#The Pretty Lads™

[meadow-art]

Just found a Yeosang stan who's also an aventurine stan. we won guys

[sysig]

The latest KoiBo chapters are Really Interesting for ace reasons 👀

[canon-fcdder]

(( Tag Dump - Pete Thelman ))

[cosmonautski]

thinking bout... small guys... pocket sized lil fellas.. fun sized snack guys..

[osarina]

Waking up next to Chuuya or Dazai must feel like heaven, because who wouldn't wanna have a handsome lad next to themselves ? So if the waking part is that good, then it means that the former moment, aka the ZZzzzz , must have some disadvantage to it.

First off, Dazai: this guy has NO bed etiquette whatsoever. The very first time you share the bed you can already say bye bye to your blanket because he is HOGGING that shit!!! If that was not enough for you to send him straight to the couch then maybe the fact that he will absolutely not stay still, always moving and changing positions, which sends you to the good ol' floor ™ , will make you do it. I could also go on that he is a sleeptalker and one of those weird af individuals that undress themselves to literal nakedness while asleep but I feel like he has been flamed enough already.

Chuuya whereas snors like a middle aged father of 4 (and shockingly, gets louder when he drank beforehand, how is this even possible????), runs hot 24/7 and sends you temperature wise straight to Florida Keys and Miami because he is not just the big spoon, he is the iron one (which is sooooo cute and romantic at first, to be held like that until it turns into an oh no! situation once you realize that you gotta go to the toilet though)

Feel free to add more stuff or disagree

(and just to be clear, this review is very /lh, love these two dummies)

AHHAHAHAHAHHAH PLEASEEEEEE STOP YOU'RE SO RIGHT

dazai TRULY has 0 bed etiquette, and yk what, the night starts out fine too. he lays on his side of the bed or he curls up at your side, and it's soooooo precious to see him sleeping for once because this man RARELY lets himself sleep, but once he's knocked out ... the first time you're woken up, it's because he's literally sprawled entirely on top of you and his elbow is digging into your side. you have to shove him off of you because you literally cannot BREATHE. the second time you wake up, it's cuz you're literally SHIVERING because this man has taken all of the blankets and demands for the AC to be cranked even though he's always cold. the third time you wake up, it's because he literally can't sleep if he's not touching you in some manner, so he becomes restless and starts moving in his sleep trying to seek you out. you get a foot to the shin and a hand to the face before he finally manages to get his arms around you to curl back up next to you ... and of course the cycle repeats after that. dazai is a HELLISH bed partner but </3 he's pretty so it makes up for it

LMAOOOOOOOOOOO CHUUYA SNORING HELP ME WHY IS THAT SO ACCURATE, and you know this man adamantly denies it too. "wdym i don't snore" and he gets SOOO passionate about it. even when you take a video to show him, he accuses you of editing it bc he refuses to admit he snores like a fucking truck. IM CRYING BC NOT ONLY DOES HE RUN HOT BUT YOU LITERALLY CANNOT ESCAPE HIM, so not only do you have to pee desperately but you're also sweating because he's literally a FURNACE

they're such LOSERS i love them pls this made me giggle i love YOU

[the-black-bulls]

Realization of the Day:

(⚠ huge manga spoilers for anime only below)

Yami is an actually pretty darn tragic character if you take five mins to think about it and take a good look at his history; I managed a quote based on this as a joke here, but he's indeed covered nearly every sad and tragic backstory trope in the book.

Let's see... he lost his mother who died from childbirth when he's 5-6 years old, and spent the better part of his childhood on pointless and intense training by his abusive, sexist, daughter-beater, war obsessed father; and then at the age of 13 said father forced a freaking drug on his baby sister and Yami had to witness the massacre of their clan by her hand before he took down his father for once and all to protect her before he stopped her and held the weight of all her crimes on his shoulders and left his hometown to never return again.

Then... he shipwrecked, barely surviving death, on an unwelcoming land and suffered from language barrier, culture shock, xenophobia and about every typical "Why Clover Kingdom is the Worst Kingdom in the World" key point, all lasted for two years until he turned 15 and recieved his grimoire, but prior and shortly after to it Yami was pretty much on his own with no one else to rely on or a home to return to.

The... things got better, no? He met the Faust Bros, he met Julius, he was offered a roof to sleep under and a chance to start fresh; 15 years lad who's already suffered a lot but ready to live and learn against all the odds with Nacht as his partner in crime and Morgen as his best friend... and then they both got screwed up years later when Yami, at the age of 18, wasn't around, so he only got to face the loss through a visit to the latter's grave while the former grieved his brother's death, and Yami never stopped smoking ever since.

It was right then and there when Yami decided, enough's enough, and promised to create a squad that became a home for the unlucky who shared some of Yami's experience in his past, be it the abusive family, lost of a beloved one, crippling loneliness, crime burdens, being unfit to the norms, and the list goes on. My favorite example is a threeway tie between Noelle, who is pretty much Ichika if Ichika didn't have an amazing brother, and Gauche, whose first meeting with Yami makes a hell lot of sense now that we know Yami also had a sister he threw his life for her sake, and finally Nero, who will never be able to return to her old life and is fairly content about it because she's too loyal to the person she loves to cry over homesickness.

Yami has been there, done that, experienced those, and is still going through some TraumaWorthyBullshit™ right now, and while he rarely shows negative signs of what he's been through, I like to think that he offers the Black Bulls what he always wanted to be offered.

That, by accepting them and letting them live however they want, but above all, by giving them a safe place to belong to.

In short, the Black Bulls is Yami's way to deal with the bullshit that's his lifetime worth of trauma. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[yuikomorii]

hey there. hope you're doing well 😊💗

i was just wondering which Love and Deepspace (an otome game) character would match with the DL characters?? I'm really looking forward to your opinion on it since your wordings are very well done to me ^~^

// I love the LADS graphics soooo much, but unfortunately I don’t have enough storage to play it. However, I did watch a lot of gameplay videos, yet I don’t know how accurate my interpretation will be:

Rafayel - He seems like the Ayato type. Bratty, pretty and playful but also got a sweet side.

Xavier - Most likely Azusa, since they’re both good boys™. I also feel like both of them got a 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 side despite the cinnamon roll vibe.

Zayne - I guess he’s the serious and smart one of the bunch, so I’ll go with either Reiji or Ruki.

Sylus - I wanted to say Carla because of the ‘villain’ role, but imo Sylus is too cool to be any Diaboy. I’m sorry, but I can’t find the loserism in him. >_<

[studentinpursuitofclouds]

i have a request! + a little bit of a ranting because i love talking about this game (if you don't want to see the long rant you can skip to the two last paragraphs with the actual request :3)

ok so, i played SDV multiple times (although i never did the 100% challenge, i played at least 9 to 10 different saves), and i noticed that, throughout the entire game, the farmer's parents only send 4 letters for them, and for you to even receive said letters, you need to obtain certain amount of gold. plus, another detail is that only one of the parents will send you a letter (depending of the gender option you chose in-game), while the other one is never mentioned even once.

additionally, i also found interesting how, whenever Harvey mentions having to do "an emergency surgery" on the player, the parents never even send a letter mentioning it or anything. i would assume that for something as serious as a surgery, a family member would be contacted in case anything went south, but that never seemed to be the case. you simply wake up from the surgery, go home, sleep, and your parents never even show sign of being alive.

i know Eric most likely did this to 1. keep the past of the farmer as vague as possible for people who enjoy creating OCs/sonas to not have to ignore canon details, and 2. in regards of the letters, to reward the player for reaching x milestone. however, my little brain could not help but assume that the reason the farmer barely receives any letters from their parents (and when they do it's only from one of them) it's because they bought some heavy mommy/daddy issues™ baggage with them to the valley.

and that's where my request comes from: how would the older villagers (preferably those with no children and/or spouses, like Gus, Marlon, Willy, Linus, etc) react to the farmer accidentally calling them mom/dad, because the farmer views them as the parental figure they wish they had in their life? would it be awkward? would they be flattered? would they comfort the farmer? i NEED to know.

additionally, i would prefer if you could make it a mixture of angst and fluff. plus, you can choose any villager you want, i just ask you to include Willy, since he's the one that i made a father/child relationship with my OC and who inspired this request in the first place.

thank you, hope it wasn't too much!!! and take care :3

I have to say, when I first played the very first save, I was also interested in the fact that only one parent sent letters, and even the letter itself didn't say "me and your mom/dad are proud of you", but just "I'm proud of you, with love dad/mom). Then the letters stopped coming altogether. My first guess and failed headcanon for my OC is that Farmer only had one parent (the other parent abandon family/dead), and when the letters stopped coming, the other parent passed away as well. And then I thought it was a pretty dark headcanon and scrapped the idea. Don't want too much angst, nope!

I really like this ask, because in my opinion, even if Farmer has living and loving parents, they will still see some people in Stardew Valley as a parental figure, because Farmer's family is far away.

I hope you enjoy the stories, I tried to make them both sad and fluffy at the same time. Thanks for ask and enjoy! ❤️

Willy, Marlon, Linus and Gil react to Farmer calling them dad.

Willy:

Amazement, laughter and pride is what Willy felt as Farmer very emotionally showed how they caught the Legendary fish in the mountain lake, not forgetting to gesticulate. They and Willy were sitting on the docks on a late summer night when, a little tired from fishing, they began to tell each other their fishing stories over a bottle of mead.

"That fish almost tore the fishing line, but I still managed to pull it out. I swore and puffed, but I pulled it out! It was huge!" The farmer summarized his story.

"What a fisherman! Well done, lad/lass!" The old fisherman's heart rejoiced that young people were still interested in fishing.

"Thanks, Dad!" The Farmer quickly said the last phrase on emotion, but their smile quickly slipped and they slapped themselves on the mouth. Willy also sat silent, a little surprised at the last word. Dad... The sea wolf had his heart broken more than once in his youth, and he had already resigned himself to the fact that he would never hear that word. He wasn't sad, for fishing did bring him happiness. And still...

"Sorry, that was... Ugh, I didn't mean to-" The Farmer was already trying to get out of the awkward situation, except that they felt the old sailor's hand on their shoulder, Willy's eyes looking at them with pride and warmth.

"You're welcome, son/daughter. I'm really proud of you". Never did Willy think he could say such words, the words of a proud parent for his growing child. Willy did not have a wife or children, so he could not feel the pain of loss from something he never had. And yet, after that word, he felt as if a stone had been lifted from his shoulders, and a warmth flooded into the old sailor's heart when the Farmer, crying, hugged him back after his words.

Marlon:

"Kid!"

"I'm fine!" The Farmer's voice came up from the bottom floor of the mine, letting Marlon know that they weren't under a rubble pile of rocks or in a nest of monsters. After a moment, Farmer was able to climb out of the hole in the floor on their own, unharmed, just a couple of scratches and with dirt.

Seeing that the Farmer was standing on their feet and unharmed, Marlon sighed in relief. But immediately, anger filled the old one-eyed adventurer's chest. Using a mega bomb on slimes - how did they even think of this!? The uppermost levels of the mines can collapse from a not too strong explosion, and then there's explosives of such power!

"Things went a little off plan, but we still destroyed those slimes. I call it success," the Farmer didn't have time to finish, as Marlon walked up to them quickly and gave them a not too strong, but quite painful smack upside the head. The Farmer immediately writhed in discomfort.

"Ouch! Why?"

"What were you thinking!?" It was the first time the Farmer saw Marlon so angry, the one-eyed monster hunter rarely lost his temper, "Have you lost your mind? Using a bomb, here! You could have died under that rubble!"

"But I-" Marlon interrupted Farmer again, raising his hand in a gesture.

"We have to think about every step we make in a fight, and what did you do?" Marlon was already speaking more calmly, but his tone remained the same steely. The Farmer had already feel ashamed and regretted their careless decision.

Yet, when Marlon calmed down and scolded the Farmer, taking their word that they would never act so recklessly again, the elder adventurer offered to return to their Guild, since it was getting dark. The Farmer breathed a sigh of relief, and on the exhale they said: "You're such a dad..."

Marlon stopped after that, turning to face the Farmer, who seemed to be surprised at their own words. And Marlon himself was surprised at how he snapped at the shout: he knows that the life of an adventurer is a constant risk, but Farmer had become a close person to him to let them risk their lives so recklessly. Just like... Just like his own child. And then they call him dad...

After Farmer's words, the one-eyed adventurer hummed playfully:

"In that cases, I, as a 'dad', officially declare to you: once again you use a mega bomb at the first levels, or do another stupid act, and I will flog you with a belt so that you won't be able to sit for a week, let alone swing a sword", Marlon is unlikely to ever carry out his threat, but he must make it clear to the Farmer that he is not joking.

