#I laughed so much it was like let me reference & quote so many specific things that you have read and like

[geryone]

Reading a novel & thinking yeah we all took the same theory courses in college huh

[tyuntopia]

hiii i js wanted to say ur writing is so good omg and also can i request husband txt. theyve got me feeling a little delusional lately 😭🙏

★ txt as husbands

pairing : ot5 x fem! reader

genre : fluff, kissing, smut but not fully just a bit suggestive, minors dni

a/n : hii it's been a short while, i got kinda busy with life all of a sudden but hopefully in the near future i'll have a consistent update schedule ^^ other than that, i hope you like it !!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

yeonjun

he would still be so so flirty referring to you as his angel or his darling

he would want to stay in bed with you all day just sleeping and maybe occasional make out sessions where he tells you how beautiful you are to him

as you get up to go to the restroom he orders takeout over the phone so that you don't have to worry about cooking, he's always so considerate of you

you guys would eat takeout in bed while watching a movie and as the night gets older he would turn on candles and caress your body while talking about your guys' future

he could stare into your eyes all day and night and he does do that until you drift off to sleep in which he blows out the candle and gives you a soft kiss on your shoulder before drifting off as well

he would be so good at planning dates to keep your marriage fresh, picnics at the park, hole in the wall cafés in the mornings, massages for the both of you

he would also give you a lot of presents, after work he would come home with a small necklace that he saw that made him think of you, small things like that

he would just love you so much and want to give you world if he could

soobin

he would be such a mushy husband, asking you all the time if you need anything, calling for his honey, his sunshine

LOTS of cuddling, specifically on the couch where he would be on top of you laying his head on your breasts because, and i quote "they're just too perfect"

i don't see him cooking for you, however, as you cook breakfast, dinner, you name it, he would be right behind you, head resting on your shoulder and hands hugging your waist asking what you're doing every couple of minutes,, such a clingy boy

you two would play video games together and bet that whoever loses is in charge of the chores for that day and sometimes even if he wins he gets up, gives you a chaste kiss on the cheek, and lets you know that he'll get them done because you've done so much for him already

you guys would probably always shower together: he would wash you, and then you would wash him and he would be so soft and vulnerable

after marrying, he would definitely call u odi's mom and it would be such a big deal to him

watching you take care of odi makes his heart swell because all he can think about is how you would take care you your guys' children

and at night thats definitely all he can think about now too, bringing it up when he's inside you asking if that's what you want and with a desperate "yes" from you his dream comes true

beomgyu

i think like many of us see, he would be energetic always shining light on his baby, his honey bun, his beau

but i think with you he would let shine his more raw persona

you two would spend hours in bed laying next to one another talking about the most earth shattering things, your fears, desires

he would try his best to be all that he can for you, always being there for you, asking if you need anything, just being the shoulder that you could cry on and vise versa

you two would probably bake brownies together and eat them as you watch that ridiculous dating show because why not

and you bond and laugh over video games that he forces you to play because even though he's older he "still needs to maintain his youth" whatever that means, but you don't mind it, it keeps your relationship fun

you would definitely also have pillow fights all the time and he would chase you around the house trying to tickle you

on slower nights he would draw a bath for you both to just lay together and he would bath you

upon getting out, you would get in bed as he turns on candles and begins playing guitar for you, singing you to sleep

he's definitely a goofball, but there's so many more layers to him that you love and adore

taehyun

god he would be so soft with you, treating you like a queen, calling you his love, honey, sweetheart, you name it he just wants you to know how special you are

you would wake up every morning feeling soft traces of his fingers on your legs and hips along with breathy kisses along your neck and shoulders

he would tell you to rest more as he gets up to walk to the kitchen to start cooking you breakfast, but not before giving you a soft kiss on your forehead which makes you feel all warm and protected so as he disappears you can't help but smile at the ceiling, giggling, and kicking your legs up and down

his breakfast would be so delicious and you would probably do the dishes together: him washing them and you drying them and putting them away ><; dream team and this would probably be the same with all chores

he would probably lift you on the counter after you're done to make out with you softly, his hands gliding up and down your thighs and yours tangling in his hair

he would be so sweet, carrying you to the shower and washing your hair and body, then dressing you in his shirt that he thinks looks so fucking sexy on you

you would probably have movie days in bed together and late night trips to the gym

at night he would be the most sentimental, kissing you everywhere and telling you how much he loves you, taking his time- definitely lots of eye contact and temple kisses

i could also see you guys having a lot of quickies where he pins you against the wall and hikes your skirt up as he lift you up, definitely has a strength kink and isn't afraid to show it

overall, your relationship is just so so soft, you can feel his love from a mile away

huening kai

he'd be such an angel to you, but would call you his angel because that's what you are to him and he makes sure he treats you as such

you'd wake up to tummy rubs and pouty kisses and maybe even tickles which would lead to tickle fights and him and his evil laugh (that is still somehow so cute)

you would probably make pancakes together with lots of different fruits and talk the whole morning about anything and everything

no matter how old you two are he would still take you on arcade dates and lunches with his sisters who he adores so much even though he's always making fun of them

you guys would have dance parties in your living room listening to bruno mars

in any situation he always puts you first and is such a soft gentleman, i love him

© tyuntopia | please do not copy or translate without my permission

[gremlintooth]

AHHHGH DUDE, IVE FINALLY FOUND YOU ON HERE, YESSSS BRO, YOUR WRITING IS PHENOMENAL, (I'd say I'm the biggest lagwafis enthusiast on the internet, as soon as i read lagwafis, I bought the CD, the collectors edition pill pack white shirt, I have so so so many quotes on my Craig Tucker Shrine from the fic, and if you wanted to know, I've currently managed to read lagwafis 388 times, people believe I know it by heart, get it? "I know you by heart, Tweek" and the agonizing fact I quote lagwafis every day whenever I see a brink of reference infront of me, like let's say yesterday, I was in a store- and I saw a tub of chai latte and I was so close to screaming lagwafis reference inside of the store, I'm also cooking up some fan art (specifically from coming home) so I'll totally tag you when it's out) AHHH I'M GONNA WRITE SO MUCH ON HERE IT MIGHT GO TO THE LIMIT, okay so first, let's talk about the fanfic itself, there are SO many tiny details in this fic that have either made me laugh or cry in agony, which is a good thing, also, the characterization is TOP TIER, a lot of fanfictions tend to fall slightly short on the background characters outside of the pairing that tends to be the main focus. This was a great change, especially in Craig's group and Stan especially, everyone felt so real and totally had obvious quirks from the fandom itself that I LOVED SO MUCH, your writing evokes so much emotion that I somehow managed to feel exactly how everyone felt in a chapter relevant to them.

Let's talk about the character description choices, the way you described Tweek in almost every chapter made my heart ache in the best way possible, you made him sound like a fallen angel, the definition of ethereal, also the fact you decided on giving him that mouth scar with backstory to it is TOP TIER, I have a similar scar on my lip and whenever I see it in the mirror I think of Tweek from this fanfic, let's move on to Craig, the way you wrote his internal monologue and the way his emotions played out made me absolutely soul crushed, this entire fic left a deep pit in my heart, especially how Craig was described, Craig was written so realistically that it actually felt like he was real. He purposely blocked off his emotions to prevent himself from being seen as vulnerable, he struggled with keeping his “I don’t give a shit” personality until it all just exploded and the part that he was so vulnerable with was exposed to the entire school.

Also I see that the lagwafis anniversary is coming up soon!! I usually celebrate it every year when I get the chance to, by doing lagwafis related things and shit, this fanfic deserves way more than just kudos and comments and hits, this fic deserves the damn world and beyond, I even had literal dreams of this fic being one day announced to be an animated movie, and if it ever did I would cry and vomit in the best way ever possible, my life would be so complete if we became moots on here, also, I'm not sure if you have TikTok, but that's where I'm most known to being the lagwafis enthusiast on there, i make a lot of lagwafis related videos, my username is spacecadetcraigz, if you ever see this at some point, just know im so grateful you took your time to read through this.

I literally wish you the best life for now on

Yours truly,

Spacecadetcraig

388 times????? That’s true dedication my friend, you must read it like twice a week? Incredible, I’m so glad you enjoy something I wrote this much. I’m also so glad you love the album by Spiritualised too, it’s such a special album and there’s something so perfect about the title track that I’ve never been able to shake.

I didn’t even realise the anniversary was coming up, thanks for reminding me! It’s so weird to think I started writing that story six years ago. At that time I’d been catching up with South Park and when I first saw the Tweek X Craig episode it was my new favourite thing from the first minute in.

An animated movie would be amazing, Matt and Trey give us the rights pls, free of charge if possible (they’d so try for another billion dollar deal ahahahah)

I’m going to check you out on tiktok and if you do make fanart please tag me! I’d love to see!

[patrickztump]

RE: SRAR - I 100% agree with you, that it is a very red album to me too!

The Pheonix. Light 'Em Up. Death Valley. Young Volcanoes. So many of the song titles directly use imagery of fire, or miserable, all-consuming heat. I don't think it's a coincidence that the first two songs I mentioned are the two we heard first, and they both invoke the idea of burning everything down, in order to build something new. Even the poem you hear at the beginning of the "Miss Missing You" video ends with something like the words "Burn 'em all", iirc. And it's perfectly fitting, for where the band were then; They've passed through fire, and they're now reforged from the flames with new purpose.

And there's also, of course, plenty of red imagery throughout the Youngblood Chronicles, too. The aforementioned fire. The snakes with their red bands that appear a few times. The red pickup truck. The apples. And of course the blood. So much blood!

"Don't trust a band that wouldn't bleed for you" after all, right?

yes to all of this 😩 that's the thing i love about save rock and roll, it's the way songs are intertwined, often tightly, and there's a very consistent theme throughout every facet of it's creation. those themes are blatant with other records as well, but this one is very in your face about it – to me at least.

even songs that don't mention fire or heat in their titles still touch on it in their lyrics. "your hot whiskey eyes have fanned the flames / maybe i'll burn a little brighter tonight / let the fire breathe me back to life," "if heaven's grief brings hell's rain," and of course "rat a tat" is absolutely littered with fire references. i suppose you could even count the smoking of cigarettes in "where did the party go" as an indirect fire reference, as a flame is needed to light them and they glow orange from their heat. eight of eleven tracks involving flames of some sort is certainly painting the album as red.

and yes, the quote at the beginning of "miss missing you" – that was later added to copies of the record – drills the point home that the album has a specific theme. quoting it because it's so post-apocalyptic to me and i love the image it conveys:

they just sat back laughing at the wounded city, each breath sucking in ashes and fumes. oh it bled all right; drier than moore county. all expatriate fumes hurrying to find new nations of blinding dust. but the two of them. they just squinted at that pipe-cleaner skyline, and it burned hotter in their oil slick pupils. one elbowed the other and said "i've seen better." knowing that they were paid to remember the past - he blew out a hot breath and said "burn it all."

it's just so good?? and it makes so much sense being paired with "miss missing you" but also as an addition to the album. i don't know.

and touching back to the intertwining of songs, the redundancy of lyrics is so fun. some may argue it a lazy tactic, but imo it works so well that it's not. not even close. i've said it once and i'll say it again, "alone together" and "young volcanoes" are sisters to me, twins even. "this is the road to ruin," "when rome's in ruins" / "and we're starting at the end," "we're the beginning of the end" / "do you wanna feel beautiful," "do you wanna feel a little beautiful, baby." and the "and i said, i'll check in tomorrow if i don't wake up dead" between "alone together" and "rat a tat"? i love it so, so very much.

and of course the call backs in "save rock and roll" to "chicago is so two years ago" and "sugar, we're going down" is very fun and a [leonardo decaprio whistling and pointing at the tv] moment.

anyways, back to your original ask on color before i got completely side tracked (but felt i had to discuss). i am so glad you brought up the various calls to red in the youngblood chronicles as i have a project i've been working on for save rock and roll's 11th anniversary and it heavily revolves around red. and i can't elaborate because even i have no idea where i'm taking this lmao. i'm just going where the wind (curious thoughts) takes me.

so yeah. sorry for going off. i was on topic mostly until i became distracted by lyrics and the little cd booklet.

tl;dr: you are 100% right when you said "so many of the song titles directly use imagery of fire, or miserable, all-consuming heat" as the album is a scorcher in so many ways, and certainly is red through and through.

[airasora]

Imho the party thing is an extremely clumsily written attempt to show that Derek loves her swan or no swan. The food bit specifically always made me laugh as a kid because he sounds like he's concerned he may poison her on accident (... would you serve this to a swan...?) Like it's not swan themed food, it's food a swan can eat. It also bears mentioning that swans were associated with his (and hers, there's swan stuff at the baby party iirc) kingdom. That's why the locket has a swan on it (and she seemed perfectly happy to wear it again, even after everything), and why the golden curtain weights during the ball have swans on them, and other smaller background details. So maybe they were animals she loved before and that's why Rothbart chose a swan? Maybe the dress wasn't even created by him and he just made a copy of the one she was expected to wear. After all, he also replicates her crown; wedding dresses could be made well in advance and she was engaged since birth.

Also, credit where credit is due, Derek didn't know what the ball was for, his mother lied to him about it because she knew he wanted Odette and no one else. And then Uberta showed up to the wedding with A SWAN SHAPED HAIRDO XD

Like to be clear I still think he's a terrible boyfriend but the party comes off as more clumsy than anything else and certain things weren't him lol

(Also apparently it's Odette who wanted a swan armed force right at the end so this whole bit is a mess xD)

That's the thing though: if Rothbart did indeed choose to make Odette a swan cause swans are the kingdom's international animal or something like that, that really still shouldn't make Odette ok with the trauma 😂

Everything about Derek and Odette's romance is clumsily written. It's so sad cause the first song and the entire opening is SO GOOD and memorable. It could have been such a good movie, but they mucked it up xD

Also, while I do agree that Derek doesn't know EXACTLY what the ball is for, Uberta only says it's for "a few friends, and their daughters" secretly at one point, but he still seems to think he's running the show cause he starts saying HE doesn't want red roses, HE wants WHITE roses as if he knows the ball is FOR HIM... so either he does know what his mom is planning, or he thinks his opinion triumphs his mother's despite HER planning the ball. Derek doesn't come off looking good in either scenario xD

I took a look at the movie to find all the swan references and there aren't actually that many in total. Definitely not enough for me to think that swans were particularly important to the kingdoms, just some hee-hee ha-ha foreshadowing by the artists xD

And it wasn't Odette who wanted a swan-armed air force, that was Derek. Puffin says, and I quote: "The prince wants a fighting air force." I checked the scene to make sure, and he says prince and not princess :)

I wish you were right though, that would be a bit more evil and hilarious if Rothbart chose a swan because Odette loved swans or the kingdom had a special bond to swans or something. That would be so good xD

In the long run though, this is just a kids movie and we can analyze and interpret everything, but let's be honest... the developers did not put nearly as much thought into all these tiny details as we do. Uberta's swan shaped hair near the end was 100% just for the sake of the joke of her shadow looking like "the great animal" to make Bromley faint with fear. And they chose a swan cause irony, there's most likely nothing deeper to it than that, but it's fun to think of theories and interpretations! 😊

Also, sidenote: Apparantly Derek's kingdom is named Chamberg...?

As ANOTHER sidenote... Derek says he wants the music to be: "Rubato, soft and graceful." That... is not what rubato means.

Rubato is translated to "stolen time", the best definition of rubato in music is the freedom or flexibility to choose your own tempo for a part or a phrase of music.

So he also doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about despite Rogers being his musician tutor. Nevermind the fact that Rogers is right when he makes the tuba play when Derek asks what Rogers thinks a swan sounds like. Swans may LOOK elegant, but their voices certainly aren't x'D

[malt-rants-and-stuff]

HI HEY I REBLOGGED THIS WHEN YOU POSTED IT BUT TUMBLR ATE MY DRAFT APPARENTLY SO LETS TRY THIS AGAIN UNDER THE CUT

First of all!!! tashiroooo my best friend tashiro. kiri your mind astounds me like the way you integrate the inner voices of the characters you write is just incredible!!

gonna copy and paste in the quotes bc image limit got me but

Though the former captain of the ping pong club who’d tricked me then wasn’t the former captain in front of me now, I couldn’t help but feel the way I had then—cornered.

PREV PRES SPOTTED!!! also the phrasing of that. he felt cornered when he played that match and comparing it to now. wonder What could have caused a comparison like that hmmm

Maybe it was the black and red sailor uniform I was wearing.

THE BLACK AND RED SAILOR UNIFORM. GAH.

But Kuresawa had worn it just fine the year before, so even though I hadn’t shaved my leg hair, I couldn’t have looked too bad. I’d also worn this specific outfit quite a few times—we’d needed to adjust the fit, and I’d needed to practice my lines. Maybe it was the makeup I was getting done. But I’d tried some of that before, too. Getting blush dusted on my cheeks had gone almost exactly as the same as it had last time.

just,,, so much to unpack here. the comparison to kuresawa who at the time tashiro thought to be convincing as a girl. hey tashiro just how many times did you wear it. how many times did you Actually have to and how many times did you just Want to hmm i wonder... also the makeup part. wonder what could make this time so different tashiro. or who i should say.

In fact, he was the type to take a normal silence, extend it until I felt awkward, and then mercilessly tease me whenever I blurted out something to fill the space.

first proper acknowledgement of hanzawa and you say this. insanity. why are they like this.

…And here I was, falling for it again.

AND HERE YOU ARE, FALLING FOR IT AGAIN!!!!

Hanzawa-senpai had been a terrible sadist of a president,

Hanzawa sadism reference everyone clap and cheer

As if—they were small, and a plain steel color, but it was Hanzawa-senpai. Of course I couldn’t stop staring.

jumped in my seat and started giggling hysterically the first time i read this. TASHIRO. oh my god i am not made for this life...

Hanzawa-senpai’s secrets probably had secrets. He’d passed over his title of captain to me, so I knew his caginess wasn’t completely because I was unreliable, but it still bothered me.

going to explode. tashiroooooooooo

I yelped and threw my hands up in self-defense.

IN SELF DEFENSE. IM DYING IM DEAD.

Hanzawa-senpai just laughed at me, close enough that I could feel his breath on my face. Sadist!

COULD FEEL HIS BREATH. i need to be wacked with a rubber hammer i cannot with them

I said, ready to fight for my life.

to fight for your life you say. i see. [trips and falls to the floor]

A warm hand curled around my wrists, and I froze. Hanzawa-senpai pulled my hands away from my face, pressing in close, and made an order: “Sit still, would you?”

[GURGGLING NOISES] COUGH COUGH SORRY I WAS DROWNING IN A RIVER FOR A SECOND THERE CAN YOU REPEAT THAT

I’d barely listened when he was captain of the ping pong club, but something about his voice held me in place. I’d never really thought about it before, but Hanzawa-senpai had one of those storybook-narrator voices—the kind that made even simple things sound weirdly compelling. And then he had to go be one of the most eloquent people I’d met, too.

