#I'm very aware of my own levels of ridiculousness

[ajaxbell]

For my Veilguard Rook, I combined my Dragon Age obsession with my cdrama obsession to make sure I'm always thinking about everything all the time. Meet Lin Thorne, based on Yan Lin from Story of Kunning Palace.

[shsl-analyzer-guy]

In-Depth Character Analysis On All The DR Characters Because What, Are You Gonna Try And Stop Me? Who Are You, My Mom? Yeah, I Didn't Think So- Part 1: Kiyotaka Ishimaru

Yes, I'm aware the title is ungodly long, it's called comedy. Behold, a series inspired by my overwhelming hubris! Despite my better judgement, I love this series and (almost) every single one of its characters, so I decided to do this little series of posts on the side, just cuz!

So part 1 of like, 88 I think?, going through the characters from THH, DR 0, SDR2, UDG, DR3, and DRV3 with as much objectivity as possible, analyzing their character using only canon material from the games/anime/novel/canon adaptation they're present in. So sit back and enjoy while I go feral! Or just scroll, if you aren't interested. Whatever works for you.

Part 1- Character Design

Kiyotaka Ishimaru is depicted as a very aggressive honors student, and is shown as such through his very expressive facial features and his choice of clothing. He has large eyebrows and big eyes, and is given a uniform meant to make him look more like a soldier, reflecting his rigid dedication to the rules and his ethics. This uniform also includes an armband meant to signify his authority within the class as Hall Monitor and as the unofficial class rep. His sprites are very animated, with big gestures using his arm(s) and his mouth often wide open, whether in a wide smile or while yelling. This makes him one of the more expressive characters in THH specifically, as most of those characters are pretty restrained on a day-to-day basis and only become more exaggerated when put under high levels of stress.

Something interesting about Taka is that his talent changes from the original Japanese to the English translation. His official talent is the SHSL Public Morals Committee Member, meaning his original talent was that of discipline and social order. This was translated to Ultimate Moral Compass in English, as most western schools don't have a Public Morals Committee. This change in translation unintentionally shifted the perception of his talent from discipline to morality. This change in distinction has had a bit of a negative impact on the Western perception of his character, as rather than appearing to impose order on the other students, it instead appears at the beginning as though we, the audience, are supposed to view him as a beacon of morality. We're not.

Part 2- Character Introduction

Taka is one of the first characters to actually speak to Makoto directly, berating him for being late on the first day of school, despite the fact that he and everyone else had experienced a strange warping of memory. He also goes on to interrupt your first conversation with Sayaka, stating that their time is being wasted by 'ridiculous back-and-forth'. Despite this, when it's his turn to introduce himself to Makoto, he goes off on a tangent about how cool Makoto's name is. He's described by Makoto as a 'flawless honors student' and is most publicly known for his work on his local Public Morals Committee. He believes in putting 'every ounce of effort' into living, and imposes this belief on those he interacts with, something Makoto finds irritating(This guy is... kind annoying.").

So in short, Taka's first impression on the player is that he's a mildly obsessive honors kid, and a bit of a hypocrite that isn't fully aware of his own presence or the effect it has on the rest of the cast. The game goes on to use this lack of social awareness as a source of comedy, as he takes Monokuma's initial greeting as Headmaster fully at face value. He struggles to grasp the concept of the killing game at first, opening the discussion upon Monokuma's departure from the welcome ceremony with dialogue that sounds like it was pulled from a customer feedback survey("So guys, how would you define what we just experienced?"). He's not a malicious or hateful figure; he wants to work with the class but isn't quite sure how to.

Part 3- Early-Game Events

The game spends the early-game establishing Taka's more negative traits. He's shown to be inobservant and wrapped up in his own ideals and need to command authority to even notice Kyoko is missing and, upon being informed of her disappearance, cares more about her punctuality than her safety. "Not only is she late, she didn't tell anyone she would be late! A most unbecoming personality trait..."

He's also established as hypocritical once again, and a bit egotistical, as he has trouble fathoming the others' lack of discoveries but overinflates the importance of his own.

He then goes on to agree to Celeste's suggested nighttime rule for all the boys in the class, without letting them speak for themselves. While ultimately, no one has a problem with the rule, this is the first real instance of him doing something that, on paper, is beneficial to the group, but without considering how the others actually feel about it.

Taka doesn't show up in-story again until the day of the motive, when he goes around to the entire class demanding that they will now all have breakfast together every morning after the morning announcement. Although this is a good idea, allowing for everyone to bond and creating a morning headcount, he makes this decision for the entirety of the group. Leon and Makoto both complain about this if you speak to Leon outside the cafeteria, but ultimately go along with it because they don't want Taka to continue bugging them about it. So we can see that his efforts are perceived negatively by his classmates and go unappreciated.

Already we've seen Taka act overbearing and commanding over and over, inadvertently separating himself from the majority of his peers. He's direct and to the point, forming the breakfast meetings expressly to 'become friends and build trust' with the rest of the class. So we can see in no uncertain terms that he wants to befriend his classmates, but that his lack of social skills leads him to fail at every turn. He doesn't ask the class to join him for breakfast, he tells them. The strategy he employs doesn't leave room for choice, and ends up building resentment from his classmates.

It's not until the first body is discovered and the rules of the class trial are revealed that reality fully seems to set in for Taka. He, along with everyone else, are given the rules of a game they don't really want to play- that should they fail in the trial, all of them will be killed. And it sends Taka to a breakthrough- that some regulations can be harmful to those they're imposed upon.

There's now a shift in his actions- he's still trying to push for the class to follow the rules he's set, yes, but there's a newfound urgency to them. When Byakuya disappears in chapter 2, his concern has shifted from punctuality to his classmate's safety. He's the one to lead the search for Byakuya when he doesn't answer. Despite all his harshness, we can see that his strictness now comes from a place of genuine concern for the people around him, a direct parallel to earlier in the game when Kyoko went missing- "I'd like to think so. But I'm worried something might have happened to him."

This growth of character, though not focused on, is undoubtedly present. The dedication he has to his discipline and his ego are still fully intact, but now that dedication has moved beyond just order. It's an act of protection, for him and everyone else. The invisible threat of death has become all too visible with Sayaka's absence from their last breakfast meeting. If he can keep track of everyone, then he'll know they're still alive. He can prevent another murder. It imposes upon him the responsibility of the leadership he craves.

Part 4- Relationship(s)

Unincluding if the player actively seeks him out through FTEs, Taka only ever develops a real relationship with one character of the other fourteen in-game, though he does have some important dynamics with others. We'll continue moving in chronological order.

4.1- Ishimondo (these bitches gay?)

Throughout the game, whenever Taka is saying or doing something stupid, Mondo is typically the one to call him out on it or shut him down. While this doesn't start to take real shape until chapter 2, it is visible here and there in the early game.

But their connection doesn't really start to take focus until chapter 2, as Taka's failings as leader and Mondo's constant correcting him puts them at odds. Mondo's attitude is the antithesis of Taka's, living a life of complete risk and impulsiveness, yet has a matching level of energy, and despite being more intimidating on a surface level, he's able to actually befriend characters like Chihiro, Hina, and Sakura, while Taka's left on the out. One of the best examples of this is found not in the game, but in the stageplay adaptation, where both characters attempt to help Chihiro feel better about her weakness in the daily life segment.

When Byakuya starts mocking Chihiro for her fear, Mondo threatens him, and insists that Chihiro's weakness doesn't matter because she's a woman. But when this makes her upset and Sakuraoi call him out on it, he offers to help Chihiro train as an apology, acknowledging that his behavior was irrational. But when Taka tries to give her advice by telling her not to be weak anymore and is told to be reasonable, he can only insist that Mondo's words don't matter anyway.

In the game itself, Taka's barely present for this exchange, as it chooses instead to focus on Chimondo's relationship. Regardless, the animosity between Mondo and Taka is still made very clear in-game.

Mondo and Taka are both demonstrating the desire to protect their classmates here, but in different ways. Taka is the more logical of the two, focusing on keeping track of resources and devising a system of check for everyone to keep watch over each other in the breakfast promise. Mondo, meanwhile, wants to push the importance of actually getting everyone the fuck out of there. While their endgoal is the same, they disagree on how to go about it, and both their stubbornness drives them to butt heads as time continues to pass, leading to the sauna scene.

After being slowly built up in the background, Ishimondo's mutual anger finally comes to a head, with both not understanding the position that the other is in. Taka still believes Mondo's value to be what he provides to society, and as a biker gang leader, that's not much to a man that lives by lawful discipline. Meanwhile, Mondo can only see Taka as an egomaniac with a stick up his ass and doesn't know the background to why(and neither does the player without actively seeking out his FTEs). They each follow a different code of ethics, and view themself as the protector of the class, leading them to see each other as rivals. Yet, despite that, both of them still share their core value of total dedication, and so when finding a way to prove themself the better man, they end up with an endurance competition. For Taka, this reflects his belief that men connect by baring their souls, and do so by baring their bodies(something only learned in-game by approaching him for FTEs).

(This also leads to the implication that, while Mondo insisted on entering the sauna with all his clothes on, at some point, he was, in fact, naked while with Taka that night.)

The information as to what happened in that sauna is intentionally left unanswered, remaining fully private between both men in-game. The only thing either of them will say is that a brotherhood was formed between them, and that who won their initial contest no longer matters. Finally, Taka has found someone. Someone he can confide in and lean on, someone who'll support him and that he can support in turn("And if you can't do it alone, just find someone to support you, and you can support them back! That's how you can overcome any storm!" -Taka ch 1).

And then Chihiro's case happens.

At first, when the motives are introduced, Taka is one of the few to vocally insist no murder will take place. He has newfound confidence in the willpower of his classmates, and puts faith into everyone else for the first and only time. Even when presented with his own unknown secret, he finds it ridiculous that anyone would kill over the embarrassing memories and secrets. It's here that we truly see the highest high of this character- when he comes up with the idea to share secrets. When he presents this idea, he moves forward as usual, preparing to be the first one to reveal their secret and take the pressure off. But when his classmates insist they can't (Toko & Celeste) he doesn't keep chugging along, and he doesn't completely shut down, either. He looks around at his classmates, and he asks Chihiro. He actually steps back and asks for someone else's opinion.

And when she isn't yet comfortable, he backs off. He respect her wishes, and he stands with the class, ready to help them face their secrets the following day. Finding a friend in Mondo has softened his rigid exterior a little bit, enough to actually consider the opinions of the others. He's gotten comfortable. All that comes crashing down with the discovery of Chihiro's body the next morning. After finally taking a step back and letting his classmates- his friends- make their own choices, it directly leads to the murder of one of them("Dammit! I'm sorry, Chihiro... It's all because I wasn't strong enough!").

Taka fully blames himself for allowing Chihiro to be murdered, and as the guilt of failure starts to set in on him, he looks to his ethics and order to solve it. Chihiro may be dead, but the murderer will be condemned through the class trial("Justice always prevails! Right, bro!?"). A solution, a path forward, still exists for him. He still has Mondo by his side, and he and the rest of the class can surely prevent this from happening again, right?

The trial only validates him at first, revealing the existence of a serial killer among the group, someone so clearly immoral for her killing obsession. But it's not her. Why isn't it her? "Could such a heinous villain really be innocent!?" But his confusion is quickly stamped out- of course, it's Byakuya, the guy that's been threatening everyone and refusing to cooperate, the guy that has no regard for the rest of their classmates. "He kept calling this a game, right? So he'd totally be willing to do whatever it takes to 'win'!" But no, wrong again- he didn't know that the murder was in the boys' locker room, and was taken aback by Chihiro being AMAB. It should be him, someone so clearly antagonistic, that's how it's supposed to go, right?? But no, it's wrong! Why? And, who could kill someone like Chihiro at their most vulnerable?

He's failed. Taka's failed in every way conceivable. Mondo, the first person he's ever truly felt connected to, a murderer? Chihiro's murderer? That can't be it. Even long after Mondo's stopped arguing, Taka continues to push back against Makoto and Kyoko's accusations. It's a coincidence, that's not actually proof, anything to get them to stop, to save his brother, to save himself from the reality he's about to have to face. When sent into the BTB, it's Taka we fight in his despair, not Mondo. Until the very end, Taka won't acknowledge it. He can't. He can't bring himself to vote his Mondo a murderer, a killer. How could the man who gave him the chance no one else would, ever be so cruel? "I- I refuse to believe it... There's no way... no way he would kill someone! Why!? Why why why why why!? WHYYY!? Why did you do it!?"

