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randomfoggytiger · 4 months ago

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React: A Late-Canon Reviler Gives the Revival a Try (Home Again), Part IV

This is the one Revival episode I was semi-curious about: it may drum up a lot of heartfelt ~emotions~, but my glasses-on-emotions-off side is dying to be intrigued or surprised or… placated.

It’s gotta happen at some point during this series.

Part I (My Struggle I), Part II (Founder's Mutation), and Part III (Weremonster).

Let's go!

HOME AGAIN

It’s Home Again tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime~.

Oh, no.

(Note from the future: Looking back, this sign makes me want to rage.)

…Why are the firemen antagonistically hosing down the homeless?

“You people?” In D.C.? In 2015? Sure, Jan.

This man’s career woulda been over in five seconds.

The firemen’s careers woulda been over in five seconds.

The police wouldn’t be standing by eating food on the job while supervising, what?

Does.

Do the writers remember how police procedurals work?

Do….

Do the writers not care about the casefiles anymore? Well, yes; but… do they not care… at all?

Guys, if I read this in a fanfic I’d have already skipped to the end, skimmed through the last paragraph, and closed the tab.

Solomon Grundy or the avenging Angel of Death or the Homeless Havoc Haver got off a dumpster… truck… and.

I’m not taking any of this seriously.

If the MSR is really good, I’m going to save all my snark for the plot.

It’s a stinky one already.

THE POLITICIAN GUY STARTS SCREAMING, THE BAD GUY STOMPS IN, RIPS HIS ARMS OFF, AND THAT KILLS THE POLITICIAN GUY?? RIPPING HIS ARMS OFF???? REALLY???

And no, he didn’t rip him in half-- he ripped his arms off.

All the homeless people zipped up their tents knowing the dead garbage... thing was coming-- so, do they have protection from it, or are they afraid of it?

Also, why did that soda can crunch up before the garbage truck even arrived? A visual that the Garbage Gargantuan was coming? …Before he actually, physically arrived? Even though he apparently can’t manipulate matter in that way himself? Or hasn’t shown himself to do so, yet?

It’s all kinda… shoddy.

“Sir, are you there?” said the most unconcerned voice on the other end of his discarded phone. …You couldn’t give me… something?

Wait, the garbage truck dropped him off, drove off, then had to drive back, I guess, to pick him up mere minutes later. Less than five. Less than three, even.

That makes no sense.

Here they cooooooooooooooooooooome….

Oh, that’s where these outfits came from. This episode.

Scully still has her middle-aged wine mom low-cut, very unprofessional-- and your girl knew how to be hot and professional back in the day. (I’m not even saying she has to be prudish, I’m saying why that shirt? Leaving it unbuttoned would work for a softer blouse, but hers has stiffer fabric, which makes the shirt bunch weirdly. You can see it particularly in the uneven collar and wrinkled lapels:)

Wait, what’s that weird, discolored stripe on Mulder’s left chest? It’s not a shadow from the tie, I don’t think. Is it a wet patch? A thinning patch of fabric?

Also, yes, this episode is a rip-off of Arcadia, who cares.

“Well, it looks like this person was born with no footprints. …Which is impossible, by the way.” Yes, Mulder, the team knows, THEY ASKED YOU ON THIS CASE. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the cuts didn’t hold too long or end awkwardly. Whoever was in the editing room really hampered the already questionable quality of their material.

Scully’s voice isn’t as “smoker” anymore.

WAIT, WAIT, HOLD UP. NONONONONONONONONO.

Mulder just looks out a window and sees a MURAL of the KILLER??????????

WHAT, DID THE HOMELESS POOL THEIR POCKET CHANGE, BUY PROFESSIONAL GRADE ART SUPPLIES, AND PUT GARBAGE GARY UP ON A BILLBOARD?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

MULDER AND HIS HOMELESS ART, TAKE TWO, I GUESS.

Maybe it was a local artist who heard the homeless stories and put it up, but....

Wait.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Scully has Bill’s name. In her phone. As William.

As.

William.

AS.

WILLIAM.

That was purely to tease the fans because there’s no way Bill goes by William.

Scully doesn’t even call Bill ‘William.’

Wait.

Those aren’t Scully’s nails.

Did the hand model casting department even try.

I WAS RIGHT, oh, look, it changed due to Scully’s ~trauma~, I guess.

The writers and cinematographers and directors didn’t even try.

Why would Scully have Bill in her phone as ‘William Scully, Jr.’ and not Bill? He’s Bill to her, not ‘William Scully, Jr.’ the 2nd, ™.

She didn't: it was a ~ trauma mirage~.

And a badly done one at that.

The writers tried to have a little “oh, look, it’s William!” moment, but the caller layouts are completely different. 'William' is front-and-center whereas the 'William' in 'William Scully Jr.' is shoved off to the left.

They should have done an extreme zoom-in on the ‘William’ part of ‘William Scully, Jr.’, then a snap over to Scully, then a snap back showing Bill's full name. It would get the point across without being nefariously baity.

(Note from the future: This makes even less sense in retrospect.)

Shoddy scene splicing, what’s new?

Bill was in Germany, huh. Guess he’s still in the military.

WAIT.

Maggie, who is in Maryland, next to D.C., had BILL listed as her emergency contact. (Note from the future: Not even that, it's worse.)

Who was supposed to be in Germany.

