i've been dying for a poll option ever since i saw my followers' answers to that text post from february 2022 asking people whether they pronounce beloved as "be-lov-ed" or "be-loved". many people were emphatic about only using one option, and many others use both but were not always able to articulate when they use 2 syllables vs. 3. so out of the goodness of my heart and my insatiable lust for knowledge i have gone through the notes on that post and written down some likely contenders! you're welcome!!!!

BEFORE YOU ANSWER! think about how you would pronounce beloved in the following syntactic contexts:

noun, talking directly to the beloved: hey there beloved

noun, talking about rather than to the beloved: my beloved lives in a pineapple under the sea

adjective in a noun phrase: my beloved x lives in a pineapple under the sea

verb participle: x is beloved by y

okay poll time! there are no wrong answers!! and apologies in advance if i didn't capture your truth, i only had 10 options and life is a rich tapestry!!

aziraphale from good omens :)

Bahahahaha! Oh my.

Okay, for the sake of sportsmanship, let's be as fair as we can and give Dracula every fighting chance.

The first big question is holiness - Aziraphale is undoubtedly very very holy. But he's an angel of God, not literally God, and that makes a difference. If we take the demons of Good Omens as a test case, we can see that they share some traditional weaknesses with vampires, the most prominent one being Holy Water - (although NB Dracula never interacts with Holy Water in novel, just as none of the demons in Good Omens, book or series, never interact with the Host). It seems reasonable to presume that Crowley for instance would have a bad time with a crucifix. So we can perhaps say that the two are repulsed by the divine in much the same way. But. No one would ever suggest that Crowley cannot physically touch Aziraphale. Right? Apart from it being demonstrably untrue, whole pillars of fandom would collapse. It's a non-starter. So Aziraphale is not prima facie the kind of divine that is repulsive to the demoniac... except perhaps aesthetically.

The next thing to get out of way is that Aziraphale is not strictly speaking the kind of thing that can die. But he can be discorporated, and the waiting list on bodies is such a bother, so I am going to say that if his physical body gets destroyed by any means that counts as not surviving Castle Dracula, though I love the idea of him possessing people later in the novel (I'm thinking either Renfield or Van Helsing, because Renfield is basically a medium already and like real weird about angels, and Van Helsing has that one scene where Jonathan is like .... so I'm like 90% sure he was possessed and speaking with literal divine authority just then. Weird.) The question then becomes what it takes it discorporate an angel and whether Dracula in fact possesses those means. The one thing that actually accomplishes it in universe is that summoning circle, which is a pretty extreme example. BUT if we include actual biblical canon in our angelology, then, while while that doesn't bring us any closer to what, if anything, can kill an angel, we do at least have examples of angels being beaten in fistfights. So, for the purposes of this exercise, Aziraphale can in principle be killed, and he can also in principle be beaten in a fistfight.

It might make some difference if we are talking about the Book or the Series. Book!Aziraphale is a little bit more of a bastard, a little less naive, a little less distractactable, and (as is Crowley) a whole lot more terrifyingly competent than his televised counterpart.

...okay enough of this. Aziraphale outclasses Dracula so hard it's not even funny. Angels and Demons are set up to be evenly matched because they are fundamentally the same type of thing and that's the whole point - but Dracula isn't that type of Demon. He's a human person who's mildly demoniac because he majored in it in college. It's very impressive to other humans, sure, but like, the ravings of his solicitor aside, he's really not on the level of actual Demons of the Pit. And the things that humans are better at - creativity, growth, love - he's traded for vampirism. He's got the disadvantages of both without really the advantages of either.

Aziraphale's fatal flaw, if you want to call it that, is that he really likes humans. He would be delighted by Dracula's cooking and by his library. He would never stand for the baby eating. He would he more insufferable about the paprika than our baby lawyer. But he's also had 6000 years of learning to be unassuming and letting people underestimate him, and perfecting the Reverse Customer Service voice. He would do that Disapproving Bookseller thing and make Dracula uncomfortable in his own home. He's not the kind of thing that can be hypnotized. He's not going to waste time looking for the key, the doors will just open for him when he tells them to. And if all else fails he has wings, he can literally just leave whenever.

So um, yes. Aziraphale can survive Castle Dracula. And he will probably mess with Dracula non-trivially while he's there.

Psycho Pass Providence — The Re-introduction of Kougami Shinya

Still working on a general review on Psycho Pass: Providence and also a Shinkane/KouAka post. But I had so many thoughts on Kougami after watching the movie twice that I had to document them while they were still fresh. This is a follow-up to a post I made about Kougami prior to watching PPP: some of my impressions did change while others stayed the same. It’s a lot so keep reading if you’re interested in what I thought about Kougami’s character in Providence. WARNING: Spoilers!!!

I’ll begin with the scene in Dejima where Kougami and Saiga are drinking together. There’s one particular line that I felt could’ve been made smoother: Saiga says “the girl is neither a saint nor a bodhisattva, screw around too much and you’ll end up getting enforced. Apologize while you still have the chance Kougami. Take it from an old timer like me.” and he raises his glass with a smile. I watched both the subbed and the dubbed version and the line is very similar across both. I can’t help but think that line could’ve been improved slightly. Maybe it flows more naturally in Japanese so I can’t speak on that matter. But if I had the liberty of tweaking it even just a little, it would go as follows: “the girl in neither a saint nor a bodhisattva, screw around too much and you’ll end up losing her forever.”

And I don’t mean to necessarily press for him losing her as a love interest, but even just a trusted friend or at least a colleague who always had his best interest in mind.

Ultimately, not exploring the more emotional (and by extension—the romantic) aspects of Kougami’s character was a missed opportunity for Providence in my opinion. He’s the second main character in this installment and we got very little inward reflection from him this time around. The last 15 or so minutes of the film is what really impressed me with respect to his character. Seeing him exit the isolation facility, looking back, and then looking ahead, declaring “I swear, I’ll come back for you,”  with such ardor reminded me that he’s still a hero in this story, however unconventional he may be.

It was clear that Akane and Kougami’s relationship had to change in this installment. After 6 long years, they are both different people now and cannot go back to the same relationship dynamics as in Season 1. More on that in a different post. Consequently, the portrayal of these individual characters had to evolve in order to match this change. Initially, when I watched the promotional clips, I was put off by his bluntness—especially towards Akane. But there were instances where we saw the caring Kougami seep through. He smiles once in the film. And this is when Saiga tells him: “I don’t work with the PSB, I work with Akane Tsunemori.”  I don’t know if he smiles because he still finds it funny that Saiga is cooperating with the government or if he smiles at the mention of Akane’s name or even some matter of pride at how much Akane is respected by Professor Saiga. Either way, it was nice to see this moment.

The other less noticeable moments from Kougami were two times when he showed what I can interpret as a combination of grief and frustration. From my observations, his eyes were animated to have this glistening/“quivering” motion, similar to this gif, minus the actual tears — there were no tears in Kougami’s case:

It’s very subtle but please let me know if anyone else also noticed this. The first time his eyes did this was when after Saiga died and he called Shion to consult Saiga’s psychological profile of Tonami along wirh Akira’s poem. Shion mentions how horrible it was — what happened to the professor. Kougami pauses and adds “Yeah”  but the tone is almost as if he had to force it out of himself. I couldn’t help but feel like he was holding it together for the investigation, but deep down was grieving the loss of his dear professor. After all, he told Akane to keep it bottled up until the end of the case. The second time I saw this effect of his eyes was while he was reading Akane’s letter in his isolation cell. He gets to the part where she writes about being glad to have seen him again and that he helped her find the answer. He calls her a bakayaro, and his hands grab the letter so fiercely that it kind-of crumples while he throws his whole body into a defeated hunch — since he’s stuck in his cell and can’t even do anything to stop her.

I had read some early accounts by Japanese viewers that he was crying while reading her letter: this effect in the eyes may have been what was mistaken as crying.

