#I don’t want to have to sell my pieces for $200 that’s such a stupid number

[eternalsummer2006]

ohh i get it. we’re meant to fail under the system

[alymccart]

Ask du jour because I’m in a lot of feelings right now and need a diversion from them and because I stayed home for a mental health day and have time to ask: Back to First Time, I feel like there’s a whole analysis or chapter behind Charlie’s words to Vaggie about their connection.

“It's been a long time. And I... uhh, I've never had this kind of connection with anyone before. This is... more intense than I was expecting.”

I’d love to get into this more because here’s Charlie, who is this being that shouldn’t even exist- or it’s unimaginable that she exists- and is astronomically powerful and probably as wise as time and space due to her connection with the cosmos (even though the show never talks about that but it has to be true? Maybe? I’m overthinking? I mean, I can’t imagine one could live as long as Charlie has and not have some wisdom). And Vaggie’s just a dead woman, right? Just a dead human woman (who I fucking love so much, this isn’t a criticism). So for Charlie to feel a connection with someone so much “less” than herself and for it to shake her enough during intimacy, Vaggie must be powerful herself. Maybe not in the same way as Charlie, but damn. She must have some kind of soulmate-level power over Charlie. Like they’re written in the stars and, in this one instance, Charlie is meant to be completely powerless.

Makes me wonder, as I am wont to do, how Vaggie’s story will evolve both in your fic and in canon.

Anyway, I think that’s enough word vomit for today. But also thank you? You don’t know it but writing these thoughts helped quiet a small feelings storm in my head.

TT^TT Another fantastic ask.

I really REALLY do feel like there's more to Vaggie than the show has shown us so far, which is why I'm attempting to kinda-sorta foreshadow that in my fics. I have no actual idea what exactly that "more" is, and I may end up being way off base, but I want to believe. Although the alt version of their first time that's going to be in Hellfire goes a slightly different direction, the same general scenario still plays out.

I definitely agree with your assessment about Charlie's power. She's the daughter of the first demon in hell and a very powerful angel (in my fic I'm going to with Lucifer being a seraph, though that isn't confirmed as far as I know), so there has GOT to be more to her than what we have seen. I'm going to bet there's some angel qualities that'll crop up as the story progresses (maybe she'll get wings!?). I also feel like Charlie is treated like a child in the show way, way too much. Until it's confirmed in the show, we don't really know for sure that she's over 200 years old, but going on that assumption, there is absolutely no way she's as naive as people seem to think she is. Sheltered? Maybe a bit, but she's a busybody, so there's no way she spent all of her life cooped up in a palace or something. So, my fic/headcanon Charlie has been around. She wants to help, she wants to be involved, she wants to experience things; she wants to make Hell a better place and to do that she needs to learn everything she can about it. Considering the fact that she's a one-of-a-kind royal hellborn demon and more-or-less impervious to permanent/killing damage from just about anything around her (save for strong angels like Adam and angelic steel weapons, and Carmilla is not stupid enough to sell them to someone who wanted to hurt Charlie because Lucifer would shred her to pieces) there's not much reason for her to be overly cautious.

"Soulmate-level power" is one way to put it. I really feel like Charlie and Vaggie's connection was at least catalyzed in their mutual desire to see this whole "redemption" thing through. For Charlie, it's to help her people. For Vaggie, it's partly to prove that she herself is worthy of redemption and partly to help end the cycle of death altogether. Murdering all of those Sinner souls and only questioning it after thousands had died, then thinking she had done the Right Thing and immediately being mutilated and abandoned by people she trusted as a result really effed her up, imo, and she's obsessive about making up for it. I think after that initial spark, Charlie sees someone she can truly believe is her equal, if not in power, but spiritually, so she is willing to let her guard down. She's comfortable showing that side of herself to Vaggie, and Vaggie is comfortable with that side of Charlie, so, in the context of First Time, it ends up being harder for her to hold back (and maybe a bit of unconscious "I don't want to hold back" that she has to fight for fear of hurting someone she believes is a squishy Sinner demon).

I'll see how things play out as the fic progresses. I've got a general direction set, but things like to crop up and throw me off course as I write (which I love, tbh). Thank you for the thoughts! Getting to really mull this stuff over out loud is really helpful. :>

[onnabox]

An excellent take from a fellow artist on facebook regarding NFTs:

“I get requests almost every day to mint my stuff on some blockchain (it’s even happened jokingly with people in my personal life). It's extremely annoying and I’m fucking tired of it, so I’ll vent a bit here.

I’m disappointed in many of my fellow artists and wish more people would realize it’s ok to not participate because NFT's (as they are now) are stupid and only about commodifying/financializing every aspect of art/life made digital. An NFT is nothing but a digital certificate signifying you "own" a thing you cannot hold physically, and it locks you into a cryptocurrency ecosystem which is shaky and opaque by design. Buying an NFT is like buying a star or a piece of otherwise useless of cosmetic DLC in a videogame (like horse armour). Even though half the companies that sold those stars are now out of business and cosmetics in games have no effect on gameplay. 

In this environment, it's common for developers in the crypto market to disappear and steal from investors when a critical mass has been accumulated (look up "crypto rug pull"). It's also a way for unscrupulous buyers to money-launder since the laws haven't caught up to crypto yet, which is par for the course to unbridled big tech. Crypto aims to supplant banking in the same way Facebook aimed to supplant our lives and all artists participating are adding to it. It isn't about changing the system as much as it is removing accountability and concentrating power via a new and artificial scarce form of capital. If this is truly the path of history we are on, fine, but I don’t have to add to it and you don’t either, if you’re honest. There are (almost) always better ways to make money.

NFT's could be said to be about supporting artists by creating a space for exponential gains, but they are not about appreciating art. It’s big tech Sotheby’s. The only advantage for artists is that it creates a gambling scenario for buyers who believe that the pieces will go up in value over time. Like buying a poster for the flipping value over the appreciation for the art itself. Because if you really just loved the art and wanted the artist to make exorbitant amounts of money, why not just give it to them directly? Why do I need to digitally tokenize my artwork for you to pay me? If you love the art and believe in me so much, then fuck, just pay me $500-1k or more per poster instead of the usual $50-200 I ask. If you want, I could not send you a poster and just email a jpeg. I wouldn’t object.

I wish everyone participating in this grift (whether they acknowledge it as such or not) would look at the entire issue holistically. The impacts on the environment (crypto mining is awful and an unneeded expense on our atmosphere), the way more participation normalizes it and encourages others into what really feels like a MLM scheme, the lack of actual value inherent, the way it turns every piece of art into a mini stock market in which someone is going to lose by the end, only they won't have anything physical to show for it when they're the last one holding the bag and the injection of artificial scarcity (which is so stupid since you can just screencap any/every NFT that exists).

Scammers on NFT platforms like OpenSea are also notorious for stealing art from artists and selling it as if it were theirs the same way bots on FB and Twitter steal my artwork to use on bootleg t-shirts. The entire system is rife with disadvantages and opens up new avenues for piracy. NFT’s market themselves as the solution to a problem they are creating, which can only be solved by participating. “Well, if you were on the platform, then you could sell them yourself.” So the only way to avoid being thieved is to participate in the grift. How lame is that. Consent and respect are easily superseded in this system for those who decline its predatory advances.

Artists and developers should just be honest that this is about making more money above all else and speed-running the zeitgeist further into late stage hyper-capitalism instead of hiding behind high-minded ideals. Now, I don't think capitalism itself is always a bad thing, but I think there need to be checks and balances, and the whole crytpo-NFT scam is truly just about breaking all boundaries and supplanting old markets with new ones. It's not liberty, just diversification in a new kind of market. This isn’t a new system, it’s just creating digital fiefdoms and pressure for other artists to conform ("What, you don't wanna get rich, bro?"). And it's been really disappointing to see so many folks I respect uncritically go along with this just because it's an easy way to make more money.

Just say you want to make big money off of idiots who also don't know how half of this shit works. I'd personally respect it more. And despite the tone of this comment, know that I'm doing my best not to unequivocally judge everyone who's going along with this. I just think there should be more critical conversations instead of confusion and endless cheerleading, which is an affect only those with uncritical curiosity and/or a vested interest adopt. The rest of us just want to call it out for how stupid and greedy it looks and wish people would do better and spend their time making money in healthier ways. But this is The World Today, where the dollar trumps everything else. So. Fuck the environment, fuck physical art, let’s turn everything into a gamble. Let's embrace the metaverse with open arms. Because uncritically slurping up everything tech has done over the past decade has gone over so well. Sounds very healthy and sustainable.

I’m not an expert, so maybe I have everything totally wrong. But from what I’ve read/seen/talked about to people on both sides of the issue, this is my understanding. And maybe my opinion might change as new information becomes available. But for now, this is all just gross and I wish people would leave it to the techbro idiot’s corner it deserves to be in. Anyway. As you all were. And stop fucking asking me if I want to get in on this bullshit. No. Fucking. Thanks.”

[sirfrogsworth]

Toilet Talk feat. The HandyFrog

In other news, I changed my toilet seat. 

My previous seat kept wiggling left and right. Like... a lot. This was very disconcerting when I had to take a sleepy, middle-of-the-night trip to the little frog’s room and forgot that it wiggles. I don’t know about you, but having a bull riding sensation is not what I want when I am half awake and trying to drop some kids off at the pool. 

After disassembly, I finally figured out why it wiggled. There was this weird gel-like plug that went into the attachment holes. It forced the bolts to stay centered and kept them from moving around. One of those gel plug thingies was missing. No idea where it went. So the bolt would just move freely and give me seasickness during my... me time. 

The broken seat was actually harder to remove than the new one was to put on. The previous WiggleButt 3000 was overcomplicated and poorly designed. I made sure to buy a new one that had simple installation. And I found one that specifically advertised NO WIGGLING. The new attachment method was incredibly simple and quite clever. And their marketing doesn’t seem to be misleading as I don’t see any way it could potentially shift like the old one. After some twisting of the ol’ Philips head my throne repair mission was accomplished. 

Even though it was stupid simple to install I am still going to add this to my handyman credentials. 

HandyFrog +5. 

Since my dad got sick, I’ve been fixing quite a few things around here in the last year or so. I changed out two faucet handles (+20), I unclogged a shower drain and two sinks (+15), and I engineered and installed a custom rotating television mount for my parents’ TV (+40). 

My biggest feat of handyprowess was repairing my dishwasher. The latch on the soap dispenser broke so I had to place the soap pod thingie on the top rack and just hope soap got on everything. It seemed to get things clean, but it left soap residue on all of my dishes and that was getting annoying. So after some detective work tracking down model numbers and part numbers and finding what I needed at a reasonable price, I ordered the parts and watched some repair videos. 

It took a week or so to build up the courage to replace the dispenser myself. I got a quote from a repair dude and he wanted like $200. I could almost buy half of a new dishwasher for that. I don’t know if they sell half-dishwashers, but that would look silly and I wasn’t going to have any silly business in my kitchen.

So it was up to me. 

Unfortunately, due to the design of the dishwasher, this operation required dismantling the entire door. What I didn’t know was the dishwasher in the repair video was a slightly different model than I had. My dishwasher had a digital display and other electronics inside the door. So when I tried to remove the front panel of the door and set it aside like he did in the video, I discovered it was permanently attached to some wires. So I had to balance the door on some pillows and lean it against a trash can I weighed down. (I’m quite the problem solver.) And I had to work inside the small space between that precariously balanced front panel and the interior of the door. That was a fun difficulty multiplier I wasn’t expecting.  

Then I discovered that one of the two wired connections for the old soap dispenser was hopelessly fused in place. The first one just unplugged with no issue. But the other one was super stuck. Not to get too technical, but it was this white plastic doohickey piece that two wires terminated into and it wouldn’t budge even when pulling on it with pliers. The guy in the video just yanked them out with his fingers like it was nothing. He did not prepare me for this eventuality! 

However, the ends of the wires had these metal circle thingies crimped on and they inserted into the white plastic doohickey. I could just pull out the metal circle thingies. EASY! 

But the metal circle thingies were also stuck. UGH! 

Then I figured out I could uncrimp the bare wires from the metal circle thingies... and this was the breakthrough epiphany I needed to prevent a full on panic attack. I could just leave the old white doohickey AND the old circle thingies attached! I then inserted just the bare wires from the new dispenser and crimped them in place with a needle nose pliers. Brilliant, right?! I was like a goddamn electrician with this problem-solving.

If you couldn’t visualize any of that just know it was a whole thing and very stressful and somehow I had barrrrely enough knowledge to create a workaround and hook everything up properly. I ended up with a spare white doohickey and metal circle thingie, but if you don’t have spare parts at the end you are one of those pesky direction followers and no one likes people who follow directions. 

I will say by this point I may have cried twice, cursed various gods, and kept screaming in my head, “THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN TO THE REPAIR DUDE IN THE VIDEO!” But, as problems kept popping up, I used my resourcefulness and weighted trash cans to find a solution. As one does.

One embarrassing thing I forgot to do... turn off the breaker. 

Despite working with wires and connections and different electronic components, none of that caused an issue. But when I was just finishing up and trying to maneuver the front panel back onto the door, I grabbed a very unassuming, very safe looking part at the top... and shocked the hell out of my hand. 

I made a mental note... “Don’t touch that.” 

But the panel was being very stubborn and I was balancing it on my foot and trying to angle it back into the slots and I almost dropped it and to catch it I instinctively grasped that same damn spot. Electric shock number 2. 

DON’T. TOUCH. THAT.

I still didn’t think to turn off the breaker at this point--even with my hand tingling. I think I had tunnel vision and could only see the repair finish line approaching and was just desperate to get the thing done and I was unable to think about something silly like personal safety. 

Finally, the door cooperated and it all slotted into place and just as the two sections were joining together that same friggin spot brushed against my arm. Electric shock the third. 

HEY, ME! WOULD YOU STOP TOUCHING THAT?

I screwed it all back together, ran a test load to make sure I didn’t ruin my dishwasher...  and it worked perfectly. Clean sparkly dishes with no more residue!

The pride I felt in completing that insane repair far outweighed my still tingling hand. 

HandyFrog +100.

Heart Lifespan -10. 

I’m essentially a contractor at this point. 

[questersrest]

apologies for the just talking about junk lately but my brain’s on infodump o’clock. i really want to talk about dq9 grottoes and alchemiracles. so here’s a wall of text that’s been in the back of my brain for around 9 years.

i always thought this stuff was insane and i’m dying for a remake so i can get into this again.

so.

quest #015 collapsus’ call

at the summit of the heights of loneliness, you will find a man, christopher collapsus, who climbed all the way to the top but collapsed just short of zere rocks. you need to bring him a special medicine. as a reward he will give you your first treasure map: granite tunnel of woe lv. 1.

a treasure map will depict a red X drawn on part of a map, this will be one of several locations on the overworld but it’ll be fairly zoomed in so it might take some thinking to figure out where it is. when you stand in that location, a prompt to press A will appear and when you do, a cave entrance will appear. these caves are called grottoes. inside you’ll find several floors with monsters and chests and then a boss floor.

when you beat the boss they will drop another map. it’ll be random but influenced by 3 factors:

a) the level of the map just beaten.

b) the hero’s max level. the hero’s level is stored separate for each vocation so if you’ve hit level 99 as a minstrel but are currently a level 30 warrior, your max level is 99.

c) the hero’s max revocation. when the hero reaches level 99 as a vocation they can revocate, resetting that level to 1 and gaining a little +1 next to the level. my max revocations was a +3 on gladiator.

there are like over 32,000 maps with over 200 quality variations if i remember right, the exact total is over 8 million possibilities with these varying features:

a) it’s location on the world map.

b) it’s environment theme: ruins 40%, cave 30%, fire 10%, ice 10%, or water 10%

c) the number of floors before the boss floor: 2-16

d) the layout of each floor including the placement of any chests. if you’ve ever played a mystery dungeon game you know what to expect with randomly generated dungeons.

e) the starting monster rank of the grotto. monsters appear from a pool, there are 12 ranks and each environment has its own pool of monsters for each rank. the monster rank can only start at up to rank 9 but it increases every 4 floors so to find rank 12 monsters, you’ll need a grotto that starts on 9 and has at least 13 floors. many monsters in the higher ranks are exclusive to grottoes so if you want to complete your bestiary... well i never in 700+ hours found a water grotto with rank 12 monsters. monster rank on each floor also determines what ranks of chest can appear there. there are 10 ranks of chest. each weapon used for making the 5 star weapons has a 1% chance to be in a rank 10 chest. there’s one for each of the 12 weapon types. but even on a monster rank 12 floor it’s not guaranteed to have rank 10 chests. (chests by the way refresh when grotto is closed and reopened).

f) it’s boss, of which there are 12 possible. each boss is more difficult than the previous and so it is related to the map’s level, so dw, a level 1 map can’t have the final grotto boss, you won’t be ready for that.

there is some lore to the bosses. the goddess celestria, daughter of zenus (who was slain by corvus at the beginning of the story), said her father must still be alive in some capacity or the world would cease to be. every grotto boss has some dialogue before the battle commences. fowleye specifically explains that zenus shattered into 10 pieces which took form as the first 10 grotto bosses. the 11th is the demon that the supreme sage sealed in a book with himself long ago, the supreme sage, still in the book, is a character who gives you the quests related to the sage vocation. the 12th is greygnarl who was slain by barbarus in the story but at the end his shadow was shown hinting at his return. in his dialogue he talks about himself, barbarus, and styrmling who remains somewhat of a mystery. greygnarl actually drops an yggdrasil leaf instead of another map.

each boss has 3 items they can drop. a 100% drop: another treasure map. a (i actually can’t remember, i think it’s 5 or 10)% drop chance: a certain pretty good piece of gear. a 2% drop chance for a piece of armour used for 5 star armour. most armour categories can be split into multiple sub-categories e.g. handwear that focuses on defence or deftness so there’s one for each sub-category: 1 shield, 2 headwear, 2 handwear, 3 bodywear, 1 legwear, 2 footwear. each boss has a specific one e.g. the first grotto boss, equinox, has a 2% chance to drop the vesta gauntlets: defence handwear. greygnarl is an exception to the rules, i don’t remember all the specifics and can’t find details at this time but i do remember is his 100% drop is an yggdrasil leaf and one of his drops is a certain legacy boss map, i’ll get to that in a bit.

treasure map names are clues as to the details of the map before explored but usually don’t guarantee anything (except a few environments, if it says “waterway” it’s definitely water).

there are a few other weird factors for the probability for monsters appearing on floors resulting in the ruby path of doom map that got extremely popular to share in japan and got referenced in dq11s because of the one floor with nothing but metal king slimes. i myself found a grotto which had a floor with absolutely no monsters whatsoever, it did however have 2 chests on that floor, at least one of which was rank 10.