Instead of her daughter who is in D.C.

~~~~~~Tensions~~~~~~ I see.

Mulder immediately notices the slight change in Scully's voice and intuits Something’s Wrong. Good, good. The bare minimum, but good.

Wait, the EMTs found Bill's number on Maggie, or…?

So, did Maggie not have anyone listed as her emergency contact? ...And the writers want us to think Scully would stand for that in case of an emergency??

Well... that could be a valuable character beat, we’ll see.

Mulder telling Scully to immediately go and her “Yeah”ing and going is a good beat, too. They’re acting more like themselves... they’re acting like a 50-something version of themselves, at least; it’s good.

Don’t ruin this for me, writers. Don’t do it.

Scully’s gone and DID NO ONE THINK TO CHECK THE SECURITY TAPES??? NO ONE’S DONE THAT, YET????? NO ONE EVEN BOTHERED TO LOOK FOR A SECURITY CAMERA???

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

(WHY are we down but looking up into Scully’s face with really weird jumpcuts as she clops out of the building????

WHAT IS THIS.

This is not displaying her anxiety. It’s portraying impending madness.

THERE ARE FOUR. FOUR. MOUNTED SECURITY CAMERAS.

Mulder’s gauging the perpetrator's height based off of basketball players; but is this supposed to be a "heehee, haha, that's weirdo Mulder for ya" bit? Because his method is just... sensible and smart. (The other investigator has a split-second “what’s up with this dude?” expression, but that wouldn’t fit here because what Mulder did was, dare I say, normal.)

None of this is offensive, and it’s not drumming up real anger, so. That’s a win, I guess.

That street art was put up… this morning? THIS? Morning? How did someone scale and paint and get it all done before Mulder and Scully arrived?

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatever. Probably supernatural, anyway.

Mulder stepped in gum, then had the brilliant idea to preserve it as evidence. Smart.

Scully’s at the hospital.

Maggie’s in the hospital, alone. Ah, man.

This scene’s shot really well thus far. It has the right balance of music, the right balance of silence, the right balance of camera cuts.

And it’s immediately ruined.

WHEN MAGGIE GAINED CONSCIOUSNESS, SHE REPEATEDLY ASKED FOR "SOMEONE NAMED CHARLIE" AND NOT HER OWN DAUGHTER WHO LIVES IN D.C.

THIS ISN’T MAGGIE, WHAT.

There had better be a real-- and THOROUGH-- explanation for any of this. Maggie LOVED her little Dana and her daughter Melissa and Bill. But here we’re to assume Charlie has supplanted Melissa as the outcast or Dana as the favorite???

Really.

(Note from the future: Nope. It might be worse, though.)

To me, Dana was her "favorite"-- her "baby girl"-- all these years. The two always drew comfort and strength from each other, growing closer when Captain Scully passed and the other Scullys drifted away or died off.

But now Maggie wants Charlie. To what, right a wrong???

Scully has been shoved into this new reality of her mom not listing her as an emergency contact and only asking for Charlie-- NOT FOR HER, FOR CHARLIE-- and perhaps having suffered from health complications for a while now without filling her medical doctor daughter in on the details.

It’s so. Cruel.

“They’re estranged.”

CHARLIE’S ESTRANGED FROM MAGGIE.

WHAT.

WHERE DID THIS COME FROM.

I knew there were fandom speculations that Charlie was estranged, but I never knew it had confirmation in canon (well, the Revival canon.)

SO.

All this time, Charlie didn’t have a problem with his father-- since Bill is Captain Scully’s carbon copy and Charlie always called or communicated through him-- but with his mother.

What’s Maggie ever done? Honestly, what’s Maggie ever done for this to be her ending? What in canon pointed to estrangement or secrets from her children or whathaveyou?

If anything, this is Tena Mulder 2.0: estrangement from her son, asking for him to come before her death, keeping a health complication secret, dying without providing closure. But that’s not Maggie’s character and never has been.

I don’t understand this, Morgan and Wong or Morgan or Wong. At what point did you think this was the right decision to make for this character??

I can pick up what the writers are putting down-- no one truly knows another person, even if they think they do, etc.-- the FLAW with that logic is, we know enough about a person to notice if they're acting differently or out-of-character. And Maggie has always been a flamingly consistent person: she can’t hide her feelings and doesn’t feel shame in expressing them, she’s terrible at keeping secrets, and she’s torn apart if excluded from her loved ones’ personal lives. These traits have consistently remained the foundation of her persona. Changing them now-- so suddenly and completely-- is poor if not lazy or "hack" writing.

My fury is not solely because I like Maggie and want her to have a happy ending but because that’s not Maggie-- never has been-- and Maggie Scully would never act the way this Maggie has.

Regarding Charlie, he was never portrayed as “separate than” the Scully clan-- that was Melissa-- just always busy on military tour or whatever he was doing. He kept in contact with Bill, he let his sister babysit in Home (heh, Home Again, GET IT), and he sent presents to the family through Bill in A Christmas Carol. Maggie never seemed perturbed or disturbed or saddened or emotional when hearing his name or talking about him; and she would have been if there were something amiss.

“She, she didn’t ask for me, or for Bill, or for her grandchildren?”

The implication here is that Bill has children and Charlie doesn’t-- if Charlie had children, Scully would have assumed Maggie were trying to get in contact with his kids-- her grandchildren-- by calling him. Scully doesn’t say “all her grandchildren” or “her other grandchildren.” Nope.

So, Charlie’s not a dad, and Bill has more than one kid.

I do understand he was written as the lone guy with a wife (while Bill had a wife and kids) in Beyond the Sea, but times and lore have changed; and I’m disappointed Morgan and Wong or Morgan or Wong didn’t update their memory, too.

In a deleted script, Charlie was also, supposedly, single. And yes, that script was never produced, but I find it interesting that he and Melissa were kind of the “unattached” Scully kids, with Melissa being considered the black sheep and Charlie being considered largely absent.

“Hey, Mom. I’m here. I’ve been where you are. I know Ahab is there. And Melissa.” Um, okay. Something feels off about this, but I can’t pinpoint what.

“And Mom. I’m here.” That part can stay, wow it kinda got to me. Okay, Revival, you got something out of me. Huh. Don’t butcher this.

(‘Kay, so, I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink the problem I had with the first statement was that it was a little clunky, a little “remider”y. But it bridges the gap between redundant and old X-Files dialogue, sooooooooooooooooooooo. I’m not sure how to sort it.)

“Bill, Jr.’s” (guess he’s forever called ‘Junior’, huh… that’s kinda hilarious, but also out of character) “here. And William.” Her crying over William a little, realizing she talked about him voluntarily for the first time, is also a nice touch. “And Charlie. Charlie’s here.”

Too bad I’m not invested in Maggie because… welp. Review criticisms above.

“Please, Mom, don’t go home yet. I need you.”

I do wonder why this is called Home Again-- I get it, it’s a wink-and-nod to M and W’s Home title, but the material doesn’t reaaaally sync. Unless, of course, Maggie’s real proud of “her boys”, and is tossing aside Scully’s importance aside because she never had children.... Well.

…Oh, my word, the two politiciany people on the scene are so highschool play. Stop, please. “Are you threatening me?”/”I’ve been threatening you for six months.”/”Well stop.” UGH.

Lady calls police-politician-whoever a name and Mulder jokes, “You married?” and mumbles a little as the lady stumbles over her words explaining…. That’s David-humor, not Mulder-humor.

Mulder having to become the voice of the homeless while hashing out this not-married couples’ couple banter aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand. Snore.

This is like a little Professor Layton sideplot where you can’t pass down the alley you need to get to if you don’t solve a random villager’s puzzle. Groovy.

Random homeless guy says “Band aid nose man” to Mulder and walks off. That’s a clue if I’ve ever been beaten upside the head with one.

Oh, look, the mural’s gone. Groovy.

WHY are we getting a flashback to Scully’s bedside from One Breath? I get it, I do, nostalgia, etc. etc. HOWEVER, I think this scene would have been better served if we heard Mulder’s voice instead of seen his hand because, I don’t know, Scully was in a coma and didn’t see this happening, I don’t think. Unless she had a bird’s eye view above her body and just hovered there for days, I guess.

Maggie has a new coin necklace, ooooooh, the woman without secrets had secrets, ooooooooooooooooooooooooooh. Ugh.

Bill called, and Scully finally called him ‘Bill.’

Bill needing to know if Maggie will die before he gets there and demanding expertise from Scully IS a Bill thing to do-- he’s probably not meaning to inflict more trauma on his sister, but he’s never paid attention to what does traumatize her. Nice, nice.

Maggie wanted to remain on life support, nice, nice, that fits with her One Breath experience and Catholic values, good.

That was a REALLY good scene, I will admit. Just having Scully watch someone else’s body be packed up for the morgue while Bill continually leeches answers from her on the other line, I wish that’s how the One Breath flashback had unfolded, too.

OH, it was a band aid, not gum, that stuck to Mulder’s shoe.

Why does the undead man need to wear a band aid on his nose.

Deadman’s neither dead nor undead. ‘Kay.

Scully’s being hyper-vigilant and boundary crossing into "doctor mode" while keeping an eye on her mom. Bored, trying to distract herself with work, nice, nice.

MAGGIE MADE A NEW DIRECTIVE WITHOUT TELLING SCULLY ABOUT IT. WHAT IS THIS, PAYBACK FOR WHAT HER DAUGHTER DID?????? But if this is payback to Scully, why is she ALSO punishing Bill??? Because Bill is being inadvertently punished: he was left in the dark, too, and only called incidentally. And even if that's the case, Scully's punishment is still WORSE. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Because of William???

Sorry, that’s not a Maggie thing to do. She mended fences between her husband and youngest daughter, embraced her despite the chaos of her life, even forgave her after the whole cancer debacle (being kept in the dark then forced into secrecy without the healthy outlet of discussion.)

MAGGIE’S JUST NOT VINDICTIVE, SHE’S NOT. WHY IS SHE NOW????????????????????????????????????????????????

Dudes are collecting the homeless paintings and selling them.

So the painting wasn’t---

OKAY, WAIT.

The mural (plural?) isn't supernatural.

Despite being completely finished and all materials being cleared away before Mulder appeared on the crime scene.

Despite two arthouse dealers swiping it before Mulder even walked away from the crime scene.

Despite them swiping it (hauling a ladder over, climbing it, unpinning the painting or whatever, climbing down, and scooting off) within minutes of Mulder seeing it from the window, checking the cameras, and going out to investigate.

With police swarming everywhere. After Mulder let the head of the team know he wanted to investigate the mural.

What.

Scully’s still dealing with this alone, ‘kay.

Not against that, either, because Mulder is busy and that is a thing he would do, even in his 50s. It’s how he operates. It’s how Scully expects him to operate. It’s how he operated when his own mother was on her deathbed (and after.) So, nice.

Maggie’s gonna get extubated.

The William screen thing keeps happening. Wish it WOULDN’T. At least do a zoom-in or weird camera angle then, not when Scully’s weirdly stumbling down the stairs.

Mulder’s here. That’s nice. Another thumbs up from me.

THIS is how you do character development: both characters acted on their modus operandi, but Mulder has grown enough to set aside time for Scully, to be there for her and help her. This isn’t after her mother’s death or after tragedy or after the truth has slipped through his fingers, this is during the long wait. Mulder’s still himself, but he’s also grown, too; and that growth hasn’t been shoved in our faces or jumped from A to B without proper explanation. Here, we get to see him make the choice and grow as a person. Further, Scully’s reaction lets us know this is NEW for her partner; and that she’s immensely grateful and touched to know he won’t leave her to do this alone.

THAT’s how it’s done.

Case stuff, who cares.

Mulder can’t stay. Scully’s going through it, doesn’t understand why her mother’s done what she’s done. Even Mulder’s surprised.

Disclaimer: this isn't The X-Files of old. These scenes may be good-- excellently acted, not too shabbily written-- but Mulder and Scully still don’t feel like Mulder or Scully. The characters (when not poorly written or wildly butchered) don’t even come close to the essence of IWTB, at times: as badly as that movie fell apart, at least Mulder and Scully retained a spark of their original selves. Here? DD and GA act as twins or doppelgangers. They’re not Mulder and Scully, they’re Clone!Mulder and Clone!Scully who exist separately from the juvenile nature of the cases they investigate, who exist only to sit near each other and talk over their past, and whose very existence and nature are determined by the writing flavor of the week. There’s no cohesion and no point to the plots-- there’s only a hint of Mulder and Scully, and, hopefully, a quiet second for the characters to absorb. And that’s not even a guarantee, anymore.

Mulder following after Scully and gently pulling her back when Maggie needs to be extubated-- good character moment. Scully not caring about the bigger questions right now-- also a good character moment.

The unfortunate darting on Scully’s top makes it look like she’s really cold in that hospital. (What an oddly constructed shirt, anyway. …Kinda just want to stare, marveling that it’s both: stiff and silkyish, has buttons and doesn’t, and isn’t naturally low-cut but is? ...I don’t miss 2015's fashion.)

A Home music number as someone gets murdered? Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Buuuuut why the lady and not the politician-police-guy? What? Why?

ANOTHER bit of character growth: not only does Mulder show up, but he stays. Ding, ding, ding! Good writer, that’s a good writer!

Though this all washes over and away because it’s in service of a Not-Maggie, so. Consider my investment shot.

Here are the lines I always read in gif sets:

“Back in the day, didn’t we ever come across the ability to just… wish someone back to life?”

“I invented it. When you were back in the hospital. Like this.”

“You’re a dark wizard, Mulder.”

See, those lines coulda been cheesy; but they were tempered and calmly handled. (Good writers, good writers, who’s a good writer!)

“What else is new?” Mulder adds, and laughs at his own joke. Self-deprecation and amusement in that one. And Scully is cheered up a little by it, too. Thumbs up, DD and GA.

Charlie called. Scully begging Charlie to “do what I can’t do” caught Mulder’s attention, as it did mine. That’s an interesting dynamic that could have been explored: she said it quite flippantly; and that’s a VERY big “I’ve just held you back” tell.

Aww, well. A question for a better series, I suppose.

AND Scully thinks Maggie will come back if Charlie talks to their mom. WOW, okay, that’s a lot... and will never be explored again. Ah, well. Again, a better series.

Charlie sounds how I expected him to, huh.

OH, NOW Maggie wakes up.

They all think it’s a miracle and then Maggie thinks Mulder’s Charlie. That made me laugh, I’m sorry. …Or am I?

WAIT, she didn't, scratch that. It's worse.

Maggie came back to say, “My son… is named William, too.”

Um.

Uuuuuuuuuuum.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM.

She really woke up, recognized both of them, then ignored her daughter, grabbed onto Mulder, and commiserated with HIM about their sons named William. As if she related to all of Mulder’s hardships and gave Scully absolutely zero grace or mercy.

That’s cold.

AND SCULLY’S SO DEVASTATED because she woke up that morning not knowing her mother had effectively cut her out of her life. Because of the past. Because of William.

WAIT. Wait. wait WAIT.

None of this makes sense.

Scully has been seeing ‘William’ all day on her phone. At first, we the audience assume that’s her continual guilt.

It’s revealed Maggie has open wounds over ‘William’, as well.

Maggie wakes up only to utter “My son… is named William, too”, which suddenly introduces a supernatural element to the messages on Scully’s phone.

But the only time Scully’s gotten supernatural messages in the past is from MELISSA.

So did Melissa try to connect with Scully to prepare her for Maggie’s final message before Maggie woke up? Did Melissa do that ever since Maggie collapsed, from the very first phonecall Scully received?

And if that’s the case… did Melissa hang out with Maggie in that forest with Ahab, but try to make connections with her living sister to prepare her?

And if so………………….. That’s the worst possible way to do it, giving Scully new layers of guilt and depression from failing her mother and reliving the moment she failed her son.

That’s… that’s. Melissa levels of unawareness, but she’s supposed to be all-knowing or less… Melissa in the afterlife, right???? If this is even Melissa????

And if it wasn’t Melissa, WHAT WAS THIS ALL ABOUT?????

Maggie wanted Charlie, she wakes when he talks, she ignores Scully completely-- who’s been by her side since coming back from being on-the-run, supposedly-- and talks about WILLIAM with MULDER.

It’s all so tangled and confusing. And, just. Mean. So unbelievably mean-spirited. To come back from the brink not when your daughter begs you to but because your son called while keeping said daughter and your other son out of the loop-- Bill was called by chance, after all-- and never leave clearer answers or messages or love or anything....

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

Tena’s was the worst death, but this angers me just as much because they did this to Maggie.

Yep, she’s dead.

SHE NEVER SAID A WORD TO CHARLIE, EITHER.

Her estranged son finally called and she died without speaking a word to him, or looking around for his voice, or anything.

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow I’m mad.

At least the episode’s not pretending to be a casefile.

UH OH, here comes the (can’t remember the name, help me out) morgue bed. Scully’s panicking over it, Mulder has to go wrangle her (gently) AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I’VE FELT THE ESSENCE OF SCULLY other than a smirk or a smile. THAT’s Scully-- the fire, the fury, the indignation.

“Margaret” is what Mulder calls Maggie. Can’t remember if that’s canonical, either. Oh, wait, he called her “Mrs. Scully” in the past. Eh, it makes sense he changed it to Margaret.

Wait, does that mean “Maggie” was her husband’s endearment, and everyone else called her “Margaret?” The “Scully” and “Dana” nicknaming duality got a little more layered. If, if, if.

Scully’s beating herself up about William, but at least she says, “That we gave away” which means she considers Mulder a part of herself and her decision (and that he’s drilled that truth into her head until it stuck.)

“Why did she say that?” Because the script told her actress to do so. “Why did she have to say that?” I know, cruel, isn’t it?

Not getting Mulder from this scene, either. David can act, but he’s tooooooooooo… muted, here. Mulder would have given a little more.

The last frame hanging on his face is okay, though. Still too… muted.

Only one type of spray paint on crime scene evidence, one search on Scully’s part, next clue found in three seconds. Because that’s how life works.

Scully still struggling with her mother’s death, not clued in. Mulder whistling after leaving the shop, really subtle, but a fine character tidbit.

SCULLY JUST DROPKICKED THE--

NO.

THAT’S NOT HOW PHYSICS WORK.

SCULLY’S LITTLE TWIG ARMS AND LEG AREN'T TAKING ANYONE DOWN-- LET ALONE A GROWN MAN-- WITH A TEENY TWIST-FLIP-KICK MANEUVER, ON STILTS.

WHAT. I thought that scene happened in the computer simulation whatever episode. WHATWHATWHATWHATWHAT.

I can hear 90s David screaming about feminism from here.

The case continues to descend into “who cares?"ville.

The kid gets away because Mulder doesn’t do stairs anymore. And though we're all with Mulder in spirit, this is his job.

“Mulder, back in the day I used to do ‘stairs’ and in three-inch heels.” ‘Kay, Barbie. But Ken didn’t.

“Back in the day…. Scully, back in the day is ‘now.’” …..

………..

……………

……………….

What.

What did that dialogue have to do with the kid getting away and Mulder not chasing him? If “back in the day is now”, then Mulder would have done stairs and caught the kid.

“Back in the day is now” doesn’t make sense even if you two flash your lights over it.

OH, LOOK, THE FLASHLIGHTS ARE CROSSING AGAIN, GET IT.

We’re, like, four episodes in and Mulder and Scully are still slowly getting back in the groove of The X-Files.

OH, LOOK, THE CAMERA SHOT IS HOLDING ON THE FLASHLIGHTS MAKING AN X, DID YOU NOTICE IT YET???? Yes, yes we did.

WHAT WAS THAT. A rubber mask and suit popped out, hit the wall in front of them, and fell back into the shadows????

That was as convincing as the rabbit fur puppets mauling Gillian’s face.

Hurry it up, I don’t care about the case.

Mulder doesn’t do stairs but can kick the door in with one try in his tight, tight Patriarchy Pants.

I can hear 90s David screaming about feminism from here.

Grotesque clay masks, got it. Okay. All right. I’m bored.

A new character, the garbage man, is going on about homeless being treated like trash. ‘Kay.

He’s the artist? What. Doesn’t... what. He wouldn’t have time to put up the art after the murder but before--

Forget it.

Oh, it wasn’t him. They were… supernatural? What.

THIS TRASH GUY MADE A TULPA OUT OF TRASH.

HOW DARE YOU RIP OFF MY TRASH BABY TULPA EPISODE. HOW DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE YOU.

I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS TRASH RIPPING OFF MY TRASH.

GET OUTTA HERE.

ACTUALLY GET OUTTA HERE. GO ON, SHOO. BEAT IT. SCRAM. GET LOST.

AND NOW THEY’RE SAYING 'TULPA' WAS A MISTRANSLATION????? OH, THAT’S RICH. SO WHAT HAPPENED IN ARCADIA WASN’T A TULPA, BUT THIS ONE MIGHT BE.

THAT’S REAL CUTE.

A realized Tibetan thought form would never harm someone or kill.

But what if… hang on with me a second… what if it already did?

This guy willed it, so it happened.

This is giving Scully an idea. Guess she’s gonna manifest Maggie from the dead. Or manifest William from the clouds, I suppose. Or manifest herself a better wig, I reckon.

WHAT IN THE EXISTENCE FLASHBACKS IS THIS. HOW IS SCULLY COMPARING HER SON’S BIRTH TO WILLING A MONSTER INTO EXISTENCE?????? I, I, WHAT. NO. NO, DON’T DO THIS. THIS IS BAD, THIS IS VERY NOT GOOD.

“He came to me,” the guy explains, and Scully now thinks William came to her???

Is… is this a revelation or a mental breakdown????????

“But in the end, he told me what he wanted to be.”

ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW??? IMPLYING THAT WILLIAM WANTED TO BE PUT UP FOR ADOPTION-- SHOWING HIM CRYING IN S9-- IN ORDER TO GIVE SCULLY SOME CLOSURE ON THAT MATTER AFTER HER MOTHER’S RECENT DEATH???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

NO ONE TOLD ME THIS. NO ONE WARNED ME.

THE AUDACITY OF THE WRITERS.

SHAME, ACTUAL SHAME, ON THEM.

…I will take all this back if the script does, but WHAT IN THE WORLD. THIS IS INSANE.

Never have I EVER seen Scully so broken mentally. Wow. Morgan and Wong or Morgan or Wong love her character? I’d think they view her as the band aid on their shoe. Wow.

(Note from the future: They don't take back any of this implication, only gaslight us into believing Scully was thinking a totally other, very normal thing about "responsibility." Which is utter doodoo.)

“All we do, is hold the pencil. All we do, is hold the clay. I think there must be spirits or souls--” GET OUT OF HERE WITH THAT FIELD WHERE I DIED GARBAGE. GET. OUT. YOU BUTCHERED THAT EPISODE THROUGH YOUR OWN SHEER INCOMPETENCE, YOU CAN’T TRY TO REWRITE IT NOW THROUGH ANOTHER LENS TO MAKE US SWALLOW YOUR POISON LIKE PUNCH.

GET.

OUT.

OF.

HERE.

“And if you think so hard, if you want them real bad, they’ll come to you.”

Stunning.

A thought experiment that would be interesting to tap into when explaining the *insert words* of The Field Where I Died’s plot, but is ABSOLUTELY. IRRESPONSIBLY. IDIOTIC. here in light of the sheer amount of trauma you are putting Scully through, right this second.

Full disclosure: I don’t care how many bad things are done to the characters-- I really don’t-- IF those experiences give weight or add to their stories or history. THIS, HOWEVER, DOES NOT.

I’M FURIOUS. I’M SO FURIOUS I MIGHT TEAR UP.

HOW DARE YOU INSERT EXISTENCE FLASHBACKS TO--

i’m done. let’s just move on.

I’m struck anew with how these characters aren’t Mulder and Scully-- not even S9 Scully-- when both scenes are positioned back-to-back.

