"Matchless Under Moonlight, The Crimson Pomegranate" Or How To Make Akatsuki Pomegranate Hibiscus Tea

egoist

urania im so sorry honey you deserved better i love you

ive gotten so much mileage out of this tweet. every time i see something on the internet that makes me mad i just think to myself "people in real life: hey man how's it going" and i keep it pushing

[TL] BIOHAZARD/Chapter 5

[ This post uses Ois~su ♪ ]

Time: That night

Location: In living quarters of the AIIE experiment grounds

Rei: Uwaa, we’re having a sleepover with all of UNDEAD~♪

Fufu. The SS preliminaries was the perfect opportunity for one, but Kaoru-kun was thrown into a desert and separated from us.

I’m happy that the four of us can have a sleepover together peacefully– gah!?

Koga: ...

Rei: Koga? Don’t throw an omanjuu at me? Is this your way of telling me you want to play?

Koga: Stop bein’ so happy-go-lucky, vampire bastard. The hell you mean, pajama party.

Rei: Oya, how nostalgic. Could this be that you want me to call you ‘wanko’ for the first time in a while?

Koga: I ain’t callin’ you that for nostalgia purposes, I’m insultin' you.

Rei: How troubling. Please don’t take your frustrations out on me.

We’ve all given our consent to take part in this experiment.

We can’t complain now, can we?

Koga: We was basically forced to? If it hadn’t been us, it woulda been like, Ra*bits who haven’t done nothin’ wrong.

Then we’d hafta live with the knowledge that them lot are now the victims whilst we watch from the sidelines.

It’s better for our own mental health to just do it for real, right?

‘Cos I don’t like this at all. Don’t forget that.

Kaoru: Ahaha. It’s definitely a little off putting and shady sounding, but it makes for an interesting story, right?

AI idols and stuff– no, technology and science in general has come a long way. Really, it’s like an old sci-fi movie.

If this was just a movie, or even just someone else’s problem, I think it could have been a lot of fun.

Adonis: I also don’t feel great about this but I am interested in terms of the development of science and technology.

This is the future we thought of when we learnt about Voc*loid and drawing AIs, and it’s becoming a reality right in front of our eyes.

We’re now living in a near sci-fi world that people from the past could only imagine.

It’s like a dream, whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

I’m excited.

Kaoru: Ahaha. That totally has the vibe of a boyish heroic novel.

I don’t particularly like that sort of thing either. At the end of the day, I’m still the son of an academic who reached for the sea in search of romance and mystery.

Adonis: I also dislike jumping into areas I don’t know about.

Rei: If we think realistically, if we had refused to take part, there was the likelihood of RhythmLink turning their backs on us.

I suspect they would be rather unpleasant in the matter.

This is a necessary step so we are not thrown to the side. The compensation is rather impressive, and, in simple terms, profitable for us.

Well, we made quite the sum of money during the SS, so we have some to spare.

If an experiment such as ‘AI idols’ is successful, implemented, and announced to the world, won’t they look to us as we were the test subjects? Doesn’t that make this all worth it?

Koga: But this doesn’t solve the problem we’re havin’. They’re just killin’ time, it literally has nothin’ t’do with our situation.

This better not turn into a goose chase, wastin’ time runnin’ ‘round lookin’ stupid.

Rei: Umu. We should all brainstorm some ideas in order to solve the root of the problem, as Koga said. Fortunately, we have been blessed with plenty of time to do so.

Kaoru: Mmm… I was kinda on guard when they said experiment, but if they’re just asking us to stay the night here?

Rei: Umu. We will be given medicine, which will cause us to sleep for about half a day. In that time, via the devices connected to our heads, data will be collected and compiled.

During the time we are not asleep, we will exercise to prevent our bodies from weakening, and eat to keep up our energy levels. Let’s all get on, the four of us.

The testing period will last approximately one week. During this time, any other forms of work are banned, as the extra stimulus may skew the results.

Our phones will be confiscated, and we will be separated from the outside world.

Kaoru: Kinda feels like being a prisoner or a hospital patient… Welp, this’ll be easy money if all we’ve got to do is laze around.

Rei: Umu. I suppose we can take it easy. We will be paid regardless as to whether the experiment produces useful results or not, so it’s not a complete waste of time.

Fortunately, this location is better than a hospital or a prison.

Look, there are some cards and board games we can use to kill time. Let’s play until it’s time for us to sleep.