now say you get one of these special pieces of gear, how do you make the 5 star gear?

agates of evolution are items than can only be made through alchemy and are only used for alchemy. the ingredients are 2x ethereal stone, 2x sainted soma, 1x chronocrystal. ethereal stones and sainted somas can be obtained through a few means but the easiest is through further alchemy with the ingedients being available through monster drops and sparkles found in the world. chronocrystals can only be bought, there is an npc in a cave that can only be reached in the postgame the only thing he sells are chronocrystals for 50,000 gold each, the most expensive item in the game.

there are a few special treasure maps, legacy boss maps, that lead to a grotto that is only a boss floor, a boss from a previous game. we have: dragonlord, malroth, baramos, zoma, estark, psaro, nimzo, murdaw, mortamor, nokturnus, orgodemir, dhoulmagus, and rhapthorne. the first you’ll likely come across is baramos’ map lv. 1 as a quest reward. the one greygnarl drops is dragonlord’s. when you defeat a legacy boss, they will return and ask to gain experience too, if you agree the map will level up. as a legacy boss levels up, the drops will increase in chance or change entirely. be careful as some maps you can only get once unless shared from another player, you could lock yourself out from some items. the key things they drop are armour to dress up as heroes from the previous games and maps of other legacy bosses. some legacy bosses are only available from the dlc quests or dropped by other legacy bosses that are only available from the dlc quests and since the online service was discontinued in 2014 they are now almost unavailable (if you’re genuinely interested bc you missed out, shoot me an ask and i can explain that one).

then there’s the orbs. every legacy boss can drop one of six coulored orbs. as their rarest drop, this won’t change, the chance can just be increased with their level, the only exception is nokturnus who changes which orb he drops with his level. it’s the same 6 orbs that appeared as a plot device in dq3, alongside a 7th in dq8, and would go on to appear in dq11. all six orbs are thankfully available among the legacy bosses available without online services.

each of the special items can be alchemised with an agate of evolution and a certain orb to make an improved version that looks identical. e.g. 1x stardust sword + 1x agate of evolution + 1x silver orb makes a nebula sword. getting the ingredients is both expensive and time consuming BUT it goes further. 1x nebula sword + 3x agate of evolution + 3x silver orb will make a further improved and identical but still only 4 star supernova sword. most of the time. see when you try to make this further improved item, krak pot will alert you he feels an alchemiracle coming on. he will state a chance as i think 10%, 20%, or 30% which i think can be influenced but i’m afraid i don’t know the details. you are then forced to save the game with the result determined so you can’t reset and try again. if it should succeed, you will make a 5 star item, the best item of that kind in the game, a stronger palette swap of the other items. e.g. the hypernova sword.

should it fail and you want to try again, you can alchemise the failed alchemiracle item e.g. the supernova sword with a rest stone to return it to the first item e.g. the stardust sword. reset stones can be bought from the mini medal collector of dq9 once you can reached the final reward.

so here’s the procedure.

1. grind grottoes and their bosses for this stupid rare gear. 2% drop rate has nothing on shiny pokemon, sure, except you do have to go through the entire grotto again every time.

2. grind legacy bosses for orbs.

3. grind materials for agates including money for chronocrystals.

4. pray to the rng gods once more for an alchemiracle.

5. cry because you spent 100 hours on this and it didn’t work.

6. give in to cheating via rng abuse, the hoimi table’s out there still.

have fun

[chaniters]

Masked

Fifth Ash short, getting on a mask for the first time, and any mask will do! Also, first heroics!

Follow up to the last fic (Homesick)

No specific warnings

Spoilers for Fallen Hero Retribution.  ___________

“So how much for this one?” he asks, going over the many necklaces in the box and taking one. 

The owner tells him the price, and he puts it back, moving his hand to pick another… and there. There is the moment where his pinkie and his ring fingers snatch another, a small cross, hiding it from view. There is something intriguing about his method, just pure sleight of hand. A simple trick and nothing else, that’s all it takes.

The shop owner doesn’t realize what’s going on. You’re not even helping, it’s all Morgan doing this. Your role is to distract, talking about your imaginary girl that’s going to be so happy, while your uncle Morgan, helps you buy her jewelry so you won’t get scammed. 

In the end, you buy nothing, but the cross is still in Morgan’s pocket. 

“Well done kid, for someone so quiet you really talked that guy’s ears off!” he laughs walking alongside you. 

“Just some chit-chat,” you say. You could keep doing it for hours if you needed to. Providing distractions is your most basic training “What’s next?”

“Now we sell this little baby here, and maybe we get us hm… 200? Maybe 250? I’ll let you have a 30% cut this time because you were so good, how about that?”

“That’s more than fine you say,” trying to smile a bit. He expects you to be happy, so you have to act happy and smile. 

“We can get us a motel if we keep this up! Off the streets, as long as we can!” 

You nod, lightly, letting him go on and on with his plans. It was nice to pretend to have an uncle, if only for a few moments. 

“There’s a guy over at Richie’s, we’ll let him see the cross, and…”

You keep walking, but then notice he’s not following, and turn his way.

“Morgan?” 

He doesn’t answer, staring at something in the distance. A quick scan and you realize something’s off… he’s not the only one that’s standing still…

At least 10 people have stopped what they were doing, eyes lost in the horizon.

Something’s definitely going wrong and…

“You look strong. Take this!” a guy wearing a weird blue robe cape, and yellow gloves says shoving a bag into your hands. On his head, a white mask with a purple spiral painted on its front, and a hood covering the rest. “Come on take it!” he says pressing a gloved hand to his mask.

You do as told, confused more than anything. 

“Follow me” he calls, and instantly, everyone starts marching behind him… and of course, you follow. What is going on?!

“Psst… Morgan” you elbow him, to no avail. He doesn’t respond at all. 

Enemy telepaths can be just as sneaky as yourself. You will not notice them if they are targeting someone else. So remember, ALWAYS  look for signs on others! 

Her words from training come to life with a scan, trying to figure out if this is what you think…

And of course, there it is… A compulsion, pressed against their minds, so frantic that you completely blocked is, thinking it was just a trail of loose hysterical thoughts bouncing against your shields. He’s literally screaming into their minds as loud as he can, telling them to do as he says…

Everything you learned not to do, he is doing. These people will remember being manipulated, will remember the voice of the one who did it, and they will become useless the moment they are let go…

You would have probably ended up recycled if you had ever been this sloppy. Makes you mad.

The man’s little caravan of the damned marches on towards the general bank… and the guards themselves begin to join the group.

Shit.

You start walking slower, and slower, letting others go ahead, until you are out of formation, hiding your face from the cameras, until you manage to hide behind one of the columns inside the bank, next to a mother and her kid doing the same. The kid’s wearing a ranger mask, you don’t remember which.

There’s a big commotion as he starts his robbery, with several of his controlled followers locking the doors behind them.

“So, the name’s Overlord, and I heard you people were fixing your dampeners today, so I decided to show up, how about that?” he laughs. “Now everybody, be still! STILL, I SAY!” he orders with a mental command, freezing everyone in place. 

Morgan and the others begin bagging the money from the cashiers and all you can do is watch, because you don’t have a plan and you don’t know what should you do…

You could just wait it out. Hide and wait until it ends, because this is none of your business… You could just walk out afterward.

But that would mean leaving Morgan under this madman’s control. His control is pathetic, and he is forcing them too hard… he is hurting them.

The mother holds her kid close, shielding him from what’s happening…

“I’m going to need this,” you say taking the mask from him.

“Are you going to be like Anathema?” he asks. 

“We’ll see,” you say walking over as the mother pulls him from you. 

“Hurry up, I don’t have all day!” Overlord yells

“Hey,” you say tapping his shoulder.

“What the…” 

He starts turning, just in time to get your fist to the face. The mask breaks to pieces, leaving him confused. You follow it up with an uppercut to his stomach, leaving him breathless, and finally kick him down. 

“Release these people,” you ask, in a calm tone, standing tall above him. 

He crawls back, looking at your mask with a bloodened face, pieces of the mask still falling off.

“And who the hell are you supposed to be?!”

“Release these people now” you repeat, not going to answer stupid questions from this human. 

“Oh, you release them, if you can! SHOOT HIIM!” 

The mind-controlled guards move forward, guns in hand…

Shit.

You pull their aims slightly off to the left, and sidestep a few times to the right, letting them empty their ammunition each time, repeating it to the right… left…Right...

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Overlord struggles to stand up, but the four guards are out of ammo, leaving you a clear way to walk over and kick him down again. 

“Release them now”

“KEEP SHOOTING AT HIM!” he repeats, but you place your foot on his neck, as the guards keep pulling the trigger on their empty guns at you. 

“You do know you have to actually order them to reload, no?” you ask, disgusted by this man’s amateur approach to telepathy. 

“Who are the fuck are you?!” 

“You asked for it,” you say, bringing down your fist down on his face again. You can see teeth flying over the floor this time, and his concentration shatters, everyone around you holding their heads in confusion. 

“You can’t… do this…” he gasps.

But you’re done talking, thus you bring down your first once more, leaving him out cold. 

Nobody moves, everyone still confused after his control broke, so you walk up to one of the guards, who cowers pathetically, but you just take his handcuffs, and bind Overlor’ds hands behind his back. 

The kid in the back, the one whose mask you took starts clapping, along with a few other clients that weren’t controlled. 

You don’t pay attention to that, walking straight up to Morgan, grabbing him by the arm, and pulling him to the exit. 

“Let’s go,” you say. 

“Oof.. my fucking head… at least we got some money out of it,” he says in a lower tone, showing you the moneybag he was gathering from the cashier. 

You look down, snatching it from his hands, and tossing it at the guards.

“What?!” he asks

“We’re leaving” you don’t need the police looking for you later because the cameras show them your friend forgot to return the bank’s money. 

“Why did you do that?!” he keeps yelling as you come out onto the streets, where a few patrol cars are beginning to arrive. 

“Because it was reckless and you would have been caught”

“You’re a coward!” he says pushing you away. “You’re a loser, with those powers you have, it should have been you robbing that bank!” 

“... listen, Morgan, we couldn’t just…” 

“I don’t care! You’re on your own from now on kid! I don’t need some loser on my tail!” he yells walking away. 

“Morgan…”

“Get lost!” 

You watch him go, getting lost among the crowd that’s starting to surround the Bank.

You knew this was going to happen, but somehow It’s… 

It’s…

You don’t even know what this feeling is. You’re not supposed to have feelings in the first place, but you can’t help it in here, surrounded by them.

It’s just another human who got tired of you, nothing special. Why did you expect Morgan to be any different?

They’re all the same, and you’ve always been on your own, so nothing’s changed, you say to yourself, rubbing the wetness of your eyes as you walk back to the bridge, to get your stuff before he returns from selling the cross and steals it all. 

You read his mind, so you know without a doubt that he was already planning to do so as he walked away. 

___________________

The video is playing on a loop, with the guards shooting, and the masked guy sidestepping them, over and over. 

“Am I seeing this right…? Did he just start dodging bullets?”

“Totally seems like he did. Jealous much, Marshall?”

“Nah… but I can’t stop watching it… it’s just… too sexy. Look at those moves!”

“It does have a certain rhythm to it, no? Wait here, I’ll go get Sentinel, he’s got to see this!” __________ If you want to read more: My Fanfiction: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero    DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

[shadowturtlesstuff]

~Stolen~

This is a random piece I had to write for school but love it to much not to share. And who knows I might add to it.

Plan

A: “How good of a mood are you in right now?” Person B: “... what did you do?”

I walk into the room slowly to try and silence my footsteps. I shut the door behind me and cringe at the creaks that burst through the silence and give me away. The singing I heard stopped abruptly, indicating she’d heard the door give away my attempt at sneaking through and not disturbing her. However I hear her open her study door and know there’s no point in being silent anymore so I straighten myself and prepare my explanation. She enters the room and I can’t help but give a small smile. She’s in her painting clothes, the oversized hoodie that has been demolished by layers of pain throughout the years. Her leggings suffered the same as her hoodie and her long black hair is put messily in a bun atop her head, with strands of hair falling down her face. She pushes her glasses up as she glares at me.

“Why are you sneaking?” She asked, already knowing I’ve done something. How much do I tell her? The less she knows the safer she’ll be. That way she can stay and paint for as long as she likes. She can stay happy and not in danger.

“I wasn’t?” I ask more than I can say. It’s worth a try, even though there’s no way she’d let me off the hook that easily. She huffs a sigh and gives me the look of I’m not stupid. I walk towards her, angling my bag behind me and give her what I hope is a convincing smile. She doesn’t return it.

“How good of a mood are you in right now?” I ask as I place myself in front of her. Her eyes widened with the implications she was right. That I did do something wrong. Not wrong per say but an action that could lead to danger.

“What did you do now?” She throws her hands up in exasperation. She turns and I follow her into her study. Her unfinished painting hangs on her easel, a skyline of a city at night. I smile at her work, my own problems fading for just a second at the beautiful picture she created. She begins to pack away her paints, waiting for my explanation and knowing she won’t have time today to finish it because she has to deal with the mess I’ve made. I take a minute to recall today’s events, and a way to say them without her going ballistic at me.

“So err... funny story really,” I begin, causing her to look back at me a sigh. It’s one of those stories she must think. I still don’t understand why she puts up with my antics but what I do understand is that I couldn’t live without her at this point. She’s essential in my life, not just because she fixes the messes I make but because he makes everything better in her weird little way. ‘Yeah so I was walking along, minding my business and I see this man stealing from this woman and child. And we can’t have that can we? No. So I basically pushed him off the woman. Which as you can guess made him angry.”

She finishes moving her easel to the back of the room and spins to face me. “Do I need to know the rest or just the name of the man you angered?”

I rub the back of my head. There’s a lot she doesn’t know. A lot that would make her brain hurt trying to figure out why I did what I did. Some pieces even I can’t wrap my head around. “Well, I beat him up.”

“Him being?” She asks impatiently.

“Samuel Grogan.”

“Grogan? Are you serious. Brother to the man who owns the assassin guild? Good job.” She drawls sarcastically at me as she try to figure out what this means for us.

“That’s not all.” I mumble. I really hate this part. The explaining. I know now she doesn’t really hate or judge me. But it’s like I’m talking to my mother and she’s going to ground me. Which she did often. Mainly because I picked fights with the other kids but she never bothered to ask why. At least Zara cares about the why more than the what. I don’t act without a reason. “So the guards saw me beating him and I tried to explain he was robbing this woman, and I turn to point but the woman had ran, the child with her obviously. So they took me down to the station and fined me 200 gold coins. Which I know is what I needed to use to get us food. And I knew that that was our last.”

“What did you steal?” She already knows how I tried to redeem the situation. My attempt to fix it. She doesn’t look angry, which is good. I step towards her to help her pack the paint. The least I could do is help her with her mess. However small it is compared to mine.

“Some silk. Just a small piece and a ring. I figured you could sell them to one of the merchants. Use your charm to get the 200 back.”

“We both know I have the same charm as a tree.” She snorts.

I smile knowing how far from the truth that is. “I guess I must really like tress then.” I say as I take off my bag and hand it to her. After she’s changed she can go out and get us what I lost. Maybe extra.

“I guess so.” She tells me through her laughs as she leaves the room. Now we have to figure out how to deal with Samuel because he decides he doesn't like me beating him up so easily or mixing with his business. So long as they don’t send assassins Zara and I we should be fine. Maybe they’ll fine us like the guards do, but I don’t think that’s their style. Maybe we’ll be fine. I hope for Zara’s sake they focus on me and not her.

She enters the kitchen a few minutes later, cleans from all the pain. Her hair now hangs loose down her back and her rags are replaced with a summer dress. She set my bag down on the counter and assessed the ring and silk. “Are you mad?”

She looks up from her exception and considers my question. “Slightly, I mean I understand your actions but that doesn’t exactly stop the brothers leader being mad at us.”

Us. She uses the word us so freely like it was her who told me to help the woman. Like she was with me instead of her painting her worries away and singing freely as I potentially ruin our lives.

“I’m sorry.” I say placing a glass of water down as a small attempt to show that I am.

“I know. It’s fine. We’ll figure it all out like we always do. We’re a team remember. Don’t give me that look. I know you want me safe but that doesn’t mean I can’t help with the dangerous stuff. I’m trained, you're trained. So long as we don’t anger them anymore than we have to try to negotiate peace we’ll be fine.” She explains as she sets the ring and silk back in the bag. “This will get us at least 250.”

“With your charm 300.”I point out and she laughs loudly. I smile back at the woman I love. I move round the counter and kiss the top of her head. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, tree man.”

I sigh into her hair, “why am I with you?” I ask even as my heart bursts with joy.

“M tree-ish charm. We’ve literally just covered this. Keep up.” I move as she stands up, shoving the bag over her shoulder and giving me a kiss before she leaves to get us food.

@fang1rling-again

@yafa-towers

(I have no idea my tags, it’s been so long since I’ve posted.)

[wachtelspinat]

Oh hey, a very good question here...

“Anonym hat gesagt: have you ever considered filing off the serial numbers and turning your mc humansonas into personal ocs? they seem like a pretty fun and interesting bunch all on their own!”

... and I have no idea how to answer it.

This is extremely hard to answer somehow..................... or maybe not...

The thing is the entire idea makes me feel unsure on so many levels. I know that my way of depicting the MC was different from the very beginning and has changed quite a lot over the years, I’m EXTREMELY thankful that people dig the things that I draw! I really am, this gives me so much life! And I have never drawn more for any fandom / obsession than for the MC... my files count way over 200 pieces in the midnight mobster category and, to be honest, it’s really cool to see what happened over the years by just looking at that pile of stupid drawings... 

There are a lot of people out there who don’t know who they are when they see my art and it’s nice to see that they dig it for what it’s it nonetheless, but other folks will always recognize them and I like that! I love reading fanfictions, I love seeing fanart, I love the whole context. I mean I’m sorry to admit it but I never fully read Homestuck (something I save for my time in retirement home), it was just too much at some point and I realized very soon that I was actually only interested in the Intermission and everything surrounding it. But all the things that came with it, the music, the amazing artists, the wonderful AUs we created in that tiny corner that was and is the Intermission fandom..... These things made such a big impression on me and I live for the fact that the four lads are a part of it and are interwoven into this whole package.

The thing is... you are not the first person to say this to me, you know, and to be honest, over the years, from time to time, I thought of altering them just enough to unhinge them from this context. But... it wouldn’t be the same. I would still see that angry tiny asshole as Slick, I would still think about them roughing up The Felt, being horrible dads but trying so hard nonetheless and the list goes on... I am WAY too uncreative to take them and put them into my own story. And to be honest? I don’t really want to. My everyday life is stressful as f and I just want to come home and draw stabdads and mobsters... 

