#I HAVE BEEN DANCING SINCE I FOUND OUT. EVERY SAD FASCIST I SEE MAKES ME DANCE MORE

[hawberries]

sorry to uspol on main but i am JUST so happy for my american friends today for pushing out the fascist one, and like the rest of my dash i am in a celebratory mood, so feel free to use code "HeLostByALot" in my webstore for 25% off everything ahead of the small update on the 10th 💛

[soranihimawari]

Based on this Oikawa art: ©️to the original artist credits via this link.

Tagging : @oikawa-obvs @m0nstergeneration20xx @smolbludandelions @oikawaandkuroostan

Word count: 2.2k

Playlist for reference:

The lullaby:

The song that helped me write:

Conmigo, tu corazón está a salvo.

(With me, your heart is safe)

A small part of you is a tad bit more curious these days since your building had received a new occupant. You had been studying for months abroad in Argentina, the place where your paternal grandparents had met during the Second World War. They were encaptured by the thrall of escaping their fascist home territory of a province in Italy as children; the two would eventually meet as young adults and with a promise of an apple and fine charcuterie select meats, it wasn’t long before they were busy tending to their own children.

One lucky son met the love of his life on an excursion to the library and had successfully flirted with a young florist who did not fall for the young man’s sharp features, but instead, with his kind heart. The younger couple chose to move abroad to the states for a few years in order to leave behind the pillars of their supportive past to sketch a dream for their future.

You were the first child who infamously stayed mute, observing a world that was meant for those who were much older and wiser than a child. You had been exposed to mainly three languages and until the age of four, you remained silent. You had been dragged to many doctors and learning centers yet the cause for the quiet loomed over your tiny demeanor, but growing up in a multicultural household did have its charm. You were five years old when you finally decided staying quiet was no longer an option; you strung along sentences in your father’s Argentine tongue, your mother’s native British English, & finally much to your grandparents’ surprise, Italian. The world was much more brilliant since that day.

Now, nineteen years later, here you were standing at the mailing center floor of your student lodging. The mid-July season was a time when the air brought about snow and sleet and the graying sunset surrounded the city of Buenos Aries in a phosphorescent hue. The new neighbor had just arrived from Japan earlier last month; he was a sight to behold. You couldn’t help falling for his charming smile or his determineds stare as you two walk up the stairs together. Suddenly, you think of yourself when you were nonverbal for the first five years on this planet. His actions and reactions to the new side world was at first marvelous; you could see his passion and drive everyday you would leave the apartment for various errands like heading to the market or a cafe for a light snack of coffee and pan de bono.

However, the thinning veil of homesickness loomed behind the closed door had become much too great. You didn’t mean to pry, but you could tell the man was clearly upset at something (or in this case someone) as you over heard his voice crack on the phone, which for whatever reason had been set to speaker:

“Lo siento Toto. No podemos encontrar un traductor para usted ahora mismo.”

You close the book you were reading in your room as soon as you heard the call end. It was only three weeks into his tenure, but you and him liked to play a game. You come up with it one afternoon after your online lecture at the university finished and he was home from a jog around the apartment block. You smile at him, waving shyly at first. He returns the gesture before you make a sign with your hands; this is when you point him and he glanced down at your kind eyes. You smile again and with your opposite hand, you tap his door once. You frown, and it’s two knocks. And so on. If there is an emergency, it’s a triangular placed knock; if it’s a health thing like a cold or your cycle showing up, a square. So now you wait patiently waiting by the wall of next to your bed and when you hear no knock from him, you raise your hand and knock twice. Your neighbor agrees with two knocks followed by a triangle.

Of all days to make a house call, you chose no time like the present. You grab your D-link key ring, bag, and a hoodie before you slip on your light blue high top sneakers. You lock your front door and slide to the left. Your heart suddenly beats a bit faster because you give a curtesy knock on the door. The deadbolt squeaks as your neighbor pulls the door open.

The apartment is dark save for the night light in the kitchen and the light in the bedroom. Looming above you, you noticed his pink tinged nose and tear stricken cheeks hidden by a broken smile. You think about your family stories about being lost and found. You apply it to him once the door behind you closes. His dark brown hair bounces on a whim as he instinctually reaches out for your hoodie sleeve; he tugs on the fabric causing you to turn to look down at his hands. He mutters something so quietly you thought it was the heating element being turned on by the timer.