Although it was nice to see Kougami go through these moments in PPP, I can’t help but feel like there could have been more. However, Providence is a very dense film and I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt that with all the action sequences, Akane’s iconic scenes, and the supporting cast all getting their own memorable segments, Kougami’s development just wasn’t a priority. If Shiotani, Fukami, and Ubukata intend to make an SAD spin-off as they’ve expressed in interviews, I would hope that they explore possible romantic or other intimate human feelings on Kougami’s part — similar to how he learned to be a father figure to Tenzing. In fact, I would argue that after Providence, it’s likely that they’ve backed themselves into a corner with regards to Kougami’s interpersonal relationships. The tension between Kougami and Akane was essentially the secondary conflict of the film and it ended with some resolution midway but also a shift in Kougami’s disposition once he read Akane’s letter, realizing the impact he had on her life. If there’s further content on Kougami as a person, we almost certainly need to at least confront his relationship with Akane and even Ginoza (was somewhat addressed on the boat scene and we see them on good terms in Season 3/PPFI). The other route is just watching a 007-Misson Impossible Kougami getting into knife fights and performing crazy stunts, but I think the PP fandom in general agrees that this option would be dull and a waste of a character who had such an artful inception. Now I know that PP wants to go for a more shōnen look and are cautious of depicting romance between the main characters. It was pretty obvious with Arata being introduced as the new main character and the fact that Yuki Kaji was brought on board to voice him (he’s done fantastic work on many popular shōnen characters including Eren Jaeger). But, showing how love could affect Kougami and how him giving love could present new angles of his character would undoubtedly be exciting to see. We know he wants to protect people. We know that he’s decided to work outside of the law in order to do that. He’s made peace with his revenge and he’s learned that he wants to protect people without any reserve or obligation. Saiga warned him about potentially becoming a killing machine like Tonami if he keeps letting people use him as a hunting dog, and he agreed that he doesn’t want that. I expect that he could follow the same thought process as Ginoza did in SS Case 1 where he ultimately just wants to help people with his detective work, without much care for who’s judged to be good or evil. On this note, it would be beneficial for Kougami to understand his heart a bit more. Maybe visit his mother too? Maybe actually value his own life instead of running into a fight like he has nothing to lose? He’d already prepared Akane for his death way back between S1 and S2. Would he fight differently if Akane were expecting him to come back home alive?

Hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on Kougami’s character. Still love our chaotic spikey-haired gun-slinging emo cowboy. And I’m looking forward to what the creators might do with his character next.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN DREAM'S HAIR USED TO BE WHITE!! oh my god. i just saw your post about killala and i have now perished. thanks for breaking my heart.

but also hi!! i'm relatively new to the fandom and it's a great place to be. i haven't finished reading all the comics yet but i'm curious to know:

what do you think are the main differences between TV!Dream and Comics!Dream? i've heard so many people claiming that he is incapable of changing, for instance, and though the show does convey his overall rigidity pretty well, i'm not getting the vibe that he's immutable.

also!! it's clear that he feels a lot. which is always funny to me when the corinthian is like yo, try this and maybe you'll feel something for a change but like. he does!!! or i get the impression that he does. he probably feels too much if anything?? all of it simmering just beneath the surface, barely contained. how would you personally analyze his relationship with his own emotions?

i hope all of this is coherent enough for you to answer lmao, i saw your post about enjoying being asked sandman questions two seconds after i woke up and barged into your inbox. hope you have a lovely day!

Thanks so much for the ask, and welcome if you’re new(ish) to the fandom! 🤗

I’m sorry I broke your heart—much more heartbreak to come I fear if you haven’t read the comics yet, so I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible.

I am one of those people who believes the differences between comics!Dream and show!Dream are actually not as big as they are made out to be where it matters, and you will definitely find people who disagree. At the end of the day, we all read it through our own lens and will never be fully objective about it.

The main difference I see is that they filed off the rough edges of the comics a bit to make a new audience sympathise more. It’s very hard to do that with a character who is basically in full arsehole mode for most of the first 40 issues or so, and even then only slowly begins to come out of it (although we can obviously see glimmers of what lies below the surface at the beginning of the comics, too, but it’s far more subtle than in the show). I’ve worked in musical theatre for a over decade of my life and understand a bit about bringing the written word to stage/screen, and some things simply don’t translate well from book to stage/screen, and you have to change it. So my personal opinion is we get a more sympathetic Morpheus and certain changes so the audience can do exactly that—sympathise off the bat. You will lose an audience pretty quickly if they don’t care about the protagonist and the universe he moves in, and you can’t be as nuanced about it as you can be in a written work. We’re talking about streaming services thinking about profits here, even if people don’t want to hear it.

Also: The more you sympathise with a character, the deeper the emotional investment and the more you feel, even if it hurts.

Having said this, I don’t think Morpheus is incapable of change, and I never got where that idea comes from. His biggest flaw is that he believes he cannot change (and even he has moments when he admits he might have). In the introduction to Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman says that he was once asked to describe The Sandman in twenty-five words or less, and famously, it was this (you might have heard it):

“The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision.”

And I think some people might have wrongly taken that for an either/or thing. I don’t want to say too much at this point because I don’t know how much you know (if you’d like spoilers or already know how it ends, let me know, I’ll happily expand on it). Only so much:

He is capable of change, also in the comics. Very obviously so. But just like he denies he has his own story (which also isn’t true), he denies he can change. Or at least he thinks he perhaps cannot change enough (it’s actually hard to write about this without giving everything away, help! 🙈).

As for his feelings: He does feel, but again, it is something he pushes down and will deny himself. Until it bursts to the surface and breaks through, and when that happens, it’s usually with, well, let’s say varying results, and that’s putting it mildly. Personally, I’d say he has problems relating to his feelings, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel. Quite the opposite in my view. He holds the collective unconscious—all unprocessed feelings and whatever else floats around in that collective mess, and it’s exactly what he says to the Corinthian in that famous scene: he needs to keep a lid on it and keep that lid firmly closed so all of it doesn’t consume him. But that also means denying himself the feelings that are linked to his own personhood (if you want to call it that). There’s Dream of the Endless, and then there’s Morpheus. And while they’re one and the same and inseparable, Morpheus is also the “point of view”. The character, the person, if you will. And deep down, he craves that personhood so badly. Out of all the Endless, he is the only one who basically collects names because they mean having something beyond his function, which is also mirrored in what he tells Death in “The Sound of her Wings”: he wants something more. He is the only one whose realm is populated with sentient beings (yes, I know Despair has rats, but I think you get my drift). He is desperately lonely and struggles with it. He seeks connection yet denies it to himself. That’s not someone who doesn’t feel.

I don’t know if this answers your questions at all—I was doing the wild “spoiler-free” dance 🤣 But please let me know if you want me to go a bit deeper, I love talking about this stuff.

You can also have a look at my metas if you haven’t already. The headers pretty much explain what they’re about and what spoiler-level to expect, but none of them are truly spoiler-free I guess:

Again, thanks so much for encroaching on my inbox, and feel free to follow up if anything was left unanswered.

@dreamaturgy ask answered

Most of us know by this point that the Lupin III manga series doesn't particularly have the best reputation, but why is that?

Is it simply because of the content itself, or is there more behind it?

It is August 10th, the 56th anniversary of the og manga, and I will be exploring the causes of the manga's poor reputation in the Lupin community with as most detail as I can try to be.

Bluntly put, I will not hide the fact that the manga series as a whole contains extremely problematic elements. All three series, OG manga, New Adventures, and Shin Lupin III all contain instance of Lupin and other characters raping and sexually assaulting women.

It certainly gets better as the series goes on. At the last three major arcs of Shin Lupin III, Lupin becomes almost entirely sexless, with some instances of plain pervertedness. However, it is not an issue that cannot be glossed over and it is the by far biggest burden that this series has to carry over its 56 years of existence.

OG manga is the biggest culprit of this, barely two chapter goes by without an instance of Lupin pulling his sexual advances onto random women and succeeding. Those moments of the manga are extremely gross and uncomfortable- and it really makes our protagonist extremely unlikeable, which brings me to my next point:

The fact that the OG manga is the first of the three manga series contribute heavily to its poor reputation.

"Aiee!! No way that the biggest manga preacher in tumblr is slandering the manga! Isn't that out of character!?"

It quite is, luckily I can think. As someone who has spent about 5 months reviewing almost all of the chapters, I can say that I know quite a bit about what it does right and what it does wrong... and it sadly does many things wrong.

Of course, the main thing is the sexual violence, but it is also the series with the least interaction between each member of the Lupin gang, who are characters people already come to really like. Lacking that element takes away what many people regard to be the best part about the series.

The beginning chapters of the og manga are also poorly paced. A bunch of things are going on, and the panelling certainly makes it hard to follow as well.

And to even add to the original issue, the english translation provided by Tokyopop also fucked everything up too!! Many of the extreme dialogues that you come across, including ones that make jokes at Monkey Punch's expense, are done by Tokyopop. Tabbiewolf explains this much better than I can:

"Just remember: a LOT of the…more offensive stuff in the manga is from the TokyoPop translations. I’m not excusing ALL of it, mind you — it was the 1960s and this was an adventure/spy manga marketed at cisdudes, after all — but the script writer for the English version was extremely, uh, artistic, with his localization of the translation."

"it was the early 2000s, manga was trying to appeal specifically to people who didn’t read it: teenaged cisboys who watched South Park, basically ;) So a fair amount of the stuff was very much the new English script, NOT the creator ‘s original work! Some plots got changed entirely just because the Japanese slang from the time didn’t translate."

First impressions matter, and the OG manga makes a very bad impression for people attempting to get into the manga series. Many readers are most likely taken back by how different it is from what they are used to, and they are definitely not going to like the problematic elements.

Those who still try to give it second chances are going to be met with disappointment when they find out these glaring issues are only partially fixed further into the series. Believing that it won't get better, they end up dropping the manga altogether and generalizing the rest of the manga series as depraved nonsense.

