#I’m once again trying to do stuff that’s way too advanced with some huge gaps when it comes to basics

[sableeira]

a few hours ago I was joking about how specific knowledge on technical topics can only be found on niche Chinese blogs or YouTube videos entirely in russian. It’s not a joke anymore I’m once again looking through Chinese blogs and looking at videos in Russian.

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

Soldier Boy (Part 2)

Summary: The reader spends the day with Dean getting to know him some more when she catches him in a lie and discovers one of his most dark secrets...

Masterlist

Pairing: Superhero!Dean x reader

Word Count: 2,600ish

Warnings: language, mentions of death, angst

A/N: Enjoy!

____

“So how old are you, Solider Boy?” you asked the next day as you walked around the park. 

“Thirty,” he said with a smirk.

“Solider Boy’s been around since the second world war. So. How old are you really?” you asked.

“I was eighteen when I was injected. I’ve aged very slowly. I do age, but it’s slow. They...I shouldn’t talk about this stuff,” he said, kicking at the ground with his boot. “Ah, fuck it, it’s in the news anyways.”

“The compound V?” you asked and he nodded.

“First successful try right here. I was still going through puberty so it took,” he said. “I guess. The science is very complicated they said. They just said you want to serve your country and I signed up.”

“What year were you born?”

“January 24th, 1926,” he said. You paused and he chuckled. “I know some women aren’t into older men.”

“I must seem like a child to you,” you said, walking again and crossing your arms.

“You’re twenty nine. I’m thirty. What’s such a big deal about that?” he smiled.

“You’re sweet,” you said. You dropped your hands by your sides, Dean taking one of them in his. “Old man ain’t wasting his time.”

“Keep it up, kiddo,” he laughed. You laced your fingers together with his hand and smiled as you looked at him. A flannel and t shirt. Jeans and boots. A baseball cap on his head. He looked so ordinary and yet he was the first superhero in existence. “I’m sure you’re wondering if I ever had a family.”

“A bit. It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” you said. 

“No, I want to. I don’t talk to anyone anymore. Aside from the people at Vought to try and get in The Seven but that’s like beating a dead horse at this point,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently I’m too similar in the market sector as Homelander. Go ‘merica and color scheme and that shit. I didn’t ask to be the leader or anything. I just...want to get off the kiddie squad, go do real shit out there, help people, not the stupid stuff I do now.”

“Maybe that’s why you don’t fit on The Seven. You want to help people, you don’t care about the photo op,” you said.

“I’m gonna keep trying,” he said. “But to answer your other question you didn’t ask, no, I never had a family. I had parents and a brother but they’ve all passed away. All my friends are gone. It never seemed right to love a girl and have a family and watch them all grow old and...honestly I didn’t want to watch my children grow older than me and die. I can’t imagine anything worse than outliving them.”

“You’re a good man, Dean.”

“I had the occasional acquaintance, don’t get me wrong. But it was always casual, no titles, nothing formal.”

“Is this casual?” you asked. He shook his head and you bumped his shoulder. “What’s different this time?”

“A chemical made me this way. Maybe a chemical can unmake me this way. We are so advanced now compared to back then. Maybe I can age normally with some other combination. Maybe I’m stuck like this forever. I just know that the numb pit inside of me woke the fuck up when I met you and it has been quiet for a very, very long time.”

“My mom’s quiet a bit older than my dad. Age gaps don’t scare me,” you said. He chuckled and you held onto his arm. “You don’t sparkle like the twilight guy though right?”

“Oh my God, no,” he laughed. “No sparkles here. I do make sparks when bullets bounce off of me though.”

“Well now you’re just bragging,” you said. You rested your head on his arm, thinking back to a movie you used to watch as a kid, Solider Boy the lead in the thing. “Dean.”

“Hm?”

“Why did you just lie about not having a family?” you asked, pulling away from him. You knew you could have let it go, should have let it go for the sake of the mission but damn you were pissed off at him for lying to you. You crossed your arms and he frowned, going over to a nearby bench. You sat down next to him, Solider Boy rubbing his hands together. “You were in this movie my brother loved so I watched it all the time. He was a huge fan and he would never shut up about you. I never paid much attention but I remember. You had a wife and kids once.”

“You’re gonna leave after I tell you this part,” he said, a sad smile on his face.

“I’m gonna leave if you don’t tell me the truth right now. You will never see my face again. You promised you would not lie to me. Out with it Dean.”

“I wasn’t always a good person. It’s very...difficult to stay good when there’s so much bad around you. When there’s no consequences.”

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

“My son and daughter died hating me, thinking I was a monster. They died because of me. That was the breaking point for me. I walked away after that, I started over. I’d turned into this thing I didn’t recognize. I became Soldier Boy. Dean Winchester...he died back in that war. Not until the nineties did I realize what had happened to me. So I left. Went away from the world. Brought Dean back to life and Soldier Boy came back but different. Good this time. Greed, corruption. It’s not happening this time. Then you said...you made that comment about me being naive, that I’d turn eventually into an asshole supe like the rest of them. I’m terrified of that happening to me again. Maybe that’s why I like you, cause you’ll remind me not to be a monster again.”

“Why do you call yourself a monster?” you asked quietly.

“The first time I killed someone, I was mortified. The last time I did it, I laughed. It made me happy. I hurt him before I did it even. I stopped caring about people. My wife wanted a divorce. I thought she was hot, she fit my image. I told her I didn’t want one so she took some pills and told me she’d rather die than live with the devil. My kids were young adults, late twenties. I snapped at them when they blamed me for their mother’s death. My son hit me so I pushed him and he hit his head. My daughter ran out, afraid of me and was hit by a car. They died because I didn’t want to lose my image. I wasn’t even that upset at first. I thought a widow superhero, that’ll boost my numbers.”

“If that didn’t…” you said, Dean running his hands over his thighs. “What made you change?”

“I found a drawing my daughter had made me when she was small,” he said. He took out his wallet and unfolded a laminated sheet of paper holding it out to you. It was done in crayon, a few stick figures with one of them wearing a superhero outfit and the word “daddy” written above it. “She loved me once. I ripped it away from her. I found that cleaning out the house and I realized what I’d done. I’m worse than any bad guy there ever was for doing that to them. I stopped caring. When you stop caring is when you lose those bits of your soul. They break off until there’s nothing left. I am a monster, Y/N. Nothing I ever do can make up for it and save whatever shattered pieces are in there. But I owe it to my kids to be good and stay good.”

You handed the sheet back and he tucked it away, his wallet going in his pocket as he stared out at the trees across the path. 

“I understand if you would no longer like to see or speak to me again. Or if you want to slap me in the face. That’s also acceptable,” he said.

“What year was all of this?” you asked.

“They died in ‘92. Then I ran away to Kansas, worked as a farmhand for a while,” he said. He rubbed his palm and stared down at his lap. “Just...be careful at night and try to stop walking down alleys for me, okay?”

“Why are you saying that?”

“I’m never going to see you again after you get up from this bench.”

You stood up and he let out a sigh. You took a step to your left and sat down closer to him, turning your head as Dean looked so horribly confused at you. You couldn’t walk away. It wasn’t an option. But while you knew you couldn’t walk because of the mission Butcher had you on, you didn’t want to. There was so much self-hate inside of Dean he hid well and part of you ached that he considered himself sub-human.

“Y/N, what are you doing?”

“Dean. What happened to your family was horrible but they were accidents. Your daughter, your son. Your wife, did she even let it sink in for you before she did that? If I was married to someone and they suddenly asked for a divorce my gut reaction would probably be no too. I’m not saying you didn’t play a part but those were her actions that trickled down and affected the rest of you. Letting yourself become corrupted means you’re human. We all make fucking mistakes. Yours are a little big, I admit that. But you try to make up for it. All you can do after the fact is try and you’re doing that. There’s a soul in there Dean. If there wasn’t this wouldn’t be eating you alive. Cut yourself a break. I gotta process everything you said but I’m not walking away. Promise you will never lie to me again and I can promise you that I won’t judge you, no matter what you’ve done.”

“I’ve been around 95 years and I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said. “That’s a good thing. I will never lie to you again. I swear. I’m sorry. I was...frightened of telling you who I was deep down. I like you. I’ve never felt like this before. It’s the first bit of happiness I’ve felt in a long time and I don’t want it to go away just yet.”

“It’s okay that you were scared. Maybe on our third date we can have a less intense conversation. We can talk about how you’re older than sliced bread,” you teased. 

“You youngin’s don’t know how good you got it,” he chuckled. You took his hand into your lap and he smiled. “Not a monster to you?”

“No. Just be a good guy and I’ll be happy,” you said. You leaned over and kissed his cheek, Dean looking you up and down.

“I wish I knew you when I was a dumb kid that let them shove that stuff in me. I never would have said yes if I had a girl back home.”

“Well, from now on, maybe just ask if you think I’d be proud of what you were doing. If the anwer’s no, maybe don’t do it,” you said.

“I’m gonna keep that one,” he said. “Also did you subtly drop that I’m getting another date despite all of that?”

“You told me the truth, even though it was hard. That’s why I like you too,” you said. “Plus you’re really old so you must have like, sex down to perfection by this point.”

“Gonna blow your fucking mind,” he teased. “Eventually. I know things are different nowadays but…you’re special. You’re not a hookup.”

“When you’re ready, you let me know and we’ll go from there, okay?” He nodded and you gave him a hug, Dean hesitant at first but he quickly relaxed into it. “You alright?”

“Been a long time since I had a hug is all.”

“You need one, just come to me,” you said. You sat back and he smiled. “So. Let’s go do something fun. You look like you could use it.”

“Night,” murmured Dean as he kissed you at your doorstep that evening.

“Night,” you said, not moving away from him just yet. His ears perked up and he forced himself away. “Trouble?”

“Yeah. Nothing major. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

“Bye Dean,” you said, watching him take off running far faster than any human man could. You smiled as you locked up, a loud thud coming from your kitchen. You unlocked the door and looked around. “Hello?”

“For such a nice house you have an incredibly small kitchen,” said Butcher as he walked out with the bottle of your nicest bourbon.

“Oh come on, that was a housewarming present,” you said.

“I swipe you some more,” he said, taking a long swig. “How’s it going?”

“Good. We got close today but Butcher you seriously can not come back here again. Dean was this close to coming inside tonight.”

“Dean. I thought he was Solider Boy.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You want to wind up like his last broad did? You give him the puppy dog eyes and then we make a move,” he said.

“I’m starting to think we might get further with sugar over spice. Billy he wants to make up for his past. If he gets into The Seven he could be a serious asset.”

“Are you going soft on me?” he asked, an edge in his voice. 

“Let me work him the way I know best. Trust me,” you said.

“Don’t forget what this is for. You call when you’re ready,” he said. “Don’t take too long.”

He left out the back and you sighed, running your hands over your face. Sure, Dean had done some bad things in the past but who hadn’t? He wasn’t playing you, he had no reason to. The part of you that wanted revenge was still there but he didn’t cause your brother to die, not really. He was simply a prime target at the moment.

You swallowed and went to the kitchen, taking the bottle of alcohol to the family room. You sat on the couch and took a swig, letting it burn your throat.

You didn’t want him to get hurt. You liked him. A lot. Maybe you could convince him to go away, be someplace safer. Your head turned when you got a text, the alert saying it was from Dean and him asking you if you wanted to get out of the city and go hiking tomorrow.

Maybe that’d be a good time to tell him the truth. He was bound to find out eventually and if he got mad, at least you’d be the only one in danger. Billy’s voice was at the back of your head but you ignored it. He’d been angry for too long, couldn’t see the good in people anymore. Dean wasn’t what you thought he was at first. He was good deep down.

You’d tell Solider Boy the truth tomorrow and hoped you lived to see the next day.

______

A/N: Read the Final Part here!

[popculturebuffet]

Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: “Morpholomew” (American Dragon Long): Stop Trying to Make Am Drag a Thing (Commisson Done For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a brand new retrospective/story arc/thing from yours truly, comissoned directly by WeirdKev27. If you’d like to comission your own review or set of reviews like this one, it’s 5 bucks. Just contact me via my ask box or direct messages on this very blog or my discord technicolormuk#6550.

With Shadow Into Light in the books, Kev decided he wanted to comission something not duck related and a bit smaller as a buffer before the next big arc, ALL of three arcs from season 2 of Ducktales, and decided to go with something he suggested to be a while back as a possible future retrospective: The Lilo and Stitch Crossover episodes! 

That’s right for the next three weeks, with TWO reviews this week since I had a spot open up and Kev paid for this one in full and way in advance, we’ll be taking a trip to Hawaii to visit everyone’s faviorte little girl, her best friend/pet/killing machine as they try to find homes for his 625 cousins. 

I loved Lilo and Stitch when I was a kid: Disney admitely got their hooks in me on that one with their cool prequel comics in disney adventures. These comics set up the movie, showing Jumba creating Stitch and the events leading up to both getting captured. The movie did not disapoint with cool character designs, a drop dead gorgeous recreation of Hawaii, and a really heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartpumping story of loss, family, and ving rahmes voicing one of the few heroic child services workers i’ve seen in a medium, a refreshing change of pace. The film is a masterpiece and I really do need to watch it again sometime. 

Given the series was a huge hit and that thsi was before the big lull in the late 2000′s and early 2010′s where Disney refused to make any tv shows based on their movies, a series followed, given a lead in by the direct to video movie Stitch.

The movie set up the basic premise; 624 capsules containing Jumba’s previous experiments, cousins as Stitch calls them, ended up raining over Kauai, awakening when dropped into water or any other liquid. Lilo and Stitch, with help from Jumba, his live in boyfriend Pleakley, her tought but fair sister Nani, and her boyfriend David, who dosen’t show up as much as i’d like but is my boy so he gets a mention here. But anyways our heroes try to reform the various engines of distructoin who all have unique powers and find them their one place they truly belong. 

So yes the show was a Mons-type show clearly captalizing off pokemon.. but the slice of life setting as opposed to the shonen style of most shows following in pokemon’s wake, gave it it’s own unique feel: while our heroes did fight, it was more about shenanigans, adventures and what not with these unique creatures and the purpose is very heartflet: Lilo simply wants to give these guys the same kind of love and support she’s given Stitch and a chance to do good. 

Opposing them is Gantu, the shark bounty hunter from the first film who, now out of a job, is working for Dr. Hamstervile, an imprisoned sceintest and a character I really don’t like that much as he’s not funny or a genuine threat or both and feels like a waste of time. Thankfully he’s not the focus and Gantu is instead partnered with 625, my faviorite Lilo and Stitch character. 625, as the name suggests, is stitch’s immediate prototype.. but unlike Stitch is too lazy and peaceful to be a real threat and isn’t even really a villian despite being on Gantu’s side. He’s busy making samwitches, his calling to the point when he gets a name in the finale movie it’s naturally Ruben, and snarking at gantu. He’s sadly not in this one but hopefully it’s JUST this one. 

As you can tell I liked this show a LOT at the time. I haven’t watched it since, mostly because disney scarely replayed it after it’s run, but it was vibrant, fun and intresting and a nicely laidback and creative take. The fact I came into the franchise with the comics and thus 625, who was introduced there in fact, and had a hunger to know more about the other experiments certainly helped. It was great fun. 

But while I grew up with the show and the four shows it teamed up with, i’ve never seen these episodes before these reviews. I wondered why for years as I caught the tail end of the kim possible one and saw images ocasionally, but never saw them. 

Turns out it’s because in general Season 2 got screwed over. While Season 1 was pushed out the door fast and aired at a rapid pace Season 2.. was portioned out over several years, and the Recess crossover one, the last one aired and the last one i’ll be covering never even got to Disney channel, only airing on ABC kids, DIsney’s saturday morning block at the time I rarely watched. I did watch it’s predecessor one saturday morning though. Good stuff. 

Since I couldn’t find any making of stuff for why these episodes happened, my best guess is DIsney wanted some cross promotion, and the shows used were chosen because they were the most popular at the time and honestly all 4 represent some of disney’s best, with Recess being in heavy reruns at the time, hence i’ts conclusion despite the show being finished before Lilo And Stitch the movie came out, let alone the series. 

So yeah i’m taking this ride for the first time.. but I was happy to. While Kev pays for a lot of my work, I still have to accept the idea.. and this was a great one. It allows me to cover 5 amazing series and gage how much people would want to see reviews of said series on this blog in one fell swoop.

So to kick us off we have American Dragon: Jake Long, a series I waited forever to come to Disney + as I loved it at the time, badly need to rewatch it (Been busy ), and find it genuinely great: It’s a great teen superhero story about the magical protector of new york, with a charming lead, a great setting and horrifcally great villians in the violently racist magic creature hunting huntsclan.. and their top agent who happens to be jake’s love intrest Rose. It’s really excellent and i’m glad it’s now widely avaliable for all to see. I will say ahead that all four shows in this crossover arc are excellent, and were fine choices for this. 

So what happens when an action comedy about a hip hop teenage dragon meets a slice of life show about aliens? Find out under the cut. 

So we open at a fancy hotel where Lilo’s bringing lunch to her sister Nani when she runs into.. Keoni Jameson. 

The second I remembered this kid all the hate just came flooding back, coursing through my veigns. Just pure liquid hatred for this little perosnalitiless little punk. Keoni is Lilo’s crush and local “stupid white audience stand in”. He has no real personality other than “generic cool kid” and “likes skating”, and just sucks the air out of the room anytime he’s in an episode. Keoni is part of a recurring problem in cartoons across the ages, one that’s slowly going away: the bland love intrest. Intorducing a character whose only traits are being cool for the lead to fawn over with usually no intent of either getting the two togehter or just ending it. IT’s annoying, it was in a good chunk of my childhood, I wish it’d stop. I cannot tell you how many shows used this trope. There were exceptions, American Dragon Jake Long actually used it well by not only making Rose a fleshed out character..  but making her jake’s nemisis in their other lives, and thus making things increidbly difficult on both once the truth comes out, with Jake grappling with if he can trust her or not and Rose grappling with the slow relization eveyrthing she was taught her whole life was wrong.

And again I have seen GOOD storylines using this as a tool: Dipper and Wendy ended with her having been aware teh whole time, but simply not knowing how to let him down given the age gap, and Regular Show rebounded the best from it: it turned the stop and start relatoinshpi of Mordecai and Margret’s relationship into a character flaw for him, openly explored it.. and ended up having him work past it and actually date her for a bit. Before she moved away, he got an even better love interest, then they destoryed the relationship in the worst way posisble and I wil lbe getting to that at some point. Some point. 

So yeah even at the time it was done better, hindsight haas only made it worse and it made watching the first few minutes tough because I had to keep pasuing because I hate him so damn much. He just adds NOTHING to the show and is a blank yanwing void from which no good came out of and I was terrified he’d be in the rest of the episode. Thankfully while he drives the plot he’s only in this scene.. but it’s still one more scene than both 625 and Pleakly got. yeah both are missing, as is nani. 

I did uncover one fun fact that made things a bit easier though: The crew ALSO hated Keoni. No really. Disney forced the character on them as they wanted an audience surrogate, and this abomination is what popped out. They DID NOT want him here and likely only used him as mcuh as they did because Disney forced it on them. And Disney would NOT learn from this as Star Vs got saddled with Alphonso and Ferguson soley because of network mandate. The two aren’t TERRIBLE characters but they aren’t great and feel as tacked on as they were. And part of this does fall on the crew: you CAN twist a stupid mandate like this to work well: Joe Murray was asked to add “A female character with a hook”, as in some sort of dumb gimmick to Rocko. He used those words, meant to create a superfical girl power cardboard cutout.. and created the wonderful Dr. Hutchenson, a bright cheery doctor, the series best sidecharacter.. and someone with a hook hand. But I won’t go too hard on them: they probably didn’t have as much room to manuver and the fact Keoni was sitll being shoved into episodes in season 2 tells me they likely had a set number of episodes he had to show up. I’m suprised they didn’t demand they have characters ask “Where’s Keonie?” any time he wasn’t in an episode. He was unecessary and it comes across with a massive chunk of unforutnate implications: that they didn’t think a series with a mostly hawaiann cast would work, that they wanted at least one other “nice” white character to offset myrtle instead of having the only major white character be a bully and antagonist, and that they thought tehir mostly white audience coudln’t enjoy a series without a white character, which as someone who was in the target demo at the time, I call bullshit on. As I said I hated him then, I hate him now and his involvement is the worst aspect of this episode. 

So after Lilo fawns over him for a bit we find out this chonk of wood’s purpose in the episode: to set up the plot. There’s a massive Skate Competition coming to town with the prize being a really cool skateboard.  This plot point itself.. I don’t mind. Jake is a skater, it’s part of his character and one of the things he loves doing in what minsicule spare time he has. And while it was a common trope at the time having a character skateboard really dosen’t harm most works. We’ve gotten great characters like Jake, Jackie Lynn Thomas, Branwen and Ronnie Anne Santiago out of it, and it feels like natural parts of the character, and frankly An Extremley Goofy Movie wouldn’t be NEARLY as awesome without having skateboarding bizzarley attached to the plot via the college x-games. Granted somtimes you get Rocket Power out of the deal but that’s the price you pay for the good stuff. I only regret it’s involved because Keoni has to be there and I had to pause multiple times to get through his scene. He’s just a sampler platter of terrible decisions made in 2000′s cartoons and he irritates me more than this guy. 

And anyone whose read my Loud House reviews can tell you that is a high bar to clear. 

So naturally Lilo wants to enter the Hawiann X-Games to get the board for Keoni. Though I will give the writers credit for having Stitch voice their thoughts and the audiences thoughts by having him take Keoni’s picture and throw it in the garbage. Where he belongs. 

Lilo’s not great at it as they practice.. and said practice naturally ends up waking up a new experiment, 316.. who i’m just going to go ahead and call Morpholomew. Stitch eventually catches him though like many of the experiments he’s not actively malevelolent and is easy enough to get home. 

Jumba gets to his schitck of breaking down what the experiment of the week does: In this case Morpholomew is  a shapeshifter though he has a VERY intresting twist on those powers: while he can naturally morph himself into anything he’s seen or has a picture of, he can do the same to anyone he touches. It dosen’t effect their voices, but otherwise it’s a perfect recreation. 

So Lilo instead of finding him a home right away.. decides to wait until after the compettition because we need him for the plot. 

So at the Skateboard Competittion Lilo tries to enter, but finds she’s too young.. but since she has a picture of Keoni, which is a nice way to use her photo hobby from the movie for plot reasons and thus dosen’t feel like an ass pull. Why Keoni’s not in town to skate is as his dad left because it’d be too crowded.. even though the event is at the resort he owns. 

So while Lilo commits identtity theft, our guest star appears. He’s cool, he’s hot like a frozen son, he’s young and fast he’s the chosen one, people i’m not braggin, i’ts the American Dragon. Jake is here for two reasons: the first is that Grandpa Long got reports of magical creatures out in the open, so naturally they need to look into that. It’s a clever way to get him, along with Grandpa, Fu, Trixie and Spud, over to Hawaii. The Dragon Council would defintely be suspcious hearing about this, and my guess to why they hadn’t sent another dragon over is they simply dont’ have one on the islands. As for why the Huntsclan didn’t get involved in any way, it’s simply too public for them.  With the magical community in new york, they don’t have to worry about exposure because neither side wants it, so neither side can out the other. Here with a bunch of creatures out in the open it runs the risk of the Hunstclan being dragged into the light.. and given the populace dosne’t care about the “magical creatures” alongside them, it would make them look like the monsters they are. 

Spud and Trixie tagging along also makes sense besides “they needed them for the plot”: While they’d obviously want to come to Hawaii, the skate competition is likely Jake’s cover for why he’s there, as well as one for why it’s just him and grandpa going with a couple of his friends so they don’t have to deal with manuvering around jake’s dad. That sad them never TELLING jake’s Dad is it’s own can of worms as it feels cruel, made things harder for jake and there was no real reason not to. At worst he’d want Jake to stop for his own saftey but given ther’es an active threat in  the huntsclan for the first season and a half, NOT helping people would be the right thing and I feel he’s a sensible enough man to understand eventually. 

And it’s stuff like this that already makes this crossover really work for me: they don’t really have to strain to get Jake over there or tell the audience heavily, the blanks fill in themslves. Or I am but that’s because it’s my job and I love doin it. 

So everyone goes off to their corners; Jake to do a few practice runs, Foo Dog to bet on his friend because of course, Trixie and Spud to go to the beach (even though Spud’s terrified of sharks so I question why Trixie needs him for this), and in a delightfully adorable subplot, finds a lady to woo: local fruit stand vendoer and crankly old lady Mrs. Hasagawa. 

I am here for this subplot: While Grandpa not focusing on the mission is weird for him that’s the entire point.. and their just really cute together. He’s smitten with her entirely because he sees her chewing out one of the people running the contest for making her sign too small. And he performs one hell of a romantic gesture by, while everyone’s back is turned, using his dragon fire to make an add for her on the skate ramp itself, and they have a lovely montage of their time together.. which also weirdly includes grandpa using his dragon fire on stage inf ront of everyone which makes no sense for his charcter but is so cute and does feature david I really don’t care. The writers of Lilo and Stitch probably weren’t deeply familiar with the show and likely just wanted a fun gag. Could be wrong there but it’s cute. He continues to act grossly out of character by trying to avoid going home at the end.. but again I find it simply because he’s in love, they have genuine chemstiry and I like to think they stayed in touch and he retired out there at some point once Jake was old enough to handle things himself. This may not be a ship I expected to support going in but I will die for it going out. 

So back to the main plot, Lilo uses Keoni’s body to imitate him which... she’s only loosely called out on and realizes is bad by the end only because she gets stuck in another body. And that’s not even getting into the fact she BREAKS UP WITH KEONI’S GIRLFRIEND. Yes really.. she just does that to get her out of the way. She comes around and realizes she was wrong and tries to fix it which would be fine.. if hte episode didn’t try to cop it out by revealing “Oh she’s not his girlfriend, she’s just someone who keeps telling people that”. It just feels lazy and dumb and a way to keep Lilo’s crush on Keoni for reasons I DO. NOT. GET. But the identity theft is just brushed aside by everyone: Keoni never finds out, and Jake just brushes it off. The real issue is more her trying to bribe keoni into likng her which while something kids need to learn is not the only thing she did wrong here. It feels like they didn’t think all the implications out here and it hampers the episode

Speaking of which as Gantu captures Jake, he sees him transform into dragon mode and assumes he’s the experiment, Jake’s charactization is pretty shallow.  And why yes it DOES feel weird writing sentences about a character with the same name thank you for asking. I wasn’t expecting a deep character piece or anything: This is a guest spot, the writers here are not the same normal ones for American Dragon. That’s fine. The problem.. is that they clearly did not get Jake. Grandpa being partly out of character is half the joke, Trixie actually gets a really nice moment towards the end, and Spud.. is eh. But out of them Jake just feels like a basic character description: He likes hip hop, he likes skateboards, he calls himself Am Drag despite that sounding like a good name for a drag act but a terrible name to shorten your title, he fights.. that’s it. 

While jake is all of that in the main series, he’s also a kind young man who while sometimes irresponsible does the right thing when the chips are down.  He’s someone weighed down by a responsiblity he didn’t ask for, often makes his life more difficult and often finds himself in trouble because his mother and grandfather won’t bother to tell his dad he’s a dragon. Yes that part still bothers me, and I don’t see why we couldn’t just have a superhero show where both parents know. But regardless this just dosen’t feel like Jake , like they just watched the intro and that was it. Jake feels more like a plot device in his own crossover. 

That being said there is some good stuff: The minute Jake realizes some Sci Fi stuff is going on instead of hte normal magic stuff he tells him “The am drag’s show isn’t about sci fi” a nice meta bit and then breaks out. Meanwhile Lilo takes on his form.. and ends up stuck after badly botching her run again, as Gantu finds the real shapeshifter. 

We get the best stretch of the episode from here though: Lilo awkardly tries to play jake and like jake we get a nice meta nod to how diffrent their show is as she’s worried about his belief in magical creatures.. and is startled out of her charade when Foo Dog talks, a really nice bit especially since it’s tame compared to the weirdness he deals with. Spud and Trixie have questions... only for Jake to show up and his agressive behavior leads to the best bit of the episode: Jake Vs Stitch. The catlyst is understandable: jake has no idea why Lilo’s taken his identity and Sttich is just protecting his best friend from harm. The animation is fluid, the fight is fun and quick and uses both’s powers stellarl. Whle “two heroes get into a misunderstanding and then fight” is a well worn cliche at this point, it’s moments like this that show why: you get to see two heroes who in this case never have interacted before or sense, duke it out, why each is special and it’s fun to watch. 

Lilo breaks it up, and admits to the whole thing.. including the whole give Keani the board stuff. While Jake and Spud, being awkard with girls and a loveable moron don’t see the problem with that Trixie gets a moment to shine. As far as I can remember she really didn’t get much on the show proper so it was a nice suprise to see her mentor lilo her, telling her trying to give someone gifts to love you is not okay, she should just be herself all that good stuff. It’s a nice character stuff and tha’ts the kind of character interaction this episode needed more of. 

With the misunderstandings washed away our heroes team up and storm gantu’s ship leading to another great sequence as Stitch rides on Jake’s back while the two keep him busy and Lilo gets turned back, Trixie complimenting her dress “Thanks I have 10 just like it at home”. It’s such a sweet and genuine moment” They head back out and gantu semeingly grabs morpholmew from where they hide.. only to find out when he gets back it’s spud, our adorable little blob monster transforming Gantu into a bunny and our heroes leaving. How does Gantu get out of being a bunny?

But it’s a nice enough gag. So we end the episode. We get another nice gag as grandpa had himself and his lady transformed to try and avoid going home, and Jake is fine with having lost out on the board what matters is he made a friend. Sadly we did not get a followup in ADJL., but spud does name our experiment, Morpholomew. 

We end on Morph getting his home: a costume shop where he gets paid in fried chicken, he was shown to enjoy it throughtout the episode and changes people into things. It’s a nice little button to the episode and one of the funnest parts of the show was figuring out where the experiment would end up at the end. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a really mixed bag. There is some good character interactions, two tremendous fight scens and Trixie gets a chance to shine for once if only for a scene or two, and the clashing genres end up making for some great jokes> The shows do go well together as while Lilo and Stitch is more laid back both have slice of life elements. And hasgawa X Grandpa is just oto cute for words. 

The episode is held back by Jake and Lilo’s lackluster characterizatons: Jake is simply the theme song as a character, which in theory is awesome because that theme song slaps but in practice is pretty lame, and Lilo is selfish and irresponsible even for her in a way that dosen’t feel at all convincing. It drags down what’s otherwise a fun crossover and Morpholomew is truly a unique and wonderful experiment. Still if you like either show it’s worth a watch even if you have to suffer through Keoni for it. It’s worth it.. I just wish it was better and hopefully the next 3 will keep the good parts but take out the bad. Granted this was produced last so I could be wrong, but here’s hoping.  Oh this episode also featured Miranda Cosgrove as the girl who claims to be Keoni’s girlfriend. This is also Keoni’s last episode meaning I do NOT have to worry about accidently running into him. Thank fucking christ. 

Next Time On American Dragon Jake Long: Jake’s dad drags him and his friends on a camping trip and Jake ends up encountering the Jersey Devil. Now all they need is a sexy lady devil cake to lure it out... what it worked for the Cake Boss. And yes that happened, Allison Pregler did an episode on that episode. Check it out. 

Next Time On Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: It’s the family, the family, proud familllyyy as the Prouds take a vacation at Peakly and Jumbas bed but not breakfast and we get some kind of squirrel demon for our experiment of the week. We also get Wizard Kelly appearing...

See you at the next rainbow. 

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 5x09-- And the end was violent...

It’s been a busy week, but I didn’t want to wait until after 5x10 aired to write this. This recap may be a bit rushed (read: I am going to make an effort to just skip over scenes I don’t care about; we’ll see how many of those there actually are). I didn’t love this episode overall, but I thought it was a huge improvement over 5x08’s parking ticket fiasco and wish it had immediately followed 5x07.

Bless these episodes for not being overly long

Oooh, the opening sequence is long and I have nothing to say about it! Thanks for making my life easier, writers!  

The point of this opening is to show that there are lots of problems with the official court system—inefficiencies, inconveniences like broken elevators, overcrowding in prisons (though, uh, I don’t think the actual problem there is that there’s not room to incarcerate more people)-- that might make cops open to an alternative like Wackner’s court.

I know the cop thread kind of started with last week’s parking nonsense, but surely there was a way other than the parking nonsense to bridge the gap between 5x07’s prison system and 5x09’s focus on Wackner’s court suddenly being a replacement for criminal court, too.

(Y’all, I have SO MANY questions about how Wackner can POSSIBLY judge criminal cases, but they’re all just variations on... UH, GUYS, ISN’T THIS ILLEGAL? LIKE SUPER DUPER ILLEGAL?)  

I see that there is a filming notice when the cops bring a dude into Wackner’s court, and that the notice says that by entering on the premises you consent to being on film. I do not think that this sign being displayed would hold up as evidence of anyone consenting to be sentenced to a private prison on criminal charges.

New question: How did Wackner Rules get on the air so fast? And are they just filming endless episodes in real time? They just film anyone who walks in?  

I think there is supposed to be a subplot about Marissa liking fame and attention; it is almost a little too subtle to be meaningful. I see a through line from her sleeping with that editor dude last week to her smiling at the flowers in this scene to her scenes with Carmen later this episode. Unfortunately, I need a lot more for this to work.

I don’t need Marissa to be a hero who constantly does the right thing and calls out Wackner on crossing the line, but I’m really sad that this is what they’re using Marissa for when we were due for Marissa calling Wackner out (in a meaningful, lasting way) like two episodes ago. It’s felt odd to me that she just sticks around and assists Wackner and Del when they’re doing things like putting people in private prisons and comparing the show they’re making to The Apprentice. Any subtle shift in Wackner’s decisions that has signaled to me that he’s gone too far is something that I can say with certainty would signal the same to Marissa. Marissa’s outspoken and passionate, and we have seen enough reaction shots to know she knows things are going bad, fast. Am I really meant to believe that because she likes Wackner and she likes fame, she’s not going to do anything more substantial than look upset from time to time? Not only does that feel out of character, it’s also just boring.  

And, it speaks to another problem I’m starting to have with the arc: they needed to get to the point faster. Once Wackner said “David Cord’s private prison,” this stopped being fun. It would’ve stopped being fun for Marissa and it stopped being fun for viewers (seriously though, the change in tone on Reddit between 5x07 and 5x08/5x09 is VERY noticeable). So why did we follow that up with some repetitive filler bullshit about parking spaces and then start getting back to the point in this episode? I’m sure they’re going somewhere big in 5x10, but you can’t follow an explosive reveal with more status quo.

(Also, lol, I think the parking space thing was meant to be a fun silly absurd little way of entering into themes about authority and Wackner trying to legitimize his court, but it was about an issue so relatable and illogical that I think it feels even harder to believe than the, like, whole concept of a secret court in a Copy Coop.)  

Time for Marissa to look concerned again! She’s confused about if the case is real or not, and when Wackner says it’s real, she says it’s not for their court and it’s crossing a line. She is absolutely correct. Wackner’s like, let me know if you think I’m crossing a line after I rule, and then he makes a silly flailing gesture that Marissa can use as a signal.

I actually don’t hate that scene; it is a good scene. I am only snarking on it because it feels like familiar territory and it belonged in an earlier episode.

Am I correctly understanding that these cops wanted to be filmed bringing a man against his will to a fake court with a private prison? And that they wanted this to air on television? Okay.

I will say that I believe the motivations of everyone involved except Marissa. Wackner thinks he’s doing good for the world. Del is getting good TV (I mean, I still think that Wackner Rules title sequence is shit and the show Del seems to be making is terrible, but that’s besides the point). Cord has so much money he’s untouchable and this is fun for him. The cops just don’t want to deal with bureaucracy when it comes to someone who they basically caught in the act.  

Court! Stuff! Happens!

Wackner sentences the guy to one year in “David Cord’s private prison.” Again, I know they have to say this for exposition/storytelling reasons, but I continue to find it hilarious that David Cord would want his name to be used in this way (because he like, absolutely would not want his name to be used this way).

The cops like Wackner’s verdict so they tell all their friends to also take their cases to Wackner. What could possibly go wrong!  

Like, yeah, there are problems with the criminal justice system—and some of them are even the ones these cops are mad about—but this is ABSOLUTELY not the answer!!! You cannot just take people off the streets and place them in private prisons because they were forced to enter a filming zone for a TV show what the actual fuck

Love David Lee still having candy on his desk. Some things never change.

Allegra, who was welcomed by the partners of RL last week, is interviewing for a job with David Lee. I don’t understand. Doesn’t David Lee have to approve new partners at RL?  

Please don’t mention real estate on Mars, Allegra. You’ve made me think of Jason and how bad season seven was.

Allegra is feeling a bit different from Elsbeth this episode, though she very much still has some Elsbeth energy. She is very strategic and blunt in a way Elsbeth isn’t, and she seems a little more focused and intense.  

“I notice, in a partisan world, the person in the middle controls the agenda,” Allegra says of her alliances with both Liz and Diane. This is interesting. What are Allegra’s goals here? Just to have power? Does she have a vision for RL? Is it just a good paycheck?

(My guess is it’s about power and money for her. I don’t think she is going to be the ally Madeline wants. I don’t think anyone who voluntarily signs up to be a name partner at a firm owned by corporate overlords is a natural ally for Madeline though, tbh.)

(I really hoped this arc would explore that just a tiny bit more. The longer this conflict drags on the more convinced I become that the whole question of if it’s appropriate for Diane to lead a black firm is moot. It’s an interesting and complicated question, but with some distance from the plot, it becomes pretty clear that in this particular situation, RL isn’t a black firm. It’s a subsidiary of a large multinational corporation.)

(The show seems very aware of this and keeps having plot points like Diane using David Lee to keep her job and having Madeline call out all the awful clients they have... but it needs to go somewhere.)

(This also may be why I’m more down on the end of the season—in the middle of the season, nods at the things I’ve been thinking are appreciated references. At the end, they’re more like plotholes or reminders of the questions we should actually be spending time on.)

“Are you shitting me?” David Lee storms into the room as Liz and Diane are working. “David, we are shitting you about so many things, you’re gonna have to be more specific,” Liz responds. God, funny!Liz is maybe my favorite part of season 5?  

Liz calls David out on his power, noting that he also reports to STR Laurie. So it seems like Liz and Diane can make decisions on their own, and STR Laurie can overrule them, but not stop them in advance?  

This little ad about an ice cream chain is like, 15 seconds too long.  

Carmen is back!!!! She’s helping Rivi sign a deal with an ice cream chain so that they’ll turn into a distributor of weed.  

Why do we have to watch a SECOND commercial?  

The farm wants Rivi to stop dealing other drugs if they’re going to enter into this deal.  

Allegra, another character who seemingly has no qualms about representing drug kingpins, quickly impresses Rivi.  

I understand why there is an interpreter for Rivi’s wife. I do not understand why the interpreter interprets conversations BETWEEN Rivi and his wife. And then he’s translating the sign language into Spanish? But also Rivi speaks fluent English in half of these scenes? WHAT is happening?  

Allegra is also different from Elsbeth in that with clients, you’re NEVER going to underestimate her. You might not follow her at first, but she’ll get to the point clearly and concisely and without telling you how much she likes your lipstick.

But like at 13:44 Rivi signs something to his wife, and when she signs back the interpreter tells him what she’s saying. This is so so so clearly for the audience but I wish it had just been captions because it makes NO SENSE that the interpreter is in on this private conversation between two people who both know sign language!?  

Rivi and Isabel now LOVE Allegra. Diane and Liz are like, okay!  

Cop stuff happens.  

Credits!!! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out indiewire’s piece on the making of the credits—it's fascinating.  

Brooke directed 😀  

Marissa the celebrity is signing autographs in Wackner’s court when the cops bring in some young men affiliated with Rivi.  

NO, GOD NO, NOT THIS DEVIL’S ADVOCATE FUCKERY. The problem I have with the Devil’s Advocate, in addition to it being fucking annoying, is that it is also the exact opposite of what Wackner’s court is all about. Wackner is about facts and really hearing people out, and from what we’ve seen, Devil’s Advocate is about... stereotypes and pop sociology so bad it’s essentially just racism?  

“These young men are the victims of a system that arbitrarily declares some drugs illegal, and others, like alcohol, not. They should be released. To hold them is to perpetuate an unfair system,” Devil’s Advocate says. Good lord, a 7th grader could write a more persuasive speech than this bullshit.  

WHY IS DAVID CORD PROSECUTING THIS, WHY IS THE TRIAL ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT DRUGS HARM COMMUNITIES, WHY IS THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE SOUNDING LIKE A WHITE BOY IN AN INTRO TO SOCIOLOGY CLASS WITH HIS REFERENCES TO THE WIRE, WHY IS ANY OF THIS HAPPENING OMG MAKE IT STOP HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS BAD

Why is Marissa the court clerk being called upon to be defense, WHY IS THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE JUST SCREAMING “DEFUND THE POLICE” WHAT THE FUCK

I’m sorry, I am going to rant about this more, I truly cannot get over how fucking stupid the Devil’s Advocate is. He just starts screaming “defund the police”??? To what end?! Why does Wackner want this in his court?!  

I revise what I said earlier. Devil’s Advocate isn’t just sounding a white boy in an intro to sociology class. He is sounding like a white boy who showed up to an intro to sociology class absolutely hammered.

Marissa, correctly, argues that the arrestees should be taken to Cook County. Then she hears that they work for Rivi and she knows this is bad.  

Cord calling Marissa out for her firm representing Rivi: Another thing that would NEVER air on Wackner Rules.

David Lee seems surprised Liz and Diane did not get rid of Allegra. I don’t know why he is surprised, I think they made it very clear they don’t see him as an authority figure.

STR Laurie is now demanding (another) 10% in cuts to pay for Allegra. Liz says they’ll pay for her with the money that used to be for Adrian and Diane notes that Allegra has more stature than Adrian. Interesting.  

David Lee then decides to be both sexist and racist for really no reason at all. Pleasant!  

Showing Carmen as competent but not yet as strategic as Allegra is a really nice way to underline that Carmen is still a first year even if she is very very good.

Liz, Diane, and Allegra talk about cost cutting. Allegra is like, no, we need to spend more, which makes sense, both for the reasons she outlines and because when you bring on a powerful name partner, your need for lower level support does not DECREASE, it INCREASES.  

I know this scene is meant to show Allegra thinking outside the box, but I am a bit surprised that (1) Neither Liz nor Diane push back on the 10% cut and (2) When Allegra suggests hiring back all the associates and then some, Diane seems to think Allegra doesn’t understand they’re talking about cuts? Like, obviously she knows the topic of conversation, Diane.  

“We don’t run our own business. We work for a global conglomerate,” Liz notes. Yup. Right point, wrong context lol.

Diane and Liz are just too smart and strategic to have to be told ALL of this by Allegra... especially Diane, who is not only smart but also used to dealing with management.  

And worse... Liz and Diane think they made a mistake with Allegra because of this? I mean, I guess if your goal is to permanently work for a big corporation that will slowly chip away at your budget because they can and to never make any waves because that might disrupt the status quo, sure, Allegra isn’t who you want! But do Diane and Liz REALLY want the status quo?  

I hope they find a way out from under STR Laurie next year, as much as I hate the firm switching, because it’s just such a boring dead-end when Diane and Liz don’t actually have power or control.

OOOH I like Del asking Liz what SHE wants wrt the whole Diane situation. She says she wants to “stop fighting” and for Diane to “stop using her racist clients to keep her job” and for “the firm to be led in the right way by the right people.” So sounds like she wants to work with Diane, then? That last one is as vague as can be, but I think we can infer at this point that Liz is more concerned with stability and a work environment she likes than idealism.

God, Liz and Alicia would’ve gotten along so well as adults lmao.

Del tells Liz that “women at work always want to be thought of as nice. Women always want consensus. But you know what, baby, sometimes you just gotta say, ‘Fuck you, and you and you and you. Alright? This is my business and it’s my decision.’” I see where he’s coming from (even though this sounds like something my nemesis the Devil’s Advocate would say) but I am not sure I agree that’s Liz’s problem here.  

Actually, maybe I do agree with Del. I think Del’s saying to say FU to Diane, but what Liz clearly actually wants to do is say FU to Madeline lol

Liz asks him to change the topic. Where ARE they? Is this a restaurant or an incredibly nice backyard?  

Del changes the topic to how his boss wants him to come back to LA, but he wants to get Liz’s thoughts on their future. Liz asks him to start since men are better at saying what they mean (ha, love her giving him shit for that).  

He basically tells her he wants to stay and she says he should stay. Aww.  

Rivi’s house is... certainly something.  

Isabel is concerned because three of their boys have disappeared. She, naturally, suspects they’re at police blacksites.  

I’m sorry, did Marissa not elevate the Rivi case in Wackner’s court to the partners’ attention!? Rivi blames the dairy company, even though this does not... make that much sense?

This escalates into the murder of cows?? What... the fuck.

Now Marissa finds Carmen and loops her in! But only now that she knows Rivi’s looking for them and Rivi’s about to, like, kill Christian Borle’s character whose name I’ve forgotten.  

Marissa’s position on this is that Wackner will just let the boys go so Rivi shouldn’t know about any of this. Rivi would just kill Wackner. And Carmen is like, Rivi will just kill Christian Borle if we don’t tell. Fair point.  

Carmen, being an actual adult (sorry Marissa, I usually love you), is willing to admit when she’s in over her head, so she walks off to go get Liz for help. Yay!  

Rivi is not impressed with Wackner’s court or Marissa. He and Isabel want either Carmen or Allegra. Liz says Carmen will do it, I think meaning Marissa will do it but Carmen will be client facing.  

I love it when we get to see Liz just be super competent. It’s not a rare occurrence, but it’s just very, very clear in this scene how much better Liz is at handling this situation than Carmen or Marissa would’ve been and I like it when the show makes time to emphasize that even on a show full of hypercompetent people, some people are more skilled than others at handling some situations.

Liz, Diane, and David meet with STRL over Zoom. Allegra somehow pops up on the meeting but also joins as a cat because you know what the cat lawyer on Zoom needed? To be parodied on TGF. Ugh

OH MY GOD I DIDN’T PUT THIS TOGETHER SOONER BUT IT’S A CAT LAWYER YOU GUYS. This will mean NOTHING to any of you because it’s about an inside joke I have with the friend who got me into TGW, but indulge me in a little nostalgia here, ‘kay? So in like 2012, there was a trend on Tumblr where everyone would photoshop cat ears onto their favorite TV characters and my friend and I were like, why would I want to put cat ears on my favorite character, idgi. So then we started photoshopping cat ears on to the most unlikely characters and we landed on David Lee. We referred to David Lee as a cat for a really long time. Like, if we were to talk about David Lee today we would probably still call him Cat! David Lee.  

