#CHOICES WERE MADE

[nabi-unveiled]

Hagiwara isn't off the hook.

He shares responsibility in the state of his and Kaori's relationship, and I'm not talking about the cheating.

Put down your pitchfork. Just hear me out.

I adore Hagiwara. He cheated. I don't care. I have mentally added him onto my list of "good boys". I will make a special category just for him.

I'm also not making excuses for Kaori. She must own up that she kept Hagiwara on a string while knowing it was hurting him.

However, their relationship was doomed to fail. They need different things. Kaori needs a relationship where sex isn't expected, and Hagiwara needs a relationship where he can be fully open and honest with his feelings and desires. Frankly, he needs something deeper than Kaori can offer, and I'm not talking about sex.

But the relationship shouldn't have lasted this long, and that's on BOTH of them. It's perfectly okay that Kaori doesn't want sex. It's perfectly okay that Hagiwara does want sex (and intimacy). The problem is that neither of them communicate about it.

Before we go further, there are some points that need to be established. Also note - the symbols are EVERYTHING to me.

1 - Kaori/Hagiwara's relationship is NOT the same as Fujisawa/Sei's.

Their relationships share similarities, but they are NOT the same.

Sei's relationship with Fujisawa developed as a trauma response to a violent car crash. It has carried violent undertones the entire time.

The symbols convey that Fujisawa has methodically trapped Sei in this relationship.

But Kaori and Hagiwara's relationship? It starts with a romantic meet-cute. It was warm. It had saturated colors.

Their relationship does not have a violent undertone. It has an undertone of passivity and complacency. Of note, Hagiwara didn't initiate anything in this relationship. He's waited on Kaori's lead.

The door is open. Hagiwara could leave at any point.

These two relationships also do not have the same power dynamic. Kaori DOES control many aspects of the relationship. However, Kaori has control of the relationship because Hagiwara lets her. Fujisawa has control over his relationship with Sei because Fujisawa demands it. There is a difference.

In fact, the show actually has already acknowledged that there are different types of "controlling". The coworker's relationship isn't painted as unhealthy. Some of us may see it as unhealthy, but the show doesn't give ANY indication of that itself in sound or symbols.

2 - I am in the camp that thinks Kaori DOES like or care about Hagiwara.

Not because I believe her words, but because I believe in the symbols. Kaori made Hagiwara rice.

The rice that represents home and affection? Kaori made it. It's just her version had a sour plum in the middle.

And when she offered it, Hagiwara willingly chose to eat it. He knew the plum was there, and he ate it anyways.

In this week's episode, Kaori explains herself, and she's in black. This is not a typical color for her. She may be smiling, but she is mourning.

We could discuss in length about whether emotional abuse is in play here or if it's just an unhealthy relationship. That's not really the point of this post. Either way, we know that Kaori was finally being honest and vulnerable.

WE SAW HER FEET.

Feet shots happens when our character's true feelings and motivations are exposed. Sei has beautiful heels (desires) but his toenail is broken (😭 Just like his Sim card, but I can't go there right now). Both Kaori and Hagiwara have feet shots too. No broken toenails. In this case, Kaori's feet stop moving. Unlike Fujisawa whose body moves on it's own, her body won't move. We haven't seen Fujisawa's feet.

Kaori can't make herself take action to deal with the situation with Hagiwara. Her choices are selfish, and they hurt Hagiwara. However, I actually think that's very realistic and very human. In unhealthy relationships (and even healthy ones), we can often hurt the people we care about. It's not easy leaving an established relationship. Especially, one that you want. We're not all as altruistic as Hagiwara.

But Hagiwara isn't off the hook.

He shares responsibility in the relationship lasting until this point.

Sei admits his relationship has problems.

But Hagiwara? He denies that they have a problem at first. He's choosing to ignore reality. A conversation with Sei later shows it too.

He wants to believe they've been honest with each other.

Even though he's not verbalizing his actual thoughts to Kaori. For those that don't remember, he has an entire sequence in his head at the BBQ with their friends of what he wants to say. But he doesn't say it. He's not being open and honest with Kaori.