. Tashiro . i am becoming ill. sick from pinning poisoning. yeah no there isnt a cure. yeah its all this fic's fault. i put you as both my cause of death and my willfor living.

So, my eyes, which I thought would never hold still, obediently refrained from twitching as Hanzawa-senpai slowly curled my lashes.

i am going to die. hey remember that art sunny did with hanzashiro as the girlfriends doing makeup meme? yeah. yeahhhh.

The process was less painful than I thought, but it was still freaky—my vision was half metal, and so even though I knew that Hanzawa-senpai was right in front of me, the only real cue for that was the way he kept murmuring instructions into my ears.

HE MURMURED IN HIS EAR. i need a ho pital.

I could finally breathe again. My eyes felt… different?

Why'd you stop breathing tashiro. explain yourself to the class.

“Fancy earrings. Since there’s that jeweler guy you’re friends with.” 

👀Tashiro... you seem a little off when you say that...

“Not friends,” Hanzawa-senpai corrected after a beat. “I’ve met him a total of four times.”

Ha. liar.

You’re counting? 

[eyebrow raise] someone seems a little jealous. not anyone in particular obviously.

For two people who weren’t friends, they sure had talked to each other like they were. And now Hanzawa-senpai was looking through his stuff with a strange look in his eyes, so I’d clearly touched some kind of nerve. 

didnt say it when it popped up before but im so obsessed with how they read each other like a book. like of course you would notice that.

I sighed. “Do you have to overthink everything?”

He didn’t even pause his search. “Maybe you could stand to think more?”

“Hey!” I crossed my arms. I think about you all the time, don’t I?

WOAH WOAH WOAH WAIT HEY I STILL NEED TO RECOVER PLEASE GO EASY ON ME

“…Okay, that was a little rude,” Hanzawa-senpai admitted. “Forgive me?” When he smiled, his eyes would always curve in a way that made it impossible to be angry.

god. tashiro gon-chan gonzaburou. you got it baaaadddddd

“I can tell that’s green,” Hanzawa-senpai said, clearly amused. “No, that’s just for you.” He gestured to the eyeshadow palette in his hands, which was way more color-appropriate. “Close your eyes.”

ITS GREEN!!!!! also. what is that supposed to mean hm? what do you mean by that hanzawa masato. im going to shake him like a denial shaped rattle.

I did close them, but I couldn’t stop thinking—what did “just for you” mean?

haha yeah i wonder///

Once Hanzawa-senpai was done, he tugged me to a standing position, and moved a few steps away to check the result. Judging by the irritating smugness radiating from his expression, he’d done a good job.

ha. hahaaha. ha. sorry im unwell over literally all of what they do.

“Where’d you get this eyeshadow?” I asked, holding up the one still clutched in my hand. I couldn’t bring myself to ask why. 

almost crashed my browser in the middle of typing which is a testament to how i reacted to that part. hee hoo gender

“…When I was helping Seigi cover his bruise, I happened to find it, and—” He shrugged, deliberately casual. “You like that shade of green.”

Deliberately casual. call him out on his shit tashiro lmao. also hanzawa you lying liar who lies/ i know what you are

I did. It was my favorite color, and I wore it all the time. But I still didn’t understand why Hanzawa-senpai had gotten this eyeshadow for me. And I didn’t understand why my chest felt so weird when I heard him talk about Seigi. 

*raises my hand* I can explai[gets shoved into incoming traffic]

I had a faint memory of Shirahama saying he didn’t trust anyone else with hairstyling, but I figured he’d accept Hanzawa-senpai’s skills, so I didn’t protest.

Shirahama you deserve compensation for whatever conversation comes after.. all of this.

In this new setup, I was stuck staring at a random classroom wall. Though I couldn’t see Hanzawa-senpai standing behind me, I could feel the brush he was carefully pulling through my hair, working through the tangles with a steady hand.

i am such a sucker for combing loved ones hair like wow okay might as well get married while youre at it.

“You know,” I said, “why didn’t you ever do the contest yourself? You’d be so good at it.” 

“I prefer to be on the sidelines for this kind of thing, I think.”

*squints* okay masato whatever you say...

“Makes sense,” I said. “But if you did—oh, you’d have to pick out a name!” 

“A name?” 

“It’s a conversation I had with Kuresawa. Like, his girl name would be Tasuko. And I could just shorten my first name to be something like Gon-chan. For you, maybe… Masako?”

fell off my chair when i first read this because it shocked me so hard. hello sister.

I thought he’d laugh at my lack of naming sense, but instead, Hanzawa-senpai just shook his head. “That one’s out—it’s my sister’s name.” 

“Ah—that’s right, you have a few siblings, don’t you?” 

“I do. And you’re quite obviously an only child.”

“How do you know that?”

He simply smiled. “It’s impossible not to.” 

“...Sure,” I said. 

Sure....

I stole a glance up at Hanzawa-senpai. If this guy was my brother, I don’t know if I would cry or laugh. 

cry. definately cry.

As it turned out, you couldn’t unnoticeably look upwards when you had someone’s hands fiddling with your hair. Our gazes met, and Hanzawa-senpai smiled—like a cat who’d gotten the canary. I stayed frozen in place as he leaned down.

tashiro canary comparisons is doing something for me. river what river dont you see him in the coal mine chirping away happily giving it his all until one day the gases will finally get to him and all that is left is an heavy cage and a dead bird. Sorry off topic.

“Alright, Gon-chan,” Hanzawa-senpai purred. “It looks like you’re all set.” 

GON-CHAN. GON-CHAAAAANNNNNNNN!!! GON-CHAN!!!!! OH MY GOD SHE'S SO REAL HI HELLO. ALSO PURRED. HANZAWAAAA

My face turned instantly, abruptly red. No wonder Miyano had said I’d been way too casual about accepting the name. It definitely, definitely, without a doubt, definitely, definitively, couldn’t be used casually! 

im going to DIE from this one seriously this is lethal stuff you got here kiri

Hanzawa-senpai straightened back up. “...Tashiro-kun?” 

HAJSHDJSJSJAJSJSKJ

“I—” My voice came out way too high. “I’m going to ask Shirahama to help with my hair!” 

"HELP!!!" –tashiro running into shirahama after this. also me.

Then I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. 

(...Running in a skirt wasn’t that hard—it was actually kind of fun—but that was the last thing on my mind, then.) 

NO NO STOP RUNNING COME BACK HERE AND FACE YOUR THOUGHTS!!!!

aaaaaaand oh wow that was so fucking increadible and im slightly pissed you dont get the chance to see my original reblog bc i had so much to say that day and now i am too tired for it bc its 1 am but i will say that you are genuinely such an amazing author kiri and i loved every second i spent reading and obsessing over AA, thank you dearly for writing all of this and sharing it with us starved hanzawa to tashiro lovers. you truly are a legend<3

bonus hanzawa to tashiro (ft. the anomalous agate)

have you read the anomalous agate? yes? if so, this is the bonus I was talking about—if not, as long as you know what I mean by hanzawa to tashiro, this should still make sense. if you were introduced to hanzawa and tashiro as characters through the anomalous agate and that alone, consider reading this post where I explain little but talk a lot.

this bonus scene takes place between the two scenes in ch 4 of the anomalous agate. specifically, it takes place around two weeks after the first scene in ch 4 / a week before the last scene in ch 4, during tashiro's cultural festival as a third-year.

and since this exists within the context of the anomalous agate, which is written first-person and trying to emulate seigi's pov, this bonus is written in tashiro's pov, and attempts to blend my style with tashiro's first-person narration in love & passion.

ok I think I've spent enough time talking. fun stuff is below the cut!

bonus: hanzawa to tashiro, ft. the anomalous agate

Tashiro Gonzaburou, third-year. At the moment, I was experiencing a horrible case of déjà vu.

Two years ago, I’d lost so badly at a ping pong match that I’d stumbled my way into being the captain of the ping pong club. And as much as I liked the club, and had even gotten pretty good at ping pong, I was still pretty annoyed about having been tricked into joining. 

Though the former captain of the ping pong club who’d tricked me then wasn’t the former captain in front of me now, I couldn’t help but feel the way I had then—cornered. 

It was hard to pinpoint the exact reason. Maybe it was the black and red sailor uniform I was wearing. But Kuresawa had worn it just fine the year before, so even though I hadn’t shaved my leg hair, I couldn’t have looked too bad. I’d also worn this specific outfit quite a few times—we’d needed to adjust the fit, and I’d needed to practice my lines. Maybe it was the makeup I was getting done. But I’d tried some of that before, too. Getting blush dusted on my cheeks had gone almost exactly as the same as it had last time.

Almost, except for one thing: it was way too quiet. The guy sitting in front of me, Hanzawa Masato, was probably used to that kind of thing. In fact, he was the type to take a normal silence, extend it until I felt awkward, and then mercilessly tease me whenever I blurted out something to fill the space.

“Weird to see you with earrings on,” I said. …And here I was, falling for it again. 

Hanzawa-senpai didn’t seem fazed at all by what I’d just said, but he was an annoying guy who looked the same whether he was angry or not. “You’ve seen me wear them before, though?” 

“Not in school,” I pointed out. Hanzawa-senpai had been a terrible sadist of a president, but he was squeaky-clean about the way he did it. Even now, with his earrings clearly visible, he was the perfect picture of a model student working in quiet concentration. 

Hanzawa-senpai hummed in thought, his hands rummaging through the bag of makeup products he’d left on a nearby desk. “Well, I’m not a student anymore,” he said with a shrug. “Even so, aren’t they fairly hidden?” 

As if—they were small, and a plain steel color, but it was Hanzawa-senpai. Of course I couldn’t stop staring.

“Trying to hide your delinquent ways?” I asked, not expecting a serious answer. Hanzawa-senpai’s secrets probably had secrets. He’d passed over his title of captain to me, so I knew his caginess wasn’t completely because I was unreliable, but it still bothered me.

“If you’re looking for a delinquent, look in the mirror,” Hanzawa-senpai teased, and then produced some kind of torture contraption from his bag. “Now don’t move, okay?” 

I yelped and threw my hands up in self-defense. “You can’t put that thing near my face!” 

Hanzawa-senpai just laughed at me, close enough that I could feel his breath on my face. Sadist!

 “It’s just an eyelash curler, Tashiro-kun,” he drawled. “Calm down, would you?” 

I shook my head furiously. “No way,” I said, ready to fight for my life. When we’d gone over the basics, this guy hadn’t mentioned this step—I’d bet anything it was purposeful! “How can—” 

A warm hand curled around my wrists, and I froze. Hanzawa-senpai pulled my hands away from my face, pressing in close, and made an order: “Sit still, would you?”

I’d barely listened when he was captain of the ping pong club, but something about his voice held me in place. I’d never really thought about it before, but Hanzawa-senpai had one of those storybook-narrator voices—the kind that made even simple things sound weirdly compelling. And then he had to go be one of the most eloquent people I’d met, too.

So, my eyes, which I thought would never hold still, obediently refrained from twitching as Hanzawa-senpai slowly curled my lashes.

The process was less painful than I thought, but it was still freaky—my vision was half metal, and so even though I knew that Hanzawa-senpai was right in front of me, the only real cue for that was the way he kept murmuring instructions into my ears. Once he’d curled my eyelashes, he carefully applied mascara, and then leaned back to survey his work. 

I could finally breathe again. My eyes felt… different?

“Blink a few times,” Hanzawa-senpai suggested. 

After taking his advice, I got a bit more used to the feeling. “Huh.”

“Eyeshadow next.” After that announcement, Hanzawa-senpai started digging through his bag again. 

“Right,” I suddenly remembered, “Were you planning on buying something fancy?” At Hanzawa-senpai’s blank stare, I elaborated, “Fancy earrings. Since there’s that jeweler guy you’re friends with.” 

“Not friends,” Hanzawa-senpai corrected after a beat. “I’ve met him a total of four times.”

You’re counting? 

For two people who weren’t friends, they sure had talked to each other like they were. And now Hanzawa-senpai was looking through his stuff with a strange look in his eyes, so I’d clearly touched some kind of nerve. 

I sighed. “Do you have to overthink everything?”

He didn’t even pause his search. “Maybe you could stand to think more?”

“Hey!” I crossed my arms. I think about you all the time, don’t I?

“…Okay, that was a little rude,” Hanzawa-senpai admitted. “Forgive me?” When he smiled, his eyes would always curve in a way that made it impossible to be angry.

“…We’re doing eyeshadow next, right?”

Instead of answering, he pressed an eyeshadow palette in my hand. Palette wasn’t the right word—what did you call something that was just one eyeshadow? Before I could think too hard about it, I got distracted by the eyeshadow’s color. “…You’re not colorblind, are you?”

“I can tell that’s green,” Hanzawa-senpai said, clearly amused. “No, that’s just for you.” He gestured to the eyeshadow palette in his hands, which was way more color-appropriate. “Close your eyes.”

I did close them, but I couldn’t stop thinking—what did “just for you” mean?

After I’d faced an eyelash curler, the eyeshadow and eyeliner didn’t seem so bad. The hardest part was staying still—how did some girls do this daily?

Once Hanzawa-senpai was done, he tugged me to a standing position, and moved a few steps away to check the result. Judging by the irritating smugness radiating from his expression, he’d done a good job.

“Where’d you get this eyeshadow?” I asked, holding up the one still clutched in my hand. I couldn’t bring myself to ask why. 

“…When I was helping Seigi cover his bruise, I happened to find it, and—” He shrugged, deliberately casual. “You like that shade of green.”

I did. It was my favorite color, and I wore it all the time. But I still didn’t understand why Hanzawa-senpai had gotten this eyeshadow for me. And I didn’t understand why my chest felt so weird when I heard him talk about Seigi. 

“…Is that everything, then?” I asked.

“There’s lip gloss,” Hanzawa-senpai said, handing me a tube of the stuff, “but that’s easy enough for you to do. Sit down, but turn to the side—I’ll do your hair.” 

I had a faint memory of Shirahama saying he didn’t trust anyone else with hairstyling, but I figured he’d accept Hanzawa-senpai’s skills, so I didn’t protest.

In this new setup, I was stuck staring at a random classroom wall. Though I couldn’t see Hanzawa-senpai standing behind me, I could feel the brush he was carefully pulling through my hair, working through the tangles with a steady hand.

“You know,” I said, “why didn’t you ever do the contest yourself? You’d be so good at it.” 

“I prefer to be on the sidelines for this kind of thing, I think.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “But if you did—oh, you’d have to pick out a name!” 

“A name?” 

“It’s a conversation I had with Kuresawa. Like, his girl name would be Tasuko. And I could just shorten my first name to be something like Gon-chan. For you, maybe… Masako?”

I thought he’d laugh at my lack of naming sense, but instead, Hanzawa-senpai just shook his head. “That one’s out—it’s my sister’s name.” 

“Ah—that’s right, you have a few siblings, don’t you?” 

“I do. And you’re quite obviously an only child.”

“How do you know that?”

He simply smiled. “It’s impossible not to.” 

“...Sure,” I said. 

I didn’t have an immediate reply, so I unscrewed the tube of lip gloss. It was easy enough to apply, even without a mirror, so once that was over, my thoughts wandered.

What kind of magical, mystical quality did having siblings give to someone? Maybe even thinking that was what made me an only child, but really… 

I stole a glance up at Hanzawa-senpai. If this guy was my brother, I don’t know if I would cry or laugh. 

As it turned out, you couldn’t unnoticeably look upwards when you had someone’s hands fiddling with your hair. Our gazes met, and Hanzawa-senpai smiled—like a cat who’d gotten the canary. I stayed frozen in place as he leaned down.

“Alright, Gon-chan,” Hanzawa-senpai purred. “It looks like you’re all set.” 

My face turned instantly, abruptly red. No wonder Miyano had said I’d been way too casual about accepting the name. It definitely, definitely, without a doubt, definitely, definitively, couldn’t be used casually! 

Hanzawa-senpai straightened back up. “...Tashiro-kun?” 

“I—” My voice came out way too high. “I’m going to ask Shirahama to help with my hair!” 

Then I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. 

(...Running in a skirt wasn’t that hard—it was actually kind of fun—but that was the last thing on my mind, then.) 

[starstruck-shima]

❄️Kaeya meets a Bunny Girl Senpai❄️

Notes: Kinda crack, references to Kaeya’s backstory, fem reader, heavily based off of/inspired by Bunny Girl Senpai.

“In which Kaeya questions his sanity over a wild bunny girl that only he could see.”

Sometimes, he wonders if he’s finally lost it. After all those years of working in the knights, experiencing the shithole that was his early childhood, and the split that happened between him and the man he still saw as his sworn brother, you’d be pleasantly surprised to see how Kaeya still persevered and became the infamous cavalry captain we all know and love today.

And yet there he was, taking a double take on the sight before him during his rounds around the city. More specifically, the sight in question was that of a girl, just around his age--yet unlike him, who at least considered donning on some type of protective wear (wether it was for the weather or public decency, perhaps both), she opted for a less... conventional outfit. It was the bunny ears that really caught his attention though. 

He’s less intrigued by the black leotard, tights, and heels and more interested on who you are and why are you doing this. A wild bunny girl, with a vision strapped onto your collar too... you were most certainly a big deal. Yet why did no one bat an eye at you, or at least your appearance? 

“You’re staring.” Those were the first words you said to him, and Kaeya blinks--seeing bunny ears nearly obstruct his vision. You could talk. He’s either imagining things even more or it was a sign that you had a mind of your own. Either way, he’s still a bit taken aback. “Huh, you can still see me.”

“Forgive me, I just couldn’t help but notice you. What brings you to Mondstadt?” He tries to carry on a conversation--a surmise way for him to ease someone into at least spilling a bit of info on them.

Your next answer caught him off guard. “I live here.” That certainly raised his suspicions. He’s been patrolling around Mondstadt for years, to the point where he knows the familiar faces of regulars at the Angel’s Share bar, and even the names and schedules of the knights who guard the city walls. Who exactly were you? Perhaps you were new? But you didn’t look like an outsider either... you felt right at home in Mondstadt.

“I’m (Y/n) (L/n), part of the Knights of Favonius.” His eyes widened a bit at the revelation. You were part of the knights? “Forget what you saw today. Farewell.” Before he could inquire further, you had disappeared right there and then.

Kaeya takes it upon himself to immediately read up on you. Records, testimonies from fellow knights, checking your rank, asking Lisa, he did it all. His findings surprised him even more--not much was known about you, and from what he heard, you’ve barely even showed your face--or rather, not much have actually seen you around. Some can’t even recall your appearance. Yet the records state otherwise. You definitely existed. 

And so, Kaeya’s trip down down the rabbit hole had begun. After all, someone had to get to the bottom of this, and frankly, he was pretty much the only one who could, considering the circumstances.

It wasn’t long until you noticed his behavior, and it led to another chance encounter. This time, in front of your house. You knew he would’ve eventually found out in the records, yet you were surprised at his perseverance nonetheless. What was his deal? “Cavalry captain, why are you so persistent?”

He chuckles. “So you do know me.”You roll your eyes a bit. It was nothing, really. He was a huge a name here after all. 

