this is the real horseshoe theory

A (Mostly) Comprehensive List of Tumblr Holidays

I saw this post about Tumblr holidays/celebrations, and there were a ton of them, so I decided to make an organized list and their meanings. I am also adding famous "fandom holidays" to this list. Feel free to point out any I missed/explained incorrectly and I'll add them!

Tuesday:

Supernatural Tuesday --- an episode of Supernatural was about a time loop where it was always Tuesday. Can be posted on any Tuesday.

Leave the Bog --- a meme with a drawing saying "When it's safe to leave the bog" and an arrow pointing to Tuesday. Can be posted on any Tuesday.

Thursday:

Out of Touch Thursday --- a video of the cast from the anime Lucky Star dancing to the song "Out of Touch" by Hall and Oates. Can be posted on any Thursday.

Thursday the 20th --- a screencap of a rapper in The Simpsons with a gold necklace that says "Thursday the 20th". Can only be posted on Thursdays which are also the 20th of their month.

February:

Galentine's Day --- February 13th. From an episode of Parks and Rec where Leslie dedicates this day to celebrating female friendship.

March:

Pi Day --- March 14th. The first digits of pi, 3.14, line up with "March 14" or 3/14.

The Ides of March --- March 15th. The day that Julius Caesar was assassinated. Many memes and jokes are made about him, the assassination in general, or bad luck.

Evergiven/Suez Canal Anniversary --- March 23rd. Refers to an event where a ship, the Evergiven, got stuck in the Suez Canal.

94 Meetings Day --- March 31st. From an episode of Parks and Rec where April doesn't think this day exists and books all of Ron's appointments then.

April:

April Fools --- April 1st. Also a real world holiday. The most popular prank is Rickrolling.

Mishapocalypse --- April 1st. On this day, Tumblr users spam one specific photo of Misha Collins, who played Castiel on Supernatural, where he is looking at the camera wide-eyed.

Neil Banging Out the Tunes --- April 13th. Refers to a photo of a rat by a children's keyboard with the caption "Neil banging out the tunes April 13th 2006".

Homestuck Day --- April 13th. The birthday of Homestuck, a web comic. It is/was one of the most popular fandoms on Tumblr.

It's Gonna Be May --- April 30th. Comes from a GIF of Justin Timberlake singing the song "It's Gonna Be Me". In the song, he pronounces "me" like "May".

May:

Star Wars Day --- May 4th. It comes from a pun between "May the force" and "May the Fourth".

Revenge of the Fifth --- May 5th. It comes from a pun between "Revenge of the Sith" and "Revenge of the Fifth".

June:

Let Papyrus Say "Fuck" Day --- June 16th. Someone who was annoyed with mischaracterization of Papyrus from Undertale established this holiday and it caught on.

July:

Dashcon Anniversary --- July 11th. Dashcon was a poorly organized attempt to hold a Tumblr convention.

September:

21st Night of September --- September 21st. The day referenced in the catchy disco song "September" by Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Frodo and Bilbo's Birthday --- September 22nd. The joint birthday of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings.

October:

Mean Girls Day --- October 3rd. This comes from the part of the movie where Cady's crush asks her what day it is.

Treat Yo'Self --- October 13th. From an episode of Parks and Rec where Tom and Donna have a day to pamper themselves.

November:

November 5th --- Multiple holidays. It's Guy Fawkes Day (a holiday in Great Britain where effigies are lit to celebrate the failure of a traitor), and some people post screencaps of the movie V for Vendetta, where it's mentioned. November 5th, 2020 specifically had three huge news items: rumors of Vladimir Putin's resignation, Destiel (a ship from Supernatural) becoming (one-sided) canon, and the controversy over counting electoral votes in the U.S. election.

Life Day --- November 17. The equivalent of Christmas in Star Wars.

December:

Christmas Adam --- December 23rd. It comes from a Tumblr post making a pun on "eve" and "Eve" (from the Bible). As the original Tumblr post describes, it "comes before Christmas Eve and is generally unsatisfying".

Almost Christmas (Means It Wasn't Christmas) --- 11:59 P.M. on December 24th. This is from Ace Attorney, a video game where you're a defense lawyer. The fact that it's not quite Christmas is a crucial piece of evidence in one of the cases.

DL-6 --- Christmas/late December. This is when one of the most famous cases from Ace Attorney (mentioned above) occurs.

Other:

Annoy Squidward Day --- either January or February 15th. This refers to an episode of Spongebob where Mr. Krabs votes for Employee of the Month; a screen cap shows Spongebob pointing to the 15th day on the calendar with a sticker of Squidward on it.

Fuck this Post and Happy Birthday [Fictional Character] --- any character's birthday. The original Tumblr post starts out with a user saying "People who celebrate fictional character birthdays are annoying, pass it on", and another retorts with "FUCK this post and happy birthday, Sonic". "Sonic" can be replaced with a character of your choice.

Pericles and Purple Scarves (or: why the fuck is the parrot so horny, and why does it matter)

(or: did i think about this way too much, or exactly the right amount? yes.)

[cws: fantasy racism/ableism, dehumanization, mention of homophobia and canon-typical grooming, non-detailed discussion of canon-typical SA/sexual harassment and canon-typical bestiality. this show is a thing and a half]

-

something i think about a lot is that like.... i joke about how delightful it is for various reasons that they made pericles So Relentlessly Horny, and it's fucking hilarious to me to see in real-time the dawning horror of people watching the show for the first time and realizing he's sexy. (their reactions to the tentacle scene are comedy fucking gold every time.)

on a doylist level the creators are obviously paying homage to his voice actor, making him stand out from the other mascots, and trying to make him charismatic, memorable, and that much more uncomfortable to the audience. and it worked! pretty much everyone thinks he's one of the best scooby-doo villains out there, and they're right.

(i'm not biased, i swear.)

when you look at it in-character, though, it makes a lot of sense that he'd be that way, and that's important. he's doing it on purpose.

for one thing--again--he stands out among all the other talking animals we see, because he is the one who comes across most as a depiction (an intentional one, anyway 🙃) of an actual person who happens to be shaped like a bird. the others all are Some Kind of Uniquely Goofy in the way that they act, be it how they talk or their general mannerisms or the fact that none of them seem to really have an implied Age. pericles is the only one who doesn't have some kind of silly voice or speech impediment or catchphrase what-have-you, and he's also the only one who comes across as being in specific life stages you could map onto a human corresponding to how old he is. he's even the only time we ever hear mention of a talking animal being a child, or having been once. everyone but pericles is just Mascot-Aged.

(fwiw, my personal read is that scooby is about the same age as the gang or equivalent. also there is So Much to unpack here about all that re: the mascots in general but that's a post for another time)

and the one thing they all have in common except pericles is that they are NOT supposed to be sexy. if anything, the ones we actually see talking (in a fever dream, to be fair) except scooby and pericles are obviously meant to be borderline or outright really goddamn annoying. (reggie/dyno-mutt is adorable but he is also on thin ice with me on this one, sorry little guy.)

and like. all of this lines up with the fact that the talking animals very obviously represent disabled people. even moreso than they represent racial minorities, which they very much do! they're a lot further toward ableism on the sliding scale of xeno bigotry (which is a big reason i'm iffy about just calling it fantasy racism). the infantilization of disabled people is, you know, A Whole Ass Thing, and being aggressively desexualized is a major part of that. Disabled People and Disabled Mannerisms are a Bonerkill.

enter pericles, who does not truck with any of this shit.

i've already got a lot of posts planned going into this subject in general, because there is So Much. but in short, the thing to remember when you examine anything about pericles is that he lives in a world that draws zero distinction between people like him and animals.

practically everything he does is, on some level or another, him yelling FUCK YOU LOOK AT ME I AM A PERSON, LOOK. I'LL MAKE YOU IF I HAVE TO. and what's something animals don't do, whether actual animals or annunaki descendants (at least the latter ones he's probably been around most)? they don't flirt. they aren't sexy. they don't act like a brand of seductive, even skeevy, person you might feasibly meet irl, if maybe a theatrical larger-than-life one who runs in certain circles.

(gay ones, to be specific. super, super gay ones. more on that in a minute.)

and, what's more: they don't flirt with humans. we never see anyone really comment on the very obvious Thing he's always had going on with ricky; but that doesn't come across as them thinking it's normal or acceptable so much as not noticing that it's a thing at all. it is that aggressively unthinkable that it would be. and this is backed up even more by the fact that people hear scooby ask shaggy if he's cheating on him by having a girlfriend and think nothing of it, and it continues to be treated as Romance vs Platonic Friendship/Pet Ownership. Gal Pals, but Worse!

so yeah, we have no idea what society would think of anunnaki descendants having sexual/romantic relationships with humans that they couldn't ignore. presumably it would be Pretty Well Disapproved Of, but like. who the fuck knows.

what we DO know is that pericles is considered so utterly beneath personhood that no one would so much as blink at him fucking an honest right to god animal. if it were anyone other than, y'know, pericles, they might even think it was cute.

(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.)

(moving on.)

so all things considered, as you can imagine holy SHIT would he have a reason or two to broadcast as hard as he can that not only that he is A Sexual Being, but one intended to appeal to human standards. it brings to mind queer people presenting in ways meant to be attractive to other queers, not straight people, except, well. instead of trying to get the attention of supportive people like you on the downlow, because you don't want the majority to know what kind of sexuality you're announcing, he's blaring I AM ONE OF YOU at that majority out of desperation and spite.

which, speaking of signaling queerness: pericles is a hundred percent gay-coded, as in the actual definition of 'as close to explicit as they could get away with, done on purpose.' there's the obvious--his relationship with ricky--but his VA, who he is to some extent modeled after, is an openly gay indie horror film icon, and given that and the time period he grew up in i don't think it's a coincidence that the one piece of clothing he chooses to wear is a purple scarf. (they even made him a sexual predator! yippee!)

so like, if anything it's pretty feasible that he might have actually observed that kind of thing as a phenomenon, especially with the demographic he'd actually be interested in, and pick it up accordingly. who knows if he ever managed to actually, y'know, Involve Himself with any human men--my interpretation is that he did and it went poorly 🥲--but it makes sense to me that he'd wear something like that; that he'd use his one opportunity to express himself with clothing to go HI HELLO I AM A PERSON DID I MENTION I LIKE MEN. WHO ARE PEOPLE. BECAUSE I DO

......and he STILL gets ignored no matter how hard he tries. i feel like that's one of the reasons he ended up being such a creep, honestly: operating on similar logic to the tag rant in this post, the conclusion he comes to is that well fuck you, you can't ignore me having a sexuality if i make it a problem for you. even if you try to pretend sexual violence and harassment aren't sexual, or don't recognize that it's happening at all, you are not going to walk away unaffected by it. if the only lasting evidence he's able to leave in the world that he's a person is causing damage that can't be shrugged off or undone, so be it.

(a real irony, isn't it, given how things turn out in the end.)

and like. this is one of the things that really bothers me about people trying to act like you shouldn't ship pericles or think he's attractive because Ew Gross Cringe That's an Animal (or transparently pretending it's because Problematic, not because cringe). either way do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, to be clear, but like... that's the point, man. that's the whole point. the writers are assholes who wanted you to miss it, and you did.

basically: just about everything pericles does is acting out in some way or another, and that's why we know what this man would sound like busting a nut. you're welcome.

I feel like in general on this blog, I really do undersell exactly how private & introverted of a person I am used to be creatively, particularly in fandom spaces. When I say I've been entrenched fandom for a long time, I am not joking. Despite this, you'd be hard-pressed to find most fandom content I produced until...well, until this blog!

In fact, unless you know me in real life, it's unlikely you've ever seen any art which I've posted OUTSIDE of this blog, which is saying something, because there is a LOT of it, both original, and for shitloads of different fandoms. I am, at my core, an artist, as pretentious as that sounds; I create ad nauseam.

Despite this, I very rarely post publicly. The few times I have created a public page to post art, it was incredibly infrequent. And most of them are deleted, now. In fact, this blog is possibly the first time I've made an online account for fan content (or art in general) that has achieved general notoriety anywhere, and it's incredibly fun, but it has made me painfully aware that there's something of a reason I deleted most of my public art accounts...(/lh)

But seriously, I keep a comically low profile, despite enjoying both creating and receiving praise for creating. Part of it has to do with the particular way inspiration strikes me (the periods where I don't post to this blog are mostly actually because I'm looking for proper vision, despite wanting to create) which is why my creation of these sorts of things is so infrequent, because I know most people (particularly artists) don't do that, and it can be very concerning or frustrating to anyone paying attention.

It also creates a rather daunting prospect of creating something "good enough to share", which I have been increasingly working on not giving a shit about. And sometimes building relationships with people who sort of expect you to post/message them often, because that's the only way they know you're alive. I barely even talk to my irl friends as often as some people want to over the internet with me. It's wild.

I'm not complaining about the popularity of this blog by any means, nor how people have been interacting with it, I mostly just wanted to share that despite how it might look, it's actually significantly more normal for me to post basically nothing for months at a time and then have a burst of inspiration leading me to make like 3 posts that leave people raving for a week, then disappear of the face of the earth completely.

Like, you wanna talk how I normally am with art, I have piles of old Undertale doodles & fanfiction, which almost no one has seen, and I probably won't ever post again. I have art for a fandom I was in for maybe a week and have never done anything for again. I have drawn YouTubers I no longer watch. I have OCs which I haven't thought about in actual years. I have world concepts I literally used for a single drawing and nothing else. I have Omori fics and drawings I literally never posted publicly. There are probably people waiting on an update to a fic I wrote 6 years ago (when I was 15).

You wanna talk me in fandom spaces? There are people I know from my Undertale fandom days who I'm surprised are still posting. I know nearly every major artist in the Omori fandom on some sort of personal note (I'm still in a Discord with some of them), and they're the people who've seen my unpublished Omori art/fics. I would post stuff maybe once every month or two in that server. Most of them probably don't even realize they know me.

I know fandom drama I didn't even care about when it was happening.

For the better part of my life I've been the fandom equivalent to a mysterious stranger, blowing into a fandom maybe once a week, then once a month, then never again, people forgetting I was even ever there. There are friends I've made over social media who I've not seen or spoken to in an actual decade.

I just live my life. I make shit. Sometimes I'm active in a particular space on social media for a while. I meet some new people. I am cheesed to meet them. The case goes cold. I continue living my life. I go elsewhere.

I think this is both vitally important to understand on the internet, especially in a fandom sense (The Internet is not your life, please remember that you can literally turn your computer off and leave) and also a really bad habit I have that, while somewhat amusing, means that by nature a lot of the new friendships I make are temporary.

Also, if ever we message each other and I stop talking to you, that's not because I'm mad or forgot you or something; if I don't have anything to say I don't say anything. Small talk is my bane because it feels dishonest. Offer to play TF2 or Overwatch with me or something.

Now that I'm thinking about it, this is actually generally applicable to all online spaces I'm in, which might make the entire thing seem a little silly... There are people I've met on online games like Roblox, or old flash games, or old websites where you can PLAY those flash games, who I just disappeared from one day. A lot more of my life than I thought is intrinsically ephemeral...hm.

It's to the point that a lot of people know who I am but don't realize who I actually am because my name is sorta generic, so they don't make the connection. I make a lot of jokes about it on my main but most people don't even realize I'm The Mind Electric Guy who made the big mash-ups and also the Catboy Electric. And Johnny Johnny Electric but we don't talk about that one.

There are times where I'll have people in my comments/messages going "wait YOU'RE THAT GUY? YOU MADE THAT?!?!" about something completely unrelated, and i'm just like "yeah i was bored on a saturday". I'm like the Neil Cicierega of obscure internet/niche fandom bullshit.