Koga: Ain’t you bein’ too relaxed ‘bout this whole thing?

Rei: That’s a good thing, is it not? I’ve been acting unusually mature since my youth, so I do not have many experiences like this. Such as having a sleepover with friends of the same age—

That’s why. I can’t be sure of the future, but I know I am very happy right now ♪

[ ☆ ]

Chapter 4

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Hakaze Kaoru/Oogami Kouga/Otogari Adonis/Sakuma Rei, Hakaze Kaoru & Oogami Kouga & Otogari Adonis & Sakuma Rei, Hakaze Kaoru/Sakuma Rei, Hakaze Kaoru/Oogami Kouga, Hakaze Kaoru/Otogari Adonis, Oogami Kouga/Otogari Adonis, Oogami Kouga/Sakuma Rei, Otogari Adonis/Sakuma Rei Characters: Hakaze Kaoru, Oogami Kouga, Otogari Adonis, Sakuma Rei Additional Tags: Ensemble Stars Rarepair Week, Enstars Rarepair Week, Established Relationship, Fluff, Polyamory, Beaches, Touch-Starved Otogari Adonis Series: Part 6 of enstars rarepair week 2024 Summary:

Day 5: Beach / Family - UNDEAD has fun at the beach!

Mona Hatoum, Grater Divide, 2002 Mild steel, 204 cm x variable width and depth

Sailors & Other Sea Travellers - Superstition & Folklore

 ”Red skies at night, sailor’s delight. Red skies at morning, sailor take warning.”

Lore

Davy Jones is a popular character in sailor’s yore, especially of the gothic variety. Davy Jones’ Locker, is an idiom for the bottom of the sea: the state of death for drowned sailors. The origins of the name are unclear, and many theories have been put forth, including:

An actual David Jones, who was a pirate on the Indian Ocean in the 1630s.

A pub owner who kidnapped sailors and then dumped them onto any passing ship.

The incompetent Duffer Jones, a myopic sailor who often found himself over-board.

Or that Davy Jones is another name for Satan or “Devil Jonah”, the biblical Jonah who became the “evil angel” of all sailors. Due to this, sailors with the name “Jonah” were bad luck to have abroad.

Upon death, a wicked sailor’s body supposedly went to Davy Jones’ locker (a chest, as lockers were back then), but a pious sailor’s soul went to Fiddler’s Green (in maritime folklore it is a kind of afterlife for sailors who have served at least 50 years at sea).

At Fiddler’s Green, where seamen true When here they’ve done their duty The bowl of grog shall still renew And pledge to love and beauty.

Dolphins and albatrosses were said to be the reincarnated souls of dead sailors; and sailors could not kill either of them. 

Mermaids & Mermen

The legend of the mermaid, a creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish, has circulated the worlds oceans as far back as 5,000 B.C.

One of the earliest scientific accounts of the mermaid was documented by the great historian Pliny The Elder in 586 A.D. Pliny the Elder was convinced of the existence of mermaids and described them as “rough and scaled all over.” Since that time, and well before, thousands of sailors across the globe have reported seeing mermaids swimming off the bows of their ships. Even the famous Christopher Columbus reported an encounter with a mermaid; in January of 1493 Columbus reported that he saw three mermaids fin the ocean just off Haiti.

Mermaids were often considered lucky, but not universally. In Trinidad and Tobago, sea-dwelling mermen “were known to grant a wish, transform mediocrity into genius and confer wealth and power.” Mermaids appear in British folklore as unlucky omens, both foretelling disaster and provoking it.

Sailors would look for mermaid’s purses (the egg case of a skate, ray or shark; one of the most common objects washed up on the sea) on beaches for signs of mermaids in the area.

Klabautermann 

Traditionally, a type of kobold, a Klabautermann, lives aboard ships and helps sailors and fishermen on the Baltic or North Sea in their duties. He is a merry and diligent creature, with an expert understanding of most watercraft, and an unsupressable musical talent. He also rescues sailors washed overboard. The belief in Klabautermanns dates to at least the 1770s.

A carved Klabautermann image, of a small sailor dressed in yellow with a tobacco pipe and wooden sailor’s cap, often wearing a caulking hammer, is attached to the mast as a symbol of good luck. 

However, despite the positive attributes, there is one omen associated with his presence: no member of a ship blessed by his presence shall ever set eyes on him; he only ever becomes visible to the crew of a doomed ship.