When you ask him why he cared for your case so much, he simply responds like it was common sense. You still don’t understand why. ”It’d be bad for me to let you run off on your own, you know? Especially in that.” His eyes gesture onto your clothing. Right, you almost forgot. “Consider it a favor.”

And thus, began your strange friendship with Kaeya.

It started a bit rocky, but as time passed, the two of you started to see past your differences. Petty remarks turned into playful banter, and suspicions were cast aside into genuine fondness--though none of you openly admitted to that.

Kaeya soon learns more of your predicament, after patiently waiting for you to be ready to open up. It started with an incident in your lab--you were testing the limits of elemental reactions, which led to an explosion. 

At first, you thought there wouldn’t be any side effects, however, you quickly learned that the opposite was true, when Sucrose came to check up on the noise... yet didn’t notice you in the room. It only got worse from there.

So, you tried to test another theory. People were sure to notice and have a bigger impression of you in their memory if you caught their attention, right? Perhaps by making a huge impression, it’ll trigger a memory--hence causing them to remember. So, you opted for something that would definitely be a sight worth seeing (and remembering, to an extent). That was how you ended up as Mondstadt’s wild bunny girl, hopping around the city as a phenomenon waiting to be seen.

Yet somehow, only one man did. And amidst the time you had to bond, wether it was during a quiet meal in your abode after he helped you in getting groceries, or looking through the library for hints to solve your predicament, Kaeya and you proved to be quite the close pair.

Time was ticking however, and you knew that if Kaeya and you couldn’t find a solution, then sooner or later, you’d be gone for good. Left to be forgotten. A failed experiment.

It was something you never told Kaeya--something you kept hidden in your many papers dedicated in solving your predicament. You kept convincing yourself that it was better this way. He could go back to his knightly duties and continue protecting Mondstadt without an extra burden.

But what you didn’t know was that he found out. It was all adding up, really--the way you started to distance yourself from him, how you began stocking up on food, and the notes he read behind your back when you were away. 

...Which meant he also read about the details of your planned experiment to make him lose his memory. And he didn’t like the idea one bit. He’d never abandon you after all you’ve been through. He hates the very idea of such.

So one day, when you asked him to meet you in front of the gates, wearing that same old bunny girl suit for shits and giggles, he knew what he was getting into. He calculated the time you’d finish prepping your little memory loss experiment, and today was the day.

You thought everything was going as planned. Kaeya didn’t once suspect the drink you gave him. Your first mistake. Your second was letting your guard down... as Kaeya had immediately chucked the drink into your lips, forcing you to gulp it down, choking in disbelief. Wait... did you see him spit it out right as he did that?!

“You--” coughing, you look at Kaeya in distraught. “YOU KNEW?!”

But the man merely chuckles, quoting a friend that helped him solve the mystery. Of course, in return, he had to submit a full, detailed report on your entire predicament, but he could care less. Thank you Albedo.“With equal force comes equal reaction.” 

“I still don’t get what you mean--” you stiffen, suddenly feeling eyes on you, several people saying your name. Wait... if they remembered your name, could they see you?

“So that was where you ran off to,” You almost cry tears of joy when Albedo actually talks to you, walking alongside Sucrose to where you were situated. “I expect a huge explanation on how all of this happened--” he briefly turns to Kaeya. “--And everything in between.”

Still in the high of euphoria, you don’t notice the cold night air until Sucrose brings you back to reality. “Um... Ms. (Y/n), not to be rude, but... aren’t you cold in that?”

You stiffen, your mind wanting you to slap the blue haired man behind you for laughing hysterically in response. Right, almost forgot about that.

[cultofbeatles]

parts of pete shotton’s book “john lennon: in my life” that stood out to me

(this is semi long and contains book spoilers)

john and pete being the first people ever to get banned from their church 

pete saying john would always share any candy he had with everyone around, but that he would maybe give john one piece of candy 

they held a competition to see who could go the longest without swearing and they both spent so much time focusing on not swearing that they sat in silence 

tw blood/cutting: wanting to do a blood oath and cut their wrists to be “blood brothers” but john brought a dull knife that wouldn't cut so they pretended to do it 

being pyromaniacs (seriously)

john crawling out of all fours and groaning after being canned and making pete get canned even worse because he was laughing 

john being known to pee himself when laughing 

john daydreaming while he was riding his bike, crashing into a parked car, catapulted into the air, hurt his arm pretty bad, but his main concern was the damage to his bike 

they once had a serious fight where pete was about to step on john’s glasses but intentionally missed just to tease john 

persuading their classmates to wear white dog collars that they made in class 

eleven year old john making pete watch him orgasm 

pete and john having sex with their girlfriends in the same bed 

john going through great lengths to avoid dancing because he was horrible at it 

john and paul’s first introduction being awkward as they both just stood there 

pete asking paul if he’ll join the band: “a full minute passed while paul pretended to give the matter careful thought: “oh, all right.” he finally shrugged.”

mimi slamming the door in paul’s face whenever john wasn't there to stop her 

george just pushing himself into the band because he wanted to be there 

paul, george, and john wearing buckets on their head and marching around on paul’s roof to make fun of pete’s cadet graduation ceremony 

one night after julia’s death pete found john completely passed out drunk on a bus and found out that he had been on it for hours. he took him home and tucked him into bed. 

john saying that he wrote in my life with pete and stuart in mind 

cynthia scolding john for saying something outrageous and then john saying something even more outrageous 

the quote, “john bamboozled his new soulmate” in reference to making stuart use his art show money to buy a bass 

brian epstein asking if pete wanted to come back to his house for sex and pete turning him down but following with, “no offense taken. actually, i take it as a compliment!”

calling ringo a runt 

“what’s a fucking wank between friends anyways?” - pete shotton

brian having a reminder of “haircut for george” on his desk because he was in charge of their grooming needs 

john giving pete one of his big beatles paychecks so he had money for christmas

john asking pete “isn't he lovely?” when first meeting julian 

john screaming “hi pete!” at a show because he told the staff to let him know whenever pete arrived 

john hated to be touched and especially by strangers 

john wanted to open his book in his own write with a dedication to pete saying “to pete, who got it first.” but didn't want to hurt mimi’s feelings so he drew a caricature of pete at the beginning and that’s how he dedicated it to him secretly 

pete telling john he would never go to a interviewer and talk about john for money. (he only talked to two authors about john. hunter davies, who he asked john for permission for, and philip norman. who told pete that he was only writing a book about liverpool pop music)

cynthia and john getting in an argument because she wanted a porsche and john said they're too dangerous 

paul was the beatle that was the hardest to get close to 

george’s proudest possession was a painting by bob dylan and he had a guitar shaped pool 

“there never was, and probably never will be, a group more self contained or tightly knit than the beatles were in those days..”

john loved a good pun joke 

john loved hanging out with the monkees and micky dolenz was the craziest one 

“the only thing john hated more than going to bed at night was getting out of it the next day.” MOOD.

john would literally read every single page of the newspaper 

he once saw a tv program talking about autistic kids and donated 1,000 pounds to an autistic foundation 

john making a random guest give him their sgt pepper album so pete could get one 

the beatles almost showed up to brian’s memorial service in bright colorful clothes for “good vibes”

tw suicide: john was convinced brian committed suicide 

george telling pete he use to think he was a “bad influence” on john 

paul thought magical mystery tour was going to be a big masterpiece 

at beatles financial meetings: paul doodling, john high on lsd, ringo asleep in the corner, george actually paying attention 

bill turner (childhood friend of theirs) telling paul he didn't like hello, goodbye and paul being taken back by that

the beatles bought pete a car (jaguar to be specific)

john was very insecure around girls and never knew if they liked him or not 

john thinking his housekeeper would assume him and pete were having sex because they were laying next to each other 

pete was actually happy at first when john and yoko got together because john was happy 

any time john and pete would be laughing together yoko would silence John 

the beatles had to constantly tell ringo he was the best rock drummer in the world before he agreed to join the band again 

paul asking pete if hey jude or revolution should be on the A side, pete saying hey jude, and then paul immediately screaming to john that pete picked his song over john’s. 

there was so many arguments with yoko that would have to be another post itself but i will say it’s awful 

george running after the press in his backyard because he took a photo of him while the police chase george around to arrest him for possession of drugs 

“remember pete, they can't kill you for speaking your mind.” - john lennon

when pete found out about john’s death he went to visit george 

“on the drive back home, memories of john flooded into my head. what a life, i thought.” <3

[inkbyajm]

Bottled Up

pairing: C.H. x fem!reader

category: angst, fluff

warnings: yelling, crying, insecurities

word count: 2.2k

notes: apologies for the tardy post, i wrote and rewrote and re-rewrote the whole angsty scene because i didn’t know if it was written well enough, i wanted to make sure you guys could feel the emotions that i vividly visualised and tried my best to put into words  :( i did send it to a friend to check and she seemed to like it, so let me know how it goes for you, my loves. the angst for this one was inspired by 2 different songs - hold me while you wait by lewis capaldi and i will run from you by cemeteries. it’s not necessarily about the lyrics, but more about the melody and the mood you get into listening to them (they go in order). give those a listen :) also, beware of the upcoming philosophy references, i did study philosophy last year, hopefully no one gets triggered lmao

< previous    next >

Is a person’s scent something a normal human being picks up on before taking into account the rest of their features? Would a normal human being remember said scent and be able to recognise it in a crowd full of strangers? Corpse wasn’t too sure about the answer, but one thing he did know, is that she smelled delicately sweet, like cherry blossoms, and that ever since he had noticed it during their game night a few weeks ago, he simply couldn’t let it go. It was intoxicating, but in a calming way. 

━

Corpse and (Y/N) each lay on their beds in their own homes, going into the third hour of their call. He couldn’t exactly fall asleep, so he had decided to see what his dear friend was up to, and even though she was this close to succumbing to sleep, she said nothing and stayed up to keep his busy mind company.

“Okay, hot topic: what do you think about soulmates? More specifically the romantic type?” the girl asked, not knowing how much of a risqué question it was. How was he supposed to answer?

“I don’t really have an opinion on it. Why?”

“I read Symposium by Plato the other day and it presented an interesting concept about human beings. Basically-” Of course she fucking read philosophical books. How were they even having a conversation with each other? Why were they even friends? She was on a whole other level of smart. “-so this guy says that humans were like androgynous blobs, so they’d come in two sets of everything a normal person has. But those humans were so powerful, the gods were literally shaking in their robes, so Zeus decided to cut everyone into two to weaken them. But then humans became so miserable, they spent their entire lives searching for their other halves. In the end, Zeus kinda felt bad and said fuck it, I’ll give y’all dicks and vaginas for every time you wanna hug each other. And that’s the oldest explanation there is about the idea of soulmates.” she sighed, finished with her rant.

“That was...not at all the story I expected to hear.” she heard him mumble on the other side of the call. “Yeah, Greek philosophers were up to some reeal freaky things, you would have loved them,” he laughed at her joke, “I honestly think it’s cute. Not the whole cutting people into two thing, but like, longing for someone and then finding them because you finally feel complete. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong independent woman who doesn’t need a prince in shining whatever to sweep me off my feet. But it does sound nice, that ideal comfort, a person you’re just...meant to be with, I guess.”

There was a moment of silence that neither of them really minded, before it was Corpse’s turn to ask the second bold question of the night. “Have you found that person yet? Your soulmate?”

She’s never thought about it before, but she hasn’t really thought about soulmates that much either, it was a spontaneous thought she had said out loud. “I’m not sure, actually. (B/F/N) could be one, I guess.” (Y/N) shrugged in return. Wasn’t she going to ask him about it? She probably didn’t care that much. Understandable.

“My favourite quote about love is «You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.». It’s by Sam Keen, the American philosopher. It maay be the hopeless romantic in me shining through, but I do very much agree with his statement.” Did this mean anyone could have a chance with her despite their fuckups? So if he were to try, would she-?

“Obviously, there are some things that just can’t be ignored or avoided, but at that point it’s preferences and personal tolerance. Depends on the person, ya know?” she swiftly added, unaware of the effect it had on him. Sick. Some people were just meant to rot alone.

The final question was posed by (Y/N). She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t at all curious. This little crush of hers had been steadily growing with every hang out, every laugh, every hug and every glance. There are rarely ever moments where one could casually discuss a topic this personal with friends, at least there weren’t with friends one had feelings for. This was the perfect opportunity.

“Corpse?”

“Hmm?”

“Have you ever been in love?” her voice was soft, her approach gentle.

“Well, I’ve been in relationships before, so I guess, yeah? It’s been so long, I don’t even know what love feels like anymore.” he let out a breath resembling a chuckle. Lamest fucking answer ever. But it was true. He hadn’t thought about love in that way in quite a while.

“A lot of people describe it as having an intense range of overwhelming feelings. Lightheadedness, slight shakiness, heart palpitations, some people have even reported losing their appetite. Crazy how human bodies work, huh? Oh! Speaking of chemicals-”

She had continued on to ramble about...chemistry? Eyes? Corpse couldn’t really hear what she was saying anymore, let alone concentrate on her words, as he pieced everything that’s been happening for the past few months together. The nauseating feeling. The pounding of his heart so fast it felt like he was about to die. The urge to make as little eye contact with her as possible, because otherwise he’d turn into a furnace. The obsession with her perfume, like he was some fucking creep. The fool was falling in love. And it was at that moment that everything had come crumbling down.

━

(Y/N) and Corpse hadn’t talked for a couple of weeks. Or rather (Y/N) messaged the 23 year old many times, but he’d either claim to be busy or just not answer at all. There were two possible reasons for the sudden lack of contact: he was indeed busy with his musical projects and couldn’t allow himself to be distracted; or something much more serious was going on. It didn’t matter, for she was already in her car, on her way to his apartment.

Arriving at her destination, she used the spare key he gave her months ago, a sign of absolute trust, and allowed herself into his humble abode. Silence reigned in her friend’s residence. She thought maybe he had gone somewhere, and though that was unlikely, it wasn’t unprecedented. The door to his recording room was closed, and while she was tempted to check if he was in there, she refrained from doing so, knowing that specific room was not to be entered unless he was around to give permission.

“Corpse?” she called out just to make sure. There was no response for a few minutes, which made her assume she had the place for herself, until she heard a door open behind her. Turning around, she saw his figure emerge from said recording room in a white t-shirt and black sweatpants, his curly hair disheveled.

“Hey, how are you d-”

“Why are you here?” he spoke flatly, interrupting her. “Well- You weren’t, um, answering your messages or any of my calls, so I thought something had happened.” she replied, suddenly nervous, fiddling with the rings on her fingers. “Nothing happened. I told you I was busy.”

The air around them seemed colder as tensions rose. (Y/N) could tell he was irritated, but she couldn’t exactly figure out why. She had never seen this side of him before. “Okay. Tell you what, I assume you haven’t had dinner yet, so why don’t I go ahead and start cooking something up while you-”

“Get out.”

She blinked a few times, not quite registering the words that had just left his mouth. “Sorry?” Her voice was quiet. She was taken off guard.

“Are you deaf? I said get. the fuck. OUT.”

Corpse shouted the last word, making her flinch in what appeared to be fear. Good. Run away while you still can. Heart pounding, (Y/N) took a second to remind herself whom she was speaking to. “I see that you’re angry, but at least give me a reason why-”

“You want a reason? I just don’t fucking WANT you here!” Anger grew inside of him like a tumor, but it wasn’t intended for her. She had simply been caught in a storm that had been building up for years. “Do you understand that?! I can’t fucking be around you without feeling like I’m going to EXPLODE.”

His words hit her like paintballs. They were only words, plain and simple, but they dug deeper and deeper into her skin with each hit, until, eventually, it broke. Eyes burning, she felt the tears slowly welling up in them.

“Why are you doing this to me?!” her own voice grew louder with frustration, but mostly, confusion.

“Maybe because I can? Because I’m a goddamn asshole?” 

“Don’t say that.”

“How?! How can I not say it when it’s the truth!” He wanted to stop. His mind told him to cease whatever it was that he was doing. However, blinded with resentment towards himself, he only spilled words he would regret after it was too late. 

“I can’t function like a normal fucking human being. I can’t be a good friend, son, or whatever the fuck else, and I sure as hell can’t love you.”

The paintballs had turned into a singular sword. A very long, very sharp sword that had found itself plunged deep inside her chest. How did he found out? When? Had she been too obvious? Had she been pushy? Clingy? Way out of line? The woman before him was unable to conceal her shock, as tears came rushing down her hot cheeks. Her voice brittle, she tried defending herself. She couldn’t leave it at that. She had to try. Try to have him see reason. “You don’t love me, that’s fine. But you didn’t have to deliver it this way-”

“But I did.” breathless with fury, Corpse clenched his fists so tight they had turned cold, yet they were still trembling. “You can get so naïve and dumb, you won’t understand things unless they’re spelled out nice and fucking bold for you.”

He closed with (Y/N) until their noses nearly touched. He noticed the way she silently shook, her eyes which shed endless tears never leaving his gaze. Unable to make a single sound, she felt the man’s hot breath on her face, his aura domineering.

“Now get. out.”

Her body wouldn’t cooperate as she just stood there. Staring back at him, her inner brows raised. Corpse wanted to hug her. Envelop her trembling figure with his and tell her he was sorry, that he meant none of it, that he had lost his mind. But he couldn’t bring himself to do anything. And with his own tears threatening to spill, he created a distance between them. He needed her gone.

“Leave! GO!”

His yelling was enough to jolt (Y/N) out of her trance, and, in a hurry, she sprinted towards the entrance. The door closed behind her, she felt a sudden urge to fill her lungs with much needed air. She jumped at the resounding scream that emanated from deep within his soul, letting out all of his pent-up rage.

Feet carrying her all the way to her car parked outside of the building, the young woman managed to climb in, and this was the queue for her body to break down. The night was young. The street empty. No one around to hear her long-lasting wailing. She clutched the steering wheel for support, fingers wrapping around the leather in a tight grip. A headache was creeping up from the back of her skull. Her ears pulsated in response to the heavy pounding of her heart. Clumsily, (Y/N) inserted the key into the ignition, felt around for the gear stick, and drove away. She didn’t know where she was going or how long it was going to take to get there. She needed to get out.

What went wrong? When did it go wrong? She couldn’t help but feel guilty, feel at fault. She had never seen that side of him before. He had never treated her that way before.

It was the hugs, wasn’t it? He had to have noticed the way she held on for a second too long to enjoy the smell of his cologne. Her vision blurred as she resumed softly weeping, her salty tears staining her top. Or it might have been the touchiness, she would practically glue herself to him during their movie nights. Unaware of both her actions and surroundings, (Y/N)’s breathing quickened, becoming ragged. Maybe he didn’t like the way she called him three times a week. Her hands were slowly losing control over the wheel, over the vehicle she was driving. She invaded his privacy. That was definitely it. Fuck. How could she have been so damn blind, selfish, ignorant, FUCKING STUPID.

Lights. Something was moving towards her- MOVE.

With a sharp turn, she dodged the approaching car just by a hair’s breadth, but as she had avoided one accident, another came just as quickly. 