Wait, so I'm like Neil Cicierega. And I've been told I resemble him more than once, so maybe that's fitting.

As a reward for making it through my silly ramblings, here's a little proof in the pudding! Here's some incredibly old DDLC fanart from my initial obsession to a little later, not exactly in chronological order. You can really see my improvement as an artist, which is actually pretty funny, because imitating some other DDLC fanartists is specifically how I started getting better at drawing people

These are incredibly old! You can tell, because they look like SHIT! I didn't really know a lot about how to draw people at this point in time, and what became my style was super poorly defined here! I have some other super old art which really shows off how bad i was at drawing people, particularly in the waist. Believe it or not, this is a better showing than most others around this time.

Hey, at least they're recognizable, right?

This right here, this is the exact moment where drawing faces started to click for me. I still think this is one of my best showings from this particular time period, even though it's still got a lot of line jank, and I'm pretty blatantly ripping from a different artist (who no longer has an online presence, so weh, have at it). I still really like this drawing, and a lot of the experimentation that was on this page.

also, you can see me trying to draw boobs for the first time! ain't that a sight!

These are a weird period where I'm drawing a lot of different things on the same sketchbook page just to fill them up, which...I mean, I guess I should be proud I used to draw that much! They certainly do look cool, too. This image of Sayori in an Adidas tracksuit is directly referenced from a picture of a Sayori cosplayer I found on Instagram once upon a time. The @ you see pictured there is my old private instagram--you can try to follow it, but I doubt you're going to get anywhere!

I think a big problem you see in a lot of these is just that I'm uncertain in my lines, even in sketching and doodling, which is still a problem I struggle with sometimes. Also I don't really get how clothes work. But this is significantly better than how some of my old art used to look like, so I'm glad for that!

Can you identify all of the other pictured characters? There are 3 musicians and 2 YouTubers present!

I drew this in 8th grade? I think? These might be slightly out of order. I really liked drawing Sayori.

I really didn't like how this turned out when I first did it. I don't often do digital pieces and even less often work in color, but when i do, they tend to take a lot of time and effort. I think this is definitely rough around the edges, but the amount of work I put in to really make this pop is something I enjoy. Just wish I'd spent longer on those hands...

Remember how I said I used to really vibe with MC x Sayori?

Yeah.

Here's some more, including a more fleshed out MC design. I think I did this my senior year of high school?

And this, dear viewers, is a Sayori I doodled from memory roughly a year ago.

I didn't really have much direction here, I just wanted to talk about this stuff, and I had these that I wanted to share. These drawings were all from roughly 2018-2023.

My dear readers,

I had been, as is my habit, reclining on my bed to write, both for my own amusement and the edification of my audience. Wracking my brains for potential drolleries to impart, a thought came to me as if on dark wings, unbidden: That one might say it was understandable that Stoker, benighted Anglophone Irishman that he was, may have believed a Dutchman of Amsterdam would utter the German ejaculation, 'Gott in Himmel!'

Scarcely had this heretical whimsy left my brains and traveled thence from my fingers to keyboard then screen, then with a great and hitherto unexpected violence a large and misshapen sack crashed through my window.

Fortunately I had been engaged in a practice known to the Teutonics as Lüften, a habit I picked up on the Continent, and so my window was wide open (though sadly mine is not the modern German window that can open in any direction and indeed possibly any dimension). I gazed upon the sack in flabbergasted vexation, though not without some underlying gratitude because hey: free potatoes.

I had barely time to process these strange and unprecedented events before something whizzed past my cheek with uncanny velocity, just under my eye. Bringing my hand to my face, my fingers came away wet; I was bleeding. And also weeping; I am of a sensitive disposition by nature and would I dare any person of good breeding to keep perfect composure in the aftermath of such an unexpected, unprovoked, and unnatural assault. Also it stung real bad.

Looking bewildered across my small quarters to my chamber door, I beheld the object of my wounding: It was a stroopwafel, sharpened to a razor's edge. It had embedded itself at least three centimeters into the admittedly extremely inexpensive wood. I could see on the visible edge the sticky dampness whence my blood had been drawn. I gave thanks unto Almighty God that the military use of these dire wafers had been forbidden since the Extreme Unpleasantness of 1862.

Crossing over to the door I dislodged the offending snackfood and began to munch upon it disconsolately; You may think the act barbarous, but in my distress I had much need of nourishing and wholesome sugar and carbs. I confess had I not the stroopwafel I may have taken a raw potato slice and eaten it covered in sugar, as I believe is the current fashion in the antique and mystical polity of Offenbach am Main.

Still munching the stroopwafel and weeping profusely and voluminously both in terms of multitudinous tears shed and heartfelt whimpering discharged, I ventured forth to my refrigerator to arm myself with a cup of milk; my thought was to both enhance the consumption of my stroopwafel and secure a means of self-defense, as it would be a passing strange assailant indeed who would enjoy getting milk splashed on them.

With a means of defense against Man and Thirst thus acquired, I boldly if somewhat haltingly made my way to my bedroom window and thrust my head out the window. I briefly considered thrusting my fists against the posts while insisting still I saw the ghosts as an alternative, but I was unsure that reference would be appreciated as it would be somewhat incongruous in a chronicle meant to be evocative of more ancient strains of horror. I come to a compromise, then, and merely mention in passing to you, my reader, that I thought about it.

But I digress. Not that you could usually tell in this kind of story. One man's digression is another's artful cultivation of suspense. Let us be frank: I could draw this out for six or seven more pages, promising all the while that this horror I have come to know simply must not be described with anything less than the literary equivalent of a ten minute drumroll. I could just make you endure that regardless of whether the payoff is actually worth it. But this joke already becomes stale and sad, like a forgotten stroopwafel.

In the dim moonlight, I beheld two figures standing before my window, glaring as though their skulls were filled with eldritch fire that poured from the sockets of their eyes. I could not make out any defining details; their countenances were too much in shadow. Which in retrospect was kind of odd, given the aforementioned fiery eye sockets. But I could hear them speak, and their words will stay with me until I reach my grave-- perhaps longer.

"Nicht in Ordnung... nicht in Ordnung... Ordnug muss sein... Ordnung muss sein..."

These were the words incanted by one figure, with a maddening repetition that conjured up images of discontented civil servants and disappointed grandparents. Of the other figure's speech, I could understand nothing, though it too was repetitive and filled with mordant venom; it sounded as though some manner of incensed lizard was clicking angrily in my general direction. I recognized the language immediately as Dutch, for as any schoolchild knows a direct consequence of learning any German at all is that one becomes completely incapable of understanding Dutch spoken aloud, though their dread writings may be comprehended. And yet, horror of horrors, whether your tongue is English or German, the Dutch will always be able to understand you.

It is a terror only shared by those Swedes and Norwegians who, through dire necessity, go among the Danes.

And so I curl huddled and weeping still (no, I never stopped) on my bed, typing these meagre words with quivering fingers. Also the cut on my cheek still stings, even with a bandaid on it, feel bad for me. The chanting of my tormentors ceases not, and as I exposited all that I type aloud, as is my wont, the Dutch assailant called angrily through my window in English to let me know it was a honingwafel, not a true stroopwafel, and now I just feel like an idiot. I know now my error, my unforgivable sin; it is not understandable that Stoker might have confused German and Dutch. It was, indeed, bad, and were the wretched man not dead today then needs he should be compelled to feel, in a word, bad about it. Perhaps even now in some Stygian pit he pays for his crimes. I am sorry. I am so sorry. Bram Stoker was the worst thing since the Spanish Habsburgs and/or expecting free tap water in restaurants. i was wrong. i was so wrong. oh god please don't hurt me.

dumb things my friends and I have said: 2022!

part two: april - june apologies ahead of time for length! feel free to change pronouns if need be. warning for foul and dirty language, and capslock-implied yelling :)

“You get points for trying, Jesus said so.”

“Not gonna lie, I just want an excuse to be a huge dick in a fancy suit.”

“You’re sorry? You’re the one who shot orbeez into my soup.”

(maniac laughter) “I get to destroy the government!”

“I am NOT a closet pickle eater.”

“The real blackmail is the photos of the frosted tips.”

“Loving the Home Depot commercial remix.”

“This is what made his doctor’s degree disappear into the woods.”

“I drive myself to drink.”

“The frozen balls are gonna hurt more.”

“It’s a record, you dumb fuck.”

“Yeah, well Twitter’s a lying sack of shit― Oh.”

“Working here is going to begin my Joker arc.”

“I dunno how to explain this to you without breaking any HIPAA laws.”

“I was about to be really mad, and then I realized I couldn’t read.”

“Back in my day, we touched grass.”

“You’re so valid. I’m 24 and get carded at the mall.”

“Are we pillaging or not?”

“Okay why did this personality quiz just read me to filth.”

“I feel like if I told him ‘please don’t kill me I’m very mentally ill’ he wouldn’t do it.”

“Hearing that comment is the equivalent of McDonald’s Sprite.”

“Do I look like I know how to draw feet?”

“Can we maybe please be normal about literally just another human being?”

“You can’t gobble at me and expect me not to gobble back.”

“He may be qualified but he is also not...that.”

“Stop pretending to be a lesbian every time I’m near you.”

“Sorry for the lukewarm take, I’m gonna go ride my bike now.”

“You can chew ice cream with real teeth if you’re not a coward.”

“It’s not that hard to figure out, you just suck at trying.”

“Oh hang on, I can make a funny joke about this.”

“Post theft reverse pickpocketing.”

“How do we have the same brain?”

“WHY IS THERE A BIRD IN THE BUILDING?”

“I’m not here to fight spiders.”

“Imagine needing a GPS to get to McDonald’s.”

“Please don’t clap your ass for the kids.”

“He really sells water.”

“I’m not into toes!”

“That rat just fucked your girl.”

“If I were a crocodile I’d live in Florida.”

“They’re fucking high on volcano ash. Okay.”

“That would require your death, according to the lore.”

“Bitch I am on the ground.”

“This tastes so much.”

“I dug this grave, and so I lie in it.”

“I dunno, I think my tweets are kinda banger.”

“I’m too sexy and iconic to have a job.”

“I’m gonna go join my milkshake in the shadow realm.”

“Oh, hey, good job! You don’t have to get fucking plowed by a 2006 Saturn Ion!”

“Would you be mad if I showed up dressed as Spider-Man?”

“She’s juicy for her food.”

“I dunno man, I’m only certified in bird law.”

“Please do not arson the cacti.”

“You have been identified by the government as a huge bitch.”

“We should steal a cactus and get charged with a felony.”

“This is what Oklahoma does to a motherfucker.”

“He looks very pro-police.”

I posted 44 times in 2022

19 posts created (43%)

25 posts reblogged (57%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@gofancyninjaworld

@katyatalks

@koumbaya

@opmanime

I tagged 41 of my posts in 2022

Only 7% of my posts had no tags

#opm - 31 posts

#translation - 19 posts

#manga - 14 posts

#mob psycho 100 - 9 posts

#revisions - 9 posts

#omake - 7 posts

#genos - 6 posts

#drive knight - 3 posts

#update 160 - 3 posts

#update 163 - 3 posts

Longest Tag: 114 characters

#and it's good to see sekingar carefully weigh up his options before deciding to trust the hero with the dodgy past

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Volume 26 Bonus chapter “The Great Selection” -- partial and rough translation

The first four pages (of eight).  It’s not joking about being rough and there may be some passages that will be understood differently once a fuller translation is done.  But it’s still interesting!

Translator/ Typesetter: u\Bald_Caped

Date: 3 June 2022

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n-UghKI90sQY1vT6WNBgk_vjiCyzfTaL/view

14 notes - Posted June 4, 2022

#4

Update 160 (previously 159). Changes between online and print versions, part 2

Yup, this goes on!

Unlike the previous version, this time Nyan ignores Food Battler and was dragging just Waganma off to his most painful doom when lo, an intervention!

Fear not! Drive Knight is here!

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18 notes - Posted February 26, 2022

#3

Update 163 (previously 162). Changes between online and print versions. Part 2

So, where we left off, it looked like a tense standoff between Genos, who wants to go back to the battle, and Sekingar and Waganma, who most desperately don't want to be ditched by an S-Class hero. Food Battler Futoshi steps up to offer a solution (revised version on top, old at the bottom).

Sekingar does some thinking before deciding to trust Genos (no equivalent in older version)

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25 notes - Posted February 26, 2022

#2

ONE/Murata 2015 Joint Interview

Because I'm always concerned about old blogs going down and taking material with them, please find below a transcript of one of their first interviews on the subject of One-Punch Man.

Link: http://opmcityz.blogspot.com/2016/04/onemurata-2015-joint-interview.html

Translator: Herms

Translation Date: 2 April 2016

For no Earthly reason, it’s taken me this blasted long to finally translate the ONE/Murata joint interview from the 2015 guidebook OPM: Hero Encyclopedia. The notes throughout are the same ones as in the actual book, although towards the end I got lazy and didn’t write out the full details on such topics as the plot of Eyeshield 21 or the explanation for what fencing is. The curious may look that stuff up on Wikipedia. --Today I’d like to ask you two to provide the “definitive edition” of the story of One-Punch Man’s birth ONE: I’m much obliged. Yusuke Murata: Yes, thank you very much. --ONE-sensei, tell us how you began drawing One-Punch Man. ONE: Well, I wanted to try drawing manga digitally; that’s how it all started. There was this place (*1) online for posting up manga, and lots of people submitted their stuff there, so I wanted to submit something too. I bought a PC and some tools for drawing pictures digitally (*2). I tried out drawing 15 pages, and uploaded it with my PC for the first time…that was One-Punch Man Chapter 1. I didn’t have any real plans for continuing the story, and just posted it up without thinking of what to do next. But perhaps because I submitted it as “Chapter 1” it got a great response…OK, maybe not “great”, but a decent response. So I figured I might as well try drawing a continuation of the story. That’s when I really sat down and worked out how the story would continue, which made me realize this could turn into quite an interesting manga. And that pretty much brings us from Chapter 2 right up to the present. --Where did you get your ideas? ONE: To start with I simply tried to draw the sort of manga I’d want to read myself. I’ve read loads of Shonen manga throughout my life, and am particularly fond of battle manga. Generally speaking those types of stories are all about growth, meaning that by the last chapter the main character has grown stronger than anyone else and lives happily ever after. So I wondered what would happen if I started the story off with the main character already in peak condition. That became my jumping-off point. --So it’s a complete 180 from existing Shonen action manga? ONE: Which makes it fun for people who have already read lots of those typical Shonen manga. It’s like they’ve run the first lap, and this is their second time around. Murata: Yeah, it’s really exciting for Shonen manga aficionados. ONE: I also love it when a series creates friction between drama and humor. With One-Punch Man I wanted to try doing that through the worldview itself, rather than through specific plot points. The series is set in a dangerous, monster-infested world, but since Saitama’s there you don’t really notice just how bleak the world is. I think it’s that friction between Saitama and the rest of the world that makes things interesting. --Murata-sensei, what do you think makes One-Punch Man so appealing? Murata: It all boils down to Saitama’s appeal. In some ways, Saitama is incredibly similar to Son Goku from Dragon Ball (*3). It was Dragon Ball that first got me started reading Weekly Shonen Jump, so I find those similarities particularly appealing. Dragon Ball’s Goku (*4) is a very memorable protagonist: he does whatever he wants, fights strong guys…he’s only after excitement! He goes through life full of spirit. Even when the world’s in peril and he’s surrounded by chaos, it doesn’t bother him one bit. Like when Piccolo’s reincarnation entered the Tenkaichi Budokai (*5) and if Goku lost the world was doomed, even then Goku himself simply fought to win the tournament. After he beat Piccolo, he didn’t care that he had just saved the world, he was just happy to finally be crowned tournament champion. It’s that sort of detached easy-goingness, the sense of operating under a completely different logic than those around him. This type of aloofness, of doing things at one’s own pace, really screams “hero” to me. That’s what Goku and Saitama have in common. Another similarity is that they’re simply the strongest guys around. When things are looking hopeless, the moment

