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What if we’re tiny?

What if, to the majority of species in the galaxy, ten feet tall is unusually short— it basically only happens due to rare genetic conditions— and the average human is basically cat sized or smaller?

Instead of being terrified by our strength, the aliens’ most pressing concern is how exactly they’re going to communicate with us when we’re all the way down on the ground.

There are experiments, with aliens crouching low or humans standing on high platforms— but it usually ends up being either uncomfortable for the alien or dangerous for the human, or both, and just generally impractical for everyone.

But, while the diplomats and politicians are trying to figure out a dignified and simple solution, the ordinary people who actually have to work with the aliens have found one. Humans are, generally, pretty good climbers, and most species have conveniently places scales, feathers, fur or clothing that can act as a hand or foothold. Sure, some humans have a fear of heights, but those aren’t typically the ones going into space. Besides, climbing on a living alien often feels safer than climbing up a rock or something— at least you know you’ve got somebody to catch you.

Soon it becomes accepted that that’s the way humans travel with aliens— up high, easy to see and hard to tread on (there were quite a few… near misses, in the first few meetings between humans and aliens), balanced on somebody’s shoulder like the overgrown monkeys that we are.

Many humans see this as kind of an insult and absolutely refuse to go along with it, but they aren’t the ones who end up spending a lot of time with aliens— it’s just too inconvenient to talk to somebody all the way down on the ground. The ones that do best are the ones who just treat it like it’s normal, allowing themselves to be carried (at least, it’s ‘carrying’ when the aliens are within earshot. Among themselves, most humans jokingly refer to it as ‘riding’), and passing on tips to their friends about the best ways to ride on different species without damaging feathers, or stepping on sensitive spots (or, in at least one case, ending up with a foot full of poisonous spines…).

The reason they don’t feel patronised by this is that they know, and they know that nearly everyone else in the galaxy knows, that humans are not just pets.

After all, you’d be surprised when a small size comes in handy.

Need somebody to look at the wiring in a small and fairly inaccessible area of the ship? Ask a human.

Need somebody to fix this fairly small and very detailed piece of machinery? Ask a human, they’re so small that their eyes naturally pick up smaller details.

Trapped under rubble and need somebody to crawl through a small gap and get help? Ask a human— most can wriggle through any gap that they can fit their head and shoulders through.

If you’re a friend, humans can be very useful. If, on the other hand, you’re an enemy…

Rumours spread all around the galaxy, of ships that threatened humans or human allies and started experiencing technical problems. Lights going off, wires being cut— in some cases, the cases where the threats were more than just words and humans or friends of humans were killed, life support lines have been severed, or airlocks have mysteriously malfunctioned and whole crews have been sucked out into space.

If the subject comes up, most humans will blame it on “gremlins” and exchange grim smiles when they’re other species friends aren’t looking.

By this point, most ships have a crew of humans, whether they like it or not. Lots of humans, young ones generally, the ones who want to see a bit of the universe but don’t have the money or connections to make it happen any other way, like to stowaway on ships. They’ll hang around the space ports, wait for a ship’s door to open and dart on in. The average human can have quite a nice time scurrying around in the walls of an alien ship, so long as they’re careful not to dislodge anything important.

Normally nobody notices them, and the ones that do tend not  to say anything— it’s generally recognised that having humans on your ship is good luck.

If there are humans on your ship, they say, then anything you lose will be found within a matter of days, sometimes even in your quarters; any minor task you leave out— some dishes that need to be cleaned, a report that needs to be spellchecked, some calculations that need to be done— will be quickly and quietly completed during the night; any small children on the ship, who are still young enough to start to cry in the night, will be soothed almost before their parents even wake, sometimes even by words in their own tongue, spoken clumsily through human vocal chords. If any of the human are engineers (and a lot of them are, and still more of them aren’t, but have picked up quite a few tricks on their travels from humans who are) then minor malfunctions will be fixed before you even notice them, and your ship is significantly less likely to experience any major problems.

The humans are eager to earn their keep, especially when the more grateful aliens start leaving out dishes of human-safe foods for them.

