#also! if anyone’s interested (probably not) since i already have the transparent backgrounds i can edit in a different pride flag

[look-better-in-gold]

i made some koala pride icons!! rb if you use :)

[commentaryvorg]

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 6 - The Ultimate Team No More?

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Sayuri Daimon ~ Sarah Damon

Chika Daimon ~ Kristy Damon

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

Katsumata ~ Boomer

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

Yoshi: “But does he wait? Of course not! Not Mister Reckless!”

Yoshi has some added exasperation at Marcus in the dub and I approve.

Masaru:  “Aw, he’s annoyed at himself.”

Agumon:  “Yeah, he’s annoyed.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “What’s wrong, ya jealous?”

Agumon: “Sorry, but no autographs!”

how does Agumon know what an autograph is

Agumon:  “As if any Digimon could beat us when we’re fighting together!”

Masaru:  “Yeah! Because we’re the strongest combination ever!”

Agumon:  “Ever!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “We’ll just win again, of course! There’s no Digimon that can beat the ultimate team!”

Marcus: “Yeah! Agumon and I are the strongest team ever!”

Agumon: “Yeah!”

The original brought in Masaru and Agumon calling themselves the strongest combination ever kind of transparently for the purpose of this episode. However, because Marcus and Agumon have already called themselves “the ultimate team” before in the dub, this works better and doesn’t seem quite so obvious.

Dub-Agumon doesn’t have that quirk original-Agumon has of echoing the last word or so – or maybe a whole sentence as in the previous quote – of Masaru’s lines for emphasis. Not necessarily a bad thing, just that the dub Agumon has different quirks.

Lalamon:  “This is the worst…”

Yoshino:  “That’s my line.”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “Well, at least they don’t lack confidence.”

Yoshi: “No, they just lack common sense.”

Lalamon doesn’t get to steal Yoshi’s catchphrase, but instead she and Yoshi do some very warranted snarking.

Agumon: “Sarah, you’re a genius chef! Yum!”

Marcus: “Hey! How many times do I have to tell you not to call my mom by her first name!”

In the dub of the earlier episode where original-Agumon started doing this, dub-Agumon actually didn’t happen to use Sarah’s name, so this is the first time he’s done so onscreen. Still, I suppose Marcus’s line implies he’s done it multiple times before now, so this is the dub catching up by implying it’s been happening for a while even if we haven’t seen it.

Agumon:  “But Sayuri is Sayuri. Chika is Chika. And Aniki is Aniki.”

Masaru:  “That’s not what I mean!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Kristy is Kristy, Sarah is Sarah, and Boss is Boss.”

Marcus: “‘Boss’ is not my name!”

Agumon: “Oh. Well, still.”

Instead of Masaru failing to articulate why it’s weird for his friend to call his mom by her first name, Marcus shifts to an entirely different argument which almost might be implying he doesn’t really want Agumon to call him Boss? That could be considered relevant to this episode, but it’s almost certainly not deliberate.

Masaru:  “It’s manners for the follower to hold back!”

Agumon:  “Look who’s talking! Giving things to the follower shows off an aniki’s generosity!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Whatever happened to me being the boss here?”

Agumon: “Consider this an employee profit-sharing program.”

????? Agumon how on earth do you know what one of those is. I don’t even know what one of those is. Also, way to make this sound 1000% like a small business even though that never made any amount of sense.

This is basically making the same point as the original that Agumon feels Marcus ought to let him have the last fried egg as part of a boss’s generosity, but man does that get kinda lost in the ridiculous small-business joke.

Sayuri:  “Oh my, they really know what they’re talking about…”

Chika:  “That’s because they saw it on TV yesterday.”

Sayuri:  “Still, it’s amazing that they’re studying while watching TV.”

~~~~~

Sarah:  “Oh boy. Well, dinner just got a lot more interesting.”

Kristy: “Why do boys always have to act like boys?”

Sarah: “Oh, believe me, Kristy, one day you’ll be glad they do.”

The original exchange between Sayuri and Chika here was very strange – I think the subbers didn’t quite get what was meant to be going on there, because their take on it doesn’t really make sense – so the dub changing it to something else is quite reasonable. But Sarah being heteronormative at her daughter was really not what they needed to change this to.

(Is this implying that Sarah was/is into guys who are this kind of ridiculous idiot? Actually, uh, knowing about the kind of person Marcus’s dad is, that’d make… a good bit of sense. Oh dear.)

There’s some similar bickering about snoring here, but then also, still in the background:

Marcus: “That’s it! You’re fired!”

Agumon: “You don’t even pay me!”

Can we not with the small business jokes! It makes this whole thing so difficult to take seriously as a meaningful bond between fighting partners, which is kind of what this whole episode is meant to be focusing on. Also, as usual, how does Agumon even know that an “employee” is supposed to get paid; his entire experience with the word should be limited to what he is to Marcus. And Marcus saying “you’re fired” really should be taken as him officially breaking off their partnership, but this isn’t the part where that happens yet. (Though honestly I’m glad that when we do, we won’t be doing the small business jokes there.)

Agumon:  “Well, I’m not gonna bail you out any more, Aniki! If I wasn’t there for you today, you would’ve been screwed!”

Masaru:  “What?! Don’t be so damn egotistical! You can’t even evolve without my Digisoul!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Fine, don’t count on me to bail you out any more! Face it, you’d be totally lost without me!”

Marcus: “What?! Gimme a break! Without me you couldn’t Digivolve! Without me, this team would be nothing!”

I’m quoting this whole thing even though it’s basically the same as in the original, because this exchange is very important to the entire episode and I’m really glad the dub kept it intact. Boy could they have ruined the whole episode if they messed up this part, but they didn’t.

(I shouldn’t have to bring this up like it’s remotely remarkable, but after the fire-punching fiasco in episode 3, apparently it is.)

Marcus’s “without me this team would be nothing” is a bit harsher and more jerkish than originally, though that’s probably partly because the dub had more lip-flap to fill. It’s making Marcus more of a jerk like usual, but at least in this instance, Masaru being something of a jerk originally was actually the point, so this doesn’t stick out as much as it does sometimes.

The noises Agumon initially makes in reaction to Marcus’s comment here are a lot angrier in the dub, whereas originally it was more like upset floundering at the realisation that that’s true, before he snapped.

Agumon:  “Damn it! I can’t do this any more! I’m done being your follower!”

Masaru:  “Oh yeah, well, I’m out too! We’re not Aniki and follower any more!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “That’s it! I can’t take this! I don’t want you to be my boss!”

Marcus: “That’s just fine by me! I don’t wanna be your boss, either!”

At least the dubbers had the sense to deliberately avoid using the word “employee” here and keep the small-business nonsense out of the part that really matters.

Tohma:  “You’re arguing over something so trivial.”

Masaru:  “It’s not my fault!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “You’re being immature, even for you.”

Marcus: “Y-Y-*You’re* immature!”

The joke of Marcus proving how immature he is means that instead he’s snapping at Thomas, somewhat shifting away from the issue with Agumon. Meanwhile, Masaru was more subtly and relevantly showing his immaturity by trying to insist that their argument is totally all Agumon’s fault and not even slightly his.

We also lose the interesting implications of Tohma thinking this whole argument is over something trivial.

Masaru:  “Fine! I’m more than enough for one or two Digimon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hah. It’ll probably be *easier* without you, just you wait and see!”

Marcus’s extra jab about it being easier without Agumon shifts this more into an insistence that Agumon was somehow holding him back, rather than focusing on the more relevant point that he simply wants to feel like he can do this without help from anyone.

Agumon:  “We’ll see about that, Aniki!”

~~~~

Agumon: “Hmph. Good luck, ‘cause you’re gonna need it!”

By wishing Marcus good luck, even if he means it as an insult, dub-Agumon is implying somewhat more of a sentiment of at least not wanting Marcus to get himself hurt doing this, which original-Agumon didn’t realise until later.

(Dub-Agumon doesn’t happen to call him Boss in this line, but he did so in an earlier line, so he is still doing that in the dub, too.)

The point I made in the original post about how these two scenes feel like one connected scene that ends on the note of Masaru going off to prove himself rather than them falling out doesn’t quite apply as much in the dub. Partly it’s because the dub doesn’t have the opening here, which isn’t its fault, but it also uses different BGM in each scene.

Elecmon:  “So many toys to play with!” [evil chuckling]

I’m sure you can tell without me quoting the van driver’s line that this is not Elecmon echoing anything that any human said at all. Apparently it’s coming to the human world just because it genuinely personally likes messing with electronic devices. That is not how this is supposed to work, at all. Not even in the dub’s slightly different version of things!

Masaru:  “Now there’ll be peace once again in the Daimon family.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Finally I have some peace now that Agumon’s not around.”

Marcus not mentioning his family makes this less about the petty eating and snoring concerns that the argument started off about. But this still does very much carry the tone of him trying to insist to himself that he’s totally happier this way when he very obviously isn’t.

Masaru:  “I’ll do it all by myself.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Soon he’ll see! I don’t need *him* around!”

This, though, I don’t really like. The point was never specifically about Masaru proving anything to Agumon, and it wasn’t even specifically about the fact that he needs Agumon in particular. Masaru just wanted to prove, to himself, that he could do this (whatever “this” was) by himself.

Marcus’s intonation here is also quite overly-moody, making this come across a lot more like just a temporary tantrum rather than that this is connected to something that runs deep.

The dub decides to put a commercial break after this scene rather than after the Elecmon scene where the original opening went, even though this scene is short enough that they could probably have just as easily put it before it. I… think I like that choice? The Elecmon scene was always a bit unnecessary, so lingering more closely on the note of Marcus’s moodiness feels better. (Though it specifically lingers on that dub-changed line that I don’t like much, so, eh.)

That said, this next set of scenes cutting between Masaru out on his own stewing in his frustration and the DATS members trying to talk to Agumon in his Digivice does feel like it’s supposed to be one long connected thing in the original. So I dunno.

Megumi: “Look, it’s your favourite! A cheeseburger wrapped in another cheeseburger! With a cheeseburger for dessert!”

Um, that sure is a way to have a cheeseburger. Since she’s holding what looks like a perfectly normal burger, I can only assume she’s lying to try and make it sound more enticing to Agumon. (Also, haven’t you got the memo, Megumi? Agumon’s favourite is Sarah’s fried eggs, obviously.)

Yoshino:  “How will they ever make up?”

Tohma:  “It’s not something we should interfere with.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You think those guys will ever be partners again?”

Thomas:  “I have more important things to do than second guess those two.”

Originally the implication from Tohma was definitely that he imagined they would make up sooner or later and just felt it wasn’t any of his business to try and force it to happen. But Thomas sounds like he’s implying he wouldn’t care if they didn’t ever make up at all. That’d have been reasonable for him before he came to respect Marcus, but not now.

Satsuma:  “They must learn why they’re important to each other. If they don’t find that answer, this is as far as they go.”

~~~~~

Sampson: “They need each other. But if they can’t see that, there’s no place for them here.”

Sampson is spelling things out a lot more explicitly for us. And it also sounds like he’s only thinking about this in terms of their suitability as DATS agents. The sense I got from Satsuma was that he was thinking more broadly about their growth as individuals and is concerned about that, DATS agents or not.

Masaru:  (That little shithead. He was the one who first said he wanted to be my follower.)

~~~~~

Marcus:  (I can’t believe him! He was the one who said he wanted me to be his boss in the first place. Then he gets upset when I act like a boss.)

That last dub-added part misses the point a bit. This is supposed to be about Masaru still having room to feel like he doesn’t need anyone, because Agumon initiated their partnership and looked up to him. This isn’t about Marcus acting in any particular way while being in that “boss” role at all.

(Maybe this could be read as Marcus deflecting from the real point here – but that’s not even necessary, since the real point is him being able to tell himself he doesn’t need Agumon. Masaru was also essentially deflecting from that.)

Masaru:  “Damn it!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “This day just keeps gettin’ better and better…”

Marcus has more to say as he almost falls over from his missed baseball swing and leaves. I’m not sure I like his comment here, like he’s just thinking about this as one of those Bad Days where everything goes wrong, as if he was playing baseball as a totally unrelated way to pass the time and then this mishap just added to the Bad Things pile. Really, Masaru’s playing baseball because of the initial problem, as a way to physically let off some steam, and then he probably messes up as a result of that frustration of his, which only serves to amplify it.

Maybe it’s just the tone I don’t like as much – Marcus simply sounds fed up and exasperated, rather than actively frustrated about something that isn’t really the baseball at all.

Lalamon:  “You always said you hated being in the Digivice because you were alone.”

~~~~~

Lalamon:  “You said you hated being in the Digivice because it’s cramped and lonely.”

Ayy, the dub is still consistently sticking with its added emphasis that Agumon doesn’t like cramped spaces. I’m so weirdly pleased at this one bit of extra nuance that they manage to be completely consistent and also not-too-unsubtle about – probably because they’re not usually nearly this good. It’s to the point that I’m starting to have a strong theory that someone on the dub writing team had claustrophobia themselves and was projecting this onto Agumon, making consistently writing it this way personal to them, because they otherwise do not usually care enough to think about and follow through with the implications of minor changes like this.

Agumon:  “You two wouldn’t understand.”

Gaomon:  “That’s for sure. But that’s why I’m interested.”

~~~~~

Agumon:  “Just drop it, you guys, you don’t understand!”

Gaomon:  “It’s disgraceful. A member of DATS should take pride in his partnership.”

Original-Gaomon was simply curious here, perhaps showing a side of him that’s similar to his master’s very scientific approach to things. Dub-Gaomon is also showing similarity to Thomas in his strong sense of duty (plus pride in his partnership because he’s a dog)… but he is also kind of being more of a dick in the process.

Gaomon:  “Fighting with your master…”

~~~~~

Gaomon:  “Arguing with your superior…”

Since dub-Gaomon doesn’t call Thomas “Master”, this had to be changed, and this is a perfectly reasonable change, but it does still give Gaomon more of a sense of being an army grunt rather than a loyal dog.

Gaomon:  “Interesting. And why do you argue so often, do you think?”

Gaomon’s tone at the end here is also kind of dickish, like he’s implying that it should be obvious why Lalamon and Yoshi argue a lot. Geez, dub-Gaomon, chill.

Lalamon:  “Yoshino’s always really lazy! She doesn’t clean up her room, she doesn’t fold her laundry, she has bad sleeping habits and—”

~~~~~

Lalamon:  “Yoshi’s great, but she’s bossy and messy! And you should see what she does with her toenail clippings—”

“Bossy” is a lot more in line with the Yoshi we already know (at least towards Marcus, who kind of deserves it), though the “messy” part is similar to the original in hinting at a side of her we don’t usually see. But overall – no thanks in large part to the toenail clippings joke – there’s much less of a sense in the dub that Yoshi’s an entirely different person at home and that she doesn’t work nearly as hard in her home life as she does at DATS.

Katsumata:  “Da… Daimon!”

Masaru:  “Katsumata? You’re still hanging ‘round here?” [he turns to walk away]

~~~~~

Boomer:  “Huh? Oh… Marcus!”

Marcus:  “Hey, Boomer. Uh, sorry I can’t really talk right now. I’ll see ya.” [he turns to walk away, muttering under his breath] “Doof.”

Masaru’s interaction with Katsumata is obviously somewhat unfriendly from the start, based on both their tones and Masaru’s implication of “I thought I drove you out of this turf”. But Marcus and Boomer are both being… polite to each other? I would have assumed they were friends based on this, until Marcus insulted him under his breath.

Which, since they’re evidently not friends – especially given what’s about to happen – just makes it come across as incredibly off that Marcus even pretended to be polite to him in the first place. Masaru would never do that; he never beats around the bush and would never hide it if he had a problem with someone. That straightforward sincerity he has is a really big part of his character and I am sad to see so much less of it there in Marcus.

Since Marcus was enough of a jerk to pretend to be nice and then insult them under his breath, it then also comes across like Boomer and his cronies surround Marcus for a beatdown mostly because of that, rather than that they’ve had a run-in with him before and want revenge.

Masaru:  “What bad luck.”

Katsumata: “Cursing your fate won’t do you any good.”

Masaru:  “I was talking about you. I’m extremely pissed off right now!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “You *don’t* wanna start a fight with me today.”

Boomer:  “Just ‘cause it’s five against one? Hah. We’re callin’ the shots this time around.”

Marcus:  “Is that what you think? Back off, Boomer, before I teach you bullies a lesson!”

Boomer:  “Yeah, right. Get him, guys!”

On the other hand, Marcus’s “today” does imply that he might have had a fight with this dude sometime before. (Unless he just means “start a fight with me” in the very general sense that people often come to him looking for a fight and not necessarily this guy in particular).

That line is also the only part of this scene that gets across the important sense that Marcus is especially in the mood to give someone a beatdown right now because of everything that’s been going on.

The rest of it… really doesn’t. Bullies? I don’t know if this is trying to say that these guys are known bullies that Marcus has heard of or dealt with before (in which case, why would he bother being nice to them?), or just a comment on the fact that they’re surrounding him five-on-one (though Marcus isn’t entirely innocent in this, since he insulted them first). But either way, this is the dub trying to reassure us that, hey, really, it’s okay that our protagonist beats up these guys, because they’re bullies! They’re bad guys! Marcus is being the good guy here, see!

That is not supposed to be the point of this. Masaru wasn’t beating up unwilling bystanders – he would not do that – and only did this because these dudes were looking for a fight. But this is very much supposed to be Masaru doing something that is kind of not okay, as a result of his frustration with himself set off by his argument with Agumon. That’s the point! It’s good for this to not be a great thing for Masaru to do! Characters – even good characters – are allowed to do bad things. That’s what makes stories more interesting.

Marcus also at least tries to de-escalate the situation by warning Boomer to back off. That makes the resulting beatdown a lot more on Boomer for refusing to listen, and a lot less on Marcus, who is at this point mostly acting in self-defence. Apparently Marcus would have been perfectly happy to walk away from this if they’d had second thoughts and left him alone.

But Masaru never gave them that chance. Once they’d incited aggression first by surrounding him, Masaru took that as a free excuse to start letting loose on these dudes without giving them an opportunity to change their minds. He wanted an excuse to vent his frustration through violence and wasn’t going to back out of it once he’d been given one. Again, that’s the point.

Agumon:  (Aniki hurt my pride.)