And I can't simply blame Monkey Punch for all these issues!! It was the first of what's to come, and he was not aware at the time just how big Lupin III would become in Japan and eventually worldwide. The og manga is very experimental, and you can tell he was only trying to figure out what works. I also cannot blame the people that dislike the manga. People naturally dislike something that is problematic and different.

Heck, most manga fans feel indifferent about the og manga as well, with the majority of them liking Shin Lupin III much better.

I have the statistic right here!!! It's not a lot of people, but there's an obvious majority choice here.

(By the way, if you're enjoying reading this so far, you should totally join my Lupin III server ahem cough cough nudge nudge)

So not even the manga fans love the OG manga. In my opinion, I would definitely not recommend people to read that as their first Lupin manga either. It is the type of media that if you really love the source material in general, then it'd be ok to read.

It is quite a shame to say that the series that does a better job at getting people in the manga, is the third one of the bunch. Most people aren't going to know that however, and they end up reading something that is going to likely give a bad image of the manga.

Ok so I dont have a good segway to the second part of this post so have a panel.

Now I'm gonna talk about how the fandom itself screw up it's reputation!!

(Before you get further I have to say that I have nothing against anime fans, if I do sound like I don't like them it's just sort of poor wording on my end)

Many fans of Lupin III start with the anime, if not probably all of them at this point. This causes a huge skew in public opinion, where those who are pre-exposed to the anime are probably going to view the manga as something lesser than its animated counterpart.

This can be seen particularly in CloudConnection's video of his manga analysis, which is concerningly just a portion of this 18 minute video, but I'll look over that. The portions of the video where he analyzes the manga contain a large amount of negative opinions about it.

A lot of his points are very good, and a lot of them I agree with, like his issues with the rape and sexual assault and how its a good time capsule but definitely not something that people should start off with. But a rest of the points seem a bit unreasonable to make and rather biased, like how the characters feel inconsistent, the bad pacing, and really emphasizing how dark and grim the manga is (it is very goofy and nobody ever talks about that)

And I have to state- It's totally valid for someone to prefer one thing over the other, but my point is that when this opinion is overwhelmingly the majority, it is going to cause the general public's opinion to unfairly be against something, ignoring what it does good and pinning the focus on what it does bad.

That video example was very popular, and I know someone personally that got the wrong memo from it and hated the manga without reading it for a long time, so you can see how it can probably effect the rest of the people that viewed that video.

So what can we learn from this?

We now understand that two of major reasons responsible for the manga's bad reputation is one: the unfortunate circumstance of the OG manga being the first series, and the overwhelming public opinion being unfairly skewed against it.

To wrap this up, I ask you to please give the manga a chance!! Read Shin Lupin first, and be aware of its flaws while also appreciating what it has contributed for the franchise and anime as a whole. I hope you enjoyed this little essay I wrote, and happy birthday Lupin III!

What makes you interested in book!Aegon? (didn't read the books)

Thank you for asking this anon!

There is a LOT I could say about book!Aegon. To start, I think if you haven't read F&B it's kind of hard to understand that even moreso than with ASOIAF, there are almost no "good" characters unless you count people who are the completely innocent victims of other characters' actions, so choosing a character to like isn't really some moral or ethical issue the way a lot of show fans seem to make it out to be. In the actual historical Anarchy, I 100% think Matilda was done dirty and should have been queen. She was usurped by one of her cousins, not a brother, a guy who wasn't even the oldest male of his family, and beyond being her father's choice, her legal claim was stronger and she was a pretty impressive woman in her own right. But Rhaenyra is no Matilda, and F&B as a whole just doesn't have any Brienne of Tarths, or even Robb Starks. Hell, it's even pretty low on Jaime Lannisters. The most social-justice minded character is a five year old bastard and his lesbian sex-worker mothers who try to put him on the throne. You have characters who do one good or heroic thing like Addam Velaryon, and characters who are blandly inoffensive, like Jacaerys, but they are not really compelling dynamic characters either. You also have a lot of really loathsome assholes. Book!Aemond, for instance, doesn't even have the childhood bullying backstory to soften him, he's just violent, and often a liability. Aegon is one of the very few characters who actually has a dynamic character arc and a few redeeming qualities. He changes over the course of the story, shows a lot of resilience and tenacity, and ultimately, what happens to him is tragic. (This is long, I'm sorry. I'm incapable of being concise on this topic and I honestly could have said even more. Also, book spoilers ahead, obiously).

Just to get it out of the way, the show did Aegon pretty dirty in adapting Mushroom's accounts about the "guttersnipes" selectively. Mushroom talks a LOT of shit, and the stuff he says about Rhaenyra is almost more abhorrent than the stuff he says about Aegon, and he was actually on her side. Is Aegon a good, decent, honorable guy? Not really. Aegon is written as a hedonist. He's a drinker, he's gluttonous, and he sleeps around. The more neutral non-Mushroom sources say that Aegon was handsy with the maids (not great, to be clear), and we know he has a couple of bastards and likely at least one paramour, but there's no really credible suggestion that book!Aegon is some serial rapist. Is it plausible that he could have been? Sure. I'll give the haters that, it's not a huge stretch to say a guy who was handsy with the maids might have taken other liberties, but I'll also say this: George does not have a problem outright stating that someone is a rapist or an abuser when that is his intent, even characters he likes (hell, book!Tyrion is explicitly written as a rapist and George loves him), but he did not have anyone but Mushroom say anything like this about Aegon. But Aegon's got a lot of vices, and they start pretty young. If we look at other Targaryens, drinking problems are pretty rampant. Aegon is also called "sullen," and "pouty" but Aegon is in a unique position. He's the eldest son, but his father chose his elder sister as heir, and this is pretty unheard of in this world, an eldest son who gets second son treatment. And unlike other second sons, like, say, Daemon, he doesn't even have an advantageous marriage arranged for him. Daemon might not have liked Rhea or wanted that marriage, but the point of it was to give Daemon holdings of his own and lands he could inherit so that he would not always be beholden to whomever sat the throne. There is just zero provision made for Aegon or his siblings' futures. Instead, Viserys (not Alicent) marries Aegon to his sister, sealing both Aegon and Helaena's fates. It means that when Rhaenyra becomes queen, he and Helaena will be entirely at her mercy, and will basically have to be charity cases, dependent on her continued willingness to support a brother that she hates, who poses a considerable threat to her rule, and his family of dragonriders, all of whom are legitimate unlike her older sons. And book!Rhaenyra is not a great person, the show softens her considerably (I won't get into Rhaenyra in this post because it's not about her, but I have Rhaenyra thoughts too), so there's really no indication that she'd do this. But, in spite of all this, Aegon is not particularly keen to take the throne. He does it because he becomes convinced his family's safety depends on it (and in my opinion, this is true, except taking the throne also, ironically, dooms them. This is a no-win situation for Aegon and his siblings).

Aegon is a reluctant king who is young and inexperienced and he makes mistakes, but he does his best to step up for the sake of his family. And he suffers greatly as a result. There's this idea that gets thrown around a lot that Aegon didn't care for his family, but there's really no suggestion of that in the book. Was he a hands on, present dad? Was he in love with Helaena? I mean, he's an alcoholic teen dad whose father made him marry his thirteen year old sister at sixteen, but he clearly did love his kids. Aegon is devastated by Blood and Cheese. He has to be stopped from immediately taking off on Sunfyre and storming Dragonstone and is forced to wait while Otto keeps trying to win supporters and make alliances. During this period Aegon "drinking and raging." He's upset. But when Helaena falls into depression and can't take care of Maelor due to the guilt of having chosen him to die, Aegon is the one who notices and puts Maelor into Alicent's care. And Otto's lack of decisive action after B&C is what leads to him firing Otto and naming Criston as Hand, and then Aegon joins battle himself and winds up horrifically injured as a result. And Aegon battles back from injuries that really should not have been survivable, which leave him in incredible pain. There are points he's begging for death, the pain is that bad, and no one really thinks he'll survive at first, but he does, he fights back, and when King's Landing falls he and his children are spirited away.

Where does that well of strength come from, if he doesn't have anything or anyone worth fighting for? He shows incredible resourcefulness and resilience, rehabilitates himself and his dragon, kicks milk of the poppy, and infiltrates Dragonstone, Rhaenyra's stronghold. And at what should be his moment of triumph, finally taking Dragonstone's keep, he's injured again by Baela, and his dragon, which he worked so hard to rehabilitate, dies after being wounded in that same battle. Aegon will live out the rest of his life disabled and with chronic pain. By the end he has lost nearly his entire family including both his sons, he's ill, he's drinking again, he's disabled, and he's got an entire clownshow of a council at each others' throats and pulling him this way and that, and still he doesn't give up. Then you get a lot of frankly ableist nonsense (again, mostly from Mushroom) about how Aegon was sitting on dragon eggs and watching other people fuck because he couldn't, there's a strong effort there in Gyldayn's narrative to build up his poisoning as being somewhat justified because Aegon was "not a well man," but it's tragic what happens to him.