"Ok, ok! I won't do it again! Sheesh...", Not wanting to argue with their mentor any further, the Farmer quickly followed Marlon to the exit of the mines. Before they left the cave, Marlon put a hand on their shoulder.

"Stay vigilant, adventurer. I've lost many people dear to me to let this happen again..."

Linus:

Linus hadn't noticed that the Farmer had managed to doze off by the camping fire. After all, a hearty supper of fried mushrooms had put the Farmers to sleep and made them fall into the realm of dreams. Early fall had already rewarded the Stardew Valley with cool nights, and so Linus decided to wake the Farmer so they could head to their warm home. The task was not an easy one: besides the delicious food, the Farmer had been very tired lately, and so he slept like a dead man.

"Get up, my friend, it's time for you to go home," alas, all of Linus' efforts were unsuccessful, and then stopped altogether when Farmer sleepily said: "Dad, please, five more minutes..."

"...Dad?"

Linus heard many words for himself: homeless, crazy, wild man, freak, stinker, weirdo. But Dad...?

While Linus was processing the information, Farmer had already managed to fall back into a deep sleep. The wild man decided to let Farmer finish his sleep in peace here near his tent. He took out a warm blanket from the tent, which he had made himself from fur, and covered Farmer, who was shivering a little from the cold night.

"Sweet dreams, my child", Linus had never thought that Fate would let him consider someone his child and pass on his wisdom, even if they were not related by blood. He made a promise to himself to always keep an eye on this kid and to help them in any way he could, whether by advice or deed.

Gil:

The knocking of stone against stone. Bang. And another ban

Another failure.

"Ah, damn it..." The Farmer cursed, throwing two geodes at their feet.

"Try it again, kid, you'll learn in time. See, you do it like this..." Gil again demonstrates how to open the geodes by himself, without Clint's hammer. With movements that had been honed over the years, he again held two halves of a split geode in his hands, from which amethyst and rock crystal druzes glistened.

"You didn't get into farming the first time either, yeah? You told me yourself, kiddo". Gil was absolutely right - to achieve a prosperous farm, the young Farmer had to work really hard, and success did not come immediately. So Farmer, sighing tiredly, took the geodes in their hands again in an attempt to open the mineral. Knock, knock, knock.

Crash.... Pop.

It worked!

"Told ya, kid", Gil smiled at the excited Farmer, who, twisting the two halves of the open geode, couldn't believe their own eyes.

"Yo, I finally did it! Thanks, Papa!"

It took the Farmer about ten seconds to realize what they had just said. Their cheeks flushed. Oh...

Gil, on the other hand, was quite ok to such a word in his address. In fact, he did not even miss the opportunity to tease the young adventurer a little.

"Papa, huh?" Though deep down Gil was touched by the fact that he had become this kind of father figure to Farmer, he wouldn't miss the opportunity to have a little fun. Especially since he knows that Farmer, though embarrassed by their confession, will also catch Gil's mood.

And the old adventurer is not mistaken.

"Well, should I call you mom then?" The Farmer was not in debt, deciding to play along with Gil as well.

"And that's how you talk to your papa, kid?" Gil rewarded the Farmer with a playful slap on their shoulder, "Come on, get outside. There's a whole bag of geodes lying by the supply boxes. Bring it over here and we'll practice some more," Farmer nodded and ran merrily toward the Guild exit, almost hitting Marlon, who was just entering the building.

The one-eyed adventurer, seeing his cheerful friend (it was rare to find Gil in such a good mood):

"Did something happen while I was gone?" Marlon hummed favorably and waited for Gil to stop snickering and calm down.

"You can congratulate me, brother," Gil said, "I just became a dad."

[pliablehead]

I guess if I want to write a travelogue/write up post about my 4-stop journey following the first chunk of Everything Everything's 2023 US tour then I have to just... do it!! If this is of interest to anyone other than me then GREAT and if not then it's still special to me to try to write down and remember everything I can uwu

FIRST STOP WASHINGTO-- wait, no, actually, first stop, on my way out of town, the local donut shop in my neighborhood, a place that I absolutely adore and patronize all the time with staff who mostly know me by now/some of whom are my instagram friends/etc. i'd checked with the Pittsburgh venue ahead of time to see if it was okay to send in outside food as a gift to the band even though they have a cafe/bar in their own right, and whoever I corresponded with said it would be totally fine, so I talked to the donut shop manager and set up a delivery of a dozen for the lads for Saturday before their show here. advance paid for that, as well as getting my own breakfast and coffee hehe, and then hit the road. OKAY FOR REAL FIRST STOP WASHINGTON DC!!! This was the second-longest leg of my Car Driving and it was definitely a wee bit exhausting but I had a podcast or two and a ton of E E on shuffle to bolster me through and I made it to my mom's friends' house, where I was staying, with relative ease. The venue was within a not-too-unreasonable walking distance too so after a change of clothes (I had very distinct and deliberate Show Outfits for each night that were fully separate from my travelin' clothes) and a bunch of fussing with the bracelets™ I headed over!! stopped for empanadas and a smoothie on the way and then queued up!!

aaaaahh this was such a nice fun queue. I was maybe about a dozen-ish people back from the front, down about half a block, and once I finished scarfing down my food this was my first real experience with doling out the bracelets. so fun! I'm glad it was basically an instant hit! AND I even got a few trades in this queue--one person gave me a Man Alive / Tin / E E bracelet with teeny tiny beads, super fun, and one person with a SHITTON of kandi stuff gave me one that had the name of a flower genus on it?? i think they said it was?? I love the colors on this one! And one person traded me a Blow Pop. lmao. I should eat that before it sits in my fanny pack for too long. I also really enjoyed chatting with the two guys right in front of me (Nick and Alex?), who were from south-central PA and had a couple other fandom touchstones in common with me (mcelroys/dnd/BDG! I love this Venn diagram!!) as well as a big love for E E. We didn't really see much of each other beyond the point of getting inside but I liked y'all a lot!! Hope you had as great a time as I did!!

Black Cat is where I saw E E the first time I EVER SAW THEM, which was almost exactly six years ago from this gig, which is insaaaane. The space is kind of narrow so there's not a huge amount of stage barrier space right at the front, so Becky and I ended up pretty much at the front but almost aa-all the way stage left/Jeremy-side. coulda been worse hehehe. We kind of loitered and chatted with nearby folks, I think maybe becky checked out merch ahead of the show ? but I kind of just held down the fort, enjoying setup stuff, pete running around etc hehe. getting BLASTED by the AC, which was nice.

the ummmm the opener! our first experience with Pierre! I gotta say his general style is not for me, despite the fact that I do think he's very talented and good at the thing he's doing. this first night especially he was SO sweaty and I felt bad for him lmao, you could like see it dripping off him. i am so curious as to why/how he got paired with the boys for this tour, like, what aligned in such a way that this match was made, because my general vibe on the crowd/his audience/etc was that we the fans of the nerdy white english mathy rocker guys were not exactly his demo LOL. BUT i will say in DC I do think he had one little pocket of strong-contingency fans because I kept hearing big whoops and cheers coming from one specific audience spot and I loved that for him lmao. for some reason i cannot explain I actually almost found his backing/support musician guy (the guy who was basically his version of peter) more compelling. I wanna know THAT dude's story lol.

so when he finished up we had a little interlude aaaannndd the setlist appeared... hehe. I could def have peered up to look at it from where I was, but I was telling myself I wanted to be surprised, and was deliberately looking away........ until suddenly everyone around me was gasping and going HOLY SHIT and I was like, ugghhh okay, I will check JUST enough to figure out what that's all about, and what that was all about was immediately apparent because smack in the middle of the set were a Man Alive track (which we never get in the states bar MY KZ) and something that just said "New Song." AND LIKE, OKAY, THAT'S A JUSTIFIED HOLY SHIT. new song????? so now we had THAT to contend with coming up, and aaaaaaah. ahh. yeah holy shit indeed.

it's also while we're standing there that AG pops into view, (or maybe I first spotted him during Pierre's set? Chronology is irrelevant), back off behind Becky from me in the other direction, and we waved over at him to say hi and he says to us, "All four of them are bleached blond." And my gut instinct was to be like, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, but also the truth in my heart was that there was absolutely no justification for not believing them, because of course they would, and sure enough these bozos roll out onto the stage and they are all four draco malfoy-ass bleach blond. God it looks a mess on Jeremy LOL and while the color/dye job wasn't bad on Alex, it was clear his finer hair wasn't holding up as well against the chemicals because it was just a fluffy riot mess. BUT GOD IT WAS REALLY SO INCREDIBLY STRIKING OF A VISUAL for them to be all be wearing all pure white/beige clothes and then to have this bleach-white hair and all of it catching and glowing under the stage lights... god... clearly the effect they were going for and it WORKED, IT REALLY DID. I think it looks so damn goofy (mostly on jez) out of context but it's ABSOLUTELY nailing the Everything Everything Gig Costumes energy/uniform thing that I felt like they'd drifted away from a little the past couple tour cycles, I'm so incredibly here for it

The set!!!! The gig!!!!!!! it wasn't a wildly different set from what we'd seen in CA last year, obviously RDF-heavy supplemented with a heaping helping of singles from the other albums too, but I remember thinking Leviathan and Pizza Boy were especially excellent aaaah. And Schoolin'! And the NEW SONG! The two pieces of it I IMMEDIATELY absorbed and retained were 'the image of a little yellow face to tell you that I'm sorry' and 'I love you like an atom bomb,' and I was spouting those two pieces back to anyone who wanted to talk to me about it for the rest of the night. I'm so lyrics-pilled/vocalist-biased. Which was.... Unfortunate, for this DC gig, because I do think the audio mix was pretty rough - at least from where we were standing so close to the front, I wonder if it was at least a tiny bit better further back into the crowd in the area the sound system was probably primarily calibrated for - and we were REALLY losing Jon in the mix, especially underneath how enthusiastically the crowd was singing along a lot of the time. We were on Jeremy's side of the stage and we were really just getting a LOT of Jeremy. (Which, the bass did sound absolutely fantastic, so hard to complain about that, at least, but still.) I was very thankful to be going to a few more gigs beyond this one so that this wasn't my only experience with it, especially New Song!!! Plus there were a bunch of other little tech difficulties too? Near the beginning of the new song, Jon's guitar strap came detached and wouldn't reconnect, and after struggling a bit with that he decided to just drift back and pass it off the stage to their tech guy--but he was still kind of singing/holding the mic, so as he moved on stage, the mic cable yanked the microphone stand straight over, too. Then the rest of the night that stand was pretty precarious and nearly fell two other times, only caught at the last minute by a true homie who was standing directly in front of it in the audience lmao. I think Becky yelled HIRE HIM! at one point. Annnnd also for like a whole verse of NOTLK jez's bass boards just kind of Gave Up. He tried switching to his other instrument but that wasn't working either, and then finally it all sort of came back online, so he played a little stretch with the wrong bass and then was able to switch back to the right bass when there was a lull in his part. SHAMBLES. lmfao. god it was a great gig though. SO FUCKING GOOD TO BE BACK I LOVE BAND UWAAAAAHH I WAS SO SWEATY AND HAPPY

afterrrr da gig, we needed very badly to drink water and so we managed to do that I believe, and we kind of loitered in the Merch Line Situation trying to figure out what was going on. I had kind of resolved not to buy merch until at least NY, part because I really didn't want to be lugging anything around with me for too much of my trip (esp on this night where I walked) and part because I'd read a post that Irving Plaza was among the venues who'd committed to not taking a cut of band merch sales and letting them keep it all, and I was like, well obvi that's where I want to spend my money. Plus it was cash only in DC and since I'd kind of told myself NY I didn't even have cash out, so it was nothing. BUT!!! homie Adrian whomst I had met at the DC Foals show last December had been there, a few people ahead of me in the queue and also rocking out yaayyy, and he was trying to get merch but the ATM inside the venue literally did not have any more cash left inside it to dispense because everyone was taking out so much of it to buy merch AAAH. so he reached out to me like 'you're going to more shows than just this one right?' and asked if I'd pick him up the stuff he wanted later and then mail it to him so he didn't have to contend with international shipping and I was like aaaah absolutely! yay gig comradeship!