[fromiftowhen]

The Rookie: 3x09 Amber Thoughts/Spoilers

I have… a LOT of thoughts about this episode. Unsurprisingly, the majority of them are Chenford related, but I had a LOT of West and Lopez feels too, so. Here we go. I started to try to get my feelings out, but it just became me copying quotes that I either laughed or had other feelings about, so…

“Grey’s busy, and Smitty’s getting a back tattoo.”

“That’s --”

“Don’t ask.

-- When I say I laughed out loud. Jackson and Smitty’s relationship is one of the best callbacks this show does, and every mention of that ridiculous man is hilarious.

“But it’s super important she doesn’t get shot today.”

“No promises. You ride with me, you ride the rollercoaster.”

-- Nyla Harper is my favorite person. She was excellent in this episode, from the very beginning to the sweet moment at the end (that ending scene did NOT need to be about Nolan, this should have been solely focused on Lucy and Jackson and what they accomplished today, but I can’t say I’m surprised. But Harper made it better.)

Tim tossing the list out the window immediately.

“You know, littering is a $250 fine.”

“Worth it.”

Lucy pulling a backup list right out. They know each other SO well.

-- HILARIOUS. Although I’ll admit my guard was up the moment she pulled that list out and used the word “trickery.” It worked out differently than I thought it would, but… well. We’ll get to that.

“I knew my TO would be important to my career. But I don’t know. I didn’t realize how important you’d be to my life.”

-- I should have been more prepared for the Lopez and West feelings today. Their relationship probably started out the rockiest of all the TO/rookie pairings, and maybe rightfully so… but it’s become the least complicated, the closest to friendship the fastest, and their bond is just really something. Jackson was right - a LOT has happened in their 13 months together (yes, show, I remember exactly how long it’s been -- do you?) and they’ve both grown and changed in such wonderful ways. Angela looked sentimental the whole episode (while still being her badass, hilarious self) and West looked SO relaxed, it was such a lovely bookend to their first days together.

“I wish someone taught me how to be in this one.”

“Oh, so we are in a relationship.”

-- All the references to a relationship were good, if not entirely baity. But Tim’s delivery of that line was amazing and made me laugh out loud. He sounds so long-suffering and very much like an exasperated husband, and it really pinpointed one of the ways they interact that just WORKS so well. It just feels natural, and Eric Winter’s delivery was great.

“Tell me the truth -- Am I gonna poop myself?”

-- This entire conversation was so randomly hilarious (but added levity they all clearly needed then). Harper and Lopez are hilarious together and I truly wish the show gave us more of that.

“Don’t worry -- I will personally stand watch over your kid until you leave the hospital.”

-- Jackson West. I love you.

“I really hope our last shift together doesn’t end with that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

-- EMOTIONS.

Tim distracting her with her list. The man KNOWS her. And him acknowledging that she’s been to hell and back. Again, I say -- EMOTIONS. It was such a good callback to him knowing she needs to focus on work and order and process to remain calm in some situations.

“One look from you could send me into a tailspin.” And one day, it will again -- in an entirely different way, I am SURE. The way they both knew she was referring to Plain Clothes Day was great.

“I dunno. Smitty is surprisingly maternal.”

“That is the most horrifying idea I’ve ever heard, and I want it to be a reality show so bad.”

“Right? I would watch the hell out of that.”

-- Lowkey this was the most hilarious exchange of the night. I would also watch the hell out of that reality show. All these little moments made me miss Lopez and West together so much. Their scene at the end of the episode was lovely. All the times he thanked her. Please still let them interact often. The show NEEDS it.

“We did it.”

“No. You did it.” THE MOST TIM BRADFORD THING I’VE EVER HEARD.

“Office Chen impressed me with every decision she made today. I will miss riding with her.”

The callback to the evaluation in Plain Clothes Day. My heart skipped a beat, honestly. The way that Tim was looking at her in this scene while she read the note was… it was a lot, and apparently too much for me to process currently because that’s the most intelligible thing I’ve got to say about it.

“You don’t let anyone ever tell you you can’t do something. Not even me.”

-- WHILE HE HELD THE HANDSHAKE. This one line tells you all you need to know about Tim Bradford and his RELATIONSHIP with Lucy Chen, honestly. He knows she’s “as tough as they come” and has “been to hell and back” and he knows, even if it scares him, even if it gives him flashbacks to Isabel, that she can do it.

Her gift to him was such a nice callback. For a show that doesn’t seem to track or care about its actual timeline, they’ve done a wonderful job with callbacks especially this season, and especially Tim and Lucy related ones. All the Caleb/Rosalind stuff. All Isabel mentions. Multiple mentions of Plain Clothes Day and their first day riding together, etc.

Every. Single. Time. He has called her Lucy this season, I have had to compose myself, none more than in this episode. I do kind of wish they’d waited until that last moment to have him call her Lucy (to her face, we all know I don’t think the phone call scene from season one, although one of their very best moments, counts)... it might have felt slightly more impactful (although the moment in the season premiere was great in its own way.)

Honestly, it was a little weird for me watching the show tackle their final moments as TO/rookie because I’ve written so many versions of that myself? (And look, I’m not gonna lie, their version gave me feelings, but I liked mine better). I wish that truly lovely garage scene hadn’t come on the heels of that “confession” scene, but it did help make up for it.

You might have noticed that I specifically skipped over that “confession” scene in the shop. As soon as he started talking about lying and UC work, I said “ugh” and then immediately wrote the scene in my head -- down to her laugh, it was that predictable once you got the gist. And I’m going to be honest -- if I had written it, I would have deleted it.

I KNEW going in -- and I think most people will agree -- that this was not going to be a true confession. That we weren’t going to get a Chenford love confession tonight (and please, can we discuss that ‘canon’ and ‘endgame’ are not interchangeable for just a sec.) But the way it happened just felt SUPER ship baity, and using it in the promo even more so. I just felt super pandered to in a ridiculous way that didn’t leave me with the most pleasant feelings about the writers… the garage scene at the end definitely helped, but overall the confession scene left a sour taste.

The thing is -- the things she said? How he saved her? How the reason he’s protective of her is that he might have feelings too? Those are all valid things! And things that, at least in fic, I believe. But watching that scene, me, someone who can read something shippy in the TINIEST glance? I didn’t FEEL those things. I wasn’t nodding along like “yep, yep, that’s all true” -- there wasn’t a moment during that scene where they looked at each other and I thought “yes, this is hitting too close to home for one of them.” Maybe that’s just me. I don’t know.

And I don’t know if that’s because I was too in my feelings about being badly pandered to, or if it just wasn’t there, or what. But… just overall I’m left with a feeling that it was just an entirely unnecessary scene that probably didn’t serve the ship well, just judging by some reactions I’ve seen.

Those feelings though? The ones I wanted to feel in that confession scene? I FELT THOSE, every single one of them, in the parking garage scene at the end.

Every look was perfect. Every pause, the handshake (a hug would have truly saved the confession mess, let's be honest, but can't be picky), the way he looked at her as she read, THAT is the writers do SO perfectly right for Tim and Lucy (and I know the majority of that credit goes to Eric and Melissa, because the moments that are the most impactful are the looks that just can't be entirely scripted.)

Do I still ship them with every fiber of my being? Yes, and nothing the writers do or don’t do will change that. Will I still (eventually again) write a million words about them falling in love how I think they should? Yes. Do I need the show to stick to moments like in the parking garage -- real, honest moments between them? YES. That is what the show gets right about their relationship. If they can just stick to those moments -- and somehow continue them and make them believable even if they’re no longer riding together -- I’ll be happy.

Am I worried about their interactions now that they’re no longer riding together? Yes. Their chemistry is honestly the best thing on this show. Giving less screen time to Lopez and West together has been rough -- not only on the relationships aspect that so much drives the show but on the timing/pacing as well -- and I worry that their best characters/best ship not sharing as much screen time will not help either of these issues.

Maybe they’ll surprise me. I hope -- I think -- they will.

(Random, but things I still need from this season: A Rachel mention? Don't get me wrong, if they want to forget her, I'm cool... but it feels like (even a fake love) confession should have been the right time to be like "I know this is awkward, you're dating my friend..." Come on, show. I don't care about her, but you tried HARD to sell us on her last season, so at least give her a two second mention to update us on what is actually going on. The Lopez-Evers wedding. (Do I think it'll be THE Chenford event most people are hoping for? No. But I'm ready to be proven wrong.) A continuation on Harper's love life. UPDATE ME on my girl.)

[becomewings]

The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>

  BTS Universe Story Highlights, pt. 4 / 4

« pt. 3  |  start at the beginning

Introduction

The final sections for TaeHyung’s arc and the Epilogue are 4.3k and 4.4k, respectively. As with earlier parts of the series, I have included “tl;dr commentary” at the bottom of the post after a section of additional thoughts (specifically devoted to an interesting MV location parallel!). This commentary summarizes the parenthetical asides I made throughout the summaries and may be of interest as standalone reading to those who have already played the game yet would like to review its connections to the BU texts and MVs.

Content warning: contains references to death, suicide, suicidal ideation, child abuse, domestic violence, blood, homicide, depression, trauma, PTSD

This guide contains major spoilers and includes references to other BU media

Do not repost, copy, or quote without permission

Heart’s Distance

TaeHyung’s story opens with a short cutscene. In his apartment (with the calendar on the wall open to May), TaeHyung smiles at a photo of his father holding him as a baby. (The image looks similar to the photograph he holds at 1’48” in the HYYH On Stage: Prologue short film.) Remembering his father’s drinking and violence, he crumples the photo with a sigh. SeokJin then narrates over a series of shots explaining the latest developments in the loops. By this 15 May Year 22, he has saved NamJoon, ensured that JungKook and YoonGi saved each other, prevented HoSeok’s accident in the hospital, and borrowed everyone’s help to free JiMin. Everyone is gathered outside NamJoon’s container that night, smiling and giddy from saving JiMin. “How long has it been since we’ve all laughed together?” SeokJin asks. (This is a reference to the recurring phrase “we can laugh when we’re together” present throughout the Notes and occasionally this game.) He wants to relax and enjoy the moment too but knows this isn’t over yet. TaeHyung is laughing radiantly next to JiMin. “What drives this happy and innocent TaeHyung to commit such an unspeakable act?” he wonders.

SeokJin’s reflections on the coming days in previous loops present the crux of his challenge and this story: on 19 May, TaeHyung is arrested for vandalism while painting graffiti on the streets. (The bus stop depicted in the shot is the same as the one in Highlight Reel.) One thing SeokJin has learned through the loops is that TaeHyung and his sister live under the constant threat of domestic violence. On 20 May, TaeHyung goes home after spending the night at the police station. The situation gets especially bad for his older sister, and TaeHyung makes a choice that he can’t take back. (In the shot in the game, TaeHyung approaches his father from behind and the sound of glass occurs on a cut to black. We know from the I Need U MV and Save Me webtoon that he fatally stabs his father.) SeokJin’s inner thoughts relate that he has tried to stop this event by preventing TaeHyung from going home this day or even involving NamJoon—but all of his attempts have ended in failure.

While SeokJin is mulling over this challenge during their gathering on the night of 15 May, HoSeok approaches and asks what he’s thinking about by himself. “Oh, nothing much,” SeokJin dismisses. HoSeok remarks that it’s nice to be there with everyone. “It makes me think of the old days…” While HoSeok happily chats, SeokJin’s attention stays on TaeHyung as he approaches NamJoon. The player is given the choice to “get closer to eavesdrop” or “listen to what HoSeok has to say.” In the first path, SeokJin excuses himself to make a phone call and only pretends to pick up the phone as he nears TaeHyung and NamJoon. In the second path, HoSeok jokes about eating too many snacks in high school thanks to SeokJin. SeokJin is a little distracted, but HoSeok notices that TaeHyung has snacks. ��Huh? What’s that? I want some too!” SeokJin uses this opportunity to follow HoSeok and join their two friends. The paths converge with SeokJin overhearing TaeHyung and NamJoon’s conversation. TaeHyung says he doesn’t want to go home and asks if he can spend the night at the container. SeokJin remembers that TaeHyung often mentioned not wanting to go home in high school. Back then, they thought it was because he enjoyed being with the group, but now SeokJin knows that he was probably avoiding his father. He wonders why TaeHyung insists on going home on the 20th since he hates it there so much. Maybe learning the reason will be the key to stopping—and saving—TaeHyung. “Do whatever you want. You can sleep over,” NamJoon replies. TaeHyung brightens visibly at this answer. “Do you want to stay up doing something? We can play a card game, or…” HoSeok chimes in too that it sounds like a fun idea, but NamJoon says he has work tomorrow and can’t stay up late. “Let’s play until I have to go to bed.” TaeHyung’s phone vibrates. His face is already grim when he peers at it. “Actually, I think I have to go home.” Surprised, NamJoon asks why, but TaeHyung leaves without answering.

SeokJin leaves the gathering and follows TaeHyung, shadowing him carefully to avoid detection. He wonders what was in the text that changed TaeHyung’s mind and notices that they’re heading in the opposite direction of his home. After purchasing snacks at a nearby store, TaeHyung stands at a bus stop. SeokJin wonders if he’s waiting for someone since he lets several buses pass by. Eventually, a disembarking figure approaches TaeHyung. SeokJin recognizes her as Kim Eunhye, TaeHyung’s older sister. She asks why he is waiting for her since he said he’d be home late. “I was about to head in, so I thought I’d wait for you,” TaeHyung replies. “You should’ve gone ahead. Dad probably hasn’t had dinner yet…” she trails off. TaeHyung says he ordered delivery to the house for their dad. “Did you eat yet? Here.” He hands her a hot dog. SeokJin follows at a distance when they begin walking home. “Do you think dad will be drinking?” Eunhye wonders. “Is that even a question?” TaeHyung returns. They go back and forth about how he has been drinking less these days, goes to work every day, and doesn’t get as angry. “I hope things stay like this,” Eunhye finishes. “...It won’t last,” says TaeHyung. From his sigh, SeokJin senses how little TaeHyung trusts his father. He is surprised to hear that his father goes to work every day. In previous loops, he wondered if the cause for TaeHyung’s accident was an external force and went to observe his father’s workplace, but the man was not at the construction site and apparently hadn’t shown up for several days.

“I better check it out,” SeokJin decides. He calls Uncle JunHo, his father’s assistant, to ask for a favor. The two meet later in SeokJin’s bedroom. “You wanted to go on-site for practical training, right? This is the form you need,” says JunHo. He dismisses SeokJin’s thanks. “The Assemblyman seemed to be interested, too. He said he’ll be keeping an eye on things.” “Father said that?” SeokJin checks. “Make sure to use this opportunity to take a thorough look around. It’ll all be helpful to you later,” JunHo advises. (It’s helpful to know that Kim ChangJun is involved in some shady business with a construction company—this is revealed in The Notes 2.)

On 17 May, SeokJin visits the construction site. The foreman tells him that they’re busy and won’t have time to pay any special attention to him. SeokJin is glad for the lack of watchful eyes because it gives him the opportunity to observe TaeHyung’s father, Kim SungHoon. He is working silently, and SeokJin can’t see anything wrong on the surface. “Why does he get so violent at home?” he wonders. The foreman has apparently been watching too and yells at him. “Oi, you! Why aren’t you working?” Kim SungHoon points out that there isn’t any scaffolding. The foreman orders him to use a ladder instead. “You can’t get any work done being all careful.” Kim SungHoon tries to protest, but the foreman won’t hear it. “Are you going to pay for it if the schedule gets delayed, Mr. Kim? Hurry it up!” A look appears on Kim SungHoon’s face as though he’s been wronged, but he uses the ladder to begin working. SeokJin’s concern must be visible, for the foreman makes conversation with him. “Ahem. Don’t get the wrong idea. You might not be well aware of it yet, but it’s hard to always follow the rules on site. We can’t stay on schedule if we’re not flexible.” “I see…” murmurs SeokJin.

Another laborer shouts, drawing their attention: Kim SungHoon has fallen from the ladder and lies groaning on the ground. The foreman curses and rushes over, demanding how he could be so careless and shifting the blame to him for not paying attention. With a hurt back, Kim SungHoon cannot continue working. Trying to downplay the accident, the foreman gives him a few bills and advises him to stop by the hospital. TaeHyung’s father seems to have something to say, but he withers under the foreman’s stare and accepts the money in resignation. The foreman then assures SeokJin that this happens occasionally on a rough worksite and hands him money too. “You’ve worked hard, so here’s a little something for you to get a nice snack. Forget about everything that happened today. You know what I mean, right?” His brazen, selfish attitude angers SeokJin, but he smiles and leaves to follow Kim SungHoon. He is shocked to witness TaeHyung’s father purchase alcohol at a convenience store rather than go to a hospital. Worried about what will happen if he drinks while injured, SeokJin tries to call TaeHyung, but he doesn’t pick up. The episode ends with a small scene of TaeHyung finishing graffiti on a wall. He doesn’t know why he painted what he did, but the “dumb, ugly-looking graffiti” represents how he feels. He rubs the still-wet paint, yet it doesn’t go away. Picking a new color, TaeHyung sprays over the existing layers like he’s pouring and emptying out all of himself.

On 18 May, TaeHyung deals with his third rude customer of the day at the convenience store. The man demands why he must pay for a bag, even though the law has changed so they can no longer be given freely. TaeHyung either relents and gives him the bag without charge or stands firm. In the first path, he gives in, knowing that he probably won’t restrain his anger if they argue further and that he’ll have to cover the cost with his own paycheck. In the second path, the customer flings the money at him before leaving. TaeHyung clenches his fists and holds in his anger. The paths rejoin with him reflecting that this isn’t a good day. He greets the next customer and realizes that it’s SeokJin. “How come you’ve been stopping by so often these days?” TaeHyung asks while ringing up his bottled coffee. “Huh? Just. I have some things to take care of around here,” SeokJin answers. TaeHyung doesn’t know whether or not to believe him. SeokJin keeps asking how he’s doing, and it makes him a little uncomfortable. Today, SeokJin asks more meaningless questions as always, until: “How’s your father?” TaeHyung can’t stop himself from responding sharply. “Why do you ask about him?” Taken aback, SeokJin stammers, “N-No reason, really. I was just wondering if he was well… Uh… Never mind.”

A rich-looking father and son enter the store, interrupting the awkward silence. The way the father looks after his son and buys him what he wants to eat plunges TaeHyung into memories—he once felt the same as the boy about his own father. He remembers asking his dad who the baby is in the photograph we see at the beginning of the story. Kim SungHoon said it was him. “Don’t you think you look just like dad, TaeHyung?” An incoming phone call shakes TaeHyung out of his memories. The food deliverer informs him that no one is home to accept the order of hangover soup. “Huh? My father should be there…” TaeHyung confirms that the deliverer can leave the food outside the door, but he worries about his dad, who was passed out drunk and groaning in his sleep when he left for work. “SeokJin. I need to run home really quickly. Do you think you can watch the store for me?” TaeHyung leaves as soon as SeokJin gives a startled affirmative. The episode ends in SeokJin’s perspective. He’s curious and concerned about what is going on with TaeHyung, as he couldn’t overhear the phone call. Since leaving the store alone to follow TaeHyung may just create more trouble for him, SeokJin decides to stay put and look for clues.

