31 / she/theyĀ Ā Ā The den of weird artist who does fanart and creates random funny or heartwrenching AUs. (Naruto, FMA, GitS, Star Wars, the Sandman, etc)Ā
āThe old magic persists thanks to itās unfathomable power.ā
No, the old magic persists because the new magic canāt run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I donāt want or need onto my orb.
Look, if the new magic didn't have a personality construct that kept trying to tell me which spells to use, maybe I wouldn't still be using the old magic.
You try to get guidance for the new magic and the king's sorcerers maybe will answer you in a few days with an unhelpful suggestion to buy the newest orb.
You need guidance for the old magic and a dozen retired middle-aged wizards will pop up to explain it to you rune by rune if necessary.
The old magic is customizable. The new magic is pre-packaged slop. Not only that, you don't have to stick to one language to use the old magic. Found a really terrific spell but it was half written in one runic language, and then, when there just wasn't a suitable rune for what the incanter wanted the spell to do, they substituted with a completely different set of runes for that one spell line, then switched back to the original rune language. Brilliant! Beautiful spell. Can't do that with the new magic. It just sort of screams and fizzles if you try. Very disappointing.
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āSo, uhā¦ā Anakin said, looking around him. āThis is weird.ā
āIs there something wrong, Master Jedi?ā the Kaminoan asked, concerned. āI was going to welcome you to Tipoca City.ā
āOh, Iām actually not a Master,ā Anakin replied. āMy Masterās busy, Iām justā¦ā
He shook his head. āSorry about that, itās very unprofessional of me. I know Iām supposed to be professional, but being around this much water is very odd for me.ā
āBeing around water is odd for you?ā the Kaminoan repeated. ā...is there an alternative? I know Kamino is an unusually wet planet, but I did not think the difference was that stark.ā
āIām from a world where there just⦠isnāt water,ā Anakin explained. āThe only way we got water to drink was to pull it out of the air, and there wasnāt enough to go around.ā
Then he frowned slightly. āActually, uh⦠come to think of it, it isnāt all that far from here to my homeworld⦠do you think I could ship some water over there?ā
āThat is an⦠odd request,ā the Kaminoan admitted. āBut I must admit, we do have more water than we know what to do with. Perhaps we could discuss something like that after our main business is completed.ā
āSure,ā Anakin agreed. āSo, where do we get started?ā
āI will take you to Lama Su,ā the Kaminoan decided. āHe will show you the current state of progress.ā
Anakin nodded, absently, mostly thinking about showing up at Tatooine with a freighter full of water.
āHow often does Anakin go on missions without you?ā Padme asked, curious.
āIt happens, sometimes,ā Obi-Wan replied. āIncreasingly often these days, actually. Anakin is approaching the point where he will have the chance to become a Jedi Knight, and⦠I worry about him a little.ā
āIs that something a Jedi does?ā Padme said.
āAll the time,ā Obi-Wan replied. āBut right now, Senator, your safety is the highest priority.ā
He frowned. āThough I must admit, I was expecting there to have been some kind of assassination attempt by this point.ā
āYou almost sound disappointed,ā Padme suggested.
āNo, no, itās pattern recognition,ā Obi-Wan replied, firmly. āYou see, my missions with Anakin so rarely go smoothly. And if this mission is going smoothly, where the biggest danger weāve had to deal with is mosquitos, then I dread to think about what is going on with Anakin.ā
There was a beep.
ā...like that, for example,ā Obi-Wan added, taking his comlink out of his pocket. āWhat is it, Anakin?ā
āSo, first I want to say, I didnāt set out to do this, Master,ā Anakin said.
ā...oh dear,ā Obi-Wan sighed. āThatās never a good sign. So, what is it that you didnāt set out to do?ā
āSo it turns out that Kamino was building an army for the Jedi,ā Anakin said. āAlso, itās a really wet, flooded planet, they actually have too much water, I didnāt know that was possible! But I said that Tatooine had too little water, and since they had all those giant ships anyway I thought some of them could be used for transporting lots of waterā¦ā
āSorry, Anakin, Kamino was building an army for the Jedi?ā Obi-Wan repeated, a little incredulously. āThat seems like the most important part of the situation.ā
āNo, no, the most important part is that some guy called Darth Tyrannus hired this bounty hunter called Jango Fett to be the clone template,ā Anakin said. āAnd get this, heās the one who killed that bounty hunter we chased, and things got a bit complicated⦠anyway, I went over the technical details and the clones have this weird chip in them and I think Chancellor Valorum might have been trying to assassinate the Jedi because the chip would have let the Chancellor tell the clones to kill the Jedi⦠obviously I told the Kaminoans to take that bit out because we didnāt need it and itās way too much like slavery if you ask me. Anyway, uh, Iāve got the clones shipping water from Kamino to Tatooine for now, the Kaminoans are actually totally okay with it because theyāve got too much water, and I rescued my mother, too! I told you she was in danger!ā
Obi-Wan took several seconds to process that particular bit of Skywalkerness.
