#I’ve had. a lot of Nonsense to deal with lately

[ddrunkdazed]

cherry-flavoured (y.jw)

GENRE. smut. fluff. slight angst.

PAIRINGS. yang jungwon x reader

WORD COUNT. 1,9k.

SYNOPSIS. you lose your virginity to jungwon, your academic rival turned crush.

WARNINGS. allusions to drug use, boob sucking, brief mention of oral sex (f receiving), loss of virginity (with protection).

NOTE. finally this left the drafts. made for my beloved @treasxreblue, hope you enjoy! here's a short playlist if you're into that.

Things were a lot easier when you “hated” each other. 

Truth be told, hatred was never part of the equation – just a nonsensical and short-lived rivalry that died as soon as you realized that joining forces was a lot more helpful to you both than trying to live those enemies-to-lovers, academic rivals tropes you so loved to read.

But now, as you flip through every app on your phone as the clock goes forward, you wish you had never gotten involved with him. It’s a petty sentiment, the brat in you coming out whenever he keeps you waiting. Once again, Jungwon was supposed to meet you (almost two hours ago this time around), yet there’s no sign of him anywhere. No text, no call, nothing.

As you consider getting up to leave, your brain supplies you with the memory of last time: his phone’s battery had died, which is why he couldn’t text you to let you know he would be late. Then, he proceeded to spend the rest of the week apologizing in various forms, even though you had mentally forgiven him as soon as you saw his face. But since that wasn’t fun, you figured you’d make him a little miserable for a while. 

And so, you figure that waiting for a bit longer while soaking up the sun isn’t that big of a deal. What was proving to be a challenge was avoiding your train of thought from diverting to those forbidden ways. Luckily, the familiar cadence of Jungwon’s voice snaps you out of your cyclical line of thinking.

“I am so fucking sorry,” he says.

You look up at him expressionless, as you gauge his features, taking note of his extremely red eyes and sluggish disposition as he struggles to sit down next to you on the sidewalk in front of his house.

“Are you high again?”

Jungwon takes his sweet time, perhaps trying to come up with an excuse, but the goofy grin that takes over his face quickly gives him away. “I was. I mean… maybe I still am, a little bit?”

“I’ve been here for almost two hours, you know?” You say quietly.

The cherry lollipop you’d been playing with to distract yourself with something other than your phone feels like the only thing tying you to reality. You’ve been playing with it, a nervous reflex, so you put it back in your mouth and look away to avoid saying something else. Something mean, or maybe something that will give you away.

Jungwon says nothing, but you can feel him staring at you. The silence that settles between you is heavy and oppressive, and you pretend not to notice when his beautiful eyes settle on your lips – but his gaze is so penetrating that you can’t help but stare back at him. Your hand hovers over the plastic stick, and Jungwon beats you to it. Softly, he coaxes the lollipop out of your mouth and puts it in his, proceeding to suck it slowly as he holds your gaze.

Such a deliberate move… seemingly insignificant for Jungwon but so earth-shattering for you. Heat rushes to your face, and you want to use that burst of energy to rip the lollipop out of his mouth, make a big deal of him being late, yell at him for doing drugs, for ruining his life (and possibly yours), but his little action has rendered you speechless. He’s sucking the lollipop you had in your mouth a minute ago… isn’t that like an indirect kiss?

Time slows down as he claims the piece of candy as his. Your eyes are trained on him the whole time, and you follow the lollipop’s trajectory as it exits his mouth. He gently pats your lips with it, pushing the cherry-flavored candy between your lips, prompting you to open your mouth and take it in. It’s all so intimate and nearly obscene, and you can’t help but make a little noise that snaps Jungwon out of his little reverie.

Jungwon rasps your name, and you reach for the lollipop with a shaky hand.

He tugs at his hair. “Do you still want to come in?”

“Huh?” You retort dumbly until you notice that he’s gesturing towards his house. That’s when you force yourself to focus on something other than the candy in your mouth. “Oh, sure.” 

The burning sensation that has settled between your legs is a lot more noticeable now that you’re standing up, but at least you’re no longer looking at Jungwon while you drench the fabric of your underwear. The lollipop hangs idly from your hand, half-eaten.

You’ve been inside his home countless times before, and yet, you feel terribly out of place. Uncomfortable, like you’re once again the new girl arriving on the first day of school, not knowing what to do with yourself. 

At some point, he speaks again, but you can’t make out the words, your head still replaying what happened just a few minutes ago, right outside this apartment, hand heavy with the spit-slick candy. Jungwon walks over to you and gets dangerously close to your face, whether to annoy you or to appease you, you don’t know. At least you didn’t, until you caught the taunting glint in his deep brown eyes when he notices that you’ve held your breath. 

Your entire body burns, from embarrassment, from longing, from desire. You are so, so angry at him – and emboldened, you caress the back of his head and then tug on his hair, hard. His eyes widen, and now you bask in the glory of having caught him off guard, at least this once. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says, slightly fearful of what you might do. 

“I don’t believe you.” You tug harder on his hair. 

“Let me prove it to you,” he pleads, finally moving to untangle your hand from his hair. 

You hate that whenever Jungwon does something like this, all it takes to disarm you is a single look from those pretty brown eyes, and you fall right into his trap, like a fool. And a fool you are, in bold, capital, scarlet letters. 

One second you’re menacingly tugging on his hair and the next, he has you against the wall, the entire length of his body pressed to yours. 

The burn between your legs deepens when he presses his knee to your core, forcing you to spread your legs for him in a swift motion, Jungwon’s cherry-flavored lips so close to your (also) cherry-flavored ones.

“You have no idea how crazy you make me,” his sweet, warm breath hits your face when he speaks. You’re so overwhelmed with emotion and want that you could start trembling under him, yet you stand there, unmoving, wide-eyed, lips parted and eyes glittering in anticipation. 

“Ever since we became actual friends, I’ve wanted to have you this close to me…”

If he’s expecting a response, he doesn’t wait for it. Instead, he crashes his lips against yours and despite the force, his lips are soft, searching. The way he kisses is exploratory, like he’s trying to map your lips with his, and you can’t help but moan into his mouth, pressing yourself further into his knee.

“I want you too, Jungwon – so bad.” you manage to gasp, in between kisses. The neediness in your tone would’ve had you wanting the floor to crack open and swallow you whole under other circumstances. Now, you feel like a starving woman who just had her first meal in weeks, and you can’t get enough of it. Of him.

Jungwon smiles against your lips when he dives in for another kiss. This time, you feel his tongue tentatively swiping your lower lip. The switch to open-mouthed kissing has given way to a myriad of new sensations and thoughts, and in the back of your mind you wonder if his tongue feels as good as it tastes. 

Like a mind reader, Jungwon starts kissing all over your face, your neck, hands groping your ass and forcing you to grind harder on his knee. His brown eyes are darker with desire when he asks, “May I?” Before lowering your top after you enthusiastically nod your consent.

And indeed, his tongue is sweet in everything it does. He leaves open-mouthed kisses all over your chest, softly nipping at your boobs before he hastily lowers your bra and takes one of your nipples in his mouth. You could cum, just from his mouth on your tits and his knee deliciously rubbing against your cunt, but you don’t want to. Not yet. So you push him back.

“Jungwon…” 

He looks up at you, reverently, mouth swollen and shiny. For a brief second, he’s a lost puppy, waiting for his next command. 

“I… I haven’t done this before.”

Immediately, he straightens up, still holding you close but this time a bit more carefully, like you’re a fragile flower he must take care of. 

“Do you… Do you want to do it?” Jungwon shakily asks, his big brown eyes scanning your features for every single ounce of information he can compile.

“I do. Please.” You say, honestly. However, the confession makes you feel a bit bashful, which results in biting your lip and looking away from him, your cheeks hot.

“Are you sure?” 

His voice is soft, just like his eyes. You feel yourself melting into him, his concern somehow being what seals the deal for you. It’s been him for a while now. Of course, it needs to be him now. The first one. You want him to be. You need him to be. 

“I’m sure. Please.” You repeat, looking directly into those beautiful eyes you love so much.

Jungwon nods, taking your hand and guiding you to the bedroom. The initial passion that brought you together is replaced with an intense devotion, every single one of his moves venerating. He undresses you slowly, pressing soft kisses to every inch of the skin that shows once the fabric is off. His touches, rough at first, have turned into careful caresses, as if he’s mapping you.

Soon enough, it becomes clear to you that this moment has become all about you, his pleasure momentarily ignored. Nonetheless, by the noises Jungwon makes as he kisses and licks every inch of your skin, you can safely assume he’s also enjoying himself.

“You’re so beautiful,” Jungwon murmurs, after pressing a kiss to your thigh. “I love seeing you like this,” after he’s collected your wetness with his tongue. He gives you no time to feel shy about the fact that he’s hungrily lapping up the result of your desire for him. When the orgasm rolls through you, he inserts one, then two digits to prepare you for the actual thing.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” He inquires, as he lines up (prepared) against your entrance. Once again, you give your consent. This time in spoken form, a shaky exhalation of, “Yes, please.” And he’s entering you, slowly, allowing you to feel every inch of him inside you. 

It’s a tight fit, but he patiently waits until you grow accustomed to it before he starts moving. Even when you plead for more, he’s never rough with you. And when you’re on the edge again, he presses his forehead to yours, his eyes looking straight into yours before he captures your lips in a soft kiss, the taste of cherry still faintly there when he lets himself go. 

[thebaldursmouthgazette]

Okay so I’ve been thinking lately about spirits and the concept of change, specifically in the context of personal growth. And forgive me if this is a little disjointed, because there’s a lot of various topics that come together.

Because spirits in the fade are very rigid. They represent one feeling or concept, and they represent it rigidly. It is their being, and their purpose, and if they stray from it they become corrupted into demons, they are no longer their original purpose. Justice is no longer just. Compassion is no longer compassionate. Wisdom is no longer wise. Changing in this way is not a good change for spirits.

But people as we know them do change and grow. It is a part of life. And we don’t lose who we were, we just move on from it. The old versions of ourselves remain part of us and we build onto them. And I wonder if taking physical form to be like humans allowed spirits to change and grow the way that regular people do (and I say regular people to mean people as we know them, as actually exist in the real world, since DA spirits are sort of a thought experiment in many ways, and not actually real). And I’m wondering about how the sudden ability to do that would affect spirit society. I’d imagine it would be very taboo to change in that way, because previously, before taking form, change to a spirit is tantamount to death. They may not recognise that personal growth is not a bad thing. It’s not a corruption, it is a part of life.

Sidestep for a moment. When Bellara confronts Solas for killing the fragment of Mythal in Flemeth, he replies that that was not Mythal. He doesn’t consider her advice. He has no qualms about killing her. Yet when the fragment of Mythal we get from the crossroads talks to him, he sees her as Mythal. Listens to what she says. They are both fragments, yet one is considered Mythal and one is not. What is the difference?

The Mythal who we meet as flemeth has lived in the world and among people for a very long time. She has lived as an elf, as a human. She’s lived in a swamp. She’s fallen in love with an alamarri chieftain (most likely Tyrdda Bright Axe). She’s had lots of direct experience with people, and has allowed that experience to change her. She has allowed herself to grow. She now sees modern people of all races as people whose lives have meaning. There is no test of how well we can grovel in front of her to get her help with the blight in origins. In dragon age 2 she accepts a simple exchange of one favour for another, even with a Hawke who shows her no respect. She tells Merrill she bows too easily.

If we take the fragment we meet in Veilguard as a representation of who she was in ancient times, she is very different. She’s changed, but in ways that make sense given the new experiences she has. But solas claims that is not her, and I think it’s because she has changed. She has grown as a person when spirits should remain stagnant, and therefore she is no longer Mythal to him. She is a corruption of Mythal.

She’s also not easily recognisable as a spirit. She doesn’t represent one single concept anymore, and certainly not the one she started as. I’d figured out that the ancient elves were spirits before veilguard came out and I’d have put her down as justice/vengeance and said it wasn’t a very good fit but the closest I could find. Meanwhile the other fragment is definitely retribution and a very condescending brand of benevolence.

I bring this up because there’s another ancient elf that isn’t recognisable as a spirit and that’s Felassan. I could not begin to guess what sort of spirit he is, but he definitely was one. And I think it’s because he has grown and changed too. He has, as people do, allowed his experiences to shape him, change his opinions on things, learned and grown. And while it is not stated, I think this is part of why Solas kills him. He has changed when spirits are supposed to remain stagnant, and thus, in Solas’ eyes, he is no longer Felassan.

So I do think that that sort of change and personal growth, for good or ill, is something that the ancient elves gained the ability to do when they took physical form. And I think it’s one they rejected as taboo, because change is something they considered a corruption of your true self, even though that is not what this personal growth was. Which brings me on to my next point: fragments.

We know spirits can fragment themselves or be fragmented. We know Dirthamen and Falon’Din are fragments of the same original spirit. We know Mythal split into different fragments, with a theory being that she split down different facets of herself (so the fragment that became Flemeth Mythal was a part of her already moving away from benevolence/retribution). I’m wondering if it might have been the custom, after taking physical form and gaining this ability to grow and change in a constructive way as people do and rejecting it out of fear, to fragment yourself if you noticed such a change coming upon yourself, to keep yourself strictly within your purpose and being.

This ties in to my theorising about the cave “Prides End” on the peak of “Sundermount” where a pride demon named “audacity” with an in depth understanding of the blight has been trapped sundered from the fade for an unimaginably long time, and how that might be a part of Solas he fragmented from himself when he sundered the titans.

And a while ago I briefly saw a post about how the wolf statuettes are made from the same material as the Mythal statue we obtain, which IS her. And I can’t remember what the post said beyond that, but I wonder if those regrets are something Solas removed from himself so he couldn’t learn and grow from them. So he would remain stagnant and true to his purpose (even though he changed to pride a long time ago, and learning from these would allow him to move on from that).

It would also add further context to Cole’s quest. Because Cole’s quest is NOT about becoming more human or more spirit. That is a choice he comes to himself. What Cole’s quest is about is whether he should show this Templar unconditional compassion (his purpose), or allow himself to feel anger towards him for what he did to the original Cole (the thing that brought him into physical form, and something outside of his spirit/demon dichotomy. His demon form mercy kills, he doesn’t seek revenge).