Arriving home, TaeHyung brings the hangover soup inside and finds his father slouched in the corner. More soju bottles are lying out than when he left this morning. “Your lunch is here.” TaeHyung shakes him when there’s no response. “Wake up and eat.” Kim SungHoon mumbles something unintelligible, so TaeHyung nudges him again. His father shudders and cries out. “You bastard! I’d just gotten comfortable!” “Oh… I just wanted you to eat before the soup gets cold…” says TaeHyung. Kim SungHoon calls him a bastard for not listening. “I just told you to leave that damn thing here!” “Hah… Anyway, eat your lunch.” TaeHyung touches his shoulder again, and his father shoves him away. “The pain is killing me. Get lost, bastard!” TaeHyung yelps. The back of his neck burns from something he hit, but he doesn’t feel the pain over the rage brewing inside him. He can’t stand to look at his father for another second and kicks the door open to rush outside. “But of course. Why did I run over here to make sure that miserable geezer ate something?” he thinks bitterly. TaeHyung’s temper cools as he walks back to the store, and he remembers the pain in his neck. His fingers come away with blood when he touches the spot. He trudges onward, planning to bandage it at work. The memory of the rich father-son duo comes to mind: the man holding his son’s hand so tenderly, and the kid smiling brightly up at him. It makes TaeHyung even more miserable, and he fights to suppress the feelings that threaten to overflow.

Alone in the convenience store, SeokJin feels anxious not knowing when TaeHyung will return but decides to poke around, hoping to learn something like he did when observing NamJoon’s room at the gas station. He either looks through TaeHyung’s backpack or a full box near the register. The box is only a makeshift lost-and-found with customers’ forgotten items. Despite his discomfort at rooting through someone’s belongings, SeokJin finds the crumpled photograph of TaeHyung as a baby with his father in the bag. “He wouldn’t be carrying it around if he truly hated his father. But it wouldn’t be crumpled if he liked him, either. Is it… love and hate?” SeokJin wonders. He also finds a post-it stuck on the counter with a note left by HoSeok: “I packed this for myself but Auntie invited me over for dinner. There are two patties inside. Make sure to enjoy it and write me a full review at least one page long!” SeokJin realizes they’ve spent all this time looking out for each other. He’s glad to see the signs of HoSeok taking care of TaeHyung and TaeHyung being grateful enough to keep the note.

When TaeHyung returns, SeokJin is concerned to see blood from a cut on his neck. “Are you okay, TaeHyung? What happened to your neck?” But TaeHyung avoids looking at him and doesn’t answer, instead putting on a bandage and continuing work. SeokJin ignores a call from Uncle JunHo, deciding it’s more important to look after TaeHyung. “Are you sure you can stay here all day like this, SeokJin? Aren’t there people at home wondering where you are?” TaeHyung speaks up at that moment. SeokJin smiles sheepishly. But with the incident looming ahead on the 20th and no solutions yet to avert it, he has no choice but to stick close to him. After TaeHyung’s shift ends, SeokJin asks what he’s doing now. The red seeping through the bandage worries him. “I’m just… gonna go paint some graffiti,” says TaeHyung. He reluctantly agrees to allow SeokJin to tag along. His phone vibrates before they leave. “Sis? What’s going on? What? The emergency room? Why is Dad there? Hold on. I’ll be right there!” TaeHyung runs out. SeokJin catches up to offer him a ride, which he accepts after a moment’s hesitation.

The perspective switches to TaeHyung when they arrive at the hospital and find his sister waiting with an uneasy expression. She thinks that their father was injured at work. When she tapped him lightly to wake him up for dinner, it caused him a lot of pain. TaeHyung remembers the incident at lunchtime and wonders if he felt like that earlier, too. Eunhye notices SeokJin, and TaeHyung introduces them, noticing that her hand seems to make her uncomfortable. “Did you hurt yourself, sis? What happened to your hand?” “Oh, it’s nothing. I… tripped before we came to the hospital.” TaeHyung knows she’s lying but doesn’t argue. He pretends not to see her injuries, and she pretends not to see the one on his neck—like they always do. Eunhye voices concern about the high bill, which the hospital wants them to pay before discharging their father tomorrow. “The company will take care of it if he was injured at work,” SeokJin assures. TaeHyung finds the construction foreman’s number in his dad’s cell phone and calls him. Reporting the situation, he asks if his father’s injured back can be processed as an industrial accident. The foreman denies that they can help. “How can we cover an accident where Kim SungHoon was drunk on the job and failed to follow safety protocol?” The foreman informs him that he already gave Kim SungHoon money to see a doctor. “There’s nothing else to say, so I’m going to go. And I’m telling you—don’t try to pull anything.” TaeHyung swears when the call ends. Eunhye wonders if the foreman is mistaken because she doesn’t think their father drank that day. TaeHyung purses his lips shut instead of replying, filled with rage at the patronizing foreman and their incompetent father. He hates that he can’t say his dad isn’t the kind of person to drink on the job, and his body shakes with indescribable emotion.

“They won’t cover it as a workplace accident?” SeokJin asks, the perspective shifting to him. He knows the foreman is lying but is unsure how to help TaeHyung and his despairing sister. He could pay the hospital fee himself, but that was counterproductive when he tried it for NamJoon in an earlier loop. Noticing a text from Uncle JunHo asking where he is, SeokJin postpones his decision for later and bids TaeHyung a quick farewell. “I’m sure there’s a way to take care of all of this. Don’t worry too much. Take care of your dad. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

On 19 May, TaeHyung and his sister exit the hospital room with twin sighs. Their father called the foreman back after hearing about the first conversation and let loose, only hanging up when his supervisor agreed to speak in person at the hospital. He also demanded alcohol all night and only recently fell asleep. TaeHyung notices that Eunhye looks exhausted and suggests that they take a nap before the foreman arrives that evening. Later, the foreman arrives with some workers and a box of drinks. TaeHyung stands in the corner, not wanting to butt in since this is his father’s business. The foreman asks how Kim SungHoon is doing, advises him to rest, and then adds, “We’re here to say that you shouldn’t bring up compensation since it’s your fault you were injured.” The foreman accuses him of drinking on the job, and the coworkers Kang and Seo nervously agree. Kim SungHoon argues back about being denied the scaffolding and drops the box of drinks, a “token of their sincerity,” on the floor. While the other works avert their gaze, the foreman looks down on him and clucks his tongue. “You bastard! You call yourself a man?!” Kim SungHoon roars. The foreman bristles. “What? Bastard? Watch your mouth punk!”

Eunhye tries to intervene, pleading for her father to calm down and apologizing on his behalf. The foreman accepts her actions like it’s the obvious thing for her to do. His arrogant attitude reminds TaeHyung of how he probably deals with his underlings. “Sir. My father wasn’t drunk,” he speaks up. The foreman’s arrogant air dissipates. “What are you saying? I have witnesses here.” TaeHyung explains that his dad did not drink that day or the previous one. The foreman scoffs. “Look at this kid. Where’d you learn your manners? He probably drank on the way to work even if he didn’t at home! Who do you think you are, raising your voice like that?” TaeHyung’s hands tremble with rage at the injustice, but he has nothing to retort. Suddenly, SeokJin appears. “I also saw everything. Remember me? I was there on site for practical training that day. I watched him work and he definitely wasn’t drunk.” The foreman grows flustered as SeokJin reveals the truth of the site’s dangerous work process and makes it clear that he coerced Kim SungHoon into not following the correct procedure. He glares between SeokJin and TaeHyung. “I don’t know how you both are putting up this united front… But you think it’s going to change things? We already paid him. It’s a done deal. Understood?” Fuming, the foreman leaves with the other workers in tow. “It’s alright now, TaeHyung.” SeokJin gently taps his shoulder. TaeHyung realizes how tense he has been when he loosens his grip and sees little crescents of his fingernails cut into his palms. (His wounded palms are a recurring motif.)

The perspective shifts to SeokJin while TaeHyung stares blankly at his hands. He decides to come clean about his payment of Kim SungHoon’s hospital bill, since the problem with NamJoon was that he paid it secretly. “You can think of it as borrowing—” “Thanks, SeokJin,” TaeHyung interrupts. “I’ll pay back all of it. Thank you.” SeokJin is a little shocked by his response—it is the first time he’s heard “thank you” from TaeHyung. He hopes that this is the beginning of solving TaeHyung’s problems and bids farewell for the day. Outside the hospital, SeokJin runs into HoSeok, who correctly guesses that he came to visit TaeHyung. “How’d you know?” “I stopped by TaeHyung’s work and didn’t see him, so I called him right away,” HoSeok explains. SeokJin expects him to ask about Kim SungHoon, but instead HoSeok worries about his friend first. “Is TaeHyung alright? He must’ve been so shocked. He cares a lot about his dad…” “TaeHyung does?” SeokJin checks. “Yeah. Even though he says that he doesn’t want to go home all the time, he always makes sure his dad gets a real meal every day. Even if he just eats convenience store snacks himself.” This is new information to SeokJin, who wonders if this is why TaeHyung is determined to go home on the 20th. HoSeok seems more familiar with TaeHyung’s sincerity than anyone else. SeokJin is still braced to explain how he knew about Kim SungHoon’s injury, but HoSeok is more focused on contacting TaeHyung and continues on towards the hospital. Overcome with exhaustion as his tension ebbs, SeokJin trudges home to plan his next move.

Later on 19 May, TaeHyung helps his father walk home after he is discharged from the hospital. He is grateful that SeokJin paid the bill but even more so that he intervened to verify Kim SungHoon’s unjust treatment. “SeokJin might be a better person than I thought.” No words are exchanged as TaeHyung supports his father. His arm is thin, but the weight that presses down on him is burdensome. “It’s the weight of the wheel that I can’t escape. The weight of reality—that I’m always going to be responsible for my father. A person that I wish I could let go, but can’t, and the contradictory feelings of hating my father but wanting to protect him.” In a perspective switch, SeokJin watches at a distance with bated breath. Even though TaeHyung seems accustomed to helping his father walk, Kim SungHoon raises his voice every time he almost falls. SeokJin guesses that TaeHyung is adamant about going home on the 20th because he is worried about his father, who is just out of the hospital, but all he sees is violence against his sister when he arrives. “I’m going to stop it this time, no matter what,” he vows.

On 20 May, SeokJin stands at the bus stop and touches the graffiti for which TaeHyung was arrested the previous night. (It’s the “I’m Fine” message depicted at the same location in the Highlight Reel.) He wonders what TaeHyung felt when he painted it and feels uneasy that he may not be handling this sequence correctly. SeokJin shakes away this premature doubt. There’s one thing that has changed from the previous loop: him. He has protected Kim SungHoon after his injury, paid the hospital bill, and built up enough credibility with TaeHyung to earn his thanks. This time, he reassures himself, his words will get through to his friend. Later, SeokJin follows TaeHyung when he leaves the police station. They walk in silence, but TaeHyung does not push him away or ask why he’s following. “Thanks for walking me here, SeokJin,” he speaks up when they arrive at his house. SeokJin waits a few moments before heading inside after him, entering a familiar situation he has seen far too many times: TaeHyung lunging toward his father, who looms near Eunhye. “TaeHyung! No!” SeokJin dashes to grab his arm. “Let go!” TaeHyung snarls and flails. SeokJin holds tighter, pleading for him to calm down. TaeHyung yells and shoves him away. SeokJin slams into something and falls, pain blooming in his skull. TaeHyung spins around with an expression of shock. The voices calling SeokJin grow fainter, and his vision blurs. “Tae… Hyung…” The glass shatters, marking another failed loop and concluding the story. (This is not the first time TaeHyung has caused SeokJin grave or mortal injury during his intervention: in the Save Me webtoon, he accidentally stabbed SeokJin with the broken bottle instead of his father.)

Nightmare: Epilogue

Throughout the <I’M FINE> series, we have witnessed SeokJin’s trials and failures in the earlier time loops. These experiences culminate in the Epilogue, titled “Nightmare,” as in The Notes 1. This arc spans his efforts to save each of his friends between 11 April and 22 May rather than focusing on one or two characters. SeokJin’s decisions and their consequences here closely follow The Notes 1, so now we have a more detailed picture of his journey between the Save Me webtoon and the first book. The Epilogue fills in some gaps and provides greater depth to these events. For the sake of clearer context, I have still summarized the moments that parallel The Notes 1.

On 11 April Year 22, SeokJin opens his eyes to the familiar bedroom ceiling, the events of the previous loop replaying in his mind. Will he be able to save his friends this time? Uncertainty, horror, and the fresh pain of failure plague him, but he looks at the photo of his friends by the sea. Once, he believed that saving them would be straightforward. But while obsessing over only the problems that he could see, SeokJin lost his way and had to learn from his mistakes. The “signal fires” that helped guide him back were the times spent with his friends, the moments they began to truly understand each other, and the memories he wants to treasure. As he leaves his room, he reflects: “We’re all connected together by a single string, and we’re fated to save one another. And the person to finally put an end to all of this… has to be me.”

In his car, SeokJin encounters a scene at the school crosswalk that he always runs into around this time. He sees a downcast-looking JungKook crossing the street among a group of students. The player is given an option to get out of the car to greet him or pass him by. Regardless of the decision, SeokJin knows that he can’t let his emotions steer his actions. In a previous loop (depicted in JungKook’s arc), he brought JungKook to see the cherry blossoms blooming on the university campus. SeokJin wonders if the JungKook from that loop enjoyed it at least a little. But ultimately, it was just a day and JungKook ended up alone with nothing changed. Not wanting to repeat his past mistakes, SeokJin drives by without stopping.

Later that night, SeokJin pulls into Naeri gas station. NamJoon greets him with a now-familiar look of surprise. “Oh. SeokJin?” “It’s been a while.” SeokJin is determined to make this the last time they repeat this conversation. (As mentioned in part 1, this sequence parallels their moment at the end of the Blood Sweat & Tears Japanese version MV.) As they move to a corner of the station to continue their conversation, the perspective shifts to NamJoon. Something seems a little weird to him, and SeokJin looks like he has a lot to say, but he manages to gloss over it. NamJoon is about to invite him to the meetup with the other guys after work, but his boss yells for him to do his job. An expensive foreign car pulls up to the gas pump, and the customer drops the money on the ground when NamJoon reaches for it. “Ah, butterfingers. What are you doing? Not gonna pick that up?” the man sneers. The player is presented the choice to pick up the money or not. In both paths, NamJoon unconsciously clenches his fists. “You don’t want it?” asks the customer. The paths converge with SeokJin easily picking up the bills and handing them back to the driver. “You dropped this.” Hands shaking, NamJoon is mortified by the situation that caused SeokJin to react, yet his friend continues to stand there between him and the customer. The man demands who he is, but SeokJin advises, “You must be busy… So you should leave.” Out of steam, the customer drives off. NamJoon thanks SeokJin. “It’s nothing. What were you going to tell me earlier?” NamJoon forces his mouth to move. “Ah. I’m meeting up with TaeHyung and HoSeok today after work. Do you want to come with me?”

Back in SeokJin’s perspective, these are the words he’s been waiting for. Nerves dry his mouth, but he tries to speak naturally and inquires about the others. NamJoon doesn’t really keep in touch with them, but offers to call HoSeok, who still talks to YoonGi. SeokJin knows that YoonGi will call JungKook after hearing from HoSeok—this is how he saves JungKook tonight. His phone buzzes with a call from his father. “Oh, I’m sorry… But I need to leave.” NamJoon’s expression reflects disappointment yet understanding. “That’s too bad. Let’s hang out another time.” “Yeah. Tell the guys hello for me.” SeokJin turns back as he arrives at his car. “NamJoon. If we can get everyone together… Let’s all go to the ocean.” NamJoon looks puzzled by the suggestion. “The ocean?” SeokJin smiles in lieu of an explanation.

The third episode begins with JungKook fighting a group of thugs in a covered alley. (The date is unspecified, but this is a continuation of the night of 11 April.) They kick his stomach and spit on the ground as they walk away, a sight that reinvigorates him even though he can barely sit up. He either says something to provoke them or hurls his bag at them. Riled up, they beat him again as he laughs, vision blurring. They’re gone by the time everything comes back into focus. JungKook got what he wanted: he deliberately provoked them, and when he laughed, they called him crazy and hit him harder. He watches a breeze flatten a tuft of grass in the pavement, just like him. JungKook forces himself to laugh again because he’s afraid he may cry. Where does he go now? He feels like a ghost at home: he’s never a priority for his mom, and dealing with his stepfather is a pain. JungKook closes his eyes, hoping that when he opens them, he won’t be here.

The scene that follows appears to be a memory of 7 April, although it is not specified as such and is written in present tense. (This encounter occurs in The Notes 1 as well as episode 4 of JungKook’s story.) While wandering the streets at night, JungKook is drawn by a familiar piano tune to a music shop with broken showroom windows. He sees YoonGi, for the first time in two years, playing within and looking like he will crumble at any moment. JungKook can’t muster up the courage to follow when he leaves and instead sits at the piano. The keys feel cold like no one has touched them. By memory, he stumbles through the song that YoonGi played this night and back in the classroom hideout. YoonGi appears beside him and corrects the notes like he did in their school days.

The story cuts to YoonGi in the present, possibly in the classroom. He ignores his ringing phone partly because of his drunken stupor and partly because he doesn’t want to talk, but he finally relents and answers. HoSeok offers that NamJoon wants to hang out later. “I’m not going,” YoonGi says immediately. “Hey, don’t be like that. SeokJin’s here, too. Do you want to talk to JungKook? I called him earlier, but he didn’t pick up.” HoSeok encourages YoonGi to call instead because JungKook may pick up for him. YoonGi hangs up, thoughts complicated as he remembers a time when he watched JungKook play piano. “Looking back, that kid was my shadow. I couldn’t ignore him, even if he wasn’t speaking to me. And I kept looking out for him… because it seemed like he’d fall apart if he was ignored.” He considers leaving it be, but his fingers are already dialing.

The perspective switches again: on a rooftop overlooking Songju, JungKook grows dizzy and stumbles. Darkness grasps his ankles, and his mind empties. “I don’t want to leave anything behind. This will just be the end.” At that moment, his phone rings. He sees YoonGi’s name, and everything sharpens, as though he’s awoken from a dream. “What took you so long to pick up?” asks YoonGi. When JungKook doesn’t answer, he continues, “Everyone’s meeting up later. Do you want to go?” After a pause, JungKook says, “YoonGi. Please come get me.” (From the thug beating to the rooftop, this is how his 11 April entry plays out in The Notes 1, but it ends before their phone conversation.) Waiting for YoonGi down on the street, JungKook recalls when they all used to hang out in the classroom. “I have a place to go. People to be with. Right now, that’s enough.”