~~~~~

Agumon:  (You really hurt my feelings, Boss…)

This is almost the same, but hurt feelings is a bit more of a general idea that hurt pride. Pride in particular is especially relevant here, since Agumon and Masaru both have a lot of it and that’s a big part of the reason why this is happening.

At least the musical cue as Marcus stands over the beaten dudes is appropriately sinister and painting Marcus as very much not a hero in this situation. The dub soundtrack people have the right idea, even if the dub writers don’t.

Marcus:  “See? I don’t need help from anyone.”

Marcus has an added silence-filling line as he walks away, pointing out things that were already implied in the original because who needs subtlety. Also, hey, look, it’s almost like he really did just beat up those guys for his own issuey reasons and not because he was being a good guy defeating the bullies, how about that!

Though I also think this is somewhat missing the point. Yes, a lot of this episode is about Masaru trying to insist he doesn’t need anyone’s help. But this particular part is also here to show that his usual pastime of street fights against other humans isn’t enough for him any more, that he needs something more that fighting Digimon can give him. That’s what’s supposed to be the main thing on his mind as he walks away from this too-easy victory, rather than the more general don’t-need-anyone issue.

This whole part is one of my favourite delightfully-subtle bits of this episode, and the dub watered it down so much.

Old man:  “Well, well, my angry young friend.”

Pfft. Not an inappropriate thing to be calling him right now.

Old man:  “The things you truly need appear even when you’re not looking for them. That’s because you understand why you need them.”

~~~~~

Old man:  “The things you truly need appear even when you’re not looking for them. So look for what’s new in your life and figure out why you might need it.”

Unlike last time the old man showed up to be vague and metaphorical, this time the dub actually translates his speech almost entirely word-for-word! Amazing. This is the one bit that’s slightly different – but if anything, the dub’s version makes more sense at a part where the original was a little bit “???”, so, hey, good job. This does also mean that the old man is somewhat more actively giving Marcus advice in the dub than in the original, but that doesn’t really make a difference anyway (because Marcus is still not listening).

Boomer:  “What luck. I can’t believe I lost to Marcus again.”

Okay, so the dub is definitely going with the fact that Boomer is someone Marcus laid a beatdown on before today. They really shouldn’t have thrown doubt on that to begin with by having them sound like they’re being polite to each other in that earlier scene.

Katsumata: “Damn it, the stupid light’s taking too long again! Come on, change!”

Elecmon:  “Lights, change!”

~~~~~

Boomer:  “Why won’t these stoplights change already?! C’mon, c’mon!”

Elecmon:  “More toys to play with!”

…So, yep, Elecmon coming here is totally unrelated to anything Boomer is saying or feeling. And therefore it’s nothing to do with Marcus that this is happening. (Which also makes it a hugely convenient coincidence that he happens to be nearby to this Digimon incident when he doesn’t have DATS to tell him where to find it.)

Agumon:  “I decided I wouldn’t come out until Aniki apologises.”

~~~~~

Agumon:  “I’m staying here until Boss apologises, so blame him if something goes wrong!”

Dub-Agumon is being more of an immature dick here. If something goes wrong that he could have helped with, it’s totally not his fault for choosing to put his personal issues above the importance of the case, sure.

Bystander:  “I still can’t believe that no-one was seriously injured!”

Yeah, sure, dub, you just fill a silence with this to reassure the kids. It’s a huge flaming car crash, but it’s fine! Nobody was even really hurt, let alone killed!

Masaru:  “It’s okay. You’re not hurt anywhere.”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “It’s okay, kid, you aren’t hurt. Thanks to me, of course!”

Marcus, unlike Masaru, feels the need to make things about himself here, somewhat putting the damper on his selfless moment of heroism. Not completely, but he comes across as slightly less genuinely selflessly good as a result.

(It could be read like that comment is a result of the I-can-do-everything-alone issues he’s having this episode, but it feels like now of all times is when he should stop acting that way at all. That was the idea behind this bit in the original. Marcus’s tone for that part is still quite soft, so it also doesn’t sound like it’s part of his overcompensating.)

Agumon:  “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Agumon:  “Oh no!”

Because “Aniki” is two lip-flaps, they can’t just replace a lone “Aniki!” with a lone “Boss!”, so instead Agumon says this, coincidentally sounding more worried than he did originally.

Yoshi:  “Marcus, where’ve you been? Why didn’t you contact us?”

Marcus:  “I’ve been busy doing my job!”

Yeah, sure, doing your job definitely includes playing baseball and beating up some random dudes. (Masaru did not try and make any such claim.)

Yoshino:  “You don’t have a partner, so just wait here.”

~~~~~

Yoshi:  “Without a partner, you’re useless, so just stay out of the way, Marcus.”

Yikes, Yoshi. Calling him outright useless like this is going to rile him up even more.

With the dub’s insistence on using its evolution music every single time someone evolves, at least these shorter evolution animations mean that the music doesn’t awkwardly loop exactly twice, and instead it plays smoothly through the two animations.

Masaru:  “Even if I am [being absurd], I’ll use it to cut through a new path! That’s what a man does!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “An ultimate fighter never quits! Let’s go, you overgrown puppy!”

Even aside from removing the manliness part, they also removed the rest of what was fun about this line. Masaru has a delightful insistence about how he doesn’t care if he’s being absurd, that can be a good thing that’ll help him win! Marcus is just… never quitting, and then trash-talking his opponent. Which is fine, but… simple.

Agumon:  “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Agumon:  “Oh, Boss!”

More ways for the dub to get around the lip-flap issue with short exclamations like this.

Yoshi:  “Chasing something we may not be able to catch, to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved! Marcus must be terrified all alone.”

[cut to Marcus on Garurumon’s back]

Marcus:  “Yaaaaa-hooooo!”

Look, I get the joke they’re going for here, but doing so compromises two characters. Why would Yoshi even worry about Marcus being terrified, after she literally just complained that he won’t want to be saved? She knows him, geez.

And then Marcus having great fun riding the Garurumon would normally be perfectly fine – see Drimogemon last episode – but one of the interesting points about this part in the original is that Masaru wasn’t having nearly as much fun with this as he had with Drimogemon before, as a sign that he knows deep down how outmatched he is without Agumon.

Masaru:  “Hey, asshole, how far are you gonna go? Stop sometime! Damn, my arms are giving out! Are you trying to see which of us lasts longer?”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “Hey, you digital dimwit, give it up! You’re never gonna be able to shake me off you! …Except my arms are starting to get tired. Well, let’s see who gives out first!”

He’s also a lot more openly cocky about being able to hold on, generally, despite that he does admit his arms are getting tired. Masaru’s lines gave more of a subtle sense that he was hoping it would stop so he wouldn’t have to keep holding on, if still not directly admitting that.

Masaru:  “Hey. Don’t underestimate me!”

~~~~~

[Garurumon growls]

Marcus:  “Woof.” [he lets out a wordless battle cry]

As much as I am kind of amused by Marcus aggressively making fun of his enemy being a big dog, I am sad that this comes in place of that fun original line in which Masaru had decided Garurumon was totally underestimating him, which definitely wasn’t him projecting his own self-doubt onto it.

Masaru:  “Damn it, what do I do now?”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “Oh, that’s right! I’m on my own here!”

Somewhat less of a sense in the dub line that Marcus is starting to wonder how the hell he’s going to win this now.

Marcus:  “…Not fun.”

Marcus has this little comment about how it felt to be slammed into a wall, and I enjoy it.

Masaru:  “Am I not… strong enough to beat him…? Is it really only a Digimon that can stop a Digimon…?”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “Man, maybe I’m not strong enough to defeat this guy… Maybe it really *does* take a Digimon to defeat a Digimon…”

Despite his “maybe”s, Marcus generally sounds a lot more sure about this here, like he’s not actually having any real difficulty accepting this now, whereas Masaru was still struggling with it to the point of phrasing it as a question.

Marcus:  “But still, there’s no way I’m gonna give up even if this turns out to be my last stand…!”

The dub has some extra lip-flap here, so this is also added in. Which I’m not super sold on. In keeping with a dub difference in episode 1 (wow, consistency), Marcus is apparently openly willing to just throw his life away for no good reason. Plus, the fact that he’s explicitly accepting the possibility he might get killed here means he really has accepted that he can’t do this with a lot more willing certainty than Masaru did.

(At least the dub managed to phrase the concept of him dying in a way that sounds natural despite not directly mentioning death.)

Masaru:  (I was wrong… I need…)

~~~~~

Marcus:  (What was I thinking? I couldn’t have defeated that guy [Tortamon] by myself, and I can’t beat Garurumon either! I need Agumon, and now I’ll never get to tell him I’m sorry!)

These are both lines that take up the same amount of time, believe it or not. Marcus is way more internally-talkative and generally perfectly articulating the problem he was having and the Lesson He’s Learned. Meanwhile, Masaru was coming to this realisation a lot more slowly and gradually, barely able to articulate it to himself beyond the most simple and important part. The original’s writers were happy to leave some silent gaps in between his thoughts to do the rest of the work more subtly.

The dub’s also really doubling down on the idea that Marcus is very consciously aware that he’s probably about to be killed here. Him lamenting not being able to apologise to Agumon is cute, but I still don’t know if I like him having admitted the about-to-die part to himself in the first place.

Sadly, the dub does not have the extra layer of Marcus’s screams of exertion that are what’s physically coming out of his mouth during this part. Regardless, these are definitely internal thoughts, because they have an echoey sort of effect on them to imply that. (The original doesn’t use that effect for its inner monologue lines at all.)

Masaru:  (I need… I need Agumon! I want to fight together with Agumon!)

~~~~~

Marcus:  (I get it now. I need you, Agumon! What makes us strong isn’t you or me… it’s both of us working as a team!)

Them working together as a team being the reason they’re strong is a cute (and correct) sentiment, don’t get me wrong, but I still like it less how Marcus is able to perfectly articulate this to himself and has just very straightforwardly Learned His Lesson.

Also, the loss of specifically “I want to fight together with Agumon” loses the possibly-unintentional call-forward in that line, which makes me a little sad.

Marcus:  “Right. We’re the ultimate team!”

With the dub’s “ultimate team” being a whole Thing that’s in more than just this episode, it has a more impactful effect to bring it back here that the original can’t do. So that’s a plus for the dub, at least.

Marcus:  “Never surrender, GeoGreymon!”

The evolution theme, being an instrumental remix of the dub’s opening theme, happened to have the part of its melody which matches with the dub’s opening lyric of “Never surrender!” just a few seconds before this line. Heh. I wonder if that was deliberate.

Masaru:  “There’s no way you can lose to a Digimon like that!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “Remember, you’ll never lose as long as we fight together!”

Marcus’s line here is more adorable than Masaru’s, putting the focus on their partnership rather than just implicitly insulting their opponent! (It could be read that Masaru was specifically referencing the fact that Garurumon doesn’t have a partner and that’s why GeoGreymon should win, but if so that’s not all that clear.) I approve.

Masaru:  “You did it, Agumon!”

Agumon:  “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “You did it, Agumon!”

Agumon:  “*We* did!”

The dub did indeed go for “you” with the translation of Masaru’s subject-ambiguous Japanese line – and then they had Agumon add in a “we”, for maximum adorableness!

Masaru:  “We can beat any Digimon if we’re fighting together!”

Agumon:  “Yeah! We’re the strongest combination ever!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “As long as the two of us work together, no Digimon can stand against us!”

Agumon:  “Yeah, we’re still the ultimate team, Boss!”

The dub’s version of this is basically the same right here, but what it unfortunately doesn’t do that the original did is directly echo what the two of them said in the beginning of the episode, but with the speakers swapped. Here’s the earlier bits:

Agumon:  “As if any Digimon could beat us when we’re fighting together!”

Masaru:  “Yeah! Because we’re the strongest combination ever!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “There’s no Digimon that can beat the ultimate team!”

Marcus: “Yeah! Agumon and I are the strongest team ever!”

Alas, apparently the dubbers didn’t realise that was a deliberate callback and make sure the earlier lines were worded so they’d work with this.

Agumon:  “Nah, it’s fine. I’m sorry, too.”

~~~~~

Agumon:  “No. I should be apologising to *you*.”

The dub’s version of this contains the awkward implication that Agumon isn’t just giving his own apology but also feels like Marcus didn’t even need to apologise in the first place. Which isn’t right, since both of them were equally at fault here. I don’t know if the dub even meant to imply this, but that’s how Agumon’s phrasing reads.

Masaru:  “Crap, it’s Yoshino. Run, Agumon!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “Oh man, I’d rather face another Digimon than Yoshi. Run!”

The original reads like Masaru is trying to run because Yoshino is going to force him to clean up his mess. In the dub, it reads like it’s not so much about the clean-up and more like he’s mostly running because Yoshi is scary when she’s mad, which has a vaguely uncomfortably sexist vibe to it.

(Also, why is he acting like facing another Digimon would be a bad thing? Of course he’d rather fight another Digimon than face Yoshi, regardless of her anger or the clean-up, because fighting Digimon is his favourite thing!)

Overall differences

Well, at least they didn’t ruin the overall point of the episode like they could have by changing the reason Marcus and Agumon fall out. I had wondered if the bizarre misconception I’ve seen of “this episode is bad because they fall out over fried eggs!!!” came from the dub, but no, it very much didn’t. That part is perfectly intact. That said, there’s a lot of other changes going on in this episode that I’m not too fond of, especially because a lot of them mess with the fun nuanced bits.

The ridiculous small-business jokes during their argument further highlight how nonsensical it always was to call Agumon Marcus’s “employee”, and they detract from the meaningful points being made there about their respective roles in the relationship.

Elecmon is entirely lucid and simply coming here because it wants to mess around with traffic lights, which is extremely not how things work, not even in the dub’s version of why these Digimon incidents are happening. It also means this incident isn’t indirectly Marcus’s fault, which was a thing I enjoyed in the original.

The scene where Marcus beats up the dudes is probably my least favourite of the changes. The dub completely fails to grasp that Masaru doing something kinda not okay is the whole point of that scene. Instead it scrambles to insist that their kids’ show protagonist is still a 100% squeaky clean good person actually, because look, he’s only beating up bullies! And yet despite that, Marcus also acts weirdly uncharacteristically polite to this person that he has every reason to openly dislike.

Just like in episode 3, Marcus is a lot more articulate and self-aware about admitting exactly what his problem is and the lesson he’s learned in this episode (though at least in this episode he actually learns it), which continues to be less interesting and nuanced than the way Masaru struggles a lot more to fully accept and understand his issues. There’s also a recurrence of the thing from dub episode 1 in which Marcus is fully, consciously aware of the possibility that he might die, which is not something Masaru ever quite lets himself acknowledge even when he’s inches away from being eaten.

At least a few of the lines in the scene where he and Agumon make up are changed to be a little bit more adorable in the dub than they were originally, so there’s that.

[the-art-of-animated-gifs]

Hexeosis:  Why I sell my gifs as Crypto Art

Hexeosis is one of the success stories of Tumblr’s golden age.  The psychedelic gifs created under the Hexeosis name became so popular that the person know as Hexeosis quit their day job and never looked back.  Now Hexeosis sells gifs as Crypto Art, something I have been mystified by.  Hexeosis was generous enough to answer my questions at length below.

Why did you decide to put your art on SuperRare and KnowOrigin?

I like SuperRare and KnownOrigin because they both feature clean interfaces and nice designs that I think complement the work being posted. And, they are some of the leaders in the cryptoart space which means they have traffic from many collectors and many artists. Both of the sites do a lot to promote the artists and the art works as well, which is a great feature.

Once a piece is sold, does that mean no one but the purchaser can see it?  Can it ever be posted online again?

This is one of the things that makes crypto art a unique way to buy and sell art. For the most part, the sites selling crypto art do not prevent others from seeing it once it's sold. It's actually more of the opposite, in that the sites will host the images for all to see whenever they want to. Also, posting on-line is a bit controversial, but most feel that posting on-line is a good way to promote the work and to get a larger audience. There's not much of a real world equivalent to how that aspect works. There's a popular saying in the crypto art world "everyone sees it, only one owns it" said by artist Hackatao. They even made and sold a gif about it:

https://superrare.co/artwork-v2/only-one-owns-it-4489

Some artists and collectors don't completely agree with this idea. Some artists argue that posting the same artwork on social media devalues the crypto art version. Some also would like it to be set up in a way that the collector could decide whether to keep the image private or share more widely with the world. I think this is one of the issues that will continue to be explored as the space grows.

What do the collectors do with the art?

