#For reasons that I don't feel like explaining I'll be working 3/1 instead of my usual 2/2

[0xeyedaisy]

The next few months are gonna be hard for me. Ough

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Animated Series ending tier list

Okay this is based on a discussion with @j4gm, kim and mifil the other day

These are all cartoons with the exception of Homestuck. I'll admit I don't get invested in a lot of TV shows, even animated shows, so this is limited to stuff I like. Maybe i forgot something but if i did it's probably not worth talking about.

Here's the list if you're interested in building your own.

So I'll go through each item one by one and explain. Yes, I did arrange them based on better (left) and worse (right) for each tier. I'll start from top to bottom so I have the most energy for the better show endings.

I'm rating them both in how they respect the stories of their show, and how entertaining/cohesive they are as a piece of media. To be honest, the former matters to me more than the latter, but some of the shows at the top of this list aren't even ones I particularly like, because their endings were just that well written.

Astonishing

Owl House. This show got better and better with each episode. I don't know, I was blown away by how bad it was at the start and how great it was at the end. And of every item on this list, this one's ending episode had the best pacing. There was lots of room to breathe, lots of reminders of the connections between various characters, and the villain was taken care of in a satisfying way. And we got a beautiful epilogue. The only reason Owl House is in the same tier as She-ra and Gravity Falls, instead of being its own category, is because I felt it had some shortcomings, particularly s3e2 focused on a bunch of characters nobody has ever had any reason to care for, and a lot of the cast don't reach the potential they could do because they lack focus, so I don't have as much emotional attachment to it as a lot of other shows listed here. Anyway here's my favourite moment:

2. She-Ra and the Princess of Power. This is my favourite show on this list because I think it's the most cohesive of the lot. Even though it has a rough start, and often follows cartoon logic, from the very beginning of She-ra to the end it focuses strongly on the same themes. The cycle of abuse and pain and that feeling you will need to earn love, you need to earn the right to exist. It does so with a wide cast of characters, but it's also very good at trimming down to a smaller cast when it needs more focus. There are a lot of good decisions to make sure it worked in the small runtime it had. The ending of she-ra is basically its entire final season. It's one long arc. It doesn't have any major weak spots like The Owl House's final season did, and it has more room to breathe, with 13 incredible episode of about 20 minutes each, more than twice the length. And it delivers on every single character. Every member of the cast gets a moment to shine across the season, yet it isn't so distracted as to pull attention away from Catra and Adora. What makes She-ra's ending a bit weaker than Owl House's is the pacing of the final episode. Heart part 1 and 2, while great, is absolutely rammed, and one of the weaker episodes of that season because of it. You don't get enough room to breathe, you don't get to soak in the characters' emotions quite as much as in the episode prior, Failsafe. But I would count Failsafe as part of the ending. So while season 5's finale isn't even the best finale of She-ra (s3 and s4 were harder hitting), the final season as a whole is incredibly strong. And it's a very entertaining piece of media too! Ugh. I love it.

Here's this powerful scene of Catra whispering and yet screaming to Adora to stay with her, even in the end.

3. Gravity Falls.

To be honest I'm not much of a Gravity Falls fan, so I don't have as much to say as I do about the other two shows, but this ending is highly regarded across the cartoon community. It works perfectly within the smaller scope of the show, bringing a wide, crazy calamity for the characters to work with.

My problem with Gravity falls is Mabel. Not that she's a bad character, but that they don't spend enough time making her a good one. And the ending reflects that - it shows her doing something very major, overturning the world, and that's interesting, but it keeps presenting Mabel's problems as rather shallow instead of focusing on her psychology and why she's making these mistakes. Meanwhile it spends a lot of time on Dipper and explaining and justifying his teenage boy mentality and it drived me crazy how much more of a main character Dipper is than Mabel. Because it's Mabel I relate more to. She's more like I was when I was 12. It's a teen boy's show for teen boys, so I don't like it as much as Owl House or Amphibia. Other than that the ending is a good time and I love the themes of family, I love that Dipper has such low self worth and is grappling with the idea of what manliness even is, facing misguided pressure from other relatives like Stan and Ford. And I love the relationship between Stan and Ford, the mistakes they made, and how Stan ultimately takes responsibility for being an obstructive little shit by removing his memory, taking Bill with him!

Yeah, perhaps this show's ending could've been further strengthened by Stan having his memory lost forever, or having a harder time regaining it. But it makes sense in the stakes of Gravity Falls, where the world resets after every episode even if there was a zombie invasion. I don't see them having Stan forget his great nephew/niece as the ending of the show.

And it has a nice scene with the characters driving off in the bus... Heartbreaking. I love that Stan and Ford go adventuring together afterwards. And I love the theme song.

Remaining rankings below - I think these three should be celebrated most. It's gonna be a shorter summary from here.

Genuinely Good

These are endings that blow you away, but do have a couple nooks and crannies stopping them from reaching the top tier. Another person's list might put them at the top.

Adventure Time Distant Lands: See what's crazy about Distant Lands is that anyone one of these episodes might be the best in the series if it was a different show, but Adventure Time is such a good show that the way Distant Lands is different stands out to me. Like, Together Again, you might think I'm crazy for not putting it above Owl House, but while it's a fantastic episode, really emotional, it's not even my favourite Distand Lands episode. That would be Obsidian which I felt was a more honest resolution to the characters of the show itself, showing the limitless future ahead of the cast instead of what TA did which was demonstrate that Finn really didn't go much further after the end of the show. I felt TA was very limiting in that sense, it contradicted the ending to Adventure Time, which had the strength of "the adventure never ends". Which means that growth never ends. Finn is supposed to be an ever changing character, but in Together Again, he's stagnant.

Other than that, it's absolutely top tier. But not good enough for me to call it the best of the best. Even if I think Finn's character writing was a downgrade, or harmed the main show, I think where DL and TA did better than Come Along With Me is it was actually coherent and had strong themes rather than being a mishmash of random parts of Adventure Time that they wanted to shove in before it was over. It was a better tv finale, one of the best and most emotional ever made, but it's hard to call it a better Adventure Time finale, because AT's legacy hinders on so much more. 2. OK KO: Let's be Heroes: This is a show that went under the radar. It was coming out at the same time as Steven Universe, which was far more popular. So I'll explain it to you: OK KO has two endings. KO has grappled with his alternate persona, TKO, for the entire show. In the first ending, TKO takes over, and starts fighting everyone in a giant tournament. He literally kills all the cast, while KO is struggling to regain control. KO's epiphany is that TKO is a part of himself he buried long ago. KO has always tried to be the sweetest kid possible, so all his rage and fire, all his strength, was neglected and buried. That became TKO. It's similar to the ending of Celeste. They fuse together, but KO is crying because he killed all his friends. So he makes a wish to the God of the Universe to give everyone a happy ending. Then you get a really nice ending montage of all the characters from OK KO having the time of their life. One interesting touch was Venomous, KO's bastard father, had very little to do with KO in this timeline. KO clearly wanted nothing to do with him. But Venomous is shown raising his adoptive daughter Fink and doing a fantastic job. The final episode of OK KO has KO seemingly stuck in time acceleration. Time is flying by, his friends are achieving their goals, leaving the town, way before he can begin to process what he's even doing here. Everything is going faster and faster and it's like he's jumping forward! He doesn't know what's going on!!! But when he explains his plight, he's told... This is normal. This is a normal part of growing up. What seems like time acceleration is just time passing by. Then the rest of the episode show KO going through his life in the same manner. A big gag of the show is KO is age 6-11. That's his age. It's the same as the target audience for OKKO. But you see him grow up. His twelth to fifteenth birthday... 18th to 24th birthday... 25th to 35th birthday... At the end, he's in charge of the Bodega, a full adult looking after runts just like Mr Gar did. I dunno, I felt this was a very meaningful way to end the show. Even if it's not the most emotionally heavy hitting series, even if it's way too short, it did something that stays in my mind to this day. Time goes by in such a flash that you don't notice it was there to begin with, so appreciate the good things life throws at you.

3. The Legend of Korra: The show Korra wasn't particularly great, if I was rating the media as a whole it would probably be at the very bottom of this list. Yes below Star and Homestuck and Kipo. It's not remarkable in the slightest and constantly fumbles.

However I was at the edge of my seat during the series finale in Season 4. I was excited by the conflict between Korra and Kuvira. I loved the metalbending battles. I loved Korra's actualisation, how Kuvira is a very good rival, how their whole conflict plays out with Korra demonstrating such an INSURMOUNTABLE LEVEL OF STRENGTH both in power and character to save Kuvira from her own mistake.

I love how Korra decides to take a break and leave with Asami into the spirit world through the portal she just opened. It was a nice relationship in a show that has so heavily fumbled its prior character dynamics.

And you can't forget how it felt watching this the first time. Afterwards, Bryke made a post on tumblr saying "Korrasami is Canon". You have to remember, this was long before Bubbline was anything more than subtext in two episodes. This was before Steven Universe's "Stronger than You". This was the first time two girls were confirmed to be in a relationship in a kid's cartoon in America. I was so happy. You have to understand Korrasami did a lot of good things and made a lot of the queer representation in these other items possible.

Did the job

These are endings that were OK. They were satisfying but they weren't anything special. They weren't the best episodes or seasons of the series they're from.

Avatar: The last Airbender: I will be honest this show is in a similar realm to She-ra wherein its whole final season is one big buildup to a couple of fast-pased episodes. And honestly its final episode might be better than She-ra's in a pacing sense? But... The simple part is I don't like Avatar as much. I didn't feel particularly strongly about most of these characters. It's a very competent tv finale, with strong scenes - the Agni Kai, and Katara's capture of Azula, are particular strong points. But it's quite long and there are a lot of scenes I don't feel much about, like Aang vs Ozai. Back in the day lots of people were unhappy Aang spared Ozai, and I get that it's not in character for him to just kill him, but it was the original "deus ex machina" for Aang to find a way to get out of it and get what he wanted. It isn't particularly interesting. And then Aang x Katara... I don't care. So yeah ATLA does the job. It's a great final season but I don't care for the finale itself and the characters. while great for the time - by far the EARLIEST show to release on this list - are more childish and cartoony than most. They don't have depth required to compete with more modern cartoons. You've only got maybe two outstanding characters in a tight story vs She-ra's one dozen in a looser story, and honestly I value character more than cohesion because that's what you remember. That's what makes you feel things. Anyone can make a story where things happen but what makes you care? Being a bit harsh here because a lot of people call this the greatest show of all time blah de blah and throw away everything all the other shows do better. But the ATLA finale isn't even in the top ten most interesting episodes of the series. This part went hard though (couldn't find a video of it alone):

Azula starts the scene dominating Katara, and then Katara turns the tables and restrains her using the very ice which fire is supposed to melt, which is mentally destroying for Azula. All she can do is scream and breathe fire when she is restrained, unable to let out all her rage and pain. And Katara spares a moment to witness this, looking troubled, before she runs off to Zuko, attempting to save his life.

2. Adventure Time original ending: Why is my favourite show of all time listed so far down? Why? Well it's because while that AT finale is emotional, hits a lot of themes, it's... a fucking mess. The first part is a war which has only been relevant for two episodes, the second part is a dream sequence which destroy any tension you might've had, and the rest is an unrelated battle against GOLB because we needed a real final boss.

It's a really bad tv finale. And it even does harm to my favourite character in the show, Princess Bubblegum, by making her seem irrational. She's someone who has had the entire series for us to get to know her, to see her biggest flaws and see her struggle to overcome them. So for her to fall back on them yet again, nearly fuck everyone over, with such little buildup and justification and literally throw a child tantrum when Finn interrupts it, it's an injustice to her. She deserved better than everyone thinking she's a fascist forever. The AT crew should have respected their own work on that character better instead of leaving her off like that.

But... even despite these issues, despite being so incoherent? It's a great Adventure Time ending. It makes perfect sense. Of COURSE it's anticlimactic! Of COURSE there's a ten minute dream sequence of crazy shit happening! Of course it's so sudden, things happen so quickly without much time spent to reflect on them! It's Adventure Time! This is what we're HERE for! And the emotional heart of the episode, it isn't really in the Great Gum War or the battle against Golb. It's in Shermie and Beth, and Future Ooo. The fact that the world will end again, but even then.. it's fine. Everything changes. Everything grows. Nothing can stay as it is forever, but letting it go might allow something new and beautiful to take its place.

It's in Jake trying to protect his home, freaking out, and BMO coming in... instead of being looked after, BMO decides to reassure jake, even in certain doom.

It's in Time Adventure. We may not be able to go home, turn back time, relive the past and return to how things were, but... you and I will always be back then.

3. Scavenger's Reign: I felt this show started stronger than it ended. The ending wasn't offensive but it wasn't good either. Honestly I don't have shit to say about the ending, other than that Barry is an annoying stereotype of an autistic character with no agency of his own and it breaks my heart. I liked how relentlessly bad Kris was and I liked Azi struggling to save the day. I liked how her character evolved from being straightfoward and pushing down Levi's curious, kind traits, to embracing those very things in her memory.... while maintaining the strength in adversity needed to challenge someone like Kris. The baby alien thing sure was there. I dunno, the earlier eps with those two hit harder than the ending. The worst part is the sequel bait. We are not getting a sequel. Why is there sequel bait? Seems like the crew were a bit too optimistic for a team of cartoonists working for HBO Max.

But the show as a whole is incredible and has left a strong impression. So, an inoffensive ending is completely fine. I like how everyone is still stranded because of Kris, who meanwhile is dehydrating to death in space because of the organic Levi invasion, and all the people they left behind are chilling in the alien wonderland, learning how to live comfortably.

4. Fionna and Cake: We're now moving into the endings I dislike for one reason or another. I liked Fionna and Cake's themes with Simon and Betty, how it showed a bit more from Betty's side, how obsessive she was with him and he didn't even know.

This does have a weakness though. It removes agency from Betty. It was her choice, in the finale, to sacrifice herself to become GOLB. She was chasing Simon over and over and over again, SHE was the obsessive mad scientist, and she finally achieved her goal at great cost even though could've given up at any time. It was a tragedy. But here it kinda shifts the blame on Simon, even though he was a victim of Betty's obsession. I'm not accusing it of victim blaming, more that I really liked that it was Betty making her own terrible mistakes. It added a lot of character and conviction to her. I don't think Fionna and Cake undermines this much. Kim was a lot more bothered. Besides the Simon plot, the rest is.. ok. It was very predictable Fionna would want to protect the boring, happy world she came from. It fits and it has heart. But it's not remarkable. The ending montage is... weird. Why is Jay and Little Destiny here? Why is Baby Finn here? What about their worlds? Won't they be missed? Did Farmworld Finn fucking die? And the big problem with Fionna and Cake is.. it's such a meanspirited show, even compared with Adventure Time. It relies on you finding tragic shit really funny, like BMO having a horrible gory deeath in jerry. When Fionna and Cake has desensitized me this much, it's hard to feel emotionally invested in this world anymore. It made mistakes by showing too many alternate universes and undermining the world of Adventure Time itself, and I have issues with how Marceline was completely absent from the series - AGAIN - despite allegedly being so important to Simon. It's an outright BAD Adventure Time ending!!! I do love the presentation of Casper and Nova, how it was revealed it wasn't Simon Petrikov but the little Fionna and Cake fan who was able to write the story that finally got through to him and made him realise he needed to stop holding betty back.

"You were a good experience, Simon. Goodbye."

Mistakes were Made

These are the endings that fumbled, disappointed people. They still have value in them but theyre largely disliked by the fanbases involved. I'll explain a bit of why.

1, Arcane: This one just ended last night and is the reason I'm making this post.

I explained a bit here and here, but the issue is: Arcane's a much better show than it has any right to be. It's a league of legends cartoon. But season 1 is so heavy hitting, a tight ship from start to end focusing on the dramas of Vi, Jinx, and the people around them. The main weakness of season 1 was Jayce, Viktor, and Mel. It would distract from the main story in order to focus on them, but wouldn't spend enough time making them compelling characters. Season 2 has this issue tenfold where it seems the scope of the season was so big that it had very limited time to have those amazing scenes from season 1. And there certainly some heavy hitters, like Ekko save-scumming his conversation with Jinx to find a way to stop her killing herself, or Caitlyn and Mel's battle with Ambessa, or Jayce and Viktor yetting themselves into arcane oblivion, but... the finale itself seems very disconnected from the rest of the series, having a generic big bad in Possessed Chaos God Viktor. It lacks any of the intrigue of the Piltover vs Zaun conflict that was so important from s1e1 all the way to s2e4, after which it was promptly discarded in favour of other distractions. And as a result, Jinx and Vi are left as side characters in the ending of their own series, with a lot of their internal struggles left behind. Instead of the tragedy of season 1's ending, we are left thinking of the tragedy of how much better the ending could've been if they had just one more season to give these characters justice.

The strongest episode of the season is probably episode 6. If you know, you know.

2. Ducktales: So if you were a casual viewer of Ducktales you probably had no issues with this one. It's a competent TV finale where stuff happens and all the characters get involved and there are emotional themes.

What's weird about this one, and why it's so far down, is because of Webby's role. Webby is a misfit because she's not a member of the Scrooge family. She's a wannabe. She wants to be part of them, part of the siblings, and she has more in common with Scrooge and Della's brilliance than the other three, but she will never have that blood relationship. Her own parents are dead too, so she has feelings about watching the triplets reunite with their mother.

But in season 3... Ot's like the Ducktales writers were told they only had one episode left to work with and just made something up, and what they decided to do was take the "found family" trope and say "actually it was real family the whole time because Webby was Scrooge's secret clone daughter".

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The show did such a good job before this point showing Webby's development as she gets loved and accepted into the family. But for her to have always secretly had that blood relationship undercuts it fully.

It also undercuts her relationship to her grandmother, who tries to move out of the picture as soon as the truth comes out. The show does have Webby embracing her gran to show theyre still family. But we already had this story told in a better way with Webby and Scrooge and the triplets.

The fact the finale has nothing to do with the rest of the season is also why it's so far down. The season 2 finale was pretty spectacular by comparison and had compelling scenes like Della freaking out over protecting her kids and "running to the moon" with them, recycling her trauma (yes a ducktales character has trauma).

If you're not bothered by it, it's an inoffensive, fun finale. But more obsessive Ducktales fans and Webby fans were quite upset, myself included.

3. Kipo and the age of Wonderbeasts

I can't remember much about how this show ended. Honestly that's part of the problem. The first season was far more intrigueing than anything that followed and the whole thing came out across 2020 and it was a forgettable experience despite Karen Fukuhara voicing the energetic Kipo.

What I do remember is being pissed off about some things. Like how a lot of the talking animals were turned into non-talking animals and that was how things ended for them, and no vaccine or anything was made. It pissed me off somehow? Please kipo fans tell me your feelings on this.

I also disliked the final villain. She's a lot like Kris from Scavenger's Reign but even more generic and disappointing.