He's also hiding what he truly desires. Kaori didn't say he couldn't drink the sweet coffee. She said it was unhealthy. Sei said it was unhealthy too. He drank it around Sei anyways.

He even bought it FOR Sei even though Sei thought it was too sweet. Hagiwara initiates with Sei.

It's actually been shown that Kaori doesn't care what Hagiwara eats. He's allowed to eat whatever he wants. Kaori isn't telling Hagiwara to go to sleep or eat the yogurt.

She controls sex (and maybe their social agenda). However, unlike Fujisawa, Kaori doesn't keep tight control on Hagiwara as a person.

Unlike Sei, Hagiwara isn't isolated. There's no traumatic backstory. He's more self-confident than Sei. Unlike Sei, he talks about the things he CAN do rather than things he can't. For example, in episode 1, he mentions that "he's good" at organizing parties.

Unlike Sei, he's not trapped in a locked room.

His affection might have been contained and hidden. I think he wonders whether Kaori has things she has to keep inside, because he knows there are things that he keeps inside. But...

He's not trapped. He's stuck. There's a difference.

Hagiwara didn't forget his ID. He didn't forget who he was. He lost his ID, because he's losing confidence in his relationship.

But he's still walking around this building freely. Apparently, he's been walking free without that ID for months. And when he gets a new ID? He chooses to put it back in the case that Kaori gave him.

He wanted to change his picture, but he hadn't taken the steps to do so. He could've changed the situation by being frank with Kaori at any point. Just like Kaori, he avoided. He has chosen to stay.

He chose not to call Kaori out. He doesn't like making people uncomfortable. His nature is to prioritize the other person. Unlike Kaori, his avoidance is inherently unselfish. But it got him stuck. I'm someone who was actively taught to avoid confrontation and to always think of others first. This hits hard.

Kaori was too selfish, but Hagiwara wasn't selfish enough. Being a little bit selfish is a good thing.

He chose NOT to talk about sex with her. He's not comfortable bringing it up with her, because he's not open with her.

Kaori doesn't communicate about sex, because she's afraid that not wanting sex makes her a bad woman. She's surrounded by heteronormativity after all. As @babyangelsky points out, this is what society treating libido as swamp does to you.

Hagiwara doesn't communicate about sex, because he's afraid prioritizing sex makes him a bad man. After all, wouldn't breaking up with his girlfriend just because of sex make him a bad person? Isn't his desire just making the river murky with swamp water? Stupid swamp. He doesn't realize sex is not the real issue. In the end, he has chosen to stay in this relationship even though he's unhappy.

It's why I had positive thoughts about the breakup scene. A lot could be said about Kaori forcing Hagiwara to be the one to breakup, but I was actually glad that Hagiwara said it. It was on both of them that the relationship lasted this long. Neither of them had been willing to speak up about what wasn't working. They both stayed stuck.

Hagiwara is finally speaking his mind. He calls Kaori out.

Hagiwara is no longer being passive. He's asserting control.

Hagiwara is no longer hiding what he wants. He's being open.

Hagiwara is now taking action to change the picture on his ID.

Previous posts about Hagiwara:

The Desire to Be A Good Man

I also have two additional posts about Hagiwara in my drafts. I'll try to get them posted this weekend.

[scarlettohairdye]

Home Ownership Was a Mistake

This is for @trickybonmot, who may or may not use some of these stories in a fic.

Okay. So.

In the year of our lord 2010, my wife and I were lucky enough to be gifted $20k by my parents, which in those days (given it was a historically low point for real estate prices in Seattle) was enough for a down payment on a house. It was an astounding confluence of luck and privilege that led to us being homeowners, because if they gave us the same money now it would go precisely nowhere.

Anyway, it was not enough money for a large house, or a fancy house. We looked at a lot of places, only some of which were move-in ready (and one of which was absolutely just a tear-down) and eventually settled on our current place, which is a 1910 bungalow with a detached garage that was finished and turned into a studio.