Allegra starts trying to work her magic on STRL.  Diane literally runs down the stairs to try to stop Allegra. I am not sure why Diane and Liz are so anti-Allegra during this conversation which is only happening so they can have the funds to keep her on board!  

Allegra tries to share a burrito with Diane and Liz and says she stands by her strategy. Liz finally says she’s not sure this will work. Allegra is understanding.

I respect that. Allegra may as well go all out and see if she can make this workable.  

(That said, this is pretty much the opposite of her whole staying neutral thing from earlier!)

No one is in the audience at Wackner’s court when Carmen shows up, yet the musician who I like only very slightly more than Devil’s Advocate is still on call. Just STOP.  

Overall I’ve liked the Wackner arc and I’m excited to see it wrap up tomorrow, but lemme tell you: it had better wrap up tomorrow. I am NOT open to dealing with this for another season.

The musician takes orders from Cord? The cameras are rolling? Rivi is there? WHAT?  

I know that NONE of this makes sense, but some things make exceptionally little sense and I just can’t.

Guys, remember the parking tickets?!  

Oh, excuse me, the ice cream company is actually a yogurt company.

Rivi notes that there are three boys missing. Wackner only has two.  

I am a little surprised Rivi has managed to be successful with that temper. Idk what skill set you need to be a top drug dealer, but he attacks people like three times an episode and that seems like a really good way to not build trust and to also get yourself killed?  

Liz and Del talk about what happened in Wackner’s court. Liz asks how they deal with liability. I guess she isn’t Del’s lawyer, then. Del says they have releases and people want to be on TV. Liz says what I’ve been saying, which is that Rivi doesn’t want to be on TV. Del says there are ways around that and references the show Cops as though that’s enough to make this question go completely away.  

Liz references The Apprentice, for those of us who didn’t catch the reference last week and/or for those of us (me!) who wanted to pretend that Wackner wasn’t somehow a commentary on Trump and star power. Ugh.  

(I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad point, I just am not sure that I think it is the most interesting point about the Wackner plot.)  

“Remember how we all watched and laughed and thought it was funny when they fired people?” Liz says. “We? No, no. Hmm, you... you never watched The Apprentice,” Del responds. She did not. Hahahahahaha I love this exchange. It feels very real.

Liz seems less concerned with Wackner and more concerned with Del’s eagerness to turn Wackner into a larger than life personality with a devoted following, which, yes, thank you, Liz, this is actually a much better and more interesting point!  

“That came out of nowhere,” Del says. “No, it didn’t,” Liz responds, correctly.  

Del talks about how Liz represents Wackner, along with murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and yet she wants to draw the line at reality show producer who makes people famous? He’s got a point, even if I’d argue that choosing a romantic partner is not the same as running a business.  

“Would your firm turn down [the producer of The Apprentice] if he wanted to join the roster?” Del asks. “Good point,” Liz sighs, resigned. She’s not happy he’s right, but she knows he is.  

Sigh. I already said some variation of this, but this season seems to have all the right ideas floating around, it’s just choosing the wrong ones to explore deeply and the wrong moments to mention other ones. Things like Liz worrying that someone she’s considering starting a serious relationship with might have some personality traits she doesn’t love can be done through throwaway lines that quickly come back to being about work/plot (that’s what happens in this scene, basically) and I love that. But the existence of STRL and the influence it has over whether or not RL is a black firm at some point can’t be dealt with through references. Wackner becoming increasingly off the rails can’t be turned down to a simmer after reaching boiling point. RL’s unsavory client’s can’t just come up in moments like this; they have to play into a central conflict.  

Like, what good is it to constantly remind the audience that RL represents a ton of “bad guys” if you’re not going to go anywhere with that other than making Liz and Diane occasionally be like, “hmm, good point.” when called out on their client list? This could be a really, really good piece of a larger puzzle about the culture at RL, and instead it feels like it’s a card they play whenever they need some moral complexity. Just... go somewhere with it, please. Either stop pretending that RL are the good guys or have them seriously deal with their client list.

Anyway, then Liz and Del talk about his possible LA move. It’s kinda inconclusive; they talk about work just being work.

Outside of court, Carmen doesn’t believe that Wackner only has two of Rivi’s boys.  

“I don’t know why you’ve been wasting so much time with this joke court, because it’s not gonna magically turn you into a real lawyer, Marissa,” Carmen lashes out. Oooo. Now this is interesting, can I have an extended version of this scene and also all the other Carmen/Marissa scenes that we should’ve gotten in the episodes Carmen was barely in?  

I understand Carmen’s frustration, especially since I imagine she worked pretty damn hard to get into/get through law school. And, as fun and smart as Marissa can be, she does get bored easily, try to skip over the dull moments, and moves on and still always lands on her feet. I can see how that would rub Carmen the wrong way, especially during a stressful moment.

Carmen isn’t exactly a rule follower, but I’d say she is someone who is very conscious of the rules, and, I think someone who values structure more than she lets on (I especially see this in her decision to stay at RL instead of work independently/with Lester).  

Marissa calls Jay for help!

Allegra talks to David Lee, with Liz and Diane in the background. Allegra makes her argument to  David Lee again and it goes over well. I think the writers think there’s more suspense in this plot than there is; it’s pretty obvious from the start that Allegra is correct and Diane and Liz are only correct if the goal is to avoid all conflict.

What is David Lee’s role at STRL? Is there anything else in that office besides awful HR and RL? He talks like he is more RL than STRL and that doesn’t track with what we saw of STRL last year.

Marissa spots a flyer that leads her and Jay to where the missing boy is: another fake court. This was inevitable—I think one of the very first things I said was that Wackner himself seemed fine and decent, but what happens when someone else decides they, too, want to be a judge because they said so—and I’m glad to see the writers go this direction. I actually think this would’ve been an effective build after 5x07 and would’ve kept turning up the tension, so again, most of my issues with this arc lie in 5x08’s momentum killing bullshit. It’s hard to get back into this plot when they lost me last week.

Shocker: Wackner having a reality show inspired more copy cats who take cues from the show and think Marissa is a celebrity.  

Vinetta, the judge of the second court, puts people in “time-out” (read: imprisons them in her basement) and... yeah, I don’t care how kind she is to them, this is not okay! The solution to the prison system is not for people to turn their basements into prisons!  

I don’t know that the writers are TRYING to comment on this here, but there is definitely something to be said about communities that the legal system repeatedly fails finding alternative measures of justice.  

Vinetta is nice and seems reasonable as a judge, but she also has a basement prison her judgments are influenced by her religious believes so, uh, yeah, not good!!!  

Wackner, however, thinks Vinetta’s court is GREAT! He wants to go see it, because “it’s finally happening.” What’s happening? “Justice,” he says. Uhhhhhhh, no. This is just so dangerous, even if everyone involved so far seems to mean well.  

I’m very curious to see how this little thought experiment wraps up (again: I say wraps up because I cannot deal with the thought of this being more than a one season arc).

One thing I love about the Wackner arc—my 5x08 issues aside—is its slow burn. The writers did a phenomenal job of getting me to take Wackner seriously at first, then slowly started to take all the things that seemed great and reasonable about Wackner’s court to their extremes (while still making his judgment on any individual topic* sound). It’s a very fun and entertaining thought experiment, and I think that’s why this arc has largely succeeded for me, even though it’s so far removed from reality.  

* Exceptions to this include policing, prisons, cancel culture, and, of course, parking spaces.  

[haruhey]

🤔 💭 and this is not a question but I gotta say, I love your writing, hope you are doing great!

hey sgtapepper !! i’m really glad you enjoy my writing and, besides the fact school will start up for me in a few weeks, i’m doing great :)

as for your questions:

🤔 What is the hardest part of writing fic?

everything !! the hardest part about writing a fanfic is honestly writing all the parts, ufeel me?

the way i go about my writing process is i basically film a little movie in my head, full of camera angles and all that other good stuff, then i try my best to transcribe everything which you guys then read. the hardest part really is just the writing part which sucks because that’s literally the only thing you need to do to write fanfic.

💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work?

hmm i don’t really know how to reply to this question to be honest. i feel like the way i write doesn’t really give much room for headcanons since i use so many hyphens to ‘talk to the audience’ essentially and give some expository throughout the fanfic. though, maybe i could use this to explain my blueprints for how i model the whole storyline and experiences of the ‘you’ character?

‘you’

in the early fics, met during the prison (recruited by him or by glenn), but now i favour the meeting setting being the greene farm (you got stumbled across during his search for sophia)

has been with groups before meeting team family but none have stuck

was still relatively naïve about stuff about the apocalypse (esp on the more physical/violent side) before meeting daryl and then voluntarily approached him to learn about stuff, making him confused because ‘why tf is this person talking to me??’

not much younger than daryl, 1-7 years probably just because i’m personally not that big of a fan between huge age gaps. i don’t have a problem with them, especially if both characters get together when they have similar life experiences (i don’t mind connie x daryl because, though their age gap is probably a decade, connie is ~35-40 and daryl is ~50), but i have a problem when it’s morally reprehensible like *coughbethylcough*

after the prison, met up again sometime before terminus or during terminus (there’s some leeway there - maybe you were with rick, michonne and carl, stumbled across them after the claimers confrontation by yourself, maybe you were with maggie - whatever drives the plot forward). because beth had such an impact on him, i wouldn’t want to erase that from his character

went to grady, but went with rick for the hostage stuff

after getting to alexandria, was probably assigned to work at the infirmary, but after carol recognizes pete’s abuse, you opt for runs instead until he gets murked

as for daryl

bestie can juggle !! nothing as advanced as knives or anything, but he can do three apples and maybe four beanbags if you let him practice a bit beforehand

naturally doesn’t need a lot of sleep, but also takes a really short nap at least once a week

tries to give himself stitches/hides wounds he thinks he can take care of himself so he doesn’t use resources or have to confess to you how he got them

didn’t have a cell, instead took one of the admin rooms in the prison (like where guards would stand to watch over prisoners and click clack away on computers)

probably was religious at one point (only to the extent of going to church on sunday), but fell out of religion really really young

was good at school but because of his brother’s reputation and bad home life, he was never given the resources to actually end up pursuing anything academically and probably has a sort of inferiority complex if the topic of undergrad comes up

he can draw !! picked up the skill when he was a kid but hid it because merle thought it was lame or would give him shit for it. still does it, too - on pieces of scrap paper, in the dirt if he goes out to hunt and feels bored - and if he’s pining really hard and can spare the resources (which he usually can’t), he’ll draw them

stick and pokes his own tattoos (that BBH skull hello??)

doesn’t shower much because of childhood trauma (dunked into cold water, not being able to breathe as one of his parents washes his hair because they kept his head dunked in) and even as an adult, he’s shower adversed because he has to touch his scars

doesn’t take off his shoes in his house which !! take off your shoes !! you’re in the house !! outdoor shoes don’t belong on indoor floors !!

lives alone in a smaller house since nobody wanted to room with him, carol lives with tobin, you and tara already had a deal, and a bunch of people died when he was redirecting the heard so there were a bunch of houses that were vacant

also lives in the basement because he enjoys the shade and the coolness in the mornings when he wakes up

rips off his own sleeves (but only has a few of them) and gives his sleeves to carol

i also enjoy the bisexual daryl headcanon !!

[ivyglow]

making my boyfriend jealous #prank 01 - Carter Hart | Philly

a/n: this idea sounded perfect in my head, but I don’t know if I’m satisfied with how it turned out; Hope you guys like it anyway. Don’t forget to let me know <3 It’s not proofread-ed so let me know if you find some mistake

btw, I wanted to say a huge thank you to @skarsgardswiftie​ for putting up with me talking about this idea and helping me out with some scenes. Love you, Val!!! <3 *muah*

Word count: 3.5k

Requested: yes

Prompt: 17. “wait a second..are you jealous?”  19. “I don’t love them. I love you” 

warnings: none

No one would believe if told that Nolan, the grumpy almost shy one, was best friends with y/n the smiley and loud girl. They met at a pharmacy, going for the last pain medicine box on the shelf and bumping hands, he was about to give up, but then she smiled and suggested buying it and give him one card since there were two inside. They spent some time talking in the line and when she found him once again in the same pharmacy she didn’t lose time following him and sliding to his DM. They got along pretty well and months after y/n saw herself in a bar full of hockey players to celebrate the victory of the team. 

That’s how she met Carter and more further ahead started dating him.

They were two distinct polos. 

Y/n loved to dance, Carter preferred to sit and sip at his drinks.

Y/n was a college student of Fine Arts, Carter was a hockey player.

Y/n had curly hair while Carter had the thinnest straight strands of hair.

Y/n was Colombian, Carter was Canadian. 

 Y/n had a YouTube channel and Carter, well Carter discovered that he liked it a lot more than he was supposed to. 

She did videos of hair care, study routine, and even some dance moves while cleaning the house. He was able to watch her, hear her, and almost feel her even if the timezone would not allow during trips. 

Their first kiss was in one of those videos, y/n was talking about some chapstick new flavor while Carter was watching some game on the TV sitting on the opposite sofa. 

“Well, I’m really suspect to talk about the peach one since I don’t like peaches” she comments while putting it on. “Carter, can you come here for one sec.” 

At that point, the boys were part of her routine so they were used to appearing in some videos sometimes, TK truly loved the attention, he would show out of the blue behind the camera or pretend the video was about his morning routine. Nolan would crack a laugh and Carter would roll his eyes telling his friend to give the camera back to y/n. Of course most of the time she would edit these parts, so it didn’t appear, but sometimes it was hilarious, and so she couldn’t help herself. The next day Travis would be the joke of the locker room -but he never stopped-. 

“What’s up?” he asked, sitting by her side on the living room floor. Travis and Nolan were out buying food, Hart and y/n being the only ones in the house. 

“Can you taste this chapstick flavor and see if you like it?” she applied one more time in her lips and smelled the tiny balm in her hands, making a face and giving it to him. 

Carter laughed and scooted closer to her taking her shin into his fingers and bringing her face close. She giggled not expecting him to taste directly from her lips, he was probably messing with her like they always did with each other. But when Carter closed the gap all she could do was hold his neck and dive into the feeling. 

After the episode, they would kiss every time no one was around. Dates and night in started to be a common thing and the rest is history.

It was a Saturday morning, Carter was sound asleep since he was going to have a game later in the afternoon and y/n was already in the kitchen preparing the usual breakfast they had for game days, except today she was reasonably early. 

“Hey there, my lovely pals” she greeted trying to speak as low as possible. “It’s a Saturday morning and I’m doing breakfast while editing some school stuff, Carter is sleeping and this video has everything to do with him” she grins while sipping from her favorite cup of coffee. “Travis was talking to me about some kind of conversation they had at the locker room and apparently Carter said he wasn’t a jealous person...well, it’s something between the boys but my amazing and devilish friend came up with the idea...he wants me to act a little weird and see if Carter really doesn’t feel jealousy at all. I decided it was better to film it so he wouldn’t be capable of denying it. He’s sleeping as I said before and I’ve distanced myself since yesterday, I don’t know if he already noticed it but yeah..let’s go” she turned around to start paying full attention to the preparation of breakfast. 

Y/n was halfway done when she faced the camera again.

“So we usually have the ‘breakfast-pre-game’ together whenever we can, but today I’m calling Trav and Nolan to join us…”

The next record was y/n pacing in the kitchen while sending some messages on her cellphone. When the duo was already there TK gave her a bear hug and murmured “let’s go for it, Hartsy girl”. She laughed and went to hug Nolan, who didn’t know about the prank. 

“Where’s Carter?” he asked.

“Sleeping, can you wake him up while I set the table, please?” 

Nolan noded going for the stairs and Travis started setting the table while y/n moved the camera to a better angle. When Carter and Nolan showed up he was still in his sleeping sweatpants and with his hair a total mess. 

“Morning” he mumbled to his friends going directly to his girl and wrapping his arms around her.

“Morning, sleepyhead” she teased.

“Why you didn’t wake me up?” his calm breath lingering on her neck almost made her forget about the plan. 

“I did, I just send Nolan to do it” y/n answered pretending to be confused with his question. On these days she was the one to wake him up and she did it with kisses, depending on the mood even some morning sex. 

Carter left one last kiss on her shoulder before they head to the table. 

“What’s up with the juice, babe?” Carter asks while sitting beside her. 

“Oh, Travis didn’t want chocolate milk so I made him orange juice…” here we go, she thought. 

“God, you’re so sassy, TK” Nolan rolled his eyes glancing at his friend.

“You see?! He comes to have breakfast at my house and wants to choose what to eat” the goalie goes along while TK just grins.

“It’s ok, Carter, he didn’t ask for it, I just wanted to make sure he is one hundred percent spoiled since it’s a game day...” she speaks and then pauses pretending she said the wrong thing. “Not only him, but you guys, of course…” 

Travis tried to suppress the giggle, that fucker! she was a great actress. 

The meal went along with TK always carrying the subject to y/n witch made Carter glance at him every once in a while. She would for sure zoom his face in the editing process.

…

“Hey, lovely pals, it’s afternoon now, Carter is already at the rink and I’m getting changed. I’m going with Travis jersey today and we’re expecting a big win so I have an excuse to film the boys leaving the locker room and get a good view of Carter’s reaction.” 

Y/n keeps the camera on her face while showing some makeup tricks and it was not long before Ryanne was knocking at her door. They met way before y/n started dating Carter, back when she was starting her friendship with Nolan, he was the one saying that the two would get along pretty well...and he wasn’t wrong. 

“Why are you wearing TK’s jersey?!” was the first thing she said when the door was open. 

“Hi, Rya, I’m doing pretty good, thank you for asking!” Y/n’s words packed with irony were responsible for both of their laughs. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just...very weird. Like I look at your face and my mind goes straight for a #79…” she jokes.

Y/n rolls her eyes slightly at her friend and let her enter “I’ll just grab my purse and we can go!”. 

Not even 10 minutes later they were already in a cab making the way to the arena. Y/n take advance of the time to explain to her friend everything while making sure she won’t let herself slip, such as sheer too loudly for Carter or forget about everything once he left the locker room with wet hair and rosy cheeks pursuing her body for a warm hug.

And that’s exactly what Ryanne does once the game starts and y/n is on her feet holding tight to her water bottle. The thing is, the Colombian girl was very competitive being raised in a home where the weekends were specially for soccer games and her father got her a jersey even before she was born. She was so used to diving deep into everything she did, especially if it was about cheering for a team. And well, living in Philadelphia and dating a hockey player made her role to cheer as loud as possible. It was her team and her boyfriend after all. 

The game went better than expected and thanks to Ryanne she was able to hold herself together. 

“So I bet this is the hardest part…” Ryanne stated holding y/n’s camera and prepared to film everything. “That’s why I’m praying for TK or even Nolan gets here first…” y/n sighed.

It was not long before the three boys come all together laughing and talking about something y/n predicted as the game. 

“Hey, babe” Carter greeted burying his head in the crook of her neck and breathing deeply. 

“Good game, Hart” she smiled hugging him back but shorter than the usual. And only when she went to hug the other two players he notices the different numbers printed on the jersey. His lips twitched and his brows furrowed, Ryanne tried to suppress a giggle before Claude finally leaving the locker room. 

“Nolan I hope deep down in my heart that you washed this hair with shampoo, please” she joked. 

“For your information, I always wash it with shampoo…” he shoves her lightly before hugging her by the shoulders. “He’s lying, y/n, last time I went to his house he was using soap to wash this damn birds nest.” Travis grabbed her hand bringing her closer to him.

“Hey! Great game, by the way, Trav! I loved that last pass!!!!” and that’s it, that’s precisely how she usually does with Carter, praising everything he does during the match time, always. Giving him advice and hyping him up. 

Carter chose to let it go while they started to make their way to a bar to celebrate as they did every possible time. 

At the bar, Carter kept his distance while y/n danced around with Ryanne and Travis,

He should be happy since his team won and he did an amazing job keeping every puck away from the net, but something was bothering him and he knew exactly what it was once his eyes found his girlfriend one more time that night. 

Something in the way she did not bother to stay close or even tells him how good he played was giving an uncomfortable vibe. Not that she should always do that, but habitually that’s what they up to, and the sex after too, so when y/n brush him off going for a cup of water in the kitchen he knows something is really wrong.

They just got home from the celebration, she was barefoot looking for a glass in the cabinet.

“Y/n what’s wrong?” he approached not knowing how to start that conversation. “What do you mean?” she asked, a confused look on her face. 

“I mean, why are you wearing another player jersey…??” 

“Oh...I just wanted to support the team in general, you know?!” she shrugged. “I need to go to sleep now. I’m exhausted, sorry. TK danced too much tonight…” she giggles, walking to their shared room and leaving Carter behind. Knowing damn well that she planted a jealousy seed in his mind. 

...

Two days and more distance later she was recording a video about her playlists in the bedroom when Carter got home from practice. 

“Hey, missed you” he muttered undoing his tie. 

“Hi, Carter” she grinned, not the big bright smile he’s used to when he got home, but at least it’s something considering she’s been almost ignoring his the last days “I’m filming a video” she explains. 

“Not gonna interrupt” he left a kiss on her forehead and went for the closet to change, coming back minutes later with his grey sweatpants and no shirt on. Y/n knew what he was trying to do and being as competitive as she is she choose to make a game out of it. 

“...and so there’s a lot of Post Malone’s songs, as you guys expected, and some Spanish as well because hell yeah I’m here for praising my own language…” she’s trying to focus on the camera in front of her when the bed dips, Carter is laying in the bed. 

Sometimes he used to do it, but usually, he would wear a shirt or something and try to be as invisible as possible, just wanting to be closer.

“You can keep going, I’m just gonna...watch” he whispers smiling and laying his head comfortably at the pillows. 

She rolled her eyes and went back to talking with the device when his hands found hers. The long and calloused fingers threading and holding to her strongly but still somehow soft. She felt his adoration look and could not keep her eyes from founding his and her lips from mirroring him and smiling.   

Carter was this contagious. 

Like some kind of speel.

It was hard to resist when he started being so soft and loving around her. 

And that’s exactly how he managed to lay her beside him and finally get the deep kiss he’s been seeking since three days ago. His hands found her waist bringing her closer and slotting one of his legs between hers. Y/n’s hands went to his soft hair and pushed it lightly, part of her wanting to separate their mouths, the other just expecting for what he did next: he moaned into her mouth. He melted every time she pushed his hair and she knew it. 

“Babe, please…” he spoke sinking his head in the crook of her neck, kissing that spot.

“Not today, Carter” she tried to resist, departing their bodies. 

He huffed but nodded his head. “Can I at least eat…” he started looking for her legs and she gasped interrupting his naughty question. “The camera is still on” she tried to pretend that this was the big deal, but in reality, she would not be able to hear his full question and deny it. “It’s not like you are on live, puff” he joked and she tried to stay serious. “Wait...are you on live?!” his eyes went wide and y/n didn’t resist the laugh. “I’m not on Live, calm down.” 

“Fine, but are you sure?! Are we ok?!” he asked sitting when she did the same. 

Y/n turned her head to the nightstand pretending to look for something while answering “yeah, we’re just fine” 

“So does that mean we can do something?! I just want your attention, love” and there he was all soft again.

“I’m just...not in the mood, Carter” she mumbled. “Not even for kisses?! Cuddles?!” She shook her head and he sighed. “Fine. Can I at least just be here watching you??” he asked this time not looking at her but drawing imaginary patterns in the mattress. She felt a pang on her heart but went for the answer she knew was going to make he thinks something was different “yeah, whatever”.  

And just like that, she kept trying to go on with the video while Carter was laying beside her and watching every move until he fell asleep. Still, he kept the adoration look, she knew it, she felt it. 

…

The Flyers were playing again and just like the last game y/n went wearing TK’s jersey. But only this time the game wasn’t so good as the last one. The team failed shamefully and even TK gave up from the prank for some time after leaving the locker room. This time the hug y/n gave him was well needed. Consequently, when she was comforting him, it was not part of the jealous-game anymore, but for Carter, it all seemed the same obviously. “You did great, Trav. Sometimes we just can’t control everything and that’s ok” he hugged her strongly before letting go. 

Hart just noded for his two buddies, Nolan and TK, before heading for the parking lot, not going for his usual hug or kiss after loss or victory. 

“You don’t want to hug me or anything?” she asked once they reached the parking lot.

He sighed. He looked tired. “I...I guess Travis needed the hug more than I did.” she furrows her brows. “Wait a second..are you jealous?” she asked and he shrugged before entering the car. 

“You’re ok?!” y/n asked as soon as she got inside the car. He nodded starting to drive in complete silence. She knew better than to give him his space after a loss, but usually, he wanted her around, he would not want to talk during a certain hour, but he definitely wanted to hug her or at least have her close.

This time it was different. 

And it kept being different during the whole ride home.

He was giving the silent treatment. 

She almost forgot to turn the camera on when they arrived home, but when she felt the tension she knew it was the moment he probably was going to snap. 

“Y/n…” he called already inside the apartment. “Can we talk…?” 

“Is it about the game?! Of course, we can talk…” she pretended not to be aware. Carter shook his head. “It’s...about a subject completely different.” He was undoing his tie while walking to sit beside her on the couch. Somehow it seemed like he was too nervous about it, so he just rose and started pacing in the middle of the living room.

“Oh, go ahead. What is it about?” 

He sighs.

The passe goes on.

“I’ve been noticing lately what your...friendship with Travis started to change...to develop…” she tried to open her mouth and comment, but he shook his head again. “Just...let me finish ok?!” his voice was not angry, it was calm...like he wasn’t that angry like he was just...hurt. And so he went on “And I love you… that’s why I just want to see you happy. So...if you’re not feeling the same anymore, if it’s something I did or said, or it’s nothing at all just you falling out of love with me...just...let me know. I do trust you with all my heart, and I know you would never cheat and I know you don’t want to hurt me too” he took a deep breath before starting again. “So...what I want to say is that if you’re starting to like Travis, tell me now, don’t bring it to me out of the blue-”

He’s so deep into his ranting that he did not notice she’s snickering with her two palms covering her face. When he did, he stops himself. “Oh- no, don’t cry, babe. It’s not your fault, feelings happen...and I’m not blaming you…” she was about to finally crack a laugh, but when she found his sad eyes she just couldn’t.

“What’s so funny?!” He’s clueless. 

“It’s not it, Carter...it’s just...you love me so much. This is a whole level of maturity and affection...I was not expecting. I thought you would be jealous and snap at me, get angry, I don’t know. I’m just in shock.” 

“I was not that angry because it’s not like we choose to fall in love you know?! We just do…” he says apparently deep into his thoughts. “But if I could choose I would go for you anyway.” there’s this small smile in the corner of his lips. 

“I’m so sorry I was so distant lately. But...I don’t love him. I love you” she whispers. “I’m really really sorry about this week.”

“so…?” 

“It was a prank, Travis idea, I got curious...I did not imagine it would get this far. I’m sorry I make you felt like I did not love you…” she hugs him and feels when his body relaxes into the embrace. He was relieved.

She stood up and went to the camera behind an ornament in the coffee table. 

“This is the moment you tell us how it felt. Take it easy on TK, he’s not the greatest actor, we could’ve come up with something better...” she joked sitting in front of her boyfriend. Carter chuckles admiring her face behind the camera. 

“Actually, I do love him, but as a friend” y/n adds before turning the lens a little and kissing his lips.

“That I can deal with.” 

[lockefanfic]

Business Trip: Pt 17 - Interrogation

The fact that there was an actual interrogation going on in the next-door interrogation room was probably the hottest thing about the whole situation.

You notice that the police officer in the cold, sterile room is questioning a heavily tattooed, scary looking dude, but that’s pretty much all the attention you give the scene, given that Park Jihyo was doing her best to distract you.

She distracted you partially with her cute, pretty face, her large, round eyes that seemed like they were always shining with some inner light, making the room brighter just with their presence. Then there was her cute button nose, her wide, blinding smile, and her short haircut that only added to the alluring cute sexiness that she exuded with every movement.

But she mostly distracted you with her breasts.

“Bae Irene is still on the loose, and finding her is our top priority.”

Your statement draws looks and nods of agreement from the women in the room, each of them determined in their own way to finding the mastermind behind the recent attacks on your company. The fact that two of Red Velvet’s members were now currently behind bars did little to dull their desire to bring its leader to justice, especially now that they had escalated things beyond mere corporate espionage and into the realm of physical assault.

Three days have passed since your successful plan to capture Wendy and Joy. You are joined in the large boardroom of JYP’s Seoul office by Momo, Choa, Seolhyun,and Jeongyeon; on a video conference monitor on the wall is Mina, joining into the meeting from back home. Her legal expertise was likely to be important in the days to come.

“Jeongyeon,” you continue, addressing the young IT specialist who had played a key role in trapping Wendy and Joy, “were you able to find anything in Red Velvet’s data that might lead us to her?”

“No,” she replies with a disturbed look on her small face, “it’s kind of crazy - there’s nothing on Red Velvet’s servers that is related to her at all. There are obvious gaps of missing data, especially in data that has a chronological sequence… but some entire files are missing.”

“What do you mean, missing? Is her data on a separate server?” Seolhyun asks. She was the head of JYP’s Seoul office now, following the retirement of her superior; she was just as determined as anyone to find Irene given Red Velvet was operating literally in her own backyard.

“I don’t know where it is. My theory is that when we established the connection to Red Velvet’s servers, it automatically triggered a program or subroutine that deleted everything related to Irene. She must have been prepared for something like this to happen and she had contingency plans in place in case her underlings got caught.”

“That bitch didn’t even give a damn about deleting her other members’ data,” Momo points out with a sneer, “some leader she is.”

“Keep digging, Jeongyeon,” you say as you give her an encouraging look, “maybe you’ll find something in one of the other members’ files that can help us out.”

Jeongyeon manages a smile, and you are surprised for a split second by how cute her determined look was; you rarely saw or had a chance to work with her, buried deep in JYP HQ’s IT floor as she usually was. But now that you had a chance to really spend some time with her, you found yourself attracted to her geeky, tomboy appeal.

“We should interrogate Wendy and Joy,” Momo says, eager as any of you for any chance to strike back at Red Velvet, “if we tell them their boss didn’t do anything to save their asses they might be more willing to sell her out.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Mina adds through the video conference feed, “not legally possible, anyway. We’re not law enforcement officers, and now that they’re under the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s custody, we can’t touch them. Any interrogation of those two will have to come from the SMPA. Considering the number of crimes Red Velvet has been involved in, it’s likely we’ll be waiting awhile before any interrogation relating to JYP even begins.”

Momo seems disappointed at Mina’s answer - she was really chomping at the bit to get at those two, and a small part of you takes comfort in the fact that perhaps it was because they had hurt you.

“I’ll speak to Detective Park at the SMPA today. Maybe she can give us a few minutes with them if we’re lucky,” you suggest. You were eager to meet with Park Jihyo again, if for no other reason than to thank her for her part in rescuing you three days ago.

“Then what about Sana and Tzuyu?” Momo says, “they received their orders directly from Irene when they pulled their little Taiwan stunt. Maybe they might know something that can help us.”

Momo’s tone is neutral, although you knew that she still harboured some resentment towards Tzuyu and especially towards Sana for what they did in Taiwan with Seolhyun’s company data. As much as you appreciated her eagerness in finding Irene and making her pay for what she did to you, you knew anyone that questioned Sana and Tzuyu would need a clear head. Her history with Sana would clearly compromise any questioning she did to the other Japanese girl.

“I’ll take care of that,” Mina offers, saving you from having to tell Momo that she couldn’t question the two ex-SM employees, “They’re still back here at home anyway. I’ll get some questions ready and question them in the next day or two.”

“Good, do that and report back when you’ve spoken to them,” you say, “maybe they’ll still have some contact information or something like that… A phone number, an email address, anything. Momo, you, Seolhyun, and Choa can help Jeongyeon comb through all the Red Velvet data and try to find anything that might lead to Irene. I’m sure Jeongyeon can use the help.”

“There’s terabytes of stuff to go through,” Jeongyeon adds with a sigh, “those girls were busy. There are records of at least a few dozen instances of extortion and blackmail, each with hours of recordings and video.”

“Great, let’s get to work. Let’s meet up back here tonight at 10 and we can get some drinks. It’s been a rough few days. Maybe it’ll help us cool off.”

Your team nods, and each of you head off with determined looks on your faces.

---

The other women have left to start their respective tasks, and Momo is the last to leave the room. As she steps out of the boardroom you grab her lightly by her arm.

“Momo, I was hoping we could talk.”

She had stayed by your hospital bedside for every single minute you were there, refusing to go home or even eat until Choa reminded her to do so. Thankfully whatever drug Joy had knocked you out with had no permanent effects, and you were discharged after three days of observation by hospital staff.

The whole time the two of you didn’t really speak about your relationship; she was too busy taking care of you despite your insistence that you were fine, helping you eat, fluffing your pillows or finding magazines or books for you to pass the time with. Every moment she spent with you only increased your affection for her, and your desire to talk to her about what had happened with Sana.

The two of you hadn’t slept together since the ordeal, not for lack of effort on your part. Momo refused your advances, however, as difficult as it was for her to not give in. She said it was so that you could concentrate on recovering, although you knew it was partially because she was teasing you, and partially because she wanted to punish you.

Momo responds to your request to talk with a sigh, although you could tell it wasn’t because she was dreading the prospect.

“Can we… wait until all this is over? I want to talk to you too, but I can’t relax until that bitch is behind bars,” she responds, her voice soft.

You nod slowly, happy to give her the time and space she needed.

“I… I’m happy you’re here, Momo,” you tell her, eager to tell her something, anything, that conveyed how you felt about her, “...And I’m happy you’re in my life,” you add, not quite knowing where the words were coming from - they were out of your mouth before you knew it. It was your heart speaking, you guessed.

Momo smiles softly, her large, round eyes boring into your very soul, rendering you speechless as they so often did.

“After drinks with the girls tonight I want to fuck so hard we have to call in sick tomorrow,” she says with a smile, eliciting giggles from the both of you, “I bet you’re really backed up, what with an entire three days without sex.”

Classic Momo, interrupting an emotional moment with the topic of sex. You reach for her hand and are thankful for her presence in your life. Your fingers intertwine with hers.

You spend a long minute there in silence, the two of your sharing soft smiles with each other, happy for a moment of quiet following the recent storm that the two of you had weathered together. Eventually Momo steps close and gives you a peck on the lips before turning and rejoining the rest of your team.

You watch her leave, the smile still on your lips.

---

You had expected the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Cybercrime Division to be hidden away in some corner of the large central Seoul precinct, but you were surprised by what you found when Detective Park led you through the glass sliding doors into her department; a hyper modern, super advanced open concept office that seemed to have more screens and monitors in once place than you had ever seen in your entire life.

“Korea is one of the most connected countries in the world,” Jihyo states as she leads you through the busy department, “and as such cybercrime is a huge deal for us, especially here in the capital.”

All around you officers are glued to monitors or busy typing away on their phones. Everywhere tablets, smartphones, and laptops have taken the place of charts, notebooks and notepads. Truly this was the police department of the future.

“Please,” Jihyo says as she invites you into her office that is tucked into a corner of the floor. She closes the door behind you as you step in, and she motions for you to sit in the seat in front of her desk with an exaggerated servant’s flourish. The young detective had a cheerful, bright charisma about her that made her easy to get along with.

“I wanted to thank you personally, detective,” you start, “for your role in what happened earlier this week. We weren’t expecting them to drug me, so it was good that you and your men have such impeccable timing.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Jihyo responds, “as you know Red Velvet has been a thorn in our sides for years. I’m glad they’ve finally been put to justice.”

“Most of them, anyway.”

“Most of them, anyway,” Jihyo echoes, catching on to what you are saying.

“My team is hard at work combing through what we’ve found on their servers. We’re hoping we’ll be able to find some trace of data that might lead us to Irene.”

Jihyo gives you a small, sly smile.

“You do realize,” she begins, “that Red Velvet’s data is official evidence. You’re not supposed to have any of it.”

“It would have been foolish of us to not make a copy before we handed it over to you,” you answer truthfully.

Jihyo gives you an exaggerated sigh as though she was disappointed in you, but you could tell she was being sarcastic.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just tell me that,” she says, her bright smile still on her round, cute face. When you first met her you were still technically drugged, but now that you had the chance to have a conversation under less stressful circumstances you were surprised to see how attractive she really was. She had a bright, cheerful aura about her that was somewhat at odds with the gravity of her position.

“Anyway, i was hoping you could help us with something.”

“What might that be?”

“We’d like to question Wendy and Joy. We believe if we tell them that Irene cut her losses and left them behind, they’d be willing to co-operate with us and perhaps provide us with information regarding her whereabouts.”

Jihyo’s smile widens, surprised that you had the audacity to ask for such a thing.

“That’s kind of illegal,” she answers, “they’re suspects for a crime that is being actively investigated. Their interrogation is under SMPA jurisdiction. My jurisdiction.”

“Then maybe we don’t have to question them. Maybe you’ll just happen to accidentally leave them in a room after hours and with any recording devices turned off…”

“...a room where you and your staff might be waiting?”

“You can’t stop what you don’t know is happening, Detective Park,” you finish.

Jihyo leans forward on her desk, bringing her hands together beneath her chin and interlacing her fingers.

“I understand your eagerness to find Irene,” she says, “but you know I can’t leave you alone with Wendy and Joy after what they did to you. I’m sure you’re a fine gentleman that wouldn’t hurt a woman, but I wish I could say the same for your girlfriend. She looked like she wanted to tear Wendy’s head off.”

“Momo is… passionate,” you admit.

“Dammit,” Jihyo hisses under her breath, her volume obviously loud enough for you to hear.

“Excuse me?”

“So she is your girlfriend. I was kinda hoping she was just a friend or especially concerned co-worker or something.”

You smile as you realize what Jihyo was implying. You decide to tease her a little, saying, “Detective Park, are you attracted to me? Are you disappointed that I have a girlfriend?”

“Noooo,” Jihyo answers, leaning back into her chair. Her cheeks turn a deep shade of pink. You smile smugly, liking where this was going.

“Well, I’ll have you know that Momo and I have… a relaxed relationship. Especially when it comes to other women.”

“I’ll have you know I’m not some easy girl that’s going to sleep with you just because your girlfriend lets you bang other women.”

“Who said anything about sleeping? There must be an interrogation room around here somewhere we can use…”

Jihyo grabs a pencil off her desk and throws it at you with a laugh, and you are happy to find that she has taken your joke for what it was. She maintains eye contact with you after you successfully deflect the projectile, a sly, alluring look on her features.

“Can you shoot?” she asks, out of the blue.

“Shoot… like, a gun?”

“No, shoot a damn basketball. We’re in a police station. Of course I mean guns.”

“Um, I can’t say ever shot a gun, although I’m pretty good with Widowmaker’s sniper rifle, if that’s the kind of gun you mean…”

Jihyo giggles before rising from her desk and tapping you on the shoulder on her way out of the office.

“Follow me,” she says, and you follow her eagerly.

---

Park Jihyo, it appeared, was quite the shot.

The pistol - a Daewoo K5, as Jihyo informed you - bucked violently in her hands that seemed so tiny by comparison, but she did an admirable job of handling the recoil of the weapon. More than admirable, it appeared, as she proudly showed you the close up shot of the target that was displayed on the tablet embedded into the wall of the firing range. Her smile was even brighter, it seemed, than it was earlier in her office.

“Cops rarely carry their sidearms on duty here in Korea,” she says as she makes her weapon safe, “and when we have to go on a raid in the field it’s usually only the SWAT guys that are carrying. But every now and then I like to sneak down here and let off a few mags to blow off steam.”

“You’ve clearly had a lot of practice. I dunno if I stand a chance here.”

“C’mon, give it a shot. All that Overwatch experience must mean something.”

You smile at her jab as you approach the firing booth and pick up the pistol, your first time handling any sort of firearm.

“Now take the long rectangular thing with the bullets in it - that’s called the magazine - and then put it in-”

You smile as you grasp the magazine and load the pistol, racking the slide back with your free hand as the pistol chambers a round.

“I’ve watched enough movies and fired enough virtual guns, thanks,” you retort, and Jihyo snorts in reply. She approaches you and you feel your senses tingle as she brings her arms around your torso. You are even more aroused by the feel of her chest pressing ever so slightly against your back. Her hands lift your forearms into the correct position.

“Shooting a real gun isn’t like clicking your mouse button,” she says matter-of-factly, “just breathe and pull the trigger back softly. You should feel a wall in the trigger. After that, the trigger will break and the gun will go off. Line up the rear and front sight, breathe out, pull the trigger…”

The pistol barks, and you both glance at the tablet that is relaying a live shot of the target downrange, looking for a bullet hole… that is totally absent.

“Did you… did you just miss the entire target? Damn, you suuuuuuck,” Jihyo teases.

“Just you wait,” you retort, “I just need some practice.”

The next fourteen rounds do little to back up your claim, but at least three of them manage to hit the paper, even if only one of those three actually lands in one of the target circles; the furthest one, at that.

“Apparently shooting a real gun isn’t like clicking my mouse button,” you say, echoing Jihyo’s earlier words and being rewarded with a throaty laugh from the detective. She steps into the booth with you to begin to fill another empty magazine with more rounds, and you tense suddenly at her close proximity.

“Maybe you just need motivation,” Jihyo says with a suddenly sultry tone.

“Maybe I do,” you agree.

“Maybe if you hit the three point circle with this next magazine, we find an interrogation room around here somewhere we can use.”

New motivation fills your veins, and you grasp the pistol in both hands as you load the newly filled magazine. Jihyo steps out of the booth, you line up your shot, and pull the trigger fifteen times.

You miss with every shot. Five miss the target altogether, eight hit the paper outside of the target circles. Two hit the five point circle, although you’re sure they were mostly fluky shots.

You eject the magazine and lay down the still smoking pistol. Jihyo retrieves it, the remaining ammunition, and your eye and ear protection and returns the equipment to the weapons storage room, replacing the lock and shutting down the range, a sly smile on her features all the while.

“Good thing there are consolation prizes,” she says with a tempting, alluring tone, taking you by the wrist and leading you out of the firing range.

---

The fact that there was an actual interrogation going on in the next-door interrogation room was probably the hottest thing about the whole situation.

You notice that the police officer in the cold, sterile room is questioning a heavily tattooed, scary looking dude, but that’s pretty much all the attention you give the scene, given that Park Jihyo was doing her best to distract you.

She distracted you partially with her cute, pretty face, her large, round eyes that seemed like they were always shining with some inner light, making the room brighter just with their presence. Then there was her cute button nose, her wide, blinding smile, and her short haircut that only added to the alluring cute sexiness that she exuded with every movement.

But she mostly distracted you with her breasts.

She was well endowed, it went without saying, easily the largest of the women you’d slept recently. And you were practically drooling with anticipation, as at the moment they were still annoyingly encased in her strapless, white cotton bra, her blue and red checkered cardigan teasingly opened up to reveal her assets to your eager eyes.

Your lips are pressed to her neck, planting soft kisses on her smooth skin that elicit soft gasps from the young detective, and you find yourself happy, not for the first time, that the listening room was completely soundproof to the interrogation room. You move lower with your kisses, bending somewhat awkwardly at the waist now to bring your mouth closer and closer to the prize. You bring your hands up her sides, treasuring the feel of her warm skin beneath your palms as you eventually bring them to her chest and cup her bra-clad breasts.

Jihyo accommodates you by pressing her back up against the soundproof glass. The audacity of the action surprised you - there you were, devouring a young woman just a few feet away from a scary looking interrogation, the occupants of that room completely in the dark as to what was happening in the very next room.

Her back pressed against the glass, you are free to bend your neck further. Jihyo finally lets you have your consolation prize, if indeed this is what it was - she reaches behind her and undoes the latch to her strapless bra, letting the garment fall to the ground, her round, full breasts falling free as they finally escape their cotton prison.

You want to dive in, so to speak, but Jihyo pushes you back by your shoulders until you fall into the chair in the listening room. She straddles you quickly, and wasting no time, brings her chest to your face.

“Taste me,” she says, the words almost a hiss as they escape her lips.

You do just that, burying yourself quite literally in her breasts, taking her left breast first in your mouth, your tongue swirling over her already hardened nipple. Your left hand captures her right breast in its palm, squeezing the soft flesh gleefully, delighting in the feel of the large mound, happy to experience such a well endowed woman after months of smaller (but no less appealing) chests.

Jihyo leans her head back and lets out a long, low moan that gradually increases in volume as you explore more of her chest and as you deepen the sucking on her nipples. You switch after awhile, your mouth descending on her other breast, leaving her other saliva soaked nipple to be squeezed and fondled by your palm.

Momo was probably the next well endowed woman you’d been with, her breasts round and in perfect scale with the rest of her fit, slim body - but Jihyo was in another league entirely, her breasts large without being comically so, her nipples absolutely delicious, your tongue delighting in their pebbly hardness with each suck and stroke against the sensitive buds. You wanted to bury your face in her warm flesh, and you do just that, tearing your mouth from her nipple to press your face in her cleavage, delighting in the feel of her warm flesh on either cheek.

“You like my tits?” Jihyo says, although you both knew the answer.

“Fuck yes,” you answer, your voice muffled, rather pleasantly, by warm breasts.

“I’ll make you love them,” she answers, and you tingle with anticipation as Jihyo takes control, lifting herself from her straddling position until she is kneeling between your knees. Even as she looks up at you with those large, innocent looking eyes of hers, she is unbuckling your belt and hooking her fingers into your waistband, pulling your jeans and the boxers you are wearing underneath them down your hips, until they are down past your knees.

She immediately takes you into her mouth; without warning, without teasing. Other girls relished that few minutes of teasing, taking things slowly, working you with their hands and the tips of their tongues, making you squirm, making you wait, painfully, for them to take you into their mouth.

But Jihyo is not one of those girls, and as she continues to take you in and out of her wet, warm mouth, you thank god that she wasn’t, because you don’t think you could have waited a moment longer for her to begin. She is not as skilled as Seolhyun or Momo, but she makes up for it with sheer enthusiasm, swirling her tongue around your sensitive head and pumping your shaft with her closed fist.

You lean your head back in pleasure. In the interrogation room, things are getting heated, the cop appearing angered by something the gangster has said; little knowing one of his colleagues was in the listening room giving you a blowjob. You would have laughed, if you weren’t sighing out of pleasure.

Jihyo slowly winds down from her blowjob, and as it had only been a minute or so since she began you find yourself disappointed, especially since the pleasure was just beginning to build. But when she straightens her back, you realize why her blowjob was so short.

You know what she is about to do, but it does little to dim the anticipation of what is about to happen, nor does it lessen the pleasure when Jihyo leans forward and, taking each of her breasts in her hands, traps your erect shaft between her large mounds. Slowly, she grinds her chest against your pelvis, your slick shaft pumping in and out between her breasts, the saliva from her blowjob providing the perfect amount of lubrication, the head and upper half appearing and disappearing from between mounds of soft, warm flesh.