One thing that irks me immensely though is the matter of selling my art, prints and postcards and such. I know that Hussie’s not cool with people offering merch at online shops and conventions, but I really don’t know how much my art falls within the radar of said merch...? So yeah I would really love to hear opinions on that. (Lots of folks have asked me over the years and I always had to disappoint them, I would never ever gonna get rich with this shit anyway, but it would be nice for those who’d like some gangsters on their walls) 

Which brings me to another point: they’re already somebody else’s characters. And I don’t know, but I think it’s kinda odd and disrespectful to take their traits and everything, turn their hard shells into skin and hair and then call them my OCs : (

So...  Regarding the personal OCs question: They DO feel very close to my heart. Heck, they have a front row seat for life in my effin’ heart. This sounds very sappy... but yes, they are more to me than just humanizations of some Homestuck characters.  ... and this is hardly understated since I’ve never loved a fictional character more than this angry little man. Never ever. My brain releases so much dopamine whenever I think of him it’s unreal... 

... But everything that makes me love him that bad is based on work of other fans, including me.

Nevertheless they are what they are, and I guess if I wanna have my own OCs then I should sit down and start something new. But yeah, the statement stands: They are definitely more to me than just a bunch of HS characters.

__________________________________________________________

Anonym hat gesagt: I love your art style so much! Do you do commissions? (Sorry if i missed it if you already said it somewhere) 

Hey! Thank you so much! I’m really sorry to tell you though that I don’t do commissions : C idk but as soon as there is money and high expectations involved my mind shuts down on me and I stop drawing altogether.. I did a few for a friend in the past but I let him down horribly, always delaying the final product and such... In the end it’s just stressful to the max for me and unfair for the other party involved : (  

Anonym hat gesagt: So like, sniperspy is basically a kismesissitude. Thoughts?

HHMmmmmmmmmm  I’d say it depends on how you see their relationship? Like there are many approaches on how these two would even function, and I personally love the ones where they turn from enemies to something like soulmates and soulmates don’t hate each other.    

[jiggy-pagie-drabbles]

Yoowzer idea: Yooka really needs to buy an item from Trowser, but strangely, rather than taking advantage of him, Trowzer sells it to him for a very cheap price, no strings attached. What's going on?

Trowzer was at his newly-built home in the hot and sandy area known as Crick Canyon. Directly behind the snake was a stack of 4 signs, each with differing messages, all of them crossed-out and littered with various errors.

Trowzer was currently carrying a paintbrush at the end of his tail as he stared at the new, blank sign lying in front of him. “Hm... buy my extravagant goods? No, no, no, too formal. Buy my... good goods? Oh, why does marketing have to be so difficult sometimes. They’re just words, how hard should it be to put them on a stupid si-”

“Trowzer?” “Ah!” Trowzer’s tail quickly flicked in the opposite direction as he let out a stifled yelp. He nearly dropped his paintbrush, but managed to keep it in his grip as he slowly regained his composure. He looked up, wondering who had broken him from his concentration. It was a slightly taller chameleon with green and red scales. “Oh... Yooka. I know you’re a chameleon and blend well with your surroundings, but you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

Yooka snickered. “Sorry, Trowzer. I didn’t think you’d get startled so easily.”

“I don’t, you just caught me at a time while I was focusing.” Trowzer placed the paintbrush down on a piece of cloth that was already stained with earlier paint drops. “What can I do for you? Just wanted to visit your ol’ pal, Trowzer?”

Yooka shrugged his shoulders. “Well... sure! I can hang out with you, Trowzer. But that’s actually not what I came here for. There’s something I’d like to buy.”

“Oh really!” Trowzer was suddenly back into business mode, standing up as straight as a snake wearing shorts could, and gave the chameleon a charming grin. “Well, business hours are always open for you. What would you like?”

Yooka rubbed the back of his head, suddenly seeming a bit nervous. “Well those speed boots you were trying to sell last week? I want them, but I still don’t have the quills.” The chameleon revealed a small bag and opened it, revealing the golden feathers inside. “You said it was 200, right? Well, I only found 150, and that was with me really trying.”

“150, it is,” Trowzer responded nearly immediately after Yooka stopped talking.

Yooka froze, staring directly at Trowzer with a dumbfounded look. There were a few moments of silence before he finally said, “Wait... really? You’d give me a 50 quill discount? You’re not going to try to sell me something cheaper or throw me out on my ass?”

Trowzer chuckled. “Oh, what do you take me for? A greedy snake? There’s no need to be so shallow-minded, Yooka, I don’t always have to be so cheap.” He raised the end of his tail up and gently rubbed Yooka’s arm. “Think of this as a loyal customer discount. And if that’s too much for you, then you can make up for the 50 quill loss by giving me a little bit of company.” Trowzer looked down at his sign. “And, uh... maybe helping me with these signs.”

Yooka was still confused, wondering if there was a catch to all of this. But Trowzer’s tone seemed genuine to him. He simply smiled and nodded his head as he rubbed the end of Trowzer’s tail. “Yeah, I can keep you company and help you with your signs.” He looked past Trowzer and noticed the stack of soiled signs. “It... looks like you need it.”

Trowzer sighed, looking down. “More than you know.” He turned towards his house. “Perhaps you can look through the stack of books in my room and find a thesaurus. I need another word for amazing.”

[mysterylover123]

My thoughts on Izu/Ocha: Meta

cue frustrated shipper screams

by mysterylover123

At the end of the day, irrespective of any shipping wars, I just want HeroAca to have a good ending. Many manga/anime/franchises have been utterly destroyed by a bad ending, while others are elevated by a great one. And a very consistent element in Bad Endings is poor handling of romantic subplots. Exhibits include: How I Met Your Mother, Naruto, Bleach. Horikoshi has listed both Marvel and Shonen Jump as his major influences, and BNHA is published in the latter. Both companies have a history of terrible Romantic Subplot decisions: Selling Spider-Man’s marriage to Mephisto, the IchiHime vs IchiRuki debate, the awkward Staron and Brutasha subplots in the MCU, and the fiery pit of controversy that is the Naruto ending pairs - all of it ultimately harming the narrative’s integrity and preventing audiences from enjoying the story. While a badly handled romance subplot doesn’t have to tank the ending of an action series, it’s still a thin line to walk.  

On the surface, BNHA’s main pairing of Izuku Midoriya/Ochaco Uraraka, or Izu/Ocha as it’s called, seems to avoid the obvious problems. There’s no More Important Girl in Deku’s life, there’s no coding on his rivalries, and no melodramatic love triangle to annoy people. In fact, I can even say that Izuku and Ochaco’s dynamic is pretty fascinating. But not yet as an endgame pairing. My feelings on Izu/Ocha are complicated. I simultaneously ship it and don’t. I ship it because I enjoy them both as characters, I think they’re good friends, and they seem to like each other; I don’t ship it because the execution so far has been rather awkward, the romance lopsided on Uraraka’s side, and the nature of their relationship struggling to get to the levels of intimacy I’d expect from an endgame pairing. I’m afraid, in short, that Horikoshi will do what other Shonen manga have done: have a supporting female character become defined by her love for the Lead, have the lead spend the whole series ignoring them to obsess over their rivals and villains, and throw the two together at the last minute without properly developing their romance, leaving both fans of the pairing (because of the lack of onscreen development) and non-fans (because of the weak storytelling) alike disappointed and frustrated. 

There are several options for what could happen besides that terrifying prospect. Izu/Ocha could spend lots of time developing their romance, correcting the problems I’ve spotted and outlined in this meta - I’ll mention a few areas where I think they could change these problems as I go along - and become a great Official Couple, like some of the success stories in Shonen romance writing (Ed/Win, Vegeta/Bulma…erm, that’s all I can think of). Alternatively, they could grow away from their crushes on each other and set them aside, ending as friends instead of lovers, possibly with no Official Couples (One Piece, and in the west, Gravity Falls, do something like this). That could work too. They could both end up with other people. They could end up having a tragic falling out and become enemies. At this point, anything’s possible. But what I do know is that they need to change something about their dynamic, and change it fast, or else the story is going to go barreling into the problems of it’s predecessors - the flaws in Shonen manga the series is so well known for avoiding, like pacing issues or Power Scaling. And I don’t want that.

I wrote this meta mostly to contextualize/analyze the Izu/Ocha dynamic for myself. I find their relationship interesting, and most meta on Izu/Ocha barely scratch the surface of their relationship, only going so far as to say either “I don’t like it” or “I like it, and you all are stupid for not liking it”. My feelings on Izu/Ocha are complicated, and I wanted to do a meta on them. Both their relationship, and as two of my fave characters in BNHA. What I want from a storytelling, meta-narrative perspective is a good story. What I want from a character loving POV is for my faves to be happy. If the series shows me they’ll make each other happy, I’m good. It’s just that so far, their relationship doesn’t seem to work that way.

So I’ll go through each arc of the series, and try and detail their interactions from both Deku’s POV and Uraraka’s. I’ll highlight the moments I like and find shippy, and the things they need to work on as a couple. Hopefully this’ll be an enjoyable read (it ended up really, really long), and I’m sorry if Izu/Ocha fans reading it get mad at me - I have nothing against it as a ship, I just want more from the relationship in canon.

Without further ado:

Entrance Exam Arc:

Deku’s POV: Deku’s first impression of Uraraka is great. She’s a cute, kind girl who stops him from tripping over his feet. 

He does, however, think of her as “a girl” (“I just talked to a girl!”), which is a pattern with how he often reacts to her - as “a girl”, rather than “Uraraka”, later on down the line. When Deku shows attraction to Ochaco, it’s to her as an exemplar of the female, rather than as a person. 

Compare Deku’s attraction to her uniform and costume, or responses to talking to ‘a girl’, to say, Naruto saying he likes Sakura’s “large charming forehead” or Darcy in Pride and Prejudice thinking of Elizabeth’s “fine dark eyes”. Big difference in terms of how romantic the attraction comes across. 

Iida stops Deku from talking to Uraraka before the test, saying he’ll just distract her. Take a shot every time someone frames Ochaco’s potential interest in Deku as being a ‘distraction’ that she has to do without.

Deku notices Uraraka pinned under rubble and jumps to save her. He compares this mentally to doing the same for Bakugo in the previous arc, from the sludge villain. But there’s no All Might here to save Deku, and when he jumps he breaks three limbs. His decision gets him into UA, but he thinks he failed. For weeks, Deku feels miserable about this, wallowing in despair because he threw away his chance to get into UA. He gets the news from All Might, and learns that Uraraka went to offer up some of her points for him. Now this is sweet, but let’s look at what we know of Deku’s character now and talk about why I don’t think he appreciates this all that much, and why it wouldn’t have been good for their relationship if that was what got him into UA.

Deku doesn’t believe in himself. He has huge issues with personal security and confidence because of his past. He wants to be there for other people, to be “able to smile, while doing something good for them”. Deku wanted to get into UA on his own merit. So had Uraraka actually been the one to get him in, out of gratitude, it really would have done a number on Deku’s self-esteem. It would have told him that he wasn’t good enough to get in on his own, that someone else had to sabotage themselves to bail him out because of his mistakes. Fortunately, that’s not what happened - he got in because Rescue Points - but from an Izu/Ocha standpoint, it doesn’t seem calculated to cause Deku to fall in love with Uraraka. He doesn’t want someone to take pity on him and sabotage themselves so he can do well. 

That’s why he doesn’t seem all that moved by Uraraka’s gesture here - we could have had many close-ups and reaction bubbles of him thinking about how wonderful she was for doing this, how generous and kind of her it was, but nope, nothing like that happens. Deku is only ecstatic once he learns that he made it in on his own merit. As he should be, of course, but ultimately this first encounter doesn’t do a lot to set up Izu/Ocha.

Ochaco’s POV. Ochaco is a nice girl who saves people in trouble. She’s also very, very insecure. I’ll get into that more later, but despite Uraraka’s cheerful exterior, she’s even more insecure than Deku is. She saves him when they first meet, then walks off after talking at him for a few minutes. 

He doesn’t respond to her at all out loud and she quickly moves on. This is a small microcasm of their entire  dynamic: Ochaco often talks at Deku rather than with Deku, and he rarely talks to her about anything. We’ll get more into that later.

Ochaco gets saved by Deku during the exam, saves him in return, and later on offers him her points. When she brings him up to Mic, she calls him “plain looking” and “didn’t stand out at all”. Lovely first impression. Of course, it’s not impossible for a romance subplot to start with the love interest not finding the hero attractive. The aforementioned Pride and Prejudice, for instance, starts with Darcy calling Eliza “tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” But within two chapters he’s gushing about her “fine eyes”. 

200+  chapters later, and Ochaco still hasn’t said a word about finding Deku more attractive now. Now, she could, hopefully some day, realize that she no longer finds him plain, and that she’s grown to find him attractive. Say something about those big green eyes or his fearless smile. Something personal, like he has yet to say about her, to express that she finds him appealing. But nothing yet.

Uraraka giving Deku her points, from her POV, is I think motivated just as much by pride as it is by gratitude. She got into that scenario because she was pinned down, and she probably feels like it was her fault. It would be kind of creepy, actually, if she was willing to throw her own chances under the bus for someone she just met because she liked him or was in love with him - Misa Amane levels of love-at-first-sight co-dependency. Uraraka doing this because of her own pride seems more fitting to me, more in line with the character we get to know later on. 

EG:

She feels she messed up, and took someone else down with her, and as such has to make things better. Thankfully, Deku pulled through on his own. This is one of many sweet scenes where Uraraka offers Deku a great deal of love and support. But sadly, it’s a very lopsided bond in that regard. Outside of this moment, Deku never does anything crazy to protect Uraraka again, and rarely shows her the same kind of support. Not because he doesn’t want to, per se, but because she won’t let him (if you want the full details on that imbalance, skip to the Sports Fest arc section).

Quirk Apprehension Test Arc:

Uraraka’s POV: We continue the pattern of Uraraka’s crush on Deku being something she’s told to drop here, with Aizawa telling her if she’s “just here to make friends” she can go home (take a shot). 

She’s happy to see Deku and supportive of him when he does OK, worried for him when he’s hurt, and in general a good friend. At this point in the series, we’re not privy to her inner thoughts, so there’s not as much to say about her feelings here. The only thing of note is the other general pattern of their relationship, wherein Uraraka gets to be supportive of and worried for Deku, but not him for her. Her revising of the name Deku is more important from his POV.

Deku’s POV: Deku shows continuing attraction to Uraraka here, thinking that she “looks good in her uniform” and blushing around her. However, he quickly moves on to overcoming the Quirk App Test and doesn’t think about her much throughout the rest of the arc. 

She comes up to him later and calls him ‘Deku’, like Bakugo did, and reframes the nickname as a positive thing. The setup seems clear: Ochaco is to be the friend to Deku that Bakugo never was, the kind and supportive ally he lacked back in middle school. This scene makes me smile.

Which would be fine if that’s what they went with, but…

Battle Trial Arc:

This arc starts out so well for Izu/Ocha, then goes down hill fast.

Deku on Ochaco here: Deku thinks she looks good in her uniform, blushing around her, and expressing a desire to impress her when they’re put on the same team. 

They’re up against Bakugo, and he’s nervous. When Ochaco asks, he starts talking about how Greatamazingawesomesuperspecialwhatever Bakugo is and how he wants to beat him. 

He then apologizes to Ochaco for getting her caught up in his problems, indicating that he doesn’t see her as being part of them. Even though Ochaco proclaims them to be a team, he doesn’t do much strategizing with her ahead of time. He gets very caught up in his match with Bakugo, and doesn’t bother working with her until Bakugo has him cornered and nearly drops him with the MegaBlast. Then, he calls her and comes up with a plan - but imagine if he’d actually worked together with Ochaco to beat Bakugo.

 If he’d guessed, as he says, that Bakugo was planning to “come at him first”, then why not get Uraraka to grab Bakugo while he’s distracted and zero G him out of the building?

Because Deku wants to beat Bakugo to prove himself, plain and simple. He’s known Bakugo longer, so it’s only natural he’s more interested in beating him than working with Uraraka. But this could have gone so much better for him if he took the time to work with Ochaco instead - if they’d tag-teamed Kacchan, Deku might not have had to break his arm. 

He does salvage this a little by taking the new version of his name Uraraka came up with. But then Deku spends the rest of the arc ignoring her instead of working with her. 

There’s even an oddly placed panel sequence where she blows off a flirtatious Kaminari to worry about Deku, and he then blows her off to go chase after Bakugo and clear up their misunderstanding. It’s probably just a coincidence, but it’s still a weird parallel.

And speaking of this scene, let’s talk about a bigger concern with Izu/Ocha (from Deku’s angle) that I have. Deku has a secret identity. He has a past as a quirkless kid, a history of insecurity, and a secret chosen one destiny that burdens him greatly. He needs his future partner to be someone he can talk to about all this. If I were him, and I had to choose among the kids at UA who I’d tell my troublesome secret ID to, who I’d want to confide in, I’d probably say 1. Uraraka, 2. Iida, 3. Shoto, 4. Literally every single other character Deku is friends with and finally, bottom of the list, Bakugo. Yet Deku chooses to tell Bakugo his secret identity, not Uraraka or anyone nicer who would be presumably more trustworthy. Now, in hindsight (SPOILERS IF YOU’RE NOT CAUGHT UP YET), Deku doing this has paid off. Bakugo knows his secret and he’s kept it. He’s been a supportive friend to him since then, especially post JTA, everything a good secret keeper should be. But Deku - and especially the audience - didn’t know that at the time. (SPOILERS DONE).

And Deku can’t be with Uraraka if she doesn’t know his secret identity. That’s one of the Laws of Superhero Romance Comics. Spider-Man could never be with Gwen or Black  Cat, for instance, because they hated his alter ego. He married MJ because she liked both. And Horikoshi is a big fan of Spidey, so he must know this. Deku has to tell Uraraka about OFA if he’s going to be with her. But he hasn’t, and he hasn’t shown any inclination to. 

The setup is there for him to tell others; Todoroki asked about his powers, Tsuyu compared him to All Might. They could figure it out, they could tell Deku they know, or he could tell them, like he tried to tell Kota his personal stories, to make them feel better. There’s a mechanism in place for him to tell either one of them. But not Uraraka. She’s never asked about it, he’s got no interest in telling her. And as long as she doesn’t know the Secret, she can’t be with Deku. This isn’t, BTW, me making a manifesto for any of those ships over Izuocha. I don’t think for a second that any of those pairings will happen in the series. Only that if Deku is to be with Uraraka, he has to find a reason to tell her about OFA, or their relationship will be all kinds of messed up.