I just knew this episode would be butchered, but never would I ever….

By the way, to catch us back up to speed, Scully’s having this… revelation while a garbage man rambles about the MURDERING THOUGHT FORM he dreamt into being.

Also, the cuts and flashbacks A. reinforce my disdain of this series, B. are cheesy and corny, and C. are ham-fisted and clunky. You know how it should have been done? Without the flashbacks. Not one soul who is watching this episode needs to be hand-held through Scully’s memories, especially ones we’ve already seen mere minutes ago.

Scully’s clutching her cross after remembering her mom’s words, ‘kay.

I LAUGHED AGAIN.

Mulder’s been listening to this guy and looks over and does a doubletake because Scully’s frozen LIKE THIS:

Mental. Health.

Also, considering what happens to Jackson’s character later on… this episode is kind of implying Scully was so terrified by the constant tragedy in her life that she willed a tulpa-alien-god baby into existence (or WOULD have, if given the opportunity, which is worse) for her own selfish reasons, or for the world’s protection; then yeeted it to the adoption agency, anyway. (Note from the future: This implication doesn't make broad canonical sense, and is kinda reverted, later, but:) ...Which plugs dangerously well into her disavowal of William in My Struggle IV. Which makes me hate Home Again even more.

(Also also, that turns Scully into Arcadia's Gogolak. Stellar writing.)

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh, have to break this down.

If Scully thought William into existence, he wouldn’t be a normal baby in S8. Which he was. He also wouldn’t be a magic baby with independent will in S9 (who is closer to the alien DNA kids in Founder’s Mutation that cut themselves out of their moms to survive, but ANYWAY.) He’d be a thought form controlled by one impulse. A tulpa. Or-- let’s extrapolate-- a Supersoldier like Billy Miles. Which he wasn’t.

If Scully is comparing herself to the Syndicate that brought beings into a tormented existence for their own ends (or to the garbage guy’s intent) and is… freed? by that thought…. She needs help-- not “go to therapy, babe”, no, actual, real, extensive help outside of the FBI and away from work, period, for awhile. That’s so incredibly unbalanced it’s… kinda scary.

Also, again, if Scully willed Jackson into Existence-- say, by touching the alien spaceship?-- the timeline wouldn’t match her late S7 pregnancy-- but what else is new-- but would condemn her for Jackson’s later erratic actions, anyway.

And therefore, Scully becoming pregnant in My Struggle IV would have to be an actual, literal miracle because she didn’t taint it with a thought-form or alien DNA or any other thing this episode or Founder’s Mutation or the other Struggles are suggesting.

Any of these possibilities are foul. If William exists, he’d have to be a normal baby (as he was until the writers changed him) or it would crumble the very meaning of his birth and the leadup to it from Requiem to Existence.

It. just. doesn’t. make. sense. and. continues. to. be. cruel.

Scully now thinks she’s responsible for “making the problem” and Mulder’s like “huH” and “UHOH” at the same time.

Okay, let’s say M+W or M or W take the aforementioned implication back: this scene is utterly and unfathomably cruel, a cherry on top of the other cruelty they put Scully through this episode.

I’m gonna say it: at least Chris Carter gave William to Scully.

“You’re just as bad as the people that you hate,” a.k.a. "You did a bad thing by playing god and creating life only to abandon it."

Thanks M+W, I really needed “Scully comparing herself to the Consortium” on my list of Unexpected Things to Hate, that was nice.

NOW the tulpa’s going after the politician-policeman. Not before killing the woman who wanted the homeless on the streets if they preferred, but after, now that he's moving them into a nicer facility.

Oh, the guy’s soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo evil because one of the homeless people's dog’s temporarily at an animal shelter. Well, yeah it was kinda evil to separate them (temporarily.) Had to make politician-police dude eviler, I guess.

He smells something bad, oh, nooooooooooo…………….

Guys, gonna be honest. How’s this politician-police-whoever guy bad? He’s callous, but he’s moving the unhoused into housing where they can, hopefully, have better access to resources to get back on their feet.

…What’s the moral here? That no one treats them like people, therefore the tulpa or thought form will kill indiscriminately? Even if the homeless might be benefiting? That the garbage man just didn’t like HOW policeman-politician-whoever was operating, so thought up a tulpa to kill him and the others?

Slow clap for the stupidest morality tale I’ve seen in a bit.

I. just. Can the writers craft an episode where the homeless are actually being victimized?

Oh, wait, the 90s already did that. Huh.

Poli-man’s about to be murdered. Mulder and Scully arrive and gently jaunt down the hall towards his screams. That’s cute.

They were literally FOUR. SECONDS. too late. Then don’t express a sense of remorse or whatever that they were. And this guy isn’t villain- enough to be given zero remorse, c’mon, save that for the big 'uns.

Tulpa’s vanishing instead of walking away, I guess.

Scully’s too calm for acknowledging they just heard politician-policeman die. He was screaming for help and you two didn’t speed up. 100% they wouldn’t be able to pass the FBI field tests. A witness-victim-whatever just died because they were FOUR SECONDS late, that shouldn't have happened.

The gymnastics of this plot, summed up:

Monster always leaves band aids behind, I guess.

Garbage man made the band aid sculpture’s face into a smiley so it's gone forever, I GUESS.

Wait, LAKE SCENE??

THAT’S IT???

THIS IS IT??????????????????????

“I know now why Mom asked for Charlie even if he was out of her life.” OH, THIS HAD BETTER BE GOOD and not A. “she’s a mom, so she loved and missed him” or B. “she created him so he mattered.” Because neither of those answers explains what she did and didn’t do or say to the two children that stuck by her.

*sharpens harpoon*

*THUNK*

I KNEW IT.

SHE WANTED TO KNOW BEFORE SHE LEFT THAT HE’D BE OKAY.

Then WHY did she ignore Charlie on the phone and TALK TO MULDER while laying on another layer of guilt about William WITH HER DAUGHTER, who'd been pleading for Maggie to come back to her, RIGHT THERE???

Just because Maggie “gave birth to him” doesn’t mean anything.

Like.

Guys.

Of course she wants to know her son’s okay, of course. She raised him, she loved him, etc.

But. But but but.

If she’s the loving mother we all knew from the OG series that SUDDENLY took a dive into secrecy and distrust and guilt-tripping, there would have been signs. Scully missed all of them, didn’t even know her mom had her living will signed by other veteran sailors (AND WHO ARE THEY?), doesn't even know what the quarter lore is.

You can’t have Maggie want to know her baby’s okay while actively neglecting and ignoring the others. You can’t.

*sharpens second, third, and fourth harpoon*

“She made him. He’s her responsibility.”

*THUNKKITY THUNK THUNK*

OH. MY. WORD.

THIS IS SO TWISTED.

Scully is now being guilted for giving up William, AGAIN, because she needs to "take responsibility" for him.

Canonically, she gave him up because she was taking responsibility for him-- to protect him, to take care of him.

And whether that decision was justified or not-- it wasn’t-- S9 Scully and IWTB Scully and pre-this-episode Scully and Mulder made the best they could of that decision for their son’s sake.

A.k.a. Responsibility.

HOW DOES THAT TRANFSER ONTO MAGGIE? What responsibility does she have to take?? Perhaps she drove Charlie away?? But none of her behavior thus far would have driven him away.

So, not only has Maggie’s character been harpooned on her deathbed, but her past off-screen behavior must also be harpooned in order to justify that "responsibility" line: a.k.a., she must have been a horrible person to Charlie, and must want to take responsibility for that action now.

Because “responsibility” doesn’t fit IF Charlie walked away of his own accord for his own reasons, separate from his mother’s actions or behavior.

Also, “responsibility” doesn’t fit PERIOD with either scenario: Scully already took responsibility for William when she sent him away (as stupidly as that decision was written, it wasn’t written for any other pretense) but Maggie DIDN’T take “responsibility” because she didn’t even apologize or question or talk to or whatever with Charlie. She did it WITH MULDER, and even THEN she was urging HIM to take responsibility of William, if anything.

Know what’s worse? They’re saying all the pain Scully is going through (and put Mulder and her family through) is because she hasn’t taken responsibility for William, and that she needs to go find him and make it right. IGNORING THE FACT THAT IT WAS REVIVAL MULDER, NOT SCULLY, WHO PUT WILLIAM BEHIND HIM. IF ANYTHING, IT WAS SCULLY WHO TOOK RESPONSIBILITY ALL THESE YEARS.

Which means Scully is culpable for everyone’s emotions and pain and trauma because she gave her son away for his safety. AND I DON’T EVEN AGREE WITH HER DECISION-- there’s no way she would have given William up, and most certainly not that way-- BUT YOU WRITE SCULLY INTO AN IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION, THEN PUNISH AND REVICTIMIZE HER AT THE HANDS OF HER OWN MOTHER IN ORDER TO "OWN UP" TO "RESPONSIBILITY."

I’m... pretty mad.

I should be furious, really, because this does unfathomable damage to… everyone. But My Struggle I's and Founder’s Mutation's brain rot runs deeper-- by comparison this is a 0.5 to its -1,000,000.

At least we know what the coin necklace date was supposed to mean: the date Charlie walked out of Maggie’s life. “Responsibility” and all that garbage.

“She wanted us to be responsible…. To make sure William’s okay, even if we can’t see him.” That is NOT what Maggie said, and that is NOT what she meant. “My son… is named William, too” was a commiserating statement spoken to MULDER, indicating he, like her, suffered from an estrangement. And who would be the enforcer or creator of that estrangement? The same woman who broke up with Mulder over depression (before he had a meltdown or breakdown, despite knowing his history of suicidal tendencies.)

The Revival does Scully (and her mother… and Mulder…) so dirty it’s. Ugh.

Can someone knock Not-Maggie's ashes over onto the ground or something? That way she can join her brethren, the dirt.

Let’s be honest, this Home Again should have been further down the season. ‘Cuz if Babylon’s next… guess they didn’t look for William.

Scully’s smoker voice makes its first appearance, ugh. Code broken: GA uses smoker voice when Scully is feeling teary or depressed.

UGH.

“...To keep him safe. That it was for his own good to put him up for adoption. But I can’t help but think of him, Fox.” The requires the special 'what', *ahem*: WAHT.

“I believe you will find all of your answers--” ALL. OF. YOUR. ANSWERS?

“And I will be there when you do.” WHEN YOU DO?! What is she, an elementary school teacher holding Mulder's hand while he explores around the gymnasium??????????????? Where’s the Scully who insisted this was her quest, too???? ...wwwwwWHAT.

This is. This is. Guys. Why.

“But my mysteries… I’ll never have answered.”

Um. Scully can’t figure out how to find William?

She can’t, just, go back to the agency and offer to connect with her son? 2012’s over-- the world might end, still, but CSM’s dead (as far as she knows), APPARENTLY there are no aliens or Supersoldiers, and no one’s cared about her and Mulder getting back on the files.... Where is THIS coming from???? Just ring up the agency, Scully!

UUUUUUUUUG.

“...If he’s ever been afraid, and wishes I were there. Does he doubt himself, because we left him?”

While Scully continues to speak, I must add: Mulder looks like a browbeaten 50s housewife. I love watching DD’s acting as much as GA’s, but David’s giving nothing here. I KNOW it’s a direction issue because he’s been consistently this key the entire episode (except for the... comedy or “dark wizard” scene) so SOMEONE wants Mulder to be this way. But.

But it doesn’t line up with his character from the previous eps.

And the previous episodes don’t line up with each other.

And all the Revival eps. don't line up with IWTB.

Or S9.

Or canon.

Etc., etc.

“What… questions does he have of me? The same that I have of this quarter?” Um. I thought we concluded that was the date Charlie walked out.

Isn’t Scully the investigator, here? Maggie kept that quarter necklace secret, Maggie kept her health secret, and Maggie only wanted to talk to Charlie-- ergo, Charlie’s connected to the quarter necklace. And if it’s not his birthday, it’s the date he left. Ergo, voila.

“And I want to believe--” yeah, yeah, yeah, “--that we didn’t treat him like trash.”

This doesn’t match.

The writing treated him like trash because Scully was written to give him up for no reason. (Perhaps "like garbage" is a fun dig at CC's decision, but Scully ends up taking the damage for it.)

Scully herself didn’t treat William like trash-- she was trying to protect him.

In short: writers = trash; Scully = not trash. Scully’s decision = trash, Scully’s canonical reason = not trash.

Are we following canon now, writers? Have you caught up WITH YOUR OWN SHOW?

Mulder decides against talking, opting to pull her into a hug, instead.

Um.

Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhere’s the reassurance, Mulder. You reassured her in Founder’s Mutation quite soundly, but not. Here. When she’s in crisis.

Groovy. Stellar. Ugh.

...WELP, that’s the end, I GUESS.

CONCLUSION

What. was. that.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

59 notes · View notes

m1ckeyb3rry · 8 months ago

Text

── PEREGRINE // THREE

Series Synopsis: The ways that you and Seishiro Nagi fall together and fall apart over the years.

Chapter Synopsis: You spend the night at May and Reo’s, and then you go to visit your parents.

Series Masterlist

Pairing(s): Nagi x Reader, Kira x Reader

Chapter Word Count: 5.0k

Content Warnings: unhealthy relationships, cheating, non-linear narrative, probably ooc, angst, nagi is endgame, kira sucks, alternate universe, original characters

A/N: literally twitching every time i have to write a chapter and nagi is just not in it LMAOAOA also l/n family slander is always acceptable here #iykyk

divider credits: @/benkeibear

“When do you plan on going to see your parents?” Reo said. You, May, and him were hanging out in their enormous kitchen as rain poured down outside, hammering against the windows and roof. The storm made you feel nostalgic, and you sighed wistfully as you watched the deluge.

“Probably tomorrow,” you said. “I just want to get it over with. Even without having the conversation, I know how it’s going to go. It’ll be the same as the usual, so there’s no point in delaying the inevitable.”

That probably didn’t mean much to either of the two, considering you had never divulged much to them. You had never been able to tell anyone about the details of your relationship with your parents — it was something secret and rotten that you held close to your chest, a hatred which festered in your stomach and cowered from the light, and you could not bear for anyone to see you like that.

“Do you want us to come?” May said. Although Reo had known you longer, May had always been the more perceptive between the two of them, had always been more in-tune with emotions — both her own and others’ — than anyone you had ever met.

“No, it’s okay,” you said. The last thing you needed was for your parents to see Reo, especially with his own fiancée. It would be the worst outcome, and when the situation was already bound to be so fraught, there was no sense in adding fuel to the fire.

“We’ll drop you off whenever, though,” Reo said. “That’s a promise.”

“No way,” you said. “You guys should be relaxing. The whole reason I came over early was to make things easier for you two during your wedding! I’m not about to cause extra problems. We’ll take the taxi, and then afterwards, I’ll look for wedding dress boutiques so we can book an appointment. We should probably get that over with soon, just in case it takes them time to get the fit altered.”

“If you mention my name, it’ll be finished in seconds,” Reo said dismissively. “Don’t worry about dumb stuff like that.”

“No need to brag,” you said, elbowing him in the side teasingly. “We should give them enough time to make sure the work is of the highest quality. Besides, we have to begin planning somewhere, don’t we? Might as well start with this.”

“But that’s another thing I can’t do with you guys,” he said. You could not help yourself from chuckling at the way he pouted, his eyes swimming with melodramatic tears.

“You’re seriously clingy,” you said.

“Once we’ve picked my dress, you can come help us choose the rest of the wedding party’s clothes,” May offered. “I don’t think there’s any superstition around that, is there?”

“No, it’s just that the groom isn’t supposed to see the bride’s dress until the wedding,” you said. “Everything else is alright. We can probably get the dresses and suits from the same shop, too, so we can kill two birds with one stone. Great idea, May!”

“Thanks,” May said.

“Just tell me when, and I’ll make sure Nagi is free — don’t look at me like that! You knew he was going to be the best man before accepting the maid of honor position. I warned you!” Reo said.

“I know, but I just…I mean, do you think he’s going to offer any valuable insight? Beyond saying something like ‘oh, this suit is less of a pain than that one,’” you said, pitching your voice deeper to mimic Nagi’s low, mild voice.

“He’s going to have to wear it, so his opinion is kind of relevant,” Reo said.

“What happened between you guys while we were gone, anyways?” May said. “It was pretty normal when we left, besides Kira making things kind of awkward, but after we got back from dropping him off, there was a really weird atmosphere. Did you guys talk about something?”

“Nothing in particular,” you said.

“That still means you talked,” Reo said. “May’s right. I thought you said you weren’t going to let the past impact the present, so what was that tense vibe all about?”

“I wasn’t going to,” you said. “He’s the one that brought it up!”

“Brought what up?” May said keenly. You gulped, suddenly feeling like you had walked into some kind of trap, though judging by Reo’s clueless expression, it was one that he, too, was unaware of.

“Um, just, our old animosity,” you said.

“He never disliked you, though,” Reo said. “I don’t know why he’d bring it up when he didn’t even have a problem in the first place.”

May laughed. “You hated someone who didn’t hate you back? So out of character, Y/N. What was the reason?”

“It doesn’t matter,” you said. “If you must know, things were weird because neither of us knew what to discuss without you there, Reo. We don’t have that much in common. The only things are being friends with you and going to the same high school.”

“That does make sense,” Reo said. “If I swear I won’t leave you two alone again, will you be less annoyed about him coming along?”

“If that’s the best deal I’m getting, then yes, I suppose so,” you said, even though a part of you wanted to be alone with Nagi for as long as possible. You knew, though, that it was better if you weren’t. Just the thought of Ryosuke’s face was enough to convince you that this was the only path forward, or, if nothing else, the simplest.

“Consider it done,” Reo said. “Are you sleeping in the guest room tonight?”

“If you don’t mind,” you said, directing the question to both him and May alike.

“It doesn’t bother us,” he said.

“We wouldn’t have let you come over if it was an issue,” May agreed with a yawn. Even though you weren’t that tired, you knew it was late, and unlike you, they had not slept half of the day away. You wanted to keep them up, to talk to them until your throat was dry, but it would be unkind, so you pretended to yawn as well.

“We should probably get to bed, then,” you said.

“Are you sure?” Reo said. “We can stay up a little longer if you’d like.”

“Yup, we can,” May said. You smiled but shook your head.

“No, I’m really tired. I’m just going to call Chigiri so I can see how Sora is doing, and then I’ll probably sleep myself,” you said.

“Okay, if that’s how you feel,” Reo said, beckoning you after him. “I’ll show you where everything is, and you can do what you need to. But be up for breakfast, alright? I’m calling one of my chefs to cook something for us, and if you miss it, I’ll be really angry.”

“You don’t have to do that,” you said.

“I don’t have to do a lot of things, but I do them anyways. Do you know why? It’s because I can,” he said. “So I will.”

“Honestly,” you said, shaking your head. “You’re such a show-off.”

“I have to look impressive for you,” he said.

“Aren’t we past that point now?” you said, thinking back to his ridiculous antics from high school. “I agreed to be your friend a while back.”

“Old habits die hard,” he said, shrugging and sticking his tongue out at you cheekily. You did the same back.

“Yeah, yeah,” you said. “Whatever, rich boy. I’ll be up.”

“Good,” he said, patting you on the head. “Sleep well, Y/N.”

“The same to you, Reo,” you said. “Tell May, too.”

“She’ll probably be over to wish you herself,” he said.

“I’ll stay up until she does, then,” you said.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

“See you.”

The familiar motions of getting ready for the night were the same no matter where you went, serving as a backdrop for your thoughts, which even now had not settled.

It had been worse than you had expected. Seeing Nagi again, being so close to him after all of this time…you thought you could handle it, but you couldn’t. You thought that by finding him again, you could reaffirm your decisions, but the only thing he had done was throw everything into a muddle. As always. Why had you expected anything different?

The rain had not abated by the time you crawled under your sheets and scrolled through your list of contacts, searching for the one you wanted. You wished it would stop. The rain meant something different to you, and for that reason, you wanted it to go away, but the weather was ignorant to your desires, and so it continued to pour.

“Hey, Y/N. Calling already?” The screen only showed the top half of Chigiri’s face; most of it was dominated by the white of his ceiling and the whirring blades of his fan. He blinked his pretty eyes at you, obviously curious about what you needed. “Is everything okay?”

“Is Sora doing alright?” you said. The camera switched to show Chigiri’s lap, which was dominated by your large white cat, who was purring to herself as he pet her.

“We’re watching TV together,” he said. “I think she likes this show.”

“Sora,” you said, your voice shaking. “Are you being perfect for Chigiri?”

“Yes, I am,” Chigiri said, doing an admittedly excellent impression of a little girl. “That was Sora, by the way. Not me.”

You sniffed. “That’s good.”

“Seriously, is something up? You’re acting a little bit freaky,” he said, the camera flipping back to its original position, though he now held it at an angle where you could see his entire face.

You hugged a pillow to your chest, resting your chin atop it when you spoke. “I don’t know.”

“Do you wanna talk about it, or is this one of those moments where I’m supposed to distract you by talking about dumb bullshit?” he said.

“The second option,” you said. You didn’t want to talk to Chigiri about it. You didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, because no one could ever know, and besides, talking about it would make it real. It would mean that you had acknowledged it, and by breathing life into something so nebulous, you ran the risk of it taking on a tangible form that would jam down your throat and wrap around your joints, halting you from moving forward as you ought to.

“Okay. Um, I went for a walk today,” he said. “It was really nice out. I wanted to run, but I decided it was probably better that I didn’t. My neighbor’s garden is flourishing — you know, he doesn’t really seem like the type to be into flower-growing, but it looks nice. Lots of roses, which is surprising, considering the whole muscle-head aesthetic he has going on. Maybe I should try to be nicer to him.”

You giggled despite yourself. “Is this the one with the orange hair who helped me carry your groceries in when you were sick? He seemed like a good person. You should be nicer to him.”

“Yes, that one. It’s not like I’m mean or anything! I just prefer minding my own business,” he said.

“If you say so,” you said. “I am surprised he’s into growing roses and flowers and whatnot, though. I would’ve thought he was exclusively into making protein powder shakes.”

”That’s what I’m saying!” he said. “I suppose everyone has many sides to them.”

“Hm,” you said. “Say, Chigiri. Can I ask you a bit of a random question?”

“If I say no, you’re going to ask anyways, aren’t you?” he said dryly.

“Yeah,” you said.

“Then what was the point of checking first?” he said.

“I knew you’d say yes,” you said. He flushed at the way you had read him so well.