they show up you know things are going to be OK (laughs). --How did you find out about One-Punch Man, Murata-sensei? Murata: I follow this illustrator called “Akiman” (*6) on Twitter, and when I heard about One-Punch Man on his blog, I read the entire series overnight. I got a bit frustrated, because I realized I had become a manga artist precisely to draw something like this (laughs). At the time I was in sort of a dead-end career-wise, and (my apologies to Ootagaki-sensei[*7]) thanks to my incompetence things weren’t going very well with Donten Prism Solar Car (*8)…It’s safe to say I ended up causing Ootagaki-senseiand the readers a lot of trouble. Back then, I viewed my job simply as illustrating the stories given to me. But really, isn’t an illustrator’s job to visually convey the charm of the characters? You’ve got to understand what makes the characters appealing, or otherwise you’ll have nothing to show the readers. Once I read One-Punch Man, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. I sent ONE-sensei a message right away, asking if we could meet. I told him point-blank I wanted to work with him… ONE: I was surprised to get a message from Murata-sensei. Frankly, at first I thought it might be a prank… Murata: Sorry… ONE: It was a real shock! (laughs) --Did you two hit it off? Murata: Yeah. I was so nervous about meeting him that I ended up being 30 minutes late (laughs). By that time I was already starving, so first I suggested we go get some yakiniku. (laughs) --What did you talk about at the yakiniku restaurant? Murata: I asked “hey, why don’t we do a one-shot together first?” --Your first collaboration was Earth Monster. ONE: With Earth Monster, I made storyboards so that Murata-sensei would have something to work off of, and to give us something to show the editorial office. I took it as an opportunity to make something really flashy, the sort of thing I could never draw on my own. I stayed within manga contest regulations (*9), so it was probably around 31 to 45 pages. Murata: But I wanted to use bigger panels, and expanded it to roughly 60 pages. --So you submitted Earth Monster (*10) to the editorial office as a one-shot? Murata: Actually, wasn’t Cockroach Busters (*11) the one we ended up showing to Young Jump first? ONE: That’s right. Before that we showed it to your then-current editor at Weekly Shonen Jump; I think we made about four copies. Murata: At the time I had an exclusive contract, so I felt obligated to draw it for Jump, but it wasn’t really panning out…And while I was wrapped up with that, I came down with gastroenteritis. ONE: Your wife found you and called an ambulance. Murata: I couldn’t move at all…That’s when I started thinking that if this exclusive contract was going to keep me from doing the work I wanted, then I had better do something about it. I called ONE-sensei from the hospital and told him “I’m terminating my contract, so how about we get a bunch of different one-shot manuscripts together and shop them around at different companies?” And that’s how things went. --How did you end up at Neighborhood Young Jump? ONE: Several different people had approached me with proposals for commercializing One-Punch Man. The question was, would I handle the illustrations myself, or get someone else to do them? Although personally I thought Murata-sensei was the best man for the job…Later there was discussion about me trying to draw a revised version, but after drawing about two chapters worth it became painfully obvious it would never sell. At that point Murata-sensei asked if he could take a stab at it. He redrew the first chapter with a felt-tip pen, and it blew me away. From there we started thinking about the best place to distribute this out to the world. With Murata-sensei’s connections we hooked up with an editor at Young Jump, and this led to the plan to run it in Neighborhood Young Jump, on condition that it be drawn by Murata-sensei. I thought it was incredible of Murata-sensei to publish this manga on the web rather than in print form, and I was sure

everyone else would be impressed with it too. So with that, we made our proposal to Young Jump, and it began. --Murata-sensei, were you in any way reluctant to publish the series online? Murata: Back when I was doing Eyeshield 21 (*12), I had never read any webcomics, and my thoughts towards them didn’t extend much beyond “eh, doing one might be interesting”. But when this proposal came up, I had by then read ONE-sensei's One-Punch Man, so I felt like publishing on the web had real merit. For instance, with a weekly magazine each issue disappears from stores when the next one comes out a week later, but on the web people can read the previous chapters too. And since it’s available to the entire world, it seemed like a good way to gain a larger audience. Viewing something published online on my monitor, I was amazed at how pretty the lines were (laughs) (*13). But since up until that point I had only ever worked with lines on paper, I had absolutely no skills at making them look pretty on monitors...So me and my staff went through a lot of trial and error. That's what made it so interesting! Mastering a new field was a lot of fun. Another advantage of drawing on the web is that you can make corrections. With Eyeshield 21, I was always pressed for time, which didn’t leave room for much trial and error…I’d question if what I was drawing was really up to snuff…then realize it wasn’t. But even after a chapter ran in Jump, there still wouldn’t be any time to fix it, so it would just remain as-is forever. This happened all the time, and really stressed me out. Online though, I can fine-tune things until I’m satisfied. Particularly the characters’ faces. I mean, when anyone other than ONE-sensei draws Saitama, he ends up a different character. Though at first I was real keen on putting a Shonen manga spin on him. --I hear there were a lot of rejected Saitama faces. Murata: That’s right. It wasn’t until I had drawn a good number of pages that I finally got the hang of his expressions. It was when he and Genos are listening to Sneck’s lecture at the Hero Association, and he’s noisily chewing gum. The moment I saw this bored-looking Saitama, a lightbulb went off in my head (laughs). I realized that because Saitama is so strong, for him everything is always boring. This made me want to redraw the whole thing from square one. Me and the staff had by then learned the ropes of drawing online and were really into it. I told them that this was the first step in what would be a historic manga; I was drawing in a daze of ecstasy. --How do you two work together during the writing process? Does ONE-sensei create new storyboards? Murata: With the main storyline or anything else where I’m going off of ONE-sensei’s original, I’m generally given free reign with page distribution and whatnot. But I’ll ask ONE-sensei if I have any questions. ONE: That’s right. Murata: For the main storyline, the dialogue stays pretty much the same. But with side-stories, sometimes I’ll try adding in scenes to ONE-sensei’s storyboards, or change the dialogue up a bit. In such cases, I’ll always ask ONE-sensei’s opinion. We’ll go back and forth fine-tuning it…and sometimes it’ll just end up reverting back to how it was in the beginning (laughs). ONE: Murata-senseialways shows me whenever he thinks up new scenes or dialogue to add. For instance, with the A-Class hero Spring Mustachio, my storyboards just had his name and general appearance. He talked a bit and got beat up by the monster, nothing more. I didn’t plan to highlight what weapons he used or anything like that; that part was really cut short. But the storyboards Murata-sensei came up with featured him using his weapon against the monster, showing off his fighting chops so that the monster looked even more impressive by comparison. It was fantastic! Murata: When I heard his weapon was a fencing (*14) rapier (*15), it reminded me of that cool swordsman from Wheels on Meals (*16). Sometimes it’s fun to add in more action like that. --On the flipside, has ONE-sensei ever given you pointers on how

to draw something? Murata: On occasion. For instance, during the big showdown with Boros. Since I felt this was the heavyweight championship of the universe, I tried to make it as flashy as possible. However, midway through when Boros starts losing ground to Saitama, there were places where he appeared clownish…ONE-sensei pointed out to me that the reason Boros is popular is because he always retains his dignity, even against Saitama. That made it all click for me, and I redrew things from square one. When it comes to the storyline, characters, and dialogue, all of that flows from ONE-sensei’s head, so I constantly check in with him. --Thank you very much. Finally, what do each of you consider a “true hero”? Murata: "Even if you’re the strongest around, not letting it go to your head”, I guess. Abiding by your own rules. A true hero never waivers. ONE: I agree; someone who never waivers. A true hero is someone who follows their dreams to the very end. ==[Notes]== *1: ONE-senseibegan serializing One-Punch Man in Weekly Shonen VIP on the community site Toshanai in 2009. *2: A graphics tablet and related software. *3: One of Weekly Shonen Jump’s most well-known series, a battle/adventure series by Akira Toriyama that ran in Jump from 1984 to 1995. *4: The protagonist of Dragon Ball. A member of the Saiyans (a warrior race) who grew up on Earth. Though pure-hearted, he is also a super-warrior who loves fighting against strong opponents. *5: The 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai (“Strongest Under the Heavens” Tournament). The reincarnation of the supposedly defeated Demon King Piccolo entered the tournament and battled Goku. *6: A Japanese illustrator who has worked on numerous games and anime, including Street Fighter II. *7: Yasuo Ootagaki-sensei. Wrote the story for the series Donten Prism Solar Car, which ran in Jump Square from 2010 to 2011. *8: The aforementioned series which ran in Jump Square from 2010 to 2011, depicting the struggles and friendships of young people involved in the development of solar cars. *9: There is a set number of pages for Rookie of the Year awards. For instance, the Tezuka Prize requires 31 pages. *10: Original story by ONE-sensei. A doujinshi by ONE-sensei, Yusuke Murata-sensei, and Kinu Nishimura-sensei. An action story depicting the struggles of a father who becomes a giant to fight monsters, and his frustrated son. *11: Comedy depicting the adventures of soldiers who undergo special training to exterminate cockroaches. Ran as a guest one-shot in the July 2015 issue of Young Gan-Gan. *12: American Football manga series which ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2002 to 2009. *13: The current Neighborhood Young Jump browser is improved constantly to allow everyone to read the latest One-Punch Man as soon as possible. *14: A European style of swordplay, and now an Olympic sport. *15: One-handed sword with a sharp point. *16: 1984 Jackie Chan movie.

27 notes - Posted January 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Update 171 (previously 170). Changes between online and print versions

Murata has taken advantage of the revisions he's doing for volume 25 to make a few small but important changes to update 171.

Amai Mask calling for help

No excuses, just a straight out plea for help. Which isn't forthcoming

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28 notes - Posted February 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Hi there, I feel as if the most wrong thing you've done is the comic/animation of what would be non-con aka rape.

That was what would be the most irredeemable thing you've done in my views and which is the most questionable thing (which is admittebly VERY wrong if rape) the robespierre thermidor 9 gif the cerain someone is saying you are supporting non-con because its implied in it, do you feel like your art depicted a rape scenario accuring?

Thanks for asking, I will copy paste the answer on this matter sent to someone and edit it a bit: sorry for upsetting you, I’ve deleted the automatically censored post in question, post it again and given warning and flagged the image.

I don’t think and never think depicting noncon in absurd porno should be understood as supporting rape, especially when it’s highly fictional. Here’s a little fun story on the back story of that piece:

One day I finished reading about the Thermidorian reaction (in a article written by my friend) and I feel so defeated and sad for the revolutionaries that I run to my friend to tell them about how frustrated and depressed the historical event makes me feel. “F/The Thermidorian really fucked the revolution through and through” they said, because they know I like sick jokes (this is beyond dark humour but it’s me). Then it reminded me of a little play called Yes so I said Yes by David Ireland. It’s a dark comedy about the Troubles through the eyes of a former UVF-member. The play ends with the protagonist (the former UVF-member ) being raped by his neighbour (representing the treaty, I assume) while other characters (Irish republicans mostly) singing We are on the one road merrily throughout the whole process. I believe you can see how the sick idea comes into being, I like these kind of gruesome jokes, because they can turn the heavy story that saddens me into something that also makes me laugh (although it would be a sad laughter, it’s still refreshing and entertaining)

I was and am always drawing gory / noncon from time to time in the past (You might refuse to believe it, but the R18G-artist-community is quite healthy and positive as far as I have experienced) . it’s for me, personally and sadly, only another genre I enjoy doing, just like card design or Fantasy au. I DO NOT mean to disrespect any historical figure, I only want to use aspect of a “story” as a theme, I do not want to represent anyone as “real person” or “themselves“ in the fucked up pieces, I only See the characters in what I did as fictional characters and symbols. At least I, in my interaction with others, draw the line really clear, when we talk about serious history or literatures about Robespierre or Danton or anyone, I never see them as anything equivalent to the objects of my cursed drawings.

I am aware the I am still pretty bad at drawing and explaining myself in English, so pls feel free to inform me of any possible misunderstanding my wording can cause.

So I know absolutely nothing about Leverage except what I've been seeing you post lately and I have to admit you're making it look tempting to watch! Can I ask what are some of your favorite things about the show/reasons you would suggest people watch it? And is there really a poly relationship that is canon?

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I am going to do my best not to just “asdfghkjl” at you and answer coherently.

In a nutshell, Leverage is about 5 people. 4 are criminals (Parker, Hardison, Eliot and Sophie) with different and unique skill-sets and 1 is an ex-insurance investigator (Nate) who, at one point or another in his career, has tracked down (or at least attempted to) the other 4. The whole show is essentially: man reluctantly reforms 4 criminals to use their criminal powers for good and 4 criminals move into man’s life and stubbornly refuse to leave because, goddammit, now they have morals. 

I’ve got a lot of favourite things about the show but the main ones are as follows:

1. Found family. And I’m not talking about loners who come together to fight crime and happen to co-exist to the point where they realise they happen to have found themselves a family. I mean, Nate and Sophie are the Drunk Uncle and Wine Aunt who somehow become Mom and Dad to 3 beautiful criminal children. Mom and Dad love their criminal babies and the kids love them (as well as each other, but we’ll come to that in a moment). You get amazing family moments such as: Mom and Dad packing the kids lunch before sending them out to kick corporate greed’s ass; Mom and Dad giving the kids ridiculously expensive and personal Christmas presents causing their most Grumpy Kid to go very very quiet and soft as he runs off to gleefully play with his new murder toy; the kids interrupting Mom and Dad’s big Movie Style Kiss to ask if they can please keep their new underground layer and huffing and puffing when Dad tells them no.

2. Found family: the OT3 edition. To answer your question, the OT3 is indeed canon, confirmed by the creator. Now, usually, “confirmed by the creator” infuriates me because most of the time it’s a way for a creator to be seen as “progressive” without doing anything to actually be progressive. That isn’t the case here. The OT3 are built up carefully and while it is obvious the creators didn’t originally intend for all 3 of them to become a relationship in the romantic sense, by mid-season 5 we are given a very clear picture of where Parker, Hardison and Eliot are heading in their relationship. There aren’t any kisses at the end to signal this but there are solid marriage vows in not only one but two episodes. (And by marriage vows I mean literal equivalents of marriage vows: “for better or worse” and “’til death do us part”. I’m not even exaggerating). The OT3 also doesn’t need explicit romantic narratives to convey how much they love each other. Their love is laced through the whole show, from the way they teach each other things to the way they respond to each other and work as a unit. The way they fiercely protect and admire each other. Like someone once said, if you need characters to kiss or say I love you to let the audience know they love each other, you are writing them wrong. 

Aside from that, each of the parings in the OT3 are just. Gah. They are so well done, with friendship being the solid basis for them all. The creators never expect the audience to assume anything about them or fill in the gaps. They give us their relationships on screen and reference many things off-screen to show us how these relationships continue to build in between episodes.

Hardison and Parker are a canon couple and date in the show: it’s approached slowly and they are so goddamned sweet. They are basically every fluffy slow-burn trope with a healthy dash of mutual pining in the mix. They are basically that quote “love is patient, love is kind”. (I would like to add their romance never becomes the focus of the show or overrides the importance of any other relationship they have with the other characters, especially Eliot.)