Was it the most aesthetically pleasing house when we bought it? No. The walls were white, the carpet was light beige, and the paint had seen better days. That said, it was move-in ready and the owner was pretty desperate to sell, so we took it!

The inspector let us know that some of the wiring was still the old knob-and-tube, so we'd want that updated sooner rather than later, but it looked pretty good. About half the outlets were grounded, so it didn't stop us from plugging in three-prong appliances. We just had to use more extension cords than maybe we'd prefer.

The Electrical

The first big house thing we paid for was to have the entire place rewired. Our circuit breaker was a mystery, we didn't have enough outlets, and we were tired of being stuck with specific layouts of our stuff due to the lack of grounded outlets. We were expecting about half the wiring to be up to code, and the rest would need an update.

Spoiler alert: HAHAHAHAHAHA.

The rewiring took about a week, and every morning the electrician sat down with us and told us what new fire trap he'd uncovered.

"Yeah, so the knob and tube wiring going to the lights in the ceiling? Knob and tube gets hot when it's running, and yours is under three layers of insulation."

"You know how you thought your outlets were grounded? They weren't, actually, the ground wire just went elsewhere into the house and wasn't connected to anything."

"So there's wiring in your crawlspace? Whoever put that in nailed some sheets of wood paneling over it, so we had to rip the wood paneling out to access it."

I think the job was about $15k when it was done, we had many many more outlets, and our house was no longer one bad day from lighting itself on fire. Victory, I guess?

The Studio Window

This was leaking a bit, and we knew it was leaking when we moved in. (South facing walls get all the weather in our region.) We were not handy enough to replace it ourselves at the time and we also didn't have money because I got laid off shortly after we bought the house and was making my living doing costume commissions. Solution: Trade costuming work to an acquaintance who did carpentry.

The window, we discovered, was not so much a finished window as it was a single sheet of glass sandwiched between some boards.

Badly.

The carpenter was not entirely she that she was qualified for the job, but she did manage to remove the single sheet of glass and replace it with a window that was insulated and actually capable of opening. She used caulk around it. It was way better than we had before. Maybe someday we'll have both studio windows replaced by a contractor who actually does windows, but this is not that day!

The Siding

The cedar shingles were no longer cutting it at a certain point, so we had the house resided. (Houses are money pits, in case you didn't know.) This was a $30k job (MONEY PIT!) and had several layers of badness.

Bad: Our house had no insulation. It was cedar shingles over the original siding, with nothing in between that original siding and our INTERIOR WALLS. There was occasionally a newspaper. Our PM asked if we wanted insulation? And we said yes, please!!! We did not have a lot of time to think about insulation or research the best type, so it's just sheets of the pink fiberglass stuff in there, but it exists and we have it now!

Worse: Underneath our laundry room was a horrorshow. The laundry room is an addition that was added to our house probably sometime in the 50s? And, uh...

Well, the siding guys pulled off the siding, took a look at what was under it, and immediately called the project manager. The project manager came out, took a look, and then called us. He said that the siding guys thought it really needed to be reinforced and stabilized before they re-sided it, which is very fair, because I think the people who built it originally were drunk when they did it. It was a fucking Wild West cowboy construction situation under there.

Yes, you heard that right: A LOAD-BEARING SHINGLE.

Our project manager also informed us that the siding guys couldn't do the reinforcement, because they're just siding guys. They don't do structural. This is very fair.

It also needed to be done by Monday so we could stay on schedule for the siding work.

We learned this on Friday.

I immediately called my general contractor dad and got his voicemail, because (I remembered belatedly) he was in Mexico getting dental surgery. There was absolutely no way we could get another contractor out to do the work over a single weekend.

It was up to us.

