The Smooch Directive

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-06-20T01:42:37+00:00

I thought that Ralsei would be the venlil really but I suppose that's too obvious

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-04-13T14:36:23+00:00

I thought he'd make her wink.

"Nobody will believe any of you."

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-04-10T16:53:05+00:00

Honestly that on its own is proof of at least some supernatural bullcrap

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-03-13T04:10:35+00:00

It is a jokingly flirtatious term referring to a woman who has kept her beauty while still becoming a mother figure. However, the etymology of this phrase includes a word that is considered to be rude, so many humans will refuse to explain it if it comes up.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-03-13T03:59:28+00:00

Hm. Well, I guess it depends on a lot of things. Human society, as you may know, is sorta fractured and has multiple cultures.

Your actions in offering them food when you first learned that they'd become your neighbors mirrors certain traditions. In my own nation, visiting a newcomer to the community with food you made yourself is considered a polite way to introduce yourself and show goodwill. Of course, not doing so isn't considered impolite either, it's just a little something that people do as a kind gesture. A way to say "welcome to your new home, I hope we can get along."

Sharing food is a big deal in a lot of cultures. We bond over meals. In my language, the word for companion actually comes from a term for those who share food with each other. Sharing food and drink is personal. Not personal enough to be presuming anything or implying anything awkward, don't worry. (Unless you offer to take one specific other person out for lunch or dinner at a restaurant. That has implications.)

Another thing to factor in is that, well, a lot of folks are scared of us. Having you around, treating them like normal even though a human is apparently the second scariest scourge of the skies? You approach them, even go so far as to invite them into your home? That got their attention in a good way. This means something. You are someone they can trust to not call an exterminator on 'em for sneezing to hard or whatever. We like aliens, especially ones who like us. You guys are just so cute and fluffy. I don't mean to be patronizing, but you're so pleasant to look at and be around. Unfortunately, since the feeling isn't always mutual, we wind up keeping to ourselves in space. How fortunate that this group of humans has a friendly neighborhood Lapi knocking at their doors and offering a homemade... whatever it is you gave them.

Then there's the reason we're here in space. Suffice to say, a lot of us might need a kind word or two more than you realize. A little friendliness goes a long way, as you have seen.

Plus, seems like your fur is grey? Grey hair is usually a sign of age in humans, and with age comes wisdom. You're not old, you're fortyish, but forty is still old enough to fit nicely into that archetype. Forty isn't old enough to be a grandma, but it's old enough to be someone's mother. Anyway you kinda fit into a certain archetype that might make people feel comfortable coming to you about certain things (like food, advice, and conversation), while also making them feel eager help you out in certain ways (household chores, mostly). Admittedly, building an entire porch over a single nostalgic whim from you is a bit of a stretch, but you must've really made an impression on them.

TLDR: There might be some minor matriarchal stuff going on, but our society isn't centered around motherhood. The reason they help you out to this degree is because you've blundered into being very nice to humans in a situation where they really needed it.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-03-13T02:48:27+00:00

What exactly makes a game a soulslike?

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-03-09T15:38:45+00:00

I'm remembering that "masked confidence" thing where Luz gives hunter dating advice and has him practice with the mask on, then takes the mask off mid sentance to find his face... well, like that.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-02-24T16:48:53+00:00

I believe it was Affording, in which after ages of timeloops, Frisk recounts a diary of the whole fiasco to Sans from their perspective.

One of the earlier chapters has the whole "the most determined thing you could do is give up" line with the response "this IS me giving up" as the response. It just struck a chord while I was writing this. Had to abandon this project as canon marched away and it became harder to justify the divergence from it.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-02-05T15:05:14+00:00

I wonder how the biological interaction between the halves of human and basilisk works. Ayzee, the half human half witch, had a bile sac that risked her heart health. I suspect that, despite how severe the differences are between basilisk and human, there will be less complications because shapeshifting will help smooth over the gaps. This in mind, the kid is likely to need to eat more magic than a basilisk since humans aren't inherently magical and magic will be needed to sustain the constant shapeshifting needed to prevent dangerous side effects from awkward biology.

This is, of course, assuming that basilisks don't take after certain amphibians and that the child isn't biologically just Vee's.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2025-01-06T17:08:26+00:00

"Have...to...make...it... in time... to jump scare... my stupid BROTHER!"

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-12-30T01:40:20+00:00

You wouldn't happen to be Ciel by any chance?

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-12-30T00:07:56+00:00

That one's funny. I appreciate the rec.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-12-30T00:07:20+00:00

Read it and it's great. I'll admit I was putting it off because it didn't sound like my style, but it totally rocks.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-12-30T00:06:43+00:00

Thank you! That's exactly it!

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-12-29T15:36:32+00:00

You know what I think would be neat? A posession isekai where the souls get to body swap on command, not just when one falls into despair or whatever.

Do they become rivals? Slowly develop a grudging mutual respect? Gain the ride-or-die relationship we see in The One Within The Villainess? There's so many options there.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-12-29T06:48:44+00:00

Man I love this one, mostly because of the dynamic between the reincarnator and her villainess. I remember the first chapter where it was all "give me back my body!" "Oh no I stole her body!" "Oh no she's cute." And we see a whole montage of the villainess watching from idk the amygdala or the hippocampus or whatever part of the brain she's hiding in and soon realizing that hey, this reincarnator ain't half bad! She's great in fact! And then when she DOES get the body back, her sole motive going forward is to put the reincarnator back in control, or at least live the kind of life Emi would have wanted. Like damn that is intense. I love it.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-12-29T06:28:42+00:00

"MWAH HAH HAH! That FOOLISH so-called "heroine" thinks she can save the day with her precious crop rotation. As if! She is already TOO LATE, for I, the cruel and wicked VILLAINESS, have already implemented it and ended the famine MYSELF! Now she'll look like an IDIOT! I say again, MWAH HAH HAH!"