Then he processed it a second time.
āā¦you have the clones⦠shipping water to Tatooine,ā he repeated.
āYeah, itās going to break the Hutt control over water production and transportation for anything above the subsistence level,ā Anakin said. āAnd itās going to make Tatooine a way better place-ā
āI have to interrupt you there, Anakin,ā Obi-Wan said. āYou said you rescued your mother? Thatās very impressive, but you didnāt tell me she was in danger.ā
āI did!ā Anakin objected.
āYou said you were dreaming about her,ā Obi-Wan pointed out. āThat does not mean you were dreaming about her being in danger. Thatās quite different, Anakin, you must remember to use the right words if you want me to know something.ā
ā...oh,ā Anakin said, and Obi-Wan could hear the shrug. āWell, anyway, I think there might be some kind of Sith plot involved too because of the whole Darth thing. Do you think Chancellor Valorum was a Sith?ā
This article was printed in the Nikkei evening edition, and the following image of it was posted on Twitter. In the article, Asano hints at a potential continuation for the story of No. 6 (!!!). @aowyn translated the article and kindly granted us permission to post the full translation, so you can see for yourself!
I've always loved chocolate. Probably, this is because of a memory.
A long time ago, I received a large chocolate bar from a relative. I split it with my older sister. While that's not much of a memory, I remember the sweetness of the chocolate bar and the feeling of how it slowly melted in my mouth. When I reached adolescence, however, hearing tall tales like if you eat too much chocolate you get acne, gain weight, etc took me in, and I left chocolate behind for a while.
Now, though, I eat chocolate nearly every day. It's just a little bit of high cacao chocolate, but it's my dessert at lunch.
I choose chocolate anywhere between 80%-90% cacao. It's bitter, but I love the sublimity of the bitterness mixing together with the sweetness that comes from behind.
Especially when spinning a tale about boys, I eat more bitter chocolate. That was the case when I wrote "Battery" and when I was tackling the world of No.6. Why, I wonder? Even I don't know. It may just be a matter of preference. But when I try and draw out a stronger, denser relationship between two boys, or face individual differences that won't be reconciled, I always end up wanting chocolate that is more bitter.
When the protagonist of the novel is a girl, this becomes strangely unnecessary. Even if I eat it as an after-meal dessert, I don't feel a strong desire for it. It's really strange. Compared to strong girls who shape their world to their will, boys carry a certain peril somewhere behind their toughness. I wonder if that's just me feeling that way, though. Hm, I'm not sure. I wonder how that boyish peril is tied to the flavor of chocolate. I really don't know.
This year, a new No.6 series began. Bitter chocolate is lined up on my desk. As the bitterness that lingers on my tongue gives me a push forwardā"Now, write!" it saysāI'm face to face with the boys.
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AS USUAL, IāM HERE TO TALK ABOUT MADARA. more specifically: madaraās background as the clan leader of the uchiha.Ā
essentially, the uchiha clan is a nightmare financially. theyāre a mercenary clan, so all their income is from jobs that people have hired them to do and thereās never any guarantee of consistent work, or consistent payment. thereās very little variance in the way they dress, unlike the senju: the dark uchiha robes with the high collars are pretty standard throughout the clan, regardless of gender. also they all wear their hair pretty long, even in battle.Ā during the flashback with madara and hashirama as teenagers, hashirama wears several different outfits! they are all really cute!! Madara just wears the one. (still cute.)
then, much later, when they have that alliance ceremony, all the senjus are in their fancy pinstriped kimono pants and their nice haoris. madara?? heās wearing the same shit as usual. lmao
anyway, here is the main telling detail that the uchiha clan is far from well off: they donāt wear armor. in fact I think the only instance in which an uchiha wears armor (during the flashback anyway; i hc that madaraās Iconic⢠red armor is actually hashiramaās old armor) is the confrontation at the riverbank when both tajima and izuna have armor on (though izuna was VERY young at that point and maybe tajima wore it too to convince him to come along??? idk). whereas, if you look at the senju, everybody is wearing full armor all the time. the senju clan also has significant access to crops (hashirama), shelter (hashirama), and healing medicine (hashirama). the uchihaā¦does not have this advantage.Ā another thing: the senju clan was ALREADY famous at the height of the era of warring states; the uchiha clan rose to fame with madara as its leader partially because of all the interactions it had with the senju. madara definitely realized this.