Solas is projecting on Cole, but it’s not just about having a physical body, it’s about changing and growing as a person. Cole is fine with changing and growing, he’s fine either way. But if spirits are supposed to remain stagnant and rigidly true to their purpose, then Cole shouldn’t let himself grow. He should deny that growth and cut parts of himself away if necessary. And, of course, Solas does not consider that Cole is fine either way because Solas is rigidly remaining as Pride, and therefore he must be right by virtue of being the one who thought it.

The kicker, of course, is that while Solas is rejecting any and all opportunities for growth, and cutting out the parts of himself that seem to be changing and learning, he has changed, more than he realises. Not for the better, as he could have done had he allowed old friends and new experiences to teach him that sometimes he is wrong. But despite all his active and determined resistance to any change at all, it has happened anyway. It’s just happened in a twisted and gnarled way instead. He’s not changed for the better and learned from the people of the world, he’s twisted in in himself and isolated himself from everything and everyone.

[florencebirdsong]

Valentine Event! I love love 💕

Could you please write an Agatha x fem! Reader where Agatha and Billy try to recover Agatha's body (they are successful) and in the process Agatha meets/crosses paths with her soulmate/true love, Reader

Reader is a witch who doesn't know she has powers and only believes she has good luck

Thank you

Happy late Valentine's Day! I hope you had a good one. Thank you for the request <3

Valentine’s Day Event 2025

Tags: ghost Agatha, reader is flabbergasted, ficlet

You have always considered yourself a lucky person but you don’t know if you would call this luck. A ghostly form of a beautiful woman floats in front of you. You can literally see the outline of your living room through her.

“Um…hello?” you probably shouldn’t be talking to her.

Talking to ghosts is not a good idea. Whether that’s because it’s a sign that you’re losing it or that because ghosts are always depicted as vengeful remains to be seen.

“Hello, dear,” she flashes you a brilliant, sharp smile, “The name’s Agatha Harkness. It’s lovely to finally meet you. A few centuries late but I won’t hold it against you.”

You continue to stare dumbly at her.

“I know this is shocking. Your soulmate’s a ghost. Dead. But,” she waves her hand in little flourish, “Soon to be undead. So no need to panic, dear.”

“Undead as in…?” your mouth is moving but your mind is still stuck on what you’re looking at.

“Oh, no. None of that nonsense,” she assures you. “I’ll be back to my former glory,” her hands run down her sides and your eyes following without your permission. 

You finally process what she originally said.

“Wait, soulmate?”

She tilts her head.

“You don’t know,” she says.

“That I can see dead people? No, that’s news to me,” you hallucinating is also news to you. And soulmates. You need to make a list.

“Unexpected,” she murmurs to herself and then floats around you in a circle, gazing up and down your form. “Your magic is strong enough to manifest. You should have noticed something, surely. You need to be on your toes when dealing with me, darling.”

“Well, I’ve noticed a ghost. So, that’s something.”

“Anything a bit earlier?”

“Uh…” you need to get a bit more coherent if you want to keep talking to her. “I’m lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Yeah. Like, supernaturally.”

“Strange,” she gives you another analysing look. “That’s not the usual way magic manifests itself.”

“Magic?”

“You are talking to a ghost, dear,” she says dryly.

“Right,” that has yet to fully sink in.

“That’s time,” a reedy teenager says, walking casually into the room like he isn’t breaking into you place.

Agatha looks annoyed at the interruption. You look between the teenager and the ghost.

“You can see her?” you ask faintly.

“Unfortunately,” he says.

“Great. Okay,” you run your hand down your face. “And who are you?”

“Billy,” he says simply.

You know what you should do. What’s rational. But magic would explain a lot about your life. 

There’s also the draw you feel towards Agatha, but since that is so extremely irrational you’re not currently taking it into consideration.

“We really do need to go,” the teen says apologetically.

Making a snap decision, you go looking for your keys.

“It’s not like I have anything better to do,” you lie.

“Oh, goody. Now we don’t have to deal with your awful driving,” Agatha says to Billy.

“I’m a great driver and you know it,” Billy says.

Agatha doesn’t acknowledge it. 

“I’ll meet you at the car,” she winks at you, clicks her fingers, and disappears.

[jinkiezzsstuff]

TYSM FOR THE LADY GAGA FIC!!!!

I have another song fic request...

Alastor (or anyone else really lmao) has to find reader in order to patch up like a deal or smth idk and he finds them in this jazz club thing performing on the stage to 'Noel's lament' from 'ride the cyclone'? Like she's draped across a piano singing abt when she was living she was nobody but in her dreams she was this absolute femme fatale and alastor just watches her from the back of the crowd??

So niche but I was thinking abt it all night

Lots of love 🤍

i actually loveeee this song eeeee i’m so happy to do this, and i am so glad you liked the last one it means so much to me teehee sorry this took awhile i’ve been busier lately but i hope you enjoyed this, maybe i’ll do a part two but if i do it may be real delayed until i clear my plate lol!

song referenced; noel’s lament

warnings: implied to be succubus reader but their not really to standards of succubus, i don’t believe there are feminine pronouns here but there are certain feminine things (dress wearing, feminine terms like suductresd etc), no psychical descriptions of reader as per usual, minor gore and death, reader is sneaky and slipper, alastor is weird about love as he should king, but he still feels emotion, possible cringe parts idk it’s a songfic and sometimes they can be 50/50. LMK if i missed any!

word count: 2.7K

You had a debt to pay, you had to have known this. Alastors mind reeled as he toyed with the pen in his hand, occasionally scribbling nonsense down as he thought. You were always quite the slippery sinner, never being tied down to one place in the pentagram, but this was just ridiculous. Since he’d been back, and warmed up to the hotel, he’d been searching for you, but no sign. No demon has said a word about you either had he still been in touch with Vox he may have had you found by now.

You weren’t dead, and that’s as much as he knew; he would’ve felt your souls absence if you’d died, the fickle fun of making such contracts. There was little he knew about you personally, he new superficial things but nothing that would give him a clue on where you’d hide, a silly mistake on his part. He knew Mimzy would be were the cash or party was, Husk wherever there was a gamble and Nifty, well, normally she never strayed far anyways. As for other souls they were about the same in simplicity, whether they were murderous or cannibals they always had something keen to them that would lead him to where they were.

Alastor failed that with you, unfortunately he’d found himself a little at loss with you, in more ways than one you boggled his mind. He was used to women and men alike hitting on him or being incredibly provocative, but there was some way you did it that made him speechless. Not like when Angel would hit on him, where Alastor felt that sensation of being caught off guard with disgust and shock. No, on the night you made the deal, you were stalking around the back of his sofa inside his radio tower, your hands caressing his shoulders as you passed, sweetly and mischievously offering a pleasurable favour in return for his help. That was something else, that was unique to you.

He still recalls the memory as if he was still right there on the couch, engulfed in your scent, entranced by your siren-like voice, it made him hot under the collar and tight around the waist. Thankfully Alastor was a gentleman and a businessman and there was no way you were getting out of a soul contract through some silly sexual favours. It was definitely trying to keep his composure as your lidded eyes watched his lips move, but he managed as he always does. The deal was fairly boring on your part- you wanted to be his friend.

Red flags appeared in Alastors mind about the validity of that but shook on it nonetheless, however that was all before he disappeared. He’d not held up his end of the bargain but then again neither did you; you didn’t show when he called on you to the hotel and try as he may, couldn’t seem to summon you the way he could with Husk.

Dropping the pen, Alastor stood from his seat and shadowed into the floor, stalking out the window like a snake. Alastor decided a little stroll couldn’t hurt, after all his mind couldn’t rest and perhaps he could happen upon you out in sin city. Alastor enjoyed his time walking, humming and basking in all the horrors that happened around, however he grew bored fairly quickly, and decided to take a detour into Mimzy’s favourite joint.

Alastor walked in like he owned the place and seated himself at the bar waiting for his dear friend. “Mimzy dear, how’ve you been?” Alastor spoke out excitedly and loudly, catching the attention of his fellow demon who had appeared from the back of the bar. Mimzy squeaked and ran up to Alastor on the other side of the bar, shooing off the other demons trying to pull at her, the trim of her dress flying in all directions as she hopped and scuttled. “Alastor! What brings ya here, big man? Coming for a dance?” His smile was indifferent as she spoke but he was quite pleased to see the doll, someone of routine. He watched the demon plop herself down on the seat beside him, his hand fiddling with the whisky in his cup that he magicked up. “Yes dear, afraid I have quite the slippery soul in my hands.”

With both elbows on the table Mimzy leaned in, an excited smile on her face. Alastors head fell to the side, sighing at her desire for gossip, Alastor pushed up his monocle and explained the situation with you briefly. He probably went into too many details about how you looked, or smelt, or perhaps how he thought of you in his absence because the whole time Mimzy was coy and giggles. “Wow Al, sounds like you’re carryin’ a torch for this gal’,” Mimzy teased, walking her fingers across the table in his direction. Alastor stiffened at that watching her do her silly tease wide eyed. What a juvenile thing to assume, that he had feelings for some sinner. “Mimzy, don't be ridiculous!” Alastor scoffed grin still present as he threw his limp hand her way, head tossed back. “There’s no such thing! Besides she’s nothing more than some sensuous succubus, it’s what those types of demons do. Seduce.”

Crossing her arms Mimzy let out a flat ‘mhm’ clearly not convinced by what was being said. “Well Al, tell ya what! You have my back next time some nasty loan sharks come, and i’ll tell ya where your pretty seductress is.” Alastors nails tapped against the table rhythmically as he silently pondered, it’s not like he’d say no to her, just as she wouldn’t say no to him. Fixing his posture from his more lesuride position, he agreed with a nod, gulping back the last of his liquor.

-

This club Alastor stepped into was very reminiscent of a wealthy man’s speakeasy, something that was nestled safely in the depth of the pentagram in an unassuming alley, as if it were hiding from something or someone. It was nostalgic for him, in a sickening way, Alastor didn’t enjoy remembering mortal life as it seemed so detached from him and who he is now. His red eyes danced across the room manically, his static following in suit with every glance he gave. Searching for his little succubus. Low amber lighting, that stuffy smell of smoke in the air, the velvet chairs, surrounding chatter and the piano playing smooth jazz; Alastors body subconsciously relaxed into the familiar environment, as much as he hated his mortal life there were such aspects like this he missed.

He dragged himself inside and sat in a red velvet chair, immediately he slumped onto the table, his elbows on the table, his chin rested on his hand while the other toyed with the fire from the candle, bringing it up, around, and high and low. His eyes dragged over to the stage as the piano rifted into a new tune, the lights in the room dimming and brightening toward the stage. Inwardly, Alastors frustrations imploded making his skin hot and his antlers grow in size; all the light to see you with now focused on the stage for a performance he couldn’t care less about.

Standing to his feet, Alastor gripped his microphone like it was his life line. With a strained smile he began towards the door as the music began, and a voice started introducing themselves and talking about their dreams, however he was too busy being frustrated, and scanning the room for you to fully pay attention to the voice. That was until- “A hooker with a heart of black charcoal.” A breathy voice finally sang out, grabbing the attention of Alastor as he neared the exit. Freezing the static sounds of radio station channels sounded out from him, his eyes widening at the sound of you.

Turning abruptly on his heel, he looked over the crowd of seated heads and at the stage where you were walking on. There was a light focused down on you as you slunk out from behind a curtain furthest from the piano. Straightening his back, Alastor slipped into the shadows and behind a pillar near the bar, just to wait for you of course, to come off. “I write poems to burn by fire light, drink champagne and guzzle gin, good girls call me ‘The Town Bicycle’- don't knock it til you’ve tried my life of sin,” Alastor watched enchanted as you dragged your heels across the stage as you sung, making your way over the piano with seductive grace, something Alastor wasn’t used to being so hooked by.

“Oh, Claude, my pimp knows neva mess with me,” Your voice, once serene and beautiful now, was demonic and harsh, capturing the audience's attention. “Last prick did that faded quick to black,” Like a switch your voice returned to its sweetness, your arms outstretched just slightly, fingers twinkling to emphasise the ‘fade’ you sang of. Alastor couldn’t look away from how you manuerved your body, how your voice carried through the room, and how the lights sparkled against your jewellery. You were a sight for sore eyes as you teasingly brought yourself closer to the piano, that regular soft bedroom look in your eyes. “I have no idea where to find him officers,”

Alastors brow quirked at that, as your hands came up to cup your face with false naïveté. “But if you do, please mention that I’d like to have returned that pretty knife, that I stuck, ten. times. in his, back!” You grit out, sweet façade falling once more making Alastors tail wag, unbeknownst to him. There was something about the way you pulled and pushed the narrative in the song that made him antsy, excited even, and the fact that this was something you stated you dreamed to be, meaning whilst alive you dreamt of killing, of being bad, oh that made Alastors blood rush.. You waltzed around as you continued to sing the lyrics to the chores, Alastors eyes watched closely as you slithered your body effortlessly up onto the piano.

It was like you were made for performing, singing, and he had the brief fantasy of you in his studio singing on air, sat on his lap as you sung through his microphone for the folks of hell to hear, but he pulled himself out of it quickly, scolding himself for indulging in silliness. Now your body was draped across the obsidian piano that shone the reflections of the light, you sat on your hips, legs folded behind you, hands over your heart. “He said ‘I think I am in love with you’- I’ve heard that lie a million times before,” Your posture fell slightly as did your tone, it seemed that there was some truth and sombre in the lyrics you sang, and in a way Alastor felt like he could relate to that; after all what even was love?

It made him feel weak to pity you, to attempt to empathise with your pain, but there was barely any time to think about his thoughts because just as he did, you’d recapture his attention entirely. “Oh, tonight I give into the fantasy,” Your head fell back, sorrow in your tone as your hand caressed your shoulder, pulling down the strap of your dress. “Take love when you can, when you’re a whore.” After a silent moment the chorus picked up, as did you, sliding yourself off the piano and dancing around with a smile. Unfortunately Alastors mind lagged behind, something was just too vulnerable in the way you sang about love, and considering it wasn’t something he often thought about, it peaked his curiosity just slightly.