He learns the truth of Mondo's story alongside the rest of the class, unable to process it all. It makes no sense. They were friends who trusted each other, who helped each other. And what about the man's promise? Doesn't that count for anything!? This doesn't sound right. This isn't Mondo, not his Mondo, not the man from the sauna. How could he have been so wrong about him?! It just can't be, but it is; the truth is but a slap to the face.

He was wrong. He stood by Chihiro's killer and defended him. He let his brother become the monster he saw himself as. He didn't stop it when he could have. He was blinded by his own beliefs, and as he watches Mondo's death, his spirit dies with him, the game cutting out all music as Taka screams, filling a deafening silence. "As Taka's sad screams invaded our skulls, we were each forced to realize once again..."

4.2- Kiyondo Ishida

Taka enters chapter 3 as a hollowed out shell of himself. He's gone near comatose, staring at nothing and saying nothing. He won't eat, won't speak, won't sleep, and although there are a couple weak attempts to get him back in action from Hiro("It's times like this where the committee chairman needs to get things going with a BANG!"), he's mostly left to grieve by himself, as the rest of cast is more concerned with the expanded school than the bossy guy they didn't like that much.

Monokuma even goes out of his way to torture Taka, to punish him for his grief, lying about the existence of a time machine just to fuck with his head and give him false hope, sending him further into despair- "Hmm... You sound disappointed. But actually, I was lying about the whole thing anyway. There's no such thing as time machines!" He's forced to become Monokuma's most successful project from the class, completely and utterly destroyed.

When he learns of Alter Ego, something in his head clicks. He can still talk to Chihiro. He can repent. He can apologize directly to him. So, with Makoto's help, he's brought to the laptop. His guilt finishes totally consuming him as he asks: "Do you... hate Mondo? And since I couldn't stop him... do you hate me?" His own self-hatred stemming from his failure is projected onto Alter Ego in one last attempt to come to terms with what's happened. The response he receives, unfortunately, is the culmination of all the toxic and unhealthy ideas of manhood the other boys carried with them via an attempted simulation of Mondo.

"You're not letting yourself get crushed under the weight of that responsibility, are you!? A man's only worth as much as the load he can carry! You get it, right bro!? Hell, what am I saying? Of course ya do!"

"So you're just gonna stand there, huh? Just wait for things to get better? Just take your time and get all depressed... Take the time to indulge your regrets... You might even start walking again without realizing it. Sure, that kind of mediocre thing might work for some people."

This speech, while attempting to inspire Taka to keep living for Chihiro's and Mondo's sakes, encapsulates the desperate need to be perceived as strong and untouchable that Mondo himself carried, and that Chihiro admired so much. It sinks its way into Taka, convincing him that the way to respond to his guilt is simple- pretend it isn't there! Mondo has clearly returned to him, and he's never letting him go ever again. He fully deludes himself, and he's fused with this idealized version of his bro. He permanently ties himself to Mondo's memory, and goes from the SHSL Public Morals Committee Member to something else entirely- Kiyondo Ishida, the unholy mixture of both men.

This revelation also leads him to an obsession with Alter Ego, viewing it as the vessel in which his bro was returned to him. He views it as another chance to protect his bro from ever being hurt again, as some divine second-chance he's been granted. All desire to be around the rest of his class is gone, replaced with this obsession. He's put at odds with Hifumi, who's also connected with the AI, and separates himself from the group that much more. When Alter Ego disappears, he can't handle it. He panics. He won't let his bro die, not again. And so he dooms himself, refusing to let go of the shadows of the past enough to see his own death looming before him, and he's killed in the early hours of the morning, led by desperation to his demise. And even so, the class can only worry about the semantics of when he died, barely mourning him.

5- Isolation (What's the point of this guy, anyway?)

Rather than learning from the mistakes both Chihiro and Mondo made by subscribing to the societal expectations of what makes a man, Taka ends up doubling down, burning away the optimism and more reasonable logic Taka used to have. Taka's story is that of a doomed fate to become the symbol of manhood and its self-destructing nature, leeching off of his first and only friend's unhealthy behaviors and sending him spiraling. And it's allowed to happen because of his social isolation.

From the very beginning of the game, Taka is singled out as annoying to be around. He's put in a negative light and viewed as unpleasant to spend time with. Every attempt to befriend or connect with a classmate is written off as a nuisance, a hindrance. Taka doesn't know how to make friends. He doesn't know how to do anything besides follow the rules and regulations he's been taught. He sticks to his regimen, because it's comfortable, and doesn't understand why others can't conform in the way that he does. He's very thoroughly isolated mentally and emotionally from his classmates at every turn, to the point where even in the very first trial he's standing with no one but the dead by his side(as Sayaka and "Junko" were positioned on either side of his podium).

All this is done with the deliberate intention to showcase his solitude, and more importantly, the loneliness that comes from it. It's to the point that when he finally does make a friend, he thoroughly idealizes him in his subconscious, coming to view him as some perfect person who'd even support him. It's inherently contradictory from his established beliefs going into the game, that a delinquent could be kind, but he accepts it wholeheartedly. He gets to know Mondo on some deeper level while in that sauna, and it's enough to rapidly develop a massive codependency on him. So when Mondo self-destructs and dies, so too does Taka.

Taka's purpose as a character is to suffer. He wraps himself in his moral beliefs, remaining steadfast in what he views as right and wrong, making judgement calls he's 100% sure of, and when they're challenged/disproven, he's thrown wholly out of whack. He exists to serve a purpose- what would've happened if Makoto didn't accept the truth about Sayaka? What happens when you let your idealism blind you to the truth? What happens when you blind yourself to the reality of the people around you, of the darkness in the people you care about? You self-destruct. He's tossed aside, killed as an accessory to the plot of someone who does nothing but manipulate the truth. He dies, and that's just it. His story is cut short; he doesn't get to heal or grow or come to terms with the truth. Such is the fate of the failed.

6- Afterword

...I didn't even touch his FTEs for this. Holy shit.

I'm gonna be honest, as much as I love Taka, I never expected this post would become as long as it did, or that I'd uncover such a dark fucking reason for why he gets as totally fucked over as he does. Don't get me wrong, I still really wish he'd lived and gotten to grow after this, but maybe his death was more well-written than I used to think. Good god.

[direquail]

You know the point of "protecting the children" dogwhistles, right? It's a reference to the idea that all queer people are child abusers. Super common belief among homophobes and transphobes, including (sometimes especially) gay ones.

It's also not just "a dogwhistle". When pressed to explain what exactly they want to protect children from, it's a ready-made emotional appeal to something that has broad social support. Most people, even if they don't like being around kids, are also not pro-child abuse. That's why conservatives go out of their way to invent (even if it's completely fictional) "reasons" why acceptance of gay and trans people amounts to child abuse. It helps them create an emotional connection with their target audience, and can be leveraged into logically ridiculous arguments like "well, if you don't agree with my platform, you must be pro child abuse, because I'm on the side of The Children".

"Protecting the children" is also super appealing to parents in particular, not because all parents are secretly authoritarians, but because it's super common to have a child and realize "Oh shit, I brought this person who can't defend themselves into the world and the world kind of sucks", and to feel horribly, horribly inadequate in the face of that.

I get very tired of people who mock, scorn, and ridicule people for falling for these rhetorical traps, or being snared by something that seems common-sense but disguises something ugly underneath. They are traps. That is what they're meant to be. That is why there are gay people who fall for anti-queer rhetoric, and get pulled into exclusionist or violently reactionary circles. We all have things we are vulnerable to, whether that is a history of being abused or a deep fear that we cannot protect our own children, who we brought into the world and are responsible for the protection of. And we gain nothing by mocking the latter.

I'm sure it makes some people feel great to say "well if you were really who you claim to be, you wouldn't fall for this shit", but frankly, that's a stupid-ass take. It misses entirely that these messages are carefully crafted by the people who hate us! They workshop these statements! They spend months or years trying to find the right message and when they find it they use the hell out of it, because it works. Because they are listening to the public conversations people are having online, and it doesn't take any level of basic agreement to be capable of regurgitating the party line word-for-word.

I am so sick of people who look at a deeply-embedded struggle over social and political ideals and think that this fight won't demand our whole brains and hearts and souls and yeah, we might fuck up because we care deeply and sometimes, people with bad intentions prey on that. On our grief and our fear and our rage.

And I'm frankly a lot more nervous around people who refuse to be aware of that, especially when they loudly mock the people who are willing to acknowledge their own fallibility and explore how they got ensnared in something. People are not moral machines, they are people.

[save-the-villainous-cat]

Hiiii I hope requests are still open !! No worries if not ofc, but if they are; f!hero and m!villain with the villain flirting a ton until hero finally gives in and touches him like she's been wanting to all along 🫶 smth with an "it's your fault I'm in love with you, villain" vibe maybe

Your writing is absolutely incredible <33 have an awesome day!!

"You can be so creative," the villain murmured.

It wasn't necessarily the fact that the hero had handcuffed him to the bed which amused him. It was rather the horrible yearning she had sparked. Once again.

Amusing. Cruel in the bargain.

At this point he was aware of the type of fool he had become. Someone stubborn, someone who always fell for it. Someone who would burn himself a thousand times while reaching for her.

"Oh, thank you," she said. She was still sitting on his hips and levelled her weight. Clearly, someone this sadistic couldn't call themselves a hero. "I am impressed by myself, to be honest. This has got to be a new record. How long until you were in my bed? Thirty seconds?"

"Can you blame me? When you are promising all those sweet things to me?" He smirked, lowered his voice. "What was it again? You said you wanted to get down on your knees and put your tongue on my-"

The hero put her hand on his mouth immediately, but he still caught a glimpse of her ears turning red.

For the most part, she ignored his flirting, but for some reason, she had been more interested in him lately. She had returned the flirting and now, she was even touching him.

Which fried his brain to the fullest. He could barely concentrate when they were in a room together. It was ridiculous. He was losing his edge.

"You're truly stupid if you think I was going to go through with that." She leaned forward, her chest against his. "You know we do not always get what we want in this dog-eat-dog world."

He mumbled something under the hero’s hand and she pulled her arm away.

"If you truly mean that, then you should probably stop moving your hips like that…" He let his eyes drop to her waist and let them wander, only slightly distracted by how clearly visible her hip dips were today.

"I like challenging you," she said.

His hands would probably fit perfectly into those sweet indents.

He bit the inside of his cheek.

"Is that so?" he whispered, his eyes still occupied.

Would she like it? To be held like that? Would she guide his hands there? Would she ask him to touch her there?

He couldn't help but imagine what it would feel like to feel her skin against his fingertips. His heartbeat increased heavily.

He squeezed his eyes shut and frowned.

At his very core, he was a slave to his own cravings. A true loser.

"You look very tortured right now." Her voice was still soft. Still sweet.

He opened his eyes again and stared at the hero's lips through half-lidded eyes.

"I..." He didn't quite know what to say. He knew he wasn't the brightest, but was that really all it took to defeat him? His pretty nemesis sitting on his hips?

"Take your time…" She smiled and he would have melted right then, right there. But slowly, he realised that he was in big trouble.

She had tied him to the bed.

She was distracting him.

She waited for reinforcement.

"Uh…uncuff me? Please?"

"No way." He had to concentrate. He had to focus. She sighed softly. "I'm way too easy on you. I blame those good looks of yours, my boss won't accept that, though."

Suddenly, she put her hand on his chest and let her fingertips crawl up to his neck where they dipped under the shirt. Running along his collarbone.

Good lord.

"This is your fault, all of this. You shouldn't say those things to me, you shouldn't look at me the way you do…" She dug her nails into his shoulder gently. Their eyes met.

He took in a sharp breath.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Don't apologise. Just try to be a good boy."

He nodded.

Both of them knew that wasn't happening for as long as him being the enemy meant they'd end up like this regularly.

[andmaybegayer]

Every now and again someone will make the claim that "Calories In Calories Out weight loss techniques don't work" and a brain genius will round the corner waving a conservation of energy equation to tell this person that they're an idiot and I do not care for the brain geniuses here.

The brain geniuses are fundamentally misunderstanding several things, potentially willfully. Calories In Calories Out isn't a fundamental truth, it's the process of tracking estimates of energy consumption and usage and the problem is that both of those numbers are highly variable and nearly impossible to track reliably without continuous intervention.

