terranigma, a cool game

What Is ORV?

The number one question I get asked on this blog, now answered better than ever. Today I am going to formally introduce you to Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

To start off this recommendation: ORV might very well be my favorite thing I've read. Ever. If I could only reread one thing for the rest of my life it'd be this webnovel.

My elevator pitch is this: something with the cosmic-scale goofy video game nonsense and intricate setting comparable to Homestuck in its prime, paired with the deft emotional poignancy and emotionally-driven fights of Mob Psycho 100, topped off with the sort of compassionate and heartwrenching metanarrative of Undertale.

ORV is a love letter to it's own readers. ORV revels in the joy of losing yourself in fiction, even when it's the kind of fiction that tends to be considered lowbrow or worthless. It's something that dances the delicate line between recognizing the difficult nature of using media as escapism without condemning it. I've rarely seen anything else that accomplishes everything it sets out to do in its narrative with such remarkable precision. Frankly if you're reading a tumblr media recommendation post in 2023, I can almost guarantee ORV has the kind of meat you're looking for in a narrative, whatever that may be.

The story follow the antics of protagonist Kim Dokja, a 28 year old office worker on an expiring contract, whose only real joy in life is reading his favorite massively long and massively boring webnovel. One day, the novel’s events - worldwide deathmatches aired for the entertainment of mysterious higher beings called ‘constellations’ - begin playing out in reality in a sort of reverse-isekai. Kim Dokja, the only longterm reader of this webnovel, finds himself uniquely poised to succeed based on the advantages given to him by his knowledge of future events, but the webnovel’s actual protagonist, Yoo Jonghyuk, is a violent monster who will stop at absolutely nothing to complete his goals, no matter the cost to anyone else. Kim Dokja finds himself in a delicate dance of guiding the events of the story to play out more favorably than the version he read while trying to avoid being massacred in the fallout, all while trying to see it through to the story’s end. 

Below the cut I'll go into a more in-depth (but non-spoilery) explanation of what exactly makes ORV so unique and worthwhile, and what you're in for if you choose to read it.

Clocking in at 550 chapters, and over 1.3 million words in English, ORV may seem incredibly daunting to dip your toes into, but I assure you it's worth every moment. I would read 1.3 million more words if they had them for me. Here are some things about ORV I consider to be selling points, not necessarily in any particular order:

The tone. Its funny, for starters. It is extremely funny, which is very high up on my media priority list. In ORV, there will be incredibly grim things that make you laugh, and incredibly cringe and silly anime bullshit that will hurt you as heavily as any other media you’ve seen. I always love this kind of tonal whiplash when it's well executed, and ORV probably executes it better than anything else I've seen to date.

It’s got fun and fascinating worldbuilding mechanics. the core concept being ‘reality now operates on the rules of a shitty novel’ means that the worldbuilding doesn’t have to function logically, it functions thematically. It’s explicitly stated in ORV canon that some of the internal rules governing this new reality are objectively really stupid and illogical, but they just have to roll with it because that’s what was in the book, and i think it’s a really enjoyable way to do it. This may at first sound like a copout to excuse bad worldbuilding, but I promise it isn’t. The worldbuilding is actually incredibly deeply thought out, but it doesn’t exist for the sake of rational function, it exists for the sake of furthering orv’s thematic arcs. The rules by which this universe operate do a magnificent job of strengthening the core concepts the authors are exploring.

It plays with the trappings of isekai/litrpg in a really thoughtful way. These are genres I'm not super familiar with, so I can't comment on this point too heavily, but with my limited knowledge ORV feels a lot less of a deconstruction of it's genre and more of a celebration/interrogation of it. Despite that, it's still accessible to readers such as myself who are not super familiar with these genre conventions.

It deals with morality in a really wonderful and nuanced way. there are almost no characters in ORV’s extremely large cast who are just explicitly morally condemnable, and almost every conflict allows you to understand exactly why the antagonists believe they’re in the right by opposing the actions of our protagonists. The central conflicts are never pure right and pure wrong; they’re always about contrasting goals, conflicting worldviews, and different priorities between ends and means. this makes the conflicts all feel so much more dynamic and engaging than those where the only stakes are physical harm.

The characters interpersonal relationships are some of the most interesting I've ever seen. ORV is very slow burn and it takes a long time for a lot of these to come out of the woodwork, by design, but by god once they do they fucking hit. Similar to the plot conflicts, the interpersonal conflicts also almost never occur where there’s one side clearly in the wrong. The characters are almost all genuinely attempting to do their best by each other, and the tension comes from the ways in which human communication is fundamentally imperfect and part of our feelings and intentions get lost in translation. it’s very heartwrenching and heartwarming to see unfold, in equal measure.

Following from that, it’s a narrative that really meaningfully prioritizes non-romantic relationships over romantic ones as the central focus. Orv is about love, but not about romance. Obviously there’s shipbait and the ot3 is real and good and my friend but if you’re looking for deep complex platonic, (found or otherwise) familial, and antagonistic relationships that never get ruined with forced romantic arcs, we got em baby!

The pacing is unlike anything i’ve ever seen before. from a purely technical standpoint, it is genuinely a fascinating case study in how to execute a narrative that is almost constantly escalating without exception. there is very little downtime or breathing room in orv, which is insane for something that clocks in at over a million words, and somehow, it still works. i’ve never felt more like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water than i did when i was reading orv and i can’t believe they pulled it off. it’s so interesting to read something like that.

It is a tragedy without resorting to cynicism and a very adult narrative that’s really steeped in childlike wonder. I’m a big fan of cartoons made for children. Cartoons made for children are some of my favorite things to watch, but of course children’s media will always be simplified and not very relatable to an adult audience. ORV is very much a serious and heavy adult narrative, and a deeply tragic one at that, but it never delves into torture porn. It’s a very compassionate piece of media overall, that holds a lot of reverence and sympathy for the ‘naive’ optimism of children that gets stripped down over time. if you, like me, feel more like a grown up child than an adult some days, I think it’ll hit for you.

It is extremely cathartic and meaningful. I am not exaggerating at all when I say that reading it gave me the closest thing I have ever felt to any sort of spiritual breakthrough. It helped unfuck my head a ton during some very grim times and i think the perspective it offers on the value of human life and our relationship to storytelling is a really really good one.

And if my word isn't enough, here's some reviews from satisfied customers. With that, I'll leave the rest to you, and hope you one day reach the end of the story.

Inspired by your last ask! What are the best French books you’ve read that have no English translation yet? I read Play Boy and Qui a tué mon père (really loved the latter) last year and it feels so fun to read something that other Americans can’t access yet

I'm too nervous to make any list of the Best XYZ Books because I don't want to raise your expectations too high! But okay, here's my No English Translation-themed list of books I've enjoyed in recent years. I tried to make it eclectic in terms of genre as I don't know what you prefer :)

Biographies

• Le dernier inventeur, Héloïse Guay de Bellissen: I just love prehistory and unusual narrators so I enjoyed this one; it's about the kids who discovered the cave of Lascaux, and some of the narration is written from the perspective of the cave <3 I posted a little excerpt here (in English).

• Ces femmes du Grand Siècle, Juliette Benzoni: Just a fun collection of portraits of notable noblewomen during the reign of Louis XIV, I really liked it. For people who like the 17th century. I think it was Emil Cioran who said his favourite historical periods were the Stone Age and the 17th century but tragically the age of salons led to the Reign of Terror and Prehistory led to History.

• La Comtesse Greffulhe, Laure Hillerin: I've mentioned this one before, it's about the fascinating Belle Époque French socialite who was (among other things) the inspiration for Proust's Duchess of Guermantes. I initially picked it up because I will read anything that's even vaguely about Proust but it was also a nice aperçu of the Belle Époque which I didn't know much about.

• Nous les filles, Marie Rouanet: I've also recommended this one before but it's such a sweet little viennoiserie of a book. The author talks about her 1950s childhood in a town in the South of France in the most detailed, colourful, earnest way—she mentions everything, describes all the daft little games children invent like she wants ageless aliens to grasp the concept of human childhood, it's great.

I'll add Trésors d'enfance by Christian SIgnol and La Maison by Madeleine Chapsal which are slightly less great but also sweet short nostalgic books about childhood that I enjoyed.

Fantasy

• Mers mortes, Aurélie Wellenstein: I read this one last year and I found the characters a bit underwhelming / underexplored but I always enjoy SFF books that do interesting things with oceans (like Solaris with its sentient ocean-planet), so I liked the atmosphere here, with the characters trying to navigate a ghost ship in ghost seas...