This, again, is considered good luck— especially since the aliens who aren’t kind to the humans often end up losing things, or waking up to find that their fur has been cut, or the report they spent hours on yesterday has mysteriously been deleted.

To human crew members, who work on alien ships out in the open, and have their names on the crew manifest and everything, these small groups of humans are colloquially referred to as ‘ship’s rats’. There’s a sort of uneasy relationship between the two groups. On the one hand, the crew members regard the ship’s rats as spongers and potential nuisances— on the other hand, most human crew members started out as ship’s rats themselves, and now benefit from the respect (and more than a little awe) that the ship’s rats have made most aliens feel for humans. The general arrangement is that ship’s rats try to avoid ships with human crew members and, when they can’t, then they make sure to stay out of the crew members’ way, and the crew members who do see one make sure not to mention them to any alien crew members.

The aliens who know, on the other hand, have gotten into the habit of not calling them by name— mainly because they’re shaky as the legality of this arrangement, and don’t want to admit that anything’s going on. Instead they talk about “the little people” or “the ones in the walls” or, more vaguely, “Them”.

Their human friends— balancing on their shoulders, occasionally scurrying down and arm so as to get to a table, or jumping from one person’s shoulder to another, in order to better follow the conversation— laugh quietly to themselves when they hear this.

a short comic about witches and wishes and wanting things.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

use tools

Can be taught to speak (like parrots)

Have huge brains for birds

like seriously their brain-to-body size ratio is equal to that of a chimpanzee

They vocalize anger, sadness, or happiness in response to things

they are scary smart at solving puzzles

some crows stay with their mates until one of them dies

they can remember faces

SIDENOTE HERE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT.  They did an experiment where these guys wore masks and some of them fucked with crows.  Pretty soon the crows recognized the masks = douchebag.  But the nice guys with masks they left alone.  THEN, OH WE’RE NOT DONE, NO SIR crows that WEREN’T EVEN IN THE EXPERIMENT AND NEVER SAW THE MASK BEFORE knew about mask-dudes and attacked them on sight.  THEY PASSED ON THE FUCKING INFORMATION TO THEIR CROW BUDDIES.

They remember places where crows were killed by farmers and change their migration patterns.

Every day, I would watch Buck from my window until one day I opened it and started talking to him. He was small and gangly and he couldn’t caw right. His feathers were all over the place and I felt a kinship. So I made a deal with him. I told him that if he could do it, if he could fly, then I could find the strength to get up. Well… near the end of the season, after talking with him every day, I finally saw him get out of the nest. He went to the edge of his branch, braced himself, and jumped… and just before he hit the ground, he soared back up into the sky. I cheered harder than I ever had before.

That winter, Buck left the area. I was crestfallen. I felt like I’d lost a friend. But I was so damn proud of him. 

Cut to the next spring? I’m walking up the driveway one day when suddenly I hear a sound… a broken caw. I look up, and Buck is sitting in a tree above my head. He stared at me and puffed his feathers, then hopped down in front of me and cawed again. I was so damn thrilled, and I told him how proud I was of him. He ruffled his feathers and then soared off into his old tree. 

That summer? I heard two broken caws. One from Buck… and one from his chick.

i tried to get close and take a better look and one of them dived super low and tried to attack me. so i went back in the house and chopped some sliced raw meat and tossed it at him from a distance.

a few more times later, very soon after, they could tell i was trying to help, and did not attack me. i was “allowed” to walk up close and pick him up, he couldn’t drink water properly so i had to dip my finger in a bowl and stick it in his mouth.

i did this few times a day and it went on for about a week before he disappeared, i thought he recovered and left, but he came back the next day and lands on me, and i see him around the block quite often, and he would come sit on my shoulder for a few minutes and then fly away again. i feel like i’ve adopted a son.

As a side note, I volunteered at a rehab (Hope for Wildlife), where they were rehabbing a crow with a broken wing–who was named Russell Crow. He kept pulling his bandage off so a sleeve was cut off some old clothing and put on him like a little sweater. 