I dunno, to me the finale represents the wasted potential of this show. How it takes place in a world that rivals Adventure Time's, but Netflix did away with it so quickly, releasing three entire seasons in one year and leaving it with a generic end.

The peak into everyone's futures is nice, but it's not intrigueing like with The Owl House or Adventure Time.

4. Steven Universe: What a hot mess of an ending that threw out so much potential for the wider Steven Universe world. The motivations of the main villains were narrowed down to "we have emotional problems". Steven Universe has a consistent issue where it has emotional scenes at the expense of characters and story.

But I rate this more highly than the SU Future ending, despite that one having perhaps more cohesive writing, because I felt that the SU end had some incredible scenes that carried the spirit of the show while SU Future constantly undermined the original series without providing enough value of its own.

In particular, the scene James Baxter animated of Steven and Steven. This was mind-blowing, it was the climax to the most important part of the story, the truth of Steven's identity and whether he was his own person.

In retrospect that scene brings more value to me than all the bad parts of SU... but SU had so many amazing characters. It's a tragedy that Steven was the only one of them that the show still loved by the end.

Hardest line:

She's GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!!!!

5. Amphibia: Season 3 was plagued by being worse than season 2. The opening episodes on Earth were kinda bad, just "Amphibia season 1 episodes but in a far more boring setting". I hated anything involving the secret agents.

The fact Kipo, Scavenger's Reign, and Amphibia all have corpo villains at the end, and the fact I didn't like any of those endings, shows to me that it's not a particularly great thing to add to a fantasy story.

The first sad part is "the magic is destroyed". A popular theme in Disney shows. Well, what happens here is Sasha, Anne, and Marcy lose their magic abilities, and they decide to stay on Earth and lose the ability to travel to Amphibia. It's not massively offensive but it's kind of played out and generic and it does the sad thing of separating the trio from their found family. What's controversial is the epilogue shows that Anne, Sasha, and Marcy stopped hanging out after the end. They just broke off from each other's lives, it was easy as that. It wasn't a lifelong friendship. They do reunite in the end but it's been like ten years. It undermines the emotional turmoil that was present across the whole show. What Matt Braly wanted to show is sometimes things happen. Despite how much you want to be best friends forever... you stop being close to people, you lose touch with them. But this isn't a story that makes much sense when the characters have been through so much together in a fantasy world. It's like Marcy's worst fears have come true, and while that's a point of growth for her, it's frustrating for the viewers who believed the endgame bonds between the characters were better than that.

[Edit: Other than that, a lot of characters weren't delivered in justice s3 with how they had been built up in season 2. Sasha is hardly present in season 3 and Marcy is genuinely not present at all, and when we watched it we really thought they were gonna do more with Marcy when she came back. Swim in that emotional trauma a little bit! But no she's fine even with her evil father figure gone. It could've been better, should've been because season 2 was so stellar.] And I wasn't a fan of how Anne was portrayed at the end. I don't like how these stories make their characters "grow up" in such a way that they come across as love-all hippies instead of having anything resembling their original personality. Where's her sass? Why is she so melancholic and only melancholic? But that's a personal problem I haven't seen many others talk about.

Other than that, it's a competent episode. But it's the ending to a weaker season compared to what came prior.

The cat in this drawing has been my discord icon since we watched it though.

What the Hell?

These are the endings that shat the bed. I hate them! Everyone else probably does too.

Steven Universe Future: Unlike the other endings of this section, I did feel like Rebecca Sugar was going somewhere with SU future. They had a specific goal in mind for what they wanted to do, and every episode reaches towards that goal in some way. That's why a lot of people think Steven Universe Future is better than the more disjointed, huge tv series that came prior. It had a set start middle and end and carried through those themes. Unfortunately, those themes suck. Yeah, it's great deconstructing the impact Steven Universe had on Steven as a character, showing the damage that was done to him, the ways he's been let down. In isolation, it's a great way to show how a difficult childhood can affect you in adulthood, in ways that you would have never expected. This is the value SU Future has. It also has good sections showing how some other characters have recovered, how Pearl for example is healing and far more social than she ever has been but still has a ways to go, and finally talks to someone about her feelings over Pink Diamond, the previous Pearl that served her. Volleyball is a great episode. Unfortunately it takes the wrong lessons from the mistakes of the show. Steven Universe really wanted us to fall in love with its many characters, but it spent so much time showing Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl's flaws, spent so much time showing them failing Steven, that they ultimately came across as incompetent and sidelined. This is an issue with the original show. Steven Universe Future: "You know what? You're right! That was bad!" Me: "So are you going to do those characters justice and show them having growth and being competent and caring for Steven?" Steven Universe Future: "No. We are going to show them BEING EVEN WORSE and COMPLETELY FAILING to connect with Steven!" Me: "... For the entire thing????" Steven Universe Future: "Yes. this is never fixed and Steven leaves the county because of it." Me: "What the fuck?" Even people who were really into the whole thing were taken aback that Steven's kaiju transformation, the manifestation of his deepest fears about himself, was resolved with a hug. Just like the major conflict in the original show. And instead of a meaningful denouement, the show skipped all the resolution and went to Steven running the fuck away in an episode that would've had equal emotional value if it was in season 1 episode 1, or a competely different series. It was cheap and easy to make a bittersweet ending of Steven leaving the city. And it made it feel like the tragedy of Steven's mental breakdown was more important than his healing. Like they couldn't make an interesting story of him getting better because they're incompetent writers. I did like the scene of Steven crying his eyes out after he detransformed. And a lot of scenes in Future did go hard. But the Crystal Gems deserved better. Hell, Jasper deserved better.

Hardest scene:

2. Star vs the forces of Evil: Hooo boy. In the animation community this is HERALDED as The Worst Ending. It is the flagship of disappointment.

It disappointed people who loved the magical world the show took place in. It disappointed people who wanted to see Star reach her potential. It disappointed every shipper of every ship, not that I ever cared for the romance dramas but they took a lot of screentime on the show to its detriment. It disappointed people who like to apply basic logic to the things they watch. What a disaster!

Okay so why is it so hated?

Well, Star had been on the decline for a while. It had a fantastic start to season 3, with a great big war for Mewnie where everyone had great character moments, Star died and came back to life and utterly annihilated the villain. Toffee was a great villain, by the way.

There had been a bit of romantic tension between Star and Marco and they both had crushes on each other but refused to ever admit it and Marco thought he was into some other girl, and Star let him go at the start of season 3 and started dating... her ex... this shitty guy called Tom... he's a good character but a terrible boyfriend who kind of suicide baits Star back into his life. And Star would become a terrible girlfriend. I dunno, people really thought that pairing would be endgame but it was clear to me it was just an artificial obstacle in the way of the inevitable Starco ship. Like Kelly. Who Marco dates for a whopping half an episode before they break up offscreen. Great?

Anyway the romance in this series is on the same tier as Korra, though it does try to build up its endgame pairing from the start.

But from season 3 onwards Marco felt more like a joke character. I don't know, they didn't treat him with much respect.

The thing that EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT with Star, oh god it's going to be the longest thing on this list, is Moon and Eclipsa and Mina and the atrocious decisions the characters made.

I'm going to bullet point it so it's vaguely readable:

Star's mother, Queen Moon, goes missing following the events of the start of s3 special.

Star learns that the throne was stolen from monster-fucker Eclipsa and wrongly given to her own family line so she gives the crown to Eclipsa, to great controversy. Eclipsa is a dark magic user who is 300 years old and she's pretty cool but the show takes a sharp turn from this point to being about a racial conflict - Monsters being discriminated against by Mewmans and how a lot of people want to keep it that way.

The council which was previously on the side of good really HATES this decisionn and is now portrayed as bad.

Conflict breaks out and people are against Eclipsa and her giant person-eating husband leading the kingdom.

People have their homes given back to the monsters that they were stolen from hundreds of years ago. It's a silly cartoon form of reparations but it is shown giving them hardship because they are made homeless. By the way nobody in history has been made homeless because of reparations.

These homeless or disgruntled mewmans find Moon, who has re-emerged and decided to stay away from the kingdom. They want their old queen back and side with her, and she thinks they need someone to represent them. She also hates Eclipsa for various reasons.

Moon decides the best way to deal with Eclipsa is to arm the biggest fascist monster-killing character in the world with an invincible undefeatable army of magic soldiers, and retake the kingdom and go to war against the side her own daughter is on.

Moon gets a surprised pikachu face when she realises she can't undo the spell she used to make this fascist evil super army.

Star decides the best way to resolve this is to delete all magic. Kill it. They go to the source of all magic and use a spell to kill everything there. Lots of reindeer die.

Then every magical thing in the universe gets deleted. Every single magic-born creature. The entire council is murdered. All of the creatures in Star's magic wand die. Countless portals to other worlds are closed down, meaning many of the characters can no longer go and see their friends anymore. This is directly shown, by the way - not just inferred.

Somehow, Ponyhead survives.

Then this is capped off by Marco and Star wanting to reunite... and in a scene that is supposed to be emotional, they cleave their universes together. Mewnie lands on top of Earth. Normal humans are screaming as they are chased around by giant creatures.

The story ends.

Yeah do I have to explain any more why this one was unpopular? It's the biggest fumble you can speak of.

My biggest issue is how dumb they had to make Moon in order to achieve this outcome.

But Starco is kind of cute, even if Marco wasn't half the character he used to be by the end.

3. Homestuck: Which ending do you want me to discuss? Act 6? The epilogues? Or HS^2?

Let's start with the main work, as that's what makes Homestuck qualify as an animation.

Act 6 was a vast disappointment because it sort of ended. We had so much talking for so long that we were hoping something cool would happen and then we got a flash where the characters hit each other with sticks. There were no stakes in Collide, not really.

Then we got the Frog flash. We watched a frog for 8 minutes.

Then that was it!

There were so many unanswered questions. What the hell happened to the final boss and the MAIN CAST, for example. We had learnt earlier in the story that in some point of the future, the main cast all get stuck in a little homestuck house which Vriska fires at Lord English. But we never learn when, we never learn if they're ok, we never learn if English is killed or what happens to Vriska. So for a long time there was this disturbing implication that the cast would all die not long after the series ended.

We had the Credits which were much better but further solidified this implication, and it had Terezi fly out into the void looking for Vriska forever, which made me sad and depressed but that was because of my personal involvement in the story really.

Act 6 is more of a "mistakes were made" ending, but it's the Epilogues and HS^2, and the actions of creator Andrew Hussie, which are why it's rock bottom here.

I don't want to give my breath to those items. Let's just say they were the most meanspirited, intentionally offensive, hostile, character-destroying sets of stories every done, created by people who accused every homestuck fan who didn't like them of being "not really trans" or "pedophile harborors" or "deserving to be lined up and shot" (real quote).

And then the fact Hussie fired his entire crew twice and blacklisted them if he ever had any suspicion they complained about his leadership or financial decisions anywhere.

And the fact the entire whatpumpkin team were left uncredited in the original release of Hiveswap Act 2 because Hussie didn't want to give them any credit because he wants his friends to be a hivemind.

I have so much hatred for what Homestuck became. It's tragic because this series was such a big part of my life for so long.

It's also tragic because the main work is a masterpiece. Even Act 7, despite the criticism, is Guzusuru's masterwork with how much effort went into the animation. How much heart went into each illustration the old Paradox Space team made.

So that's it. Homestuck is the one that is not just a little bit worse than Star. Leaps and bounds worse.

But that's it. I have a lot of opinions on endings because they can colour how you view the entire previous work.

[kittyit]

This is a long and loaded ask so feel free to delete but it's completely earnest

I've been a radfem for about 3-4 years now (radfemhagen but I got termed) and honestly I still struggle w genuine dysphoria. All the reading, critical thinking, talking w detrans women is definitely eye opening and helped me but it hasn't healed me of my ~gender feels~ if you know what I mean. I remember trying to get tips from other blogs but all I remember was something about doing physical labor with other women or just being around other women but that isn't helping either, I'm so disgusted by my female body and how I'm seen (especially by men and especially as a lesbian) and it's just getting worse. I've been thinking about going on a low dose of T even but I know there's other options to coping, like there HAS to be SOMETHING. I can't just will it out anymore.

Help a gyn out

this and it's probably better saved for an essay but i felt moved to respond to you straight up. i'm going to explain three really important parts of my journey to a place where i almost never experience the intense and life-disrupting distress around my sex (diagnosed as dysphoria) except in times of extreme stress, and even then it's fleeting.

one essential thing i did was stop thinking of transition as an option for myself. this is something i see a lot of detrans/desisted women struggle with. i think this is a mental trap. "if i don't feel better in x amount of time or when i do x, i'll transition" removes the urgency and necessary nature of working through the distress around your sex. i've written in a few pieces about when my girlfriend max asked me to not do it 3 days before my first t shot, it genuinely felt like the last light in a dark harbor going out. i felt utterly hopeless. i felt like my last solution had been taken from me and i would never feel better.

i came to my decision to never pursue transitional medicine first through listening from my girlfriend and other detrans women. to take seriously the pain & trauma detrans women go through. to listen when they said this did not help me, this was not help, it did not fix these feelings of distress. to listen to detrans women is to understand that transitional medicine is an unethical practice being done by unethical practitioners. it's also to understand that this solution is not what it's presented as. taking these women's experiences and analysis seriously meant ruling it out as a coping mechanism for myself, ever. but there are so many reasons to make the decision not to participate in transition medicine - political & practical. not giving money to surgeons who traffic in literal female flesh. not wanting to risk all of the under-studied, ignored negative long-term health effects. not wanting to signal to the women around you that there is no way to survive as a woman like you without transitional medicine. defiance of new patriarchal expectations for women like you. defiance of the pressures that tell you that this is the thing that will make you feel better - like makeup, like labiaplasty, like breast implants, like an elective double mastectomy. defiance in general.

so the first thing was to stop thinking of transitioning as an option. i said no. the second thing was to stop thinking of my distress as dysphoria. to un-diagnose myself with this word that means i need to take T and get a mastectomy and undergo phalloplasty to have a chance of ever being happy. you mention disgust for your body, you mention disgust for how you're seen by men and as a lesbian. disgust for yourself on these points is anger at patriarchy, lesbian-hating society & men turned inward on yourself instead of the people who deserve it. it's an impulse of someone dealing with oppression to blame one's self for it and think there are things we can do to escape it. it's no different than a woman trapped in domestic violence obsessing over what she could have done differently to not set him off this time - the right dinner, place setting, clothing & tone. the idea that woman- and lesbian-hating can be escaped as easily as transitional medicine claims it can is simply not true. the experiece of a woman who passes as a man is another exerperience of womanhood, still under the bell jar of misogyny.

what helped me with these feelings of distress was pinpointing exactly where they came from and what they meant. i know this isn't helpful for everyone. but it's almost like going deeper and deeper on the feeling make it more and more clear what needed to be addressed. here's one spiral to the center: i want to chop off my tits → why? → i hate my breasts → why? → they feel ugly and disgusting → why? → i got them so young, they're so large and people stare → why does that bother you? → i feel so ugly and out of place → why does that bother you? → i feel so alone and worthless → how do you feel? → i feel lonely → what do you need? → i need connection.

"i want to chop off my tits" is not a coherent feeling - every human alive has complex reasons for the things they say, think and do. if you can get to the bottom of where these sensations and feelings and disturbances diangosed as dysphoria are coming from, you can figure out how to address them. what is the feeling at the bottom, what is going unaddressed? and quite honestly a lot of the time it's not an easy answer. sometimes the answers are super hard to grapple with. sometimes the need cannot be fulfilled or are very difficult to fulfill. but once you've decided that transition is not on the table, the quest to find those answers becomes a lot more essential.

this isn't something anyone is really meant to do alone. when i hear you say you hate being seen as a lesbian and how men treat you, i hear an inherent isolation in that. i could be wrong, i know a lot of people can still feel lonely when they have a strong support system, but i would say the majority of women do not have the kind of friend group and number of connections they need to be socially supported. so another big part of this is breaking out of isolation and being around other women who "get it" - whether virutally or in real life. humans are a pack animal and this is an isolating age.

so that's my three parter to your question

1. say no to transitional medicine

2. undiagnose yourself with dysphoria and instead figure out why you're feeling what you're feeling

3. seek out friendship, community, and ways of thought that can help you address those feelings

[wovenstarlight]

I got an interesting anonymous ask on the SFS Tumblr asking about the reasoning behind a bunch of Yoohyun's decisions that had… less-than-stellar outcomes, let's say? (LMAO.) and I'd like to keep the TL blog clean so I'm answering Anon here. I'm gonna post their ask in full for reference, because the answers to each individual question overlap:

Hi, thank you very much for your time, energy and effort. What you are doing is really amazing and admirable. I know you are busy enough and I shouldn't trouble you, but after reading the manhwa, I had questions about Yoohyun's logic and sentiment, and I became more confused after reading the novel and I don't know who to ask. Please ignore my message if it's to much trouble. 1: Why doesn't Yoohyun spend the last years of his life on earth peacefully with Yoojin, even though he knows that the world will end soon? 2: What did Yoohyun accomplish by leaving and humiliating Yoojin that he was persistent to do it for so many years? 3: Why instead of using his forces and technologies to protect Yoojin, he announces to the world that it is open season on him and he is worthless? (Normaly no one dares to harm the family of an S class but Yoohyun expose Yoojin to danger by abandoning him.) 4: Why does Yoohyun stop protecting Yoojin when the most dangerous part of Yoojin's life as an F class hunter begins? (Using his influence he could easily ban Yoojin from entering dungeons. Or he could have secretly formed a group of the most powerful hunters to go with Yoojin to dungeons. This way he could have provided him with everything he needed and keep him safe. That is, if he had any intention of protecting him.) 5: Why would Yoohyun gain all that resources, power, wealth and connections and he sit around and does nothing so that Yoojin would face death every day and rot in the basement? He gain all that for what, if not for protecting Yoojin? 6: Why doesn't he ever change his procedure or provide new options for Yoojin to stop going to dungeons? (Yoojin has no chance for a peaceful life due to not having a degree and being a notorious person. And he doesn't know about that cult.) Yoojin got to see his 30 years old birthday cause the cult didn't feel like killing him and he took care of himself in dungeons and was lucky that only his legs broke. So why would Yoohyun identify as a doting brother? The more I think about it the less I understand.

(crossposted on AO3, if you'd prefer to read there)

Okay, so, I'm really prone to rambling at length and this is a subject I have strong feelings on, so I'll give you a very short version of my answer in bullet points, and then a longer version with proper chapter-specific references and full explanations of what I think was going on.