There's a wide range of collector behavior after they purchase a piece of crypto art. Some collectors will create galleries in various decentralized 3d / VR worlds to display the art. This is one of the best things about the ETH NFT art now in my opinion. There's a huge degree of interoperability between many decentralized apps right now. I have a museum and a gallery set up inside of CryptoVoxels, which is a 3d / VR world accessible via web browser. The parcels are sold as tokens on the Ethereum network and the world allows users to embed gifs, video, etc.... A lot of crypto artists have been attracted to the space and are building a really interesting world. Here's two of my locations you can check out:

https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=NE@1E,261N

and  

https://www.cryptovoxels.com/parcels/929

 You can move around with arrow keys and use mouse to look.

Some people are also buying crypto art as investments. There have been notable re-sales of digital crypto art that have traded for many times the original purchase price. Some collectors are interested in curating collections and some have set up museums for this purpose. There are also 2d web sites that work like portfolios / display pages where collectors can show off their collections. I've also seen people promoting and selling physical display panels for the home, that you can send crypto art that you own to display.

Since you have the original source files you are legally obligated to never create a copy again?  Even for portfolio purposes?

Artists agree to not reupload the same thing to multiple sites for sale, but it's ok to have in your portfolio or twitter feed. The terms of SuperRare state that the artist retains the copyright to the image, so the buyer doesn't even get the rights to re-purpose or publish the art without the permission of the artist. Some artists have decided to also include the copyright when selling the NFT.

Have you sold any pieces?  How is the price relative to real world commercial work?

Yes! I started in December of 2019 on SuperRare and have sold 34 gifs so far for an average price of 1.5 ETH  Here's a list of the artists on SuperRare

https://superrare.co/crypto-artists

where you can see number of items sold / created / average price etc......

Can the artwork be resold?

Yes, this is a big factor actually. A number of collectors do look at this as an investment and do re-sell the works. Many of the platforms even have built-in royalty payments to the original creator. SuperRare and others currently include a 10% royalty payment to the original artist on re-sales. I've already had two works resold and have received a percentage of that sale. It's a pretty cool idea, especially since many artists have seen their early creations rise in value as more people enter the space and want to collect rare items.

Do know of other artists doing this?

I've followed both XCOPY (twitter @XCOPYART) and Yura Miron (twitter @YuraMironArt) for years on Tumblr and Twitter. I noticed that they both were posting more about crypto art and their involvement in it and that's what led me to investigate the space further. XCOPY is now one of the top selling artists, if not the very top at SuperRare. Since I've gotten involved, I've met probably close to 100 other artists now through the discussions groups, metaverse meetups, discord servers and twitter messages.

Do you get the sense that this is growing?

It is growing, there are more artists coming on board all the time and the developers of the dapps keep coming up with new ideas, features and integrations. Two years ago, the early artists were selling pieces for very low prices, under $100 and lately there have been digital crypto artworks that have sold for thousands of dollars.

How do you see the future of crypto art?

It seems like it's still in the really early stages. Most people don't really understand what cryptocurrency is all about and so crypto art is still largely unknown. But I do see it growing and gaining more mainstream acceptance all the time. I think in the future, the interfaces will be more user friendly and the backend will become a bit more transparent. I really like the idea of interoperable, ownable and tradable digital assets and people are coming up with new uses all the time.

Do you feel that the idea of 'owning' digital artwork is antithetical to the open idea of the internet?

I like this question.  When I started the hexeosis project back in 2013 on Tumblr, I was making and posting art "for free" as in, anyone could look at what I was making and enjoy it and download it, etc.... If I could live in a world where money somehow didn't matter, I would be completely ok with that format. I really enjoy making and sharing art with people. The social media platforms have monetized all of the free content that we all have been providing them. They sell ads, etc... but don't share with the creators. I can't pay rent with social media likes or buy food with retweets, so I see cryptoart as a good way for creators to have direct control of the monetization of their work. Since most creators and collectors are ok with the idea of sharing the work, it doesn't really interfere with the open internet concept.

Let me know if you have additional questions! This was fun to think about and try to explain from my point of view. A lot of people in the crypto art space have come from various backgrounds, a lot of them are coders and developers and tend to explain things in a very technical manner. I am approaching it as an artist and looking at the crypto art space as a way to earn money from my digital creations. My explanations above probably gloss over some of the technical aspects and I probably even summarize some things wrong, but it's an evolving space and I am learning all the time. Thanks!

[hopevalley]

Season 8, Episode 10: Old Love, New Love, Is This True Love

All right, so...like I said, work has picked up and my eyes feel like old marbles from staring at numbers (the woes of working in accounting I guess) so I want to get this written up and tossed into the nether before I lose steam and motivation to do it. The interesting thing about these little write-ups is that as the week goes on they just get harder and harder to write...

I do apologize in advance to those who like the long-winded write-ups. I’m just not up to it at the moment. Still feeling kind of bleh from the episode.

Let’s go back to an old format, shall we?

The Good

We might as well start out with the things about this episode that I enjoyed! 

Gossip Hour with the Men was one of the best openers they’ve had on the show in a while. It was genuinely funny without being meanspirited. Nobody looked like the bad guy. Everyone just calmly talked about it alike it was a normal thing to maybe call off the wedding. Bill calling out Carson for giving marriage advice was pretty funny, Mike was a delight. I don’t know what to say. I’d watch a whole episode of The Boys just hanging around spending time together.

--

Florence’s worry that she’s ugly was...not a terrible idea for a storyline, but the actress is too good-looking to pretend to be ugly (I saw her in this pretty yellow dress on Instagram a couple years ago and she was smashing)? Also, it’s not like Ned is a handsomely aged gentleman (like Henry lol) so it makes even less sense for the characters. I think they should have gone with Florence feeling she’s “plain” and that dressing up Super Nice makes her feel uncomfortable because she just doesn’t feel like Herself and worries maybe it’s projecting a false sense of Who She Is or something? I guess overall I still liked that an attempt was made to add some depth to Florence and her difficulties in choosing a dress/hairstyle, so...it goes here.

--

Ned asking Henry to be his best man was nice, too. I can forgive the shoddy pacing and weird placement of this request (like I do with almost everything in the show) but only because the scene was just...so incredibly wholesome. 

I like how Henry just casually is like, “Well maybe today’s just not the day.” I think it eased Ned’s mind just a little that he CAN back out if he really wants to.

I think it’s worth thinking about the fact that Ned and Henry would have always worked very closely, since the mercantile would have been a company store before the mine closed down... I like Henry and Ned as pals.

--

I’m glad the “investment” thing with Jesse and Clara’s savings was brought up in a way that...makes sense. And also, glad it wasn’t forgotten.

--

I really liked Molly and Florence in this episode. I’m a little sad Florence married Ned because I AM SORRY BUT I WANTED TO KEEP SHIPPING MOLLY AND FLORENCE TOGETHER UGHGHGHH

But their relationship is so good and maYBE Elizabeth will learn something from them.

Hey Elizabeth...you see that?

YOU SEE THAT?

Just saying.

And then later...

“You are the sister I never had, the mother I forever wanted, the friend I have always needed. From the depths of those dark and terrifying coal mines you’ve walked beside me, picking me up whenever I’ve stumbled along the way.”

AAAAAAAAA IT GOT ME.

--

I’m...really liking Fiona and Mike’s relationship, whatever it is. I kind of think they’re not headed toward anything romantic. Everyone thinks Mike is really into Fiona but at the end of the episode we realize he likes talking to her about business; it’s almost like they have this shared passion for numbers/ideas and he likes infodumping to her (and vice-versa).

I think they’re going to end up being “just friends” and Fiona will end up paired off with the man Elizabeth doesn’t choose. They hinted at Nathan briefly in this episode (with Allie’s hair), but who knows? I’m over trying to speculate on where the triangle is going at this point, but I actually like Fiona’s relationship with Mike so much that I’ll be disappointed if she fades into the background with Nathan or Lucas. Mike deserves more screentime. 

--

Ned and Florence sharing their fIRST KISS. My husband got emotional over this. And I admit, it was starting to get to me, too. I can’t NOT root for them. 

--

I said it before and I’ll say it again: I WOULD DIE FOR THE CANFIELDS.

--

The wedding was nice. I liked that Bill and Joseph officiated it together; it gives Joseph a li’l trial run of pastoring and finally Bill gets to use some of that power of his to officiate a wedding.

“Please, if you’d like” is such a Bill way to say that they may kiss LOL.

--

Also, I have to admit that I did enjoy Lucas calling Nathan out about Allie. She wouldn’t be caught in the middle if he’d leave Elizabeth alone AND HE IS RIGHT LMAO.

The last good thing: Elizabeth telling Nathan she doesn’t blame him for Jack’s death. Nice. Good. Thank you. He probably needed to hear that.

--

...THE BAD

Carson and Faith. UGH. UGHHHHHHHHHH. BREAK UP ALREADY I HATE YOU BOTH.

I appreciated that Carson had the ring ages ago, and I did like his conversation with Minnie—or more accurately, her advice to him. I felt like she was nudging him toward, “Remember why you became a surgeon in the first place.” If he became a surgeon to help people, then there’s no reason he can’t help people where he is. Sure, he might not be doing state of the art procedures but with Faith working alongside him, he can afford time to learn new things and go to doctor conventions or even take a specialized class now and then. No other doctor could get away for very long but he has that chance!

And he’ll arguably be doing more good in the middle of nowhere than in the city. All the doctors want to live in the city. Nobody wants to barely get paid for their time in the countryside.

We had a whole episode that made it clear that Faith and Carson don’t make a lot of money and do a lot of charity work. They also work for trade goods (mostly food). So it’s like...a pretty big difference in lifestyle? 

Half the reason I can’t get invested in these characters is because I really can’t stand Paul Greene. He just...annoys me on every single level imaginable. But he’s a decent actor and I can’t help but feel that his character was a massive waste of space for the past few seasons through no fault of the man himself. Imagine introducing a character like Carson and then leaving him to rot before you try to make him interesting with a romance plot that nobody asked for.

Yes, some people really like Faith and Carson, but as a whole I think the fandom didn’t buy into them as a ship due to the lack of chemistry.

It really is a shame. This episode didn’t do a thing to endear me to either character. Please, Carson. I am begging you to leave town.

--

This one particular line of dialogue almost enraged me.

WE KNOW WE KNOW WE KNOW WE KNOW WE CAN SEE THAT FOR OURSELVES. WHY DID THEY HAVE ROSEMARY SAY THIS LIKE IT’S AN EPISODE OF A CHILD’S TV SHOW?

--

Elizabeth.........

How could Katie have...looked up to her? She was never in her class? That was? Never part of anything? It was just something they threw in here to force Elizabeth to make 1% more sense in the role she’s in but IT STILL DOESN’T WORK.

I felt like I was back in Season 5 again with Lori and Elizabeth putting their nose in everyone’s business except it’s just Elizabeth!! The whole plot, which was boring and contrived anyway, should have gone to Molly, since she’s Florence’s best friend and another woman from town that Katie would have known as a child.

AND ALSO, MOLLY WOULD HAVE KNOWN KATIE’S MOTHER AND WOULD REMEMBER THE GRIEF THAT NED STRUGGLED WITH.

I know they wanted to make Elizabeth give advice so that she’d Realize that she needs to, I don’t know, make better choices or something, but it was too on the nose for me and I hated it.

GinithePooh on Reddit made a good comparison to Elizabeth in this episode by saying she reminded them of Clippy from Microsoft Word, always popping up and offering to help when nobody really needs or wants advice.

To honor their incredible idea, I opened Photoshop and created this gem, which I will also be posting separately so that people can reblog it if they wish to.

I also don’t think I need to say also filed under The Bad is the fact that Elizabeth didn’t even apologize for being awful to Rosemary and then gave her unsolicited advice to other people for two days straight. I can’t believe they wrote that? 

All I can say is that her apology to Rosemary, when it comes, better be good.

--

And I didn’t like this either:

I wish it had been followed up by literally anything: Nathan saying he’s sorry he didn’t tell her sooner or something to make the hand-holding actually be a little more innocent.

As it is, it just seems so deliberate? 

Maybe the next episode starts off right in this scene and we’ll get that? If so, this might actually end up being fine. I just don’t think it is if it doesn’t get a little more direct attention.

--

& THE UGLY

I debated on putting anything in here, because I’m not ready to talk about my feelings on this matter, at least not fully. But I’ve been pretty quiet all season so far, and...eh, why not just mention things in advance? What will it hurt?

Let me preface this section by saying I’m biased and I doubt hardly anyone on this site will agree with me, so feel free to just ignore this part if that’s the case.

There are two things that I really didn’t like in this episode.

I hate the slanting toward Bill/Molly.

I like Molly just fine but I don’t like her with Bill. I’m biased as all getout and also worried about the future/potential Season 9 with regards to this. I don’t want to see it. Like at all. Why, you ask? You should know why if you follow me. I’m super transparent.

It’s because I like AJ AND I WANT HER BACK LOL.

John Tinker rewatched the series so we know he wouldn’t have missed that hanging plot thread—especially since he didn’t forget any of the other things that were brought up this season! So why didn’t she appear this season? The love triangle absolutely needed to be a focus or it would have never ended, so that’s part of it, but I’m also pretty sure Josie Bissett wasn’t interested in doing any filming last year during Covid. My only “proof” is that Wedding March 6 wasn’t filmed last year even though it was scheduled to be filmed, but it makes sense. Last year was chaos.

THAT SAID, Jack Wagner posted on his Instagram the other day that they are actually filming Wedding March 6 now, so... I guess AJ’s re-appearance in Season 9 wouldn’t come as too much of a surprise if they wanted to write it.

You’d think I’d be hyped about that, and I kind of am? But it doesn’t come without its share of worries, too. We just had the worst love triangle in the history of love triangles and I really don’t want another one, especially if it makes any of the characters in question look stupid or mean.

I fully admit a well-written love triangle could be a LOT of fun for them* (low stakes because they’re not front and center characters), but I saw how Nathan was written so far this season and I really, REALLY do not want to see that happen to Molly, Bill, or AJ.

Anyway, not a fan of the Molly/Bill stuff. No chemistry. I don’t want it.

*I would totally write a fanfic like this lmao.

--

And finally...the part that everyone will hate me for:

I DO NOT WANT TO SEE ABIGAIL COME BACK. And I specifically do not want her to come back ‘cause I do not wanna see Henry/Abigail happen.

I fully recognize that a lot of you like it and ship the heck out of it, and that’s...good. I’m glad you enjoy it. I loathe it, though, and I worry that all these hints (more like...mentions) are leaning toward...something. Like, either they’re:

1) Sending Abigail off/tying up that loose end with Henry (since nothing was ever clarified either way), or

2) Warming up the audience to receive Abigail back on the show.

I’m pretty into the idea of one-sided Henry/Abigail. Hindsight is 20/20, regrets, that’s all some juicy stuff to give a character like Henry. Some things can’t ever be made right again. He had too direct of a connection to the death of her husband and son for me to ever want to see them together. Forgiveness? Yes. A careful but meaningful friendship? Yes. Romantic relationship? Uh...no thanks.

I liked the Abigail mentions at first because I felt like...the character still mattered (as she should) but I’m at a point where I feel like they’re trying really hard to steer the fandom’s view a certain way and not knowing where it’s going is extremely unsettling to me.

--

I’ll probably talk more about the things that bother me when the season ends, because I’m hoping to have a better idea of where things are going to be headed, but for now just...know that I feel very apprehensive.

And keep in mind that I primarily watch this show for Bill these days, since all my previous faves (AJ, Frank, the old Abigail, Dottie) have exited, stage left. I also always really liked seeing Henry. So as you can imagine, seeing plotlines I hate for the only two characters I’m invested in? Is making me consider dropping the series next year.

My husband told me I should hate-watch it, but I don’t know if my heart can take it. I’ve been following this series for so long...it just...kind of hurts to feel let down like this? 

But sometimes an ongoing series ends up going where you...didn’t want it to, and it becomes something that’s no longer right for you. I hope that doesn’t happen, but last night’s episode makes me feel like...it might be happening for real this time.

I guess if that holds true it’ll be back to fanfiction for me. Will that novelization I planned ages ago end up getting written? Will I write the best love triangle fanfic known to man? WHO KNOWS.

For now, we’ll all have to wait and see! Two more episodes left. I’m really curious to see how they resolve some of the open plots right now. :>

[discotreque]

Disco 3.08: The Sanctuary

This week IRL was a real mixed bag for me: a lot of messy and barely-manageable anxiety about my health, my day job, and uhhhh *gestures outside*—but also I’ve recently fallen in love (from a responsible social distance)—so it’s been equal parts re-writing professional emails to edit the panic attack out of my tone and gazing dreamily at Discord notifications with cartoon hearts in my eyes. It feels like my life is going to hell in the cutest, coziest handbasket—which is to say that Michael Burnham could not possibly feel like a more relatable character to me right now.

I continue to have issues with the writing at a strange medium-level—somewhere between micro, where the dialogue and characters are really good, and macro, where I’m digging the pace of the overall season, it almost feels like something went wrong in the assembly process, and the script ended up a little bit less than the sum of its perfectly good parts. Again.

But that’s such vague criticism as to be nearly meaningless, and it’s hardly the most interesting level to spend time on anyway. If I zoom out, the parallel season arcs of “getting used to the future” and “the mystery of the Burn” are hanging together wayyyyy better than the Red Angel saga did last year.

And if I zoom in? This episode was funny as shit, wtf.