More recently, the Klabautermann is sometimes described as having more sinister attributes, and blamed for things that go wrong on the ship. This incarnation of the Klabautermann is more demon- or goblin-like, prone to play pranks and, eventually, doom the ship and her crew. This deterioration of image probably stems from sailors, upon returning home, telling stories of their adventures at sea.

Sailor Tattoos

Sailors believed that certain symbols and talismans would help them in when facing certain events in life; they thought that those symbols would attract good luck or bad luck in the worst of the cases:

Sailors, at the constant mercy of the elements, often feel the need for religious images on their bodies to appease the angry powers that caused storms and drowning far from home.

The images of a pig and a hen were good luck; both animals are not capable of swimming, but they believed that God would look down upon a shipwreck and see an animal not capable of swimming and would take them into his hand and place them on land. Sailors had the belief that by wearing the North Star, this symbol would help them to find his or her way home.

The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship  that can never make port and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The myth is likely to have originated from 17th-century nautical folklore. The oldest extant version dates to the late 18th century. Sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries reported the ship to be glowing with ghostly light. If hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman will try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.

 Some say that The Flying Dutchman was used for piracy and was loaded with gold and other loot. While travelling with a load of treasure, unspeakable crimes were committed on board the ship, thus making it cursed forever.

“originally a vessel loaded with great wealth, on board of which some horrid act of murder and piracy had been committed” and that the apparition of the ship “is considered by the mariners as the worst of all possible omens.”

Other variations of the legend say that the Captain of The Flying Dutchman refused to go to port in the face of a horrible storm and as a result the entire ship perished. Others claim that the ship was not called The Flying Dutchman - that instead it was the name of the captain of the ship. Eventually, as people passed the legend down through the generations, the story of The Flying Dutchman referred to the ship.

Superstitions

Bad luck:

No bananas on board -  At the height of the trading empire between Spain and the Caribbean in the 1700’s, most cases of disappearing ships happened to be carrying a cargo of bananas at the time.

No women on board - Women were said to bring bad luck on board because they distracted the sailors from their sea duties. This kind of behaviour angered the intemperate seas that would take their revenge out on the ship. However, images of naked women were carved onto the bow of the ship because the woman’s bare breasts  ”shamed the stormy seas into calm” and her open eyes guided the seamen to safety.

No whistling on board - Mariners have long held the belief that whistling or singing into the wind will “whistle up a storm”.

Deathly lexis - At sea, some words must be strictly avoided to ensure the ship and crew’s safe return. These include obvious ones like “drowned” and “goodbye”. If someone says “good luck” to you, it is sure to bring about bad luck. The only way to reverse the curse is by drawing blood.

Lurking sharks - A shark following the ship is a sign of inevitable death.

Unlucky days: - Fridays: Fridays have long been considered unlucky days, likely because Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday. - Thursdays: Thursdays are bad sailing days because that is Thor’s day, the god of thunders and storms. - First Monday in April: The first Monday in April is the day Cain slew Abel. - Second Monday in August: The second Monday in August is the day the kingdoms of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. - Superstitious sailor believed that the only good day to sail on was sundays.

Changing the name of the boat - Boats develop a life and mind of their own once they are named and Christened. If you do rename the boat- you absolutely must have a de-naming ceremony. This ceremony can be performed by writing the current boat name on a piece of paper, folding the paper and placing it in a wooden box then burning the box. After, the ashes were scooped up and thrown into the sea.

Red heads - Red heads were thought to bring bad luck to a ship if you happened to encounter one before boarding. However, if you speak to the redhead before they get the chance to speak to you, it is cancelled out.

Good luck:

It is good luck to spit in the ocean before you sail.

Coins thrown into the sea as a boat leaves port is a small toll to Neptune, the sea god, for a safe voyage.

Horseshoes on a ship’s mast will turn away a storm.

Cats brought luck. If a ship’s cat came to a sailor, it meant good luck.

Pouring wine on the deck will bring good luck on a long voyage.

It is often considered lucky to touch the collar of a sailor’s suit.

some 2wink doodles from wbs with friends :3 (last image is by a friend who knows nothing about enstars ahahaha)

how do i find god ?

don’t look now but he’s right behind you

[TL] BIOHAZARD/Prologue

[ This post uses Ois~su ♪ ]

Season: Winter

Time: Early March in the first year of ES’s establishment

Location: In a underground livehouse, one of UNDEAD’s haunts

Keito: (What is that?)

(What the hell is happening…?)