You nod your head, kicking off your shoes; you see the small area next to the coat closet where his shoes were kept. This momentary delay caused enough of a buffer time before he moves his hand into your own to hold. You don’t mind the roughness of his fingers at all. Against yours, it feels like the sport he so heavily trains for everyday gave him these aesthetically pleasing grip. You squeeze his hand gently for reassurance, your eyes hide a certain storm of serenity & you decide that perhaps this is what he needs. You have to quell the uneasiness and betrayal he was emoting because you of all people understand.

Call it a sign of humanness since you both slowly start to see each other not as neighbors, but as equals in the solidarity of finding comfort in the other.Neither of you say anything as he leads you to his kitchen dining island where he sits on a singular barstool, his body facing you with his hand in yours still.

You raise an open palm to his face, his cheek is warmer than you expected when he closes his eyes and the tears fall again. He looks like a pouting child, much to your amusement. You say nothing as your other hand massages the ringlets (which felt like chocolatier mousse)that make up his hair before you feel his other arm snake around your waist and he pulls you closer; your hoodie becomes damp the more he lets out every thing that he kept locked away. The loneliness is not kind to those who fear it, yet the two of you persevered. After all, the dark is less scary when you have a friend and so you grasp a hold of him. It hurts; this hurts seeing him this way because somewhere along the way you and him forged a bond. And you hold the boy who is so far from home as much as you can; believe in me and I will come running to you. Your inner conscience conveys this until his crying subsides you stay there still cradling his hallowed frame. His sniffles are reduced to a breadth of a whisper as you hum the opening bars of a song you heard earlier on the classic radio XM station.

Your eyes notice the shirt he wears has been through better days with the faded title on its sleeve, you realize the word is the same no matter which language you spoke; you brush back his hair with your fingers before you pry his almond eyes upward to get a good look at your stoic face. You wipe his cheeks with both of your hands and when you are sure his eyes are truly focused on your promoninent features, your breath hitches in your throat for a moment. You intake a sharp breath and when you exhale rather slowly, your breath fans across his brow. His eyes are closed for a half a second and you decide to open your mouth when your mid-Atlantic voice finds its place.

“Captain,” is the first word you say with confidence you say with utmost clarity. You trace your fingers on the faded design, your neighbor’s emblem is a crown as well. Your voice cuts through his pride like a comet; it is surreal and bright. The shadows of sadness ceases to exist when you see how much the old title inspires the almost snuffed out embers to reignite. He doesn’t look anywhere but up at you stunned in a wild glimpse of surprise. You repeat the word, a brief smile dances across your features.

“Captain. Capitán. Capitano,” all three languages you know in succession drives his mind to rule the court again. You tell him this out loud until he kisses your lips closed; it is as honest as he feels and when the kiss breaks you tap his steadfast pursed lips with your left handed fingers. His arm is still on your waist with the other brushing back your your front layers of hair over your shoulders. You place your right hand in the middle of his chest which now regained its resting breathing rhythm. He asks you something and you nod. You stifle a yawn before you remove your hand from his lips and lean down again.

This time, this kiss is calculated and efficient; you guide the hand on your waist higher to your neck and when you tilt your head to the opposite side, he whines. Yet you smirk beneath the soft sound he makes you reply with. You remove your lips from his and kiss his jawline, the side of his neck driving his impulse points insane. His hair is a mess and so is yours, but neither of you are paying it any mind when his arms envelope your body; he lifts you with such ease you feel your head swimming and the kiss is becoming more deep. Your hands entwine around his shoulders for stability, and your legs wrap around his hips; and he breaks this moment to hold your body for the few minutes he needs to move you swiftly out of his kitchen and into his dimly lit room. He smiles into this kiss and finally the least bit of sorrow leaves for the time being.

There is an innate need of questions seeking answers. Desires of wanting to feel safe in the company you keep is a mad thought when your nightly clothed bodies are pressed in an innocent hold and the kisses exchanged are like tantalizing secrets you expose.

He knows he’s not in the right mind set to give you all of him, but this physical love language you both trade off are fine for now (on so many levels). He navigates the small apartment with ease calling you nicknames from his hometown like Watashinojinsei no joō & Hikari no ōjo.