so I think becky finally committed to getting in the merch line and I was mostly just waiting With Becky and there weren't a ton of people left because the venue was trying to clear out, but the handful of us who were still there, a wild Alex Robertshaw appeared up near the stage/bar. we vibed out whether he was receptive to Fan Bothering at this time but it seemed legit, so a bunch of us went over and socialized with him and took some pics, got some signatures, etc, woooo. We tried to vibe out from him also if the other guys were gonna be coming out, and when and where, but y'all know Alex is the awkwardest member of this band by a country mile and we didn't really have too coherent of a discourse at this point in time lmao. Not sure who talked to him about what at this point as I was just trying to hold down the fort and be Normal. I was able to give Alex the bracelet I'd made for him at this point (he was so cute studying on it and reading it ahaha - "rave-- kevin-- kevins rave KEVIN'S RAVE" and he smiled and I felt cool), and also meanwhile Pete was still running around stage doing roadietech type stuff and I sort of politely flagged him down like "do what you need to do if you need to do it but also: Hi lol" and I got to give him his bracelet as well! yay ♥. He complimented my shirt--I'd been getting a lot of compliments on it honestly, it's their Yellow Bird Project shirt that Jon designed some time ago, only I replaced the plain white sleeves of the original unisex tee with some sort of vermilion "girly fit" sleeves that are more comfy to me and kind of give the shirt a different look haha--and I sort of joked on that, said as much, oh, I swapped the sleeves out, "It's to cover up how sweaty I get." and Pete gave me a deadpan look and went "You don't even want to go there with me" and I was like "YEP I FEEL MUCH THE SAME" and I think we both enjoyed a moment of feeling very Seen about the sweatiness hehehehehe. I love Pete he is my heckin Friend With no additional merch purchases (merchases) (hm, no) the venue was finally for realsies ejecting us so we drifted back out into the streets and just like... okay... now what........ this was the point at which I think our Band Groupie-ing Crew became me, Becky, Danielle in the fox ears/tail, and a lanky youth named S.P. whom I'd talked to in line earlier while doling out bracelets (he had the good E E baseball cap; he asked for an Arc bracelet and I commended him for being an Arc fan, since I feel like they are a dwindling/rarer breed, and then I offered up my hot take that Violent Sun is just the second coming and second pass at Duet, which he thought was spicy, and then he asked for my most controversial E E take and I told him that I don't really like Tin very much and he told me he doesn't really like Shark Week very much and we agreed to disagree and have a good night LOL) (anyway I digress !). It was a warm enough night and none of us really had places to be so we didn't mind just loitering and trying to suss out some more Guys other than just Alex and Pete, but slowly but surely we became basically the only fans left sticking it out. so we stuck together! We split up to try to find if there was a rear stage door at the back and SP and I went one way (the long way RIP) and Becky and Danielle went the other way and it turns out the way that SP and I went was an alleyway just FULL of rats. Too many rats in DC!! People like to talk about rats in NYC but I saw WAY more in Washington just vibing out on the sidewalks and eating trash. I'm not anti-rat, they live there and deserve to live, but oh man it was just. I did not especially want a rat encounter LOL. The rat alley DID actually lead us to where the bus was though!!, but there was also a venue security guy there who was immediately like "Nope, back up, leave, bye" and we were like. understood have a nice day, and doubled around a different way to meet back up with the other two. wwwwelp.

We loitered a bunch more and eventually saw Alex and his homies like, AT LEAST two more times, but we ultimately never saw anyone else. They p much confirmed for us that because this was the first night of the tour, they had a really intense load-out, and everyone was jetlagged to all fuck, that they probably wouldn't ever make it out, even though at least once Alex had said something ambiguous/optimistic enough to imply that they might yet, but really it just got SO late that we couldn't justify still being there for nothing instead of being like. asleep. lol. SP and Danielle got rideshares, Becky and I walked back as far as her hotel together, and then I hiked the rest of my way back too and went the fuck to SLEEP!!! FIRST GIG IN THE BOOKS!! WHAT A LOVELY NIGHT GOD IT WAS JUST SO BEAUTIFUL TO BE SEEING THEM AGAIN ngl I think the blond is really attractive on Mike with his darker brows/beard and I'm always a sl*t for jonathan so like. beautiful. finally some delicious fucking food

it was super nice of my mom's friend to let me stay with him!!! I was so delighted to see his cats again, I remembered them from the last time I was there like six or so years ago, they're sooooo floofy and beautiful aahh. he also provided me with a white noise fan without me even asking which was SO choice. zzzzz. My plan was to get up in the morning, get coffee someplace nearby at wherever he recommended, and then hit the road forrrr... Philadelphia!!! Night two!!!! I got some breakfast tacos at a hella legit place, messed up my coffee/milk/sugar ratio ever so slightly but not in an undrinkable way, and then frickin. autobot rolled out. This drive was not bad at ALL, I timed it pretty much exactly like I planned it to, which was to: get to my friend's place where I was crashing in philly with, ideally, enough time to take a small nap before I had to do anything else, because, god, despite being pretty exhausted and sleeping okay on the nice guest bed in DC, I had BARELY slept the night before I left just from Travel Antsiness and from both staying up way later and waking up way earlier than I meant to unintentionally, and a second little recharge zzz before I went and did it all over again really hit the spot.

It was soooo nice to see Mads again and to see Mr. Angus and also meet BENNY!! More host cats!! They are suuuch silly good little lads, Mads and I had a ton of Kitty Chat and just vibing out and talking about concerts and fandom and stuff, I was so thankful she let me stay with her and getting to hang out was icing on the cake of this trip! She pointed me toward the trolley I'd need to take to get to the venue, and after my baby snzzz and drinking a ton of water and suiting up in my Arc-inspired look (literally just a sweatshirt dress I bought specifically because it was color-blocked very very much like the jackets/outfits they toured Arc in, I saw it and bought it immediately lmfao) I journeyed into the city, hoping to just find a place to eat in the vicinity of the gig! I was way closer up in the queue this time, the people in front of me were really just like.... the usual suspects, Annika+squad and David+squad (incl. Becky, who'd apparently already been there when I got there but wasn't there when I arrived), and also a super-nice woman immediately in front of me named Robin who I MEGA hit it off with!!! Hanging out with her was such an awesome part of my experience at this gig!!! she's COMPLETELY Offline which is so powerful for her but I hope there's some capacity in which we can continue to be friends because she ruled.

There was a Dominican(? I think) place like one block down from the venue where a couple in front of me had gotten some stuff and so I ran down there to snag food too and holy shit this man gave me so much goddamn food. Just a HUGE pile of rice and beans and some pork ribs, and I got a pineapple fanta, and I just popped a squat on the sidewalk and ate as much of it as I could which was probably not even half of what he gave me but it wasn't even that expensive so god bless. Once I wasn't dealing with my food sitch any more I was freed up to pass out a bunch of bracelets again, and I even got a couple more trades, one that was just a bunch of black beads and a bunch of Xs and one that says 'BUSSY' which I am elated about, thank you so fucking much lmao. Also someone offered to trade me an ibuprofen LOL and I was like no that's fine the bracelet can be free... for now, but I will keep that in mind if I change my mind later LOL aaahhh i was just so excited to give the bracelets out it was such a good vector for socializing and making Friends and Gig Buddies. I did learn p quickly at Philly that I should have made way more Man Alive, GTH, and Raw Data feel bracelets because those were basically the first to go every night and then I got stuck with just sad unloved Re-Animators and AFDs :( I was trying to like! do equal amounts of everything to give everything the love because I love them all! but people got favorites out there damn lmao. I was happy to be able to give Robin the MY KZ one because she said that's the first song she ever heard by them and it's special to her because of that (and then also it's been in the touring set and she got to hear them perform it too yay!!! I don't remember if she said she'd seen them before but it had just been a very very long time, or what, idk, aaaah).

We were R I G H T on the stage at this venue, slightly more to Alex's side this time, and the lip/rise of the stage was not very high at ALL and it felt almost like... intimidating, or like it shouldn't have been ALLOWED, for us to be that close to the stage. :flushed emoji: jeez lmao. I didn't fuck w merch here either but some people around me did I think and I held their spots, and a nice kid from right behind me in the queue brought me a Liquid Death which was so incredibly sweet. Pierre's set passed much as it had in DC, lmao; his other musician guy had a sweet fit on, though, this like two-piece set that was a really really dark/muted camo, a blazer over a black top and then matching like athleisure-fit pants and black boots, it was a fuckin look. They had a song at the very end of Pierre's Philly set that I don't think they'd done in DC (and that I didn't get in PGH either, it turned out), and ironically that was actually probably far and away the song of his I enjoyed the most, so I got kind of into it there at the end! but MAN was I ready to see the boys instead. hnnnn.

LADS SO CLOSE TO ME. JUST RIGHT THERE AND SINGING AND ROCKING. the set was aaaalmost exactly the same as DC, but in Philly they shifted Bad Friday up out of the encore and back into the set proper, and then replaced it in the encore with Violent Sun, which I admit I'd been bummed to not see in DC because I think the Violent Sun/No Reptiles encore double whammy is so incredibly crucial to the vibe. Warmed me to have it back in. Obviously Pittsburgh had so many other contributing factors that put it over the edge, but if it weren't for all of those, I think Philly would've been my favorite/best experience of these four gigs. Jon was spicy (he sang so many of the Original Rejected naughty lyrics, this is where we got 'he's a vegetable now' for the first and only time and also the only gig of the four where he leaned into the 'Arch Jeremy' gag in Arch Enemy, hehehehe, plus also motherfuckin' distant past which is not uncommon), and we got way more of the New Song-- through the whisper network of Becky, AG, David, etc., etc., we'd pieced together enough info to know by now that apparently the title of the song was in the lyrics of the chorus, and so I think it was in Philly that we all pretty much determined/decided that this was Cold Reactor. I love you like an atom bomb and I've become a cold reactor. I wasn't diving as DEEP into SONG DECIPHERING as some other folks were, but I did like kind of working on it at my own pace and absorbing it into my heart and my understanding of the band and what they're about to start doing, and so this was really great, for me, here, beautiful, beautiful. I took almost NO pics and vids at this one because my phone was kind of dying but also mostly just because I was honestly having such an enormously great time and I didn't feel the need to try to do anything other than be present in my body at the gig and experience it live. you KNOW?? LIKE!! MUSIC. man. EDIT TO ADD: I forgot to mention a small tech flub that was actually so charming, where near the very end of Arch Enemy jon seemed to be having trouble with his guitar board in the front, and he spent so long in the outro squinting down at it and trying to resolve the issue that he didn't fully come in on the It's time to show your face! bit at the proper time, and he ended up just saying "It's time to show your face." right into the mic very unaffected and straight-up in his regular speaking voice at the very, very end when the song was basically over. lol. he is cute. everyone is cute.

(I WILL ALSO SAY I got the giggles SO BAD at david and amanda's gudetama they slipped onto the stage, oh my god--I was going to take a joke video just dramatically zooming in on it, as one does, except right when I went to do that it got caught up in jon's mic cable and just TUMBLED AND JOSTLED ALL OVER THE PLACE and that fucking GOT me and I was DYING and it was right at like. the serious, heartstring-tugging, fuck-yeah parts of No Reptiles where I'm supposed to be at CHURCH and instead I'm losing my shit into hysterics over this poor gudetama just rolling everywhere alksdhjglaksd, I had to bury my face in Becky's shoulder for a measure or more and try to recover, oh my godddd. EGGS!) -- (OH ALSO I LMAO I HAVE SEVERAL AUDIENCE MEMBER ~BITS THAT I AM DOING just like, clapping here or there, participating actively in certain parts of things, and one that I kept doing for some asshole clown reason was singing along with/lampshading Alex's quick backing vox on the second verse of Spring Sun Winter Dread-- Philly was probably the place where I was the most prominent/obvious/easy to see doing it, and it made both him and Jeremy REALLY snicker, ahahaha I'm sorryyyyyyy for being obnoxioussssss)