Yoohyun wants to repay Yoojin for all the care and love he's given him, but as a 17-year-old, he doesn't have much social power

Yoohyun's Awakening puts himself and anyone he loves (i.e. Yoojin) in a dangerous position, because while he has individual physical power as an S-rank, he still lacks social power and also can't singlehandedly protect Yoojin 24/7

Yoohyun, in all his rash 17-year-old glory, takes the drastic action of cutting off Yoojin, planning to build up enough power to protect Yoojin and then reunite with him. Yoojin, as just your ordinary everyday 22-year-old, faces no risks other than people targeting him in order to hurt Yoohyun (I don't agree that no one would dare to harm the family of an S-rank, for reasons I'll elaborate on later in the long answer), so if Yoohyun's not close to Yoojin, then that cuts it down to "no risks at all", right…? So tell the media, tell the world, that no, Han Yoohyun doesn't give a shit about Han Yoojin. Yoohyun assumes he'll be able to explain it all to Yoojin one day and that he'll understand. (This should answer your Question 2 and Q3.)

But it doesn't work out as expected. Yoohyun thought it'd take much less time to establish his position than it does in reality (the assumed 4-ish years ended up as 6+ years). Also, Yoojin's gone from trying to make up with Yoohyun in a way that'll let them be together again (not going to happen, because Yoohyun's still not ready to bring Yoojin back into the fold) to being in his own terrible situation, so he's started lashing out at Yoohyun. So even if Yoohyun was in a stable enough situation to try reconciling with him, Yoojin might not be open to it by this point

Somewhere along the way, Yoohyun learns from the filial duty addict Diarma the world is going to end. He doesn't drop everything and go to live with Yoojin because even now, there's still the concern that maybe Yoohyun won't be able to protect Yoojin from everything, and maybe Yoojin doesn't want Yoohyun around, anyway. There's no use in going to live with Yoojin if it'll just end up getting Yoojin killed through Yoohyun's inaction (Q1).

So Yoohyun keeps maintaining his guild and his power so he can keep protecting Yoojin from what he thinks are the Real Threats. (Because the worlds of low- and high-rank Hunters are VERY different. Yoohyun probably assumes that because Yoojin's not facing the high-rank Hunter dangers, he's facing no dangers—a stupid but understandable mistake, given that Yoojin also assumed the exact same thing in reverse about Yoohyun! It sucks, it really does, but I really do think Yoohyun just… didn't realize just how bad it was.) (Q5) And the world can end whenever it wants; if there's no challenging it, then at least Yoohyun's kept Yoojin safe in the meantime.

And the one danger they have in common, dungeons—you suggest Yoohyun banning Yoojin from entering any, but Yoohyun's cut himself off from Yoojin entirely, remember. Trying to interfere in his life would be met with (a) STRONG rejection by a deeply hurt Yoojin who doesn't understand why Yoohyun thinks he has any say in Yoojin's life anymore, and (b) interest by Yoohyun's rivals, who'd wonder why he's trying to keep his hyung away from dangers when he says he doesn't care about that hyung's wellbeing, putting Yoojin right back in their crosshairs. (Q4)

Also, the immoral people have been killing Caregivers of S-ranks. Diarma might have told Yoohyun about this. If he did, then Yoohyun's goals would definitely have gone from "stay strong and one day reconcile with hyung" to "NEVER get close to hyung, because there are beings outside this world, much more powerful than anything I can match in a reasonable timespan, who will 100% kill him". At which point, even if Yoohyun had wanted to reconcile with him, or compromise by just adjusting his plan and talking to Yoojin a little more, or literally anything past making a show of total and complete indifference, he couldn't have without knowingly risking Yoojin's life. (Q6)

You and I and all the other S-Ranks readers, removed from this situation as we are, can think of half a dozen ways Yoohyun could probably have gotten around things. But the simple fact is that in that situation, under that much pressure, with that much emotional attachment to his brother and literally everything that mattered to him at stake if he fucked up in the tiniest of ways—forget making perfect decisions, there was absolutely no way Yoohyun was going to do anything other than what seemed least risky. Because to do otherwise would be risking Yoojin’s life and therefore his own. And the choices you’ve already mades, the path you’re already on—no matter how bad it is for you, no matter how bad it is for the people you love, no matter how much it hurts—will always, always be less risky than the unknown path, because at least this way, you know what dangers to expect and brace for. At the core of the matter, it’s just that… the path that was best for Yoojin's happiness wasn't the path that was best for Yoojin's life expectancy, you see? And Yoojin can't be happy if he's dead. Yoohyun can't be alive if Yoojin's dead. That's all it came down to.

……oh my god that was so long actually. And that was supposed to be the TL;DR. The long version is going to be SO long. I hope you like reading 50-page passionate essays. There's a poll at the end, you can look forward to that!!!

(Also, okay, before we jump into the Deep End. Two disclaimers.

Anon, you said you read the manhwa and novel, but I read only the novel, so some of my chapter references might be unfamiliar. I know they shuffled events around a little in the webtoon, too, so I'll try and describe the general events so you can find any webtoon parallels.

Yoojin's a REALLY unreliable narrator and definitely doesn't know a lot of what Yoohyun's gone through. Part of that is because there's things he has no way to pick up on or deduce; part of that is because he wants to not think about Yoohyun going through bad shit; part of that is because Yoohyun doesn't want Yoojin worrying about him and has actively hidden the worse parts of his life from him. So a fair part of what I'm talking about is going to be reading between the lines and extrapolating.

Okay, disclaimers done!) Now on to the long version with references. Let's go point-by-point based on the TL;DR.

#1: Yoohyun wanting to repay Yoojin

I mean, the skill's called Last/Final Repayment! Isn't that enough? Where did you think that came from? There certainly wasn't anything Yoojin wanted to repay Yoohyun for.

Okay, no, more seriously. Yoohyun and Yoojin have grown up with only each other to depend on. Yoohyun has watched Yoojin take care of him alone their whole lives, with no outside support, keeping a roof over their head and their stomachs filled. For Yoohyun's sake, Yoojin has given up:

A complete education, with Yoojin having "dropped out of school to take care of his little brother", as mentioned in chapter 1.

A proper social life. In chapter 25, Yoojin says his friends in his early 20s were "middle-aged factory workers" instead of people his own age.

Hobbies. He says to Yerim and Myeongwoo in chapter 45 that one of his "few hobbies" is taking spam calls, but his character profile from the E-books volume 1 confirms it's his only hobby, and one that's now fading… which leaves him with zero personal interests. (The spam calling thing is almost certainly something that sprouted from loneliness in the years that the brothers were separated, by the way. After all, why would Yoojin waste time listening to some stranger on the phone talk to him about something he doesn’t care about? Most likely because there isn’t—wasn’t—really anyone else who’s willing to talk to him, anymore.)

The sole birthday present of "a 10,000 won bill to buy something tasty to have with his friends" he got from their parents, which "would be used for Han Yoohyun’s birthday. As [it was] every year", as mentioned in chapter 239, during Yoohyun’s flashback to childhood.

And Yoohyun, a helpless child, could only watch as Yoojin gave up all of that, to no real benefit of his own, just to focus all his attention and resources on supporting Yoohyun.

By the time he was in middle school, Yoohyun was already talking about becoming a doctor since it'd be "advantageous in a lot of aspects"; he says he "just wanted to make it so you [Yoojin] could live comfortably" (chapter 258). Yoojin wouldn't have to be the sole earner, and would've been able to pursue his own happiness as well as Yoohyun's. Yoohyun wants very badly for Yoojin to not have to worry about him anymore. It makes sense that that sentiment would remain even after he Awakened.

#2: Yoohyun's Awakening

And boy what an Awakening it was! Straight from a random orphaned kid with zero social life and decent grades to one of the world's most desirable and dangerous individuals, basically overnight. He has none of the social sway that the rich and well-connected Sung Hyunjae or the professional athletes Moon Hyuna and Choi Sukwon do, and he refuses to get the help of big corporations like Choi Sukwon and Bak Mingyu (and Yoon Kyeongsoo? I forget if Soodam was also a corp-backed guild). So he's got no power, but he's also declared his intent to create a guild, and that combined with his nature as a born S-rank makes people perceive him as a threat. Maybe not so much in the early days, when people think he's just an arrogant, stupid kid who's going to crash and burn, but definitely more so as time passed, which Sung Hyunjae confirms in chapter 152:

“Wasn’t [Han Yoohyun] at the age where one faces a lot of problems, starting out living alone?” […] “He wasn’t even alone, strictly speaking. I heard Team Head Seok and the others joined Haeyeon early on.” I heard that Seok Simyeong had visited Yoohyun-ie even before Haeyeon was founded. He was still annoying, but I had to give him his share of the credit for Haeyeon. Sung Hyunjae gave a small nod at my words. “Even so, it isn’t easy for a latecomer to find his place.” “That’s… You’re right.” “For the first year or so, it was easier. Since most of them said Haeyeon wouldn’t be able to properly establish itself.” Sung Hyunjae also said he hadn’t been interested in Haeyeon—in Yoohyun-ie—at the time, either. “The problem arose when it started to become a major guild.”

The second the initial "LOL, this has got to be a joke, right?" blinders come off, he's at risk. And he would've known that this would happen right from the start—Yoohyun's smart enough that he would've understood the lack of attacks was just because they didn't see him as a real threat yet.

So, again: a latecomer on the scene with no power and no experience to his name, and seen as a threat to deal with. No social connections means he has no one to rely on to help him with Yoojin's protection: it's up to him alone. And even S-ranks have to eat and sleep and use the bathroom and do half a dozen other things that would pull him away from Yoojin's side, not to mention the all-important requirement of raiding dungeons, which Yoohyun himself admits in chapter 71 was one of his main concerns:

“Once I start a raid on an S-rank dungeon, I’ll be gone for a week […]. Me… avoiding you… was also largely due to the S-rank dungeon raid time. Since, obviously, I can’t look after you once I go into the dungeon.”

So Yoohyun himself can't just stay by Yoojin's side as his bodyguard 24/7. He'd have to leave him unattended for, at minimum, whole weeks. Which means he doesn't have a reliable, sure way to keep his hyung safe.

#3: Cutting off Yoojin, and the risks to an S-rank's family

And that's not even mentioning his own safety. What happens when Yoohyun's hurt and can't help with guarding Yoojin? And he will be hurt, either by dungeon raids or other people. If you don't think that second one is a concern, as early as chapter 6, when Yoojin and Yoohyun are having their first meal together, Yoojin asks about Yoohyun's ability to cook, and he says he taught himself:

“I’ve got items for detoxification and de-cursing, now, but I didn’t have them before. So making my own food felt safer. Even now, when I enter dungeons, I bring dried rations I made myself. Since it’s most dangerous inside dungeons.” “…Detoxification? De-cursing?” What was I hearing right now? As in, there were bastards who’d poison and curse his food, so he had to make it himself… that sort of thing?

Yoohyun himself, a strong, healthy S-rank with a good constitution and one hell of a temper, was at risk of being poisoned and cursed through something as everyday as food. You said that normally, no one would dare attack the family of an S-rank—but if people are willing to attack the S-rank himself, knowing that he'll kill them for sure if it fails and he learns they're behind it, then what's stopping them from attacking the S-rank's family?

There's two points you could argue:

Yoohyun says in the chapter 6 conversation that "It’s a major crime for an Awakened person to target an Unawakened person, so I made them think it wasn’t worth it to risk going after you." But that'd only last for the 3 years up until Yoojin Awakened, and honestly, there's a real risk that anyone targeting Yoojin before that time would just be rich or socially connected enough that they could make the charges go away.

The other argument that if they attack an S-rank's beloved family and that fails, now the S-rank is coming after them with a vengeance, and he's not even suffering from the aftermath of poisoning or a curse to weaken him in the slightest, so that might scare them off. But, like… people do stupid things when they're desperate. In that kidnapping where Yoojin met the Krecke Blackie (chapters 46–49), sure, Yoojin had his own special skills that made him valuable, but he also had five major guilds and the Association all dedicated to his protection. That's several times the protection a single S-rank could offer, and some idiots who weren't even in a desperate situation still tried to go after him for benefits similar to what you'd get from having leverage over an S-rank. So I really don't think anything would stop people from threatening Yoojin. If anything, the combined facts of Yoohyun starting out from a weak position, Yoohyun obviously caring about Yoojin, and Yoojin being so much weaker than Yoohyun would make that the best option by far, if you wanted to hurt Yoohyun. After all, it’s not like Unawakened F-rank Yoojin can fight back himself, and again, Yoohyun isn’t going to fight you if it would risk Yoojin’s life.

So, Yoohyun goes "if I distance myself from hyung and make people think it WON'T hurt me for him to be hurt, then people have no reason to target him!" and follows through. I do think this was a stupid move on his part, even if he intended to explain it all to Yoojin eventually, because by not letting him in on the secret right from the start, he guaranteed that Yoojin would be hurt and upset by his sole remaining family member seemingly abandoning him for better prospects. Which leads Yoojin to start making his own stupid moves, which snowballs into a series of bad decisions on both their parts, and so on… but we'll get to that in a minute. The problem, I think, is that this plan could've worked, if only Yoohyun had told Yoojin at the start, so that Yoojin knew not to draw attention to himself. Maybe they could've done regular calls on burner phones or something, to stay in touch, and they'd have been happier that way.

Unfortunately that didn't happen. Why? Because, as Yoohyun states in that same conversation in chapter 6, he "didn’t want to burden" Yoojin. Yoohyun's desire to protect Yoojin is not just physical, but also mental/emotional—he doesn't want Yoojin to know that Yoohyun's going through all this trouble of leaving home and dealing with threats to his life and making big decisions, because he doesn't want Yoojin to worry.

[EDIT: And actually, thinking back over this, do you realize—Yoojin always talks about how Yoohyun was a delight of a child to raise, never complaining, never throwing tantrums, wonderfully behaved and always doing as he was told. Enough so that Moon Hyuna has to tell him, explicitly, in Chapter 43, that that’s not normal, in those exact words:

“He was a good younger brother who never needed to be scolded. Ever since he was little, he listened well and didn’t worry me…….” “You said you were the one to raise him, right? After you lost your parents early. That’s not normal.” She clicked her tongue and continued. “A good, obedient little brother from a poor family without parents. That sort of thing doesn’t even appear in children’s fairy tales these days. Because it’s not realistic.” “I mean, to go that far—” “Kids are kids. They get frustrated and angry if there’s something lacking, they make trouble to get attention, they compare themselves with others, and beyond begging their parents to buy them something they want, they might even resent them. Parents might still think their kids are cute, but brothers? To them, they’re just enemy bastards; I also have a younger sibling, so I know. Of course, there are brothers and sisters who get along. In peaceful households where their parents take good care of them. Even then, it’s not like they never fight. Younger brothers in particular are a type that need to be put in their place; older siblings the world across would probably agree.”

This suggests that Yoohyun and Yoojin have never, ever, EVER experienced conflict on major life decisions. Not once have they argued about Yoohyun making choices that Yoojin wouldn’t like. Which means Yoohyun approached cutting off Yoojin with a very particular mindset, and I have some guesses as to what exactly that mindset was. Do you think he hoped Yoojin would understand that his perennially well-behaved brother would have some reason for leaving home? Do you think he just… didn’t know how to approach telling Yoojin about his choice, knowing it’d upset him so much, so he simply didn’t and hoped for the best? Or was it something else entirely?

Either way: Yoohyun absolutely did not know what would come of this choice. He definitely did not expect just how hard it would be on Yoojin. At the time, he was probably just wanting to spare Yoojin the heartache of their first major argument about Yoohyun’s life choices.] And it's that very desire to not bother him with the knowledge of how much Yoohyun's suffering that eventually makes things go wrong and both of them suffer for it.

#4: Yoohyun's strategy failing

What do we know about Yoohyun's plan going wrong? We know that Yoohyun intended to wipe out his enemies before even thinking about allowing Yoojin into danger. In that conversation in chapter 6, he tells Yoojin to wait "just 1 year" and to basically live in confinement, locked up safe inside Haeyeon, until Yoohyun's done. Combined with the 3 years since the dungeons appearing and Yoohyun Awakening, that means he thought it'd take maybe 4 years in total, with hurrying at the end to accommodate Yoojin already being involved with him again. Yoojin says in narration that pre-regression, it took him 3 years instead of the 1 he's proposing, which puts us at a total of 6 years minimum before Yoohyun could even think about reuniting with Yoojin.

But, of course, a lot can and did happen in those 6 years. Within the first 3, the brothers' relationship had deteriorated enough that Yoojin blocked Yoohyun's number, as mentioned in chapter 32 by Yoohyun to Yoojin during novice Hunter training:

“You got angry and told me not to call, remember? You even blocked my number.”

Why was Yoojin angry? See chapter 158, when Yoohyun was temporarily amnesiac due to Jellyfish's fog:

“I’m certain I told you not to come near me.” …I remembered. When I’d heard that, I’d blocked Yoohyun’s number, telling him not to call me back.

Yoohyun's repeated refusal to tell Yoojin about his plans, just telling him they had to stay apart, only worsened their relationship. And while Yoohyun did attempt to reach out and help Yoojin in ways such as sending him money to cover living expenses (probably hoping to repair their rapidly deteriorating relationship), that also made it worse, with Yoojin rejecting all of those attempts. As he explains in chapter 274, during the flashbacks induced by Jellyfish in their fight:

Gritting my teeth, I sent back the money Yoohyun-ie sent me without even laying a finger on it. To the me of that time, it was horrible money that my young brother had as good as traded his life for. Yoohyun-ie wanted me to accept living expenses and stay safe, but I believed my brother was being sent to his own death and could never accept it.

It isn't like Yoohyun didn't try to reach out. He did. The problem was that all of his attempts were undercut by his continued refusal to tell Yoojin why he had distanced himself, such that all those attempts at staying in touch only rubbed salt in the wound of being abandoned. And as early as 3 years in, by his own admission in chapter 6, Yoohyun starts to think that things have gotten so bad that even if he tries to confess everything now, Yoojin might not "be understanding". He might not be willing to let go of his hurt and resentment to reconcile with him.

So should he stop reaching out, then? Surely there's still hope that they can reconcile in the future. Someday, maybe, when Yoohyun's sure he can protect Yoojin, even if Yoojin doesn't want to be with/near him.

#5: Learning about the world ending

Only, there's a deadline imposed by the end of the world, which Yoohyun learns about from filial duty addict Diarma. Part of the contract with the filial duty addicts, as Sung Hyunjae explains in chapter 102, is not interfering with said end of the world. Actually, the contractors have to give "their word that they’ll eliminate obstacles" i.e. other people fighting against the end of the world, so Yoohyun can't do anything about this deadline. This gives him a limited amount of time in which he can "eventually" reconcile with Yoojin.

So, as you ask, Anon, why not spend that limited time with his brother? Well, just because there's an end of the world approaching—which Yoohyun can't even talk about! L-rank contract, remember—doesn't mean that Yoojin is 🌟magically🌟 going to get any less mad about Yoohyun abandoning him for several years than before. Yoohyun still doesn't want to explain, so that argument is absolutely not getting resolved.