“Okay, okay. What is it?” he said.

“Do you know much about Japanese soccer?” you said.

“Obviously?” he said. “Why’d you even ask that? It’s kind of a given, you know.”

“It was just a prelude. There’s a player — former player — that I was wondering if you had any thoughts on,” you said.

“Which one? If you say Kira, I’m killing you,” he said.

“No, not him. Um, Seishiro Nagi?” you said.

Chigiri raised his eyebrows. “That’s unexpected.”

“What is?” you said.

“You being interested in a player like that,” he said. “He’s Reo’s best man, isn’t he? Why don’t you ask him yourself? You guys must’ve gone to high school together.”

“I want to hear what you think,” you said. “That’s why I’m going to you. Idiot.”

“I’m flattered. Well, keep in mind that this isn’t a professional evaluation or anything; I’ve never even met him, and anyways, I’m just a failed player myself, so I’m hardly qualified to give my opinion on anything,” he said.

“That’s not true, Chigiri,” you protested.

“It is. It’s okay; there’s no need to fight about it. That’s not what we’re talking about. My thoughts on Seishiro Nagi…he was talented, and that’s a fact. If I remember correctly, they used to call him the falcon of the field, right?” he said.

“Yes, I think that’s what it was,” you said.

“He was almost unbeatable. Sure, he had a few losses, especially earlier on in his career, but for the most part, facing off against him was like a death sentence for any team that had that misfortune. A combination of unorthodox thinking and unbelievable physicality made him a genuine threat,” he said.

“I see,” you said. “I knew all of that already, though.”

“Jeez, never satisfied, huh? It’s not like I know him personally, and I was already in college by the time he started really getting big. That’s about the extent of it,” he said. “If I remember, one of my high school friends had a sister who was a fan of his for a bit, but she got over it pretty quickly, since he never went on social media or anything. Guess it’s difficult to have a parasocial relationship with someone so private.”

“Even in high school, he was that kind of guy,” you said, unable to stop yourself from grinning affectionately, though you pushed it back before Chigiri could notice. “No one knew the first thing about him. He was such a mystery.”

“Some people are into that lifestyle, I suppose,” he said. You hummed.

“Guess so,” you said.

“I don’t really know much else, Y/N, I’m sorry. You’re going to have to talk to him if you want more,” he said. Scoffing, you shook your head resolutely.

“It was just a typical curiosity,” you said. “I don’t need more than that. Thanks, Chigiri.”

“Anything for you,” he said.

“You’re making me blush,” you deadpanned.

“It’s only because your cat’s so cute,” he said. “Mind if I keep her?”

“In your dreams,” you said. “Speaking of which, I should get to bed. Talk to you later.”

“Later.”

Only a few moments elapsed between Chigiri hanging up and May knocking on your door. You knew it was her because she was light and hesitant instead of firm and sharp, the way Reo would’ve been, and also because she announced herself shortly after.

“Come in!” you said, pulling your blanket up around your shoulders.

“Are you still talking with Chigiri?” she said, flopping down on the foot of the bed.

“Obviously not,” you said, nodding towards the blank screen of your phone. “I wouldn’t have told you you could come in if I was.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“What did you need to ask?” you said. There were never any secrets between you and May. It was impossible to lie to her when you had lived together with her for years, and conversely, she could never hide her true intentions from you.

“Nothing in particular,” she said. “Just…are you sure you’re going to be okay with this whole maid of honor thing? It seems like there’s way more to your history with Nagi than I realized. If you’re uncomfortable with it, then we can figure something else out.”

“No!” you said, too quickly for it to have been a natural reaction. “No, it’s okay. We’re okay. It was just really sudden today, that’s all. I wasn’t prepared to see him again. Please, I told this to Reo and I’ll say it to you too: don’t worry about me. Your wedding is the only thing you should be thinking about, and even that shouldn’t be a cause of anxiety. I’ll take care of everything.”

“Okay, but you’re my friend, and I don’t want you to be more stressed in my place or anything,” she said slowly. “If it’s a problem, you have to tell me immediately. Reo can pay someone else to be his best man, so it’s not a huge issue.”

“It wouldn’t be fair to him,” you said. “He’s been friends with Nagi for almost as long as he’s known me. I don’t want my own issues to ruin his wedding. Really, May, thank you for the concern, but there’s not a problem at all, and even if there is, I’ll handle it.”

You mimed hitting the air, and she snorted, shaking her head condescendingly.

“What, you gonna fistfight Nagi if he bothers you too much or something?” she said.

“Yeah. You don’t think I can win?” you said.

“I mean, considering he was a professional athlete until a few years ago and you’re…you,” she said. “No.”

“You should have more faith in me,” you said. “I can totally take him on. Bam! He won’t know what hit him.”

You punched your pillow for emphasis, which drew a giggle out of her. Taking the pillow from you, she fluffed it up again before handing it back so you could lay against it.

“I’ll bet on you, then, so you had better win, or else Reo won’t let me hear the end of it for a week or more,” she said. You flexed your biceps.

“You can count on me,” you said.

“On a more serious note, though, and now that Reo’s not around, will you tell me the truth about what Nagi brought up? I know you were lying earlier, but I figured you just didn’t want to make Reo feel bad. I’m sure it must be strange for him, having his two best friends dislike each other,” she said.

You had no interest in lying to her, but you also could not tell her the entire truth, so you decided to go with a version of it all.

“The past,” you said. “I don’t know if Reo’s mentioned it, but we had a very complicated relationship back then.”

“He never elaborated, though, to be fair, I don’t think he really understood it well enough in the first place. He just said that you seemed to really hate Nagi when you all went to school together, but you never told him why,” she said.

“I was embarrassed,” you said with a shrug. “It was an embarrassing reason, and not one that a person like Reo could ever understand, so I kept it to myself. Nagi never really had any friends, bar Reo of course, so no one ever thought any less of me for it.”

“Embarrassing?” she said, and then an idea dawned her, her expression morphing into one of pure horror. “If that overgrown q-tip of a man hurt you at some point, then I don’t care about Reo’s feelings. He’s out of the wedding!”

“Overgrown — what? What are you talking about?” you said.

“You said that it was an embarrassing reason that Reo could never understand,” she said. “What would be more embarrassing than you getting rejected by Nagi of all people? And I doubt Reo’s ever been rejected in his life, unfortunately, so he definitely wouldn’t comprehend that sort of feeling. If it’s the case, then just let me know and I’ll sort things out! Reo has other friends now, so he can just have one of them be his best man. Or there’s always the paid route, like I mentioned earlier.”

“It wasn’t like that,” you said. “Also, there’s no way Reo has other friends, so please don’t lie for my sake.”

“No, he does. If you don’t believe me, just wait for the wedding — you’ll meet them there. At the least, he can always get Chigiri to do it,” she said.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Anyways, though, it’s fine. You missed the mark this time, I’m afraid.”

“Oh. Then what was it?” she said. You smiled ruefully and shook your head.

“You wouldn’t understand, either, you know? So it’s okay. Enough of this; he knows better than to bring it up again, and I know better than to end up alone with him again,” you said.

She really was the loyal sort. It was evident in the way she hesitated before nodding, standing up with a furrow to her brow and a pensive twist to her mouth as she headed to the door.

“Y/N,” she said. “Like I said, the instant he pulls something, you tell me, alright? Before you get in a fistfight or anything ridiculous like that, come to me.”

“Got it,” you said. “I’ll remember that. Goodnight, May.”

“Goodnight.”

You wondered when it had come to be that you felt more uncomfortable with your own fiancé than anyone else. Yet it remained that being shoved in a taxi with him on the way to your childhood home was the oddest sensation you had experienced in so long that you found yourself once again longing for the days when it had been simpler, when you and him had gotten along in an easy way.

“Did you have a nice time at May and Reo’s?” Ryosuke said.

“I did,” you said. “Reo made one of his chefs come to serve us breakfast, so it was delicious.”

“It’s a good thing he’s about to be married, or I’d be jealous,” Ryosuke said. “How can a normal guy like me compete with that?”

“Stop,” you said. “He loves May. There’s no competition, and don’t say anything like that in front of my parents.”

“What?” he said in alarm. “Are there rules to this meeting? I was just planning on winging it!”

You held back the urge to groan. He could not be blamed; like Reo and May, he didn’t know what it meant for you to see your parents again, not fully. Why would he expect anything other than a normal meal at their place? But your parents weren’t that type, and if he just waltzed in and expected them to love him based on nothing but your fondness for him, then he was mistaken.

The home you had grown up in had not changed a bit in your absence. The same flowers still bloomed alongside the concrete path leading to the front door, and the bushes were still the exact emerald shade they had been on the day you had left. Foreboding crept in you as you ascended the stairs and pressed on the button for the doorbell, and you reached behind you to grab Ryosuke’s hand as footsteps approached the foyer.

“Mother,” you said when the door swung open, revealing a pair who, too, had not changed from the images of them which you held in your memories. “Father. It’s been a while.”

Your mother’s lips pressed into a thin line, and your father clenched his jaw as he regarded you and Ryosuke. For a brief moment, you thought that he would turn the two of you away, but he only glared at you for a second longer before motioning for you both to come in.

“Y/N,” your mother said. “We weren’t expecting you.”

“Did you think I’d miss the wedding?” you said.

“Wedding?” your father said.

“No need to play innocent,” you said, marveling at the nooks and crannies you had once known so intimately. “You know whose wedding I speak of.”

“It should’ve been yours,” your mother said.

“If things had gone the way you wanted, it would’ve been mine,” you agreed. “But they didn’t, and it’s not. It’s Reo and May’s.”

“There’s still time,” your father said. “They aren’t married yet. You could still—”

“When will you give up?” you said, cutting him off, squeezing Ryosuke’s hand — as much for his reassurance as your own. “I flew halfway across the world to escape you and your demands, and the first thing you do upon my return is make more? It’s shameless, father.”

“Why are you back here?” your mother said, presenting a tray filled with tea and biscuits to the two of you. You wavered before allowing yourself to pick up one of the cups, dipping a biscuit in it and chewing on it. The flavor reminded you of your childhood, immediately transporting you to the days when you had not despised your life so thoroughly and extremely. “You made your feelings quite clear when you left, so what brings you back?”

“He wanted to meet you,” you said. “Ryosuke Kira. My fiancé.”

“Hello, sir, madam,” Ryosuke said, bowing his head politely. You had to give him that — he was good at acting, and in this situation, it was a helpful attribute. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”

“You seriously chose him over Reo Mikage?” your father said bluntly. “That’s a decision no one in their right mind would make.”

“Enough about Reo,” you hissed between your teeth before smiling tightly, your nails digging into the back of Ryosuke’s hand. “We aren’t here to go over that same argument. Aren’t you going to congratulate me? Your only daughter is getting married.”

“Does he have a house of his own?” your mother said.

“Yes,” you said.

“A job with a good income?” your father said.

“Well above average,” you said. “It’s secure, too.”

“Then it’s good enough,” your mother said, stiffly, insincerely. “He’s no corporate heir, but he’s a serviceable consolation prize. Congratulations, Y/N. You’ve done better for yourself than we expected.”

They didn’t ask if you loved him, or if he loved you in return, but why would they? It was unimportant. When it came to relationships and marriages, such fickle concepts as love could not be relied upon. It was the ideal that they had pounded into you from a young age: stability. Safety. It was easier to learn to love someone than it was to live a life without certainty. It was easier for you to pretend to be unaware of Ryosuke’s dalliances than it was for you to let go and live the rest of your life alone.

“I don’t think your parents liked me,” Ryosuke confessed upon entering the taxi you had called to take you back.

“Don’t take it personally,” you said. “They’re just upset that things didn’t go according to their carefully laid plans. It’s fine. I wasn’t expecting them to be happy, anyways. That went better than I anticipated, all things considered.”

“What plans?” Ryosuke said as the driver took off towards your hotel. Ryosuke would get down there, and you would continue on to the dress fitting appointment that Reo had somehow already managed to book before you had even woken up.

You weighed the merits of telling him, but came to the conclusion that it would only make things more difficult for you.

“Plans that never had a chance of success in the first place,” you said. “That’s the long and short of it. Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure,” he said. “What style of dress is May thinking of getting for the wedding party?”

“She mentioned wanting me to have a different dress than the rest of the bridesmaids, since I’m the maid of honor,” you said. “I think she wants it to be my choice.”

“How considerate of her,” Ryosuke said. “She really is such a sweet girl. And so pretty, too! She’ll make a beautiful bride.”

You thought back to what Nagi had said at dinner, your face souring as his cool, snarky tone rang in your mind. It looked like he wanted that waitress, too. And that hostess. And May. But I don’t think he’d go after her, because, y’know, Reo would be pretty mad, and he can definitely afford a better lawyer than Kira can if it comes down to it…

“Reo is lucky,” you said, though all you wanted to do was grab his face and demand he look at you. Aren’t I beautiful, too? Aren’t I sweet, too? You wanted to scream these things at him, but you feared that the answers were not ones you’d prefer, so you remained silent.

“I bet you’ll look great, too,” he said. “Make sure you pick something flattering. I want everyone to see just how amazing my fiancée is.”

“I would’ve done that regardless,” you said.

“Maybe you should FaceTime Chigiri and ask for his advice! We all know how well he can pull off a dress,” he said, snickering.

“That happened once, and you need to stop bringing it up. It wasn’t even his choice,” you said, though you could not suppress a laugh at the memory of the time that you and May had forced Chigiri into a dress so that you could sneak him into a Halloween party with you.

“As you wish,” he said. “Looks like this is my stop. Text me when you’re on the way back!”

“Okay,” you said. “Wait. Ryosuke.”

“What’s up?” he said.

“Can I, uh, send you pictures? Of my options? So you can help me choose?” you said, hating how uncertain your voice sounded, the cracking hinting at your true meaning — tell me. Tell me what I will look worthy of you in. Tell me what it is you want from me.

“Can’t you just pick on your own?” he said. “I was planning on taking a nap and then going to eat. I won’t really have time. Ask May or Reo if you’re stuck.”

It had been a foolish idea to begin with, and as the taxi you were in accelerated away from him, you cursed yourself for even trying. After all, if a simple dress would’ve been enough for your fiancé’s eyes to remain on you, then they never would’ve strayed in the first place.

taglist (comment/send an ask to be added): @mariyumemi @naatggeo @prettyarsxnist @noble-17 @rinitoshisgirl @stuckindreamland06

#nagi x reader #nagi x y/n #nagi x you #nagi seishiro #bllk x reader #bllk #blue lock #reader insert #modern au #peregrine #m1ckeyb3rry writes

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accirax · 1 month ago

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Revisiting My Original DRDT Death Predictions

If you haven't been following what's going on over at @av-multifangan, Venus and I have been posting one of our fangans, Danganronpa: One Shot. Hooray! But, more relevantly to this post, we also posted the rules to a game that we've been playing for a long time-- a game through which you can score your performance at guessing how a fangan's kill order will go after viewing only its prologue.

Said old game was also invoked when we began watching DRDT, so I thought it would be a fun trip down memory lane to see what my genuine initial predictions for the entire killing game were after viewing just a little over an hour of Despair Time content.

While all of us non-cast-and-crew members obviously don't know the entire kill order at this point, I can rest assured that these predictions, well... ain't it. But, that's part of the point! To prove that even the creators of this predictions game can be terrible at it, and that there's no shame in making a guess and then changing your mind!

... Oh boy.

SPOILERS for DRDT through the end of Chapter 2, and IMPLIED SPOILERS for SDR2 and v3!

Well, no use in dilly-dallying. Here's my predictions sheet:

(god damn why is the quality so bad--)

If you haven't read the rules of our game, I'll quickly summarize them here. You have to predict the killing game using the most standard formula: one Chapter 1 victim and killer, one Chapter 2 victim and killer, double kill in Chapter 3 with one killer, one Chapter 4 victim and killer, one Chapter 5 victim and killer, and four survivors with a "surviving" (until Chapter 6) mastermind. These roles are listed out in rainbow order (Chapter 1 death = red, Chapter 6 = purple), and victims are marked with an X while killers are circled. The survivors are circled in purple, with a cyan star on the suspected mastermind.

At the end of the game, you gain points based on how far off you were, such that a low score is good. It's +2 points for getting the role wrong (victim vs killer/mastermind vs survivor), with an additional +1 point per chapter for how far you are off from the characters' last.

Although the quality is low, hopefully you can figure out what I predicted using those instructions-- or the image ID, if it's still too tricky. And, of course, I'm going to go through all of my choices below, starting with

XANDER in the role of CHAPTER 1 VICTIM

"Accirax," you may ask. "Why are you acting so doomed about your predictions when you literally got 1/4 of the confirmed deaths correct?" Unfortunately, my friend, I was already spoiled about Xander's death before I started watching DRDT. I'm very grateful that I had no idea about the circumstances of Xander's death (AKA, him stabbing Teruko) going in. But, I think I'd seen some thumbnail somewhere of Xander's BDA and knew he was a goner.

Hence, this was a free 0 pointer for me. I'm not that cool.

ARTURO in the role of CHAPTER 1 KILLER

Now, why I thought Arturo of all people would be the one to kill Xander is beyond me. I think my rationale was that, at the time, Arturo was giving me early death vibes, and this was the only spot I could put him in?*

This is one of the predictions that I know is wrong, because the Chapter 1 killer spot has already elapsed. The best I could do now points-wise is if Arturo is the Chapter 3 killer (I'd get +2 points for being two chapters off), which is definitely still feasible! Still, I wonder now if Arturo's vibe is too obvious for being a killer, and if he would ever be willing to put ~Julia Rosales'~ life in jeopardy by attempting to escape. J certainly isn't doing herself any favors with that Felicity reveal, at least.

ROSE in the role of CHAPTER 2 VICTIM

*This is where things get... a little complicated. As I already said, I had been spoiled to the fact that Xander was the Chapter 1 victim. However... I also thought I had been spoiled to the "fact" that Rose was the Chapter 2 victim?

I really don't know how this happened. I have a distinct memory of seeing a Tumblr post containing something that sort of looked like what I imagine an Ultimate Art Forger Lab could look like(?) talking about how the characters needed to investigate to figure out who killed the Ultimate it belonged to. I thought I remembered seeing Rose's face, but this was before I had ever watched any DRDT content. So, it's possible I had the wrong fangan, or accidentally stumbled into someone's AU.

It was pretty funny looking back on my Chapter 2 viewing experience, though. When Teruko got Rose's secret, I was like, "oh, it totally makes sense that DRDTdev would give Teruko Rose's secret as a natural way to hear about Rose's backstory before she dies. Clever." And then we got to the day of the motive reveal, and Rose is there, and David says that Arei of all people is missing, and my jaw dropped. "Spoilers," indeed.

It sucked for me at the time of making this sheet, though, because Rose was, like, the only woman I got survivor vibes from (other than Teruko). But, I thought I couldn't mark her as such! Of course, Rose could be a Chapter 3 victim for all I know, meaning that being "forced" to put her in this spot could actually be good for my predictions. However, scoring 0 points on Rose is fully off the table now, which is a bummer.

DAVID in the role of CHAPTER 2 KILLER

"Why couldn't you have put Arturo as Chapter 2 killer--" I also thought I had been spoiled that David was the Chapter 2 killer. If I didn't make Arturo the first killer, the earliest I could have put him would be Chapter 3 victim, which is hardly early at all. And yes, I thought I'd been spoiled on three out of "four" of the canonical deaths when I originally watched the series. That's just my life (/lh).

At least this one is obvious to figure out why I thought it was the case. I started watching DRDT in May of 2023, about a month and a half after 2-11 dropped. Hence, I knew DRDT was on hiatus, but I was under the impression that it was a hiatus after Chapter 2 had finished. I'd also seen 2-11's thumbnail, recognized it as David, and (along with having spoilers about David's "true personality") concluded that David must be the Chapter 2 killer.

Live footage of me watching 2-11 for the first time:

"Ah, there he goes... Man, we're gonna have to wrap this murder up quick, huh? I guess that's why he's admitting to it... Haha, 'Teruko, we fucked up'... WAIT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S A HIATUS ON AN UNSOLVED MURDER?!"

I decided quickly afterwards that I no longer believed that David would be the Chapter 2 killer.

Finally, we're done with roles that already happened/that I had "spoilers" for! You'd think that would automatically make them better (because most of them, at least, have not been disproven), but there are still plenty of things that contradict what I believe will happen now, at least.

LEVI and HU in the role of CHAPTER 3 VICTIMS

Relatively, though, this one isn't that bad. Don't get me wrong, these two aren't my leading candidates for Chapter 3 victims, but I'm not actively opposed to this happening.

The idea of Levi nearly evading dying at the end of Chapter 2 only to actually become a victim in Chapter 3 is a little puzzling, but still narratively on the table, imo. So much happens in a DRDT Chapter's worth of daily life that Levi could definitely still serve enough of a narrative purpose to justify his continued survival/eventual victimhood in that Chapter. Especially if that purpose had something to do with the fact that he was injured-- for instance, if it's important for an Arturo arc of learning that he actually enjoys taking care of others, or if the killer has to exploit Levi's injuries in order to have the strength necessary to take him out.

Meanwhile, I've long held the opinion that Hu will be a big character in the Chapter 3 Daily Life by virtue of not having done a whole lot in the Chapter 1 or 2 Daily Lives-- she definitely has content, but the majority of the important stuff occurs in the Chapter 2 Trial. Currently, I'm of the opinion that that spike of content wouldn't result in a same-Chapter death, but following in the footsteps of Xander and Arei, it definitely could. Same with Levi if he's a Chapter 3 focus, honestly.

J in the role of CHAPTER 3 KILLER