The Calories in Calories In Calories Out process typically means "the number on the side of a bag of food" and "your basal metabolic rate plus activity energy" and importantly it is that and not the fundamental law of nature that conservation of energy is.

Metabolism is a very complicated thing to measure and, under real world conditions, the amount of energy you extract from food is extremely variable, depending on how and when you eat, the structure of your digestive system, your own hormone and enzymatic and bacterial profile, and many other things. The number on the side of a packet is a suggestion that is largely estimated empirically, not even measured by something as crude as a calorimeter, just added up from components and older estimates.

Similarly the amount of energy you burn both as a basic level and in activities depends on many things, basal metabolic rate estimates that you can do without specialized equipment and several days are extremely quick and dirty and are basically just simple thermodynamics estimates. Even if you do get your estimate spot on, the amount of energy you burn can change pretty dramatically in response to changes in diet, lifestyle, and situation. It doesn't help that the majority of many people's energy consumption is passive metabolic energy consumption and that's regulated hormonally, largely beyond your direct control or awareness.

I'm also sympathetic to this because I have completely given up on gaining weight. In my final year of high school after spending three years oscillating between 50 and 55kg my parents and I decided to try and increase my weight by eating more calories, I tripled my breakfast calorie intake, added supplementary protein, ate like 1.5× more at other meals, all while slightly decreasing my activity level because I had dropped some extracurriculars, It felt like a ridiculous effort, I often ate way more than I was comfortable eating, and a year later I had hit an incredible 59kg and was stuck there.

I now just manage my diet and activity to keep on useful muscle mass and make sure I don't go below 50kg because my bones have enough problems to deal with.

If I was trying to lose weight, did the opposite of what I did, cut my calories by 30%, for months, increased my activity by a small amount, and I lost less than 10% of my weight, I would probably also move my focus elsewhere. I'm sure the system works for some people! But it's not as simple as adding up some numbers and making sure one is bigger than the other.

[lipstickchainsaw]

I'm about to start Act 3 in my rewatch of Arcane before the new season comes out, so this is as good a time as any to share my thoughts on how each of the characters in Arcane represent sociological forces.

This post is going to be long, so this post will be about Piltover:

Let's start with Marcus, who very much represents the 'Us vs. Them' mentality topside. A group of people who feel the enforcers didn't do enough to stamp out the criminal element during the uprising, and is left with a lot of resentment and insecurity about why that didn't happen.

But when they do try for that, they very quickly find out that the consequences are horrific, and now they have blood on their hands, and they're in power while their more experienced superiors have been removed from the equation, so they're floundering, facing pressure on every side, and reacting with more violence that doesn't resolve anything and just further increases the unrest.

(Until they get blown up by Jinx' long-repressed pain that they played a part in encouraging, but we'll get to that.)

Marcus doesn't really have a characteristic weapon, but if he did, it'd be a shovel, not just because this is the guy who found a hole and kept digging, but also because he discovered that this hole ended up being his grave, first metaphorically, and then literally.

Grayson, by contrast, represents the people who were there during that conflict, who fought in it and saw how monstrous things got. She's the boots on the ground, though, not the political class, so she didn't just see the results, she saw what it took to get there, and she's not eager to get there again. She's the part that maintains the divide, sure, but with a handshake right over the line. Willing to let things be and look the other way if it helps keep the peace.

But that peace is lopsided, and there is still a lot of unrest brewing under the surface, so when the peace breaks she's the first to go, caught entirely off guard by the ambition and anger still brewing in the Undercity.

Moving up that chain, we get Jayce, the well-off (but not ridiculously rich) upper class whose self-image insists that they are regular working class, and them 'making it' proves anyone can. The one who's grown up with surprising privilege he is not aware of, and who sees the world as remarkably simple, and the only reason problems still exist is because either the elite don't really care to solve them, or they're just not smart enough and Jayce's class would cut the knots that need cutting!

This insistence that things are actually pretty simple, that everything is just a nail to hammer down, is what allows him to be manipulated and taken for a ride by anyone actually savvy, but the power he ends up with still allows him to do a lot of damage (and makes people want to manipulate him).

But he's so stuck in his own head, and thinking he's fairly average and normal (and just smart and charismatic, instead of privileged), that he can't see other perspectives as reasonable.

But unlike the Marcuses of Piltover, the Jayce class started off genuinely meaning well. Their view of the uprising was a kind of beneficent condescension, as they were a step removed from the actual pain involved, so they likely went 'oh those poor people, driven to something like this by their poor lot in life (and not because we're actively exploiting them), clearly we should help them'.

And then when the help he's decided the Undercity needs doesn't work, because he never bothered asking them what they wanted or needed, he's confused and upset and, uh, kind of overreacts.

Going up one level more, you end up with Caitlyn. Caitlyn is the new upper class, who knows of the uprising only because of her mother's stories (and maybe because her mother was a bit more stressed for a couple of weeks when she was six), but otherwise the whole thing is too far removed from her personal experience it doesn't even register. She has seen just enough from the Graysons of the world to see that as a more honest way of living life than what her mother does, and so she decides to slum it, insisting she should be treated just as everyone else, unaware of how her class privilege affects any of those interactions as well.

Seeing it as a more honest living, as a goal to target with a single-minded focus, does lead her to approach the problem with a bit more understanding, allows her to actually see the Undercity and its many aspects, but even then, she's still coming from above, and her family is still responsible for much of that suffering, and when that check comes home, her appreciation for those nuances doesn't exactly survive.

Now, I said Jayces think the only reason things aren't better is because the Mels and Cassandras don't particularly care about solving those problems, and, uh.

They really don't.

The actual rulers of Piltover remember the uprising as this annoying item on the itinerary they had to deal with for a couple of weeks years ago, and they've passed responsibility to keep that from happening again off to the Graysons, so they can focus on the things they do care about: Getting richer and more influential within the council.

And while yes, Mel may be the more progressive rebel of her family, but in Piltover, what she wants is to not be the least of the Medarda's, and if that means turning Piltover into a scientific powerhouse, that's the way to do it!

The Undercity doesn't even register to her, and it doesn't for Cassandra either, as Caitlyn accuses her of, later (and I'm sure that's an argument that's happened in a ton of places).

Now, it's true that both of them eventually vote for peace, but that's because of their emotional connection to the Jayces and Caitlyns.

After all, the thing that makes Mel work is that she's been aimlessly building up political and economic capital, until she catches feelings for Jayce and starts to look at how to spend that capital, only its filtered through the lens of Jayce's own biases, because she doesn't have alternate lenses into the whole problem.

They've spent so long not giving a shit about anything other than their own status within the game the Establishment created for them, that when they finally do act, they are forced to do so without actually grasping it.

And that is, of course, the fault of the Establishment itself, the embodiment of Piltover as an entity: Heimerdinger.

Because Heimerdinger is an institution. Yes, he is the head of the council, but in a sense, he is the institution that underlies that council as well.

And like every other institution, he's slow to change. He completed his mission, achieved his goals, and has been enjoying the fruits of that labour for a good hundred years. He thinks he's done, and so he's stopped paying attention, at least in a structural sense, to the point where he isn't even playing the game the other council members are.

He's assured himself he is the board, and that everything is basically fine. The uprising was probably just a brief flash of something with little consequence to him. It was contained, so it's no motivation for institutional change.

And so he doesn't realise how bad things have gotten, how much the foundations of his grand city of progress have rotten and crumbled until Jayce (via Mel) kicks him out to form a new Establishment, and he finally has to think about what the fuck is actually happening.

It's in part a result of his long lifespan, and that sudden change is the one thing he's most afraid of, because what if the change goes bad?

The problem is, of course, that the change will happen regardless, and he's just neglecting to be part of it.

But hey, he does manage to be out of office when the result of his neglect actually blows up.

Good for him.

Speaking of his neglect, as we've gone up, we most also go down!

Viktor is, technically, the Undercity resident who's made it! He got out of the Undercity, and became the assistant of the Dean of the Academy, one of the highest aspirations possible!

But of course the Undercity hasn't left him. Literally in the sense of the degenerative illness, of course, but metaphorically in that, uh, nobody gave him the respect he deserved, unless he outright clawed for it.

Like, what the fuck is this guy doing as Heimerdinger's assistant? If this guy got the resources that Jayce got from Cassandra, imagine where he'd be?

But no, he has to work twice as hard to get half as far, and, unfortunately, he soon learns there's no point in asking other people for help, because they'll just tell him 'no', anyway. He'll still have to go at it himself, and he now realises he doesn't fit in the Undercity anymore either.

He has only himself, and like everyone in that position, uh, he quickly burns out. In this case, the tragedy is that he doesn't realise he does have someone next to him who he could reach out for help, and who won't go 'you're dying? That sucks buddy, but such is life!'

And instead of noticing that, in his burnout, he ruins that, too.

And as much as a lucky Viktor might partner with the Jayces of the world, he won't get the credit, and the Jayces of the world quickly get the kind of accolades that draw them away from the original work, and from helping Viktor with, you know, the whole dying thing, and the businessman beats the scientist regardless.

And we see this happen despite the good intentions of everyone involved, which is what makes this a sociological, institutional pattern.

Going the other way, however, is Singed, whose role as a disgraced scientist who clearly crossed a number of moral lines makes for an interesting commentary on both Heimerdinger's tenure, and Silco's proclivities, because he found a refuge in the Undercity, that was more willing to accept the many lines he crossed.

In part because they hardly have the luxury to turn him away. Silco's entire plan hinges on Singed's shimmer, so he gets to be a powerbroker there, too. Thriving as Silco lets him poison everything down there.

[sonkitty]

The Sideburns Scheme (Good Omens 2)

(Previous version: The Sideburns Scheme v1)

This post will likely be regularly updated as I process my thoughts.

Last Updated: 07/08/2024

This is short:

This is long:

There is more to to it than above, and we are going to work through that.

Crowley's sideburns change in length in season 2. I have worked out some of how and have some theory on why.

...

Games

Good Omens 2 has two significant findable games. One of those games is this one that I'm choosing to name here as The Sideburns Scheme. The other game is almost certainly called Earthly Objects.

...

Space

The absolute most crucial thing to understand for my theory is space. Character presence, movement, and likely memory all impact the space, but the space decides the length based on those things. The space is practically a character reading the story with us and making decisions on what length to give Crowley in response.

If you walk away from my post with only one thing and one thing only, I want it to be this:

The Bentley is Crowley's own demon space, and the driver's door to that space is its primary threshold.

...

Effect

When I refer to the effect, I will specifically mean the changing of the length.

But what is the effect from that?

On its most basic level, short trends human, and long trends supernatural with that length increasing depending on the supernatural elements within the space.

Crowley takes actions to change the length as he sees fit since the lengths have their own benefits. They help him manage his personal space. He probably did this sideburns thing to himself. If it was done to him, it's something ridiculous like a delayed after-effect of Crowley driving through fire on the M25 in season 1. That freeway was his work as a demon and very effective work at that. Get it? Side BURNS. The outside of his car that is now functioning as his home was burned. The bookshop was burned too, and he was briefly in it while it was on fire.

Even though the length is what I focus on, the sideburns even change on how full of hair they are, and sometimes aren't even...well, even.

...

Earthly Objects

So far as my own theories go, Earthly Objects is a large, difficult, hidden game that has findable solvable puzzles in Good Omens 2. It is a layered type of game. The characters themselves are playing it, some with a higher awareness than others. An audience member can play it by trying to figure out how the game itself works. I've played it in my attempts at understanding the sideburns. It is amazingly and infuriatingly complex.

The Earthly Objects game is somehow related to this Sideburns Scheme game. Both deal with thresholds so encounter each other.

...

The Tutorial (Storming Out)

In episode 1, there is a sequence that looks like Crowley storming out of the bookshop. That sequence is a dual tutorial of both Earthly Objects and The Sideburns Scheme.

The story is trying to make it obvious that it is lying to you about what happened because of the prominently featured earthly objects that were left untouched. They are the cardboard box and the plate of Eccles cakes. The cardboard box was left unquestioned by a fake Crowley. The being leaving the private room was Gabriel pretending to be Crowley. The being passing by an untouched and unquestioned cardboard box was Aziraphale pretending to be Crowley.