On 2 May, SeokJin sneaks into YoonGi’s workroom, which is filled with oil-soaked papers as though he intended to set it on fire. (It’s dark, so as the later part of the episode occurs in the daytime, it must be past midnight or in the early morning.) There is no foolproof way to save YoonGi since he acts unpredictably between the loops, but SeokJin has determined that YoonGi needs someone who can tie him to the world—someone whom he won’t push away. Once, NamJoon told SeokJin that JungKook still carried the photo they took at the beach. (The photo depicted in the game is the one of the boys on the wall by the sea.) While NamJoon probably relayed this to show that JungKook hasn’t forgotten about SeokJin, it stirs a different memory for him. In high school when they ditched and went to the beach, hunting for a boulder that supposedly made dreams come true, SeokJin noticed JungKook ask YoonGi an important question while their voices were drowned out by construction noise. He has now realized that both JungKook and YoonGi have the same desperation in their eyes. JungKook knows that YoonGi is like him: a person who needs a string to hold him here. Therefore, JungKook is the key to saving YoonGi.

SeokJin places his copy of the photograph next to the mirror in the workroom, hoping it will lead to saving them both. Before he can leave, footsteps grow closer. Flustered, he chooses to either explain himself honestly or hide. In both paths, YoonGi stumbles inside and collapses on the sofa, too drunk to notice that someone else is in the room. In the second path, some extra information is presented when SeokJin notices a little water dish and paper cup with breadcrumbs as he hides beside the piano. “He must’ve looked after it again.” In another loop, SeokJin saw a small, weak bird that got mistakenly trapped in the workroom. YoonGi looked after it, most likely thinking of JungKook. (This particular episode is called Small Bird, so the title may only be meaningful to players who choose this path or are familiar with the bird from The Notes 1.)

SeokJin escapes undetected while YoonGi sleeps. Later in the day, he watches the workroom from his car. The most difficult part starts now: JungKook must follow the hints SeokJin has left to save YoonGi. After staring up at the second floor for a while with an unhappy expression, JungKook seems to make up his mind and enters the building. The story cuts briefly to YoonGi’s perspective. In the workroom, the mirror shatters. (The reason is unspecified, so we are left to wonder if a confrontation unfolded like the one depicted in the Run MV and implied in The Notes 1, or if something else occurred.) Dizzy, YoonGi falters but manages to stand up. (Again, standing up from what? Possibly because JungKook hit him.) “YoonGi…” JungKook is rooted to the spot in surprise. YoonGi runs, leaving him behind. Back in his perspective, SeokJin starts the car as soon as he sees JungKook dash out of the building. He hopes that leaving “a sign” will guide JungKook to the correct motel. (In The Notes 1, it is a bloody tissue that SeokJin drops by the entrance gate because YoonGi fled his workroom with busted lips. The game episode closely follows how this scenario proceeds in Notes 1, so I’m not sure why it is so cryptic around the details implying that a fight occurred between YoonGi and JungKook.) Inside the motel (once again matching the I Need U MV), YoonGi lights the bedsheets on fire. He regrets having JungKook by his side because the people close to him get hurt. The memories of his childhood burn along with the flames: fragments of the day he arrived home and found it collapsing in a fire. YoonGi hears JungKook shouting. “I’m sure… He’ll be sad because of me. But he won’t be unhappy anymore,” he thinks. JungKook shouts for him to get up, and YoonGi finally looks at him. His last view of the room encompasses the red flames, the air wavy with heat, and JungKook’s crumpled face. The episode ends with sirens playing over a black screen.

Episode 5, “Connecting Threads,” picks up on 12 May with SeokJin preparing to set events in motion for saving his next pair of friends. At the hospital, he waits for JiMin to show up and overhears a conversation between a nurse and doctor. If SeokJin stays where he is, they notice him and postpone their discussion, but if he steps out of sight, they continue. The nurse mentions “patient Park JiMin” who has “transferred down from the 9th floor.” She reports that he keeps roaming the hallways at night and wonders if they should stop him “just in case.” “He’ll be headed back up in about three days or so. Just leave him be. If it really bothers you, check with them,” advises the doctor. SeokJin moves to his precalculated spot when they leave, planning to lead JiMin to the stairs so that he’ll run into HoSeok on his way down. In his perspective, JiMin is troubled by his stiff wrist as he waits for the elevator. A familiar voice suddenly calling his name draws him to the stairwell, but the light makes it difficult to see its owner.

The story cuts to HoSeok wrapping up a consultation with the same doctor from earlier. The doctor states that they haven’t noticed any huge issues and that he’ll be discharged soon. “Do you have any discomfort still?” “Nope, I’m fine!” HoSeok answers energetically and even strikes an exaggerated pose, feeling that he needs to. “Please take care to avoid any future collapses,” the doctor adds. This comment makes HoSeok either recall the last time he collapses or the last moment he spent with his mom. In the first memory, he collapses on the bridge as he thinks about his sick Auntie leaving him alone after she has always been at his side. In the second, he stands at the merry-go-round and wonders if his mom will be standing there when he finishes counting. “Sir… Sir? Are you alright?” The doctor’s questioning shakes HoSeok out of the past. He wants to say hello to JiMin before he leaves the hospital, but JiMin’s bed has been empty for a while. Worried, HoSeok heads to the elevator to look for him. A woman dressed in a long skirt and hat passes by with her child. “Mom!” Convinced that she’s his mother, HoSeok chases after her. He shoves past people, breathing ragged and heart pounding. Afraid to lose her, he either yells out again or goes to the stairs. The results are ultimately the same because she doesn’t respond to his shouts and disappears into the stairwell. HoSeok skips steps down the stairs in his haste. “Mom!” His foot suddenly slips, throwing his weight forward. He flails, but there’s nothing to grab onto—and suddenly, his fall is arrested by someone grabbing his arm. “HoSeok?” “JiMin? How are you here…?” JiMin looks equally surprised. HoSeok realizes it’s obvious that the woman isn’t his mom. Though he can’t remember her face anymore, he still can’t let her go. “Are you alright, HoSeok?” JiMin asks. HoSeok figures that JiMin doesn’t inquire about what he was doing or why because he already knows. “I wonder if JiMin is like me… living trapped in the past. If he’s unable to get better and move on, stuck inside the memories that bind him…” “JiMin,” HoSeok says aloud. “Let’s get out of here.”

From JiMin’s perspective now, he notices that everything about HoSeok in this moment is different from normal. “Get out of here?” JiMin echoes. Outside is unfamiliar and scary, and he knows that even if he escapes the hospital, he will still have to return some day. “JiMin, I’ll come back for you.” HoSeok leaves without waiting for an answer. Not wanting to say goodbye, JiMin follows him secretly as he’s discharged from the hospital. He stops at the line where the hallway ends up on the ninth floor, watching the bright sunlight filter in through the open door. JiMin turns away, believing that the place to which he needs to return isn’t outside but the ninth floor. “Because… I’m a patient.” The rest of episode 6 follows the events in his 15 May Year 22 entry of The Notes 1, with only minor dialogue changes. HoSeok pulls JiMin out of his hospital bed the night before he is scheduled to return to the psychiatric ward. SeokJin and NamJoon meet them in the elevator, while JungKook, TaeHyung, and YoonGi are waiting for them in the first floor lobby. A nurse finds them and sees through YoonGi’s flimsy excuse that they’re having a birthday party. Throwing snack bags and plastic bottles, they all run toward the exit. (This sequence is likely the one depicted in the Euphoria MV, although in the video it’s staged during the daytime instead of at night.) JiMin unconsciously slows as he nears the invisible boundary in the hallway, but HoSeok’s urging grants him the courage to cross the line. Passing through the door, he draws in a breath of fresh air and feels on the verge of crying.

The beginning of episode 7 follows SeokJin’s preparations to prevent TaeHyung’s incident on 20 May in the same fashion as The Notes 1. He waits at the park on the hill behind TaeHyung’s apartment building until HoSeok escorts TaeHyung home from his night at the police station. With careful timing, SeokJin calls HoSeok after he sees the two part ways and asks him to invite TaeHyung to their beach trip in two days. HoSeok turns around toward TaeHyung’s apartment.

The next sequence provides more details of the confrontation (and notably unfolds a little differently than what is depicted in the I Need U MV). TaeHyung arrives home to a familiar stale odor of mold and stench of alcohol. “Where the hell have you been all night?!” TaeHyung turns to see his father’s bloodshot eyes and his sister standing behind him, face swollen. Defiance surges through him, but the desperation in Eunhye’s eyes roots him to the spot. “TaeHyung, tell Dad you’re sorry and go to your room.” TaeHyung either apologizes, holding his anger in, or tries to go straight to his room. In both paths, Kim SungHoon yells that a beating should set him straight. He seizes TaeHyung by the collar. Something bursts and rages inside him. “What have I done wrong?! You’re the one who needs to get things straight!” His father stammers in shock, “W-what did you say?!” while his sister calls his name in warning. TaeHyung chooses to shake him off or hold still. In the first path, he shoves his father to the floor. “Why are you doing this? How long? How long do we have to keep doing this?!” In the second path, Kim SungHoon snarls that he has a lot of nerve to look him in the eye and strikes his cheek. “Why do I need a beating?” TaeHyung thinks.

The paths converge with Eunhye begging their father to stop. The voice continues thundering in TaeHyung’s head: “Why does my sister need a beating? How long are you going to do this?” “You two are a double dose of pain in my ass today!” Kim SungHoon swings at Eunhye, who has thrown herself between them, and she sways at the rough blow. The injustice of it all stokes TaeHyung’s rage. “What have we done wrong? Why do we have to live in fear like this?” Heart pounding, he notices that the cold bottle he’s somehow picked up grows warmer from the heat of his hand. He roars and charges forward. A shattering sound plays over a black screen, and someone cries, “No—! TaeHyung, stop!” TaeHyung comes to his senses. HoSeok is hugging his midsection, his sister is crying, and his father is nowhere to be seen. He wonders whose blood is on his hand. HoSeok stands there silently, looking like he has a lot to say but holding back. “I’m sorry, HoSeok. I’m okay… So you can go now,” TaeHyung says, calm voice belying his inner turmoil. “I want to cry, to scream, to kick, break, shatter everything. I want to fall apart, but I can’t do any of the things I want.” The world spins as he closes his eyes. Mind blank, TaeHyung craves NamJoon’s presence and wants to talk to him—to tell him that he almost killed his father.

The eighth and final episode, “The Pier,” closely follows the version of 22 May in The Notes 1, with the addition of SeokJin’s perspective providing greater depth to the events. The boys make it to the same beach they visited in high school. The observation platform strikes TaeHyung as familiar. As the sun sets, he remembers this all occurring in a dream, except that SeokJin climbs the platform instead of him. Atop the platform, SeokJin is fearful and full of emotions. Memories flash by of their suffering and loneliness, his failures and desire to give up as the misfortunes repeated. He is relieved that TaeHyung does not follow him. At nightfall, they head to where they’re staying. (In The Notes 1, this location is simply called their lodging, and in The Notes 2 it is referred to as a lodge by the beach that SeokJin reserved under his name. In the game, the room appears like the one in the Run MV party scenes (0’57”, 3’00”, etc.), down to the same string lights and sconces—more on this in the Additional Commentary section below.) As the others dance and laugh, SeokJin realizes that this is the first time they’ve made it this far. “It’s something I hoped so desperately for… and a day I thought would never come. We were all lonely once. We hid our own scars and lived through it alone. But it’s different now. We’re all by each other’s sides. We’ll never be alone again.” Despite these thoughts, he has a nagging feeling because he hasn’t told them the truth. SeokJin is afraid of their reactions, but this will be the only way “to really see them properly.” He announces, “I have something to say.” Only TaeHyung turns to look at him through the chaos.

TaeHyung balls up his prickling hand, wondering if this is about the dream he asked SeokJin about several days earlier. (The location of this conversation is unspecified in The Notes 1, but the game provides a flashback shot of it at the bus stop.) His frustration grows when SeokJin begins to mention high school instead. TaeHyung interrupts sharply, believing that SeokJin is still cowardly avoiding the truth. “Are you talking about when you spied for the principal in high school and told him everything we were up to? Or were you going to mention how, because of that… YoonGi got expelled?!” The mood in the room chills. “I’m sorry.” SeokJin drops his head, while the others look away or stare in surprise. But TaeHyung doesn’t want to be unhappy without knowing why, even if the truth is worse than the nightmare. “Is that all? Or are you hiding more from us?”

The perspective switches back to SeokJin. He guesses that TaeHyung is asking about the dream but can’t reveal that the tragedies he experienced were real, believing that no one else should have to suffer with that knowledge. NamJoon approaches and tries to calm TaeHyung, but TaeHyung pushes him away. “Stay out of this, NamJoon. Why does it matter to you? You’re not my brother.” (In the album Note from Her and as a flashback in The Notes 1, TaeHyung overheard NamJoon talking on the phone while they walked to their lodging. NamJoon was speaking to his parents about his younger brother being old enough to take care of himself, but TaeHyung apparently took this to heart as something about himself. It hurt and angered him deeply.) “TaeHyung, I’m sorry,” SeokJin attempts to plead with him. “Stop it, Kim TaeHyung!” NamJoon warns. TaeHyung demands again that SeokJin explain everything. The interrogation unleashes all the memories of his friends’ tragedies that he has tried to forget. SeokJin feels like his nightmares are going to become reality, and his mind goes blank as TaeHyung and NamJoon continue to argue. “I repeated so many moments of suffering… for you… Why are you doing this to me?! I only wanted to be able to laugh together.” A little flame grows within SeokJin, an indescribable feeling cresting like a wave. This is what his countless attempts have led to? “What’s so great about being together?” Shaking off NamJoon’s arm, TaeHyung yells, “Who are we to one another? We’re all alone in the end!” “Alone…” The thing SeokJin has desperately been holding onto breaks away, and the shaking in his hands now consumes his entire body.

SeokJin hits TaeHyung. He remembers TaeHyung’s sudden jump off the seaside platform—a time he thought he saved them all. “I even kept that from happening—and he says we’re all alone in the end? The hopes I had for all of us to be happy, and for us to face coming days together… It all feels like it was for nothing. I thought I left my repeating misfortunes behind me, but I now see them again, taunting me from just ahead.” This concludes the Epilogue and the <I’M FINE> series. Notably, the glass does not break, suggesting that this loop continues from this event (as it does in The Notes 1) without yet resetting.

Additional Commentary

The only point I want to touch on here is the depiction of the boys’ lodging on 22 May after their beach trip and its potential implications. In The Notes 1, this location is simply called their lodging, and in The Notes 2 it is referred to as a lodge by the beach that SeokJin reserved under his name. In the game, the room appears like the one in the Run MV party scenes (0’57”, 3’00”, etc.), down to the same string lights and sconces.

As a standalone MV set, this location felt (to me) more metaphorical than concrete. It’s introduced after NamJoon opens the door of a train’s shipping container, a little film editing trick as though it’s a world inside—and it does feel like a space away from the real world where the boys are free to let loose, revel in their youth, and be themselves. While it seemed to serve as a more glamorous substitute for NamJoon’s shipping container where they often gathered, this location also appeared to stand in for the location of JungKook and YoonGi’s confrontation (2’24”-2’55”). An altercation between them is heavily implied in SeokJin’s 2 May entry from The Notes 1, but it occurs in YoonGi’s workroom. Since Run is an MV rather than one of the short films, which always present BU events and locations more literally than their song counterparts, it doesn’t seem too unusual that these sets are condensed to one in this video. YoonGi’s workroom isn’t portrayed until Highlight Reel, so we can kind of excuse one of the earliest MVs for artistic license.

However… the inclusion of this location in the game considerably changes the circumstances! Since it is both canon and animated, the creators had the ability to design the settings as they are truly intended to appear (within the general limitations of the game’s engine and visual style). It must have been a very deliberate choice that led to the reuse of the Run MV’s set for the 22 May beach lodging. (For what it’s worth, I have always interpreted SeokJin’s and TaeHyung’s fight in the Japanese MV for Blood Sweat & Tears to represent the fallout of that night, and that is staged in a different set.)

To further complicate matters, a date has been explicitly attached to one of the scenes in Run because it is matched shot-for-shot in the BU Story trailer Map of the Soul—and it is neither 2 or 22 May.

24 July Year 22 is not reached in <I’M FINE>, but in the Notes, this is the date the boys plan to gather at NamJoon’s container to celebrate JungKook’s discharge from the hospital. So far in The Notes 1 and 2 (and various album-accompanying Notes from MotS: Persona and 7), this event has hardly manifested as the celebration it is intended to be. This particular shot maps a little better to the circumstances in Notes 2, as not all of them even show up in Notes 1. But again, this gathering occurs at the container—so what, and where, is this shot really depicting? How is it linked to the beach lodging they visit in some loops on 22 May?

BU has been in development for years now, so I believe there is intentionality behind this location’s depiction in the game, even if it raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps it is foreshadowing a very different version of 24 July in which they return again to the beach lodging. This is my best guess for now, and it’s exciting to think that there are still hints embedded in the older MVs for aspects of the plot that have yet to be fully revealed in The Notes.

What do you think? Did you notice the location parallels if you played the game, and did they inspire any new theories for you?

----------------

As mentioned above, the following “tl;dr” commentary summarizes the parenthetical notes I provided in the summaries in case you want to review them on their own.

Heart’s Distance — tl;dr commentary

In the opening cutscene, TaeHyung’s photograph of his father holding him as a baby looks similar to the one he holds at 1’48” in the HYYH On Stage: Prologue short film.

During the gathering at NamJoon’s container after everyone freed JiMin from the hospital, SeokJin asks, “How long has it been since we’ve all laughed together?” This is a reference to the recurring phrase “we can laugh when we’re together” present throughout the Notes and occasionally this game.

On 19 May, TaeHyung is arrested for vandalism while painting graffiti on the streets. The bus stop depicted in the shot is the same as the one in Highlight Reel.

In the shot in the game illustrating TaeHyung’s choice on 20 May that he “can’t take back,” he approaches his father from behind and the sound of glass occurs on a cut to black. We know from the I Need U MV and Save Me webtoon that he fatally stabs his father.

When SeokJin asks Uncle JunHo for a favor to visit a construction site for practical training, JunHo expresses that SeokJin’s father seems to be interested, too. “Make sure to use this opportunity to take a thorough look around. It’ll all be helpful to you later,” JunHo advises. It’s helpful to know that Assemblyman Kim ChangJun is involved in some shady business with a construction company—this is revealed in The Notes 2.

After the foreman leaves his father’s hospital room, TaeHyung realizes how tense he has been when he loosens his grip and sees little crescents of his fingernails cut into his palms. His wounded palms are a recurring motif.

On 20 May, SeokJin stands at the bus stop and touches the graffiti for which TaeHyung was arrested the previous night. It’s the “I’m Fine” message depicted at the same location in the Highlight Reel.

The story ends with SeokJin losing consciousness after TaeHyung shoved him away and he slammed into something, marking another failed attempt while preventing the homicide. This is not the first time TaeHyung has caused SeokJin grave or mortal injury during his intervention: in the Save Me webtoon, he accidentally stabbed SeokJin with the broken bottle instead of his father.