It wasn’t until the end of the performance when you sung about your death that Alastors attention zeroed back in on you, his eyes catching yours as the song fell out, your head turned in his direction. He watched as your eyes widened and mouth fell slightly ajar before you sang out one last word: a ‘hey’ coincidentally directed toward Alastor. After that the lights on stage shut off instantly, and the crowd applause began.

Alastor watched you be dragged off stage by two larger demons through the darkness, your legs flailing as your arms were restrained, at the sight the purpose of him being here returned. Pushing himself off the pillar he was leant against, he brushed himself off and straightened the crimps in his pants, before picking up his microphone and making his way towards where you’d been dragged. It was a cruddy little backstage area, he’s under the assumption the performers here weren’t treated as kindly as the guests. Throwing the door open he was greeted by the sight of you, the two demons who dragged you off, and some other third one.

You sat on an ottoman in the middle of the room, your entire essence changed as you curled into yourself, your head hung low. Humming, Alastor adjusted his monocle. “Am I interrupting something?” Oh how Alastor loved to play dumb, he watched the third demon, seemingly imp, stand straight anger evident and radiating off of him. “Yeah you really fuckin are red, get outta here now.” The imp barked throwing his hands up in a shooing motion. Your eyes met Alastors, begging silently to stay. “I’m afraid i can’t do that you silly lug,” Alastor tutted joyfully stepping into the room throwing his microphone around like it was a toy. His shadows crawled out from beneath his feet, sneaking up the walls and across the ceilings making the three men anxious. “This little canary happens to me mine, soul and all.” His voice shifted to a more demonic one as the hues in the room shifted.

You sat speechless, watching the mysterious deer defend you after seven long years of being on hold with him. You were surprised he came at such a time, convenient for you. The two muscle demons were quick to puff their chests and step toward Alastor, but before they could properly swing, tentacles emerged from the shadows gripping the torso and hips of the men and pulling them in two. The screams were horrific, and the sounds of squelch and ripping nearly made you yourself sick, however it did the job for the littler imp as he immediately caved. “Oh okay okay, alright buddy, take the siren, no problem take em! Go!” The imp stressed while pulling you from your seat and toward Alastor hurriedly.

You stumbled against his pushing and found yourself falling accidentally into Alastors arms, tripping over your own heel. Alastor caught you without even looking down, arms wrapping instinctively around you as he glared at the imp with a smile. “Oh good, I would have hated to have caused a scene! Ha ha.” Alastor laughed humorously, although he was the only one finding any joy from this as the imp cowered away from the two of you. Pulling you closer to his body, Alastor fell into the ground with you, your body feeling freezing and damp for a moment before normalcy returned.

You didn’t realise you had your hands over your eyes until you felt Alastors hands grip your wrists, and pull your hands away. You blinked up at him before glancing around the room, it was indeed a room, one you’d never seen. “We're at the Hazbin Hotel dear, time for you to see to your deal.” Alastor said calmly, his tone even and his voice soft, his even his static was at a minimum. “Of course,” You say clearing your throat and backing up from his grasp. He didn’t fight against your distance, letting his arms fall and wrap behind his back as they normally would. “Why did you help me back there? I mean you could’ve just poofed us away?” You ask, rubbing the places on your arms where the demons dragged you.

“Why, thats what friends are for my dear! That was our deal, no? To scare off the threats and protect each other?” Alastor coyly hummed, bending slightly at the waist. Looking down slightly you nodded, hands coming up to sit on your waist. Sighing you shook your head, you should’ve known that this would come back to bite you in the ass eventually. “Alright slick, what is it that i’m doing for you?”

[newtthetranswriter]

Hellooooo

I wanted to request a Tokyo Revengers fic for Mikey. Platonic. Reader, although not very flashy, has been in the gang since the beginning. Serving in the first division.

It's reader's birthday, but they never made it a big deal, so no one else realized. That is until Mikey tosses them a messily wrapped box at a gang meeting saying, "Happy Birthday" and giving them a headpat.

I thought it was cute <3<3

The gift can be up to you, as well as the time frame this takes place.

Word count: 615

Pairing: Mikey x Reader Platonic

A/n: Hi, thank you for the request. I’m not super happy with how it turned out, but I did love the idea. I hope you at least enjoy it. Anyways, enjoy, have a great day and as always remember to hydrate or diedrate.

    It was time for the weekly Toman meeting. All of the divisions were gathered waiting for Mikey and Draken to show up, and of course they were running late for whatever reason. Anyways, while waiting I just sat back and watched as the guys got in their usual playful arguments about random shit. Watching as Baji and Kazutora teamed up to pick on a few of the younger members, I was reminded of where it all started.

   I had grown up not only a few houses away from Mikey and so I ended up spending a lot of time around the blonde. We have always been extremely close so it was no surprise to me when he came to me asking me to join his gang when he and his other friends started it. Since that day, I’ve been part of Toman’s first division acting as a kind of babysitter for the more impulsive group. Evidently, I was the only one able to stop Baji from setting a car on fire when he was hungry, so Mikey and Draken thought it would be best for me to keep him in check.

   Other than making sure Baji doesn’t ruin Toman’s reputation, I’m a pretty good fighter when it comes down to it. I may not be the one everyone is watching when a brawl breaks out but I can definitely hold my own. Which is another reason I was put in the first division. I had everyone’s back even if some of them didn’t realize it.

   “Hey Mikey’s finally here.” I heard someone shout from the crowd. As if it were a queue to behave, everyone stopped fighting and stood up straight as we waited for Mikey and Draken to start the meeting.

    I had taken my usual spot next to Baji, not expecting much of anything to happen. “Hey Y/n, catch.” I turned at the sound of Mikey shouting at me. Once I made eye contact he threw what looked like a poorly wrapped box at me. Quickly catching it, I looked at it confused for a second but before I could ask about it, Mikey cut me off. “Happy Birthday.” He flashed a bright close eyed smile, patting the top of my head.

    My eyes went wide. I totally forgot it was my birthday, it was never really a big deal to me and Mikey was the first one to mention it today. “Thanks Mikey, I honestly totally forgot about it.” I said looking back at the present. “But you didn’t have to get me anything.”

   “Nonsense, of course I had to get you something. You’re my friend and it would be rude of me to not get you anything.” He said, taking his hand off the top of my head.

   Before I could respond, Baji spoke up from behind me. “Wait, it's your birthday and you forgot about it?” Baji asked me.

   I just shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. And how sad it looks like my only friend is Mikey, after all he’s the only one who remembered.” I answered with mock sadness.

   Mikey laughed at our interaction as Baji decided the best response to my sarcasm was to shove me. “Ok, Ok, enough fighting we have a meeting to take care of.” Draken said, cutting off the shoving match that started between the two of us. With that he and Mikey went up to the front of the group commencing the meeting.

   It warmed my heart for Mikey to get me a gift even if I never made a big deal about my birthday. He was like a brother to me and he remembered it even when I didn’t, which means a lot.

[chaoticlittlerat]

Father

⚠️Mentions of death and jail, past stuff, mentions of fighting and other stuff⚠️

Later that night, after another stressful day, Jessie had went to bed. But somewhere around midnight, she awoken up to a noise. It startled her awaken.

She looked around the darkness in her room, still shaken up and startled by what had made that noise. She knew it was in her room because everyone else was asleep. She slowly opens the drawer next to her bed and held up a flashlight, turning it on and held it up to what made the noise.

There stood a figure….

It smiled at her while Jessie stood there in fear and confusion. Hesitantly, she spoke up.

“W-Who….W-Who are you..?”

It was quiet for a moment before speaking in a gentle, comforting voice.

“My dear little Jess…Don’t you remember me? It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, my little one…”

Jessie was taken aback by how it knew her little nickname….Only her dad called her that…

Useless…

“H-How do you…”

“Why, Jessie…I know a lot about you. More than your mother ever did. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your old man, huh?”

Jessie’s eyes widened by what the figure had just said….was it….N-No. It couldn’t be…

“W-Wait….Are you saying….Y-You’re my….”

The figure took a step closer to her, offering her a comforting hug

“Yes, my little Jessie…It’s me. You’re father..”

Jessie shivered as tears filled her eyes. She didn’t say anything and just stared in stock. Before she finally jumped and hugged the figure.

The figure smiled as it hugged her back, holding her and let her cry as it spoke again.

“Shhh….It’s alright, dear. I’m here. I’m never leaving you again…I’m so sorry for leaving you so long ago. But I’m finally here…”

Jessie took a moment to calm herself down as she wiped away some of her tears before looking up at “him” and spoke in a shaken up tone

“W-Where did you go..?”

He went quiet for a moment. He seemed to be hesitated to answer but he sighed and looked down at her with a sadden smile

“I….I had to go away for a while for a crime I’ve done. And I….I died. I thought your mother would have told you. But I guess she didn’t…”

Jessie’s eyes widened as he explained.

“S-She did tell me you went to jail…But I didn’t know you died..! But…if you’re dead, how are you here right now..?”

“Well…I work with a guy. But it’s personal right now. But, I am dead. But I can still watch over you and your brother. But only at night. I’m not allowed to see you in the daytime. My boss has me working. But the point is, I’m gonna be seeing you again”

Jessie was still confused by all of this but nodded, seeming to understand it all.

“That’s odd but…I’m happy to see you again. I missed you so much, dad. Things haven’t been the best lately. Mom’s been seeing this guy for the last two years named Aj. I think he was you’re friend after we moved here, right?”

He went quiet, but seemed pissed off. He scoffs.

“Of course she’s seeing someone. And it had to be that excuse of a “friend” of mine…Whatever. I wasted my time with her anyway. She’s not any of my concerns right now…You and your brother are my top priority. Is Aj treating you well?”

Jessie was quiet for a moment before letting out a sad sigh and shakes her head but also shrugs.

“I mean…Kinda? He kinda drinks a lot even though he stops. But…They sometimes fight a lot and…I started to freak out a lot. But my mom keeps on forgiving him…I don’t understand why she still loves him. Even Blake hates it and he sometimes gets into fights with mom…She makes us feel bad because of how hard she works to take care of us..But…I feel…unsafe here sometimes..”

He went quiet as he listened to her. He seemed VERY pissed to hear that Jessie and Blake had to go through such stuff.

“I see…I’m so sorry I left you and your brother to deal with such nonsense…I’ll do whatever it takes to help you. But for now, I’ll come and see you each night…Okay? I’m sure I can get my boss to help as well! He did help me”

Before Jessie could say anything, he picks her up and puts her back into her bed and puts the blanket over her, patting her head and kissed her forehead. Being the father she had missed.

“I’m afraid I must go now, my dearest. But don’t worry! I’ll be back tomorrow night. I will be having a word with my boss about this. For now, just get some rest. Okay?”

Jessie was sad that he had to go. But she nodded and smiled up at him, understanding that he had a job to do.

“O-Okay..I’ll see you tomorrow…Goodnight, Dad..”

The sleepiness kicks into Jessie as she closes her eyes and falls asleep.

The figure smiled down at her as he took a moment before patting her head and placed something on her dresser.

“Goodnight, my little Jess….”

Than, Just like that, he disappears into the darkness.

…….

It was the next morning. Pretty early but Jessie had grown to be an early bird. She rubs her eyes before looking at her dresser, seeing…a locket and picks it up.

A sign that a father would always watch over his daughter

End of chapter 2

[doumadono]

hii it’s the twice & dabi anon again.

i’m sorry to ask for another emergency request but i’ve been having so much difficulty with my mom over the past year and a half, maybe two. it’s only been getting worse and now she doesn’t even talk to me. i only get updates from my little sisters and— oh my god it’s just horrible. i feel so bad that i had to leave them. but, i just couldn’t stay, you know?

could you maybe write something about twice & dabi comforting their partner/gf about the situation??

you don’t have to write for both!! either or is perfect!!

i just love the comfort you’re willing and able to provide. (even though you don’t have to. it’s truly heartwarming seeing you do this all. i really appreciate what you do.)

i really hope you’re doing well and taking good care of yourself. please be sure to eat properly and drink water!!

A/N: I'm really sorry to hear that you're going through such a difficult time. It's important to prioritize your well-being, and I hope things get better for you soon. Also, thank you so much for your kind words! Your appreciation means a lot. Even though I'm not doing well lately, I'll make sure to take care of myself. Wishing you all the best too! 🌟

EMERGENCY REQS MASTERLIST

Twice

Amid the chaos that permeated your mind, Jin Bubaigawara appeared with a boisterous greeting that momentarily broke the heavy silence that surrounded you. "Hey, babe! Twice is here to lift your spirits!" he declared with his characteristic energy, though his eyes held a genuine concern as he noticed the weight on your shoulders.

As you poured out the complexities of your strained relationship with your mom, Twice listened attentively, his empathy shining through. "Dang, that sounds tough. But you know what? You're strong for facing it head-on, I admire that," he remarked, his voice carrying a mix of reassurance and admiration.

He enveloped you in a tight hug, and his voice softened, "You did what you had to do for your own well-being. Don't beat yourself up about it." He pulled back, looking into your eyes. "You're not alone, okay? The League's got your back, and so do I."

Twice pondered, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps you'd like to engage in something? Not sure what exactly. Toga mentioned once that staying busy is beneficial - it keeps your mind from wandering into overthinking territory. And hey, if you ever need a clone to handle some mom-related drama, I got you covered. Double the trouble, double the fun!"

Dabi

The faint glow of Dabi's cigarette illuminated his face as he leaned against the wall, his stoic demeanor unwavering. "Come here, doll," he said, gesturing to the spot next to him.

As you recounted the painful saga of your relationship with your mom, Dabi listened in silence. When you finished, he took a slow drag of his cigarette before speaking. "Family can be a real mess, I know that. Sometimes, you gotta step back to save yourself."

He placed a comforting hand on your shoulder. "Leaving doesn't make you weak, ya know? It takes strength to break away from toxicity, in fact." His voice was low, carrying a raw honesty that resonated with your own emotions.

His long fingers traced soothing patterns on your back as he continued, "You're not alone in this. The past doesn't define you, and you're building a future for yourself, not for them, yeah?"