The discourse re: Tilly these past couple of weeks has been bullshit, and I have a whole angry thing to say about it—but honestly, if you can’t appreciate Doug Jones and Mary Wiseman as a comedic duo, I’m not really mad: mostly I pity the lack of joy in your heart.

Everyone on this show is so funny. Doug’s prissy little delivery absolutely slaughters me (“Execute!...?”), Mary will make a face sometimes that has me screaming laughter into my hands, and I’ve gone on before—and will again—about Sonequa Martin-Green’s egregiously underrated comedy chops.

They were obviously casting for folks w/ jokes in the new season too: David Ajada is no slouch in the dry-delivery or the goofy-face department; his energy and chemistry with Sonequa are as suited to comedy as they are to romance (i.e. extremely 🥵). Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz we knew about, but Blu del Barrio—a certified tiny baby!!!—holds their own and lands every smartass whiz-kid one-liner just on the right side of “too precious to stand.” (I almost always at least chuckle, and never roll my eyes, and for a “teen genius” character that’s literally as good as it gets.) And living legend Michelle Yeoh is clearly having the time of her life, omfg.

Disco’s not funny-funny like Lower Decks, but they do funny-on-purpose better than any live-action Trek except maybe DS9. They have such a deep comedic bench they don’t even need Tig Notaro—they have her on just to flex, I presume.

(I don’t know if I’m predicting, per se, that Strange New Worlds—with Rebecca Romjin’s deadpan, Anson Mount’s twinkly eyes, and Ethan Peck’s twinkly-eyed deadpan—is going to have a tone somewhere between Disco S3 and LwD—but I mean... it kinda has to, right? And you know they kept the number for Rainn Wilson’s agent.)

***

At the start of this episode, I was “sure, why the fuck not” about First Officer Tilly; by the end, I was completely on board. And to everyone who’s still wringing their hands about “the real military” this (always from people who have no idea how actual militaries work, lol) and “Lt. Nilsson” that (she... already has a job on the ship? And no character traits besides “stoic” and “furrows brow”? Oh, I get it—she’s skinny and blonde)—y’all are kind of embarrassing me.

“Rank” and “position” (and “seniority” and “day-to-day duties”...) aren’t the same thing, in Star Trek or any IRL military. Yes, the permanent first officers of normal-duty Starfleet ships we’ve seen have usually been command-division officers with the rank of Commander—but not always. Star Trek: Discovery-A, if you will, is a unique show about a unique ship in a unique situation: “B-b-but that’s not how they do it on Star Trek!!!” isn’t a legitimate criticism, not of this—it’s the mournful cry of an entitled pissbaby who isn’t having their hand held all the way to the fireworks factory.

Here’s what an argument supported by the text of the first 37 episodes of Star Trek: Discovery actually looks like: Sylvia Tilly is nervous and lacks self-confidence, but once she gets over herself—which she can do pretty much instantly in a crisis, even when hilariously intoxicated—she is competent as hell. In lower-stakes situations, without intense pressure to focus her attention, she sometimes gets sidetracked by her own insecurities; at her best, she channels that anxious energy into ambition, drive, and being scrupulously organized.

The only person Tilly doesn’t always get along with is Stamets, and even Stamets’s husband thinks he’s an asshole. Since Season 1, we’ve seen her easily socializing with the rest of the crew, who seem to universally adore her. And she’s also happy to leave her social comfort zone at a moment’s notice: she aligned herself with Ash Tyler (miss you, Shazad!) when no one else would, and she instantly befriended Po even when Po was in Weird Feral Alien Princess mode and Tilly had salad in her hair. She doesn’t like confrontation, but she’s brave enough to initiate it anyway if she needs to, and she’s compassionate with other people’s feelings while still setting firm boundaries. (Her graceful dodge of Rhys’s tipsy kiss at the party in 1.07 lives rent-free in my head to this day.)

No, Tilly didn’t finish the Command Training Program—but she started it, which is almost certainly more command training than any of the lieutenants whose names we know, all of whom are Ops or Science personnel with, presumably, specialized non-command training of their own. The same could be assumed for any unseen ranking officers on this science ship with an entirely volunteer skeleton crew.

And seriously, about Nilsson: she’s my #3 background bae after Octopus Head and the lady on Pike’s Enterprise with the spiky red face, but her job is Spore Drive Ops, not personnel. If she’s running after Saru with a holo-clipboard, who’s going to look serious and push holo-buttons when there’s a Black Alert? *drops holo-mic* Drumhead!

***

The stuff on Kwejian, though. Ooof. Ol’ Two-Takes Frakes directed this one, and between the kinetic energy he always adds to the camera and the scintillating performances he evokes, things stayed moving so briskly I almost didn’t notice Book’s entire “homeworld” was a rental house outside Vancouver, a couple acres of adjacent woods, and like six or seven people.

It’s a hot mess in retrospect, but in the moment it gave us the intensity of Book and Kyheem trying to hurt each other’s feelings by poking at 15-year-old wounds, which as a sibling with complicated sibling relationships I found both funny and devastating—not to mention Frakes directing “shaky bridge” explosion falls at an obvious intensity of “10” on an outdoor location shoot. It falls apart at the slightest scrutiny, but I can’t lie, on first viewing I was totally along for the ride.

***

I’m dying to see where this Georgiou thing goes. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to assume she got Cronenberg’d a couple weeks ago, probably to get her under the thumb of this century’s Section 31, and that her arc is going to take Michelle Yeoh off this show in a way that sets up the S31 show. But also, I don’t care so much whether I’m right, I just want to watch Michelle Yeoh—and Sonequa Martin-Green, and also David Cronenberg tbh, and bring back Shazad Latif while you’re at it—get wherever they’re going.

It’s also a fun and interesting direction to take the comically-evil comic relief character and show that her performative moustache-twirling is partly habit and partly a transparent emotional defence against very real fear and vulnerability. We’re all products of our circumstances, and a radical enough change in circumstances can afford almost anyone at least the opportunity to change. I can’t say Emperor Georgiou would have been my first choice of protagonist for that storyline, but it’s not like Michelle Yeoh’s not going to fuckin’ crush it.

***

Miscellany:

So the Burn had an origin point, and now that point is broadcasting a signal that’s somehow both a haunting melody that everyone seems to know—but no one can remember learning—and a Federation distress signal. What the fuck, y’all. I have full-body goosebumps just typing that.

Saru workshopping his own captainly catchphrase with the aid of Tilly’s extreme sincerity and organizational skills is probably the funniest thing that’s ever happened on this show—followed closely by the uncomfortably lingering reaction shots when he’s trying them out on the bridge 😂 (And omg please give Rhys and Bryce the dumbass buddy-comedy C-plots they deserve next season, I beg you.)

I would do a little “prop watch” entry on those Kwejianian(?) bolt-throwing rifles, but I’d have to stop drooling over them first. “Curvy polished hardwood” seems to be New Trek shorthand for “extra sleek and futuristic” (cf. the bridge of the USS Titan in the LwD finale), and I have to say: I am fully into it.

Restating my prediction that we will not see Detmer and Owosekun get together this season, because we will find out that they’ve been together for ages. Everyone knew—Pike even knew!—it just never came up in front of the audience before. That would be one of the cutest ways to do it imho, and one of the funniest too, especially as a meta-joke about how much character development didn’t happen in the first two seasons. (That said, if we get to see their first kiss, I will be screaming with incoherent joy for days, so this is a real win-win for me.)

Speaking of cute: IRL spouses Mary Wiseman and Noah Averbach-Katz, both Julliard-trained actors (it’s where they met!), can’t quite hide their chemistry in the scenes between Tilly and Ryn. I loved seeing Tilly be a hardass when Ryn was rude to the captain, but that sparkle in her eyes didn’t quite match the context <3

And speaking of people who are VERY OBVIOUSLY IN LOVE: that last scene with Book and Michael, and his nervous little “yeah, I said it” eyebrow lift, and her irrepressible giggle as she’s walking away... it was almost too much. Especially right after the queer-family scenes with Stamets and Culber and Adira. My poor heart is going through a lot lately, and I guess I’m just glad Season 3’s emotional intensity is melting it with soft sweet scenes like that instead of kicking it down repeated flights of stairs like Season 1.

***

Next week: everyone stops caring about the Burn and starts trying to solve an even more important mystery—why is this (holographic) dude wearing an early-2360s uniform with an early-2370s combadge?

[enithinggoes]

Wanderer’s Refuge, chapter 5: A haven, found

The crew was finally reaching the original destination of their journey, non-specific as it was. They were finally approaching the sea.

After the close call near Sunhill, Lawrence told them it would probably be unwise to land too near to any towns, especially big ones, if they intended to stay more than just one day, the others all agreed, and so they looked for a beach hidden off the beaten path, but not too far so it would be possible to go get supplies on foot once in a while.

This led to a thin beach off a cliff face at the extreme west of the country. It was the early evening by the time they left the train and the girls were all excited to explore their new surroundings, this was the first time any of the three of them saw the sea, after all.

The symmetrical stars, shining as bright in the sky above as in the sea below them were a sight to behold. Lilith excitedly rode Floof into the sea, splashing around and trying to drink some water before quickly spitting it out after feeling the taste of salt water.

Ursa gently wheeled Agatha through the sand, taking her to the border where the foam of the waves barely reached her feet close to the sand, Agatha pulled Ursa close and timidly whispered a request, which Ursa answered by simply smiling and picking her girlfriend up in a princess carry and slowly walking into the sea, going deeper into the water until Agatha was able to start swimming with her arms, just floating upright on her own, though Ursa still held onto her in case anything happened.

The feeling of being able to move just with her own body and muscles was overwhelming, so much it almost made Agatha cry right then and there. She laughed out loud, a joyous, contagious laughter that infected Ursa and then Lilith, who came bounding over on Floof and started splashing the other two girls with water.

Agatha and then Ursa fired back, soaking the two heads of Floof and the bottom of Lilith’s dress, this started an all out water war, which rapidly escalated until Floof was using it’s huge paws to make big waves, Ursa was creating big jets of water using burst of steam and Agatha had somehow made a big water gun that used a metal piston. All of this use of magic would be considered extremely dangerous and frightening anywhere else, but here the group knew none of them would hurt the others.

Lawrence just sat on the sand and smiled contentedly. He soaked in the feeling of being entirely safe and unobserved, as he laid on his back and stared at the stars, he knew that this was freedom, real freedom, not being locked to a position or forced to keep running at all times, just being allowed to stay and breathe for a while, with time all to themselves.

This moment of tranquility was interrupted by the quiet sound of sandals in the sand, startling Lawrence for a second and making him sit up and turn as fast as he could.

In front of him stood a woman in a green jacket with a blue handkerchief around her neck and small, round black glasses on the bridge of her nose. She crouched down in front of the alarmed Lawrence and gave him a gentle wave. “Easy there, kid, I’m not a cop. Just wanted to know what brought you lot to this beach.”

“We… walked here, we’re journeying to the next town over.” Lawrence answered in a hurry, he hated telling a bad lie, it hurt his pride in his work, this is one of the things he’s supposed to be good at!

The woman rolled her eyes and adjusted her glasses. “Alright, maybe I wasn’t clear, I know what brought you here, It was the flying train,” she pointed to the Wanderer’s “what I really wanna know is why you’re here. This isn’t the most popular beach you know?”

“Well there’s not a lot a lot of places you can take a flying train these days.” Ok, she knew about the Wanderer’s, not very surprising, but if she didn’t seem hostile now she probably wasn’t too against magic, still, best to keep your guard up. “What are you doing here? Who even are you?”

“I live here, you can come by if you want” The woman gestured to the cliff behind her, looking closer Lawrence could see there was a cave in the rocks, “And I’m doctor Alexandra Keys, pleasure to meet you.”

Lawrence stood up, dusting off the sand from his suit and regaining a bit of his composure before shaking Alexandra’s hand. “Lawrence, and the pleasure is mine. Let me call the others over. Fellas! There’s someone you should meet!”

The rest of the Wanderer’s crew came over, approaching cautiously, this person could be a threat, and they’d been lax in hiding their abilities since they came here.

“These are Agatha Clarke, Ursa Martin and Lilith Hughes. Gang, this is Alexandra Keys, she seems fine with us and lives inside the cliff.”

“If any of you are injured, I’d be happy to help. Also, I’m very interested in those machines of yours.” Alexandra turned to Agatha.”I’ve been researching the applications of sorcery in daily life and it looks like you’ve really figured out how to use it to improve your daily life.”

“Yes! I’ve been learning a lot recently and I believe that sorcery can adapt to a person’s needs and wills, it “knew” my desire for mobility and evolved to accommodate me.” Agatha beamed as she spoke of what she knew.

“Fascinating, I’ve often wished for supernatural healing abilities of some kind, but those haven’t manifested.” Alexandra’s head hung low for just the smallest moment.

“What are your abilities, doctor? Have you been able to use them effectively in your daily life?” asked Agatha excited.

“Well I’ve gained some mobility too, and I can also use it as a sterile tool in my work.”

Ursa chimed in “speaking of which, how did you get down here, can you fly or something? Or are you just incredibly skilled at climbing those rocks?”

Alexandra gave Ursa a cheeky smile before raising her hand and answering “Yes I do climb... The stairs!” she snapped her finger dramatically and about 50 light blue constructs made of something that didn’t seem to be any known material appeared parallel, arranging themselves neatly into a staircase, they were perfectly horizontal just floating in the air, and seemed so thin they were almost entirely two dimensional.

“That’s so cool!” Said Lilith, less concerned with the mechanics of the sorcery than the spectacle.

“Very interesting, I’ve never heard of magic taking the form of matter that isn’t analogous to anything outside it, the closest parallel I can find at the moment is some form of blue glass,” commented Agatha.

“My ability is “command force”, I believe it relates to my academic background in allowing me to manipulate objects with minimal unwanted effects using non-conductive, sterile, mostly transparent tools that are very precise,” Hypothesized Alexandra.

“So, what do you do around here, lady? This isn’t exactly a hospitable place to live.” Ursa raised an eyebrow, narrowing her eyes just a little.

“Well, I’m sure you know the country doesn’t have the most positive outlook on sorcery or, well, doctors like me,” the woman gestured to her dark skin and long curly hair, “so I come out here to do my research and treat anyone who comes by. I think I’ve actually started to get a reputation around outlaws and runaways from the area, no questions, they just come in, cure what ails them and go.”

“Could we come live with you and help, big lady?” Lilith asked something the rest of the group had already thought, but felt unsure about saying to the doctor, who really was significantly taller than any of them.

“Sure! I’d love to have a few helping hands around, and I’m anxious to know what you kids can do.” Alexandra smiled warmly and gently rubbed Floof’s heads. The crew felt reassured, a part of them that most of them would like to hide still felt safer having a real adult looking out for them.

[modestmuses-a]

@thejester-hacker​ said: “1, 36, and 38!”

try honesty | accepting

What would prevent you from following someone?

//honestly, if you don’t have at least one rp reply on the first page of your blog, i am extremely unlikely to follow you.  i want to see if our styles are compatible, and i should not have to go 5+ pages back in your writing blog to find any examples of your writing.  i follow this rule myself and try to set up my queue in such a way where it won’t push my writing back too far in my blog so that people will always have at least one IC post on the first page of my blog.  for example, if i’m going on vacation, i set my queue to only post one post a day so i can leave it for a couple of days and still have the most recent IC post on page 1.

and speaking of incompatible styles, i’m very unlikely to follow if i see that you mostly do short < 100 word threads.  liking short threads is perfectly fine, of course!  i am not shaming anyone for writing short stuff bc i know people are busy and some people want to just chill and do rapid-fire short responses for their partners and not sit here and craft whole epics.  and that’s totally okay.  however, it means that you are not going to be the right partner FOR ME.  i tend to word vomit in my replies, and i get really bored of threads that are less than two paragraphs.  i like para and multipara, and i’m not interested in exchanging 1-3 sentences back and forth.  you can have your fun over there, and i will have my fun over here. lately, i’ve actually had problems with people who write nothing but short stuff trying to interact with me, and i’m like.  dude.  it’s not going to happen.  stop trying to make it happen.  your writing style is your own and it’s cool and everything, but it bores me to tears FKJDSKJDFK

also, while aesthetics don’t matter to me, having a legible/accessible theme DOES.  if your desktop theme has transparent posts on a patterned background, or low-contrast tiny text, or it turns your italics into cursive, or does some otherwise unreadable bullshit... not gonna follow you.  the other day, i passed up someone’s blog just bc i highlight everything i read on the computer and i didn’t like the way their theme highlighted stuff.  like highlighting on their desktop theme felt clunky for some reason?  and that may have been my imagination but anyway.  i was like no ❤

What’s one thing that other people seem to hate that doesn’t bother you?

//i’ve talked at length about reblog karma before, but i’m gonna do it again because fuck it.  but i really, really just do not understand the sentiment behind reblog karma.  back when i started in the rpc, if someone reblogged a meme from you, you just... were nice and sent them one instead and you didn’t sit there and bitch about it like a tiny baby.  i have very little sympathy for people who are going to sit here and complain that people just use them as a meme source and they have no interactions while NOT TRYING TO INTERACT WITH PEOPLE.  you know you could FIX your interaction problem if you just SENT PEOPLE THE MEMES THEY REBLOG FROM YOU.

everybody talks about how ~great~ reblog karma is, but it has not solved the interaction problem at all.  the only thing that it has done is make people go even further out of their way to avoid interacting with each other.

basically, you get out what you put in, and if you’re not gonna toughen up and reach out to people first, then you DON’T get to sit here and whine about no one sending YOU any memes.

i actually STILL follow my rule where i will send people memes if they reblog them from me, or at least i try my best if i’m not too busy with something else.  but instead of inviting me to come interact with them, people avoid me and reblog from the source instead.  i won’t know you want me in your inbox if you don’t ping my activity feed, especially since i work anywhere from 8-13 hours a day depending, and i cannot be looking at the dash all the time to see who reblogs what memes and when.

