radio414

a few words for the firing squad (radiation) “What an accusation! Should I deny it?” Simon said. “No, surely not. You have demonstrated knowledge enough already of who I am and what I am doing without even meeting me face to face, you would find out the truth eventually, I am sure. Or perhaps you already have, and this is just to test me.” He raised his arms in defeat. “You have found me out. An… unfortunate side-effect of knowing and worshipping the void is that one’s soul can start to prefer it over life. Even that, it starts to prefer it to death as well. As you say, you have seen what has happened. I do hesitate to call it a plague, of course. Perhaps it is because that word villainizes me more than I think you already have. If it is a plague, it is one of the mind. Of knowledge. “But, then again, it does not really matter what it is called, does it?” Simon paused and tried to sit up from his supine position, though he only eventually managed to raise himself to a slight angle, bracing against his cot with his elbows. “I suppose the next question is ‘did I know when I started, that I would inflict such a fate on some of my followers?’ I did not, of course. No mortal can know what the future holds. Of course, Myria does occasionally try to help, doesn’t she?” He coughed. “I could intuit, though, that something would happen. It’s a bit of a shock to some, getting it through one’s skull that the apocalypse rages on in the present as much as it does in the past. “Or maybe that was not your next question?” Simon said, “Tell me what it was, dear watchdog, while we still have the world after all.” Blood of the Fang Caleb couldn’t help but be near Taros’ temple, even after he’d found out that there was as likely to be no ceremony that day as there had been the day before it, or even after attracting a much larger crowd than he had been expecting. He knew he should have slinked off and gone back to work, but what work could he do now? He was deflated, that’s what it was. He also couldn’t help but imagine the sword -- his sword -- being used in some way. Sure, maybe the thief had only desired an ornament, something that, despite the indiscretion, still treated the weapon with some degree of respect. But a piece of perfection, or close enough to it, being used to draw blood surely would desecrate it in some way. The blood would wash off and the sword could be resharpened, yes, but surely there was something essential to the sword that would disappear in its first use. Maybe he could ask a watchdog about it. There was one that was on the island, right? The ceremony had initially been delayed for just that purpose, to have them present. No, this probably wasn’t healthy. He needed to get a hammer in his hands and work it out that way, meditating to the sound of metal on metal. Not even the act of creation -- again, Caleb still couldn’t imagine himself making anything right now -- just to do something. He pushed off the wall he was leaning against and went to leave when a specific face caught his eye. It wasn’t Taros’ watchdog, but it was a watchdog, one who practically barged into the main annex with a grim look on his face. It took a few seconds for Caleb to recognize him further, but he did eventually identify him as Hinder’s, God of Wealth. … and of Thievery. And it was the second title that gave Caleb a sparkle of hope in the form of an idea. He approached cautiously -- the dog’s mood implied he didn’t want to be surprised -- and tapped him on the shoulder. After that, well, it didn’t seem like an introduction was right, so he got straight to the point. “Hey, Hinder,” he said, “you think you could steal a sword back for me?” The Room Where It Happens “‘Everything’ is a lot of things,” Levanna said. It was clear by the expression on her face that she was trying very hard to not react to anything Olive had said, though she did persist nevertheless. “But you are right in that you could help us.” “Banishment is not as feasible as one might think,” Elliot said. “What ship would take him? And imprisonment -” “In any case,” Levanna said, cutting him off. “I cannot promise everything, obviously, But we can share more, yes. For example, and perhaps most importantly…” She gestured to Thomas, who gave a stiff nod -- the same he’d initially acknowledged the watchdogs with -- and said, “At some level, we are seeing the results of our actions pay off. His numbers are dwindling and Simon has not been able to replenish them quite so quickly. We believe this is why he invades temples other than Medeis’, as some sort of recruitment tactic.” “He tends to invade temples where he knows attendance will be up,” Katherine said. “Lar, as you mentioned, and Taros because of the ceremony, and a few others at various moments of vulnerability. And yet, as you’ve noticed if you’ve seen him, he doesn’t tend to attract more of a crowd than the one he brings with him. And yourself, of course. He can attract a lot of attention, but we haven’t seen it translate over to tangible results.” “The best way to help would probably be assisting in containment, I imagine,” said Levanna. “Perhaps even your presence would be enough to encourage visitors to temples Simon has left lacking? You mentioned Lar, and though Aiden and I might not see eye-to-eye all the time, his is not a plight we’ve left unnoticed. How could we?” She chuckled at her own little joke, though nobody else on the council did likewise. “I know that is not everything, but how is that for a start, at least?” OOC

