acheron, because while she's an HI3 reference, she is also mostly her own character, meaning I don't need to go find HI3 content just to know what's happening like I'm watching the goddamn MCU.
Unfortunately, some of what I've seen just uses Acheron as a stand-in for Raiden Mei. Or more specifically, the same Raiden Mei as in HI3, even though I thought the whole point is that this is an alternate universe and alternate timeline etc, and by extension these 2 characters, while likely sharing an origin and backstory, are by this point vastly different people. Idk how else to phrase this, but it's most common in playthroughs and stuff where you know it's an HI3 fan because they won't stop talking about Raiden Mei when the story is focusing on Acheron, it feels like they often ignore Acheron's actual story and just want Raiden Mei again.
2nd last segment here, I am very worried for Luocha's story. He's clearly being set up to have more importance in future, specifically in regards to the Xianzhou and Yaoshi. And to this point I'd been fine because he's been his own character, and Welt and Himeko have been their oen people too. But Penacony, the undoubtedly biggest and best chapter Hoyo's released, has all the issues I just ranted about w/ Acheron. And Luocha is another character who bears a striking resemblance to someone from HI3, who Welt also knows and is not so subtly being hyped to meet.
Lastly, this last one's entirely me and even more so than the rest I've ranted about is definitely subjective, but I don't want Kiana to be in HSR. She's already the main character of HI3 anyway, it'd bring us back to square one with Acheron as I don't doubt for a second they'd write it so they get back together (see also BronSeele, a pairing I like now too, but which felt like it had the most forced start ever just so we could pair them up as fast as possible), continuing my fear of Acheron not being allowed to be her own character and keep her stuck in the shadow of Raiden Mei. And she'd no doubt become extremely important if she were to exist here since Hoyo does have favoritism to HI3 characters, and I was already sick of the Astral Express' lack of impact in the Luofu arc.
Well that's all this time. I will stop bitching now because no one wants to read these walls of text full of subjective views. As is customary with these things, all my thoughts and opinions are... well, exactly that, MY thoughts and opinions. I still like Penacony, I still like HSR, and I hsve no quarrel with those who like the things I didn't or vice versa. I mostly make these rants just to vent since I don't have anywhere else to let anything out. If you bothered to read this far then uhh thanks I guess, and I hope you have a great day/night.
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