What advice would you give to someone new to rp?

//don’t give up and write what makes YOU happy!  i did not start this blog so that i could follow trends and write what other people wanted me to write.  i don’t have very popular muses, i don’t play the characters that people like, except for my league of legends muses.  and even then, i don’t even write my league of legends muses in the way that people want me to, haha!  the amount of times i’ve been ghosted for not shipping akali...!  i have never once picked up a muse just to match with one of my friends, i have always stuck with the muses that resonate with me.

and it can take a little bit to get a blog off the ground!  i have been running this blog for two years now, and i have worked hard to build up my following!  i once went to follow a new blog, and they were already posting about quitting when they had only been on tumblr for, like, a week.

and also... reach out to people!  and if those interactions fall through, who cares!  reach out to more people and start new ones!  i have had a lot of partners come and go over these two years, and a majority of the people i’m writing with now are not the people i was writing with in 2019.  and a majority of the people i’ll be writing with in 2024 probably won’t be the people i’m writing with today.

keep writing whatever you want and keep reaching out and forcing your niche muses down other people’s throats.  you will find people who are willing to write with you and stick with you, no matter what.  and be patient, as that might take a bit!  tumblr really isn’t as dreadful as a lot of people make it out to be.  most people just aren’t patient or tenacious enough to make it work for them.

[wiltedeyesandtwistedlies]

What are the inattentive symptoms of ADHD?

Before I answer, it’s important to acknowledge that not everyone experiences ADHD the same way. I came up with this list through hours of extensive research, but I still explained each one based on how I experience them personally, because I wanted it to be an honest and accurate resource.

Now, I experience every inattentive symptom of ADHD severely. As well as most hyperactive type symptoms, but not nearly as severely. Hence why my explanations are on the severe side. So if you don’t experience every one of these, or you don’t experience them exactly like this, that doesn’t mean you don’t have ADHD.

Most Commonly Known Symptoms:

Inattentive ADHD is pretty much the same thing as hyperactive ADHD but with less hyperactive tendencies. So technically these symptoms apply to both, but ADHD has a few more that won’t be listed here.

• Inability to focus on disinteresting or unengaging tasks even if you need or even want to – As if your brain physically won’t let you. Because that’s exactly what’s happening. There is no, “Just do it because you have to.”

For real. Imagine a video came where you’ve reached the end of the map and there’s that invisible barrier to keep you from going any farther. But all the other players are passing it just fine. They look at you like you’re crazy and can’t believe that you can’t get through. But it’s literally IMPOSSIBLE.

Now apply that to easy individual movements or tasks like plugging in your charger right next to you or washing a few bowls.

• Focusing WAY too much on this single thing whether you like it or not. It’s called “hyperfixating” and it’s both the most exhilarating experience in the world and the most soul crushing. You can watch/do nothing else, consume nothing else, think of nothing else. It’s exciting and invigorating. But as soon as there is no more material/info about it to devour, existence is gray and meaningless. The adrenaline rush and laser focus are like nothing else, but the crash is just as intense.

• Inability to divert attention to something different when you're already focused on something else. (More of a product of the two above, really)

• Inability to organize or maintain a neat system. It’s not that we don’t have a system (because we do, and if it’s altered in the most miniscule way we will know and we will be furious) but that our systems tend to be more about ease of access. It looks messy, but everything is just easily reachable instead of tucked away in drawers or hidden in organizer bins.

“Out of sight, out of mind.” As soon as we can’t see it, or we get used to it and it becomes a background visual (like background noise but for your eyes), it no longer exists. Until we see it again we have never seen it before either.

• Emotions are forceful and kinda scary. Lacking the ability to regulate emotions means violently strong feelings. They can sweep you away and leave you stranded in an uncomfortable predicament. Major highs and lows as well as strong grudges and emotionally based actions.

• Distractability: There’s this stereotype that all people with ADHD are hyper airheads who cut off mid sentence to shout random shit like “SQUIRREL!” whenever they see something remotely interesting. They’re super excited about it and HAVE to let everyone know, no matter what they were doing before. It’s kind of the “cutesie” version that the media portrays a lot. Most ADHDers don’t actually fit this stereotype.

However, stereotypes are often based on true characteristics, even if they have been twisted into a sick joke or a cruel portrayal.

NOTE: There is nothing wrong with this form of ADHD. It just sucks that if you don’t match this stereotype, no one really believes you have ADHD. Also that so many people use it to insult and bully people with ADHD, even if that isn’t how they display their symptoms.

Lesser Known Symptoms:

Basically if these are #relateable, you probably have ADHD.

• Unable to conceptualize time in any way. Will this take two minutes? Three hours? No one knows! You thought this would take a half hour at most and it’s taken three! How?? This was a five-minute task and you’ve just realized you zoned out. It felt like two seconds but it was two hours!

• There is only Now and Not Now. Again, it’s a time thing. The future always seems so far away that it's almost like it doesn't exist. "Time is a construct" is something I often say because I have no sense of time passing, having past, or will pass. People describe me as "living in the present.” But that’s only because I forget that there is a future or that time is moving. I just don't think about it at all and when I try to it's impossible to understand and it feels made up.

• Sensitive to any form of rejection, actual or perceived. A friend texts you back, but they don’t sound nearly as enthusiastic as usual. You immediately tear your message apart to try to find what upset them and how you can make it up to them. Because surely that’s what that nontypical period means? You want to curl up in a hole and never come out, never face the horrible thing you’ve done to a treasured friend. Intense fear and sorrow mingle into all consuming guilt. The kind that makes you wish you’d never met them, just so they wouldn’t have to be hurt by you now. All because they added a period.

Everyone with some form of an anxiety disorder will recognize this. But it’s also a very common ADHD experience. This is in part because anxiety is SUPER likely to be comorbid with ADHD. But we also have Rejection Sensative Dysphoria. Which basically means we’re ridiculously sensitive to the slightest possibility of the barest chance that we maybe might receive a sliver of perceived ambiguous rejection. To the point where we cut off good relationships for seemingly no reason because we’re too afraid to even speak to them again, much less explain our emotions that we know are irrational but can’t help. The guilt and regret are too agonizing, the fear to face them too much.

• Reading is AWFUL. We’ve already established that attention is not your friend. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to read blocks of boring text. The information could be good, it could be fun even. But if the format is too uniform and plain, it’s impossible to get past the first few sentences. You just keep rereading the same line over and over, realizing every time that you zoned out halfway across. It’s infuriating and very sad. It also makes studying an absolute nightmare.

Many people actually don’t have this experience. They hyperfocus on their reading or their schoolwork so it isn’t a problem. I was the same way until college and now I can’t even read a little recipe card without zoning out. But it’s a very common experience nevertheless so I listed it anyway.

• Ringing ears, hearing electricity. This is one I just heard about. I haven’t been able to actually research this one, but it’s interesting and every ADHDer I know has confirmed it so I’m adding it. ‘Cause I’ve had constant ringing since I was old enough to talk. And I’ve always been able to hear power lines, household appliances, wires inside the walls, all those varying vibrating hums and crackling pops. It’s one of the weird quirks that “run in the family.” Just like Tinnitus and all ADHD symptoms. Apparently, MANY people with ADHD have similar experiences.

• Negative stimming. Things that negatively stimulate your senses. After encountering a certain stim, you feel it physically. It causes a sensation that hurts, in a way. It shouldn’t, logically. But your body’s reaction is to pain. This includes foods you can’t eat because the texture is wrong. Clothing you can’t wear because you can easily breath but no you really can’t because the collar sits wrong against your throat. Sounds that make your spine stiffen or skin crawl. Bright lights or colors that don’t affect anyone else but make your head ache.

Stims and sensitivity can affect any and all senses. A certain smell, agitating fabrics, an unbelievably smooth stone, specific tastes and food textures, certain color combinations, particular sounds/pitches/volumes, et cetera.

• Positive stimming. The other side of the sensory coin. Things that are exceptionally pleasant to your senses/stimulate you positively. For example, the way light shines through a transparent bright blue gem. Watching the light catch and twist so fluidly when you move it takes your breath away. There’s a euphoric feeling to it, and you can’t look away. It’s too pleasing. It’s like a deep satisfaction you can physically feel throughout your whole body, emanating from deep within your chest. You never want to stop that feeling.

Personally, it feels like my chest is somehow much deeper than it actually is. And at the farthest, deepest part is where that satisfaction settles. Nothing else can ever reach that hidden, impossibly deep cavity. It’s so amazing, I never want it to stop. It can feel like that endless pit is starved, and the stim is the first sustenance it’s ever had so it never what’s to let it go.

• Forgetting supposedly unforgettable things. Like where the fuck I parked my car. Also what my car looks like. It’s blue right? It has a hatch. I accidently memorized the license plate (complicated story) but I can’t tell you what model it is?? Is it even in this parking lot? I’ve never parked anywhere else but my memory is obviously garbage so now I need to check every parking lot just in case.

End Note:

It’s important to know that ADHD has many symptoms that overlap with other nuerodivergencies such as autism or ASD. Executive dysfunction can be caused by a number of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Emotional regulation problems can look just like Bipolar disorder and vice versus.

My point is, every symptom could actually be something else. It’s really easy to be misdiagnosed because they all have such similar symptoms. I know someone who thought they had ADHD for years, but it was actually a mix of severe depression and anxiety that fucked with their working memory (as both depression and anxiety do). Someone else I know was diagnosed with manic depression and thought they might be bipolar, but it was undiagnosed ADD the whole time.

[corttana]

hello gamers @canidrook​ was interested in how i made this gifset so here’s a (hopefully not too long) tutorial under the cut :^)

this won’t cover how to make gifs, just the rest of the process, and i guess there’s also a couple of photoshop tips in here too okay let’s gooo

i started with the two gifs of chief, then both gifs went into their separate 540px panels with dark gray backgrounds (resized and put together in one gif for the purposes of this tutorial). i recommend sharpening the gifs at this (or any time after this) point because starting at 540px and scaling down will cause the gif to lose its sharpness. i did not do this myself because i was too lazy to correct my error lol

coloring came next, i used clipping masks to affect the coloring of only the gifs. honestly you probably won’t be using clipping masks a lot when making gifs, but for anyone interested and/or unaware, clipping masks are layers that alter and are visible only on the layer below it

for example, if i were to create adjustment layers without clipping masks, the canvas and layer tab would look like this

however, by clipping the adjustment layers to the layer directly below it, the coloring affects only the Gif group. you can create a clipping mask from any layer by right clicking the layer in the Layers tab and selecting “Create Clipping Mask”, or by holding down ALT and clicking the bottom border of the layer

here’s the canvas and Layers tab with clipping, where there are now little arrows inside the adjustment layers on the left to indicate that they are clipping masks

of course, there are other ways of achieving this same effect, but i find clipping masks to be faster. and again, not always applicable for making gifs, but i do use it often when painting or editing

here are the colored gifs

then i moved on to adding text. i used two fonts, Couture which is the bigger, chunkier font and Avenir LT Std (not actually the exact link where i downloaded it from because i can’t remember anymore, but i think it’s close enough) which is the smaller, skinnier font

the default settings of Couture weren’t wide enough for my liking, so i edited the vertical scaling through the Character tab (found in Window -> Character)

the left is 100% vertical scaling, the right is 70%. i kept this setting for Couture for the whole gifset

a lot of fonts (~*technically*~ they’re called typefaces if you wanna be TECHNICAL) have variations included within its family, e.g. italic, bold, light. some fonts have an outline variation as well, but since Couture does not, i had to do it manually. i won’t go over how i did it though because... it’s kind of a dumb method LMAO

honestly i would just find a font that already has this outline variation included, it’s way easier. the Swiss 721 typeface has this, which might be a default font already installed? also i would have used this Outer Sans font, but i found it after i posted this gifset rip

anyway these are the gifs with all the text included

there’s also a purple to pink gradient on top of the tiny text on the bottom of the first gif. to add gradients to text layers, right click on the layer in the Layers tab -> Blending Options -> Gradient Overlay

the last thing i’ll go over is that little animated soundwave (it’s not really a soundwave but Whatever) in the first gif, which is basically just overlayering a gif on top of one another. it’s actually stock footage that i cropped to get rid of the watermark lol shoutout iStock

1. is a screencap of the original video, 2. is the cropped portion that i used

i won’t go over how to overlay gifs, so here’s a tutorial on how to do it. no i did not specifically choose this link because it’s of destiel, but it does use the same method of gif-making as i do, which is the frame animation timeline. it’s just a thousand times funnier that it happened to be a destiel gif

at this point, the soundwave gif should be layered on top of the original gif, and the Layers tab should also be grouped similarly to this (as the above tutorial suggests)

it’s actually important that the Soundwave frames are grouped because it’s how i changed the group’s blending mode to screen, which will make the black background turn transparent. to change the blending mode, click the necessary group, navigate to the menu next to Opacity in the Layers tab, and switch to Screen

the black should now be transparent, and the gif will look like this

to make the waves purple, i added a gradient map and clipped it to the group, at which point the gif and Layers tab should look like this

there are some other shapes like the plus signs and the colored squares and stuff, but you don’t really need reference pictures for that. one last tip is to use ruler guides to make sure everything is lined up with each other. you can access the ruler with CONTROL + R, then dragging from the ruler out to the canvas, which should create a cyan line that runs infinitely. you can also snap objects to it to make lining up elements like shapes or text that much easier

and that’s it :^) save that bad boy and post it on tumblr dot com !

i apologize if this was confusing, too short, too long, or otherwise incomprehensible, so if anything was unclear/if there are any questions, you can always message me or send an ask! good luck!

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

Aesthetic Approach

I watch as my girlfriend Ella cuts out intricate patterns into folded over newspaper. Her long, curly, dark brown hair held back in a ponytail slides back and forth against her shoulder as her head nods along to the beat of the music we put on in the background. We act like it’s background music while we talk about almost nothing but music.

Like right now, we’re discussing exactly who we’re listening to.

“No one is questioning if Eddie Vedder is a beautiful man,” I say with an amused shake of my head. I stretch across the bed and pretend that I don’t have photographic evidence open in the Pinterest app on my phone.

Music is our constant. It’s smack in the middle of the overlapping Venn diagram of us, and if we wanted to be a little extra, we could create a web from that one theme, “music,” where we’re even further connected. Right now that main point from “music” that’s connecting us is the band Pearl Jam.

My favorite member is, ironically, not even in the band anymore – Jack Irons. He was their drummer from 1995-1998, but what he contributed to the band was, to me, more interesting than what anyone else in the band added, though that doesn’t count the more permanent, original members. I still say that Jack is my favorite.

Ella’s favorite is Jeff Ament. When she first told me that, I thought it was kind of funny because he’s such a stereotypical, athletic male, and I guess I figured she might align herself more with one of the less-stereotypically-masculine members…until I remembered that Jeff’s an artist.

Ella is actually a brilliant artist, able to create these bizarre multimedia sculptures with themes from seemingly unconnected objects. (Like right now she’s making something with cut-shaped newspaper, plastic water bottles, and necklace chains.) She’s also rather analytical, so I love to observe how her art is created from several different angles as she tries to take into account the different ways people see things. You might say her art is, therefore, easily accessible, but if you saw it, I’m not sure you would think so. I say that as her girlfriend – someone she trusts to survey her before, during, and after process  – and as someone who doesn’t know a thing about art. So, I’m being honest.

“Well, I don’t think people would think he’s a work of art the way I do, A,” she retorts, her tongue tucked between her lips as she snips away corners of paper.

I roll my eyes. “Everyone is a work of art if you look at them on a deeper level than just what’s on the surface.”

“Exactly!” she says as she drops a few tiny triangles of paper. I watch them flutter to the floor. “But not everyone does. I mean, I don’t think any of us are completely capable of considering everyone on a deeper level. But trying is a good start.”

I nod and look toward the window where the sunlight is dimming. The sky is a pastel shade of blue, and cloudless. The sunset won’t be as remarkable as it is when the sky is covered with a smattering of clouds. I only know that because the best sunsets I’ve seen with Ella have been on days where the sky was streaked with cirrus clouds.

“Okay,” I begin, thinking of a challenge for her suddenly. “What’s your favorite PJ album based on its album art?”

I watch as she opens her mouth quickly to reply, then closes it and begins to stare off. Her thinking face. Her deep thinking face. It’s a beautiful sight; her dark brown eyes stare off into space that always feels like a million miles away from me, and the dimple embedded into her brown cheek relaxes as her mouth straightens. It’s one of my favorite sights on the entire fucking planet. But I haven’t been able to tell her that. I’m afraid it’ll make her self-conscious and she’ll never want to think deeply around me again. What a loss that would be. Also, she’d probably call me gay, which I already know I am.

“All I can think is that everyone would say No Code or some shit just because it’s made up of a bunch of Polaroids.”

“Ouch!” I say, feigning hurt as I place my hand over my heart. No Code is my favorite Pearl Jam album. “What about Riot Act, though? A shitload of people have tattoos of the skeletons, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waves a dismissive hand, then pauses. “I don’t know if I’d call them posers or legit dedicated fans.”