In trying to analyze the sideburns, an audience player might, and should, ask the question, "How else am I supposed to figure out how the sideburns work if I know the story is obviously lying to me here?"

The answer is in the question. You can't. You won't. Or, if you do, you're going to have a very hard time of it with a refusal to recognize what just happened. I did not recognize the fakes when I asked the question. I mainly recognized that those earthly objects were featured in a suspicious way, and Crowley himself looked off.

Even though the sequence is a blatantly obvious lie, there is a hidden message within it that is true. That message is a tutorial of how the sideburns work. The story is tricky like that.

As such, a lot of my analysis is still going to be on what is presented nonetheless. I'll note if and when I have a guess at its deceptive nature.

...

Another important component in my theorizing is that Good Omens 2, through Earthly Objects, is especially interested in these three things: doors, windows, and pockets—especially pockets. We'll be seeing these things a lot within the spaces when studying the sideburns.

...

The Past

The Season 2 present day storyline is broadly solvable for the sideburns without examining the minisodes.

If anything, the minisodes can get in the way of analysis until the present day mechanics are better understood.

The minisodes offer other things to examine more closely regarding the spaces themselves, but these things don't really seem to tell you how the sideburns work in the present day. One can look for parallels regarding the hair in the first two minisodes for what styles read more as "human" or "supernatural".

The 1941 minisode really puts an audience player to the test because it reverses how the sideburns work with short trending supernatural, and long trending human. I don't know why the test is there, but from my own play, that's what it seems to be.

The Job minisode offers a clue to pay attention to when a roof is around, which then actually gives a clue about the roof of Crowley's car in the ending credits.

Generally, the minisodes suggest to keep an eye out for fire and hats or head gear too.

This post focuses on the present day, but you can find links to my notes on the minisodes at the end.

...

Home Base Concept - The Bookshop

Aziraphale's bookshop is where a lot of the present day season 2 story takes place, and it is nearly a second home to Crowley. Aziraphale himself is an angel, or a former angel.

The bookshop's default reading on Crowley being with just Aziraphale is medium-long. The sideburns shorten closer to a proper human-space short when the two are in a private room together.

These readings recognize Crowley as a supernatural entity but still giving something shorter than a longer reading around other angels. Most likely, that's because Crowley and Aziraphale are supernatural friends whose relationship is very similar to human partners.

When other angels are around, the bookshop's reading on Crowley increases the length. It's most noticeable from Gabriel, but that's likely because Gabriel is the angel who is around in the bookshop for most of the story.

Muriel shows up later, and Muriel is an angel, yet the sideburns are short. What gives?

The bookshop takes Muriel literally when Muriel claims to be human. It probably helps that Aziraphale literally accepts this claim even if he is fully aware that Muriel is an angel. As such, the reading on Crowley is that being a demon who tends to be around humans and pretend to be human often enough, the sideburns should still be the proper short length for this "human" encounter.

Later in the story, Muriel admits to not being human. Crowley acknowledges a full awareness that they are an angel. The next time they are in the bookshop together, both with other angels and alone, the bookshop then gives the longest type of sideburns to Crowley.

After that, the bookshop's not really going to tell us about other specific angels, such as Michael.

The main thing we're told is that other angels who are not Aziraphale are going to make that length longer, with at least Gabriel and Muriel being among those angels. Lying by claiming to be "human" will make them shorter nonetheless.

So, what does longer mean among the other angels? My general guess based on character behavior and story events when it's on, is that it's also a mark of rank from Crowley's time as an angel before his fall. The reading comes from a latent memory within the angels themselves. The story has repeated implications he was a high rank, seeming to be most specific at "First-Order Archangel" among those implications.

Crowley seems to be in charge among angels. He becomes a decision-maker and ends up directing the action.

When he is with only himself and Gabriel, he is in charge.

When he is with only himself and Muriel, he is in charge.

When he is with only himself, Aziraphale, and Gabriel, Aziraphale might make suggestions but otherwise follows along with Crowley's direction of what to do.

When Crowley is in the bookshop scene with both the powers of Heaven and Hell, he is in charge right up until he says to Aziraphale, "You got this?" Before that, he is quick to deflect a war, and they basically just let him with him yelling, getting the cardboard box, and recovering Gabriel's memories.

There is a moment where it looks like Michael is taking charge by commanding mortals be turned into salt. Crowley quickly steps in to volunteer to take care of it. Saraqael looked ready to do what Michael ordered. They abide and let Crowley escort the mortals out.

Do longest length sideburns do more than mark rank? I suspect they are related to memory, and they are always present during three access points of memory with Gabriel, who has amnesia. Each one is brief, and it's hard to say how much the information given is actually used. One access point is a mix of Gabriel's and God's voice. Another is a mix of Gabriel's and someone else's voice who sounds like a woman. The third access point is that Gabriel took his memory out of a matchbox, no, wait, he took it out first. In the first two access points, Gabriel's eyes turn purple, which seem to be a mark of rank on him as the Supreme Archangel.

When Crowley has longer sideburns in two specific human spaces, the speaking human within the space relays a longer-term memory about a meeting.

...

Home Base Concept - The Bentley

Did you ever notice how abruptly the encounters with Shax and Beelzebub ended when Crowley was in or near his car? That was weird, right? Here is what I believe happened.

The Bentley has special rules as a space, and each of those encounters ended with Crowley kicking out the other demon, possibly on accident in two of those instances.

The threshold to the Bentley is mainly the driver's door, but the driver's seat acted as one when Crowley was summoned to Hell.

Of note, the sideburns are long in these instances though not at their longest-length that happens in the bookshop. Based on Crowley himself, Shax, and Beelzebub, that altogether suggests a default demon reading from the car. It can change, but it has to be managed through Crowley in the season's ending.

Back to the topic of the encounters, let's move on.

...

Shax at the Door

Crowley placed himself on the threshold and possibly made Shax wait a full hour before answering his phone. When answering, some of his body is touching the roof of the car, which makes it so that he's not touching that door panel exclusively. Then he turns around when he would presumably not be touching his car but at least fully intending to touch it, which seems to suffice for the story. Shortly after, he is leaning against the roof again.

By taking this action, he is allowing Shax closer to the space around the car, so that she can talk to him.

For the shots we are allowed to see him from the front, he is touching the roof, door panel, and sometimes we see the window pane is included the lean as well.

Before he asks, "Is that all?", he stops touching those parts of the car entirely and cannot be seen touching any other part.

Shax disappears from the scene.

By removing the touch from the car, the home base kicked her out. The forced exit seems unintentional.

...

Summoned by Beelzebub to Hell

Beelzebub uses a fly already inside the car. Crowley did not invite Beelzebub in, but the fly is enough to get their metaphorical foot in the door.

After Beelzebub says, "Hello, Traitor," Crowley makes a hit against his driver's seat, then says, "Oh."

Beelzebub then does not fully manifest in corporal form into the car and summons Crowley into Hell.

Crowley very deliberately leans back and while we can't see his back constantly against the throne during the entire scene, it is implied, bare minimum, he is not leaning forward while on that throne for most of it. He's gathering intel despite his evident reluctance to be in Hell during the scene.

The throne he sits in represents his driver's seat. Even when Crowley seems to want to lean forward, he'll try to not lean too much or he will lean to the side. Until the end of the conversation, he only leans forward off the back of the seat when he asks something he does not answer himself ("Is that a new face?" "How?"). As in, he is inviting that part of the conversation into his space. He'll lean most toward Beelzebub's throne, even making sure to place his hand on the seat. The seat is to Crowley's own left, which is akin to the passenger seat in his car.

Crowley never stands up from the throne and only leans too far forward possibly at the end and possibly on accident. Beelzebub's "So if you hear anything, you come to me first, yeah?" is good enough to end the conversation, and that was a conversation where they were not invited. Crowley himself has no further questions and no further interest in actually being in Hell. The intel gathering is done. As such, the space reads that business is done and sends him back to the car instantly, whether Crowley intended for that exact thing to happen or not.

...

Shax in the Car

Crowley allowed Shax in by not verbally denying her entry and looking at where she would manifest. He kicked her out by non-verbally revving up his car even more after doing it once and giving her a second look. The home base understood it was about to de-activate and kicked her out.

...

Activation Points for longer sideburns:

-The bookshop under the right conditions

-The Bentley under the right conditions

-The pub (dependent on its threshold)

-The music shop (dependent on its threshold)

-Hell (notably shared with the Bentley)

-Heaven (assumed, notably shared with the pub)

-The park (only slightly longer because of a newspaper door, find out more here)

...

What are the right conditions for the bookshop to make Crowley's sideburns longer?

Within the season 2 present day storyline, longer seems to be a default reading actually. It's more like certain exceptions must not be met.

-No individual angel claiming to be human

AND

-Not in the private room with Aziraphale after encountering Gabriel

AND

-Not alone before an angel activates the effect.

...

The sideburns will be at their longest-length in any significant angel encounter that has an angel who is not Aziraphale and not pretending to be human. Those scenes are:

Scenes with only Crowley and Gabriel

Scenes with only Crowley, Gabriel, and Aziraphale

The overall general scene with angels, demons, and two humans, where Crowley is actively trying to undo a declaration of war.

The scene with Muriel after everyone else has left.

...

There's a small chance they lengthened slightly after first encountering Muriel, then going to talk to Aziraphale in the private room, but I can't really tell.

The sideburns are long during the ball, some parts being very hard to tell the right sideburn has reached the longest-length when there is a stronger focus on Gabriel's presence at the ball.

...

What are the right conditions for the Bentley to make Crowley's sideburns longer?

These conclusions are based on clues from the story itself:

-Staying parked for a long enough time with Crowley inside

-Approaching the car itself being isolated in a familiar area at night

-Standing at the threshold with utmost precision in the season's ending

The sideburns are at their longest-length in the season's ending up to the final cut right before the credits start.

I currently think it is because of a combination of stillness and his left arm's exclusive touch on the threshold. There is plenty more going on with such a touch, but I think those two factors are what are mainly increasing the length.

..

Activation Points for shorter sideburns:

-Driving the Bentley for a long enough time after de-activating it as a home base. His plants are ensured to be behind him as well, and he drives alone.

-Exiting far enough away from the bookshop, assuming the bookshop already activated longer sideburns. This distance expands during the story, explained further below.

-Being present in human spaces. Thresholds can both force and counter this effect, dependent on their design.

-Entering a private room with Aziraphale within the bookshop shortened them from the bookshop's main first floor after encountering Gabriel.

...

Connecting the Two Home Bases

During the specific season 2 story, Crowley regularly parks his car across the street from the bookshop. He himself parks it by the coffee shop in episode 1 twice and in episode 5 once. During episodes 5 and 6, the car remains parked by the coffee shop. Aziraphale chooses to park the car by the coffee shop near the end of episode 4. Otherwise, Crowley parks the car across the street from the pub in episode 2 and right by the pub in episode 3.

In episode 1, once Crowley reaches the middle of the street and starts to count to ten, the sideburns are a shorter length that better matches before he entered the bookshop.

In episode 2, we see Crowley with longer sideburns right before he crosses the threshold whereas episode 1 showed them still short. At some point, he leaves and is seen with short sideburns again, across the street.

In episode 3, Crowley exits the bookshop to interact with Shax. He never crosses the street and remains mostly along the sidewalk. Still, it might be considered further in distance and is longer for the sideburns than seen in episodes 1 and 2.

In episode 4, when Crowley exits the bookshop, his sideburns are again longer than the usual shortness around humans up to that point of the story. Episode 1 is structured to tell us that the sideburns get shorter from the bookshop threshold to the center of the street. Episode 4 shows us the sideburns did not get shorter from the bookshop threshold to the center of the street. They stayed longer.

Why?

Crowley and Aziraphale connected their home bases for when the Bentley is parked across the street, intentionally or not. I think it is intentional, but I have a very loose grasp on a possible reason.

...

So, how did they connect their home bases?

Aziraphale borrowed Crowley's car. Crowley borrowed Aziraphale's bookshop.

Put another way, Aziraphale inhabited Crowley's home base without Crowley for a certain amount of time and over some distance between the two of them. Crowley inhabited Aziraphale's home base without Aziraphale for a certain amount of time over some distance between the two of them. Both time and distance contribute to changing the length from each of these homes.

Crowley and Aziraphale remotely contact each other once during this borrowing phase. Assuming this effect is memory-related, those spaces now share those memories.