• Janua Vera, Jean-Philippe Jaworski: Not much to say about it other than they're short stories set in a mediaeval fantasy world and no part of this description is usually my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed this read!

Essays / literary criticism / philosophy

• Eloge du temps perdu, Frank Lanot: I thought this was going to be about idleness, as the title suggests, and I love books about idleness. But it's actually a collection of short essays about (French) literature and some of them made me appreciate new things about authors and books I thought I knew by heart, so I enjoyed it

• Le Pont flottant des rêves, Corinne Atlan: Poetic musings about translation <3 that's all

• Sisyphe est une femme, Geneviève Brisac: Reflections about the works of female writers (Natalia Ginzburg, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, etc) that systematically made me want to go read the author in question, even when I'd already read & disliked said author. That's how you know it's good literary criticism

Let's add L'Esprit de solitude by Jacqueline Kelen which as the title suggests, ponders the notion of solitude, and Le Roman du monde by Henri Peña-Ruiz which was so lovely to read in terms of literary style I don't even care what it was about (it's philosophy of foundational myths & stories) (probably difficult to read if you're not fully fluent in French though)

Did not fit in the above categories:

• Entre deux mondes by Olivier Norek—it's been translated in half a dozen languages, I was surprised to find no English translation! It's a crime novel and a pretty bleak read on account of the setting (the Calais migrant camp) but I'd recommend it

• Saga, Tonino Benacquista: Also seems to have been translated in a whole bunch of languages but not English? :( I read it ages ago but I remember it as a really fun read. It's a group of loser screenwriters who get hired to write a TV series, their budget is 15 francs and a stale croissant and it's going to air at 4am so they can do whatever they want seeing as no one will watch it. So they start writing this intentionally ridiculous unhinged show, and of course it acquires Devoted Fans

Books that I didn't think existed in English translation but they do! but you can still read them in French if you want

• Scrabble: A Chadian Childhood, Michaël Ferrier: What it says on the tin! It's a short and well-written account of the author's childhood in Chad just before the civil war. I read it a few days ago and it was a good read, but then again I just love bittersweet stories of childhood

• On the Line, Joseph Ponthus: A short diary-like account of the author's assembly line work in a fish factory. I liked the contrast between the robotic aspect of the job and the poetic nature of the text; how the author used free verse / repetition / scansion to give a very immediate sense of the monotony and rhythm of his work (I don't know if it's good in English)

• The End of Eddy, Edouard Louis: The memoir of a gay man growing up in a poor industrial town in Northern France—pretty brutal but really good

• And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran: Yet another memoir sorry, I love people's lives! Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight as a child, and was in the Resistance during WWII despite being blind. It's a great story, both for the historical aspects and for the descriptions of how the author experiences his blindness

• The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception, Emmanuel Carrère: an account of the Jean-Claude Romand case—a French man who murdered his whole family to avoid being discovered as a fraud, after spending his entire adult life pretending to be a doctor working at the WHO and fooling everyone he knew. Just morbidly fascinating, if you like true crime stuff

-{ model bf hyunjin }-

I had writer's block for a bit, but I have written this! ((Also, happy almost friday))

Word Count: 955

Sometimes he takes you along with him to events & photoshoots. For most shoots he can’t take you on set, but just having you in the same city calms his nerves a bit. Paris is one of his favorite cities to visit. 

One of his favorite moments to indulge in is the quiet calmness found in the morning. Sun rays shine through the luxurious hotel blinds and cover the room in a staggered array of beauty. You two lay, a tangle of limbs, within the pristine white sheets. Hyunjin tries not to make a sound as he admires your effortless beauty before you wake. Your cheek is squished against the pillow, which he thinks is cute.

On his free day between shooting, He invties you to a walk on the riverside. In a world that is so fast-paced, he has learned to appreciate the seemingly ordinary. You hold his hand as the light breeze passes by. The emerald green leaves flutter up in the branches of the trees that line the walkway. As you walk, A swan meanders through the slow current of the river. It catches your eye, with its elegant white feathers and curved neck. With your free hand, you point to it. Hyunjin comments, ‘It’s not as beautiful as you, though.’ Always jinnie and his cheesy compliments. 

Sometimes, he will send you concept photos or videos of a shoot he’s on for your thoughts. Honestly, he just needed an excuse to text you. He’ll ask, ‘Do I look good here? What about this one?’ In what universe does he ever not look good?? 

He loves taking you to the fanciest, most elegant restaurants. Even if it’s not really your vibe, he’ll try to persuade you. He’ll pay for everything, help you pick an outfit, whatever it takes. He wants you to be comfortable and safe in your own skin. 

He is your #1 supporter when you’re going shopping. If you thought your best friend persuaded you to buy more than you need, you haven’t met Hyunjin. He gives out compliments like crazy. They don’t have your size? He will find an employee to order it for you. He will never hesitate to get you what you deserve. Window shopping is nonexistent, because he will drag you into the store instead of just peering through the window. 

Hyunjin doesn’t get jealous for every little thing, but he does notice when someone crosses a line, and he’ll step in. He is an expert at reading body language. It’s something you’ve always loved about him; he is observant and notices the small details. He can tell when you need him a little more than usual, or if you need some space to think. 

In public, he puts on his ‘business’ persona, which is classy, cool, calm, and collected. The aura he radiates is astonishing. He exudes elegance. However, in the comfort of your own home/hotel room, he has a tendency to be clingy and sugary sweet. There’s a reason he’s the drama llama! He’ll pout, whine, make random noises too. Sometimes when he’s bored he’ll strike a model pose or two in the living room just for fun. He constantly has to be touching you in some way; back hugs, shoulder/neck/waist rubs, anything :(

This is especially escalated when he can smell your presence. He loves the smell of you. With perfume, without, or just your regular shower gel has him go crazy. He’ll nuzzle his face into your neck, and play around with the collar of your shirt. 

Your high rise penthouse is chic, with the perfect mix of modern yet ‘old money’ vibes. White and black with accents of warm gold. Kkami has definitely made himself feel at home, too. With no concept of personal space, that dog will leap into your lap at any given chance. Particularly while you’re lounging on the couch or on the bed. Hyunjin jokes that Kkami might like you more than he does. Especially since Kkami does growl when Jinnie gets too close. 

He lives in those designer shirts, like the white ones that simply say Gucci, Versace, etc. on the front. Just a simple house shirt and sweats when he wants to be comfy. His shoulder-lenth hair is slightly disheveled, and small strands lay across his forehead and fall into his eyes. His lips are so glossy and pouty, just begging to be kissed. So you do. His head is resting against your shoulder, so you have to do some maneuvering. His response? A small hum and the most delicate smile gracing his face.

After going shopping, he makes you do a ‘fashion show’ in your living room with all the stuff you bought. It’s silly, but he loves it as a couple’s activity.

He loves to create matching couple outfits. Not that cliche cringry kind though. His vision is that your outfits complement eachother in aesthetic ways. Spending as much time as he does with the fashion industry means that he’s picked up a style tip or two. In no way does he see you as incompetent, he will always let you wear whatever you want or say no. But, he just can’t help but try to elevate your style and maybe put his own touch on the things you wear. It’s like his own type of love language. And it’s not like his advice is bad, either. At this point, both of your closets have influences from each other’s styles, and maybe some stolen pieces as well. It goes back to the part where he loves your scent. Scarves especially, because they hold your perfume so well. He will hold it up to his face and it instantly fills him with thoughts of you. 

If you liked this, see my masterlist !

as an Irish (we don’t call it “Gaelic”, ever) speaker and a Sunny fan, I thought it would be fun to do a bit of a post about the Irish-language scene in The Gang’s Still in Ireland, because it’s not a scene I see widely discussed but I adore it.

some background. I am not a native Gaeilgeoir (Irish speaker) — my first language is English — but I started learning it age five and have always had very high grades in it and a huge love for it. I was hugely excited about Charlie Kelly being able to read Irish in the previous episode, and even more so when he turned out to be able to speak it.

Colm Meaney, the actor who plays Shelley Kelly, grew up in Ireland and as such would have learned Irish throughout his time in school. (this has been required by law more or less since Irish independence, and it was already quite common before that. nowadays, you can get exemptions for things like dyslexia but otherwise you have to do it.) this is clear in his ease with the language. (I will do a post about where in Ireland Shelley lives at some point, because there aren’t many areas where Irish is the principal language, but that is for another day!) both the actor and the character have easy and good Irish.