The merch/loitering sitch was sli-iiightly more locked down, in here; there was only so long Marty and I could pretend to be thinking about merch/hanging out with people who were actually in line but not actually being in line before they really truly wanted us to leave, and they were pretty pissed that I even left the venue with an empty/ice-only water cup, never mind any dreams of re-entry. The militant energy of the security at this venue compared to how relatively chill and normal DC had been (for two venues I would say of comparable size/seriousness) was def my least favorite part of the Philly experience. I was outside, finishing my water and chitchatting with some artsy youths who were also unimpressed with security, and Becky's messaging me like "they're in here!" and I'm like "well I'm not and I can't come back so you gotta tell them to come out here!" lmao. But they did!!! All the guys came out before too long and I very delightfully got to talk to everyone. I gave Mike and Jeremy the bracelets I'd made for them - THEY both apologized to ME outright for not coming out to chat the night before?? like hello you’re the band we’re the fans you don’t owe us anything - they kind of came toward my side of the door first, and talked and chatted some, vs Jon sort of peeling the other way to the other half of the loiterers - I honestly have lost track of the sequence of events here and what happened when, but it was largely unimportant hehe. (Gosh, but then I keep randomly remembering other unrelated details. Like, for example, Black Cat gave me their big ol' signature black cat hand stamp, and I'd been thinking, oh this will be fun to watch my four hand stamps stack from these four gigs, the way I got two together from The Altogether/Matt Duncan double feature back in July, and then Underground Arts put theirs on the INSIDE OF MY WRIST and not the back of my hand, and both Irving and T-Bird just did wristbands. BUMMER.) But mostly just Seeing Band, Talking To Band. This was when I overheard Alex definitely confirm to someone that the new song is called Cold Reactor, and he sort of half-seriously half-not said they just didn't call it that on the setlist in case there was another "New Song" they might want to decide to start playing there instead at the last minute, even though the longer this goes on the more confident we are that they're not going to do that and that Cold Reactor is gonna be a new single that probably drops once this tour is over <___< eyes emoji. Also, between Wednesday and Thursday we also knew that the bleach-blond hair is for Lore Reasons, which we assume are to do with Cold Reactor and the album it will be on, because of course it is. stupid. jonathan higgs I want to crawl inside your deranged pisces mind and meld with it vulcan style.

anyway, as far as my short term memory can be relied upon/will tell me is the truth, I think Jon was actually the last person I ended up in contact with on this night; I was drifting over toward him but someone else was still engaged in an active conversation with him, so I was like, well obviously I will wait my turn and let other people have jonathan time even though I'm the biggest jonathan girlie, I can just hang and go in when he frees up, and so I was turned slightly away from him listening in on other convos and talking to Becky and maybe Annika or a couple other people, and then suddenly there's a delicate hand on the back of my shoulder and Jon's right in my fucking ear ominously going "hello." askdjhgka. He was soooo cute and nice, I gave him the bracelet I made him as well (which was "I wanna be there" from Violent Sun and shades of re-animator orange) and he was immediately like Oh, of course you, are the bracelet distributor, and I was like hehehe yes, and he asked if I also had to do with the gudetama and I was like absolutely not I have no idea what is going on there lmfao. and I think amanda and david did take credit for it at that time of course so yes hehe. Ended up in a fun casual chitchat with Jon and Becky for most of the rest of the time here, with her trying to squeeze him for info about the new song and album and lore hehehe and him being his typical cryptic trolly cagey Jon, and it was all in incredibly good fun; he noticed her bracelet too, and she pointed it out like Yes I got the one that says This Is The Prophecy from big climb because it hearkens back to that bit they were doing on twitter from way before that song even came out so I gave her that one on purpose duh lol, and Jon says "Oooh yep I forgot about that. .. Album..." and mimed swiping his hair back like whoopsie lmao and it was such a silly little half-self-neg on Re-Animator lol, and so I said "WELP too bad! because the one I made from you is one of those too haha!" and he took another look at it as if to remind himself about it and then went "Well yeah that one's good" with a wryer wickeder laugh and I was like lmao tell us how you really feel. But like he's right violent sun is perfect and I actually labored so long over what I was going to have jon's say because he was the only person I didn't have a really solid concrete idea of what to make for and ALSO he was the only one I REALLY wanted to get PERFECT because it's important to me and yeah. so it was. reassuring for him to like the violent sun one. idk anyway.

The woman we'd seen running around doing a lot for them, including merch, who recognized us from DC the night before and was fun and glib about it, and who turns out to be: Tour Manager Sam, finally had enough of our fucking about and started very efficiently organizing us all into "everyone who wants a pic with themself + all four guys come get in Now and I'm gonna play photographer and then we all gotta go the fuck home" and I respected it SO much lmao, so we had sort of a rotating queue of group picture taking and then the guys all went back inside the venue (I kind of fingerguns'd Jon like "New York :D?" and he looked at me just SO Put Out and just deadpanned "Of course you're going to be there." of course!! lmfao) and we started talking amongst ourselves just out of reluctance to let the night end/social energy we still wanted to wallow in and that was cute and nice. I said goodbye to some folks who weren't going any further on the tour. I had such a wonderful night. Then, lo and behold, we turn around and Jeremy's up on the stoop of the venue, and he's like, I think I've locked myself out. I am locked out and I also don't have my phone on me. lmfao jez. he goes "I am going to blame jonathan" and we allowed him that. I was like, do you want me to TWEET AT SOMEONE LOL and he was like good god no they'll come back for me eventually, and then yes they did, and THEN we all left hahahaha. becky insisted on sticking with me part of the way to the trolley but I was like, it is coming in 14 minutes and it says it's gonna take me 12 minutes to get there I gotta GO!, and I freaking missed it anyway!!! and then I had to wait like OVER HALF AN HOUR MORE for the next one and i didn't even get ON the trolley till like 12:50 and it was soooo late before I was back at mads's place aiyaa. But, all in all, TRULY SUCH A GOOD NIGHT I JUST LOVE BEING IN AN ACTIVE BUZZY FANDOM SPACE AND MEETING FANS AND PARASOCIALING AND DANCING AND SINGING AND DOING ARTS N CRAFTS. you KNOW?? you know. you're on tumblr you get it.

The Philly to Jersey (pre-NYC) leg of my road tripping was set to be Thee shortest drive I had to make the whole time, so I let myself have time in the morning to keep snoozing and fucking about, even though I once again woke up way earlier than I'd hoped to and didn't ever make it back to sleep after that. But the tradeoff was still super nice and relaxing vibing with Madeline--I offered to buy her breakfast in exchange for the couch-crashin' and we got hella bagel sandwiches and cold brew from a place real close by her apartment, and scarfed 'em down while watching the most recent ep of Make Some Noise and just shooting the shit (again, largely about either fandom or kitty cats. We are simple folk). My sandwich contained salmon, a fried egg, and the most incredible sloppy caramelized onions, what a banger. The last truly good food I truly enjoyed before my mega super Travel Tummy set in and wrecked my whole shop metabolically speaking, rip. I took a little rinsy-rinse shower at her place too, and then finally made myself get up and Go to do the runaround silly business of driving to and parking in NJ, taking the ferry in to Manhattan, and then taking the subway to Allegra's place for NIGHT THREE IN NEW YORK CITY WOOOOO. I LOVE going to E E with Allegra!!!!! Once again I used her place primarily as a spot to change out of my car clothes and into my gig clothes (it's RDF night; I wore an oversized pale beige button-up shirt, actually left over from my Foals Antidotes costume from last halloween hahaha, gussied up with E E pins and jewelry) and to fuck about with bracelets. I made Allegra a special In Birdsong bracelet, the only one I did from that song :) because allegra is my special E E friend!! and she needs one of her special song!!! Fandom... is good. Allegra also had a kickass outfit. We stopped in at a tex-mex place she really wanted to try that was nearby the venue, and i got pretty nervous that it was gonna be a little late before doors for us to be hitting a sit-down dinner spot, but we rushed it along pretty well on the food and got our slice of dessert cake to go in a box and everything was A-OK. And I had time to hit a bodega for merch cash from the ATM and a pineapple soda for fortitude! let's GOOO irving plaza.

God, Irving was kind of a shitshow when it came to queuing and security though. There were a fair few people in line ahead of us, maybe just as many or slightly more than what I'd had in DC (definitely further back than Philly, although in line near us were the same also-eating-Dominican-food couple from the Philly gig, and I recognized them and was glad to see them again-- I FULLY DO NOT REMEMBER/DID NOT CATCH Y'ALL'S NAMES, AND I FEEL TERRIBLE BECAUSE WE HUNG OUT AND WORKED TOGETHER SO MUCH, i am so sorryyyyy), but then because it's not a sweet local friendly indie venue but is in fact Livenation As Hell, there's some person affiliated with the venue wandering up front offering some sort of VIP/fast pass line experience where you can just cough up some extra cash and get in your own special line and get to go in first regardless of how long other people have been queuing--you know the deal. Wack as hell. I think David and Amanda opted for this in some capacity, so I was happy for them about it, but a lot of the other people who ended up doing it had kind of rancid vibes of just like "concert-going" and not the very lovely communal sardine megafan energy everyone else had had thusfar. Also it put us where we were at in the queue standing in a place that just had a really terrible smell of sewage, which persisted almost the entire time we were there only to suddenly be replaced by a very powerful smell of bleach, as if whatever it was was suddenly being cleaned/sanitized. ICKY!! Annika was enough further ahead of us in line that I thought it might have only been over where we were but she said no she was definitely getting it too. new york city babey

Bracelet distribution got a little silly here, too, since the queue was wrapping SO far back and was being policed a little more stringently, but I had kind of figured I may need some kind of additional plan, especially since I'd decided not to wear my fanny pack (bum bag--fanny pack, says Jonathan Higgs in a derisive American accent, even as he's telling me he likes mine a lot, skdjshgalkj smh) since my shorts under my shirt had really capacious pockets and that just made for one less thing to worry about--I snagged a sheet of paper at Allegra's place, along with a gallon-size ziploc bag, and I put all the bracelets in there with a note that said to just take one if you wanted one and pass it back through the queue while we waited. It was kind of a crapshoot how effective I thought this was going to be, especially since I had to kind of wait to deploy it once there was a substantial queue BUT by the time there was a big queue it meant that I couldn't see exactly HOW big from where I was near-ish enough to the front, so I didn't know how far the bag was going to make it, if someone was going to end up stuck with my whole big bag at the back of the line (esp since I had a fair number of extra Philly bracelets left over that I lumped in with the NYC ones just because I still Had them).... whew...! BUT by the time Marty was there, he was further enough back from me that I asked him to kind of check up on it when it made it to him and keep passing it; and, by the time we were going inside, I could see zero sign of the bag itself but I DID catch a lot of people milling around me wearing bracelets, and one or two of them did stop me to thank me (since I'd indicated on my note in the bag that I was the person with green hair hahaha), and then I never saw 'em again, so I guess it was a relative success!! Yayyyyy!! WAY less conducive to making New Line Friends than the DC/Philly setup had been, but incredibly effective at making sure that all my bracelets found new homes rather than me having to take a huge handful home with me again and them just sitting in my house forever LOL. success! :)

tl;dr about the bracelets. not important compared to concert and band. WE GO INSIDE!! They have such dumb security/bag check. a gender-split process where the men get patted down by a dude guard and the women get patted down by a lady guard? In TYOOL 2023? you hate to see it. She felt the Sharpie in my back pocket and made me take it out and surrender it???? MY METALLIC BRONZE SHARPIE ? ? no sharpies in the venue I guess. Talked to at least one other person who got sharpie-confiscated too, but also at least two people who fully didn't and still had markers just fine. Absolute shenanigans. Allegra and I didn't quite get barrier due in part to fastpass line nonsense but we did end up right exactly behind Annika &co. with perfect sightlines, once again stage-left/Jeremy-ward-of-center. we don't hate it! my Philly pals to my left with David, Becky et al in front of them. Me fully surrounded by redheads. LOL.

this was the laaaatest show of my whole run, a whole lot of standing around just waiting for Band, and also definitely the energy of "trying to politely vibe to pierre kwenders's set because he can clearly see me and look straight at me even though I would much rather just skip to the bit I actually came for and don't necessarily need to see his set" just slowly increasing every night RIP lol. BUT WE MADE IT! ohhhh new york. EXACT same set as Philly but I couldn't even be mad about it because I was still so grateful to get a Man Alive song that wasn't just MY KZ (not that I don't love my kz obviously, but it HAS been in the set literally all eight times that I have seen E E live as of this Irving Plaza gig, and something else from that album is fun fresh delicious) (OH, SWEET THREEP OF FRIDAY EVENING, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW) and to be getting COLD REACTOR again, especially becaussseee by this point I knew just enough of the lyrics that I felt confident singing/mouthing along conspicuously with the parts that I Did know, aka I See You Sir I'm Doing The Thing Just Watch Me, god I wish I knew how to be not so fucking extra but then again no I don't. we did get saddled with some Rather Annoying audience members in our near vicinity--a couple I'd spotted in the fastpass line earlier wedged themselves hard between me and my tall redhead/mask-wearing homie from Philly, all like "ummm we're short :)" because they. were, but that didn't give them a right to be pushy and rude, and their vibes were kind of shit because the sense I got was they were mostly there because the girl really loved the band and the dude didn't know much about them at all, and also they were already drunk so early on in the set, and they were talking loudly with some other fans they'd just met and getting Lore™ explained to them and it was just a lot of. loud talking and shoving. in my vicinity. when I would have preferred for there to. not be. BUT Also materializing behind me was someone who said "I saw your bracelets on twitter do you still have any!!" and I had to be like UHHHH FUCK, NO, I turned them loose into the queue, did they not make it as far as you..?? and she sadly said no, and I was like, well the only one I have left is this one I just left on for tradesies/advertising purposes, and it says "akon in the butterfly house" so that's kind of a deep cut, if you're familiar-- and she went WAIT REALLY and seemed SUPER jazzed to get a Dave Sardine-ass bracelet and I was like OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, GOOD, ACTUALLY, because I'd made four of these and I knew they were going to be the deepest cut/hardest sell and I was really really hoping that whoever ended up with them would actually get and appreciate them. so thank you, andrea, for being that person, and for appearing exactly when the bracelet needed it most. so glad to have hung with you this night. sorry that you too found yourself among the ranks of the sharpie-confiscatees.