Finally, and I might catch some slack for saying this, but in a war that is notably devoid mercy, book!Aegon is one of the few characters that shows any, even when he has every reason to be vengeful. Does he spare Rhaenyra? No. But she would not have spared him at that point either. He does spare Aegon III and Baela, some would argue to his own detriment. He spares Gaemon Palehair, and he grants Trystane Trufyre's last request to be knighted before he dies. His more ruthless actions are also relatively justified in the context of Westeros compared to some of the other completely wanton killings that we see from others in the Dance on both sides. Again, is he a great person? No. He's a impetuous young man with a lot of issues who was not raised for the throne, making some questionable decisions but also showing a lot of bravery, resilience, and yes, mercy.

And you know, just to get it out there, I've been accused of being a book purist and of being oh so above it all by anons before, but it's not that I think the book!Dance is really all that great. F&B has its problems too, and I know that if an adaptation were to follow it completely faithfully, it would not be a very good show. But Aegon is one of the more complex and interesting Dance characters, one of the few who is present and active until the end, and it's a pity that a lot of show watchers and wiki readers have written him off because how the show handled Aegon in season one. (tagging @aifsaath on this in case she'd like to share Aegon thoughts!)

What's your favorite ebook-compatible reading software? Firefox EPUBReader isn't great, but I'm not what, if anything, works better.

Very short answer: for EPUBs, on Windows I use and recommend the Calibre reader, and on iOS I use Marvin but it's dying and no longer downloadable so my fallback recommendation is the native Apple Books app; for PDFs, on Windows I use Sumatra, and on iOS I use GoodReader; for CBZs, I use CDisplayEx on Windows and YACReader on iOS; and I don't use other platforms very often, so I can't speak as authoritatively about those, although Calibre's reader is cross-platform for Windows/Mac/Linux, and YACReader for Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android, so they can serve as at least a minimum baseline of quality against which alternatives can be compared for those platforms.

Longer answer:

First off, I will say: yeah, Firefox EPUBReader isn't great. Neither, really, are most ebook readers. I have yet to find a single one that I'm fully satisfied with. I have an in-progress project to make one that I'm fully satisfied with, but it's been slow, probably isn't going to hit 1.0.0 release before next year at current rates, and isn't going to be actually definitively the best reader on the market for probably months or years post-release even assuming I succeed in my plans to keep up its development. So, for now, selection-of-ebook-readers tends to be very much a matter of choosing the best among a variety of imperfect options.

Formats-wise, there are a lot of ebook formats, but I'm going to collapse my answers down to focusing on just three, for simplicity. Namely: EPUB, PDF, and CBZ.

EPUB is the best representative of the general "reflowable-text ebook designed to display well on a wide variety of screens" genre. Other formats of similar nature exist—Kindle's MOBI and AZW3 formats, for instance (the latter of which is, in essence, just an EPUB in a proprietary Amazon wrapper)—but conversion between formats-in-this-broad-genre is generally pretty easy and not excessively lossy, so you're generally safe to convert to EPUB as needed if you've got different formats-in-this-genre and a reader that doesn't support those formats directly. (And it's rare for a program made by anyone other than Amazon to work for non-EPUB formats-in-this-genre and not for EPUBs.)

PDF is a pretty unique / distinctive format without any widely-used alternatives I'm aware of, unless you count AZW4 (which is a PDF in a proprietary Amazon wrapper). It's the best format I'm aware of for representations of books with rigid non-reflowable text-formatting, as with e.g. TTRPG rulebooks which do complicated things with their art-inserts and sidebars.

And CBZ serves here as a stand-in for the general category of "bunch of images in an archive file of some sort, ordered by filename", which is a common format for comics. CBZ is zip-based, CBR is RAR-based, CB7 is 7-zip-based, et cetera; but they're easy to convert between one another just by extracting one and then re-archiving it in one's preferred format, and CBZ is the most commonly distributed and the most commonly supported by readers, so it's the one I'm going to focus on.

With those prefaces out of the way, here are my comprehensive answers by (platform, format) pair:

Browser, EPUB

I'm unaware of any good currently-available browser-based readers for any of the big ebook formats. I've tried out EPUBReader for Firefox, as well as some other smaller Firefox-based reader extensions, and none of them have impressed me. I haven't tested any Chrome-based readers particularly extensively, but based on some superficial testing I don't have the sense that options are particularly great there either.

This state of affairs feels intuitively wrong to me. The browser is, in a significant sense, the natural home for EPUB-like reflowable-text ebooks, to a greater degree than it's the natural home for a great many of the other things people manage to warp it into being used for; after all, EPUBs are underlyingly made of HTML-file-trees. My own reader-in-progress will be browser-based. But nonetheless, for now, my advice for browser-based readers boils down to "don't use them unless you really need to".

If you do have to use one, EPUBReader is the best extension-based one I've encountered. I have yet to find a good non-extension-based website-based one, but am currently actively in the market for such a thing for slightly-high-context reasons I'll put in the tags.

Browser, PDF

Firefox and Chrome both have built-in PDF readers which are, like, basically functional and fine, even if not actively notably-good. I'm unaware of any browser-based PDF-reading options better than those two.

Browser, CBZ

If there exist any good options here, I'm not aware of them.

Windows, EPUB

Calibre's reader is, unfortunately, the best on the market right now. It doesn't have a very good scrolled display mode, which is a mark against it by my standards, and it's a bit slow to open books and has a general sense of background-clunkiness to its UI, but in terms of the quality with which it displays its content in paginated mode—including relatively-uncommon sorts of content that most readers get wrong, like vertical text—it's pretty unparalleled, and moreover it's got a generally wider range of features and UI-customization options than most readers offer. So overall it's my top recommendation on most axes, despite my issues with it.

There's also Sigil. I very emphatically don't actually recommend Sigil as a reader for most purposes—it's marketed as an EPUB editor, lacks various features one would want in a reader, and has a much higher-clutter UI than one would generally want in a reader—but its preview pane's display engine is even more powerful than Calibre's for certain purposes—it can successfully handle EPUBs which contain video content, for instance, which Calibre falls down on—so it can be a useful backup to have on hand for cases where Calibre's display-capabilities break down.

Windows, PDF

I use SumatraPDF and think it's pretty good. It's very much built for reading, rather than editing / formfilling / etc.; it's fast-to-launch, fast-to-load-pages, not too hard to configure to look nice on most PDFs, and generally lightweight in its UI.

When I need to do fancier things, I fall back on Adobe Reader, which is much more clunky on pretty much every axis for purposes of reading but which supports form-filling and suchlike pretty comprehensively.

(But I haven't explored this field in huge amounts of depth; plausibly there exist better options that I'm unaware of, particularly on the Adobe-reader-ish side of things. (I'd be a bit more surprised if there were something better than SumatraPDF within its niche, for Windows, and very interested in hearing about any such thing if it does exist.))

Windows, CBZ

My usual CBZ-reader for day-to-day use—which I also use for PDF-based comics, since it has various features which are better than SumatraPDF for the comic-reading use case in particular—is an ancient one called CDisplayEx which, despite its age, still manages to be a solid contender for best in its field; it's reasonably performant, it has most of the features I need (good handling of spreads, a toggle for left-to-right versus right-to-left reading, a good set of options for setting how the pages are fit into the monitor, the ability to force it forward by just one page when it's otherwise in two-page mode, et cetera), and in general it's a solid functional bit of software, at least by the standards of its field.

The reason I describe CDisplayEx as only "a solid contender for" best in its field, though, is: recently I had cause to try out YACReader, a reader I tried years ago on Windows and dismissed at the time, on Linux; and it was actually really good, like basically as good as CDisplayEx is on Windows. I haven't tried the more recent versions of YACReader on Windows directly, yet; but it seems pretty plausible that my issues with the older version are now resolved, that the modern Windows version is comparable to the Linux version, and therefore that it's on basically the same level as CDisplayEx quality-wise.

Mac, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

I don't use Mac often enough to have opinions here beyond "start with whatever cross-platform thing is good elsewhere, as a baseline, and go on from there". Don't settle for any EPUB reader on Mac worse than the Calibre one, since Calibre works on Mac. (I've heard vague good things about Apple's native one; maybe it's actually a viable option?) Don't settle for any CBZ reader on Mac worse than YACReader, since YACReader works on Mac. Et cetera. (For PDFs I don't have any advice on what to use even as baseline, unfortunately; for whatever reason, PDF readers, or at least the better ones, seem to tend not to be natively cross-platform.)

Linux, EPUB

For the most part, my advice is the same as Windows: just go with the Calibre reader (and maybe use Sigil as a backup for edge cases). However, if you, like me, prefer scrolled EPUB-reading over paginated EPUB-reading, I'd also suggest checking out Foliate; while it's less powerful than the Calibre reader overall, with fewer features and more propensity towards breaking in edge cases, it's basically functional for normal books lacking unusual/tricky formatting, and, unlike Calibre, it has an actually-good scrolled display mode.