I really still want to believe that J will be a killer. Why? It's because, in my opinion, Ultimate Effects Artist is a talent that is totally optimized for being a blackened, whether it actually happens or not. You know why the idea of J and Arei swapping places was so popular? Because Ultimate Effects Artist is the kind of talent you give someone if you want to pull a trick like that off!

However, all of that "murder is despicable" talk is really cramping my style. Why would J ever become a blackened after opposing the idea of murder so openly?

(It'd be pretty funny if it was all an act so that people would use that as an argument to her credit down the road.)

It's possible she could have a crisis of faith/breaking point that would change her mind, but I doubt that would occur as quickly as Chapter 3. Or result in her killing two people. Sigh.

AREI in the role of CHAPTER 4 VICTIM and EDEN in the role of CHAPTER 4 KILLER

OKAY HEAR ME OUT BEFORE YOU ACCUSE ME OF CALLING EDEN EVIL--

Chapter 4 is, oftentimes, the sacrifice chapter, right? It's a killer that makes everybody cry, because they'd never normally do something like this, but ultimately decided to kill in order to spare their friends and take the bullet themselves. I'm, like, 99% sure that's what I was imagining for Eden. Whatever the motive may be, Eden would be the small and scrawny sacrifice killer in sort of a reversal of the buff curse...

... taking out the mean bully girl that everybody hated as the victim, if she had to choose someone.

I'M SORRY I'M SORRY STOP HITTING ME WITH ROCKS-- (/j)

But yeah, I definitely remember predicting that part of the surprise of the case was that the small nerdy girl was able to take out the Ultimate athlete mean girl. I don't know how I managed to deduce that Eden and Arei would have an important relationship with one another after the prologue (in which they don't really talk at all, to my memory), yet managed to get it so horribly wrong. Predicting that Eden would kill Arei was just in my DNA, I guess, even if I originally envisioned it for a different chapter.

In the light of Ace being declared the Chapter 2 killer, this one is just embarrassingly wrong. Evidently, Eden would never stoop as low as to kill Arei. The good news for me, I suppose, is that Arei will only net me +2 points, as the role was correct (V=V) while the chapter was 2 off (4->2).

As for Eden being the Chapter 4 killer, that's not one of my top spots for her. If I had to pick, I'd probably guess either Chapter 3 victim (especially if paired with Charles Ch3 Victim, this could really knock the wind out of Teruko's sails if needed), Chapter 5 victim (allows her a long period in the story that isn't a survivor nor a killer), or just a survivor (and/or mastermind). If she were to be a killer, then maybe I'd predict Chapter 4 along the sacrifice angle? Not with Arei, though.

MIN in the role of CHAPTER 5 VICTIM

+6 points (5->1) (V->K) on Min is... not the greatest score. In fact, it's only one fewer than the general max possible character score of 7, reserved for Chapter 1 deaths mistaken as Survivors and vice versa.

I think my original prediction for Min was that she would not necessarily be Teruko's support character emotionally, but that she would be a useful aide when it came to solving the mysteries of the Class Trial. Then in Chapter 5, to force Teruko/the other innocent students to solve the high-stakes Trial on their own, she would have to disappear.

Looking back on it, I really enjoy how Teruko is far and away the best at solving the Class Trials in DRDT-- she would have already earned the title through her connections to, like, literally every character and theme in the story, but making her the principal mystery solver really hammers the idea that she should be the protagonist home. Having Min be on Team Spotless for even one Trial might have diminished that effect, so it makes sense that she became the first blackened. Girl was too powerful to live, smh.

WHIT in the role of CHAPTER 5 KILLER

Personally, I've always gotten the vibe that Whit is one of DRDTdev's Special Little Guys. Perhaps it was the way that he showed up in three character introductions-- Charles', Hu's, and his own-- that made me think he had Favorite Character Privileges. As such, even when (get ready for a truth bomb) I didn't really like Whit after watching the Prologue for the first time, I always thought he had late game energy.

(I don't know how much it really comes across from my blog, but I'm actually fairly critical of new series when I pick them up for the first time, unless I've heard many positive recommendations from friends/online personalities I admire. Other than the spoilers, I hadn't heard too much about DRDT before I started watching it, so, unaware of DRDTdev's writing skills, I was worried that Whit would essentially be a poor man's Kokichi. As someone who really likes Kokichi, that biased me against Whit. Then, of course, I actually watched the series and Whit won me over very quickly. And the rest is history :) )

I’m not really sure why I went killer over victim, other than the possible “I’m making Min the victim and therefore Whit has to be the killer.” Maybe it was that Kokichi-ness that made me think that he'd be the man behind the slaughter? ... Even if Kokichi wasn't actually the blackened in that case? It might've also been an effect of wanting him to be just that much closer to surviving, to fully break the hearts of everyone who was rooting for this Special Little Guy to survive.

Like, uh... me. Um. Well, I do genuinely currently think Whit will survive right now, so... I'm willing to take a +3 if that's true!

TERUKO in the role of MASTERMIND

Yeah, I predicted that Teruko would be the mastermind because I'm a basic bitch (/aff). Uh, I'm not being affectionate towards myself, to be clear. I'm only being affectionate to those who still hold the (fairly, I think) popular opinion that Teruko will be the mastermind of DRDT. She's a popular choice because there's a lot going for her! I still ranked her as third most likely back in my mastermind analysis!

Everyone who plays Venus' and my game is forced into the same default formula (to make comparative scoring easier), and that formula locks in the protagonist as a Chapter 6-er, because of how frequently that is the case. Even so, I feel fairly confident now that Teruko will survive until Chapter 6 anyways. The more times she says "I'm the Ultimate Lucky Student and I can't die" and then doesn't die, the weirder it would be if she suddenly did drop dead in, like, Chapter 4.

As for whether she actually is the mastermind... dude, I have no idea. Back at the time I wrote that post, I named J and Rose as my most likely candidates, but now J has gone on a whole anti-murder bend and I'm growing increasingly worried that Rose is going to be the Chapter 3 killer (probably unfounded, but still). That would leave Teruko as the most likely option, but Teruko's behavior at the end of Chapter 2 felt anti-mastermind coded to me, too, even if she forgot about it...!

We are not reviewing my mastermind theories here and now. Next!

CHARLES in the role of SURVIVOR

If you're a giant fucking nerd (/j), you might have noticed that I said I made my DRDT predictions after viewing "just a little bit over an hour of Despair Time content." However, the Prologue is under an hour. What gives?

Well, I... broke the rules of our game, actually. You're supposed to make your predictions sheet after viewing the Prologue only, but I went straight from watching the Prologue into Chapter 1 on the same day, and I forgot to make my sheet until watching Chapter 1 Episode 1. Sue me.

At any rate, I'm sure you can figure out how watching 1-1 would make me think that Charles would survive. Obviously, I knew that other characters beyond Charles would get focus in later episodes, but that still doesn't change the fact that DRDTdev chose to highlight Charles and Teruko's relationship as the first thing we saw in the first chapter of their story. Even without that extra content, though, he's also very reminiscent of Danganronpa's "Jerk" archetype, which survived in every canon DR game.

All that said... obviously, I don't think he's going to survive anymore.

I've been saying that Charles is a Chapter 3 victim-- at least since that analysis I just linked, even-- and I will probably continue to say it until proven false by the story itself. He is simply arcing too fast, and Whit needs to be confronted with that grief he prefers to ignore, no matter what his eventual placement is. We got one real Trial with Charles to prove what a smarty-pants he is, but now that he's pulled that "out of your element" card, he's off to break down into two or more simpler substances. AKA, decompose.

If he's not a Chapter 3 victim, though, Survivor is at least back on the table.

ACE in the role of SURVIVOR

Here we have it! Proof positive that I (falsely) believed that Ace would be a survivor all on my own, without taking into account anyone else's opinions! My incorrectness is mine and mine alone!!! (/j)

So, yeah. Funny coward man go brrrr and character arc into survival, except then he didn't. I have to imagine that's the basic premise behind why so many people believed that Ace would survive. I don't really have much to say about this choice beyond that.

I don't like that I'm already tanking another +6 points (S->K) (6->2) from Ace, though. Save me Xander-zero-point spoilers, you're my only hope.

VERONIKA in the role of SURVIVOR

Whaaaaaaaat was I cooking here?

I guess I kind of remember. I think I was imagining Veronika along the lines of a poor man's Sonia (like I said, critical) due to her more apologetic attitude towards rambling and presenting others with horror concepts in the Prologue. With my prediction that Whit would die in Chapter 5, I guess I might've also been thinking that Veronika could then fill in that "comic relief" void in his absence? I also had Ace there, though. Moot point; every DRDT character has the capacity to be hilarious.

There are a lot of places I could see Veronika landing in this killing game, but survivor really isn't one of them. I could see Veronika as a Chapter 3 victim or killer for The Vibes, Chapter 5 victim or killer if she takes on more of a main antagonist role, or Mastermind also for The Vibes. But survivor is just... odd. At least from this point in the story, what business does the "fangirling over acevi dying" girl have taking up one of those coveted survivor slots? Surely either someone would think to kill her or she would decide to kill before four more chapters elapse!

That being said, locking in Veronika as a late game character isn't terrible in my eyes. Being "barred" from making Rose a survivor, I remember that Veronika was the girl who I initially got the second most late game energy from. Those Chapter 5 or Mastermind scenarios won't score terribly here if they come to pass.

NICO in the role of SURVIVOR

I want to mention here that, despite my other spoilers, I did not know that Nico was nonbinary going into Despair Time. Therefore, I didn't make Nico a survivor under the premise of "I'll have two girls, two boys, and one enby survive!" I don't really remember why I did make Nico a survivor, though.

My best guess is that I put them there for cast composition purposes. From the Prologue, all of Charles, Ace, and Veronika are pretty over-the-top in their own ways: Charles is overly condescending, Ace is really loud, and Veronika is an exaggerated fangirl. Adding in a quieter character like Nico would have been a nice way balance to the others... or at least, so I thought with only the Prologue to go off of. Now I know that Ace and Nico surviving together was incredibly unlikely to be the case.

Speaking of Ace, now that he's dead (and therefore can't be a survivor), my opinions of whether Nico could survive have definitely gone up. However, I still don't think that Nico surviving is particularly likely.

There's definitely potential for redemptive survivors in DRDT with the "fighting your fate" theme they seem to be setting up. But, I think that's more likely to play out with someone who might have committed murder before the killing game (like Levi) or someone who did terrible things, but never went so far as to physically attempt another student's murder (like David), than someone who actually attacked someone else and nearly succeeded. For media in general, I think it's much easier for audiences to forgive something that happened off-screen and/or to characters that barely exist than something that we saw visible evidence of on a character who many people adore. Nico's attempted murder just seems like a big hurdle to overcome on their path to survival, dude.

That being said, I've written before that for both in-universe and meta reasons, I don't think we'll ever see Nico as a blackened, which already eliminates, like, half of my options moving forward. Logically, that would conclude that if I don't think that Nico will become a victim, then they're likely to survive. I do (currently) think that Nico will probably be a victim sometime in the future, even if I'm not certain in which chapter. For the sake of my score on Nico specifically, I guess I'm rooting for Chapter 5. I already know that they wouldn't be robbing Min of a perfect zero, at least.

And that's my tally so far, a total of 14 points out of a possible... well, I actually don't know what the highest possible score is, both because math is hard and because I don't know what bonus rules, if any, will come into play in DRDT's future. It's 14 points across 4 characters, which comes out to an average of 3.5 points per character.

Comparatively, most of our game sheets have come out somewhere in the high-30 to mid-40 points range (predicting is hard). Across 16 characters, means that it's usually an average of, like, 3 points per character. So, I'm doing worse than usual, but not by a whole lot...!

But, how well I do isn't what matters. The important thing is that I had fun while making it, and got to think about what patterns and possibilities can arise when you look at the basic facts of a character's simplified personality and talent in time with their role in the story!

So if you want to have fun making a predictions sheet like this of your own, you should totally go read Danganronpa: One Shot's Prologue (before Chapter 1 starts airing on Friday) over at @av-multifangan and fill out that game's prediction sheet. That would mean that this shameful shameless attempt at cross-promotion would have succeeded at one of its desired effects! Or, if that's not your cup of tea, you could also fill out a predictions sheet for DRDT moving forward, and just acknowledge that Xander, Min, Arei, and Ace were placed after the fact. Who knows, maybe I'll make a sheet like that too, so we can compare.

Thanks for walking down memory lane with me, and I hope to be back with more DRDT content soon!

#danganronpa despair time #drdt #drdt spoilers #fanganronpa #teruko tawaki #xander matthews #charles cuevas #arei nageishi #ace markey #rose lacroix #hu jing #eden tobisa #levi fontana #arturo giles #min jeung #david chiem #veronika grebenshchikova #j rosales #whit young #nico hakobyan #to be clear i did think that this would be a fun post to make even without the ulterior motive of trying to convince you to predict one sho #and i was correct about that from my end; but hopefully it was a fun post for you to read as well :)#also please know that the entire tone of this post is casual/teasing #so if you believe in anything that i said was “likely incorrect” in this post know that i totally respect your opinion #1) i'm not actually any more likely to be able to predict what happens in drdt than you are and #2) i was also trying to be extra critical of myself in this post in an attempt to heighten its comedy. again hopefully this also worked #i am Working on that david analysis if you're reading this anon but there's actually another mini(?) theory related to that #which i want to do first so hhhhhh. the delay continues. sorry #does this post count as a theory? i guess it has some theories in it so #my theories

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ashpkat · 1 month ago

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Do you still think TSM and TGT were bad? For me, The Silver Mask and The Golden Tower were so bad it felt like such a let down. I know it's kind of apropos of nothing to rant about a book series that finished 6 years ago but whatever. The new cover has made me dip my toe back into the water of the fandom.

The first two books of the series were like ride or die for me; they were just so incredible, I would read the Copper Gauntlet over and over and over and over again on repeat when I was younger because I was obsessed with that reveal scene where Cal reveals to Aaron and Tamara (was there another character with them? I lowkey forget, I haven't read these books in forever) that he was born with the soul of Constantine Maddon (or something akin to that) and that he had control over the chaos-ridden armies like oh my god peak literature. And the awkward boatride to the island after that was some of the most captivating YA I've ever read. The intrigue between Alastair and Cal and the reveal and the tension between the Masters and the Iron Trio like oh my god that made my younger self go absolutely feral over the series. I wasn't that big on the Bronze Key but I went feral over the ending with Cal in prison and Anastasia (that was her name right? I haven't read these books in 6 years) revealing that she was Constantine's mother and that she would set him free. Like I was so hyped for the Silver Mask.

And then it was just like. boring. I didn't like it all that much. I did end up enjoying it but I thought the ending with Alex turning into a chaos-ridden was stupid. Then I read the Golden Tower and was just. confused the entire time I read it. I was low-key just reading it to get to the ending. Then the Maugris reveal happened and I felt like it just cheapened the entire series.

And I just have to wonder like... what happened? How did these authors write such amazing stories for the first three books and the just have the quality drop precipitously.

Anyway thank you for writing good fanfic for this series.

yesss i still think TSM and TGT are awful and a complete let down!!! TSM had so much potential to be a very good book! they’re trapped with the villains; if they try to leave then call would likely be arrested again, if they stay then call is going to likely be forced into resurrecting aaron. and then they do like. absolutely nothing with it. it would’ve been a perfect time to develop alex’s character from a cartoonishly evil villain, a perfect time to expand on the constantine and first gen lore, and they just go: “what if we make the chaos ridden dance and then kill joseph (who, mind you, was quite literally there to be the main villain all along, corrupting and using young men’s grief to turn them into powerhouses for his selfish needs).” it was VERY stupid. i hate it so much. TGT was even worse because they brought alex back (further destroying the whole point of joseph as a character) and then completely disregarding the meaning of their own story by making MAUGRIS a thing.

i also agree that the bronze key was very mid and i can’t really recall the events of it as they all mesh together into one giant blob of mediocrity. prison ending was FIRE though, right after the alex reveal and aaron’s death (which again, was hardly ever discussed and you couldn’t even truly see the ramifications and his SURVIVORS GUILT in callums character except for a few lines. and also, HELLO??? my girl TAMARA??? her GUILT of having to choose one of her best friends to live?? that entire choice being summed up to “well i was in love with you, call” FOR NO REASON???? what was she turned into??? the entire plots of the last two books could’ve gone as they did without her, compared to the first three where she was an incredibly vital character. she’s just a pretty cardboard cut out in the last two. very aggravating.)

i stand by the ghost writer theory because of the plot holes were 10x worse in TGT and TSM

#and thank you! i live to serve this community and i’m glad to hear u like my fics #magisterium #the magisterium

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tankclub · 7 months ago

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how would you rate the expansions so far?

it really depends on the criteria. overall i think that ffxiv has gotten better with every expansion, even if i dont always like all of the changes.

more details and rambling under the cut

ok so i broke it out into a few different categories, and i'll rate the expansions on each one:

X.0 MSQ

stormblood

endwalker

shadowbringers

a realm reborn

heavensward

here I'm just talking about the basic MSQ as it launched for the expansion. I put stormblood much higher than most people because I loved the lesbian road trip arc and I loved the azim steppe. the expansion certainly has flaws, but the strong points were really strong.

endwalker tops shadowbringers for me because the elpis section was the only thing that really got me to care about the ancients/ascians, and i think it was necessary context for the whole story arc of the game thus far. endwalker has some issues with pacing and with weakness in the downtime sections (and they clearly didnt know what to do with garlemald, a casualty of the game's shift in focus around shadowbringers).

the others i think are relatively straightforward. i've posted in the past about how i dont like the heavensward story, i think that it kind of botches its themes and the writers got too horny for killing women (in this case ysayle) to tell a good story. it also absolutely squanders the 2.5/55 setup with the ul'dah stuff.

Patch MSQ (X.1, X.2, etc.)

endwalker

a realm reborn

heavensward

shadowbringers

stormblood

endwalker is miles ahead in this category. although its patch story has weaknesses, being able to tell a whole coherent story from 6.1-6.5, without having to have the weird "second climax" for the X.0 story in X.3, puts it ahead of the competition.

ARR scores highly mainly because of just how well the banquet/ul'dah/crystal brave stuff hits. they wasted all of these story threads in heavensward, but especially at the time they absolutely worked.

heavensward makes third because i think it's the only expansion that really made the "x.3 climax" actually work, which is partly down to how the themes of the story worked with "oh and theres more even after you win the climactic battle".

shadowbringers is pretty low for me because i think that its a casualty of the change in narrative leadership. elidibus had been being set up as "the ascian you will talk to", so introducing emet to take that role left him kind of at loose ends. ive played the patch storyline several times to try and understand why people love it so much, and it just never landed for me.

stormblood patch story is the worst this game has ever been. i would put it lower than last if i could

Raids and Jobs

I kinda combined the experience of endgame play into one category, so I'm rating both job design and raid quality here. as the devs said recently, these things are linked, so i didnt think it made sense to separate them. more than the other categories i think this one is influenced by my personal circumstances

shadowbringers

endwalker

heavensward

a realm reborn

stormblood

shadowbringers takes the top spot for my favorite job design (in my beloved shb summoner), a top-class raid series in eden, and the best ultimate raid in TEA.

endwalker i think is really good and a step forward in many ways, but i think the issues with the centralization around 2m burst and inflation of boss hitbox size hold it back from the top spot for me. however, i do like a lot of the additions like criterion, and i hope they continue a lot of what theyve done in this expansion.

i had to put heavensward above arr because it's a straightforward continuation of arr, and also had my second favorite job design in the history of this game (in heavensward warrior, which was broken, goofy, and always fun). also alexander is a fantastic raid, even though coil is more nostalgic for me personally.

stormblood takes the last spot because i didnt enjoy the way the jobs played during that expansion, and mostly skipped it. i was unsubbed for a substantial portion of it, and really only started playing again in the leadup to shadowbringers. possibly i should leave it off this list altogether, simply because i couldnt have evaluated it properly.

Overall

so, i if i combine all of those ratings (weighted equally), i end up with:

endwalker

shadowbringers

a realm reborn

tie between stormblood and heavensward

which i think summarizes my opinions fairly nicely, although as you can see each of the expansions has their strengths.

overall im very excited for dawntrail, and i think it has the potential to be (and likely will be) the best expansion the game has had to date.

#ffxiv

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anemonet · 2 years ago

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I want to ask about Moon and Pebbles but I'm bad at asking questions D: My brain is forever empty. But I love them and I love you drawing them

Heeelllooo anon you have activated my trap card!! Brace for words.