You breathe in through your nose and out of your mouth as he lays you down, a tender sigh escapes your mouth in vague innocence remains. (It would be a name he affectionately still calls you years later, but neither of you are perturbed by the future you will create for each other.) You are on equal footing or lack there of as you both reach an sensual epiphany.

You let him hold you for as long as needs; your bold vitality is what motivates your contemporary lover in your arms, away from the fickleness of the world outside. Here in the bed draped in a sky blue tone, does the light he keeps on shine around you. Even Helios learns to drive the chariot, like your mythos books say, so you balance yourself, on your knees close to where he his hands rest on your thighs. He waits learning newer customs he was still adjusting to since he left his palace home behind.

You straighten your lower back as he observes the way you pull off your hoodie revealing a thermal turtleneck that has a designer’s mark stitched on the corner. The familiar western numbers stare at him through the well loved turtle neck. Your paternal grandmother and father’s favorite fútbol player and mother’s lucky number is exposed to him. The faded gold and white thread outlines the club from the late modernization of the sport (a club that has since been retired). Argentina’s famous #13 ranking legend is Oreste Omar Corbatta, commonly known in 1957 as “Angels with Dirty Faces,” but from where the soon to be Olympian watches you, he knows where this chance meeting would end once you trace your fingers along his face...

You crawl back toward him to rest your head against his neck as he presses his lips against your brow. You look up at him with a a stern gaze. He chuckles at the way your nose scrunches before he kisses you one final time, hope ever present when your bodies succumb to sleep. Somewhere along the twilight hours activities, the idea is seared into both your minds that no matter what happens afterwards, because falling in love with him would be the driving force for him to call you his everything.

[sleepymarmot]

Twilight Mirage liveblog 5/5 (finale & post-mortem)

64-67

Found a new shortcut to my heart: announcing your finale is going to be a mashup of The Quiet Year and Firebrands 

Why is it surpising that the Qui Err Coalition allies with the Waking Cadent? That was my first thought when Iota was making her speech! The Qui Err thinks the humans should leave, the Cadent thinks the humans should leave, sounds pretty compatible to me. 

What's the logic of “When Crystal Palace arrives, we will blow up this system”? It's not a bomb! But it will be in danger if a bomb goes off right next to it!

Oh no, Ali is doing the classic “shoot yourself in the foot on purpose” move

I don't get how Grand Magnificent got promoted from “got paid once to retire” to “is trusted to do actual missions for Advent”

Why the hell does Gig want to kill Ballad

The players keep underestimating how “horny” the scenes in Firebrands are and Austin is increasingly exasperated 

I would like to thank Jack from the bottom of my heart for choosing dance as a framing for making contact with Grand. Also I completely lost it at “there are talons on my shoulder”

I must have missed something, what's so bad about the Splice and Our Profit that everyone's so excited to fuck them over? The Mirage is made a renewable resource, right, so the Splice isn't a drain on anything?

The Echo-Ballad scene is so frustrating that I can't even feel appropriately bad about it! Come on Echo, just help Grand go back to Advent as an undercover spy, it doesn't have to be a competition this time!

I still don't understand Independence II… How do you send your new very conspicous and recognizable design to friends in rival factions without blowing your cover 

The timeline here is really weird… Echo rescues Grand and brings Ballad with them, Ballad calls off his people, Grand sends out his new mech design… And a week later, Grand's still on Qui Err territory having a friendly lunch with its leader? If going back is still an option, how is that going to look without making Advent seem like total idiots? Ah, it's only a day after? Okay…

I'm very glad the Volition problem was solved so peacefully!

5 minutes later: “Quire could die!” How about no??! I was so busy preparing to mourn Volition. I am completely unprepared to lose Quire just like that.

Memorious was alive and also an axiom worm this whole time? Wut

Fuck, do we need another opportunity to kill off Ballad?! This list of NPCs is making me very nervous, I don't want any of them to die… As soon as they said “tactical skirmish” I started screaming internally and likely won't stop until it is over… Wow, Ali, that was cold Oh no, Keith is really on a mission to murder Ballad

Grand how could you bring a bomb to Christmas dinner what the hell RIP bird leader / avian boss, he had an amazing unique voice and, in my head, a really cool cartoony design

Thanks for 9.5 hours of fun. Now I guess it's time for the 4 hour long brutal and heartbreaking final boss encounter

Full offence Gig, but I wouldn't log off even the real internet for lawn games

Signet fucking saved everyone single-handedly, twice. Two biggest threats. Incredible. What is the rest of the game even about