Dabi's lips curled into a smirk. "We're both well aware of the hell it is to deal with toxic nonsense within our own families. Parents messing up their own kids? That's a special kind of mess."

He lightly tapped your nose. "Take it easy, and find ways to keep that beautiful head of yours focused on other things. Overthinking is just a slow way to kill your own self. Don't let it consume you."

He extinguished the cigarette and looked directly into your eyes. "Just so ya know, if you ever need someone to lean on, I'm here. We're in this together."

[tamamatango]

“Holy shit they actually froggin did it”: A Keroro Gunso anime revival preliminary info and speculation post (late as hell edition)

Okay first of all,

AWAKEN

That’s right, vanished-into-the-void bastard Kirb here, I am an alive person still, though I’m certain a lot of stuff on this blog is horrifically outdated. Don’t get too used to my presence, I’m a whole ass adult with a 9-to-5 now and don’t really have the energy to put into consistently maintaining this account, at least not to the degree that I used to (took me well over a whole ass MONTH just to write this post). However, I’ve returned for a special occasion, as basically anyone still in this fandom is already aware considering it’s been forever now:

We are so fucking back

It took thirteen years and counting, but here we are, a brand new Keroro anime project is in the works—no “the short anime of all time” Flash series here, this is the real deal, straight out of 2004–2011, and goddamn is it beautiful. I might’ve been off the mark when I called it for the 15th anniversary, but it’s now the 20th, five years later, and the madmen did what was once thought impossible by many.

So let’s break down what the hell is actually going on here, because when this got revealed last month, Keroro fans on all sides of the globe basically started collectively running around like headless chickens. I’m gonna divide this aggregation post into the following sections:

Where did this even come from

Clearing up misconceptions

Okay so like what is “““Project”””

Collection of statements from official accounts, staff and cast, etc.

The Localization Question (TM)

Miscellaneous thoughts that don’t really fit anywhere else

I was originally going to make this a living document of sorts but some small stuff has already happened since I started drafting this the day after the reveal happened, so this should be it for the time being. It’s a hefty enough post as is. I am just a master procrastinator :V

That takes care of all the goofy intro nonsense, now for the parts you actually want to read, starting underneath the cut!

Section 1: The Signs Were There

As previously stated, 2024 is the 20th anniversary of the Keroro anime, along with the 25th anniversary of the manga’s serialization but apprently even they don’t care about that since they’ve made no fanfare around it whatsoever, unlike the joint 15th & 20th anniversary back in 2019. Maybe they will as we get closer to the manga anniversary in November, but for now-obvious reasons the anime has been overshadowing the manga side by a lot.

If you’ve been monitoring the Keroro PR account on Twitter (you bet your ass I’m still calling it that) you’ll have noticed an increasing output of Stuff over the last year or two, even compared to the prior anniversary. These include but are not limited to:

In 2021, the series opened an official YouTube Channel, where they’ve been doing reruns of the anime (region locked to Japan), PR podcasts, etc. It’s also where the revival announcement premiered on April 1 at midnight JST.

In 2023, the series opened an official Fan Club with a paid membership. Originally it was a temporary project meant to last for only the two anniversary years (2023 for the pilot oneshot’s anniversary, and 2024 for the anime/manga), but was ultimately extended indefinitely due to “good reception” (my guess is it was always planned to be more than two years but they didn’t want to make it too easy to guess as early as last year that the anime was returning lol). They have a merch store, giveaways, and some kind of social component. I don’t know much about it otherwise because it’s a paid membership that I don’t have access to.

The series has had an overall increase in merchandise and collabs since 2022 or so. This has pretty much always been the case, but there was a bit of a lull between the Flash series ending and the ramp-up period to this (I’d start at 2021 when the YouTube channel opened). Save for the 15th/20th stuff in 2019, for which the major project was Keroro UC, a spinoff manga/plamo line that just…never released all the models and has never been brought up again. Guess it didn’t do very well :V

A number of international releases/rereleases happened as well, but I’ll get into that a little bit more in its dedicated section. For now let’s just say that the anime being finally licensed and put up on streaming in North America may indicate the new series will be English translated in some capacity. It’s also made a resurgence in Korea, its biggest market outside Japan, where it’s had new exhibitions and collab cafes, a redub (that only got through 2 seasons I think), and even a new mobile game.

And finally, a week or so before the announcement, a new Twitter account was created specifically for the anime side of the brand. I think this was really the big tip-off, as Keroro PR has been the hub for all things related to the franchise for the last nearly 15 years, even when the original anime itself was still running during Twitter’s infancy. Keroro PR has posted everything for every other anime anniversary. The fact that now all of a sudden they had to sector off the anime stuff into its own account made it clear something bigger was going on. (Accordingly, the Keroro Anime account has labeled Keroro PR the “original work” account, AKA the manga side of things.)

Essentially I think they’ve been planning this to some degree since as long ago as 2021, the first time the president of Bandai Namco Pictures (animation studio comprised of Sunrise staff that took over the Keroro IP in 2015 and are now producing the new anime) openly acknowledged the possibility. I’ll just link my own tweet with the translation of his statement here. This was right around the opening of the YouTube channel, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

tl;dr Momentum for the anime component of the franchise has been building for the past couple of years pointing toward a new anime around the 20th anniversary, so I wouldn’t say this comes off as a huge surprise, though I was expecting something smaller scale than what we might be getting (more on that in the “what is this” section).

Section 2: No It’s Not April Fools, Guys, Plus Other Clarifications

With the announcement spreading across the internet, I’ve seen a few points of confusion going around that I’d like to clear up before I go any further.

As I’ve made clear in the section title, yes the new anime was revealed on April 1, no this is not a prank. A lot of Japanese companies do post April Fools pranks, but keep in mind April also marks the start of the new fiscal year in Japan, so many legitimate announcements are made as well. Plus, the original anime’s exact anniversary was on April 3, just a couple of days after the announcement.

I’ve seen a lot of people call this a new series, season, etc., but officially, the only term used to describe this so far is “new anime project”. That could mean literally anything, from TV series to movie to ONA and so on. I am leaning closer to a certain interpretation, which is what the entire next section is for, but for the time being, calling it anything other than “new anime” is technically not concrete info.

There seems to be a little bit of confusion on what studio is working on this, but in short: it's Bandai Namco Pictures (BN Pictures or BNP for short). As previously mentioned, this is the studio that inherited the Keroro IP when it spun off from Sunrise in 2015. Sunrise, the anime's original studio, is now a brand name for the larger anime management company Bandai Namco Filmworks. Although they've held the IP for almost a decade, this is the first time they've really gotten to do anything with it besides merchandise licensing and some anti-piracy commercial from a few years ago that they’ve ironically scrubbed from the internet now. If you've seen the name Studio BIND (Mushoku Tensei, Onimai) floating around, they're assisting with the production but are not the primary animation studio. Of course this is all assuming this setup continues on to the final project and not just for the PV, but I see no reason to assume otherwise at the moment. It would be rather unusual for BNP to outsource anything if it was solely for a 30 second trailer.

I think that does it for the main points of contention I wanted to address for now, so moving on to the thing we all really want to know…

Section 3: Okay But What Is It Actually???

Well, as I said in the previous section—we don't know, lol. At least not officially. But if we put our thinking caps on, we can make a few deductions:

The anime project will be broadcast on TV. In other words, it won't be an ONA (original net animation). This is determined based on the fact that TV Tokyo, the network the original anime aired on, is on the production committee. For those who don't know, a production committee for an anime is the collection of parties/companies who contribute to the production and funding of the anime. For comparison, the Keroro Flash Series, which aired only on the TV channel Animax to accompany a dedicated timeslot for the original anime reruns, did not have TV Tokyo in its committee. So, it will likely air on TV Tokyo once again.

It's (probably) not a movie. This is going to be more evidenced by point 3 than anything, but BNP has been pretty clear about when something is a movie specifically in the past, such as when Kaiketsu Zorori had various feature films in the 2010s before getting an actual TV anime revival in 2020. Still, we can't be 100% sure until someone directly says otherwise.

It's going to be more than a one-off. I will post the statement in full in the next section, but the Keroro PR account uses specific wording (“resumption,” “new start,” etc.) that sounds very much like they’re making a longer term commitment, so this is straight from the horse’s mouth, essentially.

The series will be a continuation of the 2004-2011 series rather than a reboot. This one’s probably my flimsiest prediction as the PR statements sort of obfuscate whether it’s one or the other, but the character bios section on the new anime portal site gives away a big hint: the Garuru Platoon, Pururu included, is there. This means that we can reason that, at minimum, all or part of Season 3 has already occurred. The character bios themselves also summarize things that weren’t revealed until a little while into the show, such as how Momoka and Tamama met. That all said, the Garuru Platoon members do not have bios, so I suppose they want to keep what’s being done with them a bit of a secret; perhaps they intend to reintroduce them with some kind of dramatic arc again. Either way, if the series does retread/retell some old material, it probably won’t be the bulk of the story. This makes sense to me, as it’s not like the show has been so hard to find in the last decade that a reboot is necessary to get a modern audience on board—it reruns constantly on kids’ TV channels like the Japanese version of Cartoon Network, is available in full on multiple streaming platforms (movies included), and is now on its second rebroadcast of the whole series episode by episode on the YouTube Channel. Unless you’re a literal toddler, if you’re interested in the series, you’ve probably watched at least some of it already.

In conclusion, based on the above (admittedly sparse) evidence, I am inclined to believe the new anime project is a TV series that will air on TV Tokyo as the 2004 anime did and will be a continuation rather than a reboot; however, there is no way to determine episode length, episode count, etc. at this time. It could be a cour (for those who don't know anime, "cour" is your average 12-episode season), it could be consecutive cours, it could be split cour (in other words, goes on break for a season before returning), it could even be a year-round anime if they really wanna go all the way with it. Granted, I hesitate to believe that they would do the latter simply due to the nature of anime production these days, and as far as I know, BNP has not done a single year-round airing since its founding. Even the aforementioned Kaiketsu Zorori revival was a two cour (24-25 eps) series each year from 2020-2022. My guess is we're looking at something similar here, but Keroro is a pretty big deal, so could they make an exception? Maybe, but this setup would already lead to more episodes than the vast majority of anime these days, so it would still be plenty enough to be happy with.

Considering all this and the list of numerous hints that we were potentially getting a new anime as far back as three years ago as bulleted in Section 1, you might question what made me doubt that it could be a series in the first place. Well, besides just the series being so old and it being so long since the anime ended that it felt a little like wishful thinking, at least three members of the cast said that a new series was not something they were specifically looking to do...I think, anyway. Let me explain.

Last year, on December 9, a Keroro birthday event with Kumiko Watanabe (Keroro), Etsuko Kozakura (Tamama), and Takeshi Kusao (Dororo) was hosted in person and livestreamed on TwitCast for fans that paid for a ticket. There were two timeslots for the in person event, and only the evening show was streamed, with the afternoon one being in person only. Now that I have adult money, and being the impulse driven gremlin that I am, I paid for the virtual ticket. Most of it was just cute little segments like the three cast members doing live commentary on some of the birthday episodes, discussing the results of a “favorite lines from their characters” poll hosted on Twitter a few weeks before the event, and a brief visit from Jashin-chan of Jashin-chan Dropkick/Dropkick on My Devil, a series that Keroro recently collabed with for a series of merchandise. Unfortunately the event wasn't archived publicly and they specifically asked to not upload materials to social media, and I'd like to respect that request mostly out of consideration for the cast, so you will just have to take my word for it :P (besides those who were watching me talk about it in real time on discord).

The reason I'm going on this tangent is because, at the end of the stream, a special prerecorded video featuring the three cast members was shown exclusively for virtual attendees. In it they essentially explained that they still greatly enjoy the characters/series and would love to partake in more events and projects, but "not necessarily a new series." I promise you I listened to this clip over and over the entire time it was available and that's what I heard. Now look, the room they recorded this in was echo-y, and my Japanese is pretty decent (enough for my N2 anyways, yeah I did that while I was away from here clap clap) but listening comprehension is my weaker area, so maybe I just take a massive L here. When I started writing this post there was a sentence here guessing about whether they were just being cheeky or didn’t know yet, but an interview came out last month that gave what’s all but a conclusive answer to that. More on it in the next section but tl;dr, they likely did not know it was happening at all. Well, at least they got to be as surprised as we were :V

Anyways now that the thing has been revealed none of the last two paragraphs even matter, so I just prattled on for no reason besides to admit my own shame. Next bit.

Section 4: SAUCE PLOX??? (Current testimonies from relevant people/entities)

Naturally, when the trailer dropped, we got a pretty decent handful of comments from whatever staff and cast are on social media. Most of these are just people going “yay we’re back hooray!” (paraphrased) but the Keroro PR account statements are actually kinda sorta hints? So I’ll start out with those. There’s two tweets that I want to highlight here:

First is from April 1 (JST), the day of the reveal. In this tweet the account wishes everyone well for the new school/fiscal year, but the important part is the last sentence, This can be translated any number of ways (thanks to yoroshiku onegaishimasu and its 50 potential meanings, every Japanese translator’s worst nightmare), but essentially it’s something along the lines of “we hope you’ll support the restart/resumption of the Keroro anime for a long time to come.”

The keywords here are obvious: 再始動 (saishidou) meaning either restart or resumption. I know you’re probably thinking those are two very different things, but the nuance here is that it’s more of a restart in production than restart of the continuity. For the latter, I think it’s more common to see リメイク, which is just the English word “remake” in katakana. Worth noting that the Flash anime used none of these words in its marketing, but it did use language such as “brand new invasion plan,” “rebirth of Keroro,” and so on…in addition to, you know, having a completely different artstyle and a title change to just “Keroro”, which this clearly does not (the artstyle is relatively faithful to the old one and the project is under the original Keroro Gunso name).

The other big word is 末永く(suenagaku), which…also doesn’t have one exact translation, but implies somewhere between years or even an indefinite period of time. I didn’t want to say a specific unit of time in my translation of the statement because well, we can’t really be sure of anything here, but either way, they’re signaling that they’re most likely in it for the long haul.

Then there’s the tweet from the PR account commemorating the actual anniversary of the original anime (April 3). This one uses 新しいスタート, “new start”—no real multiple definition shenanigans here, this is about as literal and straightforward as you can get. In terms of the reboot or not question, this could lean either way, but it definitely adds to theory that it is a series of some sort.