[ALPHYS] [PAPYRUS] [SANS] [TORIEL] [ASGORE] 

AKA: IN WHICH KATT THINKS TOO MUCH ABOUT UNDERTALE AND IS A HUGE NERD 

I’m gonna be looking at Undyne, Alphys, the Skelebros, Asgore, and Toriel for this, mainly because the post is inspired by the fact that I noticed something of a pattern in both their characterization and in the nature of the friendships forged with each. Major MAJOR spoiler warnings for pretty much the whole game probably, but ESPECIALLY for the true ending! 

But to start with, I want to suggest that we think of each of these characters as wearing a mask. How well fitted that mask is, and how aware the character themself is of its presence, varies from person to person, but they all have one. Figuratively speaking, of course. And as the story progresses, you slowly work towards helping each of these monsters deal with whatever’s underneath the mask, even if you don’t always outright unmask them. 

EDIT: This post was originally going to be all six, but I’m still doing Undyne and it’s already getting pretty long so I’m gonna. go ahead and backtrack and split things up….And maybe not do all six in one day, this one post is starting to give my poor laptop a fIT 

(ONE LAST TIME FOR THE ROAD: MAXIMUM SPOILER WARNING HERE IM SRS DONT CLICK IF YOU HAVENT SEEN THE TRUE ENDING GET OUT NOW)

I present to you a different idea.

There’s several themes behind Spirited Away: Capitalism’s effect on Japan, Environmental issues, and notably, Chihiro’s coming of age story.

From what I know, the idea of time passing differently in spirit worlds, is more based on western stories of the fae. 

But something more common in Japanese folklore is spirit trickery/deception. Or more accurately. What you see, isn’t always what’s actually there.  Chihiro starts this story as a young child, before her coming-of-age arc, that more or less forces her to become ‘an adult’. More accurately. The challenges she faces makes her mature as a person. What’s the most common thing in folklore? Children see what’s actually there.

1.)    The dwarves spar as they journey, in the mornings or evenings, or sometimes when they break for the midday meal.  Sometimes they divide into teams, sometimes it’s a massive free-for-all, and not even the brothers and family units among them will help one another.  Sometimes one dwarf stands on a rock and the goal is to knock him down and take his place and defend it alone, other times they simply pile into each other and all may use the terrain however they please.  Sometimes they all attack Thorin at once, and he holds them off with sword and axe, or sword and the oaken branch that gave him his name, or the sword alone, or barefisted, wrestling and biting and kicking.  Sometimes they have one-on-one spars, or two-on-one or small groups against other small groups.  No one seems to hold back at all.  The company goes around with bruises, groaning as they ride the next day with wrenched muscles, ruefully let each other help staunch a bleeding wound.

          “Someone’s going to get killed,” Bilbo had said with certainty after a week of watching this, but Gandalf only smiled.

          He gained some perspective when, during an unarmed melee, Balin neatly sidestepped a punch from Dori that smashed the tree behind him to splinters.  Because he’s seen dwarves take blows from Dori before, and they always leave bruises that last for days– but never more than that.

          Fili wasn’t sparring that day– he was still recovering from the near-drowning– and thus was sharpening his swords next to Bilbo and keeping one eye on the proceedings, yelling out the occasional encouragement or taunt.

          “What’re you gawping at there, Mister Baggins?”

          “Ori’s never managed to raise a single bruise on any of you,” he said slowly.  “What would happen if he struck me?”

          “Don’t worry, Gandalf warned us all not to.  You Shirelings are a soft little folk, hm?  ‘–but they’ll surprise you, Master Dwarf,’ you know how he is.”

          “Soft is what you call not having a harder skull than a tree, is it?”

          “Couldn’t’ve been a very hard wood,”  Fili snorted.  “Half-dead, too.  Dori’s pulling his punches.  He has to, he’s stronger than Dwalin even.”  He glanced over at Bilbo, who was still wide-eyed.  “You said you’d read a good deal about elves.  That you’d studied them.  How would you describe ’em?”