You are awestruck by the pleasure this brings, if for no other reason than because of the novelty of it - you’d never been with a woman endowed enough to even try this, and while you’d emptied yourself on plenty of womens’ chests after fucking, you’d yet to experience a titjob.

Jihyo tries, mostly in vain, to lick your head as it appears from between her breasts, only succeeding a little bit of the time, but each time her tongue makes contact with your head it sends shocks of pleasure shooting up and down your spine. The novelty, the pleasure, the fact that you were getting a titjob from a beautiful young detective while an interrogation was happening just a few feet away from you, it was a lot to take in, and it quickly became too much.

For long, pleasureable minutes, Jihyo continues to push your rock hard shaft in and out between her warm, slick breasts, her hands squeezing her flesh tightly around your cock, her fingers interlacing at her front to keep your cock from escaping the lovely embrace of her tits. She continues to try to lick the head of your cock sometimes, sometimes letting her head fall back and making eye contact with you through half-lidded, heavy, seductive eyes. It was all too much to handle.

“Fuck, Jihyo, that feels amazing.”

“Mmmmm?” she manages to reply, so absorbed she is in trying to lick your shaft as it appears between her breasts.

“Fuck… you’re gonna make me cum.”

“Then fucking cum,” Jihyo replies, returning her full attention to your pleasure, increasing her pace, squeezing her breasts even tighter around your thrusting shaft as it sinks and reappears from between her soft flesh mounds. She pumps her chest up and down faster, grinding her chest against you fast and faster, until you quickly see that edge, that edge from which there is no return.

“Fuck… Jihyo… I’m cumming!”

“Do it! Give me all your cum… give it to me… cum on my face… Cum on me! Cum all over me!”

Your orgasm strikes with the force of a thunderbolt, and you feel every single burst of semen as it erupts from your shaft, the first shot happening while your head was still covered by Jihyo’s breasts, sending hot, warm cum into her cleavage and further lubricating each subsequent thrust. You wonder if she is going to open her mouth to take the rest of your cum, but Jihyo instead leans her face back, letting the rest of your semen splash against her chin and face, the thick liquid spraying all over her cute, innocent features.

You weren’t usually one for giving girls facials, but there was something radically different about Jihyo. Maybe it was the environment, the fact that Jihyo was a law enforcement officer; maybe it was the gravity of the week’s earlier events; maybe it was the novelty, it being your first time receiving a titjob.

Whatever it was, you found yourself staring, awestruck, at Jihyo’s cum stained face as you finish sending your last few small streams of semen onto her chin and her upper chest, her grinding gradually slowing as your orgasm finally subsides.

Jihyo finally lets your shaft escape from her warm, wet cleavage, and she bends low to run her tongue along your shaft from its base to its tip, drawing shivers of sheer pleasure from your post-orgasm cock. She straightens her back, allowing you a perfect view of the semen splayed all over her large breasts, the smooth, perfect skin of her upper chest, and finally, the beautiful, innocent features of her cute face.

Jihyo brings her hands to her wet chest and begins rubbing the cum into her skin, lending it a shiny, slick appearance in the dim light of the listening room.

“It’s a shame you didn’t do better on the range,” she says with a sexiness you didn’t think the innocent young detective capable of.

“Oh yeah?” you manage to ask, “and what would’ve happen if I had done better?”

Jihyo smiles slyly as she captures a stream of dripping semen from her cheek and brings it to her mouth, tasting it as if it were some expensive delicacy at a five star restaurant.

“...All this cum would be in my pussy.”

---

You smile as you watch Jihyo join the other girls in the busy, swanky looking Seoul bar. Choa greets her with a warm hug, the two having worked closely together as they planned the capture of Wendy and Joy. With a warm smile the older girl introduces her to Seolhyun and Jeongyeon, who welcome the young detective warmly with smiles and a tall glass of beer.

A poke on your arm alerts you to Momo’s presence, two drinks in her hands as she offers one to you with a warm smile. You accept, and with a toast of your glasses together, you share your first sip of the evening, relishing the cold, crisp alcohol as it slides down your throats.

“Rough week,” you say, eliciting a smile from Momo.

“I’ll say,” she agrees, “Sooo… did you hit that?”

“Jihyo? No… just boob stuff.”

Momo blushes and almost chokes on her next sip of beer as she gives you a playful punch on the shoulder.

“That’s no fair, I can’t do boob stuff. She’s got an unfair advantage. Was it… a natural advantage?”

“Oh yes, I think so.”

“Dammit. I wish I could do boob stuff,” she says with an exaggerated sad face as she looks down at her own chest.

You smile widely as you wrap your arm around her and kiss her forehead.

“She’s got nothing on you,” you reassure her, leaning down to give her a small peck on the lips. Momo returns your kiss, and the kiss deepens slightly, before Momo breaks it off.

“I’m still, like, super fucking mad at you,” she says, her playful, sarcastic tone betraying the weight of her words, “and one day soon I’m gonna tear you a new one.”

“The Future Me can handle that.”

Momo lets out a snort before composing herself for what she is about to tell you.

“Before things get all drunk and alcohol-y tonight, you should know what the girls and I found while we were sifting through Red Velvet’s data.”

“What’s that?” you ask, taking another sip as you prepare yourself for what Momo is about to tell you.

“We pieced together communication between Wendy and Joy, and apparently their entire plan to trap you and get access to the JYP servers through your login was solely Wendy’s idea, and Irene had no idea it was happening. I guess she wanted to impress Irene with it.”

“So Wendy was a damn snake,” you quip, “no surprise there.”

“That’s not all. We found a message that was sent to Irene minutes before we caught Wendy and Joy. The message must have been what warned Irene in time to manually activate the program that deleted all her data from the server.”

“So it wasn’t automatically triggered when we gained access, like Jeongyeon said?”

“No. Irene actively deleted her data when she got the warning. Someone knew it was happening, and someone let her escape before we caught Wendy.”

“Fuck,” you hiss as you weigh the complications of this revelation, “who could it have been? Did you find out where the message came from?”

“No. Jeongyeon says it could have come from anyone.”

“Even one of us?”

“Even one of us,” Momo echoes, taking a deep sip of her beer in an attempt, perhaps in vain, to ease the implications of what she was saying.

“No. We’ve already been betrayed once. I refuse to believe we have another traitor in our ranks.”

“I don’t want to believe it either. And to be fair, it could be anyone who knew what was happening, not even necessarily one of us. For all we know, it could be someone we aren’t even aware of, someone we don’t even know.”

“That’s scarier,” you admit, and Momo nods in agreement.

You sigh - you had hoped this evening would lend you a small reprieve from the gravity of the past few days, but now you found another weight being added to your worries.

“Hey,” Momo says as she catches on to what you were feeling, “let’s worry about this tomorrow. Future Us can find whoever did this to us, and we’ll catch them just like we caught Wendy and Joy. Then Irene after that.”

You smile, and you find some solace in Momo’s bright smile, finding yourself thankful once more that this wonderful woman was in your life.

“Cheers to that,” you say, sharing a toast with Momo as you both rejoin your colleagues at their table, eager to forget about your worries if even for a single evening.

---

In a dark, mostly empty cafe in downtown Seoul, Bae Irene is meeting with two females.

“Wendy and Joy fucked up and got themselves caught. It’s time for you two to step up.”

The first female lets out a haughty laugh.

“Don’t talk to us like we’re your fucking employees. We’re done with that life,” one of the women answers, “we’ve had our fun. We’ve retired.”

“You’ll come back to it once you realize how much I’ll pay you.”

“What’s wrong with your other members? Seulgi and… what was the other’s name? Yubin? Yerin? Yeri?” says the second female.

“I don’t need them,” Irene hisses, “they’re dead to me now, after what they did to me.”

“This will cost you,” the first woman says.

“SM has deep pockets,” Irene answers.

“What do you want us to do?”

“I want to break JYP,” Irene answers, every syllable cold as steel, “I want to break him.”

[seiin-translations]

2.43 S1 Chapter 3.1 - The Dog’s View and the Giraffe’s View

1. FRESHERS

If my one accomplishment in life is teaching everyone how cool Odacchi is...I’m okay with that

Translation Notes

1. Volleyball and ballet in Japanese are written in the same way (バレー)

2. Yuichi Nakagaichi is a former volleyball player who played for Japan in the 1992 Olympics

3. Tadahiro Nomura is one of the most famous judo competitors in Japan who won three Olympic gold medals in a row

Previous || Index || Next

When he first entered high school, “Oda” was second from the top for the boys on the class register. The seats in class were temporarily allocated according to student number, so he was second from the front, two files from the window.

However, he couldn’t see the board very well in this seat due to an obstacle. If he were to apply a nicely fitting expression to it, then it would be as though a tree had spurted up from the seat of the chair. An extremely tall back completely blocked his sight. His shoulder blades were at the height of Oda’s line of sight, who was sitting normally.

“Whoa,” Oda bent back in shock, then leaned over his desk and poked the tall guy. “Hey. Hey!”

“Mmm?”

The tall guy twisted his long back around and placed his elbows on the back of his chair. His sleeves of his brand-new blazer, the same as his own, was already a little short at that point in time, his wrists peeking out quite a bit. His arms look long too… Oda, out of habit, imagined how far he could reach if he added the reach of his arms to his height.

“You’re huge. The biggest in this class. How tall are you? Were you the biggest in middle school too? What club are you in?”

“Club? I’m not in any, but…”

When he showered enthusiastic questions on him, the other boy leaned away from him suspiciously. A mild personality could be inferred from his gentle-looking features reminiscent of a horse-like creature, as well as a low voice like his throat was slightly stuffed, coupled with a relaxed way of speaking, however…

“Huh, with that height? You’re kidding, right? What a waste.”

Oda’s eyes widened, and the boy frowned, as though he had said something that hurt his feelings.

“You’re prejudiced to think that if someone’s big, they’re in some kinda sports club. I don’t really like exercise. There’s a lot of guys who say stuff like that, but it’s annoying.”

…He was the type of guy who spoke harshly and without restraint from the first meeting. Oda felt daunted at the gap from his first impression of him, but he immediately collected himself. They would be classmates from now on. It was much better to have someone to state clearly what they hate rather than let it go vaguely.

“Hey, wanna join the volleyball team together? I played it all the way through middle school and was thinking of playing it in high school too.”

“Volleyball? The ball sport?” (1)

After a short while,

“You?”

He said with a faint mockery in his voice. Oda was discouraged. It was the first day of school. Anticipation bounded in his chest and there was still absolutely no reason to doubt his own future.

“Well, it’s true that I’m small now, but I’m gonna grow tall in the future. They say there’re guys who grow thirty centimeters in high school, so I’m sure that I’ll have caught up to you by third year.” For some reason, at that moment he never doubted that he would be as big as the guy in front of him after two years. “And then I’ll be a super ace, like Gaichi.” (2)

“Super ace? What’s that, sounds strong.”

Oda’s eyes sparkled like he had been waiting for that question.

“It’s a team’s coolest, most dependable attacker.”

After that, he enthusiastically talked about how Nakagaichi Yuichi was from Fukui Prefecture and how amazing of a player he was until the new homeroom teacher arrived and made them stop chatting. The tall guy didn’t seem particularly impressed as he listened, but after school that day, he followed Oda, who immediately went to visit the boys’ volleyball team.

This was the second boy in attendance, Oda Shinichiro’s encounter with the first boy in attendance, Aoki Misao, who was one spot before him. That was exactly two years ago from now.

***

I. Prohibition of the posting and distribution of flyers other than in designated posting areas

I. Prohibition of any solicitation activities that obstruct traffic, on campus or off campus

I. Prohibition of any solicitation activities accompanied by the transfer of money, goods, privileges, etc.

I. Prohibition of any solicitation activities that could be seen as coercive or intimidating, as well as forcibly making someone join a club

The above was the notice handed down every year by the student council during the welcoming period for new students in early April, but practically no club strictly adhered to those rules. In actuality, the student council took a stance of toleration unless some sort of problem occurred.

That was why, during this season, as soon as school let out, the hallways became so crowded with people that it became difficult to walk. Those who indiscriminately pushed flyers on any new student coming out of their classrooms, those who tried to get their attention by offering sweet conditions such as answers for past exams or joint training camps with girls’ schools, those who wrapped their arms around the new students’ shoulders and trying to bring them into a room, extortion showing through beneath their friendly behaviors—. A large number of flyers were trampled underfoot, staining white like a cherry tree-lined path after a spring storm scattered all the petals.

Oda was considerably fed up with the tumult that filled the hallways, and he advanced through the crowd while hugging his enamel bag to his chest. Although he thought that the student council should manage it a little more, every time he saw the innocent faces of the new students whose shoulders didn’t quite align with their uniforms, he thought that it might be insensitive to say so. Although they were overawed by their upperclassmen’s overbearing approach and backed away, their cheeks were flushed with excitement and anticipation and their eyes were sparkling. He probably had that same face as he walked down this hallway two years ago.

The him from two years ago who triumphantly entered high school with pure anticipation and groundless self-confidence had already somewhat transformed into being part of his dark history, and he felt embarrassed when he recalled it. That was two years ago. At some point during those two years, I think I was forced to acknowledge my own limits…

“Hey, you, yeah you, walking over there.”

Someone heartily placed their arm around his shoulders from behind.

“Ooh, nice abs. If you’re this fit in your first year, you must have been in a decent sports club, right? Which club? Baseball? Soccer? Wanna try judo? You’ll be in the lightweight division at a tournament in no time. If you do soccer, there’s a chance you’ll be on the bench until graduation, you know?”

His abs were being rubbed while a huge guy was leaning on him and making him slouch over. “Hey, stop it!” Oda twisted around and pushed the other person’s elbow aside.

“Ah? Oh, what, it’s Oda. Sorry, sorry. I got it a bit wrong.”

“Not just a bit. You got it completely wrong.”

“Well, you’ll do too, Oda, you’re an instant asset. You can still switch clubs now, right? I’m seeing a second Nomura Tadahiro (3) in you, Odacchi. I don’t care if you’re in two clubs at the same time either, if you want. Let’s accomodate each other, seeing as how we’re both minor clubs.”

“I don’t know who Nomura is. If you have the time to invite third years, then go get a first-year.”

“We already lost all the good first-years. It’s all about soccer for them. I guess judo really is that uncool. It has a stinking image I guess.”

“Well it is uncool. I’m in a hurry.”

He was getting bitter, so he dealt with him bluntly and started walking.

“Odaaaa!” A rough voice chased after him. When he turned around, the stern face of the tall judo club member popping out from above the heads of the students crowding the hallway.

“I’m serious. The only club that wants you is us, you know? You don’t have to do volleyball… Why volleyball of all things?”

It’s none of your business, he cursed in his mind, faced forward, and squeezed through the crowd of people. Even when he thought he got out, his enamel bag that was wider than him got caught and he stumbled backwards. He frustratedly pulled on the strap and held it to his chest once again.

Why volleyball of all things, you ask? He had already asked himself that a long time ago without being told that by others. Did he miss the chance to give up? Maybe if he had switched at an earlier stage, there would be something else he could have displayed his power at? I don’t know, I don’t think there is something like that in this world, but maybe there is.

But, this year would definitely be the year where I’m glad I continued. This year, we’ll definitely get stronger. Even if I can’t do it by myself, the actors are coming together.

A feeling of exhilaration gradually welled up from the pit of his stomach. His steps, which become a bit heavy, lightened. He held his bag, raised his head that was hanging down, and looked forward. Unable to suppress his excitement, he hastened to the room.

For the Nanafu Seiin High School boys’ volleyball team, today was the first day of practice for the new first-years.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

When Oda changed into his practice clothes and went to the gym, the second-years were in the center of preparations with the new first-years helping out as well. When the third-years were all there, they would look good as a team. After all, during his second year, after last year’s third-years retired, there were two people in Oda’s grade and three in the grade below, so the total was a meagre five people. It was a situation where they didn’t even have the head count for a game.

Four provisional admission forms were received three days after the entrance ceremony. That could be called an excellent result. I don’t know how many people will stay after this, but assuming they’ll all join officially…

“Eight people…ah, nine including me?”

How can a court not look so lonely when there’s nine people?

As he stood in place at the gym entrance for a while to take in the scene, Aoki approached him with a wry smile.

“Oi, oi, don’t tell me you’re getting emotional from just this?”

“I’m, I’m not getting emotional!”

He looked away to gloss over the embarrassment. In the first place, his neck got tired when he looked this guy in the eye and talked. Not liking how the shoulders of Aoki, who was standing next to him, trembled slightly as he suppressed his laughter, he made a stern face on purpose.

It was just as Aoki said. How could he be feeling satisfied with this stage? The Inter-High-slash-prefectural qualifiers were at the beginning of June, two months later. He would be picking the starters from these new members at once.

“Whew, this really puts the high in high school.”

A first year said with his mouth wide-open, after the first- and second-years finished putting up the net. He seemed to have volleyball experience. His shoes were Mizuno Volleyball, and you could see that they were worn in. He still has iinnocent, middle school student features, or rather, he seems spoiled, but…he’s big. Though not as big as Aoki, he was definitely over one-eighty. It seemed he would be useful just by having him stand in the center.

“Wanna try hitting one?”

Oda called out as he walked up to the court.

“Is it okay?”

It was a look of irrepressible joy despite his shyness. Yeah, that’s nice. That’s a good face.

“Where are you hitting from? You can just choose your strong spot.”

“Then, I’ll start from the back, right in the middle.”

He was a bit surprised that he requested to do back row attacks without hesitation. Not center, but a side hitter? The first-year flexibly used his knees to bounce twice before lightly running to the court end. “Kanno, give him a pass.” The second-year Kanno picked up the ball Aoki rolled to him and assumed the position of receiver. Oda went to the setter’s position, close to the right front. His position wasn’t originally setter, but he wanted to get a first taste of this raw material to see how good he was.

Kanno sent forward a light overhand pass. As a preliminary test, Oda started with a slow high set—

“Oi!?”

The first-year kicked the floor with his legs, and by the time the ball might or might not have left Oda’s fingertips, he was already jumping. It almost looked like the floor itself had elasticity and added power to his jump—he was that high! And not just that, but far! His body, which was bent back like a bow, jumped nearly three meters in one go from the front of the attack line to the net.

But of course, the set didn’t meet him at all. Before Oda’s high set even reached the top of its parabola, the first-year refreshingly and very energetically attempted to hit it and missed, and unable to kill his momentum, went under the net and tumbled all the way to the other side of the court. There was even time for Kanno to nonchalantly walk right underneath the ball and catch it as it fell after drawing a huge arc.

“O…oi, are you okay!?”

He was stunned for a moment, but then realized what happened and rushed over. They couldn’t afford to have a new team member get injured on the very first day. “Sorry—!” The first-year said. He was relieved to see him suddenly raise his upper body up from his spread-legged forward bending position, looking surprisingly unconcerned.

He’s pretty flexible…with that height…? From Oda’s experience, big guys had stiff bodies. He himself was fairly flexible, having properly did stretches since middle school. He secretly thought that it was one of the few physical advantages he possessed. This first-year had easily overturned that. This is a bit…no, very frustrating.

But, what was that timing just now? Didn’t he jump after he saw the set? “Huh, that’s weird,” the first-year muttered to himself, tilting his head.

“Well, that’s enough entertainment for now. Assemble!”

Aoki clapped his hands and called the other team members over.

Facing the captain and vice-captain Oda and Aoki, the three second-years and four first-years stood on the right wing and left wing respectively, standing moderately spread out. Kanno was also participating today’s gym use day, so it felt good to see everyone’s faces and start the new year off right. The new members, including that astounding first-year from just a moment ago, looked a little nervous, their cheeks unconsciously slackening with their innocence.

Aoki handed him the forms they were made to fill out when they tentatively joined the team. He flipped through the four forms in his hand. The provisional admission form had a common format for all clubs, requiring students to write down the club they wanted to join, class, full name, and middle school. Obviously, all four forms had “boys’ volleyball team” written for the first item. That one line written in poor handwriting on each of them was dazzling…If he got emotional here, Aoki would laugh at him again.

“Now, we’ll have each first-year introduce themselves. Class, name, middle school, height, and position if you have experience. If there’s another position you want, you can say it. If you don’t know because you’re a first-timer, don’t worry. First is…”

He read aloud the first form.

“Nagato Ryo. Where are you?”

The first-year on the far left answered with “Here!” almost immediately. He wasn’t badly built either. He remembered seeing his face at the middle school prefecturals last year.

“Nagato Ryo from Class 1-E. I’m from Monshiro Middle. My height is probably around one-seventy-eight now. My position was pretty much the center.”

Fourth in the prefecture, Monshiro Middle. He exchanged a glance with Aoki and nodded.

“All right, next. Kuroba Yuuji.”

This time, there was no one who answered immediately.

“Hmm?”

He looked up from the sheet of paper. The one who had introduced himself as Nagato earlier poked the person to the right of him with his elbow. It was the first year who had swung and missed earlier who answered “Here” while looking down with Nagato’s elbow in his side.

“Kuroba Yuuji from 1-C, I’m from Monshiro Middle, now I’m probably one-eighty-three or four or something like that. I played left-side and right-side…”

While talking, that Kuroba was glowering at Nagato next to him. When he looked, he saw that Nagato had his hand to his mouth with his shoulders shaking.

“What’s going on here?”

The two’s faces stiffened when Oda’s tone turned sharp, but…

“It’s nothing. I’m Kuroba Yuuji.”

Kuroba named himself again while seemingly reluctantly giving Nagato the side-eye, a “pff” sound burst out from Nagato’s mouth.

“…Senpai. It’s Yuni. The reading.”

Kanno interjected from among the second-year right side players. “Ah,” Kuroba said and turned protesting eyes to Kanno. Come to think of it, Kanno was also from Monshiro Middle.

“Well, if that’s true then say it earlier. Why didn’t you correct me?”

“It’s fine. I will change my name starting today.”

Kuroba said with a solemn face while the tips of his ears were bright red. “You’re gonna change your name starting today?” Oda’s temple twitched. Is this guy an idiot? Nagato was clutching his stomach and bending over like he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Senpai, apparently his name got laughed at a lot in his new class today. When he was asked the reason for it, he said it was Yuni from ‘universe’, and everyone said it was a super over-the-top name. That’s why you’re sulking, right, Yuni?”

“Shut up…no one said anything in middle school.”

“Nah, I thought that too, but I knew you since first grade so I missed the timing.”

“Say, say stuff like that earlier! You’re making my wounds worse.”

The other two first-years, who had been just standing there with confused faces at the back-and-forth between the graduates of the same middle school, laughed reservedly. “Sto-stop laughing at me!” Kuroba said, aghast. Oda sighed.

“Isn’t it fine, Yuni from ‘universe’? Who named you?”

When he interjected, all four of them reflexively straightened their postures and contained their laughter. “Grandpa did…” Kuroba answered embarrassedly with his head hung. “The Buddhist priest at the temple decided the number of character strokes and read it as Hirohito at first, but Grandpa said he changed the reading since he wanted it to mean ‘May you be able to reach the universe…’”

The person himself didn’t seem to like it very much, but Oda was impressed by that origin. That’s nice…he thought again. The other first years other than Nagato seemed to have come out of their shells with this episode. They were already familiarly whispering and poking each other. He made the people around him like him, perhaps because he had a strange, hopelessly unguarded character to him. There was a big difference between having a moodmaker like that on the team and not having one. And of course, the first thing his eyes were drawn to were the height he was blessed with, and the jump power he displayed earlier. The suppleness of the body led to less chances of injury.

That’s nice…but…it’s frustrating. Two feelings were jumbled within him—the sincere feelings of welcome as a captain, and envy mixed with jealousy as a fellow attacker.

“Kuroba Yuni, eh. I don’t approve the name change, so keep it. Okay, next!”

When he turned over another temporary club entry form, he saw that there were no more people from Monshiro Middle School. He looked over them starting with the last one first, just to be sure, but that was also wrong. I assumed that he’d be among these four, but…

“Kuroba, Nagato, there’s another guy coming here from your school, right?”

The two first-years, who had gone from poking each other to joking around with each other, immediately froze. Kuroba’s reaction was especially conspicuous. His smiling face stiffened in an instant, and his huge body seemed like it shrank a size.

“What’s wrong?”

The two made noncommittal answers and looked away from Oda.

“Haijima goes here, doesn’t he? Haijima—Kimichika.”

When Oda impatiently repeated that, Nagato gave Kuroba’s profile a meaningful glance before nervously speaking.

“That guy, Haijima, stopped showing up to practice after prefecturals, and he doesn’t seem to be playing volleyball anymore.”

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[johannas-motivational-insults]

She-Ra season 2 episodes, ranked

All right, I have a lot of feelings about She-Ra season 2 and what was good and not so good. I’ve been doing a lot of shitposting but this is legit analysis/meta, or at least it wants to be.

To be fair, though I’m trying to rank these as objectively as possible, it will be influenced by what I care most about and find most interesting in the series. I stan Catra and the Superpal Trio and think Adora is a loveable mess, and I really can’t stand Swift Wind. So, take this with a grain of salt. Needless to say, SPOILERS AHEAD.

7. 2x03 “Signals”

I would rank this episode higher, except the A plot was so meh. It felt like it should have been a Halloween special, and if it was I’d give it a pass, but I found it so thoroughly disinteresting I all but tuned out. Of course, people who stan the Best Friend Squad might have still loved it, but their dynamic isn’t as interesting for me anymore because we’ve seen so much of it, and this episode didn’t do much to change it other than add Swift Wind in (and he really, really annoys me). The only real thing it did to move the plot forward was introduce the subplot about the mysterious transmissions, and it didn’t do anything characterization wise. Ultimately, it’s a set up episode, and to be fair it might be more interesting in retrospect once we get some payoff and see where that whole thing is going. But I dunno, I kinda doubt it.

It’s mostly a set up episode in the other subplots too, but I enjoyed watching the political machinations in the Horde because there were real, tangible stakes and important power shifts. Catra learning that having power and authority is not all it’s cracked up to be was a crucial bit of character development. That bit of her getting the air sucked out of her lungs was more genuinely scary than the creepy ghost holograms by far. You felt her desperation trying to save face with Hordak and regain her sense of power and safety after that terrifying threat, and watching Shadow Weaver tune in to and play with her insecurities was a good bit of development for and insight into their relationship. It also foreshadows how easily Shadow Weaver is able to manipulate Catra later in the season.

Meanwhile, Entrapta’s excursions and work with Hordak supplied some comic relief (which I think the A plot also tried and failed to do) and also made the Horde plot take an interesting turn. This is the episode where Catra really starts to lose power, and meanwhile Entrapta gains a lot without even meaning to. She just wanted to fix the problem with Hordak’s experiment, dear girl. On that note, I did not expect to enjoy watching Hordak and Entrapta so much, but one thing this show does really well is throw together unexpected combinations of characters and make an amazing dynamic (e.g. the Superpal Trio, Scorpia and Seahawk, Catra and Glimmer and Bow).

The Entrapta subplot was the most interesting of the episode and unfortunately it was relegated to the C plot. This episode would have been way better if they’d put more focus on the Horde side of things and/or given the “Best Friend Quad” something with more substance.

6. 2x01 “The Frozen Forest”

This episode was fine, but it didn’t do much to stand out. It was important, of course, to follow up on the end of season 1, and if they had skipped this episode entirely it would have left a huge gap. But with the two main groups of characters not interacting at all in person, there was little reason to be emotionally invested in the fight scenes. We don’t really care if Horde bots get destroyed. It would have been more interesting to see the Superpal Trio directly fighting the Princess Alliance, but on the other hand it did set up just how big a role Entrapta’s tech knowledge was going to play this season. The stuff with the princess alliance was cute, I always enjoy seeing more of Mermista, and they did some character work (which I can always appreciate) with Glimmer and Frosta. But since we only see the princesses once more this season, it hasn’t had much of a chance to pay off yet.

The highlight of this episode was Adora fighting Catra in the simulation and her ensuing conversation with Light Hope. (“There. There.” and “I also have buttons” were two of my favorite one-liners of the season.) The simulated fight was very cute, and I definitely screamed when Catra grabbed Adora’s hand while delivering her customary “Hey Adora,” right before taking her down. And look, the fact that Catra was flirting so hard with Adora in that simulation means that an AI with very poor social awareness has picked up on their sexual/romantic tension, and that’s hilarious.

The Horde side of things gave us more time with the Superpal Trio, who are always delightful, but not a ton happened over there either. This episode established that Entrapta has fully moved in to the Fright Zone and Catra is comfortably leading the Horde’s advances and has respect from Hordak and the Horde’s soldiers. It also foreshadows how impressed Hordak is going to become with Entrapta’s work (and unimpressed with Catra’s) when her EKS bots steal the show in that meeting. Finally, the episode introduced the shifted dynamic between Catra and Shadow Weaver now that the power position has flipped. That ongoing subplot was possibly the saddest part of the season, and this one scene did a good job of setting that up.

Overall, this was a good and necessary setup episode, but because it had all that exposition and setup to do we didn’t get a ton of good character/relationship moments (Frosta/Glimmer and Catra/Shadow Weaver being the notable exceptions). So yeah, it was fine. But there were definitely stronger episodes, which we will now get into...

5. 2x04 “Roll With It”

This was a very cute episode, a fun one to watch. The reason I ranked it fifth is because there are three very strong episodes this season and 2x07 had higher stakes, being the season (mid-season, lbr) finale. On the Horde side of things, I loved seeing more of Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio. Lonnie really shined this episode and I keep waiting for someone to realize how smart and capable she is and promote her. And of course, Scorpia. Darling oblivious Scorpia who just wants to impress her crush. She’s not very smart but she’s earnest af and can pack a punch, and this is the first episode where she really stands out.

The planning session in the rebellion camp was really fun to watch, though I’m sure I missed a ton of jokes because I’ve never played D&D. The chaotic way the princesses all play off each other was more evident here than in 2x01, which made for some great gags. The different approaches they each take and the different aninmation styles used to portray them were a lot of fun. Glimmer’s noir hero fantasies were my favorite, personally. (And apparently she sees Catra as a very sexy villain? I need more on this, please.)

Adora’s monologue about the worst possible secenario revealed all her insecurities, and it was one of the highlights of the season. Her anxiety issues and messiah complex have been touched on before many times, but this is the first time they’ve really come bubbling to the surface this season. It was really nice to see the whole group reassure her that she isn’t in this alone, much like Bow and Glimmer did before the Battle of Bright Moon. And while it’s been hinted at before, this episode really solidified her obsession with Catra. And Scorpia’s too, as I mentioned above.

It’s easy to forget that Catra wasn’t actually in this episode (AJ Michalka was, but her character was not, not for real) because you felt her presence everywhere. The bit with all the princesses’ different renditions of her was hilarious. But you know, it was nice to see the show put together such a strong episode without Catra. Having the emotional focus on Adora again was a nice change of pace.

4. 2x07 “Reunion”

This episode gave us what 2x03 lacked: it made the Best Friend Squad interesting again. That group is most compelling to watch when there’s conflict among them, like in the stretches of 1x01-1x02 and 1x08-1x10. They weren’t in an actual fight this time, but Glimmer and Adora being so thrown by Bow’s secret family life meant that things didn’t feel “as usual.” Glimmer’s insecurity about not meaning that much to Bow resurfaced, and Bow’s “coming out” scene was extremely moving. But thankfully there was comic relief, too. Adora mispronouncing words to try and sound scholarly was a great ongoing gag, and the eventual fight between the Best Friend Squad and the elemental was really fun because it was so chaotic with Bow’s dads being extremely confused.

Okay and look, Bow’s dads. Finally we get to see why Bow is the most well-adjusted person in the group. His parents aren’t perfect, but they did way less to fill their kids with insecurities than Angella or Shadow Weaver. Angella’s not a bad mom but it’s easy to see why Glimmer feels so inadequate. And Shadow Weaver is, well, Shadow Weaver.

This episode was sort of oddly structured for what is essentially a mid-season finale in the sense that the A plot was about relationships more than the overarching plot, but that’s not necessarily bad. And they tied the plot back in at the end with the reveal about the Crimson Waste, setting us up to finally move forward in this transmissions subplot in season 3.

There wasn’t a lot of time for Horde stuff this episode, but Scorpia forcibly loving Catra and turning her into a burrito was one of my favorite scenes of the season (maybe I will do a Top 10 later on). Catra opening up to Scorpia about her problems for the second episode in a row was huge, especially after experiencing a heart-shattering betrayal in the previous episode. Catra’s final scene where she gets exposed as a liar and choked out felt a bit truncated to me... like after they set that up as this terrifying threat in 2x03, they lingered a lot less in the terror of that moment in this episode. So that was kind of disappointing, but it still worked well as half of the cliffhanger (the weaker half, imo, but it was still extremely nerve-wracking).

It was hard to pick between #4 and 5 on this list, but ultimately the amazing cliffhanger was what put this one over the top. Both our protagonists are in danger, at the mercy of our two worst villains, and even though I knew what was coming as soon as I saw Adora sleeping, the shot of Shadow Weaver standing over her bed made me scream. I hate this show for leaving me hanging here, so they did it right.

3. 2x02 “Ties That Bind”

Ranking this one so high may be an unpopular opinion, but I personally loved this episode. I didn’t care much for the B plot except it was good insight into Adora, but the A plot was so delightful it made up for it. Mixing members of the Superpal Trio and Best Friend Squad almost always results in something good... maybe not for the characters, but for the audience. Watching Catra and Glimmer play off each other’s insecurites was great, and it was sweet watching Bow attempting to befriend Catra, just like he did with Adora. The conflict between him and Glimmer about how to treat their hostage felt very in-character, a good callback to the beginning of season 1.

Of course, Catra is a much more annoying hostage than Adora was. Her being a little shit and doing everything she could to get on their nerves was amazing, and I would have gladly watched a full hour episode just of that. The sassiness and manipulation we see from her in this episode balances nicely with the deep emotional stuff she goes through this season in her fight to win approval and prove her worth. It also produced my favorite joke of the season: “How are you such a nightmare?!?”/”Eh, years of practice.” I felt that in my soul as a youngest child. I also loved all the cat mannerisms they incorporated in this episode, it was very cute.

There is a bit of emotional meat to that story, with Catra and Glimmer’s confrontation at the end after Glimmer says Adora ran away from Catra, not the Horde (rude, btw). But the real emotional moment comes when Bow and Glimmer find out Entrapta stayed willingly with the Horde. That was heart-breaking. Heart-shattering, even. Especially because Bow and Glimmer feel such guilt for her being left there in the first place. I wish there had been more follow-up on this major emotional beat, but that’s not a weakness of this episode itself. This was my favorite Entrapta scene of the season, even though there were a lot of other great ones.

Like I said, the B plot was... okay, but not amazing? The bits with Light Hope glitching were funny, if a bit creepy. (But she’s always creepy, so.) Swift Wind annoys the hell out of me when he’s being hyper, but seeing his eventual heart-to-heart with Adora gave him some good depth and development. Plus, this episode does a really good job of illustrating not only how uptight Adora is, but why. There’s that messiah complex again (which I don’t blame her for btw, that’s Shadow Weaver’s fault). I like episodes that focus on Adora emotionally, and separating her from Glimmer and Bow meant her storyline got to be a bit more serious and in-depth. I just wish it hadn’t been opposite Swift Wind... not because it wasn’t effective, but because Adora’s arc was good but I have little desire to rewatch it if it means I have to watch more of him. Sorry, I guess I’m an anti.

2. 2x05 “White Out”

As I’ve said before, this episode is the highlight of season 2. Once again, that has a lot to do with the dynamics that occur whenever we mix members of the Best Friend Squad and Superpal Trio, and this time we got all of them in one place! And they added Seahawk to the mix too, which I didn’t expect to like because he tends to get on my nerves, but pairing him with Scorpia was a move of pure brilliance.

Scorpia and Sea Hawk’s little heart-to-heart about feeling unappreciated and Drunk Adora validating and encouraging them was so so cute and heartwarming. All the Drunk Adora and Scorpia stuff was great, actually. It was funny but also made very textual how much Catradora is an insecurity for Scorpia and how she’s afraid she’ll never be able to live up to that and Catra will never open up to her the same way. And Adora actually seems to genuinely like Scorpia when she’s not focused on the evils of the Horde, so that’s good to know moving forward. And yeah, that pairing also brought us “Girls night in!” and the closet joke, another highlight of the season.

In the other mixed grouping, Catra and Glimmer renewed their rivalry, and that’s always fun to watch. Entrapta continued to be her usual chaotic self, and any time we see her interacting with Bow it tends to be a great scene. The reveal at the end that she had the tech all along but didn’t tell Catra because she liked hanging out in this remote place with her friends was really, really cute.

I would be amiss to not mention the Catradora of it all in this episode, because holy shit this is actually the only time they interact in person all season. That is just wrong, by the way, but I did thoroughly enjoy what we got. It’s very clear they still have an emotional hold over each other despite their attempts to “let go,” between Adora’s overly-focused anger and Catra’s expressions whenever she hears or sees Adora. Adora actually kind of hates Catra right now and I think that caught Catra off guard. Catra’s panic when Evil She-Ra almost killed her was a great moment of vulnerability, how she tried to appeal to the Adora inside. She dropped the act for a moment and genuinely tried to connect with Adora, and maybe it made me tear up a little.

Along those same lines, the one thing that pissed me off about this episode was that we didn’t get to see Catra interacting with Drunk Adora. That would have allowed Adora to interact with Catra in a vulnerable state too, and in general it just would have been amazing. And the trailer kinda suggested we would get to see that, so that made it extra disappointing. Can’t these two just talk about their feelings and actually hear each other and communicate properly, please? Ugh. Still, despite these frustrations, I loved the Catradora content.

But the real highlight of the episode was Scorptra. The scene where Scorpia tried to ask Catra out on a date was amazing and so freaking cute. Of course there’s also the stuff I mentioned where her insecurities about Adora came spilling out. And the look on Catra’s face when Scorpia aborted a mission to save her life and then whisked her away despite her protests... that was a huge moment. She doesn’t think of herself as worth saving, but someone else does. And despite the fact that Scorpia disobeyed direct orders, I think this is where Catra really comes to trust her. It’s certainly where she comes to respect her. And then they shared a blanket! God, this was so cute. I expected to enjoy the Catradora stuff more but a) there wasn’t all that much of it and b) this was so incredibly pure and sweet, watching Scorpia finally make some headway and Catra finally open up to someone again, even if it was only a little bit. I am a multi-shipper now, I can’t help it.

1. 2x06 “Light Spinner”

It was hard choosing between this and White Out for top spot, but I’m a slut for villain backstories. This episode was the less entertaining of the two, and I think I’d have to say White Out is my subjective favorite, but objectively I do think this is the better episode. Why? Character development.

Shadow Weaver was a bit too twirly-moustache of a villain at times in season 1, so seeing how she became what she is now did a lot for her character. Seeing how a desire to do good mixing with a thirst for power can drive someone to make mistakes and turn evil was very interesting, and having Micah be part of the backstory made it all the more compelling.

The ways Shadow Weaver tries to mold people with more intrinsic power than her so she can use that power was a crucial new insight, one we’ve never seen before. It explains why she’s so obessed with Adora, which was never really explained in season 1. And it also suggests that part of Shadow Weaver’s dislike for Catra came from Adora’s connection to and therefore influence over her. Shadow Weaver wanted Adora’s loyalty to be to her above all, even above the Horde, and Adora having a close friend (who’s a rebellious loose cannon, to boot) was a danger to that goal.

This episode is essentially about Shadow Weaver and Catra, both separately and together, and it does a great job of drawing parallels between them even before Shadow Weaver outright tells Catra that they are the same. They both go off on a rant about how no matter what they do, no one listens to or respects them. Shadow Weaver seems to have a bit of a self-loathing streak that she took out on Catra, too... kinda like Glimmer being annoyed by all her worst qualities manifesting in Frosta.

As for Catra, it shocked me that she was so upset about Shadow Weaver being sent away to die. Though she obviously still craved Shadow Weaver’s approval, I didn’t expect her to react so badly to this. Clearly Scorpia didn’t either, and her trying to tease Catra’s reasons out of her was sweet. It was nice to see Catra continuing to open up to Scorpia after that moment with the blanket at the end of White Out, but there’s still a lot she’s holding inside. She still genuinely cares about Shadow Weaver despite how she’s been trying to hurt her for revenge and her own satisfaction... that sound familiar?

And unfortunately, Catra’s connection to Shadow Weaver and her need for maternal love and approval was her downfall. After she mocked the rebellion for their bleeding hearts and how easily manipulated they are, mind you. This is where Catra’s tendency to sympathize with Shadow Weaver (which we saw at least twice in season 1) finally came back to bite her in the ass. It was terribly sad because Catra actually has a big heart and Shadow Weaver knew that and took advantage of it.

It’s hard to say how much Shadow Weaver meant of what she said to Catra when they had their big confrontation. It wasn’t clear whether or not she had seen her badge hidden in the food, whether she was only trying to manipulate Catra or if she was being earnest about any of it. Was the physical affection she gave her genuine, her way of making up for things and saying goodbye, or was she just fucking with Catra? I dunno, but either way this betrayal she pulled was awful, and if she was trying to be nice she would’ve been better off holding Catra at a distance than letting her get her hopes up. For real, Catra’s reaction when she realized Shadow Weaver had used and betrayed her was gut-wrenching, one of the rawest moments we’ve seen from her. I might have cried, a lot. She let herself be vulnerable in a way she rarely does, and for that she got absolutely obliterated emotionally. Again.

So yeah, this wasn’t a particularly fun episode, but it was a very strong episode of television and it did a lot to make Shadow Weaver more fleshed out and interesting. It finally brought one of the show’s most fraught relationships into the spotlight and let it combust in front of us, and as painful as it was to watch, I can’t help rewatching the Catra and Shadow Weaver scenes again and again. I never expected Catra to so openly ask Shadow Weaver why she was never good enough for her and what she did to deserve all the abuse. It was an incredibly rewarding scene to watch with great emotional payoff. And for a stan like me, that made it the best episode of the season.

[ncumenia-archived]

📱MOBILE-FRIENDLY RULES📱

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Since English is not my mother language, I apologize in advance if there are some grammatical errors or I use wrong words to describe an action. If something is not clear to you, just let me know, I’ll fix it as soon as I can.

Roleplay Rules:

TAG DUMP HERE!; (NSFW too)

Mun&Muse are both 21+. This blog is selective, 18+ exclusive, canon divergent, duplicates crossover, AU, fandomless, etc… friendly!  

Besides the obvious fact I won't rp smut or ship with minor muns/muses whatsoever, do not follow me if you're underage. This because I feel uncomfortable interacting with minor muns due to the huge age gap that might be between us. (Mun is currently 25 as I write this) Please, don't take it too personally, it's just for my own comfort. Furthermore, if your rules and age (mun is 18+, mun is 23, mun is of age and so on...) are not present on your blog I won’t rp with you at all. Lying about your age will result into a permablock and reported. The same applies if you're underage or your age is not stated and you dare to interact in any kind of NSFW way with me (This also includes liking/commenting my nsfw posts or sending me nsfw asks)

I refuse to ship/interact with: aged up muses (Nunu, Annie, Zoe etc…) and only smut-oriented blogs since they both make me uncomfortable. So, please, if you’re one of these blogs do not follow me.

No godmodding. If our muses are fighting, I’d like to discuss first with the other mun, in order to avoid it as much as possible;

I don’t like “follow for following me back, and if you don’t follow me I’ll unfollow you“ philosophy because I find this kinda disrespectful. I’m also available to interact with you even if we’re not mutuals! Usually, the reasons why I unfollow you are these: spamming too much without using a proper tag, talking shit about other people here on tumblr, spreading useless drama or rumors, posting stuff that makes me uncomfortable or if I somehow assume you’re not interested to interact with me.DMS are always open for plotting!

Currently available verses: Canon, Odyssey, Modern/Academy, Bloodmoon, Deity Please, before interacting with my muse in one of these verses make sure to read the lore and, if something is not clear to you, dm me anytime!;

I’ll try to match length more or less, so don’t worry about that. And please, TAKE YOUR TIME to reply. I have a life too, so don’t worry I’m not the one who runs after others! I tend to easily forget threads, so if I didn’t reply to our thread for like a couple of days dm me!;

I do believe in reblog karma, it’s your choice to send me a meme, but please reblog it from the source and not from me if you don’t want to send me one. If you reblog a meme from me without sending me one for more than once, I’ll block you. I’m sorry about this rule, but after some time this becomes quite annoying;

Any kind of hate toward a nationality/gender/sexual orientation and so on will result in a report and permablock. I believe everyone should respect a person, regardless of their gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation. If you don’t, you’ll get permablocked. Period. The same goes for every kind of insult or anon hate toward me, a ship or a friend: not only you’ll be ignored, but, if it is necessary, I’ll report and permablock you.

This blog is against any kind of fake/unfounded rumors and drama. I'll only reblog callouts that provide evidence about the problematic individual, and mostly about extremely serious topics (like minor hunters, abusers or if someone who is seriously in danger) I'm not afraid to callout people if they have a problematic/gross behavior or if they support/justify problematic/disturbing/traumatic topics.

I won’t rp and tolerate extremely disturbing topics like incest, rape (non-con/dub-con as well), pedophilia, child/animal abuse, and similar. The same goes for every kind of ship where these themes are involved. Mentioning these topics during a thread is okay (For example if you’re talking about your muse’s past), but I’d rather talk with the mun first so we can plot things properly.

Any jokes about child death, rape, racism, disability, sexism and so on are not allowed here. If I see one of them, I may go to your dms and telling you that’s not okay writing these things because they’re harmful, and to stop with that stuff. If you’ll ignore/insult/make fun of me you’ll be permablocked. [Added: 09/07/2019]

This blog may contain triggers such as blood, angst, smoke, drugs, gore, mental health etc. I’ll tag everything and I’ll use “read more”. (I’ll tag my triggers using, for example, “tw: blood” without air quotes) Before rping this stuff with you, I’ll always ask you if you’re okay with it, so do please tell me if you have any triggers or I should tag something specific in my blog! For example, my muse, when she’s overwhelmed by certain feelings or recalls what happened to her kin, she bleeds from her mouth and sternal scar. Please, if this makes you feel uncomfortable don’t be afraid to tell me it; Regarding sexual content, it will also be present, especially during Sinday, but I will always tag everything accordingly and put everything under read more.

Please, tag these two topics: needles and stepping on people. I feel extremely uncomfortable regarding the latter because it's heavily connected with animal abuse, and it makes me feel so sick I start to panic. I only ask you to tag these two topics.

I’m a human being, and sometimes I make mistakes too. If I made something that offended you/made you feel uncomfortable, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I want to learn from my mistakes.