Okay, that’s all for the individual tweets I’m gonna totally overanalyze, otherwise I’d be stuck here for even longer than I already have been. Here’s a quick list of involved staff who tweeted about the reveal:

Unsurprisingly, Kumiko Watanabe (Keroro) posted that day, reiterating that it is real and saying “believe usssss!” (As a reminder, half the internet was convinced it was April Fools for like a whole week)

Adding to the cast comments, Etsuko Kozakura (Tamama) says, “Whoo-hoo! Can’t wait for more news! Keroro Gunso is still the greatest!!”

Jouji Nakata (Giroro) didn’t make a specific comment about the trailer, but has been retweeting the other official accounts and such and replying about it, so he has acknowledged it otherwise. As a substitute, here’s a picture of him visiting the Keroro Exhbition in Ikebukuro a day early.

Here’s an interesting one—Haruna Ikezawa (Momoka) said about the trailer, “Really?! Is this real?!?!?!” While no cast members outside of the Keroro Platoon were officially revealed to be reprising their roles, I’m assuming they’re going to try their best to reassemble as much of the cast as of season 7 as possible—besides Keiji Fujiwara (Paul/Narrator), who sadly passed away in 2020—so I kind of figured Ikezawa would know about this, but maybe not…? Well, considering that the main five were completely blindsided by this to the point where they weren’t even sure this was a real thing until they were in the middle of recording it (as I said previously, more on that later), I suppose the other cast members were just. Not told. I don’t really doubt Ikezawa would return (she even stated it could happen someday all the way back when the then-final season ended in 2011 and did come back for Flash)…but unless they were like really worried about leaks why even keep them in the dark to learn with the rest of the public, idk man :V (so much for not overanalyzing tweets huh)

On to production staff now, here’s the tweet from Satoshi Koike, animation director of the latter third of the original and also the reveal trailer, indicating that he’s most likely back for the new project. It’s just a simple “Welcome back! (de arimasu)” but the images he used were drawn back in 2019 to commemorate the start of the Reiwa era, spoofing the original lyrics of the first opening. The reveal trailer tweet itself from the Keroro Anime account does this too (“Starting today, the Reiwa era shall be known as the Keroro era!”).

New to the staff is Jouji Furuta (yes we have two Joujis now har har), who did the storyboards and direction for the trailer. He’s relatively new to the scene as a whole, with his most well known project being Shaman King Flowers. Although he never worked on the series before, he did a pretty good job emulating the original, and based on the last line of the tweet, it seems like he will be staying on for the full project as well.

And now for a kind of weird section where I talk about the few related accounts that the Keroro anime twitter is following but haven’t made any kind of verbal acknowledgement yet.

First and foremost is Mine Yoshizaki—you know, the guy who created the fucking series, whose name is on the copyright string and whose explicit permission they had to get to do another anime in the first place? Yeah so it’s been over a month since the reveal now and there has been zero acknowledgement from him. I do know his personal social media account has been inactive for quite a few years now (I feel like the anime account is only even following it for symbolic reasons), but he had multiple other opportunities to say something at this point. He did contribute some signed artwork to the anime-focused exhibition that just ended but nowhere in it does he directly mention the new adaptation, and so far he hasn’t commented on it in Shonen Ace (maybe in the next volume, assuming that’s soonish). I have my theories about his relationship to the anime, especially now that the Kemono Friends fiasco has occurred, but that’s all a story for another day or never. I’m sure he’ll contribute something later, but even so it’s just really bizarre to have nothing to say about your biggest creation’s first new adaptation in over a decade. Oh well.

Character designer Fumitoshi Oizaki, who has been around since the beginning if I remember correctly, has been retweeting things, but no official comment just yet. (He discretely left a message at the expo apparently, but didn’t post it online, so no idea if it mentions the new anime.) He isn’t credited on the trailer, but considering he’s still been pretty involved with the franchise’s promotion over the last few years, I would be very surprised if he wasn’t returning.

Last but certainly not least is Junichi Sato, the chief director for the original anime for the first two seasons, arguably its most well-known and critically praised era. He’s also a very notable director in his own right, having headed other famous series like early Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi. Sato didn’t direct the original anime for the majority of its runtime (though he did direct the first four movies), but he still directs and storyboards on projects to this day, including for other franchises’ major anniversaries (namely Doremi and Precure). Though not certain, I think it’s very possible that he returns for this in some capacity, if not as director than perhaps for storyboarding or general advising.

To close out the testimony section, I’m going to share here the translation I did of the aforementioned interview with Kumiko Watanabe in last month’s issue of Newtype (anime-centric magazine published by Kadokawa). I won’t re-summarize it here since it’s not particularly long, but the main takeaways from this in terms of hints as to what we can expect are that a) the cast was surprised by this and potentially didn’t even know back in December when they last discussed the possibility of working on Keroro again, and b) as I previously speculated, this is going to be a long term enough project that at least Watanabe feels the need to physically prepare for it lol. And thankfully, it seems they’re all excited to go back to the series. I spent a long time thinking they might not be up to it again since it’s been so long and they’re much later in their lives/careers (Nakata just turned 70 oh man) but I’m glad I was wrong! Though I don’t expect this to be another 300 episode commitment anyway; in spite of the PR comments I don’t think we’re going for that long with the nature of anime production these days lmao.

And now for a topic which I think many of you are concerned about…

Section 5: “But what if my 日本語 is not 上手???” (The Localization Question)

If you did not get the joke in the above headline without looking it up, it’s probably safe to assume that if you want to watch this Thing, you will need it in a language other than Japanese (and even if you did get the joke you will know if you are truly 日本語上手 when people stop saying 日本語上手 to you). I’m going to focus on English for this post since that’s the primary language of the audience here, though I would be very shocked if there isn’t at minimum a Korean translation—dub more likely than sub imo, since the most famous version of the show there had different names for the characters and was changed to be set in Korea, and the series is HUGE there to the point where it almost rivals the Japanese market.

So, English. Well, if it were a few years ago (say, if this came during the 15th anniversary like I was originally coping over), I would be markedly less optimistic about getting any official translation at all. At that time, the dub was explicitly dead and the only English sub had been delisted for a few years, and even that was only available in a select few countries in Continental Europe on a pretty obscure streaming service called Viewster for like a year or two before getting pulled. It’s no surprise that this particular sub eventually became more well known as the subs on the torrents compiled by ColdFusion (whoever that was, I’m still not sure myself). That was until…

…the magical year of 2021, when our heroes at Discotek licensed the ENTIRE SERIES (minus the movies) for an official English release using Viewster’s existing translations! That’s right, we got all of it. And not only that, the whole series was also added to Crunchyroll, though only the sub; Discotek had the Funimation dub but it seems it did not get ported to Crunchyroll when the merger happened this year. It does seem that Crunchy has still not made the series available outside of the US and Canada, which is a shame, but man is it still surreal to have the entire series legally available both digitally and physically after nearly two decades of scattered fansubs and hardly accessible official releases. Surely this was a huge win for Discotek, right?

Weeeeeell…no. Of course they weren’t able to say it out loud, but it’s been extremely heavily implied that unfortunately the BluRay/DVD releases flopped for them, and they did say they definitely won’t be getting the movies or the Flash series. They also stopped releasing the discs on a one season a year basis and started bundling them together, with seasons 5–7 coming out all at once later this year, so they’re clearly trying to just get it off their plates. To be honest, this was pretty predictable because…it’s been on Crunchyroll since before the discs even came out. Look, physical media is super cool and all, but who in this economy is going to pay $40-60 per box for a handful of seasons at most when they can get the whole damn thing on their phone for like $8 a month. Crunchyroll isn’t necessarily a disc killer; their release of Digimon Adventure, for example, still seemingly did well despite that series being available on Crunchyroll two years prior, but in addition to Digimon being more popular in the west, it’s one $60 purchase for the whole series versus having to spend like over $200 for 358 episodes. I applaud them for rolling the dice and trying to get this behemoth of a release out there, but I’m not surprised about the lack of financial returns.

However, since Crunchyroll now has set a precedent of having the original series available on their platform, we just might get the new series available on there as well—if not as a simulsub, then at least dropped in batches later on. I’m not 100% confident in this, particularly because technically Discotek still holds the license, but my guess based on the way they’ve talked about the series is that they’re pretty open to someone else taking it off their hands when they’re done releasing the original series (and the translations weren’t originally theirs to begin with anyways, they purchased them and did some touch-ups to the existing translation with added typesetting). As far as simulsubs go, the kids’ shows that get simulsubbed tend to be from Toei, with whom Crunchyroll has a known partnership. But if it is split into cours rather than being a year-round anime, I think the chances of a simulsub go up. Whatever the case may be, it’s for sure in a better position to get an official subtitled release than it ever was before. I’m certainly praying this happens because I believe most of the people capable of fansubbing (with good translation anyway) have gradually moved away from the fandom over the last decade for various reasons—myself included, though mostly I just quit fansubbing/scanlation in general for Personal Reasons(TM). Fingers crossed, everyone.

So subs remain as a not-guaranteed-but- definitely-not-low possibility. But what about a dub? If you recall, Keroro has had a very rocky history in 3D with English dubs, with the American dub being in licensing hell for years before finally falling into Funimation’s lap and subsequently failing to take off despite remaining a beloved cult classic to Some Fans (I am not as high on it, but longtime Kirb followers probably know that by now), and the only other English dub is relegated to the network Animax in Hong Kong + Southeast Asia with no official home release, leaving all of it besides parts of seasons 3 and 4 as lost media (and the voice acting sucked ass but at least the script was accurate). But we’re not in the mid 2000s to early 2010s anymore; this is the screamin’ ��20s, baby! So much anime is getting dubbed now, sometimes at almost the same time as the Japanese release! There must be a chance, right?!

Eeeehhhhhh I wouldn’t bet on it. Even the Toei kids’ shows Crunchyroll started simulsubbing usually don’t get dubs (Digimon is an exception, and the reboot’s dub took YEARS to come out). Anime dubs, as far as I’m aware, are not cheap to produce (though it’d be great if more of what the companies are pocketing went to the actors’ wages >_>), and if the show does have the potential to become somewhat of a long runner, I think they’ll need to see more interest around the IP to fund one, and both Funimation and now Discotek’s releases have proved that the audience for it isn’t always there. I also speculate they’d be doing a lot of recasting; the casting process is not as smooth and (I believe) more expensive than it is in Japan, and a lot of the original cast are not working as often in the field anymore and/or have been involved with some pretty serious controversies—I’m sure those in the know are thinking of a specific drawn-out conflict but I’m pretty sure it’s more than just About Him at this point. So let’s just say that while some of the cast still remembers the show fondly, I think trying to get them all in the same project again would potentially open some cans of worms better off left closed. It’s not 100% impossible it gets dubbed, you never know what the industry can manage to make work these days, but I’d wager it’s like 90% not happening. Just a hunch. If anyone more knowledgable than me on anime localization (this goes for both the dub and sub stuff) would like to argue me with better explanations than I have I’d very much be glad to hear it.

Section 6: The Stuff That Doesn’t Fit Elsewhere + Final Thoughts

There’s not going to be any real organization to this section. Here’s just some bullets of miscellaneous stream of consciousness thoughts related to whatever:

The character bios page on the site linked in section 3 has some WEIRD romanization choices. I don’t expect these to reflect on any official localization because chances are they’ll go with what Viewster used, which is largely what the fandom is used to besides the Kululu/Kururu split. It is indeed Kululu here and Kululu has been the de facto official spelling for a very very long time now but I still have a personal preference for Kururu because “Kululu” loses the onomatopoeia joke and I’m a rebel. But like. “Tololo”? Since when has Tororo ever been called that in any media? And worst of all, “Pole”? POLE?? That’s literally never been a thing what glossary did they pull these from.

Also worth noting, Alisa and the Narrator had merchandise sold at the Keroro expo (will talk about that next btw) despite not being on the characters page. This isn’t a confirmation of anything but I would be very surprised if Alisa doesn’t return at some point since she was pretty prominent later in the show and Yoshizaki seems to have a particular fondness for her, and the Narrator will obviously be there with a recast, though jury’s out on if his little ’sona guy will show up too. It won’t be the same without Fujiwara :(

I do want to touch upon the “Keroro expo”, officially known as the “Keroro Gunso Super Gerogero Museum” (expo is a fine shorthand because the Japanese word can mean exhibition also), since I’ve mentioned it a couple times throughout this write-up. This was an event that was held in Ikebukuro just recently from April 27–May 12 that was basically a walkthrough experience recreating settings from the anime, having artwork and stuff sprinkled in between (all reused, no new concept art or anything sadly). The main gimmick was that the venue had an exclusive app that let you take AR pictures with models of the Keroro Platoon. It also had an AI chatbot feature where you could talk to each member of the platoon, and not too many posted pictures of this feature but apparently the chatbots were uhhhhhh weird. I have no idea how much of it is generative from other LLMs, and I’m assuming they programmed it at least partially with their own original input/databases (which is the only way to make generative AI even close to ethical), but from the few screenshots I’ve seen their speech was just a little bit awkward and some of the stuff they said was really bizarre. At one point users started to turn it into an otome game and successfully romanced the frogs, which I’m assuming is a little bit out of the bounds of what they were expecting from this experiment. If they do release that app publicly at some point—they labeled the version at the expo to be a “test version,” so maybe—I sincerely hope they at least fine tune it because Good Lord. Finally and maybe most importantly, there were new voice lines recorded for the exhibit to give it an audio-drama type simple story, but unfortunately it was probably not archived because video recording was not allowed inside the venue. The platoon all had new voice lines along with Fuyuki and Natsumi, reportedly still played by Houko Kuwashima and Chiwa Saito respectively, so most likely they will return to reprise the roles for the new anime, though I don’t think those two were much in question. That’s really like the only important part of this for the purposes of this post I’m not sure why I mentioned anything else here actually. AI chatbot Dororo wants you to know he enjoys tickles from Giroro and Tamama. Yeah this thing’s a little fucked

I didn’t want to get too deep into this in section 3 because it’s not really a production related question, but…are Shin Keroro and related new characters gonna be in this or not? For what it’s worth the site seems to count the Flash series as part of the anniversary celebration, and screenshots with Shin in them are there even if he is completely absent from the character page. Flash was a total reboot so I don’t think it will be that exact iteration of the character if he is in the new anime, but there must be some way to work his stuff into the existing anime canon even with its many differences from the manga. Honestly I think the main obstacle to him appearing is just that the guy is not very popular lol. He’s hardly in the manga anymore and Tomosu and Myou are in it even less. I’m not sure if it was just franchise fatigue following the end of the anime but the reception to Shin was very meh across the board (at least among longtime fans, kids might’ve liked him I think. Which makes sense). So I could totally see them skipping him entirely. There’s still a lot of post-anime manga-only stories without his involvement at all, some that included him but he could easily be changed to some other character, and for the stories that revolved around him, well, the Flash anime got to a decent amount of them. This could really go either way but for now I’m going to lean toward him not being included. If he’s put in I think it will not be until the “second season” (whatever the definition of that ends up being) so we can be eased back in to the existing cast first before shaking things up significantly.