          “Describe elves?  Well… fair, tall.  Wise, immortal beings, the Firstborn of the Peoples of Middle-Earth–”

          “Well, whether any of that’s true,” interrupted Fili with a bit of a grimace, “we were made by Mahal, not Illuvatar.  And Mahal considered it rather more important than being tall, aye, or fair in the eyes of some, that dwarves be tough.”

          Of all the things to be proud of, Bilbo thought.  But then he supposed they had to be proud of something, if they knew they were not made to be fair or wise or tall or immortal– or given a land like the Shire, with the gifts and the knowledge to till it.

2.)       Occasionally they stay at inns, in villages of Men that are apparently friendlier than others.  Bilbo has no idea what kind of unseen sign marks them apart, but the dwarves recognize something about them as they pass and Gloin takes out his ledger and abacus and talks to Thorin and Balin and Dwalin in low tones before Thorin announces whether they will enter.  Bifur and Bofur bring whatever toys they will have made since the last one, and sometimes a nicely inked scroll by Balin or Ori.  Dori might contribute a knitted scarf or hat or mittens or foot-mittens (at which name Fili and Kili fall about laughing and even Gandalf’s mustache wobbles suspiciously).  Thorin ties back his hair and disappears into the local forge for the evening.  Nori just… disappears.

They share rooms, because there are fifteen of them, and no matter who he rooms with Bilbo has never seen a single dwarf sleep in a bed.  The beds are right there, comfortable and inviting, and yet every single member of the company he has seen sleep— which is everyone except Gandalf— strips the sheets and blankets off their bed and carry them into a corner of the room to pile on the floor like a nest.

“Why do you do that?”

“Bad enough we’re on the second floor,” Gloin grumbled.  "Sleep raised up off it?  No thank you, laddie.  We’re far enough away from stone as it is.”

3.)  The metal pins go right through their ears!  Holes!  In their ears!  That they punched with needles and let scar around bits of metal that were still in there!  And he thought they looked far too regular for birthmarks but they’re self-inflicted, stabbed repeatedly with needles (again!) and stained with dyes that surely cannot be anything other than poisonous, to mark so permanently; what exactly is so wrong with the bodies they were born with?

4.)   Bilbo is perfectly familiar with the practice of breaking apart chicken bones to get at the marrow inside.  Healthy stuff, that, though you must be careful not to swallow bone splinters.  At home, if they had no guests in front of whom good manners must be practiced, his mother would bite down on them rather than bothering to get out the claw crackers.  His father would laugh and call her a barbarian.

But the dwarves crack open the bones of sheep with their teeth, crunch down on the leg bones of deer after the meat has been stripped from it.  There’s “Mahal made us to be tough” and then there’s having the jaw strength of a pack of wolves, and apparently the table manners to match.  It nearly puts him off his dinner.

5.)   In full darkness, the dwarves’ eyes widen and gleam like cats’.  In that first instant when they come into light again, if Bilbo looks quick enough, their eyes are black nearly edge-to-edge.  He strongly dislikes the way it makes him feel like a prey animal among predators.

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Noted bias: I view all the LoZ games I’ve played through the lens of OoT, and so I see them as responses to it. I think you are meant to. OoT is the first “modern” Zelda game, and the other games are full of reminders about it. Obviously I spent six months dissecting TP as conscious adult revisitation of OoT’s fairytale, and an exploration of power (as might, as corruption, and as responsibility); WW is about letting go of the past (after which Nintendo said “oh wait, we need to make money, let’s reel this franchise back in.”)

But MM - MM is unambiguously a continuation of OoT. The same hero, beginning his story where OoT ends, and carrying with him all the memories of that world and that adventure.

Link enters MM driven by a loss of his own: his longtime companion, Navi the fairy. He has lost her, and he is looking for her, and ultimately he will not find her. That loss is permanent. Most losses are. (Most of the resolutions in MM are bringing people to accept the unthinkable. Only very occasionally, miraculously, what is lost can be found again.)