Hardison and Eliot are the Old Married Couple and from day one are already bickering and looking at each other/making comments that are found in every UST fic ever (not to mention Hardison has a very good knack for making Eliot grin like a little kid, when usually he’s basically an Angry Little Chef Man). They argue, they play, and love each other plain as day. 

Parker and Eliot are more subtle but every bit as wonderful. They have an unspoken connection and understand each other on a level no-one else can. Parker and Eliot are not good with giving themselves over to affection for different reasons (and Hardison plays a central role in helping them realise it’s okay to want it and have it- that boy has endless patience) but there is something so beautiful in the way the two of them come together on their own and develop their own special bond that works for them. Parker and Eliot are that trope where the characters don’t need to speak to understand each other perfectly. They just do. Their love language is a lot of the time non-verbal but speaks volumes. (Parker also likes to annoy the hell out of Eliot and Eliot....just.....lets...her. Because he’s soft. The softest, grumpiest boy.) 

I could go into so much depth for each pairing and their dynamics as a 3 but that's for another post.

3. Subverting stereotypes. There is the occasional hiccup in the show regarding stereotypes but ultimately, Leverage gets an A+ when it comes to writing characters and making them 3 dimensional people who are not defined by certain characteristics or events. Nate could so easily fall into the White Man Pain trope where he uses the trauma of losing his kid as a reason as to why he is entitled to act like a dick. Nate is a dick but he doesn’t use his pain to excuse it and I appreciate that. Hardison is a black man who is soft and nurturing. Easily the most empathetic and patient of the group. He’s nerdy, an actual genius, and has the biggest heart of all the characters. Nate is maybe the glue but Hardison is definitely the heart. Media’s usual aggressive, amongst other, racist stereotypes can fuck right off. Parker is canonically autistic (I am sure this was confirmed by one of the creators) and she is not defined by it. It’s not written as some kind of singular personality trait. It’s part of what makes up Parker but it’s only one facet of who she is and not once is her actions, thoughts or feelings treated like a joke. Sometimes people don’t understand why she does and says the things she does but it’s met with patience and fondness over the course of the show. Equally, it’s not met with over-caution. Parker is just Parker. No-one tries to change her. The other nice thing is Hardison, who always makes sure Parker knows she’s amazing because of who she is and not in spite of it. Finally, Sophie is in her 40s. She’s not treated like she’s past her prime. Ever. She’s sexy, smart and never is she pitted against or compared to Parker (who is younger) for anything. Sophie is amazing and there’s never even a conversation of “I may be older but I am still *insert adjective typically associated with younger women here*”. Sophie is possibly the first female character I’ve ever seen who isn’t just unapologetic about her age but has never had to apologise for her age. It’s a non-issue and that’s that. The women on the show are written so well, right down to secondary characters and it’s beyond refreshing.  

4.) It’s just fun. The show has a “monster of the week” type format. Except instead of a ghoul or a ghost, the monster is some corrupt wealthy and powerful individual or organisation. The show draws on real-life individuals to do this and therefore closely parallels real-life people and events. It addresses important political, economical, social and environmental issues while at the same time remaining fun and light-hearted. The characters constantly get the chance to play dress up and by GOD do they have fun with it. You get to watch Eliot beat up bad guys in the most delightful of ways, usually after a witty non-sequitur and with a weapon you’d never think could be a weapon. The dialogue and back and forth between the characters is everything. And finally - my favourite thing- the team can never resist striking a dramatic pose after they’ve taken down the bad guy, making sure the bad guy sees them. I mean, they COULD just walk away, satisfied they’ve taken the person down, but nope. They gotta be dramatic bitches 24/7 and pose like they are models for every single month of this year’s Criminal Calendar.  

5.) Competence Porn. So. Much. Competence Porn.  

Honestly, I could list a thousand reasons for why Leverage is amazing but to list them would to be spoiling so many amazing moments you’d get to discover for the first time on your own if you do choose to watch it. It’s the kind of show you can watch with an eagle-eye and sink your teeth into. But it’s also the kind of show if, you would prefer, put on in the background for something entertaining while you do something else. Each episode is about the job at hand but it’s made up of so many moments between the characters that show how much the creators and writers care about them. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll do whatever it is you do when something Soft and Wonderful happens that makes your heart melt. I am so beyond grateful for Leverage. It’s everything I always wanted in a show. Nearly every show I’ve watched in the past 10 years has disappointed me in some way, usually either because the writers run out of steam or characters who I love are treated poorly or given some kind of unnecessary “shock value” arc. Leverage doesn’t do that. Leverage is what it says on the bottle. Fandom isn’t something I joined because I needed canon fix-its. Fandom only enhances and celebrates an already excellent canon. 

JP vs. Localization in Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation

(Okay, for real this time lol)

Again, here’s a link to my sources post.

Fortunately, this route follows suit in terms of good localization quality after Conquest. It’s the shortest out of all the posts, since I don’t really have a lot to talk about. Mostly subtle line changes, references and a few key points of information that were cut out. I also went through Hidden Truths and Heirs of Fate to see if I could add stuff from those on here, but there were no big problems that I found.

Once again, the main part of this post will all be put under the cut. If a chapter isn’t covered, it means I didn’t think there were any differences worth talking about.

I’ll use localized names for characters and locations, unless I feel the need to do otherwise.

I’ll be using she/her when referring to Corrin in this post. (I flipped a coin to decide the gender lol)

Also, note that after Chapter 14, the translation of this route on Fateswartable ends, so I mostly relied on the English patch done by Serenes at that point forward. (I also used PegasusKnight.com as a reference to fall back on if I needed it)

Chapter 7

-A minor gripe I have with localization. The JP version compares Touma (Valla) to hell constantly. To jump ahead a bit, I believe in the JP versions of the End of All Sky/Land/Below tracks are even called The End of All Roads Heaven/Earth/Hell. The Vallites are also often called demons in the JP version, and Anankos himself is known as the ‘Invisible Demon Dragon’.

Another cool thing I just thought of too, is a connection to a popular Japanese short story. Zelda fans might be familiar with the story, “The Spider’s Thread”, which inspired the Ancient Cistern dungeon in Skyward Sword.

The beginning of the story has Buddha walking through paradise (heaven), before coming across a pond. The pond is filled with crystal clear water, and covered with water lilies/lotuses. As Buddha gazes further into the pond, he begins to see the depths of hell.

Sound familiar? “Azura is walking through Hoshido, before coming across a lake. The lake is filled with crystal clear water, and when she gazes into the lake she sees the fallen kingdom of her birth. Valla, the kingdom associated with water lilies/lotuses in the game, has been turned into hell itself.”

This association loses its meaning a bit when the comparisons to hell are a bit toned down, as well as when the Buddhist inspirations were kind of supplanted in favor of Greek renames. It’s not supremely important to the plot as a whole, but it’s something interesting I wanted to bring up.

-In the JP version, while explaining what happened in Valla, Azura eventually says “Using the art of manipulating people’s souls, he (Hydra/Anankos) made the people kill each other.” This bit of the people killing each other was cut in localization.

Chapter 12

-In the JP version, when Corrin asks Flora if she knows anything about dragons, Flora says “Sorry, I don’t know…The ancestral dragon of the Ice Clan has already perished and isn’t part of the legend. I don’t know what role it plays, sorry…” Localization makes her response “I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything... They've been gone so long that we don't even have tales of dragons in the Ice Tribe. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more assistance...”

So, the JP version explicitly says the Ice Dragon is dead (I believe Fates’ second artbook mentioned this as well), whereas the localization only says the First Dragons have been gone for a long time.

Chapter 16

-There’s not really much of a problem that I have with what Ryoma says about Corrin “having leadership qualities at a young age” but I wanted to do comparisons regardless cuz the word choice might lead one to different conclusions. In localization, Ryoma says this:

Ryoma: Huh... So she told us the same thing... I don't think it's in Corrin's nature to lie. And there's a leadership quality about her that just attracts followers. I remember being jealous of her as a child, in fact. Even at such a young age, she displayed the characteristics of a ruler. Silly to be jealous of her, right?

In the JP version, Ryoma says this:

Ryoma: Oh... So, she told you the same thing. …Corrin isn’t one to tell lies. She’s been like that since childhood. She’s always genuine and honest... She has this mysterious appeal that draws people to her. Seeing my younger sister with the qualities of being a ruler... Honestly, it makes me feel envious. …What a ridiculous thing to say, right?

Again, I don’t necessarily have a problem with how it was localized, but some might. The localization version might have people think that Corrin somehow was a fantastic leader at such a young age, but JP is more clear that it was about the qualities she had at a young age that would be valuable as a leader.

Chapter 19

-A minor gripe. In the localization, Azura says that Anankos uses his magic to send Vallites to Nohr and Hoshido to stir up conflict. In the JP version, she says he uses magic, along with the help of a body of water. That’s why whenever you fight Vallites outside of Valla proper, there’s a body of water nearby; Hoshido’s lake (and the ponds shown in Hinoka’s CQ battle which are in the capital) for Chapter 5, the sea for BR chapter 11, the burning falls for BR chapter 21, and the city for Rev chapter 13. Similarly, the consequences of being a victim to the curse are described as “turning into sea foam” in the JP version. Localization as a whole kind of toned down how much water has an influence on the story.

Chapter 23

-Probably the pettiest gripe I have lol. As Arete is fading away from Azura’s arms, Azura has a different reaction in localization and Japanese. In localization, Azura says “Mother? Mother!” while a voice clip of her in-battle pain cries plays. In the JP, she says  “*Sob... Sob*…! Mother... Mother...!”, while a voice clip of her crying plays. Her crying voice clip I don’t recall hearing anywhere else.

This is one of the few times in the you get to see Azura express a heavy and heartfelt emotion, since her rough childhood caused her to remain guarded and stoic around everyone. The equivalents to this scene in other routes is her death scene in Birthright, and her crying with Corrin over Ryoma’s death in Conquest; a normally unflinching and aloof character breaking down is a rarity, and indicates that the cause of it is something to take note of for the character as a whole. Localization softened this aspect, and I take issue with it, despite it probably seeming trivial to most other people.

Chapter 24

-When Corrin is questioning the phantom Mikoto, an exchange happens. In localization, part of it goes like this:

Corrin: But this can't be... Are you truly my mother?

Mikoto: I am. Even as a puppet of Anankos, my spirit at least remains my own.

Corrin: I... I believe you.

In the JP version, it goes like this:

Corrin: It can’t be... …Are you really my mother?

Mikoto: Yes... I became an Invisible servant, controlled by the Invisible King... Even so, I am your mother.

Corrin:  …………

Again, a minor thing that I don’t personally have issue with, but replacing Corrin’s silence with an admittance of belief could make some believe she has “reverted” back to being too naïve.

Chapter 26

-While Gunter is relaying his past, an exchange happens. In localization, it goes like this:

Gunter: I ask myself that, every day. I cannot understand the minds of royals. To you all, we commoners are little more than pawns in your schemes... Or weeds to be killed on a whim.

Corrin: That's not true...

Xander: Is that how people view the royalty?

Ryoma: Such an impression would easily breed powerful resentment...

In the JP version, Corrin, Xander and Ryoma don’t say anything. They just remain silent.

Endgame

-Not a major problem so much as a general thing about the game, but I can think of like... at least three memes that Treehouse inserted into the localization. Now I like memes, but there is no better way to date your media nowadays. One of them was Kana’s “That’s dragon for I love you” which tbh, is kind of cute and isn’t the most well known meme so I guess I can let it slide. Another is Felicia saying “I had one job!” when she messes up in the dining hall, which isn’t that big of a deal since the dining hall is very optional.

The last one I can think of is why I put this specific grievance here, and it’s during Corrin’s speech before facing Anankos.

Corrin: We won't back down! This is my... This is our destiny! Ready your weapons! Fight for your friends! With the Seal of Flames... With the Fire Emblem on our side! We fight for our world!!

Yeah, she says “Fight for your friends” which is everyone’s favorite Ike line from Brawl. Now, this isn’t even a totally inaccurate translation either, but it kind of just... makes the moment funny for the player when it’s supposed to be commanding and serious I guess.

But yeah, not the most important issue by far, but something I’d thought to mention. Hell, it’s not even that bad compared to how they made Peri’s, Effie’s and Hisame’s quirks into exaggerated and tired jokes. And the Beruka-Saizo support. Never forget.

-When Azura and Corrin are by the lake and discuss the latter’s plans to rule, Corrin says this in localization:

Corrin: I'm going to make Valla a wonderful place! In honor of the true last king and for Queen Arete. And everyone who fought... I promise to make them all proud.

In the JP version, she says this:

Corrin: I’ll make the Invisible Kingdom (Valla) into a great land. For the previous monarch, Queen Shenmei (Arete)… And for all of my allies who fought beside me. I promise.

So, JP version only mentions Arete as the reigning monarch of Valla. Which makes sense, cuz unless there was some wild “keeping the bloodline pure” shenanigans in Valla, Arete being the Queen keeps in line with what we know about the rest of Valla’s history. Arete was royalty from birth, as was her sister Mikoto. Arete is the one who passed down Lost in Thoughts and the pendant to Azura.  

Chapter 66: Tang Fan Realizes He Cannot Lose Sui Zhou

Context: Sui Zhou, Tang Fan and their men head into one of the tombs together after finding remnants of the missing villagers right outside the entrance of a tomb. One of the men’s lower body has already been eaten up, and they are sure that there is a sort of creature and monster in the tomb, and hence decide to visit and clear this case once and for all. 

They are accompanied by the old village chief’s oldest son, and once they are there and get into trouble, Tang Fan and Sui Zhou finally find out who this son actually is - Li Man, Tang Fan’s previous landlord before he moved in with Sui Zhou, the man who plotted to kill his own wife and then let his son go to prison in his stead, and let him die there before fleeing with his new pregnant mistress. Turns out that Li Man is actually affiliated to the White Lotus Sect.

After his identity is exposed as they are all trapped in the tomb, Li Man takes Tang Fan hostage, but Sui Zhou to the rescue! As they try to get out alive while battling the creature physically, and also dealing with scheming mastermind Li Man and less-than-cooperative subordinates, Tang Fan and Sui Zhou really have their work cut out for them. 

*Do read the previous highlight Ch. 60-61 to find out who the village chief and Tang Fan’s uncooperative mofo of a subordinate Yin Yuan Hua are, and also a refresh on the case XD Qian San Er is a young boy, thief-turned-ally that follows Tang Fan from this case onwards and later works for him

*No major Fanzhou ROMANTIC moments in this chapter, but they’re trying to save each other and trying to outwit the bad guy, and also the creature is this huge-ass crocodile that eats people lmao, and they’re trapped in the tomb ;-; 

Sort of MAJOR FANZHOU MOMENT AT THE END of this chapter!!!

Introduction Post | Masterpost

—

Highlights under the cut

Li Man is just realising how extremely useful a hostage is, and before he gets a chance to put his hand on Tang Fan’s neck, a sharp pain comes from his exposed back. He cannot help but cry out in pain, and then the person he caught to play his human shield earlier is gone. The side of his arm has taken a heavy hit, and the pain he feels has him loosening the hold on his blade uncontrollably.

It is but a short moment, but the situation has already changed significantly.

Li Man is originally a businessman and his skills are nowhere better than Tang Fan’s. Otherwise, he would not have been unsure about how much force to use when he took up an axe earlier to slash at others. His two henchmen, however, are clearly more skilled than he is, as faced with the closing in of the Embroidered Uniform Guards, they managed to struggle a little before being forced to surrender.

“What are you guys doing here!” Li Man glares at the person before him in disbelief after his arms are restrained ruthlessly behind his back.