Also, FYI, Tsu, Todoroki, Bakugo, and even Iida have looked at and noticed enough about Deku to guess at least this, the most fundamentally important thing to know about Deku: That he’s close to All Might and his powers are similar. But not Ochaco. Does she honestly know anything important about Deku? Like how he grew up quirkless for so long, how All Might inspired his dream, how he wants to live up to the expectations of others and save people with a smile? No, not yet. He’s never told her anything personal, outside of this one little anecdote in this arc about wanting to beat Bakugo.

Uraraka’s POV:

Uraraka is happy to be working with Deku, but initially not all that excited about winning the fight. She just wants to relax, and is surprised to see how stressed he is.

 Then Deku talks about how he wants to beat Bakugo, and she becomes more proactive. Nonetheless, she still basically just follows his lead this arc. 

She takes no initiative on her own: She doesn’t go to grab Bakugo when he’s attacking Deku, she stands around giggling on the phone while trying to sneak up on Iida, and Momo criticizes her for it. 

She thinks to herself about Deku wanting to win when Iida outfoxes her. She doesn’t seem like she wants to win the Trial for her own sake, just Deku’s. And this is a problem for Uraraka. (take a shot)

Momo criticizes everyone but Iida in this match, and all three characters who messed up did so because they were too fixated on someone else. Deku on beating Bakugo. Bakugo on beating Deku. Uraraka on impressing Deku. Iida, for instance, also admires Midoriya - but he’s able to concentrate on the match and fight Uraraka anyway. That’s why he’s MVP, as Momo and All Might put it.

So we set up Uraraka’s over-fixation on Deku as being a problem she has to overcome, a flaw - like Bakugo’s obsession with beating Deku, Iida’s obsession with killing Stain, Todoroki’s obsession with hurting his father, or Momo’s feelings of inadequacy next to Shoto, it’s framed like a flaw she has to overcome to do better. Of the dynamics here, only Deku’s admiration of/determination to beat Bakugo is not framed as a flaw per se, since he still has it to this day and seems to benefit from it. I’ll elaborate on why I think that is later on in the essay - it has to do with the “Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Tragedy” theme - but overall, this doesn’t paint a good picture of Ochaco’s feelings for Midoriya. They’re framed as something she has to put away in order to do well. (take a shot)

Class Rep mini-arc:

This is another score for Izu/Ocha. Ochaco voted for Deku as class Rep. She never tells him about it, though. I’m not sure why. Iida told him. Todoroki tells Momo later on that he voted for her. Ochaco could be gearing up for telling Deku herself, dramatically, later on, but what would that prove? 

Deku already knows she admires him, he turned down the class rep role later anyway. This isn’t like Momo and Shoto, where Momo stayed Deputy Rep and never heard a compliment from Todoroki before he told her he voted for her. In that case, the Class Rep thing showed Momo Shoto believed in her, helping her get her confidence back. But Deku already knows Ochaco believes in him. Iida telling him also helped him out - it showed him he had friends who believed in him. Ochaco’s given reason for keeping her vote to herself is Bakugo’s little temper tantrum about it. But Bakugo wasn’t at the table when Iida told Deku the truth, so why couldn’t she have told Deku then? I really don’t get why she keeps her vote to herself; I don’t see how this will do anything for Deku later on down the line, or for Uraraka. It shows she’s supportive of him and admires him, but we already knew that. I’m just not sure how to parlay this into future developments with them.

USJ Arc

Deku and Ochaco don’t talk to each other at all during this arc. They get separated quickly and don’t reunite. They don’t worry about each others’ safety during the battle. After it’s over Ochaco asks after Deku because he broke his limbs, but during the fight she doesn’t worry about him or look for him. There’s only one moment I find noteworthy for Izu/Ocha during this arc: Deku wondering “What would Kacchan do” before jumping off the boat. This type of remark, like Iida’s “What would by brother or Midoriya do” during the class rep arc, is about a platonic friend (well, rival in this case), not a love interest. So Uraraka’s “what would Deku do” being code for “I like him” doesn’t really add up. I’ll get to that later.

Sports Festival Arc

Deku’s POV: Deku asks Uraraka about her motivation at the beginning of this arc, in Chapter 22. Uraraka admits that it’s for the money, and while Deku mentally thinks that this is admirable, he doesn’t say anything complimentary out loud, or anything other than “it’s surprising”. Contrasted with Iida’s loud, uproarious applause of Ochaco’s motive, this doesn’t come across as all that supportive of his friend, even though he does not, in fact, think the less of her for it. 

On top of that,  Deku at this point in the arc is struggling to get motivated himself. Later on he’ll call Todoroki out for not trying his best, and he’s clearly thinking of people like Uraraka, Shinso, Bakugo and Iida when he does so. But at this point, he does the same thing towards her that he calls Shoto out for.

He doesn’t get inspired by her words, or All Might’s, or anyone’s, until he overhears Bakugo make an offhand comment about ‘aiming for the top’. Then he gets into the  competitive spirit. This kinda creates the impression that Deku is more inspired by his rivals than his love interest. Common issue in Shonen romances, of course; a higher emphasis on the importance of the hero’s main rivalry than his Official Girlfriend.

He’s overjoyed when she joins his team, but not because it’s Uraraka - because it’s anyone.

Deku is the person no one wants to team up with here. He would have teamed up with anyone who asked him. It seems odd, knowing Uraraka’s capabilities and quirk, that he didn’t just go up and ask her himself to join his team (Like he does with Iida, and then Tokoyami). 

(Edit: I’ve recently rereaed this chapter and found I made a mistake: Deku does say he was planning on asking her. I was just reading a weird translation. Sorry for the mistake - good on Deku!)

During the battle, while he mentally thinks that Uraraka is great, he doesn’t say anything out loud to her. He does, however, loudly compliment Hatsume and Tokoyami, in front of her. This hurts Uraraka’s feelings, but I’ll get to that in her section.

Deku gets busy with his rivals for a while until his first match is over. While watching the rest, he mentions to Uraraka that he wrote about her Zero Gravity in his notebook. But he doesn’t say “I think your Zero Gravity is cool too” or anything complimentary, just “I wrote about it” like everyone else’s. 

To Deku’s credit, he seems to realize that he hasn’t been very supportive to Uraraka. The anime cut this from the Manga, but the manga has a scene where Deku notices her leaving, and her pensive expression. This leads to him going to the prep room to offer her his strategy to beat Bakugo. 

I think this is a big deal for Deku, because at the end of the day, this is his entire motivation. Helping people. Being there for others. Deku is a wonderful, supportive friend, used to feeling weak and inadequate and wanting to help others the way they helped him. He needs a partner he can support and compliment, someone he can help, someone who needs saving. 

But Uraraka denies him this. He offers her his help and support, and she rejects him - for her own reasons, but this still leaves Deku feeling lesser. 

“She’s the one supporting me,” he muses before his match with Todoroki. He wanted to be there for her. He wanted to help her break down the wall that is Bakugo - even if she didn’t use his strategy, she could have listened to his knowledge of Bakugo, who he’s known his whole life, to pick up some tips on his weaknesses. 

But she doesn’t. She also refuses to let Deku be there for her when she loses. He can tell that her cheerfulness is just hiding her disappointment. But since she’s refusing to let him in, he can’t be the shoulder for her to cry on. He wanted to. He was willing to be that person for her - to be the friend she can talk to about her issues, to cheer her on when she fought and help her up when she’s feeling down.

But she rejected his support, just like everyone else does. 

Bakugo rejected his helping hand as a kid. Iida rejected working with him earlier that same day, and rejects his support later on with his brother. Todoroki declares he ‘isn’t here to make friends’ and spends most of the sports Fest rejecting Deku’s attempts to help him (“You’re helping your opponent? Now which of us is screwing around”).

 Deku clearly wants to be that friend. He wants to be there for the people in his life and offer his boundless love and emotional support for them. And I think he needs a partner in life who will let him be there for them. If Uraraka is to be that person, she has to let him in. She has to put aside her pride (yes, I think it is pride) and accept Deku supporting her, just as she supported him. She has to open up to him and cry in front of him. The others I mentioned have - Bakugo cried in front of Deku twice, Iida accepted his help during the Hero Killer arc, Todoroki accepts him in the very next episode. Three characters far crustier, prouder and more antagonistic towards Deku have all put aside their pride and let him help them with their issues. It’s Ochaco’s turn.

Speaking of: From Uraraka’s perspective. When Uraraka admits her motivation to Deku and Iida, she’s looking away, scratching her head, and apologizing. She says, in the dub “You two have such admirable motivations. I hope you don’t think less of me now.” Uraraka feels ashamed to admit her motivation to Deku and Iida. 

When the obstacle race ends, she announces “I’m so jealous of you!” to Deku, after he comes in first. And I think she is - jealous of him. 

She teams up with Deku for the  Cavalry Battle, and later admits that she “Might have been relying on (him) to get by”, meaning that she sees Deku as being better than her. 

She gets very jealous of the attentions Deku gives Hatsume - as I noticed before, Deku compliments  everyone but Ochaco. He even found the time to compliment Bakugo in front of her during the Battle Trial arc - but to her face, nothing. And this plays on Uraraka’s insecurities. Deep down, despite her cheerful demeanor, Uraraka isn’t very self-confident (at least, not yet). She doesn’t believe in herself, she doesn’t have faith in herself to succeed. She’s even more insecure than Deku, and often tries too hard to be “just like him” to her own self-detriment. Watching everyone else’s matches, she admits to being ashamed of herself. She realizes she needs to try and succeed on her own, not by relying on Midoriya.  (take a shot)

But at the same time, her goal is still essentially to be “Just like Deku”. What’s the one thing Ochaco knows Deku wants to do, besides be a great hero? Beat Bakugo. No coincidence she was fighting him in this tournament. To be just like Deku, she has to beat his rival, who she’s seen him fight before. Uraraka wants to be good enough, she wants to beat Deku - in a way, her motive and behavior here is not that different from Iida’s, Bakugo’s or Todoroki’s. Deku makes her insecure, so she tries to do better than him. 

She declares herself a rival to him. She refuses his help - seriously, a few pointers on how to beat Bakugo couldn’t hurt, she even thinks about Deku’s earlier moves while fighting him anyway! - and tries to win it all by herself. And although her plan is great, it doesn’t work. 

The minute she thinks “I’ll be just like Deku” is the moment she fails. The moment Bakugo blows up her debris and beats her.

Uraraka is devastated by this. She was crying for so long and so hard that her eyes swelled shut. She could have really used a friend, someone to talk to about her family problems - someone outside of her family drama, a kind and understanding ally like Deku, who can commiserate with her and tell her things’ll be ok. 

But she hides her feelings from Deku and pretends she’s fine. I think she doesn’t want to look weak in front of him - she wants him to think she’s cool, to compliment her like he compliments Hatsume and Bakugo, and she’s deeply insecure about appearing anything other than strong. So she shuts him out and cries on her own, with no supportive friend to help her. If she is to be with him, she needs to be able to let him into her life and her heart. 

She has to cry in front of him, like all three of his other rivals have done despite their immense pride and far less amiable relationships with Deku. Even Tsu has cried in front of Deku and confessed her feelings (to him and the whole Rescue Squad), and she’s not as close to him as Uraraka or Iida. Why doesn’t Uraraka confide in Deku about her feelings? Again, I think the underlying problem is her hero-worship of him. She thinks he’s amazing, she won’t admit to his flaws (she sees him, one ep/chapter later, destroy his body and lose his match helping Todoroki; you’d think she’d cotton on to his lack of utter flawlessness then, but nope), and she’s still essentially insecure about herself. She needs to learn to believe in her own strengths and admit Deku’s weaknesses. Then she’ll be willing to cry in front of him and listen to his ideas.

But until then, she’s just like all of Deku’s other rivals: Too proud and too envious/afraid of him to accept his love or friendship. 

No wonder she was so easily able to spot why Bakugo is insecure about him and guess how he’d feel about being rescued; her complex about Deku is rapidly becoming just as debilitating as his is. 

Difference being, Bakugo had his “Deku vs Kacchan 2” moment ,where he and Deku talk out their feelings and move on, recognizing that Deku isn’t looking down on him and never has been, etc. Ochaco needs that moment too (probably without the big fight scene, though).  

Hero Killer Arc:

From Deku’s perspective, he chooses his hero name based on Ochaco’s advice. This is something we see with other characters too - Eraserhead and Mic, Mirio and Tamaki - who are friends, so it’s all good. It seems to have a nice spin: Ochaco taking Deku’s flaws, the traits Bakugo mocked, and turning them into a positive. Ochaco supporting Deku. Nice. She smiles about it. 

He seems surprised that she took an internship with Gunhead, confused that she’s more into action now (I guess he’ll have to revise his notebook!). 

He talks to her on the phone after the Incident goes down, having texted all his friends for help and worried her. He again (for the last time) get’s excited over her in a sexual/romantic way, and once again it’s “I talked to A GIRL on the phone” instead of “I talked to Uraraka on the phone”. He’s attracted to her as a girl, but not excited about talking to the girl he has a crush on. Following this arc, Deku stops responding to Uraraka romantically, even when CamieRaka loses her clothes. I’ve got a theory about why he stops, I’ll discuss it next arc.

Uraraka, for her part, looks pleased when  Deku takes her name. She interns with Gunhead because of her match with Bakugo, to get stronger, which is good for character development - I like that this isn’t because of Deku, because I don’t want her arc to revolve around him solely.

She calls him, concerned, after the Stain incident, and tells Gunhead that they’re “not like that” when he teases her about it being a boy. This is the first of many people telling Uraraka that she has something going on with Deku, rather than Uraraka figuring it out herself. Uraraka’s denial is not really defensive or Edward Elric Style “She is NOT my girlfriend” levels, so honestly at this point I believe her. Up until this arc, she doesn’t see her feelings for Deku as romantic. She sees him as a friend who she admires and is often jealous of.

Final Exams:

This is where things get weird. So far, Izu/Ocha has been pretty nicely built up - but then the series decided to go for it in a way that I personally find rather strange and confusing.

So first, let’s take this arc from Deku’s POV. The scenes of Izu/Ocha watching the fights are Anime Only, so we’ll skip those. In the Manga they all take place at the same time. After Deku and Kacchan v All Might, Deku goes to watch the other battles, including Uraraka’s. He doesn’t have any onscreen reaction to Ochaco’s fight, even though we get to hear him mentally exclaiming about how awesome Iida is, or Tsuyu is. Ochaco’s his friend too, why can’t he spare a moment to fanboy over her martial arts skills?

 Anyway, later on they’re left alone at the mall, though not by choice. Deku starts making small talk and Uraraka runs away from him, saying “Have to keep the pests away” or something like that. Deku asks “I’m a bug?/“You mean me?”. So from Deku’s POV, Ochaco flat out called him a pest right here. To him, it must have sounded like she was rejecting him, rejecting the idea of hanging out with him one-on-one (which in the Manga they haven’t done before).

 He’s immediately attacked by Shigaraki; when she returns he does his best to prevent her from getting hurt. Nothing really advances, from Deku’s POV, in their dynamic at this point. The only real notable thing is the “I’m a pest” line. Since Deku never reacts romantically to Ochaco after this, I’m assuming that he thinks she’s not interested in him that way. That right here, she shut down the idea of dating him, and he just accepts it.

Of course, it’s Ochaco’s POV that’s important here. As she’s about to get sucked up by 13, she’s thinking “What would Deku do?” 

Now, we’ve heard these lines in a non-romantic context before. Iida wondered what Deku or Tensei would do when he helped disperse the crowd. Deku wondered what Kacchan would do during the USJ arc. He wondered what a “hero” would do when he saved Bakugo from the sludge monster. This sentiment is not exclusive to romance in the show.

 But Aoyama then chooses this moment to ask Ochaco if she ‘likes him’. This is completely out of nowhere. Aoyama is later revealed to have a bit of a friendship-crush on Deku, but why is he asking this of Uraraka, in this situation? It’s not like her girlfriends later on teasing her about liking Deku, it’s a guy she doesn’t know who doesn’t know Deku very well either, all of a sudden asking her if she has feelings for him. I don’t, for the life of me, understand what his purpose was in doing this. How does this help them win? Why is he painted half-in-shadow when he says this? It feels like it happens because we need Ochaco to realize she likes Deku, because the audience needs to be shocked, not because it makes sense for the  characters. Which is so strange, because it’s one of the only times that ever happens in HeroAca. For the most part, the characters always act in ways that make sense, no matter how extreme they are.

Uraraka freaks out, and thinking about liking Deku nearly gets her killed fighting 13 (take a shot). It isn’t until she re-focuses, on something she attained free of Deku’s influence, that she gets to win. Trying too hard to be like Deku, for Uraraka, leads to nothing good. 

Then, at the mall, she runs away from him. She refuses to spend time with him - which seems strange if she’s meant to fall in love with him. If she wants to be with him, why doesn’t she want to, you know, be with him? Well, because she does’t want to be with him. If she did, she could easily ask him out (they are friends, after all), spend time with him, see if there’s something there. But she doesn’t. 

She runs off, almost horrified at the mere thought of having a crush on Deku. Of having a perfectly harmless, cute crush on one of her best friends. That just seems strange to me. Yes, love can be intimidating, but this is so extreme.

Another odd thing about this sequence is that it’s juxtaposed with Shigaraki holding Deku hostage. We flip back and forth between the Big Bad nearly killing the Hero, and the Romantic Subplot.

 Imagine if that scene in Fullmetal Alchemist where Winry realizes she loves Ed was crosscut with scenes of Ed fighting Gluttony or something, and you get the idea. It’s a tonal mishmash. Unless - unless you theorize that the idea of liking Deku is as terrifying to Uraraka as being nearly murdered by Shigaraki is for  Deku. But if that’s the case, I don’t want her to be with him! I don’t want her to be in a relationship that scares her that much. (I also don’t get why it would scare her that much - like, girl, Deku’s a sweetheart, what do you have to be afraid of?). The series could salvage this, but it already kinda tainted their romance in my eyes - and to many readers as well, since it seemed like such an odd way to introduce the love story into the occasion. Instead of a joyous moment of romance, this is what we got.

Training Camp Arc:

There isn’t a lot in this arc between Izu and Ocha. Izuku includes her in his list of classmates he’s worried about, popping up in the anime second after Bakugo (who is immediately in danger because of kidnapping) and along side Todoroki.  

He works with her and Tsu to save Bakugo - or at least try. Other than that, there’s nothing (the scene of them blushing is only in the anime). 

On Ochaco’s side, nothing happens until she fights Toga. Toga starts interrogating her about her crush on Deku, in her Hannibal Lecture style - villain getting into the hero’s head and provoking them with their insecurities. Himiko Toga is Uraraka’s villainous foil - her counterpart, the evil version of her. 

Both do develop a crush on Deku, which is very disturbing if Deku and Ochaco are meant to be a couple, as well as her adoration of Stain. It’s not like Toga is going to marry Stain or whatever; so the comparison of their two brands of love is odd (at least, if Izuocha is meant to be endgame). 