Shipping rules:

Even if I’m more than aware of the fact an 18+ mun is legally an adult, I realized I feel more comfortable shipping with both muns/muses who are 20+, especially in the case there will be some nsfw. That’s my personal preference, and this is NOT negotiable and it will NEVER be.[added 06/05/2019]

If you don’t want to keep our ship going on, that’s TOTALLY OKAY. I will NEVER get mad at you, neither asking you the motivation. If you don’t feel comfortable anymore, that’s okay and I respect your decision!

This blog is multiship exclusive, that means I'll only ship with one muse/au of that muse. Furthermore, I'll be highly selective with whom I ship with, and I mostly prioritize people I've been friends with for a long time. [EXCLUSIVE SHIP LIST]

I state in advance I don’t ship my muse with Diana, since she sees her as a mother-like figure. So… This basically would be incest, and I feel very uncomfortable with it. Furthermore, I won’t ship with Taric, Leona, Aurelion, Soraka, Zoe (But this is almost needless to say since she’s a minor, but prevention is always better than the cure), and yordles.

Even if I’m extremely fine with a platonic/non-sexual relationship, I’m also okay with some smut and that may occur with a serious plot, and ONLY if I feel comfortable and I trust my rp partner enough. Unfortunately, I don’t feel very comfortable rping it on Tumblr, and I’d rather rp it on Discord. [Please check the smut rules here] DON’T FORCE IT WITH ME, otherwise the ship will be deleted and probably I’ll block you too.

My muse is a revenant (I’m talking about her canon verse. In Odyssey! and Modern! she’s a living being) and NO, shipping with her is NOT necrophilia (She’s NOT a lifeless, nonsentient, smelly and rotten body who cannot give consent. She has revived thanks to Targon/Moon’s magic, and she’s ABLE to consent and she doesn’t smell bad, she’s not rotting and so on). I’m writing this because I’m kinda sick of this subject because “Shipping with Ernye/Pyke/Thresh/Kalista/Yone is necrophilia1111!!1!!”, and I’m more than sure these people are the first who fall in love with a vampire. If I receive any anon asks about this stuff in which there’s written I cannot ship her with anyone or other offensive things toward me or my muse (both ic and ooc), I’ll ignore and permablock them. No matter who’s the person who sent this. Again: I’m sick and tired of this stuff because basically there’s no problem in shipping with a psycho who can basically kill/abuse you any moment, meanwhile, GOD FORBID a revenant/vampire and stuff like that. So, better safe than sorry. If this bothers you so much you can unfollow me.

Respect my right to say “NO” if I don’t want to ship with your muse. So, don’t force it or I’ll block you.;

About the Mun:

You can call me Silkie, and I’m 25 years old;

Discord for mutuals only;

Pronouns: she/her (They/Them is also fine, if you feel more comfortable with it, no worries);

Chickens, cats, chinchillas, and Castlevania addicted;

I consider myself as a friendly person, so if you wanna know me or rp with me just send me a message! I suffer from diagnosed GAD and depression, so I really need time to open up to people and my activity may be sporadic because of this. And, please: if I make/say something that makes you feel uncomfortable TELL ME ANYTIME since I never mean to hurt anyone here through my words or acts;

Remember Muse ≠ Mun. Ernye’s actions don’t reflect my personality, or what I think about you;

Please DON’T FLIRT WITH ME, it makes me extremely anxious and uncomfortable due to many awful experiences I had in the past, and also because rp is a hobby and I want to have fun, and I’m not looking for a romantic partner. If you ignore my warnings I’ll permablock you. And yes, this also applies to every NSFW question about me. If you dare to do so you’ll get immediately reported, permablocked and the whole chatlog saved. I will also NOT tolerate any kind of NSFW anon ask about me.

The cringy art you see on my profile is made by me unless stated otherwise. Constructive criticism and bits of advice are more than welcome and encouraged ♥

[ If you have read my rules send me “Has the killing moon come for them?” That’s optional, of course, you don’t have to send it to me!]

[weasleyimaginewheezes]

George x reader / Studying

Request: Hi! Can I ask for oneshot with George and female reader studying together and due to fact that he is older than her he helps her with things she doesnt understand. He has huge crush on her so she is watching her and admiring her while she tries to remember all the stuff she learns. And in the end he couldnt help himself and kiss her when she is extremaly focused on repeating spells. Thank you in advance! (From anon)

A/n: Another request fulfilled! Thank you so much for requesting anon, I hope this fic is okay. I’m trying to space out my writing so I can plan more carefully and so I’m not writing late at night 😊 I just want to thank @rochelle-the-ravenclaw for being so sweet and caring, honestly thank you lovely it was really nice of you <3 So for this fic reader is one year below the twins and is very stressful with exams (because that’s exactly what I’m like). Just cute, quick fluff 😊 Feedback encouraged, Requests still open and most of all enjoy! (Honestly couldn’t think of a better title)

Word count: 2.1k+

Warnings: Swearing

“UGhhhhh!”

George looked up in time to see a book spiralling towards his head, he dodged it quickly before looking at where it had come from. And there he saw Y/n, sitting alone at the back of the common room looking close to ripping her hair out.

Y/n was Fred and George’s best friend, although in the year below them, she had so much fire and mischief in her that the three of them had quickly formed a bond after she had pranked their younger brother in her second year. Ron’s neon green hair didn’t turn back to red until a month later. Something which the three of them still tease him about.

Y/n was usually a rather happy person but she always strove for perfection. That’s why when it was exam season, it was probably best to stay at least 5 feet away from her at all times lest you be hit by a book or two. Fred got poked with a pencil once after he’d made jokes about her being boring and studying all the time.

Fred gave one look to her and shook his head, immediately seeking cover in his dorm room. George however, couldn’t stand to see his best friend this way. “Hey Y/n.” He tentatively stepped closer as her head shot up to meet his eyes. Her own were red and looked tired.

“What?!” She snapped before looking guilty at George’s taken aback look and sinking her head into her hands with a groan. “Ugh, I’m sorry Georgie. I just- fucking. Hate. Exams.” Y/n emphasised the last three words with the sound of ripping paper as she tore up her notes. George’s hand closed over her own to stop her. 

“Hey.” He immediately fixed the notes and Y/n looked partially relieved as she realised what she had been doing. “Maybe you should go get some sleep, I can help you tomorrow if you want?” Y/n scoffed a laugh loudly prompting some stares.

“Sleep?! What good is sleep going to do? Every hour I sleep is an hour wasted from studying.” She pointed her finger, almost as if to prove she was right. George nodded knowing arguing was pointless. “Plus, you help me? You don’t even study for your own exams.” She scribbled some more notes with intense concentration missing George’s hurt look. Her eyes were straining from being kept open so George did what any good friend would do in that moment.

She didn’t even notice as he walked behind her chair and breathed a heavy sigh which meant ‘I’m sorry but this is the only way.’ He raised her up under the armpits. Unfortunately, it did nothing more than tickle her as she swatted his hand away with a poorly stifled giggle but it did get her up out of her seat. Y/n went back to glaring at him for the distraction and he just smirked.

“George whatever you’re doing or planning on doing – please don’t.” Her words were sharp and warning but since when did George ever listen to anyone? He lifted her by the waist, up over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Y/n immediately began to protest and hit his back with her fists, everyone in the common room had turned to watch but George paid no attention as he carried Y/n up the stairs to the 5th year girl’s dormitory only stopping when he reached her bed.

She glared harder at him as she laid down on her bed but it wasn’t long before the comfort of her bed took over her senses and she was dozing slowly off into sleep. George smirked and dusted off his hands before going downstairs to learn some of her material so he could help her study.

Normally, George wouldn’t have put extra effort into relearning things he didn’t need to know anymore but Y/n was worth it. He also felt he needed to prove to her that he was more than just a jokester, if that’s all she saw him as then there would be no hope of finally getting her to go out with him.

See, George had recently realised that he had a rather large crush on Y/n. He didn’t know how he hadn’t seen it, he was constantly talking about her (as Fred would point out) and if it wasn’t that he would think about her. In the common room, his eyes always managed to drift to where Y/n would be and when he was playing quidditch he’d always look for her face in the stands, he’d also always wait for her to come and congratulate him with a hug, his heart pounding as she did so and him wanting nothing more than to kiss her. Of course, Fred knew before he did and it seemed many others had figured it out, all except Y/n that was.

The next morning at breakfast he sat with her as she ate, she was once again hunched over a textbook reading intently. He noticed it was defence against the dark arts and smirked. “What spell would you use to block an attacking spell?” Y/n’s head shot up with a quizzical look on her face.

“Protego.” She answered slowly but without hesitation, still heavily confused as George nodded.

“Okay, what-?” George was happily continuing before Y/n cut him off.

“George, what are you doing?”

“I’m helping you study.” His answer was so simple and quick that Y/n felt taken off guard. No one ever offered her help because she typically turned into something of a Godzilla with exams but as she looked at George’s smiling face, she couldn’t help but feel the complete opposite to Godzilla. She smiled back and George took it as a good sign to continue.

They spent the entirety of breakfast sitting and studying. George noticed that Y/n was smiling through every question and he knew how hard it was for her this time of the year with the pressure from her parents and the professors. He was glad that him and Fred had never felt that and that gave him an idea.

“Hey how about we take a break and then later on I’ll teach you my techniques for spells.” Y/n looked hesitant at his suggestion but after he winked at her with that godforsaken smirk, how could she say no? Plus, she could do with a break, then again if she had known that the ‘break’ entailed a prank she wouldn’t have even hesitated to say yes.

Her and George panted as they ran away from the ‘scene of the crime’. “That was bloody brilliant!” George’s voice sounded amazed that they had just pulled that off. They had turned the floor outside of the Slytherin common room into fake lava that was actually just orange jelly. Y/n laughed along and agreed, thankful for the distraction but knowing she had to get back to work. George began to follow her up to the common room just as an angry Slytherin yelled from the dungeons. Y/n took a hold of George’s hand and started running away from the yells.

As soon as they were far enough away they stopped, panting heavy breaths which soon turned into laughter. George thought that Y/n might have let go of his hand but to his amazement (and joy) she didn’t, if anything she held on tighter as they walked back to the common room.

They sat cosily by the fire and Y/n pulled out her book of spells to practice the movements for each one. George tried to remember the way it had worked for him – DADA was the only class he truly enjoyed and did well in. She started moving her wand but the movement of the wrist was wrong, George didn’t even think as he adjusted the height of her arm and moved her wrist around to carry the action properly. That was until the realisation hit him that he was touching her and that they were sitting rather close so he pulled back, hoping to Godric he wasn’t blushing too much as he felt the heat on his cheeks. He couldn’t see Y/n’s disappointment at the loss of contact or her own blushing cheeks.

She turned to the fireplace and began practising Incedio and Aquamenti with heavy concentration. George couldn’t help looking at her, watching as her tongue darted out to trace her lips as her eyes narrowed in on the fire or the way she smiled when the spell worked. He knew his unmistakable blush was there now, probably redder than his own hair. He also knew his smile was wide and that he couldn’t fight the urge to kiss her any longer so when she turned to him, excited at successfully relighting the roaring fire, he quickly closed the gap without a second thought.

He heard a little gasp of surprise as his lips crashed to hers. He started to become unsure in his action before he felt Y/n’s lips move gently back against his own and holy shit, she was kissing him back. Her hands came up to hold his shoulders as his rested on her hips. They both pulled back slowly after a few moments of perfect synchrony, both needing air. Their faces were equally as unsure before they opened their eyes, saw each other and smiled widely, taking in what had just happened between them both.

George leaned forward to rest his head to hers as he chased the taste of her lips. He pecked them again and Y/n giggled, it was the cutest thing he’d ever heard in his life. And then suddenly Y/n was biting her lip with her smile and he just wanted to kiss her until sunrise.

“What was that for?” Y/n asked coyly.

George met her eyes with such a loving intensity as he chose his next words, of course he knew what he wanted to say. Because I’m in love with you and I have been since I was 13. But maybe it was much too soon for that so he settled for the truth he felt in that moment. “Because you’re cute when you concentrate.”

To that Y/n giggled again and lifted her hand up so she could caress his face. “Well, George Weasley I think that you’re just cute in general.” Y/n’s smile grew impossibly wider meeting her eyes whilst her other hand trailed across his chest. George beamed back and kissed her, making sure this one lasted longer.

And it did. It was heavier as tongues were slid in, hands roamed more than before and George was pushed back lightly into the sofa cushions. This was before Y/n broke away saying they should study some more to which George responded, “I thought that’s what we were doing.” Y/n laughed but shoved him away playfully, bringing her textbook onto her lap and reading carefully. George couldn’t help but stare again with a smirk.

“George stop staring at me.” Y/n shook her head in amusement with a playful laugh as George continued. He moved ever closer to her and started to kiss her neck.

“I’m sorry love, I can’t help it.” George peppered kisses to her neck before he decided to be adventurous and bit down lightly. Y/n squealed and George laughed as he was once again pushed away but she never stopped smiling at him.

He sat back thoughtfully staring into the fire as she continued to study but her mind wasn’t really reading the words. He wondered m if Y/n had had a crush on him and if so for how long? He asked her this and he thought she might be annoyed at the distraction but it seemed with him she wasn’t as stressed out, at least she didn’t show it if she was. She smiled and bit her lip again, seemingly embarrassed to say.

“Since I was like 11.” Y/n’s smile turned sheepish and her eyes looked everywhere but at him until she noticed George was smiling and not weirded out in anyway. “What about you?”

“Since I was 13.” George answered through his wide smile and Y/n smiled back. “But I only properly realised like a year ago.”

“Seriously? How come it took you so long Georgie?” Y/n inquired with a laugh and a playful push to his shoulder. George ducked his head with a shrug.

“I don’t know, I guess since you’re my best friend I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself in case I ruined everything that we had.” George re-met her eyes and smiled weakly, now he said it out loud it seemed even more ridiculous. Y/n could almost tell where his trail of thought had drifted to as she sensed his unsureness.

“Aww Georgie.” He blushed a little at the use of his nickname and noticed her kind smile. Her hands rested on his jaw as she abandoned her books and left them on the side. She brought his lips slowly to meet hers in a reassuring kiss. It was gentle and quick but it was perfectly sweet.

“What about studying?” George asked with a small smile, wanting desperately to kiss her lips again, he was only human after all. Y/n shrugged with a mischievous smirk.

“Meh, it can wait till tomorrow.” And with that, the rest of the evening was spent acquainting each other with the taste of their lips and exploring new found depths of one another. And Y/n could say with one hundred percent certainty that snogging George was so much better than studying spells.

Taglist: @blue-andbrxnze @queengirl56 @spinspinspin-spin-to-forget @rochelle-the-ravenclaw @justalovertoall @beaaa-banana @harrypotterlifejamesphelps @a9yearoldboy @miss-tipton-is-beautiful @shutupweatherby​ @sweetsummertime99 

(Want to be added or removed to the taglist? just message me :))

[hecallsmehischild]

Mental Organization

Less a post to vent poison right now. More a post to untangle the ball of yarn and line the skeins up neatly in their compartments because right now it’s all one huge mishmash and I think it’s keeping me from what they call “executive function.”

Projects that I have a handle on but that I keep having to stop because I can’t make myself create something quality if my feelings are snarled

Illustrating a children’s story my friend wrote, called How To Be Good. I’m so happy with this. I’m no pro illustrator but my skills have grown a lot since I illustrated the other story (Purple is for Playtime). It’s so visually cheerful, it makes me happy to look at finished pages.

Hey Spacejerk. I love it so far but I’m apprehensive now. I’ve taken the device I was using to create this story and smashed it. How fast do I go now? I don’t really want to write a super long fanfiction. I don’t think I want this story to be longer than ten chapters more. But if I go too fast the audience will feel cheated.

Laughter Lines. I’m more sunk into the flow of this one, but constantly worried I’m going to screw up the device I’ve been laying dominoes for. It’s more complicated than my usual and, unlike previous fandoms where I could handwave these details, it will matter that everything is just right.

Elrohee. I just want to process things here. I want to be careful, too, because I don’t want it to get preachy. Ever. This series is not about being preachy and never was.

Wire trees. I created a larger wire tree recently and also a new kind of button tree that got me all excited. Then I started a tree with wire I didn’t like (because I was running out of colors) and I regret that. I don’t like the color combination. I’m staring at the half finished tree. I hate the waste, but I want to get back to being able to make trees. That half finished tree will stare me in the face forever if I don’t. So I’m standing up to throw it away now. No… No I’m not. The color combination isn’t hideous, just… not inspiring. If I add some really nice beads to it, it will perk up. I dont’ want to waste it.

Painting. Currently I have a half finished orange mask and a half finished wooden wiggly snake. Right now I have no inspiration to finish either, though I think maybe the orange mask might be flamey? Or sunny.

Crochet. I have two blankets in the works, one random-yarn blanket and one that has planned colors as a gift. They take up a lot of space.

Recording chapters of The Book of the Dun Cow aloud. This project is fun, though I do have to muster some will to make myself do it. Dramatic reading is kind of a joy, actually, especially with this book where I have all the voices down. I’m thinking of putting up the link to the whole playlist once the book is fully recorded.

Scrapbooking. I’m so happy. I have only a fraction of this project left to do, and then everything is nicely organized into binders.

And I get very angry and frustrated and kind of despair-y when I find I can’t move forward with these. It feels ridiculous because doing creative things HELPS me feel better, but I can’t do them when I feel bad??? What kind of Catch-22 is that???

Projects I am starting to get a handle on

Basic house cleaning. Or at least floors and bathrooms and countertops. Going to try and do a little bit every day that way it doesn’t become some weekly/monthly overwhelming chore I avoid like the plague.

House decorating. I’ve started getting into this and really liking it. I found a Texan-style wreath for the front door, placed 3 different house mats, and started tacking silk ivy around the kitchen windows. I’m actually kind of proud of myself about this.

Projects I am literally flailing through

Planning a wedding. Dear God, what am I doing? In the next two weeks I need to do the final ring purchase so that something has moved forward and finished. I also need to arrange the legal marriage so our paperwork is completed in the state of our residence and there aren’t any snarls with an out-of-state ceremony. That’s the goal for the next two weeks. Also how do you decorate??? (I ask, rhetorically. I’m looking through some stuff but I think I need to simplify my idea. Maybe instead of all four seasons, just winter/spring?)

Finding a therapist. The one I called isn’t responding. Don’t know how much leeway to give. If I haven’t heard back from her by Saturday night I’m going to try calling someone else. I need to move forward with getting approval for the surgery.

Krav Maga. I’m finally back and I’m doing well with jabs and punches, but anything that requires me to squat and rise multiple times is really hard. I’m very weak there, and while squatting my leg muscles just give out. I’ve looked up a beginner’s squatting routine that I’m going to TRY to enact because I really would love to stop humiliating myself in class. Been having panic issues before class (that stop once I’m in it, because there is NO ROOM in my being to have panic when I’m constantly moving) and would like that to stop. Prayed with my fiancée on the drive over and held his hand and that helped some.

Online Writing Course. Already panicked and frozen over a super vague writing prompt that doesn’t feel like enough explanation was provided. Afraid of being judged by peers. Afraid of critiquing peers because who am I to say this is good or bad? They are all in an Official Writing Course so they MUST know better than me, right? Even if it looks like they really don’t? Frozen.

Editing Best Served Cold. Froze again. Freaked out that I wasn’t a good enough writer to edit anything and froze. Freaking…

Patreon. This is a very on and off again thing. I don’t know how to self promote except through repetition which freaks me out. I don’t know how to save good things for “just the patrons” when I want to share it all. Don’t know if I should restructure all my tiers so there’s less tiers and less offerings? Very possible.

Etsy. Nobody really looks at the listings. I don’t blame them. I’m not a self promoter and I’m not a photographer. All my stuff looks better laid out on a table to sell but I don’t know where around here to do that so for now it just decorates the house. Maybe I should give up on Etsy again and just stick with my Facebook shop. People who use Etsy are serious about their business. This is a hobby I hope to sell a bit of and give the rest away.

Socially

Krav Maga class. I connected with at least one person who’s really sweet and nice. She’s more advanced than I am for sure but helps me feel a lot more at ease and I feel the need to apologize to her a lot less.

Small Group. My fiancée and I found a small group that’s an offshoot of the church we were trying. The church is a mega-church and we’re both still very wary of that. I felt very lost in a sea of people. But this group feels like a band of very real people, expressing doubts and pain while searching in the Bible together, eating pizza, and hanging out. Meets twice a month, plus one extra day that’s just girl’s night. I am looking forward to getting to know these people 3 Mondays a month.

D&D Shabbat night. Friday nights now we (light our brand new candles!) say the blessing, and eat a meal (now home cooked because ALL OUR KITCHEN IS FUNCTIONAL, WOOOOO), then retire to the great hall to play D&D. We are currently at 1 GM and 4 players, soon to be 5 players. We’re brand new so this will be glorious.

Health

BPV. Had a round of Benign Positional Vertigo for a few weeks. Finally cleared up. At least next time I’m suddenly dizzy out of nowhere I won’t think I’m dying.

Eating. Eating is weird lately. I’m walking this really fine line between getting obsessed with my weight and not caring. I have veered hard in the direction of aggressively “not caring” most of my life, partly because I was afraid of the eating disorders my friends suffered from. I’m doing pretty well with my eating, choosing my food carefully for one-main-meal-a-day-plus-light-snacks eating and trying to keep it all under 1400 cal. I don’t have a lot of impulse control when it comes to eating so I flat out can’t keep foods in the house “just for that one treat day” because that one treat day is TODAY no matter what I say to myself. Best I can do is limit my access to those foods (including turning down SOME opportunities to go out and eat). Impulse control gets worse with wonky emotions because I will eat ALL THE FEELS. Lately my main meal is (one can) tuna salad sandwich on onion roll, which is filling enough, then I eat plums and flavored rice cakes or salted-but-not-buttered-popcorn or pickles for the rest of the day. I picked up a few small soups which look good. Came to the realization recently that I really do need to stop thinking of this as something I do “Just until I get to goal weight.” In order to maintain the healthy weight I hope to achieve, I will still need to eat well. I don’t get to let loose just because I made it. So I have reluctantly begun adopting the idea that I need to do right by my eating habits as a permanent lifestyle change. I’d like to be around longer and in order to do so I need to take better care of myself than I have been. But I can feel obsession right on the edge of my consciousness and that’s a scary feeling. I’m trying not to fall into obsession or let it drive me off the other edge of extremes to not caring. Walking the tightrope carefully.

Sleep. Sleep is weird too. Some nights I wake up a lot, then I can get up in the morning easier. Some nights I zonk out straight through and then it’s super hard to get up in the morning. Still wish that I could not be so motion sensitive. I used to be Dusty-sleeps-like-a-rock and now I’m a light sleeper. All someone has to do is call my name and I jolt up.

Trich. Been obsessively tweezing a lot more. Gaps in every eyelid. Unhappy about this.

This Blog and Processing

I don’t always know what to do on here anymore. I post fanfiction, but the part of my life that I would normally process out loud... I can’t really do that now. It actually directly impacts someone this time. Feels like words are measured with a lot more care instead of just spilling out willy nilly and I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I know that things knot up inside some more, but does that mean I just need to find a different not-so-public outlet for these things? It hasn’t really worked well so far.

Ever since the beginning of the year I have wondered to myself if I am too public with things and I’ve been a step more self conscious about it (yeah, weird to say on this complete textual vomit, right? But it’s been building for a really long time and I need this) since the end of last year. I let some words get under my skin that I shouldn’t have, but they’re hard to shake because I don’t know how much objective truth is in them.

Dealing with unfamiliar feelings that I want no part of. Anger isn’t unfamiliar, but it’s unwelcome. Boundaries book says anger is a good alarm bell, but I just… don’t want to. I don’t know where the line for “good anger” is and I don’t know how to do anger without setting every bridge around me on fire. Hatred is unfamiliar and even more unwelcome. It feels like tasty, warm poison. I want it, badly. I want it as a defense against past, current, and future pain. I want to rear up and yell “Not this time!” when I see patterns from my past repeating and I want icicles dripping from my words. But it’s deeply wrong. This isn’t what the God I serve taught, and I know hatred will poison me to the core of who I am. I get that those ideas have been hackneyed to death with pop catchphrases and whatnot, but I mean… that doesn’t make it any less true. And it’s going to be really ugly and messy and I don’t want to deal with it when being ice queen would be a hell of a lot easier. Still, I don’t know how NOT to hate at this moment, so when I’m aware I give God permission to change this in me because I can’t/don’t know how to change it myself right now.

Sometimes I wish I had more to say on the Dear Someone tag, but I know who Someone is and I tell him in person every day and it’s the most beautiful, wonderful part of my life right now.

 I say a lot of negative stuff. Even if it’s true stuff, I tend to focus on processing negatives a lot. I want to figure out ways to process positive and good things. I think I’m afraid of sounding like I’m gloating or shoving good things in the face of people who are hurting. But. I also want to share the joyful things in my life. And be grateful for them publicly as I am privately. I want to rewire my brain so that the first thing that comes to mind is not what’s wrong, but what’s right. I don’t want to do this in a fakey way, that sort of front really bothers me, but there has to be some genuine way to express gratitude and joy on a more regular basis. Pain isn’t the only genuine thing there is.

I want to process publicly some of my Bible reading and I have done so, but every time I’m afraid I might be stepping on someone’s toes or making someone angry at me. I don’t want to start fights but I also want to share stuff. I don’t want to mislead people, but I want to explore.

I’m trying so hard to accept that I’m happy doing what I like, but when “doing what I like” gives out on me because I’m emotional I get so angry and upset and fearful and I wonder if I’m really okay with that at all. Or is it just my mental illness acting out, then? It’s hard to tell if that’s what’s clouding my thought process and dampening my will to act.

Misc

I feel bad that my To Do Today or Today’s Goals posts are not working for me as well as they were at the start. It feels like failure.

I feel grief and anger and uncertainty about my family situation, both immediate and extended. I still don’t know how to balance the fact that I’ve split off to start a new family (just me and my fiancée, not kids) and that this one is supposed to be my priority, while still loving the family I grew up in. Or what love looks like with distance. What I’ve been engaging in doesn’t look or feel like actual relationship.

I want to bake. I want to bake lots of sweets. Apple pies, I want to make applesauce and jam (not baking, I know), I want to make lembas bread and chocolate chip cookies and ALL OF THE THINGS.

My area is a freaking mess and I need to fix that by tomorrow. And also make Miso soup for 5.

Stressed about trying to keep all aforementioned balls in the air without melting down or losing track of any.

I think there’s more. But. I’m tired. And I need to go to bed. And this… I think this helps. I’ve shelved a lot of brain skeins tonight. Maybe I’ll be a little more productive tomorrow.

[whateverisbeautiful]

Reveling in Richonne

#103: The Heart (8x08)

Well we’re here. 😭 😣 So lets talk about it.

I feel like my brother said it best when he said; Killing Carl doesn’t advance the storyline, it advances the finish line.

It’s so true to me cuz, I’ve always been someone who felt like this show still had potential it just was losing it’s sense of direction. But a reckless decision like killing Carl is a hard one to recover from. So for me, I feel like once you kill Carl...

But before, I get too ahead of myself tho, let me start from the beginning of this heartbreaking episode. (Side note: this post is suuuuper long. Not cuz it’s about multiple episodes, but because it’s about Carl 😭)

So first; the marketing of “Experience the moment everyone will be talking about when the episode ends” gave me anxiety before even going into this episode. 🙈

I avoid any type of spoilers for this show but the week before this episode I had been hearing talk that people seriously think Carl was going to be the msf death and I just refused to believe it. Like I’d hear people say it’s gonna be Carl and my reaction was just like…

I didn’t think it could possibly be true cuz Carl is a huge character and a crucial character and also cuz they sidelined Carl so much in season 7 and 8A so I was like there’s no way they would kill Carl, the biggest character they could kill apart from Rick, with such little build up and screen time.

But I was wrong. Heartbreakingly wrong. 😥 And I started to realize that as the msf progressed.

I had been nervous about whoever got the focus in the cold open cuz often that’s who’s not going to make it. So when the focus was almost immediately on Carl with Rick that did not help my nerves.

They flash back to Rick and Carl’s conversation after Carl first met Siddiq. Carl tells Rick that if they really cared about people then they can’t just hope cuz it takes more than that.

He reminds Rick that there’s going to be something after this war but Rick says, “Not for everyone” and Carl says “Okay, yeah. But what about for you?” And I’m already getting emotional. 😭

Cuz all Rick would have wanted for “after the fight’s over” is what we saw in that happy place; Michonne, Judith, and Carl.

All he wanted is for this boy to live and now that’s not going to happen. 😫

Then it cuts back to Rick rolling up to the seemingly empty Sanctuary with Jadis and her people. They start getting shot at so Rick runs for cover and calls out to Jadis about how they should proceed, but to the utter shock of all of us…Jadis and her people ditch him and start fleeing immediately. 🤭

I was like “I’m disappointed but not even a little surprised.” That’s exactly what should be expected from the trash folk so...

(Side note: Carol and Jerry pull up to get Rick and I felt it was strange to not ever have a scene with Rick and Carol in 8A before this moment.

If I’m not mistaken, as far as Rick knew, Morgan told him Carol had gone off, never to be seen again. And it wasn’t until Carol returns to ASZ to help them fight in 7x16 that Rick would have even known Carol was still around. And so to never have a scene where Rick and Carol address each other before the msf felt like a gap in story or at least a missed opportunity imo.)

They cut back to the Rick and Carl flashback and Carl tells Rick, “You’re gonna live, Dad” which is kind of like his own version of “You’re gonna beat this world” 😥

Then he asks, “Why are we doing this? Why are we fighting them?” and I feel like this line is a clear example of Carl’s character being altered in a contrived way.

Cuz Carl would know good and well why they are doing this. Last season, he wanted to roll up to the Sanctuary himself and fight to take out Negan but now he doesn’t know why they’re doing this?

They’re acting like Carl wasn’t there for the line-up or for when Negan casually killed Spencer and had Olivia killed right in front of him. Or like Negan wasn’t seconds a way from killing Carl himself in 7x16.

And not only that, they’re acting like Carl wasn’t ticked off by Negan’s reign. He was eager to fight back and now we’re supposed to believe he doesn’t get why they’re fighting. 

He says, “We’re fighting so that it’s all of us working together for something more than just killing other people” and I was like “exactly, so that means wiping out any imminent threats.” He was almost brutally killed by this psychopath so they’re fighting so that stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore.

Rick asks, “Well, you think we’re gonna be out there picking strawberries with Negan?” Valid question.

Carl says, “If that’s what it takes.” And Rick smiles and shakes his head cuz he knows that that’s not realistic. I really was asking myself “Who is this kid and what did he do with Carl?” Cuz this just did not feel like Carl “I think you should jump out the window before I kill you” Grimes.

Carl says, “It’s more than just hope. What are we just gonna kill all of them?” and I was like “Lil homie, Rick gave them a chance to surrender and they declined, so now we have to do what we have to do.”

In fact, the words “I had to do what I had to do” was exactly what Carl told Rick when he took out that boy in the woods seasons ago, cuz that’s always been more of Carl’s mindset.

Carl says, “Finding some way forward, that’s harder. That’s something more. Dad, that’s how it’s gotta be.”

And as they walk you can see Rick’s not sold cuz what Carl’s proposing is nice in theory but just not the most realistic, at this time at least.

When I heard Carl say the episode’s title, “How it’s gotta be”, I was like...

Cuz him being the one to say that line felt like a bad sign for Carl’s fate and my confidence that Carl wasn’t going anywhere slowly started to dimmer down.

It’s hard cuz I love seeing Rick and Carl together and being father and son, and literally them having more scenes together was at the top of my wish list because they are (or were supposed to be) what this whole show was built on.

So it’s sad cuz we finally got to see them together but it would be one of the last times. And it’s also sad that one of their last few conversations was one of disagreement.

But y’all, amidst the heartbreak there was one super golden scene that I have to happy dance for; And that’s Michonne and Judith!

Y’all, precious is an understatement, this is perfection. 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾

So there’s this shot from afar and we see Judith playing with a sitter nearby and then Michonne walks into the frame and walks over to her, which I already love.

And then Michonne stoops down and sweetly tells Judith, “I’ll be back soon. I’ll bring your Daddy too, okay?” and it’s just the sweetest thing. 😊

I love that she’s confident that she and Rick will make it back and that it’s so clear they’re her parents. Also, you know Michonne is probably really happy that she’ll be reunited with Rick as well.

Michonne asks, “Can you say bye-bye?” And then they have the most precious moment to grace the show lol. Not exaggerating. 🙌🏾😭😊

Judith looks up at her and smiles and says “Bye Bye” which I believe is her first official line on the show and I love that her first line is with mom Michonne.

I could watch this moment one million times and my reaction every time will be this…

It’s perfect and can we talk about Michonne and Judith for a second? Like they have come such a long way from this…

And for Judith, this really would be the woman she sees as a mom. Like Michonne has been looking after her since she was a baby…

And now they’re here and it’s everything. 😭

It’s funny cuz as annoyed as I can sometimes get with this show, they’ll put in a scene like this and then I’m just overjoyed and it makes it feel worth it lol.

Like tell me if y’all can relate, cuz doesn’t it sometimes feel like you can be going along, not feeling a lot of the decisions being made in the show, and then they put in a wonderful scene like this and all of a sudden you’re back to being addicted like…

Cuz it’s like now you gotta stick around for these amazing moments lol.  😂 Sure, you can wait to see the gifs but there’s something special about getting to see it as it happens.

And I love that, before Michonne goes, she says thank you to the sitter cuz that lets you know that she’s the mom and when someone else is watching Judith it’s cuz mom and dad are away. I’m glad that Michonne has embraced this mom role and that her and Judith have the relationship they have. I really hope we get to see more of that in 8B.👌🏽

And this moment totally feels similar to when Rick says goodbye to Judith in the premire. They’re her parents.😭

(Side note: The next scene is Michonne and Daryl talking and he tells her his plan worked which I was like bruh you didn’t even stick around the Sanctuary long enough to know that for sure. 😑

Also  I was just so curious about where Daryl and Michonne thought Rick was during their scene, cuz Daryl had said if Rick was gone long he’d come get him, and it seems like Rick’s been gone for awhile)

So then we see Carl in his room writing letters and that’s when my nerves were off the roof.

Like seeing him write those letters, this was me trying to fight the overwhelming sense that this was all being done cuz Carl wasn’t going to make it…

And we see that he wrote it for his dad. And I’m a mess. 😭

If he wrote individual letters to Rick, Michonne, and Judith, y’all I don’t know that I’ll ever recover. And it’s so sad that he’s looking all forlorn and hurt in his room with just a sleeping bag cuz those awful Saviors took their beds. The whole thing is just depressing. 😪

So then it’s nighttime and Carl is opening the sewer and Michonne approaches him and I was super excited that we were going to get a long awaited interaction between Carl and Michonne, since they hadn’t talked since the premiere.  

(Side note: It’s sweet seeing them together here cuz Carl was once this little kid next to her and now he’s taller than her. He grew up so much on this show. ☺️)

Michonne tells him she’s been looking for him and then she casually says “We’re about ready to head out. What are you doing?” Carl says, “I’m helping someone. A traveler.”

And then it’s hilarious cuz Michonne looks down and is understandably confused so she asks, “In the sewer?” 😋

And then it looks like Carl’s about to fess up about harboring Siddiq but then we hear those dreaded bangs on the gate.

And they focus on Michonne as she realizes Daryl’s plan actually did not work, cuz Negan is now outside the gate with both a microphone and a smugness that’s at an all time high. 🙄

Negan tells the people inside that they have three minutes to come up with creative apologies and the one with the weakest gets killed and then Rick gets killed. And I was like if anyone’s wondering why it’s necessary to fight them, this is why. Like this is exactly why they can’t just pick strawberries with Negan.

So Michonne is super troubled by this and she stays standing still, whereas Carl seems to be ready to set a plan in motion. He sees Michonne is still in a state of shock so he adamantly says, “Michonne. Come on” and we’re definitely seeing Carl start to step up as the man with the plan. So he runs and Michonne follows after him.

So Carl has a whole plan ready and I was like yes Carl. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 He tells them they need to make it look like they escaped out back and he’s giving people directions and I felt like this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for, where Carl gets to make his debut as a true leader and show he’s not a little boy anymore. 👌🏽

Tara says they can fight them, Rosita says Carl’s right, and then Michonne says, “Carl, we can’t just let them have this place.” Cuz as we know home is very important to her and she knows how vulnerable they’d become to enemies if they no longer had a home base.

Carl says, “We can. All we need to do is survive tonight.” 

Excuse me while I cry, cuz Carl knows he may only survive tonight but he’s determined to use his last few moments to make sure the people he cares about survive. 😭

Carl says, “This is my show, you said it.” And I wanted Michonne to be like...

Cuz she can’t leave him, no matter what was said before. Carl goes on to say, “This is my plan. And you’re gonna do it. You’re all gonna do it. So lets go.”

And I get that Michonne did say this was his show, but I think in a high stakes moment like this she would have felt like there is nothing in the entire world that’s going to make me leave you here so if you think that…

But I do appreciate that Carl is adamant that they do this cuz he knows it’ll protect people. And it is a really smart plan.

And Michonne respects him so she agrees to go. But also I was like did they need their four heavy hitters to go? Michonne could have stayed with Carl and Daryl, Tara and Rosita could have gone.

Or at least have it where Michonne doesn’t leave until she sees Carl safely in the sewer. I just felt like there needed to be more of a sense of Michonne trying to ensure Carl’s safety before she headed out, cuz that’s more in line with her character.

I do like the subtle nod Carl and Daryl have cuz, even tho I wish we would have saw more interactions from them, Daryl and Carl have known each other a long time. Daryl knew Carl before he knew Rick. So it’s just cool to see Daryl agree to follow Carl’s plan and acknowledge him as the grown man he’s become.

So when a character is about to exit a show they often get a scene that lets them really show off their chops and have their moment. And to me, this scene with Carl talking to Negan is Carl’s big moment where Chandler gets to knock it out of the park before he goes. 👌🏽💯

Let me tell you tho, when Carl walked up on that wall to let Negan know Rick’s not home, I felt two things; Super proud of Carl for being unfazed by Negan, but I also felt suer anxious and was like “Carl A. Grimes, if you don’t get down from there and go take cover somewhere.” (And I don’t even know what his middle name is but that’s just what felt right lol)

Negan is amused to see Carl there and says, “Look at you, answering the door like a big boy” and I was like Negan try me not cuz Carl is an OG so you don’t want to patronize this kid. And Carl’s shown you he’s not afraid of you so...

Carl tells Negan, “There’s families in here. Kids. My little sister.” And I’m emotional yet again. 😢

It’s so admirable that Carl is doing this with Judith and other kids in mind. Like while yes he’s grown into a man, he’s still technically a kid himself. But because he’s the most capable kid in the apocalypse, he’s able to be a voice for the other kids.

Negan says life isn’t fair and there’s kids on both sides. He brings up how Carl had to kill his own mom and how that’s screwed up and I was ready to fight Negan myself at this point. 😒

Carl tries to reason with Negan saying how bad stuff happens but they can talk this out but Negan’s like nah there needs to be punishment so Carl says, “Kill me.” And I was like...

This strikes a nerve with Negan and makes him finally stop talking and then he asks, “What did you say?” Carl says, “If you have to kill someone, if there has to be punishment then kill me. I’m serious”

Negan asks, “You wanna die?” and Carl says, “No, I don’t. But I will. It’s gonna happen.” and y’all I cannot, for real.

He doesn’t want to die. 😥 But he knows his time is almost up and he wants to sacrifice himself while he can. 😭

Carl says, “And if me dying could stop this, if it can make things different for us, for you, for all those other kids it’d be worth it.” 😭😭

This line is special cuz it really reminds you that what made Carl’s character so unique is that he provided the perspective of the youth and what it’s like to be a kid in the apocalypse. And he was the baddest kid to ever do it. 👏🏽👏🏽

And so for him, as he knows his life is coming to an end, it’s really deep that he’s thinking about other kids and what their future could be and how he wants to leave making this a better place for the most important group; the kids just like him. 😭

He then smartly gets in Negan’s head and asks, “I mean was this the plan? Was it supposed to be this way? Is this who you wanted to be?” And I was like “Tell him, Carl! Tell him!” cuz he was asking the real questions. 👏🏽

Once the cars burst through the wall, Carl knows that’s his cue to get away and Negan realizes he’s been bamboozled. And I was like this kid is a pro. Cuz while Carl was trying to get through to Negan, he also was stalling and I was just proud y’all. 😌

Negan and his men start bombing the place and yet another TF location ends up in flames.

So now Carl has to try and make it to the sewer. As he walks the streets of a falling ASZ, I thought back to when he told his dad, when they first got to this place, how he didn’t want ASZ to make them weak. But as we can see, Carl stayed strong until the very end. 😭👏🏽

He also told Rick, in a past season, that Alexandria needs them and would die without them and, seeing Carl’s plan literally save so many people, that also ended up being a very true statement.

You can see the pain he’s in as he makes his way through the community and, at the time, I wasn’t sure if he had been hit or something, he just seemed super drained.

It was almost like he had been fighting the pain so long to keep it together for everyone else, and he got to a point where, once he finally was alone, he was able to just really acknowledge the damaging effects of the bite. 😢

When they cut to Rosita, Tara, Daryl and Michonne as they wait for the Saviors to drive over, Tara is saying how they didn’t escape cuz of what they did and if you have to say that it’s probably cuz you’re not convinced. 🙃

And Rosita’s all talking about how maybe they needed that for their own realizations or whatever and I was like...

Cuz they did not need to do that for “their own personal growth”, if it now means people are going to die and their community is going to blow up. 😒

It’s funny cuz they’re all having this conversation and Michonne is just focused on when these Saviors are going to drive up, cuz you know the only thing on her mind is getting back home to her family.

(Side note: It’s hilarious seeing Dwight play dumb as he knowingly walks the Saviors right into the trap. Like that one savior is like “You’re gonna get us killed” and he has a look like “yep that’s the point”. 😂)

So Negan rolls through ASZ’s gates and goes to Rick’s house “to make a little spaghetti.” And I was low key like…

Carl is still walking around the place and I was just like “Carl please my heart can’t take it, please get to where you’re trying to go and stay safe.”

He’s spotted by some Saviors but fortunately he’s able to cover himself in smoke and make it in the sewer.

Again, Michonne has zero time for the games when Daryl and Tara and Rosita want to make Dwight convince them he’s with them, like he didn’t just drive all those Saviors into the line of fire.

And what is Sis doing during all this? She was busy collecting all the guns and taking care of business. #boss👏🏽👸🏾

And then she diligently walks and tells them, “We need to get back now” cuz you can imagine the type of siren that must be going off in her head while she’s away not knowing if her kids and their community is okay. Like I just felt the mama bear vibes that were coming from her.

So they all make it back to ASZ and are about to get in the sewer and as Michonne looks around you can see that seeing her community in ruins yet again, is a really traumatic experience for her. 😥

It’s so devastating that just like she left her community and then came back to find it in ruins and her son gone before meeting TF, she’s literally about to have that happen all over again. 😣

Dwight even notices how hard this is on her and he says, “I’m sorry. I am” But I was low key salty and was like “if only you would have been sorry that day you tied her and Glenn up before the line-up.” 😒

Rosita looks up at Michonne from the sewer and continuously calls her name to come join them but, instead, Michonne closes the sewer and doesn’t climb down with them cuz Sis is not gonna go down without a fight.

And as much as I was excited to see what she would do next, her closing that sewer lid had my nerves all the way shot. 😬 She had me feeling...

So then we see Rick has finally made it back to ASZ and the first thing he does is run to his house. He opens the door and calls out to his family saying, “Carl. Judith. Michonne” And I love that finding those three is his first priority. Family man, y’all. 😊🙌🏾

(Side note: Him calling for Judith made me wish he would have found Judith in the house beating up Negan like…

I’m curious if they’ll play on the fact that Negan heard Rick call for Michonne. Negan knows about Carl and Judith already so you’d think it would stand out to him that there was one other person Rick called for in his house.

As Rick walks further in the house, Negan strikes and they have a little showdown. And y’all, Rick deserves a standing ovation for asking Negan if he every stops talking. 👏🏽👏🏽

Negan updates Rick that his boy volunteered to die, and he asks what kind of boy Rick is raising and I was in my feelings wanting to respond like, “He’s raising a great boy, you psycho. One who stands up and is willing to die for what he believes in.”

Negan says he’s going to fix him cuz he likes him and it definitely seems like Negan is jealous that Rick has a son.

Negan’s taunting Rick and I think they used the shot where Lincoln actually broke Jeffrey’s nose cuz Negan drops like a rag doll when he gets hit.

And then there’s a huge “How Sway!?” moment when Rick grabs Lucille and then hits Negan with the non-barbed wire side of the bat.

How sway!? 🤦🏽‍♀️

I feel like it would be better just to not choreograph it where Rick gets access to Lucille at all if you’re not gonna let him actually use it.

(Side note: it’ll never not be the most hilarious thing in the world to me that Rick flies out the window and then just casually jogs away. 😂)

And then, y’all, when I tell you I was turning up for this next part I am not kidding.

Cuz next, we see this walker walking through ASZ and then we see it’s head get sliced by a katana and you already know it’s time to let the baddest chick in the game shine, honey. 👸🏾🙌🏾

They also cut to Rick running and I was like aw this is def when R&M are about to reunite. 😌

It’s also super significant to see Rick and Michonne both walking around this place cuz at one point these two were the constables and Deanna assigned them those jobs cuz she knew they would protect and serve and defend this place and sure enough, even as ASZ gets blown up, they’re still essentially doing that. ☺️

Deanna got it right. And, even better now, they’re not just partners who break up fist fights, they’re partners who know they’re in love with each other and can bring each other back out of their dark states like we see in this scene.

So Michonne walks through ASZ with such a fierceness and determination and this was literally me during this whole thing…

A Savior grabs Michonne and tells her all her people are dead and she missed it and he tells her “This is your fault” which I was like dang this Savior is not just attacking her, he’s also really trying to make her feel horrible and guilty on top of the emotions she already had weighing on her. 😟

But I love that, when he says this, you see Michonne muster everything she has to get this guy off her. Like that Savior got the wrong one. 👌🏽

She gives this Savior the Governor treatment and sends her katana straight through his eye. But she’s not done there.

She then proceeds to repeatedly just slash this guy all the way up and you can literally feel the rage and overflow of emotions pour out of her as she yells and tears this guy up. Like it was such an intense moment with such raw emotions.

You do not come for Michonne’s family otherwise you will unleash a whole other side of her. 💯

Like seeing this scene, this was a glimpse into Michonne’s darker side, the side that she told Carl she had before she was brought back.

But you know who also has this darker intense side? Her man.

Cuz seeing Michonne tear this guy up it reminded me of the season 4 finale when Rick repeatedly stabbed that guy who tried to assault Carl.