Even if he tries to explain vaguely that there's some threat and that he'd like Yoojin to live with him or at least accept his offers of protection and security, what happens if Yoojin refuses? Yoohyun clearly isn't willing to violate Yoojin's desires too far, since the most certain way to keep him safe would be to lock him up in a vault somewhere inside Haeyeon and never let anyone else see him, but that would trample all over his free will and happiness, not to mention it'd ruin Yoohyun's "live normally and happily with hyung" goals. So he'll have to let Yoojin stay out in the world, while all of Yoohyun's rivals and enemies are still out there, watching the Haeyeon Guild Leader reach out to his brother and wondering if they've reconciled. At that point, it doesn't matter if they actually have made up or not. If someone even suspects that Yoojin is close to Yoohyun, then they'll target him on the off-chance that it's true. And if Yoojin did refuse Yoohyun's offers, which he's almost certain to, then he's defenseless against whatever attacks come. And they will come. In chapter 6, Yoohyun admitted that a single visit to Haeyeon Guild by Yoojin, willing or unwilling, would be enough to get attention on him:

“But if I directly give orders for you to be brought in and allowed to live within Haeyeon Guild, my enemies will start to actively target you. Even with you just being here right now, I’m sure they’ll already have started keeping an eye on you.”

Think of it from Yoohyun's enemies' perspective. If Yoohyun cares about Yoojin, attacking Yoojin gives you leverage over Yoohyun. If Yoohyun doesn't care about Yoojin, then he won't care if you're attacking Yoojin, so you'll face no retaliation from him. Yoohyun's enemies have nothing to lose from this, while Yoohyun has everything to lose. So, in this situation, it'd be better to take the least risky path: just don't engage with Yoojin at all.

And, also, even if he'd decided to take that risk, there's a different one when it comes to actually figuring out a system to guard Yoojin. This point is more speculation, but I do think Yoohyun might have struggled with deciding when he'd done enough for Yoojin's protection. Because the reality is that Yoojin was never, ever going to be 100% safe from all dangers ever. Again, the vault method is the only way Yoohyun could achieve that. Yoohyun could've put together any amount of high-rank Hunters as Yoojin's exclusive security detail, and he'd still have to leave him alone with these potentially corruptible strangers for a full week at a time during every S-rank dungeon raid. I suspect there was a real risk of Yoohyun continuously going "I just need to get a bit stronger and a bit more established" indefinitely, without ever reaching a point where he was actually satisfied. (Which, if this was indeed a risk in canon, would be overridden in the post-regression timeline by Yoojin's keyword usage making Yoohyun's desire to live with him again and uncertainty about Yoojin's response win out over the urge to keep obsessing over safeguards.)

#6: What counts as a "real" threat

When it comes to Yoohyun's need to defend Yoojin against threats, there's also an important aspect you need to consider, which is: what threats? You see, the worlds of low-rank and high-rank Hunters are very different, to the point where Yoohyun seems to completely overlook some aspects of what Yoojin's used to dealing with, while Yoojin explicitly notes on multiple occasions that he didn't even realize Yoohyun faced certain dangers. As always, we come back to the poisoning attempts mentioned in chapter 6, the first time Yoojin realizes Yoohyun was suffering his own ordeals. This sort of sneaky threat gets reiterated in chapter 11, after Yoojin's trip to the Hunter Mall, when Yoohyun tells him he can't even take a simple drink from any public vendor because it might be poisoned (not something that'd work on Yoohyun himself, but it certainly would on those lower-ranked people around him who he cares about). No, not even in a government-sponsored location like the Association, because even these locations are filled with other guilds' spies and informants. Yoojin's internal response is essentially "what sort of underhanded bullshit is this", and out loud he questions Yoohyun about it:

“But would they do that sort of thing in none other than the Association? If they get caught, the backlash will be huge.” And if Awakened people couldn’t trust the Association, it’d end up hurting the guilds, too. “Of course they wouldn’t make trouble inside the Association. But it’s possible to have their target sent away in an ambulance or police car.” “…And then that ambulance or police car goes missing?” “You’re getting it.”

And Yoojin literally thinks, not a paragraph later, that this is maybe too much even for him:

Somehow, the further things went, the more I felt like I should stop being involved with this brat Yoohyun-ie and go off to live on my own.

Better the dangers you know than the ones you don't, but in Yoojin's words.

Everyone in the high-rank sphere is, well, high-rank. Strong and resilient even when they don't have defensive skills, to say nothing of when they do. They face threats, yes, Real Threats that pose danger to them and risk their safety and status, including threats from other people—Song Taewon mentions to Yoojin in chapter 83 that he's investigated Yoohyun for murder multiple times a year—but because they're so strong, those threats come in the form of dungeon monsters or social attacks, not actual physical harm. Especially not physical harm from other people; like, chapter 75 mentions there's laws against S-rank Hunters going into dungeons together for fear that they might hurt or kill each other, so unless they encounter each other in a dungeon break region where combat is expected (or pick fights with Chief Song, an S-rank duty-bound to fight other S-ranks), they're never really going to encounter personal threats from other Hunters.

Take all that through the lens of protecting Yoojin: he's just some guy, he's not involved in the social/political Hunter Hunger Games, so he's probably fine on that front, right? And otherwise, Yoohyun just needs to protect him from dungeons (keep Yoojin out of them when possible, prevent breaks in his area), and maybe just some general watching out for Yoojin getting himself into anything risky, since he's so weak as an F-rank. That's all the threats Yoohyun sees on a daily basis, so that's probably it, right?

Wrong. Low-rank Hunters have their own set of threats they face, and while a part of that is dungeons and monsters, a very large part of that is also just… being easy to kill, in a community of people very ready to kill. Low-rank Hunters murder each other a hell of a lot more than high-rank Hunters get to even hurt, let alone kill, each other. Think about how easily the knowledge of dungeons being good body disposal spots comes to Yoojin (chapter 19, when threatening Yerim's uncle). Think about the way Yoojin talks about being pressured into slave contracts and miner guilds, and how common it seems to be for low-rank Hunters to be maimed and disabled and left in the lurch (chapters 21 and 22, saving Yoo Myeongwoo from Hope Resources Guild). Think about chapter 49, where Yoohyun claims there's strong camaraderie among high-rank Hunters, and Yoojin responds with this:

Comradeship, huh. There was no such concept in low-rank Hunter teams. Of course, it wasn’t like there were no good people around. The problem was that they all died before long. There were fixed low-rank teams united through trust and friendship, but it was very rare that they lasted. With how strongly they banded together, if one of them died, they couldn’t endure the shock and would fall apart; and even if that didn’t happen, if they were doing well for themselves, they’d be attacked from the outside by the many Hunters who’d find them unpleasant. But a high-rank dungeon raiding team that suffered few such accidents could form a sense of comradeship and keep staying together.

Low-rank Hunters will get killed by monsters, or survive only to get killed by the loss of their teams, or find good teams only to get killed by other jealous low-ranks, or (in Yoojin's experience) survive multiple team-wide killings only to get ostracized and distrusted for being suspiciously good at surviving (almost like you're the one setting up your teams to fail! really makes you wonder, doesn't it?), or, or, or…

High-rank Hunters just… survive. That's it.

Of course Yoohyun wouldn't know to protect Yoojin from these threats. He's never faced them. To him, fighting other people is a fun, challenging pastime, where no one being allowed to kill each other is an unspoken rule that goes implicitly understood. He wouldn't realize how it was very much not fun for Yoojin; maybe he'd know it intellectually, but I don't think he'd understand, not without getting up close and personal to see Yoojin struggle with it, which he can't do himself. If he tries to send someone to spy on or just generally help out his brother, Yoojin's primed by his experiences to distrust the people around him, so spies won't get anything out of him, and any strong Hunter handpicked by Yoohyun to help his hyung might simply be unable to gain Yoojin's trust. (Picking out a whole team of strong Hunters? Even if Yoojin trusts them, they'd probably end up victimized by jealous Hunters. Rinse and repeat.) You must also take into account that Yoojin's been made enough of a target by society that he's hiding every weakness someone could potentially exploit. Hell, if he's hiding well enough, you might think he's doing just fine.

And in the time period where it would be blatantly obvious that Yoojin was not fine, that early period right when he Awakened and turned into society's scapegoat overnight? That was when Yoohyun and Haeyeon were also being targeted, and wouldn't have been able to spare the kind of attention and help Yoojin would've needed, not with all the scrutiny they were all being subjected to. Actually, when Yoojin's reminiscing about these times in chapter 59, he hypothesizes it might've been Yoohyun's rivals themselves who were behind the scapegoating:

At that time, it would’ve been hard for that guy to look out for me. Public opinion wasn’t good in many ways, and there were too many scrutinizing eyes for him to secretly look after me. Now that I thought about it, I wondered if there wasn’t some sort of operation targeting me. The response was too excessive to have simply been the work of a few trash journalists. It was a matter that could be packaged excitingly, I was an F-rank which made me easy to use, and at that time, it could drag down Haeyeon Guild in the public opinion. Whether it was the government, the Association, or rival guilds, they’d have been fools not to use me.

If it was Yoohyun's rivals behind it, then by fighting on the Haeyeon front, Yoohyun might actually have been keeping Yoojin safe, too. How do we know he didn't actually mitigate the suffering to some degree? We haven't heard from Yoohyun about his side of things during this time, so we don't have a definite answer one way or another.

Certainly, Seok Simyeong didn't help at all by making a public statement denouncing Yoojin, especially not when it was so bad Yoojin admits to almost being suicidal over it (chapter 19)! But, well, it was a busy time. We don't know whether Yoohyun was consulted on that one, or if it was something they rushed in order to get ahead of the situation. It might also be that Yoohyun was consulted and made the choice that they'd publicly denounce Yoojin but privately offer him support, only for Yoojin to reject it as he did before with the money Yoohyun sent. Yoojin's done this before, where he conveniently doesn't mention a detail about a scenario until it becomes immediately relevant!

I cannot emphasize enough that we don't have Yoohyun's perspective on this. We don't know what he was doing or not doing to help. But we know, from his love for Yoojin, from his desperate desire to keep him safe at all costs, that he must've been doing something. Was that something effective? Was it useful to Yoojin's immediate life? Who knows. But he was trying.

#7: Banning Yoojin from dungeons

…Keyword being trying. Because, uh. To be honest, how well do you think any direct attempts at "helping" went over? The very first moment that Yoojin regresses to is when Yoohyun got him out of a meeting with an Awakening broker. And Yoojin himself says that ended so badly that "after listening to Yoohyun-ie’s nagging, I’d become furious and stormed off, shouting that I could take care of myself and to quit bothering me" (chapter 5). So if Yoohyun tries to openly keep Yoojin out of danger, then Yoojin is going to have a screaming fit of anger at his life being controlled by someone who apparently isn't even interested in being in it.

And that's before Yoojin Awakened. Once he had an actual, legal, government-assigned license saying he could go into dungeons? Yoohyun had zero standing. Zero chance he was ever going to be able to stop him from going into dungeons, short of breaking down and crying and begging for him to not do it, which (to successfully convince Yoojin he wasn't just putting on a show or trying to guilt trip him) would also require Yoohyun to admit he still cared about Yoojin and reveal his 3- uh, 4- I mean, 5- 6(!!)-Year Master Plan To Keeping Hyung Safe Forever And Ever.

Yeah. Never gonna happen.

And even that one (1) attempt at keeping Yoojin away from dungeons and Hunters and everything related could've gone really badly, because as Yoohyun himself admits in their chapter 6 conversation, his enemies will "already have started keeping an eye on you [Yoojin]". Just from one single show of apparent concern for Yoojin's wellbeing! Can you imagine what would've happened if Yoohyun kept stopping Yoojin every time he tried to go into a dungeon? Setting Yoojin's own frustration and anger aside, can you picture the kind of attention that would've gotten Yoojin? No, this was one battle Yoohyun had to lose in order to win the overall war.

Anon, you mention providing "new options for Yoojin to stop going to dungeons". Okay, sure, we're starting with Yoojin being society's black sheep and probably rejected out of hand from most positions he applies to, and Yoohyun's only leverage in society being in dungeon- and Hunter-related fields. What options would he have provided for Yoojin? A dungeon- or Hunter-related job, probably at Haeyeon or one of its affiliates? That's precisely what we're trying to avoid, and also visible enough that Yoohyun might as well not have even fucking bothered with the 6-Year Master Plan etc. etc. Okay, so then something at one of Haeyeon's sponsors-? Except Haeyeon famously doesn't have backers, and any connections they have through business deals will be glaringly obvious to Yoohyun's rivals if leveraged. Oh, Han Yoojin, the man who no one wants to hire, got a job at a company whose products Han Yoohyun sponsored just a while ago! Absolutely no one is wondering how this could've happened. Also, funny how Han Yoohyun's helping Han Yoojin find work, it's almost like he cares about him… (And so the end begins.)

Remember, all of Yoohyun's efforts at separating himself from Yoojin require actually being separate from Yoojin and the choices he makes. Yoojin's life is—unfortunately enough for Yoohyun—his own to live… and his own to ruin.

#8: The transcendent threat

And all of that—every single one of these environmental factors that make it so Yoohyun has a billion and one concerns to consider before he can so much as talk to Yoojin—all of that comes before we take into account one more fact:

God Hates Caregivers Personally.

Or, in a non-joking manner, and in the fashion Yoohyun might have learned about it from Diarma, as is strongly suggested in the virtual reality dungeon arc during chapter 246:

There are beings out there, outside your world, stronger than anything you know, and this is acknowledging the fact that you are among the strongest existences humankind will ever produce. These beings rule your entire world, are the children of the very power that created the dungeons terrorizing your planet, are themselves so powerful that they can predict dungeons and manipulate the system in their favor, that they can manipulate the circumstances of individual humans as long as they're inside dungeons. In allying with any one of their number, you make an enemy out of half of the entire population of these transcendental existences. You have already made an enemy of them. And these people, these all-powerful creatures, who you've painted yourself a rival of? These same people have a known track record of killing the loved ones of people like you.

Your brother goes into dungeons every week as part of his job. He's already at immense risk. If you go near him, if you make it seem even slightly like you're interested in him personally, you make him an out-and-out target for these transcendents, and they'll smite him. He dies, and you die, and it's game over.

Option one: You can grow to their level, meet them with equal strength, certainly, but will you get the time to grow that far before they kill your brother? Is his natural lifespan even long enough that he'd survive the time it took for your growth? He dies. You die. Game over.

Option two: Don't pose a threat. It's too late for you to never get on their radar in the first place, but if you can keep from seeming any more dangerous, maybe they won't give him any attention. Secure a favor that will let you help him when he needs it, at most, but otherwise never use your transcendent connections to your own advantage.

Option two, taken to its conclusion: If you die before your brother does—if you die calling in that favor and saving his life—you never have to see him be killed.

(Option two, on the flip side: You will not expect it to be your own ally who set the stage for your loved one to be killed.)

So, basically, every single concern Yoohyun's had about protecting his brother that made him distance himself and not tell him anything so far? All of that is taken and cranked up to difficulty level Maximum. "If I show interest in hyung, one of my rivals or enemies might choose to hurt or kill him!" The transcendents WILL kill him with NO known incentive. Yoohyun might assume it's because he poses a threat to their side, but he can't be absolutely certain that's it. In fact, he doesn't know anything about this opposing transcendent faction, since he was blocked from contacting them by the very fact of having chosen a side in the first place, as Water Droplet explains when discussing the born S-ranks in chapter 106:

“We don’t know for sure either. The filial duty addicts contacted them first, so their information is obscured. We only know that there are five, and about the ones that are in contact with you.”

And while Yoohyun-as-Alpha knows the reasons behind the immoral people killing Caregivers—namely, that they want to remove distractions for S-ranks, so that they focus on combating dungeons and monsters—if Diarma had told Yoohyun about this, and if he'd thought to apply the bare minimum of intelligence to his delivery (a disclaimer that must be made, with this transcendent in particular), I really don't think he would've told him why. No, he would've wanted the immoral people to seem like a dangerous threat, so he would just have said that they might kill Yoohyun's family, without giving him their reasoning.

Which means Yoohyun knew nothing about the immoral people's motives, nothing about their goals, nothing about what they'd see as aggression. Which meant, hypothetically, that any and every action he took could trigger them to smoothly and efficiently eliminate the only person he loved in all the world. It would be so easy, too; Yoojin's entering their turf multiple times a month as part of his daily job, a fact which we've already established Yoohyun couldn't do anything about. The only thing he knew for sure is that they hadn't killed Yoojin so far.

Remember what I said before, about the known path being safer? Because you know the dangers you'll face on it? Yoohyun knows doing what he's doing right now is keeping Yoojin alive. He can't control a single other thing outside of that. And the danger posed by not doing what he's doing just got shifted to a level he is not prepared on any level to respond to. Before, he might've thought Yoojin was safe at least inside dungeons with his chosen teams; from his perspective, "dungeons with only guild members inside are actually safer than the outside world" (chapter 134), while the outside world was more of a risk because of all of Yoohyun's enemies. But now? There is danger all the time and in every location Yoojin goes, even those outside of this world, on an insane, unrivaled level. He is never, never safe, and any single unexpected action Yoohyun takes puts that at risk. If doing anything at all is dangerous, then it's better to do nothing.

So, yeah, that's the crux of it, isn't it. Yoohyun needs to protect Yoojin every day, every single time. Everything else in the whole world only needs to kill Yoojin once. In such a situation, how would Yoohyun ever dare to risk making either of them vulnerable?

…The end! I hope that this explanation, long as it is, has given you at least some additional insight into Why Yoohyun Did All That, and helped serve as a reminder of just how little we actually know about Yoohyun's perspective of the events pre-regression.

By the way, this entire post is pulling only from information we get up to chapter 272; there’s more information revealed up to chapter 350—actually, even just in the next few chapters after that, up to 275—that sheds more light on Yoohyun’s decision-making process in the pre-regression timeline. Maybe I’ll come back and post a part 2 to this analysis someday using the additional information we get as time goes on, but right now, this much will have to be enough.

In any case—thanks for reading this far. And of course, as promised, here's the poll!

[yellowhollyhock]

raph vs a volcano day 20

The 1987 episode plot:

Donatello's health scanner predicts Raphael has only 24 hours to live. Raphael goes around doing good deeds and taking ridiculous risks because he's gonna die anyway. Meanwhile Donatello figures out his machine didn't work right and means to tell Raphael, but you see he is distracted doing good deeds and taking ridiculous risks. It culminates with Raph inside an active volcano (trying to stop it from erupting? bro??) and his brothers have to come rescue him.

I love this episode. For so many reasons.