Toga’s words are right on the money: Uraraka admires Deku and wants to be just like him, but to be just like someone you have to do as Toga does - kill and replace. This gets to Uraraka, because it’s true. Her  crush on Deku then, is not being framed as genuine love, but as a similar obsession to Himiko Toga’s - a desire to be just like someone she admires, rather than be together with a good friend she adores. Which is frustrating, because the latter is the kind of relationship I want from Izuocha, not the former. I don’t want Ochaco to get with Deku because she hero-worships him and thinks he’s amazing - I want her to get with him because they’re good friends and she loves him. But that’s not what the series is doing with them, and with the parallels to Toga, it’s starting to really creep me out.

One route they could take with all this foreshadowing, of course, is perhaps one similar to what happened in Gravity Falls, with Dipper and Wendy. In that series, Dipper like Ochaco has an evil villainous counterpart Yandere - Gideon Gleeful. Toga and Gideon both stalk and harass their crush, who clearly says no and means no. Dipper and Ochaco both harbor a crush on someone who’s a close friend, but who seems to be for whatever reason romantically unavailable to them. (Wendy is older, Deku is…I’m not sure why, Ochaco just won’t ask him, it’s frustrating). Dipper eventually reveals his crush on Wendy, who lets him down easy and stays good friends with him. Dipper later uses that understanding of himself, and of Gideon’s obsession, to tell Gideon he can’t make someone like him. This helps Gideon reform. The whole thing is beautifully healthy and positive. 

So if that’s where we’re going with this - an ending where everyone’s just friends, and Ochaco’s crush on Deku is being used to develop her character a bit regardless of romance, then this would make sense. If not then I don’t get it.

Hideout Raid Arc:

There are two interactions between Ochaco and Deku (indirect ones) during the Hideout Raid Arc. One is Kirishima relaying Uraraka’s worries about saving Bakugo, the other is Uraraka getting the Rescue Squad to apologize to Tsuyu. Both of them are really bad warning signs for their future relationship.

The simple reason is: Uraraka thinks Deku and co did the wrong thing, Deku thinks he did the right thing. Deku has never apologized for or expressed any regret for breaking the rules to save Bakugo. Uraraka, however, objected to them doing this. This is very interesting for both of their relationships with Bakugo, and their thoughts on heroism. But let’s talk about why this is a problem for Izuocha. Uraraka didn’t agree with Deku’s decision here. She has her own reasons for it - “Bakugo wouldn’t want to be rescued” -but she doesn’t bring them up in front of Deku. The thing is, Deku was on the fence about going. If Uraraka had brought up her objection, I think Deku might have actually listened to her. It’s the best objection to persuade him, because it takes Bakugo’s needs into consideration. But Uraraka didn’t bring it up to him. She didn’t say anything to Deku. From Uraraka’s POV, that’s a problem for her relationship with him, because it means she doesn’t want to say something that will upset him. She’s never had a serious argument with him, never objected out loud to his choices, even when she disagrees with them, and never had an argument with him where they came to a compromise or understanding about an important issue. Instead, she brings up her objection out of Deku’s hearing, and he hears about it secondhand. Uraraka doesn’t want to upset Deku, even about something important to her.

From Deku’s perspective, even though he knows Uraraka, his love interest, disagrees with what he’s doing, he does it anyway. He doesn’t care. He keeps Uraraka’s objection in mind, but only as it pertains to saving Bakugo. He never thinks about how Uraraka will feel about him going against her wishes, never considers her at all. He does consider his mother’s objections, even Tsuyu’s. But Uraraka’s objection, ultimately, only affects him insofar as it means he thinks of Bakugo’s feelings when saving him. And he never apologizes for doing so. 

Later on, when Uraraka gathers everyone together to apologize to Tsu, Deku is the only one of the five who never actually says sorry (going by the anime here, since the manga is ambiguous about who’s speaking). Uraraka’s speech makes it clear that she didn��t agree with their choice and thinks they screwed up, but just wants to forgive them and go back to normal. But Deku doesn’t apologize for what he did. Iida, Kirishima, Momo, Todoroki - all people Uraraka is less intimate with than Deku - all apologize to Tsuyu, as Ochaco asks. But not Deku. Because Deku doesn’t agree with her. He doesn’t think he was wrong.

The question of whether or not to go charging in, even against the rules, to save someone, is a big one hanging over the heads of all these characters. It’s Captain America Civil War style big. Something that could split people apart permanently if they can’t agree about it. And not only do Deku and Ochaco not agree on this issue, they haven’t had any conversation about it with each other. They need to be able to discuss this and find common ground before they become a couple.

License Exam Arc:

This one is obviously important for Izu/Ocha. It ends with Ochaco deciding to ‘put her feelings away’.

So let’s start with this Arc from Deku’s POV on Ochaco: He talks to her casually at the beginning before Hatsume explodes out of the shop, but focuses entirely on  crafting his ultimate move from there on out. 

We don’t see Uraraka inspiring his move, that’s Hatsume and Iida, or his realization that he’s imitating All Might (that’s All Might himself). 

Deku does, however, recognize TogaChaco as not being Ochaco, showing that he knows her well.

 He rescues TogaChaco because she’s a person in danger, thinking about his inability to rescue Bakugo from the villains and his general motivation, not how much he cares for Ochaco. 

He knows Ochaco well enough to tell the difference, but this is Deku we’re talking about - he’s very attentive to details about others. I fully believe he would be able to tell a TogaIida from the real one, or Todoroki, Bakugo, Tsuyu, Hatsume, All Might…the list goes on, but there are very few characters who Deku doesn’t take  detailed notes on or amass details about, and therefore couldn’t recognize the difference. What I’m saying is that Deku would do the same for any friend; he doesn’t distinguish Ochaco here. 

He works with her and Sero to win the day, and spends the rest of the arc focused on his goals, with no thoughts to spare for Ochaco, and no interest in the cute girl pursuing him (Camie) outside of her quirk for studying. It comes across like Deku has put away any interest in romance in the name of pursuing his goals. He doesn’t distinguish Uraraka at all, as anything more than just another one of his friends. 

From Ochaco’s POV, she becomes jealous of Hatsume once more - but fails to notice, for instance, that Hatsume’s behavior is making Deku uncomfortable. She’s jealous of Hatsume for being more confident, driven, and demonstrative than she is, but if she was paying closer attention to Midoriya, she’d probably notice that he’s freaked out by Hatsume feeling him up; there’s no real reason for her to be jealous of Mei in regards to Deku, because Deku isn’t any closer to Mei than he is to her. But Ochaco, here and many other places, doesn’t really take the time to observe and notice Midoriya, outside of a surface level. That’s why she hero-worship’s him so badly.

I’d recommend any HeroAca fan to check out this fascinating fan essay, “Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Tragedey”, (link: https://www.reddit.com/r/BokuNoHeroAcademia/comments/5n21a9/imitation_is_the_sincerest_form_of_tragedy_a_boku/ ) to get a good understanding of what’s going on with Ochaco in relation to Deku, without ship bias getting in the way. It’s an excellent read, touching on many characters and plot points. The key takeaway about Uraraka is that she has a pattern of imitating Deku, and screwing up because of it, without getting that narrative punishment that will act as a kick in the pants to motivate her to stop hero-worshipping him. 

I think that, since we do see Deku imitating Bakugo and Gran Torino’s moves for Full Cowl with no problem, and other smaller instances, the secret is not that you can never admire someone and strive to learn from them - but rather that you can imitate someone, as long as you don’t hero-worship them. Ochaco’s issue, along with Deku’s, Shoto’s, Iida’s, etc, is that she sees the person she wants to be like as perfect and refuses to acknowledge their flaws. Ochaco admires Deku and wants to be like him - even though she’s seen first hand how Deku’s brand of heroism lands him in the hospital more often than not, how Deku can be overly analytical, deeply insecure and makes mistakes like anyone else - but we don’t see her acknowledge this. She thinks Deku’s amazing, perfect, like he admires All Might, Iida Tensei, Shoto his mom, etc. The reason Deku is able to imitate Kacchan and Gran Torino’s moves without being harmed, like every other imitator, is because he thinks Gran Torino is kind of weird, but skilled, and Kacchan is a jerk, but awesome. He can admire their strengths, and acknowledge their flaws. Therefore, he can imitate their moves without striving to be Just Like Them. Uraraka needs to recognize Deku’s flaws, if she wants to imitate his strengths without feeling bad about herself. 

Once again Ochako’s feelings are brought up to her by someone else, and cause her a lot of distress. This time it’s Mina, who acknowledges that she wants to MAKE it be about love.

Just like with Gunhead and Aoyama telling Ochako her feelings for Deku are romantic in nature. Mina admits she’s trying to make a romance happen, rather than just letting one develop on it’s own. Her words cause Uraraka a lot of distress, and Momo and Tsuyu point out that this won’t help her (take a shot).

As she watches Deku from a distance, (the anime adds the Admiring All Might music track to this scene), her feelings for him are paralleled with Midoriya’s admiration of heroes, specifically Iida. Keeping in with the Imitation theme, Ochako’s feelings for Midoriya are once again paralleled with admiration of famous heroes people want to imitate, not romantic love. It’s Mina, Aoyama and Gunhead who are telling Ochako she likes Deku, not Ochako figuring it out for herself. 

Uraraka once again gets jealous of a girl who Deku doesn’t want. Deku gives lots of signs that he’s creeped out by Camie’s attentions - when Kaminari and Mineta ask him about it, he says firmly that he found it creepy. If Uraraka was really paying attention to Deku’s feelings, she’d realize that he’s not interested in Camie. 

 Imagine, for instance, this scene with the genders reversed. Our heroine is getting felt up and creeped on by a male villain. Her fellow superhero boyfriend arrives on the scene; the male villain leaves, speaking ominously about the connection between the two of them. Later on, other girls get jealous about the hot male villain waving at our heroine, and she makes it clear that she’s uncomfortable about it. 

The boyfriend ignores her discomfort and gets jealous and possessive about her being around another man. Doesn’t something seem wrong here? It’s the setup we see from many ‘Nice guy’ narratives, but gender flipped. The guy seems to see the girl like a possession that belongs to him, angry that she’s daring to be touched by another boy, not that another guy is refusing to respect her space. Uraraka’s jealousy is not routed in love for Midoriya, but insecurity about herself. She feels less than, when she sees other girls around him, and doesn’t bother to observe whether she’s actually in danger of losing him to them.

This scene is more than a little weird, since it seems like Camie is setting up her future to prey on the trust between the two to her own advantage. Again, Izuku and Ochako’s bond is being framed in a negative light. 

Uraraka decides, upon seeing Deku psych himself up to win, that she needs to put away her feelings for him. This is part of the pattern in Uraraka’s story. (take a shot) Focusing on Deku leads to her losing. Uraraka says here, that she doesn’t think she can have a relationship with Deku and be a hero. She puts her feelings away, because she feels they don’t help her. Unlike other duos in the series, other romantic parings from other narratives, Uraraka feels that her feelings for Deku don’t benefit her goals. If they’re to be a couple, then, Uraraka needs to feel like she can be a better hero by being with Deku, than by being away from him.

Internship, Culture Fest, Pro Hero arcs:

From the time Ochaco ‘puts her feelings away’, until recently in the JTA, Ochaco’s crush on Deku is not mentioned. The internship arc teams up Tsuyu and Uraraka with Deku and Kiri to save Eri. But instead of letting Deku and Ochaco fight and bond together over this shared experience - we’re given nothing. Deku doesn’t tell her anything about his issues with Mirio and Nighteye. Or even Eri. Ochaco doesn’t talk to Deku, outside of group scenes with exposition, about much of anything. 

The ending of the arc has a good setup for an emotional bonding scene with Izu/Ocha - Ochaco was the one to rescue Nighteye, but he still died, and he’s Izuku’s mentor. We could have had a scene of them bonding over losing this guy, which Ochaco blames herself for and Deku blames himself for. Similar to like, Deku and Bakugo fighting over feeling responsible for All Might’s End, or Iida and Deku bonding over Stain. But, you know, more romantic in nature.

But nope, we get nothing. Ochaco angsts over Nighteye dying, and goes on this emotional journey without Deku’s input. She chooses to confide these feelings in Aizawa and Tsuyu, but not in Midoriya. Deku, at least, has the excuse of being unable to talk about OFA with other people, but Uraraka could have told him about her problems, and he an abbreviated version like he did with Kota about being quirkless. But instead, we get nothing. No bonding between our official couple at all.

The other thing of note in the Internship arc is Toga!Deku. Toga impersonates Deku and decoys Team Ryukyu into the fight. If Toga’s intentions had been harmful, instead of getting revenge on Overhaul, this could have been really bad for the good guys, and for Ochaco in particular. She doesn’t realize that Toga! Deku is not the real Deku, even though Toga does give her a clear ‘tell’ - calling her ‘Uraraka’ and not ‘Uravity’. But unlike Deku, who realized Toga!Chaco wasn’t the real Ochaco, Ochaco can’t tell the difference.

 If I were to read this as deliberate, it seems to be implying that Ochaco can’t tell the difference between her idea or image of Deku, and the real thing. But since they’re supposed to be a couple, it’s just plain weird. It’s a brief moment, but if Toga had been trying to hurt them, Ochaco’s feelings for Deku might have gotten her in trouble - again. (take a shot).  

Then, from the end of the Internship arc to the Joint Training Arc, Deku and Ochaco don’t talk to each other at all. They go to Nighteye’s funeral with the internship kids - and no conversation about their respective issues with him at all. 

They’re in the group hanging with Eri during the Culture Fest - but no one-on-one interaction at all. He hangs with Mirio, she with Tsu and Nejire. No interactions during the Pro-Hero arc. 

At the start of the JTA, one quick reminder that Ochaco is jealous of Mei still, which she punches herself to  get rid of. That’s it.

Joint Training Arc: So Close Yet So Far

Reading this arc, I thought “Finally, we’re finally getting the ball rolling with putting these two together.” It’s such a familiar setup, so common to action romances, straight from the ATLA playbook: The hero’s powers go out of control, the love interest is the only one who can reach them, and with a cute hug they calm the hero down. When Ochaco grabbed on to the out of control Deku, I was expecting something like that in the next chapter: Ochaco saying something like “Come back to me” or “I know you’re in there somewhere” or “I’m with you to the end of the line” or something like that. Ochaco reaching Deku when no one else could, establishing her as his love interest and showcasing their romance.

But that didn’t  happen. Ochaco grabs onto Deku, sure, but then she asks Shinso to snap him out of it. It’s Shinso who grabs Deku’s attention, Shinso who does the ‘important trigger phrase to snap hero out of superpower meltdown mode’ thing. 

Shinso, who has talked to Deku like 3 times before this scene, not Ochaco, his official love interest and close friend. Once snapped out, Deku protects her briefly before they split up and go their separate ways again, to fight on different turfs.

Afterwards, it looked like Deku was blushing at Ochaco holding him, like she was after Mina’s comment. But on closer inspection, I find that nope - he’s not blushing in the panel after this comment, but does go red when Shinso compliments his prowess. And Ochaco doesn’t  get self-conscious about holding him until Mina points it out to her.

 She wasn’t thinking about how much she loves Deku when she held him, she was thinking about her parents and her failure to save Nighteye, and her “Who watches the watchmen” ideas.

So instead of a great big Izuocha ship moment, that finally set the romance in motion, we get…I guess, a Shindeku moment? It’s all very confusing. For Uraraka, this moment does seem to show that she’s now capable of being around Deku in battle, without thinking about him or obsessing. It comes across like Ochaco is trying to put her crush away (Like she said before), like she’s gone on this whole personal journey outside of Deku and changed as a person on her own. We have this recurring idea that Ochaco fights better as a hero without Deku around, or without fixating on him, which isn’t promising for them as a couple. (take a shot) 

Compare with Todoroki and Momo vs Aizawa, for instance, where they work brilliantly, together, to overcome an opponent neither could face alone. Or the insistence on Deku and Kacchan putting away their rivalry and Deku reaching 8% by competing with Bakugo or helping him. Or Ochaco and Tsuyu making a perfect team fighting others. The narrative is angling Uraraka away from Deku, if she wants to be a good hero, not towards him.

Also, once again, her romantic feelings for him are something she’s told she has by someone else, instead of something she figures out on her own - Mina again. 

But earlier this arc, we saw Mina assume that Midnight and All Might were a couple, because they were standing together. Earlier, she said it could be Iida or Deku, because Ochaco hangs around them. I love Ashido, but she’s not the world’s greatest expert on romance, or particularly close to either Uraraka or Deku. So her words, like Aoyama’s, can’t be taken as gospel truth. It really feels like Ochaco is being pushed into feeling romantically for Deku, regardless of her actual feelings towards him, by other people instead of her own heart. I mean, I’m rooting for them, but I want Ochaco to realize she likes Deku because she likes Deku, not because Aoyama and Mina are telling her she does. 

Deku shuts Ochaco out of his personal problems - he won’t confide in anyone but All Might and Bakugo about OFA - and doesn’t explain to her anything about his quirk going out of control. And she doesn’t ask. Even Todoroki asked Deku about his quirk going out of control, as did Aizawa and Bakugo. Todo and Baku are Deku’s rivals, but they both asked about his quirk meltdown. Uraraka didn’t. She’s supposed to be his friend, she’s supposed to be in love with him, so why doesn’t she ask about his problems? 

Same with her personal journey towards becoming a hero who saves people, the Who Watches the Watchmen hero - Deku isn’t privy to this. She only told two people, Aizawa and Tsuyu. Uraraka has also had this whole personal journey, outside of Deku, which she won’t tell him about or confide in him about. And she doesn’t show any inclination to do so. 

Final Review:

The series isn’t over. There’s probably still time to fix all these problems. But the series needs to get started on it right away, because so far we’re just not seeing the elements we need to get Izu/Ocha together.

On Ochaco’s end: We need  her to be attracted to Deku, to let him be as supportive to her as she is to him; to see her crush on him as a motivator to be a better hero instead of detrimental to her success, to stop hero-worshipping him and acknowledge his flaws, to talk to him about her problems and cry with him, let him be there for her; let go of her desire to be just like him, see him romantically on her own unprovoked by other people teasing her, enjoy spending time with him one-on-one, have a fight with him that gets properly resolved, defend him from unwanted attentions from girls instead of getting possessively jealous of him, and show at least some curiosity about his life, his secrets, the real him beyond the Great Hero.

On Deku’s side: He needs to show attraction to Uraraka as Uraraka, not just ‘a girl’; to work together with her as a great team to take down an opponent side by side, to loudly admire her for her skills and capabilities like he does for his other friends and rivals, to tell her about his past with OFA and being quirkless and such, to be inspired by her to do better as a hero, to show the kind of crazy, unconditional concern for her he shows everyone else in his life, to actively seek after a romantic relationship with her, talk to her about his problems, to distinguish her in his life from his other friends.