First of aww hi thank you thats so sweet, they are so beloved :D

Second of oh boy I hope you were asking for headcanons!! if not.. uh.. Anyhow im gonna talk abit about some iteratormodel thoughts!! Im gonna use this totally legit reference here to you know, viszualize.

Keep in mind this is all just my own thoughts!

So to get started I like to seperate iterators into older models v newer models - older being ones before anchients lived on top of them and the newer ones post ancheints - which reflects how their built. Older ones like moon are for one, well.. older, older tech and older materials, their clunkier and larger, think the teddybear phones. Second, their made to be low maintence, their built somewhere and then they will just chug along till they solve The Great problem. They generally more durable, hide all inner wiring and machinery with plates, all delicate things like hands are also covered. In short their more machines and tools than anything else.

The newer models in contrast like pebbles are more like our modern smartphones: lighter, sleeker, more functions and also shit quality, which is why pebbles got a much sleeker and thinner look. And besides the fact that tech evolves and develops this also ties into how their created (possibly? not sure if its actully canon who knows) when the ancheints are in closer proximity to the iterators, - think how pebbles entrence is bascily right by artificers entrence to pebbles city - their now not only machines, their something closer to art(?) their something to show off ( i have some deranged thoughts about iterator manifacturing and capatlism but lets not get into that) and they are now something not just a machine, working somewhere unseen, they are now objects you can see, so they need a "cooler" look. ( think like those transparent gameconsols)

-- also side note i read a like comment somewhere talking about iterators and ancheints beautystandards which oh boy, feral. and i like to think that shows in pebbles and the newer models design much more than older ones, the whole thin gangly monk look and tiny feet (ancheint bound their cool birdfeet) and a more elaborate design. I always found it curious that iterators dont wear masks but i guess there is a distance, i mean its funny that the people who wanted death most of all created something that couldnt die, - also it implies some iterators killed themself which oh boy - anyhow i also have a lot of thoughts of iterators using wires as hairdoes but this tangent is getting long so i stop.--

so to come to somewhat of an end, moons definitely just gonna chug along till the world ends if needed while pebbles probably started cracking his shell and wires like half a century after maintence stopped, boys not made to last in that way, aestetics over function if you will. also no this is not an elaborate way to explain why moon is just bigger ( i like drawing soft squares, sue me) and let me tell you it felt very fucked up to draw naked pebbles. Now i think i talked to long but again if you read this long thanks for the ask!!! I hope I answered nothing!!

also bonus drawing cause i think that was what you were actully asking for :))

#rain world #ahem uh yes sorry this took so long to answer or well yeh #thank you so much for sednign the ask and sorry that i uh words #anyhow!!#iterators my beloved #also for anyone not here for weird pink creatures im waiting fro the technojoy zine thing so uh art on the 5th?#song of the day is i need some fine wine and you you need to be nicer by the cardigans #its not that good!!!#also whats with the iterators pronouns

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kozykricket · 4 months ago

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i wont lie, terraria shimmer teeters very close to too much quality of life for me. to the point if it had any more perma buffs id probably call it a bit of powercreep but also like. with terraria, i really dont care what the devs do because i trust in them a Lot and. the game is a smorgasbord anyways yknow? funny thing is, shimmer is probably one of my fav things to introduce people to in terraria, because its so cool. and it feels like... hidden cheat codes, almost. like. theres some merit i think to having really obscure and impossible to figure out mechanics, because. yes. it makes the game a "wiki game" sometimes but then i get to feel really cool showing my friends all the special transmutations that exist, like the peddlers satchel. its like. yeah okay why is qol for traveling merchant selling more locked behind that? its kinda weird. but. its cool cus i get to feel cool and clever doing it. again terraria shows its mastery of making u feel cool for being able to do something or being able to know something or maybe thats just me loving my fixation on terraria and knowing everything about games that i play

oh right i said i think shimmers close to too much qol yea i think sometimes theres like. ways it reduces grind where its like i dont mind the grind in terraria ive been over this. and so. do i really want them to reduce the grind? but for one, theres the "it feels like a cheatcode, not just some recipe" as well as like its a way to keep low droprates for things like say, the adhesive bandage. to keep it from dropping a crapton. so .. .you can shimmer a bezoar for it yet still it makes people grind for Something for it and... reward their unluckiness for being so lucky they happen to get more bezoars than they need like, theres still the grind of killing an enemy involved. same for the magma stone to lava charm conversion. that just means you get to pick "im gonna farm hell bats instead of chests around the area"

which like. is . an option. and options for doing things are good! its just if one option is blatantly easier than another one, that it gets to be. weird I also appreciate fishing in terraria as being an alternative for many things! yes it can be grindy, but also. tbh? fishing can be pretty darn easy, if you just do some angler quests and use some potions. ive fished for rare stuff i dont have before. and sometimes it sucks, but ... its usually not that bad. its fair as a last resort for getting stuff that you can otherwise get i suppose this turned into a ramble about just, the methods of getting stuff in terraria in general but anyways, point is i like shimmer, but it was so close to being something i couldve very much hated. and in terms of the permabuffs, they're very very negligible, if you told me they were just placebo and did nothing id believe you. which is good. they shouldnt be that much and... for stuff like swapping class emblems? now thats just fantastic. not every single piece of loot should be able to be swapped out for another piece of loot! i think grinding bosses is good sometimes! but for the WALL of FLESH of all things, and for something as important as a class damage accessory? entirely fair all in all i really appreciate the time relogic puts into thinking about stuff

#jake post #terraria

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runwayrunway · 1 year ago

Text

No. 48 - Eurowings

We're here today to talk about Eurow

Yes, Eurowings! Did you think those five letters started any other words? Silly. Let's discuss the aerosartorial choices of Eurowings, a member of - oh dear - the Lufthansa Group.

Eurowings! Eurowings is a former regional airline formed from the 1990 merger of Nürnberger Flugdienst, a regional airline that I'd heard of, and Reise- und Industrieflug, one I hadn't. After its acquisition by Lufthansa, it has been restructured into a low-cost subsidiary, making it something of the FlyDubai of Germany. That means I am yet again courting a C&D from the Lufthansa Group, and I am delighted to throw myself on this particular blade.

The process of Eurowings's evolution into its current state is somewhat tortuous, involving the cannibalization of its old subsidiary Germanwings (yes, this was subsidiary-ception, and while it happened after 2015 it seems to have been planned before...well, you know) and the establishment of an Austrian subsidiary which was moved to Malta last year and is named - get this - Eurowings Europe.

Eurowings has been going through it of late. Well, of ever, as far as I can tell. If you've ever been frustrated by a delay, spare a thought for the passengers of 2016's Eurowings flight 131, some of whom had their visas expire while stuck in their hotels in Cuba during their 60-hour delay. Every fourth flight could expect six hours or so of unscheduled quality time at the airport. Or, you know, 20 sometimes. 20 hours. Yikes! That's what happens when you start seven long-haul routes with one (1) A330 and a handful of various and sundry wet leases. A lot of their routes have been taken over by Lufthansa proper, which seems eager to kill the brand as soon as possible, and I can't blame them given it's somehow developed a worse reputation than actual Lufthansa. I've never flown with them. They served Boston for literally three entire months, but I wouldn't have flown Eurowings anyway. For my own taste their 'cheap' prices are still fairly expensive.

The Eurowings livery is unfortunately on more than just one plane for the moment. They have 95 A320 family members and four wet-leased Boeing 737s, giving them a very typical fleet for a low cost carrier. And they look like that!

Okay, first and foremost, I want to talk about their logo. It looks a lot like LATAM's logo.

Indeed, they even both use a variation on something adjacent to blue and something adjacent to pink. I think it's definitely a coincidence - they both were unveiled in 2015 - and even if it weren't I don't respect either one enough to defend its honor from the other.

So, those colors. I think I prefer the shades chosen by Eurowings, and in a competent livery design that palette could be extremely effective. I love LATAM's saturated pink and indigo, which made the mostly-white fuselage a disappointment, and I like Eurowings's desaturated fuchsia and cyan as a combination even more, but the lack of fuselage coverage gets even sadder when it's such light colors that fail to contrast against the white at all.

Unlike LATAM, Eurowings makes use of grey as both shading and background. I like this! I think it can make for a nice base to play with and a potential source of some interesting, dynamic designs.

Oh, and the logo is meant to look like an 'E'. I guess I can sort of see it, but it looks more like me attempting to get a pen that's starting hard going again. (Don't mix inks in pens, though. Especially not fountain pens.) Anyway, I don't really love the logo's shape in isolation but I do think it could easily lend itself to some totally acceptable fuselage layouts.

It's the wordmark that I think is interesting. This is about to be a long section about fonts but I promise that one, I have a point, and two, if you keep scrolling it will stop being about fonts.

The typeface used for the Eurowings wordmark is Soleto in medium weight. It was designed by Dalton Maag, a London-and São-Paulo based foundry. You've definitely seen their work around - they've done custom fonts for the likes of Pitney Bowes, Tesco, Fox Sports, Nokia, AT&T, Airbnb, Wix, USA Today, Google, and the flipping BBC, among others. And, well, a few that I would go as far as to say are pretty iconic:

Lush Handwritten is actually gorgeous in Cyrillic, by the way.

I would say they're not my favorite foundry, with a lot of their work trending towards somewhat boring sans-serifs that are not at all to my taste (you will never replace Gill Sans), but they've had some hits. They're also no stranger to airlines - they did a custom typeface for the TUI wordmark, which appears on their livery!

Blue side up appeal aside, I definitely want to someday talk about the strange beast which is TUI, the World's Most Misogynistic Airline.

So you might think that Dalton Maag was commissioned to make a nice custom font family for Eurowings, given Lufthansa literally used their money to commission a slightly different version of Helvetica, but you would be wrong. As their website makes no mention of a custom typeface for Eurowings, despite discussing modified versions of their existing products for other companies (like Fox Sports Cricket being a variant of Aller), I believe they are indeed using off-the-shelf Soleto, available via Dalton Maag's website as well as Adobe Fonts. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with this, and I, who cannot afford a tablet to redesign the Eurowings livery, am not trying to wealth-shame an airline for not custom-ordering a typeface. They're far from alone. Another Dalton Maag user is Cebu Pacific, which uses Foco in a bold weight to decent effect, and I firmly believe that there's no reason to commission a second Helvetica if you want to use Helvetica. SAS uses Rotis Sans, and that's a massive airline with money to spare.

I just think the contrast here is funny. I could get the right to use the full Soleto font family for the entirety of Runway Runway's branding, title, and body text for one thousand sterling, or around $1350 in USD. This is, to me, a fortune and more money than I've had at any one time in literal years. It's also definitely not what Eurowings paid. I don't know what they paid, because Dalton Maag does custom quotes for unlimited licenses, but I don't want to imagine how much it cost to commission a firm to make a second Helvetica, so this just makes me think that Lufthansa really despises Eurowings. Pointless diversion? Maybe. I just think it's funny.

I think Soleto Medium is on the uglier side. I mean, I really don't like how Eurowings uses it in the same way I don't like Helvetica or the FedEx proprietary font - I really don't like really wide sans serifs used as titling, and I'm not sure why. Is it because it reminds me of elementary school? Is it because I find them sort of illegible? Are they just...ugly? Well, there's no such thing as objective ugliness, but this is my blog and I dislike them. They're certainly not at all memorable, which frequently makes their use something of an epic branding fail.

Soleto looks better than Helvetica, I'll give it that. A lot better. It's not really the typeface, though. It's the usage. While Dalton Maag's website does say:

Soleto is a flexible font family that can adapt itself to a wide variety of uses. [...] [it] is also quite capable of standing on its own.

It opens with:

Soleto is a contemporary sans serif font family with a quietly confident character. It works well for big areas of text, creating an even rhythm and texture, but can also make a statement at larger sizes.

And I think this is totally true, actually. As body text Soleto is fine! (This is via Dalton Maag's TypeTester feature, as are all future samples.)

This is 10pt Soleto medium, and it's a solid if generic sans-serif. Not overly ugly, totally legible. I'm not sure it's meant to be used for a logo, though. When I read 'statement at larger sizes' I think...titling, not airplane livery. A title for a website and an airplane wordmark are just different orders of magnitude.

How about titling? Well, I tried my own name in a couple different weights, and I actually think Soleto looks great in black italic.

This is a bit modern for my own taste, but I think this would look fine as a wordmark. Frankly, I think it would look good as an airline livery! It's not nearly as generic, it's almost a bit stylized even, and it's legible. The italic is always something I think looks nice due to its aerodynamic implications, and with a name as long as mine you don't really notice that this also does that obnoxious thing where the bottoms of certain letters dip beneath the baseline. Let's try some other weights!

Normally I prefer lighter weights in sans serifs, but no, Soleto looks worse the thinner it gets. These are, respectively, Light and Medium. Medium is what Eurowings uses!

Oh, wow, would you look at that! One of their default color combinations is even basically the Eurowings scheme, though in reverse.

Well, this...doesn't look that bad, right? It's boring, but it doesn't actively make me wrinkle my nose.

So why is this such a problem? I mean, let's look at this picture of an airplane, as we do on this blog. I've chosen this picture because you can see a Finnair (post coming soon) plane in the background. Finnair has this neat spiky sci-fi looking wordmark, for which no typeface exists. This wordmark is absolutely huge, and in a very dark blue against white.

Meanwhile, Eurowings's logo is very similarly formatted to Lufthansa's. It's high up and closely spaced, making it feel a little claustrophobic. It's not...as bad as Lufthansa's proprietary Helvetica (Helvetica Neue Neue? Helvetica Ultra-Ultra-Condensed? Hellvetica?) but that's barely a compliment. Lufthansa has theirs well above the window-line all squished together, while Eurowings has the decency to use the windows as the underline you would think they're just perfect to be, but with a typeface that's medium weight, neither thick nor thin and with no italics or serifs, it becomes something of a small blob. To locate something that far up should be a stylistic choice. There should be no default choices in airline liveries. You can design a massive wordmark to cover the fuselage, or something which looks nice when localized to part of it, but you don't just get to do the equivalent of opening your text editor, typing in one word without indenting, and calling that a livery. Lufthansa doesn't get this, and neither, really, does any of the unfortunate airlines in the Lufthansa Group.

The color used doesn't blend into the white, but it also isn't like they're sharply contrasted. It just doesn't particularly draw your eye. It's a wordmark your eyes glide right over and it's not at all memorable. While grey or cyan could have been incorporated somehow to accentuate it, they weren't. For a livery that's mostly white to work, you generally need some sort of really vivid color. Kalitta Air's red and gold or Tibet Airlines' rainbow are examples of good use of a white fuselage. You could use a different background, but they stand on their own, and the white plays an active part in the color palette rather than just being a default canvas for it. Many airlines use black or dark blue for their wordmarks, and while these aren't the most creative choices they're used for a reason. Just look at Finnair. That's some contrast. It's nice and legible and distinct.

Icelandair's two most recent liveries use the same placement for their wordmark as Eurowings and Finnair respectively. Now, I actually like the wordmark on the old livery better. It has those nice trailing serifs and is in small caps, making it memorable and dynamic, and it doesn't feel closely spaced. The name 'Icelandair' teeters on the edge of being too long for this to work, but ultimately pulls it off. The modern livery dispenses with this much nicer font in favor of gigantic letters. While I like this less, it's still serviceable. It is gigantic, legible, and feels as natural as me sprawling out on a couch after work. It's simply expanded to its natural point. Adequately done on both archetypes.

Meanwhile, the lack of color contrast from the white fuselage was perhaps my main criticism of Air Astra's livery, which I otherwise quite like. It's probably the inverse of Eurowings, which is contrasted enough to be acceptable but entirely boring in design - well-designed, but please, please, please let me actually see it.

Eurowings just...well, I'm going to copy and paste exactly what I said earlier. There should be no default choices in airline liveries. You can design a massive wordmark to cover the fuselage, or something which looks nice when localized to part of it, but you don't just get to do the equivalent of opening your text editor, typing in one word without indenting, and calling that a livery.

And, as a final note, something that looks good on a webpage won't always look good on an airplane. The angles you'll see it from are completely different, it has to compete for the rest of the livery for your attention, and you can't necessarily put infinite space around it due to the very physically limited canvas you're working with. The Eurowings wordmark feels vertically cramped more than it does horizontally, because the windows are right below it and immediately above it the fuselage just...ends, from a two-dimensional view. Something looking okay in copy doesn't mean you can transfer it immediately to material.

Lindon Leader talked about this when discussing his design process for the FedEx logo in a very illuminating interview I cited heavily in my FedEx post. He looked at multiple pre-existing fonts but decided to create a custom one, and one of his reasons for this was:

[...] each had its potential limitations downstream in application to thousands of FedEx media, from waybills and embroidered courier caps to FedEx.com and massive signage for aircraft, buildings and vehicles.

Something can look acceptable or even sleek on a webpage, and that same wordmark can look downright horrible when applied to an airplane. I'll say this for FedEx - while I find their logo ugly it is absolutely good at what it needs to do. It looks no worse in any one medium or context than any other, and that's one of the reasons it's successful. It's not to my taste, but it's definitely well-designed, and I think one of the ways to improve the livery would actually be to somehow give it more real estate on the fuselage.

So the wordmark is, in my opinion, an abject failure. It's not even ugly but I mean that in the same way Wolfgang Pauli describes crackpot physics as not even wrong. Like, it's fine. It's nothing showstopping or even memorable enough to be picked out of an identity parade of default webfonts but I don't despise it. It's a common phenomenon and I'm picking on Eurowings because it's there and I know exactly what font was used and thus can mess around with it, not because it's the worst. Much like Lufthansa, it's an opportunistic victim. You know, the sort of post I'll end up hyperlinking to later, because even in its failure it's nothing exceptional.

I will say I enjoy the tiny outline of black on the letters. That's not on the wordmark proper, as rendered on their website m, but adding it was definitely the right move to help the magenta stand out from the white. Once you know about it you can notice how it makes the wordmark pop ever so slightly, turning an unmitigated catastrophe into a mitigated catastrophe. It's almost infuriating that they did this thoughtful little thing when you zoom out and remember what it's in service of. This honestly is a reoccurring thing with Eurowings.

Look at that nice tail design! They could have slapped the logo on and left it at that, like so many other airlines, but they didn't. They use the same nice colors and the overlapping greys to create a design that is clearly their logo while also being abstract and dynamic. There's a lot of shapes, a lot of motion, and a lot of nice shades of cyan and magenta, and I love it!

See that airplane landing in the background? Think about what airline you think it flies for, and stick a pin in that for a minute.

Hey, uh...where's the rest of it, though?

So, yes. Eurowings shares the first five letters of its name with Eurowhite. If you're not familiar with the term (I have a glossary, by the way) it just means a livery that is almost completely white save for logos. One could argue that the fact that the pattern on the tail isn't limited to strictly the tail and does form some sort of attempt at a fuselage design means that Eurowings' livery isn't 'true' Eurowhite, but I'm not going to brook that. Eurowhite is a state of mind. There is a nice, abstract design here which could easily be extended further. There is a grey shade which could be utilized (as it is on the engines, which look like they're lost and wandered onto another livery by accident) and there are infinite ideas to be had on the planet, and instead the majority of the plane is just white.

If one thing is thought of as my thesis from this post, let it be this, said for the third time: there is no such thing as default. Things like this wordmark placement, this type of font, and the primarily white fuselage are not default. The fact that they are common and boring does not make them inherent until replaced. They are still an active choice just as much as designing a livery that doesn't utilize these features is. It was proposed, iterated on, signed off on, and implemented. Airlines don't start with a template they then alter. They start with a vast world of infinite possibilities and decide they want to do the same thing as everyone else - that's a choice just how any other act of cowardice is a choice. I think the misconception that boring design is a result of inertia and lack of effort is a harmful one. It is a choice. They choose to do this.

They do not choose it because it is right for their livery, because they like it. They choose it because it is common, it is safe. It is reliable and it doesn't rock the boat. I've said this before discussing Southwest and Flair - low-cost carriers should be willing to rock the boat. If you're going to advertise yourself as the no-frills option you shouldn't try to look all composed and corporate. You have nothing to lose with being bright and pretty and interesting, so why aren't you?