My wife and I (mostly my wife) went HAM on it. We rented big jacks from the tool library to prop the laundry room up while we replaced one of the entirely rotten support poles. One of the big telephone poles was so wrecked with dry rot we could kick it out of place. (It didn't even touch the BIG ROCK that was supposed to be its foundation!!! It was floating!!!) Several of the joists were also fucked, so we ran new joists alongside them and married them together. My wife dug holes while crouched in a 4' high space, filled the holes with gravel, compacted it by putting a piece of wood on top of it and hitting it with a mallet, and then installed an entire additional support system from 4x4s and deck blocks. She actually attached the support system TO THE FUCKING HOUSE, which was a big improvement from the way it was originally held on by vibes and paint.

Here's a tasty little before and after:

(Yeah, see how that visible joist at the front just... stops at the far left? There's a new joist right behind it now.)

This was completed with resounding cries of, "Good enough!" and "It's better than it was before!" The siding guys thought it was fine and sided over it. Someday hopefully we will be able to afford to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it with a properly poured foundation, but in the meantime the spin cycle on the washing machine no longer shakes the whole house. Victory?!

Ridiculous: The purple paint saga. My wife and I are lesbians who tend toward maximalism in our decoration style. Construction companies find this baffling. We paid extra to our siding company to get the extended color choices (if you order the siding with the color baked in it lasts longer, but you're limited to a particular range of colors) and spoiler alert: 90% of them are boring as fuck. We basically paid extra to have access to 400 shades of white and 400 more shades of beige. There were like three saturated colors in the whole book. Pathetic.

Anyway, we chose the one nice teal that was available and decided we'd paint the door purple, since all the purple colors were gray at best. The project manager then forgot to put in our order, and when he remembered he'd forgotten, ordering our siding through his company would have pushed back the start time by six weeks. We could still make the original start time if we ordered through a different company doing the same thing, though!

Me, immediately: And we wouldn't be restricted to your color palette, right? Him: Yeah, they can do custom colors. Me, slapping down a color card called "Fully Purple": MAKE IT PURPLE.

Bless this man, he went to the siding company and asked for Fully Purple. They told him they couldn't do that color, and also is he sure anyone wants this color? He called them on the phone and informed them yes, we did want that color, and also that he'd worked for them and he knew damn well they could do that color, they'd just have to custom mix it, so they needed to do their fucking jobs. Suitably chastened, they finally sent us a sample of the siding, and it was... okay. It was purple for sure, but a little de-saturated. Not the purple of our hearts.

I asked if they'd actually started manufacturing our siding yet or just sent the color sample. The project manager confirmed they hadn't, and if we ordered this imperfectly-purple siding now, it would be several weeks before we could get started.

"We're gonna paint," I decided, and our project manager put in the orders.

The paint store called him and said, "Hey, are you sure you want this color?" Yes, he assured them, that's the right color.

The guys doing the painting opened up the can and then called him and said, "Are you sure this color?" and he told them yes! They want that color!

At this point I told him he should just start responding with, "They're lesbians!!! Yes! They want the purple! They're lesbians!!!"

Eventually we cleared every hurdle god and the construction industry put in front of us, and now our house is Fully Purple.

It also has insulation, wiring that won't kill us, and a laundry room that hopefully won't collapse anytime soon. We got a heat pump installed that took shockingly little time and worked immediately, and our next project will be having the roof redone. Check back in to find out what fresh horror awaits us then! I think it'll be a second roof under our existing roof made of lead and asbestos tiles, probably!

[palfriendpatine66]

Watching The Clone Wars 2003 for the first time and it is ~*aMaZiNg*~

[tardxsblues]

I want another adventure. Come on, you feel the same.

[vecnaline]

st fans: dang it! just saw one post of my notp :(

me after i went researching christianity to write jason accurately and suddenly my tl became 80% christian blogs:

[elliethefroggy]

[stranger-nights-ahead]

In what might be the most baffling home renovation decision I've ever seen, our landlord has painted over the ivy growing on the outside of the house

It's truly extraordinary

[loquarocoeur]

i have always read ur name in an obnoxiously french way lmaoo second language coming thru (lo-ka-ra-cœur)

This actually is unironically the original way I intended it and how I say it in my head, but I hadn't considered that maybe I'm not, you know, actually French, my mouth can't really do that

[bisonaari]

I think yall should see what we named the moomin characters in french

[agendratum]

oh yeah that's too much sauce, this requires chan eating spicy ramen video

[nabi-unveiled]

It didn't start at the museum....for Hagiwara.