Fate is playing tricks on him. All that he put Tang Fan through earlier is now being applied on himself.

An Embroidered Uniform Guard walks over and then pushes the stone door open slowly. Under Li Man and his henchmen’s glares, Pang Qi walks in with a large gait from the outside, bringing with him Qian San Er and others. The stone door then closes shut heavily again.

The threat they felt from the approaching tomb beast earlier seems like just an illusion.

Sui Zhou personally unties Tang Fan, and asks, concerned, “You’re alright?”

“I’m good,” Tang Fan shakes his head, and then looks around his surroundings.

From the decor, the huge hall they are at is actually at the core of Marquis Gong’s tomb. the coffin in the center is where Marquis Gong’s corpse is located, and the floral patterns on top of the coffin confirm Tang Fan’s earlier guess, that this is indeed the tomb of a former Marquis of the Qin empire.

However, because this central hall’s space is larger, on the left and right there are accompanying side halls that emulate the place the tomb owner was staying in when he was alive. Li Man and the rest of them only lit up a single light. As a result, aside from this small circular area near the light, other parts of this hall are shrouded in darkness.

Stuck in such an environment, it is natural to look towards the light and avoid the darkness, so people consciously turn their eyes towards where there is light, and when these eyes look towards other places, they will be temporarily blinded.

Sui Zhou and his men made use of this to first hide within the accompanying side halls, holding their breaths so they could strike accurately when Li Man’s defences are down.

Although Li Man also realises this, he is still in disbelief, as he always seems to lose to his own plans and fall into Tang Fan’s hands repeatedly.

“This is impossible, my people definitely lured you away, how did you run here from that side?”

Sui Zhou does not pay him any mind, and looks first to Tang Fan instead.

Tang Fan jokes, “Because Sui-zhenfushi is both smart and legendary in combat, and common people are unable to see through him!”

Sui Zhou’s eyes reveal a tinge of mirth, but when he turns towards Li Man again, his expression has returned to its cold and firm state, “The set up laid in this tomb, we already knew most of it before we came down here…”

Before he can finish, Li Man shouts, “Impossible!”

There is naturally a reason behind him saying that. When royals are buried, to prevent tomb robbers, not only must there not be any details left behind for transfer, sometimes even the architects behind the tomb construction have to be killed as well. Or even like how Cao Cao did it, setting up 72 decoy tombs - this was all to confuse the people left and absolutely prevent robberies.

Although doing this may not be entirely effective, everyone has always done it this way in history, so being a little more careful and meticulous will not go wrong.

This tomb is located under the Yong Hou Tomb, and there aren’t many people who know this, not to mention anyone knowing how it’s been set up.

Facing Li Man’s ‘I am cultured so you better stop lying to me’ expression, Tang Fan patiently explains, “Before I became an official, I once wandered the world and came across the region of Shan Xi. There are plenty of tombs there, and it is said that the Zhou royal family’s tomb has long been emptied by local raiders, but the burial mounds and archaeological site are still intact. Under my observations, I realised that the structure of these sites are more similar than different.”

“Yong Hou Tomb only has two levels in the underground palace, this is clearly written by those who have come here before. Ancestor Song Ying was buried in a hurry, and so any secret passages were unable to be built. Although you are not the real Liu Da Niu, but to lure us down here, you put in quite a bit of effort.”

“Not everything you said is fake, at least half of it is real, and Qian San Er did not lie, so combining what the both of you said, then it is not difficult to conclude that when you said there was a third level in this tomb, this means that there has to be another royal member’s tomb.”

“So I took note of this, and looking through local records, I realised that this used to be the land of the Gong Empire, belonging to the Zhou emperor Wang Ji. The Zhou empire practiced gifting their land to accomplished officials, and a small empire like this, all infrastructure must have imitated that of the Zhou royal family’s, including their tombs.”

Li Man continues, “So you applied the set up you saw in the Zhou dynasty’s tombs in Shan Xi over here.”

Tang Fan nods in agreement, “Exactly, but this is equivalent only to trying to draw a tiger by looking at a cat - it is not possible for every tomb to look exactly the same, and even if we know the gist of the set up, there will definitely be differences in between. For example, the traps in this tomb, we couldn’t have known this first. But it is precisely at this moment that you did us a huge favour.”

Li Man’s voice is hoarse, “What favour?”

Tang Fan says, “After we came down, there were plenty of scattered treasures, but there were no bodies. If the creature swallowed the meat and bones together, this I can understand, but from what Qian San Er described, we know that when Li Kui and the rest came down here and fought with the creature, this was surely a nasty, tough fight. So the places that we passed by, it is impossible for them to be so clean. No matter how aggressive and fierce this creature is, one or two limbs or body parts would surely have been left behind. Since this is unnatural, something must be amiss. Someone must have deliberately cleaned this place up in hopes of luring us down here.”

“Very logical,” Li Man says, “And?”

“Since you deliberately lured us here, then you must first ensure your own safety. You couldn’t possibly have allowed yourself to fall prey to the traps, so Sui Zhou and I felt at ease, enough to bring the men down here.”

“I remember that when I was about to kill you, the creature shrieked,” Li Man says, his eyebrows furrowed.

Tang Fan makes a noise of assent, “Qian San Er.”

Hearing his name being called, Qian San Er walks out from the dark calmly, and then shoots Tang Fan a grin, deliberately sucking up to Tang Fan. Then, he brings his hand to the side of his mouth.

A chilling sound echoes, and this is exactly the sound of a ghost crying that they heard earlier!

Li Man and his two henchmen’s eyes go wide.

Qian San Er straightens, his chest protruding outwards and traces of smug delight on his face, “I don’t only know how to steal!”

One must know that his ventriloquism skills are top notch in the Huang He Gang, otherwise he wouldn’t have been brought over here by his shifu to keep watch. Although he was not of much help, but at critical moments, it’s not that he cannot be assigned tasks, and case in point, Li man and the rest were deceived.

The plan was actually very simple. Li Man planned to lure Sui Zhou and his men away and was prepared to first kill Tang Fan and Yin Huan Hua. Who knew that Sui Zhou and the rest of them were already prepared and tackled his scheme with one of their own? Through the White Lotus Sect disciple who wanted to lure them away, they instead managed to figure out all the traps here.

Plus the preparation that Tang Fan made prior to this, having understood the environment and infrastructure before coming down here, as long as they walked about, they would no longer be confused by the misleading traps.

At this point, Sui Zhou and the rest realised that the Tang Fan and Yin Yuan Hua (who were trailing) behind them have vanished. And as Tang Fan knows Sui Zhou, Sui Zhou knows Tang Fan equally well. He knew that Tang Fan would surely think of ways stall for time and await their rescue. The only problem was how they were actually going to meet - And so Sui Zhou asked Qian San Er to mimic the cries of the creatures, all to drive Li Man into the main hall.

And that’s how they have come to the situation before them.

***

Suddenly, Yin Yuan Hua picks up his foot and kicks at Li Man viciously. He demands, “What about the treasures? Where did you hide them all?”

Both of Li Man’s hands are tied up, but he does not get angry at being abruptly kicked to the ground. He only pants, his breaths harsh, “If I tell you, will you guys let me live?”

Yin Huan Hua is still holding a grudge against them for having tied him up earlier and laughs coldly, “All of you tried to rebel and create chaos in the world. It’s already the best case scenario to not have your whole family die to pay for your sins, but you still want to live? if you don’t come clean, just wait to die here!”

As if he heard the biggest joke in history, Li Man suddenly descends into a bout of laughter, and the intensifying pain warps his smile even more.

“What are you laughing at!” Yin Yuan Hua grows cold at his laugh, and almost kicks at him again, but Sui Zhou stops him.

Li Man is laughing uncontrollably, so much so that tears have emerged. He then turns a creepy smile onto Yin Yuan Hua, “I’m laughing at your stupidity! I said so much only to stall for time, so that I may live longer, and then your death sentences will arrive!”

As if in response to Li Man, the moment he finishes speaking, from outside the stone door, an eerie wail resounds from the distance.

Everyone’s expressions change slightly.

Li Man laughs, “I said before that the tomb beasts move when they smell blood and are exceptionally sensitive when it comes to the stench of blood. My blood is bringing them close, and so what if you know all of this? At the end, you still have to die here!”

Heavy thuds echo from outside the stone door, as if an external force is striking against it. In the beginning, the force used was to test the door, but as the door is firm, (the creature) increases its strength. The stone door and the whole hall along with it is struck with so much force that they are shaking slightly, scattering plenty of dust to the floor.

Li Man is still laughing, “This secret will forever be buried here, you will never make it out!”

The back of his head is hit heavily by Pang Qi, “You will also have to die here, what rubbish are you saying, think of something!”

Li Man sneers, “I am indebted to the almighty Sect, without it, there would be no wealthy and successful Li Man. My time to repay my debt has come, and to be able to drag all of you to die with me, I will not die in vain!”

While he is speaking, the stone door is again struck heavily (from the outside)! Originally, this door can only be opened with some clever handling, and for humans this is not a difficult thing, but for a ferocious beast, the stone door before its eyes is an obstacle. However, the tomb guarding beast outside clearly is intelligent, and after repeated strikes proved futile, it gradually stops its attacks and instead shifts to other various methods to try.

The people inside the stone room originally thought that even though they are temporarily unable to leave, the beast cannot enter either. As long as they patiently waited for time to pass, after it lost its patience it would leave naturally, but when they see the stone door being pushed open slowly from outside, they cannot help but be terrified.

A black claw that is as sharp as that of a bird’s, but is a few times larger than a normal bird’s, presses in from the gap made by the door. With the force the beast exhibited outside (earlier), if the claw caught onto one of them, it’s likely their heads would split on the spot.

Once they get to this thought, everyone shudders.

Sui Zhou yells, “Hurry go and hold the door!”

Even without him saying this, many people have already rushed forward and are using their bodies to completely jam the door.

However, the external force is too great, and even though everyone is expelling a majority, if not all of their strength, they only manage to push the door back by just a bit. Before any of them can heave a sigh of relief, the stone door is slammed against hard once again!

A lot of them were still stuck to the door, and are shocked immediately, their four limbs going numb and their strength leaving them.

Another strike from outside!

Once more!

And one more time!

Sui Zhou says grimly, “Prepare the hand cannons!”

With this reminder, a lot of them then remember that they did bring their hand cannons with them. Embroidered Uniform Guards with the hand cannons frantically stuff gunpowder inside, and nervously point the barrels towards the stone door area, waiting for this door to collapse…

And yet, whatever negative thoughts they have are realized, and before they are fully prepared, the door is already unable to withstand this huge force. It splits into two pieces and collapse towards the back. Some of them did not evade this in time and are trapped right there and then.

Along with the stone door being destroyed entirely, the heavy stench of blood blows inwards, and everyone almost throws up.

The only candle flame in the hall is extinguished.

***

Yin Yuan Hua leans against the wall as he shakes, and is exposed and unguarded as the creature’s claws sweep over. His face is flushed white, his eyes staring ahead, forgetting to even react to this.

At this time, it is Tang Fan who is right next to him, who reaches out with a hand and tugs him over. Yin Yuan Hua stumbles and barely dodges the claws, and the sharp tips of those claws swipe over the wall, leaving behind three deep claw marks.

If he was still standing there, then right this moment, there would be another corpse with a cut open belly.

Yin Yuan Hua shakily pants as he depends on the wall for support, not quite believing that he managed to escape from death’s clutches then.

“Go to the side halls!” Tang Fan shouts, totally different from his usual gentle, polite self.

He expended a lot of energy earlier to tug Yin Yuan Hua (out of harm’s way), and at this point, his pallor is not any better than the other man’s.

But the next moment, danger descends once again.

The beast seems to have realised that there are two more easy targets here, and it turns its head, its mouth opening wide and sharp white teeth close in.

From Tang Fan saving Yin Yuan Hua to the creature turning its head over, all these happened in merely a blink of an eye!

The beast is unable to bite at two people at the same time, so its very first target is Yin Yuan Hua. His face remains pale, but this time his reaction seems to be faster than the previous time.

There is no time to flee - the creature’s body is much larger than theirs, and so it has already blocked off all their paths for escape.

This time, Yin Yuan Hua finally reacts.

He chooses to tug Tang Fan over on one hand and hide behind him on the other, prepared to use Tang Fan as a human shield to slow down the beast’s progress. After that he will plan his retreat.

He did this in a flash, and no one would have expected him to do this!

Tang Fan is no longer able to hide or dodge in time! Seeing that his shoulder is about to be bitten off like what happened to an Embroidered Uniform Guard earlier, something flashes in Tang Fan’s eyes, and then the creature’s teeth bites onto a xiuchun blade instead!

It’s Sui Zhou!

At the last moment against all odds, Sui Zhou rushed over and with just the force of a single arm, he blocked the beast’s attack with the blade in his hand!

The edge of the blade causes the beast’s soft mouth to bleed, and it bites on the blade in a rage, then throws ruthlessly, sending Sui Zhou flying to the wall right that moment.

Sui Zhou falls heavily, and spits out a mouthful of blood.

“Guang Chuan!” Tang Fan rushes over to pick him up, his eyes going so wide in fury that they are about to split.

Sui Zhou’s face is as white as joss paper, his eyes shut tight. He is likely to have injured his internal organs, and doesn’t even have the strength to talk at that moment.

The warm body in his arms is pressed so close to him, but in that moment, Tang Fan has this sudden fear and uneasiness at the thought of losing him.

The earlier half of Tang Fan’s life - his parents died earlier and his older sister married out of the city. He thought he was alone, that he had no ties or worries, living freely without restrictions. He also thought that even if he was unable to continue being an official, at most he would just put up his hat and leave.

In this lifetime, he thought that perhaps there was nothing he could not let go.

But right this moment, Tang Fan then realises just how much Sui Zhou means to him in his heart. 

So much that he cannot bear the reality of losing the other.

I taste just like ice cream, bitch I am so icy, heart cold like an ice queen, that's why they don't like me 🎵

-What the hell was that.

Traditionally I start Union updates with semi-relevant song lyrics.

-Why did you start an update at all.

Because it’s time, Shajar! I took a holy oath in my 2020 simming goals post to update Unions once a month, and I’m already a month late.

-But nothing interesting is happening. 

That’s never stopped me before. Now listen to Rico Nasty, cry some more about Sophie blowing you off, and shut up.

-Ugh please, I couldn’t be more over Sonia if I tried. I hardly ever texted her links to wedding pinterest boards and quizzes to determine if our parenting styles are compatible. 

Did she ever reply? 

-She did once and said ‘who dis’. Of course the letters unscrambled spell out ‘do wish’, meaning she did wish me to keep messaging her. I just don’t know where it all went wrong. 

-Hey there, 17 year old girl, maybe you’ve had enough neat whiskey for the night? We’re actually running out of bottles. 

-Beat it, ponytail, I need to dull my pain. I’ve just been stabbed right in the gut by the love of my life. Just like my style idol and general role model, space opera fascist Kylo Ren.

Shaj I really hate seeing you like this, and not just because the red neon light is super unflattering on your complexion.

-You can fuck right off too, I was perfectly happy with my dads who hate me and my imbecile sister and my brother who might as well not exist, noogie-ing people all day AND night long, but you had to be all ‘OMG IT’S SOPHIE MIGUEL SHAJAR GO TALK TO HER’. Life-ruining-moron. 

But I was totally right about you two hitting it off, I mean look how sad you are now that she dumped- yea never mind, that’s not a good argument.

-Look what I can do even though I’ve had 46 whiskeys!! How you like me now, Sophie???

-You’re paying for all these broken glasses, I’m going to need your name and a credit card.