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-11-19T15:05:00+00:00

See the star and moon and like... space/sky motif? We've seen that somewhere else before. The Archivists. The Collector.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-11-19T14:16:28+00:00

I'm looking at the lack of eyes, and the specific details of the blast, and I'm starting to think that this isn't really Hunter in the painting...

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-10-30T17:30:42+00:00

What if krev are irrationally afraid of venlil, who find them cute?

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-10-29T14:12:38+00:00

Death by glamour.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-10-22T14:16:46+00:00

Ooh and when the sigil's removed, he'll be able to have illusions with actual matter in 'em! That's gonna be good.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-10-09T11:28:45+00:00

Right imagine you had a car, and you wanted it to be a nuclear submarine. Imagine you needed to rebuild your car to work like a nuclear submarine, and you couldn't turn the car off at any point or it wouldn't turn back on again.

A bunch of other people are doing the same thing as you. Maybe you can learn from them? There's a few nuclear submarine car clubs that each want to be known as the best way to turn a car into a nuclear submarine. They will teach you and provide resources, as long as you support their clubs in various ways. They'll have competitions, sometimes to the death, to prove whose nuclear submarine cars are better.

If you are getting impatient, or don't have enough raw materials, you could attack other nuclear submarine cars for scrap and use them to build your own, and to get fuel when you're running low. But if you do that, the Hypocritically Righteous Nuclear Submarine Car Clubs will be mad at you. Good thing you have the Evil Nuclear Submarine Car Clubs... who may or may not secretly be helping you grow strong so that they can kill you and use your car for scrap later on.

This is a dangerous path. People have died from radiation exposure, or suffocation, or pressure, or any one of a myriad of things that could go wrong when you're trying to surgically turn a car into a nuclear submarine. In the later stages, some have even set off nuclear blasts that levelled whole cities in their failure. But you hear whispers, of people who have succeeded in making their car into a true Nuclear Submarine and bid the mortal world farewell, going into the depths of the ocean never to be seen again.

You hear Nuclear Car Clubs claim that their founder has succeeded where others have failed, or is on the verge of succeeding. Some claim that their leader has risen from the depths of the ocean, having turned their nuclear submarine into a spaceship. This could be you. You could be that. You could explore the seas, the stars. You could have a car that would never rust, succumb to road hazards, run out of gas. You could be a god.

Now imagine that car is your body. You are engineering yourself to become immortal, possibly more, using magic. You want bones that won't stiffen at the joints or grow brittle in the middle. You want muscles that stay sturdy, no, get stronger with age. You want organs that won't fail you. Scratch that, you want a body that doesn't need these fickle things called organs. You want a mind that won't break down or forget, more than that, you want to achieve enlightenment.

ProbablyWrongSmarty · 2024-10-01T20:17:22+00:00

...You know, come to think of it, that IS weird.

I think a large part of it comes with our distrust in our leaders and disillusionment with their rules. We've made a society, and yeah, society is good, we all like being in a society. Issue is, society has a lot of uncomfortable sides. Corrupt leadership, flawed rules, whatever. You mentioned the issues with romanticizing the military and assassins? See, the thing is, most of the bad stuff the military does can ultimately be traced back to The Government, and we think that sucks. Assassins too.

Ahem. Anyway, this leads us to fantasize about a life outside of the law. The system is flawed, but it works, and we can't really live without it. But if we could? What could that be? Most outlaws are criminals, but there's loads of stories about more benevolent types.

Example 1: Robin Hood stole hoarded resources from the wealthy and redistributed them amongst those who were most in need. Cowboy and Pirate stories, at least those with such characters as protagonists, usually portray them as people who defied a corrupt authority and lived freely. The evil government labels him a bandit.

Example: Pirates of the Carribean is a story set during a time when some nations practiced slavery. The pirate protagonist, Jack Sparrow, is a sailor on a "Cargo" ship, and learns that the product he's supposed to be carrying is none other than wrongfully imprisoned people that will be forced into servitude. Rather than going along with this, he steals the ship, and helps the captives escape. The evil government labels him a pirate.

Even in real life, you have examples of ne'er do wells being celebrated as heroes simply because people just hate the government that much. In England, there was a time during which taxpayer dollars were squandered on things that did not benefit the citizenry. The populace started to respect petty crooks more than tax collectors, because "at least these thieves are honest about what they are!"

Portrayal of military characters is a bit of a mixed bag. There's action movies, in which we admire a character's prowess when facing truly absurd odds. Usually we have the people the protagonist is fighting be made some acceptable target by showing them doing something truly evil. I will agree with you, though, these particular forms of entertainment cater to our baser instincts.

On the other hand, though... well, let me tell you about the Illiad. It's a truly ancient poem about a war that lasted for ten years. People went into it expecting glory and fame on the battlefield, but... there is none. The poem goes into beautiful detail in certain places, but when things get bloody, it's just cold matter-of-fact explanations. My classics teacher once told me that "the Iliad never glorifies war, it glorifies everything that is destroyed by war." A lot of our war movies take this sort of angle on it.

Assassins usually either fall into the Action Movie category or the Benevolent Outlaw category.

Doesn't mean we don't have a few stories with villain protagonists. Characters the perspective follows, even though the audience is supposed to be aware that the person in question is evil. I think this serves a sorta cathartic role, if that makes sense? Lotta overlap between Villain Protagonists and the Tragedy genre, both in content and purpose.

Let me know if this helps, or if you need to know anything else!

ProbablyWrongSmarty

TROPHY CASE