Charlie Day, as an Italian-American, obviously does not actually speak the language and presumably learned the lines as a bunch of gibberish sounds. (nonetheless, some of his pronunciations do suggest he had the words written down non-phonetically too.) his delivery of the lines is god damn amazing. Charlie Kelly’s Irish is not remotely American-accented. if I heard someone speaking Irish like that, I’d assume they sounded Irish when speaking English. he doesn’t even sound neutral in Irish; he does actively have an accent (the word choices are more non-regional, not pointing to any of the three distinct dialects, but this makes sense as the same is true of Shelley’s Irish). his pronunciation is so on point and his accent is seriously just a delight to listen to. that’s serious effort to have been put in by an American in a show that routinely makes fun of Irish-Americans! I cannot stress enough how cool it is to see my national language like this and how good a job he does.

as a side note, Charlie Kelly finding Irish much easier to read than English makes total sense! he clearly has dyslexia, as well as intellectual disabilities and autism, so literacy being tricky is totally fair, but is probably being made worse in English by how much of a god damn ridiculous illogical irregular mess the language is. English has around two hundred irregular verbs, and that’s before we even begin to consider the irregularity of its spelling. Irish has eleven irregular verbs, multiple of which are only irregular in one tense. its spelling is entirely consistent and, once the rules are known, any word (pretty much) can be flawlessly pronounced from reading it or flawlessly spelled from hearing it. (I promise Irish names make sense. just not if you try to use English rules on them. the languages are very different!) Irish is one of the most regular languages out there.

so, I thought I’d go through the actual scene. I’m going to put each line, the direct translation, the subtitle provided, and a comment. hopefully this will be interesting to someone other than me!

·—·

“is mise do pheannchara, a Charlie.” (Shelley)

direct translation: “I’m your pen pal, Charlie.”

subtitle provided: “I’m your pen pal, Charlie.”

okay, so they translate “pen pal” two different ways in this scene. the first, used here, is “peannchara”. this is a compound word, much like all those long words you get in German. it’s a perfectly good choice given there is no one standard choice for translating that concept.

“tá brón orm, ach ní thuigim cad atá ráite agat. is féidir liom gibberish a léamh, ach ní féidir liom í a labhairt.” (Charlie)

direct translation: “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’ve said. I’m able to read gibberish, but I’m not able to speak it.”

subtitle provided: “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you just said. I read gibberish, but I don’t speak it.”

I would slightly disagree with the subtitles here. the “just” bit isn’t expressed at all. in fact, there is no Irish equivalent to that word, and we often just use the English one in the middle of an Irish sentence because of this. however, I expect that RCG (Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton) wrote the subtitles and then handed them to an Irish translator, in which case the translator did a perfectly good job. a couple of notes about the use of “gibberish” here. I love it. firstly, we totally do drop English words into sentences like that. secondly, I really like the choice to use the feminine form of “it” here (that is, to make “gibberish” a feminine noun). all languages except English are feminine nouns in Irish as a rule, so it’s just a lovely detail calling back to the fact that Charlie thinks of it as the gibberish language. also, Charlie Day really does absolutely nail that voiceless velar fricative (the consonant sound in “ach”, as in Scottish “loch” or any number of German words), a sound even many natively English-speaking Irish people are lazy about. good on him.

“níl aon ciall le sin. sé á labhairt anois!” (Shelley)

direct translation: “there’s no sense to that. it’s being spoken now!”

subtitle provided: “that doesn’t make any sense. you’re speaking it now!”

I adore the phrasing of the first sentence here. thoroughly authentic. there are much more obvious ways to phrase it, but this is absolutely what a native speaker might go with. same goes for the second, actually. Colm Meaney says the second line in a sort of shortened way (same idea as how we might turn “do not” into “don’t”) so I’ve struggled slightly with how to directly translate it. interestingly, Shelley categorises “gibberish” as a masculine noun here, but this isn’t really wrong since it doesn’t have an official grammatical gender due to not being an actual Irish word. just a little odd. also, to fit better to the subtitle of the second sentence, I personally would’ve gone with “tá sé á labhairt agat anois” rather than “tá sé á labhairt anois” (the full version of what Shelley says), as this includes the information of by whom it is being spoken.

“’s é mo dheartháir mo chara pinn.” (Charlie)

direct translation: “it’s my brother that’s my pen pal.”

subtitle provided: “but my pen pal is my brother.”

firstly, to be clear, the nuance of the sentence structure here is not captured in either of the above translations because there simply is not an English equivalent to it. secondly, Charlie uses a contraction here by shortening “is é mo dheartháir mo chara pinn”. super cool. also, there’s that other translation of “pen pal”! this one is “cara pinn”, which uses the Irish genitive case (the word mutates instead of using an equivalent of the English word “of”; this case also exists in other languages including Swedish, German, Latin, and Greek). I like this translation very much too. both work! Charlie Day again delivers this line really nicely, even stressing the word for “brother” (and pronouncing its initial consonant mutation absolutely gorgeously)! I am truly very impressed.

“níl aon fhírinne le sin, a mhic. ’s é do chara pinn… d’athair.” (Shelley)

direct translation: “there’s no truth to that, son. it’s your pen pal who is… your father.”

subtitle given: “no son. your pen pal is your… father.”

so, I really disagree with the first sentence of the subtitles here. it works, but also misses a lot of the beautiful nuance that could have been got. I would have gone with “that’s not true, son” or, more likely, “that’s not right, son”. I also disagree with the placement of the ellipsis in the second sentence, as you see (and my frustrations in translating this sentence structure to English continue, as well). however I like the use of “a mhic” (“son”) here, very much. this is a mutated form of “mac”, meaning “son” (yes, as in all of those Irish surnames; they all just basically say who the person is the son of). it carries both meanings that exist in English: an actual son, but also the use of the word as an affectionate way to refer to any man younger than the (usually male) speaker. this is a really nice choice.

·—·

so, yeah! those are my thoughts. feel free to ask any questions you like. I love this scene so much. as well as the reasons above about how good the translation and delivery is, I also love two other main things about this.

firstly, the level of dignity given to the language. Sunny makes fun of Irish-Americans all the time, but doesn’t really do the same to Irish people from Ireland, which I like (I do also wanna talk about Mac and Charlie as members of the Irish diaspora because it is so so interesting, but that is for another day). Irish as a language is not often given dignity, especially in American or English media, so I really love that it isn’t the butt of the joke here.

secondly, that such a significant scene is delivered through this language. just wonderful. after fourteen and a half series, we finally discover the biological father, and the scene cannot be separated from this beautiful language. it just is so perfect.

RCG, and of course Charlie Day in particular, we Gaeilgeoirí (Irish speakers) thank you! our little language made it to the screens of so many people around the world.

I hope this was interesting haha.

·—·

edits: fixed some things I mistyped.

What do you mean "tricks you into thinking it's a good game"? I'm curious because I'm a totk hater (felt more like a fanmade dlc scale mod) but I thought botw was pretty good.

botw obviously has its moments. The Great Plateau was a great introduction to the game, for instance.

But. You do everything that you can do for the rest of the game on that plateau. (Nearly) all of the what the game is going to do is shown to you in the first 5ish hours of gameplay, and those 5 hours are then stretched into a 70ish hour game. Every moment between leaving the Great Plateau and the final fight with Calamity Ganon is riding that high of that first initial experience with the game’s concepts. There is a reason why a lot of people’s most favorite trial in the whole game is when the game throws you onto a deserted island with none of your gear and asks you to rough it again like you were doing 50 hours ago. It’s because the best part of the game was when you were fresh to the experience, often forced to solve the games combat encounters with unique methods; engage with its unique emergent gameplay.

Why even start to bother with that stuff later on though? You actually literally can’t usually. Late game mobs become such sponges to damage that I actively avoided fights because each non trash mob (even the trash mobs would take longer too) would take like 45 seconds to fight. Why try to do a silly funny bomb explosion when the setup takes just as long as the fight only to result in doing a quarter of their health or something. Just press B a bunch of times.

Totk actually did this to me too! Enough time had passed where I was willing to be open to that experience again. And it worked on me! For the first few hours, exploring the Great Sky Island felt like I was playing botw for the first time again. I actually started to think my harsher feelings for botw had all been exacerbated by time or that i had misremembered how it felt to play the game. I was pretty locked in to the whole experience. Then I got on the ground. The false visage of a fresh experience melted away. I was in the same hyrule field as before. I think someone messed with the terrain tool over there. 👉🏻

its like chewing gum. The flavor starts out real strong, and its a fun chew, maybe you haven't had gum in a minute, so this is like, a pretty stimulating experience. But after a while you realize you've had this piece of gum in your mouth for like, the whole day now. And theres no flavor left in it anymore. And you've worked this piece of gum so much now that its like, kinda hard now? But like, looking for a trash can is kind of out of your way so its like, whatever. I'll keep chewing this gum for now. And then like, hours later you're like, wow. I've been chewing this gum for so long now that my jaw kind of hurts. So now you're looking for a trash can. You finally spit the gum out and theres still a lingering flavor of spearmint in your mouth. Not enough to like, re experience that first chew again, but you know. You had a stick of gum. It was alright. My jaw hurts though. I’ll probably have another piece in a few weeks.