At least I personally don't think it did.

Sei is the one that says it started at the museum.

For Sei, that is true.

They had both been developing an emotional connection through e-mail. In e-mail, they were vulnerable with each other. Hagiwara is the one that turned the conversation sexual, but they both engage.

However, the emotional connection didn't mirror what was happening in their physical connection with each other. In real life, they saw each other very differently before the museum.

Before the museum, Sei thought of Hagiwara fondly. Sei gives a small smile when thinking of him. However, he used the same child analogy that Kaori did. He's amused. He didn't see him sexually at this point.

Sei sees Hagiwara as a coworker. Sei notices Hagiwara, but it always comes back to work. He offers to help, but there is nothing in his words to convey anything more than Sei being amused by a coworker who has a tough job. Sei does recognize Hagiwara's effort. It's why he offers to help.

However, Hagiwara definitely saw Sei in a sexual fashion prior to the museum encounter.

That smitten look he had when he first saw Kaori?

He may not realize it, but he gives that look to Sei pretty frequently. He follows Sei with his eyes. He tracks his movements. He's intrigued. Sei's eyes do not follow him.

He leaves a group of coworkers when the conversation was ABOUT him to follow Sei to the bar. He initiates conversation with Sei.

He's the host (and supposedly a very good one), but he follows Sei around ignoring everyone else for a good while. He tells everyone else to get home safe. He pursues Sei in the rain. He tries to share the umbrella. Sei pops up his own. He's offering. Sei isn't taking.

He offers to send Sei a rain app (symbolism I see you). But even if you are not obsessed with symbols, Hagiwara asks Sei to go with him to another bar. None of the other coworkers. ONLY SEI.

Hagiwara has sexual thoughts about Sei. ONLY SEI (besides Kaori). Unlike Sei, he doesn't relate any of his thoughts about Sei to work.

He thinks about Sei a lot period. There are actually several dialogue points where he refers to things he had thought about Sei. But the most notable is probably during the entire walk with the umbrellas. They only talk about Sei (and Fujisawa). Hagiwara initiating mostly.

Sei answers Hagiwara's questions, because he's an incredibly blunt and straightforward person. Sei never asks Hagiwara any personal questions here. He didn't care to know Hagiwara deeper at that point.

Hagiwara offers to buy Sei a cup of warm, fresh coffee after returning the umbrellas. This is symbolism people. The coffee talks.

Once they are at the museum, Hagiwara reaches the statue first. He's already enthralled. However, it's at this point that Sei joins him. They sync up physically. Their movements begin mirroring each other.

Sei actually mentions sending the e-mail first. They sit on the bench together. They discover that the person they've been e-mailing is the man in front of them, and there is joy in that discovery.

The museum encounter changes how Sei sees Hagiwara. Hagiwara is inviting him to listen to the rain, and he now has the link to do so. He reconciles that the stranger he had been e-mailing was the physical man before him. I've ran out of images, but Sei's whole body posture changes on the bench after getting the link to the rain app.

When leaving the museum, Sei's eyes track and dwell on Hagiwara. It's the first time that happens.

Hagiwara invites Sei to dinner. This is the THIRD time he's invited Sei to something with just the two of them (if you count the coffee).

It's the first time that Sei accepts the gesture. (He refused to let Hagiwara pay for the coffee).

Sei now starts asking Hagiwara personal, sexual questions.

But Hagiwara? None of his behavior with Sei changes. It had already started for him prior to the museum. It just deepens.

That's not to say the museum isn't important for Hagiwara. It's VERY important. It's where they synced. It's where emotional and physical merged. It's where they met in the middle, and that makes it special.

I've now written WAY too much about this show. For those that want to read it, here's a master list. I'll keep updating it as I add new posts.