I know she’s referring to the fact that the band got the most flack during their Riot Act tour because it was the first time, per “Bu$hleaguer,” that they’d been so transparently political. Probably only the most dedicated fans could stand them through that little show. But undoubtedly, the band’s been political since the very beginning, hence: posers.

“No, no,” I say quickly, moving on as I try to resist laughing. “It’s DEFINITELY Avocado.” Never mind that I asked her the question in the first place; I figure that when you have a good idea, it’s better to just blurt it out than risk forgetting it.

She shrugs, and I’m only slightly disappointed that she doesn’t laugh.

“Hey, at least it’s more interesting than The Beatles’ White Album.”

Oh, Ella. Making comparisons between Pearl Jam and The Beatles, like going from 0 to 100 in two seconds. That’s so like her.

“Still, why did they choose a fucking avocado? Why not, I don’t know, a clam? Or the stickman? Since it’s their self-titled album?”

“Because they’re Pearl Jam and they can do whatever the fuck they want,” she asserts. I relax. She’s got a good point.

“Okay… But really. Answer?”

Now she giggles. “What is…” she starts as though she’s on Jeopardy. This makes me laugh, even though it’s apparent she’s still thinking and most contestants on Jeopardy who look like that after ringing in don’t end up answering in enough time. I look away from her to the clock, and almost immediately my stomach growls like Pavlov’s dog. I wonder if it’s possible to be conditioned based on something you read.

“I’m going to say Yield,” she concludes after a minute. I hum in a mix of interest and approval and roll off the bed, determined to start cooking dinner.

“Be thinking of your answer why while I make dinner,” I say as I leave the room.

“Sure,” she says in a way I know she’s not thinking about it anymore. “Don’t add pepper to my fucking food!” she calls after me, and I roll my eyes and sigh, but make the mental note for the fiftieth time that I always manage to forget anyway.

As I walk into the kitchen, I put my Pearl Jam playlist on my phone on shuffle and hit the play button. I smile at the light guitar picking that indicates the beginning of “Present Tense.” Coincidentally, it’s the only song on No Code that Ella likes. That alone makes me think how much sense it does make to live in the present tense.

[adorabledonutunicorn]

New Eyes

CW: Some internalized homophobia

Warning: This is 15 pages on Google Docs so it’s long. This is a combination of poems I’ve written over the past year or so (if my timeline is correct) about realizing and processing through some of my past crushes. It took me til version 4 to shift my perspective and not be ashamed of how I felt about these people. It’s kind of depressing to think that it took me no less than 4 years to get rid of the shame surrounding my sexuality, and even still I have my days, but in this case it makes for a nice arc that comes to accept everything by the end. In case you’re interested here’s a brief background on each person. I’m gonna go off since it’s already the length of a chapter of a book lmao.

1. She is literally the reasons for all of this. She was someone who I’ve known since middle school because we were in the “accelerated math group” together. She was always popular, but something always struck me differently about her. During our sr year of high school I sent her a message on Facebook and we had a few conversations on there. We were the only girls in our math class by this time and tbh we had more conversations online than we ever did in-person...we even sat next to each other in class omfg.

2. This one is about a friend I met in college. She was pretty, full of joy, and has a nice smile so I’m a very simple person when it comes to being attracted to people lol. I forced myself to get over it quickly and I’m thankful we still talk sometimes despite never really hanging out outside of the Christian group we were in lol.

3. Damn, this one’s about the friend referenced in “To see her smile again”. She’s literally just too perfect and the day I realized I got butterflies when she walked into the room was the day I fully realized/accepted that okay there’s more to me than being straight. I still don’t know how or why she loved me so well.

4. This one is about a friend I met in college, literally on the first day I was there. We were both in the same orientation group and were both so awkward we somehow stuck around together all 4 years lmao. Idk if she’s just awkward around me only or everyone, but by the end I could feel some kind of unspoken tension between us, especially after we went to see a play for the theatre class we took that was about Stonewall lol. A part of me wanted to say something but another part of me thought that maybe she was in a different place in the same journey of discovering her sexuality. The funniest part is that on Valentine’s Day I think a year ago we DM’ed on Instagram for 5 hours str8 (gay).

5. Aah yes, just another one of my Twitter crushes. Jk the first Twitter crush oooh! It took me like a good 6 months to fully accept said crush and like another 6 months to fully get over it. Truly I wish her all the best and all the healing.

V1.0

Once upon a time, These eyes grazed the truth

They saw the surface They saw someone With so much purpose

A life with a heart Transcending barriers and A mind with the ability To achieve great things

A person so pure Hiding their true self within Yet solid and confident in Serving

It was this willingness Intelligence Freedom To get lost in music and dance Goodness Integrity That led me to believe You were one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen.

And this, Is the truth that these eyes Could see

Objectively, Honestly, Truthfully, As transparently as Any teacher Any observer Any friend Knew you to be.

Yet still, My mind seems To have forsaken me.

What I know now Is what I failed to admit then What I replay in my head Is what I am slowly learning To accept within

It brings me shame To let these emotions Finally come in

And it brings me pain, Because that's not how I want to remember How and why This was perhaps, the "best" end.

I want to remember The objective observations The person we all saw, Not just me

I want to remember Rightfully, The words you said to me

I want to remember How I tried to look inside you So deeply

And how you gracefully Eloquently Opened up to me.

All I hope Is that these memories mean At least half of what they do to you As they do to me.

Even if I Can now look in this mirror And see, Say these words to myself Breathe And let them be,

I will never forget What you meant To everyone You met.

But because I tried To look so deep Because I tried To love you as you were, As you are I ended up finding something Only these eyes now Could see.

I cannot say That I fell in love With a fantasy

Because love Is so vast and deep

But there was A new feeling inside of me An emotion I would hide Because I never wanted it to be Outside For anyone To see.

I look back at these moments That replay inside my mind From every bathroom anxious tear I cried Unknowingly Became the catalyst For this "why"

Why was I so anxious And afraid? But that won't explain Why did I even feel The way that I did?

I didn't want to I pushed it down So easily It took me almost 5 years To finally accept This story That lingered inside of me.

Once I see A heart, soul, human life To love, I jump in wholeheartedly

Because I guess That is just who I am, Who I was made to be.

But I didn't expect That I'd be here Confronting these Treacherous conflicting feelings That to the casual observer Make it seem like It was all for me, Self-motivated Self-intentioned Just to set my eyes on something I could not define At the time.

If not me If I can't believe it, I hope you know Remember And see That regardless of what I felt The words we never said Still give you more Than a thousand reasons To keep on breathing And to keep on being The beautiful person We all knew You'd grow to be.

V2.0

Imagine What this heart can do Imagine What this heart can feel What these eyes Can see inside Before the mind Redraws the lines.

Imagine God's truth Willfully entering the soul Revealing more

Than I could ever know But all that I feel Is beyond words.

Imagine That what is beyond words Is not beyond shame

In fact, Shame has now met these emotions And tainted this love, The love the Lord has given To this heart of mine

This love that was pure Of good intention Is now questioned, Because of the reality, My reality, The way my mind sees

I can only perceive What these eyes gaze upon And the brain processes, filters, Through its many recognized colors

I cannot see What was not meant for me And what is Beyond me.

With these eyes, Imperfect and perhaps blind, They let me look upon a face Labeling it within me as shame Instead of grace

I used to be able to see, What I thought so innocently, Now a darkened fiend Of what was made A friend

What has now surfaced Became lies What has harbored Is judgment Internally, And nocturnal I have become

This is merely Not what I wanted to see But rather A predator where it meets its prey Onlooking the target Ready to strip Its life away

But here, This life is dignity Of the soul across the room Once the prime and primitive Instincts and defense mechanisms activate, There is no more reason, No way That words will ever be able To explain.

This Feels lost Feels lonely Like no one but me Will understand clearly That I love Deeply Wholly I dare say beautifully Whether or not these feelings Are just my feelings Or beyond Only my reality.

Because reality Is subjective Different between both you and me But somehow still We may find common ground Where the images our minds outline Overlap and see the same

It is here, where more than I Can finally understand. It is here, Where words are no longer the enemy But the potion and antidote To this shame

For this shame Has met humility Vulnerability The courage To be me

Even if The whole world will never know I know the whole world Will never understand, I still stand With my heart tall Convicted with truth Rooted in the Lord's Truth That you are so beyond and Better than beautiful It fills me With awe.

V3.0

These new eyes that have seen Change unfolding Have also seen Love unraveling.

From all the sweetness And fondness Of pure untarnished memories, To what I don't know if I know How to see,

This is me Raw and untouched Naked and ashamed To have loved The friend who was Never meant For me.

Blessed was I To have found one So faithful and kind For once not out of reach But yet still Out of my league With all the riches Of intelligence to joy And of course A smile that was not For the faint of heart to see

I have loved before, For it was here I found love In the purest form First, foremost, Of friendship

It was here Where every good thing That resonated inside me Grew tenfold With this unknown blessing That I had fathomed to know Beyond blessings ever received.

Yet, Little did I know, It took courage To love this way. Selfless Never ill-intentioned I tried to be Until the end.

It was generously That she gave me And so kindly Yet humbly I tried to give back Never feeling like What I gave was enough, As she so gracefully Accepted everything Speaking to me without words It was more than enough.

There is not a single soul That I have met Who could ever be Her Anything like her, Who could also be Or will likely ever be My friend.

It was on the days We left, Where our presences departed Where I had no regrets

But it was then When I realized The sadness and grief Was yet the loss Of love, Including the Lord's Love.

It was she, Who lamentably taught me How butterflies felt Inside me All the way To fear and shame Of this very discovery

As well as The best hugs Any person may probably ever give me.

There is no one like her, And there is no one better for her Than her husband, And this I know, It is he who I know To be faithful, kind, Courageous, righteous, Steadfast and Unconditionally loving

But somehow, I ask the Holy Spirit Did you bring her Here To teach me About love, faithfulness, and joy? Did you bring her Here To show me light in the world Once more? Did you bring her here To have a friend for once, To give me courage to speak, To love a friend deeply? And did you bring her here So that I could love so deeply That I found this part of me?

I can still say To this day That I have No regrets About anything I Have written or said To this friend, The greatest gift, A catalyst For this journey, And the one who gives The best hugs With the sweetest smiles I’ll ever be blessed to receive.

V4.0

Once where A new era began, A seed was planted In the mere probability of our existence

We did not find each other We stumbled upon one another In a way where awkwardness Was the main contributor To our similarities

Yet you stayed And I of course, stayed Somehow we relished In a relieving familiarity

Perhaps, It brought us together For that reason.

But what we had And what we have Has grown from a seed,

Watered, waiting We are here Where I never thought we would be: Friends now far away, Yet still able to relate

But even then What does it mean? It may not mean much of anything.

For a fleeting feeling Lines the nerves of my being Extremities tense While the rest of me at peace

For this is the only awkwardness We have known to overcome, Time and time again, —I never know Where your thoughts go

There is so much to be learned So much we will never know But in each other, We have still grown.

Maybe this is the best feeling I would never have known If I were not able To express it freely

Maybe one day Our lives not our hearts Will collide Telling the same story Of who we were always meant to be.

V5.0

To Jade, A jewel of always Every color but green,

Your story is a wonderful epic, Tales of travels That never grow old

They write an unapologetic narrative Of every highest mountain top And every lowest valley

You have climbed as high Just as much as you Have fallen down and cried

And I, I so wished to see and to learn Of every broken piece to your life That you thought you needed to earn

But I, Even with good intentions Fell into a hole I could not climb

I embraced every part At the expense of my joy Only adding To my despair

But you taught me What strength and courage Could be

To say it is easy To wake up every day Without the one Who loved you most Is irreparable As much as he was irreplaceable

To say the scars it leaves behind Are mere wounds of the flesh to be tended to Would simply be a lie

But still I Fell in love with What it could look like To see you wake up every morning And choose life

For there is nothing more brave As the story you write And continue to write.

I still stand by And wish to look upon your life To see how far you've come

But at least I've passed beyond The emotions I feared would last forever

Back then I was confused Back then I was still learning And I thank you for helping me Find who I am

Even if I can never say I fell as deep for love's sake, If I ever find you Stumble upon Or see you I will find the reddest rose And gift it to you

For the honor and memory of your brother And for the honor and memory of you Because sometimes words Will never be enough To describe what will always Be blooming in you (And how you've allowed me To blossom too).

Conclusion / V1.5

Without what happened that night These essays would never have turned to poems

Without the words we never said I wouldn’t have these reasons why I write

You are still as beautiful as the day I met you And the day I left you when I accepted You will remain a memory, not a friend meant for forever Or even for a second

But still, I do not hesitate To smile and be embarrassed Knowing now all That I did not know then That brings clarity, closure, and an end.

I never loved you But I definitely liked you Enough to zone in on Every beat of your heart

Enough to make you see Who you were always made to be And how worthy you are To be you, To be everything you are.

And so here I remain, Content and at peace Knowing I am allowed To never-more be ashamed.

[pokenimagines]

An Imagine of Sonya and Leon dating and Reader is really sad about it because they have a huge crush on Leon and reader is really sad but it ends fluffy, please 😳��️?

Yes, hello, have no idea how to feel about this! Like I wrote it while very tired, and the ending seems rushed, but it was almost at the 2k word mark, and I was like, “Oh no!” Anyway, it’s pretty apparent how this will end since I’m a sucker for fluff and happy endings, but go ahead and read. I just…love these nerds? All of them? Can I marry everyone in SwSh because I love them? Time to get hitched, you guys! Now without further ado, it’s a story!

Misunderstandings: Leon x Reader x Sonia

It was absolutely crushing when the new champion of Galar realized that, with Leon’s newfound freedom, he decided to pursue a relationship with Sonia. Not only did the champion love Leon to pieces, but they also loved Sonia, making this the worst-case scenario for them. Both people they were interested in were dating one another. It would’ve been one thing if just one of them got into a relationship with someone else. Sure, it would’ve stung like no tomorrow, but at least they still had one love interest left. To think they’d get together…they should’ve seen it coming.

The champion looked down at their phone, seeing Hop had messaged them again about coming down to the lab to see him, and to update their Pokedex into the newest format. They had been avoiding going to town for a long time now and was really trying to explain to Hop that they were just too busy to go home. It wasn’t an entire lie, as he surely saw all of the news with them in it, magazines and whatnot as well as live interviews or mock battles. Even their battles with Raihan, the ones just for training, were sometimes broadcasted from Raihan’s phone.

Still, Hop was pretty persistent and wouldn’t take the ‘Why not just visit me?’ nonsense. Hop knew very well that the champion had a crush on his older brother and the professor he was apprenticing with. He knew the champion was purposefully avoiding the town, and he was getting sick of it. If the champion avoided the town forever, their friendship might fall apart a bit like Leon’s, and Sonia’s relationship did when Leon became champion.

Hop opted to just call, waiting a few moments before the familiar voice of the champion filtered in, “Hello Hop. Listen, I can’t come down this week. I have this thing with Nessa and training, and I just can’t afford the time right now.” The champion immediately began making excused, knowing full well of what Hop was going to be asking.

“Nice try, I called the other gym leaders to make sure they weren’t doing anything with you. Come down to Postwicke, visit your mom, or something. You can’t avoid home forever. Even Lee managed to visit when he was champion more often than you.” Hearing Leon’s name stung, and the champion flinched a bit before coughing into their fist.

“I’m uh…I’m getting sick.” The champion pretended, and Hop sighed loudly into the phone. The champion could hear voices in the background, one of them being that of Sonia. She was calling out to Hop for some reason and what Hop said next sent chills down the Champion’s spine.

“Ya Sonia, I’ll be there in a second. The ever so strong champion has apparently fallen victim to a cold and can’t handle life.” Hop shouted across the lab, and the champion just wanted to curl into a ball. There was shuffling as something was happening, and the champion was about to hang up, not wanting to deal with their best friend before a feminine voice picked up the phone.

“Are you okay? This is Sonia, by the way. Hop said you were sick? Need me to visit you?” Sonia began berating the champion with questions, and the champion blushed at her concern. One of the things they loved about her was the fact that she was really caring when it came to her friends. The champion bit their lip, trying to push back their feelings for her.

“I’m fine…I promise I am.” The champion said, and they could hear the cogs in Sonia’s head begin turning, and they decided they’d do whatever they could to assure her, “I’m at the tail end of it, so I’ll be fit as a fiddle probably by tomorrow or the next day, I swear it!” The champion said, and Sonia let out a sigh on the other end.

“Well, okay…do you think once you’re better, you’ll be able to visit then, or do I have to drag you out of your castle and make sure you’re actually alive.” Sonia said into the phone, and the champion knew there was no getting out of this one…perhaps.

“Listen because I’m sick I’m uh running behind on a lot of things. Once I’m all better, I’m sure I’ll have tons of things to uh catch u-up on and whatnot. So sorry, I can’t visit anytime soon…” The champion mentally high-fived themself for the quick response. Still, Sonia wasn’t convinced, and she was, oddly enough, more stubborn and persuasive than Hop was.

“Alright…so I’ll see you in two days either in Postwicke or Wyndon. You have until noon that day to decide who’s going where.” Sonia then clicked on them, making the champion let out the world’s loudest and most annoying groan. The small Charmander in their room just gave them an odd look before going back to taking their nap. The champion was going to actually die because of this woman.

After two days had passed, the Champion pulled into the sleepy town of Wedgehurst; a particularly smug Sonia and Hop were there to greet them, alongside an excited looking Leon. The champion didn’t make eye contact as they walked a bit closer to them, giving small greetings. Their grand plan was to excuse themself to go and visit their mother than disappear into the Slumbering Welds for the rest of their stay until they could go back to Wyndon.