When Crowley and Aziraphale take Crowley's plants, living things that inhabited one home base, then another, during this process, they are finalizing this connection.

The plants will now have memories of being in each space, and each space will now have memories of the plants inhabiting them.

I suspect these plants are a key part of the connection that is better covered in my Earthly Objects theorizing, specifically here:

The Pocket Chain Rainbow Connection Part 4 - The Door Trick and The Door Catch

Yes, despite Crowley's seeming reluctance and discomfort with loaning his car, I think forming this connection was intentional from both of them. I go over the specifics of how I interpret the scene here: Post #31 (technically).

All the same, back to my main stuff. My theory is the home base border along the center of the street has disappeared. It is actually more like a radius around the bookshop expanded, but that's the main place the border was understood to exist.

Onto my loose grasp of a possible reason.

This connection—this disappearance of that border—does not protect the rest of the street from the incoming demon invasion when it starts. The demons enter the area without invitation.

After Crowley enters the bookshop for the ball, as best I can tell, no humans are on the street. There is a bunch of fog, and it's dark, and there are demons. Eventually, there will be an angel there, but there are no humans.

Crowley escorts some humans to safety to exit the bookshop. However, when he dismisses them, we don't really see where they go. The story cuts away, and when we are back to Crowley's location, they are gone.

There are other times we've seen Crowley in or near his car with longer sideburns and no humans.

The basic idea is that the space surrounding Crowley's car, that we've been seeing, has split itself into two different spaces at once. One is the Earth where humans do what they do, as usual, but are now not disturbing Crowley while he is in his car. The other is the Earth where Crowley does what he does, not disturbing humans. The spaces then re-merge when the driving time deems it to happen. The "no humans" space is a supernatural-exclusive zone when it comes to angels, demons, and humans.

For whatever it's worth, the only living natural beings I can find in the area are plants, inside and out of the car, and that one fly before Beelzebub shows up inside the car (assuming that fly is indeed natural).

Instead of a person, such as Crowley, being two places at once, one place becomes two places at once. The car being Hell, and the pub being Heaven further support this idea. Each of those spaces are accessed by Crowley when Crowley has the longer sideburns and in that zone to begin with.

The mechanics are confusing with the flies. I don't fully get it, but it probably relates to the car having thresholds in a wider supernatural space.

In the case of the ball, the split didn't just happen by accident or through time alone. Crowley's car is near the bookshop, but he wasn't in it. It wasn't in its usual isolated area. The window is open before the invitations start but closed when he talks to Nina, so we're never shown when it's being switched from open or closed.

There is a very specific point where things start to change, but before that, there are also some specific things that happen. Namely, during each ball invitation shown on camera, Crowley accompanies Aziraphale. He does not say anything during the actual inviting and makes various touches during each scene. These touches generally include earthly objects, self-clothing touches, self-skin-contact touches, and...pockets. Pockets are a big, little thing in GO2 that I have a limited ability to understand and explain.

I'm sorry. It sucks. It really, really sucks that I cannot do better. I've picked up enough to know they're important so am telling you at least that much. Touches and pockets or not, there are still ball invitations, and things still change. Crowley gets his own special invitation that's to the bookshop instead of the meeting.

Once he accepts this invitation, he goes to the bookshop and approaches Gabriel in basically Demon Mode. I go into it more here: Post #73 (furniture).

I think Crowley was drawing out his own demonic energy to start the split, a shift from one zone to the other.

The shift is not instant. It's happening while Crowley is out in the street to make sure Maggie and Nina are on their way. The street is growing increasingly foggy as it is getting darker. Fewer and fewer humans are around as time passes.

It doesn't really seem to be completed until Maggie is walking toward the bookshop with Nina not long before her as next-to-last. Maggie herself is a human, but she seems to be a special type of human not explained in the story as to how or why she is different. Nina could be too, even if it's not as obvious. She is next-to-last.

If one excludes Maggie because she is human in some capacity, then it's probably done when Crowley himself enters the bookshop as a means to complete the matter, further confirmed with Shax arriving through the supernatural elevator in the pub instead of wherever the rest of the demons came from. The story referred to such a place as "stairs" when Shax was planning the invasion. An elevator is decidedly not stairs. It definitely raises questions about Shax with that kind of timing and wording.

Another thing about this special zone is that the Bentley is the only car around once the shift is done.

Speaking of the car, Crowley won't just drive away to re-merge these spaces. Not only that, he's not going back into that bookshop despite the indications in the dialogue he would.

Nope.

Instead, he goes to Heaven and spends time there until the war declaration goes off. Upon returning the following day, the merge has happened, either through the time itself or just the reset of the day. Sure, it could be the halo blowing up, but the people aren't shown as being in the street until Crowley himself is visibly there. As the games tend to work, it's probably a combination of these factors.

So, if Crowley and Aziraphale wanted to protect the street overall from the incoming invasion but somehow still needed this ball to happen with some humans, that's what they did to protect everyone as best they could.

It might even be a trial run for needing to protect Earth on a much bigger scale later.

Now, admittedly, Crowley did seem alarmed by the demons arriving, but both he and Aziraphale have been acting in certain ways to throw off whoever or whatever is reading them throughout this story. There is something about layering and switches they seem to have in the games they play that I don't fully understand.

By making the border expand, short sideburns are barely seen from that point onward for the rest of the season. Crowley's left sideburn is briefly shown as short when Maggie and Nina are leaving after talking to him alone in the bookshop. He is blurry and at some distance, easy to miss in the cut. The sideburns are in the shortening process for driving just before and during the ending credits.

I suspect the sideburns do more than all of that since they seem connected to memory in some way.

...

The Bigger Thresholds Trick

This part of The Sideburns Scheme is a significant crossover with the Earthly Objects Game as one of the Threshold Tricks Crowley does during Good Omens 2.

There are three special locations that have thresholds bigger than Crowley, but we'll talk about a certain two first.

Those locations are the pub and the music shop. They are human-specific spaces that make it quite difficult to develop theories like the one about the connection and the other about the existence of a supernatural zone. In these two places, Crowley's sideburns are longer.

During the story, both locations have one thing in common that seems to have nothing to do with Crowley. Both locations have an encounter with a human who remembers a meeting from some years ago and say as much to Aziraphale. Each encounter mentions lights of a similar nature.

And then...there's Heaven. This time, the sideburns are long, shorten, but they do not shorten to what is understood as the expected human space shortness. Regardless, one is left to guess the Heaven threshold is still relevant given the past two locations and noticing the threshold is bigger than Crowley.

I have covered these places more in-depth over time, but you can still look to my previous post about the sideburns for reference: The Sideburns Scheme

The past post lacks many things about Heaven in particular, but the main one I want to note is Muriel's relevance. As far as my own theorizing is concerned now compared to then, Muriel is someone Crowley trusts deeply. You can find out more on that theory in these two links: Bookend Buddies - Crowley and Muriel (Part 2)

...

The below is one of my favorite pieces of writing along the way of playing this game, and I have added it back into this main post for that reason and thinking it generally has value. I have updated it a few parts of it to match with my current understanding of things.

During Crowley's time in Heaven, the story puts a lot of effort into teaching us something about Crowley if we haven't figured it out by now. Well, sort of. The something is more evident to anyone willing and wanting to look for this type of information frame by frame. Crowley, for the most part, does not see people with his eyes. That is likely true of most other things as well.

His entire body language constantly tells us otherwise. He snakes his way about among pillars when talking to Muriel about bees. He glances back after passing Michael and Uriel. He turns his head in the direction of voices when he hears multiple angels discussing things on different screens. He taps Muriel on the shoulder directly. He knows to look downward to Saraqael's position. He even glances Saraqael's way without hearing them speak first at one point. He knows where to look toward Muriel when telling them, "You too." Everything about Crowley's movement tells us Crowley sees the angels.

One thing and one thing only informs us Crowley is not seeing the angels but is sensing them with his eyes instead.

Check his sunglasses.

His sunglasses will reflect panels of light, sometimes blurred panels of light, but they never ever reflect an angel in this tremendously well lit space with Muriel dressed in their all white Inspector Constable attire.

Most especially, check when Crowley turns to Muriel after they said, "That's pretty good, actually." He turns his head. They are literally on screen together. There is part of a more solid-looking white pane that's a light or something on the desk. We can see his eyelid. Move to the next frame, and we still see panels of light.

We do not see Muriel.

There are other times in the story where you can actually catch a reflection of a character in Crowley's sunglasses that threw me off. I saw it once when he was talking to Aziraphale by the car in episode 2 and again when talking to Muriel in episode 3. In episode 5, it happens during the ball with both the humans in the ball or addressing Shax. He tilts his head back a little for the reflections to appear.

Later on, close to the end of season, the sunglasses have reflections of people and movement, and that movement is a contrast to the reflections shown in earlier episodes. It's a truly special case involving windows and thresholds though long sideburns are there too. Much of this Heaven visit with the lights, light reflections, and lacking other reflections, are to help us understand how special that part of the ending is. For a more in-depth explanation, please see my post on The Window Trick.

That ends what has been added back into this main post for Heaven, Crowley's special sight, and reflections.

...

Before I move on from The Bigger Thresholds Trick, here is my understanding of how this part of Earthly Objects works. The sideburns being longer in the pub and music shop is a clue about this particular Threshold Trick.

A threshold being bigger than Crowley is not enough on its own to credit Crowley as having tricked that type of threshold.

Each one has a simple explanation but is done in a more complex way for an audience member playing to try and figure out in a puzzle.

My own conclusions are as follows:

In the pub, he "switched lanes".

In the music shop, he "never let go of the door".

In Heaven, he "pretended to be arrested by an angel".

The trick for Heaven is far more involved since there are two other valuable answers in the process, and for me, I could not find that answer until Round 2 of the Threshold Tricks.

...

The Season 2 Ending (The Door Trick)

Just like with the bigger thresholds, this part of the Sideburns Scheme actually crosses over with the Earthly Objects game (Threshold Tricks)

I am cutting a lot of content on it in this newer post though, again, you can look to the older one for reference to find more: The Sideburns Scheme

Near the end of episode 6 during season 2, Crowley is seen standing at the door to his car with longest-length sideburns.

For anyone trying to figure out how the sideburns work, that's noteworthy.

Despite how much we've seen Crowley, the car, and humans throughout the story, we've never seen them all combined into this particular context.

Other angels and demons are gone. Muriel is supposedly around but not on screen. Aziraphale and the Metatron have some distance between themselves and Crowley. Meanwhile, Crowley himself is surrounded by humans.

So, a question arises. Why are the sideburns this long in this setting?

Well, I already mentioned my answer before, but I'll go over what he's doing because it's rather specific despite how simple it looks.

This character is precise in his choices, whatever this scheme really is.

He is standing incredibly still. He has his legs crossed. The scene is structured to alert us that even though we can't see his feet, they are not touching the edge of the sidewalk. In Earthly Objects, the edge of the sidewalk is a threshold. Crowley has his right hand fingers in his pants pocket and his thumb outside the pocket. The camera work ensures we know that he is not touching the window frame despite the incoming angle where we, otherwise, could not know. His left arm is touching the door panel. It's the casing surrounding the door on the car, but I prefer to call it the "door panel". The door panel is the threshold. It is not an earthly object. He is touching his own space in his own way while watching Aziraphale's departure.

I think the length is due specifically to the stillness and touch on the door of the car.

There is a lot to be said for that pocket touch, which I go over more thoroughly here: Post #102 (The Door Trick).

My own personal interpretation from a combination of the games and story goes as the following:

Crowley is giving everything he has in himself to see Aziraphale off without truly giving his full self up in the process. Aziraphale is going to a place Crowley will not follow. Even so, the demon of the pair has put pieces in place to help Aziraphale from the distance they will have between each other in the foreseeable future. They both contributed to creating and maintaining a connection with each other during Good Omens 2. They also had to work together separately. They both love Earth, and they are going to work to protect Earth in Good Omens 3.

In my view, there's a hidden "Separately Together" theme in Good Omens 2 that one cannot find—or will very much struggle to find—unless you figure out at least some of the pocket puzzles.

Linked to The Door Trick is something truly magical called The Door Catch.

I found it on accident through never fully solving The Pocket Trick.

These are generally the posts I have on The Door Trick itself for now:

Post #102 (The Door Trick).