ANYWAY, OTHER THAN THAT, THIS AUDIENCE WAS FIRE AND THIS GIG SLAPPED. We were finally in a space and an environment that REALLY lent itself to the crowd actually full on bouncing/dancing instead of just kind of wobbling and vibing and everyone in my immediate zone was really going hard. I LOVE this fucking BAND. I love every song by this band. I love when Jon just points the mic at the crowd and the entire crowd sings the whole song word for word and note for note. I love that Jon was still desperately trying to cram the name of the host city into the start of My Kz, despite the fact that "Washington" subs for "Lucifer" perfectly (he has done this both times I've seen them in DC lol) but "Philadelphia" is WAY too stupid long and "New York City," while a syllable shorter, scans metrically in an extremely busted way and you could have just said EN WHY CEE or. y'know. lucifer. but okay man you do you. Jon was just as rowdy as the rest of us lmfao. he was like, climbing up and down off Mike's riser, he was finding people who were taking photos/videos and staring directly into their cameras (me fucking included--I'm sorry, Jon, you can't make eye contact with me while singing the "When I saw you, I fell in love" part of Leviathan, I am pretty sure that is illegal and a crime against my humanity), and basically all the tracks from Get To Heaven (plus like, Cough Cough and NOTLK) blew the fucking roof off the place. I think he donked some My Kz lyrics hehehe he just skipped to the alt lyrics of the chorus too early without completing the standard chorus first at the end, and a little flubbo in NOTLK and a tiny stutter in No Reptiles too, everyone was just TOO ROWDY and he's THROWN LOOPY and man did we not care. I said multiple times to people on this tour that pretty much the closest things I've ever experienced to true Religion are a) being in an E E audience for No Reptiles and b) being in a Hedwig audience for Midnight Radio. they're the same spiritually in my heart and also like do people who love Jesus feel this way and is this why. insane. the cult leader imagery was Not Wrong!!!!!

I wanna MERCH! I got in the line not too long after the show wrapped, but true to reports I'd heard about the pre-show merch line, it was moving verrryy slowly, with just one guy manning it who was not exactly quick and a card reader that seemed pretty chuggy too (but hey, at least NY was taking card). I'd known I wanted the poster--it's got my favorite neon orange on it, it really really slaps, and I wanted something to get signed--but I let myself talk myself into a t-shirt too, mostly because I was REALLY excited to buy E E merch apparel that wasn't black or white. Yellow!! a really freaking good yellow!! I wish the yellow ones had actually had the tour dates on them like the black and white ones did but the yellow branding has been pretty exclusive to this leg of tour (i.e. vs the red branding of the west coast one last year) and it looks soooo good with my hair that I don't especially mind. I also knew that Adrian wanted a copy of Caps Lock On, but that he also wanted a shirt, but I hadn't heard back from him about which shirt or what size so I just got the book and my stuff and then bounced. Communique from outside was that Alex had surfaced but no one else, but that Alex had promised appearances by the rest of them, but that also Alex was already gone and unlikely to return by the time I made it outside. I posted up with all my friends from inside, god this was SUCH a good sardine squad this night, and it took some waiting but eventually the promises came true! All the other boys surfaced and we had some REALLY great fan chats and mingling this tiimmmmee. oh my gosh. A guy came with a Modern Bison CD that Jon and Jeremy were really truly overjoyed to see and to sign and take pictures with; I talked to Jeremy about the bracelets some more because he'd been wearing the one I gave him the WHOLE GIG IN NEW YORK SO LIKE THAT'S GONNA BE IN ANY PHOTOS THAT WERE TAKEN PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING, oh my gosshhh, he was so nice about it and enjoyed that his Arch Jeremy matched my Arch Emily, the vibes were impeccable; and then I got everyone to sign my poster, but of course Alex was gone already, so Jon offers to forge Alex's signature and goes "look it's like this" and draws some loopy scribble on there and I'm like, lmao, sure.

thing was... I had absolutely heard Jeremy signing something for someone else the night before talking about how he was getting really good at forging Alex's signature for him, since I guess it's normal for him to be the one that disappears the sneakiest (god he really is just the Justin Craig of this band, it's 1:1, huh), and so when I told Jeremy this, he was like "I'll do it" and I was like "no Jon did already do it" and he was going to just leave it then, like, oh, well, okay, but then he saw the mess Jon had made and he was like "--that's quite dreadful actually-- the trick is to not overthink it--" and so now my poster has two forged Alex Robertshaw signatures and zero authentic ones. l m f a o. (To be fair, I do have other things they've all four signed, and Jeremy's fake Alex is at least passable, and Jon's fake Alex is Absolute Dogshit Nothing. I am obsessed.) I even got Peter to sign! He was talking with another fan about a gift she'd given them in the past that had sadly been part of what they lost in their studio fire, it was really heartbreaking to hear. He also thanked me again for his bracelet and told me he planned to give it to his daughter and that she would love it. We took a pic together! Pete the GOAT.

While I was making the rounds with the other boys and other fans, Allegra mostly in tow, swapping sharpies among those of us who still had them, Becky was back with Jon, taking a couple videos for people who weren't there in NY to talk about stuff that they were curious about--I think in the context of Maria, Becky said something like, she thinks the hair is crazy, and Jon said into the camera something like, "If you think it's crazy Now, give it like two or three more weeks, and you're really gonna think it's crazy." SIR WHAT. If the blond is a precursor to something else happening I'm gonna be so the opposite of normal about it, and if the bleach is a stepping stone toward the boys dyeing their hair Other colors I am going to be PROFOUNDLY NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT, AND IF ANY MEMBER OF THE MANCUNIAN ROCK BAND EVERYTHING EVERYTHING HAS THEIR HAIR DYED GREEN ANY TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE I AM GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY INSUFFERABLE. tyler the creator unfollow me right now etc. etc. etc. The more I've thought about it I don't THINK this is what's up--my sense is that any Cold Reactor music video is probably already filmed and ready to drop alongside the single pretty quick after the tour ends, rather than being something they're going to film/put together entirely post-tour, so they probably needed the bleachblond for some energy similar to how I felt about them when they first walked on stage in DC, but Oh man...... OH MAN............ I digress. anyway.

following up from that, Allegra (I think? Or maybe still Becky and allegra was just Present) addressed the notion of the hair being related to the Lore, and like, did that mean lore for the single/the upcoming album ? ? which was what we were assuming, and Jon said some demented and ominous and extremely exciting phrase like, "The lore for this one is.... b o t t o m l e s s" in his always-startling real deep Jon voice, and that was the fucking sound bite of the evening, folks. FOLKS. ALLEGRA AND I WENT ALL THE WAY BACK TO HER APARTMENT JUST CONTINUALLY SAYING "THE LORE IS BOTTOMLESS!" my body is so god damn ready.

We bid farewells to all our friends for whom NYC was their final stop on this tour!! SAD!!!!!! Going to miss all the homies T___T it's not fair that we're not just all going to every single stop on this tour I don't think? it should actually be illegal for us not to be present when the band is performing?? the hugest RIP. Hugs exchanged all around. Me trying to say bye to Jon but he's engaged with someone else so I think I just awkwardly said "See you tomorrow" twice and then we left. becky maaaybe trying to last minute scramble to also come to pgh now despite not really having accounted for it in her plans originally ? ? I was not certain what she intended here but I supported her. yes. me, annika and AG for sure being there at least. we ride. Back to allegra's where I did, unfortunately, sleep ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLY/BASICALLY NOT AT ALL due to being so hot and stuffy in my little nest on the floor that it was making me nauseated, I think I got maybe 2.5 hours tops, but I didn't really have a choice because if I wanted to be back home in time to do ANYTHING other than just rock straight over to the queue for Thunderbird then I knew I was going to have to leave so GOD DAMN early in the morning to haul ass back to where my car was and then drive the seven hours to pgh. But I did exactly that!!!! bitch!!!!! Other than some issues like, managing to make a timely pit stop for gas/potty/coffee, I endured the miserable long roadtrip despite myself, raging my way through the poconos, downing the largest cold brew Wawa would sell me, having a truly tragic car vs quesadilla incident, etc. My BFF Francis even got on the phone with me for the last hour or so and we chatted and I got to give them the whole update on the tour thus far, so fun! They MIGHT try to go to the Chicago stop next week!!! if they feel like they can swing it, and I was like ok no pressure but also it's been an extraordinary experience for me thusfar and I highly recommend. So if you see Francis at E E Chicago please holler at them kindly from me!!! :) But at the very least they said they did want a T-shirt and venmo'd me money to buy them one, since I was already still gonna have to get one for Adrian. woooooo

I got home with, yeah, basically exactly enough time to shower, get my outfit together, and regroup before heading to the venue !!! I JUST BARELY missed the bus that would've gotten me there the most promptly, largely due to not being able to find another fucking Sharpie since irving plaza took my first one lmfao, and it ended up being quicker to walk there than to wait the 36 minutes it would've been for another bus or whatever. I still had MEGA travel tummy so I just snagged an apple and scarfed it down on the walk over. Annika was already there queuing! so we hung out in line together and waited and drank the waters we had definitely brought in from outside the bar and just vibed lol. and she was like, I heard them checking two new songs that haven't been in the setlist yet, and I was like ha ha lol like what, and she said, kevin's car and leave the engine room.

and listen, I was optimistic. that my social media obnoxiousness and well-known, easily observable public desires might yet sway them, because come on it's my hometown and it's the last show i'm gonna see on this tour and I sent them donuts, and those were MEANT as a KINDNESS and an ENTHUSIASM FOR DONUTS and not as a bribe, but if anyone wanted to interpret them as a bribe anyway whomst was I to say no, but like. just because I want the band i like to do a thing absolutely does not mean that they have to fucking do it. I want to be crystal clear that i have never at any point EXPECTED them to do this. i just. hoped. yearned in my heart of hearts. and also had very sound rationale for how possible/likely it was. Here's How Engie Room Can Still Win. yfm. but the soundcheck all but confirmed it in my soul for me. and I was like... glad, that she'd been there and caught it and could tell me about it, because it gave me time to like, come to terms with the reality of it, emotionally. AAH. AAAAAHHH, OKAY. BITCH, PLIABLE HEAD, IT'S ALL HAPPENING.

we lingered and watched the queue form behind us-- I spotted a kid I'd seen at the Philly show, god bless. Everywhere we turn, repeat customers. I was telling my work friend today, I feel like the US fanbase for E E is significantly smaller than the UK audience, but we make up for it in that we go fucking hard. Every US fan is a superfan. there are no half-assed american sardines. and that has been so BEAUTIFUL and means the WORLD to me to be sharing it with the other ones of you. Bracelet sharing rocked at this gig!! I had exactly as many as I'd set aside for Pittsburgh and no more, since all my spares had evaporated up at Irving, A new person ALSO HAD BRACELETS!!! LIKE, for realsies Made For Trading At This Show Specifically bracelets, it was suuuuch a delight, so in addition to my eclectic collection from the previous gigs I now also have one that says RAW DATA FEEL with some truly choice glow in the dark bric-a-brac on there as well, and my heart was so warm aaaaaah. fwiendship :) Also spotted in the pre-doors queue were the Pizza Boy costumed guy and a woman I met at Foals in 2019?? who I guess automatically recognizes me because of the green hair, but just. omg. the community!!!! I'm dying!!!!!!