madaraās fighting style is weirdly contradictory: heās very shrewd and practical, and he expends as little energy as he can, but he ALSO makes a show out of it, depending on the circumstances. i think it depends on who heās fighting: when he first takes on the shinobi alliance, heās using just taijutsu, fighting with just his body (and heās very good at it; he snaps somebodyās arm with his hands). as the fight escalates we see him dancing from enemy to enemy, taking their weapons and slashing people to pieces with their own swords. madara is not wasteful. he divides a paper bomb/kunai combo thrown at him into the paper bomb and the kunai parts (two equally deadly weapons) and dispatches two shinobi with them at once. then thereās the split kick he does where heās taken out 3 different people by the time his feet hit the ground.
madara is good, and he knows just how good he is. but itās only really when heās fighting hashirama (and when heās testing the limits of his edo body, e.g. the mokuton) that he gets VERY flashy, and even then, he fought hashirama for years and years during the warring states era and neither of them sustained any serious damage. which leads me to believe that they were only going through the motions due to external (internal?) pressure from their respective clans and feudal lords and all that, and were not actually giving it 100%.
so yeah, madara fights very sparingly, which i think was initially not by choice.
Ok no but for real everyone in hyrule is desensitised over "world ending calamaties". I've seen multiple NPCs fight monsters and win in like 5-6 hits. Every person I've talked to in totk acts as if it's just another day, in fact a lot of them are EXCITED because "omg look at all these new caves" or are watching a music band perform. Ganon who, there's a newspaper press giving you all the gossip. Everyone is entirely unbothered.
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Was thinking about how Hob and Dream could both be insufferable in some way because, in fairness, Hob comes across as someone who could make friends with bread if left in a room with it long enough.
Then I had a thought:
What if Hob Gadling is just super fucking insufferable to other immortals?
See, Dream is... difficult for mortals to get because he's got his whole eldritch thing going on. But while he's not particularly popular with them, I imagine other immortals at least get and respect his whole deal. Like, he's the Dreamlord. Of course he's weird. But they understand the laws and principles he's referring to at least when he's being weird. He seems to at least have a pleasant relationship with the Faerie Court. It's mortals who can't really connect with Dream and find him exasperating as a result.
Whereas Hob gets along great with mortals, just swell. He's Just A Guy who happens to live forever and people get along with him. But immortals? We don't really see it much but immortals positively loathe this guy.
Dream's reaction to the whole, "I've made up my mind, I've decided not to die!"? Hob tossed out in 1389? That's the teeth-grinding level of irritation Hob engenders in every immortal he comes across (before they have centuries to get to know him) and it is exactly why Death just had to make this man immortal because it would be hilarious.
Why doesn't Hob hang out with other immortals besides Dream? Because the minute he opens his mouth about how great life is and how he's never had even a moment's doubt about how much he wants to live, every immortal in the room starts to make the gagging motion.
You're an immortal just trying to have a bit of a kvetch about Kids These Days and how much times have changed and how it was better in your day, and there's Hob fucking Gadling again ready to throw down about how amazing antibiotics and automobiles and the latest iPhone number whatever are and like, sure, but you were just trying to say back in your day things were better, right? Not objectively maybe but you're just trying to indulge in a bit of immortal nostalgia and Hob fucking Gadling is not having any of it and is ready to argue you into the dirt about it.
You're immortal but haven't quite kept up on today's slang? Hob Gadling will absolutely call you out and he's a teacher now so he's going to be super nice about it but you know he's judging you for saying groovy unironically and thinks you should get with the times already.
You're a vampire living off centuries of generational wealth? Hob keeps talking about how you should get a job and get out of the spooky mansion more, and maybe you wouldn't feel so much existential angst. You like your existential angst!
Hob doesn't have a single ounce of patience for immortals who want to wax poetic about wishing they were mortal again. Diseases, he says, have you ever had diseases? Like even a cold? It sucks. It really fucking sucks. The Plague? The fucking worst. You don't need to be mortal to get involved in mortal life, Hob fucking Gadling keeps pointing out at the monthly eldritch coffee meetups. You can just live as a mortal and share in their problems and enjoy the fact you don't have to deal with the shit parts like getting sick. Completely missing the point of the futile lamentation of regretting one's lost mortality is something you enjoy.
Hob harshes the vibe of every single immortal out there. They are so goddamn sick of him. There's a reason he has no apparent immortal friends or connections to the supernatural world despite (in the comics) seeming to have met other immortals and having the occasional supernatural encounter that he immediately brushes off as dull when compared to what the normal, every day world has to offer.