The Sideburns Scheme (skip ahead to The Season 2 Ending (The Door Trick)

The Door Trick Visual Representation (GIFs)

The Pocket Chain Rainbow Connection Part 4 - The Door Trick and The Door Catch

...

Here is a basic log:

Basic Sideburns Log

...

Here is the full list for posts of this series, going scene by scene for Crowley:

The Sideburns Scheme Posts

...

Here are links to posts that cover parts of Good Omens 2 more in-depth, separated by episode.

Episode 1: The Arrival (Links List)

Episode 2: The Clue (Links List)

Episode 3: I Know Where I'm Going (Links List)

Episode 4: The Hitchhiker (Links List)

Episode 5: The Ball (Links List)

Episode 6: Every Day (Links List)

...

This project is inspired by these posts:

Crowley’s Sideburns & what do they mean?

Ok, I love this theory that it could be some sort ...

[thescarletnargacuga]

MONSTER

A HARLEQUIN AU SHOWTIME ONESHOT

Harlequin AU credit: @iamespecter @tadc-harlequin-au

Special thanks to: @sirrockem

A/N: This takes place after the events of "The way of the combat Harlequin"

WARNING: hurt/comfort, puppet nudity (not explicit)

~~~

Pomni tucked Cade into bed. "Try to get some sleep, you had a big day."

"Mom, if I see those marionettes in my dreams...I'm not too big to come sleep with you and dad, am I?" Cade looked at his mother with pleading eyes.

Pomni ran her hand comfortingly over Cade's head. "No, you're never too big to come to us for comfort. We'll always be here for you."

"Okay... goodnight, mom. Love you."

"Goodnight, Cade." Pomni gave him a kiss and left his room, leaving the door cracked to let light from the hallway inside.

Pomni slowly walked to her room. Today's events still plagued her mind. How hard she went on what she considered low level enemies. Cade's face afterwards. The very fact that she had to tell her own son that she wasn't a threat to him...

She accepted the fact that she was a killing machine a long time ago. If the idea of her directive ever bothered her, she stamped it down. It was a distraction she couldn't afford when she was on a mission.

First mission, seek and destroy....and protect? Her broken directive misguided her to the puppetmaster.

Then, missions to defeat the B.O.S.Ses. She HAD to send them to the void before they were reborn in their new forms.

But she found the moral quandary of her bloodlust harder to ignore the more enlightened she became. She was more aware of what combat felt like to her, and how much she craved it like a drug. She didn't just want to fight, she needed to. The joy she got from facing a worthy opponent was unmatched for the longest time.

Then Caine happened. His kindness, his patience, his temperament, his love for her made her feel another joy she didn't know even existed. She rationalized with herself that her urge to fight could be used only to protect and that lie became truth to her when she told it to herself enough.

She protects her city, friends, and family with her urge....but it's still an urge. She still gets antsy when she doesn't see combat for a long enough period of time. She still finds herself wishing to wander to find an even bigger and badder enemy. As much as she is her own person, she still has her vices. It wasn't until her son feared for his life in front of her that she realized how toxic it could be if left unchecked.

Pomni shut herself in the master bedroom and took off her belt, holding the sheathed sword gingerly as if it would come to life and bite her. "I'm being ridiculous...." She tried to tell herself, but her hands trembled. She dropped the sword on the floor next to her side of the bed and sat down, head in her hands. "I can control it..."

She didn't look up when Caine entered the room, dropping his cane and coat. "Ugh...those marionettes caused more trouble than they were worth. Eight puppets need to be rebuilt and revived, and security demands for the east side have gone up. We're spread thin enough as it is." He flopped on the bed next to Pomni. "How's Cade?"

Pomni took out her hair tie, letting her longer hair drape her shoulders. "Better...we had a talk."

"....are you okay?" Caine sat up, hearing the despondent tone in her voice.

Pomni took a moment to answer. "...Cade wasn't afraid of the marionettes. He was afraid of me." She held herself in an attempt to self-soothe. "You should have seen his eyes..."

Caine wrapped an arm around Pomni, holding her close next to him. "He's never seen you in actual combat. It was just a lot for him to take in."

"He wouldn't let me touch him!" Pomni almost sobbed. "He thought I would hurt him next, like I was some out of control monster!"

"Hey..." He gently held her chin. "Look at me...you are not a monster. Your detective is not your fault, and you've made leaps and bounds to use it the way you see fit, not the person who programmed you. You are Pomni: the woman I love, the mother of our child, the protector of the City of Circuits... Not one of those things makes you a monster."

Pomni had no more tears. She was spent; physically and emotionally. "Enjoying combat does, wanting it as much as I do..."

"Were you happy to see the marionettes today?" Caine asked seriously.

"....no."

"You wanted to protect Cade and the city?"

"...yes."

"Pomni, you're not what you think of yourself. Cade was frightened, anyone would be, but he doesn't hate you. No one hates you."

Pomni gave a dry laugh. "Jax might..."

Caine chuckled a little. "Jax is a special case." He looked Pomni over, she had cleaned herself off a bit before seeing Cade, but there were still dried oil stains on her clothes and skin. "Let me get you clean. You'll feel a little better refreshed."

Pomni had no energy to argue. She let Caine lead her to the bathroom and remove her clothing. Caine ran a bath as hot as Pomni could stand and gestured for her to get in while he got a cleanser and washcloth.

Pomni sank into the steaming water up to her shoulders and closed her eyes. The stress of the day melted away as her body relaxed. She let out a content sigh as Caine gently bathed her. His ungloved metal hands felt cool against her synthetic skin. Pomni leaned her head back to rest against the edge of the tub.

Caine gently scrubbed away the oil, his movements deliberate but soothing. When he finished, he focused on her hair. He brushed it out, removing the tangles and wayward strands. He loved to pamper her like this, especially when she needed it like today.

Caine left a quick kiss on Pomni's forehead. "I'll let you soak. Let me know when you're ready for bed." He got up to leave but Pomni grabbed his hand.

"Join me." As much as Pomni enjoyed the water by herself, she didn't want to be alone right now.

Caine didn't need any convincing. He stripped down and eased himself into the bath behind Pomni. He held her in his lap, leaving small kisses on her neck and shoulders. "I love you." He whispered to her.

"I love you, too." Pomni mumbled back sleepily. Between the warm water and Caine's embrace, she felt relaxed enough to rest. "I'm sorry..."

Caine furrowed. "For what?"

"That you still have to deal with my bullshit."

Caine smiled warmly and kissed her cheek. "My love, I married you. I took a vow to deal with your bullshit for the rest of my life."

Pomni smiled a little. "My condolences."

"Keep them, just give me everything else." He hugged her tighter.

"All yours." Pomni yawned. "Thank you, for this."

"My pleasure, dear." Caine held her as she drifted off. He enjoyed the bath for a little longer before blinking them both into the bed, dry as a bone. He tucked Pomni in and held her to him as he found sleep.

[memoria-99]

Thoughts about Gilbert's route

I was originally writing something about IkePri routes but then Gilbert part became ridiculously long so just decided to make this a single post.

Sooo...

Gilbert's route looks like the whole combination of dark routes I've seen in Ikeseries.

I'll fix this damn world myself no matter what it takes(Vlad) + death wish(Dazai, Charles) + puts a fake smile as a mask(Shakespeare) + is aware of own sin and knows it's unredeemable(Licht) + @

Obviously not a fun route, relatively heavy plots, frankly there were many wtf moments, and I really do think Emma suffered way too much, but it was a good "villain" route. I mean, other villains I know... like Shakespeare and Vlad in IkeVamp who are supposed to be the villains didn't look much like villains tbh, they didn't do real bad things to Mitsuki(well, Shakespeare did tie her up but still). But Gilbert looks like a proper villain to me. He is weirdly obsessed with Emma, tried to corrupt her, threatened her and isolated her. He even nearly killed her. Yeah this is the villain. He had a tragic past and was actually doing stuff for what he believed to be a better world, but that doesn't justify his behaviors anyway.

Emma in this route has real great mentality, very brave and embraces everything(except violence) like a saint. Her love is almost in the level of agape aka god's love.

I also love the ways "sinner" LIs are written in this game, including Gilbert and Licht, and how Emma deals with those. Instead of trying to just reassure it's okay don't let that bother you, she's like "I know what you did cannot be forgiven, nothing can change that, but I'll embrace even that part of you and lead you to step forward"

And this is the best adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast" theme, Chevelier would come second(thought his route was the best in this category before doing Gilbert). A prince who was once a human turned to a beast, this beast has a limited time, a beauty decides to be the "hostage" of the beast herself, she and her love brings him a change.

I've seen some hates of this route, and yeah their relationship is not healthy AT ALL, rather twisted, but I don't think it's particularly bad in this case. I mean, he's the villain indeed, and not all romances should be like the happiest fairytale, right? Moreover, Emma was no shrinking violet. She never gave up on her ideals, didn't hesitate to state her opinion in front of Gilbert's threat, worked as Chevalier's spy, and whenever the relationship with Gilbert turned feeble she was the one took the lead and spoke up, renewing the relationship. And while it's true Emma looked like a victim of his behavior it's also said that she conquered him at last. She won.

"I want to make you a part of my normal life. ... ...and this time, I'm going to drag you into my world. ... So I'd like to start again. Prince Gilbert, will you be my friend?" (Emma)

Up until halfway through I was like hmmmmm, but when the route came to an end I couldn't dislike this bastard.

Nonetheless, irl this kinda guy should be in the list of someone to avoid, but he's more than attractive as a 2d guy.

P.S. Considering his physical state and what happened in this route, does this mean in all the other routes he'll be dead and only the fake would be left???

P.P.S. I like his blue eye, but seeing eyepatch for so long made me think him with both eyes look a bit off. Idk, I prefer the eyepatch version.

... Oh wow this really is ridiculously long.

[im-the-j-in-anthony-j-crowley]

Hi guys, I want to start by saying that I love you all and that my time in the fandom has been amazing

I don't know if that time is over, but we're definitely going to have a break because I need to think things through

If you want a VERY long talk about my views on the subject, and my general perspective, it's below.

I should give warning that both SA and depression are mentioned, with reference to suicide

I have always had problems with the age of both Michael's and David's partners, and you don't know how much I loved the girl who asked Michael about it.

However, both relationships were consensual, so even though I don't agree with it, I could simply acknowledge the fact that we have different worldviews and that's it.

Now I assume we know what's going on with Neil, and here the allegation is that it wasn't consensual. And also, it was girls my age, or younger than me.

Neil, I know the chances of you reading this are nil, and that possibly my stance on this is irrelevant. But taking into account the time I've put into the fandom.... I don't usually generate close connections with famous people, I always feel like they're about to make a mistake. Because we are human, and nobody deserves a pedestal. But it was something I almost did for Neil, especially after the post I made when I was in a crisis, that ridiculous "if this has x notes I do y thing" post.

and I guess I'm never going to be able to see the fact of Neil reblogging that post in any way other than "hey, maybe without that I wouldn't be here".

But there's no way I can keep my mouth shut on this, SA is an extremely touchy subject for me, and I don't know how to describe what I'm feeling right now. What am I supposed to do? Abandon this blog? Delete it?

Good omens is part of my life on an immense level.

It's on most of my tumblr, Crowley is my profile picture on TOO MANY things, Crowley and Aziraphale are my favourite couple of all time, basically my definition of the best fictional relationship.

And now all of that is mixed in with what's currently going on.

I don't know if I'm going to leave the fandom or not, but I do know that I possibly need to spend a few days or weeks assessing the situation.

I love you guys, if you decided to follow me here, I really do. I adore you. I love this blog, it's one of my favourite things in the world. But now every time I think about it, I realise that it's a little too close to home.

I hope the situation moves forward as well as possible, that it is resolved with the truth...

And I want to make it clear, it shouldn't be me, the 22 year old, who is saying that someone my age dating a person 20 years older is incorrect

Even if it is a consensual relationship, it should not be that it is considered a correct course of action.

I say that as the 14 year old who thought they were an adult, as the teenager who was convinced they were mature (I wasn't). And even though I now feel that I am 100% aware of my situation, and 100% capable of making the right decisions, I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years I discover that my worldview was fucking wrong.

I say that as the 22 year old who is fucking obsessed with Michael Sheen, who has seen an immense amount of stuff just because he's in it. I shouldn't be the one to say that if the situation were to arise, it would be fucking wrong of him for anything to happen (This is nothing against Michael, he is simply the only actor who has ever interested me in that way)

If it turns out that the allegations are true, it's horrible

If it turns out they're not, Neil, please date someone your own age, PLEASE

NOT WITH GIRLS

Having finished that, I want to talk a bit more about the fandom itself. I'm not telling you that we should leave fandom, or anything. And I understand if there are those who have compelling reasons to stay, I have no problem with that and I understand that. I've had experience with deciding whether or not to leave a fandom.

