Aoshi

To this song on repeat.

With these POVs.

And an initial wordcount of 16,600 words, pre-edits. It will go through some refining and editing, but the final wordcount shouldn't be too far off this.

It will probably be controversial, which is alright.

sheeesss heeereeeee

i hope u like <3 also sorry if the blood in the last one is a bit much. probably couldve leaned into the quetzal bird themeing more,,,

i have work in like 8 hours GOODNIGHT

(also referring to one of ur posts, i luv u when ur "annoying and confrontational")

That makes me really happy. Very very haply...... very haply camper. Oh fuck yes.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

We finally made her tall. She's now, proportionally, about the same build as I am irl. And she's very long. Almost lanky. Long-time followers will know I used to have a TON of height dysphoria. It was one of the things I hated most about my body, I always felt like I looked like a weird, disproportionate freak. But as the years went by and my body filled out from the hormone therapy and better eating habits, I slowly became more okay with it. Finally, I started dressing in a way that suited me, with pants that emphasized the length of my legs, and then my height dysphoria disappeared entirely.

We also made the tank top more or less the "default" outfit, exposing the arms more often, something I also used to dislike.

And yes, we made her more tan. My relationship with my ethnicity has been a very confused one, with me being Iranian on my dad's side and white on my mom's, but never having really been introduced to Iranian culture at all in my upbringing. It's often left me feeling lost, which has only recently started abating as I got to know some other locals with Iranian heritage. Still, that heritage informs a lot of how I look, and that was never really properly reflected in Demily beyond the hair texture and eyebrows.

So, Demily now sports the skintone I get in the summer months, with olive skin, and by contrast, the old model seems blindingly pale to me now. Between that and the height it seems obvious several decisions in the original design were guided by white beauty standards that I just don't subscribe to anymore.

With the finale out now I think a central theme that I've recognized and really adore is "all of these characters are more complex than an audience would appreciate." They are all being squished into a child-friendly set of archetypes, be that by Caine, Jax, or metatextually, the fandom. Caine doesn't want them complaining, swearing or having sex, they just have to go on endless, mindless, youtube-monetizable adventures. He's the ringmaster, he puts them in a bright poppy's playtime ass stage and demands for funny to happen. Meanwhile, Jax doesn't want to address the dire reality of their situation and copes by playing along, treating himself and all the characters as flat archetypes with no internality, so that the elephants in the room can safely be ignored. The fandom, meanwhile, is quietly guilty of all the same things. "Why isn't my favorite character acting in accordance with my headcanon? Which characters are flatly evil so we can hate them? Will they achieve my perfect happy ending? Because if not I'll be mad about it."

It doesn't work. Because they're more complex than that. They're people, they need more, they have emotions and traumas and wants and needs. Ragatha isn't always cheerful, she's not just the mom friend, and she's not some manipulator either. She's a person, trying her best, and very often failing. Pomni isn't always anxious, she's a natural leader and she wants the best for everyone, but she's not perfect either. She's a person, trying her best, and very often failing. And Jax isn't just a villain, he's a very complicated ball of traumas whose consistent first instinct is to push everyone away, hurting others so that he won't get hurt himself. He's a person, trying his best, and very often failing. She might even be a girl. Zooble isn't just a grump, Gangle isn't just a wimp, Kinger isn't just crazy. They're humans. And humans aren't always good. They're messy, screwed up, complicated things. They're things that can't be flattened down to archetypes, no matter how much Caine, Jax, or the fandom wants it.

The fandom wanted a bunch of cookie cutter adventures with good guys and bad guys, but what we got is just a bunch of people, stuck together, their traumas rubbing up against eachother until something catches fire and explodes. And I think that's way more interesting. I'm glad the show is that. I understand not everyone feels that way, though. A lot of people wanted something less nuanced. But I don't think the show not matching your expectations is the show's fault. I think people just need to come at it with the right mindset. Meet the story where it's at.

You ever have a piece of popular media that you would actually like quite a bit just whiff past you for nearly 3 years?