Hi Slug!! I'm curious about some of the religious imagery in hypmic! Kuko is obvious and I think Doppo has talked about not believing in gods before but what's up with Jakurai? Is he meant to actually be Christian or is it just an aesthetic thing?

This ended up being so long Tumblr wouldn't let me put it all in one post. Hoo boy. Under a cut for length.

Usual disclaimer that I don't live in Japan, so I'm not talking about IRL Japan so much as Japanese media. Media isn't perfectly synonymous with real life and, of course, it's foolish to draw conclusions from the general (media and culture) and apply them to the specific (individual persons). With that being said, media is indicative of real life values and cultural concerns--for example, the American high school experience is a lot less interesting than in movies, but these movies reflect a romanticization of teenagehood so widespread in the US and areas with heavy US cultural influence that filmmakers take it for granted in their audiences--so I can talk about what assumptions inform the portrayal of religion in Hypmic.

As in a lot of Japanese media, religion is present but not explicitly mentioned outside of Kuukou. It's what I would call culturally religious as opposed to actively religious. Similar to how many works in the Anglosphere are steeped with Christian ideas and phrases even if the authors/works themselves aren't Christian (the Christian concept of sin, using "God" or variations as an interjection, etc.), many works written in Japanese are influenced by Shinto and Buddhist ideas. Some people in Japan are active worshipers of Shinto, Buddhism, or both, but many more have a somewhat relaxed approach. It's not uncommon for people to have a belief in a higher power, but the nature of this higher power isn't terribly well-defined. Many people will attend religious ceremonies for holidays or funerals but rarely pray to a higher power outside of moments of great stress. That is, being culturally religious. Traditions are fun and comforting, especially if they involve dressing up in fancy clothes, eating yummy food, and seeing friends and family. Even if you're not especially devout, it doesn't hurt to pray for a bit of luck before a big test, that your child will grow up healthy and strong, or that your recently departed ancestor will be at peace. For those in predominately Christian areas, you probably see plenty of this in your community--people who maybe go to church occasionally for companionship or holiday celebrations but aren't active worshipers. Or, perhaps, people who pray like, "Hey, if anyone's listening, can you lend me a hand?" Maybe you're even one of these people yourself. We can generally assume that most of the cast falls into this camp. Doppo and Hifumi go to a festival with a religious element--charms and rituals to bring good luck by appealing to Shinto deities--but I doubt either of them have a firm belief that these particular deities exist. They may think that there's some higher power...or not. But what's the harm in a good luck charm, right? And more importantly, it's fun to play games, eat, drink, and horse around with friends! But wait, does that mean these two are only Shinto or...Shinto-ish? Probably not. There's an expression that most Japanese people are "born Shinto, but die Buddhist." Shinto rituals tend to focus on matters of the living (although Shintoism has its own distinct funerary rites, sometimes combined with Buddhist rites), while non-devout Buddhists usually participate in Buddhist ceremonies only when loved ones die. We see Juushi and Hitoya with loved ones buried in Buddhist cemeteries, but it's safe to assume both observe Shinto holidays and customs in some fashion. We also see in the very beginning of TDD that Nemu and Samatoki have what appears to be a butsudan--a Buddhist altar--in their home dedicated to their deceased parents. "But wait," some might say, "I thought spirit worship isn't a part of Buddhism." That's true for some forms of Buddhism, but not all! Buddhism is enormously varied, and some of the (many, many!) forms of Buddhism practiced in Japan accept aspects of Shintoism. There's plenty of mixing, just as we see within individuals themselves. Again, the Hypmic characters may not fully believe that spirits exist. (Well, outside of Ramuda...) But it's a comforting thought that one's deceased family members are around in some form and can be a positive influence on one's life.

I love your art so much! If you don't mind me asking what's your process for designing characters/outfits?

i had to think about this for a while

when designing characters sometimes im just thinking of a concept ive been exposed to and want to expand in my mind, like with my dunmeshi ocs there were multiple Things in dungeon meshi i wanted to play around with.

dwarves having high tech ruins with trolleys? telephones? there must be Some innovation going on with dwarven society, what if i made someone interested in that innovation but theyre not a dwarf. elves have magic but instead of casting, this character leans toward that tinkering mentality and they brew magic potions and make explosives. Then, i know the noble dwarves in the story are drawn like Rennaissance lords but they have telephones, so maybe there could be a little bit of a steampunk vibe. And then being an elf, around dwarves, they probably get their gender confused more often, maybe they actually dont mind that much and its fun. maybe they work for the dwarven noble in the party? i think that was basically my thought process for fry. and then for his physical appearence, i started drawing an elf and i was focusing on that "likes to have fun" part and i gave him sort of that elven shagginess/laid back look, and messed around with the color pallett until i picked something i liked. he almost had bleach white hair reminiscent of a mad scientist but brown felt more grounded. and its pink at the root because its cute!

i feel like i wing it with outfits but i think i use the same logic. hes an alchemist and lives around nobility, so he has kind of a suit as if hes in academia. but hes cute, so it has a skirt and no jacket. he has a magical prosthetic that he controls with a puppet spell like milsiril uses to control her puppets. it doesnt heal when hes healed because he was born without the arm, and it also doesnt count towards the 1/13th of body missing that would ruin a ressurection since it was never there to begin with. SORRY I GOT INTO THE LORE ON YOU umm yeah and then his head is very warm toned so his outfit i chose warm tones as well. i put goggles and gloves because safety first proper PPE. and thats it! i pick outfits that make sense for what i know of the character, their class(monetarily) how practical i imagine they are, what they would dress for on a daily basis. either before or during the design process im thinking of the silouette and color chemistry as well, but that can change with an outfit.

awesome question thank u!

Hi I was wondering if you could do an eddie munson imagine with reader who is a total and is a total sweetheart/kind/smart/dresses girly;feminine etc.. (can be protective over her friends and is basically like a mom to the younger kids) everyone adores her and when eddie meets her for the first time he falls head over heels for her and asks her out over time and then asks her to be his girl and its just fluffy fluff and maybe a smut or reader is the type to save herself for marriage and wants kids type which makes eddie have the idea of marriage with her and time skip to graduation where he proposes and a sweet ending please 💖🤍

Omg I love this one!! Also I apologize that this took so long! I wrote a whole story just to delete it again because I didn’t like it😭 I feel like the ending is still kinda rushed but I tried my best :(

word count: 3.6K

warnings: fluff, fluff, fluff and more fluff, slight smut and a bit of cursing (this will always be in the warning because Eddie definitely curses), if I missed any please let me know!

English is not my first language, so I apologize for all kinds of mistakes! Feel free to send requests! feedback is always appreciated but please be nice! Enjoy the story!

masterlist

This feeling called "love" - Eddie Munson x fem!reader

Eddie never believed in love. He thought that it was useless and only wastes your time and nerves. That it just was a concept that society created, so humans would have something to believe in, something to dream about. But for him? For him, the feeling called "Love“ was a curse. Whenever he felt it, he got disappointed. The love towards his so called "father“ disappeared pretty fast, when he was 12 years old to be exact. His dad forgot his birthday again and decided to rob a small store in town instead. That was the reason why his father went into jail, again, leaving a twelve year old Eddie and his sick mom all alone, without money or food.

After his mother passed away, he moved in with his uncle Wayne. From there his life in Hawkin‘s small trailer park started. His first girlfriend, which he dated in middle school, just dated him because of a bet she made with her friends. Ever since then, he only had a few hook-ups with some cheerleaders who weren’t satisfied by their boyfriends dicks, but that was it. Nothing serious, ever. All the experiences he made, were the reason why he thought he could never feel this emotion called 'love' , again. Especially something like "love at the first sign“ doesn’t exist to him and never will. That was until he first saw you.

You’re sitting at one of the large tables in the cafeteria of Hawkins High, a plate with some of the bad-tasting food placed in front of you as you‘re sitting next to two, obviously younger, boys. It takes him a while to realize that these are his boys. Dustin Henderson and Mike Wheeler, the youngest members of his D&D club called "Hellfire“. They joined only a few weeks ago because they were new to Highschool.