No other immortal can fucking figure out what Dream of the Endless sees in this guy, and how he can stand to talk to him even once a century without storming off (which, in fairness, Dream has done on 2/7 occasions). Dream, not otherwise known for his patience, is seen as a saint in the eldritch community for even spending as much time as he has over the course of 600+ years with Hob fucking Gadling.
when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeopleās clothing asĀ āhomespunā orĀ ārough homespunā
āhomespunā as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME
they didnāt have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise sheās spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.
andĀ āroughā??? lol just because itās farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved aināt no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth sheās gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS
come to think of it iāve never read a fantasy novel that talks about textile production at all??? like itās even worse than theĀ āwhere are all the farmsā problem like where are people getting the cloth if no oneās doing the spinning and weaving??? kmart???
Ā In Ye Olde Medieval Fantasy Dayes, everybodyās layer against skin (shirt tunic or shift) is gonna be linen. itās almost never wool except stockings or hose (like pant legs). SayĀ āundyed clothā if you wanna make them sound simple and peasanty. Comment on how you can tell it wasnāt made for them (the fit is off) and has had probably eight owners before.Ā
Outer clothing is gonna be either wool, or a blend called Linsey-woolsey, and again you could say Undyed, but dyes are not only common they are CHEAP and relatively easy. (innerwear is often left undyed or bleached to white because it gets washed to heck- like beaten by a wooden stickĀ on a stone by the river- and dye would just fade out a lot so why bother. Ths is also why innerwear has ties, rarely buttons, unless you are so rich you have people doing your washing delicately because theyāre hired to do only that. Buttons would get broken in the washing)
A poorer person is often seen inĀ ārussetā, a kind of rusty orange-brown color. Purple was famously reserved for royalty in many times and places, but its Ā also just hard to do. We see a lot more magentas and fuschias for nobles or common middle class folks than we ever see of Purple- and not many of those. Deep blue was more likely on very rich people, but a light blue was common for even poorer folks. Yellow was popular with everyone, and so was green, and many shades of reds, including the color we now call orange (they did not- this is why redheads are called redheads and not orangeheads). Your vision of everyone in very drab brown and mud colors is from Hollywood- most medieval-ren folks have clothing with colors. Sometimes garish colors, to the modern eye. Traffic cone Orange and acid green was a popular combo in the 13th century.
Example medieval dye colors. Lots of yellows and orangey-browns. Woad gave a range of blues that are basically what we think of asĀ ādenim colors.ā There were purples - royal purple was a specific color from a specific source - but if you mix wine-dye and woad-dye, you get purpleish dye. (Getting the color to stay that way may be more difficult. Everything worn by peasants fades; they couldnāt afford the really good fixatives.)
More examples and explanations here:Ā
Plum, dusty purple, lavender, burgundy, chestnut, blood red
Walnut, chocolate, tan, linen, pale apricot, spice, dark spice
Peasant clothes were often more colorful than the nobility. Nobles could afford bright, clear colors that peasants couldnāt - but one mark of wealth was being able to buy all 4-8 yards of fabric for an outfit at the same time. So nobles would have a full outfit, including hat, stockings, even shoes, of one type of fabric (with ornamentation of a contrasting type, and as many buttons or bits of silver as they could get away with wearing), while peasants would often have a shirt, bodice or jerkin, skirt or pants, stockings, and hat of all different colors.
Dying or re-dying any one piece of clothing was within most of their cost limits - dye itself is cheap; fixatives cost. But boiling your shirt for an hour with onion skins in a copper pot would re-color the fading fabric.
if anyone is interested in way too much information about the spinning, weaving, dyeing, and trading of cloth in ye olden days, pls see these lecture notes by my old economic history prof, who knew more about the textile industry in pre-modern europe than any reasonable person should. theyāre old at this point but still pretty reliable.
This is a bit of a hot-button issue for me⦠so reblogging with pleasure.
The tl:dr; version of my usual complaint: I love Terry Jonesās work, but he (and MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL) have a lot to answer for in the āMedieval Life Was Irredeemably Mucky / Everything Was Drabā department. In the wake of that film, practically all the everyday color of Non-Royal medieval life got washed out of public perception. And it makes me cranky.
Period records make it plain that even among the Poor Folk, color was rife. Many people far more specialized and knowledgeable in this field than I am have gone on about this at length. Iām just signal boosting here.
āThe medieval warrior, realizing the consequences of his impulsive act, immediately approached the owner of the drone and offered to pay for the damage.
The owner of the drone was so impressed by the brilliant attack that he suggested organizing a competition for bringing down ādragonsā with short spears next year.
Drone owners have another year to develop a unique ādragon-likeā design for their flying machines.ā (x)
I am 100% cooler with this knowing that the spear-thrower realizedĀ āoops maybe I shouldnāt have done thatā and tried to make it right, andĀ that the guy who the drone belonged to was cool with it
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Iām absolutely obsessed with the reddit side of the Tolkien fandom, in particular, this discussion regarding how Sauron fits the ring on his finger, as well as penal compensation a la Lord Farqaud style