Linux, PDF

I have yet to find any options I'm fully satisfied with here, for the "fast launch and fast rendering and functional lightweight UI" niche that I use SumatraPDF for on Windows. Among the less-good-but-still-functional options I've tried out: SumatraPDF launched via Wine takes a while to start up, but once launched it has the usual nice SumatraPDF featureset. Zathura with the MuPDF backend is very pleasantly-fast, but has a somewhat-unintuitive keyboard-centric control scheme and is hard to configure. And qpdfview offers a nice general-purpose PDF-reading UI, including being quick to launch, but its rendering backend is slower than either Sumatra's or Zathura's so it's less good for paging quickly through large/heavy PDFs.

Linux, CBZ

YACReader, as mentioned previously in the Windows section, is pretty definitively the best option I've found here, and its Linux version is a solid ~equal to CDisplayEx's Windows version. Like CDisplayEx, it's also better than more traditional PDF readers for reading PDF-based comics.

iOS/iPadOS, EPUB

My current main reading app is Marvin. However, it hasn't been updated in years, and is no longer available on the app store, so I'm currently in the process of getting ready to migrate elsewhere in anticipation of Marvin's likely permanent breakage some time in the next few years. Thus I will omit detailed discussion of Marvin and instead discuss the various other at-least-vaguely-comparably-good options on the market.

For general-purpose reading, including scrolled reading if that's your thing, Apple's first-party Books app turns out to be surprisingly good. It's not the best in terms of customization of display-style, but it's basically solidly functional, moreso than the vast majority of the apps on the market.

For reading of books with vertical text in particular, meanwhile, I use Yomu, which is literally the only reader I've encountered to date on any platform which has what I'd consider to be a sensible and high-quality way of handling scrolled reading of vertical-text-containing books. While I don't recommend it for more general purposes, due to awkward handling of EPUBs' tables of contents (namely, kind of ignoring them and doing its own alternate table-of-contents thing it thinks is better), it is extremely good for that particular niche, as well as being more generally solid-aside-from-the-TOC-thing.

iOS/iPadOS, PDF

I use GoodReader. I don't know if it's the best in the market, but it's very solidly good enough for everything I've tried to do with it thus far. It's fast; its UI is good at getting out of my way, while still packing in all the features I want as options when I go looking for them (most frequently switching between two-page-with-front-cover and two-page-without-front-cover display for a given book); also in theory it has a bunch of fancy PDF-editing features for good measure, although in practice I never use those and can't comment on their quality. But, as a reader, it's very solidly good enough for me, and I wish I could get a reader like it for desktop.

iOS/iPadOS, CBZ

YACReader has an iOS version; following the death of my former favorite comic reader for iOS (ComicRack), it's very solidly the best option I'm aware of on the market. (And honestly would be pretty competitive even if ComicRack were still around.) I recommend it here as I do on Linux.

Android, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

It's been years since I've had an Android device, and accordingly have very little substantial advice here. (I'm expecting to move back to Android for my next phone-and-maybe-also-tablet, out of general preferring-open-hardware-and-software-when-practical feelings, but it'll plausibly be a while, because Apple is much better at long-lasting hardware and software than any Android manufacturers I'm aware of.) For EPUB, I recall Moon+ reader was the best option I could find back circa 2015ish, but that's long enough ago that plausibly things have changed substantially at this point. For CBZ, both YACReader and CDisplayEx have Android versions, although I haven't tried either and so can't comment on their quality. For PDF, you're on your own; I have no memories or insights there.

Conclusion

...and that's it. If there are other major platforms on which ebook-reader software can be chosen, I'm failing to think of them currently, and this is what I've got for all platforms I have managed to think of.

In the future... well, I hope my own reader-in-development (slated for 1.0.0 release as a Firefox extension with only EPUB support, with ambitions of eventually expanding to cover other platforms and other formats) will one day join this recommendation-pile, but it's currently not yet in anything resembling a recommendable form. And I hope that there are lots of good reader-development projects in progress that I currently don't know about; but, if there are, I currently don't know about them.

So, overall, this is all I've got! I hope it's helpful.

Honestly from hearing what you're saying about the movie and listening to others, I've come to the conclusion that people who love the show hate the movie and those who love the movie hate the show or at least the show's ending lol. Cause I really loved the movie and wished they introduced the concepts brought up in the movie into the show...... and also get rid of Thomas cause he's ass lmao

I honestly have a hard time thinking people thought it was better than the show, sorry but??

The miraculous lore is so flat and empty. No lucky charm?? What's great about Ladybug's power is that she finds solutions with her cleverness and it wasn't at all exploited. It was honestly hard to understand how they even managed to beat the villains at all. No akumatised objects, you don't understand well how the akuma leave them or anything

They made Chat Noir a misogynistic asshole lmao who is this guy, I don't know him

None of the characters backstory is exploited nor make sense. Adrien was in school all along? He's not a model? He can stand up to his father like it's normal? Sorry but no

WHERE IS THE TENSION NONE FOUND HERE. There's an identity reveal that couldn't fall more flat because there's no time to see the characters interact, there's no time to build some tension of sort. Adrinette is barely seen onscreen so a reveal cannot be impactful knowing that

The way they fall in love is just....lame and empty?? Marinette just falls for a guy in a library who asks her if she's alright. Cool. Chat Noir falls for Ladybug after she saved his sorry macho ass and there's no big moment or whatever apart from Careless Whisper playing

The themes were basics and done in the most cliché way (be yourself, not be afraid, loveeee wins etc)

Marinette wants to be ladybug again because?? Of some song with Tikki??? And that's it? No big moment where she realises she has to stand in or anything. She just suddenly goes 'ok I have to do that'

Don't get me started on the Gabriel/Adrien reveal and their hug and all fjzjjdje anyways

Marinette's cleverness and what makes her a hero in the series just isn't here. She's not standing out. Zag said fuck u feminism for real

Anyway I'll stop with the negative points hahaha, and share the bits I liked:

The ladynoir practice/play-fight was great and I wished we had had more of that in the series

The visuals in terms of background were great (still hate the characters design). But for instance the Eiffel Tower reaaaally looked huge as it is and we got that impression, the Paris of the movie feels a lot like the real Paris

And yeah Thomas doesn't have the best way of handling twitter at all but from what I've heard, Zag really isn't as great as the fandom makes him seem to be, he's just good at hiding it on social medias 😅 at least Thomas is a good storyteller and the same cannot be said about Zag with what happened in this movie and how...well.....his other shows are working

5e Mechanic Variant

I'll admit I don't have every book, nor have I played a ton of systems (6 in total), so I might've just reinvented something that exists. I haven't heard of it though, and its been successful in the sessions I tried it in. It's a variant on 5e's group skill checks. When the group is trying to do something together, instead of a DC 15 four times, you'd do a DC 15 times four, so DC 60. The players add their results together and see if they can beat the DC. What this does is let the players who specialized in a skill help the others out, instead of rolling a 25 and it being functionally the same as a 15. In my opinion there are two primary types of skill checks that can benefit from this. The first is "everyone succeeds or we fail" For instance stealth, the paladin clanking behind might not get YOU caught but it will kill the stealth section. Doesn't matter if you got double the DC, you can either go it alone (killing session pacing and abandoning the party) or you can end stealth. Plus everyone is actively looking for you now, so you might suddenly get found anyway. Now the rogue is showing them the proper path or making small distractions to cover the barbarian's stumble. You don't have party members who feel like they failed everyone, and it gives benefit for specializing because you can help the party. The second is in team checks. Lets say the barbarian wants to topple a stone pillar or push a giant boulder down a hill. He could get advantage from the help action 10 times over, it's not going to make him able to move 4000 lbs of stone. This lets you say "It's like a DC 80, this thing's huge. Then the party gets together and keeps trying (I set a limit on times you can try a strength check before exhaustion) before finally getting that 26+18+14+22 and succeeding. It also lets them know something's technically possible without letting it be within easy reach, giving them a sort of puzzle on how to reach that goal (getting help, using pulleys for advantage, etc) The closest thing I know of this in 5e is "If half the people make it everyone does", but I find this works better. The basic reason is "You work together and overcome the DC 80 skill check" sounds impressive and feels like everyone contributed to a difficult goal nobody could accomplish on their own. "ok cool, the two specialists passed so we'll just call it a win" makes me feel like you shouldn't have bothered asking everyone to roll, just make it a single person check if my roll is just meaningless.

The more complicated reason- it gives the specialized players a reason to continue their specialization. Think of the Rogue, for an easy example. They chose the sneak class to be good at sneaking, right? well now they're level 11, and they don't get to play anymore. They can't roll lower than a 10 and even a CR 30 can't find them without proficiency in perception. The fun minigame they built a character around becomes "I'd like to-" "Don't bother, you're in the next room now, moving on." Future stealth bonuses don't functionally do much. Also your ranger's still angry because they have high stealth too but don't get to use it. With this model, keep buffing your stealth, disguise, whatever, it still helps! It lets you lower the effective DC for your friends. And other people who are proud of their score but don't get to use it because you're better? Well they're really useful now too! Use a group deception to infiltrate, the bard patching holes in the fighter's story. Group acrobatics to make that leap, the others benefitting from having a perfect example to copy and someone to correct their form. Sure, in some cases it's not that functionally different from base rule, but it just feels better to me. I recommend at least trying out something like this. It has worked great for me so far.