There was a slight will-call kerfuffle that nevertheless did not stop me from being dead center dead at the front right in front of where jonathan's mic was destined to be, and I was like. god. here we go. the home stretch. This was ABSOLUTELY the WORST place to be to be pretending to be interested in pierre's set, because he kept looking straight at me and dog I gotta admit four shows in I was feeling pretty tired. like, the energy of E E Itself was going to fully reinvigorate me, but nearly everything else on the planet was like totally disinteresting and I wasn't really up for it, especially when it's my semi-sex-repulsed ace-spectrum ass being just really put off by the suggestive gyrations of a performer that is not to my tastes. UM SORRY BYE HAHA. they didn't even play the one song I kind of liked. I managed to miss like two and a half songs of his set being still locked in the merch line at least lmao. literally WHILE I WAS STANDING IN THE MERCH LINE they sold out of the yellow shirt and I couldn't get me and francis matchies so I had to get them the black instead :( but thankfully they still had the one Adrian wanted because idk what I would have done if I had to scramble for a plan B with him on short notice haha. and I had EXACTLY enough cash for the two shirts left from the day before and I was paying Tour Manager Sam with it like oh my gosh I'm so sorry this is like my sweaty pocket cash from last night this is kinda gross and she was just like, No actually that's honestly exactly how I've been rolling as well and it is kind of gross so like agreed hahaha. She's the best. Idk how long she'll be tenured to them but I'd love to see her continue to exist in like their coterie moving forward. impeccable vibes.

also used merch waiting as a way to distribute more bracelets and get a drink of water! WOOHOO NOW I AM READY TO RECEIVE MY COMMUNION THANK YOU. they put the setlists down and there was a very small fraction of me that wanted to avert my eyes but like I. I had to know. and annika said yes there are new songs in the list. and I peered into the list and my song was there.

hey guys. hey guys? look, this was for me. I have to be honest with you. i manifested this. by being annoying on twitter. by being god's specialest costume-making donut-gifting bracelet-slinging weirdo. I'm owning it and it's mine. I was exactly EXACTLY right with "well, if they put Engine Room in they'll probably take Leviathan out, because they'd kind of fill the same role of slow moody song in the set, and then they'll probably swap in a different non-Man Alive song to compensate for Engine Room being there instead," and this is exactly what happened, and so then not only did I get Engine Room but I also got REGRET, WHICH IS ALSO AN EMILY THREEPWILLOW PLIABLE HEAD SONG, BECAUSE HERE THESE NERDLORD KINGSHIT BANDBOYS ARE IN MY GODDAMN BACK YARD, they're in my house and god it took me the whole fucking set up to then to just prepare, like I had to try not to think about it so I could enjoy what was right in front of me. God it was so fucking, fucking good. our position along the stage had Alex's stuff REALLY forward in the mix which was kind of new for me, but jon was just right there and every time I lifted my hands to dance and to yearn it was like, the only thing stopping me from touching you is my own sense of propriety and not any kind of physical barrier or distance, and the person immediately behind me was seeing the band for the first time and felt similarly about NOTLK as I did to Engine Room and those two songs were literally back to back in the set so we kind of screamed and cried and died together, I gave her a huge hug, and LOL SORRY NOT SORRY THAT I GOT MY KZ AND LEVIATHAN TAKEN OUT OF THE SETLIST FOR Y'ALL, PITTSBURGH, I DO FEEL KIND OF BAD BUT THIS WAS UMMM IMPORTANT TO ME, THANK YOU, goodbye. goodbye I left the planet. I thought I was going to cry and I nearly did but I didn't, but I did actually maybe start hyperventilating. like I'm glad I knew it was coming ahead of time because if it had been a full surprise I think whatever was happening to my lungs would have been exponentially worse and I may have even fainted.

(which, btw: jonathan. jon. when he came out on stage, he almost immediately got his mic cable caught on the edge of where his setlist was taped down, and in jerking it around, he whipped the setlist up off the floor and way upstage toward where Pete was; when he finally put it to rights and taped it back down, he just left it where it was at, far enough away from me that I definitely could not read it anymore; and like DID YOU DO THAT ON PURPOSE? TO MOVE IT OUT OF MY LINE OF SIGHT, TO MAYBE KEEP ME FROM READING IT? SURELY YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT I'D ALREADY SEEN IT LIKE 15 MINUTES AGO. NICE TRY BUT IT'S TOO LATE I SAW EVERYTHING. i love him. i'm in physical pain.)

knowing this was my final one, I went so, so, incredibly hard, I let myself dance and mosh and scream and take way more pics and videos than I had before, I leaned on the lip of the stage, I had an absolute fucking blast. When the set was over a few other people who were more strategically positioned (i.e. people who had not had their most easily accessible setlists unceremoniously yoinked several feet away) snatched up the closest ones way quick; there was a general tension in the crowd at being able to see jon's, but it being further away out of reach, and one ballsy-ass kid (the "Kevin" person who'd accompanied the pizza boy person) actually clambored up onto the stage and ninja'd over and took it for himself, which inspired two copycats to do the same for some discarded guitar picks (and all of which definitely provoked a very loud, unimpressed, authoritative barking of "HEY!!!" from some security somewhere, like, they definitely shouldn't have done that!! yikes!!!!). I, instead, very patiently waited for an opportune moment to get the attention of their short king guitar tech as he was running around doing teardown, and someone else flagged him first and got pete's setlist, and in my final moments I got him to get me mike's. Gang, I'm gonna be real with you, I was not leaving my Pittsburgh hometown show in which they played Leave The fucking Engine Room without a setlist. there would've been blood or at the very least tears. so like. thank god lmao. Satisfied, we got some water and then headed out!!!

It was a long, chilly wait for the boys outside--god, the chilliness was REFRESHING, though, it's October for crying out loud, and DC and Philly and NY had all been muggy sweaty hot with no need for even long pants, much less a jacket, but I was glad I'd had the forethought to wear my flannel around my waist to cover up the YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT printed around the ass of my shorts on my walk over to deter questions, lmfao. We easily identified the spot on the side of the venue where we assumed the guys were coming out, it was all just a matter of time. (AG and I getting some confusing-to-parse messages from Becky? Idk my phone was SUPER dying so I was trying to leave it on airplane as much as possible, I didn't even make it to the end of the night, RIP needing to use my map all day in the car and even with it plugged in spending more than I was juicing of the battery. Listen i needed PICS and VIDEOS!!) I saw Jon first, and he almost looked past me before spotting me there because I was pretty close to the corner of the block, and I just stared at him, and said, May I hug you. and he said, of course! and I hugged him so long and so hard just like, thank you, I was extremely emotional then and I'm also getting extremely emotional now just typing about it, and he was like omg haha what for? Coming to your town? and I was like coming to my town and playing my SONG!!! And then he said something with the tone of a snarky teasy joke but that was like flusteringly truthful underneath about them legitimately rearranging the set quite a lot for me, and I have not stopped screaming internally since then, and Jeremy joked that I'd just seen the exact same set three times and they felt they ought to give me at least something new ha ha ha but like it wasn't entirely a joke, and I just don't even know how to process this. i am perishèd in the soil. anyhow.

I wanted both my setlist and my Supernormal EP vinyl signed by all the boys, and I managed this with relatively little doing ("A deep cut!" jeremy remarks of the supernormal, haha), but I didn't want to be crowding them and getting in the way of other people getting lad time, so I kind of took a backseat and just talked when the time was right, but Jon did kind of keep wanting to talk to me. We talked about the new song, and we talked about the donuts I sent over--oh my GOD, because I was like, they're from that place over there, you can see the big neon donut sign from here! haha, and he was like dyou know what, I knew that's where they were from, because I went over there earlier in the day and got one for myself, I got a huckleberry one and I came back with it and everyone was like, what's that, they were very jealous, and then not too long after that this box of loads of them just shows up-- And like I am a donut fairy psychic wizard. Also everyone who is ever in Pittsburgh should go to Oliver's donuts and eat their fabulously good products. I will shill for them literally any day of the week. This is the second band I have given Oliver's to this year. I cannot be stopped. ANYWAY. i honestly almost could have written that prediction on an envelope and sealed it, that they'd end up wandering in there on their own only for me to send them some too. i was so tickled that jon got the huckleberry one because it's their signature flavor and it's SO PINK and allegra and I had just decided the night before that jon higgs is hot pink coded. like, in the universe where they are dyeing their hair multicolors for the lore. anyhow. it's good shit.

i had SO much fun after this show, even though it was so chilly and dark and we were scrungling around on a literal street corner outside a wine and spirits store, I was like holding people's things so they could get pics and signatures, I was showing off my supernormal booty shorts, I was talking to Jon about lore----- ohhh, my god, I had exactly two bracelets left when the night was over, literally the end of my stash, and it was one Final Form FIRST BODY LAST BODY that I said, y'know, I'm going to save this for my bestie francis when I send them the shirt, because that's the lyric I wanna get a tattoo of, and it'll match with my PLIABLE HEAD bracelet, and it'll be another sort of besties matching thing; and my one lone AKON IN THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE bracelet that remained, where I'd kind of said, well, if this one doesn't find the right home tonight, then at the end of the night I'm going to give it to Jon too. So I dug in my bag and passed it off, and he was like "what does this one say.... kon... Akon... Akon in the house--what is--OH AND THERE'S A LITTLE BUTTERFLY ON THERE, God--" and he was GRINNING and he was SO TICKLED BY IT and Jez chimed in with just like "The attention to detail--" and Jon was like "this is my favorite one actually," he LOVED IT AND I WAS SO CHARMED AND EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT, and then he offered me up something like "you kno-ow, this, the song, of this, there's actually a reference to it in something, something you've never heard-- and--that you never will," doing his cryptic Jon troll grin, "the one thing that didn't make it," with the implied end of that sentence being "onto the album," and 'album' in this case being implied to be Raw Data Feel, which they have very publicly said that for once was an album where they just put everything on and didn't cull any songs or reserve any bonus tracks to release later or whatever. So I said, "Oh, from the one that we've been told had no cuts...?" also not explicitly saying RDF, and his answer to that was vague/nondescript enough but was probably an affirmative, but then he did follow that up with "that's lore that's SO far down the line, WAY WAY out there," and god, just, how deep does this man's brain and nonsense even fucking go. how far into the future is there LORE. BOTTOMLESS!!! I am obsessed with him. i cannot stress enough how blorbo he is to me.

The shorts came back up in conversation too ("Sorry, let me just look quite closely at your ass for a moment--" "It's okay, the shorts are designed that way--") and him saying, yeah, we do talk about some of the costumes still, and then segueing into asking if I had plans for this year and what I was doing, and I said, maybe, I'm not sure if I want to tell you, and he said, Is it to do with us, and I said, Neither confirm nor deny, and he said, Well if it's not, then, I want to know, with kind of a 'duh' tone ahahaha because like true there would be no reason to be coy if it was nothing to do with E E at all, and I explained that like I kind of have to have two costumes ("of course you do."), WELL because y'know the E E ones don't really play to or land with the general populace (a very cheeky "No!") so I have, just, one that's for going to parties, and one that's for fucking around on the internet. He seemed to find that acceptable hahaha.

Anyway what I REALLY wanted with wearing the Supernormal shorts was a group pic of all five of us normal frontways, and then a group pic of all five of us facing backward/ass to the camera a la the picture of them outside the White House, where you could see the goof of my shorts but also all of their butts, but this was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER TO DO when it was so dark that phone cameras were taking everything long-exposure, and also they'd all had just enough beer to not really be following on what the bit was. Absolute shit results on the backwards pic because I couldn't, y'know, see to coordinate it, because I had my back turned. (Me yelling, "Not just MY butt, EVERYONE'S butts, come on!!" into the streets of Lawrenceville.) Utter failure. Didn't care. I love these fucking guys. The vibe was finally kind of winding down, closing-time energy, the guys still had to get on the bus to Boston right away even with tomorrow being their day off, it was a Boston day off and not a Pittsburgh day off where I could offer them free ice cream sadly, so they all sort of bowed sweetly out. Jon gave me his like, I Am Part Of The Band clearance ID badge from the venue, kind of out of nowhere, he was like "sorry this is all I have to give you, it's the least I could do," and I was like WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'VE ALREADY GIVEN ME SO M-- YOU COULD DO WAY LESS ??? but I guess now I have that, too. I tried to give him the King Of Oil sign from my fatberg costume, which I'd initially brought because I thought it would be a fun photo taking prop but the photo situation was the aforementioned disaster so that never really came to any fruition at all, so I was just going to gift it to them, and he said "My suitcase is already so full of so much random shit-- that you've given us--" and then right as he was leaving he just said "Thank you for being such a weirdo" with a voice full of all the kindness and affection in the world and I just yelled "ANY TIME!!" and then oh so tragically the night had to be over.

it's been nice, though, because I'm so used to driving the long drive home at the end of an adventure and having that signify the end, of getting to the end of the car ride and having nothing beyond that but the rest of my regular life; and this time, I drove all the way home, but when I got there, the adventure was still happening, right in my neighborhood, right down the street, and all I had to do was walk back home alone in the dark and climb into my own bed at the end of a long and beautiful night. i can already tell that this is going to be one of my most special memories basically forever, and now every time I drive or ride the bus to and from work each day I will be passing by the place where Everything Everything performed Leave The Engine Room for me, and that's so profoundly special that I don't even have words to describe it. I love this band, I love the people in it and I love the people its gravity pulls in to orbit around it, I'm just so goddamn happy. I don't even know what to say or how to end this.