1) What an interesting way to give Raph his role while keeping him in character within the new role they gave him for this show. Because Mirage Raph is the guy who always wants to help without pausing to think about whether they can. He's known for sometimes being impulsive and always being protective. And not just of his fellow turtles! He sees someone in trouble he wants to help. But usually in Mirage that's expressed with violence. So for the show they made the "crazy one" express the same traits through sarcasm instead and he became the witty one, and I love how future Raphs are both. And I especially love when 1987 Raphael himself is both

2) This is such a classic plot. It's like... the tribbles spoof/tribute or 'character gets kidnapped but acts so annoying they get released.' You know the kinds of plots I mean right? Our style of storytelling has changed (it's always changing) but tv shows in late 80s early 90s especially had these. You could pretty much guess the plot from the title because you know the characters and you know the story. The exciting reveal is mostly the jokes. There are words for what I'm saying but I haven't had an english class in a few years, so take this ramble and trust me. It's a beautiful example of whatever this is. And!

---2a, It doesn't have the classic resolution that 'character thought they had one day to live due to a misunderstanding' would have on a kids show. There isn't a 'moral' about seizing the moment and using your time wisely. There also isn't a moral about communication, so instead of the miscommunication being annoying like it would in a preachy episode, it's gloriously hilarious to watch

3) Speaking of that, the obligatory 'he tried to ask' scene is Raphael watching Michelangelo cry on Donatello's shoulder because "I'll miss him so much" "I'm sorry there's nothing I can do for him" it's the oven. The oven is broken. Michelangelo is sobbing in Donatello's arms like his world is ending because they're going to have to get a new oven because this one's beyond fixing. And Raphael fully believes that Michelangelo is begging Donatello to fix him, when this version of Donatello is so very none medic. Like I don't even know how to describe why and how much I love this scene. I think I killed english

4) The scene of Raphael in the volcano. I just. He's so funny. This episode really captures what I love about the whole show, which is that I am absolutely buying into it and feeling deeply about it, and simultaneously enjoying it ironically. Does that make sense? When you can put your whole heart into unironic enjoyment but your brain at the same time gets it's 'make fun of this' treat. So both types of fun at once.

---4a it's not trying to fix the plot holes it's enjoying that in this format you don't have to. I feel like this is severely under utilized in modern cinema. make things not make sense on purpose for fun. don't explain about where they are, how they carried that object with them, why there were not other consequences for certain actions. The fun thing about stories is they don't have to be realistic unless you want them to

so for today I had intended to write a Rise version of this episode. I think it would work well for them. Plus, Raph and Donnie bonding. However. That is going in drafts and will be coming. later (march for raph is my opportunity to collect drafts for the rise turtles apparently.) I'm actually still debating if Donnie would make a health-o-meter or if something goes down in witch down, but either way, ❤️💜

[lionheartslowstart]

POA

Something happened recently that has caused me to confront the fact that I am truly disabled. It's not that I didn't know I was, of course I have since the autism diagnosis, but I really, and I mean really, got hit in the face with it.

I'll explain.

I can't go into too much detail regarding the actual circumstances, but the long and short of it is that I had to give my parents power of attorney in order to solve a housing issue. I trust parents completely and I know it's not something they would ever abuse. They made it clear to me that should I ever want to dissolve it, we could do that, and that the sole purpose for getting it was to avoid any houses issues now and in the future.

We had to go to a lawyer's office to sign the document and have it notarized. It was all very official. Afterwards, I drove home, sat on my bed, and just cried.

When I received the autism diagnosis, I was diagnosed with Level 1 autism. Autism is divided into 3 different levels. However, in my research, these levels seem to pertain strictly to social skills. In this way, yes, I am a Level 1 autistic. But if we're talking about "functionality," I'm not so sure I can qualify as Level 1 anymore. (Seriously, why IS it split by social ability? That's stupid.)

I'm 30 years old, and I'm still financially dependent on my parents. At this point in my life, I can't work a full time job. As a result, I will never be financially independent, and I will never be able to afford housing on my own. I say "at this point," because maybe one day that will change, but I doubt it. And for the record, I count myself lucky I can at least work a part time job, because 85% of autistics can't work at all.

Autism is a developmental disability, and I feel that as I'm getting older, it's become more obvious. Because I'm staying the same. I mean, obviously not completely the same. I've learned and grown and matured, and my friends who have known me for over a decade always comment on how much I've changed, but that's not what I mean. I mean that I feel like an adult and a child at the same time. I mean there are certain things I can't DO, certain things I can't retain or process, because my brain just won't let me. For example, I can't set up health insurance by myself. Every time my mom tries to explain it to me, my brain glazes over. That's the best way I can explain it. And I swear, I am trying SO hard to pay attention. I can't help it. My brain just...won't.

If this is what my life looks like when I'm 30, what is it going to look like when I'm 50? 60? 70? Not good. Not a good quality of life at all.

I'm so jealous of my friends and family. I don't understand how they do it. Even my other autistic friends are able to work full time or go to school full time without incident. (I did go to college full time but I almost ended myself like 3 times and I had to take a LOT of time off throughout.) It makes me feel guilty and bad. Like a loser. A failure. And yes, I know that autism can look different in everyone. I guess this is just one of the ways it affects me personally. But even so, it's painful to watch everyone around you be fully independent, and for whatever reason that's just not you. I mean, I'm independent in other ways. I can live by myself, make my own appointments, work part-time, and form meaningful relationships. I'm really trying to focus on those things instead, but it's been difficult to stay positive. I feel like financial independence is pretty major.

I want to interject here and say that I am insanely grateful to my parents. I know how blessed I am. They are my biggest supporters, both emotionally and financially. They love me so much, and if I didn't have them I'm certain I'd be homeless, probably long dead. I know that most people don't have parents like mine, let alone autistic people. I thank them all the time and tell them how guilty I feel and reassure them that I'm not lazy or spoiled, that I take their support very seriously. And they always assure me that they know, and not to worry about it, and they just want me to be happy.

But I do worry about it. My parents have wasted so much money on keeping me alive, it makes me physically ill. If I wasn't around, they'd have more money in their pockets for other things. They wouldn't have to worry about me all the time. I genuinely feel like they'd be better off without me, at least in the long run.

Like I said, the thoughts have been real dark lately, y'all. I've been extremely depressed since we instated the POA. This is my reality.

I don't know if my friends will still want to be friends with me in 10 years. Even my autistic friends. I don't like that I'll most likely never be financially independent. It is my greatest shame and I wish so badly it wasn't true.

People who insist autism is a fad and that people fake it for attention or whatever can eat my entire ass.

I would do anything, and I mean anything, to not be autistic.

[stashandtell]

Some Recommendations for Fics That Influenced My Weasley-Ship Rankings

I ranked all my favorite Hermione/X Weasley Sibiling in my most recent post Nobody Asked For This: My Rankings of the Hermione x Weasley Ships with REASONS. Here are some recs to back my completely biased opinons. And now, you can read my fic, Ranking the Weasleys on AO3! - - - - As I sometimes mention on the internet, I keep a WILDLY long and fairly detailed spreadsheet of all the fanfics I've read. I've not been in the fandom long at all but due to life circumstances, I've had too much time on my hands since diving in and have allowed this special interest to wash over me and my whole life like the warm, scented water in the Prefects' giant bathtub. (I hit over 800 works read on my spreadsheet a few days ago and am going to do a numerical analysis and breakdown no one requested, so come back for the data if you're curious.) I've pulled some of my fave fics for my main Hermione x Weasley Sibling pairings -- though I have SO MANY MORE. All of these are mid-length to longfics (~30K-100k+ words, except for one) and are complete, unless noted. Normally I'd copy-and-paste the author's summary but since I'm going to be recommending many here-- I'll give you my 1-3 sentence take on the fic and encourage you to read the author's summary and tags. We're going in descending birth-order by sibling here to keep things tidy: Billmione: What's nuts to me about the Billmione ship is that I don't have a ton of fics I would enthusiastically recommend that explain why I love this pairing so much. I'm not a huge werewolf-ish fan, the age-gap isn't something that inspires my reading that much, and, to be completely honest, sometimes Bill is dry toast in a fic and replaceable with almost any other character. That said, for those of us who love a rare-pair, we feast on the scraps. We love the moments that fuel our headcanons and it's the cumulative experience of developing our own understanding of these characters that drives us into the arms of these fics more than anything. I had a difficult time pulling general recs for this ship, only because so few encapsulate what's I love about Hermione and Bill together (in my mind) in a singular work. I'll keep searching though and plug away at adding my 3 Billmione WIPs to offerings out there, to keep the flag flying. To be perfectly clear: These are GREAT fics I highly recommend. I just don't think of any one of them as the touchstone fic for my love of this pair (imo.) Still Strong by DietCokeofEvil, inspired by I Am Strong by floatsdelicately

Word Count: 38,780 / 19 Chapters

Summary: When Ron leaves Hermione without an explanation a month before their wedding, Bill returns the friendship and care she gave him when he and Fleur separated. They fall in love and build a life together.

My Comments: I read I Am Strong first and I have to say, I loved the two stories together. It's maybe even worth reading I Am Strong before Still Strong because that's how the publishing/inspiration-order goes.

Through the Ages by LadyBlack3

Word Count: 30,301 / 11 Chapters

Summary: Hermione and Bill team up to help research possible causes for a disease spreading through Charlie's dragon reserve and find themselves drawn to each other.

My Comments: This is a fun fic with a plot that keeps things moving. I love them coming together as full-fledged adults with their own lives.

I was torn on recommending Cairo Nights by GillianSteele instead of Through the Ages because they're both excellent examples of this ship, so I'll drop it here as an honorable mention if you're looking for more!

- - - - Charmione: There are SO MANY good Charmiones on my list but I need limits. I would say none of these are exactly emblematic of the typical well-loved Charmione fics, as they don't spend time on the Reserve-- but if you're looking for more recs, feel free to ask me on tumblr or leave a comment and I can happily suggest many more. Last Christmas by KittenShift17

Word Count: 17,079 / One Shot

Summary: Last Christmas, Hermione drunkenly snogged Charlie when she mistook him for Ron and shortly after she broke up with him. This Christmas, she's back at the Burrow and anxious to see Charlie again after thinking about him all year.

My Comments: This was one of the very first Charmione works I read and I recommend it to most my friends looking to get into the ship. As a hefty one-shot, it's a pretty satisfying fic with great Weasley banter and it's on my list of fics to re-read this winter when it's time to get cozy around the holidays. If you like this, check out I Saw Mummy (mind the tag) by Amebb42. Last Christmas is the shortest of all the fics I'm recommending.

Creature Comforts by neilstic

Word Count: 34,588 / 5 Chapters

Summary: Hermione and Charlie are both Hogwarts professors and are into each other. They are also good friends who get to do some fun time travel exploration thanks to the secrets of the castle.

My Comments: This fic is SO well written and snort-out-loud funny. I think of it often and it's not the typical Charmione fic, which is why I wanted to shout it out.

The Eventually Ever After Series by Huffleclaws19 deserves an appreciation post on its own and I HIGHLY recommend it of you're a fan of Charmione and Theomione. It's worth reading it in order. Merry Christmas to Me (the first in the series) is already on my Top-Tier List of all-time faves but the whole series arc is so, so good. Consider this a MOST honorable mention.

- - - - Permione: The Always Series by Simply_Lovely_Reader consists of two stories: Unlikely, which is Hermione's POV and Possibly, which is Percy's.

Word Count: Unlikely - 15,537 / 11 Chapters Possibly - 26,754 / 13 Chapters

Summary: Percy catches Hermione pleasuring herself to thoughts of him in his bed in the Burrow immediately before they start working together at the Ministry. Romance and pining occur.

My Comments: I was overjoyed to find that there was a Percy POV fic for this story but if you only pick one, read Unlikley, which is Hermione's POV.

Reflector by Calebski

Word Count: 39,692 / 7 Chapters

Summary: Hermione seeks Percy's help in finding career her path after the war they're both so changed by. He finds himself seeking her out as well as they develop a friendship and so much more.

My Comments: This author wrote one of my all-time top 3, won't-shut-up-about-my-love-for-it fics, Flourishing Devotion, a Nevmione canon re-write. I really dig their style (Venus Flytrap, another Nevmione is great too.) This Permione delivered.

- - - - Fremione: Fremione recommendations tend to fall in to a few buckets, which often overlap 1) Fred Lives 2) Fred Dies, per the canon 3) Canon rewrites of Fred & Hermione developing feelings during the Hogwarts years There are several WONDERFUL canon re-writes I'll include a few as honorable mentions.

Salve Amor by moonfairy13

Word Count: 31,974 / 20 Chapters

Summary: Hermione saves Fred's life with a bonding spell that can only be cast by someone who carries love for the person they're saving. She doesn't want Fred to know or feel tied to her so of course miscommunications and meddling ensue.

My Comments: The author, moonfairy13, has so many great fics worth checking out. What was great about this one is that the whole fic centers around the Fred Lives turning point.

I Can Love You Like That by LSU Sweetie

Word Count: 31,357 / 12 Chapters

Summary: Fred and Hermione are the last two single people in their friend group at the winter holidays. Hermione wants a relationship and is interested in Fred but has also started to get gifts from a secret admirer.

My Comments: I love a grown-up Fred and Hermione. LSUsweetie has some great works with different pairings and I particularly absolutely freaking loved Festive Fates. This is worth reading because the pairing is undisclosed, so you gotta read it to find out. Paraphrasing the author's summary: Hermione ends up pregnant after a night with a mystery man at New Year's Eve masquerade party right before she has to leave for a year-long work assignment. When she returns the following Christmas, she brings a baby with red hair to the Burrow and hopes to find answers.

Honorable Mentions, Canon Rewrites:

Don't You Know You've Got the Best of Me by raquains

Deal or No Deal by LetticeDouffet

Steel and Soft Smiles by TricksterGhost7 and its companion work, Little Glimpses

Oh So Many Years by fanfictionaries*

The Two Dropouts by tryingsss*

*Denotes a partial canon rewrite (aka ends early or starts later) - - - - Geormione: There were several great Geormione pieces I wanted to recommend but both of my recs relate to navigating Fred's death in very personal ways. That has tended to be the majority of what I've been reading in the Geormione space though there are other dimensions to this ship worth checking out. Like Fremione, there are some great canon-rewrites as well.

I have not started tackling the behemoth that is The Arithmancer by White_Squirrel yet or the rest of the series, though it's queued up as a reward once I finish some very longfics I'm working through... so I know I've read a lower % of the total completed fics on AO3 in the "Hermione Granger/George Weasley" relationship tag than Billmione, Charmione, and Fremione.

To Those Who Wait by Fictionallizzy

Word Count: 56,233 / 9 Chapters

Summary: After Fred's death, Hermione and George spend a forbidden night together which leads to much more than they both expected.

My Comments: In my ridiculous spreadsheet, I give a rating for my personal love of the story and another for the spice level. This is one that has 5/5 on both counts, the smut smuts 💋 and there's some juicy angst in there (my fave.)

In Case You Don't Life Forever by xLoveMx

Word Count: 24,724 / 12 Chapters

Summary: After the battle, Hermione and George are together and apart in their grief. She tries to prepare WWW to reopen and they finds she has to deal with Fred's ghost literally and metaphorically.

My Comments: I've read a few ghost!fred fics but I really loved this one. It was hard to select just one George-Falling-In-Love-While-Grieving fic and the extra dimension Fred's ghost added to this story made it stand out for a recommendation.

- - - - Multi-Weasley Pairings: In fics with multi-Weasley ships, they tend to fall into three buckets: 1) Siblings in competition 2) Love triangle or triad (v-shaped or triangle-shaped) 3) Reverse harems or multiple hookup partners I basically had to read through the majority of all the enticing completed long fics with ALL of the individual siblings I wanted to read paired with Hermione before I started reading multi-Weasley fics. BUT I'm glad I went there because there are some really interesting works that I enjoyed. Here's a fic rec for each bucket: 1) Siblings in Competition: Yours Til The Stars Fall From The Sky by Ronsboggart

Pairings: Fremione, Charmione

Word Count: 64,178 / 7 Chapters

Summary: Hermione and Fred are going to be together until a chance meeting at the World Quidditch Cups finds her and Charlie inexplicably drawn to each other.

My Comments: Mind the tags! This fic definitely has the underage warning on it, which I totally understand isn't everyone's thing. That said, the story of Fred and Hermione falling for each other despite the magnet-pull of Charlie really got me on board with reading Fremione works. Truthfully, I sort of didn't "get" the appeal of Fred until I read this story and for that I'm so grateful. I ended up loving the characterization of Fred and Hermione's love so much in this fic, it's definitely worth it imo.

Honorable Mention: Hot Girl Summer (shorter one-shot) by Anonymous 2) Love Triangle / Triad (V-Shaped): Hic Scunt Dracones by Amebb42 & ShadowAlt

Pairings: Billmione, Charmione

Word Count: 118,498 / 29 Chapters

Summary: On a curse-breaking expedition in a tropical paradise, Charlie, Bill, and Hermione find themselves working a case that puts them face to face with old magic. Both brothers find they care for the same woman and try to encourage her to choose between them.

My Comments: If you read my Ranking the Weasleys post, you know that I don't give a toss about dragons half the time and I REALLY loved the dragon storyline here. I sing the praises of Amebb42 in just a bit but ShadowAlt also has great stories. I enjoyed reading their author's notes in this too.

3) Reverse Harem: Where the Heart Is by Mother_of_Chaos

Pairings: Billmione, Charmione, Fremione, Geormione

Word Count: 40827 / 12 Chapters

Summary: Hermione, who has special abilities and works as an Unspeakable, receives a claiming werewolf bite while helping save a member of the Weasley family and becomes part of their pack.

My Comments: This work was recently completed this past August and was inspired by The Weasley Pack by Mrsmarauders02. Both are worth reading and center around werewolf and pack power. Mind the tags!

Reverse Harem Honorable Mention: Weasley Magic by Amebb42 I included only completed fics here but I have to shoutout the WIP that lives in head rent-free on a regular basis and that's Weasley Magic by Amebb42. This author has so many great works worth reading but this fic completely sold me on the Weasley reverse harem structure and inspired me to give other works a try. Plus, it's not based on a werewolf pack. Yes, the smut is smutty which is great fun, however, all of the characters are so well developed in this massive ensemble work. The Molly bashing-to-redemption is one of my favorite kinds of family angst and there are more relationships beyond Hermione + all of the Weasley siblings that adds delicious complexity to the story. Most importantly, the world mechanics, especially when it come to the Wizengamot, the inherited Weasley family magic itself, and Bill's new status is so, so interesting! I live for this fic . - - - - As For All The Other Hermione x Weasley Family Member Ships: You'll note from my post "Nobody Asked For This: My Rankings of the Hermione x Weasley Ships With REASONS" I don't consider myself well-read in ships with Hermione/Ginny or Hermione/Ron or some of the other family members, so no recommendations at this time. If you have recs, please share! I'd love to know what I'm missing out on or what your fave works are for different pairings.

Don't forget to check out the newest fic, Ranking the Weasleys on AO3!