Seriously, do the players know something about Advent that I don't?! Otherwise please stop calling your cheesy space mafia “nazis”

I've been waiting for Even and Cascabel stealing time together since the beginning of the finale! For 11 hours! Finally! This finale is in dire need of more romance content I like that everyone immediately starting dragging all Bioware games at once

I don't see how a secular virtual reality is more of a “weird cult” than an augmented reality in which people maintain an actual religion worshipping the union of human and synthetic life for 30k years. Can we not do the hypocrisy again please. Why is it okay for the Divine Fleet to build their own take on utopia but when the NEH does it's portrayed as a threat and all characters treat it with suspicion and contempt

OK all these ideological debates are fine and dandy but people really should ask more practical questions like “you don't have to rush, why don't you just go back to the previous eco-friendly methods we have previously agreed upon” Glad Fourteen won, but ideologically, as you can guess from this entire liveblog, I'm with Our Profit

I don't like how Tender started with the intention of attacking Our Profit / the Splice but very much like how it somehow turned into her offering to help them and solve everyone's problems in one move

Grand Magnificent building a pseudo-Divine to blind the Crystal Palace with the power of bullshit is the ideal happy ending for him

Good on everyone for doing the best possible things with the Divines, except for the DFS for managing to do every possible bad thing simultaneously!!! My dislike of that faction is vindicated but at what cost Oh god it's even worse 

“Echo Reverie, who knew well both the value and the cost of violence, and who dreamt powerfully of peace” is such a beautiful and concise summary of their character arc God I just love how organically Echo and Gig's arcs led them to help a decolonized society lead independent, peaceful and joyful lives

A new Fleet with a healthier relationship between the Divines and everyone else is nice, thank you Signet

Oh my god, the ending titles are Gig interviewing everyone, that's so sweet!!! Really the perfect sentence to end this campaign with.

(I feel like a jerk mentioning it but… Whenever there's music overlayed with the voice track, it's almost always too loud and I have to strain my ears to hear the words… It's been like that since season one. Am I really the only one with this problem?!) 

Whew! Hard to believe this long, long listening experience is over. I have mixed feelings: sometimes it was exciting or inspiring, sometimes it was fun but I felt I could as well be doing something else, sometimes I listened to the outro and thought “this music and the montage for it in my head right now make me feel so much more than the episode I just heard”, and sometimes the ideology of the narrative or characters'/players' opinions and actions clashed enough with my worldview enough to poison the entire experience. What's new is that, unlike the previous arcs, I didn't have an urge to shake my friends and yell at them “you absolutely must listen to this!” and that made me sad. But that might be just me getting used to this show and taking its good features for granted.

Post-mortem

Oh god, the production of the final sequence sounds like absolute nightmare

Thanks for validating me with the speech about the Fleet's lack of engagement with its “original sin”, Austin 

Thanks, Janine, I hate it! This religion didn't need to get any creepier!

Yes tell us how many ears Tender has! I need to know!! Tender's fursona is the Russian food cat?! Amazing The livestream practically starts with googling animal pictures. Classic

Honestly Echo's disability was barely noticeable to me as a listener… There wasn't a lot of visible difference between the way they accessed the mesh and other PCs did, and after the nanites did activate, I don't think it was ever brought up again…

Yeah I'm genuinely upset that Tender and Fourteen didn't get together, by the way! Or at least have an overt romantic storyline! Give me that sweet sweet PC/PC romance my soul is starving Like I get what Jack is saying about the value of depicting friendship and normally I'd be on his side but 😭 😭 😭 On the other hand I didn't know Echo/Grand was a thing (And now feel kind of bitter it got more official endorsement than my ship that has more canonical foundation) This universe is actually about Austin inventing NPCs who have crushes on Keith's characters and then Keith pointedly avoiding the subject How could anyone forget about Tender's wild fangirling over Waltz lmfao

Austin calmly talking of all these things I screamed about above like “yeah that's what I intended”. Like on the one hand I'm glad, but on the other why couldn't you make it less frustrating to listen to