Rick and Michonne are both capable of going to this really intense place. That’s why she wasn’t afraid when Rick went there in season 4 cuz she knew she has that in her too.

And what’s cool about these two tho is they’re also the ones most capable of bringing each other out of that place. ☺️

Rick runs and sees her and so he goes over and says her name and then he takes her arm. And Michonne responds like this…

Because she’s so in the heat of the moment, for all she knows the person grabbing her could be another Savior so she’s still very much in fight mode and it even takes a while for her to fully come back and register that it’s her man in front of her and not someone trying to hurt her.

I know there was a lot of parallels made to this moment and the moment in season 5 when Rick reached for Michonne, which is a great parallel.

But this moment also reminded me of something else. And it’s this moment all the way back in season 2…

The circumstances are extremely different but it’s more so the visual that feels similar. This parallel is interesting to me because when Rick reached for Lori, she pushed him away and they never quite recovered from that day. But with Michonne, she realizes it’s Rick and is able to take his hand.

And that’s part of what makes Rick and Michonne’s relationship so special, they always step closer rather than further apart. 😊

It is precious that after Rick reaches for her and she instinctually pushes him away, he still keeps his hand out and you can tell he really wants to comfort her and he also sees she’s in a really fragile state and headspace as she takes a second to come out of that blinding rage and see that it’s him and she’s safe.

And they stay looking right at each other and it’s just a really deep and well acted moment to me, cuz you can literally see them finding their center again through being back with each other. 😌

Rick asks, “Where are they?” and while I’m sure he cares where everyone is, I know what he most wants to know is where are their kids cuz that’s what’s most important.

Michonne says, “Oh…god” cuz I think she’s officially coming back to, from that dark space she just went to.

And then, you can’t completely see it, but it’s clear that she takes his hand and y’all it’s the cutest thing.

Cuz Rick is just happily letting her lead the way and then he even looks down at the Savior like “Dang my girl tore him up. I’m def married to the baddest chick in the game.” #DirectQuote. No doubt about it.” 😊👌🏽

And I think this was Michonne’s first time really getting to take on a Savior and of course she messes that man up. Cuz 👸🏾.

Just the fact that R&M leave this scene hand in hand is great cuz it reminds you that they operate so naturally as a couple. She didn’t have to take his hand, but she does cuz that’s her man and cuz she told no lies when she told Judith she would bring her dad back. 💯

And then they arrive in the sewer. And I was re-watching this for this post and, y’all, I haven’t gone back to this episode since it aired cuz it was too painful so when this sewer just even came on screen, I immediately got emotional. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the msp. I really don’t. 😥

So Rick and Michonne walk through this sewer and I love that they’re together cuz it just feels like the king and queen returning to their people. 👑

So I see Judth and Daryl and I’m like okay good their safe. And as they walk further in this sewer Michonne low key looks like she can sense something is off.

I had noticed that TF weren’t making eye contact with Rick and Michonne as they walked through the sewer and it’s devastating knowing that they couldn’t look at them cuz they knew about Carl. 😢

(Side note: initially I thought they weren’t looking at Rick cuz they felt bad that they all had gone against him and forgot about him while he was gone lol)

When this first aired, I hadn’t seen that Carl made it to the sewer so I thought his whereabouts were still supposed to be a mystery. So as they cut to all these faces, I was just like “okay and where’s Carl?”

Like I was freaking out cuz, with all this talk that he was going to be the one to die, and the whole advertising of “watch to the end of the episode” I was like where is my kid cuz we have like three minutes left of the episode and I need to know that Carl made it. 😬

It’s cute seeing Daryl hold Judith and then Rick acknowledge her.

And Rick and Michonne finally get to meet Carl’s new friend when they see Siddiq.

And then we hear Carl say, “I brought him here.” And y’all. When I heard Carl’s voice I was so relived. Like I was rejoicing and this was my relieved reaction when I saw that he made it…

But I thought. 😔

Cuz Rick looks at Carl and Carl looks real sick, like he looks like he is on his last legs.

So Rick bends down and then Carl tells him “That’s when it happned.” And I was literally just holding my breath like “that’s when what happened?” 😳

And then it happened. Carl lifts his shirt to reveal that he’s been bit.

Carl Grimes has been fatally bit by a walker. 😭😭😭😭😭😭

Y’all. I mentioned it in the intro but this moment knocked the wind out of me. I was shocked and devastated and that’s just from the reveal of the bite. I really didn’t think they would take Carl, so when they did I was really like...

But then, Rick and Michonne’s reaction just shattered my heart even more. 😭😭😭😭😭

It was Michonne’s reaction that got me and just brought the tears. The way she falls to the floor cuz the wind was knocked out of her too. It’s too painful. 😥

And then the look of utter shock on Rick’s face as it’s clear this is hard for him to even comprehend. Same here, Rick, same here.

So they’re broken, I’m broken, and then I’m even more emotional when I see that even in this state of shock, Rick still looks over to Michonne. 😢

Y’all. Think about the type of seriously deep relationship they have to have, for him to look to her at his literal lowest point in life. That’s legitimately his wife. And just like he would have looked at Lori as Carl’s mom in this situation, I felt like he looks at Michonne as Carl’s mom. 😭👌🏽

And this heartbreaking episode ends with a hauntingly beautiful and somber shot of Michonne and Rick huddled on both sides of Carl as he looks at both of them and they become further and further away.

It’s a haunting and heartbreaking end but also deep to see the three of them together. Cuz these three have been through so much together for 6 seasons.

And now that’s all about to be taken away. So in regards to this msp, I have never related more to a gif than to this one right here...

That’s really how I feel. And I told you I had a lot of thoughts on this decision and so, as promised, I’ve written it all out below.

So a “few” words on this whole thing.

Realizing we were losing Carl, really did bring about the five stages of grief (except acceptance, I won’t get there for a long while).

And then it also was just numbing. Like i’m going to be watching this funeral episode like...

I know a lot of people have been frustrated with this show for awhile now, and while I definitely had my disappointments with the show, I kept feeling like it could find it’s way again. Cuz it’s not like it doesn’t have anymore interesting stories to tell, it’s just for some reason they choose to tell lesser stories than the ones they have potential for.

But when I saw Carl get bit the best way I can describe it, is it’s like how in the Pixar movie “Inside Out”, while Joy and Sadness are gone everything starts going grey, and I literally felt the part of me that believes in this show go grey.

I just became numb to this show and was like alright, it’s time to wrap it up.

Carl is the heart of the show. Period.

They sidelined him way too much to the point where maybe it could seem like he’s not crucial to the story anymore, but regardless of how often he was on screen, Carl was the heart of the show because he’s Rick’s heart and what Rick has been fighting for this whole time.

Carl deserved better than this. Seeing the way he went too just didn’t feel right either. Like you mean to tell me while out helping a random person honor his mother’s wishes Carl was bit by a walker when only a few were approaching? That just made me want to be like...

And I get that this can happen to anyone and it takes one split second to make a fatal mistake when going against walkers, but Carl OG Grimes wasn’t supposed to die from a random walker bite. 😒

The last person who died from a walker bite was Deanna I believe, and that’s largely cuz Deaana wasn’t about that slay-walkers life, but Carl is 100% about that life so Carl 1000% deserved better.

And if he’s gonna go out by walkers at least make it like when Tyreese was surrounded by walkers and hacked his way out. Like have it be in a gangster way for the gangster Carl is.

For me, denial and bargaining were my first response lol. I just wanted AMC to please go back and pretend this horrible decision never happened. I was like “If y’all want to just have Carl be cured, then I won’t even be mad at how contrived that would be, I’ll just be like…

And then I was just angry. Even at characters I shouldn’t be angry at lol. Like Siddiq didn’t you say you killed 237 walkers? And you couldn’t have helped my boy out?

And I was mad too cuz I felt like the writers were just like “Welp, lets just chalk it up to Carl died doing what he loved; not staying in the dang house.” 😑 Like that’s not cute. Carl deserved better.

And then we find out that leaving the show wasn’t Chandler’s choice and that whole situation seemed to be really badly mishandled and really not right, so that made me even more mad. Not only did Carl deserve better, Chandler deserved better for giving so much of his life and his effort to this show.

A lot of us have been watching this show for years, and so for years Carl has always been around and so it really does feel like there’s an investment in this kid.

And out of everyone you could lose, Carl was the person I thought/hoped was untouchable. He was the future so what they’ve done now is kill the future. 😥

So while I want the show to do well while it’s on, largely due to the extremely talented cast and crew, it’s time for the conclusion.

These next few episodes will be very telling for me to see if that numbness I feel for the show will just continue. I hope not, but we’ll see. That’s why I wanted to write about 8A before 8B just in case this show tries us to the point where I feel like there’s nothing left to talk about.

But trust, if we get Rick and Michonne saying “I love you” in 8B, I will most definitely be back to revel in it with y’all. 🙌🏾  

I will be singing in the streets when that happens like...

And 8B is usually more where Richonne gets to shine and I know it was said they’ll be together a lot which I’m here for. 👌🏽

At the same time, I’m like these two are about to experience their actual worst nightmare and lose the kid they love so much. So for these next eight episodes I feel like all they should realistically be doing is just crying, cuz this moment is an extremely paralyzing thing. 😭

But I really do believe they’ll continue to draw closer not further apart. No doubt in my mind about it, cuz after analyzing everything in their journey, sticking together is what they do.

The single glimmer of good that I’m thankful for is that Rick and Michonne have each other and will go through this together.

Cuz yes, Carl is Rick’s biological son and his heart and soul so it could be easy for him to feel so alone in the deep sadness he feels. But Rick’s not going to be alone, cuz there’s a woman who opened her heart to Carl so immensely that he basically became blood to her too.

Carl is Michonne’s son. Just like when someone adopts a kid and that becomes their kid period, Carl is Michonne’s kid period.

So while I seriously hate the type of dark place Carl’s absence is going to put Rick in, the only little saving grace is that Michonne will be right in there with him. And that hurts me so much but at least they won’t be alone.

And it’s also not to say that she’ll be there immediately lifting him up and not going through it herself, if anything I think Rick might be the one who has to help her recover more. Cuz as much as this will kill him, Rick’s been a bit more surrendered to the possibility of losing people than she has.

But Michonne will be the only one who understands this loss at the level Rick does because not only has she lost a son before but Carl is her son too.

They are in the same boat cuz they were family. Carl and Michonne weren’t playing family, they weren’t step family, they were family. They’ve shed so much blood sweat and tears together that they became blood. 😭

I know the entire msp will be painful and it’s interesting cuz it’s thinking about Michonne that’s been most haunting me. Like I'm concerned for the damage this is bound to do to Michonne just as much as Rick cuz Carl and Michonne’s bond was so special. Even Rick has acknowledged their special bond since season 4.  

What Chandler and Danai created through Carl and Michonne, they were the best friendship this show has had imo.

I know Rick will be broken and that’s going to break me deeply but for some reason thinking about Michonne dealing with the loss of her second son just shakes and disturbs me at my core. I keep thinking about her devastating reaction to the bite. How she was literally so overcome that her body could no longer stand. The way she fell to the floor, that wasn’t a choice, that was the air leaving her entire body. 😣

She’s losing what brought her back to life. She’s losing her very first friend in this group. She’s losing her son. 😭 It weighs on me and pains me more than a show should.

And Danai always does such a stunning job conveying emotions, real raw emotions. So I’m filled with anxiety about the real pain she’s going to make us feel.

And my eyes well up to even think about it, but I really feel it should be Michonne to keep Carl from turning. 😭 Their bond is so special and I feel like Carl would want that since the two have talked about it before and if the roles were reversed he’d do it for her.

It’s shatter her for awhile but if she’s the one to do it, it could also give her the tiniest bit of closure. Cuz with her first son she didn’t get to say goodbye but this will let her say a complete goodbye to her second son.

And then Rick. Ya’ll that really does pain me too, and the goodbye between this father and son is just too much. I know that Andrew and Chandler are about to give phenomenal perfomances and capture that love that made us fall in love with this show one last time.

I think why this loss has messed me up so seriously is because they say the worst pain is a parent losing a child. No parent should have to bury their child. And even tho this is just a show, it’s still evoking the real emotions of a mom and dad losing a child. So I think that’s what we’re feeling when this grey cloud looms over our head long after the episode ends.

I wish Carl had received more screen time before this. Like let him and Michonne go on one last run. Show us him and Judith bonding. Show us him and Rick navigating this father son relationship now that Carl’s not a little boy anymore. Show us him stepping up as a leader before the msf. Show us Carl at all considering they’re about to prematurely rip him from us.

I wanted Carl to have some added meaningful interactions with characters he’s been with for a long time so that, in 8A, he could be remembered as he lived not just as he died.

I was confused as to why they wanted to have Carl’s last few episodes spent mainly with some random stranger. Why not give him something with people he’s spent all these years with.

Cuz now everything we’re going to see of his interactions with people he loves is going to be under the veil of losing him or saying goodbye to him. 😭

I just don’t understand this whole thing. It’s outside of just not understanding cuz it hurts and I don’t want to lose the character. I don’t understand how they think this was okay for the well-being of the show either?

And, I know zero spoilers for 8B, but if this really is all just to justify sparing Negan then I’m really just going to be watching TWD like...

Also whatever arc they need Rick and Michonne to go on, as that seems to be another explanation for this decision, I have a strong feeling they could have got them there without taking Carl.

Cuz taking Carl doesn’t just devastate and utterly shatter them it completely changes them. I don’t know who this Rick and this Michonne will be when the show returns cuz Carl is a huge chunk of who they are and why they fight.

But regardless, I am a firm believer that R&M will unite and be there for one another to lean on and go through this. And while this is a whole different level of tough and painful, Richonne has proven they move closer rather than apart when it counts.

Their love isn’t just beautiful, it’s powerful and so I know they will be instrumental to keeping each other going. 👌🏽

And while they’ll go through immense suffering their love won’t suffer cuz their relationship, to me, is strong enough to endure this. But I also know this will shatter them like no other.

And y’all it’ll shatter me too. And I’m nervous for how they’ll handle the aftermath and if they’ll make it seem not nearly as huge as it needs to be. Fingers crossed that Carl gets an amazing and heartfelt sendoff and that his presence is still felt throughout 8B.

Carl was the representative of the impact this world has on a kid and that’s a fascinating thing that could’ve and should’ve been further explored as Carl got older and provided a whole new perspective as a man who spent his childhood in an apocalypse.

This is a kid who should’ve never had to go through this world but life called him to step up to the plate and he more than did that, he knocked it out of the park

So again, this is different than just being upset cuz you love a character, this just feels wrong. It feels wrong in terms of story and it especially feels wrong in terms of how it seems like the whole decision was executed and handled.

In 8x06 Carl says, “It’s hard to know what’s right and sometimes it isn’t” and it shouldn’t have been hard to know that keeping Carl alive is the right thing to do. But now...

One of the things I really loved about Grimes 2.0 is how this world was a world where people lost so much, but the Grimes family unit was the one thing that got more and more whole.

Like Rick lost his first wife which was really tough, but after that his family grew and that was the hope in this world. And that hope being prematurely taken away is a really bleak thing to have to grapple with in a show that’s already so bleak. But I won’t end this on a bleak note.

Instead, I’ll make note of how a relationship is only as strong as it’s foundation, and Rick and Michonne have a strong foundation because it was built on such a strong kid.

Like consistently through Rick and Michonne’s relationship, Carl was there and he had their hearts and then eventually they had each other’s hearts.

It’s been these three by each other’s side on this journey for a long time.

From season three

To seasons four

To season five

To season six

To season 7

(Side note: WHY did they cut that scene with Rick, Michonne, and Carl in 7x16!? Especially now that Carl’s journey is coming to an end.)

To season 8

All the way to this moment.

These three have stuck together and grown together and became a whole little family, with Judith included. And while Carl won’t still physically be there, he will always have a major role and presence in these character’s lives.

And Carl gave the two of them the greatest gift because he gave them the exact thing they’d need to get through a tragedy like this; He gave them each other.

He plays a huge part in why we all got invested in this show, cuz we were introduced to Rick as a man who just wanted to find his son and be there for him and keep him alive. And then Carl welcomed in Michonne which led to Richonne which is another reason I got more invested in TWD.

The reason we have Richonne and will continue to have Richonne is because of him. R&M staying together is proof that Carl’s impact lives on.

And Carl grew up before our eyes. He went from being a character on a show to being someone we could look at and say, “I think he might be one of us.”

He gave us a lot in his eight seasons on this show, including some anxiety when he would be wildin out every now and then lol.

So, fictional and all, thank you, Carl.

And thank you all for reading my extra self’s gigantic post! In fact, thank you for reading all these posts during this hiatus!!

Y’all are seriously the best. And, while I wasn’t counting down for this hiatus to be over, cuz I’m not ready for the heartbreak and I’ve low key gone numb to this show, I’m glad I was able to spend it reveling in Richonne’s journey with you.

I hope it’s put a smile on your face and you should know that your kindness has truly put a smile on mine. Thank you!! 😊💕

[xtremedespair3d]

New Year 2021: The Virus That Ruined Everything

WARNING: THIS POST IS EXTREMELY LONG, YOU CAN EITHER SKIM TO SOME IMPORTANT PARTS IF YOU'D LIKE.

The 2020 decade is finally here and... Quite a lot of stuff has happened for the absoltue worse, and I didn’t ask any of this.

Life continuously gets worse every time with bad stuff happening, mainly online drama and problems with my personal life, other things like celebrity deaths and among other things, but this year, no thanks to a certain virus and worse, my personal problems, this has definitely become the worst worst year yet!

(As for the thumbnail, I was gonna look for generic images of “2021″ but I realized I had saved this image since 2020 began, but looking at it now, I don’t think it has hold up because 2020 has become a far worse year of its own. Hopefully for a 2020 2 picture for 2021 in case if life continues to get worse and worse)

This is definitely the longest Tumblr post I’ve ever written, so be prepared!

First off, let me apologize for last year’s New Year post where I said it would be my last post and I would be retire from Tumblr, but after a few months, I got bored and I decided to come back because I can’t live without blogging, so I’ll continue doing what I like doing, even if nobody reads or cares about my posts most of the time.

I should also tell you in advance that I’m dropping the scoring system in my top best of the year lists, not only they were usually rigged, biased* and repetitive, it was pretty confusing too. What I was basically trying to do with these scores is just matching different systems, like for example:

10/10 Rank: S++ 100%

The first one is a standard one, the second is common in some games but it’s more loosely based on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain where the top rank is S++, and the third part is of course based on Rotten Tomatoes, which thank god I’m not even checking that site anymore and I have the word muted on Twitter so I won’t be disappointed with how terrible the movies I want to see the most perform (And why should I really care about that to begin with?). In the end, numbers don’t matter, it’s all about how much I enjoy this media and how much do I love it or hate it to be top or bottom, that’s all what matters.

*Although my lists will always be biased regardless. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now, let’s kick off this post with some of the cursed shit that happened throughout this year, there were Australia wildfires, we almost had World War 3, police brutality, and now the worst thing of all, COVID-19. I’m not even gonna bother going into details on these other events other than COVID because it’s a very important issue that happened throughout life, even for my standards which I wouldn’t give an absolute shit about everything else that happens. A lot of major events got delayed, movies and games that I was looking forward the most got delayed, etc. Everything about COVID was a mess, but as usual, everything that happens in my life is far worse than every event. There’s a plethora of issues that happened throughout this year with plenty of things that really affected me, so I really hope you’ll understand (If not, it’s fine, nobody cares about these posts anyway).

When I was writing this draft, I put some titles to better indicate myself and to not forget about the important topics I want to talk about, and at some point I was debating myself whether or not I should leave these titles, but as I was writing without the titles when I got to certain topics, I realized how disorganized this post was looking, so I’m definitely putting these titles back as part of the actual post. I’ll probably do this in every New Year post too. Anyway, let’s start!

Quarantine and mental health: Let’s talk about the current situation we live in, quarantine. A lot of people miss being outside and being social, although to be honest, I’m not really missing out on anything, my family and I rarely go outside and we love staying indoors all the time anyways, except for going to the cinema, and the lockdown wasn’t really that strict in my town.

The best part of the quarantine was at one point my mom decided that I wouldn’t do online classes for my fine arts school since it’s not very convenient to learn stuff at home, and while I partially agree, the main reason why I didn’t want to continue studying is probably because I lost care about it, I’m always so distracted on my phone, I’m always so slow with sculpture and painting, not being able to go to school is the best thing the quarantine could happen... Except... There’s still some priority with my older sister, and when September came, it was time for the homeworks once again, my worst nightmare...

Doing my older sister’s homeworks really bring the worst of me, every time my mom always tells me there’s homework to do, I always say “ugh...” in varying tones and sometimes I get in trouble for it where my mom constantly gets triggered and tells me we must do it for my older sister’s sake, blah blah blah, and always, I shit you not, I ALWAYS fight with my mom when we do homeworks. I try to tell her the do’s and don’ts of how to use the internet and stuff, she sometimes takes too long researching for stuff, she constantly talks while figuring out and changes words when I’m supposed to be writing the things she’s supposed to tell me, I hate doing maps, etc. Just working with her is the absolute worst. I wish I could calm down in every situation, but I just can’t, I always get triggered and I insult my mom in said things.

Sometimes my mom tells me that my angry behavior comes from my lack of sleep, I always insist her that my bad sleep has nothing to do with my angry behavior, it’s the way I am. (Lately my sleep schedule is a bit messy but, like I said, I’m always angry because that’s how I am)

If you’ve been following me for a while and looked at how I tweet and interact with other Discord servers, you probably would have guessed that my behavior hasn’t gotten any better, and indeed it hasn’t. Of course I did promise I would change this year by trying to not attack people’s opinions and not being so mad at my mom, but being me as usual, I’m never going to change at all.

I don’t know what’s worse, attacking people’s opinions, or always figting with my mom in what to do with doing my older sister’s homeworks.

Before you tell me stuff like “Why can’t you tell your older sister to do her homeworks herself?” Because she doesn’t care and there’s one particular reason which I’m probably not gonna discuss in detail publicly (Unless you ask me to).

I've recently been hearing stuff about the COVID vaccine coming to Mexico, while that sounds great news, but at the same time, I can't help but have a feeling that I don't have the highest hopes for this and I don't think things would be fine, like, what if someone might be allergic to whatever the vaccine is made of? Not to mention that the vaccine is delivered in syringes, instead of going like the ending of Spider-Man PS4, I have a better idea: Why not try to make planes and spray out the vaccine everywhere so everyone outside can breath it, like it was some sort of pesticide but it has the opposite effect? It's kind of a messed up idea when I brought the pesticide thing, but that's the best thing I could think of.

Novel progress: This is something I was desperately trying to achieve, but the road has become a complete let down. I don’t want to disclose anything about my project, but I actually succeeded in publishing at least the first two chapters of my novel, the prologue and chapter 1, but I’ve been getting some rather harsh criticism in my website that I’m not really fond of, some of them are suggestions I’m not really sure I want to do, and even some that are just destructive, not only on my chapters but even on my blog posts when I’m trying to talk about some changes and other things, even my older sister’s harsh criticism doesn’t help me at all. All the negative comments combined with my eternal procrastination and having NO IDEA what the story even is and trying to figure that out and the monthly gap, I couldn’t help but give up on the project, I haven’t flat out cancelled the project out of my mind, but in terms of making it exist, I put it on hold. Yeah, I was really hurt and I have no idea what to do.

I don’t know about you but I’m just very sensitive about the kind of feedback I got with my project, it’s just something I never asked for and it really hurts me so much, it completely discourages me to keep going

I’ll talk about the future of my project in my resolutions, but the one last thing to say about this is that once my project exists and if I’m become successful, I really hope for once in my life my projects or I won’t get the same treatment as the next topic below.

The Last of Us 2 and YandereDev: This is seriously the most trigger inducing topic I’ve ever had to witness in my life, it’s beyond disgusting.

Literally every time over the last 3 years, everything that I’m interested in always ends up getting some form of backlash for no absolute reason. Fate/Apocrypha in 2017, Venom, Ready Player One and FLCL2&3 in 2018, Captain Marvel in 2019, now it’s TLOU2 in 2020.

First of all, I’m not a huge TLOU person, although I would have watched Let’s Play videos of people playing the first game, and from what I’ve seen, it was beloved by many, and then there’s the iconic “That’s the cutest fucking thing I have seen in my entire life” meme which I didn’t even know it was originated from TLOU to begin with.

The first game is a favorite, so the sequel should be an instant hype, but early this year, I started to see some hate around TLOU2, and it has been going for months, even some of my friends and artists I care about are joining the hate bandwagon for no reason...

LIKE, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY???!!! THIS IS DISGUSTING!!!!! EVERYONE, LITERALLY EVERYONE ARE ABSOLUTE DISGUSTING MONSTERS!!!!!!

Literally, some of my friends and even some artists I care about talk shit about TLOU2 and they continue to do so! And then there’s other people I do care about like YouTubers who do care about TLOU2 and that’s enough to make me happy and I would LOVE to watch their videos but I’m too spoiled and self-conscious about watching TLOU2 videos and like it, so I have no idea whose should should I be on!

And then there’s The Game Awards which a lot of the nominees and even the winners were saturated with TLOU2, I can’t even bother getting into details for this but I definitely expected people to be so mad at TLOU2 winning almost every single award.

Now with how much shit TLOU2 has gotten, the future of the TLOU series which can even affect the upcoming HBO series is not gonna be so bright and everyone have turned against Naughty Dog completely.

You know what the saddest part is? Looking at the hate for TLOU2 makes me think on how will my project can get treated with whatever bullshit I may put with certain characters and other stuff, and that shit is beyond depressing, I absolutely WISH my beloved project I may or may never bring to life can get the same treatment as TLOU2, EVER! NOT EVEN FROM THE PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT! JUST DON’T!

Please let this shitty year end so no one can ever talk about TLOU2 EVER AGAIN!

Lastly I have to talk about YandereDev, although I wouldn’t like to get into details because I’m probably gonna get crucified that I’m still supporting them. I also don’t have much to comment on them but it really sucks seeing people I have highly regarded going down in infamy. Especially with YandereDev, I still watch KubzScout’s videos about Yandere Simulator and I like seeing how the game is progressing, and sure, YandereDev can be a shitty person but I can’t help but feel for him and his something is something I wish I wouldn’t be when defending my project, like I don’t want to be the next TLOU2 and the next YandereDev. And then I’ve seen some of the most unfunniest memes I’ve seen in my entire life.

Hololive disasters: This isn’t something that necessarily affected me pretty badly, but it’s worth pointing out, kinda like “I’ve seen some shit” situation.

As of late, Virtual YouTubers have become finally become a norm into our modern pop culture and global society as a whole, we’ve all become VTuber simps. Whether it’s Hololive, Nijisanji, Pikamee, Projekt Melody, Artemis of the Blue, everyone’s simping VTubers now.

Out of all the aforementioned groups and independent VTubers, the most popular group is of course Hololive. Hololive as of late has gained a huge following thanks to fan subtitled clips and even the Azur Lane collaboration early this year. Then Hololive English has launched and it became a success, and the biggest Japanese milestone is the 5th generation! But as soon as the 5th gen debuted, things don’t get any sweet with Mano Aloe where she leaked her Live2D before her debut stream and forgot to delete her leak and other things. For something like this seems too outrageous, but with that she completely decided to retire even after she debuted, which was really sad, but what makes it especially furious for me is that Guchico, Aloe’s designer, got his art completely wasted and I doubt he would make another VTuber design for Hololive after this.

Then there’s the infamous Kiryu Coco and Akai Haato Taiwan thing, which I don’t really understand what the hell happened with that, and I don’t want to be too offensive, but that’s kind of retarded on the Chinese part.

There were a plethora of other disasterous events with Hololive but I think those two of Mano Aloe and Coco/Haato Taiwan are the most important worth talking about, this wasn’t quite a good year for Hololive to say the least.

Artists: Another thing I didn’t like throughout this year was the artists, and this isn’t so much about dramas like last year, but I’ve started to hate a number of artists for various reasons, even Custom Maid people.

I’m not gonna call out people’s names, so I’m simply going to tell the actions which really turns me off. On the illustrators side, I got really tired of seeing artists complain about shit that I like and other things, and my absolute least favorite, artists completely being hard on themselves and being hardcore perfectionists. That is one of the worst things I hate seeing to artists, there’s just something about their ranting about their perfectionism and everything else that really turn me off so badly, as for the times they do their “I can’t draw, I hate my drawings” and whatever, it really pisses me off so much, why artists aren’t just happy with what they’re doing?! And to top it all off, they completely neglect their fans’ encouragement and they continue with the same shit over and over! Like, I don’t understand! I just want to see them happy and deliver the best works they can, but if that’s what they really feel all the time, why are they even drawing in the first place? Might as well they should retire for good and then I’m immediately gonna regret saying this afterwards!

Then there's also some of the artists I follow (At least the ones who speak English) who talk shit about some anime, games or movies that I like, and some what I've seen even join in the TLOU2 hate train for no reason like I previously mentioned, which gives me a huge sour taste in my mouth. Sometimes I even went so far arguing with at least two from what I recently remember when one tweeted where he sounded like he was talking ill of Rui Komatsuzaki's art with the Danganronpa x Akudama Drive crossover art, and another one who for some reason doesn't even care about the Azur Lane game, and the biggest irony is that this is an artist that drew Taihou quite a lot, and that thought process is downright stupid! Like, what's even the point of drawing fan arts of the characters from a game which made you successful but made you start to lose care for it to begin with?! You're so stupid!

In short: I hate perfectionists and I hate when artists talk shit on the things I like. Even if I hate the way they are, I just can't let go of them because I still support them for their art, I wish I would simply care for artists for their art and not so much for them (Except for their health and stuff, although I still feel selfish about it), but I've grown too caring for some of them (At least the ones who speak English) that I would occasionally read their tweets about certain things like games, anime, movies, etc, and some of them leave me a sour taste in my mouth.

Then there’s the Custom Maid people, although there’s not much to say but what pisses me off the most in some cases is that they abruptly started to retire and disappear without a trace and there’s not much I can do about that.

Throwing some Koikatsu artists in there as well, I don’t really follow many Koikatsu artists but the one I truly believe was the absolute worst is “renka.” (For some reason he deleted his Twitter, he might have ranted about something about his struggles but glad I didn’t even witness that to even care about him at this point, although his Pixiv is still open) From the very beginning early this year, the dude did some rants about his struggles and other things I can’t even bother to remember, but over the next few months I’ve grown to like the guy, we even followed each other and communicated for a while (That is until for some reason he decided to unfollow me so we’re no longer mutuals), but as of late, his content and his mental state have completely deteriorated, he stopped doing these “Good morning” posts I always interacted with, he abandoned his one OC, and the worst part of renka is that he’s become so hungry for attention and numbers, I mean, his posts always get over 1 thousand likes and he thinks it’s not enough. And the one thing that broke my heart the most about talking to this guy, I made these collab screenshots (Or just some よその子 (Yosonoko, someone else's OC) screenshots I did for fun) and renka never even bothered interacting with them. No likes, no retweets, no replies, NOTHING! The dude for no reason completely neglects my screenshots I did for fun, these screenshots I made are probably the screenshots I'm the least proud of ever making, the dude was so ungrateful, fuck the guy. Then there's also the time where renka out of the blue blocked a Custom Maid person I interacted with, which gives me more reason to not care about the guy.

I seriously wish I can at least counter some artists' opinions very often and to not get discouraged, basically virtually slapping in their faces like I always want, but I really wish people wouldn't take me as if I'm threatening them with a strong tone (Though sometimes I do it on purpose) to the point I would get instantly blocked, even when I try to make a rather innocent disagreement. This is all for directly interacting with these artists, in my private server, I ALWAYS talk shit to them behind their backs, their art and the artists themselves.

And yeah, even if I were to start drawing regularly and I face the same struggles the artists have which makes me an absolute hipocrite, but the thing is I’m still so inexperienced with digital art and the artists I care about are hella experienced, it’s completely ironic and it’s just frustrating to watch!

Private Discord server and downfall: Probably the most heartbreaking thing that happened to me and I have ever done this year. In 2018, for a while I’ve constantly been making test servers just to copy and paste some things and I always ended up deleting them afterwards, but one day I somehow have finally decided to make a server that’ll stay forever, and indeed has been which has become my personal journal where I can freely and privately talk about some things where I wouldn’t publicly do so in Twitter mainly for my controversial tone and opinions.

In 2020, a few months ago, I started bringing some people into my server, although one time I did bring someone to take a quick look at it and got out afterwards, but this time the people I brought were friends I recently made and the ones I care about now, which they happen to be Custom Maid creators and an artist (The following links contain NSFW content, click at your own risk), such as Ten Speed (Who was the only person active mainly because he’s the only second English speaking person, he’s a Filipino), hinosuna (Main account, he’s been using this more nowadays since June 30th, he seemingly retired from doing Custom Maid content), ryuuunnji, Shimotsuki Nagomi and Maidin (Who at the time he was about to delete his Twitter account for some drama, I asked him to make a Discord to better communicate rather than using Pixiv, then the Twitter account was remade into what you see in the link, no communication, screenshot posting only).

On December 4th, however, things started to take a dive. ryuuunnji had left the server, I asked him on the Twitter DM about it and he has indeed left the server because he wasn’t very active on it, which makes me sad. With that being said, it came into my mind that I would start trying to kick out the other inactive members of my server, so I tagged Nagomi and Hinosuna about it but to no response, but then I DM’d Maidin on his personal and communicational account, I was asleep for a few hours, I woke up and I found out he has cut ties with me. He softblocked me on Twitter, he blocked me on Discord, he deleted the MEGA link that contained all his screenshots (which I didn’t get a chance to download some of them, and I really hope he didn’t delete the collab screenshots he made with my characters), all of that without prior warning... Notihng. This put me in a really awful position.

Maidin and I had a pretty good history, I always liked, retweeted and interacted to his tweets, I brought him into my server because of some struggle he was having and we did interact a little bit in the server for a while,

This happened similarly to another Custom Maid creator known as gg_colombia, I made a TierMaker of ranking Custom Maid creators I follow and some I don’t but still know, even throwing a bit of Koikatsu people, where I put a friend of Colombia in the “Die” tier because that person I put in that tier blocked me a day after my birthday after telling them that my birthday happened the day after in Mexico and I got blocked for no reason, and apparently Colombia got really angry and blocked me, I communicated with other creators who followed me to vent my problem, and somehow Colombia and I eventually settled. But with Maidin... It seems like he really doesn’t want to talk to me anymore, I’m pretty sure I broke his heart. To this day I’m still trying really hard to contact him in different ways but he completely neglects me, and that really sucks how much I think about how I have instantly turned him against me, it’s just sad.

And then I got blocked by Maidin for good on the 28th after tweeting him begging to follow me again which makes things even worse now, at least I’m still not blocked on Pixiv, but I’m not having any high hopes for that, I’ve had enough.

I should never take Japanese people for granted, and I should never invite anyone into my private server ever again.

This one action that completely messed me up so bad, one of the moments that truly make me question my sanity, my being and my overall existence. I was pretty depressed for that entire weekend, it got me thinking for a while I really want to leave behind my current social media accounts and start from scratch with a new identity and stuff, but I got tired of doing that and when I got blocked some people, I didn’t care anymore, but now it’s coming back.

In late November, I made a Twitter thread ranting about my history of deleting accounts and even wanting to do the same thing over and over again as well as the cons for doing so. Now that I think about it, I don’t think it should even matter about the names I will use, it depends on the kind of person I actually am, and even though I try to change and try to be different, someone’s gotta be bound to recognize me for some things I might post or something. I’m also paranoid that people won’t support me at all, not as Hajime Komaeda, not as my pen name, but me in real life as a whole, no matter the names I go by.

I always think about doing aggressive call-outs to some people like it’s no big deal, but then when it comes to the execution, I get in very big trouble for it and I always feel bad, but now, I got what I deserved. 3 long years having the same problem with people’s opinions combined with telling a friend they were being kicked to my Discord server which left him heartbroken, not to mention always ALWAYS being aggressive towards my mom every time we do my older sister’s homeworks, I’m a really messed up person who doesn’t deserve to exist in this world. I don’t want to be a burden nor lose friends any longer.

Even if I've grown really close to Ten, there were times that we did argue and dear god, I really hope I won't get too salty about what we talk about, I don't want to break friendships any longer, especially towards someone who's now my #1 friend, fuck everyone else I talked with before.

Now, let’s move on to the more somewhat positive side of things throughout this year.

The positives

Pixelbuster and Phan-Site: Probably the best thing to come out of this year is Pixelbuster getting cancelled. Although I haven’t gotten a chance to witness this mess live as it was happening, I was asleep for a couple of hours, I woke up and started checking Twitter on my phone and I saw a tweet from MysticDistance talking about Pixelbuster and a couple of retweets and I was like “Holy shit, Pixelbuster is getting owned!” and his Discord server was gone, and with that said, I blocked Pixelbuster in Discord as well.

If you don’t remember, Pixelbuster was under controversy from some people at gaming news site Final Weapon where Pixel took advantage of their name to get free games with codes from developers. So yeah, that was quite a shitty move, but in all honesty, to this day I still feel like I don’t give a shit about that, when the controversy happened, I just capitalized in ranting about why Pixelbuster was so unlikeable, I made a post about it as well for more details as to why I hated him.

I was asleep for a few hours and I didn’t get a chance to see his downfall happen at the very moment, when I woke up, his Discord server was already gone and I wanted to see the shitstorm that happened in there, but it’s all gone.

PIxel even tried going back into social media to apologize to some people I assume he got blocked by under the name SpookyLava/Sp00kyLava with a picture of Sucy from Little Witch Academia as his profile picture. Of course this did not go well as people immediately started calling him out, and just like that, he completely disappeared without a trace for good. I don’t think I’ve seen any activity or a word from Pixel as far as I know, so he’s completely gone and I really hope I wouldn’t see him ever again.

A little while ago I came across his Nitomatta Twitter account being open for some reason, I can’t verify for sure this is Pixel himself since there’s only this one tweet that simply says some laughter and then Soul Kiwami’s tweet of the TwitLonger about Final Weapon’s experience working with Pixel that for some reason is actually pinned (Wait, how is it possible to pin someone else’s tweets? Don’t you simply pin your own tweets? How the hell does this work?), it’s even stranger when this account has been open and the one tweet where posted around the time the controversy happened.

As much as I hated Pixelbuster so much and I hated reading his tweets constantly complaining about the current media and franchises that I had muted Pixel for a while before the controversy happened, sometimes I can’t help but wonder what is actually Pixelbuster up to now, like for example, does he play Genshin Impact? There were other things that came into my mind, but the Genshin Impact thing is the one thing I have in mind the most.

The only thing I ever liked about Pixel were his shitposts, sometimes he was funny and I retweeted his memes. He also even got retweeted by some Japanese artists, including the creator of Pop Team Epic, bkub Okawa, where he retweeted a clip posted by Pixelbuster, I can’t remember what video was it exactly, maybe it might have been a Resident Evil 3 mod video or something.

To Pixelbuster, if you’re still here and you’re possibly reading this: GET FUCKED!

Next is Phan-Site and this one was quite a surprise. For a while I grew uninterested with Phan-Site’s Twitter, so I muted him. His Discord server also didn’t do any favors for me, so sometimes I did my usual complaining about people’s opinions and just being angry, after some time being inactive and just for my feeling of uninterest, I left the server.

Although not everything about Phan-Site’s Discord was necessarily bad, as I met Emanuel Gracia, a Persona fanfiction writer who I actually looked up to the guy for his writing skills and motivation, I never necessarily read his fanfictions (Sometimes I did take a peak at his Persona Next Gen fanfic, or as it’s now called Persona Grand Legacy, for reference in how to write novels), but sometimes I did give him some info about my top secret project as a symbol of trust as writers and I’m even in his Discord server as a mod.

(Gracia, if you’re reading this, I’m so sorry)

Although our friendship is not going to last long after two years and by the time this post is published, it’s most likely going to happen because I grew completely dissatisfied with the guy and his Twitter for my same problem of hating to see his opinions and talks shit about other things I like so I muted him as well, and probably the worst of him is his fixation with One Piece, he’s so fixated to it that he treats it like god and he uses it to shit on My Hero Academia and possibly other modern Shounen (Though he utterly criticizes MHA the most) which really pisses me off. Not to mention I’m pretty toxic in his server with the same stuff I vent over and over and some other problems, so it really doesn’t help.

Anyways, back to Phan-Site, the controversy happened when MysticDistance posted a tweet of a screen video capture of his voice message from Phan-Site which I’m probably not gonna link the tweet because it’s quite scary to listen to, but what I can say is that Phan-Site definitely wasn’t in a good mood, as he was threatening Mystic to answer his phone in a very angry voice.

After that tweet was posted, Phan-Site disappeared just like that. The last thing I remember is someone taking up the mantle of the Phan-Site Facebook page, but some people were telling this person to better delete the account so the brand wouldn’t continue any longer because of what happened, and that’s it, haven’t heard anything about Phan-Site or the person behind him ever since.

After Pixelbuster and Phan-Site disappeared, it made me realize that I wouldn’t like to ever follow or even associate with these kinds of bigshots ever again, neither RedMakuzawa nor UltimaShadowX, or any other of these accounts in general, not even Karoshi of all people who I’m still somewhat attached for some reason, because they’re often very bland, they often tweet opinions in a very harsh and gatekeeping tone, etc. I just really hate these kinds of people, I don’t wanna see them nor I wanna be friends with them if they’re gonna talk shit about the stuff I love.

The Boys: This is something I never expected to do, but it was something I wanted to do for a long time when season 1 came out. One day, I heard my mom and my older sister having a conversation where instead of watching shitty YouTube videos, she should at least watch some series, and that got me thinking about it and somehow I randomly went to Amazon, subscribe for Prime, check Amazon Prime Video and I immediately saw The Boys on the homepage and I started watching it, and boy, I’m so hooked on it and I seriously wish I could have seen the series sooner!

And the most unexpected part is that this is my first time watching an exclusive series in a streaming platform, completely legally! I would normally go to some random pirated websites like swatchseries or whatever where I would pretty much watch everything, but not with The Boys, I actually paid for Amazon Prime Video, well, it was my first time being subscribed to Prime so my first subscription was for free. The best part of watching The Boys using Amazon Prime Video is that I can actually turn on the subtitles and even change the language dubs, so sometimes I watched a little bit of the series with Japanese dub, though I prefer watching the series in the original English language with English subtitles on, but it’s fun watching the series in Japanese dub. (Unrelated but at some point I rewatched Venom in Amazon Prime Video and I was sad that it doesn’t have Japanese dub in there)

I actually started watching The Boys a few days before season 2 even began, so I managed to watch the first season just in time and then I definitely watched season 2 weekly (Except for the finale, I did have to go to swatchseries for the finale because I wouldn’t use Amazon Prime for the rest of October).

Things get more hype when the news of No More Heroes 3 being delayed were being released, Suda51 also stated that he happened to hire the comic artist of The Boys, and I went all-out fanboying my ass off, it’s the best thing that has ever happened to my life by a mere coincidence of watching The Boys!

To end things off, I’ve been very frustrated with Agents of SHIELD and The Blacklist. The final season of Agents of SHIELD started off interestingly, but then until the second half of the final season was an absoltue let down, it was meh, I’m so glad Agents of SHIELD is over, the era of Marvel TV shows that made references to the MCU but weren’t even allowed to have crossovers anymore is over, and now with the Disney+ shows, we’re finally getting the TRUE MCU connected and crossover shows we deserve!

Then there’s The Blacklist, and oh boy, don’t even get me started on that series because lately it has gone consistently shit, and things get worse when in November, they literally premiered the first two episodes and then the series will continue in January 22nd which is too far and too long of a break for a season that came out this November! Not to mention that they literally recast Dom after the original actor passed away a few months ago, but only to kill him off in the second episode of the premiere, this was an absolute waste of a recast! After the original actor passed away, I always thought they would leave Dom in a coma and write him off of the show, but no, they decided to recast a new actor to continue the character and his story one last time, and then they did this shit, write the character again only for two episodes and the rest is history!

Elizabeth couldn’t have put a better way to describe my feelings on the show lately with this scene!

I don’t really know for sure what’s my future of watching The Blacklist is going to be, this episode was so bad that I ranted how bad it is to the point where I said “I’m done watching this show,” I mean, I really want to stop watching this show, I want to drop it, I want to stop caring about it, but once the season returns, I’m gonna feel so bad about missing out what’s going on in the story when I may come across tweets from the official Twitter account of the show. And then there’s this Japanese article where Nijisanji Vtuber, Shizuka Rin or ShizuRin, actually appeared and she watches The Blacklist! But even that doesn’t do me any favors to continue watching this shit any longer!

So yeah, fuck Agents of SHIELD! Fuck The Blacklist! The Boys is my new favorite TV show and I will never get tired of it! I love The Boys, I love these kinds of adult rated superhero stuff with gore, strong language, sex scenes and such, it makes me think of Kick-Ass!

Other major events: There are also some major events I forgot to address in last year’s New Year post, like the US Elections, the death of Adobe Flash and even the next gen consoles.

Then there’s the US Elections, although I don’t have much to say and I normally don’t care about politics in general, let alone foreign politics, but I’m glad we won’t have Trump again, although I’m not sure if I might have heard great things about John Biden but at least I wanted someone other than Trump. Now for Mexico, I’ll have to wait 4 more years to get a new president and remove AMLO, although Mexican presidents are always useless.

Next is the death of Adobe Flash Player, today is finally the day for to say our prayers to Flash, let’s press F to pay respects. There were also some news that Flash playback will stop being supported on January 12th 2021, which makes it even sadder because there’s still some things that still use Flash, like some really ancient Newgrounds stuff and even Chaturbate (Yeah, this is a little weird, I normally don’t use the site often but I had once for Projekt Melody), I even recently watched an old Madness fan cartoon that is now deleted on Newgrounds onto the Wayback Machine and Firefox asked me to use Flash, so I did that. And this current version of Firefox, version 84, is the last one to support the Adobe Flash Player.

Hopefully there will be some good alternatives to play some old SWF Flash content, like Ruffle which is an open source Flash emulator that is actually sponsored by Newgrounds of all people, and I recently found a tweet from Tom Fulp that Newgrounds will soon be using Ruffle. The demo page of the website even allows you to play the original Alien Hominid game before the remaster comes out, it’s not perfect but at least it’s something. As of the writing of this post on December 23rd, I didn’t know I can actually download the Ruffle extension, I always thought it was something that’ll take a long time to perfect and only has a demo page to test it out, but they actually have some download links for the standalone program and even browser extentions, although it’s probably still not the first major release or anything, it might be something (I tried but for some reason Firefox wouldn’t let me download the extension).