If all that stuff happens, I’ll be happy. If some of it happens, I’ll be ok, but not thrilled. If they stay in this status quo, they’ll fall apart, because this is not the stuff good romance is made of.

[shawn-does-stuff]

Shawn Mendes: ‘I’m 20. I want to have fun’

by Michael Cragg

Shawn Mendes is the red-hot poster boy of pop. His videos have been viewed 6bn times and he has more than 42m followers on Instagram. But don’t worry if you haven’t heard of him… just ask a teenager

Shawn Mendes is standing in his underpants in a suite on the fifth floor of a London hotel as a 200-strong crowd of screaming teenage girls gathers outside. “Everyone who doesn’t need to be in the room, leave the room,” he says politely but firmly, in a soft Canadian drawl. Pop’s current poster boy should be used to causing a stir. His #MyCalvins campaign (following in the footsteps of Justin Bieber in 2016) broke the internet earlier this year, inching the 20-year-old teen phenomenon – three US chart-topping albums, 30m monthly listeners on Spotify, more than 6bn video views – closer to tabloid supremacy and global domination.

At the Brit Awards that night, Mendes will cringe as presenter Jack Whitehall ribs him about “suspicious packages”, so it’s curious to hear him describe the Calvin Klein opportunity – and the subsequent results pored over by his 42m Instagram followers – as “a goal of mine at the top of 2018. As much as it’s a stepping stone for me to play a stadium, it’s a huge moment for me to step in front of a camera and take my shirt off. I don’t see one being less meaningful than the other.”

The air is thick with earnestness as we sit down for lunch in the hotel restaurant. I blurt out a question about whether he had to wear extra padding. “No,” he says, eyebrow raised. “They’re really good underwear.” Did they send you some free ones? “Yeah, I have boxes of them at home.” He lifts up the bottom edge of his T-shirt and pulls at the waistband of his underwear before quickly pulling his shirt back down. You’re not wearing them today are you? “Not right now,” he says sheepishly. “I should be.”

Mendes’s boy-next-door appeal and laser-guided ambition feels rather wholesome, with his sensitive, heart-on-sleeve pop-rock bops such as 2015’s UK chart-topper Stitches, positioning him as perfect boyfriend material in pop’s all important fantasy world. If Bieber is the unknowable loose cannon, then Mendes is pop’s picture-perfect head boy. But it’s clear that exposing himself so literally has its downside. “The last 48 hours have been so consuming, just reading what people are saying about me [on social media],” he sighs. Do you have to read it? “No, but there’s something about being human that makes you. I’m scared of social media and how much it affects me,” he continues. “It’s literally become infused with who I am.”

Last October he apologised to his 21m Twitter followers, claiming he was worried that what he was posting wasn’t meaningful enough. “For the first time I realised how many people are listening,” he says. He now monitors how often he goes online and tries to take regular breaks, using meditation to relax. “I don’t think of myself as conceited, but I definitely spend a lot of time reading about myself,” he says.

Mendes famously has three daily rules – going to the gym, two vocal lessons and never saying no to a selfie with a fan. He’s managed the first two so far and “took about 200 selfies yesterday”. Despite this, his rise has chimed with a shift in the upper echelons of pop – its recent exponents being anti-pop stars Adele, Ed Sheeran and (with her goofy dancing style and eternal quest for relatability) Taylor Swift, who’s now a friend. Even One Direction – whose blend of teen-orientated, guitar-led pop paved the way for Mendes – always felt like they were trying to play down the pop star element.

“The more open the world is getting, the more people are craving real,” he says. “I don’t think people want to see a made-up person. [In the past] there’s been a lot of dressing up, and I still think that stuff is amazing – like I’ll wear a sleeveless top – but at the end of it, when it comes down to you, I think it’s about being authentic.” For all this talk of authenticity and being like everyone else, I tell him, you’re also a pop star begging people to look at you. Do you have to believe your own hype? “Of course,” he says, his eyes darting over my shoulder to the mirrored wall behind. “You have to. If you wake up every day and say, ‘I’m OK,’ you’re going to just be that. If you wake up everyday and look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I’m great, let’s go sell out that stadium,’ then you will.”

You could say he’s been in motivational training for a while now, having started out as a 14-year-old YouTube star, uploading acoustic covers of songs (Bieber, among others), before switching to the now defunct social media platform Vine. He taught himself to play the guitar via YouTube tutorials at home in the small town of Pickering, Ontario, while one of his first public performances was in a plaza in Portugal where his family – mum Karen, a British estate agent, dad Manny, a Portuguese businessman, and younger sister Aaliyah – were holidaying. While his parents were shopping, Mendes hopped up next to a statue and belted out a Bruno Mars song. “I was sweating and I thought, ‘Dude, if you want to be a singer, you’ve got to at least be able to stand on this statue and sing,’” he says of that moment.

Where was that pressure coming from? “It was from myself, which is pretty much a big statement on my personality at 14 years old.”

While he says he loved school, his early fame – after signing to Island Records his debut single, Life of the Party, was released when he was just 15 – meant he was bullied. “People were cruel at first,” he says, clearing his throat and fiddling with the rim of a cup of green tea. “They just thought it was so stupid.” He’d skip school every Friday to attend influencer events in which social media stars met fans who already assumed they were friends. “I was taking 1,500 selfies a night,” he laughs. “You quickly learn that what you love to do is a job, but I don’t resent what I do. I don’t hate taking selfies.”

Success was rapid, with his third single Stitches breaking the US top five and peaking at number one in the UK. That same year he supported Swift on her 1989 stadium tour. How did he cope? “This life is more real to me than anything,” he says. “If I were to walk down the street and no one recognised me, I’d feel something was wrong. When I was really young [fame] morphed who I was. If it was to become normal, it would feel un-normal to me.”

From the outside, I say, the other recent pop artists who can relate to that are Britney Spears or Bieber, people who have had issues with growing up in the spotlight. “A couple of times I’ve worried about that, too, but outside of all this I live a really normal life,” he says slowly. “You have to make an effort to carry your own bags, drive your own car and not be afraid of the public. I don’t blame people at all who stay inside. I understand how it could be terrifying to go to a restaurant and eat because you’re scared someone’s going to take a photo of you.”

Is that more intrusive than a selfie? “I’ve been so lucky that fans have been taking photos of me eating since I was 15, so I’m a little bit numb to it,” he says, his tone rarely deviating from preternaturally calm. There’s probably an Instagram account called Shawn Mendes Eating, I joke (I check later and while there’s no account, there is a hashtag to follow). Can it feel as if he’s being watched? “I’m inherently [aware of] that all the time.” If it ever gets too much, he leaves rather than making a scene. Are you a people-pleaser, I ask? “Yeah, is that bad?” he smiles. “It can lead to failure, but if I fail trying to please everyone, then that’s OK.”

Mendes spends a lot of time contemplating people’s perceptions of him. Last year he publicly criticised a Rolling Stone cover story, expressing his regret that “the positive side of a story doesn’t always get fully told”. I assume it’s because the piece mentioned his penchant for smoking weed, a detail that had upset some fans. “That didn’t bother me,” he smiles. “Actually, I was happy about that because maybe it’s OK for them to understand that weed’s not a big deal.” He says he hasn’t smoked in three months.

Another part of the story focused on rumours about his sexuality. “For me it’s hurtful,” he says. “I get mad when people assume things about me because I imagine the people who don’t have the support system I have and how that must affect them.” (In late 2017 he posted an emotional Snapchat story: “First of all, I’m not gay. Second of all, it shouldn’t make a difference if I was or wasn’t.”) He sighs and says: “That was why I was so angry, and you can see I still get riled up, because I don’t think people understand that when you come at me about something that’s stupid you hurt so many other people. They might not be speaking, but they’re listening.”

He says the reason he criticised the article was over a small detail in which he mentioned Dua Lipa and her boyfriend, and how amazing it looked to be in love. “It made me seem so creepy,” he says. “If anything, the article made me realise your career isn’t over if people think you’re not perfect.” You could see how the creepy singleton tag might irk him, and also why it might stick – a lot of Mendes’s biggest singles play on the idea of him as the emotionally needy bloke who gets messed around and comes back for more.

Are you bored of being The Nice Guy? He splutters, clears his throat and sits bolt upright. “Yeah, I am! It sounds so stupid – to be a nice person is the best thing in the world – but, yeah, I’m 20 and I just want to have fun. What I don’t want to do is live the rest of my life thinking, ‘I wouldn’t do that because I’m known as Prince Charming.’ The second that someone corners you into a personality, you don’t want to be that person any more.”

Two weeks later, Mendes is onstage in Amsterdam. In keeping with the floral artwork for his recent self-titled album, a 50ft rose snakes up to the ceiling from the so-called B-stage where he’ll later serenade the throngs of teenage fans and nodding dads with a handful of ballads. Replica light-up roses (€20 a pop at the merch stand) bob about in the dark as Mendes runs through a hugely entertaining, PG-13 simulacrum of a rock show to ear-bleeding screams (“God I’m so old,” a woman sitting behind me yells as she surveys the crowd).

Keen to further align himself with the pantheon of rock’s smiliest exponents, tonight Mendes segues from a cover of Coldplay’s big-hearted anthem Fix You into his own, the Kings of Leon-esque In My Blood, a song that surprised fans by touching on depression. Tonight it’s transformed – with the help of a ticker tape explosion – into something close to catharsis.

“There’s nothing like being on stage – you feel like Superman!” he’d said earlier, claiming it to be better than sex or any high. “My goal now is to enjoy what I do more and more because otherwise it doesn’t fucking matter. I used to think it was all about the crowd, but I have to be happy within myself.” As he takes his millionth selfie, his face radiating pure elation, you believe he might be.

Shawn Mendes plays London O2 on 16, 17 and 19 April

Fashion editor Helen Seamons; grooming by Anna Thompson using Bobbi Brown and Monat; lighting by Michael Furlonger and Tilly Pearson; digital operator John Munro; fashion assistant Penny Chan; shot at 12th Knot, seacontainerslondon.com

[raisingsupergirl]

You Don't Know What You Don't Know

In today's information age, everyone's an expert. Broken dishwasher? Just YouTube it. Wondering who that actor is? IMDB it. Want a DIY chicken coop? Google it. Trying to find an unending stream of #fakenews and fear mongering? Log into Facebook. The problem is, well… we don't always know what the actual problem is. We see the symptoms. We know what we want—the end result—but we're not always sure how to get there. And a quick Google search is all we have the patience for before we jump to conclusions and then blame someone or something else for our failure. Take my recent plunge into fishkeeping, for example.

I've always been an animal lover. I think it's innate in all of us, but not everyone has the right disposition or upbringing to appreciate animal/plant husbandry. As for me, I grew up in the Missouri wilderness surrounded by ponds, cliffs, streams, fields, and forests. Sure, I spent my fair share of time on the Super Nintendo System, but being in the great outdoors was engrained in me from a young age. And more than that, I learned to appreciate the other things out there. I kept just about every animal you could imagine at one time or another (dogs, cats, birds, fish, lizards, frogs, newts, rodents of all varieties, snakes, chickens, geese, goats, a squirrel, a ferret, a raccoon, and even a short-tailed opossum, off the top of my head), and though I was pretty irresponsible with most of them (ignoring for a second that I should have just left them where I found them in nature), I loved nurturing them, and I kept most of them alive. So when my city-girl daughter said she wanted a fish for her fourth birthday, a little piece of my past reignited, and I… may have gone a little overboard.

First, my mom still had the 35-gallon aquarium she bought me for my birthday a couple of decades ago. Back then I just winged it. I didn't have Google. I didn't come from a long line of aquarists. I just filled the thing up with well water, a cheap bag of gravel, a log I found floating in my pond, and the cheapest fish I could find at my local Walmart (yes, Walmart sold fish back then). Of course the tank was full of algae and dead fish in no time, but I kept at it, and eventually I had a few fish that didn't eat each other, but ultimately it wasn't what I knew it could be, so I set the fish "free" in my pond and put a snake in the tank instead.

I used the tank again in college with similar results, only this time I had a filter, did occasional water changes, and had just a few friendly fish, so it was much more successful, though still very "low tech," as they say in the hobby. Since then, I've matured (please hold all sarcasm until the end), and I've learned the value of researching something before attempting it. The change started in physical therapy school when I spent countless hours dissecting and writing scientific papers. It was the literal worst, but it taught me so much about the world. Rather, it taught me how to learn about any particular aspect of the world. You see, in these classes, we weren't allowed to just read the abstract and regurgitate the experimenters' assumptions. We had to read every line, go back and read every line of the sources they cited, and then, once we understood every word, we could start forming our own opinions on the subject. And believe it or not, I rarely found a paper that wasn't skewed toward the writer's desired result in some small way.

So now we get to the heart of things—you don't know what you don't know until you know it. And you won't know it unless you put in the time. We're living in an age of instant gratification. Because there's so much information out there, we only have time to skim. Otherwise we wouldn't have any time to actually live. I recently ran across an inspiration quote by science fiction author Robert Heinlein's character, Lazarus Long:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Sure. Easy for Lazarus to say. As his name suggests, he was over 200 years old and counting at the time of his above quotation (and that's to say nothing of Heinlein's, uh, colorful political and philosophical views). But even still, his words are a nice sentiment, and they resonate with our current zeitgeist. We all want to be experts at everything, but we just don't have the time to do it. So we become Jacks-of-all-trades, and masters of none. And thus, with the dehumanizing help of social media, we get into a lot of stupid fights.

But I digress. Back to my aquarium example. Giving in to my excitement and desire for my daughter to experience thy "joys" of fishkeeping, I reverted to the impulsiveness of my youth. And of the twelve fish I bought those first few months, I killed half of them. Why? Because I didn't take the time to learn about taking a new tank through the nitrogen cycle. I knew nothing of ammonium, nitrite, or nitrate. I didn't know how to promote bacterial colonies in the filter media. And when I decided to add a few live plants to the mix, I didn't know the difference between submersed and submerged, or that PetCo didn't care about selling you "aquatic" plants that would die 100% of the time if completely under water. And that's saying nothing about water pH, alkalinity, fertilizers (NPK, micronutrients, root tabs versus liquid fertilizers, etc), carbon (CO2) availability, substrate differences, etc., etc. I just thought, "these are pretty" with dozens of plants and fish from completely different, delicately balanced ecosystems around the world, and then expected them to flourish when crammed together in the petri dish that was my, er, my daughter's aquarium.

I'll be the first to say that I suck at chemistry. It was the only "C" I received in college. Too many dry facts and things I couldn't visualize. Too much like math. But over the past few months, I've forced myself to dig into the periodic table and the chemical processes of dozens of elements and compounds in order to BEGIN understanding the aquatic world. I'm still so far away from having a solid grasp on the process, but at least I now know what I don't know. And that's a start. And it's a valuable reminder of the ignorance of mankind.

As a physical therapist, it often baffles me when my highly intelligent friends and family don't understand their own bodies. These people are experts in their fields. They're fluent in areas that I'll never even begin to understand. And yet, they can't figure out the simplest causes of their own various aches and pains. And thus, they become easy prey for fad diets, snake oils, and cure-alls. In health and fitness, especially, our connected, opinion-fueled society is playing the willing victim. Like politics and philosophy, we all know there are problems, and we see "experts" offering their solutions constantly, and social media algorithms are feeding into this problem by inundating our news feeds with like-minded (no matter how wrong) individuals. We think, "Hey, everything I see reinforces my ideas, so the must be right!" But really, we're still living in the same high-walled isolation we've always lived in. We just have weapons that can shoot farther now.

So remember, if you haven't spent hundreds of hours researching and forming your opinion, you're probably not right. Maybe you have an idea. It may even be a good idea. But life is complex. It spans millennia of philosophers, scientists, and soldiers. Even if WebMD says you have terminal cancer, you should still probably see an actual MD before you throw in the towel. Because, contrary to Lazarus Long's inspiring sentiment, humanity can still find value in specialization. Life is rich and deep, so take the time to dig.

[1st-worldsaver]

I have a hard time writing out my thoughts as often as I want to, but sometimes I begin and manage to write a lot. Recently, I was talking with my mom and really felt how much I love hearing about culture. Every time my mom tells me something about Nicaragua, I get happy. There are so many small things that you don't think about without being prompted, but when you do, it feels amazing. Something that was seen as mundane in the past becomes impressive in the future, like the way people used to transport and sell eggs during the 70's.

 You couldn't waste money on cartons if you're a rural farmer during those times, so people made use of what they had. She showed me a picture of a succulent leaf that had the perfect U-shape for transporting eggs(after cutting of the prickly edges). That same plant also gave a fruit that was used to make a thickened drink, but you had to make sure to wash the fruits well beforehand or it would sting you, and not in the way pineapple stings if you eat too much, but as in “millions of microscopic spines on the outside of the fruit hurting the inside of your mouth”. It’s a knowledge that had to be passed down, people telling each other the correct way to prepare it, and it was shown to us through a simple cooking video today. It becomes one of those times where you feel such a connection to your people for some reason.

When we were children, our mom used to tell us about her starting to work from the age of five, to help her mother prepare the pigskins they later fried and sold as Chicarron, with a dangerously sharp knife that left many cuts and scars on her hands. The skins were always burning hot, being boiled beforehand to remove all the hairs from it. As a child, I could only imagine how heavy it must have been, and as an adult it’s something I’ll never forget. We were told about the suffering and hardships other people had to go through in life. But she also allowed be proud of our heritage and keep it alive, something many other groups of people aren’t allowed to.

I get to learn about the modern history of Nicaragua whenever they speak about their own lived experiences, of my mother's poverty and my step-father's fighting, through the food we eat and the language we speak every day.

When I was six, I wore my beautiful folklore-dress almost every day to preschool. I got to show it off to my classmates and other people, an opportunity to share a small piece of our country.

I still think about how lucky I am to be able to do so, without shame, without sadness, because the story of Nicaragua is such a rarely triumphant one.

 The revolution was driven by determined people who were tired of the misery, and they decided to start fighting. They would rather die than let their country continue as it did, making the phrase "patria libre, o morir" something they said with their whole chest. A free country, or death. After many years, they succeeded. They won against the dictatorship, they started funding schools and culture, giving out aid to the people who’d suffered poverty and the destruction from the war.

 The U.S. decided that they couldn’t allow something as dangerous as an “autonomous third-world country”, and started another war. Contras, arms-dealing through Iran, filling the ports with mines to destroy their trade by sea, threats that if the neo-liberal Violeta Chamorro didn’t win the first democrating election the war would never end. It had been ten years since the first victory, and even though the revolutionaries did their best, people were suffering and tired.