The rehabilitation theme is another thing that is present thematically but was not discussed on screen enough imo. One thing my mind kept returning to re: Contrition's Figure was the question of forgiveness for serious crime, personal boundaries and principles, and the policy of not disclosing the inmates' crimes. I imagine a survivor of rape or abuse wouldn't want to share space with someone who did the same kind of crime that hurt them. Even if they wouldn't be made to interact, of course, but what if that person believes those kind of people don't deserve rehabilitation at all? What if they reject that system on principle? You often encounter seemingly serious statements like “abusers/rapists/nazis should die”, especially lately. I've heard that about “fascists” (which is a separate issue) in this very campaign. Where do people with these opinions go in a utopia? Do they not exist? Do people who commit horrific crimes not exist either? Because I was listening to that arc and thinking “What if one of those undisclosed crimes was csa or serial murder or something like that? Would I be expected to shake hands and play chess with that criminal? How could I rehabilitate, heal, re-socialize, learn to trust in a space where anyone I meet could be Shrodinger's rapist?” And that leads to the bigger question of what a utopia is. Is it a better society – or better human nature? If latter (and Austin said so) – then to what extent? Because the theoretical people who are so much more advanced than us that they are, en masse, incapable of extreme cruelty, must also differ from our generation with their entire psychology. And a psychology so different would be unimaginable, unplayable, and would not provide necessary dramatic conflict or antagonistic characters. Which is why most alien characters in most stories, including this one, are just humans in silly costumes or prosthetics.

Oh dear god, that must be the heaviest personal story yet… But I understand better what Declan's Corrective was about.

Oh I've been definitely thinking about static utopias vs utopias of process while listening! When I wrote at some point that they made me stop and consider what a utopia is, it was one of the things I meant.

Yeah, sure, in our world the Splice would be terrible because of the existing power dynamics. But that's a Counter/weight story! Twilight Mirage and the Divine Fleet have been about the technologies and ideas that could have been, or were, used to terrible ends, but miraculously, we got to see them used in good faith with genuinely good intentions and good results. Divines have been all kinds of threats over the ages, and yet the Fleet managed to build a community around them that was a small paradise for 30,000 years. So why do the NEH and the Splice not get the same benefit of the doubt? Why is narrative not treating them with the same respect? Why are they always a threat? Why isn't there a major, likeable NPC whose life was enriched by the Splice to the extent that it is central to their identity, who could be our advocate for that point of view? Why are some powerful and potentially infinitely dangerous things, like Divines or religion itself, shown as more valid than others? And don't tell me that our player characters are from the Fleet – none of them are Qui Err either, and yet by the end it is a respected, lovingly portrayed player faction.

Oh, and also, speaking of the Splice's dangers, and what would have made it dangerous in the real world – one of the things that bothered me about it was that these dangers weren't actually described and addressed in the show properly! Probably at least in part because this techology is so magical it's hard to codify how it works. If it gives an indefinite amount of time, how do you sync up all these infinite amounts of timelines? Whenever anyone logs in to visit Tender, how do they know if it's been a day for her, like in the real world, or a hundred years? (Oh and by the way, I waited in vain for the explanation for these strange duplicities and possible time anomalies; what was going on with Ache and Acre?) If opposing the Splice and the NEH were about solving specific problems with the Splice, I would be all for that!

But yeah, I really do appreciate “processes that self-regulate and address their own issues”, how the story and specifically the finale were about the work of building a better world. I like the finale especially because it shows the social processes more clearly; TM's lack of a faction game and its focus on “bigger picture” was palpable, so I was happy to see again that aspect of the show I think is really good and unique. At first I thought it was anticlimactic that the main threats of the finale were solved so easily, early, and pretty much single-handedly. And, indeed, in a tv show that would have looked pretty strange (and require some rewriting, because with how it went down, Signet should have been the sole protagonist from the start lol). But on the other hand, it gave a lot of space and focus to what the whole story has been about: building a better society and future. Not just saving it from an external threat and drawing the curtain on that – but making sure the world we won is the one we want to live in. Preserve the environment! Decolonize the land! Shut off the tyrannical prophecy machine! And that's a good thing, and from my perspective very characteristic of this show. Before it, I didn't even know there were games about building and preserving communities and addressing civil issues! For years I thought “Well, stories of adventure are fun, but they don't address the real issues”, but turns out, there are people and systems that at least try to combine both. And that's a thought I can find comfort in, even if the specific choices of this campaign make me frustrated sometimes.

“I also tried to move away from violence this season and ended up making an arms manufacturer”

Somehow the end of the post-mortem feels sadder and more final than the end of the show proper