Oh, and speaking of deaths, let’s press F to pay respects to Chadwick Boseman, Keiji Fujiwara and HorribleSubs. To Chadwick Boseman, especially, this was quite a shock he’s had colon cancer for the last 4 years, he fought quite a long battle like a true warrior, Wakanda Forever! And Keiji Fujiwara amd Kobe too, god damn, we lost a lot of great ones this year!

As for the console next gen, the Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S, although we’ll stick to PS5 because I’ve always been a Playstation person, don’t judge me. This is something I’m not quite fond of it happening now because my biggest problem is that my family bought the PS4 last year and it felt like it was way too late. Sometimes I do feel tempted on wanting to get a PS5 so bad now, but there’s still gonna be some games coming to the PS4 (inb4 people are gonna be playing those PS4 games into the PS5) and there’s still like a shitton of games that I haven’t played in years and who knows if my older sister and I are gonna have time to play them all. it’s still gonna have some time left because there will be games coming to the PS5 entirely for good in like 3 or 4 years. Looks like I’ll have to wait for another 6 years to own the PS5, and then the next year, the PS6 would be released.

Really the only thing that could have sold me on the PS5 is if it was colored black and most importantly, if it was actually fully backwards compatible with every Playstation game, that could have been an absolute win so I could have replayed some PS2 games I still own, but sadly it’s not.

Home improvements: We’ve also had some home improvements, like adding a gate around my bedroom’s hallway where the staircase goes so my dogs won’t annoy me at my door, but the biggest improvement we’ve made is finally upgrading our internet modem and we finally got proper home Wi-Fi... For better and for worse.

I didn’t know I wanted this to happen but it was about time to upgrade our internet, but the results have been mixed. On one hand, I guess the internet is mostly the same, it’s not faster or anything but at least we finally got proper Wi-Fi on our house, but at the same time, the Wi-Fi can be absolute garbage especially when it barely reaches my bedroom which I’m in the second floor and that doesn’t make sense considering we live in a small house and even if I’m on top, the router should be closer to me! When I’m really frustrated with the Wi-Fi’s poor signal, I continue to use the Windows 10 mobile hotspot thing which I’ve been using for years. Not to mention that my internet on my laptop goes on and off randomly and that really annoys me, I swear when we had our old router, this didn’t happen before.

Despite these problems, at least it’s better than having no internet in FOREVER when the lights go out like it happened with our old router. Sometimes the Wi-Fi signal works, but sometimes it doesn’t, it drives me insane. That is until I finally decided I would start using the Wi-Fi for my laptop since as of the writing of this post in the 29th, the Wi-Fi has been working rather nicely, the speed of my Wi-Fi on my laptop so far is kinda the same as my ethernet, so hopefully it’ll be fine. Until the Wi-Fi goes slow, I’m switching back to the ethernet.

As of the publishing of this post, I haven’t gotten any problem with using the Wi-Fi and that makes me jump into the conclusion that my issue with having my internet randomly turn on and off really comes from my ethernet cable. Sometimes I did run into some slow uploading problems but most of the Wi-Fi is fine.

That’s all I have to discuss about my life this year, it was an absolute disaster and even I do think I wish I was dead, I didn’t want to exist in this planet any longer yet I continue to fight and suffer through a lot of things. What do I even want to accomplish by arguing people by forcing my opinions against theirs and stuff? Power and attention, but it never turns out like I want. People tell me over and over not to care about what people say, but I continue ignoring and doing the same fight with no success over and over, my problem is indeed that I’m too caring. Yes, I’m too caring about everything, and ignorance is almost never my solution. There’s seriously nothing I can do about it.

Anyway, here’s a silly meme about my 2020 to enlighten this up.

Best and worst of the year and anticipated releases

Let’s finally move on to my favorite part of making these New Year posts, the good old top best lists and most anticipated releases of whatever media I love! This year is going to be a little different, as I’m making these top best lists of each category, I’ll be talking about the most anticipated releases of the same categories I talk about simultaneously! And looking at the upcoming releases, 2021 is looking to be the most lit year ever!

Better keep in mind that not all releases could be for 2021, they may be bound to be delayed to 2022 or beyond.

Top 15 best anime of the year

I already have my top 4 contenders figured out for quite a while (Which you’ll find out), but as usual, figuring out the rest is quite difficult. At first I thought I had this list to top 10 maximum but now I got some perfect candidates to make this a top 15 list instead, a little shorter than last year’s with 20, but it’s worth it.

15.- Watanuki-san Chi To: It’s probably gonna be a permanent pattern where the Watanuki-san Chi series (if it’ll get more seasons, that is) will always be the first, or the bottom depending on how you read these top lists, since it’s a dorama and not an “anime,” but it’s still a good series regardless. And no it’s not honorable mention worthy because I really like the Watanuki-san Chi series.

Also, there are many people who make subtitled highlight clips of various VTubers, why aren’t they making fansubs of Watanuki-san Chi To or no streaming platform has picked up the series yet? smh.

14.- Eizouken

13.- Hentatsu (TV): I’m usually biased to Tatsuki’s works now that should have been amongst the top 3, and not to say this series is rather disappointing (I would never call any of Tatsuki’s works disappointing, bad or worst), but given that this is a short series, let alone EXTREMELY short with 1 minute and 30 seconds long (The size of openings and endings), I feel like it wasn’t enough.

There’s also this one episode in the TV series that is kind of the same as the one from the web series with some changes, like Tatsuki kinda threw this episode in there to fill the gap anyways.

(Web series - TV series comparison)

I kinda wish this was instead a full fledged TV series for Keifuku-san since Tatsuki tweeted this and even Crunchyroll thought it would be a Keifuku-san series, but he jebaited us all, but I do admit that I admire the troll marketing, that was quite an unexpected move.

Now it seems like we’re gonna have to wait until 2022 so we see a new Tatsuki release, I hope it is the Keifuku-san series that was supposedly teased, but if it’s gonna be another remake of Tatsuki’s old works like Kemurikusa or a brand new series, I’m down for whatever it may be.

(Also, let me painfully remind you that Tatsuki will never make Kemurikusa 12.2, so whatever happened at 12.1 will remain as a cliffhanger)

12.- Uzaki-chan wa Asobitai

11.- Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter season 2

10.- Osomatsu-san season 3

8.- Magia Record: I don’t know about Magia Record as a game with its story, and in my opinion this one is probably not as messed up or even “revolutionary” as the main series back in the day, but it’s still an interesting series. regardless. I also reward Magia Record for having the Best Anime Soundtrack of the Year! Just listen to this masterpiece!

8.- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni Gou

7.- Kaguya-sama season 2

6.- D4DJ First Mix: Sanzigen absolutely dominated this year with a ton of releases I never knew I needed, but with all these releases, we’ll have to pick TWO of the very best for this list BanG Dream season 3 and D4DJ, but first, we’ll start off with D4DJ First Mix!

I have made pretty much all the Sanzigen shows of the year but Bandori season 3 as A-tier anime (While the aforementioned Bandori S3 is S-tier), this was going to be another A-tier anime for the sake of being a new franchise, but after watching 5 episodes of the series, it already changed my mind that this is S-tier, I’m liking the concept and the characters very much!

5.- BanG Dream! season 3: Bandori season 3 is in my opinion is the series’ best season, mainly because I’ve been waiting for the plotline of Rokka being a member of RAS since I researched in the Wiki and stuff and saw these images of RAS that has Rokka in it, and this season overall made me like RAS a lot more, I would go so far to say that their chemistry and development are more interesting than their songs, not that I don’t like them or anything but I haven’t gotten the time to listen to them in Spotify.

But with my new-found love for RAS came at a cost and it was not very good: Their wasted potential in Garupa Pico Ohmori, you’ll find out why in my list of Worst Anime of the Year above.

4.- Fruits Basket season 2

3.- Ishuzoku Reviewers

I had trouble deciding on whether or not Ishuzoku Reviewers or Fruits Basket season 2 would be third place.

On one hand, Ishuzoku Reviewers is the most risk-taking and controversial ecchi series I’ve seen with very good hentai-worthy sex scenes and the series really speaks out to me the most since I’ve grown to have a very NSFW image, particularly with my few Custom Order Maid 3D2 content as well as my daily retweet spam of everything NSFW. With Fruits Basket, the story and character development continues to fascinate me and I can’t wait to see the final season next year.

But on the other hand, and mainly with Ishuzoku Reviewers, there are the cons like the show being biased with disgusting fetishes and even elfcist (That’s kind of a weird word I came up with. To put it better: elf discrimination), with Fruits Basket, I really don’t have much problems with the series overall except for the Student Council characters, they’re the absolute worst (Except Machi, she’s a good girl), and then there’s episode 9 of the season with Kyo talking to Akito and that was absolutely painful to watch (The main reason why is because the episode was too dark for me idk).

2.- ID:INVADED:To this day I still can’t get over how amazing the series is, from its animation from a struggling studio, to its story which actually got me a bit into theory crafting, my theories didn’t get paid off nor they were answered in the series which leads to plot holes, but I was very fascinated for the series.

1.- Akudama Drive: This is my grand savior of 2020, this is the one Tookyo Games project I was excited the most since the studio was founded and announced three other projects! Yes, call me biased due to my old love for Danganronpa, but I love this show! So much so that I would occasionally tell an old friend of mine to watch the series, I haven’t asked him too much about it nowadays, but I doubt he would still watch the series because he’s quite busy.

Honorable mentions

Sakura Wars: The Animation and Argonavis from BanG Dream: Counting double because they’re both Sanzigen shows. And they probably would have been in my main list, probably make one entry focused on all Sanzigen shows, but I had to pick Bandori season 3 and D4DJ separately if only Sanzigen didn’t abuse the hand drawn background characters way too much in Sakura Wars: The Animation, and the atrocious episode 13 of Argonavis.

Heya Camp

Nekopara

Brand New Animal

Attack on Titan The Final Season: I’m not convinced this has got to be Best Anime of 2020 material based on 4 episodes alone, I’m still going to wait until the series ends so I can officially declare this as Best Anime of 2021.

Aggretsuko season 3

Munou na Nana

Arknights Holy Knight Light: This came out in the 1st anniversary livestreams for global Arknights, which was around Christmas Eve. But despite the timing of the release, this is actually more like a New Year mini anime special, so it’s definitely worth rewatching a billion times every New Year!

Fate Grand Carnival: LAST MINUTE POST-PUBLISH EDITING BUT YOOOOOOOOOOOO, A BRAND NEW CARNIVAL PHANTASM WITH FGO SKIN?! SIGN ME UP!

OH WAIT, THERE WILL BE A SERIES TOO IN SUMMER?! LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

(Source)

AFTER A YEAR WITH A DISAPPOINTING FATE SPECIAL IN 2019 WITH NOTHING BUT PURE FGO BABYLONIA, NOT ONLY THEY DELIVERED A TOTALLY NEW FATE SPECIAL ANIMATION, BUT ALSO A BRAND NEW CARNIVAL PHANTASM SERIES!!! BEST OF ALL, IT’S LERCHE THAT’S DOING THIS SERIES AGAIN! THE KING RETURNS!!!

OF COURSE THIS OVA ITSELF IS S TIER AND I’LL INCLUDE IT IN THE WINTER 2021 TIER!

Dishonorable mentions

Donkyuu Hentai HxEROS - Worst: This is my #1 dishonorable mention because, first of all, I should point out that pretty much the entire series is rather okay, in fact, it’s got some pretty good fanservice scenes (despite the jarring censors), I did like the series a bit and shouldn’t be considered the “worst” of the year, but there’s one character in particular who pretty much kills my interest in the series:

I stressed enough how much I hate Kirara to death! I’m not even gonna go bother going into details as to why do I hate Kirara, you can either read my previous anime review posts to see why do I absolutely hate her. She was truly painful to watch.

I have quite a list of waifus but I never necessarily hated a waifu ever, sure, there are those I don’t like or care but they’re not hate or worst worthy, but Kirara has become the first waifu I would officially call her as the worst waifu EVER. End of story.

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Danmachi season 3 and Castlevania season 3: Both have delivered some storylines I wasn’t particularly fond with (In the case of Castlevania S3, this is my unpopular opinion given that it was otherwise well-received), but that doesn’t mean they’re flat out disappointing like the following list.

Top 6 disappointing and worst anime of the year

6.- Welcome to the Japari Park season 2 - Disappointing: For a while I was kinda sad and wondering when will there be new episodes so the series can continue where episode 24 left off with Ceval being launched into Riukiu region, that is until on April 26th, I randomly found out the series was continuing, I was really excited to see the series continue! I was quite happy with the series returning and all, but what’s the catch with this second season (?) being so disappointing? Well, for the sole reason that this season is one cour shorter than the first season, lots of plot holes and rushed pacing that makes this final season unsatisfying (Given that this is a short series after all),

The problem is I didn’t know this was going to be the final season of the series, although I should have seen it coming from the very beginning but halfway through, it was time for the endgame.

So, after Welcome to the Japari Park ended, what about the future of Kemono Friends in the anime side of things? Should we expect a third Kemono Friends season this 2021? Although there hasn’t been signs of a third Kemono Friends season coming and it’s still debatable whether or not it should be a continuation of the first two seasons or make it an adaptation of the game with the same name, which it’s extremely baffling that the game called “Kemono Friends 3″ exists in the first place (Maybe it is the third Kemono Friends game in the series? I don’t know).

5.- BanG Dream! Garupa Pico Ohmori - Disappointing: I never watched the Garupa Pico series, so when Ohmori was announced, or rather, announced that RAISE A SUILEN and Morfonica were announced to appear in the series, I had to binge through the first season, and it was... Okay? I mean, it seems like a good series but I wasn’t really impressed.

I never knew there was a second season happening, that is until I randomly checked AIR’s Twitter and they posted a tweet of Garupa Pico Ohmori having a new visual that features RAS and Morfonica, which that means RAS and Morfonica are confirmed to appear in the series. I was of course excited to see RAS in this comedy spin-off, along with a band I haven’t seen in the main anime series yet, but one of the upcoming movies is going to feature Morfonica. Now, after seeing that AIR tweet, I don’t want to get into detail, but I saw a reply of some rando saying “The good Bandori series is here!” and I went into an argument with the guy, and the dude annoyingly repeats the word “Forced drama” to the main Bandori series. I was quite pissed throughout all that morning, but thankfully I didn’t become spoiled and my opinion on the main Bandori anime series hasn’t changed.

Anyways, moving on to actually talk about the series, it started quite strangely with an alien artifact of a guitar and all of a sudden the town where the girls usually go to CiRCLE has turned into a city with CiRCLE being nowhere to be found, the next few episodes were nothing really special, but then we finally got into episode 7 where it finally introduces RAS and Morfonica, I was so excited seeing my girls RAS appearing in the chibi spin-off series, episode 10 came out and it had Rei, which was nice and all, but then as more episodes went on and on, there was another episode that featured CHU2 and Pareo which is episode 22, the finale came which the RAS girls showed up again, and... I just realized... THEY ABSOLUTELY WASTED RAS AND THEY NEVER GOT A DEDICATED EPISODE! Even Morfonica of all bands actually got a dedicated episode for fuck’s sake! (Episode 19)

This is an absolute embarrassment, I grew to love RAS so much since Bandori season 3, I didn’t know the second season of Garupa Pico was coming which was announced for some time and they happened to reveal RAS and Morfonica, which leads me to believe they were never meant to have as much screentime like I hoped they would be, but they absolutely did RAS so dirty, I hate this!

I may be fixated the new characters, so what about the rest of the series with the original characters? Well, there’s not much to say other than for this season, I couldn’t care less for the OG cast as much as the new bands like I wanted to, and sometimes I did laugh into some episodes, but I wasn’t really impressed with the series AT ALL, like about 80% I didn’t find the humor at all.

So yeah, this was quite a disappointing season with not only being not very funny and interesting, but also wasting new characters, especially the one band I grew to love in Bandori S3. And to the guy I argued about the main Bandori anime series where he constantly said “forced drama” and he called the Garupa Pico series as “the good Bandori series,” I’m sorry but this ain’t it, chief.

One thing I do gotta compliment the series for is how nice the animation is, but also introducing Morfonica into the anime media before the main series did and after the Second Live film, I really hope Sanzigen could make a fourth season so it’ll properly introduce Morfonica into the series and that’s where I would start caring about them.

Speaking of Sanzigen, for some reason I always neglected this series in particular when talking about how many other shows Sanzigen released this year, at least the CG ones. And yes, believe it or not, the Garupa Pico series is actually made by Sanzigen, or at least co-produced by Sanzigen since there’s other studios attached, so this is more of a miscellaneous release compared to the rest of Sanzigen’s library that came out this year, the CG shows.

4.- Toji no Miko Tomoshibi - Worst: The Toji no Miko franchise continues to fail to impress me, and this OVA doesn’t really do any favors, the second part of the OVA completely bleed out my interest for its horrible writing and animation.

3.- Guraburu - Worst: Throughout the year, Cygames has released a couple of trash adaptations this year, but first let’s talk about Guraburu.

At first I thought this is the most offensively bad Cygames anime I watched, but it’s a little extreme, the better word I would describe this series is “bland” because everything about it is bland. The tone and direction seems awkward but the animation is almost Queen Bee-tier bad.

This is one media I truly think it should have stayed as it is and didn’t need to be brought to life in anime.

2.- Princess Connect Re:Dive - Worst: At first I thought Guraburu is the more offensively bad Cygames anime I watched this year but bland is kind of a different level of bad, but this one gave me a sour taste in my mouth. The series is pretty much a Konosuba wannabe, from the tone and goofy minor character designs, it just really turns me off, it just feels like this is not for me.

To make matters worse, it’s getting a second season this 2021, well, let’s see if this will make me feel better or worse with this adaptation.

One person who randomly found me on Twitter told me that this anime is more of a prologue for the non-Priconne players and doesn’t spoil some of the major arcs, I’m not sure if I can verify that since I haven’t really played Priconne but I’ll take it as a solid opinion to attack me for talking shit about the Priconne anime.

I’ve kind of come to realize that Cygames and their IPs don’t really resonate well with me at all, I’m probably not the biggest Cygames person or maybe I’ve grown to have a very complicated relationship with Cygames as a whole which makes me think I don’t even like how they’ve grown into. Probably the anime I’m okay with is Manaria Friends, in retrospect before I rewatch it, I think it was an alright series, but what I will never forget about the anime is how the series was originally gonna come out in 2016 but was delayed for 3 long years and I think that fact alone is more interesting than the series itself.

And for one last time, don’t even get me started on the Shadowverse anime, the way it is, is automatically trash because it’s not like the Shadowverse game I’ve seen my older sister play occasionally, and they even made a game based on this and I’m even shocked the series lasted this long. Glad I didn’t even watch it and thank god it’s about to end soon.

Interestingly, the English version of Priconne is coming out in 2021, with Crunchyroll Games handling the localization. While it’s interesting the game is finally getting localized after 3 years the game came out in Japan, but Crunchyroll Games doesn’t have quite a good history with their games, especially since the whole Danmachi game censorship false advertising controversy from 2018, so I don’t think I might have high hopes of playing the game if they might have any potential features removed, not to mention having THREE years of content behind from the JP version, this is worse than waiting 2 years for FGO content from JP to EN. Besides, I don’t even have space to play the game on my phone because it’s saturated with FGO, Azur Lane, Arknights and 5 thousand screenshots (Which I stored in my laptop because I didn’t have enough space. Though the only way to fixed the low space was just uninstalling and reinstalling Azur Lane which I did but I wish I didn’t drag all my 5k screenshots and I was trying so hard to put them back but it would take forever, so might as well save my 5k screenshots in my laptop and start from scratch).

1.- Isekai Quartet 2 - Disappointing: If Bandori Garupa Pico Ohmori’s waste of new characters wasn’t bad enough, Isekai Quartet season 2 does it a lot worse and this one in particular completely broke my heart the most, this is indeed the most disappointing anime of the year.

Just the #1 thing to explain why Isekai Quartet 2 let me down: WASTING THE SHIELD HERO CHARACTERS HARD!

Both Garupa Pico Ohmori and Isekai Quartet 2 just wasted the new characters so bad I have trouble on deciding which one’s worse, or if I would make a tie, but I had to go with Isekai Quartet 2 because the more I think about it, the more painful it gets, even more so than Garupa Pico Ohmori.

Garupa Pico Ohmori broke my heart the most because I’ve grown to really like RAS with Bandori season 3 the season prior to Garupa Pico Ohmori, Isekai Quartet 2 broke my heart the most because I binged Shield Hero In December of last year and I really liked it months prior to Isekai Quartet 2, BUT THE WORST PART IS that they COMPLETELY overhyped the Shield Hero characters and they turned out to be minor characters! I can’t believe I’ve grown to really like characters only for their potential in sequel appearances to be absolutely wasted in just a span of months! Not to mention both of the shows are absolutely unfunny and couldn’t care less for the OG cast more than the new characters which I wanted to like so bad if only they didn’t fuck up with their poor screentime.

With Isekai Quartet 3 coming this 2021, even though I will continue watching the series regardless, I don’t have high hopes for the series anymore, if they’ll continue adding new characters from properties I don’t know of or care to even bother binging their anime of origin, they’ll always end up overhyping them only for them to become minor character status.

Most anticipated anime of 2021

There’s like a lot of anime coming out next year and I kind of lost track of what’s coming out so I had to research and refresh my memory, there’s also other announced anime that are yet to resurface into the light of day (And no, don’t expect Girls’ Work, we all know that’s never gonna happen 100%).

In my previous HajiKo Anime Fall 2020 post, I mentioned my anticipated Winter 2021 releases, you can check that out as well, but what I’m going to talk about here is a general most anticipated anime of the year coming out.

Azur Lane Bisoku Zenshin: I talked about this in my previous post which I suggest you to check it out for more in-depth details as to why is this my most anticipated show of the season, but in this case, let me simply put because I love Azur Lane and I want more Azur Lane anime in my life, even if people would hate them or not (Preferably don’t hate on them).

Dr. Stone: Stone Wars: I was seriously amazed by the series and I wish I had watched it sooner or even completely binged the series when I did the first time with the first 3 episodes at some point, although having binged the first season early this month was a pretty good time to do so as the perfect prep for season 2.

Shield Hero season 2: Isekai Quartet 2 may have disappointed me with how hard it wasted the Shield Hero characters by overhyping and making them minor characters, but by surprise, we’re getting the second season which really deserves it!

Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Hopefully no last minute delays this time, and it’s actually about to be screened in Japanese theaters soon, but what matters to me the most is whether we’ll see it just in time for the Mexican release of the film. I’m pretty sure every Mexican is gonna be thriving so hard seeing this film given my some of my previous anime film experiences in the cinema.

There’s no way Mexico wouldn’t have Evangelion 4.0, it’s one of the most celebrated franchises in the world, probably not in the same vein as Dragon Ball which is overly popular in Mexico, and Evangelion 4.0 probably won’t have that high of a marketing or having a lot of cinemas available to my theaters, even with just one or two cinemas available, they’ll end up being filled to completely and a lot of people will scream their asses of in what’s going to happen.

Fate/Grand Carnival (Series): The best and most insane Type-Moon comedy series returns! But this time it’s all FGO-centered now!

Given that the old Carnival Phantasm was all Fate with Melty-Blood, not everyone may like the direction of this series given that FGO is a huge success. BUT WHO CARES?! I LOVE FGO AND I LOVE CARNIVAL PHANTASM, THIS IS A DREAM COME TRUE!!!

And why is the second season coming out in my older sister’s birthday, August 25th, of all things?!

Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Train film: Just hoping for the film being released in Mexico. And I really hope ufotable can continue making seasons or films of the series given that the manga has now ended this year.

I just really hope they don’t make the Kimetsu no Yaiba franchise as another vaporware like Girls’ Work and the Katsugeki Touken Ranbu movie, although it’s unlikely they’ll do so given that Kimetsu no Yaiba has become a huge blockbuster series as of late, from topping One Piece’s manga sales to the Infinity Train film being the #1 highest grossing film in Japan OF ALL TIME, it’s crazy a Shonen series got to this scale! Fate (specifically the Stay Night series) and Kimetsu no Yaiba are ufotable’s cash cows, so it’s unlikely they would drop them and make them vaporware like their other projects.

Tokyo Babylon: This and Winter 2021′s Project Scard are actually two of GoHands’ TV series I’m excited, although I’m more hyped for Tokyo Bablyon than Project Scard because I would occasionally forget Project Scard’s name, at least the full name, that is until now which I haven’t been forgetting about it.

There’s something I have to address first because this was supposed to come out on April but it got delayed because of costume designs being referenced without permission for some reason, I find this reason incredibly weird and I don’t really understand what the hell is that supposed to mean.

As far as the trailers go, the animation is looking akin to the K series, not exactly the same but somewhere...? Which I think that’s what people are gonna like unlike Project Scard which is in the vein of Hand Shakers and W’z, but I don’t really mind, though.

The fact that this is an adaptation, an anime adaptation of a manga by CLAMP to top it all off, is quite surprising. I haven’t really watched any of GoHands’ adaptations and I’m not sure if I would have the time to do so, but I’m more biased towards the original stuff, and come to think of it, this is actually going to be the first adaptation by GoHands I’m ever going to watch.

B: The Beginning Succession: It’s been 2 long years (at least at the time of writing and publishing of this post) since I watched the first season and I really liked it, back when it was released in 2018, they even announced season 2 was happening and I completely forgot about it for so long!

World’s End Harem: I may or may not have heard good things about the series, probably the tone of the negative reception of the series is more like people are meme-ing this series in a terrified way for its concept or something, all of it in a very funny way, so I’m definitely checking this out. What could go wrong? And I really hope it has better waifus than HxEROS.

Fruits Basket The Final: Now we’ve finally come to the point where this anime is definitely going to adapt the manga finale for good where the original 2001 series couldn’t because the manga hadn’t ended at the time.

As I was researching in the Fruits Basket Wiki, there’s a three chapter arc focused on Shigure, Ayame and Hatori which takes place around the same time as the manga’s finale. This was actually published around the same time the first season of the remake had started airing, I don’t know anything about this and I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t assume if this is worth reading and even worth adapting, although I do wish this is actually adapted in the final season.

Uzaki-chan season 2

Zombieland Saga Revenge: I may have a complicated relationship with Cygames nowadays with their premiere IPs, but the most decent IP they made is this one, and as a birthday present in 2018, I was impressed. Not actually quite what I was expected from looking at the first promo poster, but it was quite an entertaining idol series.

I’m of course excited for the second season and what I’d really love to see the most is paying off the teaser from the final episode, that teaser is too good to be wasted in this season.

SSSS.DYNAZENON: I’d still watch this because it’s a follow-up of sorts to GRIDMAN, but my main gripe would be the character designs, some of them look cool but I’m not very impressed, none of them scream absolute material like Rikka and Akane because boy, there’s really a shitton of fan art and cosplays of them.

The Way of the Househusband/Gokushufudou: I’ve seen a lot of people talking about the manga, they get hyped about it a lot, it’s got a live-action series and now it’s finally getting an anime, so might as well check it out.

Godzilla Singular Point: About time a Godzilla anime that’s not made by Polygon Pictures, and to make things better, this is actually made by Bones AND Orange, talk about a dream team!

Speaking of Polygon Pictures...

Pacific Rim: The Black: This is what Polygon Pictures are currently making, which is coming to 2021 and I might check it out as well, even though I’m pretty lukewarm with Polygon as a studio and the Godzilla films were an absolute mess, what the hell were those? After the widely hated sequel of the original film (Though I actually liked it) and with this upcoming anime, I hope the future of the Pacific Rim franchise can be in good hands, even if it’s from a studio I may have a mixed relationship with.

There’s just something about Polygon that doesn’t sit well with me. Sure, the CG animation can be absolutely gorgeous and even I can admit that they’re way better than Sanzigen and Orange where they don’t even do hand drawn background characters, but something still feels off with me, like the tone or whatever. I’m probably just blindly hating on Polygon years after watching the Godzilla films and I should at least check out HUMAN LOST to get a better impression on Polygon overall.

Kaguya-sama season 3 and OVA: I was very impressed with the second season, so might as well follow the Kaguya-sama series now.

Dragon Maid S: Hopefully what I’m about to say isn’t of bad taste. The Kyoto Animation arson was one of the worst events of 2019, while the majority of the staff members are safe, there are those who did not, including the director of the first season of Dragon Maid.

One year later after millions of dollars in donations, KyoAni seems to be doing fine as of late, with their latest release being Violet Evergarden The Movie which was released this September.

Although I haven’t seen any footage of Violet Evergarden The Movie for me to judge how KyoAni’s animation style after the arson would still hold up. And that’s where the second season of Dragon Maid comes in.

Even though KyoAni isn’t my most favorite anime studio, I do hope they have recovered well and got a handful of new and good staff members so they’ll keep their magic going.

Okay, I’d better stop right there before it can get any worse. NEXT!

Shenmue anime: Shenmue 3 finally came out a few years ago but literally nobody, at least from what I know, have even talked about it, whether it was worth the wait or not, just nothing.

Given that people hate video game adaptations, this in no way shape or form could regain interest in Shenmue, or maybe it will by making people play the games in order to forget about the anime, however it may end up being.

Speaking of video game anime adaptations...

The World Ends With You anime: I never played TWEWY in my life and a lot of people really love the game, and 2021 is looking to be the best year for TWEWY fans with not only this new anime, but also a long-awaited brand new game! (Not sure if I would call it a “sequel” of sorts but it’s 100% a brand new game).

Since this is a game adaptation and usually people hate video game adaptations, I never played TWEWY before and this is my one way to experience the story, and the animation is looking nice too. So here’s hoping for me as a non-TWEWY player that I wouldn’t be gatekept by hardcore TWEWY fans with how terrible the anime is and whatever, I don’t care!

Now, like I mentioned earlier, there should be anime that have been relatively recently announced or has been announced for over a year, and they should resurface into the light of day this time. Starting with...

New Touken Ranbu Hanamaru anime: For a while I always thought the Touken Ranbu franchise is dormant at this point, mainly with no new anime, especially the Katsugeki Touken Ranbu movie being another one of ufotable’s vaporware works or they probably ditched it for good in favor of Kimetsu no Yaiba and who knows if we’ll ever see anything from it.

Not that I think the Touken Ranbu series is dead, there’s still figures and other merchandise and most importantly, the game is still alive, although I don’t hear much about it but it’s definitely still alive thanks to fujo power, but I think the anime is probably what keeps me intact about the franchise’s relevancy. (And this is coming from a guy who’s hardcore into stuff for male demographic with lots of female characters and has a strong thirst for them. Hey, I gotta change teh pace every once in a while, okay? I do care about male characters sometimes, even my own)

One day, in January 2020, I randomly came across a post from Crunchyroll that a new Touken Ranbu Hanamaru project is coming! Finally, about time for some more Hanamaru! Now I should point out that YES the post explicitly says “project” which it could be an anime, a game or whatever, and I said that this could possibly be an anime, but I still want to hope it is a new anime because that’s the #1 thing I want the most.

Now that I think about it, since this was vaguely said as a project which means it can be a different media... Is there by any chance like some sort of manga or whatever media has actually been released throughout this entire 2020 and I may have never heard of it? I really hope there isn’t any other media that I might have overlooked, and if I do find out it exists, I’m going to be utterly disappointed.

Magia Record second cour: Given that this is a Madoka Magica series, I expected Magia Record to be an all two-cour series... But unfortunately it’s not, and to make it worse, the second cour wasn’t even made until the first cour finale aired and they announced it’s in production. Like... Really? Even some ufotable shows and even the second cour of Re:Zero season 2 wouldn’t announce something like that!

Inferno Cop season 2: I honestly kinda wish this shouldn’t made because it’s been so long since they announced it and no new information has come out of it so far, but my main reason why I don’t want this to be made is because the seiyuu of Inferno Cop himself passed away, and hearing Inferno Cop with a different seiyuu may not feel the same.

Megalobox season 2: I’m still wondering if this is even needed given how the first season ended and how much TMS has been working on Fruits Basket and even Dr. Stone.

Made in Abyss season 2: With the film recently being released, it is now confirmed that season 2 (?) is a go. I can see this being potentially released in 2022, but I’m still going to mention it anyways.

Anenarumono OVA: It’s been forever since this was announced, like very early into 2020 in fact and when we get to 2021, it’s going to be a full year since this was announced and so far nothing has come of it.

This is most likely going to be an adaptation of the SFW manga series since there is an R-18 doujin series as well, if this would be a hentai OVA from the R-18 doujin series, I probably wouldn’t have seen big anime news sites like Natalie Comics, AIR or even Anime News Network reporting on it and Pochi herself would have tweeted or retweeted the trailers of the hentai OVA or something.

The animation in the Okaa-san Desu Ka (Isekai MILF) series was absolutely garbage, so I really hope the animation in this one is good.

And finally, I decided to put this one to last because it’s something that it recently just got announced, it may or may not come in 2021 but I’m very excited might as well be my #1 anticipated anime of 2021:

Chainsaw Man: A while ago, I read the first chapter of Chainsaw Man a while ago, and I thought it was cool and stuff but I wasn’t sure if I would read it for my entire life, as of late I’ve been seeing quite a lot of fan art

The announcement of the anime as well as the manga ending as Part 1 were actually all leaked a few days prior to the release of the final chapter of the manga, which was December 13th, later I started hearing stuff about how the editor is straight up telling people and news pages to not do any reports about it until the official formal announcement, which that definitely confirmed it was a thing, it was pretty much an open secret.

The funniest thing is, as I was reading the manga a while ago, I thought to myself “I kind of see Chainsaw Man getting adapted by MAPPA with the looks of Dorohedoro,” I never watched Dorohedoro but from what I’ve seen with how the series look with the CG and its aesthetic, it’s perfect for Chainsaw Man, and now... The dream of MAPPA adapting the Chainsaw Man anime became true, so it’s either a dumb fantasy that came true or I actually predicted MAPPA doing the Chainsaw Man anime, you can interpret however you’d like. But with that being said about MAPPA doing the Chainsaw Man anime, it may or may not look like Dorohedoro, I don’t think I would mind if the Chainsaw Man anime wouldn’t look like Dorohedoro.

Now my biggest concern with the series is that it might get heavily censored because it is a pretty grotesque series and sometimes sexual, but for the most part it’s absolutely gorey, and that’s the kind of series I like. In my Fall 2020 anime review post, in my review of Akudama Drive, I criticized how Japanese media can be inconsistent in how much can they get away with gore in some cases, and in others they’ll just paste black blurs. If the censorship can be extremely bad in the Chainsaw Man anime, it would probably be the one thing that would disappoint me so bad, and I don’t want them to tone down the gore either because it would be equally lame, if not, lamer. When I read the manga, every time I see the blood, I always think of the red blood given that it’s usually colored in black, but when I see colored promos and stuff, I see the blood in various different colors other than red, I’m not sure why it is, but if that’s what the series in full color is, especially for the anime, I think it would be perfect for the anime to be censorship-free but it’s still unlikely, who knows, we’ll see what happens.

Around the time of the announcement of the anime, I made a rant about how MAPPA can be a hit or miss for me in terms of their animation, and now that I think about it, their portofolio even, but the animation is a bigger issue for me. I also thought I would see MAPPA as a somewhat alternative to Madhouse, which is funny given that it was founded by a former Madhouse producer, but at the same time that’s not enough for me to care about MAPPA as I do with Madhouse, or old Madhouse, I’m probably not a fan of current Madhouse, and this goes back to their animation styles. Even if I’m lukewarm with MAPPA, their Chainsaw Man anime is something I’m genuinely excited for, it was something that randomly came into my mind and somehow it became true.

I might have a really high expectation that the Chainsaw Man anime should look like Dorohedoro, I really should try to lower my expectations and try to not care for how would the anime end up looking. Something with the likes of Kakegurui would be nice, maybe Jujuutsu Kaisen too (Even though I don’t really watch the series but it seems like it’s quite popular right now), I just really don’t want something like Granblue Fantasy season 2 because that show absolutely made me sick.

Anyway, I really love Chainsaw Man now, I wish I had read the manga sooner, especially when it came out, but now having read the manga now was a good time to do so given that the manga ended (at least in Part 1) and the anime being announced. (Although I probably forgot what the story is at this point (Except some “key moments”), so the anime can help me refresh my mind)

Top 4 best video games of the year

This is my least favorite list to make in these New Year posts because I never play a single new release because for years I never had a PS4 and even now I still don’t have money to buy games or to buy a Switch and games if I want to, so whenever I make these lists, I always tend to watch Let’s Plays from YouTubers I like the most (GTFO Jacksepticeye), I rarely watch all cutscenes only videos nowadays, and doing so makes me feel like this is cheating because doing these lists is more about experience by one self. Sure, some people would say you would still try to like a game just by watching, but in my honest opinion, it’s just not the same. But now this list is going to be different!

So for this list, I’m only gonna choose the games I actually happen to play for once, I usually make these lists by including a bunch of games I haven’t even played at all, so it’s finally time to make an unbiased list of video games of the year, not including ports and/or re-releases of old games or an obscure game suddenly getting attention, even if this list is awfully short but it’s the bare minimum I could make.

I’m not sure what to make of this list, I haven’t played some of the games in this list but I’m just gonna put them for how impressive they are even by just watching anyways:

4.- Helltaker: This game became quite a sleeper hit amongst the internet, spawning countless fanart and Helltaker dance parodies. The game might be very short, but the future of the characters doesn’t end there, as the creator would occasionally make comics and sometimes small art with the characters.

3.- The Henry Stickmin Collection: Believe it or not, I grew up with Newgrounds during my childhood, but I’ve never really played a Henry Stickmin game EVER in my entire life.

2.- Arknights: Over the last year, 2019, I’ve been seeing quite a lot of fan art of the game, there’s a lot of really good character designs, I really like them all. The game at the time was only released in China, however, at the end of 2019, I was hearing that Arknights was being localized into Japanese and English simultaneously, a “global” release, if you call it. It’s localized none other than Yostar of Azur Lane fame. Anyways, enough with that talk, let’s talk about the game.

I did get to start playing the game on day 1 launch, I was quite intrigued the story, the characters, etc. Although I was at a point where I wouldn’t play the game as much and only do logins, but after a few months, as I was progressing through the game and when the Grani event came out, I actually quit playing the game because... It was very hard! There’s a lot of strategies I have to do because there can be really hard enemies, not to mention I was quite underpowered with operators not well leveled enough.

I stopped playing Arknights for a while, that is until late April to early May where my older sister has started playing Arknights, that’s where I immediately decided to play Arknights again, and now it has become my third game I religiously play, the first being FGO and second being Azur Lane. Over the course of the entire year, I’ve been leveling up some operators and as of now I have 10 operators I have E2′d, so I made some significant progress, although I’m still rough in having fully built operators because grinding for the materials is a huge pain in the ass, but sometimes it can be rewarding.

My luck with the gacha is hit or miss, sometimes I get the characters I wanted, sometimes I don’t for the absolute worse. Now with the first anniversary coming, my most wanted operator is W, she and Ch’en are my most wanted operators, but after trying to get Ch’en so many times with definitely NO LUCK AT ALL, but my greatest disappointment was W yesterday, I never got W at all and only got a Phantom and TWO Weedys for six stars and I was so furious! I’ve been wanting her for so long, and the saddest part is that she’s limited and I won’t be able to get her ever again! After all my efforts in saving a lot of orundum, materials and even making this meme, everything has gone into an absolute waste and I really bummed out!

On a lighter note, W was originally going to be a Girls’ Frontline character but she was scrapped, which makes her a lot more interesting. (Someone even made this). I gotta say, releasing chapter 7 and W now instead of actually waiting until the day the game launched which is in January 16th, they certainly ended the year with a bang! (And with a bummer of not getting W, but still...)

UPDATE - JANUARY 2ND 2021: SHE’S FINALLY HOME!!!!!!! OFF TO A GREAT START INTO 2021!!!!

End of update.

In fact, Arknights was created by former Girls’ Frontline developers, quite surprising. I wouldn’t say Arknights is a competitor nor a spiritual successor to Girls’ Frontline, both have completely different concepts, also, I wouldn’t expect for them to ever make collab events for each other in either game. Then there’s the character W which I mentioned previously, she actually happens to be spawned from a scrapped Girls’ Frontline character for the AR Team, I like how people joke about W being the AR Team’s long lost sister. As of late I’m feeling really obsessed about W, and for a while, the fact that she was a scrapped T-Doll makes her a lot more interesting.

Given that Arknights was released last year in 2019 and we got the global versions early this year, having 1 year away from content isn’t necessarily bad and I’m better off playing the English version right now, but as of late, Yostar appears to be rushing some content released from CN into global, which that’s a plus for me, they’re slowly catching up to CN, just like how EN Azur Lane started with slow content but recently they’ve been releasing content ALMOST simultaneously (Not that I particularly care for EN since I’ve been playing JP a month after launch back in 2017 anyway), but the biggest problem is as I started following some Arknights dedicated accounts where they report stuff from CN and even took a bit of some livestreams, recently CN’s going crazy with amazing content that it may take a few months or a year for global to catch up, so I really hope Yostar does their best to try to release content for Arknights semi-simultaneously between CN and global a la Azur Lane.

I mainly play the EN version of the game and tend to follow the official EN channels (Though I follow JP’s too), but I found some problems with the PR behind EN. My biggest problem is that EN make some absolutely painful to watch livestreams with no seiyuu like JP does and having total nobodies as hosts (Except Intern-kun which he is kinda known and was a meme but I don’t think he’s quite a meme anymore), sometimes there were two other hosts with big animal heads, and some other plethora of issues addressed by Tectone in this video, in short, some of the exclusive YouTube content the EN Arknights channel comes up with like the livestreams can be absolutely garbage.

By the way, Arknights gave us a pretty good content creator who was quite a meme, he was actually sponsored and got his infamous ad which I didn’t even know this was a thing and still find it hard to believe since I use uBlock Origin to block ads. Even though he probably wasn’t the best go-to content creator for Arknights news and stuff, nobody agreed on what he says and he was occasionally criticized, he was especially fun to watch his suffering in every roll. At some point around the beginning of the second half of the year, he started to do livestreams and uploaded highlight clips of said streams of games like Fall Guys and Among Us, which I thought it was a nice change of pace considering there wasn’t much Arknights content at the time, but at that point, Genshin Impact was around the corner and he started making a lot of videos for it which now he’s pretty much become the Genshin Impact guy, and then he finally released that video completely declaring he absolutely retired from Arknights for good which I linked earlier in the PR issues, so after that, I stopped caring about Tectone completely. It’s a real shame because I actually wanted to see him pull for W this first anniversary, but there are some things that pissed me off about him, he never even cared about the story, or rather the game as a whole to begin with, talk about being ungrateful to the game that made you successful and get a cult following to begin with, but the dude was harassed, so I’d better cut him some slack.

Speaking of sponsors, I actually wished Yostar continued to sponsor Arknights but on better YouTubers like Whang, ThatGamerFromMars, the Vanoss crew, and all the other ones who get sponsored to death by Raid Shadow Legends (Raid Shitty Legends, am I right?), and the last channel they sponsored was fucking WatchMojo of all things. I mean, seriously?

Although not everything about the EN PR is bad, most of the Twitter and YouTube stuff is pretty much stuf about the game like upcoming new operators and events, and English subtitled trailers which for the most part is nothing really worth noting but this is pretty much my go-to for the news and trailers. They also have a Fankit website which I can download wallpapers and stickers, and yes, I do use the wallpapers, sometimes I do use some stickers but I like keeping them. They even team up with DJs and they actually release some pretty good music with cool CG animated music videos. Said artists happen to be from Steve Aoki’s record label Dim Mak, and even Steve Aoki himself did some music for the game and actually appeared in the Arknights 1st anniversary livestream from the EN channel to make comments about his latest track and saying he loves anime which I didn’t know Steve was a weeb. (Here’s the full livestream if you wanna watch it).

Anyways, enough PR talk, this is a pretty fun game! I probably never had prior experience in playing tower defense games, though the closest would be the PS3 demo of Plants vs Zombies, so I can say this is my #1 tower defense game and I’d absolutely recommend to everyone.

1.- Genshin Impact: My main contender for my #1 GOTY was No More Heroes 3, but since it got delayed to 2021, there was nothing else that’s #1 worthy for me, but enter Genshin Impact, a AAA gacha game at its finest, this became quite a big surprise of the year!

At first I wasn’t hugely interested in it, but then I was constantly seeing fan arts and people talking about the game in my timeline and I was feeling left out, so I tried playing the game a bit on my phone but I barely had any space left, so I had to uninstall Girls’ Frontline from my phone (sorry), so I had barely some space left, but the game ran extremely slow for my phone, as expected, it’s a very intensive game. Later I tried installing the game on my laptop, but because of my problem with my ethernet in my laptop constantly turning on and off, it took HOURS upon HOURS instalilng the game, that is until I got fatal errors at the last minute which completely made the installer download from 0%... TWICE! And I was done with it.

Then I was chatting with my older sister and she mentioned that the game is on Playstation, so she downloaded it, and upon seeing her play the game, it looks gorgeous, especially on her flat screen TV! It’s better having to play the game in better graphics and in a bigger screen, so I made a separate PSN account for myself and played it and I’m very hooked.

Probably the biggest things I’ve been seeing when the game came out were Paimon emergency food memes, I’ve been seeing a lot of memes and fan art related to these and they range from hilarious to downright disturbing (As people would meme Paimon as an “emergency onahole” as well). Nowadays I continue to see fan arts of Genshin Impact, particularly those of Mona, occasionally Barbara, Lisa, etc, but Mona is the most frequent.

But the problem is I'm so far behind of adventure rank and everything else from everyone else, even Ten and my older sister, I don't have a lot of characters and I don't have enough Primogens and the gacha system can really suck pretty bad with it being mostly saturated with weapons over characters. Not even FGO and Action Taimanin would they give me craft essences and weapons would be this bad, although in the case of FGO, I do get more CEs than Servants and stuff, but the way Genshin Impact presents me with low star weapons and literally no characters, it's just a hideous sight to look at.

The other problem is that since we only have one PS4 and our home consoles have always been shared, my older sister and I switch turns, but when it comes to single player games, we've always been using my older sister's PSN account, but with Genshin Impact, this is definitely our first time playing games on different accounts for the both of us for once. But the thing is, my older sister ALWAYS plays Genshin Impact, I admire her dedication but that barely gives me some time to play the game myself along with other factors why I don't do so, such as sleeping for hours, busy with other games and stuff, etc.

Playing Genshin Impact, given that it's an open world game, definitely reminds me of the good old days when I used to play Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, I destroyed that game with pretty much beating everything, but with Genshin Impact, I'm feeling like I'm out of practice with patience and playing games for hours due to my addiction of social media and other gacha games.

Then there’s also some performance issues specifically on the PS4, sometimes there can be quite the lag on location rendering (Like when I spawn in Mondstadt and textures take seconds to render sometimes), frame drops when I did co-op in the Unreconciled Stars event, etc. I don’t know about PC or PS5, but I’m pretty sure the game would run somewhat better on PC especially.