Asking some writers/artists I follow:

Is there anything in your fic/comic that you as the author know about, but won't end up in the actual story?

oh for sure

i'll start with the TMNT stuff first because of your PFP, but we gonna be here a while.

[lab rats stuff at the bottom]

warning: fic spoilers galore

In WIBE, one of the characters we meet is Yuichi Usagi, who works at the human ROTM. He also works in the original ROTM. He was robbed while on a trip to the Hidden City, and is originally from a different city entirely. Hueso is doing his best to help him out, but it'll likely be a long time before Yuichi gets to go home.

Some other WIBE background characters in WIBE include: MM!Kendra, MM!Robyn O'Neil, MM!Irma, & MM!Casey Jones. I don't have a lot to say abt Kendra and Irma, since it's been a long time since I wrote any of it down, but I can give it my best shot with Robyn and Casey.

Robyn has been diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety disorder for a few years pre-fic. She's in her first year of college which is out-of-state, and does her best to check up on her family via phone call at least every other week. She's also sort of invested in all of April's new drama, but she won't admit it.

Casey's been playing hockey for as long as he can remember, and intends to keep at it for as long as he's physically able. He's also got a knack for engineering, and I'd gamble that sometime not long after the ending of WIBE, he'd start up the Casey Jones vigilante batshittery. His parents are divorced, but he spends most of his time with his Jewish mother, and while he's never been actually taught much about his religion he accepts it as a part of his identity, and if people don't like that then they shouldn't be around him in the first place. He finds the existence of the turtles to be one of the coolest things ever, but after actually getting to know Raph and the others, it doesn't impress him as much as it used to. (If I had time, I'd add in a tiny crush on Raph, but I'm an aro with WAY too many ideas for this tiny fic)

Then there's experienced fighters, where the main thing is me ALWAYS knowing what song is playing in the background. I really love how much music is in MM, and I love being able to say hey! here's the musical vibes of the environment!

sort of on that topic, i've got a hc that any song with even small references to space are songs that rise, 2k12, and MM leo are more likely to enjoy. they don't realize these patterns, but they sure are there.

and to end off the music rant, one of these days i'm gonna make a playlist of songs that I think the rise crew all collectively agree are good enough (this is what space feels like, goodie bag, punk tactics, etc. etc.)

there's also two in one, which is based off an au by @blackfire-fanfiction. I have to be real cautious abt what I put in there, because a lot of people are looking at it instead of the extended context of the real thing, not to mention how many Thoughts that aren't really canon I have about it. For instance: today I had a good 30 minute daydreaming session abt the concept of rise!Donnie reading leonardo's notebook while he's comatose post-rise movie and finding out about the switching

in dimension desync, I poke a bit at my head canons about peni parker's movie universe and her mental health at home, and have expanded on this even further in an abandoned draft. this is going to be LONG, so here we go: Gwen Stacy and Richard Parker were around in Peni's universe before she herself was, each piloting a mech of their own [Ven#m and Sp//DR]. A few months after Peni's mother is pregnant with her, Richard dies in action, and a few months later, Ven#m sort of devours Gwen (go read the comics because it's really fucked up but idk how to describe it) So then the role of SP//DR is forcefully thrust upon Peni at the age of eleven, and her connection with SP//DR isn't exactly... perfect.

in my team blue universe, I'm fleshing the hell out of Sam-13 and Shadowcat (both from earth 65). Sam was created by corrupt parts of SHIELD (that have yet to have been identified as corrupt) but now is just a regular agent. Cap returned to their dimension when he was 14 and has been in charge of training him ever since. Cap is stubborn to a fault and is def being manipulated by the corrupt agents, but none of the kids have gotten close to that bigger picture yet. Meanwhile, Kitty was inducted into the weapon x program (or 65's equivalent of it, I don't remember much of the wolverine origin story) at the age of 8, and despite odds survived. Wolverine took her in, and she's been helping him bounty hunt since about 13, even though he's trying to stop her.

team blue is also starting to extend to universes that the spider-verse movies don't really deal with through plants that have yet to be explained. but miguel's spite at e-199999 has definitely transferred, which means that, if they were ever to interact, not many of the main team would like the mcu-vengers

in my very obscure mech-x4 series, Olivia (who is only referenced by name once in the show) is veracity's little sister, who is 7 years old. This series is more of a set of vaguely connected oneshots, but still.

i could go ON AND ON about Oliver in all of my mighty med/lab rats fics, but in short: arcturion made his hair start growing in blonde, which he hates. Horace is his adopted dad and so it sucks ass when he dies. Oliver also comes with built in hypothermia! This is also definitely a headcanon, but I think that in EF once the rats have the upgraded chips, Chase's laser bō is green instead of blue, and his super senses are togglerable (to a degree) I also like to imagine Kaz's lil bro Kyle is his number one fan and nobody in his family listens to him when he claims that Kaz is one of the bionic guys on the news.

... yeah I think that's enough for now

While Jerra is my comfort animal, I do have some other Tavs whose story became much clearer after the full game.

For instance, this is Calliper, a half-drow Great Old Ones warlock/artisan from Baldur's Gate.

Born in the Underdark, in one of the drow cities, a byproduct of a loveless (and fucked up in every way you can imagine if you know how half-drow babies happen to be born in drow society) union between a female human slave, and a male drow slave. Needless to say, both parents wanted nothing to do with her, and the reason why she was even allowed to exist was the shortage of new slaves.

Never got a name during her existence in the Underdark - other drow made it clear that she was a mistake, a disgusting dirt-blood, and the only way for her to atone for that original sin of existing was to do what she is told and pray she is useful.

She managed to escape after involuntarily making contact with a Great Old One (strongly implied to be Atropus) through her feverish and nightmare-filled dreams and siphoning its power.

Calliper doesn't exactly know what her patron is and what it wants with her. All she gets are occasional whispers and horrible visions...and she would rather keep it that way. She is terrified of what will happen if that entity actually starts paying attention to her. For that reason, she actively avoids fighting and resorting to using her powers, preferring to lie, negotiate and bullshit her way through. She doesn't need to remind her patron of her existence more than it's already aware. And yet, she is deadly with her magic when provoked.

After making it to the surface and tagging along with the very first group that didn't instantly reject her, Calliper started making herself useful by actively applying her skills at making jewelry and fine crafts (something she got very good at while serving in the Underdark as the servant of a local craftsmaker. She wasn't allowed to touch the masterpieces, of course, but she watched her work and secretly tried her hand with whatever scraps she managed to collect. Surface dwellers turned out to be much easier to impress than drow, finding great interest in what she herself would call mediocre work. As she adjusted, she chose a name for herself based on one of the first Common language words she learned.

Her life wasn't easy, but she ended up as a guild artisan in Baldur's Gate, happy to work in her studio for the guild, surrounded by pretty magical things she made as well as fixing and restoring jewelry (she particularly enjoyed working with magical trinkets, they were always fascinating). The power of her pact kept competition at bay and provided her with some protection - and this was more than she could possibly want. Or so she thought.

Calliper is...not exactly a hero/leader material or a problem-solver. At least, not initially. She goes back into her survival mode quickly because she hasn't really found a community or support to overcome her issues. Staying huddled up in her workshop, reading books, and occasionally speaking to colleagues and guild members wasn't exactly therapeutic. Being snatched from her safe place made her withdrawn, avoidant, and dodging any situations that are too risky or can end with violence. Whatever problem you have, she is not the one you need. But if you have a fancy trinket or artifact to fix, she...might take a look. It soothes her nerves, y'know.

She is well aware of the drow prejudice, and she doesn't blame people for that because she is the biggest drow hater in the room. She doesn't trust drow. She doesn't like drow. She doesn't want to see any drow near her ever again. She would end up saving the Grove just because she sees Minthara, watches her sneer at her, and call her all the words she heard in the Underdark, and it's on. She has issues with her own self-esteem and would often use Disguise Self when having to leave her home, just to avoid people staring at her.

So, being far away from home with a tadpole in her head, Calliper's only priority will be to get that thing out of her oh this can't be happening (she lived in the Underdark, she knows what mindflayers are), and she would have no clue how she is supposed to help anyone if she doesn't know how to help herself? So, as soon as she meets Wyll, she basically goes "Finally! A hero! Please, Mr. Blade of Frontiers, come with us!" and follows his advice and decisions. Well, aside from killing Karlach because Karlach's flashback just hits way too close to home.