“Not so fast, we haven’t seen you in months, and you’re going to dip out like that?” Sonia asked, grabbing the back of the champion’s hoodie as they tried making a hasty escape. They choked a bit before falling back and seeing an annoyed Sonia, glaring at them. They withered a bit under her glare, not knowing what to do as Leon put a hand on her shoulder, chuckling a bit.

“It’s alright, it was probably was a long journey here, and they might need some rest,” Leon assured her and seeing them interact just hurt the champion more as they looked away and caught Hop’s eyes. Perhaps if they tried to grab ahold of him and escape, this anguish would be a lot better.

“Don’t even think about it,” Hop said as soon as he noticed the look in the champion’s eyes. They blushed furiously at being so transparent, and Hop smirked, “I actually need to go and see professor Magnolia, so why don’t the three of you catch up?” Hop said with a devilish smirk.

“Good idea, Hop,” Leon said, enthusiastic as ever and utterly clueless to the inner turmoil of the new champion. They just wanted to run to their old bedroom and sob into a pillow or something. Being with the couple would only make things ten times worse for them.

“Excellent idea, actually.” Sonia sent him a wink, and he returned it before dashing off into who-knows-where. The three were left at the train station, and Sonia turned to the champion, giving them her soft smile and wanting to seemingly relax them now. The champion’s eyes darted to find an escape, and after not seeing one, decided to walk alongside them.

The trip to the lab was pretty silent, other than Leon and Sonia making small talk, and the champion just humming in agreement whenever the conversation needed a reply. The two knew that they weren’t really engaging in the discussion, and Sonia knew precisely why. She was smart and had noticed the champion’s feelings a long time ago. Probably before they even made it to Turffield. Leon had been a bit more dense about it, so she spelled it out to him once.

They finally arrived, and Sonia’s yamper happily jumped onto the leg of the champion, and they happily picked up the excited electric dog. At least the champion had one ally in this lab, even if he was good at occasionally electrocuting them. They all walked over to the small sitting area as Sonia put on some tea for them and sat down next to the champion.

“Anything interesting happening since becoming the champion? Meet anyone you’re interested in?” Sonia immediately asked, not skipping around with formalities, and the champion’s eyes bugged out a bit as they bit their lip nervously.

“No, to really. Just a lot of…work.” The champion tried to say, looking over at Leon and hoping to get some support. The champion hadn’t been lying that they had tons of work to do, constantly. They’d just occasionally volunteer for more whenever Hop was interested in having them come down to visit.

“Well, it is a lot of work…what do you do in your downtime?” Leon asked, leaning a bit against the table as the champion tried to look in every other direction but him. They soon opted to stare at the bookshelf, as that wouldn’t judge them at least.

“I uh, I prefer keeping myself busy whenever possible.” Less time for them to think about the two of them whenever they were working. Hell, the league probably thought they were a workaholic despite being a pretty lazy individual when they wanted to be.

Sonia sighed, rubbing her temples before she decided enough was enough, “Listen, I think we’ve tortured you enough for blatantly avoiding us.” Sonia began, and the champion opened their mouth to say something when she continued, “We both like you, okay. Leon and myself. As more than friends. We’ve been trying to get you here through Hop for months, but that stupid thick skull of yours has kept you away.” Sonia said, making everyone at the table blush.

“I thought we were going to word that way differently,” Leon said as he looked over at his girlfriend in shock. She just shrugged her shoulders, thinking that her way had even the best way. After all, she skipped to the point and wanted this awkward tension around the group to dissipate already. It was getting a bit annoying.

“You guys…what? You guys are going out together, though?” The champion asked, not understanding what the hell they were going on about? Was this some weird flex or something?

“Listen, it’s a polyamorous relationship deal. Do you want to go out with us? Like a huge couple? All three, together?” Sonia explained to them, and the champion took a moment. They had heard about polyamory, but they always assumed it was something that old couples did when the wife found some young guy, and he and the wife were together, but the husband just watched. Was their life a lie?

“So you want to be in a relationship with me? And him. And him and me? And him and you? Like love triangle, but it’s all requited love?” The champion said, pointing at everyone while referring to them. Leon found this amusing and actually laughed, getting hit in the chest by Sonia in the process.

“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re saying? Do you want to?” Leon asked, giving him that signature smirk that had them falling for him all over again. The champion opened their mouth, prepared to answer when the front door flung open, and there stood Hop.

“So is it done yet? Did they agree?” Hop asked, being far too impatient. He had been told to wait for a while for this discussion, but he was getting now too bored. If they hadn’t gotten to the good stuff yet, he was going to just get it out there for them. All three looked over at him before the champion began laughing. It felt like an entire universe was being lifted from their shoulders.

“Yes, I agree.” The champion said, looking between their two new lovers. Sonia and Leon’s face lit up at the thought, and the champion decided, at that moment, perhaps they’d make sure to visit town far more.

Request Info Here

[miasanfamilie]

DFB-President Keller Seeks Out Conflict -- Peace in the boxes, war against fan curves

Fritz Keller should have been the embodiment of change at the DFB. However, his strange appearance in “Sportstudio” damages his image as beacon of hope, who acts ignorantly in cases of racism and affronts active fans in a way out-of-touch with reality.

Magic lives inside every new beginning.  Especially when the past hurts.  Fritz Keller should have been the face of this new beginning at the DFB.  His predecessor Reinhard Grindel met his fall over a luxury watch and failed on all accounts: The case of Özil, the unquestioning loyalty to Joachim Löw, the missing explanation of the sold Sommermärchen, the growing chasm between amateurs and pros, the poisoned atmosphere between clubs, federations, and fans -- this heavy burden has rested on Keller’s shoulders since September 2019.

Hymns of praise accompanied his election to DFB-President. It was believable that this Keller was reasonably competent, upstanding, in short: “The right choice,” like Uli Hoeneß said.  However, for anyone who heard the beacon-of-hope Fritz Keller on Saturday in the “Current Sportstudio,” a few other attributes could spring to mind: out-of-touch with reality, inflated, ignorant, bigot. No trace of the magic. Only traces of the past.

Of course, moderator Katrin Müller-Hohenstein began the conversation with the excitement of the day: The match pauses in Sinsheim, which has been written about in this paper many times already, for example here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.  However, just for background, one more time the facts: In FC Bayern’s fan block, banners were hung with insults against Hoffenheim’s financier Dietmar Hopp.  Nothing less, but also nothing more.

Protection for one who does not need it

However, Keller stood strongly on the sides of the football-elite from Karl-Heinz Rummenigge to Michael Zorc: “I believe we have really arrived at the bottom.”  He spoke about continuing “only in solidarity” for the “cleanliness of the sport.” Once again: This was about an insult against Hopp.  Now about the slush fund for the Sommermärchen, not about the crooks at Fifa, not about the dead workers at the construction sites for the winter-world cup in Qatar.  For the DFB-President Keller, who leads more than seven million members, the line is crossed when a billionaire is insulted.  A man who can afford the best lawyers, and also does so.  For years, Hopp has buried fans with cases.

In order to discover who called their boss the son of a sex worker, TSG installed  directional microphones in the stadium.  Hopp doesn’t need any special protection.  Jordan Torunarigha could have used some, however he received a red card instead.  The Hertha-BSC pro player was the victim of racist insults.  But what would have happened, if he had left the pitch and his colleagues had followed?  When asked, Keller suddenly turned from being an engaged anti-racist (”The dummest form of hate”) to a petty bureaucrat: “There are rules, regulations, and processes that are made by Fifa.”  In other words: we’ve already lost in the bureaucracy, there’s unfortunately nothing that can be done, too bad.

Altogether, though, it was hard to shake the feeling that the DFB-President could have used a little bit of help dealing with the topic of racism: Keller claimed England is farther along in fighting racism, because I has simply been a problem there longer.  A slip of the tongue?  Probably not, he piled it on: It did not want to enter his thoughts how now, so many pears after the war, racism is becoming a problem in Germany again.  Again?

Keller is 62 years old.  Even when he was very busy being a vintner and gastronomer, wouldn’t Lichtenhagen mean something to him?  Solingen?  The NSU-murders?  He has worked in football since 1994.  He must have heard the U-Bahn song at least once in stadium.  Seen the flags for the Third Reich at away matches of the national team.  Right-wing hooligans at the World Cup in France.  Or does the president of the world’s biggest sporting federation want to pretend that racism in German stadiums is a relatively new phenomenon in the year 2020?  That would explain why the DFB is so often disgracing themselves on this topic.  That cannot be serious for Keller.

Racism?  Just not at this buffet...

The explanation for Keller’s strange views probably lies with the point-of-view: Whoever only saw the match from the TV or watches Bundesliga stadiums out of VIP-areas, probably only sees football simply as the superficial, simple, shiny product that advertisers from Coca Cola to SAP want to see so badly.  The deeply-rooted racism, which has continued to live on especially in the lower leagues and is now simply getting louder again, is so wonderfully easy to look past from the boxes.

Not only that: The things that happen in the fan curve, that bother the fans -- no one in this five-star buffet is interested.  If they protest, if they become loud or uncomfortable, then the functionaries put them in their place.  For Keller it sounded like this in “Sportstudio”: The clubs should “reconsider, who they give tickets to.”  At the end of the day, it’s about “anarchists who want to destroy the game.”  This says the man who smilingly shook Fifa-boss Gianni Infantino’s hand at the end of last week.  A meeting before the hearing about the purchased Sommermärchen.  What was spoken about there?  The DFB didn’t release any information about it, the new transparency doesn’t go that far.  When would it be released, Katrin Müller-Hohenstein wanted to know in “Sportstudio.”  Keller responded with a question: “How am I, a simple football functionary, supposed to get the truth?”  Well, if only the president of the DFB could do something... Maybe the DFB could, just as a suggestion, not act as “underhandedly” during the investigation into the Sommermärchen as the best-informed SZ-journalist Thomas Kistner claimed during the Fifa-corruption scandals.

What the fans think? Who cares

If you were to take the photo of the happy pair Keller and Infantino with you through the fan curves in the Bundesliga and ask who here is destroying the game, most people would rightfully point their finger towards the bald man.  And if Fritz Keller isn’t careful, then they’ll also point towards the DFB-president after that.

Keller’s hard stance in “Sportstudio” against the supposed “anarchists” in the fan curves in the league begs another question: Does he really not know what Hopp symbolizes?  Does he not know the proxy war that is being waged against the Hoffenheim boss?  That’s impossible: The discussion about exuberant commerce, the growing alienation of the critical groups of fans -- these cannot escape the notice of a DFB-leader.  So he must be intentionally ignoring this perspective.  The viewpoint of active fans is apparently completely moot to Keller.  And this despite that it happens to be exactly them who have led meaningful educational work with the initiatives against racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia.  And they have to lead the work, because the DFB left them alone long enough and looked away.  Until the curves sought out the wrong enemy.  One from the VIP-boxes.

You could do everything the way the DFB-president has.  But then you have to live with the accusation, that you are a boss for bosses.  Yesterday in “Sportstudio,” Keller was exactly that person as he explained to active fans what solution the DFB wants to pursue in the future: peace in the boxes, war against fan curves.

[thepencilnerd]

- 𝐁𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 -

bib·li·o·phile- noun; a person who has a great love reading and/or collecting books for their content, appearance, quality, format, etc.

➳ Pairing: Park Jimin x Reader

➳ Summary: The library was a place dedicated to knowledge, studying, and peace and quiet—so why was it that when Jimin came to pick up a book, it just so happened to be checked out by the same person each and every single time?

➳ Genre: AU! Fluff, barely a soulmate AU

➳ Word Count: 5.1k

a/n: first time making a moodboard! i hope it’s alright ^^

“So I should come back again next week?” Without giving a vocal response, the librarian simply nodded curtly. Sighing in defeat, Jimin ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

Today was the third time this month he had tried checking out one of his favorite books, but all his efforts were in vain. It had already been checked out the day before.

“And you can’t tell me the name of the person who checked out the only version you had available?” he pried desperately. Huffing at his insistent nature, the woman stapled the corner of a page a little too aggressively before looking up at him with a fiery glare.

“I told you, Jimin,” she whispered through clenched teeth, trying to hold back her temper. “I’m not allowed to give out any further information other than the date the book gets checked out and its scheduled due date. Any personal information and I’d lose my job.”

He could only whine and kick his legs in annoyance. “But, Ninnie! You’re supposed to be my cousin! Help me out!”

“Zip it!” she hushed. “I’m your cousin but I also have a job that I enjoy and respect, so unless you want me to confiscate your library card, do as I say and come back next week. I’ll text you as soon as I get it back and you can rent it then.”

To others, it was evident that she seemed to hate Jimin’s very existence, but outside of the work environment, they were as thick as thieves. Since childhood, holidays and family dinners always revolved around organizing seating arrangements so that Jimin and his favorite cousin were sat at least across from each other. All times when Jimin was sat next to any other cousin? Pure chaos ensued.

“Promise?” he pouted at his sibling of a cousin. Shaking her head. she gave him a thumbs up before waving him off to resume her paperwork. With a smile that spread ear to ear, Jimin’s disappointment faded into joy in an instant. It was times like these that he was grateful for his cheery ability to brush off negative occurrences like these. Waving goodbye to his older cousin, he returned back to the main view of the building he had grown fond of through the years at university. 

Throughout the years of attending university, Jimin was grateful to have access to his favorite place to enable his obsession with books. From near-ancient almanacs, dusty textbooks, worn out novels, and outdated newspapers, the campus library was a central hub of overflowing information. With rows upon rows of books that seemed to stretch for miles, it was a historical museum in and of itself. The essence of torn paper, feathering ink, ragged covers, and disorganized array of what had once been in alphabetical order made Jimin’s heart race in excitement each time he came to visit, and he even opted for weekend visits to the aged building rather than go out to parties with his friends.

In a shorter summary, reading composed the essence of Jimin’s very existence. Although his passion for literature and hunger for the discovery of new books was constantly growing, his patience began wearing thin ever since that fated Monday so many months ago.

Over the past few months of falling back into the habit of re-reading his favorite books, he never expected in a million years that every single one he’d want to read would always somehow be checked out by a mysterious benefactor. The Little Prince? Checked out last week. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Currently unavailable. Frankenstein? Scheduled to be returned next week. You’d think that with an inventory nearly the size of a national library, there’d be at least two copies in stock—unfortunately, the odds were never in Jimin’s favor.

Sure, he could always go down to the bookstore two blocks down from his flat or to the bookstore Downtown, but it wasn’t just the book he was after; it was the environment. The background hum of hushed voices, the light rustling of pages from nearby readers, and right down the faint scent of aged wood and antique paper pages that laced the air, everything about the atmosphere was all-too inviting for to Jimin to resist.

As two books turned into five and five turned into eleven, the former excitement of re-reading his old faithful works of literature had slowly grown into anticipation of whether or not they’d actually be on the shelves. Each time he left the library after hearing the repeated melody of, “Come back next week when the book gets returned,” a strange feeling began consuming him. At first, it seemed like a coincidence.

To be fair, most of the books he was interested in checking out were fairly popular, so it’d make sense that Alice In Wonderland was unavailable. However, in his mind, it all seemed too incidental. Since then, a theory began to develop in the back of his mind, and the chances of it being true were almost little to none, but that didn’t stop him from pondering over it.

Jogging up the creaky stairs to the second floor, Jimin was determined to find another book to keep him occupied, at least until he got his hands on The Shining next week.

There were a handful of possible answers to the dilemma. One revolved around the plausible theory that since his favorite books were iconic pieces of literature, it only made sense that they would be rented out. The second involved around the much less plausible theory that Jimin had an equally book-obsessed stalker who was hell-bent on making his enjoyable weekends at the library a living hell—but as stated earlier, that was much less plausible.

After a couple minutes of carefully walking past tables of stone-faced and deadly silent students, Jimin found himself in a familiar aisle; the historical fiction section. Tracing his fingers over the edges of the neatly aligned book spines, he settled his fingertips on another novel he held near and dear to his heart; The Great Gatsby, by the one and only F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Letting out a sigh of relief that it was on hand, he slid it out of the shelf and clutched it close to his chest, smiling sweetly at the satisfying feeling of the hardcover pressing assuringly against his chest. Guarding it close, he turned a corner to a hideaway he had made for himself as a regular here. The secluded area was nothing more than a cozy hidden spot that virtually no one knew about. Except for Jimin, of course.

The reason it was rarely occupied by anyone was due to the fact it was the only corner of the floor that didn’t have a specifically organized genre shelf or pre-set-up seating area. All that decorated the remote nook were a couple plush comforters and detached seat cushions, courtesy of Jimin’s cousin. With hundreds of available seats and paired wooden tables, no one really paid attention to the solitary corner of the library, and Jimin didn’t want it any other way.

Settling himself on the cushion, he stretched out his legs and pulled a pillow close to his side and relaxed into the plush texture. Before he began reading, he had formed an almost ritualistic habit of admiring the antique condition of the texts. Trailing his fingertips over the now-flat metallic engravings and skimming the frayed edges of the pages, a warm grin spread to the edges of his lips.

He could never explain the feeling of what it was like to have a book in his hands. It was daunting to him how ink could paint such a magnificent picture. The endless combinations that words and thoughts could compose when paired together and the possibilities that presented themselves in the form of bound paper?

Indescribable.

