races and naps

I might be reading too much into this but there is something going on with this episode and wolves, and I’m really not sure what it is. Luz’s palisman won’t be a wolf most definitely, but maybe, once Hunter’s healed enough and he feels he’s ready, he’ll carve a new one for himself?

my official campaign promise is that if wanderer wins their poll in the @tmntaucompetition then i'll drive to @vangh17a's house to personally shake their hand and give them a crisp high-five.

People often bring up the omake No Respect Time to use as Crocodad Propaganda, and y'know, I think there might be just a smidge more the omake can provide to Crocodad than what people have already discussed in the past

Like everyone's seen the comparisons between Crocodile and the anime screencaps of Don Luffyone, we all know how the two look so similar etc etc. But honestly, the resemblance is even more obvious (and hilarious) when you look at the OG manga version (Sidenote but Don Luffyone is the only one who smokes cigars in the omake... Everyone else has plain ol' cigarettes... That sure was a decision there Oda)

And yeah, you might be thinking I picked this mangacap of Crocodile in particular because the resemblance is the most obvious here and I have My Crocodad Agenda to push etc etc. But I will have you know that the original omake was from Log Book 5, which was published February 28th 2006. Meanwhile that Crocodile is from the cover of chapter 398, published February 6th 2006. So these were drawn by Oda around the same time. I didn't just cherry pick this cover page because it's convenient for my evil agenda, if these were drawn around the same time then the likelihood the resemblance is intentional does legitimately go up a little. (Also since they're both drawn by Oda instead of random animators, again, it's a bit less coincidental and could be a bit more intentional)

But as I said, I think there might be more to the omake than that.

In the past people have also pointed out and joked how a mere few months before Oda revealed Dragon was Luffy's father to us in the story (post-Enies Lobby), in the Monster Time-omake Luffy was depicted as a dragon.

Needless to say, people believe this was intentional foreshadowing (/trolling) to the Dragon reveal by Oda-- if not it'd be one hell of a coincidence at the very least.

The reason I'm bringing that up is that if people think it's safe to assume Oda was hinting at Luffy's heritage in one omake by making him a dragon like his father, then why couldn't Oda do the same in another omake (by making Luffy a mafia boss who smokes cigars like his father)? Keep in mind that Monster Time was published in May 2006 (in Log Book 7), just three months after No Respect Time. So again, these are from the same era. To me, that just makes the resemblance between Don Luffyone and Crocodile seem even less coincidental

Oh, but there's one more omake I want to bring up.

So people do often bring up Nerd!Luffy's appearance in One Piece Gakuen spin-off manga, pointing out how much he looks quite a lot like the Theoretical Child Oda gave to Crocodile in that one SBS. Yeah. So. 'Bout that.

There was this one omake called Red Hair of Class 3-Sea Time, in which Luffy was a loser ass nerd. And man, that resemblance

Like it's one thing when a spin-off manga drawn by a different artist does A Thing. It's another when Oda himself does it

They’re so teehee so silly

I love the relationship between The Wildmother and Orym and Fearne. It’s not worship, it might not even be the road to worship, but there’s something there. They’ve communicated, she’s given gifts. They know (hope, now) that she’s watching them.

Before Fearne and Orym were Bell’s Hells, she asked them “Why are you here?” The Wildmother told Orym there is so much in the world she would have him see, and she gave him a seed to carry. Months later she’d let him smell the scent of Will of again and she would bless Orym’s sword now turned Seedling, The Wayward Pilgrim. Fearne knows there’s something between her friend and this goddess. Fearne offered a gold coin in The Wildmother’s temple as thanks. At Uthodurn she offers The Wildmother’s own flowers at her shrine in Uthodurn and asks the goddess (“Hey bitch”) to tell Orym that the rest of the team is okay. Fearne does not know if Orym is okay. But she doesn’t say that. That night, Orym feels a comforting gaze on him as he takes watch and he dances with a forest’s nature spirits.

It’s amazing that both Fearne and Orym prayed to the Wildmother for the first time around the same day of each other, both not really knowing if they were doing it right or if the Wildmother was listening, and she answered.

I did not decide to love the red and blue ships. The red and blue ships chose ME.