He carries within him a sense of dislocation that the world of Termina makes unsettlingly tangible. (See also my old notes on MM’s-time-cycles-and-forgetting as a high-octane version of OoT’s seven-year gap.) Nintendo’s decision to reuse the character models from OoT may have gotten them two games for the price of one, but it fuels the narrative beautifully. You think you know everyone, but you’re wrong, and they don’t know you. You have to learn to start again. As you do, after a loss.

OoT Link is a child who was abruptly thrust into an adult body and an adult life and an adult set of responsibilities, struck with it rather than growing into it. And at the end of OoT, he is ripped back out of that adult life and reduced to childhood again - but now with the burden of adult experiences that no one around him recalls. Because to them, it didn’t happen.

The roles Link takes on through the “main” masks of MM are, I think, exploring that issue. As if, much delayed, he gets to grow (back) into being an adult, but in stages instead of all at once.

In his first, unwilling form - the Deku Scrub - he is a child again, even younger and more helpless than in his “real” childhood. But his interactions with people are oddly comforting. He reminds someone of their son, who treats him with kindly playfulness (something that Link, a bullied orphan child, never got in his own life.) The town guards protect him from danger. A girl his own age thinks he’s cute and teases him about it. For once he is enveloped in the kind of warmth that a child ought to have had. I think that part gets overlooked in the usual “fridge horror” analysis of the Deku storyline.

In his second form, he becomes the reincarnation of the Goron Darmani - a hero and big brother. These are familiar roles to Link by now, and I imagine it feels “right” on some level to step back into them. A validation of his instincts to defend and protect which no one acknowledged in him as long as he is reduced to the child’s body that no longer suits his experiences. As Darmani, Link gets to be a champion once more, and receives the praise and pride of people that he reaaalllyy kinda doesn’t in OoT, where his heroics are 1) out of sight and 2) erased from history. I think being Darmani must be very important for Link’s own journey towards healing. Also, Darmani’s sufferings acknowledged and mourned by those he suffered for - another thing Link was denied in OoT.

The third form he takes on is that of Mikau the Zora, and here’s the very interesting thing… I think that as Mikau Link experiences the life he was just beginning to grow into in OoT before he was forced back into childhood. Mikau’s storyline is that of an adult relationship. He is a lover, a young father, and he died trying to take care of his family. Briefly, for the three days that Link can inhabit Mikau’s life, he gets a glimpse of what it would have been like to be a man, to have a career, colleagues, friends, a family of his own. I don’t believe he ever lives that life himself, in the post-credits events of any game, but for a short period of grace, he sees what could be.

The fourth and last is of course everyone’s favorite, the Fierce Deity - a being of pure wrath. There’s some great stuff to unpack about the Fierce Deity being a demonic and horrifying figure, perhaps the “bad future” TP promises Link if he pursues power too strongly… but it’s also the version of Link that is nothing but the battle, all the violence without the heroism to fuel it. The alternative to the stages of ordinary life shown to him by the other masks. But, like the other masks, this is a temporary change in him. He briefly experiences it, and learns from it, and does what he can within its guise, and then… lets it go. Because while he is not a child, and not a brother, and not a lover, he is also all of these things in small bits, engaged with the world and the people in it. As a hero should be. (That is, I think, the line that TP takes as well - but I have said more than my fair share about that.)

Link ends MM saving the world - not his world, but a world - because it needs saving. The people in it aren’t his people but they are people, and he grows to love them and gets to be loved back (for short, 72-hour stretches, sometimes for his own merits, sometimes for who he reminds someone of.) He spends uncounted time helping people to live with the uncertainty of life and letting go of their fears and regrets. He gets to see, if briefly, the difference he made - another thing he was denied in OoT, where the world he saved was… to an extent past saving. The only salvation for Hyrule was for it never to have gotten so bad.

His sister tells him ‘You waste all your time playing with knives. You’re not even good!’ and he masters dual swords.

His sister is a prodigy and he’s told he’ll never catch up. He learns from dragons. He trains the Avatar. He takes her down (with the help of a very skilled waterbender)

He’s left behind by his mother, cast out by his father, hunted by his sister, and Zuko still learns unconditional love. 