A well-known Professor (some say it was Professor Oak) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant Torterra." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the Torterra standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's Torterras all the way down!"

It's a ramble of a story but I'll try and tell it as best I can. Ten years ago, when the world was young, I was much more into the card-creation aspect of YCM. Yu-Gi-Oh was the recess game of choice for me and a rather small group of kids at my school, and, like any middle-schooler with a hobby, I wanted more of it. I couldn't tell you how I ended up on the card maker specifically; it's been too long for that. I guess what I wanted at the time was more people who played the game to talk to, but also I felt like I could conceive of a card or two. So for a few months I hung out in the card creation boards, making largely not-great cards that, thanks to some recent updates, I couldn't even show you if I tried, but I also never lost sight of my original goal, which was to try and play more people. There were clubs that I could join (this was when clubs were more active) and I tried some of that, but I still felt out of place there? I can't really describe why; it's been too long for that. If I can guess, though, I think I had this subtle realization that playing by private messages wasn't really the experience I was looking for. There was a little part of me growing up that was always like, "I'm going to do this and I'm going to be the best at it." You know how young teens are, yeah? But there wasn't a lot of recognition in just messaging the club leader the results for recordkeeping. Plus the club I joined died, like, weeks after I joined it. Not because of me, I'm sure, but it sure did die. Right around that time, though, I spotted a few Yu-Gi-Oh RPs starting up, and decided that, if real dueling wasn't going to go anywhere, I could manage some fake dueling. Back then, there wasn't even a "hundred words a post" minimum to steal my moxy, or even any sort of quality control at all. Making an app seemed simple enough, and off I went. I posted once, about a single sentence worth of contribution, and then disappeared. The second time I tried to join an RP, I got into an argument with the host regarding some 5Ds lore. Not, like, minutiae or anything, it was about the signer tattoos. That's a bit of trivia for you: I'd seen, like, one Duelist Kingdom episode and one movie of the anime, and, outside of a few dozen Abridged Series episodes, that hasn't changed. So I ended up not joining that one. But I still felt the hooks sinking in. Now I could contribute to stories! I could be the best at that instead. This continued for a year or two? The timeline starts to get fuzzy here. No RP promised to get, like, really off the ground, though there were some I had more fun in than others. I was around for some of the bigger changes to the RP culture, from OOC getting it's own subforum to the advance clause being introduced to the advance clause being mandatory (I can even tell you it was "four lines of text" not "one hundred words" back then), but, due to some personal issues, I ended up leaving the site, ghosting a couple rps in the process. Anyway, several years later, after realizing I wanted to tell stories for, like, "realsies" (whatever that means) (also coming to that realization was a whole process that I won't get into here), I got nostalgic for the site I'd cut my teeth on, and so I figured I'd pop back in and see what was going on. There was a RP just starting up that looked interesting, and, well, here I am again. This is a little hard to describe because I know just enough about the brain to know not everybody gets this, but there's this feeling I get when a character I've made jumps off the page. If I were to compare it to a similar feeling, it would probably be to when I realized I was ace? And yeah, making that comparison probably trivializes the struggle of coming to terms with an identity, but it's that same sort of "*Click!* 'Oh, that makes sense'" sort of idea. I don't know. It's not having the character talk to me in my head, which I know some authors describe their process as, it's more like when an idea comes into my head and I immediately realize that the character I'm writing for would totally do that. To use meme-y, reductive language, it causes my brain to make the good chemicals. Anyway, that's my favorite part. It doesn't come for every post, or even for every character I've made (though it's not like I don't still enjoy the process without it) but that probably helps keep those moments special. It's something to chase. Kind of as a logical conclusion of that, if you look at my list from the question above, the higher up you get, the more of these moments that character got. So that's a nice correlation. I don't have one? LIke, there's no yearning for any specific question that I want to answer. If I did, I'd ask everyone else that question as a hint to ask me too, but I haven't, and I don't. I guess that makes me a quantity sort of person with regards to AMAs. I will say, when I was playing Larry the Cucumber for Halloween, which I guess was my AMA by proxy, while I expected (and enjoyed) the vegetable and Christianity questions, I was kind of hoping for more out-there questions overall. Just something to throw me for a loop and get me really thinking about how to answer it in-character. Would Larry rather fight a horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses? The answer is probably the horse-sized duck, because while both animals eat and enjoy cucumbers, there'd only be one gargantuan duck to fight. Just because Junior Asparagus played Dave in their David and Goliath short doesn't mean Larry wouldn't be able to do it too.