 Chamorro won, and what followed was sixteen years of breaking down what little had been built up. The train-rails were broken up and sold as scrap, the free glass of milk given in schools were pulled back, no new roads were built. The country’s misery continued almost the same as under the dictator.

 But the people didn’t give up.

15 years ago, the revolutionary party won. Slowly, they started building up the country again. They started building roads, they started giving out free school-lunches, electricity grids were built up to cover more and more houses each year, several of those houses built by the government for the poor who wouldn’t be able to buy their own home otherwise.

Me and my family can hear about new projects being started and finished every day on the radio and government news-channels, and it makes us happy hearing such high spirit and progress. But there’s always things to be critical of.

This history isn’t innocent and clean; during any war, there will be atrocities committed from all sides. I can’t believe that all those male soldiers had pure intentions when they enlisted, something my mom had her own experience with after a fellow coffee-picker tried to assault her once. She was saved by other peers, but who knows how many women and men in those rural communities were subjected to such things. When hungry and thirsty revolutionaries knocked on their doors, or when soldiers from the military ransacked their homes and killed anyone who could be suspected of interacting with their enemy.

When the revolutionary party won the election in 2006, they banned abortion as a stupid gift to the church and the people who wanted it. In 2018, there were protest and battles that recalls the ambiguity of the war during the 70′s, which left around 200 people from each side dead at the end of the year. Many news-channels give legitimate information, but they are in equal parts government-biased and never say anything critical about it, leaving that to the equally biased right-wing conservative news who refuse to acknowledge any progress at all that has been made.

There is so much you should know before forming an opinion, but something that no one can refute is that there has been so much good done during these years, things that the former powers never bothered to do.

All these things, I’d be overjoyed to share with other people. People fought, and they lost. They kept fighting, and won again. Despite dictators, despite the U.S. interventions, despite being such a small, poor country that rarely passes through other people’s mind, they did something incredible: they managed to build a better country.

It's very different from when I was younger, when everything was difficult to care about and I couldn't understand the names, events and references to the things my parents knew. Now that I know so much, I want to learn even more.

For the same reason, I love reading and seeing the different ways people celebrate and live their culture.

Before my brother met his girlfriend, I didn't know about Nourouz, the fire festival celebrating a new year. Before meeting a classmate in university I didn't know that there still were orthodox Christians who fasted before easter, and when I made a friend from southern China she showed me a different cuisine that I never would have gotten the chance to learn otherwise.

If you have something from your culture you want to share, even the smallest of things, I’ll always enjoy reading it.

[keepwritingyo]

The Pale Merchant

A man was walking in the forest, as lost as ever. He was looking around as if looking for a sign. He decided to stop walking and sat down at a tree with his large military sword drop to his side. He slowly and slowly got a catch of his breath until he saw a crow on the nearby tree staring him down. He looked back and ignored the bird until it swooped down and left into the fog. The man looked at the fog and saw a short pale blue hooded man walk up to him with a large leather sack strapped to his back. He quickly felt hope emerge and spoke up “Dear stranger, do you happen to know where the town of Lothel is?” the pale man took off his hood and pretended to think “Ah my name’s The pale merchant and i can get you to Lothel..for a price” The man grimaced and said “How much?” “100 gold pieces” the man’s jaw fell to the ground “100?! I’d never do that” the pale merchant shrugged and said “Very well” and started to leave, the man surged up “No! Wait! Here’s 100″ The pale merchant turned around as if he didn't except this to happen and took the gold pieces and smiled “This way” 

The two were walking in the fog and they came upon a strange looking lagoon, the pale merchant walked in a askew pattern across the path, the man who normally walked suddenly fell into the lagoon on top of a bushel of thorny roses. Blood started oozing from his scars. “Pale man! Please help!” The pale merchant came to him and said “I have a pack of bandages but i can’t give you them for free they’re extremely expensive” the man upset but overwhelmed by the pain says “How bout i give you ma sword?” “Very well” The pale merchant wrapped bandages around the man and took his sword “Ah man, I don’t have anything left!” The pale merchant calmed him down “Don’t worry you will find fresh clothes and food at Lothel” the man grunted and followed the merchant 

they reached an interesting rock crease known as dead Pete’s Rock and the man looked up at the merchant with anger “Wait a minute you pale scum, Dead Pete’s rock is farther away from Lothel then the spot we were at!” The pale merchant ignored him and walked up to him with fake fear and said “Quick here only slave dealers are allowed to pass, im going to tie your hands together with chains and make you a slave” The man seemed very frustrated “Very well’ The pale merchant arrested him and walked up to two men with bandit clothing on “Pale merchant! How do you do it?” the pale merchant smiled and shoved the man towards the thieves “Do what?” “Steal everything from a man and him not knowing it!” The man looked with a twisted face of confusion and anger and said “Wait a minute, are you selling me to thieves?!” the merchant looked at the thief and said “200 pieces” The thief threw a larger bag “300 for your time” the man started yelling at the merchant “Why?” the merchant looked at him “Ya i knew where Lothel was but i thought it was better to take you to thorn Lagoon where i could use my 1 piece cheap bandages and take your only weapon, sell you cause even with the bandages on you’re still weak and won’t be able to escape the bandit’s clutch” the man was speechless so the merchant continued “Weak merchants only use this craft to gain profit, it’s the strong who use it for powerful purposes, oh and you killed 37 innocent people in Wispfall so if you want to run from my buyer, the Wispfall police will find you and torture you” all three men were blown away the thieves by his clever wits, the man by his twisted yet incredible price to pay for his crimes and stupidity “Farewell’ the pale merchant turned around and left with no other words               

[anyway-i-love-vanderwood]

Harvest Moon AU - Zen Heart Events

Black Heart Event

Time: 12PM-6PM; Any season but Winter

Weather: Sunny

Location: Aurora Lake

[You walk into the bottom section of Aurora Lake, which lies south of the Moonlight Mine. Zen frequently can be found practicing the guitar by the lake’s shores, and you walks in on him doing so. He does not notice you at first, and you watch him practice while musical notes appear above his head.]

Zen: They think I’m crazy. ♪ My heartbeat goes up. ♫

Zen: Words cannot express my love for you! ♫♪

Zen: Did you – ack!

[An exclamation point appears above Zen’s head, and he stops playing as he notices you.]

Zen: <MC>, I didn’t see you out there! How long have you been listening?

Zen: …A while, huh? Well, I understand. It’s hard to ignore my alluring presence!

Zen: What brings you this far out of town? 

> [Choice 1] “It’s beautiful out. I wanted to take a walk.”

Zen: Ahh, isn’t it, though? The sound of the wind, the song of the birds, the smell of the flowers drifting on the breeze…

Zen: It’s enough to make a man feel alive, isn’t it?

Zen: Whenever I visit to the lake, I remember why I moved to Mystic Valley in the first place. The fresh air has a way of making my soul feel… clean.

Zen: I always come out here to practice. Would you like to listen for a while? I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

[You nod and walk over to sit by Zen. Go to [A]

> [Choice 2] “I wanted to see you, my darling Zenny-zen♥”

(Zen blushes)

Zen: Hahaha, wow! Are you a fan?

Zen: Jeez, I’m so lucky… someone as cute as you was looking for me?

Zen: Well, come on over. I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

[You nod and walk over to sit by Zen. Go to [A]

> [Choice 3] “I was headed to the mine, when I heard you playing…”

Zen: I guess you’d have to pass me if you wanted to get there, huh?

Zen: I’m surprised you go in there… but I guess there’s stuff you need in the dirt. Ores for your tools, minerals to sell…

Zen: It’s filled with monsters though, right? I hope you’re careful.

Zen: I’d hate to see someone as cute as you end up in the clinic.

Zen: How about you take a break and listen to me for a while? I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

Zen: Back-breaking labor can wait a few minutes, right?

[A]

[Zen plays another song, musical notes appearing above his head as he strums. When he’s finished, he looks to you.]

Zen: That’s one of the first songs I learned how to play. What do you think?

> [Choice 1] “It sounded really nice.”

(Zen +200)

Zen: Thank you! I practice every single day. I have to, if I’m ever going to be a success.

Zen: Well, at least…

[Go to [B]

> [Choice 2] “That’s one of the songs in the musical Dandelion, right?”

(Zen +500)

Zen: You’re right! It’s the opening number! Wow, how did you know?

Zen: You must really like musicals.

Zen: It’s always been my dream to be in a production of Dandelion. Or… well, any musical really, haha.

Zen: Singing, acting, being on stage – it’s my dream. And every day, I’m out here practicing until I can make my dream come true.

Zen: Well, at least…

[Go to [B]

> [Choice 3] “That’s not really the kind of music I like…”

(Zen -200)

Zen: O-oh, ahaha…

Zen: It’s from a musical, but I guess that sort of thing isn’t for everyone.

Zen: They’re what I love, though. Musicals.

Zen: There’s just about the singing and the dancing – I feel like you can really feel the heart and soul that the actors put into the production.

Zen: Well, at least…

[B]

Zen: That’s what I tell myself when it seems hard to keep going.

Zen: The road to stardom isn’t an easy one, and I’d be lying if I said it never got rough, but…

Zen: It’s a small price to pay for your dreams, huh?

Zen: I figure you’d understand, given that you took over that old farm-plot and all. It can’t be easy, and it also can’t have been a popular decision among your friends and family.

Zen: I mean, who decides to drop society and run off to become a farmer, anyway?

Zen: --Ah, sorry! Don’t take that the wrong way. I meant it as a compliment.

Zen: My family… wanted me to be plain. Dull. Boring. To just follow along with the crowd, and to be exactly like everyone else.

Zen: I know what you’re thinking! With a face like mine, how could I be destined for anything but show business?

Zen: …But, to them, what was most important... was being normal.

Zen: So anyone who forges their own path and carves their own destiny like you... well! I think that’s a pretty admirable person.

Zen: Anyway, sorry for keeping you. I’m sure you’re busy.

Zen: Come see me any time, okay? ♥ I’m always happy to have an audience.

[end]

[The rest of the Heart Events are under the read more!]

Purple Heart Event

Time: 12PM-6PM; Any season.

Weather: Sunny

Location: Aurora Lake

[You walk into the scene to find Yoosung standing by the water along with Zen. They seem to be in the middle of a conversation.]

Yoosung: In the beginning, you used to come out with me every weekday after practice! Then, it started being every other weekday…

Yoosung: And now that Rika’s gone? You never help me with the Community Center! If I didn’t know better, Zen, I’d say you didn’t care anymore.

Yoosung: But that can’t be true, right?

Yoosung: Of everyone in this town…

Yoosung: You’re the person… who still dreams the most about the day when everything is finished and you finally have an auditorium to perform in.

Zen: That’s true, but…

Yoosung: But what? But you’d rather not get your hands dirty and instead let me do all the work?

Yoosung: Is that it?

Zen: No!

Zen: Yoosung, do I seem like a lazy guy to you? It’s not that at all!

Zen: It’s just…

Zen: V already… told us to stop working on it. And he has the deed - without his approval and that damn cat-mayor’s permission, we can’t even think about opening the building!

Zen: Yoosung, I want a stage more than I want to keep breathing.

Zen: But we can’t do anything until we convince the two of them! Otherwise –

Yoosung: I thought you liked breaking the rules!

Yoosung: Liked flouting authority, liked proving that everyone else’s opinions didn’t matter! When did a stupid piece of paper start scaring you?

Yoosung: How are you going to get famous if you don’t have a stage to play on?!

Zen: …

[The two of them finally notice you, and sweat-drops appear before both of their heads.]

Zen: <MC!> God, you really have a habit of walking in on things, huh?

Yoosung: U-uh, hi, <MC!>

Yoosung: I’m sorry, Zen and I were just… talking about the old community center…

Yoosung: You know, that big old ruined building a bit north of the bakery?

Yoosung: Back in the day, Rika, V, Zen and I used to have all of these plans of fixing it up and using it to hold town-wide events like classes, art-shows, and, y’know, plays…

Yoosung: Things that might encourage more people to live here and help the townsfolk connect with each other…

Yoosung: But all progress has stopped, and the woodwork has been left to rot.

> [Choice 1] “Do you want help fixing it?”

(Zen +500)

[An exclamation point appears over Yoosung’s head.]

Yoosung: What, really? Is that a serious offer?

Yoosung: Yes, absolutely! It honestly gets really, really, really depressing working on it all by myself!

Yoosung: …So depressing that I sometimes skip out on it and play video games instead…

Yoosung: Come on! I’ve hauled the tools up there already, and I brought a cooler full of soda, too!

Zen: W-Wait!

[Question marks appear above Yoosung and your head.]

Zen: Er, well, I guess I can take a break from practice, too…

Zen: Let’s go buy a pack of beer, though. You can’t drink soda when you’re doing construction work!

Zen: That’s just lame.

Yoosung: That… kinda doesn’t sound safe?

Zen: Oh, come on, it’ll be fine. It makes things more fun!

[You walk off screen with Zen and Yoosung. The screen goes dark, and when it comes back, the clock has been set to 6PM and you’re outside the community center with Zen and Yoosung. You can control your character now, but if you talk to them before leaving, you get some unique dialogue.]

Zen: Don’t worry, I’ll get him home. Jeez, he really can’t take his booze, huh?

Yoosung: Zen, your hair is so pretty and your skin is so soooooft… I want to wear it…

[end]

> [Choice 2] “You should probably just let it collapse. It’s kind of ugly.”

(Zen -500)

Yoosung: It’s, it’s not ugly!

Zen: It kind of is…

Yoosung: That’s only because no one will help me fix it! It’ll be like a beautiful butterfly coming out of its cocoon when it’s done… you’ll see!

[A sweat-drop appears over Zen’s head.]

Zen: Look… if it means so much to you, I can come help for a little bit.

Zen: But we have to get V to agree to the repairs. Okay? Otherwise, I’m just going to spend my time practicing.

Yoosung: You know he’s never going to agree to that…!

Zen: It’s our best shot. There’s no way the mayor will intervene; that guy doesn’t care about anything other than cats and money.

Yoosung: Sigh…

Zen: Hey, maybe one day one of your chickens will lay a golden egg and we’ll just be able to throw tons of cash at Jumin.

Yoosung: That’s geese, and I already tried that!

Zen: …What.

Yoosung: Yeah! The wizard on the hill said if I got a goose and did the macerana in front of it while balancing a melon on my head and jumping up and down, it’d lay a golden egg after a month!

Yoosung: But it didn’t work!

Yoosung: Maybe I didn’t do it right...?

Zen: S-seriously, kid…

Yoosung: Anyway, let’s go!

[Yoosung and Zen walk away, but Zen stops by you before he goes off the screen.]

Zen: Sorry <MC>, I won’t be able to play for you today.

Zen: It might be a lost cause, but Yoosung is my friend. I have to help him out occasionally or he gets pretty hard to deal with.

[end]

Blue Heart Event

Time: 6PM-11PM; Any season.

Weather: Sunny

Location: Meteor Hill Peak

[Meteor Hill is where the Wizard 707 lives – and it’s also the best stargazing spot in town! When you enter the area, the camera pans up to Zen standing by the very top of the mountain, and you walk up beside him.]

Zen: Oh, hey there, <MC>…

Zen: Sigh…

[Choice 1] “You look sad. What’s wrong?”

Zen: Sad? Hmn. I suppose I am a bit gloomy, but nothing is wrong, don’t worry!

Zen: It’d be crime against the world itself if anything bad happened to me. ♥

Zen: I was just thinking about some things, that’s all.

[go to A]

[Choice 2] “That’s not a very energetic greeting.”

Zen: Haha, sorry, you’re right.

Zen: Hey there, <MC!>

Zen: Is that better?

Zen: It’d be horrible for me to deny you my beautiful, smiling face. Though… isn’t there something tragically beautiful by a gorgeous, sad man under the stars?

[A laughing face appears over Zen’s head.]

[A]

Zen: Anyway, the sky is so clear tonight… why don’t you join me?

[You walk up and sit beside Zen, and he turns to face the sky once more.]

Zen: Looking at the sky makes you think, huh? About how small everything is, how tiny and insignificant we are compared to the stars…

Zen: Yet, we humans have managed to touch them, haven’t we? We’ve launched rockets to the moon, we’ve made telescopes that can see distant planets…

Zen: And through art and literature, we’ve managed to, as a species, achieve heights that our ancestors could only dream of.

Zen: Beautiful paintings. Music that can move you to tears. Acting that takes you into another time, another place, that’s so convincing that it makes the characters appear real.

Zen: We’ve made light of the constellations; we ourselves have become stars.

Zen: Sigh…

Zen: Do you ever think about how the people that might be watching the same sky as you? People you’ve left behind, people who might not even remember that you exist…?

[Choice 1] “I do.”

Zen: You should tell me about them sometime. I’d love to hear about the kinds of things you think about in the darkness of the night.

[Choice 2] “I don’t.”

Zen: No? That’s probably for the best. It means that you’re not chained by your own regrets, that you can face the present without looking behind you.

Zen: Myself, on the other hand…

Zen: …

Zen: I’ve left a lot of people behind over my life.

Zen: My friends. My… family.

Zen: They didn’t believe that I could amount to more than a “pretty-faced, shallow thug”, so one day, I – I got on my motorcycle and just drove. And drove. And drove until the city was behind me, and all that I could see, for miles and miles, were green, rolling fields.

Zen: I didn’t have a lot with me. I only brought my jacket, my guitar, and a small knapsack filled with some of my clothes and my wallet.

Zen: I started living simply, just playing and singing in towns. I’d buy a bit of food - whatever I could afford - with the tip money…

Zen: And then I moved on.

Zen: I don’t know what I was looking for.

Zen: I don’t know if I was even looking for something, in the end, it was more like… it came looking for me.

Zen: Have… I ever really told you about Rika?

[You shake your head.]

Zen: Well, I came to Mystic Valley on a rainy day in the summer. It was pouring, I was soaked through, and I didn’t have enough money to stay anywhere. But! It was warm, so I thought, oh, I’ll just find someplace to wait out the rain and just sleep outside.

Zen: Hehe, can you imagine that? I was kind of like the prince of the forest in those days… sleeping under the open air. It was nice, sometimes.

Zen: I mean, sometimes it wasn’t, but look on the bright side, right?

Zen: Anyway, you know how the restaurant has that great porch? Well, I took shelter under there, and since I was bored, I brought out my guitar and started playing.

Zen: After a while… someone came out and saw me there, dripping on one of the chairs and playing away without a care in the world.

Zen: It was Rika.

Zen: She was astounded. She told me my music was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard, and she dragged me inside to introduce me to V. And V, that guy could really fret up a storm, you know? He got me a change of clothes, something warm to eat, and he also offered me a place to stay.

Zen: Free of charge. What a guy, right?

Zen: Anyway, they were both so excited. They asked me a million questions about myself – who I was, where I was from, what I was doing out here – and when I said I wanted to be in show business, Rika said…

Zen: “V! Let’s let him play here! He’ll bring in customers!”