Of course, Calliper gets swept away by the warlock rizz. She looks up to Wyll as the "only-guy-who-looks-like-he-knows-what-he-is-doing" and then, when his secret is revealed, his ordeal is so familiar on so many levels that it hurts. She sees Mizora and instantly remembers how matriarchs and their associates treated male slaves. She hears the word "pact" - and it reminds her of her patron and what it might want from her. And seeing Wyll still having the strength to continue, to smile and stay calm all this time...she is bewildered by that man and falling for him. Hard.

Even though it's been years since she left Underdark, Calliper still wrestles with the feeling that everything is wrong about her - how can't it be? She wasn't born from love. She was told her blood was filthy. That she was a mistake. She has no real place neither on the surface nor beneath it - even if she was complimented, it was always about how exotic she looked as if she was a rare trinket to pocket. Meanwhile, Wyll, makes her feel as if she is absolutely and entirely fine as she is. Her heritage doesn't make her any less worthy of those charming gestures usually described in romance novels. Wyll gives her a fairytale, except that he means every word. In turn, she grows determined to give this man his happy ending, even if it means tapping into her own powers and making hard decisions. As soon as Calliper starts seeing Wyll as more than "the hero" and realizes that this man believes in her (thanks her even for stopping him when he was wrong), she gradually starts leaving her comfort zone and pushing her limits. She is still terrified of her patron and the uncertainty, but she can no longer put the weight of facing problems on Wyll's shoulders.

✩ — 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒.

▸     IS  YOUR  MUSE  TALL  /  SHORT  /  AVERAGE? tall. he's 6 ft.

▸      ARE  THEY  OKAY  WITH  THEIR  HEIGHT ? yes, he's chill with it. his aiel girlfriend told him he was short and he was very offended. but she was like 6'3 so that doesn't count.

▸      WHAT’S    THEIR    HAIR    LIKE? short dark hair, messy, slightly longer in the back

▸     DO    THEY    SPEND    A    LOT    OF    TIME    ON    THEIR    HAIR    /    GROOMING? yes, but he leaves it messy so no one will know the care that goes into his hair grooming process. lol but only when he has the time

▸      DOES  YOUR  MUSE  CARE  ABOUT  THEIR  APPEARANCE  /  WHAT  OTHERS  THINK ? he does. he likes the idea of leaving an impression based on his appearance. he likes making a statement with his clothes. drawing attention to himself.

✩ — 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒.

▸     INDOORS  OR  OUTDOORS? outdoors.

▸     RAIN  OR  SUNSHINE? sunshine

▸     FOREST  OR  BEACH? beach.

▸     PRECIOUS  METALS  OR  GEMS? both because GOLD.

▸     FLOWERS  OR  PERFUMES? perfumes.

▸     PERSONALITY  OR  APPEARANCE? both..

▸     BEING  ALONE  OR  BEING  IN  A  CROWD? he does like having alone time but he prefers being in a crowd, common rooms, groups of people - small or big. he's got some trust issues but he's always up for being around people.

▸     ORDER  OR  ANARCHY? order if the the top of the power structure is rand lol.

▸     PAINFUL  TRUTHS  OR  WHITE  LIES? to hear? painful truths. to tell? white lies. depending on the situation. but he finds that people take that easier. or how about a mix up where he'll do painful lies --- wait wut

▸     SCIENCE  OR  MAGIC? erg he's very uncomfortable around magic. he'll go for science but like from an engineering stand point more than anything, like weaponry and the like. scares the hell out of him but - he has more control over it. structurally at least.

▸      PEACE  OR  CONFLICT? peace but he's never gonna get any of that... he wouldn't even know what to do with it tbh

▸     NIGHT  OR  DAY? night, more fun.

▸     DUSK  OR  DAWN? dusk.

▸     WARMTH    OR    COLD ? warm although he does like the snow.

▸     MANY  ACQUAINTANCES  OR  A  FEW  CLOSE  FRIENDS? he has both. and depending on the day the preference on this changes up

▸     READING    OR    PLAYING    A    GAME? playing a game., he hates reading. plz don't make him do it. but he LOVES games. even mind games ??? help

✩ — 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐄.

▸      WHAT    ARE    SOME    OF    YOUR    MUSE’S    BAD    HABITS? gambling, drinking, promiscuity, reckless behavior, those knife fights lol - okay he just wanted some attention let a man live -, which could be the next one like sir ---, complaining lol, quick to judge, weird toxic women lol

▸      HAS  YOUR  MUSE  LOST  ANYONE  CLOSE  TO  THEM?  HOW  HAS  IT  AFFECTED   THEM? yes, men under his command, his dark friend girlfriend, his friend, noal. survivors guilt, anger, a lot of reflective thinking about it but never really talking about it. over protective over women - to the point of annoyance- after his girlfriend.

▸      WHAT  ARE  SOME  FOND  MEMORIES  YOUR  MUSE  HAS? most of his memories as a kid are ones that he's fond of. he had a good childhood. he was a terror though lol but he had fun doing it. fml the few memories he still has of back home, his family, and things like that. he lost most of them though or they blur more and more over time.

▸     IS  IT  EASY  FOR  YOUR  MUSE  TO  KILL? i wouldn't exactly say it's EASY. but he's done it more than he cares to count. some instances just stick with him, things he can't shake and others are more of a general, the whole ptsd from war and then there's the one on one killing that depending does leave a mark.

▸      WHAT’S  IT  LIKE  WHEN  YOUR  MUSE  BREAKS  DOWN? Mat doesn't exactly break down. he keeps his emotions hidden for the most part. even from himself. he lives very fast that his reactions and such to things often go over his head. he'll act out with drinking, gambling, getting into fights, sleeping around, uncontrolled laughter, isolating himself for a bit, just turning completely of like just sitting there by himself not talking or moving for an extended period of time. things like that. but he never processes any reactions as anything. he can be very unaware of what's going on inside of himself. he tends to arrange his thoughts more in what he's going to do next as opposed to breaking down.

▸      IS  YOUR  MUSE  CAPABLE  OF  TRUSTING  SOMEONE  WITH  THEIR  LIFE? there are a select few that he would trust with his life. oh and the band -- so there are actually over thirty thousand people he trusts with his life lmao

▸      WHAT’S  YOUR  MUSE  LIKE  WHEN  THEY’RE  IN  LOVE? he has different of stages. when he acts very showy, trying to dote on them, win them over, see what they like and if he can give that to them, constant attention, gifts, getting to know them, trying to win them over. but in contrast since he's not exactly very attuned to his feelings if things get emotional / intense he'll try to be indifferent, a little aggressive even. the physical, "courting" aspect would be super easy, he takes to it like a game. but emotional things are tougher so he tends to shut down, push away but all the while wanting the person to stay, needing to be loved but not wanting to ask for it. he's complicated and tends to let that bleed into relationships. it's easier for him to be in a relationship that remains a challenge or a game. not exactly the healthy option but he's not here for the healthy options. but regardless he'd be extremely loyal and devoted to the person.

tagged by: @adversitybloomed tagging: @agoldenlily - @caracarnn - @xradiant - @xhideyourfires - @inprometheanfire - @petitsdieu - @godresembled - @cannotfly - @lunarruled - @honorhearted - @laviexenrose - @bas0rexias

Hello hello,

I am new around here. I really enjoy Kookmin’s bond, and I am also a researcher in the narrative space. I found you on Twitter and I was so impressed with your transparent, eloquent commentary on this whole thing. Thank you for running this blog. My question might be odd, but I am really curious to see how much of this ship/fan wars translate within the Korean social media space? The last few days have been nothing less than hell on the bird app, the anon requests on some of the blogs here are just people thinking they are so slick, but are just purely undermining Kookmin’s bond. I assume Naver is like one stop destination for SNS in Korea. I also see that the members have quit Twitter officially (I have no doubt they lurk though). Are ship wars this intense in the online spaces in Korea? Is it between the same ones we see on the I-Army side? I know shipping is a common theme in the pop space there and people might have healthier approach to it? This is also me being wishful that the members don’t see the pure vitriol that’s being expressed. Thank you in advance.

Hi, there! Thanks a lot for your nice message 😊

To put it shortly: no, such shipwars don't typically happen within k-army online spaces (at least not in the same way we know them) because there is never any need for debate around any meanings of words and no wiggle room for alternative explanations and seeing hidden signs in shadows. However, that doesn't mean that I have not come across any Korean accounts on Twitter that like to twist narratives and *especially* in case when their desired narratives feed into what their non-Korean speaking followers want to hear (they do like to take advantage of that language + cultural gap). As with every assessment though, Koreans are not a monolith, the same goes for k-armys or any netizens. There are some general tendencies but there will always be exceptions. Also it is important to note, even though the fandom largely organizes on the Twitter platform, I find it it less prominent among Korean ARMYs as to the amount of time they spend on there and the conversations that are held there.

From my perspective (my subjective opinion, therefore isn't unbiased and might not be representative of the whole community) ships or to be more accurate 'duos' / 'insert name line' are first and foremost among the majority about the members' chemistry, cute moments, looks, vocals and performances together; not about any potential romantic involvement of the two (that is not to say there are absolutely no Korean shippers of course). It is important to remember that the general premise has been that the idol sells their Korean fans the idea of a boyfriend/girlfriend, therefore the whole fantasy revolves around him/her and the fans having a connection, hence why for example idol dating life is still a big no no in the public etc.