-Yes, fair enough, my name is Cyneswith Union-

-I LOOK GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT

Yea, you really should eat something to soak up all the alcohol. And not to kick you when you’re down, but you should also disregard all those cliches about ~a smile being the most beautiful thing you can wear~ because MAN. Watch out Joaquin, there’s a new Joker on the prowl. 

-So.. 20 lobsters thermidor and our most expensive appetizers?

-Aha.

-Would you mind settling your bill now?

-Of course not! My name is Cyneswith Union and this is the credit card my parents got me when I was 6 because we’re super duper best friends! I love my parents! They don’t care about their other daughter at all, even when their other daughter is going through a really hard time because she got the emotional equivalent of a lightsaber wound in the gut. You know what, let me also get 20 bottles of your most overpriced champagne to go with the lobsters.

Feeling better?

-Well it’s hard to feel bad when you’re spending your parents’ money recklessly and with malice aforethought.

It sure is. Alright well, the sun is coming up, maybe we should head home.

-What’s the rush? What is going to happen if I don’t go home, my parents will get worried? LOL

God your life sucks. Ok let’s hit a couple more places.

-Greetings. Welcome to our establishment. I am a human employee from this planet.

Great, nice to meet you.

-I just want there to be no doubt that I am indeed an earthling, born and raised under the earth’s exosphere and not above it.

Leave us alone.

-And I’m the resident community lot sim with that one face template you hate! There must be one of us on every lot you visit!

-And I am here in my revealing outfit to use the dance sphere and make everyone uncomfortable!

You’re actually pretty, I need to keep you in mind for after Don Oates takes a wrecking ball to our genetics, but yea, let’s bounce, Shajar.

Time to visit the happiest place on earth, Deh'Javu Modern Art Museum, home to my favorite piece of art in any medium, The Toilet of Fire. Shove that Fountain up your ass, Duchamp. How we feeling, Shaj?

-This trash can reminds of Sophie :( She used to go around town throwing money she stole from charities in trash cans and then send them riddles for where to find them :(

Enough with Sophie, we’ll find you someone better! Like..

..your aunt! Get the hell out of here Brit Brit, you’re taking up townie space. 

-I won’t be long, Gunther’s amazing close-up portrait of my hair was rejected by the museum so I’m here to set this shithole on fire. 

In other words Gunther just painted a canvas black and called it a day?

-His art doesn’t cater to plebs. Yes, offense.

Our old friend Ugly Teen Townie is here so finally we can have some fun. Shajar had gone almost 12 hours(!) without noogieing someone and I was starting to worry for her health.

-Yes, yes, I’m starting to feel like myself again..

Good for you, Shaj!

-Hope you’ve made peace with your God, Ugly Teen Townie, this water balloon is filled with horse feces! 

-WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET HORSE SHIT

-I ordered it from some guy named Leod McGreggor.

-How about a another joke, MuRRAY?

-What?!

-Now you say, ‘no, I think we’ve had enough of your jokes’. Say it!

-No, I think we’ve had enough of your jokes.

-What do you get when you cross a mentally-ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? Now you say ‘call the police, Gene!’

-Call the police, Gene!

-I'll tell you what you get..

-YOU GET WHAT YOU FUCKING DESERVE. HAHA oh man! Good stuff. 

Alright I’m starting to feel bad for Ugly Teen Townie, first he had to come to all the toddler birthday parties during the Victoria/Komei era and now this, he has suffered enough at this family’s hands. Time to go home, Shaj.

-Not so fast!

Wow, the Countess and Mrs. Crumplebottom on the same lot, top 10 anime crossovers.

-I have been sent here by the Limp Dick Vamps United organization to recruit Shajar Union.

Ugh you people are still around? Haven’t heard of you losers since the Count wouldn’t let Victoria bang him, which I’m still annoyed about. 

-Indeed we are, and it’s clear Shajar is ready to join us, dedicating her life to evil deeds without romantic distractions. I have no idea what Crumplebottom is doing here.

-I’m here to recruit Shajar to my own organization, Bitter Sims Worldwide Alliance. We’re always on the lookout for new members who want to spread their misery to their fellow Sim. 

It sounds like it’d be more effective if you guys just merged your organizations.

-I will NEVER merge my organization with someone who displays her bosom like a common whore. 

-Eat a dick, Crumplebottom!

-MAKE ME, FANGTOOTH

-Alright here I am, what the fuck do you want?

-Shajar, it is a pleasure to meet you! Ardent admirer of your work.

-What work, freakshow?

-Torturing everyone around you, what else!

-What? I don’t torture people around me, if anything they torture me.

-Why don’t you talk to me about it?

-I’d rather not, you look like a bejeweled snowman.

-Look deep into my eyes, Shajar..

-And now look deep into my razor sharp teeth..

-Ugh fine, let’s talk. 

-Is that Victoria and Komei’s teen granddaughter hanging out with a vampire?

Yes it is Kennedy, keep it moving.

-God, wtf is wrong with this family. 

Nothing now that you’ve been removed from our social circle, go away! Just kidding, you’re an icon and I’m marrying you in at some point. 

-Hard pass. 

Your loss, hombre. 

-It definitely isn’t.

-If I had known your turn on was vampires I would had set you two up!

STOP SETTING UP TEENS WITH ADULTS, LAKSHMI. And Shajar’s turn ons isn’t vampires, it’s fitness/fatness. Body positive queen. 

-Well, Shajar, you alphabetically listing all the people who have wronged you while I was trying to kill Crumplebottom telepathically has made for a very productive conversation. We’ll be in touch. 

-Thanks, Countess, it’s been real.

Shajar!!! Who cares about Sophie when you might bag a hot, rich vamp??

-Meh.

I’m gonna need you to be more excited about this prospect because a vampire spouse might just be enough of a draw to beat the comedic factor of fucking Don Oates turning us into an unintentional uglacy and I’m doing whatever I can to avoid my fate.

Ugh.

UGH

UGHHHHHHH

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO VICTORIA

-GET FUCKED, BROKEN FACED WEIRDO

God I miss you Vic 💔

-Donnie-bear, not to be not-nice, but mopping your pee off my front lawn is not exactly what I pictured doing during this date.

This guy won’t even mop up his own piss, what a catch.

Wow, manipulative much?? You are a piss piece of work, Donaldo.

-Don’t think we forgot about you, you 10-nice-point disgrace!

-VICTOR NO

-GET THAT MOP READY

-Finally, some peace and quiet.. Just me, alone with my broken heart, pondering my hopeless, loveless future..

-💗💗💗OMG SIS THERE YOU ARE. DONNIE AND I MADE OUT!!! 💗💗💗 But then grandma’s ghost scared him into soiling himself. 

-Good for grandma, hopefully next time she gives him a stroke. Now shut up and let’s eat in silence while I ponder my hopeless, loveless future.

-Okie dokie! 💗💗💗

-Um, I think mine has vomit in it.

-Yea I did that, but it’s just whiskey and lobster, if anything it increased in value. 

-Awww thanks sis! 💗💗💗

-Stop patronizing me, you little bitch. God I want to poke your eye out with this chopstick so badly.

-I love you too Shaj! 💗💗💗

And I hate both of you. Where’s your brother, I haven’t paid attention to him in 3 days. 

-He went upstairs, I think he’s pusshurt we forgot his birthday LOL

IT’S HIS BIRTHDAY????

-Don’t feel bad, I forgot it too! 💗💗💗

GODDAMMIT. WULF! WULF WHERE ARE YOU

-I’m here, I just grew up and dare I say it could not have gone better! 

Really?? Finally some good news! Let me look upon you-

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

WULF WHAT THE FUCK

-I was Mozart musical genius boy but now I’m a sk8ter boi! Character development!

Ok this is the most iconic birthday look since Gunther grew up in the pirate costume, we’re obviously keeping it. 

-Great! And as if the fact I’m a Wyatt face template with 0 Jojo genes wasn’t enough to make me unelectable, I also rolled family! :D I’m doing everything I can to ensure I live that sweet motherlode spare life! 

Honestly you should had picked another outfit cause now that you’re dressed like this I unironically want you to win. Hoisted with your own petard.

ok so like i wanna be real with you about what being a writer/artist/anyone who posts content on the internet is like sometimes, especially from the perspective of someone who has anxiety/depression etc

so on the one hand there’s that (and this has been said before) some of this art is shared with you, not for you. sometimes we make stuff just for us, but then we post it because we’re proud of it and it made us happy and we want it to make other people happy as well.

and then this thing we make that we’re proud of that we wanted to share for other people to see seems like it falls into the silent abyss of cyberspace and no one responds and you question whether it matters at all. and suddenly the thing you shared and were proud of becomes something you question if it was really as good as you thought it was, or if rather by posting it you’re being annoying and the people who like/reblog/comment/engage with any of the things you make in any capacity are only doing it because they feel bad for you.

on top of that, then you get afraid to question/talk about it or open up about how you feel because you think it will come off as narcissitic or attention-seeking. so you stay silent and make the next thing and the same thing happens and the cycle repeats itself.

for example, those of you who watch my videos (thank you!), you probably notice that i make a lot of self-deprecating humor. part of this is just who i am as a person. but the other part is because half of the time i do actually struggle with those beliefs and the “haha this is trash content” is very real. sometimes if i’m in a really bad place i have to fight about three different internal voices telling me that i should stop because no one cares and i’m being annoying and i have a screechy voice and by sharing this i’m just reminding people how bad i am etc etc etc. i’m not saying this for you to say “oh no your content isnt trash you’re wonderful” every time i make one of those jokes or talk about this, i’m just telling you that sometimes it is what it is and i don’t need sympathy for it, it just happens, and i have to fight against it personally a lot

the same goes for writing etc etc. I dont post my art on here but from what i’ve seen lately about the HUGE gap between likes and reblogs for artists on here, i know they struggle with it as well. and some of them really need that kind of exposure because they’re trying to make art a career, they need to take in commissions and every reblog is a better chance for that to happen. we work on multiple platforms oftentimes to try to get the word out but that doesnt mean it’s always effective and that the same shit doesnt happen there too. it does. always.

then there’s the thing like... we post it online because we want it to be shared. we want it to be seen. and due to a variety of factors ranging from fucked up algorithms to just people “lurking” vs. leaving likes/comments/reblogs, sometimes or oftentimes it’s not seen and that’s for me when the questioning begins. and i ask myself if i complain about this am i annoying and begging for attention? but here’s the thing guys.. most artists dont WANT to do art in a vaccuum. If they do, they don’t share it. That’s why i don’t post a lot of my drawings. Thats more just for me. But stuff like writing and other content that I HAVE posted, and same for any writer or creator, has inherently passed that threshold. We want engagement, we want it to be seen, so yes, we want attention. And that isnt a bad thing because that art needs an audience and we want it to have one.

When we share things, we want you to see it and we want you to engage with it. We want to make you happy, we want to make you think, we want to entertain you. We want to make a difference in your life, even if just a small and momentary difference. But it is impossible for us to reach through the screen and see you. When I do live theatre, I can see and feel my audience so I can tell how they’re feeling and reacting and it’s great. But I imagine if I tried to do a one-person-show behind a one-way curtain without hearing or seeing the audience or even being able to tell if there is an audience at all, it would probably be a very different, and really sucky, experience, and that’s what posting content on the internet is like.

That’s why it makes writers’ and artists’ day when we get comments on our work. That is the only way we are able to tell that we reached through the screen. Even if it’s dumb, even if it’s incoherent, even if you think you’re being annoying, really, more often than not, the simplest comment can really make us feel that way. Because of everything I just mentioned above. All we wanna do is make you happy, entertain you, give you the joy our art gave us, and it’s scary and uncertain when you send it out there, and even more scary and uncertain when you hear little to nothing back.

I also have compared this to when I used to teach a class of 90 students. It was a gen ed theatre course and teaching it genuinely sucked ass for much the same reason. I also just get really stressed out teaching. But when you’re teaching a big class like that, you look out and see any number of faces with expressions ranging from “bored,” “on the phone,” “interested,” “awake,” to completely unreadable. And the completely unreadable ones are the worst. Posting stuff on the internet is like teaching a class full of completely anonymous, completely unreadable students.

But, in the same vein, in every class i taught, there was always a small handful of people who seemed genuinely interested in the topic. They’d raise their hands, ask questions, go above and beyond for assignments. I still think about the students in my classes from years ago who seemed like they enjoyed being there, or at the very least tried a little bit more than everyone else. They were a beacon of hope that what I was doing and saying mattered. So when I got scared of those bored, unreadable faces, I’d look to the two or three people who I knew cared, and it gave me courage to keep going. It was like I was teaching the class just for them.

Getting comments, reblogs, any equivalent of engagement on any platform is like having those interested students. When creators talk about their audience being the best part of what they do, it really is the truth. Because a lot of time everything else can be scary and uncertain and suck. And so then sometimes even when those hateful inner voices are getting the best of me, I do it for the one or two people in my class who make my day of teaching brighter when I see them. So to any of you who engage with artists, writers, and creators in any way- seriously we do it just for you sometimes, and you have no idea how much even the tiniest poke through the screen means to us.

This was a lot longer than I intended it to be but yeah I just kind of needed to get it all out of me because it’s personally been something i’m struggling with right now, and I know others do too. And again this not to say like “NEH NEH NEH WHY ARENT I GETTING ATTENTION” but just to be upfront about what it’s like so that you on the other side of screen understand that you do make a difference and can also have a positive effect on our lives, the same way we want to have one for you.

The Big Read – Lewis Capaldi: “I make jokes because I’m comfortable with who I am”

The breakout star of 2019, Lewis Capaldi has the midas touch and the world at his feet – but he still likes talking about his pubes and dreams of meeting a girl who'll break his heart for real. NME Deputy Editor Dan Stubbs meets the cocksure 23-year-old in Dublin for a Buckfast sesh and quickly discovers a legitimately hilarious talent who's far from the “big fucking annoying cunt” he thinks he is.

Lewis Capaldi is miming a range of sporting activities. He bounces an invisible basketball around the stage. He boots an imaginary football into the crowd. And after some minutes of this, he poses with an imaginary dart in his hand. Every time he mimes pulling back to throw it, he changes his mind and walks over to take a sip of Guinness instead – to the delight of the crowd. When he finally throws the thing, they roar with approval, before goading him into downing the rest of his pint. And of course: he does. 

It’s November 21 at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin. So far Capaldi has spent 10 minutes playing three songs and 15 minutes doing what, in the most affectionate terms, can only be described as dicking about. It shouldn’t be this funny to watch, but it really is. And the price of witnessing this spectacle? Depends when you got your tickets. A tout offered to take NME’s off our hands for €500 outside the venue. 

A year ago this may have sounded like madness, a sign that the world was heading to hell in a handcart and we’d be closing out the decade in a post-apocalyptic new reality, eating boot leather and watching jesters for entertainment. But in 2019, Lewis Capaldi has proved, conclusively, that what the world was waiting for was a pasty-faced, pasty-loving, 23-year-old Scot with an act that’s 50 percent heartbroken balladry and 50 percent improv comedy. And it is a worldwide thing – Capaldi is a global hit, a bona fide phenomenon. A superstar whose first encounter with NME is backstage, hurtling along the corridor clutching a handful of items. “Got my passport, my acid reflux tablets and my water – and that’s all I need!” he says, whizzing past. “And now, I’m off for a small pish.”

When listing Capaldi’s many 2019 achievements, they start to lose meaning, like contemplating distances in space, or making sense of the costings in the Labour manifesto. But here are a few: The Brits’ Critics Choice award. A Number One album with ‘Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent’. A Number One single with ‘Someone You Loved’ in much of Europe, the US and the UK, where it spent seven weeks at the top. The hardest touring artist of the year, playing over 250 shows. A scene-stealing Glastonbury appearance.