What got you into RPing? What do you enjoy most about RPing? What question do you want to be asked most here? And what's the answer to it?

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Duel 18 -- Mitsuru’s Impatience Or: Did You Forget This Kid Existed? Because I Certainly Did I’ve realized doing symbology -- at least writing it, I don’t know how it is to read -- always feels like making a bullet point list. Like, I don’t want to go “Here’s what this means” and “Here’s what this symbolizes” on and on down the line like that. It feels more like a montage, a barrage of information without any of the connecting tissue. That isn’t to criticize any of the people that do this, especially in Twitter threads, which is a medium that is almost purpose-built for that sort of stuff (and I’ve definitely picked up on things from these Twitter threads that I would not have otherwise), but that’s why I hesitated on doing it until now. Fortunately, Revolutionary Girl Utena’s OP, heralded in by Masami Okui’s Rondo-Revolution (or “Rinbu Revolution” as I’ve seen online), is a montage, so this should fit right in. Let’s talk, in brief, about the first thing someone sees when starting the show. There’s a subtle theme of transformation, or at least of change, going on throughout the opening credits. The very first shots, for example, show silhouettes of Utena and Anthy before they add on Utena’s duel uniform and Anthy’s Rose Bride dress, a motif that is repeated later as their school uniforms change as well. Saying there’s thematic relevance does kind of beg the question, though. What are they transforming to or from? We can see something of an answer in the intervening shots. The two leads are both more formally introduced walking away from the camera among a sea of the rest of Ohtori Academy’s students, boys with Utena, and girls with Anthy, establishing the gender roles dynamic. There’s even a shot of Utena and Ohtori Academy’s central tower and Anthy with a rather yonic gate to reinforce this. With this reading, one can imagine the transformation turning them into the archetypes of their specific character, with Utena as the prince saving Anthy’s princess. However, we’ve seen the sort of abuse Anthy experiences as the Rose Bride, not to mention how people take advantage of Utena’s nobility. I mentioned way back that Utena was interested in deconstructing gender roles, and that doesn’t just mean “girls can be princes too.” Some of that appears in the horse sequence, with both Utena and Anthy appearing in armor -- something they don’t wear anywhere else in the show -- and riding up to the upside-down castle in the sky. The Doylist reason for the horse sequence is that it was a concept from early in development that got scrapped (though we do eventually meet some horses anyway, and pieces of the concept do appear in the manga), but to bring this reading to its conclusion, they have transcended the roles ascribed to them and are going to confront that which has given said roles. There are other, seemingly innocuous readings to take from Utena’s OP, but to elaborate on which and where would be to spoil. Like I said, I wanted to be brief, tackling the basic throughline of the montage. It would be wise, though, to keep some of the moments the opening shows to us in mind. Or don’t. I mean, I certainly didn’t. We already knew Mitsuru Tsuwabuki was kind of creepy, right? Like, he’s introduced in Episode Six as the person who’s been putting Nanami in danger so he can save her, and she eventually starts playing along with it because it’s nice in her mind to have someone doing all the boring stuff for you. This episode is the natural follow-through of that relationship -- Tsuwabuki was always going to eventually want more. Fortunately for everyone involved, he doesn’t relapse into his old habits of putting Nanami in dangerous situations, instead internalizing this self-hatred into a desire for maturity, both on an emotional and physical level. We see a classmate, Mari Hozumi try and address this herself, though she, along with Utena and Anthy seem to fail miserably as to describing what Mitsuru is after. Even Akio and the Shadow Play Girls fail to offer up any meaningful explanations, with Akio more saying “growing up is overrated” (which, given how we’ve seen him act with Anthy, is more than a little creepy in itself), while C-ko says it’s being able to donate blood. It’s a little weird how a show defines the fourteen-year-olds as “grown-up”, but given how the same treatment is given to eleven-year-old Mari, I imagine the justification can come from the episode being from Mitsuru’s point of view. From that perspective, every off-hand remark seems like a slight, and Souji Mikage even steps in to influence this further by inviting Nanami to his seminar and extending the same to Tsuwabuki in an “if you can handle it” sort of way. The most sympathetic way to put Mitsuru’s problem is that he doesn’t want to be infantilized, to be treated as though he knows nothing. Even if he doesn’t know everything, after all, he knows enough to know when he’s being spoken down to. Unlike previous Black Rose episodes, however, this results in change for both parties. Tsuwabuki, of course, learns not only to be patient in growing up but also to lessen his dependence on Nanami. Nanami, meanwhile, gains more empathy for her assistant and implicitly encourages him to act his age, watching him run off at the end of the episode. Mari, meanwhile, despite the “main character indicator” that is her purple hair, is never seen again. -r Next Time: Wakaba was totally a chuuni, just saying ←Previous Post -- Link to Episode -- Next Post→