And that cowardice is what makes me hate it so much. Some liveries are ugly, and some are almost ugly but stop halfway to cower in a Eurowhite bunker in an attempt to stem the bleeding, but there's nothing more tragic than a livery so afraid of being ugly that it cuts off and cauterizes something beautiful. The fear of ugliness is the death of beauty. condor is worth one billion Eurowings.

(No, Eurowings does not fail the Star Alliance Test, though.)

Like many of these designs that sort of just decide to stop after the tail, the longer a plane is the worse the Eurowings livery is on it. This is a very nice tail attached to a big white tube. Sure, Eurowings mostly operates somewhat short aircraft, but that wasn't the case when the livery was designed - back then they had A330s. Even now they have A321s.

Frustratingly, given how much I've ragged on this livery, I do still really like the tail. Even more frustratingly, you can see how easy it would have been to not have it be this way. The end of the cyan stripe almost begs to be held onto, weaved onto the rest of the fuselage, but it just isn't. It looks unfinished. It looks sad.

With all these shades of cyan and magenta to play with, the light heavily alters the way the colors on the tail look. They're never not pretty. It's a lovely colorscheme that's dramatically underutilized. The way it weaves together has so much potential, and it's attached to a white body. It looks like the paint job is unfinished. And that's what I hate the most about Eurowhite - good ideas left to languish, where a bit of custom letterhead does a better job of expressing your identity than an airplane livery.

The one feature Eurowings has towards the front of the plane is this little cheek decal of the Eurowings logo. Nice thought, but it almost looks actively worse when it stands out like that among an otherwise blank space. Plus, it's so small it might as well be a dot. It's cute, but in terms of overall effect on the livery it has the effect of making something mostly white look cluttered, which is just downright bizarre.

Obviously I can't endorse this. While not quite at the Lufthansa Line, with the actual bit of design happening on the tail instead of a sterile block, it doesn't cover much more fuselage than a proper exemplar of the phenomenon, and that's just always going to be a bit of a kneecap. Eurowhite is a state of mind, so much so that I almost think an unremarkable sans-serif font is as much of a codifying feature as a white body despite not being specified anywhere in the term. The same decision-making process leads both places, and the little black outline and cheek stamp and nice tail design just cant overpower that.

I'm giving Eurowings a D+.

Eurowings reminds me most of Saudia. They both have gorgeous colorschemes wasted on a design which burrows itself down as far into the substrate of artistic cowardice as physically possible. It's especially tragic and leaves me fighting myself over my final ratings. It feels wrong to grade such a gorgeous tail so harshly, but the good design features just make the bad package even more insulting. And at the end of the day I just have to put my foot down.

Sometimes I'm generous with grading because an airline is new, or because they're iterating on something that could be taken in a good direction. Eurowings isn't in the process of developing towards something nice, it's just Eurowings. It's an airline that stranded people in Cuba for 60 hours and Lufthansa seems to want it dead. I don't think we'll be getting a Eurowings livery overhaul anytime soon and I'm pessimistic about its longevity in general. Low-cost carriers and subsidiaries of large airlines are both easy come, easy go. Tears in the rain. 'Twas ever thus. Try not to get too attached.

Remember that plane from earlier? Yeah, I've got no clue what airline it flies for, but I don't think I can rule out it being Eurowings. 'Twas ever thus.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: d+#era: 2010s #era: 2020s #region: west/central europe #region: germany #eurowings #low-cost carriers #lufthansa group #air astra #icelandair #lufthansa #tui #finnair

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hendolish · 1 year ago

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Me again lol. Have I said that I love your ficlets? If no, I DO LOVE YOUR FICLETS ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

So, this stonesford idea (duh) with addition of hendolish - boys going on double date. It's cute and sweet and they spend their free time together.

And John and Jack may argue about who's Jordan is better. And Jordans may be like "They are idiots, but we love them".

I LOVE YOUR WRITING ❤️❤️❤️❤️

stonesford + hendolish | dinner dates ♡

“Dunno who’s let you do this.”

John comments wryly as he stares at the plate of food before him.

Well. He‘d say ‘food’, but he’s not entirely sure that what Jack has just dished up for them all is edible. The worst part is that he’s actually hungry.

“Is this a forfeit for our last game of two-touch?” He asks Jordan as the other just grins at him with all his teeth and laughs, slipping his hand under the table to rub at his thigh in sympathy.

“It should be fine,” Hendo promises him as he emerges from the kitchen with another side dish containing roast potatoes; at least that one is hard to fuck up, “He was closely monitored, don’t worry.”

“Should be fine.”

John mutters under his breath, not feeling particularly reassured. Jordan squeezes his knee, yet his face is a dead give away that he’s enjoying this far too much.

It’s all good for him, John thinks. Jordan would eat anything placed in front of him. John has never known a man to have standards so low.

“If I die tonight I want all my earnings to go towards getting you some cooking lessons.”

He instructs as he nods in Jack’s direction. The younger man scoffs.

“You should have more faith in me Stonesy. Pep would kill me if I killed you off, wouldn’t he.”

John narrows his gaze, “Oh, so me dying isn’t the main problem here?”

Jordan’s got a grin on his face beside him as he shares an amused look with Hendo across the table.

“It’s not gonna kill you mate,” Hendo levels after some time of letting the two of them bicker away, smile stretching his cheeks, “It’s just a Sunday roast.”

“Okay, that’s exactly what you said about your fish and then I got food poisoning.”

They’ve been doing date nights together in a sort of ‘Come Dine With Me’ fashion as of late. They’d eaten together at Hendo’s last week and have now all gathered round at Jack’s for what John was hoping to be a better meal than the last.

“That weren’t food poisoning,” Jack quips beside him as John turns to him to give him a stare, “You had a stomach bug, that’s all.”

John frowns. His poorly stomach would’ve begged to differ, “I—“

“This is actually good.”

Jordan suddenly deems from beside him, cutting another bite from the indecipherable lump of meat Jack had served them on their plates.

When he meets John’s incredulous stare he just shrugs his shoulders and continues chewing a little too loudly, “What? Try it.”

He keeps talking as John picks up his knife and fork gingerly, “Is that lamb?”

“Yeah,” Jack confirms as he makes a go at cutting his own, “Good quality stuff too. Went to the butchers and everything.”

Okay. Now John feels maybe a tiny bit bad. He takes a small bite from his fork with his teeth, and when he doesn’t immediately recoil at the taste, soon goes in for the whole bite.

“Hmm?”

Jack questions then, already looking way too smug.

“It’s alright.”

John relents eventually, pretending that his mouth isn’t watering for another taste despite the meat’s less than appetising exterior.

“ ‘m more worried about Pickers’ dish finishing me off, to be honest.”

Hendo shares through a mouthful of potato, eyes crinkling, “You ever cooked anything for yourself other than a Pot Noodle?”

John opens his mouth to protest on behalf of his boyfriend, then realises he doesn’t really have an argument for that. Similarly, Jordan just continues eating and shrugs in a ‘you’ll have to see’ kind of way.

“Don’t need to when I’ve got John, do I?”

He squeezes John’s thigh again under the table, making him grin over at him. His cooking really isn’t anything to be desired, just… usually edible and nicely seasoned. But that’s more than enough by Jordan’s standards, and John likes to feel special.

“Ew.”

Jack mumbles under his breath as he and Hendo stare at the two of them staring at each other, but John can hear by the infliction in his voice that it’s fond.

Still, he kicks Jack’s ankle under the table for good measure.

♡

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apopcornkernel · 1 year ago

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poppy's watched cdramas

與君歌 stand by me/dream of chang'an

i... did not finish this drama 😭 i only watched this because my mom was watching it and we were stuck in quarantine together, so. it was fun i guess but ultimately mid

蒼蘭決 love between fairy and devil

loved it, the ending was a little too abrupt for me but it still ended well! lived for the villain romance, had so much fun booing changheng (sorry), had even more fun staring at dylan wang's cheekbones. also i love how ride or die the main couple is for each other, it's absolutely not one-sided in that regard which <3 yes. and also episodes 30(?) to 36 i cried nonstop it was so cathartic. episode 35 specifically....... aha

琉璃 love and redemption

STUPIDLY long and rather cringe at times im not even gonna lie but the main characters had me by the THROAT i could not stop watching. yu sifeng is so so so unfairly pretty with bangs and chu xuanji in god of war mode,,,, i lvoe her sm. i loved how the gender roles of a typical cdrama relationship was more or less flipped, with sifeng always being the damsel in distress (not even joking or exaggerating about this one) and xuanji being the badass hero. i feel like a lot of cdramas tend to say their female mc is the hero and stuff but then in execution its ALWAYS the male lead saving the mc from danger and its just,,, idk i'm a little tired of it so i like that chu xuanji exists <3 and fuck haochen

傳聞中的陳芊芊 the romance of tiger and rose

REALLY REALLY GOOD one of the most perfect dramas ive ever watched. cinematography really high quality, an mc that i never got annoyed at and is so lovable, a petty murder cat love interest who is unfairly handsome at every angle. i was smiling and giggling with every episode. it's the true definition of a happy pill. i only wish Those 2 Specific Scenes did not exist

星落凝成糖 the starry love

i did not finish this 😭 i onyl watched it because it was the only thing i had downloaded on my phone. i don't recommend it tbh, sorry, the concept was interesting but the execution didn't do it for me. it was also really obvious how low budget it was and the acting & writing didn't really make up for it enough so,,,

今夕何夕 twisted fate of love

THIS IS THE BEST CDRAMA IVE EVER WATCHED I KNOW IM BEING SUBJECTIVE BUT LET ME BE SUBJECTIVE THIS IS MY BLOG okay okay so general travels back eight years to stop a great war but unfortunately she lands smack dab into feng xi's residence, who is an ally of the Bad Guy and very morally grey politician who will not hesitate to kill people for his goals. she keeps trying to assassinate feng xi's ally (the Bad Guy) meanwhile feng xi is just trying to put a ring on it. they are SO so funny and you KNOW i love villain(ish) romance so i ADORED this cdrama even though it was objectively mid and even though the last episode was trash. I DONT CARE i will defend this one with my life JUST WATCH IT im very incoherent ik but in my defense it's kinda hard to explain just trust me

星漢燦爛 love like the galaxy

currently watching!! it has zhao lusi who i trust with any drama, and the cinematography is great! some of ling buyi's dialogue i dont like but im still on board the main ship,,, i think i wouldve liked lou yao but i keep remembering he's daole from twisted fate of love and it jars me so bad.... also i have this thing where i automatically boo the second/third leads so really lou yao had no chance im sorry 😔 i find it really funny how obviously down bad ling buyi is update: i dropped this drama :(( i got all the way to episode 20 something and then i just couldn't be bothered to continue, i was honestly bored :((((

雲之羽 my journey to you

my sister rec'd this drama to me and oh man i tried. i was so ready to be hooked. but i just couldn't. like, it had gorgeous cinematography and beautiful costuming and i was happily surprised to realize the leads were clj's changheng and xiaolanhua, but omfg gong ziyu (changheng) pisses me off so bad he's like omg guys im an underdog they all hate me im struggling so bad i'm being oppressed etc etc AND THEN HE'S BEING OPPRESSED FOR BEING A RICH BABAERO NA PALAGING NAGBABAR LIKE BE SO FOR REALLL also shangguan qian and gong yuanzhi's scenes are infinitely more interesting than anyone else's, their one battle of wits already had me more interested than the entirety of the previous 5 episodes... and then when it switches back to include shangjue or gong ziyu or yun weishan i immediately feel all my energy get sapped. like they're so boring it hurts fgksjhg and the way yun weishan and gong ziyu speak don't help at all it's like 有時候……我也……睡不着…… DO NOT WASTE MY TIME LIKE THIS AND ALSO PLEASE SPEAK NORMALLY so yeah i got fed up by episode 6 and dropped it despite my sister's urging

天盛長歌 the rise of phoenixes

started watching this right after i dropped my journey to you BECAUSE FUCK YOU i swear that cdrama made me see cdramas as a chore again. anyways im loving it. ning yi looked so miserable in the first episode which is a great portend for things to come, and feng zhiwei is great i love her already and the cinematography is not bad as well, i'm just worried i'll get lost on the machinations and everything but i'm still having fun so far anyways hehe update from episode 19 or something!! i'm really enjoying it this is so good!!!! a little slower paced so if that's not your thing be warned but i am really liking it hehe

#poppy speaks #cdrama

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mnstcrbnll · 2 years ago

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"ONE LAST TIME, WELCOME BACK TO SECRETS FROM THE STARS!!

Eleven stellar contestants wanted to give it another shot and discover the secrets remaining... and while some did amazing, some others... not so much~!

Now, first of all, time to spoil who sent those last few secrets... and then we'll go ahead and see who got the golden star... and who ended up at rock bottom!

" i still like a guy who cheated on me and broke my heart and idk what to do about it. i know i shouldn't be. i think i need some advice." was STRELITZIA'S SECRET, and half of our contestants guessed correctly! Let's hope someone will give her some advice after all!

"killed a man by adding 4x the spice to a chili. he never recovered." was BRUTO'S SECRET, and while the majority guessed right, plenty thought it could've been Anzu's, Lyra's or Molayne's secret as well. Guess nobody is a good cook, here!

"I ACCIDENTALLY CAUSED THE GREAT SUNNYSHORE CITY BLACKOUT AND NOBODY KNOWS. I CRASHED MY BIKE AGAINST A BIG ELECTRIC PANNEL AND RAN AWAY." was WILLOW'S SECRET, and with my surprise a vast majority thought it belonged to Mable! And while I'm at it, I want to remind our stellar audience to go visit Eternara's Rickshaw & Daughter's for all your biking needs!

" I once broke a thunderstone earing my classmate lent to me by chewing on it." was LYRA'S SECRET, and people equally guessed her and Molayne! We'll have to gift them both some high quality earrings!

" I have had done something naughty in the break room or my place of work " was MOLAYNE'S SECRET, but the majority guessed Bruto! My oh my, sooo spicy~!

"I have horrible Phasmophobia, but ghosts seem to love me anyway." was RIKA'S SECRET! She got the majority of votes, but that seemed to throw off a lot of people too!

"I've been trying to get back into drawing fanart of my favorite childhood book series, PokeMorphs. I even had a PokeMorph-sona back then, who was a Stantler, and I'm trying to redraw her. Who knows, maybe I'll have her evolve into a Wydeer or something" was MABLE'S SECRET, and much to my surprise, while the majority guessed her, just as many people thought it was Rika's secret! Maybe you too should meet for some fanfiction ideas!

Now now now, the moment you've been waiting for! Last time, Riley ( @auraguardians ) was on top... but this test put everyone in a very rough spot, making someone even go under ZERO STARS! In fact, at the very last place, with MINUS THREE AND A HALF STARS, Volkner ( @low-charge )!! But fear not, someone did way worse: in fact, GRUSHA ( @crushed-ice ) he decided to go ahead and threaten your galactic host on camera and we decided to give a little malus ♥ This means that, at the end of the day, with MINUS FOUR, Grusha loses! ♥

But, now, to see who became our new STELLAR GOSSIPER... with NINE STARS after she guessed every single secret of round 2 correctly, and after she oh-so-boldly went ahead and sent her guess for the first one barely five minutes after the start of our show

WILLOW ( @soardived ) IS THE WINNER OF THIS ROUND OF SECRETS FROM THE STARS!!!

For that, she's allowed to recieve... ONE WISH! Nothing too big, of course, we don't give out Mythical Pokèmon and potions of eternal youth... but after spreading your dirty laundry, the least you could ask for in return is a first class ticket, right?"

cue canned laugh

"Congratulations to all partecipants, and I wish you all a STELLAR EVENING!"

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growingdesires · 2 years ago

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Hungry - Chapter 1

This was one of my first published stories, it is free on my Deviantart in full, here is the first chapter :)

____________________________________________________ Your head hits the pillow, you are not long for the waking world. Another rough day at college coupled with your roommates foolish idea to go out last night drinking. “Why did I have to take chemistry?” you curse to yourself “And why did I listen to Phils stupid plan to go out drinking!”. You groan, you know why, Emily was going to be there. Your mind starts to relax as you start to fall asleep. *Bzzt Bzzt* Your phone goes off. “Uggh” you peer over to the screen, Its Emily. Your eyes bolt open and you quickly snatch the phone from its charger. Emily: I had a lot of fun last night Matt, I am suffering now though. Matt: Me too, I just got in and I’m in bed Emily: Lol same, I’m not sure how you managed to stay awake in Chemistry, I’m fairly sure I did fall asleep Matt: You did, only reason you got up is because I coughed Emily: Nice save, Mr Fletcher would’ve killed me if he would’ve noticed Matt: That old coot, he is blind and should’ve retired ages ago Emily: Too true, I hope you can make it tomorrow to the party at my dorm, low key stuff but you made the list Matt: Definitely Emily: See you tomorrow then, Good night xx Matt: Night Emily Chambers. You’ve been crushing on her since high school, as it turns out you both went to the same college and you both took the same class. She is brilliant, incredibly smart, funny and very pretty. Emily is 6”1 and obviously towers over all of her friends, she is quite lean in her build with an even distribution of what little fat she does have on her body. As a result of her frame she isn’t curvy at all, whilst usually that means she wouldn’t be your type there is something about her that just clicks with you. You appreciate a larger woman, curvier the better and for the most part the bigger the better too. You estimate Emily to have B cups and her bum is trim and almost non-existent, her long beautiful legs are thin and smooth, her best asset other than her very pretty face. Her face is lean and she has a strong jawline, a wide mouth which just beams when she smiles. Flowing down her back is her long black hair which curls towards the ends. Even though you are exhausted, your conversation has you thinking about spending time with Emily tomorrow. She mentioned that it's low key, enough for you two to spend quality time together? You hope as you fall asleep. The next day flies by, not helped by your extended lay in. You go shopping for a few things to get you through next week's unrelenting college course and also some new clothes to go to Emily’s party. You start to get ready and check in with Phil. Hey man, you're not coming tonight?” you ask “Where? I wasn’t invited?” he seems a little hurt “Oh… well Emily invited me over for a party, she did say low key” Phil’s face breaks out in a stupid grin “Oh low key huh?” he winks You blush in response “I’m sure it's not like that… is it?” “All I’m going to say budd is pack some protection and make sure you look a million dollars” he punches you lightly on the arm “No it can’t be? But? Huh?” “Hey chill, don’t over think it Matt, you will be fine. Let me know the deets tomorrow, go get her tiger” “Huh? Yeah… right” “I’ll see you tomorrow if you do come back” Phil winks as he enters his bedroom You spend some extra time getting ready. Product in your hair, shaved smooth, bathed in cologne and your clothes look smart. You are ready to dazzle. Doing the classy thing you pick up a bottle of wine before you head over. When you arrive at Emily’s dorm, music can be heard from outside. You take a sharp inhale and knock. The door opens, It’s Emily. “Hi Matt, looking sharp, is that wine?” She laughs “Yeah… for the party?” you blush “Heh you are such a sweetheart, come on in” Following Emily into her dorm it has a fair sized living area with 2 couches and a big TV on the wall, you survey the room and see a few faces you recognize. Her close friends Jess, Joanne, Melissa and five guys, you don’t recognize them other than one. Brad Smith. Much like you he went to the same highschool but he was one of the popular kids. Brad was the quarterback for the school team, his mom and dad were big shots in the town, even as a straight man you could tell he was handsome. “Hey everyone, this is Matt, a good friend of mine, a chemistry nerd like me” Emily gives a sweet giggle “Hey everyone” you shyly wave Everyone introduces themselves to you and you mingle with everyone there for a while. You notice Emily is sticking close to Brad. After some time passes, some games and the hours get on people start to leave, stumbling out the door. You must admit that you are quite drunk yourself, you drank the wine almost all by yourself. This is it, you see your opportunity and sit next to Emily on the three seater. Brad sits to her left and you to the right, you try to join in the conversation but it’s no use. You spend the next hour trying to get included in their conversation but you instead just speak to the other party goers. Brad finally gets up to go to the “piss palace” as he so eloquently put it. Emily turns to you wide eyed with a big smile. “Oh Matt, I think he likes me” she beams Trying to hide your shame as you realise you have misread the situation. “Oh yeah?” you feign excitement, Emily is pretty drunk so I think she fell for it. “Yeah, I’ve never seen him sit with one girl for so long, Oh Matt I'm giddy!” “Well, play it smooth Emily, I’m sure if you feel this good then he must be giving you good signs”. Expertly delivered, I don’t think she could tell you are dying inside “Good advice Matt, you are such a good friend” Like a dagger through your heart you suppress your frown as best as you can. “We are going to head off now Em, I hope you have a good night” Melissa winks as her and Jess start to leave “Hey Matt, I think it's time we left” she adds as she gives you a light tap on your arm. “Yeah, good idea Jess, I’m going to turn in Em, see you monday” you flash her a fake smile before leaving with the others. After closing the door you go the opposite direction for Jess & Melissa. A bit of fresh air to clear your head before you get back to your dorm. You stumble in as quietly as a drunk person can and fall face first onto your bed. *Knock Knock* What pure evil creature is knocking at my door at this ungodly hour, you squint as the light burns your eyes whilst the burden of being conscious weighs heavily on your skull. “Who is it?” you groggily call “It’s me bud” “You know I was-” “I’ve got someone to see you Matt, I hope you are decent” You sit up and stretch with a mighty yawn. Luckily you cleaned your room yesterday and yesterday’s clothes will have to do, you pop a mint in hopes that it will help with your breath, quick comb of your hair. “Yeah, send them in” The door opens and you see Emily. Her eyes are puffy and her eyeliner is running down her cheeks. “Good morning… everything all right?” you break the silence. “Everything alright? What a stupid question” you think to yourself Tears form in her eyes and she dashes into your room. Instinctively you hold out your arms to offer her a comforting embrace. “What irony, you wanted her in your room but not like this, this is some cursed monkey paw shit” you think to yourself whilst she sobs into your shoulder. 5 minutes pass, slowly she calms down and raises her head off your shoulder. “Oh Matt, I am so sorry, I didn’t know who else to turn to” “It’s ok, you can talk to me” you say, taking your new friendzone role seriously “Brad is a jerk” “Did he hurt you?” you say with venom in your voice “Not like that… once he got back from the toilet I started to make a move… he turned me down, said I was a flat chested nerd” She starts sobbing again “What an asshole” “What a shallow bastard… I like him and he shoots me down like that… it hurts” “I know the feeling” you say under your breath “Huh? What?” “Nothing, I just said he's a dick” “Yeah… he really is” “Right wait here, I’ll be back in 30 seconds” you head towards the kitchen. You open your freezer and grab a tub of ice cream and 2 spoons and head back into your room, fire up netflix and sit back down. “I’ve not had many female friends but I believe the social norm is to watch some junk TV and eat ice cream in this scenario” you chuckle and see a smile creep over her face “You are a good friend Matt” You spend the next 2 hours watching any old rubbish on netflix and sharing ice cream. Emily has a bit of a sweet tooth as she devoured 90% of the ice cream herself. Randomly she pauses the TV and turns to you. “Do you think I'm a flat chested nerd?” a serious glare in her eyes Completely caught off guard you can’t control the shocked reaction you give her “C’mon we are friends, you can answer” She adds “I mean from one chemistry nerd to another, yes we are nerds” you joke, she reveals a tiny smile for a brief moment before the serious look returns “And my chest?” You go red in the face “Erm, Your chest, I mean, No you aren’t flat chested” you stammer “I’m a B cup, not big sure but not flat chested. Brad, what an ass hole. Have you got any more ice cream?” “All out sorry Em” “Probably for the better. Thank you Matt, I think I’m going to go now anyway, you’ve been a good friend today. I’ll see you tomorrow morning” “Oh sure, I’ll let you out” You show Emily out and she remarks at what a gentleman you are. Phil is peering through the door at you from his room. “Sooooo?” he exits his room with a big smirk “I mean I didn’t hear any noises so-” “No” you interrupt “It didn’t go like that at all” “Well tell ya boy Phil all about it” “Ok so last night…” You give Phil all the “deets” that you remember from last night and everything from this morning “Wow so the highschool quarterback, popular, rich, snooty athlete was an asshole… who would’ve thought?” Phil rolls his eyes “Well not Emily I guess” “Well how are you Matt?” “Feeling pretty shitty… I got my hopes up and I shouldn't have but hey maybe I can just be in the friendzone and maybe we will just be friends…” “My advice, try to avoid that, it will hurt more. You can be her friend but after you’ve lost your feelings for her” “Makes sense. I’m going to shower and chill in my room today, if you need anything just knock” “Same for you bud” You spend the day watching TV, playing games and relaxing before class starts again tomorrow morning.

#Weightgain #weight #gain #belly #expansion #bellyexpansion #eating #stuffing #bloating #stuffed #stuffedbelly #teasing #tease #flirty #hungry #story #ertoica