He thought that they looked like two lost sheep’s, wanting to be found and saved by a shepherd. And oh sweet Eddie knows how it feels to be alone, to be an outcast, a freak. So he decided to help these two lost sheeps, like the lovingly soul he is, making them join Hellfire pretty fast after they told him that they‘ve been playing ever since they were kids. That’s how these two little idiots became a part of his small family.

Seeing them sit together with such a pretty girl like you makes him frown though. Not just because you’re definitely not their age and way out of their league, but also because he thought that they had no friends in Highschool. That‘s when the realization hits him. He never saw you here either. Normally he knows most people from school because he either sold drugs to them once, fucked them, or because they made fun of him…but you? He never saw you before. He definitely would have remembered a pretty face like yours.

Your hair lies perfectly on your shoulders, your eyes shine as bright as million stars, while you show the younger ones your even prettier smile. The soft, pastel pink sweater you‘re wearing makes your skin look even more perfect and it shows a bit of your skin, making Eddie stare like a young teenage boy. He notices the white skirt you wear together with the white high-knee socks after he moves a bit closer to his usual table were he always spends his lunch breaks, letting out a soft "Mh-hm“ which causes all eyes to be fixed on him. Shit.

"Oh hey Eddie! That‘s our friend Y/n! She just came back from New York and will go to our school now!“ Dustin announces to his older friend who just stands there, mesmerized by the way you look at him. Your smile didn’t disappear after your gazes locked, no it gets even brighter. You’ve heard a lot about Eddie. Dustin always told you about him on the daily weekend calls. You know that he‘s an outcast, that people call him weird and scary, but you never were the one to judge someone, just because of some rumors. Plus, what you’ve heard about him from your friends, made you realize pretty fast that Eddie was just like them. A lovely nerd.

"It‘s an honor to meet you Y/n" he softly smiles while gesturing a small bow, scanning for any slight change in your facial expression, but that isn’t the case. Instead you smile even brighter again, your cheeks flushing because of his way to say "hello“. "Nice to meet you too Eddie, Dustin told me a lot about you“ you smile at him before looking at Dustin who gives you a slight slap on the shoulder, nothing that could hurt you of course. "Don’t tell him! That will just boost his ego!" your younger friend says while Eddie takes a seat in front of Dustin.

Usually Eddie would sit at the head of the table, on his usual chair but since a specific someone ,you, has taken a seat there, he decides to sit across the younger ones. Mike and Dustin share a quick look. If it was one of his hellfire members, Eddie would have kicked them off the chair, that’s for sure. A soft giggle escapes your lips because of Dustin’s earlier comment, gosh it kills Eddie. He’s already head over heels for some random girl, he knows since 3 minutes..plus you stole his usual seat in the cafeteria..so why would his heart beat that fast?

—♡—

That was your first encounter with the Eddie Munson. The big, scary, drug selling, satan worshipping Freak of Hawkins High. The boy everyone in town knows because of his bad image. Turns out that all rumors you’ve heard about him are way off reality. You weren’t surprised though. Yes, Eddie sells drugs and also smokes a joint himself sometimes. Yes he also is a freak, an outsider but he‘s not scary and that’s definitely not a reason to call him bad names. Hell he‘s everything but scary.

It‘s been a few months now since you first talked to the Hellfire Club leader, turns out that the "satanic cult club“ is a small D&D club for nerds. That also wasn‘t a surprise for you, since your younger friends told you that they joined hellfire on their second day in Highschool. If it would have been something, that would corrupt their young minds, you probably would have sent them to another school. As the second mom of your friend group, it was you job to protect the younger ones from any bad influences. Yes, you and your childhood friend Steve take that job very serious.

So here you are. Lying in your, now best friends, bed with your nose in one of the books you‘ve borrowed from the library earlier that day. Eddie‘s sitting across from you at the end of his bed, his fingers lingering on the sides of one of his guitar, which is placed in his lap. Oh how he wishes it would be you sitting in his lap instead of his guitar. He plays a few soft chords while humming a low melody, looking up from time to time just to check if you‘re still there with him.

Even though you‘ve been best friends for a while now, he‘s still scared that you‘ll leave him. That you‘ll start to see him the way, everyone else in this goddamn town sees him. "What‘s going on in that pretty brain of yours?“ your soft voice pulls Eddie out of his thoughts. You let your fingertips graze over the skin of Eddie‘s hairy legs, trying not to scare him because of the sudden touch. His eyes meet yours, causing your cheeks to flush a bit. "Nothin‘" his lips form into his beautiful warm smile, the smile that makes your heart beat a million times faster.

He‘s beautiful, that’s for sure. His brown eyes are so innocent, his hair is messy but in its own gorgeous way and god his smile. It‘s the prettiest you‘ve ever seen. It always makes your day better, no matter what. Everything about Eddie is perfect and gosh how bad you want to tell him that every single day, ever since you‘ve met. How bad you want to give him the love he deserves. It‘s no secret that you‘ve been crushing on Eddie since the day the two of you first talked. Everybody knows but him..but how could he know? Stupid little Eddie. He doesn’t think that the perfect girl with her short, white skirts and her high-knee socks and her perfect made hair and absolutely amazing grades would like someone like him in that way. He‘s happy that you even talk to him, that you allow him to be your friend. He doesn’t want to mess up things with you, even if it feels like his heart beats for you and you only. Eddie still hates love, he‘s still fucking afraid of it. It could mess up everything, he has built up with you.

"So everything‘s the same as always?“ you teasingly grin at him, trying to lighten his mood a bit as you slowly put your book aside. He answers with a raised eyebrow and mirrors your smirk before he puts his beloved guitar to the side just like you did with your book. "Say that again!“ the grin on his lips grows wider as he slowly crawls his way up to you, cornering you. A soft giggle escapes your lips when his big hands start to tickle you, as a soft punishment for the "bratty" behavior. "Eddie stop! I‘m sorry!" you laugh while he hovers above you to get a better chance to tickle the sensitive spot on your neck.

"What was that? I don’t think I‘ve heard ya Sweet thing“ he grins even wider as you start whining beneath him. Your pouty lips trying their best not to form into another smile while you innocently look up to him, looking through your lashes as you put on the best doe eyes you got. And shit that does things to Eddie. The way you look at him, all cute and innocent right here, in his bed, beneath him while his hands are all over your body.

He stops. Suddenly. Abruptly. His eyes meet yours, making your cheeks burn hot and red again. You‘ve done this before. Fooling around with each other and breaking out in big laughing sessions, ending up cuddling on the couch while watching a lame movie, but this feels different. The way he looks at you, right into your eyes, not even daring to look away for the split of a second. Your heart is pounding so hard in your chest and it feels like you’re going to explode if he doesn’t do something, anything to just already cut this tension between the two of you.

Again his hands find their way to your soft skin after he softly brushed his thumb over your hot cheek. His other hand holds himself up, still right above you, only a few inches away from being completely on top of you. His gaze shifts down to your lips for a second before it’s meeting your eyes again. "Can I kiss you?“

The air feels heavy and hot as he whispers against your lips, only a few inches away from his own. You look at his lips before slowly nodding 'yes', not being able to form any words right now. Eddie grins again. "Words princess, I need your words" "y-yes please Eddie..".

That‘s all he needs to hear before he softly brushes his lips against yours, kissing you so carefully like he‘s scared to break you, but that doesn’t last long though. The kiss gets more intensive as soon as your hands find a firm grip on his shoulders, while you try your best to not moan right into his mouth. He lifts you up softly, sitting down himself before making you sit on his lap. Again his hands roam all over your body, but this time it’s not for teasing or making you laugh. This time he wants to explore every inch of you, wants to get to known what‘s okay and what’s not. One of his hands ends up on your ass, squeezing the fat of it softly through the silk of your short skirt. The other one is caressing the back of your neck to pull you even closer to his body.

Fuck, how did he get so lucky?

—♡—

It‘s no secret anymore that you and Eddie officially started dating a few months ago and it definitely was no surprise to the younger ones. No, actually the two of you found out that the boys of Hellfire made a bet about you and how long it would take for you to start dating. The people from school were shocked after they saw you and Eddie kissing in the hallway. The dark, scary Freak who tries to graduate for the third time and the bright, smart cheerleader with top grades walking to their classes together while holding hands. Of course your relationship with Eddie has been the topic in school and town at first, but now people are used to seeing the two of you together, all happy and madly in love with each other.