[kookies2000]

Racism Alagory in Kids Films

Has anyone noticed a pattern when it comes to films aimed at kids with a racism alagory? They always have one of these three things.

1. The oppressors have a good reason to fear the oppressed.

Zootopia, Elemental, and Z.O.M.B.I.E.S have done this. I love these films, but that doesn't mean I can't point out this fact.

In Elemental, the other elements have a good reason to fear fire. They can accidentally burn things and / or kill other elements. Ember proves this over and over again throughout the film. She even kills Wayde at the end of the film on accident. The movie is a cute love story, I love it, but the racism alagory just didn't work out well.

Z.O.M.B.I.Es, Zombies eat human brains. That's a good reason to fear them and keep them separated from humans. Instead of trying to let zombies into human society, why not find a cure first?

In Zootopia, the prey has a good reason to fear predators. They have a history of killing them and being naturally savage. Which isn't the best way to explain racism to children. Because if you humanize the characters, the racism alagory suddenly doesn't work. You can't call non white people naturally violent because that's not true. But many people have used that as an excuse to keep themselves away from non whites.

In summery, racism never happened because the oppressed were a danger to the opressers.

2. White savior.

When one of the opressers is the one that saves the day. The best example is Z.O.M.B.I.Es. Adi is a human, the ones who are the opressers. Yet, she's the one that saves the opressed in all 3 films. And this is shown the most in the 2nd film. Where it's her destiny to save the werewolves and bring them back onto their land. The same land the humans stole from the werewolves.

I like Z.O.M.B.I.Es as a guilty pleasure, by the way. Maybe it's the music, I don't know.

3. The oppressed are a different species than the opressers.

My best example for this is Cats Don't Dance. But that's all I'll say about it. Because I absolutely love Cats Don't Dance. It has no white savior and the animals aren't a threat to the humans.

For those that haven't seen the film, it's a great musical that talks about how animals are treated in Hollywood. They are never given the chance to shine, they are never in the spot light, and humans only use them as extras and to make money. Same way people of color were treated in Hollywood years ago. Still treated like that in today's time.

I use to considered Cats Don't Dance as the best racism alagory kids film. Until a certain movie came out in 2020. A movie that I feel handled racism better than any other film aimed at kids. A film that avoids all three things I listed and gets the point across clearly for children and adults to understand.

I am not joking. This film is by far the best kids film with a racism alagory. I would say why right now, but this post is getting too long. I'll explain in another post; Because let me just say, I can write a college essay as to why this film is the best kids film with a racism alagory.

[dairogo]

20 Questions for the Writer

Tagged by @griseldabanks ^_^

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

Only 18 :O I have a bunch on fanfiction.net that I never transferred over, but they're all an extra 10 or so years older than the Ao3 ones so ... there's some disparity of quality, partly in the writing but also very much in the content present.

2. What is your total Ao3 word count?

168,935

3. What fandoms do you write for?

FMA! I had other things when I was younger, but FMA bit and it's the one that stuck with me.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

A Bed Too Small (Mustang POV, same bed trope, tongue-in-cheek)

Wayward Youth (Hawkeye POV, learning about crushes and affection from the girls at her boarding school while seeking her father's attention)

Order 3066 (Hawkeye and Mustang POVs alternating, Ishval fic about being broken and coming out of it [still broken, but moving])

Partiality (Mustang POV, post-canon, broaching the topic of a relationship)

The Next Step (shifting POV, written soon after giving birth to my youngest and in a bit of a family-related haze. Mostly fluff.)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I certainly try to! I might have missed some along the way, but I usually get there!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hurrrghgh, one from my ff.net days: The Manga-ka Has Her Reasons. It was basically saying, hey, they can't get together guys - things will go bad if they do. And so it ended with them both dead.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I'd say The Next Step, because it's just fluffy and lovely :)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not really. The last time I remember feeling taken aback by a comment it was over a decade ago and it was someone rightly pointing out a factual error I'd made. The FMA community I've found myself in is largely positive, and I don't know if that's about the FMA community in general, or that the stuff I write appeals to people who are just cool about community instead of looking to be jerks. Whatever the reason, I'm very grateful!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nah

10. Do you write crossovers?

I've got a half written FMA/HP crossover that I started in like 2005, resurrected a few years ago, and then haven't touched for the last year and a half. Sigh. It's probably going to be stuck in my brain forever.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not a fic

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Royai for suuuuure <3 I'm so big on romance as a side-plot, and if that's not the perfect way to explain their relationship I don't know what is. Like, FMA aside, their own personal story is that romance is their side-plot, not their main thing.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Wayward Youth! I have a few really rough drafts of later chapters that need to be edited, but I still haven't written all the way to the end and I'm happily working on another project with all the time/headspace I have, so I don't want to interrupt that flow. But I'm hoping to slowly accrue the last of it, then go through and make it presentable and post it one day.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I can write fairly clear action. And I like putting together a lot of threads to tug on as I go - not all big plot things necessarily, but just things that repeat again later to add an extra layer.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I don't know. I feel like I can write in a very blunt way sometimes, so I have to be intentional about adding in colour and emotion - that doesn't always come through on the first try.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I wouldn't do this to show to a native speaker, oh boy oh boy nosirree! Currently reading a book on English idioms and my main thought as I looked at it today is that this is exactly why I'll never consider myself fluent in other languages.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

In year 5 we had to co-write a story and my best friend and I basically wrote an AU of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

20. Favourite fic you've written?

Look, it depends on my mood. If I want something light and short, I can't go past Desperately Hoping He Didn't Look Like an Idiot (modern AU, Royai without angst). But I'm probably proudest of Order 3066, because it took a lot of work and a lot of emotional catharsis to get through that and I ended up with a bit of a deadline for when I had to finish it up and made it! So I feel good about it.

Tagging @scienceoftheidiot and @fullmetalscullyy if you're interested :)

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

OC questionnaire

Thanks to @willtheweaver here and here, @mk-writes-stuff here, here, and here, and @somethingclevermahogony here.

I did Robbie, Gwen, Maddie, Noelle, Jedi, and Kelsey here.

I did Carmen, George, Akash, Sam, Lexi, and Ash. here.

Doing Gabriel, Carla, Parker, Rose, Alex, and Ewan under the cut!

#1- Gabriel

Did you have any formal education? If so, what was it like?

“I mean, I'm still receiving formal education, so your use of past tense is strange. I never attended Ceteri school. My parents raised me to know that I was Alii, and they always planned to send me over to the Aequales once I received my powers, since they were in direct contact with them the whole time. Ceteri school was counterproductive, so I was homeschooled until then. I now attend school in Alium. I'll admit, I do like it. At least, I do more than homeschooling from my parents. Not that they were terrible, but I don't mind more structure and people.”

What is your stance on friends and friendship?

“I don't know you, so I'm not going to explain growing up with no friends. I don't exactly need them, but it was boring growing up with no one else. I'll admit I don't mind the others in the Aequales, as annoying as they can be. However, they are decent people I enjoy spending time with. Niri is pretty great, actually. Jazlyn still babies me, which is a little annoying, but I would be lying if I didn't admit she is someone I consider a friend. Robbie is a little annoying at times, but Akash keeps him in line. I wish Wade would do the same for Parker. I have no idea how it took until last September for Wade to punch him.”

How would you describe your relationship with your family?

“My parents are my parents. Why would I not respect them? I don't see them often, but I'm following what they want. I'm making them proud. I have a decent job. I'm contributing to Alium as a terrakinetic. They are proud of me. I don't want or need anything more than that.”

#2- Carla

If you could have one wish granted, what would it be? (No wishing for more wishes)

“I would like to bring my parents back. I'd like things to be normal again. Carmen to talk to me more. I'd like to know my cousin I never got to meet. Oh, sorry, this is more than one. Um... The war. Yeah, I'd wish the war never happened. No, wait, the cause of the war: the prejudice of Inutilia. I wish that never happened. I wish we could all get along. Then it would be good.”

What’s your favourite music?

“I really like the different cultural music of each of the Sectors - I have to say I love Sector 3's music the most. Stefanija Lauwers is also a Sector 8 singer I really love. But recently, Tyler has gotten me into a Ceteri genre called 'alternative rock.' I can't stop listening to it - I've never heard anything like it!”

What’s your number one warning sign that it is not going to be a good day?

“How I'm feeling once I've woken myself up all the way. My emotional state tells me how I'm gonna feel for most of the day. Sometimes I'm sad for no reason. And then that's a bad day. When George goes off to work and instead of getting something done, I just decide that I'm going to experience time as quickly as possible until I can get to when he comes back.”

More Carla: empty Bingo

#3- Parker

What’s your favourite snack?

“Me. Cause I'm a snack - hey-ooo! Come on, guys, I'm not gonna explain that joke to you. Honestly, whatever I'm hungry for in the moment. Changes day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second, nanosecond by nanosecond. Anyhow, I'd like some Cheetos.”

What do you least want to hear when you wake up in the morning?

“'Oh, my God, Parker, are you gonna sleep in all day?' No, Mom, I'm gonna get up when I want to. Also I don't want to hear 'Mrs. Holliday just emailed me about your attitude and conductivity problems.' Mom, the bitch hates me. Let me sleep, Goddamn.”

Do you have a nemesis? What are they like?

“Yeah, he got interviewed earlier. Gabriel hates me, and y'know what, he's a boring asshole. He's been a boring asshole for years. He's a stick in the mud, and he drives me insane. Jazlyn, my girl, best girl, my badass idol, likes him. How? Jaz, he's so boring! You're the least boring person I know! What, you knew him for a little longer so he's like a little brother for you? Do what everyone else does with their little brother: dropkick him. Light his hair on fire or something. I take back my last answer - the thing I least want to hear in the morning is Gabriel Medina's voice. Every single practice, he's like 'Cassidy, you're an idiot, Cassidy, you need to stop, Cassidy, you're too chaotic, Cassidy, listen to me.' Go shove a rock up your ass, Medina. Robbie and Akash think he's worthy of a cute silly nickname like Gills. How dare you. Why not nickname me? I'm much more fun than him.”

#4- Rose

What is your favorite beverage for a warm summer afternoon?

“I don't think I could consider myself a true Texan if I didn't say iced tea. Sorry if that's a lame answer.”

What is something that keeps you up at night?

“Insecurities. Hope that helps.”

If you could switch lives with any one you know who would it be and why?

“Lexi. Her family is great, she has so many friends, and...yeah. Lexi.”

More Rose: OC in three

#5- Alex

What’s your favourite flower?

“In Alium, there is no way that it's not the hahkosa blossoms. In Ceteri, purple asters, obviously. I am so predictable. Purple is just such a totally awesome color. I mean, no shade of purple is bad. Not a single one. Every other color? There's, like, one icky shade. Purple is just objectively the best color.”

Do you like parties? What kind?

“Uh, duh! I love parties! Who doesn't? I'll go to any kind of party. You could say I'm the life of it! I prefer going with friends, just because it makes it so much fun! Dances are awesome. Just vibing to the music with your besties. Cannot compare to anything else.”

Are you hiding anything from your friends (I promise the secret is safe with me)?

“Oh. Well, I guess that I'm not happy at all times. I try to be. I love making others happy. I feel like I may be abandoning what makes me, well, me. I'm happy. I'm Alex. She's the girl who is the life of the party, like I said. I can't be anxious! [Pause] haha, well, who am I kidding? This has been such a fun interview! Thank you!”

#6- Ewan

Is there someone that you look up to?

“Jazlyn, in both senses of the phrase. She's taller than me, but also, she's just...don't tell anyone this, but Jazlyn is the most important part of my life. She has this super confident demeanor, but she's actually reflective. More than she lets on. Not that she isn't confident. She's the kind of person who'd volunteer at a magic show. She sits in the front row every time. She's the smartest person I know. Sharp wit. Great at everything it seems. Blunt and harsh at times, but she is never rude. Badass at sparring. She's made me more willing to take risks and get out of my comfort zone! I can't imagine my life without her if she never approached me five years ago.... *clears throat* Oh my gosh I've been talking too long...”

Do you have any trouble falling/staying asleep?

“When I'm out, I'm way out. Cause I'm exhausted. But falling asleep? Man, my mind is on so many things. My next music composition, Jazlyn, what and how I'm gonna train Lexi, homework, band practice, Jazlyn, the manga I was just reading, wait--I said Jazlyn...*clears throat again* anyway my brain is so full at night.”

Do you believe in forgiveness?

“Oh, 100%. Not because I think the person is deserving, but I feel sick if I don't do it. I can't move on. Forgive. My life has other places it would like to be than in the past.”

TSP intro

Thanks for reading this far! I'll tag @finickyfelix @ohnomybreadsticks @winterandwords @jezifster @jay-avian @kyofsonder @lesleymoonwriter @leahnardo-da-veggie @cowboybrunch @elsie-writes @atelierwriting + anyone else!

Your questions:

Do you prefer working on one thing until it's finished or many things at a time?

You are in a talent show! What is your talent?

How do you feel about your birthday? Do you have a best or worst birthday?

TSP tag list (ask to be +/-): @thepeculiarbird @illarian-rambling @televisionjester @finchwrites

[linagram]

[ linagram season 3 albums info ]

this post includes season 3 album covers, original song titles, s3 voice drama titles, cover songs, album, character and song trailer voicelines and song previews! so yeah, very long post! but i feel like it's probably better to have everything in one place..

i've planned to go with a completely original concept for season 3 album covers but.. drawing all that would take too long.. and drawing the designs alone was already too much work for me, so i went with season 1-like album covers bc i actually haven't made these before! i've still tried to make them more. "linacore" and instead of a black background, i tried to make them more colorful. i think they came out too colorful.. apologies if they look too eyestrain-y..

(also i really tried to make them more hd but my editing apps kept ruining the quality. so sorry.. maybe that will make analyzing them more interesting in some way..)

[ TRACK LIST ]

Miyagawa Akio.

01. [ Original song ] Experiment: Failed

02. [ Cover song ] Mosquito (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] Unfriendly Hater (Original by Meddmia)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] All-knowing All-agony

05. [ Voice drama ] The Right-Hand Man's Betrayal

[ Creator's comments ]

IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO COME UP WITH A TITLE FOR HIS SONG I'VE LITERALLY TRIED EVERYTHING BUT ALL OF THEM SOUNDED TOO BORING.. i really wanted to have more fun with the song titles this time, so hopefully this one sounds cool.. okay, so his covers! literally all of them are about his relationship with arata, haha. COME ON UNFRIENDLY HATER IS LITERALLY THEM BEFORE THEY STARTED DATING. (or. "dating" as akio likes to say) mosquito is a much more angsty AND realistic take on their relationship ("in any case, in any case, you're the only one getting high", "the more we pursue one another, the more unsavory you become", "i'll die if i stop sucking from you, 'cause i'm a mosquito", "i wonder why it was so beautiful despite being so warped"). meanwhile akaa is like, the saddest one out of them all since in this case it's basically akio begging arata to stay with him, continue to praise him and call him a genius no matter what. i wish i could've given him something that could tell more about his relationship with chise too..

Hanasaki Aimi.

01. [ Original song ] Blooming Connection

02. [ Cover song ] Starlight Girl (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] XxX Cat (Original by Kikuo)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] Deep Cover

05. [ Voice drama ] The End of All Friendships

[ Creator's comments ]

i think aimi's mv theme will be obvious, hehe. you won't have to think much about flower language and stuff like that tho, so don't worry. i really don't think i have to explain why i gave xxx cat to her, like. i think it's obvious jdkslsls (i also thought of maybe giving her bacterial contamination, but i changed my mind since even though the lyrics sound a lot like her, the aesthetic is.. not very aimicore). starlight girl was mostly given to her bc i thought it'd sound cute, but some lyrics do remind me of her and her relationship with her victim ("whispering that sweet lie, you disappeared", "but i still haven't been able to fill up this hole you left inside me"). was deep cover assigned to her only bc of the aimi (kotoko's va) pun?.. maybe. but no, no, i really do have a deeper reason for that! but for now, all i can say is. her relationship with miki and all other prisoners at the moment.

Ishizu Shun.

01. [ Original song ] ???

02. [ Cover song ] Zombies (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] Aishiteitanoni (Original by MARETU)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] MeMe

05. [ Voice drama ] Loving Too Much, Remembering Too Little

[ Creator's comments ]

i honestly gave up while trying to think of a title for his song, so i think "???" perfectly describes shun's character and how tired i felt. if you need to know how it's supposed to be pronounced, i imagine it being something like "uhh..", showing how shun is confused 24/7. AND FINALLY HE'S OFFICIALLY GETTING A ZOMBIES COVER.. the reason why i went with zombies is bc shun just.. feels like a zombie to me. like the way he talks, how i imagine him moving, his color palette.. and also the imagery of his victims' dead bodies. like aww, he's drinking tea and eating cake while both his "ex-gf" and her new bf are dead <3 how cute.. i think his character trailer voiceline will really show how much the lines like "your body is cold even when we hug", "i love you, half-decomposed isn't bad", etc, fit him.. about aishiteitanoni, I DON'T THINK I HAVE TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING, IT'S PERFECT FOR HIM, I SCREAMED WHEN I SAW IT SHOW UP IN MY NOTIFS HSHAHSHSJS. meme is. meme. that's what a guilty verdict does to a guy. and yes, his vd's title is supposed to be a reference to his t1 vd :)

Chiba Naomi.

01. [ Original song ] Like An Adult

02. [ Cover song ] Miraise (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] It's Just Life (Original by nulut)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] Double

05. [ Voice drama ] A Grown Up Child's Tantrum

[ Creator's comments ]

oh naomi.. if only it was easier to come up with song titles for you.. i was giggling while typing her vd's title tho LIKE YES NAOMI EMBRACE THE FACT THAT YOU WERE NEVER ABLE TO TRULY GROW UP!! her miraise cover is really up to interpretation, it can be both about her relationship with her mother and her trying to express her true feelings and make her mother listen, but it also can be about her relationship with tao ("you went before me, didn't you?", "how long do i have to wait? how long do i have to cry?", "i'm singing to the you that will be born after tomorrow") i felt like "it's just life" really fits her and her cover would sound very pretty and it's also just. sad. like naomi really is a smart and talented woman, she could have a bright future, she could have lots of friends, but.. she has way too many issues. and she can't accept that. HER DOUBLE COVER WOULD BE SO GOOD. THE INSTRUMENTAL WOULD MOSTLY BE THE SAME BUT HER VOICE WOULD STILL SOUND SOFT AND REALLY ANNOYED AT THE SAME TIME.. i get chills while thinking about her version of the scene where mikoto calls his mom..

Sanada Kei.