[afrenchwriter]

Don't mind me, I’m just here thinking about Sherlock's "John, there’s something I should say, I've meant to say always and I never have...", and Loki's "Mobius, if I don’t make it back...", and the dramatic pauses and all, and how very platonic it all is, how this is definitely what friends say to each other before being sent to the jaws of death. Right?

[locke-esque-monster]

I had a dream earlier, which is a bit fuzzy now, about a SPN episode that would have taken place in season 1. (My brain was convinced it was specifically 1x7 numerically - awake I could not be more wrong.)

Anyway, in this episode Sam and Dean had failed to save a boy during the course of the episode. And in some later season years down the line, they had to come back to this town because the boy's twin sister had also died about a year after they were there, and was now a ghost causing trouble. And the boys had to deal with the failure on this previous case, because the sister wouldn't have died if her twin hadn't (either because of looking into her brother's death/reckless behavior at his loss/taking her own life).

Obviously this episode doesn't exist, but now all I can think is the wasted opportunity of having an episode like this in season 15. Chuck decides a way he can screw with Sam and Dean as the author of their lives by making a whole episode (episodes?) of loose ends he wants to tie up before his grand finale. For example:

The hotel from "Playthings" is about to be demolished and the ghost sisters start acting up again.

Chuck artificially speeds up the timeframe on the baby Rugaru from "Metamorphosis" to make it a problem the boys have to deal with. This also gives a chance to have Sam and Dean revisit and clear the air with their issues from season 4 and the demon blood thing (like the Voicemail) with the benefit of time and distance.

Some kid accidentally rewrites and resurrects the Tulpa from "Hell House", and it spread even faster in the age of social media.

Jesse the antichrist from 5x5 comes back to the states to find something has happened to his parents and goes on a power-fueled rampage.

Ben or Lisa start trying to dig into their missing memories (maybe having stumbled over the books) and get in over their heads, or some monster comes in their path. And either way, the boys end up involved and everyone has to come to terms with that.

Sam runs into a member of Jess's family and has to deal with either his ghosting them after her death and his subsequent "crime spree" he seemed to go on. Or that maybe one Jess's family (like a younger sister) went deep into hunting because they knew something was up with her death.

And I think this would work so well, because first, this is exactly the type of author I think Chuck is.

Second, because it would bring the show full circle to episodes like season 1's "Something Wicked", or "Jump the Shark". Enough time has passed during the 15 years on the air these cases have the similar distance to how much time had passed pre-canon to the episodes above. And how often is a show on the air long enough to be able deal with that? And that like John, their presence had ripple effects. Generally those are positive (the people they saved), but not every case they worked was perfectly wrapped up in a bow. Which could say a lot about endings and writing, and discussing the philosophy of whether it's good as a writer (Chuck) to wrap up these ends or not.

And third, can you imagine if we had that episode before the finale with the vampires coming back from 1x20 to cause Dean's death in the finale? If there was a way Dean's death was going to work narratively, this would be it. Because you have the baseline of however Sam and Dean feel about tying up those loose ends in the previous episode in season 15 now to help set the groundwork of this plotline, so it doesn't come out of nowhere. And it clearly sets the tone of "Chuck won", like in a Quentin Beck from Spiderman Far From Home kind of way. That Chuck still had one ace up his sleeve even if he lost, to make the narrative end on his terms with one last loose end to throw in Sam and Dean's path.

[picspammer]

I was going to make a more... serious? edit to celebrate Songs from the Big Chair's birthday but I kept taking the funniest screencaps so.

[constantlyfalling]

So Descendants: The Rise of Red is just like 2/3 of a movie. They really did that.

[madlori]

lmao tommy's such close friends with eddie that we haven't had any mention of them hanging out since buck and tommy got together. but isn't it crazy that tommy literally flew eddie to vegas (i think) to watch a fight but he puts in the bare minimum of effort with buck every time.

I would have loved to see more of Tommy and Eddie's friendship! I get why...once the focus shifted to Tommy with Buck there wasn't time. We did see them still buddies at the bachelor party, and Tommy and Buck sat with Chris and Eddie at the medal ceremony. I really hope we get more of their friendship next season!