Rei: 『♪~♪~♪』

Kaoru: 『♪♪♪♪♪』

Koga: 『H！E！L！L！』

Adonis: 『S！I！N！G！』

Koga + Adonis: 『We are 『HELLSING』 ...☆』

Keito: I have no idea what’s going on—

HELLSING…? No matter how I look at it, that’s UNDEAD!

Rei: 『♪~♪~♪』

Kaoru: 『♪♪♪♪♪』

Keito: Oi! Listen up!

I know this isn’t a great time but I need to ask you guys something!

Adonis: —Hey. Oogami, Oogami, Hasumi-senpai is in the stage wings making a racket.

I am not sure how our senpais will react to this, so I think we should deal with him before something bad happens.

Koga: Nah, if somethin’ was gonna happen, it woulda happened by now.

Actually, I don’t want this important live t’be interrupted. Guess we’ll have t’see what he wants.

Oi, shitty glasses— Whaddya want?

Can’t you see we’re in the middle of rehearsal?

Keito: Let me make this clear first of all - I have no intention of interrupting your activities. I’m no longer the vice-president of the Student Council so I have no reason to be supervising the activities of problem children like you.

Koga: God, you fuckin’ know how t’waffle on and on. So why are you here if it’s got nothin’ t’do with us? Random person who looks good in glasses, whaddya want, hmmmm?

Keito: Well I don’t see how that’s relevant. We once donned the same costumes and participated in the same activities, and now we share an agency.

And that is precisely why I, as a representative of RhythmLink, have gone out of my way to come ask you this.

Your recent “peculiar activity” has become troublesome for the agency.

Therefore, I’d like to know what’s happening, UNDEAD.

Firstly-, what is “HELLSING”?

Koga: ...

Keito: Why are you keeping quiet, Oogami?

Can’t you explain it to me? After all, as you quite rightly said, you and I are in different units and are complete strangers who–

Adonis: Please wait a moment, Hasumi-senpai. I don’t think Oogami will be able to explain this very well.

Truthfully, we don’t really know what’s going on ourselves—

Koga: Shut it, Adonis. Yer actin’ like a parent who’s watchin’ their kid run their first errand. Stop addin’ unnecessary shit to the conversation.

Adonis: But, Hasumi-senpai will probably be able to offer useful advice—

Koga: Shut up! He fuckin’ said it himself, he ain’t got nothin’ to do with us anymore!

Now you’re actin’ like your our parents and tryna stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong! Stupid shitty glasses.

Keito: That was never my intention… I’m really– no, I mean, I’m worried about you.

I always end up imposing Oogami with heavy burdens that are my own responsibility.

Koga: Oi, don’t apologise! They told me to take it on, and you told me it was a lot anyway!

…Seriously man, don’t worry ‘bout it. HELLSING is just a different name we, UNDEAD, use on stage.

Recently, the hardcore rock image we use on stage versus the stupid silly image we use on like, variety shows is creatin’ a divert… divertent?

Adonis: A divergence?

Koga: Yeah, that! It’s creating a divergence in terms of how we present ourselves, so we thought that we could just use different names whether we’re on stage or doin’ our regular activities!

It’s like those mangas you fuckin’ love so much. They use different names dependin’ on what they’re doin’.

Keito: Umu… I suppose that’s true, as there are mangaka that operate under different pseudonyms based on if they are working on commercial materials or R-18 material.

Though generally, fans can tell from their art style that it is the same person.

Adonis: I don’t know much about manga but. Think of it as a parent company setting up subsidiaries, where each brand markets different things dependent on what activities they engage in.

Our, so to speak, immoral, radical activities will be handled by HELLSING, and our more friendly and palatable activities handled by UNDEAD.

Only what we do and the name has changed, the members remain the same. Me, Oogami, Sakuma-senpai, and Hakaze-senpai.

Keito: So what’s the point in doing all this…?

Koga: Shut uppp, there’s a ton of reasons. I get you’re a producer ‘n all but why’s it any of your business?

Keito: ...

Koga: …It’s whatever, alright?

This is what I wanted. To be honest, the fans are a little confused but everyone else is pretty happy with it.

I feel like I can actually breathe now I’m not bein’ forced t’do stupid varieties shows ‘n shit like that.

So that means it’s a good thing— all of it is.

I said it’s fine so everyone who says otherwise should shaddup!

『♪~♪~♪』

[ ☆ ]

Chapter 1