"So, what you up to later Princess?“ Eddie asks as he leans next to your locker in which you just put your books from your boring classes. You look at him, a soft smile forming on your lips as soon as you‘re able to see his face. "Haha Eddie. You know we’ve gotta study for our finals! If you don’t graduate this year, Wayne’s going to kill you!“ You slap his chest softly before he pulls you closer to him, placing a kiss on your lips just as soft as you slapped him. "I know, I know. I was just teasin‘ ya pretty girl“ another soft kiss lands on top of your nose as his smile grows wider. Gosh that boy is madly in love but so are you. "So we gonna study at yours later?“ he tilts his head to the side as you nod happily.

A few hours pass, you and eddie are sitting on your bed, your nose buried in your books from history classes. It‘s probably the most boring book Eddie has ever hold in his hands but that doesn’t matter to him right now, since his eyes are focusing on you instead of the pages in front of him. His gaze is practically glued to you. The way you‘re sitting in front of him, in a pink dress which barely covers the flesh of your ass and thighs. It also let’s him have a real nice look on your tits. Your hair is perfectly made again and your lipstick-covered lips look plump and soft while you mumble some of the sentence you’ve just read. Gosh it‘s hard for him to concentrate when you sit there, looking like this. Eddie is about to loose himself in his thoughts, when suddenly your soft voice rings out to him.

"Hey, you okay Ed‘s?“ "Mh? Oh yeah, I’m fine. Was just wondering why Napoleon kind of reminds me of Carver“ he lies, his lips forming into a soft grin with which he tries to cover his lie. You shake your head softly, letting a soft chuckle escape your throat "Eddie, the book is about the Second World War! I don’t know where you saw the name 'Napoleon' appear“. Shit, he got caught. He looks at the page, you can see how his eyes try to find the, not existing part, where it mentions Napoleon. Another soft laugh of yours can be heard as you shift closer to him. "Ed‘s, I know you‘re scared because these are our finals…but you can do it! I‘ll help you as much as I can, okay?“.

A soft, reassuring smile forms on your lips and your fingers find their way to his free hand, before they slowly intertwine with his ring adorned fingers. Eddie doesn’t know what he did to deserve such a warm-hearted girlfriend like you, oh lord how thankful he is to have you by his side. He knows he wouldn’t try to graduate again if you wouldn’t be sitting here with him, trying to help his stupid ass to pass the exams. Oh yeah Eddie really is, one lucky bastard. "I know, I know. And I appreciate ya for that Doll. So so much" he says before placing his lips on your own. His kisses are so careful, like he’s trying his best not to break you. You‘re just as lucky as him. Maybe even luckier.

The carefulness of Eddie’s kisses doesn’t last long though. It never does. The kiss deepens as soon as Eddie’s hand put down the book and replaces it with the flesh of your thigh, pulling you on top of his lap while never breaking the kiss. You place your legs on either side of his thighs, so that you perfectly sit on his crotch, feeling the small tend that grows by each second. You and Eddie have made out many times before, so many times, Eddie stopped counting..but you‘ve never gone further than just kissing each other and leaving marks on the others body in the most messy way ever. It‘s not like you two didn’t want to go further..oh boy Eddie would love to corrupt that innocent mind of yours, but he won‘t because of what you told him.

When you grew up, your parents always told you to wait until you‘re married when it comes to sex. That you should save your precious virginity up for the man, that will stay by your side until it’s all over. To your surprise, Eddie was completely fine with it when you first told him about, that you want to save up for marriage. He said that he can- and will - wait for you, until you‘re ready or until he‘s able to call you by the name "Mrs. Munson". Of course he‘s not a big fan of these days, when he has to jerk himself off in your or his bathroom while his precious girlfriend is just one room away, but he respects your wish and wants you to be comfortable around him, no matter what. As you feel how the air around you begins to feel hot, you softly let go of him, leaving him in front of you with big puppy eyes and pouty lips. "We should study Eddie…seriously" your voice is barely about a whisper. "Just one more minute please, it will motivate me to keep studying!“ you roll your eyes at him. He‘s unbelievable and that’s what you love about him.

—♡—

Time flies. It feels like you‘ve meet Eddie just yesterday, but no. Instead you are standing next to him on the stage in the cafeteria. Holding your graduation certificate in one hand, and Eddie‘s hand in your other one. You did it. Both of you. You‘ve graduated. The smile on Wayne‘s face shines as bright as the sun, he even sheads a tear here and there because he‘s so happy that his nephew finally did it. After three hard and awful years, he finally did it because of you. Wayne will always be thankful for that. Your parents stand next to Eddie’s uncle, clapping their hands and sharing a soft smile for you and your boyfriend. You‘re about to leave the stage, when Eddie suddenly let’s go of your hand and walks to the microphone.

Before you‘re able to pull him back to your side, you‘re being pulled off the stage by your friend Chrissy, who you‘ve met after joining the cheerleading team. She pulls you to two empty seats in front of the stage. Directly in front of it. In front of Eddie. His fingers tap the mic a few times before he softly mumbles "2,3" checking if the mic is still turned on or not. He clears his throat and looks around, an obvious nervousness takes place on his face as he starts speaking.

"Uhm- hi..So uh..I think most people here know me…" he slowly starts speaking, looking around the cafeteria with a heavy gulp. All eyes are on him now. "I also know that most people don’t like me or thought I wouldn’t make it this far. Well, I actually planned to flip y‘all the bird and scream something like 'look! I‘ve made it you assholes!'…but I‘m standing up here, for a different reason". That‘s when your gazes lock. Eddie‘s beautiful, brown eyes meet yours, making him relax a bit immediately. He lets out a soft sigh, smiling as he continues his speech.

"I wanted to say so much..I‘ve planned a whole ass speech for real, just for me forgetting everything..how embarrassing" he laughs softly, making some people in the room join him. "No, I‘m up here today because of one special person…my girlfriend y/n, who literally saved my ass from failing my graduation again. I want to thank her. I want to tell her how much she means to me, how much I love her…and I want everyone to know that too" his gaze is still locked with yours as he bites his lower lip nervously. His palms feel sweaty from the new feeling of people staring at him because they‘re interested in what he‘s saying, not because they want to judge the living shit out of him. But your soft smile gives him the courage to keep speaking.

"I‘m standing here today because I want everyone to know how thankful I am for being y/n‘s boyfriend. How thankful I am, that she‘s in my life. I can’t imagine a life without her anymore. She never judged me, she didn’t call me a freak, she never thought that I am creepy or believed any of the rumors about me... She makes made me a better person. That‘s why…that’s why I want to ask you something y/n…“ he says as he jumps off the stage and walks over to where you sit. One of his hands finds it’s way to yours and he pulls you up to his level, looking you in the eyes for a few seconds before he kneels down in front of you.

Your eyes go wide when he pulls out a small box and opens it. One of his rings that usually takes place on his fingers, shines in his full glory directly in front of your eyes. It‘s your favorite. Eddie gives you his best smile and most adorable puppy eyes when he suddenly speaks again "y/n, y/l/n…would you allow me to marry you and become yours forever?" His voice is full of love mixed with fear. Fear of you saying 'no' in front of half Hawkins. The air between you feels heavy again, all eyes are on you and your boyfriend who‘s still kneeling in front of you and waits for your answer. You can feel how your eyes start to swell up with hot tears and your head starts to nod 'yes' as you fall to your knees, right in front of Eddie.

"My goddess, yes Eddie! Yes!" you practically cry out and wrap your arms around his figure, shaking a bit from the sudden, overwhelming feelings. His arms find their way around your body and he pulls you even closer, letting out another sigh…but this time it’s a sigh of relief. He softly starts kissing your forehead as he takes the ring out of the box, putting it on your Ringfinger. Claps and cheers can be heard in the filled cafeteria but that doesn’t matter to you right now. All that matters to you is Eddie, and Eddie only.

"I love you so, so much Eddie Munson"

"I love you more Mrs. Munson“

I started playing around with my Charlie’s design a little bit. I wanted to add some more covert wolf/dragon-like qualities, and I’ve also been ruminating on the white-savior narrative a bit as well as colorism… I know that they are technically half black in my version (they’re basically albino and albino black/bipoc people exist and, of course, should be acknowledged; I don’t want to overlook them, however, there is something to be said about how lighter skinned people or characters tend to fill the kinds of protagonist roles Charlie is in at a disproportionate rate….for very obvious reasons…., and idk how I would feel about playing into that even if I aim to critique it, especially if this ends up branching off into its own little thing) and that I chose the white coloration to comment on the ways we perceive whiteness as purity (lamb deception) whilst demonizing darkness, but I’m still on the fence. Like I said, I also wanted to play around with wolf patterning, so I landed on some vitiligo (ig?)- coded ideas. I’m not sure if I’m sold on it right now, but I do like the concept. I was also gonna try darkening their skin tone, but that one’s still in progress (Sorry, I don’t do a lot of digital art, so I’m kinda bad at it lol)

If anybody has any thoughts on the subject, I’d love to hear them.