Nightmare: Epilogue — tl;dr commentary

SeokJin and NamJoon’s conversation when they reunite at the gas station on the night of 11 April begins with 2 familiar phrases: “Oh. SeokJin?” “It’s been a while.” As mentioned in part 1, this sequence parallels their moment at the end of the Blood Sweat & Tears Japanese version MV.

In episode 3, the scene of JungKook finding YoonGi playing piano at the music shop appears to be a memory of 7 April, although it is not explicitly stated as such. This encounter occurs in The Notes 1 as well as episode 4 of JungKook’s story.

From JungKook’s beating at the hands of thugs to the rooftop, this is how his 11 April entry plays out in The Notes 1, but it ends before his phone conversation with YoonGi.

SeokJin reflects on a time NamJoon told him that JungKook still carried the photo they took at the beach. The photo depicted in the game is the one of the boys on the wall by the sea.

Episode 4 is called “Small Bird,” yet the bird is only referenced in one of the choice’s paths (SeokJin hides behind the piano in YoonGi’s workroom). The title may be more meaningful to players who choose this path or are familiar with the bird from The Notes 1.

The game is even more cryptic than The Notes 1 about JungKook and YoonGi’s apparent altercation on 2 May in his workroom. When the perspective cuts to YoonGi, the mirror has already been shattered. The reason is unspecified, so we are left to wonder if a confrontation unfolded like the one depicted in the Run MV and implied in The Notes 1, or if something else occurred. The “sign” that SeokJin leaves to guide JungKook to the correct motel is also unspecified, but in The Notes 1, it is a bloody tissue because YoonGi fled his workroom with busted lips.

The motel room that YoonGi sets on fire in this loop once again matches the I Need U MV.

JiMin’s escape sequence from the hospital is likely the one depicted in the Euphoria MV, although in the video it’s staged during the daytime instead of at night.

TaeHyung’s confrontation with his father on 20 May unfolds a little differently than what is depicted in the I Need U MV.

Some notes/thoughts on the 22 May post-beach trip lodging are included in the Additional Commentary section above.

TaeHyung has a flashback to several days prior to 22 May when he asked SeokJin about his recurring dreams. The location of this conversation is unspecified in The Notes 1, but it’s depicted at the bus stop in the game.

TaeHyung pushes NamJoon away physically and verbally when he tries to interrupt his interrogation of SeokJin at the lodging. “Stay out of this, NamJoon. Why does it matter to you? You’re not my brother.” In the album Note from Her and as a flashback in The Notes 1, TaeHyung overheard NamJoon talking on the phone while they walked to their lodging. NamJoon was speaking to his parents about his younger brother being old enough to take care of himself, but TaeHyung apparently took this to heart as something about himself. It hurt and angered him deeply.

Notably, the glass does not break at the end of the Epilogue, suggesting that this loop continues from this event (as it does in The Notes 1) without yet resetting.

----------------

This brings us to the end of the BTS Universe Story <I’M FINE> highlights! This series turned out a little different than I originally envisioned, but I hope you found these summaries helpful and worthwhile to read. If you have any questions, important details that you felt I overlooked, or theories of your own that you would like to share, feel free to send me an ask!

For more informational storyline content, please check out the Timeline project, currently in development!

[oumakokichi]

hello! could you talk a bit more about the original (as in jp, not localization) ouma's personality and speech patterns? you've mentioned that he tends to trail off or speak more softly when it is implied he is speaking the truth, etc. and how he is not so loud/intentionally obnoxious. //btw when does he call himself a fairy? that's so cute

I got a couple of questions asking about the fairy line Ouma has, so I don’t mind sort of rolling them both into one! And I’m more than happy to talk a little more in-depth about Ouma’s speech patterns and personality in the original game, too!

Since I’ll be covering some late-game spoilers, I’ll put the bulk of this under the cut, so be careful when reading!

First off, I cannot stress how much I recommed playing ndrv3 with the Japanese voices enabled. If you’ve already played through the English dub but never experiened the original voice acting cast, I promise you won’t be disappointed. The Japanese cast are all fantastic, incredibly talented VAs who, unlike the dub, were hired specifically for these roles and not just re-casted from previous DR games.

Hiro Shimono as Ouma gives an absolutely incredible performance. The localization might still have many flaws in its translation and omission of certain lines or punctuation, but you can still very much get a feel for how Ouma’s character was intended by listening to Shimono’s performance. Re-playing the game with the Japanese voices will definitely let you hear how soft and tonally different Shimono’s performance is in places from the English dub, and compare it to the way in which many lines are written and punctuated as if Ouma’s yelling at everyone.

That isn’t to say that Shimono’s Ouma is never loud or excited: Ouma is a character whose moods and façades are all over the place, and therefore his performance requires a voice actor who can similarly change moods and intonation on a dime. Ouma is very much loud and haughty and deliberately annoying when he’s supposed to be, but his voice is also low and ominous at other points when he’s trying to be scary. And again, it’s soft and hesitant in places where he’s considering divulging some of his information, or when he’s insisting that all the things he does are for everyone’s sake, because he cares about them and doesn’t want anyone to die.

These moments feel so much more genuine in the Japanese version of the game--because they’re meant to be. As fantastic of a liar as Ouma is, it’s much easier for us, the player, to tell when he’s lying on a re-play, knowing the information from chapters 5 and 6 that we do, and looking at cues like his sprites (often his blank-faced ones) and, yes, his delivery of certain lines.

This probably sounds like me just gushing about what a fantastic voice actor Hiro Shimono is, and in part that’s exactly what it is, but I want to stress that pretty much every single voice actor in the Japanese cast is just as fantastic and that they all do their jobs incredibly well. With all that gushing out of the way, I’ll move on to talking about some of Ouma’s actual speech tics and the way he refers to other characters.

Like most things about him, Ouma’s speech patterns are sort of an interesting mix and even seem a little contradictory at times. He uses the very masculine pronoun “ore” (オレ), but he also refers to nearly everyone (with only a handful of exceptions) by their surnames and the much more childish honorific “-chan” (i.e. “Saihara-chan,” “Akamatsu-chan,” “Amami-chan,” etc.)

The use of “-chan” is very interesting. Honorifics in Japan are extremely complicated and tend to mean different things depending on who is using them. Typically, “-chan” is seen as a very feminine way to refer to someone else, commonly used in close-knit friend groups among school girls.

There are, of course, a few notable exceptions to this however: often times, middle-aged or elderly people will call a child “-chan” regardless of gender, as a way of showing they find them cute and endearing. And sometimes, people will use “-chan” to refer to other things they find cute, such as pets, or even to refer to themselves in a sort of informal, tongue-in-cheek way.

The fact that Ouma uses “-chan” as an honorific to refer to nearly everyone in the game stands out quite a lot: by and large, boys don’t use this term to refer to other boys. Using “-chan” to refer to anyone you’ve just met or don’t know very well is already somewhat frowned upon, but a boy using it to refer to other boys is especially rare. This helps set Ouma’s character up as someone who is both incredibly casual and informal with others (not to mention, you know, quite coded). Considering childishness and lightheartedness are traits Ouma values, and how much emphasis is put on him having “a very innocent, childish streak that’s hard to hate,” it makes sense then that he would talk like this.

Not counting Monokuma and the Monokubs, the only characters who Ouma doesn’t refer to with “-chan” are Gonta and Kiibo, who he simply calls by name. This also says some interesting things about his character.

Gonta is easily the character who Ouma interacts with the most often, as well as the charater he hurts the most in the end. Ouma’s choice to exclude Gonta from his usual way of calling people is, I think, a testament to how much Gonta really wanted to be friends with him, even if their friendship was never exactly on equal footing.

Meanwhile with Kiibo, I feel the choice to exclude him from his usual way of addressing others is indicative of how much Ouma tried to remind himself that Kiibo “wasn’t human,” and therefore how suspicious he found his presence in the killing game. We know Ouma suspected Kiibo and likely even had an inkling of his role as the audience proxy/camera in the game, due to how Kiibo’s picture is one of the only others set aside on his whiteboard besides Saihara’s, with the word “weird” written next to it (he also clearly guessed about the cameras after Gonta’s line in chapter 2, as we see from how he commissioned Miu for the bug-vac).

Ouma clearly enjoys teasing Kiibo a lot, and their banter reads very much like a manzai comedy duo; I feel like Ouma often tried pushing himself to remember that Kiibo “wasn’t human” on purpose in order to not get too attached to him or too distracted from his goal of ending the killing game. I don’t think Ouma’s decision to exclude Kiibo from the way that he very particularly referred to most of the rest of the group was just an accident or a coincidence.

Honorifics aside, Ouma also refers to several characters in interesting ways. He often uses “daisuki na ___-chan” (大好きな) to refer to some of the other characters, a phrase which more or less equates to “my beloved.” He uses this phrase with Saihara more than any other character of the game, but there are a few other instances where he does use it with Amami, Momota, and (if I’m remembering correctly) Kaede. Pretty much every single instance where the localization put, “because I love you” or “because you’re my favorite” whenever Ouma was talking to Saihara was usually a point where he would specifically call him “my beloved Saihara-chan.”

In chapter 4 during the scene where Ouma is alone in the parlor of the VR world, he also specifically, exclusively refers to Saihara as “suki ni natta hito” (好きになった人), literally: “the person I fell in love with.” This line was changed in the localization to, “when there’s a person I like,” which is more or less literally correct--however, the phrase “suki ni natta” is much heavier and more loaded with explicitly romantic implications than “suki” would be on its own, as it’s often used in Japanese love songs and shoujo manga love confessions.

Worth noting in my opinion is the fact that this is the exact same phrasing Maki uses to describe her romantic feelings for Momota. Since Maki’s feelings for Momota are considered canonically confirmed because of this, Ouma’s feelings should be considered equally canon, but a lot of people don’t know this because, well, it’s sort of been lost in translation.

And now, on to the fairy line! Ouma calls himself a fairy in chapter 3, when he pops up in the middle of Saihara and Korekiyo’s discussion of the katana in Korekiyo’s lab. Full of enthusiasm, he decides to touch the sword and examine it for himself; Korekiyo starts to object, but Ouma interrupts and says:

“Come on, it’s not a big deal! I’m like a fairy, so it’ll be fine!”

I’ve always really loved this line and thought it was super adorable, both as a nod to how fairies aren’t supposed to be able to touch steel in most fae mythos, as well as the fact that fairies tend to also have a love for mischief and pranks and lies. The localization apparently didn’t like it so much though, because this line is simply changed to, “Come on, would I lie to you?” instead.

One final thing I can think of as far as Ouma’s speech tics go is that his laugh in Japanese is romanized as “nishishi” instead of “neeheehee,” as this is closer to the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound horses make--but I actually don’t mind this localization change at all! “Neeheehee” definitely looks a lot closer to the word “neigh” and helps capture that horse joke in a way that I feel like western players can more easily understand.

All in all, while I still definitely feel people can like and enjoy Ouma’s character from playing the localization alone, I still stand by my opinion that listening to the original Japanese voices helps give a much better picture of how the character was intended to come across, and really shows how much depth Hiro Shimono put into his performance. He’s quoted in the official ndrv3 artbook as saying that he believes Ouma is someone who’s actually “really meek if you take away his strong wish to outwit everyone” (credit to @kaibutsushidousha for the art book translation), and I think this interpretation of Ouma really shows through in so many of his lines.

Thank you both for the really fun questions! I hope I could provide some more interesting information about Ouma and the translation!

[pepperonitimeline]

There is an interesting emphasis on timelines in Steven Universe

but like. Why?

Hypothesis: Steven Universe is made up of multiple timelines, but shown in an order that makes the events seem linear. read part 2 here!

I'm not the first person to speculate this at all. A lot of this stuff has been pointed out by @dogcopter​ @arrozbrillante​ @stevenutheories and many others on various platforms!

I just gathered the most conspicuous "evidence" into 1 post. If you’re interested in SU theory and analysis you should check out their blogs. :o) This was as short as I could make it..

And a big thank you to @love-takes-work for her podcast summaries!!! 

So, most ostensibly there’s Garnet, who can see multiple futures. In Pool Hopping she begins to call her visions timelines specifically.

Garnet: In this timeline, we do the opposite of that. Hey, you! Have a pizza!

Steven: Hey, Vidalia's house is around here. Let's bring her the last pie.

Garnet: Now, that would be nice. She must be upset that her son was taken into space by those Homeworld Gems. (referring to the events of I Am My Mom)

Steven: You mean Onion? He isn't in space. He's right over there. *points*

Garnet: Sorry, I-I must be thinking of a different timeline.

-

Garnet: My bad. I was sure we were in the pepperoni timeline.

-

Garnet: It's important to keep in mind that all these horrible things did happen to you in alternate timelines. Safety is fun.

In Steven and The Stevens:

Yeah

It was confirmed on the podcast that the Steven we see from that episode on is a different Steven than the one from episodes 1-21. In “The Fantasy of Steven Universe” Sugar explains:

"I think, early on, we knew for sure what we wanted to do was to create episodes that feel self-contained but give you a new piece of information or change the characters fundamentally. So, Steven and the Stevens, is tight but Steven does change fundamentally after having that experience. He's not the same- in THAT case he's LITERALLY not the same character..."

It’s muffled because they're all laughing but right after they say this Matt Burnett goes “He died.” 

Link to the episode

Love-takes-work also has a text summary of the episode

But something I haven't seen discussed very much is the time travel chase scene. Granted it’s very blink-and-you’ll miss it, there are some Stevens who witness the other Steven’s fighting but that don’t end up in the Sea Shrine at the end.

Way back in 2015 @stevenutheories already did the math as to how many alternate timelines may have stemmed from the time shenanigans: 3 to 5. Not counting the original one who is definitively gone. 

Technically quantum mechanics don’t work like that and those Stevens should have been Thanos’d too. I’m not going to pretend I understand physics, that is just what I’ve been told by someone who does. But then again the magic time thingy wasn’t bound by rules of real-life physics in the first place… so ??

Let’s cross-examine SATS’ accompanying KBCW post.

“At any given moment, if you asked me what I was thinking about, the answer would be one of two things: katana swords, or THE POSSIBILITY OF ALTERNATE TIMELINES RUNNING PARALLEL TO OUR OWN!

Proving the existence of these timelines can be pretty tricky, even for a seasoned paranormal investigator such as myself.  An inter-temporal incursion caused by the momentary weakening of the time-space continuum doesn’t really photograph well.  And all the cross dimensional time travelers I know don’t want to go on the record about their experiences.  Frankly, the only thing I can submit as evidence of alternate timelines is the fact that THEY ARE PROBABLY JUST SO COOL AND AWESOME THAT THEY HAVE TO BE REAL.

Think about it!  What about a universe where that asteroid missed Earth and we had DINOSAURS for pets instead of dogs?  Or a universe where someone was like “Hey, zeppelins are way cooler than planes, let’s just do that!”  Or a universe where AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF ME CAN GROW A FULL BEARD?!  What an amazing life that Ronaldo must have… in THIS stupid reality I have a really hard time getting my moustache to connect to the rest of my facial hair and it’s incredibly frustrating.”

KBCW and Ronaldo’s commentary in general are usually half-right. Like the “Polymorphic Sentient Rocks are aliens who want to hollow out the earth… to make it lighter so they can transport it back to their star system” thing.

I can't help but think the "Dinosaurs for pets instead of dogs" is a reference to the live action Super Mario Bros. movie- where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs sent them to a parallel universe instead, causing mammals to go instinct in said universe. (Don’t know about the zeppelins.)

And then, and THEN there’s Keep Beach City Safe, KBCW’s more obscure rival blog run by (most likely) Onion under the pseudonym "The Observer". Apparently he’s planted cameras all over town to record Steven’s adventures. There's also a "Recruiter" and second mystery narrator calling themselves "Marco Díez", it's a whole thing,

Assuming it’s real, here’s one of the posts I think are the most relevant.

“I have been on zero gem hunts over the years, and what i have learned over the years is: always be prepared for anything, and everything. Connie’s already knows that and this her first mission. I, wasn’t so fortunate on my first mission. It was a crisp Autumn morning, - with notes of cinnamon in the air. I was the mountains, the air temperature, humidity and level elevation levels, were perfect.

Then, I noticed the creature, it was charging me. I tried to evade the gem monster, but it just kept on coming, and coming! There was no escape! And then- Wait! I just remembered. I never been on a gem hunt! So where did I get that story from?”

This was posted on August 1st alongside Gem Hunt… and the day after the Greg The Babysitter post, which was deleted earlier this year, right after people started interacting with it again.

Being a Babysitter is hard, especially if your Greg Universe. This guy, in the picture above me. Wait did I just become self aware? Hey, I did! Haha, I always knew I was more to me than just a narrator. Actually this is the first time I thought about, Because I'm self aware baby! Woohoo, yeah! Wait, what was I talking about? Ah yes, Gregory. So this Greg guy,Has to Babysit this cool baby, because he owes her for letting him mooch off her. And Greg, is like totally irresponsible, he some how lets the baby climb a Ferris Wheel. How does that even happen? This dude is so not getting payed. And what's up with his hair!?!

So here it is, another story, told by Greg, about his past self. I wonder how many times I started a paragraph with the word so. And when he was telling this story, we got some clues that could finally tell use when all of this started. We know about the gems and what happened  thousands of years ago, but we don't know about the hems and  what happened thousands of years ago. They wee being very vague about the whole thing. Almost intentionally, well it was obsessively intentional.

?

There are subtle inconsistencies in Beach City's layout. ("The Observer" points this out, too.)

Remember Danny’s? In Bubble Buddies and Joking Victim, there’s a shop named Danny’s Salt Water Taffy.

Then in Watermelon Steven it’s gone.

As for a prop: Chaaaaps used to just be Chips

That’s from Monster Buddies, the episode right after Steven and The Stevens.

It's just as likely someone on the show simply thought the background/chips looked a little too busy or whatever. But re-doing stuff costs a lot of time and money, yknow? Neither of which is the animation industry very generous about. Did you know even props have model sheets?

Of course it could just be another brand of chips. Maybe Utz got involved somehow.

Lastly I want to highlight a quote from a Rebecca Sugar interview regarding SU ending.

“The story is continuing off screen and I do know what happens next, at least in certain timelines, for the characters,” Sugar says. “But I would have to decide how and when I’d want to dig into that, or if it’s best to give them their privacy.”

yeah so like what the fuck

[masterhandss]

Hello! Uhm… there’s something I’ve been wondering about for a long time now regarding Nicol. And I figured I may as well ask now, since S2 has started airing.

I’ve seen his wiki page. And it says and I quote: It was later revealed that his emotionless face and quiet nature is a result of extreme trauma. From a young age, people of all genders and ages would tend to do absurd things, as well as assaulting him.

I’ve been so fixated on this probably since S1 had finished, yet I haven’t really had the time to read all the light novels to know where this specifically comes from or even be sure if it’s actually true. The only thing I managed to find was a scene (I think in one of the later volumes) about Katarina pointing out this creepy guy that took Nicol’s used utensils and stared at him a lot, but she didn’t do anything about it because Sophia saw nothing wrong with that guy’s behavior and told her it was okay.