I rarely encounter bugs in a game, but Genshin Impact is the one game that I can definitely find more noticeable bugs and other flaws more than any other game I’ve ever played in my life.

Aside from performance issues and despite not playing the game as religiously like I want to, it’s still a very solid game. Gacha has been a genre that I’ve religiously been playing for 3 years and this really speaks to me, as I used to play a lot of video games for hours in the past and just a few months after playing DMC5 on our PS4, I’ve come back to the console and spend some hours playing on it again.

If I had a PS5 for myself but with a better TV in my bedroom right now, I would have absolutely made a lot of progress on my own and boy, my older sister must be way too far ahead with our adventure ranks, the campaign and even getting better characters than I do... ;-;

Honorable mentions

And here we are, the lamest part of doing these top game lists, whether main or honorable mentions, it’s always acknowledging games for their existence and sometimes simply from watching Let’s Plays which kind of defeat the purpose of making these lists based on actual experience, but who cares? Let’s talk about the games that I may not have played but peaked my interest in the least.

DOOM Eternal: Around the time of DOOM Eternal’s release, I somehow finally got into Doom by playing the classic games (Except Doom 3, I wouldn’t mind playing it, though), so I think I totally consider myself a big fan of Doom now (Even I played some WADs was breifly interested in wanting to make one), but what about Doom Eternal? Even if I had watched videos of Doom 2016, I of course liked the game for how it looks, but with Doom Eternal, it is absolutely better.

Based on what I remember seeing from Doom 2016 and with Doom Eternal, they’re like the modern equivalents of Doom 1 and 2, particularly with the final bosses being the Spider Mastermind in Doom 2016 and the Icon of Sin in Eternal.

When I first saw Doom Eternal being announced in Bethesda’s E3 2018 conference, as far as I can remember, I thought it would be like a random new game that has nothing to do with Doom 2016 or something, but as time went on and I kind of forgot about what I thought but now thinking back, looking at the trailers and even the actual game, my expectations have exceeded. Looking back at Doom 2016, it now pales in comparison towards Doom Eternal, from its UI to some of its more faithful monster designs from the classic Doom games!

Although even if Doom Eternal is great, there were some problems about Mick Gordon not being able to do the sound mixing for the soundtrack and all that drama, that could have ruined the game for being GOTY or something. (I’m exaggerating but it was quite a serious problem back then).

Speaking of Doom Eternal being GOTY, I’m seeing quite a lot of people saying that this is their GOTY, which is funny because I originally had Doom Eternal as my #1 GOTY in the main list which I later changed it to Genshin Impact in my TRUE best games of the year list with games I actually played, I still think this is GOTY, but without actual experience, it’s not worth counting it on the main list.

Resident Evil 3 Remake: Surprisingly RE3 Remake was rather divisive, probably the biggest reason I can think of as to why the game is divisive is because it’s rather short. Sure, the game is short but calling it a disappointment is an absolute understatement, as long as the game continues to have beautiful graphics from RE2 Remake, the gameplay is satisfying and has quite some spooks, it’s still good enough for me.

Call me crazy to judge the game this way considering I’ve only ever played the demo in my PS4.

Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition: I was quite surprised they actually went ahead in making a Special Edition of DMC5, I mean, I thought they wouldn’t based on what they said about “no more developments” for DMC5, but with the PS5, that all changed. And of course, it cannot be a Special Edition without playable Vergil who not only has a really awesome gameplay, but he has the absolute BEST theme that actually surpassed Devil Trigger. Man, Vergil always gets the best themes.

The only caviat with DMC5: Special Edition is that it’s only made for the next-gen consoles. or it has rather become the current-gen consoles as of now, that is all because Capcom wants to take advantage of the PS5 and Xbox Series’ technologies with the ray tracing and turbo mode, but not all hope is lost as they actually made Vergil available for previous gen consoles as DLC, so that’s an absolute win!

A few days after he was released as the DLC, I got a chance to play as Vergil and I pretty much speedran through the Devil Hunter difficulty in 6 and a half hours, and I think I’m almost not out of practice on playing Vergil since DMC3SE. By almost I mean that most of the time I was familiar with the controls and the movesets, but at the same time they tweaked a little bit of some of those familiar controls from what I remember and added some cool new combos. Oh, by all that I meant that he’s absolutely fun to play.

I kinda wish they did make Trish and Lady playable as well, just like in DMC4SE, but they kinda turned out to be useless throughout the story, so this could have been the only chance for Capcom to redeem themselves with the characters, but I guess not.

Among Us: The game came out in 2018, but out of the blue, it has now become a massively popular game. I had always thought Henry Stickmin was part of why Among Us is popular, but not really, it was a streamer with a lot of followers to make it happen.

To be honest, I kind of wish Henry Stickmin was as popular as Among Us, the only thing from Henry Stickmin that was apparently a big meme (Which I wasn’t even aware of and never seen such memes in my Twitter timeline) is the distraction dance.

Persona 4 Golden PC: For a while I’ve been seeing news about leaks and stuff like that, I was skeptical about it, but it has finally become real.

For a while I did want to buy the game, but I didn’t want to spend quite the amount of money and I was kind of skeptical of how demanding the game might be, but out of the blue, my good old Japanese friend gamer Hinosuna came to the rescue and gifted me the game (He also had gifted me Mortal Kombat 9 after it was removed from Steam a few months earlier, and with Persona 4 Golden, this is probably the last game he’ll ever gift me).

Upon opening the game, the first problem I immediately encountered is the cutscenes running extremely atrocious, they were running extremely stuttery, it was so bad I had to find an all cutscenes video with Japanese language (Since I had the game set in Japanese audio), but then when it was time for the gameplay, the game isn’t insanely demanding like I thought it would be for my laptop, it’s an absolute win! From what I heard about this problem with the cutscenes, it’s probably a problem that’s only affected on laptops, so I believe people must have the cutscenes running like normal in their insanely powerful desktop computers, lucky you.

A few months later, they eventually fixed the cutscenes... Supposedly. The cutscenes for me run a little better, but they still work just as badly. Instead of having the cutscenes extremely stuttery, like I previously had, instead I may have a bit of lag but the visuals can get very glitchy, like scratched DVDs.

By the way, this happens to be the most successful PC port on Steam, given how successful it is, I completely forgot that the Catherine PC port exists and looking back at it, I can’t help but laugh at how the PC port of Catherine wouldn’t get to this level of success P4G has, especially because it’s a fan favorite enhanced version of a Persona game and because you probably wouldn’t find a copy of the game for PS Vita if you still have a PS Vita lying around which makes this port ten times more accessible, this is how successful it turned out to be, in my opinion. I could be wrong and there can be other reasons why it’s successful, but this is my main theory.

Now, since I’m traumatized from my PS2 dying in 2014 when I was doing Shadow Yukiko or Kanji in New Game+ after doing the bad ending, this is my chance to redeem myself, I want to get the true ending this time, especially with a new port of the better version of Persona 4 Golden! ...Or so I thought I wanted to be.

When I was playing P4G, I was trying to get 100% on my first playthrough and it puts me quite a lot of compromise, there’s just something about playing the game windowed while looking through guides at the same time that not only makes it distracting, it completely slows me down, not to mention I’ve actually been burned out from playing the game overall...

As of now I’m on June 29th and already doing Shadow Rise’s world, I think it’s decent progress but that’s how far I am by early December this year after not playing the game for... MONTHS. At this point I also try not to care about following guides and just do whatever is best for me and I can try to do better when I do New Game+.

I want to go back and finish the game once and for all, but I’m very busy with other games and other things, I’ve been held back very much on them and even when I try to play the game, sometimes on midnight, I immediately lose my patience. I don’t know what to do...

Hopefully next year, I’ll try to go back and try to finish the game once and for all, I don’t want to make Hinosuna’s gift a waste, I’m really proud of him gifting me the game.

Final Fantasy VII Remake: I can’t remember when was the first trailer shown in E3, 2015? We’ve come a long way and FFVII remake is finally here. Apparently I heard this is a two-part game, so I hope we won’t wait for a really long time for the second time, probably not the same amount of time as we waited for the first part, but worse, perhaps even longer.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Action Taimanin (English and PC): I played Action Taimanin back when it was released on mobile in Japanese in 2019, but since I was done with the campaign and there was nothing else to do, I decided to stop playing it and uninstalled it from my phone to make space, but to my surprise, I randomly happened to find out that an English version AND PC port of the game was released on Steam in October 6th, I kinda wish it did came out on my birthday so it could have been more enjoyable, but whatever.

Having known that Action Taimanin was gonna be released on PC with English translation, that’s where I thought “It’s time to return to Action Taimanin!” unlike the one time I said I would because Rinko Akiyama was released as a playable character in the mobile game, but now I have her AND Mizuki Shiranui, which I got them both at their launch dates, I also got Emily Simmons as well but not right on time for her launch but it was still worth the wait.

Speaking of Asagi, one other surprising thing I found out about Asagi when I started playing the PC port is that they actually patched out Asagi’s voice by recasting her with a different actress, apparently it happened since late June for rather unknown reasons. For those who don’t know, Asagi was originally voiced by Ami Koshimizu and now she’s voiced by Sayumi Watabe (Who’s claim to fame is Els from Beastars and Manaka from Aggretsuko season 3).

Square Enix Avengers: I wanted to like this game because I always had thought this would be part of the Spider-Man PS4 universe, a Marvel Gaming Universe of sorts, even if it isn’t, I was still interested and I didn’t tolerate how people would trash the game. The game now came out, mixed reviews and a plethora of far worse problems, like how very little the game made and low playerbase on Steam and what not. None of that stuff is my problem, I would really love to play the game now.

Dishonorable mention (?):

This is hardly a dishonorable mention in an ill matter, but something that completely shocks me, so might as well be in a disappointing sense.

Cyberpunk 2077: I was never interested in The Witcher series, but I admire them as a video game adaptation of a novel which aspires me in wanting to write novels for them to get adapted primarily into games, however, Cyberpunk 2077 was the CD Projekt Red title I was genuinely interested.

The game came out and I saw a tweet from Nibel that it’s got quite some good reviews, but over the next few days... Things started to get very sour...

The game launched at a very buggy state, it even got removed on console digital stores, the game is unplayable on consoles and money loss... Everything just feels disheartening, and it’s not fair...

This is the one game from CD Projekt Red that I wanted to start caring about as well as the studio, but after the PR mess and constant delays leading up to a messy release (at least on consoles from what I mainly hear), and everything else that’s been happening, now it seems like people are turning against CD Projket Red which they were once highly regarded, I just hope Cyberpunk 2077 can recover so it’ll eventually turn into the next timeless masterpiece like it was supposed to be after The Witcher 3.

Although not all hope can be lost as I still see some people playing Cyberpunk 2077 fine, at least on PC maybe, and that’s enough to make me confident that not everything is all bad.

Most anticipated video games of 2021

Now we’re finally on my favorite category, and first and foremost, my most MOST anticipated game of the year is of course...

No More Heroes 3: With NMH3 finally being delayed to 2021, that was my last final nail in the coffin to care about 2020 as a whole, BUT, not ALL hope is lost! As on October 28th 2020, Suda51 actually released THE FIRST TWO GAMES into Nintendo Switch! This is an absolute win-win, I can finally play ALL No More Heroes games in the most recent console possible... Except I still don’t have a Switch and I seriously need it so bad now. 😭 (And now I’m hearing news that the first two games might actually come out on PC, which I don’t think I’ll need a Switch anymore, at least for this, I still need it so bad to play NMH3 on launch) I’m so glad Travis Strikes Again sold so well to make NMH3 happening, hell, it it didn’t, the post-credits scene could have been a total waste and I would have been forever heartbroken!

For a long time I was skeptical for the soundtrack, I always thought it wouldn’t sound anywhere near as good as the first two games without Masafumi Takada, but in reality, Takada never actually composed the soundtrack for NMH2 to begin with, in fact, he had already left Grasshopper around NMH2′s release. But regardless, I still thought the NMH3 soundtrack wouldn’t sound as good as the first two games (Sorry TSA, I haven’t paid attention to your OST), but then I listened to WILD TOKYO, the first album by RED ORCA, a band formed by composer Nobuaki Kaneko, and I was very impressed, so I guess it changed my mind. Actually, the album contains three tracks that have been heard on the trailers, like “ORCA FORCE,” “beast test,” and “Octopus.” That’s not to say that the album is the ENTIRE soundtrack for NMH3, only these three are what are currently known based on the trailers, so who knows if the rest of the album is actually the NMH3 OST or there’s gonna be entirely original tracks for different things.

However, there’s one thing that I’m scared the most is the probability of recasting Quinton Flynn from Henry (in case he might appear in NMH3 since Travis Strikes Again) due to some allegations towards him, I really hope everything that I’m hearing is just made up bullshit that people want to cancel others they hate for no absolute reason. Although I’m hearing all of this from word-of-mouth and nobody sources, if there’s something that’ll immediately convince these allegations are true, is by seeing legit sources like Anime News Network, OR EVEN other actors speaking about it (Though they would most likely easily jump into the conclusion and easily agree to the allegations without any solid solid proof (Yes, I’ve seen a screenshot but I don’t want to believe it)). If Henry does appear in NMH3 but he gets recast before launch or worse, AFTER launch, I’m going to be very sad and it’ll probably be one of the things that NMH3 may disappoint me.

And lastly, I̵ ̵S̵W̵E̴A̸R̴ ̶T̵O̸ ̸G̶O̸D̵ ̷I̷ ̴R̴E̷A̷L̷L̶Y̶ ̴H̵O̷P̷E̴ ̴T̴H̴I̵S̸ ̵W̴O̷N̶’̶T̴ ̶B̸E̶ ̴T̶R̴E̷A̵T̵E̸D̷ ̴I̸N̷ ̷T̴H̶E̵ ̶S̴A̶M̷E̶ ̷W̵A̸Y̵ ̷A̷S̸ ̵T̷L̷O̴U̴2̸ ̸O̸R̵ ̴T̷H̴E̸ ̷O̶T̷H̴E̸R̷ ̴T̵H̸I̵N̶G̸S̴ ̴F̸R̵O̸M̸ ̷T̶H̵E̸ ̵L̸A̵S̵T̴ ̴3̶ ̸Y̴E̵A̷R̸S̶ ̷W̴H̷I̸C̵H̶ ̴I̷ ̸M̴E̴N̵T̸I̵O̷N̷E̴D̴ ̴A̴G̷E̴S̶ ̸A̷G̶O̵!̷!̶!̶!̷!̴!̶

I̷̩̗̒͑ ̷̡̩̆̓Ã̴͉L̷̠̭̎S̷͚̊O̵̲̍̀ ̵͙̍͒͜D̸̰̈́͘O̷̻͌̽Ņ̸̎’̷̦̋̅T̶͉͐ ̶̪̼́́W̶̲͍̐̔A̶͕̠̓̊N̴͙̆̈́T̵̨̪̾ ̵̻̈̌N̷͚͛͐M̵̻̕H̸̘͋3̶̛̤͔̇ ̴̦̭̍̆T̸̠͒̉ͅÒ̷͚̬͠ ̴̲̥͗̍B̶͙̀E̵̛̘̋ ̷̰̗̽T̷̳̜̏Ŕ̸͙E̶͓̓A̷̻̽͘T̴̲̫̿̋È̵̯͝Ď̸̅ͅ ̷̺̽T̶̢͆H̴̰̕Ě̴̩̈́ ̸͎̇S̴̗̮̏͆A̶̫͌̏M̷̙̈E̷̟̍̓ ̵͈́̔Ẅ̶̢͔A̴̹̤͆̑Y̸͇̺͘ ̸̭̃̄A̷̜͝Ṡ̷̯̬̓ ̷͚͕̒͝T̸̗͋̕R̶̝̾A̶͓̚Ṽ̸̤͊Ǐ̷̗̟S̸͎̠̈́͛ ̴͈̅S̴̘͕̾T̷͘͜͠R̴̬̍̄Ị̸̳̍K̵͕̘̀͂È̸̼̱S̷̤͂͝ ̸̳̃̇Ä̸̞G̷̨͓̏͝Ȃ̴̰͘Ị̷͐N̴̚ͅ ̸̙̒W̷̻̼͐͑Ḩ̶̲̂̎E̶̼͆͂N̸̤̟͗͠ ̵̜̇T̵͂ͅH̶̘̉͒E̵̲̺̔͠ ̸̖͋̄G̷̲̑͊A̵̡̾͊Ṁ̵̡͋E̶͈̽ ̸̰͈̎̀Ḫ̷̤̈́Ā̷̼D̵̺̼͗ ̷̞̽Ḿ̸͎͇I̷͖̽͜͠X̷̤̘̒̚E̷͖͉͋D̴͎͒ ̴̹̳́̑R̵̛̘Ẽ̴͎̽V̶̙̎̈́I̵̧̤̔E̶̞̤͗͠Ẃ̷̨͊ͅS̷̫̕ ̷͚͆A̵̦̙̔̍N̷̡̦̂D̵̥͍̉ ̵̳̩̈́S̶͖̏̚T̴̬̠̒Ǘ̴͔̩̏F̴̡̣́F̴̰̝͒͝ ̸̹̫͂̕Ạ̷̧̈͂N̸̥̐D̸̡̤̃̃ ̴̦̘̇P̴̗̅͒E̶̛̥̠͗Ò̸̩̜P̴͕̋L̸̮̘͠E̸̺̣͝ ̴̫́̂S̴̨̰̊̓E̴͎̖̎͑Ê̶̠͚M̸͔̒È̷̺Ḍ̸͠ ̸̯̬͂̀Ț̷̮́̂Ó̵̱̽ ̶͙̃̄N̴͔̉̌Ǫ̴͂̑T̴̡́ ̷̻́͝Ç̵̙̾̋A̷̙͋͝R̷̟̥͌E̷͖̣̋ ̶̻̌͠A̷̝̞̽B̵͙̒͊Ō̵̭̗Ṷ̶̤͝T̷̥̓ ̵̩̤̐̎I̵̹͎̅Ṭ̸͍̈́,̵̺̳̽̉ ̷̪̄̔É̵̼̜V̶̭̆E̸̫̦̚N̵̜̰̅͠ ̵̼̪͝C̴̼̈́Ȧ̶̧̡̔L̸̟̼̿̄Ḷ̷̫͘I̶͉̟̋Ń̵͈͝G̷̦̦̎͝ ̷͔͗Ì̸̺̀T̷͉͓͂̒ ̷̤͘C̷͔͉̈́Â̶̗͓̂S̴̲͂H̶͛͜G̴͈͕̉R̶͈̕͝A̶͎͂B̸͇́ ̶̹͈͒Í̵͕Ň̴̖̊ ̸̻̪̎O̴̜̾͜R̷͔͌͘Ḓ̸͉̋͛E̶̬̒͘R̷͈͔̽ ̷̠̖̃̽Ț̶̓O̷̭͐ ̸̡̘̍M̸̛͙͐ͅA̶̳͐̓K̴̲̈́͐Ë̸̬̇ ̴̻̔N̷̢̰̄͑M̶͕̳͐H̸̳̎3̶̬̄͜ ̷̢̑͆É̷̬̩̕X̸̙́̓Ï̶̖S̵̘̙̉T̶̗̲̒,̷̹̻̋͝ ̷̧͎́͘I̸͔͂̓ ̴͕̚ͅD̴͍̟͆͝Ŏ̴̞͕N̷̞̫̓̊’̵͓̂T̴̡̰͛ ̶̧͕̐Ẁ̵̢̹͂A̶͕͐ͅN̶̪͆T̷̫̆ ̵̗̣̃T̵̤͈͋̎Ǒ̴̮̆ ̵͓̽S̵̝͓̊E̵͕̒E̴͇͂͒ ̸̟̫̄̚A̶̱̥̕͝Ņ̸̥͑Y̶̧͋́ ̷̠̑̒S̸̯͑I̶̩͇͑Ņ̵̯͑̂G̴̝͖̽̏Ļ̵̓́͜Ë̴̫̗́̕ ̶͔̅P̴̬͊E̴͍̐͛R̶͙͇̓̅Ș̷͝O̸͙̠̽̋N̸͍͒͛ ̷͔̥̀I̶̯̓ ̶̨̺͊C̷̡͛̕A̴̧̰̿R̴͙̍E̷͓͚͋ ̷̲̜̔̉A̵͈͜͝B̵͔͓̾Ǫ̴̟̿̓U̵̗̔Ṱ̵̀,̶̖̖̑̄ ̷̗̤͂̍W̵̭͝H̵͕̬̅̈́Ḛ̷̫̐Ṱ̸̛͇H̴̟̩͂Ḙ̶̒̈R̷̢͛ ̷̤̌͑Ỉ̵̆͜T̴͉͖͂’̴̠͒̈́S̵͚̾ ̸͎͈̿̿Å̶̪̈ ̶̧̦̏̇F̶̦́R̴̟̍I̸̢̻͛È̶͍Ṉ̵̋͠D̷̜̜̍ ̶̫͍̅O̸̰͌̓R̶̛̥͕͛ ̷̮̊̚A̵̰̹̓̏N̵͎͛ ̵̥̐͘Ȁ̴͈̪͝R̸̡̦̓̑T̶͚̕Ȉ̶̤̘S̴͉̣͆̽T̸̩́ ̷̊͑ͅI̶̝̿͘ ̷͚̓L̶̤͇̉I̴̙̋Ḱ̶̟͈̑E̴̱͊͠,̵͔̝͑ ̶̥̦͌͠T̵͔̙̉̽Ǫ̷̟̌ ̸͚̪̓T̶͍̒̈A̷̦̚͝L̵̨̡̃K̴̪̋̂ ̵̳̊S̸̗͔̆͘H̵͙̮̒I̴̫̎T̸̢̤̓̂ ̵̩̠̌À̴̪͕̑B̵̫͌̄O̸͇͆͂͜Ǘ̸̺̙T̸̛̲̅ ̵̳̂M̸̘̻̒́Y̷̿̈́ͅ ̶̪̌̿ͅM̷̦͗͑O̷̦̭̓S̴͙̞͋̂T̷̺̓ ̴̺̞͠P̴̗͋R̷̪͖̍͌E̷̫͝Ç̴̨̚Į̴͈̽O̷̡̒͆U̵̟̅S̵̟͋̾ ̸̞͊G̷͚͗A̶͊͜M̷̘̚E̵͕͚͑ ̵̼͇̋S̶͕͖̒É̷͎Ŗ̶̱̀̕I̷͇͚̎E̷̼͛̑S̶̳̠͗̈́ ̶̳̑À̸ͅN̸̦̟͝D̴͕̠̈ ̴̡͐T̷̛̩̯̃H̶̼̿̄Ė̴̕ͅ ̷̜̍M̸͍̓Ȍ̸͚̊S̵̳̈Ţ̴͝ ̵̘̼͌͝P̷̲̝̐̅R̵̪͓͛E̵͕̓Ç̴̳̌̚I̴̭̕Ö̷͔̀U̶͉͛S̷̙̘͑̕ ̶͕̺̊S̷͈͛Ě̴̖͒Q̴͎̇͝U̵̟̚E̷͔͓͌́L̷̟̀ ̷̡̫̀͋I̸̟͛̈́’̷̢̓͜V̵̧̪̆̅E̴̢͙̍͝ ̵̣̕Ḅ̸̰̋͐Ẽ̴̪̰̚Ē̶̯̺̃N̴̜̎ ̷̤̻̂W̷̡͕̐A̵͖̓̇I̴̥͋̍T̶͓͊Ị̷̛̿N̴̞̫̚G̴̡͕̒̓ ̷̦͘̕F̸̖̓̃O̶̠͆̚R̶̭̅̿ ̴͎͐͆A̵̻̽ ̸̥͓́̄L̷͎̰̚͠O̸̺̗͌Ñ̴͖̖̏G̴̳̍͐ ��͇̻̽À̶ͅS̴̝̄S̷̛̙ ̸̨̩̇͊T̶̟̉̕I̷̯̞̒M̸̠̃̌E̷̫̚ ̴͖̅͂͜I̸̧͚̍N̶͕͍̂͐ ̶͔̒M̷͌͜Y̵̾ͅ ̵̛̬̻́L̸͓̫͒I̸͎̓̿F̸̨̳̍E̵̝̣̋!̴̹̼̿͌!̵̖̝͆̚!̶̦̏!̵͚̏́!̵̞̟̔͊!̷̱͌!̷̞̖̐̌!̴̻͐

¡̶̗͎̭̲̯̑̀̑̋̃͂̆̕͝¡̶͇̹̗̙̖̀̇͂̈́̚̚͝¡̶̜̀́̐͆̉͂̊͜͠͝M̵̢̰̭̪͎̥̩̂͗͋ͅĂ̶̻͗̕ͅĻ̴͉̗̼̤̈́͑D̶͓͎̋Į̶̨̛͔̝̫̳̝̭̮̈̈́̈́͊͑̂Ṱ̵͗͑̋̒͑Ȏ̷̲͌̄S̸͚͙̲̀͋͘͠ͅ!̸̨̖̠̮̩͍͒͝ͅ!̴̧̼̬̩̖͎̉̾̓!̵̨̛̝͓͎̙̺͉̃̔̒̏̑͒͒͜ ̷̛̘͙͈̰̦͎̪̖̍͊͋̈̾Į̸̠̝͙͖̙̗̏̓̓̏̋̂̚'̶̹̩̆M̴̭̠͈͈̐́̌ ̸̺̰̮̔͛́̂̊̂̄̑͘Ģ̵̘͈̳͎͇̰̮͇͗̑͂̉͘̚͠Ở̴̝͖̟͖̾͌͌̐̒̏͘N̶͙̽̇̾͐̐̆̐͗͘͜N̸̙͊͌̀̇͜͜A̶̢̜͉̣̘͖̹̎̃̈́̀́̂͆ͅ ̶̭͖̹̰͔͓̅C̶̛̹̜̉̂͒̀͋͑̔͠Ȕ̴͕̟͇̯̭̭̓͜T̷̡͖̱͇̳̗̺̓͂ ̶̗͕̩̘̀̈̍̆͋́̒̒Y̸̹̣̬̿ͅO̶̢̢͈̣͗̀̽͜͠͝Ų̷̗̺̩̤̹̙̤͎̍͐̚͠R̵̝̱̘̥͙̠͈͐̀͆̄͌̉̐͜ ̷̙̹͆̓̓̑D̵̟̺͇͕͌Į̶̨̡̬̫̞͍͋͑Ć̶̢͕͖̮͘͜͝K̵̰͍͑͑͗͆͑̂̏̚̕S̶̭̭̼̤͔̳͊̀̈́͋ͅ ̷̝͖͇̹̪̲̜͕̀͆̔͑͜Ơ̵̧͔̖̣͌̓͛̃̊̆̕͜F̷̛̫̙̣͖͊͛̾͗͌̈́̃̎F̶̡̤̭̟͔̬͖̼̙̎̈́̿͗̌͋!̵̢̛̪͇̣̦̥̿̌̊͆̔̒!̷̡̤̪͓̒̋̽̿!̸͓̻̱́̽̋̓̌̕ ̵̡̼͓̪̟̓͊́̚͝Ḯ̵̬̫̪̰̯͍̂̉͝ ̶̨̺̟̘̱̤͙̻̆̋͆͒̀̀S̶̪̪͖̩̮̗̬̰̉͒̓͗̚W̸̢̭͔̪̱̺̅̌E̴̯̥̿͛̅̔̋̎̿̕A̸̖̠̝̙͖͗̋̔R̷̼̔̌̀̿̈́̍̽͠ ̸̤̾̄̀̒̀̍̃͝T̴̫͙̦̗̦̤͌̔̈̈́͜ͅƠ̶̗̜̝̽̂̑̑̓͆ ̷͔͉̗̞̭̣̣̔̎̒̌͠͝G̸̢͙̅͐͆̐O̷̹̭̼͙̔̏̈́̔͜͝D̷̤͍̦͝ ̴̨̦͈̟͙̱̘͎̅̿̉̅̂̋̈́̄I̷̬͖̐̒͌̾F̴̜͉̻͈̟͍̈́͑̃ ̷̹͈̦͇͈͗̎Ÿ̶̛̬͇̫̼̝̤̑̎̂̐̕͘͠Ơ̸̢̙̹͉͉͉͙̠̦̂̍͂̄U̷̠̬̥̪̥̞͆̍̒̿̆̾̕͝ͅ ̵̤̀̄̆̍̐͂D̷͕̞̎́̍͘O̶̧̢̨̗̠͓̓̍͌̓͘͜ͅ ̴̢͖̟̗̭̦̱̦͊̏̉͆̊̓̐͜͝T̸̙̳̙̟̪̟̪̈́̽̌͒̅̅͂͘̚ͅH̵̘̤͎͎͊̅I̶̡̧͎̗͓͔͖͐̓̀̑́Ş̶͓̻͓̼͙̘̜̱̾͒̿̊̕ ̸̡͍͔̤̹͒̽̈̽͑̈́T̷̨̢̨͓͈̝͚͇̘̔̑̊̐̂O̴̖̎͆̏̇̐͐̄͘͠ ̶͔̗͉̩͕̒͗̄̒͛̈̎̚M̴͉̠̾̔Ę̵̤̼̲̘̤̜̈́̃͂,̴̬̦̳̲͖̖̲͒̾̏̔̌̉̽͐̚ ̵̡̨̜̤̯̬̌̾͆̿̓̉͝͠͝I̴̺̝̐̽̃̒̀͝'̴͎̂͐̿M̷̡̳̜͚͍̼̬͋ ̴̢̢̫͇̈́̐̓̀̅͝G̷͍̞̔͗͗͑̀́̏͐̾ͅO̶̠̐́́̓̂̊̈́N̶͓͓͔̗̪͍̈̂͑͝N̵̢̛̛̳͎̞̒̔͑Ą̵̒̆ ̴̛̳̝̍̌̈́̌B̴͎̖̤͎̜̟̳͇͋Ḻ̷̒̅̔́́O̷̖͑͆͑̈̈́̆Ĉ̴̨͖̪̪͇̣͎͚̘̀Ķ̷̼̺̝̠̮̥͓̈͐̅͆̎̀̚̕̚ ̸̡̘͇̣̹͇͌͊͛͠Ý̶͕̥̦̜̗͉̉̐̿̆̄̃ͅÖ̸̧̳͈̞̳̤̤̌͐͒̍͘ͅU̴̜̔͛͂͗͐͜R̸̨̫͈̥͍̰̀ ̷̨̩̘͓̇̽͘À̴͙̈̀̈̃ͅS̴̠͈̙̎̽̒̓͂̐͛S̶̡̼͉̟̝͚͖̔́̍̀̄̓̕E̷̳͍̞̊͂͝S̸̛̥̠̻̤͆̐̌̋̉̿͘͝ ̶̣̩̖̘̦̂̆̇̔̀̅̕O̴̦̬̦̟͆̂͂͋̈͂́F̷̡̛̠̝̹͖͉̱̗͌̿̀̎͆͘F̸̹̖͓̖̎̉ ̴̤̹̗̯̊̔̏̀͆͒́̅͝Ǒ̷͖͙̻̭͎͕̌͗͒́̍̚F̶̜̳̭̺̱̖͔̒͋ ̷̢̹̩̝̗̙̎͂̽̐͝M̵̫͓̮̪͕̹̳͗̽̔̈͊̓̎͘͝Y̵̡͙̟̝̓̊ ̴̻̪̗̙̭̊̓͌̈́̀̒͠L̷̢̠̩̳̦̺͚̦̚Ȉ̸̝̲͗͊̃F̴̺̘͂͑͂E̴͓̓͋̑̔̏̎̌̏ ̶̫͚͎̜͔͂͂́Ą̴̨̦͈͌̆͒ͅN̷̺͕̻͙̄̽̋̄D̸̳͎͖̰̎̑́̔́ ̶̦͉̘̖͍̹̏̆͛̍̑̎N̷̞̟͋͂̓̈͊͘͝Ę̶̤̟̠͉͇̓́́̄͝͠V̸̤͋͑͠͝Ě̵̛̬͕͒͆̒̽͑Ŕ̸͕̼͈̠̰̦̼͚̍̐͜ ̵̢̰͙̯͇̝͖̑̆͑̇͘͘͝ͅS̷̡̲̣̖͚͊̌͐̇̚E̵̟̒̇̈͂͂Ĕ̴͓̬̪͖̙͚͚̓̇͒͋̅͋̿ ̷̢̳͚̼͂̆͠Y̵͇͔̎̊͌̀Ơ̵̢̫̟̠͖̣͒̇͋͛ͅǕ̶̡̧͈͚̜̻͍̝ ̵̼̬̤̥͚̟̎͌͜A̷̧̪̰̻͓̗̿́G̸̜̠͓̙̜̬͇̭̒̐͠A̸̹̩̾͗͆̆̒I̷̹̬̗͖̐̽̈́̓̎̓͐͗͘ͅͅŅ̸̧͈̹̭̝͇̝͕͗̏̓͐̽͛͊͐̕,̴̡͓̼̜̖̮̮́͗͒̍̀̇̚ ̷̳̰́̉Ỳ̵̦͓̞̻̩̐͜ͅỚ̷̺̰̻̝̰̾̂͗̽̍��̣͓Ů̸̢̡͈̟̪̬̜̝̼̈́̃̂̓̄́̚͝'̷̟̳̓͂́̅͐R̷̹͖̆͊̕É̶̛̯͈͆̓͒̄̂̈́͌ ̸̠͍͍͙̪̀̏̅ͅǦ̶̝̯̦͕͙̈́͛͛͝ͅÖ̷͉̗͎́̔̏̓̒ͅṊ̸̡̝̾̂̅̆Ǹ̸̢̗͖̲̋̂̿̽͝A̴̖̮̰͎̪͂̂̈ ̷̨͖̖̹̦̈́̉P̵̞̩͔̱͔̲̦̟̤͂̄̈́́̓À̷̺̽̄͌͋̃͝Y̵̳͓͐́͐͆͘ ̴̼͈̻̲̟͎̩̿̍͗͌́̃̄̇͛Y̵̱̲͐̒̌̕Ơ̶͎̫̦̠̈́̄̒Ử̷̜̙̪͉̪̖̓̒̚ ̵͙̗̫̉̒̓̐͒̂̓̕F̴̱̠͎͝U̷̦̬̘̓̽͐ͅC̵͍̿̈́̂͌͐̅́͋̚Ķ̵̨͂̈͐̔̆̒̔̅́Ǐ̸̧̱̻̪̪͖̈́̾̃̀͘N̴̟̭͉̲̰͉̍̽̊͒̕Ğ̸͓̰̖̎̂ ̴̧͎̥̜̹͒̃̑̌̈́̒̅̊C̷̨͈̪̫̥̲̜̱̿̐͋U̶̲̮͈̪͆͋͐̊́̍͌͐͘N̴̬͈̝͓̆̄̔̍͝T̸̙̖̼͎̻̬̀̌̃͐̔̅͋͗ͅS̴̨̰̋̆͒̆͝,̵̞̭̜̭̹͕̱̃̚͝ ̵̗̬̆̚͠ͅY̵̗͕͌̾͂̂͂̒Ò̶̥̙́̄͝U̸̗͗̂̐̀͐͜͠ͅ'̴̹̱̤̇̃̓̀̏̽̀̽R̵̡̫̙̙̯̗̒̉̾̔̎͗͋̈̇ͅE̷̖̒̒̒͑̔̇ ̴̯͑͜Ǵ̵̨̝̟̙̰͓́̓ͅO̸̡̘̤̗̭͔̬͖͒̎̓͗̊̇͐͘͘Ṉ̸̱̆̔͑̈́͘Ǹ̴̡̩̼̃̀̍̕ͅÄ̴͕̠̂ ̸̧͓̭̟͔̹̖̥̔̂͐̃͆P̶̮͎̫̳͚̃Ą̷̨̪̖̟͋ͅY̵̧̘̟͇̮̥̏͛̓͜ ̴̢̨̜̞̹̭̼́͑̽̀͜͝F̵̛̞̤̺̈́̆̇̋̋̔O̴̜̜͇̽́Ŗ̴̯̟͈̱̳̲͆͑̂͐̈̍͂͝ ̵��̞̻̌̋͑T̷̝̯̭̖͖̼̏͐̄͆͗̀͠H̶̨̧̛̗̤̮͕͕̙̉́̊̾́̚͜͠E̸̗̪͉̩̤͖͆̅̐̄̎̂̃̾̚͜ ̵̧̪̱̦̪̞̫͔͕̀̋R̸̗̭͓̖͔̻̟̮̈́̀̅̋̀̇̒͜͝Ȩ̸̟͇̮͇͂̿S̵͕̯͕͌̓͂̀͊͒̀̊̍Ţ̶͇̭̖̰̊͛̓̅͒̈́͝ ̷̟̜͍̦͇͍͒͑O̶͎͋̊́̈͌̚͝F̵̨̧̖̯̗̞̯͎̭̌͊̅̾̂̂͌̕̕ ̶̤̹̖̱̦̐̆̓́̉̐̑̕ͅỶ̵̨̮̠̬͚̤̱͎̄̒̚Ơ̶̢̬̦͙͚̝̒̏̈́̚Ŭ̶͕̗̣̎͘͝Ŗ̴̨̱̪̹͉̰͆ ̸̪͓̱̒̀̊͑͑Ļ̵͖͖̉I̵̡̨̭̺̼̺̟͌̏̾̽͌V̴̢̢̛͚̫͌͗͑͜͜ͅẺ̸̮͖̹͇̰̀̐̊S̸̨̲̜̖͍͚̙͉̥͊̀!̶̮̱̻͑!̶̩̦̫̓͑̇̿͛ͅ!̵̹̲̯̦̗̹̗̹̃̈́͛̐͝!̵̼̿͑̃̉̕͜!̷͍̮̝͖̙̫̫̺́̅̐̔!̶̭̻̫̭̗̗̼̏̈̆͒͝!̷̗͚̣͇̑̓̒̂͑̔́̈̄

Ä̶͇̪̘̹̦̰̥̪̞̺́͆̉͂̀̆̈̈̈́̌̽͊̏͠Ą̶̨̧̪̻̗̯̘̭̺́̅͒͊͌̈́̑̈́̓̑̿͆̕͝ͅÄ̵̢͇͍̉́̿̔͋͌͛̾̿̂̚͝͝Ą̸̢̯̬̹͖͉̻͇̘̱̙̖́̓ͅĄ̶̛̯̝̰̜͍̬͇̹̈̀̋͑̅̉̚͝Â̷̢̡͈͍̞̮͖̥͌̊̈́͐͝Ã̶̛̦̠͕A̶̖͎̗̜̳̘̪͈͙̍̍̒̀̑͜ͅA̷͚̰͕̻̯̪̔͆͆͗A̶̘̝̞͖̹̙͖͚̥͎̫͈̓͗͐̒́̈́͌̊̓̇̽̒͌͋͝A̸̭͕͋͋̎̀͂͛̈́̕͠À̵̼̓̑͋̅̍̿̀͗͗͊̂̓̚͝Ạ̶̧̨̧̤͖̠͍̜̱͐̆̽̿̆̇́͗͝͝͠Ä̷̱̼̝͇̱͐̈̐̈́̏͆̽͌͂̏̈́̀̐̅A̵̛̛̱̥͐̂̈́̃̐̀́̏͝Ä̷̼͕͉̭͖̣̼̺̺̩͍̯̭́̽̒̎̑̓͘ͅͅA̵̳̰͋̌̀̍́̈͑̿̋̃ͅĄ̷͈͎̮̬̠̻̀͐Ạ̵̢̢̣̻̻̯̰̦͉̮͓̯̔̏́̍͒̋̀͆̓͒̆͝͝͝A̶̝̝̻͉̼̫̹̱͇̓̑́̌̌̐̍̄͝A̴̛͕̫̰̹͈͙͖̪͒͂͆̈́͋̚Ą̸̖̻̹̹̣̹͓̩̩̲̓͆́͋̇͋̃̽͝͝A̸̻͔̲̥̠͐̏̈̅͆̀̍̒̀͌̕Ä̸̮͖̱͐̅̀Ǡ̶̧̡̛͍͉̠͇̗̉̇̔̽̇͛̔̂̉̌̚A̷̛͈͈̫̲͙̾̈́͂ͅA̸̢̢̝͉̼̫̔̆̑͑̔̊̓̎̚͝͝ͅA̵̢̧̛̗̮̮̭̫̹͔̹̮̫͌͂͌̔̔̄͒̌͑̌͘͜͝͝A̷̠̋A̸̡̜̭̫̤̝̩͎̦͑̃͋̏͠ͅA̸̡̨̯̮͕̭̠̺͈̜͖̗͂͒̐̈͆Â̵̟͔̘͂̃̏͌̓͒͋͊̀̇͐̚̕̚A̶̡̲͉̗̲̬̜͈̻̟͚͈̠͉̩̋̌̈́̐͂̍̓͐̉̆̇̃̕͝͝Â̴̳̻͍̯̗͉̣̞̥̙͋͌͂͊͗̏̃̈́͘Á̶̢̧̧̠̞͕̞͎̼̪̻̠̩̫̄́̋̅͆̀̊̇͘͘Ä̸̢̡̬̬̜̻́͊̈́̇̌̂́̋́̅̍͜Ã̴͍̫̲̤͈̐̄͒͋͗̋͑̓̾̓͒̃͘A̴̢̛̗͕͔̝͖͛̅̀̍̔̑Ā̷̧̛̩̘̘̹̭͈͇̣̗͉͙̣̈A̵̮̣͙͊̑͐̈́͠Ą̵̛̠̖͍̥̜̟͇͎͎̅͆͐̄͋̊̌̔̋̾̒̚͝ͅA̶̦̖̗̫̜̼̦̯͎̲̔̀̎̂̅̔̍͑͑̂͗̈́̕͘͝ͅA̴̢̢̧̞͕̺͍̣̳̹̮̜̥̅̑̈͠Ḁ̶̛̟̘̉̈́͑̐̔̂̑͝Ḁ̶̥͕͓̩̩͈̘͒͛͑͝͠Ả̸̧̞͉͈̊̀̈́͐͊̐̉̀͒Å̵̳͕͕̼̦̜̱A̵̧͉̖̦̼̺͉̙̗͈͓̹̠̦̅͜A̴̩̓̂̌ͅǍ̶̛̗̬͕̼̩͙͎͐̓́̔̊̾̓̽̾́̚Ǻ̴͖̤̯̈̈́̉͗̊̾̍͘̕͝͠͝Ą̷̩̬͇̹̮̺̇Ȃ̴̳͙͋̓͌̌̆͐̂̄̚͠͝Ǟ̸̻̹̲̜͎́͐̃̓̕͠͝͝Ą̸̬͚̪̳͕͙͓͖͚̹̘͑̀̈̅͛̿͋̃́̋͘͠A̵̹̮͖̣̻̘̗̟̋̐̋̓̉̇̍̈̓́̔̅̉̊͜Ȃ̵̧͙̽͊̌̔̂͝A̶̮̒̔̂A̷̧̛͎̞̗̽̏̀̔͌̎̂̀A̶̤̻͎͌̊̍̒̀̓̅͛̿͂̊̀͘̚͠A̷̳̝̝̓̿͘Ǎ̶̛̖̜͕̖̤̲̣̠̥͚̆͑̏̓͂̌̈́͋̑͗̚͠͠À̶̢̢̙̩̟̖͔̳̎̈́̈̒ͅẠ̶̘̹̦͉̬̰̝̘̫̈̋̽͌͒̑͊̌̍̾͑͝A̷̡̢̧̙̰̮̠̠̫͈̯͗͊̀͗͒͋̄̑́̍͆͒͠Ä̷̧͕̖͖͕̗̲̲͓̞̟̣̲̙̐̽̊͝͠ͅA̶̛̰̝̙̣̤̙̝̗͋̆̓͊̀͘͠͝ͅA̶̢̢̯̰̜͈̭̯̰̯̫̎̔̋̀̌̇̓̽̽Ȁ̶̧̨̨̺̜̤̈̉̎̒̀͠A̵̪̩̼̮̻̜͕͍̓͒̓̉̈́̍̈̂͘͜Ą̴͖͙̜̦̄̏͗ͅA̵̡̙̱̳̭̪̙̰̐̄͋̈́̄̉̋͆̐̽̋̿͜A̷͉͋͑͋̂́̋̆̈́̿͛̂̚Ḁ̴̛̃̏ (Headphone warning)

Ahem, my apologies. :3c

Also, I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO SEE SPOILERS, I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THE GAME FOR A LONG TIME AND I DON’T WANT TO SEE ANYTHING UNTIL I ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME MYSELF IF WE EVER END UP BUYING A SWITCH AND THE GAME! I’m definitely gonna try boycotting the internet, boycott Twitter, boycott YouTube, mute every news site and journalist, etc.

By the way, on the morning of the 29th, when I made myself breakfast, I happened to talk to my mom that I want to buy NMH3 so bad and we agreed that starting on January, we’re gonna start saving for a Switch and the game, didn’t expect to tell her about it sooner but I actually did it! We seriously need to buy a Switch ASAP, and I cannot afford to wait for a long time to buy a Switch AND the game even if it’ll come out in other consoles, I want to play the game right on launch, I’ve been waiting for this game for a seriously long time!

I had considered making this list with NMH3 as my only most anticipated game, but there are some other releases I should look out for (Which of course I’ll probably never play because of money):

Resident Evil Village: The remake period is over (Though it ended in a conflicted way with RE3) and we’re finally back on track with completely new games, especially the sequel to RE7.

Not only there’s a new Resident Evil game but there’s going to be a new CGI series following Leon and Claire on Netflix as well. So we’re getting new game that continues Ethan’s story and whatever the hell is happening to Chris, while we’re also getting a new series that continues Leon and Claire’s story.

Shin Megami Tensei V: It’s been years since we haven’t heard anything about SMTV until this July where we finally got a brand new trailer and teased to be coming this year. My older sister would seriously love to play this, but we don’t have a Switch yet...

MADNESS: Project Nexus (Madness Project Nexus 2): I really hope for sure they’ll release Project Nexus 2 this 2021, the game’s been in development for a very long time and it’s constantly getting delayed, so I don’t think I might have high hopes to see the game being released at this point, but even so, I’m still going to count it as my anticipated release of 2021 (Hopefully).

I played the demo of the game, however, and I had a blast, although it’s certainly a little confusing, but my bigger problem was the framerate I’ve been getting, which the game is a little intensive and I expected the game would perform well on low end computers, but at least I manged to play it.

I’m not very happy with how they changed the title, it went from “Madness Project Nexus 2″ to “MADNESS: Project Nexus,” the new name is absolutely confusing and someone might get mixed up with the original Flash game, or so I thought it would be as the original Flash game was eventually renamed to “Madness: Project Nexus (Classic),” which part of it makes me think it’s a remake of its own but at the same time there’s still new additions, like new enemies and new story campaign that kinda justifies that the new Project Nexus game is still a sequel.