Also, some more fun facts: they definitely have a more extensive wardrobe as royalty, and the colors I associate with them are black, white, pastel blue, and red (so original lol). They wear more red around their father or whenever they feel crappy since this palette is based on flame coloration in accordance to heat (high spirits = blue and white; low= red and reddish orange) and in my version, red would be a color closely associated with specifically Lucifer’s presence (instead of…everything), so they’re subconsciously trying to match his energy. They wear more contrasting black and white outfits when hanging around Alastor. With V, it’s more the typical blue (their usual attire is made to complement each other through pastels). Oh, and V finally has a name: Vanesa. That should have taken two seconds to come up with, but indecisiveness strikes again. I’m still second guessing.

Alright enough random color dynamics:

What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

by Maureen Tkacik

March 28, 2024

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

John Barnett had one of those bosses who seemed to spend most of his waking hours scheming to inflict humiliation upon him. He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed.

“John is very knowledgeable almost to a fault, as it gets in the way at times when issues arise,” the boss wrote in one of his withering performance reviews, downgrading Barnett’s rating from a 40 all the way to a 15 in an assessment that cast the 26-year quality manager, who was known as “Swampy” for his easy Louisiana drawl, as an anal-retentive prick whose pedantry was antagonizing his colleagues. The truth, by contrast, was self-evident to anyone who spent five minutes in his presence: John Barnett, who raced cars in his spare time and seemed “high on life” according to one former colleague, was a “great, fun boss that loved Boeing and was willing to share his knowledge with everyone,” as one of his former quality technicians would later recall.

More from Maureen Tkacik

But Swampy was mired in an institution that was in a perpetual state of unlearning all the lessons it had absorbed over a 90-year ascent to the pinnacle of global manufacturing. Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs. CEO Jim McNerney, who joined Boeing in 2005, had last helmed 3M, where management as he saw it had “overvalued experience and undervalued leadership” before he purged the veterans into early retirement.

“Prince Jim”—as some long-timers used to call him—repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” book he co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. He initially refused to let nearly any of these talented assholes work on the 787 Dreamliner, instead outsourcing the vast majority of the development and engineering design of the brand-new, revolutionary wide-body jet to suppliers, many of which lacked engineering departments. The plan would save money while busting unions, a win-win, he promised investors. Instead, McNerney’s plan burned some $50 billion in excess of its budget and went three and a half years behind schedule.

Swampy belonged to one of the cleanup crews that Boeing detailed to McNerney’s disaster area. The supplier to which Boeing had outsourced part of the 787 fuselage had in turn outsourced the design to an Israeli firm that had botched the job, leaving the supplier strapped for cash in the midst of a global credit crunch. Boeing would have to bail out—and buy out—the private equity firm that controlled the supplier. In 2009, Boeing began recruiting managers from Washington state to move east to the supplier’s non-union plant in Charleston, South Carolina, to train the workforce to properly put together a plane.

Mutuals Mutuals Come one COME ALL!!!

Put your various sona's and appendages together for the unveiling of a lil' something I've been working on while being distracted from animating Dame Aylin's wings (Its long, hard, fun as all hell but the concentration required to do so seems physically impossible for a beast of my genus)

I drew all my moots tavs/pseudo-companions!!! It took a bit, but it was well worth it! Everyone's design is so unique and fun to figure out. (10 is a big number of moots)((which I am very grateful to have :3)) So without Further Ado!!! (there will be so much more Ado):

(page break cuz the images are 400x400 each but 10 times, I also go on for a bit about how much I like each Tav/pseudo-companion character) ((if anyone can give me tips on how to size pieces in a normal style digitally i'd be very grateful))

First of all is Sivvus the Fey Prince (he/him)! This elusive Eladrin Tav belongs to @thedomesticanthropologist! A gorgeous yet seemingly cold-hearted druid who tends to keep his cards close to his chest. Though if you want the challenge you can see for yourself if you can try and get close to him to see if Sivvus is as closed off as he seems to be. To be quite honest, Sivvus really grew on me. A very fancy Eladrin with a high society (fey society) upbringing ( with very good looking mood boards to match) and the like only for him to be thrust into the bg3 world with a worm to boot. He is charming! Also his backstory? <3 Defienetly go read it! 10/10 would draw the snob again :)

Second off we have Gum (He/They)! A Githyanki Cleric of Mystra. Being @piipaw's Tav you'd find this charming fruit lover trying to live a peaceful life after escaping from the creche that raised them. I like Gum a lot as the concept of a githyanki trying to find their own way in Faerun while also having no idea about any of the social customs is very gripping to me. I recommend greatly to check out the blog for Gum fics, fanart and a very cool moot . :)

Next is H'rayn of Verkos (she/her)! Now different from all the character's I drew, H'rayn is not a Tav! She's actually a pseudo-companion character with a lotta lore and history! She even has her own quest, party banter, approval and disapproval things. It's the whole deal!! @githkisser made an amazing post all about H'rayn . If you want a ton of indepth and fun info that's really really well documented, I cannot overstate how much you should it check out! I find myself going back to learn more about H'rayn as she really is as well thought out as in game companions! It's quite fun thinking up of ways tavs can interact with her and the art is mwah!!! very good indeed :3

4th! Tavern (Tav) the Bard! (they/them) This darling bard ran away from the circus.....from birth! Created by @avocado-writing, Tavern plays their way into your heart with their silly antics, warm heart and eldritch pocket dimension in their chest!

Tavern is a doll to doodle and I am amped to draw them even more in the future. The heterochromia and the inclusion of instruments does make them a fun challenge (i will draw instruments accuratley with these paws eventually). Go check them out!! :D

5th! Hvinidyr the Barbarian (he/him)! @star-bear-art (I just realised after all this we aren't actually mutuals. Which is funny since we kinda have the same name and theme with the bear thing XD) If you wanna see wonderous art of Hvinidyr as well as the other companions, go look right over here!

Winnie (Hvinidyr) has a lot of forms depending on the time period you wanna look at. The one I chose was the most recent with the large scar tissue all over the left (right? I'm horrible at directions, my paws don't make an L shape for me to tell). He was really fun to sketch out (and probably later colour in) and has a really unique design that I appreciate :)

6th Vierlin the Enchantment Wizard (and a lil' bit rouge)!!!(she/her) @sybaritick's Tav!!! Now!! This classic drow has a keen intrest in enchantment magic, teaching her crafts to nobles in Amn. After the whole tadpole fiasco, she also finds another use for her multitude of arcane skills. Most notabley depicted with a local wizard.

Now I won't get ahead of myself here but the fics that Sybaritick wrote about Vierlin are like....licking a warm pan of thickened maple syrup or a fancy meat meal with so much demi-glaze you're left smacking your lips for at least 20 mins after eating. Its indulgent. And I couldn't recommend it enough!! Read it!! (it took me a good 8 times to get the 'ie' part of Vierlin's name right, the letters look the same to me)

7th Fink the Spores Druid (they/them) belonging to @causticcontemplation! They're a pretty short Tav a 2.5ft and have a whole modern AU fic about them!!! You can read all about it here! (the pun name is amazing!)

I found it cool to use the fic to figure out how to colour them in, I ended up sending an anon ask instead and it helped great! Lovely Tav 10/10!

8th Korydass the Druid!! (She/her)!!! Conjured by @cfcreative, this seemingly non-emotive bronze dragonborn lights a spark in viewers as her tail and love for nature portrays otherwise. Art of Kory is many and also very good. Reading through her lore is fun watching her dynamics with the different origin characters change as she opens up to the party.

Now I do have slight bias, I like drawing Kory the most since her head shape is less humanoid. It's just so satifying, also her design is crazy awesome to work with so all around its great recommend I like her a lot :3

9th Asheera the Paladin (she/her) produced by @optiwashere.

To be quite honest I wouldn't even have a blog if it wasn't for Asheera's fics. They are EXCELLENT. If you want to go through a journey of a half orcs struggles, successes and gripping romance with Shadowheart, VAULT YOURSELF into Opti's A03 page and devour. You will have negative regrets about it just like I! Asheera is great I love her a lot I am the most normal about her.

(I'll keep it brief since this post is long enough to cross a river)

10th Quin the Bard (he/him) composed by @quinthebard (who'd have known?)