I’m not sure if the wiki was referring to that scene, or something else. And since I know that you read the light novels, I was hoping if maybe you could check that info and confirm/deny it for me. If it is true… then it really puts a whole different perspective on Nicol. People in the series have been shown to faint if Nicol smiles, but it was also mentioned how he was one of the only second year students in the student council because people would fight over him.

And to think their behavior possibly had escalated to the point of traumatizing him as a child makes me very heartbroken to think about. Especially when the wiki also mentioned how he feels very uncomfortable when he’s the center of attention… makes me wonder if the anime will even touch upon any of that.

Hello! I'm sorry if answering this one took such a long time. This one definitely caught my interest so I wanted to take my time in writing a response for this.

// trigger warning: brief mentions of assault (nothing too graphic I swear)

I'm an editor for the wiki, so I admit that I have seen that description on Nicol's page too. I don't know who wrote it (and I never bothered to edit or adjust the wording), but that doesn't really matter since it's not exactly something I can deny.

Before that I just want to make it clear first that the "assault" mentioned in the wiki is probably not sexual or physical assault, it's likely referring to a simple assault, aka any unwanted advances that is done without consent. Whether or not any advances on Nicol while he was growing up were leaning towards sexual assault or physical assault (unwanted physical contact from men and women, sexual invitations, groping etc.) has not been mentioned by the books. It used to be a very popular headcanon for the more darker and realistic depictions of the hamefura or fortune lover world to give Nicol that kind of backstory, which is why I still feel like clarifying just in case anyone might get the wrong idea.

Hamefura is a very light-hearted series so I doubt it would put Nicol is such a tough dark position. While it's played for laughs, thankfully Nicol's beauty makes him so dazzling that people can't get close to him rather than being so handsome that people would try to initiate physical contact at every opportunity lmao.

Rather than the wiki pertaining to a specific scenes, I think it might be written in hindsight instead. It could very much be referring to the guy from Volume 6 who keeps staring at Nicol and stealing his uetnsils, but I feel like it could also be referring to the possibility/likeliness of such events and advances happening regularly. Like we don't really need to be told that men and woman throw themselves at Nicol for us to know about it. I mean if its frequent enough for Nicol to be unbothered by it, then it must happen a lot (as gross as that is). Regardless, those advances can still be classified as assault (since Nicol is not a fan of it at all) and the only reason he doesn't do anything about it is because it happens so often that it might be not worth the trouble anymore. At least we do know from the StoryMe hamefura game that Nicol will act in the face of an unfavorable position if he can, so hopefully he isn't just sitting around like an animal in the zoo if he were to receive unwanted advances.

I wouldn't deny that all of these interactions hadn't traumatized Nicol though. They never really mention in the books word-for-word why Nicol is so emotionally stunted/incapable and silent, they only really mention that he doesn't talk because he doesn't want to receive any unwarranted pity. In the first hamefura anthology (whose canonicity is up for debate), they do say there that the reason why Nicol doesn't talk a lot is because people would twist his words in order to turn it around and make him sound more tragic and pitiable than he actually is. I'm no expert on what is or what isn't considered as trauma, but that sounds like a source of trauma to me. The idea of Nicol being so fed up of people misinterpreting his words and expressions in order to fit what they want to hear must have been so hard on him, to the point where he decided to just not speak at all. It can be easily link to his emotionless-ness too, since any positive reaction like a smile could be twisted to mean other things.

Realistically, having people constantly fight over you, whisper things about you behind your back, constantly ogle at you and be constantly flirted on regardless of gender sounds terrible. If that was me I'd be traumatized too. He definitely hates being in the center of attention for all the reasons previously discussed and other well-known variables; he's always in the eyes of every noble around him which makes him hate being in the spotlight (from his perspective, maybe he always feels like the spotlight is on him, like it'll just never leave. he'll always bothered by the eyes of other people even maybe when he's at home... eyes watching him with desires and expectations, haunting him even when he's alone...). It really makes you think about what kind of life Nicol had been living in without Katarina's positive influence. He would have to bear the burden alone, without being able to say a word about it because he needs to act tough for the sake of Sophia.

Like geez, Nicol is even aware that he has stalkers but isn't doing anything about because "they aren't harmful". He never even really clarified what he meant by that (at least I don't remember anyways, feel free to correct me), like is he already doing something to stop the stalker, is it happening so often that he doesn't care anymore or is he fine with it because the stalker hasn't done anything dangerous (yet)???

If you want an /objective/ answer to whether or not the wiki description was referring to the stalker man from Volume 6 or something else, that line on the wiki was added on April 27, 2020; while the JP release of Volume 6 was on March 20, 2018 vs the EN ebook release which was on June 28, 2020.

The editor is likely a JP reader, or it was just an interpretation based most-likely what-if scenarios/interpretations. That's a fun fact for ya :DD

—and since you mentioned that you haven't read all the volumes of the light novels yet, let me help you by listing chapters in the books with a Nicol POV (that I can remember, as of Volume 9)

Volume 1 Chapter 5 (Encountering Katarina) Volume 2 Chapter 4 (Remembering Katarina's Positive Influence) Volume 3 Chapter 2 (School Festival Various Vignettes - Nicol Ascart) Volume 4 Extra Chapter (The Troubles of Nicol Ascart) Volume 5 Chapter 4 (A Lady for Nicol) Volume 8 Chapter 2 (Nicol's "dream")

With this, hopefully it'll be easier for you to cross-reference if you want to look into Nicol's character on your own :DD

TLDR; the trauma and assault mentioned in the wiki is definitely real, although the extent and severity might depend on the reader('s imagination). There's no particular scene to point to as the source, explanation or example of Nicol being given uncomfortable treatment, but it's not hard to imagine given the kind of character Nicol is. He is a silent beauty who caries himself smartly and politely, which in the eyes of many carnivorous nobles is the perfect kind of prey. Whether or not he was assaulted in any way or if people's behavior towards him can be considered as assault depends on the reader, since we still have yet to get a deep dive on Nicol's life outside of his friend group.

If there's any confirmation or deconfirmation to anything I said that I have missed during my skimming on the light novels, feel free to tell me! If I got the definitions and examples of trauma and assault wrong, feel free to tell me and I'll edit this post as fast as I can!

I know this might not exactly be the response you were hoping for, but I hope it was good enough to read qwq. There's so much I could still say but I know I'll go too deep into interpretation (I kinda already did though...), which I want to avoid since the question is asking for in-canon proofs and instances.

Thank you for the ask!

[thewebcomicsreview]

Do you have a theory about what drama befell Homestuck 2, or if there was any drama at all to cause it to seemingly go down?

I had no clue, but Andrew Hussie posted his explanation on Patreon, which is a public post so I’ll just quote the whole thing here:

Homestuck^2 is going to be completed, but the Patreon will not be charging patrons anymore. The account will be frozen and no additional patrons will be accepted, but the ones currently registered are welcome to stay and receive notifications about the future of this project if the team is inclined to post any.

The plan now is to have HS^2 finished, but without a regular update schedule. Previously saved Patreon funds will be used to privately commission the team to finish the story. It will all be posted at once when it is finished, and there will be no updates until this happens. I expect that it will take a long time to finish the story. This is because I am specifically instructing the team to work slowly.

I originally agreed to let this project move forward entirely based on the presumption that it would be an enjoyable experience for the team involved. It's not like I had a burning need to release a continuation of the narrative, or a formal "sequel", which is never how I viewed this arc. The project mostly came about because I picked up on the enthusiasm the original creative group had for the idea, and I also sensed that energy was being reciprocated by the particular state of the fandom at the time. But since then I've observed it's been pretty far from an enjoyable experience for the team due to the way the members have been treated by large segments of the fandom, and this pattern appeared to surface almost immediately after the project launched.

This put me in a state of conflict about the project ever since, because I like the content quite a bit. Some have lamented that it doesn't feel much like the original series, but it was never supposed to. I've never once invited anyone to work on a Homestuck project with the hope they would perfectly clone my style or approach to making content. I feel that is neither possible nor desirable. So any time I invite anyone the only real standard I want them to meet is to bring their own voice and perspective to the work even if, or sometimes especially, this results in significant departures from the expectations for the characters fans typically have. Like pretty much everything else that's been released over the last few years, I think HS^2 has satisfied that purpose very well.

So there has been conflict between liking what's being done, not wanting to waste the work or disappoint those who enjoy it, and the chronic abusive treatment the staff has received while trying to work on this story. I admit I've been at a loss on how to handle this, so I've just let it ride for a year or so. To some extent it's part of any project like this, to put stuff out there and receive criticism, and I'm sure the team understood that. But I think there's a line where criticism crosses over into more abusive expressions, and I've observed this has happened way too often.

If it were just me making it, I don't think it would even occur to me to have a problem with it, because I'm so used to wild stuff coming at me from doing this for many years prior. I view attitudes toward me very differently than those I invite for collaboration. I've done this so long hostility toward me barely even registers. If I inexplicably log onto tumblr appearing to resemble some sort of extravagant clown, make a few shitposts, and I'm met with literally thousands upon thousands of comments about feet, it's pretty easy to laugh it off because that's exactly the type of stupid shit I expected to see. I've just always worked with those types of contentious interactions in a way that is inseparable from whatever strange performance is connected with the content I happen to be making at the time. But it's a very different situation when I see stuff directed at the people I work with.

The things I see that my co-creators and friends have to read are a lot more alarming. One major problem here is the people I work with are mostly women, many are transgender, many are people of color. So the stuff they get is especially vicious, because the people giving them shit usually target the sensitive features of their identities in ways they don't with me. And I'm not just talking about obvious stuff like calling them slurs or anything. It's more that I've noticed people have clever ways of using people's identities to bully them in less conspicuously bigoted ways. They always go a little harder, a little more critical, manufacturing ways of blaming them for things they had nothing to do with. Stuff you start noticing when you've seen way too much of it. Much of this stuff even crosses into physically threatening territory. Some people I work with get multiple threats every week, and it's just become a routine part of their lives while being involved with Homestuck. All the above treatment I'm referring to is not focused on a couple  people, it covers everyone contributing to the full range of Homestuck projects over the last several years.

And I don't think that's what contributors were signing up for, or at least, I never wanted anyone who takes on official work to feel like it's an essential cost of participation. But I've never really known what to do about this, because it's very difficult to control fandom behavior, and if you ever try to police anyone's conduct it usually just backfires. The worst offenders out there almost see it as a challenge to go harder. So usually I leave these things alone, since the only alternative is pulling the plug on certain projects. Which is essentially what I'm doing here, while taking steps to make sure it gets finished in the background, because I really don't want to see the work wasted.

My only criteria for the completion of HS^2 is that whoever is involved the rest of the way just has a good time with it, and ends up feeling like they have made a good story. If the team is happy with it, then so am I, and nothing else about it matters to me. Especially not sticking to a schedule or satisfying fandom demands, whatever those even are at this point.

Since this is a post appearing on the Patreon, I should say any reference to abusive fan behavior isn't including current patrons obviously. I can only assume anyone willing to donate to the project for this long would hold a very sincere attitude about supporting this project, which I greatly appreciate and I'm sure the HS^2 team does as well.

There's probably more to say about this, but I'll leave it at that for now. If there's anything to add later I may address it in an internal note to patrons (remember that if you want to remain a patron you will never be charged again). I'll consider ways to thank the patrons for hanging in there all this time and supporting the team. Maybe some free stuff. We all appreciate your support. —Andrew

[katyatalks]

Mob Psycho 100 Interview Translation - Character Designer Kameda Yoshimichi - Otome Visual 2017

Summary-style translation for Character Designer Yoshimichi Kameda’s 4 page interview from Otome Visual 2017, regarding elements in the creation of Mob Psycho 100 such as: what inspired this cover art, the influence of fan art in the anime’s creation, Tsubomi’s design, the process behind the package art for the DVDs, and more. Includes some genga. Under read more;

[TN: The reason why I elected to summarise this interview rather than do a full write up is because a lot of the information given gets covered in December 2016′s Animestyle010, in “The Making of Mob Psycho 100.” I typed that one out in full over on twitter but that’s a long interview, and I don’t have the time or energy to reformat it for Tumblr, but if you’re interested in a very in-depth look into how Mob Psycho 100′s anime came to be I’d really recommend checking it out. Direct quotes are given in “” here. Enjoy!]

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*~The genga illustration for Otome Visual’s cover~*

“With the recent popularity that Skating Anime has had, what’s this - a Shouwa idol collab?! It’s all in the little details in their clothing - their wrinkled shirts, white trousers, black belts - both around their waists and arms.”

*~Kameda’s comments~*

“Can you heaaaar me!! I am currently speaking directly into your braaaain!!! What I’m grateful for with this commission is I was able to design the cover in any way I’d like!! A cover is a reflection of current times, so, of course, I went for ice skating! You wouldn’t be able to find this kind of amazing content in any time period other than now! That’s what I first thought! Like, Mob Psycho 100!! If there’s not a certain Mob Psycho 100-ness present in the art then what’d be the point, so, the characters are being very serious but they’re also pretty laughable. I tried to create a piece of art from which you could hear their voices!!! What’s with it being Shouwa-esque?? Being lame is incredibly cool!!! Huh? Does that describe Mob Psycho 100?? Can’t answer that if you ask!!!! Please feel the amazing Paradise Ginga x Mob Psycho 100-ness here!!!!!!”

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Kameda describes how he wasn’t sure how best to adapt the manga into an anime format at first, since from the art he was shown he immediately knew it to be very unique - the idea of using Flash to animate the show was raised but quickly shot down

Originally, upon being asked about the show, he based his thoughts on what a web image search for Mob Psycho 100 gave him rather than having the actual manga in hand. “For the most part, the results that came back would be fanart (laughs). It’s a bit strange -  at that time, it was difficult to find art uploaded from the manga. If you could find anything, it’d just be art from the covers. So for the most part, an image search of Mob Psycho 100 would just bring you back fanart. A lot of that fanart would be… a shounen in a cool pose wearing a school uniform with smooth bobbed hair & sharp cat-like eyes, sort of like Hiei’s eyes (from Yu Yu Hakusho). Very different from the manga’s art. But when I looked at that art, I thought; this could work. Fanart is, fundamentally, ‘fans drawing what they like’, so I thought, ‘the anime having this kind of art would make the fans happy.’ Well, it didn’t work out that way, obviously. I was told the anime’s art should resemble that of the manga. (Laughs)”

He hadn’t read the manga so all he had for reference was art from volume 1 and the fanart he found online. “But I like things like spirits and urban legends, so seeing Dimple - a floating supernatural fiery ball - and being told the manga touches on the occult caused my interest to soar.”

Says that Teru is the easiest character for him to draw. “He’s overflowing with confidence, so it’s easy to put him into some cool poses. Mob and Ritsu in comparison, not so much. [...] With Reigen, he has a lot of poses that are like, he’s trying to look good. He takes a solid stance. I suppose Spirits & Such has such a shady air to it, and you have to hide that somehow, right? So, Reigen injects confidence into how he presents himself. A model-like stance.”

“The anime is faithful to the manga… ah, actually, Tsubomi-chan was changed with a ‘let’s make her more like a heroine’ conversation. So, I did so, but reading recent events in the manga I can’t picture her in her anime form (laughs). The manga’s Tsubomi isn’t much like a heroine, so I’ve found myself wondering, if we animate up until this part… just how will we approach it? The anime’s Tsubomi is so bright and sparkly, so she wouldn’t have snot hanging from her nose (vol.13 of manga), would she…? (Laughs). Perhaps we went a little too far with making her a heroine. Maybe, if we do season 2, we’ll turn her back into a normal girl (laughs). Well, Tachikawa-san is clever; I think he’ll find a way to make do with her current design.”

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Picture text: "This is Mezato's first appearance, so I decided to make her cute!! Thank you in advance!!"

Picture text: "That girl was telling me such a stupid story this morning... aidzuchi* isn't easy, you know... I'll just ignore her tomorrow..." [* sounds made to indicate that you're listening to someone speak]

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Asked about his favourite characters; “I love Mezato Ichi from the Newspaper Club. When I drew her in her character sheet in that pose where she’s holding her camera, I came to see her as being quite cute. So now I focus on her a lot; in fact, when I draw genga I sneakily choose the cuts that have her in them (laughs).”

“I also love Mob. Reigen stands out the most so your eyes naturally jump to him, but I love the balance that Mob has. His heads tall ratio... or rather, his face, and the way his body is proportioned? It makes him lovely. Ritsu is around the same height as Mob, but, how can I put this - the cuteness that Mob has, is lacking in Ritsu�� due to the latter being quite standoffish, I suppose (laughs).”

Ritsu’s hair changing through the first season is discussed, and how it is purposefully shortened during the latter half. “I paid attention to making sure his hair was long especially while he was being possessed by Dimple. So it’d resemble thorns.”

“I feel Teru-kun is the most ‘yang’ of all the characters. The rest are more ‘yin’ in nature. Because of this, it’s easy to play around with his expressions - he’s fun to draw. Speaking in terms of Dragonball, he’s kind of like Mob Psycho 100’s Vegeta (laughs).”

“In episode 9, Dimple possesses one of Claw’s security guards, right? I don’t really understand why that security guard is so popular.” Q: What do you mean? “Because he’s just some middle-aged dude (laughs). He doesn’t even appear for long…”

After discussing the huge amount of SG!Dimple commissions received: “Unlike SG!Dimple, I don’t really get asked to draw Shou-kun. With this commission I thought to myself, I /have/ to include him here, and so I added him in. The initial brief excluded him.”

Asked about moments that stuck with him; “When Teru chokes Mob in episode 5. [...] Mob’s pained expression as he’s being choked is good, but Teru-kun’s face shows us… envy, jealousy, distress, anxiety.”

“Also, the ‘super real Reigen’ sequence from episode 12. The tension between Reigen and Sakurai is funny, but the art itself has had me laughing since production. It’s funny no matter how many times I look at it!”

Kameda’s idea to have the characters make number shapes for the volume art came from him watching ‘Tonneruzu no Minasan no Okage deshita’, specifically the ‘Mojimoji-kun’ segment of the show (where they try to make numbers from their bodies)

Volume 6’s cover art was first planned to have a whole ensemble of characters, but Kameda changed his mind on this - “if we do a second season, we can leave that for volume 12 (laughs).”

Volume 4's cover was originally planned to feature only Onigawara and Gouda, but Kameda found himself wanting to include the rest of the body improvement club

Regarding the pose we see on vol 6’s package art, “My original thoughts for that cover were to have Reigen and Mob in a ‘hell wheel’ pose, like, Mob pulling Reigen’s legs and arms… but that wouldn’t be very fitting for the final volume.”

His message to the readers; “Thank you for your support! With sales, the ‘this is popular!’ message gets conveyed, and the more support you give us, then there’s no doubt we’ll be able to produce season 2 and season 3!! Season 2 relies on your support. It’s in your hands - thank you!!”

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Crossposted on twitter here.