What I will ask is that you please consider acknowledging the fact that the ages of the people involved in these relationships alone is questionable, and the possibility that it was without consent makes it even worse.

I'm not asking you to smash or burn anything with Neil's name on it, but please think about it.

Is there a chance it's a fake? Yes, but please consider supporting the victims, because it is a fact that victims of SA are often categorised as liars

Just... acknowledging what is happening is better than pretending it is not happening

That's why I'm doing this

It happened, this is my situation at the moment, I'm going to take some time to think about it

[rjthirsty]

I decided to try to clean up this impromptu Chevbert BL I had written some time ago. Just for a cleaner version for my masterlist. The last was a long line of reblogs with other people asking for more, and me obliging. I love when people ask for me to write. The best motivation.

Gilbert and Chevalier are a couple, and no one can stop me. Chev tops. I want Gil to teach Chev how to swallow his D. Gil is a moaner, that's already in my headcanon. He likes his hair pulled. He likes the sting of pain being scratched or bitten. Chev doesn't have to be gentle with him like he does with MC. And Gil doesn't have to hold back either - his bites always break skin on Chev.

It happened unexpectedly.

Chevalier was cleaning up the filth, and Gilbert went to oversee and deal with those who fled - because we all know no one survives a Chev purge. They run onto each other, friends from long ago, now enemies. Chev swings, and just like every other time, Gil blocks with his cane.

They know the drill by now. Exchanging words with faces inches away from each other. Death threats and promises of each others demise.

Then Gil days something preposterous. "I loved you, you know?"

Chev's brow furrows. This has to be some sort of trick to throw him off balance. "Ridiculous."

Gil steps back to bring his cane down to his side, his smile appearing just a little more strained than usual. "We could be friends again."

"That's impossible," Chev scoffs, rolling his eyes but continuing to be wary with his sword still in hand.

"We're only enemies because of our fathers. There was a time Obsidian and Rhodolite were on friendly terms."

Gilbert raises his hands placatingly, showing he has no weapon and means no harm. He slowly brings the end of his cane up to slide over Chev's swords and lower the tip towards the ground. Chevalier allows him without resistance. Gilbert doesn't appear to be looking to fight.

"I still count you as a friend."

Chev doesn't trust it - doesn't trust him - but after this strange encounter, he agrees to meet again to discuss possible restoration of their fractured relationship between the two countries without knowledge of the king or emperor. After all, there was ever only one person who could talk with him on the same level, and he sometimes thought of that young man.

Gilbert is awfully jealous. When Chevalier goes months with no contact and then he finds out Emma was chosen a Belle, he went to Rhodolite for many reasons, all branching from his own jealousy.

His first move was to bind Emma to himself. He had been watching her for a very long time, and he didn't want someone else in the beast den to touch what he considered his. Introducing her at the gala as his date made it very clear she was off limits.

Chev was his second target. In the chapel in the gardens, the two men met.

"Have you been playing with the little rabbit and lost interest in our talks?" Gilbert had been waiting for Chevalier to arrive.

"What do you want?" Chev was cold as always.

"It's the perfect time for Rhodolite to join Obsidian. The king is dead, the emperor wants to absorb this county, and my closest friend has abandoned me. Perhaps we'll march tomorrow. Trampling all over this country will lift my mood."

"If your intention was to invade, you wouldn't have come to the gala."

"A fair point." Gil's cane thumped against the tiled floor with every slow step he took towards Chev. "My friend has wounded me, and I'm the type that bites back as you are very well aware."

"You've come to fight." Chev drew his sword, ready to play the familiar game they often began their meetings with.

"I've come to claim what's mine."

Gilbert's cane rose so swiftly that a normal person wouldn't have seen the movement. Metal connected as Chevalier easily parried it aside.

"I don't intend to allow you to rebuke my friendship now." Gil's smile was gone.

"As long as you remain in Rhodolite, your threats mean nothing. You're a beast without claws. Prove you can still bite back if you dare."

Fighting came naturally to both men, friendship did not. It was complicated, laden with expectations and selfless acts. There was no clear goal or objective in establishing a relationship with another except furthering their ambitions, and when it came to the two tigers, their ambitions clashed so violently that friendship was out of the question.

They were not truly friends. They could never publicly call each other such. Despite the words Gilbert had said, they both knew friend was not what described the two of them.

Gilbert swung his cane again, flicking it upwards towards Chevalier's throat. Using his weapon unlike a sword forced Chev to adapt as well in order to prevent being pummeled with the heavy cane.

"I've never lost, you know. I don't lose." Gilbert reminded Chev, aiming a sweeping kick with the intention of tripping his close friend.

"And what is it you're trying to win?" Chevalier taunted, jabbing his sword towards Gil's shoulder.

Gil hooked the handle of his cane over Chev's blade and pulled the flat of the sword against the top of his shoulder. With his jacket, he was padded from the edge unless Chev really wanted him dead, but that would cause Rhodolite to lose face with friendly neighbors.

"Time." Gil answered with a slight rasping to his breath.

Chev stared at him, attempting to make sense of the single word answer he was given.

Gilbert grabbed Chevalier's coat, yanking the two of them closer. From this distance, Chev could hear the difficulty in Gil's breathing. They were practically chest to chest.

Gil was shorter, but not by so much that when he cautiously moved his face closer to Chev's he was still able to touch his cold lips against the brutal beast's.

The sensation was new to Chev. No one had kissed him before. No one wanted to. He had thought it pointless to pursue something of that nature. But now Gil's cold lips sparked something inside of him that begged to be examined. A flame of desire to have another touch-- to have another want to touch him.

The kiss had been fleeting, just a touch of softness that had brushed against him. But since he made no move to pull away, Gil moved closer again and this time gave Chev's lower lip a lick, then a nibble.

Chev felt arousal. The pit of his stomach clenched. The thought of putting his teeth on Gil overshadowed his hesitation. He released his sword, and it clattered to the ground, but not before his gloved fingers were clenched in Gil's clothes.

The two moved in a heated flurry of hands, grabbing and pulling at each other. Lips that moved together and parted for teeth to graze or nip. Tongues that tasted each other for the first time and sought new places to explore.

Gil sank his teeth into Chev's neck, and Chev grabbed a fistful of hair to remove the nuisance, eliciting a moan from the black tiger. In response, Gil bit him again, harder.

Chev drew in a breath that hissed through his teeth, roughly shoving Gil away. His hand went to the pain throbbing on his neck, quickly checking his black glove for signs of blood in case Gil had broken skin.

His heart was beating faster than the previous fight. His pulse thrummed with an eager anticipation. Lust was not a feeling Chev was familiar with. The man was ruled with cold indifference. This current desire-- this need to overtake Gilbert in some sort primal show of possessiveness clawed at his logical mind, tearing reason from him.

Chev came at Gil again, this time the aggressor. He grabbed Gil's hair and pulled another soft groan from him, using the opportunity to cover his mouth with his own, delving into a kiss that could be considered passionate, but certainly was deep and probing.

Gil's fingers tore at Chev's clothes, stressing seams and buttons in order to bare skin so his teeth could dig into Chev rather than the protective wear. Their groins pressed together, stiff erections violently rubbing through too many layers to sate their hunger.

Chevalier continued to advance on Gil until Gilbert felt the back of a pew press hard against his legs. Giving a final tug on Chev's partially open collar granted him access to the smooth skin he desperately wanted to marr. Using the leverage, Gilbert hoisted his legs around Chev, using the pew to hold the weight he wasn't managing himself.

Forced to widen his stance or tip over the bench, Chev performed the former, one hand grabbing Gil's ass to hold him up. His fingers dug into the thick muscle, leaving bruises that would go unseen. Gil's tongue and teeth and lips were on his chest, raking and biting and sucking and caressing. Chev ground his crotch into Gil's, the fabric of both men's trousers protesting from the strain.

[starwarsmum]

Day 23! Today's prompt is shovel talk and takes place during day 21's Meet My Partner ❤️

@maribat-calendar-events

“Bugaboo, come on, you know I'm right. Tell him to leave you alone for five minutes so we can talk.”

Sighing and letting go of his arm, Marinette encouraged Damian to follow Adrien to the drinks bar. She smiled at them as they walked away before allowing Adrien to have the privacy he wanted and glancing around the room.

Damian followed Adrien towards the bar located at the far left of the hall. He was not worried about a physical altercation with the boy, in spite of his control over the literal power of a destruction god. But he was worried that if he inadvertently offended Adrien, he would convince Marinette that he was not worthy of her affection.

They stood at the bar in silence for several moments, but Damian refused to be the first to crack. A golden rule of interrogation: the first to speak has already lost the upper hand. And so he waited until Adrien was ready to speak, in spite of wanting to get back to Marinette.

“So, why Marinette?” Damian pushed down a triumphant smirk and leveled a bored look at Adrien. The blond waited patiently, eyebrows raised, and Damian sighed internally.

“Marinette has far too many qualities for me to list them for you. Also, I am not confident that I can do justice to those qualities verbally. It will have to suffice for me to say that she is singular and I am enamoured.”

“Huh,” was all Adrien said, but he did seem to relax slightly. They offered drinks and turned to face the room at large. Damian's eyes locked onto Marinette and a tightness he hadn't noticed in his chest eased. “Okay, wow, you're not just into her, you're, like, stupid about her.”

“I do not appreciate you insulting my intelligence,” Damian growled, although his ire had more to do with the fact that he had just spotted Jon making his way over to Marinette. 

“Alright smart guy, let me just make one thing clear then - if you hurt her and she lets you live, you answer to me. And there won't be enough of you left to convict me of a crime,” Adrien threatened and Damian turned back to him, mildly impressed.

“Noted. I assure you that I have no intention of causing Marinette distress, but I am now aware of your position in the matter and you may take comfort in the fact that I believe you to have the resources to complete such a feat. Now, if we are finished, I must go and eviscerate my acquaintance who has accosted Marinette.”

And without another word, he stalked across the room, fully intending to end Jon's meddling.

_ _ _

“That was a fun evening,” Marinette said as they cuddled on a sofa in one of the drawing rooms. Damian gave her a crooked smile before resting his cheek on her head. “No, really, it was nice. And you look very handsome in your new suit, even if I do say so myself.”

“And you are radiant,” Damian murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. They stayed like that, in comfortable silence, for several minutes. “Your friend threatened me, by the way. It was very admirable of him, I did not realise he had such a vicious streak in him.”

“Of course you would be impressed with him giving you a shovel talk,” Marinette groaned, burying her face in his chest. “As long as you're fine, I won't murder him for being so annoying.”

“Love, he only threatened me because he cares for you. I am pleased that you have someone like him by your side when I cannot be. Your descriptions of him made him sound much more…ridiculous.”

“Pft, don't worry, he's plenty silly,” Marinette reassured him, letting out a yawn as she snuggled closer to him. “Do you want to watch a movie tonight? I was thinking we could make a start on one about games - it's based on a book too!”

“For you, I would do most anything,” Damian whispered, running his fingers across her face and tilting her chin up. A blush spread over her cheeks and he smirked again. “I do love seeing you blush.”

She made a whining noise, but didn't move away from him. He leaned in and kissed her gently, pulling her towards him. She melted against him and his heart beat faster as her hands snaked around his neck. 

It was several minutes later that they broke apart and Damian was sorely tempted to pull her back in. But she was tired and he was supposed to be going on patrol for the early morning shift. So instead, he helped her up and led her to her room.

“It is late, Marinette. Perhaps we may watch the movie you suggest tomorrow evening?” She nodded but when he tried to leave, she grabbed his hand.

“Will you stay for a while? Just to get some sleep,” she said hastily when he raised an eyebrow at her. “I just sleep better when I have you there. Otherwise I might end up staying up and doing commission work.”

“Tt, you are attempting to manipulate me into staying,” Damian accused her, although he was more amused than anything else. “It is fortunate that I am more than willing to help you get to sleep.”

The grin she gave him was tinged by the blood flooding her face, and he gave no resistance as she pulled him into her room after her.

[isobellenoire]

Solas is Neurodiverse.

This is of course my opinion, don't invalidate me, if you find comfort in this character then I'm glad, join the party!

• Info dumping (You boost his approval by asking him about magic & the fade... and oh my world does he have a lot to say about it!)

• Strong sense of justice... freeing the slaves, wanting to right wrongs. He feels so strongly about injustice, especially when he can sympathise (mages & elves) a strong sense of social justice is often linked with ND people because we are marginalised, mistreated and ridiculed. I can often get angry, irate and depressed when there's injustice in the world and for a lot of my ND friends it's the same.