[goldenzx]

Specialized Super Spectacular Squadron Spider-Man / SSSS Spider-Man

Decided to make a group of Sentai Spidersona Goofballs, It was pretty hard to adapt the eyes into a visor design. Also was pretty hard to find out who would make up the team and what colors they would be (So many of Spidey's villains wear green, probably because of contrasting colors schemes?). As for why I decided to genderbend Rhino?.... dunno, really just seemed natural at the time.

Here's a bit of backstory and characters, but I don't have alot. I'd appreciate suggestions from people more familiar with Spider-man.

Spider Protector V and Spi-D Machines - 5 alien warriors from Planet Spider use the sentient transformation devices called the "Spider Protector V" to tranform into the Spectacular Squadron "Spider-Man". Fighting evil using their special combat suits and weaponize giant vehicles called the "Spi-D Machines".

But while patrolling a far away Solar System in-search of the dangerous Iron Cross Army, they are ambushed and ended up landing near a prestigious stem school called "Osborn High". With four of the warriors out of commission with both their Spider Protectors and Spi-D Machines heavily damaged, And their leaders losing faith in his skills, they decide to accept help from the shady headmaster and billionaire, Norman Osborn.

The four machines and changers are repaired, and all five suits and machines are given a few Osborn™ improvements, and the Spider Protector V are sent out to find a new group of heroes to fight the Iron Cross Army and their leader, the evil Doctor Monster. Although while Osborn seems be helping them to prevent the Iron Cross Army from conquering the earth, he seems to be plotting something behind the scenes.

The Hero's backstory (This is what I've thought of for now);

Peter Parker - Chosen to be the "Spectacular Red/The Spectacular Spider" or simply Spider-Man. A promising young lad who got accepted into Osborn High after disabling a sabotaged machine that was being shown off by scouts. He lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben.  He's always been a huge nerd, but started going to the gym when he entered his first highschool in hopes of deterring bullies, although that hasn't seemed to be working thus far. (and because of encouragement by Uncle Ben). Surprisingly snarky and more confident than the average dweeb.

Otto Octavius - One of Parker's classmates and first friend in this new school. A genius inventor Peter met at Osborn High, they both get their suits on the same day, he transforms into "Spectacular Green/The Spectacular Ock" or just Doc Ock. Quite intelligent, But often victim to his own hubris.

Herman Schultz - Becomes "Spectacular Yellow/The Spectacular Shocker" or Shocker. A self-taught engineer, after having to drop out of his first high school because of his parents' financial situation, he tried using engineering and inventing prowess to rob crack safes. While in Juvie he was chosen by the Spider Bracelet, and because of this and Osborn being impressed by his inventing talents, he is out of Juvie in exchange for attending Osborn High (And fighting Dr Monster). Although he can be quite greedy, he's actually quite a kind and caring and pretty peppy dude. Just don't ask him to borrow a couple bucks.

Alex Sytsevich - She's "Spectacular Grey/The Spectacular Rhino" or Rhino, and Peter's second friend at Osborn High. A Russian American from a poor. She can seem dimwitted at practically everything else. Short-sighted and easily deceived, combined with her near inhuman stature and strength caused her to fall into the wrong crowd. She is enrolled into Osborn High after being chosen by the Spider Bracelet, where she learns she's surprisingly great at physics. Wants to make an honest living for her and her parents, but is afraid the crime life may be all she's truly good at. Appreciates Peter Parker's friendship and honesty, and has a slight crush on him.

Max Dillon - He's the final member, "Spectacular Blue/The Spectacular Electro". He's solely motivated by money, studied hard to make money, entered Osborn high to get a better job to make money, and when he gained his suit he used it as leverage to be paid when he fights against the Iron Cross Army. Some may think it's because he wants a good life for his sister, and maybe that's partially true, but spend any amount of time with him, and you'll find that he's generally just a money-hungry guy. He is easy to anger and pretty rude. It's unknown why the Spider Protector V chose him.  Although he gets the job done well, probably the best fighter among them and the most adept at using his suits abilities, always getting vexed at when his teammates play around during battles. He wishes him and Schultz hero names weren't so similar and has been asking Herman to rename himself "Shockwaver" or something.

[majimasleftasscheek]

So, I know you like Kazumaji and Tigerfish (which, ngl, you kinda got me into lol), but out of curiosity, do you have any other pairings in the series?

a few actually!

Minami x Nishida - oogie boogie dynamic of a goblin and just a guy™, they can bond over how much they love Majima and how he's a hard ass

Ryuji x Akiyama x Hana - mostly because of ishin/dead souls tbh because I get a crumb of interaction there and throwing Hana in too cuz I like the idea that Ryuji and her can bully captain capitalism

Daigo x Mine - the goober ass obsession Mine's got going for Daigo of all people is very funny to me in a charming cringefail sort of way. I personally prefer interpretations of them where they're both wildly pathetic

Shinada x Milky-chan lol - I just think they're really cute and I hope they both got on their feet so they could live out their dreams 🥺

Yuki x Koyuki- I hope they're happy running a sushi place or whatever it was that they're doing in LAD 😌

and that's pretty much it I think 🤔 most other pairings I'm very indifferent to or they just don't do anything for me personally

[lacebird]

okay lads, help me decide pls 💜

So, I have this beautiful purple bag but something that has bothered me about it were the handles. I never liked how awkward they felt, so I decided to remove them on a whim today. This has resulted in holes on both sides of the bag. Not super noticeable, but still... they're there.

Here's what the bag looked like when i bought it:

(of course there's mandatory nail matching asfdgf)

Here's what the bag looks right now:

The little thing that the strap hooks on to is also sewn crooked, which I think makes the bag look at bit 'off'.

So!

The idea is to put a large bow at the front of the bag where the handles used to sit, with tails that extend over the bag so that they flow really pretty. Here's a little sketch I did to help you see the Vision™:

My question is, should I make the bow out of a sheer ribbon (like organza), or use a satin ribbon?

The colours I'm considering are a similar purple shade to the bag or white. Since I can't make two polls, help me decide on which colour would look the best with this bag. Or give my suggestions on what other colours could work well! But personally, I'm leaning towards those two colours.

Thanks for the help!

[justasimplesinner]

Are 2022 rqs still open? Cuz oh boy oh buddy your kiss descriptions are so gd good, would it be possible to ask for making out hcs for 2022 Eddie and Ossie? Sweet riddle lad or bastard mob boss, either way, HOO

HOOOO

2022!Edward make-out hcs:

oh my god he has fantasized about this before you two even got together (or you actually learned his name) and keeps on daydreaming after. you are constantly on his mind and ever since he got a taste of your lips, he will never get enough. good job, you got yourself an addict

isn't the most straightforward person, so in the beginning, he will be too scared to initiate anything. he really doesn't want to ruin the thing he has with you

is a little sloppy and awkward, but very eager. and i mean very. there's nothing he wanted more than this, he's gonna make the best of this hopefully for the both of you

tell him once that it's okay to touch you and you'll never have to tell him again

he's always so desperate, like he was drowning and you were the very air he breathes. he kisses hard and with a lot of emotion, and his hands will cluth at you like his life depends on it

despite not being much on the dominant side, he will somehow always have you pushed up to the nearest surface during make-out sessions. he's stronger than he looks and he just pushes himself up against you so much that at some point you have to lean on a solid surface. it's like he tries to merge you two into one

gets hard quickly, so even if that wasn't your intention, you still get it! at first it's embarassing, but it's very easy to show him how much you don't mind ;)

he's generally vocal and this is no different. he whines. a lot. and who doesn't want a grown man whining into your mouth like a touch-starved puppy?? and he shivers a lot, it's like he's positively vibrating under your fingertips whenever you're close

loves it when you touch him back. it doesn't matter where, he wants your hands everywhere. pulling at his hair, squeezing his cheeks, grabbing at his sides, his ass, his back, everywhere. he'd do anything to keep your hands on him

also, once he gets comfortable, he's not-so-hesitant to initiate and take over control. not a Big Dom™ this guy (obviously) but he will gladly snatch you right into his lap and press your body to his as he kisses you breathless and clutches at your body all over

2022!Oswald make-out hcs:

oh honey, he's down. he's down down. he's in. paint him intrested. jesus fuck he loves it and he's not afraid to show it

and he's a ridiculously good kisser, too. he can get a bit too excited sometimes, trust me, but every time he gets sloppy, you know you're in for a good time

he has a generally dominating personality, he's confident in what he's doing, so don't be surprised if he sweeps you for a quick sesh every now and again. he loves it when you initiate it though, makes him feel loved and attractive

always has his hands on you. usually starts by pulling you in by your face or your waist, but boy do they love to travel. he knows you like the back of his hand, maps out every inch of you

pats and squeezes your ass a lot

a passionate kisser. he's so fucking into you it's not funny, and his kisses convey just that. you've got him wrapped around your pretty little finger

usually starts out slow and very sensual, cradling your cheek, smiling with you into the kiss, but sometimes, he's in a frienzy. either you got him all riled up or he's stressed out of his mind, then he will pull out the big guns immediately. hard, long, passionate and breathtaking, with his hands grabbing at your waist and pulling you right up against him, holding the back of your head to keep you right where he wants to, all the rizz baby

and about stress - this is his favourite way to relax. your hands have this magical ability to immediately get rid of any tension in him. and you don't have to ever worry about him being too rough because of stress - he always make sure you're alright. unless you want him to be rough, of course

there isn't a word out there that could describe how much he actually loves when you sit on his lap. you're so close to him and he has access to all of you and your scent is everywhere around him. absolutely loves that

and you have no idea how funny you got him feeling inside. he's never had anyone interested him simply because of him, and suddenly you're here, kissing him all over and calling him handsome and your hands are positively squeezing his sides and dragging down the nape of his neck, he's in heaven. he's never felt needed and wanted like this before

[ravenmold]

Pretty Please tell me about "idk man ……. Pirate au" 🥺🥺🥺

Hey PaniC 😌❤️

Surprising absolutely nobody, this is a pirate au for sterek that was inspired by the first season of OFMD. I think specifically that episode where they infiltrated the bougie party of snobby nobles 😂 I started it in March of 2023, literal months before I even found out Mattfoggy and back then every idea I had was sterek.

It's 1300 words but they're all following the more traditional raven structure: little bits of scenes and quotes and ideas and notes to myself so that I can capture the Vibes™. There's really nothing coherent about my writings but I'll share a lil snippet so you can judge it, and then afterwards the plot summary I have so far.

Derek has conflicting feelings about stowaways. Pirates deal with them often, as it’s the easiest way for convicts to escape the immediate vicinity, and pirates avoid law enforcement by design, so it’s an almost logical agreement – except for the fact that most stowaways steal your food, loot, gunpowder, and wouldn’t hesitate to kill a crew member if their safety was threatened. Overall, a loose cannon, and most pirates agree that they’re best dealt with by the sea itself.

Maybe it was because he was a stowaway himself, as a young boy, hiding among crates for a week straight on a horrible smelling supply ship, that he can’t seem to be quite so hard on them. Maybe it’s the fact that when he sees this one, Boyd dragging him about by the scruff of his collar, young face covered in grime and cheekbones stark from malnourishment, he’s reminded instantly of his own voyage to the unknown back in his boyhood. Maybe it’s because of the utter insanity of long months at sea that his next words are, unthinkingly, unprompted, “There you are, lad. Got lost, did you?"

Boyd's eyebrows shoot up.

---

“Derek.” “Don’t call me that.” “It is your name, is it not? Or do you prefer Captain?” “Would you quiet down! If you want to give me away, I prefer you take me directly to the Commander, instead of someone overhearing you and alarming the guards. At least then I’d have some semblance of dignity.” The young man snickers, unexpectedly. “You’re not at all like I remember you.” Derek can’t believe he’s having this conversation. “Yes, well, you were what, a mere lad of ten? And I was so new to captaincy. It would have been more of an insult if you thought I remained the same.” “I was fourteen, and it wasn’t that long ago. I just—I thought. I remember you more … grumbly. You were tired all the time. You sighed a lot.” He has to keep himself from sighing right now, it would only cause the man to laugh more. His disguise is already precarious as it is. “Perhaps you would recall that I had a lot to manage at the time. A rival who attacked my ship. A first mate injured in the process. A stowaway that I had to make a plan with?”