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emeraldlupin · 1 month ago

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Breaking Down Naruto: Blood Prison Part 1

Naruto: Blood Prison. One of the Shippuden films. Having watched most of the films connected with the franchise, I can't say any of them are all that good. I enjoyed Clash in the Land of Snow. That was great. Crescent Moon Kingdom was also enjoyable.

But the others? They tend to either be bland or give me a headache, with the only exception being Will of Fire, at least as far as I recall. It didn't give me a headache, at the least.

Blood Prison was one of the few I hadn't gotten around to watching yet, and oh boy did it give me a headache. Movies like this are why MST3K was invented.

Normally, I'd be discussing this in my timeline or geography analysis, but I've started to realize that perhaps some of my thoughts should be confined to another space, and since I set up a Tumblr account, well, I'd try writing something here. This movie is an hour and 42 minutes, and there's so much to unpack and analyze in the dialogue that I'm going to have to do this in parts.

And let's be clear: Even if the animation in this movie is of high quality, I'm more concerned with story. High quality animation shouldn't be wasted on low quality writing.

The Setup

In this movie, it seems that Naruto tried to kill the Fourth Raikage, even though the Naruto on screen fought nothing like him, and you know, the Transformation Jutsu is a thing.

In the next scene, Tsunade is telling all this to Naruto in front of all his teammates. The attack was "last night." She says the Hidden Cloud lost three jonin, and the Hidden Stone lost two. Then she brings out a pair of sketches sent out by "the Hidden Mist and Stone."

I'm quoting from the subs, just so you know, the ones on the YouTube copy of this movie. But do you already see the first problem? The attack on the Hidden Cloud was the day before. Fine.

But was the attack on the Hidden Stone also the day before? I'm not sure. I'd hope not, since the Hidden Stone and Hidden Cloud are extremely far apart and there's no way you could get between them in one night, even with ninja speed. Also, the subs goofed up by saying Hidden Mist. Or is the movie suggesting the imposter hit there, too?

Anyway, Tsunade says she has no choice but to send Naruto to Hozuki Castle, which is an international prison run by the Hidden Grass for the Five Great Nations to house ninja criminals. Nobody seems to believe Naruto and it all comes off like they've betrayed him. Oh no!

Gee, that sort of thing should get Naruto really upset and have a moment of angst. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. There is no angst. Because who wants actual emotions in this thing beyond generic Shonen stories? That would distract from the fights and stuff.

And, no, no one brought up the Transformation Jutsu as a defense at all.

When I did my geography analysis of the country housing the Hidden Grass, I went into a lengthy deconstruction on how Hozuki Castle can't be on the sea like it is presented. I also mentioned how the movie ignores time, too. So I basically skip over that stuff. Instead, I'd like to point out the bizarreness of the prison's design, starting with the guards.

Western Guards, Guns, and Bernini

When Naruto arrives there via being carried in a box on foot—are there really no horses in this place?—we see guards at the back of the room. It was a blink and you miss it thing, but the guards appeared to be holding actual rifles. That made me do a double take. In that moment I thought perhaps they were poorly drawn crossbows, but no, a different shot confirmed they were indeed rifles.

Then there’s the clothing. The guards are wearing pickelhaubes. That’s the spiked helmet common to German soldiers in the era of World War I, though it was also worn by Prussian soldiers and many other types of officers. Variants exist today in some countries, but it is most commonly associated with Imperial Germany.

Mui’s uniform is also a more modern military style, complete with epaulettes, those tasseled shoulder decorations. Epaulettes are used in a variety of uniform types, even in dress uniforms for policemen. But given the German helmets…I have to wonder if they were going for German military, for whatever bizarre reason.

And to top it all off, just past a cell block—cells made out of wood— is what I guess is a check-in desk. The prisoners were all made to go through a physical exam. But behind that desk was a statue. Specifically, an extremely accurate copy of the The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.

….What?

Why in the hell is there a copy of an Baroque Italian sculpture in a prison for a Japanese ninja series? Why? What point does it serve? Is this symbolic? Did someone on the art team want to share their trip to Rome?

Ah, wait, it is used as a symbol. The sculpture is supposed to be an image of the divine coming down to interact with an earthly body. When Mui opens up the Box of Paradise in an attempt to get his son back, the movie flashes back to the sculpture. So the box is meant to be divine and he's supplicating it.

One, the angel that visited Saint Teresa did so in a vision, and that resulted in religious ecstasy, which is an altered state of consciousness. The angel was not asked for anything, let alone wishes, so your symbolism is pretty loose. Two, that box is more infernal than divine.

But even with those two things in mind, the loose symbolism is not an excuse to have this sculpture here. Because look at it like this:

Does Christianity exist now? I suppose the shrine with Nagato and Yakihiko's bodies had angels on it and Konan was called an angel, but...seriously, does it exist? Does Rome exist? Does Saint Teresa exist? Or did you remove all real world context from this sculpture? You'd better not have done that, because if you did, that's plagiarism.

You know, I recall the movie The Lost Tower and how the Kingdom of Roran—I’ll get to that eventually—had stained glass windows. I could be wrong, but I don’t recall them being of any particular design. And that’s fine. When I make suggestions for worldbuilding based on history and culture from beyond Japan, I do so to give inspiration. That doesn’t mean flat out stealing a piece of 17th Century Italy.

The art team could have created a piece of art unique to the lore they were building for the movie. They could have taken the time to build the story with cool images of their own within their own context. Instead, they took time and effort to painstakingly reproduce a Bernini sculpture completely out of context.

Great priorities, guys. Great priorities.

But, hey, I suppose it's good to have the sculpture there. It really classes up the place while they strip search you, you know?

That's enough for now. More later.

Part 2

#Naruto #Shippuden #Naruto Blood Prison #Blood Prison #Film #Bad film #What is this #What the hell #Why am I looking a reproduction of a Baroque sculpture #Symbolism I guess #Bad symbolism #Breaking Down Naruto Blood Prison

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audio-luddite · 11 months ago

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New LPs!

Three albums from Acoustic Sounds came in a really nice big box. Lots of padding. A total of 5 discs. Once I had to pony up the $36 bucks for shipping I thought load up the box. A low three figure purchase.

Double 45 180 of Willie Nelson "Stardust".

A single 33.33 180 of Lori Leiberman "truly".

A double 33.33 180 of "Jazz at the pawn shop".

Where to start. Busy playing them all.

Why do 45 rpm albums not label themselves as such. I know now but could they put on a note or something! That was Stardust.

"Truly" is a nice jazz album of some old classics and new stuff. It is a digital recording on LP endorsed by Mr. Fremer and he is right the sound is excellent. Ms Leiberman is the person who wrote a poem that became "Killing me softly" a hit with Roberta Flack. The men who helped turn it into a song, denied her credit. That song is here with several others. We all know the truth. She is a good singer. and song writer. The backing group are top tier session people.

I need to listen again, but good music. There is some You Tube coverage of the production.

youtube

Next up WN in his 1977 Grammy award winning album "Stardust". American Song book. Recorded in a house in Malibu with a studio truck in the driveway. They set up in the living room with a harmonica player in the bathroom. Great sound. This is the skateboard trick recording two discs, with not a mention anywhere about 45 rpm. That became obvious very soon.

How can I put this, immediate sound, close, realistic, almost intimate. Clarity to die for. Great recording and apparently all 100% analog. Fremer would be pleased. There is lot on this album, and I am tearing through first impressions here. There was a scare as the last cut of the last side made a horrible sound that could have been the death of a tube. Turned out it was a chunk of debris I missed and the stylus went surfing for a bit. cleaned it off and played it again to be sure it was neither the pressing nor the electronics.

Lastly the famous "Jazz at the Pawnshop". It is all it is reputed to be. I have listened on iTunes and guess what, it is better on vinyl. I dislike falling back on golden-ear-speak, but it is palpable. The audience was miked and is clear and well mixed in. The stage had a ORTF pair in front and the drum had its own pair of mikes. So the combo is well mapped out with the drums sounding bigger than if they had only a pair of mikes for everyone. All this is on line in wiki-thing and such. Yes I am rushing through this as I am excited. New stuff to play with.

Oh the timbre of the vibes is truly amazing. Oh now that sax. The Cl60 loves wind. Good stuff.

I am sure to come back later to these and may even do more blah blah on them here or maybe just listen and keep the laptop on the shelf.

Taking one step back I know that I spent some money getting good copies of these albums. I want the music done well and as clear as I can get it. That is the audiophile conceit. It is a kind of vanity. I admit and confess that. Part of my enjoyment is technical quality which the music does not need to justify its existence. But hey why not?

We are still using the AT7V cartridge on the Phase linear 8000 TT with ARC SP-14 and ARC Cl60 and my invisible speakers.

#audiophile #vinyl #cheap audiophile #turntables #audio technica #Youtube

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fushipurro · 1 year ago

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Red Lights Red Flags

Chapter 3 - Shadows

<- Previous Chapter | Masterlist | Next Chapter ->

☆ Content: 18+ MDNI, f!reader, ronin!toji, courtesan!reader, jjk historical au, mentions of murder, past non-con, forced prostitution, degradation (not by toji), pet names, trauma, angst, mutual pining

☆ Word Count: 2k

A week has passed since the rumors began and yet, still no sign of Toji. Not just him either, no member of the Zenin Clan has stepped foot in the brothel and it was beginning to drive you crazy.

You sat there at your window, eyes wandering the streets below for anyone that looks remotely similar to Toji. All the while in your head, thoughts ran rampant over whether he was safe or worse, if he grew bore of idle chatter with you.

There really isn’t much reason for you to think that, but we can’t control our intrusive thoughts. The longer this goes on, the worse it’ll get. All you can hope is that your answer will come soon enough.

Among the many words in your head, you can’t help but remember Shion’s words.

“Are you falling in love?”

Your body melts into the windowsill, head buried in your arms. “Oh Shion, I think I already am…”

Toji on the other hand has a perfect view of your form from where he stands, watching you long from your window like a princess locked in her tower. It hurts him to see you like this, so he keeps his presence hidden.

But why?

Toji knows he wants to see you again, hear your voice, know if you’re okay. He’s been wanting it more than you can possibly imagine, but what if you knew the truth?

Sure, he told you he’d kill those men for you, but words are words. What would you think when you find out about the blood on his hands, beyond those four torturing souls?

You.

The woman who has bared witness to the horrors man are capable of; hurt one too many times and still trying to live. He doesn’t want to add to your suffering so he finds himself questioning if protecting you from the shadows is the path he should take to ensure your survival.

Since acquiring the title of Marigold, you’ve become more respected in the brothel, no longer the low-ranking fledgling from before. The quality of your clientele now is a plus, and with Shion vouching for you, life isn’t so bad.

While admiring the moon from your window seat, the doors to your room slide open with a shrill voice filling the air, “So let me get this straight… you stole my favorite customer, and then chased him away? Is that it?”

Begrudgingly, you bow to the woman. “Botan.”

“Save the pleasantries,” she spits. “Don’t think you’re special now that you were given a name on your collar. You’re just a glorified weed.”

Her insult is rich considering she’s the one who told you to “remember your place,” and the fact that she has a flower title as well.

“I’m willing to bet you couldn’t even please him properly with a body like yours so he had to run off to some other brothel.”

Instead of picking a fight after what happened last time, you held your ground with as best a calm expression as you could. Toji’s resting face, in all its glory.

She scoffs, “Nothing to say? No matter. You won’t make it far anyways with that witch watching over you.” A sadistic smile tugs at her lips. “I’ll have the joys of plucking your sorry ass out of here when the time comes.”

In that moment, you swear you could hear the cawing of crows outside your window, much to Botan’s dismay at such… unusual timing. She huffs out of annoyance before storming out of the room.

Later in the night, you had a brand-new client. A young, inexperienced guy with a fresh paycheck to splurge who thought a brothel was the perfect place to go.

Don’t need a trained eye to see that much.

He currently sits upright on a floor cushion, eyes trained to the floor with his cheeks red as could be. You wonder if he’s here on a dare or coercion since he did arrive with a few other most likely coworkers.

“S-so uh– what… happens now?”

Inexperienced and timid. Better than most clients, that’s for sure.

“What would you like to do? I can feed you, sing, dance, whatever you’d like for the allotted time.”

An audible gulp can be heard from the man, and you can’t help but feel reminded to how you were the first dozen times you’ve had to deal with clients. Going through the whole spiel has gotten easier in time, even if you’re just auto-piloting it while your brain shuts down.

…Maybe this can work in your favor?

“Master?” You move closer, fluttering your eyelashes.

“Y-y-y-yes?” He gulps again.

“I was wondering… could you tell me about the outside? Any rumors you might’ve heard?” You tap your finger against your chin, offering a salacious smile. “It might help in getting you to relax.”

He’s taken aback, brows knitting in confusion. “Huh? Rumors?”

“Haven’t you heard? There’s someone going around murdering people. It’s so frightening,” you say all nice and coy. You feel bad teasing him like this, but if this is how you get your up-to-date information, then so be it.

“Oh… right, those rumors.” His expression morphs away from nervousness to that of awkwardness. “They haven’t caught the guy yet, but now they’re saying the men killed were troublemakers around here. Only four have been found though, all killed in the same night and in the same exact way.”

You’re nearly certain this was in fact Toji’s doing, but that doesn’t answer the question of why he hasn’t shown up yet. Sure, it’s scary to think how capable of a killer he is, but what do you expect from a samurai? He hasn’t done you any harm. There has been plenty of chances to do so, anyways.

The rest of the time with the stranger is thankfully uneventful. He calmed down a lot but ended up chickening out of anything sexual in favor of a nice meal and chitchat. Unlucky for him, but better for you.

At least now you have the chance to gaze out the window once more before your shift comes to an end and sleep can consume you. Something draws your eyes to an alleyway across the street, and you find a moonlit shadow fading to black before you’re able to even register what you saw. Your first thought is if that was Toji, and that alone causes you to sigh and sink into the wooden frame.

From the darkness of your mind, Botan’s words come back to haunt you. Was it you? Are you the reason he won’t come by anymore? You used to never be conscious of yourself until the day you became a courtesan.

It’s plausible there’s some other explanation for everything. Toji found you at your weakest and took away something that hurt you. Maybe he just treated it as contract like any other samurai for their master. Maybe you’re just overthinking it given your trauma.

Your father didn’t love you enough, why else would he choose to sell you to an awful way of living where every day you’re degraded for every little thing. Every detail about yourself, everything you do wrong. At the end of the day, are you worth enough to be loved?

You pull away from the window as the sun peaks over the horizon, shutting it closed before wrapping yourself up in your futon. If these sheets could act as your chrysalis, then maybe there’s hope for you to one day blossom into a beautiful butterfly.

…

“You’re in some deep shit now, Zenin.”

“Fuck off, Shiu. They deserve worse than what I did to ‘em.”

The brown-haired man sighs, taking a drag from his pipe. “Maybe you’ll regret it when you hear what your clan has decided.”

“I don’t give a shit what they have to say,” he growls in response.

“You could’ve at least tried to make it look like someone else. It’s obvious to anyone who knows you.”

Toji ponders for a moment, ultimately sighing as well out of frustration rather than empathy. “Yeah, well this would’ve happened sooner or later. I’d rather it now.”

When evening rolls around, you had already been notified to prepare yourself and Shion for the guests of honor.

The Zenin Clan.

Shion’s already good to go, but she’s requested to do your hair for you. It’s as if she knows it’s just what you need to help keep you relaxed.

“Hey Shion?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Do you know anything about those men who were killed?”

She closes her eyes and hums, her pace with the brush not faltering once. “I believe you already understand everything there is to know.”

“So it was them…” you sigh, “Do you think Toji will be here with them tonight?”

“I do not,” she replies, tucking a few stray pieces of hair back. “Do not let it distraught you, my little Marigold. If I were you, I wouldn’t let worry consume you.”

Little late for that one, you think to yourself.

After everything’s done and ready, you and the other members of Shion’s garden follow closely behind, posturing yourselves before the esteemed clan of samurais. “Welcome, Masters,” you all chant in unison.

The men take their respective seats, and while there’s no sign of Toji, your stomach flips at the sight of Botan and her garden. Every courtesan had their place, and sadly you were relegated to a new face from the clan, a child.

Who even brings a kid to a brothel?

The Zenins spend their time drowning in liquor, chatting away over typical nonsense and goals for the future. Eventually, the atmosphere settles to an uncomfortable silence. So silent you could hear a pin drop.

One of the lanky men clears his throat, “We’re really going through with this, aren’t we?”

“Of course, we can finally be rid of that stain for good,” replies a man triple the size. Your eyes widen at the incoming threat, knowing full well who they’re discussing.

“Seems like a waste of money to set up a bounty on his head when we could just do it ourselves.”

“We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work,” an older man speaks up. “This is the right way to avoid any questions towards the power we hold over the people. We don’t need to dirty our hands dealing with him.”

“Toji cannot be allowed to spit on our family name as he pleases. Should’ve had him killed before he came of age.”

The bottle you hold slips in your grasp, spilling a few drops near the child at your side.

“Watch it, whore,” he spits, surprisingly more venomous than you’d expect for a child. “This robe costs more than your pathetic self.”

You drop yourself into a bow, “I’m terribly sorry, Master!”

The other Zenins shoot you a cold glare for interrupting them, all while Botan can barely contain her cruel self from laughing. Shion redirects the attention of the clan head, and the rest settle in time. For the rest of the night, your thoughts are an unrelenting blur, covering up the voices of the room until all it is just noise.

Does Toji even know about this? His own family wants him dead and is putting a bounty on him? Where the hell are you, Toji!?

You felt more nauseous than ever, practically sprinting back to your room the moment you could. You slam the door shut, falling to the floor, and tucking your knees to your chest. No longer are you able to hold back your tears from freely falling.

It doesn’t matter to you anymore why he stopped showing up, if anything, you just want the chance to warn him so he can escape and live.

A cold breeze picks up throughout the room, drawing your eyes to the wide-open window and the snow-covered ledge. You wipe your eyes with your sleeve, walking over to shut the opening.

Darkness fills the room in the absence of light, but as you turn away, a shadow creeps forward that causes your heart to leap from your chest until a familiar voice calls out your name.

“Did you miss me?”

☆ Notes: slow burn pining :) next chapter gonna have a little spice to it

☆ Taglist: @fandomtrash5092 @catmania-choco

#jjk #toji fushiguro #jujutsu kaisen #jjk toji #jjk au #toji x female reader #toji fushiguro x reader #toji x reader #toji zenin #ronin!toji #toji x you #courtesan!reader #shiu kong

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