His father tells him he’s worthless and unloved, that he was ‘lucky to be born,’ and he becomes a man that the world is proud of. 

Anything his family said to him, he managed to turn around and build on it. He thrived on it, exploded from it, turned all the negativity into a positive path and it’s just… it’s amazing.

There’s just no end to my love for this character. No fucking end. 

Bonus: The weak, banished prince has fangirls for all the ages. Take that, Ozai.

   His specialty is a military funded class called Battle Alchemy, which he starts off by inviting any of his students to beat him in hand to hand for a conditionless passing grade (by the end of the first class, most students walk away sore and horrified).

    It takes half  the semester before they realize that Ed continues to beat them even when they use alchemy and he does not. They ask to see him use alchemy in battle. The next day, a man who looks almost the same as their professor shows up to class- he’s softspoken and polite, and the students expect a substitute lecture. Ed sits in the stands and laughs as Al proceeds to fight the entire class at once, and beat all of them. The students never ask again.

  (And sometimes, in the middle of practicals, students swear they can see the Fuhrer watching from the edge of the field.)  

   I can also see him causing a hell of a problem when it comes to conventional textbooks- 

  “This is definitely wrong.” 

  “Sir, this is the most recently updated textbook for theoretical alchemy-” 

So you know how the main villains are all adapted of the 7 deadly sins right

And ironically it happens that all of them will follow the description of the punishments in Dante’s Inferno for each sins. (also friendly reminder Dante was the name of the villain in the first anime, I just can’t)

So, quoting the video (which is in French here) and spoiling to death :

Those who committed the sin of Pride are condemned to be constantly crushed under the weight of a rock. In FMA, Pride will end up crushed under rocks.

Those who committed the sin of Envy are condemned to have their eyes being sewed. In FMA, Envy will have his eyes being burned out multiple times.

Those who committed the sin of Wrath are condemned to have their limbs being pulled away. In FMA, Wrath lost both of his arms against Scar.

Those who committed the sin of Sloth are condemned to walk for ever without being able to stop. In FMA, Sloth spent all his life digging the tunnel.

Those who committed the sin of Greed are condemned to share the same body with people who would give everything away for others, the opposite of Greed. In FMA, Greed will then share his body with Ling, his total opposite.

Those who committed the sin of Gluttony are condemned to be bitten and eaten by Cerberus. In FMA, Gluttony will be eaten up by Pride. 

Those who committed the sin of Lust are condemned to be exposed to burning winds and to go through a wall of flame to clean themselves away from their sin. In FMA, Lust is being burnt to death by Roy

As for Father, in Alchemy it was specified that if one managed to create a Homunculus, this one would never be able to leave a little bottle, which is the case of Father. Moreover, the first man to claim having created a Homunculus was named Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus Von Hohenheim.  

Moreover, the one who ordered to create Father was the king of Xerxes who wanted to access Immortality. But his plan will turn out against him and Father will provoke his death. In our reality, Xerces is dead killed by one of his captain which plan was to take over his empire to divide it between his Seven Sons. The parallelism between Father and the Homunculus is then obvious, but the story doesn’t stop there, as the story tells that the Seven Sons had been killed as well by the Son of the King, who had for Mother the Queen Amestris. 

Well one day back in…I think Summer between 2010-2012? my younger sister and I had nothing to do but play Runescape in our free time. I did what all aspiring heroes do, I was happy to go out and commit mass goblin murder. My sister was more creative. At first she went to train Smithing in Al Kharid, which is this desert area with easy access to iron, coal, a player bank, and a smelter. So basically she made craploads of steel for hours on end for like a week. But then she realized she had nothing to do with the steel. She could go find a smith with an anvil and train Smithing further, but that was boring since she’d already been grinding forever. So she went to the Grand Exchange and sold it all. 

Thousands of units of steel ingots. 

And it sold like immediately, since there was always a large amount of people training Smithing at the level they could use steel.