Every week I doubt more and more that Nant is even a real person outside of Nont's body cuz like you meet up?? Where are your pictures together outside of Nant's lockscreen?? Where is your memories of you two TOGETHER flashing in front of ur eyes with him smiling innocently everytime you learn something bad about him? You just learn he killed himself, where is the grief montage?? Where is literally ANY footage of you 2 together? Where is the footage of you two SEPARATE ENTITIES existing in the SAME ROOM AT THE SAME TIME???

happy aro week to everyone who celebrates. give your local aro a hundred dollars to compensate for their suffering (me).

it's actually so fascinating to me that Brennan has created a character that maintains a pretty relaxed and mild-mannered demeanor and has said multiple times that the absolute Core of her is "FEAR" and how often we see this Fear manifest specifically in Avoidance; it really nails a relationship to that mentality where your brain fully Stops recognizing the emotion properly out of like, sheer self-defense from the stress of having to carry it all the time

I think this is also perfectly showcased in the way we tend to see Tula swing so suddenly from 'level and steady' to 'snarling Panic' and then back again - Just because your brain has detached itself from the Conscious Recognition of the emotion doesn't mean it can Actually stop itself from experiencing it. So the Fear is always there and always acting as a stressor, but because of that inability to Identify it there's no way to recognize or address it before that final straw hits and your bodymind jumps Straight into Full Meltdown Mode; but then once again, once you drop even a Little bit below that Peak Terror your brain ceases to process the emotion; it's like the most exhausting form of Poor Object Permanence in the world

And even if Tula is aware of this happening to her, that doesn't really make it any easier to deal with / address. Even if you're able to spot the symptoms Around the emotion -- chest pain, irritation, nausea, whatever -- because the Emotion Itself is basically impossible to find, you can't really Successfully Pin Down what the problem is OR a way to cope with it. If you can't figure out That You Are Anxious, then figuring out What Is Making You Anxious is impossible, which makes Find A Way To Make Peace With That incomprehensible. That's where the Avoidance comes in: you can no longer identify what might be a Dangerous Situation, which means that Anything New has a big potential to be Really Bad in a variety of ways (ranging "I don't Feel Good" to "Fully Lashing Out bc you've entered Fight/Flight and can't get out of it" to "Actual Outside Danger This Time") and that means the Only Way you know how to be Safe is to just Avoid Doing Anything New and Only stick to Familiar Situations, because anything unfamiliar is a monster of a gamble you don't know how to prepare for or cope with

thinking about an AU jerv design..

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the importance that mechanics and external factors have in understanding actual play, but how it's also really important to understand that the instant one leaves actual play as a medium, even if you are adapting the same story, you need to leave that behind.

I think the easiest example would be Scanlan's 9th level Counterspell. In the context of D&D 5e, we understand the following simply from the word "Nine": it is his highest spell slot; he only has one per day; and he has just expended an incredibly valuable and powerful resource that means he cannot use any spells that require it.

In an eventual adaptation, however, this is meaningless. That doesn't mean you can't depict something with a similar emotional weight and meaning; it's just that it will need to be portrayed differently (perhaps as an expendable scroll). The idea of "this is both very necessary to do and very powerful, and also is an immense trade-off" is what's important but the mechanics of it will necessarily fall away when you're no longer bound by mechanics. If you're adapting actual play or writing fic about it? You do need to have some degree of treating magic as a limited resource per day and staying true to broad abilities, but the idea of spell slots is "how can we provide limits to this storytelling system so that it is also a fun game" and the idea is that if you are looking at the story, and not the game, no one is saying "I have no more spell slots"; they're saying "I'm drained and need to rest before I can do more magic other than the most basic things."

(Note - this is fine in-game though. Like, yeah, ideally, no one would shout INSIGHT CHECK and would instead bring it up narratively but also...this is a dumb hill to die on, and I will die on a lot of hills. It is in fact fine while playing the game to acknowledge that you have spell slots and would like to make an investigation check instead of saying "I can do...some magic but not a lot, and I look more closely at the carvings on the wall.")