If you’re to believe the stories in the Scottish tabloid press, Capaldi’s music can practically cure leprosy. He’s even had a beef with Noel Gallagher, once a mark of honour, but now a tussle with adversary so easily shot down it’s a bit like watching the moment someone first beats their dad in an arm wrestle. 

Yesterday brought news that Capaldi been nominated for Best Song at The Grammys, which in early career terms is the equivalent of being up for the Best Actor Oscar for your school production of Macbeth. “I’m up against Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Lizzo, H.E.R., Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift…” he says. So he’s in there representing the men? “Yes, at long last!” he jokes. “At long last, straight white men finally have representation.”

“If I’m being honest, I did think ‘Old Town Road’ would be nominated,” he says, being serious now. “Maybe if I win I’ll Kanye myself. ‘This should have gone to ‘Old Town Road’! (But I am going to keep it)…’”

Capaldi is an expert at shrugging off his achievements. His unfaltering humility is a huge part of his appeal but even he concedes it’s starting to seem a bit forced. “When I read my interviews back, I always think if I wasn’t me I’d think: ‘you’re full of shite’,” he says. “Like, stop saying you can’t believe it. You can believe it! But it is so surreal and it seems like almost quarterly it kicks up a notch. Like, yesterday with the Grammys, yet again all this shit’s getting more and more mental, more beyond belief.”

Capaldi watched the Grammy nominations on his laptop, which was resting on his chest with the screen close to his face – a set-up he describes as his “home cinema” – and he admits he did get properly excited at the news. Mostly, though, he tends to find himself reacting to things how he thinks he should. 

“I’ve got a very bad way of being like, So you’re supposed to feel this way in this moment,” he says. Like when someone passes away? “Exactly, yeah. Like, four months after my grandma passed away, I’m like, ‘Fuck, my grandma’s died,’ and I’m in Somerfield or something. I mean, not in Somerfield, because it’s not been open for fucking years.”

Capaldi even plays down the success of ‘Someone You Loved’, the song that scored him the Grammy nod. In his eyes, it’s just “one of my songs that’s doing a little bit better than the rest”, but it’s already become a popular standard to sit alongside Robbie Williams’s ‘Angels’ or Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’, one of those tracks that will be soundtracking marriages and burials for years to come. Which of those would he prefer it be used for? “Burials,” he says, with no hesitation. “Don’t start falling in love to my fucking music, right? See if I see people kissing at my shows, fucking stop that! These are sad songs, you bastards.”

Like Lewis himself, a large part of the charm of ‘Someone You Loved’ is its absolute universality, which is not to say it’s banal, more that everyone who has lost someone at some point in their lives – which is most of us – can identify with it. For Lewis, it was the aforementioned loss of his grandmother that proved the catalyst for the song, but he made it more open to romantic interpretation because it felt “too morbid” to write explicitly about. 

And it didn’t come easily. Where other songwriters boast about dashing off huge hits in barely the time it takes to play them, Capaldi admits to labouring over his compositions. Writing songs, he says, is “a massive pain in the fucking arse sometimes”.

“Growing up I read interviews with people like Paul Weller, Paul McCartney – all the Pauls – and they’d say the best songs just sort of fall in your lap,” he says. “After six months at the piano writing ‘Someone You Loved’ I’m like, ‘You fucking lying bastards, that’s taken me fucking ages.’”

Many of Capaldi’s songs, which he endearingly describes as ranging from “big piano ballads to bigger piano ballads” draw on his first major relationship which – you may have guessed – is no longer a going concern. But it wasn’t a dramatic event. “Adele wrote her album about a relationship breaking up in a bad way, being jilted I think,” he says. “I wrote mine about a relationship that just ended, just fizzled out. I’d love to be jilted by someone, then I could be as successful as Adele.”

I ask if he worries that – at 23 – he doesn’t have a great deal of life experience to draw on. “I spent my entire life writing this first album,” he says, “but the stuff I’ve experienced in the last year has been much more of a growing experience than living in my mum and dad’s house in fucking West Lothian.”

How about the fact that his next girlfriend, whoever she may be, will be on different terms, it being impossible for her not to know she’s dating Lewis Capaldi the world famous pop star? “Well, I don’t know. It’s not like I’m Justin Bieber,” he says. “Today was the first time I’ve ever got out of the car at a venue and someone screamed. Normally people just shout something at me that I’ve said on Instagram about my pubes. I guess, at worst, my next partner would think I’m one way because they’ll hear the songs and think I seem very nice and level headed, but then find out I’m not.”

What’s the reality?

“Big fucking annoying cunt.”

It’s slightly unfair to question the depth of Capaldi’s life experience, because at the age most of us were familiarising ourselves with yo-yos, pogs or fidget spinners (delete as appropriate), Lewis was embarking on his music career. He began performing at 11, largely in pubs and clubs in the conurbation between Glasgow and Edinburgh where he grew up. The experience of having to hold his own in intimidating spaces at such a young age probably explains much about his easiness around people. 

“I found that at 11 it was, ‘Oh he’s quite cute, he came and stood up here and he’s doing very well.’ When I got to 14, 15 and my voice changed and I lost any remnants of cuteness – which as you can tell have not returned to me – that’s when I started to pick up a bit of the patter. You get to know your way about how to speak to people.” 

Around that time, Capaldi actively worked on changing his vocal style to something more like the wolfy howl we hear today. What was once a ”high and smooth” voice had broken. Inspired by Paolo Nutini and Joe Cocker, Capaldi added some gravel. “I thought it would be a good idea to put a bit of rasp in, to make it sound even more terrible,” he says.

For years we’ve been force-fed sensitive young men-next-door with beanie hats, beards or lumberjack shirts singing to us about their problems. In a quest for authenticity, they’ve presented themselves as troubled, serious souls. Capaldi, meanwhile, has given us the sensitive songs with a side order of toilet humour and the kind of prolific, creative swearing worthy of The Thick Of It‘s Malcolm Tucker, as played by his distant cousin Peter Capaldi. 

Stand-up comedians often make a point of referring to the most funny-looking thing about themselves as an icebreaker with the audience, a way of getting them on side. Capaldi has the same trick – there’s not a single thing about his looks or his music you could say that he hasn’t beaten you to. Try and come up something better than saying he looks like “a melting hippo”, we dare you. 

He has zero pretence – he’s a guy who can literally piss himself on stage and laugh it off. “That only happened once,” he says. “And I’ve always been like that, even back in school. If I was meeting someone for the first time I’d be like, ‘Hello, how are you? I’ve got diarrhoea and I could spew or I could blow at any moment. It puts me at ease, being honest.’”

“People think I make jokes because I’m uncomfortable,” he adds. “Actually, it’s the opposite – I make jokes because I’m comfortable with who I am. I say that I’m a chubby bastard because I am a chubby bastard.”

I put it to him that, possibly, he may be the first body-positive male icon – an important thing given Capaldi is part of a generation of young men who feel under enormous pressure to have an Insta-chiselled body. “I don’t know if I can accept that, because I probably don’t use the correct vernacular,” he says. “It’s probably not good to call yourself a chubby cunt, but it’s never been something that’s bothered me. I’ve been a very slim man, I’ve been a man who’s gone to the gym, but even when I’ve done that someone calls you fat anyway, whether it’s your ma, your da, your best pal.”

Capaldi hasn’t, as of yet, had any sort of pop star makeover. He still looks like a kid who’s moved out of home for the first time and is stacking up the washing to take to mum’s. He does, however, have a personal trainer on tour and has been exercising every day. “It’s more of a mental health thing,” he says. “It gives me energy and keeps me happy. I mean, when I’m actually doing it I fucking hate it so much, but it feels better after.”

I ask how his mental health is bearing up to his new everyday reality, an extraordinary experience for anyone to process. “That’s what I think about taking the piss out of things,” he says. “I take the piss out of doing things on stage and how mental it is because you have to, because it stops you getting caught up in it. Summer last year I started having massive panic attacks. I was supposed to do Austin City Limits but I had to cancel because I was just having panic attack after panic attack, and I thought I had something seriously wrong with me, because I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. And I went and got a fucking MRI scan. But they said I was just anxious, just recalibrating to this new fucking lifestyle. So I said, right, cancel everything for three weeks, and no one gave me any shit for it.”

At showtime, the atmosphere at tonight’s gig offers a glimpse of the bubble Capaldi is living in these days. The Olympia is a grand old theatre and Capaldi could probably have sold it out 50 times over; the reaction from the crowd is something like Lewmania. 

Afterwards, we head backstage again, where I’m ushered into a room containing about a dozen members of Capaldi’s family. I’m plonked on a chair right in the middle, handed a massive wine glass full of Buckfast by his cousin and grilled by his dad, a fishmonger and the very driest of wits, about my intentions for this article. He’s seriously proud of his boy, having supported him since the very beginning, even playing the supportive parent role when Lewis auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent aged 12. 

The afterparty moves to a private room at a nearby pub. Lewis’s hulking great cousin – the one who brought the Buckfast – is getting the shots in. His auntie is looking on, concerned, as two girls chat him up at the same time. “He’s only a wee one,” she mutters. While his friends and family enjoy the party and a certain NME journalist accidentally smashes the first of a series of glasses, feeling the effects of downing that Buckfast in an ill-advised attempt to curry favour with the family, Lewis makes his final rounds then politely excuses himself, looking a bit hangdog about it. He has another big show tomorrow. Sad to leave your own party, you imagine.

At points in the interview, Capaldi had been making a short, forced coughing noise, which he shrugged off as nothing. But the next week, he cancels a number of shows on health grounds, having been warned by his doctor that he risks losing his voice altogether if he doesn’t take action. In the end, he plays just four more gigs of the UK leg of the tour – in London, Edinburgh and twice in Glasgow for the homecoming finale. All further activities are cancelled by management, including a follow-up NME interview, but he is sent to complete the year’s touring commitments in the States before heading home for a well-earned few days celebrating Christmas with his family, which he says typically involves plenty of booze and lots of piss-taking. If you think you’re feeling ready for the break today, spare a thought for Lewis.

Next year looks to be just as busy as this one. He is, right now, just about the most in-demand young man in the world. At some point, he’ll have to start thinking about his next album too. “I don’t know what the fuck it’s going to sound like, I don’t know what the fuck it’s going to be,” he says. “Ballads, havin’-it tunes, I don’t know. I’ve got voice notes, melodies, stuff like that, but that’s just me and an acoustic guitar.” 

Considering what he said about his hypochondria, it’s likely the idea of losing his voice is weighing heavily on Capaldi’s mind. But he’s already decided there’s a backlash coming anyway. “You do get warned, as you’re coming up: ‘By the way, everyone’s gonna turn on you pretty soon’,” he says. “I guess I’m always just kind of waiting for it. I’m very doomsday. Like, if it’s not happened yet, it’s gonna come. And I can’t wait for the downfall!”

He might be surprised. People have plenty of different reactions to Capaldi’s music, but it’s pretty much impossible to find someone who doesn’t think he seems like a bloody great bloke.

And besides – if he ever finds he can’t sing, he’d make a killing at The Fringe as a physical comic. 

The extended edition of ‘Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent’ is out now

Tell how you first met each of the wives and girlfriends and when you knew you were in love with them and when you actually said it. And the same for any boyfriends/male lovers you might have - how did you meet them. Are you in love with them? Inquiring minds want to know.

Oh jeez so quick disclaimer, Leon remembers all of these and while he can’t recite the calendar dates, he knows when they happened and it’s part of why he’s so damned loved. I, however, have a brain wholly reliant on logs and written records, and the logs for both of his wives were devoured in a WoWscribe glitch a few years ago. I roughly remember the sequence of events, but not when exactly these things happened; I can’t even remember the year reliably! Because of that, I/he approximate the story kind of a lot…

AND HOLY SHIT THIS IS LONG WOW

HAVE A CUT

Leon first meets Kaewynn at a get-together he stumbled across in Stranglethorn. It’s one of his earliest interactions in RP, actually; he still introduces himself as Cambor, and is still trapped in worgen form. He’s still homeless, still wanders a lot, and isn’t yet much of a cook. He chats with her a while, and the evening ends with her smooching him. He is mightily pleased with himself. (Fun fact, in Leon’s early months, he got a smooch–or more–from someone every single time I sent him out to RP even though he never once actively sought it, this is why I shake my fist at him for being so GOD DAMN charming)

Leon and Kaewynn just keep on running into each other off and on, mostly because he keeps attending the Meddler-run event, Inkwell, and Kaewynn (a member of the Silver Dragoons) shows up frequently. Eventually they slip away to have some fun together, because they’re both fine with flings and no-strings sex, and they’re both pretty keen on one another. Their first time (I believe) is in a mineshaft at the Dragoon garrison in alternate Draenor.

Time passes, he and Kaewynn get more and more affectionate and more and more time is spent walking off on their own to either talk or fuck or both. After one particularly interesting conversation in which Leon told her his real name and was able to shift out of worgen for for a few seconds, and she told him the meaning of hers, he baffledly admitted to the only witness, “I’m in real trouble, I think I’m in love.”

They went on their first proper Actually a Date in Ulduar, because he’d never been there and Kaewynn wanted to show it to him, having some pretty intimate knowledge of the place (spoiler alert she’s a robot that got hit with the curse of flesh no seriously she actually is). 

Leon, despite being warned by a few people who knew Kaewynn that she didn’t really know what to do with the concept of love (long story, but it’s kinda literal–think “Data” here and you’ve got the gist of the problem), eventually confesses that he’s in love with her. This doesn’t go so hot, but she gives him a variation on the “just friends” speech and they both lie to themselves and each other and say that’s fine, and the rest of the night goes as originally intended, ending with Copious Amounts Of Fucking.

They are both emotionally underdeveloped idiots so of course they spend a while feeling more and more awkward and eventually Kaewynn breaks things off with him because she feels like she’s using him and …stuff. Like I said, they’re idiots.

And now we switch focus, and rewind a little because I’m pretty sure this is the part where the timing was both hilarious and infuriating.

Enter Pinapple.

A while back, Leon had seen a gnome woman throwing a bit of a tantrum at one of the Inkwell gatherings, though he hadn’t known why at the time. He eventually found out that it was because she’d been exposed to a shitload of radiation and was in a serious depressive spiral for some pretty good reasons (I don’t think it was actually cancer but it was basically cancer). 

Being Leon, and being that he’d been given access to a kitchen and the opportunity to learn to cook, he sent this complete stranger a box of treats because hospital food sucks. 

Months down the line, we come to the Silver Dragoons’ Halloween party. Pin has recovered after some risky surgeries n’stuff and is trottin’ about the place, shmoozin’ like y’do, and eventually comes across Leon. They got to talking, he got the chance to introduce himself properly, they eventually sat down to have drinks together. In probably the biggest spike of bravery she’d had for a long time before or since, she hit him with the equivalent of “Nice shoes, wanna fuck?” and they did.

He and Pin have a lot of fun together, and they romp along at a pretty good clip for about a month. Eventually during a bit of pillow talk, Pin accidentally says “I love you, you goofball” and they have a Serious Conversation in which he admits he’s not really at that same place, but it didn’t make things wierd at all. Pin being significantly more emotionally mature than Kaewynn, this works out better, and their friendship does not fall apart.

A bit later on, The Voice Of Reason happens and after he nearly dies and is recovering in the Dragoon garrison infirmary, Leon tells Pin he loves her, too.