Obviously she became fabulously wealthy and didn’t know what to do with her newfound wealth. But since she spent a lot of time at the Exchange, she knew basically how the market worked. I’m not 100% sure on what the thought process was for her, but she essentially realized a basic economic principle: If she could control the supply and demand for steel she could accelerate her profit margins. 

So like any reasonable 12-14 year old, she bought out about twice as much steel as she sold. Flooding the market had almost halved the price, and she now was both the supply and demand. Of course, as a result of some mystery person buying tons of steel, the price went up again. So she went and sold it at the higher price. She spent about another week or two playing Carnegie before it got old and she retired to Lumbridge with fat stacks of gold and the finest armor money could buy (but she couldn’t wear due to low Defense level). 

Cue Peter announcing to the rest of the captives “Don’t worry, guys, I’m not actually a mutant - my powers still work just fine!” and breaking everyone out. Except, as they get farther and farther into the escape, Peter starts getting more and more concerned because. Nothing is going wrong? At all? This has been shockingly easy? Everything’s going according to plan? What? By the time they’re out the door, Peter’s started actively trying to distance himself from the rest of the group and be annoying and unlikeable, because this is too long without something going wrong, someone’s going to die if this keeps up.

But no one dies. They get back to the X-mansion with minor fuss, Professor X runs some tests because Peter’s freaking out and it turns out, oh, you actually were a mutant, your power is just the worst power ever.

Peter: “Soooo… what I’m getting out of this is, if I keep wearing this collar, I won’t have such constant crappy luck?”

Professor X: “Well ideally it would be best if you learned more about your power now that you’re aware of it and-”

Peter: “Sorry, just remembered that you wouldn’t let me join your super-team so I don’t have to listen to you byeeeeeee~!!!”

And he makes it home in time for supper and life just gets better. Though Peter keeps getting surprised by stuff. Ex:

Peter: Wow, I haven’t stepped in gum in, like, a week. Weird.

MJ: That’s… actually pretty normal for most people?

It would also be interesting to see peoples’ reactions to that sort of thing, especially if this is in one of those universes where normal people know at least vaguely about the suppressant collars, not so much from a superheroing standpoint (he can always wear the thing under his costume and just say “yeah, trying a new look”) but from people in school.

‘cause I can see that covering a wide spectrum of reactions, from the people who have no idea what it is and think it’s just some new ‘look’ to the people who do know and approve (because that’s the ‘responsible’ thing for a mutant to do) to the people who think it is high-key disgusting that he’s wearing that thing for various reasons (either under the impression that he’s being played by the system or forced to wear it (I’m not saying MJ is ready to cut someone when she first sees it, but hoo boy, I’m not saying she isn’t, either)). If even a small fraction of the school knows about those collars, wearing it in public means he’s basically come out as being a mutant, and that news will travel fast, it’s high school.

Peter: EYYYY, DOCTOR STRANGE! My favorite doctor-type person! Help me figure out how to make these stop causing migranes so I never have to take it off again, pretty please? I’m not quite sure which bit of me head it’s causing to hurt.

Because seriously, imagine if you could just put on this thing and it would tell everyone that 1) you have powers of some unknown varietal that -might- make you quite dangerous, and 2) you may or may not have compunctions on taking off the collar and whipping some serious ass if people are unpleasant to you.

Other non-mutants wearing them as a solidarity display.

Still other non-mutants wearing them because Shiny.

All of a sudden you can’t tell SHIT about who’s a mutant or not besides 1) if they’re wearing a collar they may or may not be a mutant and may or may not be willing and able to unlock it themselves, and 2) if they’re not wearing a collar they may be either a non-mutant or a mutant with a nonvisible mutation.

Also collars that pretend to be mutant-suppressant collars but actually don’t do shit.

Some Brotherhood type makes a series of portraits of mutants doing mutant things with collars on as a “you can’t shackle me” type display.

Part 2, hope you enjoyed 😄

♥️This was inspired by @kittenwiskers story based on @writing-prompt-s prompt, reblogged on my page right after this post :)