I think what also trips people up is that DMs in combat are limited by the rules of combat, but outside of combat, they really aren't. To give an example here, Ludinus casts a spell on Kadija that isn't clearly Feeblemind - she clearly has been reverted to the mindset of a young child or similar, but mechanically doesn't act as though she is INT 1, CHA 1. It has similar vibes but isn't quite the same.

This is totally fine and only the most stick-up-their ass pedant would fuss about it. It's a homebrew spell. It's a magical effect for a monster stat block. It is completely okay that it's not exactly a match for a spell that exists. The point is that it fits the broad logic of how magical effects work in the world (a targeted save that she fails; curable) and furthers the story. (Another example is Caleb's backstory re: Vergesson, or Veth being turned into a goblin; ultimately, it doesn't matter exactly what happened as long as we get the gist, because they both fit into, for lack of a better term, the vibe of the magic).

One last related thing is that metagaming in the sense of like, actively trying to twist the scenario to your advantage based on information you as a player know and your character would not is bad (eg: if you know a certain monster is vulnerable to a certain damage type but your character has never encountered it, and you use something extremely atypical for you to leverage this? not great); but I also think fear of metagaming kind of goes too far at times, and stepping back and remembering this is a narrative and not just a rule set helps here. To give an example here: Fearne and FCG hadn't met Caleb and Beau, but as eventually was actually discussed at the table, they still do know that Ludinus and Otohan = bad guys and so it's valid to say "hmmm, freeing their prisoners is like, not a bad idea if only for the chaos." Your character might not know the characters in-game, and they certainly don't know them out of game, but I think a lot of people overcorrect and you don't need to.

This is tbh another case in which I would recommend D&D Court from NADDPod, because they do handle a lot of metagaming-related cases where people are getting far too obsessive. The fact is there is a lot of metagaming happening anyway. If your players seem upset you stop even if the characters wouldn't likely be upset. The famous Sam Smorkel joke works specifically because, on some level, no normal person would speak to Sam Smorkel first, and your players are doing it because they have medium awareness. Metagaming is constant, perfect immersion is rare, and keep an eye out for it but usually metagaming that does cross the line is pretty egregious and the rest is overly concerned.

I DREW ALL THE GREEN BOYS!!!

These boys! They’re in order of game release (hopefully) and it’s my initial take on every link and how they compare to one another. I say initial bc I wanna make more interesting designs for them later on (like give spirit tracks link uniform that looks like a royal guard outfit yknow). Oh yeah btw these are the 28 green men from the poll a while back.

There will probably be more Loz art so uhh yeah

late night insane post i rlly think birdrick appeals to me partly bc of the alien nature of their relationship… and specifically in how bp kind of bridges the gap between them but in many other ways theyre completely different

Gokkan duo notes from KOPN 19

the released version of pre-production bio does not mention Rita's gender (refer to Rita as 王 like the boys) or age range (like the other kings)

Rita's character is the most popular and received the most submissions from fashion students

Changing the face mask to a high collar that reaches Rita's eye is Director Kamihoriuchi's idea.

The initial designer followed through the whole process from conception to production as it involved a lot of details.

Morfonia's costume was designed for Rita/Gokkan's Sovereign at first.

Specific attention was paid to fabric choice to recreate the vertical lines on Morfonia.

Both winning designs happen to feature short silver hair

Rereading again, and it's really interesting to note just how different the early art style is from the later style- and especially from the anime itself. With the manga, you can at least see where things came from; in the anime, it's a fairly radical departure that is only barely recognizable as what it's meant to be, at least in regards to Joker himself, specifically.

The early manga has lots of sharp points and angles, creating a character that, even if he behaves in largely similar ways, still feels almost entirely different from his animated counterpart. No wonder I was so put off by the anime's designs, originally- and that I had gotten the impression that he was older than he actually wound up being, or was type-cast as. Funny how I now largely prefer his anime design and personality, even if it's altogether not that different!

Fun fact, when I first started reading, before I had started watching the anime (and even for a bit after I had started), the voice I had for Joker in my head was the same as Kaito's, from Magic Kaito- which, as far as anime goes, would be from Detective Conan and Magic Kaito 1412, specifically. Even if he seemed older, at least in looks, in my head he very much still read as a bratty teenager, it would seem.