To add, sadly since Korean fans can't get away with twisting the meanings of what the boys said (unless they want to appear ridiculous and stupid) the 'wars' therefore turn more vicious than that. There are some prominent 악개 akgae groups within the BTS fandom too which use all kinds of tactics to tarnish the reputation of the other members by spreading rumors through Korean forums, discussion boards, trending tags and by even reaching out to Korean reporters to run stories based on false evidence. So I would say, these things do happen, just in a different way because Korean online space can be truly unhinged.

I don't believe the members have ever witnessed any of the craziness on the international side as it for the most part thankfully only happens on the international side (objectivelly imagine if Koreans were having real arguments over, for example, the meaning of 동�� 'dongsaeng' 😂😂😂 it sounds absolutely ridiculous). And in the instances they did, when e.g. someone tried to push a 'ship' narrative on any of them directly, we got the infamous 'get out of your imagination' response.

Hope I answered your message clearly and covered all your points. Once again, thanks a lot for reaching out!

"It seems more like a prayer." This got translated as "Parece más bien una plegaria." Is that a valid use of "bien"? I thought "like" in instances like that would be "como". DeepL said the same thing, but also suggested "Parece más una plegaria," which is also missing a "como". What's the rule here? Thanks!

I would say that the como isn't totally necessary. I don't think it's wrong, but maybe more of a hypercorrection. It doesn't really impede understanding, just feels a bit off in some situations but that could be a regional thing

[note: a hypercorrection is the technically incorrect use of a word/phrase based on a false analogy... like when people misuse "I" and "me" or "who" and "whom", the "false analogy" there is its status as a subject or an object. Most hypercorrections don't impede your understanding, they just aren't always considered grammatically correct]

I'm used to seeing parecer without a como

This is one of those cases where it's likely the verb and not you. It's that parecer is "to seem like", and parecerse (a) is "to look like" or "to resemble", so the como isn't really needed since the verb implies it

The verb itself sort of comes out like "to have the appearance of" where any "prepositional quality" is kind of implied a lot of the time

The same kind of thing exists for the verb esperar where non-native speakers want to add a para as "to wait for"... but esperar by itself is "to wait for" so the additional preposition isn't needed

In your case parece una plegaria "it seems like a prayer", or parece más una plegaria "it seems more like a prayer" make the most sense

I don't think the como is necessarily incorrect though. And if it is incorrect it's not so out there that people won't understand what you mean

And you do see a como when you use como si + subjunctive to be "as if it is" or "as if it were" to mark your impressions/opinions or describe a hypothetical situation, but that's different from normal como as "like/as" for comparisons

-

más bien is "more like" in the sense of a qualifying thing. It reads as "more accurately" or "more closely resembling". People will sometimes say más bien in other contexts like o sea "in other words"

You'd consider más bien more like... "rather" in a way... It feels like you're narrowing down your thoughts which can narrow something down or pinpoint it

The third one reads to me like "it seems more a prayer (than something)", where it feels like it's talking about the appearance, like "it comes across as"

But at least to my ears all three sound viable

The Depreciation of Shiny Pokemon in the Switch Era

(forgive me I am at work so cannot format this properly)

So if you know me, you know I am an avid shiny hunter in the post-game of Pokemon Violet. Almost every time I log on I’m slapping herba mystica onto a sandwich and running around like a lunatic for thirty minutes loading in pokemon to try to snag the shiny versions.

But recently, I’ve been hyper aware of exactly how easy it is to get shinies in this game. Like, it’s almost stupid easy at this point.

A sandwich paired with a mass outbreak (and shiny charm) gives you a 1/512 chance of encountering a shiny for 30 MINUTES. I noticed that when I enter the outbreak area, I can get probably 10-14 outbreak pokemon to spawn in. This means if I reset the spawns (run away to respawn and come back) and it takes me approximately one minute to check and respawn them at the 10 pokemon spawn level, I’ll encounter 300 or so pokemon within the sandwich period. That’s almost a 3/5 chance you will get at least one shiny within the 30 minutes!

When you go online to battle other trainers or participate in Tera Raids, you’ll see an outstanding number of shiny pokemon that people are using. It is commonplace to see an entire shiny team during the online battles. It’s at the point where I don’t even notice the shiny’s presence; just a quick “nice” and that’s all I think. I’m not impressed like I used to be.

Now, I never played Sword and Shield, and from what I heard, it had pretty janky shiny hunting mechanics that made it easier to get one. I could be wrong, but it makes me think that this is a Switch Era issue, not just gen 9. I have played Legends Arceus, and it is noticeably easier to get shinies as well, but not nearly as easy as the sandwich method from SV.

Any pokemon in the mainline switch games are practically losing their shiny value. For instance, when I was playing BDSP, I got a shiny Magnemite full odds, which I personally found impressive, but due to Magnemite being on the roster of Pokemon Violet, I just haven’t felt the need to transfer it over. It’s not like people will know it’s origin game unless they look at it off my screen in the summary section. Whereas my shiny Shaymin, I transferred it over with no problem. Shaymin is not in SV, and seems to have been limited to events in Switch era. Thankfully for me, Shaymin was shiny locked in Legends Arceus, and to even get it you need a copy of Let’s Go. I spent twelve hours shiny hunting this thing, so I’m so glad I can show it off.

So what do we do now that shinies are losing their value with every new Pokemon game that releases?

My top guess is marked shiny pokemon.

Recently I’ve been attempting to get more shiny pokemon with unique marks. Like shinies, a player can visibly see when your pokemon is marked, as it is announced in line with the pokémon’s name when sent into battle. This helps your pokemon stand out like being shiny does. Not to mention, it can be hard to get some of the marks as they are rarer spawns, especially on a shiny.

I have to say though, shiny hunting in SV is fun. Making sandwiches with friends, and selecting a cute pick to put it all in place is a slay for Gen9. I don’t feel as mentally exhausted as I did all those encounter resets with good ol’ Shaymin (I wanted to give up). I absolutely love running around with the Academy Special to see if anything comes my way.

And that’s enough of my rambling. I need to get back to work. Would love to know what you guys think!

LORAH

do you have any advice on how to overcome internalized homophobia? I’m a bi woman but I have a hard time accepting I’m bi, idk I always felt very strongly about gay rights but didn’t realize until recently I actually really like women and it kind of freaked me out….. the dread that wells up within me is actually kind of terrifying. I have conservative parents who are just casually homophobic but I mean they would never physically harm me or directly confront me about being gay but I think their casual indifference and disdain still left a deep impression on me. I had a girlfriend when I was 16 and my then girlfriend’s mom was really homophobic and to this day it’s painful to think about. Also I guess I always pinged as gay to lots of my classmates because at every school I was enrolled in during high school I always got mocked for being gay/into women. Well. I think I’ve always known I’m bi but not until recently did I realize I actually want to be with women. Do you have any advice how to build yourself up after such instances? How do I extend love to myself and accept myself while still remaining closeted and not having any sort of community in my social life…. I want to move out and live with people my age and make queer friends but I don’t even know where to start. I get so jealous seeing other people happy in relationships with supportive communities and families, which makes me a bad person I know but I just wish I had the guts to actually invest time and energy to build the life I want 😭

i'm going to be very real w you i may not be the very best person to ask. yes, i'm a bi woman whose closeted to my family, so we're on the same page as far as that goes, but i think based on this ask thar you're in a bit more of an extreme situation than me. my parents would describe themselves as liberal as far as economic status goes but they've definitely got an implicit bias towards the lgbt community and it has showed ever since i was a kid......i honestly do not know what they would do if they knew i was bisexual, idek if i would have a relationship with them at all. so I find it hard to offer any concrete advice on building yourself up after coming out bc, obviously, i haven't even gotten there myself - i'm out to some friends and stuff but not to family. i think more than anything we're in the same boat, i daydream about moving out and meeting queer friends too, it is a really really difficult position to be in. i wanna say the only thing i've done in the last 2 yrs go sort of expand my horizons is go to gay bars - though i have to get the train for 40 min to get to to one - and try and get in contact with any sort of lgbt support or community, even online.

something i want to impress is that you don't have to talk about your sexuality to anyone unless you're comfortable doing so. for the longest time i felt like i was betraying everyone by not immediately announcing it - being bi - but i've come to learn that is truly just. my business?? and not even a big deal to most ppl??? i often feel so perverted, so wrong, so just like. ashamed of experiencing same-sex attraction, but genuinely - we don't owe that information to anyone unless we decide for ourselves that it's relevant to that particular dynamic. it's really really hard for me to accept, and i still find it hard to even say "i'm bi" out loud. but i think i just want you to know w this message that i at least somewhat get it and that you're not doing anything wrong by just like. being who you are and doing what you can to get by authentically. sending a massive hug your way - if you want to talk about this more, feel free to message me anytime!! x