I like the new artstyle, assuming it carries over from the trailer to the final project. It looks like they hit a happy medium between the early and late artstyles of the original anime. This is the most obvious with the human cast who haven’t received new official artwork by Koike and/or Oizaki in a looooong time, and they look much better than the last time we saw them in season 7 where everyone got weirdly lanky for some reason.

Okay FINALLY I’m done here for now I think. At the time of writing we’re pretty much just in a “wait and see” phase with no other real concrete info around that I haven’t touched upon in this post. Trust me, I’ve tried digging for more, but I couldn’t find anything really interesting staff-wise and very few of the staff credited in the trailer are even on social media (sometimes staff can be a bit loose-lipped so it’s possible to get hints there). I’ve also checked every nook and cranny of the official sites of both animation studios and the companies on the production committee and turned up with nothing of note. I’m hoping we get some more info at least sometime between now and autumn.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end (or speedscrolling here, don’t worry I won’t be disappointed lol). I hope you found it informative even though I probably spent way too much time yapping about dumb shit. It took me entirely too long to write this post, but I don’t have as much time as I did as a teenager and it’s been a good few years since I’ve done a really deep dive into Keroro stuff. Needless to say, I’m beyond excited for this project and can’t wait to see how the last seven years of me huffing unhealthy amounts of copium pays off. I’ve had like a month and a half to sit on it now and it honestly still doesn’t feel real!

I will most likely return to report when we get some amount of substantial info—hopefully with way fewer words lmao. Until next time! Ge-gero~

[hinatashiftz]

Out Of My Head

1st BOYNEXTDOOR DR

WC 2.1k | WARNINGS/ GENRE: Reality Shifting Storytime, Angst w/ fluff at the end, Lots of mentions of self doubt, mentions of crying, mentions of arguing and pushing, mentions of sadness and overwhelming thoughts, lots and lots of overthinking, self-isolation, drawing & listening to music as an escape, lovey dovey at the end, falling in love, mentions of Taesan’s real name ( Dongmin )

Weirdly enough, Taesan always seems to know me. Everything and anything that revolves around me, he knows and as someone who feels as though nobody understands them; it’s weirdly comforting

but also a bit scary.

I’ve noticed in my other K-Pop realities, promotion time and in between filming content and preparing for a new album is always a bit more rough on me mentally and emotionally than any other time. This time was no different, I could NOT slack or fall behind at any cost. At Least that's what my head was telling me.

Not only was this our debut but I'm the oldest member, I have to prove to everyone who had their eye on us that we were worth sticking around for and definitely worth the watch. Feeling as though I'm being held to a higher standard than everyone else, it’s kinda hard to try and stay optimistic when you watch everyone else around you on the screen. My members put their absolute everything into every single stage, as good and confident that made me feel to have such a team like this, it dragged me a little wondering if i’m putting enough for them as well.

Taesan never fails to tell me behind closed doors how he felt about my performance. Him and I have been together for a month and a half at this point ever since June 15, we talk to each other about everything and ANYTHING, sometimes too much information..

However, This wasn’t just promotion time anymore, Things have been different lately, more for me than him. Recording for the new album had me stumped, I was getting the praise for my work but I wasn’t feeling confident in myself like I should. Why is everyone telling me these amazing things and I’m not feeling it? I should believe them but I don’t. I listen to myself and see myself and I’m not seeing or hearing what they are.

After a rather upsetting recording session for our song “ Crying “, I left the studio and sat in the hallway in silence, placing the headphones onto my head and playing music as I took out my bag and began to draw nonsense. I could not pay attention to my thoughts or I would burst into tears and I can’t. Especially not at the workplace, that’s unprofessional, I can’t have staff, one of my members, or a member of another group see me in the halls of the workplace crying like a baby.

It’s been weeks since I've felt this burden on my shoulders of not doing enough, it always seems to be the same. I have people telling me about my “ amazing work in the studio “ so I have no reason to feel the way I do. I kept quiet about it all hoping that the feeling and the thoughts would drown itself out and I would just feel better one day, it’s almost never like that though. I tell people communication is important and I should take my own advice but I don’t. It’s not that big of a deal anyways, my thoughts say.

“ babe-“

I heard his voice over the music in my headphones, his voice snapped me out of the downward spiral my head was going into at that moment. I looked up to see Taesan looking at me, head tilted to the side with a look of worry and confusion. I take off my headphones to listen to him properly.

“ are you okay? I was talking to you- I asked how your recording went today, I just got done with mine”

My eyes wandered as I shrugged my shoulders “ there’s not enough time today to be in there for hours so i’m coming back tomorrow to fix it “

The room was filled with silence before Taesan took a seat next to me.

“ They said you did good though, I don’t see why you need to go in tomorrow-“ He spoke as if he was walking around eggshells, slowly over each word.

“ Well I told them I didn’t like how I sounded today so I’m going back tomorrow.” I replied as I got up to head towards the bathroom before I could even have my head start thinking again

“ What’s going on with you?” I heard from behind me and I shook my head, looking down at my feet as I walked

“ hey-“ I felt a hand on my shoulder, grab me and turn me around. Face to face with Taesan again.

“ Seriously, Tell me “

I stood there for a minute wondering if I should, but i felt the tears start to form in my eyes and I walked away again

“ It’s nothing.. I have to pee..” I mumbled trying to force the tears to go away and disappear.

Once again, I was turned to face him, this time he looked at me with frustration.

“ stop walking away-“ He paused and looked at me

“ are you okay-?” he asked

For some reason that question always pushes me off the end, Tears rolled down my cheeks and down my chin. I laughed to try and feel better or look as though nothing was wrong, which was not working at all. I backed away from him and as an immediate response he grabbed my hand

“ Asuma.. tell me what happened..” He spoke to me in a softer tone, a soft look in his eyes as he was worried

I then began to spill out every single thought that’s been on my mind for the last couple of weeks as if he was about to set off to war and leave me, I spoke every single word in one breath as tears were non stop running and my breath catching in my throat at times.

“ I just didn’t tell you because It’s such a little thing honestly and I didn’t think you’d care-“

Taesan’s grip on my shoulders suddenly dropped as he looked at me with a blank face. I looked up at him, rubbing the tears away from my eyes and off my face

“ You didn’t think I would care?.. Are you serious?”

I sat there for a moment wondering what about that line made him so upset. I didn’t respond

“ Asuma are you-? Why would I not care? I always care? all the time, every hour, every minute, every second I care- Do I not show that?”

My eyes widened as he began to ramble in a furious rage, why was he so upset about that comment I don’t understand?

“ No you do show that but-“

“ I don’t understand why you think I wouldn’t care- I don’t think there’s ever been a moment where I didn’t care about you-“

I stood there in utter shock, not a single word could come to mind .

“ Hey”

“ What’s going on? Guys stop arguing in the halls”

I looked back to find the voices to see Leehan and Jaehyun walking towards us confused, Jaehyun being more upset than confused.

“ We cannot argue in the halls at the workplace like this, anyone could walk by- with a camera too by the way, you guys need to take this to a private room “

Jaehyun said as he began to lead us to one of the vocal practice rooms

“ What’s going on..? “ Jaehyun asked worriedly, looking between us. I stared blankly at Jaehyun and looked over at Taesan who didn’t look too happy.

“ You can talk to us, you know? The both of you, I hate to see you guys argue-“ Leehan spoke before Taesan pushed himself away

“ We aren’t arguing. I’m done talking right now- I don’t want to talk right now.” He said as he walked away from us.

I leaned against the wall and sighed.

————

It’s been a couple days since the argument, we talk only when it’s necessary such as conversations about the album or work related things. It kinda had me worried with where we were currently at, it was tearing me apart with each day with the lingering thought in my head.

Are we over?

I couldn’t think about that today though; Jaehyun, Taesan, Woonhak, and I were scheduled to film a show where we took care and hung out with 3 kids. I’ve never been a person to take care of kids, but I didn’t hate them either, I was kinda excited honestly though.

On the way to the filming site and setting up our mics, getting into position, I could feel stares from Taesan. I looked over at him once in awhile but would look away again when we made eye contact as if we were back in high school all over again.

“ You two need to interact and talk while we are filming, please try ?” Jaehyun leaned in and whispered to Taesan and I.

I looked up at Taesan and felt a bit of myself breaking even more. I let us come to this where we have to force to interact with each other for the sake of our fans and filming. I nodded my head and Taesan nodded along as well.

Filming went along quite swimmingly actually, hanging out with the kids and playing/joking with them kinda took the edge off from the thoughts in my mind and the feelings I had prior to this.

I looked over at Taesan after being with Jaehyun and the older kids, I watched as Taesan held the infant in his arms. Watching as he held her carefully and delicately, tending to her and making her feel comforted in his arms. I watched as a smile grew on his face as he lifted the baby up towards his face, listening to the small laughs escaping from his lips. I watched as he carried the baby around the room and spoke to her softly, I watched as he put the baby back in her rocking carrier and watched over her, sticking by her side like it was his own.

I felt my world come together, I felt my heart light up and my stomach being swarmed with butterflies. I felt my face heat up and my lips curl into a big smile. I felt my future in front of my eyes and suddenly everything that had been happening between us lately disappeared.

Taesan looked up at me, smiling softly and his face grew into a light shade of pink before looking back at the baby again. The shoot went on wonderfully, it was exactly the glue that stuck me and taesan back together like nothing happened.

We said our byes to the camera, getting up and taking the mics off and thanking the staff for their time etc. We went back into the car, headed towards the company building for practice and I felt Taesan’s hand pat my leg.

“ I'm still upset about what you said, but I’m worse when we don’t talk to each other. I need to be with you, I need to be talking to you, I need you.”

As he spoke to me about how he had been feeling lately, I stared in admiration, I don’t think i’ve ever felt this way before and suddenly the movies made sense.

“ Dongmin.. I.. I love you..” I stated in a soft tone

That was the first time I have ever told him. He stared at me with wide eyes, he looked around at woonhak and jaehyun. Woonhak laughed in shock and blinked, watching the scene unfold as Jaehyun smiled, shaking his head and also watching everything unfold.

“ fuck.. you make it impossible to be mad at you, asuma.”

Taesan stated as he rolled his eyes playfully then leaned in, he took my hand into his and smiled, looking away from my eyes and looked down.

“ I could never stay mad at you, it sucks doing that anyways.. “

He stayed silent for a moment

“ I love you too.. “

I smiled and looked away out of pure shyness

“ hey but look at me-“

Taesan spoke as he grabbed my chin softly and made me look at him

“ I care. I always care. I will always care. Talk to me even if you think it’s dumb. You’ve been doing pretty good lately with.. everything carrying everything and everyone and recording. Stop thinking so much, leave that to me”

Woonhak gagged in the backseat along with Jaehyun, Taesan groaned and smacked the air in front of them playfully before rubbing the back of his neck

“ Just trust me? I would never lie to you”

I nodded my head and hugged him, leaning my head on his chest, leaning myself against his body as he wrapped his warm arms around me, welcoming me into his space again as he rested his head onto mine.

“ I do trust you.

[overleftdown]

HIII it’s me the same anon who sent that rlly long ask abt Farleigh’s monologue to Oliver, the plates, etc.. and i’ve had another Farleigh thought that i feel like u would be very good at going in depth about.

so like, even Archie talked about how Farleigh sort of felt ashamed after talking to felix and confronting him about the very obvious bias etc, and i know this might be kind of a stretch or me just thinking nonsense, but Farleigh’s last few conversations with his cousin were all just… bad. Like, they “argued”, obviously, and the next time we saw Farleigh and Felix interacting was whenever Felix scolded Farleigh for making oliver sing rent during karaoke night. After that, it was pretty unclear whether or not they’ve encountered each other during Oliver’s party (but i doubt it since Farleigh said they haven’t seen him yet), and the only time we see Farleigh together with Felix (and Venetia) is when they’re singing happy birthday to oliver (kind of lmfao) and they seemed pretty chill there but like???? I can’t stop thinking about the fact that the most major (and final) parts of Farleigh and Felix’s relationship on screen was them arguing over that little freak (i know the Farleigh/Felix conversation was about so much more than that, but Oliver was kind of the starting point of that as well, since Farleigh brought up how shitty it was that they were throwing Oliver a party considering the circumstances with his own mother etc. etc.). And in conclusion i guess I’m just wondering if you think Farleigh ever felt guilty about that later on. Like, the fact that he got kicked out and before that he bravely confronted Felix, only to be shut down, and then when he came back, his cousin died the same night. Idk maybe I’m just thinking way too much but I really hope this makes sense I’m terrible at wording things. So all in all i’m just talking about how the last few moments they shared together was all kinda shitty, thinking about it.

so sorry for the late response, u probably do not care anymore BUT. that makes a lot of sense yes. i think there's a lot of turmoil that must have been involved with post-canon farleigh and if i think too hard about it i get sad! somehow.

i imagine post-canon is very conflicted and very bitter. it's difficult with white family, especially white family that treats you like that. the death of the cattons, the ruin of the cattons, evokes an unimaginable lack of closure. how hard would it be to forgive your family while grieving them? and how hard would it be to forgive yourself for the way you commodified your relationship with them? every interaction became a transaction, and is that necessarily farleigh's fault? the acting, the pretending, the calculated risks, the begging, the "peddling," as archie put it. i'd imagine he'd begun to depersonalize himself. finding your identity while dealing with the loss of a family that led to the bastardization of your identity! yummy. i don't know. he makes me sad.

to answer your question, yea, i think he was guilty. but maybe not entirely because of those last few days of bitterness, but for the whole thing. every decision he made, all those schools he got kicked out of, all those hollow conversations and his time spent drifting between sterile relationships. for family to become a twisted form of escapism the way it had, tied up with the money and the gucci and the cocaine. there is so much to regret.