Zen: …Those were really fun days… the restaurant was packed whenever I’d play. Everyone was laughing… I brought smiles to all their faces.

Zen: Even that damn mayor came out of his ivory palace to listen. Haha.

Zen: We’d even talk about how, when the community center was all fixed up, I’d even be able to put on plays… I could have a whole theatre-troupe, and achieve my real dream of telling a story on stage…

Zen: …

Zen: …But… that all stopped when she died.

Zen: V just… retreated into himself.

Zen: He didn’t… ask me to stop playing, really, but whenever I tried, I just remembered when Rika and V used to be there at the counter laughing, and…

Zen: After she was gone…

Zen: …

Zen: It… made me think of my parents…

Zen: And how they said everything about me was just temporary. My pretty looks, my hopes and dreams –

Zen: “Why on earth would you want to be an actor, Hyun? Even if you do make it, which you won’t, people will forget about you as soon as someone new comes along. Why not do something that’ll make a permanent difference in the world?”

Zen: And – even though I didn’t want to – when I remembered them smiling, I asked myself…

Zen: Did… I really leave anything lasting, even when people loved me?

Zen: Because in the end, those smiles disappeared.

Zen: And now, I’m nothing.

[Choice 1] “You’re not nothing!”

Zen: Haha… That’s sweet of you to say, <MC>. And it’s not really fair of me to whine to you about all this; you do keep visiting me. You are a fan. And please, believe me, I appreciate your support more than you know.

Zen: When you smile at me…

Zen: When you look at me as I’m playing…

Zen: When you visit me, day after day, and sit beside me by the lake…

Zen: I really… feel it. How much I love this place. How much I love being able to touch people with my voice.

Zen: I want to be heard, <MC>.

Zen: I want to be listened to.

Zen: I want to tell people the things they need to hear, the things that will make them smile and laugh and feel like the world is alright.

Zen: I want to be the light for those who are struggling.

Zen: I want to show them there’s something worth fighting for!

[go to B]

[Choice 2] “You should keep trying.”

Zen: Keep trying? I’m not… sure what I’m trying to do anymore.

Zen: What did I think would happen…? I ask myself that all the time. I feel like such a wash-out. Do I really have any actual talent? Part of the reason I wanted to be an actor was because women kept telling me that I was so beautiful I sparkled, and that I ought to be on the stage, but –

Zen: I don’t want to be looked at because I’m pretty; I wanted to be looked at because I have something to say!

Zen: Something for people to hear!

Zen: Something that, when people listen to it, makes them feel!

Zen: I want to make people happy!

Zen: I want to make people smile!

[go to B]

[Choice 3] “Why don’t you go back to the city?”

Zen: That’s a fair question to ask. If I want to make it big, then playing in a small town probably isn’t the best route to that, right? Abandoning this place, going back and trying my hand at the theater business…

Zen: It makes sense. But. Something about that – I just can’t do it.

Zen: Mystic Valley has its problems; but it gave me a place to call home when I couldn’t find one anywhere else. Rika, V, the entire town – they liked me because my talents brought them joy. It wasn’t shallow, it wasn’t just because of my appearance…

Zen: They heard something in my voice that they loved. Not my face; my voice.

Zen: For once, I felt like I was heard. And now? I want –

Zen: I want people to judge Mystic Valley not by appearances, but instead by its heart!

Zen: I want everyone to remember what’s so good about this place!

Zen: I want to put it into a song, put it into a story so I can convey it to them, what I feel! And to help them remember how they felt, once!

[B]

Zen: I want - !

Zen: …

[Zen stands up, and then exclaims to the sky - ]

Zen: I want everyone to feel like they can wish again!

Zen: What am I doing, sulking up here on top of a mountain? Man – what have I been doing all these months?

Zen: Playing by myself in the woods, waiting for people to stumble across me and discover me because I’m too afraid of bringing pain rather than joy with my work?

Zen: What the heck; that’s dumb!

Zen: You know what, <MC>? I’m going to march right down to the bar and tell V, straight up, that he needs to let me play there again!

Zen: We need to hold concerts there again!

Zen: Sure, something bad happened, but we can’t be sad forever!

Zen: Sure, the town is having trouble, but –

Zen: There are beautiful things out there, waiting to be seen!

Zen: Like me! Like you! Like the stars – I want everyone in this town to remember that they can be happy!

[Zen pants, and then turns back towards the path leading down the mountain.]

Zen: <MC>, thank you! I feel like I’ve been born again as a new man.

Zen: It’s gotten so dark, so please, let me walk you home. After that…

Zen: I’m going to go talk to V.

[The scene ends with a heart appearing over your head and you walking back down the path with Zen. After this, Zen’s schedule will change, and he’ll start routinely playing at the bar.]

[End]

Green Heart Event

There is no event at the green heart level, however to see the final two heart events, a token of affection must be given in the form of a ‘heart gem’ to the object of your affections. This makes the relationship ‘official’, and the rest of the town acknowledges you as dating your chosen candidate.

Zen: Is this – is this for me?

Zen: Really? Really, really – you’re giving this to me?

Zen: <MC>, I could kiss you! Can I kiss you? I really want to kiss you!

Zen: Goddess, you have no idea how many times I’ve imagined this happening. You confessing your love to me... and then me sweeping you off your feet and carrying you off to the moon!♥

Zen: Ahh, I’m happy! I’m so happy! I want to go tell everyone that <MC> likes me!

Zen: Me~♥ Me~♥! I’m the luckiest guy in the world!

Zen: <MC>, let me take you on a date today! Anywhere you want; my treat!

Zen: I’ll do anything at all for the cutest, sweetest person in the world.

[Hearts appear over the both of your heads, and the scene fades to black. When it comes back, you’re standing outside of your farmhouse, in the evening, with full energy.]

[Note: After this heart event, if you interact with the ‘journal’ in Zen’s room, it’ll be filled with love poems and sonnets.]

Yellow Heart Event

Time: 8AM-4PM; Any Season.

Weather: Any

Location: Meteor Hill

[You walk onto the screen to find Zen in front of the door to the Wizard’s house. When he hears you, he turns around and an [!] appears above his head.]

Zen: <MC!> Just the person I was hoping to see!

Zen: This has to be fate. Come on! Let’s get our fortune told together.

[You and Zen walk into the tower… Where you’re greeted emphatically by 707, whose voice resonates through the house even though you can’t see him initially.]

Seven: Ooohh!! What’s that, I hear? Is someone knocking at my door and summoning me, the magnificent wizard Seven-oh-Seven?!

Seven: Well, actually, you didn’t knock, which is awfully rude.

Seven: How about you try that again?

[Zen turns to the door, and though he doesn’t leave, he knocks on it.]

Zen: Is that better, oh Great Wizard?

Seven: Much, thank you!

[Seven suddenly appears, sliding down banister the spiral-staircase which lies in the center of the ground floor. When he lands, he poses and sparkles.]

Seven: What can I do for you, humble children of men? What great secrets can I reveal; what darkness needs to be banished with the unrelenting force of light?!

Seven: Tell me, oh noble petitioners, so I may aid you in your quest for glory!

Zen: Pffthaha… I just want the usual, Seven. Though I was hoping you could have a two-for-one special? See, I have my partner here, and…

Zen: Well…

Zen: I’d like our compatibility rated.♥

Seven: A compatibility rating? Oh joy!

Seven: And may there be joy to you both! At least, if the stars will it.

Seven: Sit down, then! And present your offerings, so I may be compensated for my just and true work.

[Zen walks up to Seven.]

Zen: Here you go, pal. Fresh from the supermarket.

Zen: I got you two packs since there are two of us.

Seven: Ah, the sweet nectar of life! The ambrosia of the gods! Liquid manna straight from heaven –

Seven: PhD Pepper!

Seven: This will do. Now, we’ll begin!

[You and Zen sit together in front of Seven’s crystal ball, and he walks on the other side, beginning to make hand gestures. The screen darkens a bit, and the blips of Seven’s dialogue get a different cadence.]

Seven: Now, let us peer into the future…

Seven: The future of you and Zen…

Seven: Abra-cadabra, alakazam, make me more than what I am, show me the heart of the golden land…

Seven: Bim-bam-boom!

Seven: . . .

Seven: The stars… have spoken…

Seven: Hyun Ryu…

Seven: <MC>…

Seven: Ah, what happiness is this…? It’s so profound, I can almost taste it.

Seven: Yours is a relationship that fills the other with love.

Seven: Stability. Support. Inspiration. You work harder for the sake of the other, and through that work, you both make the world a better place.

Seven: Wherever you go, your love will plant the seeds of new beginnings… not just for yourself, but for those around you.

Seven: Yours is a love that will touch others who view it. And it will be viewed by others!

Seven: A life of seclusion, of being a recluse… is not an option to you. And neither do you want it to be…

Seven: Because through being seen, you’ll ultimately make others happy.

Seven: You see each other for the beauty in your spirits…

Seven: Ahh, it makes me jealous just to look at you!

Seven: If I had to give you a compatibility rating…

Seven: It would be the fluffiness of a rabbit’s fur! Very soft, very nice, would definitely pet again!

Seven: (Though, it’s nothing compared to my beautiful Elly!!)

[Seven’s blips turn back to normal, and the screen lightens again. A heart appears over Zen’s head.]

Zen: Hear that, babe? We have the wizard’s blessing!

Zen: This is such great news!

[A heart appears over your head.]

Zen: Thank you, Wizard! I’m in your debt.

Seven: I can only tell you what the stars have been telling you all along. But, you are welcome!

Seven: Now go! Be free! Be happy!

Seven: And sing of your love, to anyone that’ll listen!

[You and Zen walk out, but the camera lingers on Seven for a final line before going dark.]

Seven: Heh-heh-heh… he’s going to be unbearable from now on. Oh well! That’s for the rest of the town to deal with.

[End]

Pink Heart Event

Time: 6PM-12PM

Weather: Any

Location: Señor Saguaro (V’s Restaurant)

[This heart event is preceded in the morning by you getting a letter. It’s from Zen, saying that he’s set up a special concert at V’s restaurant… and he’d like you to attend! You can walk in any time after 6, and the event will be triggered.]

[Zen is on the stage, and the camera follows your character as you walk up and take a seat at one of the tables near the front. Zen doesn’t stop playing, and finishes up the song before addressing the audience – which is pretty large. Larger than any of his performances so far.]

Zen: Thank you all for coming out here tonight. It really means a lot to see so many faces out in the crowd!

Zen: Especially those of you who are smiling and in love.♥ That’s my favorite kind of expression in the world!

Zen: …I’ll be honest, in the past, I sometimes hated looking at couples. There’ve times when I’ve been jealous of other’s happiness...

Zen: Times when I’ve been sad and confused about what to do…

Zen: And times when I’ve just wanted to give up and say, ‘you know? My dreams aren’t worth it!’ but, in the end…

Zen: There was someone beside me who told me to keep trying.

Zen: There was someone beside me who kept pushing me to succeed.

Zen: And that, my friends –

Zen: Is our local farmer, <MC!>

Zen: Everyone give <him/her/them> a round of applause for being a stellar member of the community, an excellent human being, and, dare I say it –

Zen: The best partner a guy could ask for.

[You blush as the crowd reacts in various ways. Some laugh, some clap, and some shake their heads because Zen’s kind of a moron.]

Zen: Anyway, this goes out to you, babe.

Zen: …I really, really love you.

[Zen begins to play another song – which is a finished version of the one he was singing in the very first heart event - and the screen fades to black after it’s completed. When it comes back into view, you and Zen are standing outside of Señor Saguaro, and it’s very dark.]

Zen: Thanks for coming tonight. I really appreciate it.

Zen: And, uh, sorry for gushing about you in public there, I just really couldn’t help myself.

Zen: …So… I’ve, uh. I’ve been talking to some people in town.

Zen: And – uh. We petitioned Jumin…

Zen: And while he’s still saying that we don’t have the funds to make progress on the community center, he did say that he has some pretty big rooms in his manor that we could use to practice, and, well.

Zen: Maybe put some small shows in, too.

[Choice 1] “That’s exciting!”

Zen: Isn’t it? A place to work that isn’t out in the middle of the woods! It’s like a dream come true.

Zen: Jumin says he has some props we can use, too!

[go to A]

[Choice 2] “Maybe Jumin’s not totally heartless after all.”

Zen: Pft, I wouldn’t go that far, he said he’d want some of the proceeds from the show to go to the town coffers.

Zen: …Though, on second thought…

Zen: I guess… he probably would use that money to help the town, huh?

[A sweatdrop appears over Zen’s head.]

[A]

Zen: Anyway, I’d really love it if you came to some of the practices.

Zen: Maybe… you’d even want to try acting yourself?

Zen: No pressure! But… it’d mean a lot for you to be there.

Zen: I’d like you to see how far I’ve come.

[A heart appears above both your heads, and then Zen leans in and kisses you.]

Zen: …Thanks for being you, <MC>.

Zen: Shall I walk you home? I think it’d be a good way to end the night.

[Another heart appears over your head, and you and Zen walk off together.]

Marriage:

After seeing Zen’s final heart event, you can propose to him using a Prismatic Letter Opener, which is a longstanding tradition in Mystic Valley. A few things change after marrying Zen. He moves in with you, and he’ll practice on your farm instead of going out to the lake. He and Yoosung also start working on the Community Center as part of your daily routine. Zen also will write you letters that you can find on your night-stand in the evening, telling you how much he loves you and appreciates you.

After marriage, an event chain is unlocked with V and Jumin regarding the community center, and that starts the post-marriage content of fixing it up.

[theattainer]

MOST PEOPLE ARE EVIL IDIOTS. NOW WHAT?

https://files.admin.agorafinancial.com/images/jamesonthestreet.png

https://theattainer.com/most-people-are-evil-idiots-now-what/

MOST PEOPLE ARE EVIL IDIOTS. NOW WHAT?

You decide to plagiarize one of the most successful books ever.

You take a book that won the National Book Award and you retype it from scratch and pretend it’s yours.

You submit it to 20 publishers. You put a fake name on it.

100% of the publishers send back rejection letters. They hated it!

Two things strike you:

A) ZERO of the publishers realized they rejected a National Book Award winner

B) ALL of them thought the book was horrible. A book that had won the highest award.

This happened.

—

A freelance writer named Chuck Ross was curious.

He took the book “Steps” by Jerzy Kosinski, which had won the National Book Award for fiction in 1969, and decided to have some fun.

He rewrote the entire book and then submitted it to every publisher using a fake name.

Not only did every publisher reject it but even Random House, the publisher that actually published it, rejected it with a form letter.

The book has been compared to “Kafka at his best.” It’s a short, brutal book. One of my favorites. I highly recommend it.

Does this mean most people are idiots? Maybe.

It means:

Most people who have an opinion are probably wrong.

If people don’t know who you are, they are more likely to reject you.

Nobody wakes up and says, “Today is the day I make some unknown person a superstar!”

Most people don’t care about their jobs. Which is fine. But don’t rely on them for your success.

Even successful people don’t want you to skip the line. I always hear, “You have to pay your dues.” This is BS. It means:

You have to take control of your own career and opportunities.

You have a first book? Self-publish it. You have an indie movie? Load it up on Amazon. You have an idea for a radio show? Do a podcast.

You have an app you want to build? Don’t raise money. Save money and build it and get customers.

You want to be a movie star? Write your own script or shoot your own movie (i.e., Sylvester Stallone in Rocky).

Most people can’t be entrepreneurs or creatives. Don’t believe anyone who says everyone can be an entrepreneur.

They are lying.

Most people can’t handle nonstop rejection and the anxiety and depression that comes with it.

I’ve been so depressed so many times. It really hasn’t been worth it, to be honest.

It’s a catch-22 because in order to be good, you have to be unique. In order to be unique, nobody will know you. And nobody does favors for the unknown.

Dr. Seuss’ first book was rejected 27 times. “Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling,” wrote one top editor.

Harry Potter was rejected by every publisher until the 7-year-old daughter of one publisher begged her father to publish it.

If Moses wrote the 10 Commandments today, he’d be rejected by every publisher and probably give up. I would if I were him.

Even 50 Shades of Grey started off self-published.

It sold 250,000 copies on Amazon and still was rejected by many publishers. Amazon’s in-house publisher rejected it.

Finally Simon & Schuster published it. It sold over 125 million copies.

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Just a few weeks ago, we got a strange invitation.

James Altucher, the famous ex-hedge-fund manager, financial author, and frequent contributor seen on CNN, MSNBC, in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times…

Asked us to come up to New York and, as he said, “bring a camera.”

We did. And what happened next was absolutely incredible — live, on camera, this famous celebrity conducted what we can only describe as “a magic income experiment.”

I’ve never seen anybody do anything quite it… click here to see what happened.

Don’t trust anyone. Don’t listen to anyone. Ignore them.

Either give up or go around the gatekeepers.

So I did an experiment:

I took 50 Shades of Grey and hired someone in India to take a thesaurus and change every word in the book.

For instance, “She hurried to her tests” became “Brenda rushed to get to the exams on time.”

I used a fake name, changed the title, made a book cover and uploaded it to Amazon. It’s now a published book.

It’s EXACTLY 50 Shades of Grey but with every single word changed, sentence by sentence. Maybe… just maybe… I was hoping it would also sell a lot of copies.

It sold about 80 copies. It’s a piece of s***.

But it cost me about $200 in total and two hours of my time. It was an experiment.

Why did 50 Shades of Grey sell so well? What did E.L. James do? Doing my failed experiment forced me to learn.

Why did “50 Shades” succeed?

She had a platform. She probably had about a million people following her Twilight fan fiction on various fan fiction websites.

50 Shades of Grey came out around the same time the Kindle was getting popular. So people could read her soft-core porn book in public without anyone seeing what they were reading. Avoiding the stigma.

It was unique.

She had a platform. And technology and timing were just right. But she would never know that unless she had experimented, built a platform, wrote her own book without “permission,” and self-published.

Good for her.

—

This is not about self-publishing. This is not about how people are stupid (well, it is a little).

This is about not waiting for permission.

This is about doing experiments with everything you care about.

And from every experiment you will learn. There’s no other way to learn.

A billion people are standing in the way of what you want to do.

Stupid people, mean people, people who hate you, people who don’t want you to get ahead. People who will even sabotage you.

People who are frustrated in their own lives, dealing with their own problems, sad, anxious, fearful.

Experiment with how to get around them. Every day. It’s not their fault. But that doesn’t matter. You have to go around them.

You have to experiment every single day.

I’m doing another experiment right now. I am loving this experiment. So far, over three million people have seen this experiment.

It’s not really working the way I expected. But we’ll see. It’ll probably fail. But I’ve stopped caring.

What do you think?