01. [ Original song ] Love=Pain

02. [ Cover song ] Rabbit Hole (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] Bad Honey Hunt (Original by Vell)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] This Is How To Be In Love With You

05. [ Voice drama ] Rose-Tinted Misery

[ Creator's comments ]

his song title was originally supposed to be a pun on the theme of his mv, but it sounded kinda meh to me, so i just went with his main philosophy instead sjskslsl. (the reference to that pun is still there on the cover though) also nO I'VE DECIDED THAT RABBIT HOLE IS VERY KEICORE A LONG TIME AGO EVEN BEFORE THAT ANIMATION SIT DOWN I'M POINTING MY GUN AT YOU SIT DOWN!!!! thank you now i didn't just go with rabbit hole bc "haha funny horny song", it actually does fit kei's aesthetic very well and the lyrics sound a lot like him because rabbit hole always sounded very.. childish to me? like yes, it's supposed to sound all silly and playful, but kei's whole thing is that even though he claims he's so cool and mature and gets all the bitches, this guy still feels like he's younger than eiji (who is six years younger than him), unconsciously regresses to cope with whatever life throws at him and rarely takes dark, scary and tragic stuff seriously. it does reveal some stuff about his crime and his relationship with the victims too! ("you want me to repent? what can i say?", "little miss devotion, the exit's over there, oh, so not going home after all?") as for his other covers, BAD HONEY HUNT FITS HIM SO WELL. LOOK AT THE THUMBNAIL. COME ON THAT'S SO HIM. and the lyrics sound a lot like him as well! about him getting tihtbilwy.. that's him taking his rose-colored glasses on again and singing about how he sees his relationship with ruka :')

Yoshioka Eiko.

01. [ Original song ] Miss Grave Robber

02. [ Cover song ] Parasite (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] Getcha (Original by Giga and Kira)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] Cat

05. [ Voice drama ] Funeral For The Alive

[ Creator's comments ]

EIKO IS OVER HERE GOING FULL SLAY MODE!!! i originally wanted the title to be smth like "grave robber-chan/san", since i prefer to use jp honorifics in my writing, but i felt like no honorifics would fit the song's vibe, so i went with good old "miss" instead. parasite fits eiko so well.. it describes her relationship with her victim perfectly.. the reason why i gave her cat is. well first of all IT WOULD SOUND REALLY COOL, but also, i actually don't see it as eiko singing about herself, i like to think that she's singing about takeru instead, making fun of him for lying to her and manipulating her ("lie until it gets better, follow the king of the masquerade", "victim and perpetrator, let's keep it simple", "i just wanted to ask, so it's out in the open, i just got a little greedy"). MY BRAIN EXPLODED WHEN I REALIZED HER COVER CAN BE INTERPRETED IN THAT WAY LIKE IMAGINE HER SINGING ABOUT HOW MUCH HE SUCKS WHILE STILL HAVING THE ORIGINAL INSTRUMENTAL. (also considering what he did to her, "let's take a breather" sounds very... sad) about her getting getcha. let's just. let her have her girlboss moment one last time.

Yano Asahi.

01. [ Original song ] Caterpillar's Cries

02. [ Cover song ] Hitojichi Koukan (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] Givuṛta (Original by Vell)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] Umbilical

05. [ Voice drama ] The Taste of Abandonment

[ Creator's comments ]

we're getting another insect themed mv!! (though spider isn't really an insect but kei's t2 mv also had butterfly motifs so...) the caterpillar motif won't be that strong in asahi's mv description, but it will be there. i think i should draw him in his t3 mv outfit to show it better.. i think his hitojichi koukan cover would sound very cute and sad and the lyrics describe his relationship with satsuki so well.. ("no matter how much you love me, all i do is get itchy", "i can't drag you along so let's say goodbye", "after all, i want to make you my servant") YES ANOTHER VELL SONG I LOVE VELL'S SONGS OKAY they're so short but so catchy.. i feel like the voice that i imagine asahi to have would fit perfectly, like it'd sound so cute, but so punchable, like this kid goes "noooo, relationships are more important than money!!" and then literally the next lyrics are "money and personal connections make the world go round" 😭😭 but also, to be more serious, the lyrics are very asahicore!! ("naturally i always put myself first", "it's boring that people's desires never end", "in a nutshell i do that because it's funny to me", "that's a trust relationship! if it's not enough, you should buy it") about his umbilical cover... well. first of all, again, it'd sound cute! but also, um. considering the way his biological mom died, i thought that him getting this song would be very. ironic.

Maruyama Yurika.

01. [ Original song ] Secret Ingredient

02. [ Cover song ] Salamander (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] Binomi (Original by MARETU)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] I Love You

05. [ Voice drama ] A Killer by Moonlight, A Maid by Daylight

[ Creator's comments ]

her voice drama's title is a sailor moon reference and her original song's title can be seen as a spongebob reference. i cannot take this woman seriously. but i actually like her mv's aesthetic a lot! i should definitely draw her in her t3 mv outfit one day.. (i say that even though i still haven't drawn her as that monster from her t2 mv. so sorry yurikers..) I HAD TO GIVE HER SALAMANDER OKAY!! I HAD TO!! it's literally perfect for one of the hunger prisoners, it's very yurikacore and the lyrics remind me a lot of her relationship with takame and just her personality in general. ("i surrender, i'm already hooked, i can't function without you anymore", "can i get seconds? one more time", "i'm already obsessed, is it doing super great?") love me some toxic spicy ramen yuri <3 binomi came out VERY recently and before that i was thinking of giving her eye by kanaria simply bc of the vibes, but maretu saved me once again 🙏 the hunger theme is so strong.. yurika deserves to cover all the cannibalism songs ever.. (fun fact yurika actually WAS supposed to be a cannibal but then i changed her crime. i think her current crime fits her better but still. we could've had a cannibal prisoner everyone) and again, i went with "i love you" bc 1) her relationship with takame and 2) i think there's something beautiful and horrifying about the concept of yurika feeding takame rats that she sees as a cake while also going "why can't i just do it right", considering the huge power imbalance they had with takame being older and being her boss and giving yurika literally everything she could've asked for and making yurika feel like she owes her in the process..

Kuroki Riku.

01. [ Original song ] Sun Sets, Games End

02. [ Cover song ] Undead Alice (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] Shinitagari (Original by Nashimoto-P)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] It's Not My Fault

05. [ Voice drama ] Have a Breakdown, Call It a Show

[ Creator's comments ]

OH RIKU..... and also nope, riku's mv won't exactly have a video game theme, that's shun's thing, but the lyrics will reference them a few times. riku's mv is actually one of my favorites so hopefully you guys like it too.. he's my special little boy he always gets the best mvs.. (/j i don't have any faves sjsklssl but riku definitely always gets my creative juices going) i originally wanted undead alice to be his t2 cover but chimera is just so rikucore and i thought it'd go with his t2 mv really well, so i changed it though i still think that maybe chimera would be better as his t3 cover bc of the guilty verdict vibes chimera has.. so anyway undead alice is literally yueriku ("live by feeding on me, since you can’t go out like you want to", "i'm starting to hate the butterflies in my stomach, so please die before i kill you", "let’s bury this cowardly love here, let’s stop and forget all this, it’s better to hate since it's easier that way" AND BASICALLY THE WHOLE SONG). about shinitagari, i actually was planning to assign it to riku as a cover back when i first came up with him and riku's character even was kinda inspired by it! except shinitagari has a more positive meaning meanwhile riku took "wanna die? go ahead and die then" a bit too literally.. also yeah, he's the one who gets inmf this time. i imagine him making a rock cover of it too.. he surely took his guilty verdict well <3

Himura Reina.

01. [ Original song ] (Un) Forgivable

02. [ Cover song ] Fake Actor (Original by DECO*27)

03. [ Cover song ] Hello Dystopia (Original by Mafumafu)

04. [ MILGRAM Cover song ] Triage

05. [ Voice drama ] Accepting The Innocence (For Now)

[ Creator's comments ]

reina's album cover doesn't really have much to show but i think it actually fits her character a lot. also idk if it's that noticeable, but i tried to make her album cover more glitchy than the others. when it comes to her deco cover, i mostly went with it bc of her name meaning, but some lyrics are very reinacore (+ they remind me a lot of her relationship with her brother)! ("so please, shut up before i feel too embarrassed to speak to you again", "because no matter how many times you fool me with "i'm going to change," it'll just end all over again", "so let’s play the "whose fault is it game," the rules are rather hard, even for the winners") hello dystopia reminds me a lot of her character in general and i also just think she deserves to get at least one cover where she goes absolutely wild. fake actor and triage are just her being all sad but in hello dystopia she can go a little insane!! a little crazy even!!

[ Album Trailer Voicelines ]

Akio: "He continued to try to get the rope off his neck."

Aimi: "I'm just glad he's dead."

Shun: "Do I have to jog your memory, Guard 002-san?"

Naomi: "End my suffering, just like I've ended Tao's."

Kei: "Someone is planning to kill Eiji?"

Eiko: "He told me it wasn't even a big deal."

Asahi: "And after that, something.. changed."

Yurika: "Haha. You got me. Congrats."

Riku: "Come on, I was just.. bullying him a little."

Reina: "That stupid kid was obsessed with "saving" me."

[ Song Trailer Voicelines ]

Akio: "You don't have to be a genius like me to put all these things together."

Aimi: "You see me as a victim. A perfect and fragile victim."

Shun: "Are you implying that we never were a couple?"

Naomi: "Why would I be jealous of that brat?"

Kei: "The truth is kinda lame, honestly."

Eiko: "I will take good care of Shun, Kei and Yurika for you."

Asahi: "What did you just call me, Miki-nee?"

Yurika: "I-it's like.. s-she really.. loved me.."

Riku: "He's just another source of attention to me."

Reina: "I guess you could say this was my plan all along."

[ Song Previews ]

Akio:

"Solve the problem! You know the answer! Good job! I love you, love you, you can do it!

I can't concentrate with those words playing in my head!

Well, whatever, I know I'll get the best grade in loving you anyway

So keep looking at me, keep saying I'm a genius, please praise me once more"

Aimi:

"Come on, accept my gift, tell me you're grateful, tell me how thoughtful I am

Did I do great? Am I a good friend? I know I am, I know I am

"This flower reminds me of you" I'm the sweetest person you've ever met, right?

"Sorry, but I gotta go" Hey, what do you think you're doing?"

Shun:

"It's a crime for me to be in love, so I'll play it safe

No more heartbreaks, no more lying to myself

I'm ready to live a happy loveless life 

So please, just forgive me already!"

Naomi:

"Your looks, your posture, your voice, your face

Everything about you is not mature enough

Don't laugh, don't cry, look them right in the eyes but not for too long

Go on, look at me, be honest with me, don't feel sorry for me, just like an adult would"

Kei:

"My love means nothing, if it doesn't make you cry

I don't want the kind of love that doesn't hurt me

"Play it safe"? Nah, that's not for me

Now can I get praised for being everyone's PERFECT lover?"

Eiko:

"Our love is dead, oh no, let us sing our prayers

Your lies were the only thing that kept me alive

Except I don't see your name on our grave, oh no, don't just leave me like this

Let's get buried next to each other, rotting together doesn't sound so bad"

Asahi:

""Stop, that's enough!" But it will never be enough

Sweet or sour, I don't care, I want everything I could never have

Even if it's rotten, even if it's broken, I just want to have something

Do you understand now? I live like I can die at any moment"

Yurika:

"What do you two think you're doing? Hey, hey, don't you know it's dangerous here?

Well, it's your fault now, shouldn't have taken a walk in the woods when it's this dark

What should we do with you? Should we tie you up? Should we cut off your limbs?

I bet you two taste like fear and betrayal, let me take a bite!"

Riku:

"Let's play until the sun goes down, let's play until we see the sky turn purple

That's what they want us to do anyway

Hey, are you having fun? Aren't you tired? Don't you wanna go home already?

"Nope, I'm just getting started!" Well, let me end everything here"

Reina:

"All of them? So guilty, guilty! 

"You are innocent" Haha, no, I am innocence itself!

This kind of behavior is unforgivable?

Then why did you still forgive me?"

[ Character Trailer Voicelines ]

Akio: "Uh.. Good morning, I guess.. No, it doesn't hurt as much as before, thankfully.. Hey. Why did you.. I mean.. Of course, I'm glad you've finally realized I'm innocent, but.. How could you just.. change your mind like that? What did you see in my video? Did you.. feel bad for me?"

".. Arata. Arata, I don't think he's supposed to- ARATA, WHY IS HE STILL ALIVE?!"

Aimi: "Hello, Miki-chan!~.. Hm? What? I mean, we're friends, so it's only right for me to call you that, right? Ehehe, you're like, my only friend here.. Ah, Akio-kun.. He's good too, I guess. But he's not really struggling anymore, so.. I don't think he will continue to rely on me anymore. I don't think he.. still likes me."

"It's okay.. It's okay, Nii-san couldn't be wrong.. They deserve it. All of them."

Shun: "LEAVE ME ALONE! STOP- DID MY PARENTS SEND YOU TO ME?! I SWEAR, IF YOU EVEN LOOK AT MY... Huh? Where.. am I? Where's Hina?.. And where's Jouhei?.. O-oh, it's you.. No, no, it's okay, I remember now. Even though I really.. don't want to remember."

"Ehehe, I've slept well.. Hey, what do you two want for breakfast? Come on, don't be shy~" 

Naomi: "I'M SORRY! I SAID I'M SORRY! PLEASE, MOM, I WILL DO ANYTHING, JUST DON'T.. Ah. It's you, Miki-san.. Hold on, where's Eiji-san?.. Well, I don't really care. So.. Guilty, huh.." *laughs* "I know I've said I'll be okay with any verdict, but.. How could you change your decision so quickly? Did you just remember how young my victim was?"

"When.. When will I finally be enough for her? Wait, is that.. Ah, whatever."

Kei: "Oh, Miki, it's you. And.. you're Hinode, right? Haha, I'm sure we'll have lots of fun together~.. Hey, is Eiji doing okay? This place doesn't have any doctors, so.. No, no, stop saying I'm kind. I'm just mad that I wasn't the one who has caused him so much pain. It's like someone stole a chance to show him more love from me.. Are you expecting me to thank you for saving me? Haha.. Dear, I know you're just playing with our lives as if we were your toys."

*crying* "Ruka.. I don't know why I did it.. It just.. It hurts so much.. C-can you hug me, please?" 

Eiko: "Takeru.. Takeru, please.. Did I do something wrong- O-oh, it's you, Miki-chan. And.. Woah, this new guy sure is handsome!.. But I still miss Eiji-kun. Hey, he's gonna come back, right? He will be okay, right?.." *in a lower voice* "It was her, right?.. I'll have to make her pay for this."

"Thanks for helping, I guess. Wow, it's like you have a lot of experience with this stuff.. Hey. What do you guys even do?"

Asahi: "A-ah, it's you, Miki-nee.. A-and who are you? Ugh, I just hope that he treats you better than Eiji-nii did.. Oh, I'm doing great! I mean, you forgave me again and all. Um.. I kinda miss Eiji-nii's cooking though. There's no point in trying to steal the guilty guys' food now.. Hm? S-shut up, I'm not fucking scared of them!"

"I'M SORRY! I JUST- I WAS SO AFRAID, I THOUGHT SHE- I THOUGHT SHE DOESN'T LOVE ME ANYMORE! PLEASE, LET ME STAY!"

Yurika: ".. I'm going to kill you. All three of you. And all the prisoners here. I hate you all. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU SO-.. Oh, it's you. What do you want from me? I know the third trial is starting, you don't have to tell me anything. Just leave already. Stop looking at me like that! If you don't leave, I will do what I promised to do to those two."

"We're finally done.. I won't have to deal with them anymore, I'm so happy.. U-uh, you're not mad at me, right?" 

Riku: ".. What do you want? Ugh, I still feel sick.. I don't want to talk to you. And you, especially.. Hey, do you feel proud of yourself, Miki? Didn't you say that "your forgiveness has its limits"? You're sooooo cool for voting me guilty. That was sooooo unexpected. You may have used that thing on me, but I still remember what you said. And I'm still mad."

"Come on. You knew it was me." *laughs* "Now.. Won't you do all of us a favor and die already?"

Reina: "Well, well, well. I got voted innocent. Again. What a surprise." *sighs* "When will this end, Miki? When will it end? It feels like my own personal hell at this point. And I agree that I should be punished, but.. Not like this. Come on. Would you want to be forgiven for killing your own little brother? If that's so, then you are truly heartless-" 

"Please, leave. I don't want to talk about it. It was my fault. My fault, my fault, my fault, my fault, my f-"

[spopsalt]

Bro are you mentally ok? You're over here saying that Rick and Morty's familial relationship is healthier than Catra and Adora's relationship like??? Have you even watched the shows??? I'm convinced that you're braindead or just media illiterate.

Oh wow! Well looky here! Such a lovely anon ask <3 First off, if you don't like my content... maybe just block me instead of asking if I'm mentally okay and calling me braindead??? I'm not saying their dynamic is healthy, far from it, but I'm saying that it's healthier than c//a (Not like that's a high bar) Anywayyyy allow me to explain why it's healthier than your incest cute totally healthy ship. Again, just wanna make it clear because people are gross, whatever I say about Rick and Morty is 100% PLATONIC AND FAMILIAL! Got that out of the way? Good. And awayyyyyyyyy we go!

Rick doesn't use unwanted physical touch on Morty to assert control unlike a certain abusive kitty cat *cough* Catra *cough* Catra literally forces Adora to dance with her in the princess prom dance that for some reason a lot of c//a stans sexualize (Despite them being TEENAGERS at the time) and we can clearly see that Adora is uncomfortable the whole time. Meanwhile with Rick and Morty at most Rick will touch Morty's shoulder, or awkwardly hug him back, but he never does it when it's unwanted, for example when Morty pulled away from their hug, Rick didn't attempt to hug him again, sure he looked concerned but that isn't a bad thing, he was just worried, anyways that ties into my next point!

Rick is actually protective of Morty. Now, Catra is only protective of Adora when the plot demands it! But Rick is consistently protective of Morty, this started all the way back in season 1 episode 4, where he gets rightfully pissed when he found out aliens were monitoring Morty naked to accurately simulate his genitalia, we can even see that he tried to attack them but was held back. And in the episode afterward, we can see him kill someone who attempted to assault Morty.

Rick never attempted to kill Morty. This is the lowest possible bar, BUT Rick has never once attempted to kill Morty, again, unlike a certain kitty cat who tried to kill her sister crush MULTIPLE TIMES! Rick actually does the exact opposite, we see in season 2 episode 1 "A Rickle In Time" that when push comes to shove, Rick is willing to sacrifice his life for Morty. While this doesn't make up for all the bad stuff he does to Morty, it's pretty irrefutable evidence that Rick does care about Morty. I'm not saying you have to sacrifice yourself for someone to show that you care, buttttt it's pretty good evidence to show that Rick does care. His literal only request is for Morty to "be good"

Next up! Morty canonically gets comforted by Rick's physical touch. This shows that Morty feels comfortable enough around Rick to get comforted whenever he so much as hugs him, we see this in "Unmortricken" and "Fear No Mort" (Abilet those were like the only times Rick and Morty hugged soooooo) Meanwhile with Adora, Catra's touch tends to make her panic more (Unless you count her being calmed by Catra's slap when she was having a panic attack but c'mon dude)

Rick never brags about how easy it is to manipulate Morty, while Rick does canonically manipulate Morty in canon, which is immensely fucked up, I am not defending Rick I promise you, he literally does the bare minimum and doesn't brag about how easily manipulated Morty is unlike Catra twice, I don't remember the exact episodes, but the lines are "You and Adora are perfect for each other I'll give you that, earnest, naive, ridiculously easy to manipulate..." "But she's (Adora's) slow, and easily manipulated."