This darling plucky bard is the star of an ongoing comic that is very dynamic and very gripping. (My fave panel is this one). Despite being 100, Quin still maintains his joyful and kind nature when traveling with the tadpole gang.

Definetly one of the most friendlies Tavs out of all the ones i've drawn. (he was also the first i drew out of all of these!) He's a delight!! Go check him out! Thanks to all my moots for giving permission, having such great characters and being such lovely moots! <3 <3 <3

(Any pronouns or other changes that want be changed, feel free to DM about it. I love those! )

so… the whole ogl thing is happening… any thoughts?

Very stupid move by WotC that does not in any way surprise me, but is also objectively hilarious in a world where Pathfinder already exists for exactly this reason.

The appeal of D&D is and has always been in the emergent storytelling, not in any of the things that WotC can legally claim - they don't own any of the fantasy races they ripped from Tolkien and filed the serial numbers off of, they don't own the concept of a d20 system, they don't own the magic system, they don't own the concept of magical other planes, they don't own high fantasy. Its appeal over other TTRPG systems is only that it's old and accessible and has a lot of long-time fans cheering it on, and they've managed to axe two of those in one fell swoop.

The way I see it, D&D went from being a niche hobby to an Extremely Cool Mainstream Thing thanks in vast part to Critical Role and the actual-plays it inspired, with the bulk of CR's appeal being in its completely original homebrewed setting (that, as I understand it, started in pathfinder) and CR's popularity rolled over into popularity for D&D as a whole, leading to the popularization and development of support tools like Roll20 and D&D Beyond, and now that money and popularity is rolling in in vaster quantities than they've ever seen, WotC has made the mistake of assuming their audience is a captive one. It is emphatically not. If they make themselves annoying, people will leave. And they ARE leaving, which is why WotC is, at last update, frantically backpedaling. Turns out D&D doesn't matter as much as they thought.

D&D is, and has always been, a niche nerdy hobby that is lucrative only so long as it is fun. From homebrews we came and to homebrews we shall return.

So it's Solarpunk Aesthetic week and I'm trying to do homework while listening to lo-fi but my brain started thinking of Solarpunk game concepts so here are my rambles.

What if someone made a like. Not reverse Stardew Valley, per say but like. And this was inspired by some tags by @bleedingedgeavoidancetactics BUT

You inherit a great big booming agricultural business from your mysterious and distant uncle or whatever. And its run like you standard agricultural practice. But the goal of the game is to make it as sustainable as possible. You come in like right at the end of one season, so you're getting to see how its run already, while also talking to the community and specialists and such to discuss how to make changes in future growing seasons to like. Fix. Like. Do more permacultury things, still get yields needed to sustain the surrounding community but with less negative environmental impact and beginning to have good environmental impacts? (Could also have dating sim side elements if you wanted)

Or maybe a game where like. It's after a disaster of some sort, and a group of survivors/nomads find an abandoned city. And you can work to turn the materials from said abandoned city and the preexisting infrastructure into a solarpunk society? Like a city-builder game, and you're starting on the edge of this abandoned city creating like gardens and such (maybe the starting area is like a suburban neighborhood you find?), and you can send expeditions deeper into the city to find other supplies you can use to create new structures for the society you're building? And maybe this is a kind of game where you can individualize building placement and decorations to an extent, and maybe visit your friends' settlements? Or at least it'd be fun to show pictures online? (This one's inspired by a mobile game I play that I THOUGHT was gonna be like this but everything is already PRE SET)

Or a guerrilla gardening game, where you're like. A guerrilla gardener, and you're sneaking around at night sowing seeds and watering plants or planting plant starts and trying not to get caught by like. I dunno. Guards??? Police officers??? and then during the day you can take actions to protect the plants from... I dunno. And you can go to a store to buy more materials/seeds/stuff, and your home base is like a huge seed starting zone where you can craft a certain number of seed bombs/start a certain number of seeds depending on how many you have in your inventory. And each method has a few stats--efficiency, survival, and risk--so like, just sprinkling seeds would have low risk and high efficiency but low survival stats, seed bombs could have medium efficiency and low risk and low-medium survival depending on the recipe you use to make them (maybe you can learn/discover new ones as you go along), and different sizes of plant starts have lower efficiency but higher survival and higher risk. And the risk could factor into how long it takes to plant the thing but also how likely it is to be discovered by the guards or whatever during the day. And also in your daytime persona, you can make friends and organize a community that can start banding together to protect the plants from guard interference? Maybe the game starts out mostly in black and white except for your night character's green cloak and your day persona's yellow shirt, but people you can befriend also have colored shirts, and the more guerilla gardening you do the more things start to become colorful. (This one's inspired by a story idea I've had rattling in my brain and a separate animation I considered doing a few years back)

I'm not a game designer or a coder or anything, I'm just an artist. But I'm sitting here chilling and I thought these could be cool ideas. If anyone wants to use them to inspire their stories and such by all means GO FOR IT this is an endorsement

Jojolands: A Charming New Addition

Well that was quick. We start off with some backstory, you know shit gets real when Araki opens with a geography lesson. We did end up recruiting the new guy! As people have pointed out, early villain turned ally with a lost little sibling fueling his backstory is immedately reminiscent of Polnareff which is neat. But here he is, the one and only Charmingman! Which of course its a musical reference...to The Smiths. Eh, I thought they were pretty pretentious even before Morrissey went all racist so not my favorite nod in this part. That's Dragona and you'll have a hard time topping my love for Smooth Operator. Coast to coast, LA to Chicago...

Where was I? Oh yeah. My lack of fondness for The Smiths aside, and I can at least respect that's a solid reference with some lyrics that play nicely into his backstory, Charmingman is a welcome addition to round out the five-man band. I loved the aesthetic of his stand in action and am more than ready to see more. This bit of him and Jodio was so fun too, immediately asking what kind of music he likes instead of other more pertinent questions. I still have high hopes Jojolands will feature my favorite core cast. And his backstory reinforces the sibling dynamics that seem to be a core idea for this part. I'm also not fully up to date on Part 8 but we have a potential rock human? Also gotta note we're keeping up this theme of hostile police which is pertinent to a modern day American setting.

Moving on, I love this dude. Just materializes out of the aether when a cutie is talking about souvenirs. Accurate. And lookit! The fancy schmancy watch made its way back to Dragona just as hypothesized. The lava rock works in mysterious ways. A lot of this chapter was getting us back home and introducing the new guy, but especially with talking about similar concepts in Egghead for One Piece it is intriguing we skipped over the conclusion to the fight and we have this bit of weirdness. But where that really came to a head...

Aww yeah Meryl Mei! It's not just that she's pointing out oddities in their return. There's an ominous edge to this, I don't know how much we should trust this lady so it troubles me that Dragona seems to be the one closest to her individually. How does this one girlboss do so many different jobs? Worth pondering given this series has a huge running theme of bad guys with time powers. Just something to think about. Hope she's not wicked because I do like Meryl but you could have a great twist having her pull the rug out from under the gang.

Still, we're back home and ready to likely embark on something new. I liked the trip to another island, fun picking up a new friend and working Rohan in the way we did. The panels of him tossing money around on the beach to study the lava rock were classic Rohan weirdness. Personally I hope we get a couple of chapters now to play with the characters a bit. Flesh them out more. Usually Jojo's parts spend a little time on that after the first big leg of the story it seems. Something like Jodio & Dragona taking their mom Barbara Ann out and having to deal with a weaker stand battle could be solid or just letting them live their lives as some weird things happen. We have such a good group and setting I'd hate to spring too fast into heavy plot stuff while we're still figuring this part out.

Random GT Thoughts #5(?)

Ok imagine GT is just a video game, like, ALL OF IT. borrower mains try to steal from human mains. the formula has gotten old and the playerbase wants something new:

"Borrowers are so boring, we need an update to G/T, this game is seriously getting stale, the meta is full of tryhard sneaking playstyles, and defensive gameplay is ruining the longevity of this game! It's just not fun to play as a human main anymore!! I recommend we add a new archetype to the game, Vampire Borrowers! instead of just stealing the humans STUFF, they have to get close to actually approach the human to drain their blood. High risk High reward, the exact gameplay shift we need in this stalling meta."

I imagine a scene where a 'normal' borrower main meets the new kid on the block and wondering why they don't ever bring any tools for carrying supplies, only for the explanation above...

Slightly inspired by @entomolog-t's story Bite Me, which you should seriously check out if this concept sounds interesting to you, (its basically this concept but more fleshed out, and not a video game!)