---

“You were after something tonight, weren’t you? Had your charm turned all the way up. Nary an eye could keep away from you.” Stiles’ smile was all curling contentment, the cat that got the cream. “So it worked?” He practically purred. Derek crinkled his nose. “I’m not sure why you’re asking me. I didn’t see you leave with anyone, if that’s what you wanted. But you must not be too sorry if you’re smiling like that.”

And this is the working summary I wrote down for myself:

Stiles had always known what he wanted, since he was a boy hiding on a pirate ship. Had he gotten it? Well, not quite the way he’d wanted. But he was a patient man, and he knew the tides always came back. Derek showed mercy to a stowaway once, in his first year as a pirate captain, and he’s been paying for it ever since.

😂 so what's my plot here???

Well, young pirate captain Derek encounters a stowaway on his ship, and instead of making him walk the plank like he knows he should, he pretends that he hired the boy.

The boy leaves at the next port and they part ways as unlikely friends. Years later, Derek recognises him at a masquerade ball that he's infiltrating and has to try and bribe Stiles to keep quiet. The only bribe Stiles will accept at all is to go work for Derek on his boat again, so at the end of the night Stiles tags along when Derek goes back.

After this I don't remember if they go on more adventures and if Derek just finds out why Stiles is so happy to be coming with him - because he'd developed a crush on Derek years back and when he'd heard about Derek's plan to infiltrate the ball, he concocted his own plan to join in. Also there's some other details I never straightened out properly, like the reason Stiles was a stowaway, and uhm............other things happen in the fic too. But you get the gist 😌 self indulgent pirate shenanigans 😂

....i should watch season 1 of OFMD again, maybe I'd be inspired to continue on it.

[tactician]

bree @sangre tagged me in a nice lil meme and has given me an excuse to ramble about my bg3 oc, carrion!! tysm bree!!! ♡ i shared a few pictures of my lad before, but i definitely have more of a grip on his characterization and #lore now!!

name: carrion! and there's a story behind it, of course. there was once a drow half-elf who was part of a gang of thieves. these thieves carried out a grand number of heists within their home city and caused quite a bit of ruckus. they were good at their shared craft, and so they gained more and more popularity through the years. now, for thieves, popularity is like a plague - it's something that should be avoided; something that is terrible to contract. but the group of them were young, naive, and cocky. they kept seeking to do better: to become more known, to become more feared, to take. more and more and more. they kept getting away with their antics and it gave them all a sense of invincibility. but that inviniciblity was actually complacency, and that complacency let weakness in. it let sloppiness in. and so it was only a matter of time before one of their big heists went bad - and cataclysmically so. they were caught. cornered. surrounded. in desperation, one of the thieves took it upon themselves to light the manor which they were robbing on fire. it spread fast; faster than expected. the drow half-elf - a fool of a criminal - tried to help those who were caught in the blaze. he ended up fighting within the chaos and soon became a bloody, crumpled-up mess in the burning halls. the surviving members of his troupe eventually saw their gods-granted opening and began to make their retreat. one reached out to him - only for the leader to grab onto her. "go," he told her. "he's gone. naught but carrion." it was the last thing the drow half-elf heard before all went black. when he came to, he was barely alive; in the company of ashes and burns. he knew that it was a miracle that he survived. he crawled out of the ruined manor, those words still ringing in his ears. he was naught but carrion, and something about that comforted him. as fucked as everything was, it felt significant. like a rebirth. and so the drow half-elf decided to take it as such. he abandoned his old name and embraced this new one. he was carrion.

nicknames: carrion is pretty adamant about being referred to as nothing but carrion, BUT. unfortunately for him, 'carrie' has stuck for some of his companions. they usually bring it out whenever they're teasing him or whenever they want something from him. he has completely abandoned his name from before the failed heist and would never respond to it. gale (his Love Interest™) is probably the only person who knows it, but carrion would still hate for him to ever use it - so he doesn't.

age: 33.

race: drow half-elf, though he has no idea about his heritage as he doesn't know the first thing about his parents. he was abandoned as a bebe and taken in by some orphanage - a terrible place which he snuck out of as soon as he was able. he made a living off pickpocketing and scamming; it's why he has an extreme soft spot for the tiefling children who took up refuge in the grove. he was there, once. he gets it. he'll teach 'em his tricks.

gender: male, and he uses he/him pronouns.

orientation: bisexual.

zodiac: scorpio. i have no idea if there's an in-universe zodiac but whatever the scorpio equivalent of it is, that's him!

moral alignment: carrion has been privy to a whole lot of cruelness, and his experience with it makes it both easy and difficult for him to inflict unto others. that's where his personal judgements come in, you know? so he's somewhere between chaotic good and chaotic neutral. a part of him sees goodness as a terrible, terrible weakness - a weakness that gave him the scars that stretch across his face; a weakness that he can't quite shake off - while another part screams that goodness the only thing in the world that fucking matters and demands that he hold onto the good within him with all his might. at the end of the day, he'll really only go after those who he's deemed deserving of it.

class/subclass: carrion is a rogue, with a specialization in thievery.

background: criminal. he prefers stealing vastly over taking lives; he doesn't consider himself an assassin and doesn't maintain any sort of bloodlust. he's generally of the opinion that killing is the mark of messiness. But He'll Do It Tho.

interests/hobbies: carrion likes card games a whole lot (yes, he absolutely cheats in those games whenever he can) and he also likes gambling (again, he WILL cheat and steal your gold! he'll do it!!). he also has a penchant for alchemy, as he typically would rather make his own potions and poisons than rely on anyone else to supply them. this has granted him some skill in mixology, too!! he can make very tasty drinks. that being said, he absolutely wings a whole lot of his recipes, as he's fairly bad at reading and writing. he was never formally schooled, so, you know. but he still likes books a lot and will quietly work his way through them during down-time at camp. he really likes being read to but will scarcely ever ask for such a thing.

spoken languages: mostly just common, but he knows some elvish, too. he's also fluent in thieves' cant, of course.

profession: he's a thief, first and foremost! he works alone now, as he learnt his lesson with The Incident that granted him his new identity - but he still enjoys scoping out marks and taking whatever he needs from them. prior to the events of bg3, he did some adventuring - but it was mostly in the name of travelling around. he doesn't really have a fixed home as he tries to avoid garnering a reputation.

height: 5'8"

colors: a very cold silver, a deep blue velvet, the black of raven wings.

fruits: blueberries and raspberries. he's a berry guy...!

drinks: he enjoys very rich, flavorful alcohol, especially when there's a sweetness lingering somewhere in there. a nice, dark rum comes to mind.

smokes: not his thing, but occasionally.

drugs: yes, absolutely. he's very aware of his limits, though!

drivers license: (the fantasy equivalent lmao)... no. absolutely not. carrion continues my legacy of original characters who simply cannot ride horses or horse-like creatures. he simply doesn't trust like that.

ever been arrested: not as often as one would think, and especially not in recent years. when he was just starting out, though? he absolutely did have his fair share of encounters with The Law. still, he always, always managed to get himself out of prison early, be it with honeyed words or grand escapes.

[creativenicocorner]

Concept Rough Draft or something

This was initially going to be a continuation to the Serirei fic Cold Green Tea and Colder Feet but I ended up falling out of it...or perhaps the better phrasing is, thinking of a different direction for a continuation. 

Yet at the same time I think this is pretty wholesome and goofy, and although I won’t continue or expand on it (who knows maybe I’ll reuse this in a future fic) I don’t want it to gather dust either. 

I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you have fun reading it (if you choose to lol)  

So here you go internet, today I offer a super duper rough draft concept of a fic continuation that I realized I kind of want to take in a different direction™, tomorrow who knows

Reigen interacting with the kiddos is always fun, I can’t stress how much of a rough draft this is though, welcome to my chaotic mind

Changing yourself and your life is all good and dandy, but it was getting into actually doing the work when things started to get dicey. 

[yada yada Reigen and Serizawa is brought up by Teru while hanging out and watching a movie in Reigen’s apartment. Shou is also there! ]

“It’s a little more nuanced than that Teruki-kun.”

“Which is code for,” Teru made an impression of a chicken clucking away.

“Oh! The maturity level is skyrocketing!” Reigen huffed, with feigned bite, “How old are you again? You sure you’re old enough to be watching this?” To further his point Reigen thumbed to the television where someone’s arm was being cut off, and a cartoonish amount of water with red dye passing as blood was exploding with the very obvious intensity of someone playing with a garden hose. 

Teruki, with a deep somber expression, flicked popcorn at Reigen’s cheek.

“Alright, I draw the line at wasting food,” Reigen chastised, though not unkindly. He plucked the thrown away kernel, blew on it, and plopped it in his mouth.

“So what exactly makes it so, quote un quote, nuanced.” 

“I’ll break it down like a fraction for you. Imagine the person you have a crush on,” Reigen knew very well whom Teruki had a crush on, but spared the lad from further teasing, “you imagining him?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure?”

“Y-yeah! Get on with it!” went Teru under Reigen’s knowing leer. 

Alright perhaps a small healthy dose of teasing.

Reigen lifted his hands placatingly, “alright, now imagining having to work for them.” Here Reigen made a sweeping gesture as if that explained everything for itself. “Things get tricky when, well, when there isn’t equal footing.”

Teruki watched Reigen for a bit, and nodded with a hum. “I suppose I get it.”

Reigen flourished a mock bow, “thank you. And Speaking! of the unmentioned Kageyama’s-!”

“Reigen!!”

“What are you doing here Shou? I thought your would be out and about with Little Brother-chan. Doing…things, like, like,” he floundered, unable to end on anything witty, Reigen ended lamely with, “the arcade, or something.”

Shou lifted his head from resting against his knuckles, finally turning his head so he wasn’t just looking at both Reigen and Teruki from the corner of his eye. Blue eyes piercing as ever.

“Not that you’re not welcome over,” Reigen added hastily, “In fact, it’s always a pleasure.”

Shou stared on. Reigen gulped. Then when the silence drew out for too long Shou gave Reigen’s arm a playful punch and grinned. “Just wanted to drop in. See what the fuss is about.”

“About, Death Pig: the Return of the Frankenoink?”

Shou made a vague affirmative sound. 

“Well I hope it lives up to the mystique.”

“Mm, something like that.” 

[something something subtext is Shou wants to vibe check Reigen cause Shou cares a lot about Serizawa. 

After much persisting…eventually lead to…] 

“Anyways, I don’t get what the hang up is. Didn’t he like, kiss you or something?”

“Okay, one!” here Reigen flourished before monitoring a finger, “it was a chaste little peck on the head, hardly anything to make grandma swoon about,” he flourished and administered a second finger, “two! I can’t reiterate this enough, but it is none of any kids business - in fact I don’t know why we’re still talking about it, you guys have better more interesting things to worry about. Like, grades,” this was meat by a chorus of groans, “and, uh. Arcades?”

The kids in question shrugged. 

Teru leaned forward, “But like…a kiss is a kiss is a kiss, right? Like??” Teru gesticulated with his hands, “It’s still a kiss!”

“There are many cultures where kissing on the cheek is a greeting. Lets not get carried away.”

Shou snorted, “do we live in any those places, old man?!” 

“Hey!” Though the fire behind being called old didn’t have its usual gusto. Because something was slowly clicking into place in Reigen’s mind. He blinked at Shou, “I, well, no…not at all…”

They stared at him.

He stared back.

They kept staring at him, waiting for the gears to click into place.

He stared back.

They kept on staring, while a deep sense of pity for Serizawa grew ever more profound. 

He stared back.

Shou was the first to break the silence, “don’t you think a kiss like that might, I don’t know, I’m just ‘a brat’ here, but, in accordance to, oh, just about all tropes in the history of whatever, like, mean something??”

Teru quickly joined, with a more knowing look, “was it really nothing to write to grandma about? Or even in a diary?”

“I..” started Reigen, the teens leaned forward, fascinated. “You really think he, might, possibly, like,” Reigen slowly pointed a finger at himself, “me?” A blush brighter than the kilowatts of the sun started to bloom over Reigen’s cheeks. 

Shou and Teruki threw all available pillows in arms reach at Reigen, the stupidest smart adult they had ever encountered. 

No amount of pillows could wipe the contorted yet dork-ish look off of Reigen’s face as his brain skyrocketed through multiple thoughts. 

“He has terrible taste in men,” was the first thought that tumbled past Reigen’s mouth before he could stop himself. As a pillow bounced off his ear, Reigen added, “and I really shouldn’t be having this sort of revelations in front of kids.”

This earned him a whole new volley of pillows.