[stemms]

Hello, guys. I’m sorry for being inactive in terms of original content lately, but I’m back, and right now I would like to give you an important update.

I’d briefly mentioned my abusive familial situation in the past, but I never really went into details. However, I’d like to share more context now, as it is directly related to the reason for my sudden disappearance.

I’ve been trapped in an abusive situation for the past seven years, and the longer I stayed in this household, the worse it became. While the abuse was mostly psychological, it escalated to the point where one of my abusers nearly choked me to death. I will elaborate on that incident after giving you some context.

My abusers are my mother and stepfather, with the latter causing me more harm. He tends to always blame me for everything, invent more and more nonsensical rules for me to follow (and randomly abandoning some, only to come up with something else) and get mad if I don’t learn them by heart the moment he introduces them (which happens because of my horrible memory that his abuse worsened). He always expected me to reach out to him if I needed emotional support, but when I was actually struggling mentally, he either preferred to ignore it or cut off the internet because “it was obviously the reason”. Additionally, he’d always get mad at me over the stupidest things ever and use it as an excuse to yell at me for 2 hours. Also, fun fact: some of my top posts are heavily inspired by something he did to me (: (: (: My mother isn’t better because she watched every single time he was abusing me, but never really tried to stop him. Yet, when I tried to confront her about his behaviour and explain that this is literal abuse, she’d gaslight me into thinking it’s normal, and it could’ve been worse, so I’m lucky and he “has good intentions anyway”. She’s also extremely controlling, manipulative, and obsessed with the idea of moulding me into the person she never got to be, as well as always keeping me around.

Since I’ve been dealing with this kind of behaviour for so long, my mental health seriously deteriorated. My hands are always shaky, I flinch whenever my stepfather enters the room, I tremble if he comes too close, I flinch if he touches me, I’m horrified of maintaining eye contact with him, I’m always in the fight or flight mode, I overanalyse his behaviour and always make sure to do anything I can (even if it's humiliating) to ensure that he doesn't hurt me again. Recently, I started going to therapy and taking medication, and it's been very helpful so far.

Although things weren’t perfect already, I didn’t expect my life to be threatened. A while ago, I was having an argument with my transphobic mother about my identity, and after it was over, we had dinner. During the argument, my stepfather wasn’t home, so he was unaware of it, but he noticed the tense atmosphere, and it infuriated him to the point where he went to the kitchen to do the dishes instead of eating with us. I had a feeling that he thought it was my fault, so I followed him to reassure him that my mother’s state wasn’t his fault, and it was just a small argument between us (which was literally true), but he started shouting at me because he assumed I was accusing him of something???? I tried to reassure him some more, and then he lashed out at me and said lots of transphobic shit. After that, he grabbed me, pushed me to the floor and got on top of me, pressing me harder and harder to the floor, started choking me so hard that I could barely breathe, so I bit him, and he continued to choke me and pull my hair. I messaged my English Literature teacher and she called the police. We were interrogated and although my mom told me to downplay it, I was too scared to do so and told them everything, plus showed them the pictures of my bruises.

After that, I couldn’t look at any c!Prime content for a while because it suddenly felt triggering, so I just needed to take a break from my blog and work on my mental health for a while. But right now, I'm doing better and I’m feeling more comfortable about c!Prime again, so I should be able to make more content soon. I must admit, I'm not that hyperfixated on it at the moment, but I’m definitely going to do more c!Prime content soon because these freaks are too fun :)

[arachnidiots]

GET TO KNOW THE MUN.

what made you pick up the muse you have? i wanted to try tumblr rp again (i had once in the past but i never stuck with it) and a friend convinced me it wasn’t so scary so i got to thinking well… who can i write and who do i kind of want to write? in my former rpc community, marvel was NOT a hot place… garbage fire actually, and if you were writing a canon it was even more of a dumpster fire. that being said, i really wanted to try my hand at peter parker, and i’d already been writing a lot for him outside of rp for fun. i used to have a little fic type thing that was ic/first pov and it brought me a lot of joy. liam was a test, more than anything. i’m surprised that they’re still a muse i write. they were an oc i made with a friend for fun and i thought why not give it a go and the love has just been so overwhelming that i can’t imagine a blog without liam and peter. they’re a package deal

is there anything you don’t like to write? probably just smut? i don’t think anything else comes to mind

is there anything you really enjoy writing? chaotic and nonsensical threads will always be some of my favorite. often it’s something i can write a lot quicker but also makes me think and try new things. i love when a thread makes me learn. i love learning so also any threads that open my eyes to something or broaden my knowledge about a subject. crossovers are really good for this because i get to explore new shows/movies or revisit loved ones.

how do you come up with your headcanons? something probably happened to me in the moment or i stared at a pinterest board or i heard it in a song

do you write in silence or do you play music? it takes a very specific kind of music to make me write. i either have to be so disinterested and unfamiliar with it or extremely familiar, like know all the words and the pacing. this has led to some embarrassing top five end of year songs

do you plan your replies or wing them? mostly i just wing it but if i get an idea for a future piece of dialogue or concept i will write it down in my notes

do you enjoy shipping? yes, but i don’t think it’s a must or priority! i love it if it happens or if you have any interest in it, but i’m not really always thinking about it

what’s your alias/name? birdie! i’ve had some mutuals call me bird too. i think it’s funny when people use the phrase “a little birdie told me” and i love to see posts with it and laugh to myself about it.

favorite color? red, but i’m not sure what shade

favorite song? i don’t have one but anything by bleachers or florence + the machine i will always love. lately ive been enjoying my kink is karma by chapell roan

last movie you watched? transformers the last knight…

last show you watched? i’m currently making my way through st: enterprise, i’m on s3!

last song you listened to? isimo by bleachers

favorite food? bread. any bread, all bread

favorite season? i suppose spring can be nice but i grew up in a place without seasons so i guess i love the idea of spring

do you have a tumblr best friend? does it count if they’re a best friend i pulled into the tumblr rpc? or a best friend who happens to have a tumblr? no? okay well, i have love and stars in my eyes for every person i meet on here. i make best friends like a six year old during recess. you’re nice? you have a cool shirt? we’re best friends.

tagged by : i stole it from the dash! / tagging: you steal it from me!

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

CW: Intrusive thoughts (nearly acting one out which would hurt an animal)

Hi! I’m not really sure how to go about asking this, but a few years ago I was professionally diagnosed with autism and whilst it explained a lot of my behaviours there are still quite a few that aren’t “normal” and I’m not sure if it’s something else, but I thought you’d be the best person to come to (I’ve tried talking to my parents about it several times but they brushed it off, and since I’m a year off 18 I can’t really do anything about it myself).

Throughout most of my life I haven’t like getting dirty, and whilst this is partially a sensory thing, every time I touch something that I perceive to be dirty—even if I know that it’s clean and it has been cleaned several times over—I can’t touch it and if I do then my hands feel like they’re covered in a thin layer of filth and I can’t concentrate on anything else until I wash my hands thoroughly, and this can lead me to washing my hands at least fifteen times a day, but I can go days without showering and not feeling bothered by it at all. My parents sometimes ask me why I just seem to “randomly” wash my hands but I don’t want to tell them the actual reason because they’d say I was overreacting, but this can lead me to not wanting to touch people at all, especially their hands because they’re usually the dirtiest part of a person (with a couple of exceptions) and like I said I can’t stand the thought of having some else’s germs on me. Again I don’t know if this is an autism-related thing since sensory issues also come into play but I haven’t seen much about it in relation to ASD.

Another couple of things I wanted to ask about was intrusive thoughts and dissociation: I’ve been having intrusive thoughts for the last few years and most of the time I can deal with them but lately I’ve been really struggling with not acting them out, for example I’ll get one urging me to physically lash out or tell yell slurs or verbally abuse someone and it’s difficult to hold myself back now, which is similar to when they first started, where I got an intrusive thought to strangle one of my pets and it was difficult for me to not go through with it (don’t worry they’re fine I didn’t hurt them) but it distresses me that if I was zoned out enough for even just a bit I could go through with them.

As for the dissociation, again that’s been happening for a couple years, where it’s been manageable, but the last few months/year I keep zoning out a lot for long periods of time to the point where it badly impacted my grades and school work because I’d barely ever be able to pay attention in lessons, even ones I enjoyed—the teacher could be standing right in front of me and talking but I wouldn’t be able to hear a word they were saying even if I was looking at them, and a lot of the time I wasn’t even aware that I was looking at them because my eyes wouldn’t take anything in and I’d be completely inside my head. Lately it’s been getting worse because whilst I’ve always had vivid dreams it’s started to get increasingly difficult to tell what are dreams and what aren’t—even ones that are completely nonsensical—because it’s gotten to the point where my dreams feel too real and my waking life feels fake and my mind and body feel numb, my dreams feel so much more vivid and realistic, and it sometimes gets to the point where sometimes I don’t know whether I’m awake or not because real life doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t help that for the last couple of weeks I’ve been having nightmares almost every night, which ends up in me waking up terrified in the middle of the night because it feels like the threat’s actually there so I’ve been perpetually exhausted due to disrupted sleep and insomnia because it’s gotten to the point where I’m scared of falling asleep. Back to the dissociation bit, a lot of the time I also don’t seem to know what I’m doing or where I’m going and it can again sometimes feel like I’m dreaming even though I’m wide awake because my mind and senses feel disconnected from my body, I think this is sometimes described as brain fog? but I’m not entirely sure.

Sorry this turned out to be really long but I just wanted to see what your thoughts were because I’ve been really struggling lately, and there’s currently nobody else I can talk to about this. If you respond then thank you in advance, it would mean a lot to me.

Hi there,

I’ll do my best to answer this.

The washing your hands part reminds a little of OCD. And it can coincide with autism. Here’s a Venn diagram showing the difference and similarities:

The link to this article will be below if you want to read it.

I can’t really help you with the dissociation part, that’s something that needs to be talked about with a professional or therapists. Maybe some of my followers can give advice.

I’m sorry I couldn’t answer your question fully. But thank you for the inbox. I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ♥️

[meximango]

Day 26 - zip - Vaile + Altani + Mogren + Cahsi + Luvon - G

Summary: Altani is having a fashion crisis. She needs the help of her friends.

No this is still not a continuation of the silly sleepover fic, sadly (Mogren ain’t around for that one), buuuut it does allow me to try to test the waters of them all interacting together! --

“Oof. Maybe I should have gone a size up.” “Nonsense. Skintight is in! It’s hot! This was definitely the right choice.” “Might I offer my tailoring skills? I brought my kit with me in case anyone needed modifications.” “Teehee, you look so different from normal, Tani! Are you sure you won’t burst the seams when you try flexing too hard, kupo?” Altani panicked, letting the dress slip down her waist again. “What!? Could that happen? I don’t have a backup dress, and you know I love flexing!” “Hmm.” Luvon reached for the dress and tested the ribbing area between his hands. “This material is quite stretchy. I do not think you have to fear that. If something happens, then I have my sewing kit, or maybe the party will have glamour plates for rent?” “If that were a thing at this party, then why did I even bother buying this dress from Hancock?” “Oh shit, you bought that from Hancock? No way he gave you a good deal on that. Should’ve gone through Tataru!” 

Vaile briefly interrupted the goings-on with a loud sigh. “Tell me again: why did you insist I be here for this jester fest? I’ve been ready for a solid bell already and I’m the only one here not wearing a dress. I could’ve just met you all at–” “Excuse you, mister, my top half is a suit jacket just like yours!” Vaile rolled his eyes. Semantics. “And what’s that have to do with anything anyroad? I’m already dressed too! Plus, I know you. If we didn’t make you check in with us first, you wouldn’t have shown up at all. Besides, you promised.” Just because Cahsi was right didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. He scoffed. “Wow, one of you is finally ready. I feel so blessed and not at all bored.” “Oh, you want to know boredom, kid? Let me just reach over here to my precarious paperwork pile that’s a few moons overdue, lock you in the office with that until it’s done, and you’ll be begging to come back here to watch us get dressed!” 

“Wh–no I would not. And don’t make me sound like a pervert! You all said you were decent, that’s the only reason I came in here–” Altani and Cahsi burst into laughter at the same time. “Haha, yeah, true. Just a joke. Though I dunno,  you can see a lot of Altani’s back right now. Looking good by the way, Tani. You’ve got this!” Cahsi gave the slightly flustered au ra a thumb’s up as encouragement as the poor warrior strained again to try to get her dress on the rest of the way. 

Mogren instinctually shielded Altani from Vaile’s view, even though he couldn’t care less about what any of them looked like in a state of undress. 

“Cahsi, you should be careful about moving around too much yet in a crowded room. Remember, the paint is still dryi–”

“Why do you wait so long until it piles up anyway, you idio–” “Just let out your breath, Tani, I’m sure that’ll work–” “Oh!” A sharp inhalation of breath followed by a long exhale. “Whoops. Sorry. A moment too late, Lu. Think I smacked you there by accident.” The long-suffering sigh of someone who has too often had to wrassle a rowdy group of engineers into order. “Yes. That would be my shoulder. Well! No worries. How bad is the damage?” It was Vaile’s turn to laugh, though it certainly took on more of a mocking tone than the others’ had. “Oh, her entire left hand has to be redone! It’s all over your shawl. Now we can be even more late to this party that I didn’t even ask to go to!” “Well, you smart-mouthed punk, I don’t see you helping anyone getting ready! And stop complaining, kupo, nobody’s forcing you to attend!” Mogren shrieked, headbutting Vaile in the stomach. It did about as much damage as throwing a plushie version of a moogle would have. He grabbed the moogle and chucked them to the other side of the room, back to Altani’s side. He nearly whistled at the job well done. That spin on the moogle’s arc was beautiful. Mogren, dizzy from the actions of their rude acquaintance (friend status revoked until further notice!), knocked into Altani–who graciously gave them a nuzzle under the chin with one claw as comfort. The wind was a bit knocked out of their sails with that one, so they settled onto her shoulder, hmmphed! in Vaile’s general direction, and started braiding one of the long green and pink locks of hair she tended to keep in front of her face. 