• Likes to be alone (he still has friends who are spirits, but he doesn't actively seek out companionship with people) prefers his own company. (Hermit tarot... come on! I'm crying in INTP/INTJ here)

• Always reading, writing, he even paints a whole ass mural on the walls as skyhold in a short burst of time, hyperfocus/hyperfixation.

• Comes across as blunt. I've been told I'm blunt so many times it's infuriating when I don't mean to be, I'm just firm in what I know to be true and will say it without dancing around the matter.

• Speaks 'strangely' in a poetic rhythm. While not an exclusive trait, given everything else it holds merit.

• He does have a great deal of empathy if you romance him/get to know him, but on a surface level he seems distant because he doesn't open up personally! It takes a LOT to crack that egg. I'm 4 years into a committed relationship and I still get told I don't open up enough when I'm struggling with emotions because I keep them internalised... probably a trauma response but in Solas' case... yeah, definitely a trauma response.

• Comes across argumentative when talking about stuff to which the group (Dorian especially during party banter) will ask if he's upset with them, and he says he isn't. ND people are always stuffed in the 'uncanny valley' and seen as outsiders, or stand-offish... we're just not very good with social nuances in terms of delivery, but are deeply self aware of that and prefer to observe, and I argue Solas is incredibly self aware. (Knows when he is being 'selfish' or 'foolish')

• Incredibly knowledgeable on a lot because he's intensively researched it, has to know everything about that subject and becomes deeply immersed in it.

• He never lied about anytning, he just didn't throw it out there... Autistic people can lie you know... however not once did he lie, he just kept his secrets hidden, that's very different to lying. Lying wild be 'Are you Fen'Harel'?... 'No' I've kept secrets from people for a long ass time to spare their feelings and my own self interest. (Not as bad as it sounds ahah! Just an example)

• History nerd... C'mon most of us have a favourite time period that isn't this one...

• I mentioned the paintings, he's also an artist, as well as a dreamer. A lot of us have infiltrated science or the arts... or both! Most of the world's leading scientists and artists are ND. He probably has an idetic memory.

I have more if people care to hear it, but in my opinion and based on my own personal experience being AuDHD, I'd say he is. I resonate with his character more deeply than the others because no ND person is alike and we all have our own personal struggles/wins.

A similar example in media to Solas would be (and hear me out ahah) Walter White (minus the drugs) but intelligence and the way he speaks to others, hides stuff from people (and assumes an alias to seperate himself) I definitely see WW as Autistic. So why not Solas?

Can we please stop infantalizing ASD, and applying the manic pixie lense to it, there's so much more to it that just 'quirky'. Cole is practically confirmed, people have debated Sera being ADHD, but also they are painted with a similar 'childish' brush.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk ahah.

[smytherines]

Extremely specific neurodivergent curtwen headcanons that crack me like an egg:

ADHD Agent Mega is practically fan canon at this point, but I feel like we focus on him being bored & fidgeting more than other ADHD issues. Like I imagine so much of his macho guy bluster is 1. from being gay in a homophobic society, but also 2. From Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. I dunno, something about the way he gets so flustered and defensive when people criticize him (which happens constantly)?

I've been thinking about maybe Curt being dyslexic? Like maybe he doesn't read briefings because they're already difficult to focus on, but also they're literally difficult to read? He mixes up information no matter how hard he tries. He's learned to stop trying and pretend he's just too cool for that nerd shit, but whenever someone gives him a hard time for screwing up he takes it really really personally? He has big emotional outbursts, which is especially tough as a closeted gay man in the 1950s-1960s

I have a lot of headcanon about autistic Owen Carvour, but it's kinda weird because he's canonically the villain of SAF, and that tends to stray uncomfortably into "he was always a monster" OR "the fall made him into a monster." So with autistic Owen headcanon it veers too close to saying that being autistic made him a monster (yikes, no) or that becoming disabled (no way in hell he doesn't have chronic pain issues after all that) made him a monster (also yikes, no).

So for me, the way that I frame it is like... okay so Owen is literally masking in the show, but I think about what that says about him that one of the major details we know about him is that he is very good at pretending to be other people. I'm a heavily masked autist myself, so this really resonates with me. With autistic men there are some very specific stereotypes like math, bad at social interaction, etc. But I think Owen would have a profile more stereotypically attributed to women: being hyper aware of everything around him, using "movie talk" or just remembering interactions with others and having a script. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but it's like you enter a situation and you can more or less suss out what people are expecting from you in that situation, so you just flip through your mental rolodex of phrases and deliveries and ways to stand and hold your face that align with their expectations of you. You become adept at blending in.

I would fully believe that Owen reads every briefing multiple times and has charts and diagrams, and maybe before the fall part of why he does that is that he knows Curt is a talented agent but just struggles with that part of the job, and Owen feels protective of him. Like he gets that Curt is impulsive and feels the need to be a counterweight to that. It feels like Curt blocks out information and takes in stimuli, and Owen blocks out stimuli but takes in as much info as humanly possible.

Then there's all the villain shit obviously. This is extreme headcanon territory, but one part of being autistic is what they call the "autistic sense of justice." That absolutely does not mean that autistic people have some preternatural ability to be eternally on the right side of history, we all have our individual identities and experiences coloring what we consider "justice," but just on a personal level being autistic and becoming disabled radicalized me. It led to me becoming anti-capitalist & anti-imperialist. It drastically changed my perception of right and wrong because I had to interrogate my own understanding of power, the way the concept of "crime" is created (like you get jail time for shoplifting, but your boss doesn't get punished at all for stealing money out of your paycheck).

I've already done ridiculous long posts about the political stuff, but I do think that an autistic person, especially one who has gone through a massive trauma, might come through it with a new understanding that the US/UK governments are actually pretty awful, that ignorant brutes shouldn't be in charge of politics and information.

I dunno I probably have more but I've already dumped too much here

[alivingolive]

First of all, whose idea was it for Billy Joel to be born so long before me? Now I’m stuck in a timeline where I’m frantically hoping he doesn’t call it quits before I can see him live (IT SUCKS 😣)

I’ll admit, there’s a certain charm in being late to the party—like finding a book everyone’s read and realizing it’s every bit as good as they said. That’s how his music feels to me: timeless. 

So.. this leaves me with no choice but to dive headfirst into a very enthusiastic (and probably incoherent) rant about his music.

This is probably just me and my low-level understanding of music (i'm self-aware, okay?), but I’ve never experienced anything like his discography before.

Usually, I’ll find one or two songs I love, a few I like, and the rest are... there. But with his works? Well, I’m not saying every single track is a masterpiece (calm down, super fans), but liking almost 90% of someone’s work? That’s unheard of for me.

Maybe I just don’t “get” other artists, or maybe I’m just clueless about music. Either way, he’s different. I’m over here liking entire albums. Who does that? Is this what having standards feels like? 

Now, after hours of unnecessary self-inflicted stress (and questioning whether I even understand what “favorites” mean), I’ve landed on a top three.

Is this ranking stable? Absolutely not. But for now, these are the songs I’m obsessively replaying while pretending this choice isn’t tearing my soul apart. Let’s unpack them while I still believe in my own decisions. (spoiler: i don’t)

Got to Begin Again is the first. This song doesn’t just ask you to feel; it demands it. And I’m not usually the type to be all lyric-driven, but this one? It kind of broke me.

The whole thing feels like it’s saying, “Look, life sucks, but it’s cool. You’re fine... Probably.” (notice the optimism dripping off that word) And the melody? It’s like the universe is both yelling at you and patting you on the back at the same time.

I don’t know how he managed to create the musical equivalent of a therapist with zero solutions but a really good playlist, but here we are.

And Going to Extremes? Don’t even get me started.

“And if I stand or I fall, it’s all or nothing at all.”

That line is so ridiculously good it makes me want to get up and do something dramatic—like, quit my job, burn a bridge or two, and then confidently walk into… I don’t know, the nearest cafe? Because I didn’t plan that far ahead.

For exactly four minutes and twenty-three seconds though, I’m convinced I’ve got life all figured out.

Then there’s 52nd Street. I’m not even going to try and pretend I understand what’s happening in the music (do me a favor and listen to the 1:02-1:19 part)

I don’t know why it works, I don’t know how it works, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel—but wow, does it work.

It’s so perfect it makes my brain short-circuit. It’s the musical equivalent of staring at a masterpiece in an art gallery and thinking, “I don’t get it, but I love it.”

And... it’s frustrating because I know just enough about music to know that I know nothing (cue existential dread) Like, how does someone even create something like this? It’s so good it feels unfair.

But here’s the thing: I’ve always loved music—it’s been a big part of my life—but now it feels different. For the first time, I feel like I want to do something with that love for music.

Like, he’s set some kind of invisible bar that I have no business trying to meet, and yet, here I am. It’s not about connecting with people or becoming the next big thing, though. Honestly, I don’t care if no one ever hears it (definitely a lie)

But.. I want to take all the messy, confusing, slightly chaotic parts of me and turn them into something that makes sense—something that sounds like me (no clue how to do that)

So yeah, he’s officially turned my interest in music into an existential crisis. I’m supposed to be figuring out how to do something with this inspiration, but instead, I’m writing yet another long-winded Tumblr post about him while procrastinating on literally everything else in my life.

[falciesystemessays]

so there's this indie game developer who's been a quiet favorite of mine for the past year. Artless Games. they're a chinese developer who specializes in puzzle games. they have a programming game called A=B about working with an esolang, pretty solid takes on The Witness and Sokoban formulas, and the absolutely ridiculous 14 Minesweeper Variants, which is my comfort game and also getting a sequel soon. this developer is really good at making rock-solid puzzle games with good ideas and great execution. if you are interested in puzzle game design at all, and especially if any of these concepts interest you, i highly recommend you check out their work.

The hitch is, of course, the lack of an artstyle. You could call it minimalist, but the name "Artless Games" shows a full awareness that there's a presentational lack in these games. I kind of admire it, honestly, because these games do stand up without the need for visual flair. And as an indie designer who tends to be pretty limited on assets, I deeply respect a game that shows how you don't need those to make an amazing game.

...But it's not that simple, is it?

A few months ago I went to the yearly Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. I learned a lot there, met a good few people, and started to really rethink how I approach gamedev. The thing to understand about GDC talks is that they are incidentally about making good games. The real focus is on how to be successful in the game industry. This often does mean making better games, but it's just as much about confronting how making a good game isn't always enough.

Enter Lenophie, an aggressively French game designer who gave my most anticipated talk, 'Bunburrows': How to Break Out of the Puzzle Niche. She speaks to the fact that, despite puzzle games being very popular among indie developers, it's a pretty small niche in terms of players. To make a profitable indie puzzle game, you have to appeal outside of that niche to players looking for other things. In Lenophie's words, "We treated being a puzzle game like something we had to compensate for." It means not relying on mechanics alone as a selling point. It means giving your game a unique style, or even a story. And it means swallowing your pride as a puzzle game designer and giving players hints, or even letting them skip puzzles. It's not enough to make a good puzzle game, she says. You have to make a good game with puzzles in it.

I came out of that talk feeling like the future of puzzle games was just laid out before me. And I was excited. I'm still excited! The idea of puzzle games extending past their current niche status is a really cool one, to me. But it puts me in a weird spot thinking about Artless again. On some level, I have a deep respect for a game like 14 Minesweeper Variants, a game with even less interesting visuals than normal Minesweeper, for standing on its own as a puzzle game. It was a game built just for me. I think it's really important that games like this exist, that game developers can make a game with a sharp focus that knows its audience and appeals to it fully. But the reality of gamedev as a business complicates matters. I hope every developer working in the puzzle space finds their answer. I hope I find mine. And I hope you, whatever rising star developer is reading this, find your balance.