Rick never finds happiness in Morty's pain, again another really, really low bar, buttttt Rick is happy because Morty is miserable, the closest I can think of is season 4 episode 3, but he wasn't happy because Morty was miserable, he was happy because his (fucked up) plan worked, meanwhile Catra is always smiling and make little quips when Adora is in literal agony due to her, she derives some kinda sick sadistic pleasure from it and just loves to feed on her insecurities during battle, which is...interesting.

Those were just some random ones I could think of from the top of my head, but I'm sure that there's more, so maybe you need to watch the shows before leaving anon hate <3

[animehouse-moe]

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 8: Shibuya Incident 3

This is what I was worried about, what I thought was arguably the worst case scenario for what we'd get for season 2. Thankfully, only a single battle falls to this effort, but we have no telling what the future may hold. Not entirely devoid of good, the episode is overwhelmingly still, but also oddly flashy. A brutal balance to strike, worsened by the ghosting and dimming imposed on it, I don't think it'll take long for me to explain what's going on with this episode.

So, first things first, the praise. This episode takes Geto's explanation of Domain Amplification and how to handle Gojo, and shapes it into something rather appealing compared to the manga. I think it's a good change, but one that I'm still curious about. The real fight between Gojo, and Hanami, Jogo, and Choso starts next episode. I'm unsure of the reasoning behind splitting up the explanation into parts that are stippled throughout. It would work equally well as a closer to prep the tension for the ensuing fight.

Gojo, the all powerful sorcerer, has a "weakness" that's being exploited, and so he rises to the challenge. Now, I'll state once more that it's not a critique of the anime's exposition, but just a question of why they chose to split it up instead of keeping it in line with the manga.

Anyways, here's Hanami, Dagon, and Mahito playing with the kids while Geto explains things.

Similarly, I think them condensing the respective fights was a good decision. With the pacing of them, consolidating them works much better to preserve pace and engagement.

Also, there's a good few ambitious scenes in the episode, that are arguably well done. I think disappointingly though, very few have to do with actual combat, and arguably fewer that are specifically animated.

Let's start with Yuji's reaction to Mahito being in Shibuya. Not quite the manga, but it's pretty comparable to his reactions from season 1. Because of the lack of animation though, you don't really feel that oomph like you did with S1 Yuji, which is somewhat saddening. Still, far from the worst.

You know, I think I might just speed things along. The very core of this episode is good layouts. Animation doesn't really follow, nor does it keep up with said LOs. Here's a few examples though, like Yuji's running cycle paired with his character acting. Solid and smooth, it's well done even though it's different from the first season.

Similarly, but arguably worse, is Choso's Slicing Exorcism. Solid idea, good boards, surprisingly good animation. Terrible composition and art. Which is a shame, it's a really solid approach to Choso's style of combat, and it's squandered by negative effort in its surroundings. Better than a blurred background, but still far from good.

But that's really as far as my praise can go. As I said to open, the episode is painfully still, but attempts to be incredibly flashy. Some boards work well, but they're largely limited to stills and non-combat sequences.

Grasshopper vs Yuji was nearly a complete letdown in that regard. Drawing out the comical/silly moments, quickening its pace while completely changing its scale, and offer a total lack of impact and weight. By all means, its a flunking score that even makes you doubt if what transpired in the previous episode was at all associated to the execution of today's.

And that doesn't even mention the weirdness of trying to mimic a JJK 0 fight scene of Yuta & Rika vs Geto. Choppy, sluggish, and the animation/choreography makes no sense. Completely changes the scale of Grasshopper as well as the limit of their abilities, as well as Yuji. Essentially what I said with the prior episode, the scale of combat has grown to an unreasonable scale that misrepresents their ability.

And then there's the whole rapid fire punching that takes place. Bad choreography in the first place (though a bit more forgivable in manga format) that's made completely unwatchable thanks to ghosting and dimming. No real words, so just watch this clip from an account on Twitter.

And I think that pretty well sums it up. Not a good episode, not a good fight. Praying for better times, and for that matter pacing. With the Kyoto Exchange Event as the benchmark for group battling as well as exposition, Shibuya is already struggle to keep on reasonable pacing. I think Shibuya moves fast in the first place, but I still believe that said pace has been quickened with the anime. For reference, this episode adapts "about" 5 chapters (some contents are piecemealed from other chapters and re-organized, so tough to perfectly gauge), while Kyoto Exchange averaged about 3 chapters an episode.

I refuse to say I'm ringing alarm bells, as I'd already done that before this season, let alone this part of it, began. This is just stating the facts of what unfolds in front of viewers now. I'm just disappointed that following the impressive work of the previous episode that we fall so far. Hopefully the following episode of next week can pick up the pieces once more.

[saglaophonos]

how do you think the last ten minutes could have been better set up? because i have Ideas but i’m also a fool. a fool who did feel the pacing of season two was Off and would not at all have expected the kiss at the end had it not been spoiled for me.

i think the last ten minutes had two glaring set-up problems which were 1. it is way too easy to side with crowley in the break up and 2. aziraphale's decision to go back to heaven seems jarring. and sure, you can argue that you're meant to read them as both at fault, and that aziraphale's current character arc does align with his choice. and youd be right. but also if i had done it, it would've been better. 

1. too easy to side with crowley (crowley needs to be more at fault)

the scene where crowley goes to heaven and learns about the second coming should've happened in episode 3 while aziraphale was in edinburgh. and crowley shouldve spent the next couple of episodes weighing whether or not he should tell aziraphale about what he knows. this would've continued & escalated the conflict of episode one, as crowley knows that telling aziraphale would spur him into action, but crowley's priority is keeping them and their "peaceful existence" undisturbed.

then in episode 5, i would tweak the sequence that starts with nina calling out crowley. crowley's reaction reads as "oh no i'm in love with aziraphale!" and my tweak is it shouldve been "oh no i can't hide my love for aziraphale anymore. i can't avoid the situation coming to a head any longer". crowley is avoidant. avoids external conflicts (the second coming) & avoids internal conflict (feelings for aziraphale). the ep 5 sequence ends with crowley's same conversation with gabriel and he decides that in order to keep them safe, he has to keep aziraphale in the dark about both things.

having crowley make the choice to not communicate with aziraphale be what indirectly leads to aziraphale accepting the archangel position in heaven would be a more satisfying way to punish crowley for his avoidant tendencies, while also bringing into larger emphasis for the viewer that this is something crowley still needs to work out on a character level, but also for their relationship to progress. then, you don't need the fanfictiony "maggie and nina tell crowley to confess" scene, because the reason why crowley confesses becomes obvious within the breakup scene itself. crowley realizes he caused the situation they're in by avoiding the issue; his next strategy is to force them both to confront the issue directly.

2. aziraphale's decision feels really s1 (establish motivation earlier)

okay the aziraphale fix i'll be more brief about. first of all, say you go the above route. having crowley worry that aziraphale would try to prevent the second coming if he found out about it wouldve helped lay the groundwork of explaining aziraphale's choice. but i wouldve also done the following 

the fact that aziraphale really didn't care about maggie and nina getting together until he lied to heaven about it was such a missed opportunity. if aziraphale is insistent that he must and can fix heaven, that could've easily been mirrored though this plot. the aziraphale & maggie scene in episode 1 should've had aziraphale genuinely moved by maggie's plight - instead of brushing her off, he shouldve gotten invested on a personal level. maybe he just wants them to be happy, maybe its made more blatant that he sees the two as parallels for himself & crowley. idk. either way getting them together because of the miracle lie shouldve only been a secondary concern to him. it shouldve been personal. because the plot is all about how, no matter how much aziraphale would like to control the situation and manipulate it into going the way he thinks it ought to go, some things in life are simply beyond your control. but aziraphale can't see that, which would've more blatantly set up his motivation when he makes the choice to go back to heaven. aziraphale cannot reconcile with injustice; yet, in the same way you can't force two people to fall in love, you can't fix heaven.

and honestly? honestly you could tweak more. something you could really tweak for a better set up into episodes 5 & 6, but especially the last ten minutes, is 1941. anyway! can't wait for s3. hope they kiss!

[venus-is-thinking]

Disventure Camp All Stars Power Ranking (Round 16 - Venus)

Recap: Alec's Elimination (4/6 pts)

(Total: 19/29 points acquired)

I was so close. I was SO close. Why did they have to get rid of Alec instead of Riya!! It was perfect!!!

Well, the answer why they had to get rid of Alec instead of Riya is because Grett wanted to keep more disagreeable personalities around. Fair enough; I'm glad we did get a game reason to do so. Plus, I thought the Connor/Riya perfume scene was interesting and we wouldn't have gotten that if Riya went, nor would we get the incoming girls' alliance.

This does make some sense, though, and I think it makes it much more possible to get Ally to the final 3 this way, lol. In my end game prediction thing last time, I couldn't get the numbers to crunch out for her getting there without back to back immunity wins, and I think that's possible now! Winning.

@accirax is GOING to beat me this season. At this point, I'm just going for a passing percentage (70%). I'm still feeling the Gabby elimination...

Onto the new rankings!

1: Grett

This is unexpected to me, considering that after last episode, I'm a firm believer that Grett is a final boss (rather than a winner), and most likely one that goes out via vote rather than in the final 3. So, if I think she's going to get voted out, it's rather bold to put her as #1 in one of the only two vote-outs remaining.

This is really an in-universe read for me. Who the hell is voting for Grett?

Grett is the swing vote between Jake/Connor and Riya/Ally, who seem to want to take all 3 women to the final 3, as per the trailer. Grett has the flexibility to work with either; she gained trust by tipping Connor and Jake off about last week's Jake vote, allowing them to idol out Alec, and she still has some trust with Riya and Ally for voting with them.

Besides, even if either of the duos are onto her playing the middle, I don't think it really benefits either side to target her right now. Both pairs would need to agree to take out Grett, and I think it's much more likely that whoever proposed taking out Grett first would get snitched on to Grett by the other two. Like, if Jake goes to Riya and says Grett is dangerous, let's take her out, there's like a 0% chance that Ally DOESN'T go to Grett and say "hey Jake is pitching your name. Let's vote Jake out." Same for Connor with Riya, Riya with Connor and Ally with Jake. The pairs have too many problems between them to work together when they're hypothetically fairly even on power.

So, while I strongly expect I'll be putting Grett on the bottom of my next week's rankings, I'm actually putting her at #1 on this one. Who would've known!

2: Ally

I THINK Ally is going to make the finale now. She gives me big finalist energy for this season, and I think Alec's elimination opens enough doors that it's possible. Connor and Jake also proved last episode that they're willing to axe people off strategy rather than personal relationships, so I don't think Ally is TOO threatened by virtue of being Jake's worstie. Even if the women's alliance doesn't pan out, I think it's plenty plausible she'll survive.

However, I do want to say that I think it's really hard to be confident in anyone's survival chances now that the group is so small. I used to say things like "I think Aiden is the less important Jake for the future narrative" to explain why I was really confident Jake would survive, from a narrative perspective. In final 5, though, everyone is the unique copy of their character slot. Even if some people, like Connor and Jake, have similar narratives and are aligned, they bring distinctly different energies to the group dynamic. As such, the writers might decide to cut off anyone for a specific narrative choice that I didn't see coming. That's what happened to Alec last episode, and I'm very aware it could happen again.

However, I don't THINK they're done with Ally yet. Her villainy is starting to go higher, and I think cutting her off here would kill her current momentum. I feel like they're going to want the momentum to take her into being a losing finalist, where she'll get to process everything at the very end of the adventure. Plus, like, sometimes Accirax and I talk about bench distribution, and I feel like if Ally ISN'T a finalist, there's a lot of people I have no clue whose bench they'd be on. Like, would Hunter be on Connor's bench? Riya's?? Jake's???

So, long story short, I don't have a ton of concrete reasons why I think Ally is safe. I just have less concrete reasons I think she's not safe.

3: Connor

Connor is obviously in potential danger in the dawn of the girls' alliance era. I also think Connor could be in trouble because the writers might have some interest in him talking to Alec in the losers' motel episode.

I also think Connor is in an interesting place in terms of power rankings, because I could really easily see him being in the next two boots OR in being a finalist. I could even see him being a winner; I wouldn't love it, just because he was already eliminated once this season and I'd rather see someone else take it, but he's probably my third pick for winner after Jake and Grett. He might even beat out Grett at this point, idk.

So, basically, Connor could go in like any direction. He could die here, he would win, who knows! That's why he goes in the middle, I guess.

4: Jake

I wanted to put Jake above Ally and Connor soooo bad. Not because I think he's in-universe safer than them, but because I just really think he's the winner.

Let me start by outlining the reasons Jake is not safe.

If the women's alliance happens, Jake or Connor is going home.

Ally clearly has an agenda about eliminating Jake, and has previously said she'll withhold her vote against anyone other than Jake.

Jake has already escaped elimination once recently by winning immunity (with Aiden going out in his place), so it'd be kinda lame if he survives elimination with, say, Connor going out because he wins a clutch immunity AGAIN. (I think the best way to combat this would be if Ashley had somehow taught Jake something about horseback riding, but I have no idea how or when that would've happened).

These three things together mean that, assuming the girls' alliance does get control and vote out one of the guys, it really SHOULD be Jake. Like, it makes the most sense by a lot.

He's also recently talked to Connor and fully stated the theme of his character arc (even if he messes up, he can still try to change and be better). If it was literally anyone else, I'm sure I would've been screaming "death flag" instead of "winner's cut moment."

However, I do still firmly believe Jake is the winner. That's why I didn't put him in fifth. Even though Jake would make an incredible amount of in-universe sense as the boot here, I'm still a believer. If I suffer for it, at least I talked myself into putting him fourth instead of second.

5: Riya

Here we go again.

Okay, so it really seems like this girls' alliance thing would imply a male boot. It's very clearly advertised in the trailer; Ally even says something about making final 3. The only thing is, I don't really think they're going to want to let the 3 girls cake walk to the final 3. If they do take out, say, Jake here, I don't really see any way other than a Connnor immunity win to stop them from doing so.

However, I do think it's possible the girls' alliance is getting hyped up before it crashes and burns. Like, it sounds like it would get at least one win, but if you think about it, it really shouldn't be all that revolutionary. Like, wow, the 2 guys who were on the outs will continue to vote together, and the 3 women who were in the power position (only stopped by an idol) will continue to vote together. That feels... default, I guess?

Default doesn't equal impossible, obviously, but I also think Riya might run into trouble with that promise Grett made to not forget Riya and Alec voting with Yul in his boot episode.

I think it's entirely possible that this episode is where Grett makes it apparent that she's been working with Connor and Jake and takes out Riya. Then, if Grett is the boot next episode for her downfall as the final boss, the finalists are Ally, Jake and Connor. Connor probably gets eliminated at 3, resulting in Jake vs. Ally for the final 2 with Jake emerging victorious as a sign that he was able to grow and succeed. It just makes sense to me.

So, I still think Riya is the most likely. I think the womens' alliance is a way to make it seem like it isn't obvious that, with Grett in full control, Alec and Riya aren't just getting booted back to back. However, it still makes plenty of sense that that would be the case, so while it might be a surprising vote, it won't feel confusing or random.

[palmviolet]

fic writer tag game

thanks for the tag @mirkwood-hr-department !

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

44

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

~900k (scary)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

stranger things, peaky blinders, tolkien, succession, among others...

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

- sub-culture

- the lathe

- better by you, better than me

- disaster/lucky

- misgiven

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i do! i'm not so great at it with oneshots but with multichapters my practice is to reply to all the previous chapter's comments right before i post the next one. it keeps me disciplined about it, since i think it's important to engage with and thank my readers.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

probably the year of what now... i was going for hopeful melancholy but let's be honest. i cried writing it

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

i mean i don't really do unqualified happy endings lmao there's always something bittersweet or complicated about it. maybe love is a battle i can win? since i finished writing it on christmas eve and something about the festive spirit must have suffused my attitude.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

thankfully not, or if i have it wasn't consequential enough to recall it.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

not really, no. i'm more of a fade-to-black kind of gal. i have the utmost respect for those who do write it, since i find it difficult and ultimately would rather focus my energy on other parts of my writing.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

not really, no. they can be fun but it's difficult to find a scenario that feels plausible (as someone obsessed with that sort of thing lmao). i do have a hankering to somehow connect downton abbey and peaky blinders together, since they occur in exactly the same period from very different societal perspectives. i have no idea how, however. the casual viewer's choice would be putting mary and tommy together, but mary's far too much of a snob, and sybil too much of an idealist. thomas, maybe? hmm now i'm thinking about it maybe i'll do it and write something gen.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge. i have had edits stolen and put on tiktok, though, which was enraging.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i have! no forest, no trees was translated into russian, and the first few chapters of the lathe have been translated into german.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have not. i don't think i'm a collaborative enough person for that lmao

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

i'm not sure i have one! definitely have some i prefer to write but i like them all for different reasons, and i also err on the side of character work rather than straightforward fandom-style shipping.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

there's a elrond & thranduil wip sitting in my google docs waiting for its final few sections. i keep going back to it and rereading it and then never adding anything else, though it really does need those extra sections to be fit for uploading. there's also private eyes, which i did enjoy writing, but i think my style and interests have evolved somewhat beyond it now. i'm also somewhat working on a thoroughbred racing tommyalfie au set in the 1970s, but i fear my own lack of knowledge about the industry will prevent me ever being quite happy enough with it to post.

16. What are your writing strengths?

dialogue. i love me some dialogue. i also love doing research and i think i'm good at utilising that research in a thematically effective way.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i make things way longer than they need to be lol. i'm also trying to get away from over-explaining in an internal monologue and instead trying to trust the reader and the writing to speak for itself.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i can't say i've ever really had an opinion on this. i probably wouldn't use another language for pivotal dialogue, even if it's footnoted, since it can take a non-speaking reader out of the flow of the scene, but overall i don't really mind and sometimes it can be effective.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

probably something like marvel or once upon a time back on ff.net. those were most certainly NOT the days.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

hmmm definite recency bias coming in here but it's got to be either the lathe or better by you, better than me. honourable mention (only because it's so much shorter) to vagues.

zero pressure tags to @beetlesandstarss @television-bodies @greatunironic @divinekangaroo