On the topic of Newgrounds games...

Alien Hominid Invasion: With the Castle Crashers remaster, the next Behemoth remaster is the classic Alien Hominid. Depending on how much the game will cost on Steam, I will for sure buy and play it immediately. I think Newgrounds games are best played on PC.

Before you experience the Alien Hominid remaster, you should check out the original version available in Ruffle’s demo page, which Ruffle is a new open source replacement for Adobe Flash. (Be warned that the game’s one-hit death might frustrate you, it sure does to me and I really hope that’s not a thing in the remaster, if not, then I guess that’s Alien Hominid’s intended nature, although it’s probably what every side-scrolling shooter is)

Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery: Girls’ Frontline may not be my top gacha games I religiously play like I wanted, and then there’s a plethora of Girls’ Frontline games coming out sooner, some of them are spin-offs and then there’s Girls’ Frontline 2: Exilium, which I’m not interested in the least, to be honest, but there is one game that is now being re-released and localized for global audiences, and even getting retconned to be more connected towards Girls’ Frontline, this is a game that came out years before Girls’ Frontline and for a long time it was widely believed this game was a sequel to Girls’ Frontline, taking place over 30 YEARS after GFL and now it is indeed confirmed! I’m talking about Code Name Bakery, or originally called as Codename: Bakery Girl.

Even if I’m not a huge avid player of Girls’ Frontline like I wanted to since I’ve always been a gun aficionado and I almost don’t know much about what’s going on in the story (But there’s my Philipino friend, Ten, to tell me), I certainly wouldn’t mind to play Code Name Bakery.

Back 4 Blood: Everyone’s pretty much referring this game as Left 4 Dead 3 because it was created by the creators of the first L4D (While L4D2 was all developed and published by Valve in-house). I kid you not, when I saw the reveal trailer in this The Game Awards, I was definitely like “I’m getting some Left 4 Dead vibes” maybe because of the characters and the special zombies, and then the title “Back 4 Blood” was shown and I was like “Is this like a spiritual successor or something?” but now everyone’s calling it Left 4 Dead 3, so I’ll have to stick with it.

And to be honest, I’m not really sure if I’m really interested on this one. Even if this is a new Left 4 Dead game from the creators of the original game, now known as Turtle Rock Studios, there’s just something about the game’s identity that doesn’t sit right with me. And then looking at the pre-alpha gameplay, it just looks like any other generic first person zombie survival game with the modern graphics and stuff, the characters and the zombies don’t look anything brightful and special like the first two L4D games, I wouldn’t call the aesthetic bland, but everything about it just doesn’t do anything to me, at least it’s not a brand new L4D by name or even by Valve, which this is published by Warner Bros Games instead and I’m not really sure about them as publishers or their products.

As much as I’d like to get interested in this game from the creators of the first game and people call it Left 4 Dead 3, I’m better off with the first two games. Oh, even Left 4 Dead 2 even got updated a few months ago. Despite my skepticism, I will continue watching Let’s Players’ videos and see if it’ll change my mind.

Fate/Extra Record: This is probably gonna be a 2022 release, but I’ll be damned if it would actually come out later this 2021, so I’m still gonna mention it here anyways.

Tookyo Games releases: This one’s a little tricky because we all know Tookyo Games has a plethora of projects coming out, but what we don’t know for sure is when some of these will come out, maybe the closest one could be Tribe Nine, but I’m more curious about the other projects and hopefully they’ll come out this year.

And finally...

Tsukihime remake: HOLY SHIT! I can’t believe it’s finally happening after all these years!

Um... I always thought that whenever we see stuff about the Tsukihime remake, I would immediately play the original game. BUT I NEVER EXPECTED THEY WOULD ACTUALLY ANNOUNCE IT FOR THIS SUMMER!

Once I'm done with some things, I'm definitely gonna go play the original!

Top 6 best movies of the Year

At first I listed all the following films in a nearly chronological order from what I remember when have seen these films throughout the entire year, but I decided that maybe I should make this list as a ranked list, even if some of the films don’t necessarily impressed me so much in the least, if it weren’t for COVID-19, Venom: Let There Be Carnage would have been my #1, and Morbius would have been my #2. Anyways, let’s go:

6.- The New Mutants: I wasn’t able to watch New Mutants in the cinema the day it was released like I wanted, but some time later I was able to watch the film and it was pretty interesting, I liked it.

5.- Birds of Prey: Never knew I needed a full R rated DCEU movie (Though it’s not the first one. The first one is the R rated cut of Batman v Superman but I don’t know how it’s different from the theatrical cut), there’s still some ties but I feel like this kinda feels more like a standalone film, but it was quite fun. This kind of serves as a good road to The Suicide Squad.

4.- My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising: I mentioned this a couple of times because this is probably the only thing I can say about the film, but this is actually the last film I saw before the pandemic broke out.

Though one thing I have to say about the My Hero Academia movies is that I wish the manga can actually make references to the films so it would acknowledge they exist because sometimes I can’t thoroughly figure out the timeline or flat out call them non-canon (Which they aren’t), and the villains are immediately forgettable. Although given what’s currently happening in the manga (and it’s completely nuts), I doubt the manga would ever reference the films.

3.- Parasite: This was a 2019 release (I think), but after the Oscars this year, it was ran in my theaters so I had to watch it before I watched Sonic the Hedgehog next. After seeing the film, I find it pretty interesting, not to mention the ending shocked me, but in all honesty, I wasn’t like completely amazed as I was with Joker, even my family thinks that they prefer Joker over Parasite, that’s not to say it didn’t deserve to win Best Picture in the Oscars, but Parasite as a film doesn’t mean anything special to me.

2.- Wonder Woman 1984: I wasn’t looking forward to see the film in my birthday because I didn’t want anything other than Venom 2 since it got delayed because of COVID, but later it got delayed to Christmas and I was glad.

December came, the film comes out a week earlier in Mexico than in US and HBO Max, I saw the film and it was actually better than I expected, I think I like it better than the first film. Now that I think about it, maybe I wished Wonder Woman 1984 wasn’t delayed because my birthday was so disappointing and boring without anything special to see. Although even if I liked WW1984 so much, I don’t think it probably would have been the best birthday film I would have seen if it didn’t get delayed, but it was still worth it.

There’s one particular thing about the film I liked very much, but since the film recently came out, it’s too soon for me to put spoilers, but I’ll redact them in ROT13, you may or may not want to decode this, it’s your choice:

[V ybir jung gurl qvq gb gur Jbaqre Jbzna punenpgre, gurl jrag shyy pynffvp Jbaqre Jbzna jvgu gur vaivfvoyr wrg naq sylvat, juvpu vf fbzrguvat V unira'g frra irel bsgra va ure zbqrea vapneangvbaf nf bs yngr.]

But then there’s the moment when I start getting the feeling of wanting to pee so bad, and the worst part is it started around halfway or the quarter of the film. Then in the film’s climax, my bladder was dying so bad that... Believe it or not, I had to empty my soda cup and actually pee on it! I DIDN’T HAVE ANY OTHER CHOICE, OKAY?! Geez, I really should limit myself how much soda should I drink, but I even took a pee in my home before leaving! What an awful way to end my older sister and I’s cinema experience of the year, having our bladders nearly exploding.

When the credits started rolling, I was slowly standing up, I was putting my belt on and somehow I happened to see a mid-credits scene I never knew it would have, although it’s nothing hugely worldbuilding significant, but [Vg'f whfg n fznyy sha fprar jvgu Ylaqn Pnegre nf Nfgrevn.]

At this point the DCEU is definitely going to have post-credits scenes, maybe I should check the news beforehand whether the upcoming movies have post-credits scenes or not, I always thought the DCEU wouldn’t have post-credits scenes, but since Suicide Squad, Justice League and even recently Aquaman, it should be time that I should sit all the way to the credits, maybe just any other movie in general too.

1.- Sonic the Hedgehog: I had some fun watching this film and I think I actually liked it better than Detective Pikachu in terms of pacing. Can you imagine watching this film with the awful old Sonic design from the very first trailer? I don’t think I would have liked this film with the old Sonic design the same way as I do now. I’m glad that a sequel is even happening now.

Honorable mention

Promare: This was a 2019 release and I’ve been waiting for so long for it to come out in my theaters, Konnichiwa Festival disappointed me with the 2020 line-up and all of it was history for early in the year before the pandemic.

When the pandemic has broke out, I randomly happened to watch Promare in my house, torrented from the Blu-Ray rip, and BOY, I WAS SO AMAZED WITH THE FILM, SERIOUSLY! I think it was for the best seeing Promare at home in case the cinema might have had full of Mexican weebs screaming their asses off.

Around September, my dream of Promare coming out to my cinema has finally come true! The day my family and I went to see The New Mutants, we have planned to see Promare right after we finished watching The New Mutants, although we didn’t get to see TNM because there were some technical issues with the screenings in the cinema for some reason.

So we waited over 3 hours to see Promare, my older sister and I got into the cinema to see the film, and the experience... Was rather lukewarm.

In one hand, my older sister and I were the ONLY ones seeing Promare late that night, but on the other hand, the way the film was screened was an absolute mess. I don’t know what to blame, the aspect ratio or the subtitles because the subtitles were almost non-existent, it was as if we were seeing a raw anime film in Japan. It was so bad that my older sister did NOT understand what even happened in the story. Given that I had seen the film, I tried my best to try to explain her what was Gray planning with the Burnish but my brain pooped out and couldn’t continue. Later I told her to look for spoilery summaries or something and she says she may have somewhat gotten the context of the film, but it doesn’t feel right to me. I’m not sure if she has looked up on spoiler summaries now.

Things get worse when I realized seeing The New Mutants and Promare in the same day could have been the second time I could have seen two films in the cinema in the same day since February with Parasite and Sonic The Hedgehog.

Another weird thing I haven’t thought a lot is that this wasn’t actually distributed by Konnichiwa Festival like most other films, this was actually distributed by none other than Cinépolis themselves with the +QUE CINE thing, and that makes me lead to believe that either the screenings from the cinema or Cinepolis themselves butchered really badly the subtitles.

The cinema experience may have been an absolute disappointment, but it was no doubt a very good experience seeing the film upclose in the cinema with the gorgeous animations and visuals, and my older sister and I being literally the only ones who have seen the film, it makes a new record of seeing a film with my family all alone since 2017 with Kong: Skull Island with me, my mom and a random dude.

Most anticipated movies of 2021

This next list is going to be different, as I’m going to count a couple of movies per entry, more like categories for different kinds of franchises that I’m most excited to see, so here goes.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Spider-Man 3 and Morbius: Since 2018, this is the second best time to be a Spider-Man fan! (However, we won’t see Spider-Verse 2 until 2022) My #1 most anticipated film of 2020 was of course Venom: Let There be Carnage, I seriously wanted to see it so bad but because of COVID, the film got delayed until like June or July. I was seriously pissed as the film was gonna be released on October 2nd which that could have been my one chance to see a Venom film IN MY BIRTHDAY, ONE FUCKING CHANCE, and Sony wasted it! Given that it was October, it could have been a good time to have the film released but seems like the COVID situation wasn't getting any better.

There's also Morbius which I'm genuinely curious as to how they're actually building up the Sony Venomverse with the MCU since the end of the trailer features Michael Keaton's Adriam Toomes from Spider-Man: Homecoming. Yeah, so far this sounds really complicated, but I'm sure it'll all be clear once we see the film.

And lastly there's Spider-Man 3 (Working title) which is probably the hypest out of the three films on this list. For a while, the news I've seen were about the posiblity of Kraven the Hunter being the film's villain, and there wasn't anything else after that, there wasn't much special things for the film and I always saw it as a follow up to Far From Home which I would still see. Then there were news of Doctor Strange being the next MCU hero to be featured in a Spider-Man film since Iron Man in Homecoming and Nick Fury in Far From Home (who turned out to be Talos the Skrull from Captain Marvel throughout most of the movie), this was certainly interesting, but as time went on... Things started to get wild. There were reports of Jamie Foxx returning to Spider-Man 3 as Electro, possibly the very same version from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 or just an MCU version of Electro, who knows but the fact that they're casting Jamie Foxx since TASM2 was quite interesting, but wait, that's not the craziest part, later I started to see news of Alfred Molina cast as the Doctor Octopus AGAIN, and for the final blow... Rumors of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield possibly returning into Spider-Man 3 and a leaked video from an official Latin American Sony channel that said "Who's your favorite Spider-Man? You might see all Spider-Men at once, anything is possible" or something like that...

OKAY, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?! THEY'RE DOING LIVE-ACTION SPIDER-VERSE?! HOLY SHIT, DON'T DO ME LIKE THIS! I'M NOT PREPARED!

The rumors about Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield returning for Spider-Man 3 as their Spider-Men might be a hoax and it's all rumors, sure, but it might not even be a hoax at all! For more solid proof that this could potentially be a live-action Spider-Verse film, in the Disney investors meeting, they confirmed that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Which happens to be directed by Sam Raimi of all people, and it's coming in 2022) CONFIRMED that actually ties to Wandavision and... "THE NEXT SPIDER-MAN FILM." So there you go! That pretty much confirms it now that they might actually be doing live-action Spider-Verse now! This is actually going to be the BEST live-action Spider-Man film ever!

With all these Spider-Man 3 live-action Spider-Verse news, I completely forgot about the news that Kraven was gonna be in the film, I really hope they might still include him in some way in the film as Tom Holland Spider-Man's villain, and it isn't explicitly confirmed that Jamie Foxx's Electro and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock are either the same versions as their original versions or completely new MCU versions of the characters, who knows.

This is lowkey confirmed with the Disney investors meeting that the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ties to the next Spider-Man film, but what if all the live-action Spider-Verse stuff may not end up being true? In case if it's not true and it'll be just like Far From Home where it can continue Spider-Man's story from where the post-credits left off, I would still see Spider-Man 3 anyway, I'm always down for whatever MCU or Spider-Man film may end up be.

I know I wanted to see Venom: Let There be Carnage so bad, especially for my 21st birthday which I didn't get anything to watch and my birthday end up being a disappointment, but the problem is, we still haven't seen a proper trailer or anything, even for a film that was supposed to come out in October before it was delayed because of COVID! So far they only released a teaser trailer of the title and the new release window, and I really hope early this year, we can expect some trailers anytime soon, although the first Spider-Man film coming out this 2021 is Morbius.

So yeah, since 2018, 2021 is going to be the second best year to be a Spider-Man fan!

Black Widow, Eternals and Shang-Chi: First let’s talk about Black Widow because I’m the most scared of how the film is gonna be received given that when the concept art was shown at Comic Con and then the first trailer was released, people absolutely hate Taskmaster’s design, I mean, sure, he may not look comic accurate but aspects of it still kinda look like the comics and HE LOOKS BADASS! WHAT’S WRONG WITH EVERYONE?! THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH TASKMASTER’S DESIGN! Another thing is that I’m feeling that Black Widow may become Captain Marvel 2.0 where people hate the film for no reason, for a while there was some hate around the film because of some shit with Brie Larson and whatever, but most of the hate I’ve seen all goes towards the film quality, I don’t really see anything wrong with the film when I saw it, it’s rather decent, but with that said, I couldn’t stop thinking for the entire movie that there’s nothing wrong with this, etc.

I don't think even my older sister would wanna see Black Widow either as she never even cared about the character in Avengers: Endgame and she liked a tweet where someone said "Marvel making everything military sucks so much" which NO, IT FUCKING DOESN'T! I LOVE MILITARY AESTHETICS AND SHIT, YOU JUST HAVE SHIT TASTE, MY GUY!

The next films coming out are The Eternals and Shiang-Chi, although there's not much to talk about them since we haven't seen any trailers or anything so far, but I'm definitely gonna watch them.

I'm of course gonna be watching every single MCU-related thing, whether it's the movies or the Disney+ shows, I will follow everything! And no, I don't do this out of obligation (Someone in the RPG Site Discord server told me that and I'm forever pissed about it), it's called doing things religiously!

And speaking of the Disney+ shows...

BONUS: Wandavision, The Falcon & Winter Soldier, Loki, What If?: This is kind of a miscellaneous list as these are actually series in a movies list, that’s weird but deal with it. Say what you want about Disney+, and there’s quite a lot of MCU Disney+ shows coming I’m losing track which ones are coming out in 2021, but I think these four are what are coming this year.

Probably the series I’m most excited to see is Falcon & Winter Soldier, I have no idea what is even going on with Wandavision and Loki, as for Wandavision, since that one’s coming out in two weeks, I have to watch it as a lead up to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in 2022, as for Loki, I don’t realy understand it in the least so far. What If, there’s not much to talk about, it’s literally just “What If” with alternate versions of the films’ events, although I do admire the animation, it’s not Spider-Verse tier but it looks very nice.

I got a mail from PayPal offering me 250 pesos to subscribe to Disney+, I don’t think there may be an expiration date somewhere in the mail so I really hope the offer would still last, but until Wandavision comes out, I’m definitely willing to pay for Disney+.

Several Warner Bros. releases: Around early December, it was announced that all of the upcoming Warner Bros films of 2021 will be released on theaters AND HBO Max at the same time! That’s insane! It sounds really interesting, although I’m not sure if I would watch all the films in HBO Max, I would still love to go to the movie theater, depending on how much HBO Max costs and when is it coming out in Mexico. Also, that’s not to say that I would like to see them ALL, no no, I will only see the films that I’m interested the most:

Mortal Kombat: I actually loved the original Mortal Kombat films when I was a kid, although I’ve actually seen the second one and I still have the DVD which I bought when MK9 was released, although even that scene with CGI dragon Liu Kang cringed the shit out of me when I was a kid. For a while I heard this would be coming out in January 15th 2021 but it’s now coming to April, which is for the best because I haven’t seen any trailers or anything from it so far.

Tom & Jerry: I’m not sure if i would like to watch this, I’m feeling that maybe I would like to do so, so far this is kind of a bizarre concept but what I greatly admire is how Tom and Jerry are animated, it makes me think of Space Jam.

Godzilla vs. Kong: I started following the Monsterverse since Kong: Skull Island and before I’ve seen Godzilla: King of the Monsters in the cinema, I saw the first film, I like this series so far, and I can’t wait to see this one.

Space Jam: A New Legacy: I’m surprised how secretive the news and the marketing has been, every time I’ve seen this trending on Twitter, I never see these big movie news sites like The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, not even IGN were reporting about a legit Space Jam 2 teaser trailer at some point, or the film in general as of late, for that matter.

The Suicide Squad: Just my usual tradition of watching whatever DC films, whether they’re DCEU or not, and this appears to be DCEU, or at least having the same actors playing certain characters. If there’s one thing I would complain about this, is the title, just “The Suicide Squad” when the first Suicide Squad film which is titled “Suicide Squad” is really stupid.

Dune: I just need something to watch on cinemas in my birthday, this year was a disappointment since Venom: Let There Be Carnage was delayed, if it weren’t for COVID-19, I would have gotten a great birthday film that might have even surpassed Joker.

The Matrix 4: This one I’m genuinely curious to see and know what the hell is even going to happen in the film considering how the original trilogy ended. And for a while before COVID broke out, it was originally gonna be released with John Wick Chapter 4 at the same time, it would have been insane to have double Keanu Reeves films being released simultaneously and I have to choose one over the other, but I’m glad both films got delayed and they’re not being released simultaneously anymore.

Justice League Snyder Cut: This one’s kinda miscellaneous since this entire list is basically the recently announced films that are coming to the cinema and HBO Max at the same time, and I actually kept forgetting about this one and this one’s treated more as a series. We’ve come a long way since the Release the Snyder Cut campaign happened for years, and by a miracle, it’s finally happening. This film, or rather series, feels more like a remake of the Justice League film with some of the archived footage from the Snyder Cut before Zack Snyder left the project from his daughter’s passing, but apparently new scenes are being filmed. I really hope this saves the DCEU because as of late I can’t tell if the films are actually connected anymore (With the exceptions of Joker, The Batman, etc).

Mission Impossible 7: Since Fallout, I think I’m going to start following the Mission Impossible series from now on. Note that there’s Mission Impossible 8 coming out in 2022 as well.

That's all I have to discuss about my best and worst of 2020 and my most anticipated 2021 releases, boy, I seriously wrote a lot for everything and that's probably what took the most of my time to write this post (Aside from my laziness), but I really hope you liked my best and worst of 2020 and my most anticipated releases of 2021. And moving on...

Now it’s time for the one category that it’s always all talk and never deliver, I may contradict what the following headline will be, but it's pretty much what's going to be true...

No more resolutions

Yeah, I can't even bother writing these same tiring resolutions I'm not gonna even fulfill over and over. It's an endless cycle.

Drawing every day.

Behaving better.

Working out.

Writing my novel.

Give me a break. Is there seriously a point in telling you all these resolutions that I supposedly want to do but I never end up doing anything anyways? And if I were to actually do these resolutions, I wouldn’t tell you about it. (I read a study with a headline “If you want to be successful, don’t tell others about it” or something like that, which I’m still telling you about these resolutions I want to do and end up failing anyways)

Let me break things down in parts about my expected future:

Behavior:

In terms of doing homeworks with my mom: Yesterday on the 30th, she just told me there's already homework but it's for January 11th and we'll do it on the 4th, it's not even 2021 and we're already off to a great start, although it's something that my mom has to read from, so I hope it'll be fine for now, but for future homeworks, I don't have the highest hopes for it because I'm easily trigger happy in these homeworks, there's seriously a lot wrong between all of us in how we do these homeworks, we make our lives miserable if it weren't for my older sister's stupid forced pension that she has to study no matter what, and then like my mom's pension, my pension or whatever there is that we get money, either they don't give us enough money or my mom always end up spending most of the money in groceries that would last for a week and other things, this is bullshit!

In terms of people's opinions: I seriously wish I could not give a shit about what literally everyone says about certain things, not even my family, but that shit is just everywhere and I really can't help but make at least one comment that something's not bad or whatever, I said this countless times but I'm very trigger happy.

In terms of artists: I'm going to continue be a douchebag and criticize their art and themselves behind their backs in my private Discord server, whether in public channels or privately if shit gets insanely serious.

Working out:

I'd seriously love to start working out immediately right now, but given how extremely cold as shit my country is, it just motivates me a lot less to start working out! Besides, my mom hasn't even bought the mat like we talked about for ages, she always forgets about it and I'm always waiting for her to deliver, but even if I would like to start working out, I would still have to eat fats instead of actually going in a diet, can't go back to the gym because of COVID, and most of all, I'm so fucking lazy. I always tend to do one workout for one day and that's it, I never do it daily. This and what I'm going to talk about above are something I can't develop a daily routine of!

My drawing skills and my future of my project:

I now have a Wacom Intuos that is bundled with 3 programs, but I only installed Clip Studio Paint because that's what I care the most, the other programs are trials and they're worthless as shit, I did make at least two pictures to mess around but as of late I've barely been touching it because I'm still having a hard time figuring out what to do with the brushes and stuff and I'm so obsessed in having the brushes default, default brushes with default settings, etc. I'm just not too comfortable tweaking the brushes to my preference and changing the sizes is gonna be extremely hard depending on what canvas size for my pictures would be and having to tweak the brush sizes for the canvas is so inconsistent!

As for the future of my project, I really want to continue bringing my project to life, and now that I have a Wacom Intuos, if I really put myself to try to sketch every day and everything in order to improve my art style, hopefully drastically, I can actually try to make my project in a much better format, especially comics, I would love to return to draw comics because, I said this numerous times, I used to draw comics mindlessly when I was a kid, but two years later, I somehow got a slump and just like that, I stopped drawing comics for good, but now if I try to figure out my story right, I may actually bring my project as comics, literature can suck my dick! And because I'm an artist, it's best to make art for my project all by myself since literally nobody I asked wants to work with me!

I seriously had no idea how to write, never even bothered to read books and everything else to even care about the basics and essential of writing, I always thought it would have been an easier way to bring my story to life and make adaptations of them as soon as possible. I seriously had no idea what kind of story should my project be, I was extremely unconfident about it and... I don't want to say this but I seriously hated what I was doing with my novel, my writing was obviously shit and it gave me nothing but headaches, I gave up. Although it's not like I completely cancelled the project and lost interest in it, it will always live on... inside my head with constant brainstorming and headcanons.

I had a plan to deliver my project and make it successful immediately overnight and try to make the series go big ASAP in 10 YEARS, but now after giving up writing the novel, I completely wasted 1 year, so now I have 9 years to do this shit. The reason why I want to rush now is because I want my franchise to exist, I want to work with my favorite actors and other creators before some of them retire or pass away, and I SERIOUSLY cannot let this opportunity and dream go to waste!

Even though I have Clip Studio Paint now and I would love to make comics, my copy of Clip Studio Paint that was bundled in my Wacom Intuos is Pro, the features are very limited, so there's not much I can do about that. My other options in trying to bring my story to life are either making visual novels or RPG Maker games, those sound like very valid choices, but there are still some limits. If I were to make VNs, I would have to learn how to use Renpy, my art has to be good and I have to hire some people to do some extra things like I don't know, backgrounds and even the background music and sound effects which I can't even afford to do all that. Then there's RPG Maker, I bought RPG Maker MV when it was at a crazy good discount in the Steam Summer Sale but I opened it for a few minutes and I have no idea what to do, I try to watch numerous tutorials on how to use it but I still don't understand, another thing that I don't like about RPG Maker is that some programming is still needed somewhere, I have no fucking clue about programming, and RPG Maker always advertises itself as a somewhat easy engine, talk about false advertising. Besides, RPG Maker games aren’t as relevant where they become overnight hits and turn into franchises as they used to be anymore, so it really doesn’t do me any favors. So I guess my only choice is try to continue creative writing in some form, I have a better way in how to do things without the old fashion boring ass way, I would have to indicate what character says what and everything has to be in present tense, kinda like the visual novel elements in some games, and I won't give a shit about what anyone says about my writing format, there's no other way.

Even though I haven't really abandoned the project out of my life and will always continue brainstorming headcanons and different stuff, I hate to say this, but I think my project has grown to have an identity crisis. Everything I brainstorm are pretty much copying from literally everything I see, like movie scenes or even the entire movies, especially the MCU movies with wanting to make my own version of Avengers: Endgame mixed with Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Another weird thing about my brain is that, for years, I've always had a mood on wanting to make a Kingdom Hearts-like series with my project and some other franchises, and believe it or not, my crossover candidates were Persona and Danganronpa. No, this wasn't intended to be for fanfiction purposes, I wanted to legitimately make them into a reality! One day I eventually dropped the Persona and Danganronpa crossover idea with my project and opted towards literally making Americanized discount rip-off characters to be copyright-free and to fit in my story (Although eventually they have evolved into their own characters). Everything seemed well enough but my brain is coming back to this fantasy of making a Kingdom Hearts series but with Arknights. There's a lot to discuss about that but I don't want to get into further details.

So yeah, pretty much my originality only resides within the characters and their designs, everything else like the stories and some elements, rather of calling them "inspiration," it's more like heavily borrowing or straight-up copying, so I have no idea what to do with my series at this point. Not to mention that I constantly brainstorm all these things which they're all for stuff that comes LONG after the first installment of my project which I'll never release, and it makes me not wanting to go back into that. Another criticism my older sister gave me about my project is that I tend to create a lot of characters only to show off their designs and never give them any purpose, and I guess it shows.

I said this before but I’ll say it again:

What I love about my project is that I always use my imagination, everything just feels satisfying when I can think of every scenario possible and even make drawings because pictures are worth a thousand words. Whate I hate about my project is the act of doing it, showing it off, explain to some people if you're prepared, something like that.

Maybe my project shouldn't exist. In fact, it already exists, how I want the video game and other adaptations, everything exists, inside my head. They have and will always be in my head, and there's a lot more stories and characters to come. I have seen everything and they're exactly like I always wanted, I'm completely satisfied. There's no need for my project to really exist, only for me to become poor, a total nobody, and even if it were a best seller, it might get adapted in the wrong hands, but in the end, it doesn't matter because I always know I won't even succeed, it won't be an instant crazy hit and it will never be as time passes.

(That two paragraphs above is pretty much my copypasta to talk about my project)

Another thing I'm questioning in my life right now is...

My future as a Custom Maid Twitter account:

Lately I don't really make a lot of Custom Maid screenshots on my own, sometimes I do but they're mostly collabs, and I would occasionally tell people to make collab pictures with our OCs together, sometimes it does happen but the frequency of these collab screenshots happening have decreased drastically, not to mention that there are some that weren't interested, which kinda sucks

To be honest, I really haven't been motivated on making Custom Maid screenshots at all. The game runs so slow given that I have a lot of the game's content and mods which most of them I barely use, and I have no idea what screenshots to make, even if I were to look at prompts, not to mention I created some characters which I barely ever used and I almost never get immediate attention when I post my screenshots. I seriously want to retire from doing Custom Maid because of what I just said with my motivation and stuff, and then there's the whole drama with maidin which I mentioned a long scroll up ago which really affected me so much. I even had prepared some legacy files compiling my presets and my screenshots.

Even if I say numerous times that I want to retire or I'm done, I'm still considering that maybe I shouldn't quit, but even if I'm not retired, I still have no plans or even interest to make screenshots again, so I'll have to talk to some of my JP mutuals and Ten about it. After what I did to maidin, I feel like I'm no longer want to be part of the Custom Maid community and I don't want to be a burden on it. Hinosuna who was the one person I followed the most hasn't made screenshots at all as of late for 6 months and I doubt he will ever return, let alone talking to the guy ever again, and there's another person who blocked me for no reason after telling him about my birthday a day later which I did tell him I was from Mexico, talk about being xenophobic.

So there you go, my not-so category talking about my resolutions, I seriously didn't want to talk about this since I'm not even gonna do shit about the things that I want anyway, but I did it. Still, keep in mind that I'm probably not gonna be able to do any of these because of my sheer laziness and gaming addiction. Please let me know what to do with all this and hopefully it can change my mind.

Conclusion

Phew! This was an insanely long ride! I never expected I would write so much shit, and if you managed to read literally everything, congratulations, you're a madman. This is definitely the longest post I've ever written in my life!

Pretty much everything I've written here have been made with a lot of thought and effort, most of the stuff I wrote on this post for a while was my Best and Worst of the Year and Anticipated Releases category, although most of the time I was kinda lazy and only wrote little by little with everything else, and hours prior to the publishing of this post, I kinda rushed on the very end of the post, but I think I did a pretty good job into everything I made. And no, I won't even bother making a TL;DR about it.

Although to make things short, everything was an absolute mess, but my personal problems are always the worst of my life which makes every year automatically bad for my health, but on the bright side, 2021 is looking to be the very best year with the best releases ever, so I'm really looking forward to all of that!

I did mention my private server, I wouldn't like to disclose anything about it, but as of late, it has become more like a home to me, I don't check Twitter as much like I used to and this server is why I rarely go to any other Discord servers ever. Always being on my Discord server and keeping an eye on it be like:

(I know I said I wouldn't like to invite anyone into my private server ever again, and I also choose to not make my server public, but if there's a mutual that I REMOTELY like, I can DM you the invite link, if you're someone I find meh or I don't like, you can fuck off)

As for my resolutions, and most importantly on what to do with my drawing skills and project, I guess we'll have to see if I can deliver or not.

Anyways, this was a really tough year but thanks for continuing to support me throughout this entire year, for better and for worse. Hopefully things will get better this 2021 and we can be free again.

Happy New Year!

My Carrd - I did some improvements as well!

Every image featured in this post in high resolution - Because if you’re reading this post from the link I send instead of the Tumblr homepage (which I don’t think anyone even uses Tumblr anymore), my theme makes the images look incredibly small and as much as I like this theme, this is something I definitely hate. (I’ve been redoing this album numerous times by fixing something and adding at least one new image)

[thisislizheather]

May Musings

I have officially done a year’s worth of these monthly roundup posts.

Is it clear how much I love to write them? I guess I’ll keep doing them until they become a bother. Here’s what went down in May!

I’m still screaming from the rooftops about how great Booksmart was, can’t get over it.

Losing my mind over how good these Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups are.

And look, I tried to try more of the collagen powder but Nathan finished it all (and his hair has been looking pretty good lately now that I think about it) and I’m waiting to get more. I promise to finally take this regularly next month.

One of the regulars in my snack rotation has been these zucchini pizza bites that are surprisingly delightful, especially if you’re adding sopressata and/or jalapeños as part of the toppings.

I saw Jason Mantzoukas walking in Soho and he was so handsome I was afraid to say anything. Like alarmingly handsome. I knew he was good looking, but in real life? Whoa.

I am in love with this font. Someone tell me if it has a name.

I attempted to start season two of Barry, but it’s been so long since I saw the first season that I forgot most of what has happened. Could I have just rewatched the finale of season one and then moved on to number two? Sure. Will I? Now that’s another question.

Someone was singing this on the subway and I’d never heard it before, but Jesus Christ. So lovely.

This was a pretty heavy podcast month for me (kill me for that sentence), I did three of them! The first one is with Nathan talking about the new apartment, the second one is with Irene talking advice and the third one is with Nathan again talking abortion.

I just bought a pair of these heavenly, high-waisted, button-fly Gap jeans and I think everyone should go buy them ($42 right now with the sale), they fit like a dream. I might go back and get another pair in a different colour. Actually, yeah. I’m definitely doing that.

Ate at La Contenta and it was absolutely nothing special. Everything was too salty, overpriced and crowded.

I’ve already made three batches of these banana walnut muffins, they’re so perfect for the morning or for a snack. Ignore that they’re paleo, I promise you they’re good. Definitely not a party muffin, but a good-for-you muffin.

So excited that people will finally stop talking about Game of Thrones. Usually I don’t mind when other people love something that I don’t care about, but with this show it’s just been overkill. We get it. It was a show. Let’s move on?

So excited to hear that there’s going to be a new Mindy Kaling book next summer!

Nobody told me about how smokey it gets when you attempt to make burgers in your kitchen at home? Or was everyone aware of this already but me?

I just bought pink sunglasses (at Nathan’s encouragement) and I just became cool. May 2019. That’s when it happened. (I’d post of photo of them but I’ll be wearing them until I’m cold and dead in the ground, so believe me, you’ll see them on me soon.)

I can’t believe how good this looks. I love it when fall movies just say fuck it and come out in late summer.

I can’t say that I 100% relate to everything in this piece, but some parts of it are so on the money: “Men Have No Friends and Women Bear The Burden.“

I tried the mozzarella sticks at Big Mozz in Chelsea Market and whoa. They’re pretty serious. The tomato sauce that comes with them is insanity, too.

My niece Tianna came to visit New York for the first time! Some highlights: I finally ate a cronut and they’re waaaaay too sweet, and coming from me that should mean something because I love all things dessert. Maybe it’s because we ate it so early in the morning? I don’t know. I really don’t understand the big deal about them, though. We also walked through Chinatown and down to the financial district to get lunch at Manhatta, which was lovely. I forced her to eat my favourite pad thai at Lovely Day in Soho. We shared a cheese plate at The Cellar at Beecher’s, walked around the west village to see the Friends building and the stoop from The Cosby Show, we had dinner at L’Artusi where she had her first steak tartare. We walked through Grand Central Terminal to get to the dog museum (which is cute as hell), we saw and went backstage at the musical Waitress, had dinner at Shake Shack, saw the 9/11 memorial, shopped at Century 21, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, got pizza at Juliana’s (which wasn’t as good as I remembered?), walked with Baby Dog in Central Park to see the Balto statue, perused Chelsea Market and walked along The High Line, went to the galleries on Thursday night where we met Luis Guzman (!), and ate gelato at Grom. This was all within four days. No idea how we did that much stuff, but I slept for 13 straight hours the day after she left, so maybe I’m not as young as I once was.

Above Photo: Tianna, backstage at Waitress in NYC

Above Photo: Tianna on The Brooklyn Bridge

Above Photo: Tianna & Baby Dog in Central Park

I started watching the new version of The Twilight Zone with the assumption that I’d dislike it since the original is so great, however I’ve only seen one episode so far (the blue scorpion one) and I think I really like it. Obviously the classic series is untouchable, but this one is done really well.

I learned about the existence of Book Off in midtown, it’s a store “for the people who don’t want to waste.” They buy your old CDs, DVDs, books, action figures, electronics. It’s amazing.

Season three of Riverdale is over! This is the only show that I watch every week, so it was a big deal for me. And honestly, it was a fun season, despite everyone on earth’s opinions of it. Favourite tweet from the finale?

Strawberries are about to be in season, so I got a huge carton of them from a farmer’s market and made these strawberry oatmeal bars. Pretty good! They also work well crumbled up in greek yogurt.

Another good snack idea? These baked sweet potato fries.

I have made this chicken marsala so many times that I’m taking a break from them. But for the first few times I made it, it was so, so satisfying.

All right, look. I fully expected to love Wine Country on Netflix, but maaaaaan. It is not good. It isn’t funny or sweet or anything. I think I also hate it when Tina Fey tries to be a character actor, it’s always just the worst. Do not watch.

Here’s your semi-annual reminder that Bath & Body Works is having their huge twice-a-year sale starting on June 1st, I think. It’s never advertised in advance, but I’m almost positive that it’s the first week of June. Apologies that this sounds like an ad, I just really like their foaming hand soaps and I’m cheap as hell.

Made the roasted cauliflower, feta, orzo salad from Chrissy Teigen’s cookbook and yes it was really, really good. The only issue is that the portion size is way too big. We had leftovers for days and got pretty sick of eating it, so if you’re doing this for two people, definitely size it down. Also, I had no idea there were different types of feta. French feta is creamier than traditional Greek and maaaan is it good.

Loving this kale salad lemon dressing.

This shall be my June mantra.

And this is just great.

What am I looking forward to next month? I’m planning on seeing Mindy’s new movie Late Night, watching some more of the new Twilight Zone episodes, polishing off my spring list, preparing my summer list, thinking about if I’ll ignore or celebrate National Best Friend Day on June 8th, figuring out a Father’s Day gift for the 16th, I do want to see Toy Story 4 but it feels weird to not see it with a niece/nephew, and I’ll definitely take photos of the new apartment and my favourite items that I bought for the apartment post I promised last month.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, here’s a years worth of other ones like it: April 2019, March 2019, February 2019, January 2019, December 2018, November 2018, October 2018, September 2018, August 2018, July 2018, June 2018 & May 2018.

[hellothisisourhouse]

Birth Story #2

Pic: my last week of being pregnant, Oscar at 1 day old, Oscar last week.

Getting ready to birth baby #2 should have been a piece of cake, but instead it came with a whole new set of worries and things to think about.  Being pregnant was much harder at the end - maybe being a couple years older, or maybe taking care of a toddler at the same time - the last few months dragged on like crazy.  I’ll especially never forget the bus rides when I was taking Lois to/from the nanny share before/after work - the looks I would get at 8 months pregnant lugging an almost 2 year old (and enough baggage for her day at nanny share and my day at work) around on the 7 line (a very busy bus).  At least I always got a seat, even if like 10 people had to move out of the way for me to get there!

Same warning as last time - this is a birth story, so if those things gross you out, don’t read this.  I haven’t written the rest yet, but I’m guessing there will be some yucky stuff and not just a little bit of drama.  If you love it, read on.  If not, look away!  There’s lots of other fun reads out on the internet :)

I try not to compare everything about this birth to the first one, but inevitably that’s what happens.  At the time when I was anticipating it, it was my only point of reference!  In any case, I would say my biggest question (like a dying-of-curiosity question) was - how will I know I am going into labor?  The first time my water broke to begin labor, but statistically that’s not the most common way to start.  Normally it’s with contractions and since my first birth was (weirdly) almost contraction-free at the beginning - I wasn’t sure I would understand the feeling of laboring at home, or know when exactly to go into the hospital.  Also, I had been totally mentally convinced that Lois would arrive late - and then she came 10 days early, which is also statistically not normal for first borns.  So when would this new baby decide to party?  To say I was on the lookout for signs is an understatement - I was pretty obsessed.

This time around I had had some braxton hicks contractions (I had none the first time), which felt like mild back cramps in the weeks preceding the big day.  They were infrequent and I really wasn’t sure that’s even what it was - it’s hard to separate all the different aches and pains.  At one antenatal appointment (I got a ton of extra appointments, since I was SUPER OLD aka 35 yrs old), we were talking to a nurse about when I should schedule an induction, should we go way over our due date, and she said “I don’t think you’ll make it to your due date” with a little knowing smile.  I have no idea how she knew, but when your full time job is monitoring super pregnant moms and relaying their monitoring results back to them, you probably get good at predicting these things.  She was right.

So my mom made it up to the Bay Area about a week before the due date (which was Sep 2).  We had a few days to bop around together, which I can’t really remember right now - although my instagram feed reminds me that we went to Ikea.  We were all excited to have her in the house, especially little Lolo. Unrelated to my mom being there, but also in the “lead up to the big day” category, a couple days in advance, I started to lose my mucus plug.  When I would go to the bathroom, stuff would come out - not anything huge, just like discharge, and once it was weird colors (sorry for the gross out factor, but this is supposed to be helpful for any other moms in my situation who are waiting around and just begging for a sign).  I googled imaged searched probably the worst thing I have ever had to search to verify what it was.

Ok, on to the big day - the day that I would finally find out how it was going to go down.  I would say it started around dinnertime.  My mom was making tortilla soup in the kitchen and I was playing with Lois on the floor.  When Brian came home from work he took her outside to play in the backyard, and I just fell asleep right on the floor where I had been playing.  I woke up when dinner was ready and felt so discombobulated - I had never done something like that before!  At dinner, my usually starving pregnant self stuck to one bowl of soup and just didn’t feel like more (normally I would be into seconds or thirds territory for sure).  In retrospect I know what these 2 out-of-character things mean, but of course I didn’t at the time.

After dinner we started Lois’ bedtime process and got her sweetly off to sleep.  At that point I had started to feel like a lot of cramping - mild, but it kept coming back every so often - not something I had experienced before.  I opened the notes app on my phone to record the times of the cramps around 7pm, but they were so far apart and random that I stopped and deleted the times.  I usually shower every other night, but I randomly decided I wanted one on my off night - maybe hoping to stop the achy feeling, or maybe I subconsciously knew it would be a while until my next one.

We all headed to bed for the night - I can’t remember if I mentioned the cramps to Brian or not - I was feeling superstitious or something, like I should keep this a secret.  By 10:30pm, I thought ok I’ll start recording them again just in case.  As we lay there in bed, I took out my phone every time my back hurt and jotted down the minute - 10:34, 10:41, 10:54, 11:05, 11:13... Finally after an hour or so, I showed Brian - do you think this is anything?  I was confused because it was so gentle - in the movies I’d be hanging on to doorways and deep breathing at this point.  Brian is always more aware of things than I am, and he said - yes, let’s call the nurse line now.  It took a couple calls and call backs, and I told them about the (maybe?) contractions, the mucus plug, and at one point I said I think my water is leaking (even though I’m still not sure if it did or I just peed a little).  I finally got on the phone with the actual midwife that I would end up delivering with - she asked me some key facts about Lois’ birth (how it was pretty fast) and where we lived (not that close) and she told us to come on in.  I’m glad we listened.

Our bags were already packed - we grabbed a few last minute items, and tiptoed downstairs where my mom was in the guest room.  I have a gap in my contraction notes from 12:22-12:48, so that must be when we were getting out the door.  It was sort of fun to wake her up and be like “We out! Thanks for taking care of Lois” and whisk out into the dark night.  Contractions picked up on the way in the car - by the time we got to the hospital they were a mere 2 mins apart and feeling MUCH stronger.  The last contraction I wrote down as we pulled into the parking lot was 1:01.  I remember walking from the car to the building and stopping at a concrete pillar to hold on to it while a contraction passed.

They took us into triage and had me pee into a cup for some reason.  I can’t remember a lot from triage (vs last time when it was like the most chilled out relaxing hour of watching little cute mini contractions on the monitor).  I was pretty cranky already as each contraction was intense.  I’ll have to ask Brian what exactly happened in there - but the next thing I remember they were wheeling me on a gurney into the birthing room.  In my mind, they were asking me as we wheeled down the hallway - do I want an epidural?  And I basically panicked and yelled yes.  I knew that things were probably too far along, so that made the decision confusing, but I also did not want to feel any extra pain that I didn’t need to.

They got me to the room, which was bright and full of people (vs last time when the birthing room was all dark and empty and sleepy).  I sat on the side of the bed and the anesthesiologist came in to prep for the epidural.  I’m not sure how far along they got, but as I sat there, I suddenly felt a big gush and THEN my water really broke.  I was kind of in shock, and looked at Brian and mumbled “water, water” and he thought I was asking for water to drink.  It took me a bit to get the words out “my water broke!” and then it was all over the place.

I sat there a minute more and then yelled at everyone that I needed to push - that was a specific bodily feeling I remembered clearly from last time.  They did a cervix check and said yep you need to push.  This part was a bit harder than last time - I think maybe baby was bigger and I just had less time to wrap my mind around what was happening.  I think I even lightly protested - like, I take it back, I don’t really want to push.  But the whole team said yes, it’s time.  So we pushed for a few mins, taking breaks in between - it was very uncomfortable and I can’t say I was the most cooperative person in the world.  I got a bad tear last time and that was probably in the back of my mind.  At least they had given me nitrous oxide that I could suck from a mask, which is still my favorite thing ever - just a good distraction and I need a good distraction when something this crazy is happening to me.  Brian was by my side the whole time, and (also unlike the movies) I remember thinking he was the only person in the room I wasn’t mad at.  Everyone else was annoying me with cervix checks and telling me to push, but he was just there for support, to see us through.

In the end, I was glad they made me do it because out came Oscar - they put his purple wiggly body on my chest and he cried a great cry.  He had a mop of black hair, so that was something different for us!  His birth time was 2:12am - meaning we had only been at the hospital (parking, intake, triage, and birth) for an hour and eleven minutes total.  That’s what I call efficient!  The good news is I did not tear nearly as bad this time - yay for second baby luck.

I had asked Brian in advance to make sure to take some pics, since I didn’t get any the first time - but between the hair net the anesthesiologist had put on me, the badly chosen purple bra, and the whole disheveled scene, these pics will never see the light of day.  Things quieted down a lot after that, most of the staff left, and we just enjoyed being with our sweet new baby boy.  All his tests looked good and we moved into the recovery room for a few days.

I don’t want to go into too many other details, because the birth story is technically done.  Oscar had a heart murmur - a “very loud” one according to the million doctors that UCSF had milling around.  They took an echocardiogram and asked us to come back in 2 months for follow up - but everything was fine and the hole causing the murmur closed itself up by then.  We had visits from the grandparents and big sister - she loved Oscar off the bat, but was a bit cautious.  Over the months she has grown to love him more and more and it’s so sweet to watch them together.  Good job, little Oscar boy - we can’t wait to see how you grow into yourself day by day.