by g h ø s t not that other ghost this one has an ø

The next day left Peter more than a little sore. Worse, it wasn’t a soreness that was localized to any one part of his body, he just kind of hurt all around. What had caused the most, even? The walking around all afternoon with only, like, two breaks? Being pressed against the guard railings of an escalator by a questionably-obtained shopping cart? Or was it the barely-describable things they had to do to deal with the badger? There was just no way to be sure. Peter just knew he wasn’t happy about it. He was still trying to stretch his shoulders as he walked into the all-too-familiar duel team gym, ready for another day of scrimmaging and hopefully less badger-hunting. Coach Clara’s return was a welcome one, and the sight of the bags of groceries they’d procured the day before was reinvigorating as well. Then Coach Clara said the words “practice match,” and, while Hana was asking questions that must have been pertinent to her, there was only one question in Peter’s mind when he put up his hand. “Yeah, uh, with who?” “Oh, right,” Coach Clara said. “Forgot to mention that. Ocean's Coast Academy. They're a school that's in our prefecture and up until last year have been pretty below average. But, they've picked up traction and are looking for more practice partners, so I got us a match with them.” Of course it was, Peter thought. Who else could it be? There were a few other schools in the area, obviously, but why wouldn’t it be the one with the student (okay, counting Laurie, students) they’d already met? But it sounded like his thoughts were complaining, and he wasn’t sure why that was the case. They’d certainly have run into each other at some point anyway; it wasn’t like Ocean’s Coast was going to disappear from his life after yesterday. So why the sudden mood change? Instead of solving anything, Peter turned his attention to the food. “Hana, you were the one who put all that stuff in the cart. It better be enough food,” he said. He walked over and grabbed a granola bar. “Does anyone else want one while I’m over here?”

Copy/pasting this so to cover all bases... What's the five RP characters (from YCM or NCM) of yours you feel most attached to? And why; if not too much trouble? If there's less than 5 you can think of just give the ones you can think of.

Copy/pasting this so to cover all bases... What's the five RP characters (from YCM or NCM) of yours you feel most attached to? And why; if not too much trouble? If there's less than 5 you can think of just give the ones you can think of.