LITERALLY THE NEXT DAY Kaewynn tells him she wants to reconcile and asks him to take her back. This was not planned, none of us knew it was going to happen, Kae’s mun didn’t know Leon and Pin had swapped L-words, I nearly threw up laughing. That same night, Leon and Pin and Kaewynn have the single most awkward relationship conversation they could possibly have, because oh by the way did I mention Kaewynn and Pin had been in a relationship once long before Leon ever showed up, and it’d ended because Kaewynn couldn’t do love? Because that’s a thing that happened.

Leon somehow managed not to go bald during all this.

Also he asked them to marry him the following February. Though they both said yes, the ceremony never did happen, and the events of Legion saw Pin dead and both Leon and Kaewynn horribly broken. The two of them sorta gently bullied their mutual friend, Rhiswyn, into performing the marriage between them, because one of the group dying made them worried they’d never get the chance.

Leon and Pin still haven’t formally wed, because after she came back, they were both quietly terrified that if they made it official, something else would rip it apart. They call each other husband and wife, but Pin’s the only one that isn’t actually married out of the trio.

It gets a bit harder for me after this, because I was terrible at tagging things for a while on tumblr and I cannot for the LIFE of me remember how I first encountered @safrona-shadowsun. The earliest posts I actually tagged under her tag, “fizzy,” were confessionals between him and the red courier at the Ledgermaine in Dalaran. Theirs is a very, very complex relationship, but it’s very easy to (over)simplify it:

Leon is a nurturer and he saw a lot of himself in Safrona, which is a terrible thing because he is incredibly depressed and prone to fits of self-loathing. He worried about her a lot when they first started hanging out, and he devoted a lot of energy to trying to draw her out of the incredibly thick shell she’d built around herself. As things progressed over ages and ages and ages, they became business partners, and she directed an acquaintance of hers his way.

Leon’s tradition up to that point had been to put the initials of serious lovers into his collar. Committed but unmarried is engraved (that’s P, for Pin), married is branded (that’s K, for Kaewynn).

Vandrysse… is hard for me to talk about. I only knew her mun for a little over a year before I received word that she had suddenly died.

Vandy is the reason I mention that Leon’s collar still has a nearly-faded “V” on it. She was the third woman he confessed he loved. That conversation was the last time I got to RP with her. I consider it a form of memorial to never let that V actually disappear no matter how long it’s been.

anyway moving on

I cannot actually remember which one happened first, meeting Murkey or confessing his attraction to Safrona, and tracking down the posts for the latter is not easy because Tumblr’s search engine is a JOKE. Regardless, Leon did confess to the courier after some years that he was in love with her, though I’m sure by that time she wasn’t really all that surprised beyond the way he presented it. It was downright artful, the boy was trying. But this is Safrona we’re talking about, and she gently but firmly shut him down, and that was the end of it. Though it made their friendship more than a little tense for a while, they’ve gotten over it by now. He still pines, but wouldn’t you? And he keeps that shit to himself, because not only did he get his answer, she’s now taken and quite happily so.

Murkey snoot-booped her way into Leon’s life one day and never quite left. I actually don’t remember if they met for the first time when she did that, or if he met her at a brothel first. They were both open and poly people, and they still are; he was perfectly okay with her disappearing for weeks or months at a time, as long as she sent word she was all right on occasion, and she was always delighted to find that he was still waiting for her whenever she came back. She’s a romantically skittish thing, so he was actually the first one to confess he had deeper feelings quite a ways into their relationship. 

He’d hesitated to do so at all, in part because Safrona had commented that she thought he fell in love too easily and gave it too freely, implying that it wasn’t really that meaningful. Eventually he kicked that feeling in the dick and told her anyway, and though it took a long time, Murkey did eventually tell him she loved him back. She, like him, had realized it far sooner than she’d been willing to admit, for fear of ruining a good thing.

Amber is actually the most recent in the game–I am trying very hard not to call it a harem–and much like Safrona, developed first as a chance meeting that evolved into a business partnership and friendship. She helped design the logos and packaging for the Cookbook, and he sent her plenty of free food and ongoing orders for more boxes. She was a very reserved person, which he thought was kind of refreshing–after a while you sort of want to have some people who are just friends, no matter how fun fuckbuddies are–and she was quite wrapped up with her lover and eventual husband, an elf named Vaerinis.

Amber confessed to him first, and though he wasn’t quite in love with her, he was certainly open to exploring possibilities. These days, he loves her to pieces and though she’s Vae’s first, he is happy to be part of it.

Vaerinis is a happy bonus, too, though he hasn’t had much time to really develop feelings for the man as yet.

Leon doesn’t have a whole lot of male acquaintances in general, actually, and has not yet fallen in love with any or had any fall for him, that he knows about.

my hands hurt, I know I fucked up the timing a few times and I’m tired so I hope i didn’t forget anybody wooph

( @pinpep @shckaewynn @murkeyglglgl @safrona-shadowsun @theengraver @vaerinis )

ask dump! Separated loosely by topic 

Questions and Comments

1. is this a homestuck thing. this is a homestuck thing isnt it  2. lol i love doing both!!! i love world building but i also like trying my hand at redesigning the mess that is canon fashion. @theoretical-artist​ 3. thank you!!! oritel and marion are in this post! 4. ayyyyy inginio hit me up (thank you lol) 5. Thank you! 6. maybe? i’ll see if i get around to it, i still have a few characters to get to so the school fairies and the last two selkies might show up with them 7. probably not.... it would be super fun but unless it was a commission i don’t feel like i have time haha 8. I’ve seen their blog around!! i can’t remember if i follow or not but i know who ur talking about and they cool @winxy-writing @winxys-written-world

Character and Worlbuilding

1. My brilliant nerd daughter!!! She sometimes gets so into coding or a video game she forgets to eat or drink so the girls watch out for her. She’s prone to dissociating, especially if the situation is emotional. Her hair is really soft. she actually loves sappy romantic things but has trouble accepting them or vocalizing that she wants them because they’re impractical/illogical. she discovered romcoms when she got to alfea and they are her ultimate guilty pleasure(only flora knows abt this and is always slipping recs to her) 2. They’re weirdly one of my fav couples??? like maybe its because i relate to and have projected onto both of them lmao. but any ways. Daphne and Thoren actually met when they were kids, but didn’t spend much time together because it was at a formal event. Daphne is technically 20 years older than Thoren(only a few years older than Sky), but they’re the same physical age because Daphne spent so long as a spirit. They probably wouldn’t get married as quickly in my version, especially with Daphne’s trauma. Daphne will have nightmares sometimes and Thoren has a whole routine for comforting her and helping her feel safe and grounded. Thoren gets anxious easily, and Daphne will use her magic to subtly change the environment so he feels more comfortable. they like to watch reality tv together and yell at dramatic people. 3. omg yes. this was the most frustrating thing i was watching through winx with my dad like a month ago and every time bloom called her adoptive parents by their first names i yelled at her lol. she would call Vanessa mama and Mike daddy(if you make a kink joke i will eat your liver). She would call Marion and Oritel mom and dad.  4. Yeah kind of! part of her exhaustion in Dowlland was the fact that she had been in fairy mode for so long, hiking underground, and tossed around in a river like??? anybody would need a pick me up after that. She (and all solarians) do have to live where there’s a lot of natural light as they require a high amount of vitamin d(or the equivalent of it for solarians). short trips usually aren’t a problem, Stella is just hella unlucky in the second season lmao. @moonpeachblossom 5. the short answer as to why she’s a blond (scottish??? in one of the dubs???) in an asian inspired culture/planet is because racism (or not so short bcus its a lot to unpack honestly). the answer in my version however is a pretty simple fix. She bleaches her hair. she’s paler than musa but she aint white.  6. I haven’t really yet!! Helia is struggling with his two fairly opposed cultural influences, trying to figure what he wants and whats right for him. He was raised on Lynphea but had frequent trips to Vaonaa. Lynphea is very grounded, they’re slow and steady and stubborn. Vaonaa is much more flexible, they’re flighty and spontaneous and easily adaptable. Helia’s dads love eachother and helia very much but they are VERY different people and both want different things from Helia(they try not to pressure too much but the expectations are still there). Helia’s Vaonaaj dad wants him to pursue magic, specifically wind or air magic. Helia’s Lynphean dad wants him to become a warrior. Helia feels like he’s kind of a misfit in both Vaonaaj and Lynphean culture. It took a while, but he did finally confide his feelings in Flora and she encouraged him to talk with his dads about finding his niche.  7. oooooooh fun fun relationshipsssss Bloom and Sky: so bloom and sky aren’t the most stable couple, and in my version it would take bloom a little longer to be ok with dating a prince. Bloom is fairly insecure in her relationships because of self worth issues, and tend to run away from problems instead of dealing with them. Sky on the other hand is confident but doesn’t really know how to handle people’s feelings and tends to push confrontation. I do believe that with better writing Sky and bloom could be a dope couple but as is in canon they’re VERY problematic.  Stella and Brandon: babies. they love each other so much its the best omg. Stella finds her worth in her appearance but she always seems to take brandon’s complements in a less.... arrogant way? if that makes sense? like she truly appreciates them and wants his support. i wish we knew more about Brandon but he’s legit such a good boyfriend. I think they fight mostly when Stella is being a little selfish, or when Brandon is too busy to meet her emotional needs. Flora and Helia: MORE BABIES. so Helia is more of a drama queen in the comics but we’ll ignore that for right now lol. Flora and Helia are probably the least problematic couple in the entire show. They met. Flirted a little. Confessed. and started dating with out any major problems. if i can remember correctly they don’t even really fight??? unless icy has frozen helia’s heart or something lol. I think both Helia and Flora’s love language is quality time so they’re fairly low key and just like to be in the same space and each other.   Musa and Riven: boy oh boy. Ok so, ignoring the several times Riven was LITERALLY MIND CONTROLLED his character is still difficult to deal with. I think Musa and Riven are both very intense people, and while that can be super fun and develop into a good relationship, it can also lead to LOTS of problems. I think my major problem with how they broke up was that Musa didn’t support Riven’s training? like i understand being upset you can’t see ur person often, or if they’re really busy, but Riven supported Musa’s music several times in the previous seasons it just seemed weird Musa was so unfairly demanding of him? Tecna and Timmy: nerd babies. They’re super cute honestly. I think Timmy was probably the one to instigate the relationship and bonded with Tecna over technology since she wasn’t super emotionally available at first. They have issues when Tecna is unable to voice her emotions and timmy needs to know what she’s feeling mostly, but after the first few times they’ve both learned to give the other space to figure their stuff out. Aisha and Nabu: ugh perfect couple. minus the kind of sketchy beginning lol. Aisha and Nabu generally don’t fight once they get used to each other. Nabu is a focal point that aisha is kind of bungee corded to if that makes sense? like obvi not in a restricting way. its just Aisha is hella active and needs her own space to explore and grow, but Nabu is her solid ground that she relies on.  Aisha and Nex: i actually don’t hate nex as much as the rest of the fandom lol. so like i said Aisha is an active, independent woman, and if Nabu was a separate, stationary, focal point for her, I think Nex is related, moving, counter point. So like Nex can actually keep up with Aisha, and push her and challenge her. Which isn’t a bad thing in relationships so long as a mutual respect is there.   8. well. canon is a little..... messy. My version of the girls definitely retain their individualism. for other differences... they’re just a little more fleshed out? i guess? like Bloom’s moody behavior in the show i think is because of her insecurity issues, so that plays a part in how i draw her and think of her.  9. ok wow this is gonna be tough well here we go Sky: I think sky is an ESTJ he’s not super emotional(inf Fe) but can lean toward controlling(dom Te). he seems to like tradition and think social promises are important(Si). Brandon: ESFJ. Brandon is the mom friend of the boys ok. He goes along with sky’s crazy plans, tries to subtly set Riven up with musa(season 1 i think?), some how managed to land a social butterfly like Stella and seems to just navigate social situations REALLY easily(dom Fe). he also seems to hate being disrespected or taken for granted(Si) stella does this occasionally.  Timmy: ISFJ???? thats the vibe i get hear me out ok so in season 2 Timmy gets tecna the exact computer part she needs because 1. He knows they both like things to be practical(Si) 2. He knows and remembered the part she was talking about and filed it away in his brain(Ti) and 3. He and Tecna bonded over tech (Fe) Riven: honestly he’s a tough one.... Maybe a really stunted and angry ISFJ? (speaking from personal experience i am an ISFJ) i don’t have a real reason why but riven’s behavior is really confusing in the show so it makes typing tough..... possibly INTJ as well....... Helia: ISFP. Lmao I might be basing this entirely off of stereotypes but helia has a strong pacifist belief and can be moody(Fi, and more in the comics lol) is attuned to his surroundings(Se) seems pretty focused??(Ni) and i can’t think of his Te showing up be it is an inferior  Nabu: ISTJ weirdly a good fit with Aisha(ESTP) tho?? even though he’s an Si dom, he doesn’t go along with the arranged marriage because its not what he believes(Fi) and he’s stubborn about it(Te). Roy: ENFJ honestly just a cutie. He’s personable(Fe), focused for the most part(Ni), and is comfortable in his environment(Se).  Nex: ENTP? maybe?? He’s pretty impulsive and has that “work around” mentality I associate with ENTPs.... idk this one doesn’t seem to fit super well...  Thoren: Maybe INFJ?? i mean thoren honestly doesn’t have a lot of screen time but he’s attentive(Ni), and tries to take care of people(Fe). most of the infj’s i know are fun but weird lol, but i think thoren has anxiety so that could play into him being less “out there” in his behavior.  if any of yall have input on this feel free to let me know. 10. ooooooh good question. So I’m basing these on their parent’s name and the names of people from their planet. Bloom: Hestia or Enya, i also think she got sent to earth with an article of clothing or a blanket that had her name on it, which is why her name is the same lmao Stella: Stella is actually named pretty appropriately considering the other names we have are Luna, Radius, Nova, Chimera, and Casandra, all of those are fairly latin/roman based names.  but she could also be called Clara, Aura, Venus etc. Musa: Her mom and dad have very asian sounding names but the princess of melody is named Galatea, so honestly anything is on the table. Aulos, Hee-Young, Jia Li, Kaida, etc. Tecna: lol everybody on Zenith has ridiculous names so im just loosely basing them off of sciencey stuff. Nobelia, Xenon, Titania. Aisha: I actually really like Aisha’s name! Ayize, Sizani, Mehrbano would work tho. Flora: what even is the naming system of Lynphea i don’t understand it. Im gonna make them vaguely naturey and European-ish?? Calla, Terra, Rowan, Willow, I could go on and on there are so many plant names. 11. Hmmm yeah, so basically in my world a person with TOO MUCH magic gets overwhelmed and kinda goes a little crazy(the ancestral witches) the same thing happens with tritannus when he gets the emperor's throne power. He’s loyal to icy and she to him until he looses his ability to think clearly and turns on icy, icy gets freaked out and leaves with her sisters when they swoop in to rescue her. they don’t so much “break up” as they are “broken up” by the circumstances. In general Tritannus does really like Icy, hes attracted to her ambition and powerful personality. Icy started out just manipulating Tritannus but caught feelings oops 12. Yeah so, humans in general can withstand a lot of wild magic as their body “metabolizes” it quickly. Kalshara(the cat lady you don’t know the name of) used extremely concentrated samples, combined with other spells to keep the wild magic in her body permanently. If a human with out a properly developed magic biome (a lot of earthians only have a low functioning one) get exposed to a wild magic source they would probably gain some aspects of fairy animals, probably not like, fur, or anything but eye and hair color changes, maybe some patterns on the skin. but there’s also the chance that they would just.... die..... cus that happens with animals too lmao sry. @weirdghostly