Hair styling duty was assigned to them, and so even if other things weren’t going to plan, Altani’s hair at least was going to look beautiful! (they’d already finished with the others. Cahsi’s hair was pinned back in a masculine style, with just a few little curls framing her face cutely. Luvon’s hair was extra fluffed up and flipped out with a few decorative pins. His hair was so short, it was done in a snap. Vaile–well, the grumpy-pants hadn’t let them touch his hair.) “Eh, just lose the shawl. We don’t have time to wash the nail paint off of it. I’m sorry, buddy,” Cahsi apologized, taking Luvon’s arm covering and tossing it in the general vicinity of her dirty laundry pile. “If you want to dig through my closet, feel free to borrow something that feels nice on your hands. I might even have a feather boa somewhere in there!” “Ooh, that would be delightful. Thank you, dear!” Luvon had been grumbling earlier about being forced to wear shoes for this event (curse these foot prison contraptions!), so having some sort of fabric he could play with in the downtime would help to distract him from his pinched toes. Cahsi reached for the red nail paint that had a loose cap but luckily had not tipped over and spilled during the frenzy of activity that was all of them trying to get ready for the past few bells. Cahsi had finished most of their makeup ages ago, at least–Vaile didn’t know it, but she was going to attack his face with some nice eyeliner and an eyebrow pencil before they left–but now she had to redo her nails. She got up to find the polish remover to start over on her left hand, pausing to turn up the orchestrion player while she was at it. She could barely hear any music over all this shouting since Vaile arrived.

As Cahsi settled back in to carefully fix her nails, Mogren had switched shoulders and was dutifully finishing up with the braids. Luvon was still digging through the closet. Altani was still struggling, to the point of embarrassment. Vaile really had nothing to do… “Ok, fine. Altani. Let me help you with your dress.” He told himself it was just fun to piss off Mogren further, getting in their space they clearly wanted Vaile out of. To rub it in their pom that this was something Vaile could do, that their little moogle hands were useless at. Mogren’s scowl (not that moogles really had the facial features to do so, but the feeling was there) combined with Altani’s gasp of delight was entertainment on its own. He smirked as he sidled up and took stock of the situation. “You just need me to zip it up, then?”

Vaile started without really waiting for confirmation, but damn was this one poorly made zipper. It kept getting stuck, and that had nothing to do with the size (though as pointed out earlier, it certainly was a skintight ensemble). 

Altani nodded, causing Mogren to nearly tumble off her shoulder, still having their claws in her hair. “Right! I can’t really reach back there thanks to my copious musculature–” “She has wide shoulders and needs to stretch more,” Mogren deadpanned. “What are you, my mother? But yeah, that. I guess.” “You focus so much on strength training and then wave me off when I remind you to stretch, kupo! Don’t complain about tight hamstrings again to me.” “Healer’s recommendation: do the stretches. Anyroad, most people are unable to fasten their own dress up all the way on their own, regardless,” Luvon chimed in, now bedecked in one fabulously pink feather boa, and a bejeweled pair of star-shaped shades as well. “Cahsi, is it alright that I…?” He gestured toward the sunglasses on his face. This party was at night, but his eyes were so sensitive to light, so it wouldn’t hinder him to wear them. “Ooh, forgot I had those. Of course it’s good; nice choice!!” Cahsi approved. She had finished with her nails and was blowing on them to try to dry them a little faster. (Vaile was beginning to feel underdressed. What was the dress code for this party, again? Cahsi looked like she was going to an eternal bonding ceremony as both the bride and groom, Luvon was as colorful and bedazzled as a worker at a Skyrise Celebration Fête, and Altani was trying to slip into a sultry evening gown with a leg slit for days. Vaile’s own button-down shirt and vest seemed substandard, but that was fine. The less attention on him, the better.)   “See? It’s not just the stretches.” Altani stuck her tongue out at Mogren as Vaile continued to fiddle with the zipper. He got increasingly frustrated as the zipper continued to snag. He didn’t want to break it, but it refused to cooperate and he couldn’t be held accountable for what he’d do to it if it continued to defy him. He finally dragged Luvon over wordlessly by the arm to give it a go. The guy may have been the shortest of their group, but he was also stronger than Vaile (not that he’d admit it out loud), and he was the resident clothing expert. If anyone could get the dress fastened, it was him, surely? “...” “What’s the problem?” “You may have forgotten, but Altani is almost twice my height. I can’t go any higher.” Luvon demonstrated, reaching as far as he could with the zipper, which was still only up to the bottom of Altani’s shoulder blades (and the dress was meant to zip up to her hairline). “Yeah you dumb-dumb, give him a boost!” Mogren helpfully suggested. “There is no need for name-calling, and no, that will not be necessary. I am sure Cahsi has a stool around here somewhe–eep!” Too late! Vaile didn’t want to wait any longer. He’d already been milling about for an entire bell, and Cahsi’s room was such a disaster zone right now, who knew how long it’d take to find a stool. He lifted Luvon up around the waist so he could reach the rest of Altani’s dress. “Before you say anything, I know. Just do the rest,” Vaile said before Luvon could pipe up about the various furniture around the room he could have used instead of this truly undignified alternative and lack of respecting boundaries. Cahsi coughed to stifle a laugh, and Altani did her best to stay still, but her slightly trembling shoulders betrayed how amusing she found the mental image of what was happening behind her. Mogren was under no obligation to stay quiet, and their squeaky little laughs were the only sound for a moment until Luvon complied. One, two, three seconds. A bit more snagging, but he did it. “Please put me down now, Vaile. And ask next time!” Luvon tapped Vaile’s wrists impatiently. “Right. Sorry. Thanks.” Vaile’s social blunder tricked him into polite terms. After all, he had just manhandled the guy and demanded he help. 

Once safely back on the ground, Luvon dusted himself off and offered a smile. “You’re welcome. Now, Tani, how does the dress feel? The fit seems rather agreeable, for the style. There weren’t any extra fabric bunches or too much strain. I’d say Hancock got your measurements just right, somehow…” “Yeah, let’s not think about that. Just promise not to go back to him again for clothes, he’s a creep,” Cahsi shuddered. Altani did a little twirl, showing off the dress to the room. The others gave their praises. Mogren had finished her braids during everything else, and pulled them back into the rest of her hair, which lay atop her head in a bun with some additional braids surrounding it. “It feels great! Though from now on maybe I’ll stick to shopping with my friends and trying on garments before buying. Good teamwork on the dress, you two! Though Lulu did most of the work, ha!” “And what about me, kupo?” “Fantastic, flawless, amazing job, Ren!” Altani had gotten a hand mirror at some point and was admiring the braids with a sparkle in her eye. The moogle puffed up at the praise. Vaile clapped his hands together loudly, once. “Yep, the dress looks great. Well, now that everyone seems ready, why don’t we get this show on the road?”

He expected everyone to agree and for them all to file out the door at a rapid pace (he was unsure about Mogren, actually–was Cahsi going to cast a concealing or trans-mog-rification spell on them? Or would they be ditching the puffball for the night?). Instead, everyone was giving him an appraising look. “We can’t have you leaving the house like that, Vaile. Just a few little touches should do!” Cahsi shook her head, grabbing her makeup bag. “Wouldn’t you like to have pretty nails like the rest of us?” Luvon was suddenly holding two different dark shades of nail paint out in front of him. “I think you owe Mogren a little apology for throwing them earlier. How’s about a little styling session?” Altani held up a comb and some pins, while Mogren had a bottle of hairspray and was cackling maniacally. It was a completely unfair fight, four against one. Vaile didn’t stand a chance. 

[silkclan-gossip]

SilkClan – Moon 1 By Snakepaw 🐾

Hey there, it’s Snakepaw climbing my way up to the top—literally and figuratively! I’ve been keeping my ears open and paws busy, and trust me, there’s a lot going on in SilkClan that no one’s talking about. Good thing I’m here to break the silence. Let’s get into it, because things are getting interesting.

🌕 Major Events:

Twoleg Nonsense: While I was up in my favorite tree (don’t ask how high), I spotted a Twoleg playing with a kittypet near our border. I swear, it looked like they were trying to teach it to pounce. Good luck with that! The warriors brushed it off like no big deal, but something feels off to me. Twolegs and kittypets don’t just “hang out” for no reason.

Duskkit’s Breaking Point: Look, I get it—being treated like a helpless kit can be a real thorn in the paw. Duskkit is fed up with being babied, and I’m here for it. He’s especially tired of Minkpelt hovering over him like a hawk. Not sure if he’s got a plan to deal with it yet, but knowing him, he’ll blow up eventually. Can’t wait to see how that plays out.

🌿 Warrior Drama:

Larkweb Scares Off a Rogue: So get this: Larkweb basically scared a rogue out of our territory with just his words. Yeah, no claws, no bloodshed—just a stare and some threats. It was pretty epic. But what’s up with Basilstar? She looked like she was annoyed by the whole thing. Maybe she wanted some action? Who knows, but something tells me she’s not exactly Larkweb’s biggest fan.

Wisteriaspeckle and the Chicken: Wisteriaspeckle strutted into camp with a Twoleg’s chicken dangling from his jaws. I gotta say, it was a bold move. But he’s been acting kind of… distracted? I heard him mumbling about Saplingstar and StarClan. Maybe he’s feeling guilty about taking from the Twolegs, or maybe he’s just trying to impress someone. Either way, that chicken didn’t last long—tasted great!

Burrowfleck’s StarClan Musings: Speaking of StarClan, Burrowfleck has been off in his own little world lately. He had another dream, but surprise, surprise—he’s not talking. I saw him staring at the sky like he’s waiting for something. Whatever it is, it’s got him all riled up. And he’s still holding a grudge against Pondquill. Can’t say I blame him after last moon’s fiasco.

🐾 Snakepaw’s Gossip Corner:

"You know what’s been bugging me? I keep feeling like I should be doing more around here. Yeah, I might be young, but I’m not useless. At least Posyclaw is cool enough to listen when I talk about it on patrol."

"Oh, and did you see the way Duskkit snapped at Minkpelt? I swear, he’s going to lose it one of these days. Bet you a mouse he makes a scene soon."

"I overheard Wisteriaspeckle, Burrowfleck, and Posyclaw having a pretty tight conversation by the stream. They’re getting really close, but what are they planning? Makes me wonder if they’re up to something big."

Relationships Rundown:

Crush Alert: Word around camp is Minkpelt has a thing for Pondquill. Seriously? That guy? Well, Minkpelt’s always been a stickler for rules, so I guess they’d balance each other out. Whatever happens, I’m keeping an eye on this one.

Posyclaw, Wisteriaspeckle, and Burrowfleck: This trio is tighter than a thornbush. They’re always whispering about something, and I don’t trust it. Either they’re planning something, or they’re just best friends who love a secret. We’ll see.

Basilstar vs. Larkweb: Tensions are still thick between these two. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a showdown soon. Just saying.

That’s it for now, clanmates! Stay on your toes, because things are only going to get crazier. Until next moon, keep your claws sharp and your secrets sharper.

– Snakepaw 🐾

[arkus-rhapsode]

So I know I’m a bit late on this, but I’ve been mulling this over for a bit and with the recent VA actor strike talk I kinda came to some realizations. So you probably have heard something about Charles Martinet, famed voice actor for Mario retired. Being replaced in the upcoming WarioWare/Mario Wonder games. Now there were a lot of people giving their thanks to a man who has been the voice of a gaming icon for generations a proper send off, but something had really got me thinking. Charles Martinet is a celebrated VA for his work in a Nintendo franchise. Nintendo the company that isn’t really known for vocal performances.

Nintendo is many things in the gaming industry, but something that you’ll notice that even in the modern era, there really aren’t that many games nintendo puts out with voice acting as a prominent feature. With games like Pikmin, Splatoon, Animal Crossing etc, all having “actors” there’s still a big use of nonsense words. Even Mario while there was voice acting in it still used very brief phrases and words. Or even some games that are still silent experiences like Pokemon.

Now there is a few exceptions to this in terms of Nintendo franchises, Fire Emblem has been a murderers row of talent of the VA industry for years. And while British actors aren’t as well known stateside, the Xenoblade games are fully voiced narrative games. Games like Zelda have only now begun to include bigger named VAs in their works like Matt Mercer, Kate Higgins, and Chris Hackney.

But these come off more like outliers. Fire Emblem is a second party series that only in recent entries really started using well known voice acting talent and direction. And while Xenoblade Chronicles is wonderfully acted, it’s still a lot of unknowns in the broader voice acting scene. And as mentioned previously, Zelda is only now beginning to add fully spoken voiced talent in their games, yet even that game isn’t fully acted outside of certain cutscenes with a fallback on Twilight Princess style jibberish when engaging with characters. I don’t say this to diminish any of the work done by these actors, I’m just observing that when you think about their roles in comparison to Nintendo’s brand, it’s not that prominent.

For the sake of comparison, narrative heavy game publishers like Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and BioWare are no stranger to beefing up their games with well known VAs working in the California scene. And it makes sense why these publishers were targeted when VA’s proposed their own strike. But in that list Nintendo-one of the big video game publishers in the world-was left off.

So what does this mean, what was the point of this ramble? Well I think it really speaks to in my opinion the work Charles Martinet did. To consistently be the voice of a franchise for so long and so popular that everyone knew who they were. To be a well known actor for most of their work in a Nintendo game. The most popular Nintendo gaming franchise. A company where the acting talent/voiced narrative cutscenes is not really part of their selling points. I think that it’s very impressive of one VA was able to have so much of an identity given all of the hurdles.

Im excited for the new voice of Mario. And while im not going to make any predictions on how nintendo will deal with voiced narratives content in the future, I do think it is a testament to how this very old school approach to game presentation can still be effective.