When he placed the book onto his lap, it opened itself to a random page. At least, it appeared that way. Embedded in the block of the page was a laminated red maple leaf. Eyeing it carefully, Jimin furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

‘It seems too valuable for someone to just forget and leave it here...’ he thought.

Grasping the delicate film in between his fingers, he couldn’t help but observe and admire the details of the immaculately intact leaf. The main stem of the leaf was smoothed out, probably due to the period of time it was kept in the plastic encasing, and the blades of each extended leaf remained crisp like a freshly fallen flower petal. Examining it further, he noticed that the veins were not only near-transparent and paper thin, but they that were also outlined and handpainted a deep gold color.

Another heartfelt smile began to form on his face at the beauty of what would normally be considered a seemingly insignificant bookmark. Scanning his eyes at the spot the bookmark was placed in, he let out a huff of surprise at the line he had known by heart.

“I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”

An iconic quote from page 57, the words made old memories arise from when he first came across the book. Months went by as he tried to analyze and dissect the quote, but it wasn’t until his first crush came along and made him understand the true meaning of the words themselves. Reading over the words once more, he directed his gaze back to the red maple leaf in his hand.

‘You’re quite the peculiar thing, aren’t you?’ he couldn’t help but speculate.

Smiling to himself once more, he tucked the bookmark safely inside his wallet, making sure to mind the delicate edges of the blades. Jimin rose from his cozy spot and almost tumbled down the stairs in a hurry, unable to contain the excitement that began brewing at the premeditated lazy Sunday he’d have all to himself. 

The three-day weekend passed by in a blur of spilled coffee, procrastinated study guides, and feeble attempts at being social. The great thing about having a library card, however, was the fact that Jimin’s 675 word-per-minute reading skills never went to waste.

Skipping to the front desk, he earned a few confused glares from the students sat at the tables around him. No one except Jimin could be in such a good mood on a Monday.

“Any updates, Noonie?” he grinned brightly, eyes forming into half moons when he flashed his pearly white smile. Standing on his toes, he raised his eyebrows in an attempt to peep at his cousin’s workspace, hopeful that at least one of the books he tried checking out last week was returned.

Flicking him on the forehead and muttering something that sounded like a vague, “Calm down,” she opened one of the creaky wooden drawers and stood up to hand him a black hardcover book. Before Jimin could jump around like a giddy preschool child, she pressed her lips into a thin line and widened her eyes at him; a silent warning to not do exactly what he was about to do. 

Scrunching his lips sheepishly to hold back the string of thanks that threatened to spill, he swiftly reached over the desk and gave her a tight hug. 

“Let go of me if you want to live another day to read,” she whispered through clenched teeth. Her tone was tense, but Jimin knew better than anyone how it was as harmless as when two children were arguing over the last cookie in the cookie jar. 

“Thank you, Noonie,” he beamed gleefully. With the book held tightly in hand, he quickly tread up the stairs to his usual hideout. Focusing on the detailed pattern on the cover, his feet quickly carried him to the hidden corner he knew like the back of his hand.

As he exhaled at the familiarity of the serene corner once again, his body melted into the pillowy cushions. Opening the book to the first page, the edges of his lips lifted into a trace of a smile as his eyes grazed the italicized title. 

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Just as his mind was about to note how it was another one of his favorites, he realized that there really was no such thing as a “bad” book—just ones that didn’t particularly suit people’s tastes at the time they read them.  

In a matter of minutes, he was already done with the beginning introductory chapters. Words translated into images that whizzed past his mind faster than a vintage film roll, and the lines of ink were slowly beginning to envelop his mind in a world of vivid imagination. 

Turning onto the next page, his intense gaze wasn’t met by black printed font, but rather by a bookmark. Not just any bookmark—the exact same style laminated maple leaf he saw last week. The only difference this time was that the encased leaf was bright yellow and a bit smaller. His mouth parted in awe. 

His eyes refused to further down the page. Once is an accident, but twice makes it a coincidence—right? 

“Life, too, is senseless unless you know who you are, what you want, and which way the wind blows.”

Swaying to the logical side of his brain, Jimin considered the realistic possibilities. In his mind, this bookmark seemed too intricate to be a mass-produced product from Barnes and Noble, but it also seemed entirely too cliché for it to belong to the exact same person from last week. Book cult signature insignia? A silent protest against the greatest minds in literature? Or maybe it was just another bookworm who enjoyed tagging the pages with the best quotes in them for future reference. 

Hundreds of people probably read this edition before he did. Within those hundreds of people, it just so might have been possible that the same person who checked out The Great Gatsby also enjoyed a few Ellen Raskin works as well. Who was he to judge?

Now it was time for the illogical side of Jimin’s brain to kick in. In the simplest of terms, it mimicked that of a cheesy romantic movie trope that got tossed about two minutes into the plot meeting. Was there some kind of “maple leaf bookmark month” holiday he wasn’t aware of? Who had the time or patience to laminate anything nowadays anyway? Did he have a stalker? 

He let out an audible cough to hide a snort. The only person that would ever be interested in stalking a hermit such as Jimin would be people sentenced to. They’d probably die of boredom within the first few hours.

Pulling the encased leaf from it’s wedged position, his stare tried to search for any clues; initials, writing, markings, or even fingerprints in an effort to try and see if his inner Sherlock would be of any use to him. As if he actually expected anything to present itself, the results were nonexistent. 

He snapped the book shut and exhaled through his nose. Why was he thinking so much about it? So what if someone else had the same tastes as him? What difference did it make if their favorite quotes from their favorite books mirrored that of his? Wagging his head back and forth rapidly to snap himself out of his daze, Jimin reluctantly decided to call it an early day. 

There are two types of people in the world; thinkers and feelers, talkers and doers, skeptics and believers, and those who don’t deem any of the above to be of any importance in any given situation regarding life. Ironically, as hard as Jimin tried to make himself out to be a hardheaded stone-cold logical analyst, it was clear to anyone that he was, in fact, the exact opposite. 

The book thief predicament continued on for weeks and didn’t show any signs of stopping or slowing down. Page by page and book after book, the sight of a single plastic-enveloped maple leaf became an everyday sight. At this point, the longer he denied the occurrence, the fear of going genuinely insane began to grow. Often times, he found himself sitting in his once relaxing spot questioning his own sanity. Was he just imagining the stupid thing? 

Distracted by his own thoughts, Jimin didn’t bother keeping his eyes focused on where he was walking. Apparently, the oncoming passerby didn’t either. 

Contrary to being conditioned into forming a habit of whispering in the building, Jimin gasped out loud when his forehead came into contact with a hooded figure, causing the two to collapse onto their knees from the impact. Emitting a muted groan, Jimin looked up with a scrunched expression as he rubbed his temple and attempted to form words. Rather than seeing a mirror image of someone also rubbing their forehead, the stranger was kneeled in child’s pose, presumably in great pain. How fast were the two of them walking?

“I’m sorry!” he apologized while holding back a pained whimper. “Are you alright?” Unable to see the person’s face from the angle and the fact that their hoodie was incredibly oversized, Jimin started to worry when they didn’t respond. Reaching down with one hand, the figure peeked up ever-so-slightly and immediately recoiled in—fear? It looked as if they recognized him instantly, but Jimin hadn’t even gotten a visible view of their face.

Standing up with their head tucked down, the figure apologized wordlessly by ducking their head, grabbing the book they dropped, and ran off, disappearing almost as quickly as they had appeared.

Left in a state of shock, pain, utter confusion and slight offense, his eyebrows furrowed. What was their problem? Trying to brush it off, he couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit annoyed that they didn’t even apologize or ask if he was alright, but it was Monday after all. Ushering himself to forget the rude occurrence, Jimin stood up with one hand still pressed on his forehead and the other holding his book—the only thing keeping him sane today—and continued his way to his quiet spot.  

“Stop frowning; you’re gonna get wrinkles,” Noonie reminded for the third time today. Pressing a finger to the purple spot on his temple, Jimin growled at her. The only other sound besides the shuffling of papers in the empty space was the occasional scold Jimin received from his cousin and the gentle whirring of the computer fan.  

It was a mellow Saturday and the library was closed for the weekend. Jimin, having nothing better to do on a Saturday, decided it was a good idea to invite himself over to his cousin’s place of work to help her sort through some files. She was also aboard the “solitary social life yacht,” making the two of them wonder if introversion ran in their family.  

Grumbling under his breath, his cousin frowned. “Is something going on with you these days?” Her tone switched from badgering aunt to caring sibling like the flip a light switch. Jimin was acting weird. 

Jimin pressed his lips together, mindlessly repeating the action of tucking another fill-out form into the cover of a textbook. “I’m fine.”

Prying the book from his hands and slamming her hand on the cover, the action forced him to look up from his robotic state and form a bewildered face. 

“You’re acting like you just lost the ability to read for the rest of your life,” she phrased. “Why have you been so miserable for the past few weeks? Did someone break up with you? Concussion from the bruise you got two days ago? Identity crisis? Who do I need to beat up?” 

“Noonie!” he whined, burying his face into his hands. The last thing he needed was for his cousin to assume he was reasonably upset, let alone that he had a girlfriend. The word itself made goosebumps prickle his skin. 

“I’m just—it’s—” he stuttered. “It’s just this—stupid thing.” Sighing at how pathetic he sounded in his own head, Jimin groaned in sheer frustration. The next time he saw a leaf, he’d make sure the ending result would involve it being crushed under his feet or torn into shreds by his hands.  

“I’m a librarian, not a mind reader,” she sighed. “Help me out here?” 

“It’s these!” Bursting into a fit of restrained emotions, he gestured to the mountains of books around him. “These things. Every single time I come here to try and relax with the books I love, all I end up is feeling like I have some sort of stalker slash parallel universe clone who reads the exact same books as me and marks the same quotes and has a weird fetish for maple leaf bookmarks. I mean, they could’ve used a feather or a post-it note, but no. They had to—”

“Maple leaf?” her ears perked up at the words, halting his avalanche of words momentarily. “Are you—”

Waving his hand to take a breath of air before continuing his rant, he shook his head rapidly. “I know, I know, it’s dumb, right? Who makes their own bookmarks and then leaves them in library books? More specifically, just to mark a good quote?”

“But—” she pointed her finger and held her hand up as she tried to speak, but was cut off by Jimin each time, clearly in need of a venting session.  “Why am I even obsessing over it?” he chuckled in disbelief as his hand slapped his own forehead. If his eyebrows rose any higher, they’d be about two centimeters from flying off of his face. “Hundreds, no—thousands, of people read books here. People check out the same book all the time. It just so happens to be the same stupid bookmark in the same stupid book with the same stupid quote—”

“Park Jimin!” she snapped. 

Overwhelmed by the flurry of word vomit that continued to spill from his lips, he was too distracted to notice the ring of the bell that sounded from the door behind him. 

“I think I’m going insane...” he deadpanned, resting the side of his face on the desk and staring blankly at the rows of books that seemed to mock him. 

“Noelle!” a voice greeted. “I thought you weren’t going to be in today?” 

“Had nothing better to do,” Noonie laughed. “What are you doing here?”

Huffing to himself, Jimin stayed frozen there, minding his own business and not listening to their casual banter. So Noonie did have friends...

“I needed to return a book,” the unfamiliar voice giggled. Cutely, might he add. Drifting off into a bored trance, Jimin earned himself a slap on the back of the head from his cousin.

“Don’t be rude. Introduce yourself,” she whispered through her smile, widening her eyes in warning as usual. 

Lifting his head from the desk, Jimin directed his stare behind him as a hooded figure came to view. A sweet smile crossed his features like second-nature as he waved to the stranger. Opening his mouth to greet them, his breath hitched in his throat when his gaze met yours. More specifically, his eyes strayed to the blooming bruise on the mirror side to his. 

“Y/N, this is my dork of a cousin, Jimin. Jimin, Y/N.” Introducing them to each other, the two reached out awkwardly and shook hands. Jimin’s mouth was still parted as he attempted to form at least a greeting.

“Hi—hello,” he finally managed to make out.

A nervous grin crept onto your face when you noticed he was still holding onto your hand. Retreating sheepishly, Jimin’s cheeks flushed a bright pink color. “Hi,” you murmured.

Noonie’s eyes bounced back and forth between you and Jimin. “Do you two know each other?” she asked, raising an eyebrow questioningly.

The two of you were in such a daze, you forgot she was also in the room. Snapping both of your heads to her, Noonie’s hands flew to her jaw-dropped mouth when she too noticed the matching bruises.  

“Huh,” she chuckled. “I guess this is where I bid the bibliomaniac and bibliophile goodbye.” Getting up from her seat, Noonie shot the pair a teasing wink before running off to the storage room in the back. With Noonie gone, the socially inept bookworms were left to their own devices, silent and struggling to find the courage to speak first.

A few seconds passed by like minutes, and the tension only seemed to grow; an unavoidable outcome, given the current circumstance. You were the book thief he’d been chasing for the past three months? Noticing Jimin’s lingering gaze that trailed higher than your eyes, your hand instinctively shot up to the dark purple spot on your forehead in embarrassment. 

“Pleasure to finally meet you,” you mumbled softly, eyes glued at the floor for the fear that he’d see your red cheeks through your shielding hands. 

Blinking a couple times to make sure that this was real life, Jimin cleared his throat. What if this was all just one big dream? 

“So you’re the book thief,” he chuckled half-heartedly, still in shock that he had finally found you. 

Raising your eyebrows, you stood frozen like a deer in headlights before remembering that you actually had to breathe. “Oh—yeah. That...” You rubbed the back of your neck as your nerves began to creep up on you. “And you must be the book hoarder?” 

Pursing his lips to hold back a childish snort, Jimin nodded. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one that made up a nickname for you. More seconds of awkward silence followed, making the two of you burst into laughter at your similar nature. 

“I’m sorry,” you choked into nervous coughs. “I’m not good at this whole—socializing thing.” Jimin could’ve sworn his heart hiccuped at your confession. Were you reading his mind? 

“No, no!” he assured, waving his frantically in rebuttal to comfort your flustered state. “Don’t worry. It’s fine. I’m awful at it.” Flashing a bright smile at his crescent-shaped eyes, his face seemed to glow like the moon when he laughed. 

“God,” you facepalmed, still giggling and blushing at how embarrassing this entire meeting was. “Where should we start?” 

Biting his lip while grinning in thought, Jimin felt his pulse race as a newfound confidence revealed itself.

“Maybe we can talk about your obsession with laminated bookmarks?” Giggling softly, you broke into another smile. How could you resist a face like that? Nodding in submission at his undeniable soft nature, you came up with a  split second decision that might aid in diffusing the awkward tension that still lingered. 

“Do you want to go upstairs?” you offered shyly, the blushing warmth of your racing pulse still evident on the center of your face. 

Holding back another giddy smile, Jimin nodded eagerly, allowing the two of you to walk side by side up the stairs you knew all too well. 

Turning right at the anthropology and history text shelf, the narrow aisle led you and Jimin to the hidden corner you loved. 

“You know where this is?” Jimin gawked. His face was that of pure astonishment, but he spoke with a pout in his voice, probably disappointed that another soul knew of the whereabouts of the ‘secret garden’ that was hidden in the old building. “I thought this was a super secret hideout...” 

Breaking into a chuckle at his stupefied look, you nodded proudly. Sitting down and patting the cushion beside you, he sat down carefully. “Who do you think added the extra pillows?” 

Opening and closing his mouth a couple times, you took the chance to lift the corner of the fluffy blanket and reveal a book the size of an archaeological manuscript. Concealed by the bulk of the blanket and positioning of the cushions, it wasn’t a book at all, but rather a hollowed out encyclopedia with a hidden compartment. In said compartment lied a box of Pocky sticks, a packet of Sour Patch Kids, gummy bears, and wipes. Nevertheless, you were a responsible library snacker and Noonie didn’t allow you up here without good reason. 

Jimin’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “How did—when did you— ” he stuttered. “How? What? I’m so confused, are you MacGyver’s second life reincarnation or something?” 

You burst into a giggly fit of laughter and were on the verge of getting a stomachache. He was cute when he was speechless. “I think I’m the only other person who knows this library as well as you do. I’m here all the time.” Tearing open a packet of Pocky, you popped a chocolate-covered pretzel stick into his agape mouth and smiled at his reaction. Just like a child, he began chewing mindlessly, unable to resist the chocolatey treat. “And I was here yesterday.”

“Let me get this straight,” he said with food still in his mouth. “You were coming downstairs after hanging out here, and you ran away from me after that collision because you knew who I was?” 

Hiding your face in your hands, you mumbled an inaudible “yes” at the embarrassing statement. “I thought Noonie told you about me or that you’d have some sneaking suspicion about why the cushions were out of place by the time you got there.”

“I knew I wasn’t going crazy...” he muttered to himself. Popping another stick into his mouth, the snacking gave you time to mask your mortified face and relax into the padded fabric. 

“So what’s with you and laminated dead foliage?” he finally questioned, carefully reaching over for another pretzel stick. No one could resist chocolate, after all. 

An unconscious nasal snort escaped you when his honest form of asking the question registered in your mind and nearly made you choke. Reaching into your back pocket, you pulled out an orange leaf. Since your freshman year, you always made sure to carry one around with you for good luck. 

Biting your lip as you tried to concentrate on coming up with a response, you sighed. “When I was in preschool, I always got in trouble for reading too much. During naptime, I’d be nose deep in a book when everyone was asleep, and the teachers would scold me for not playing with the other kids during lunch. I’d come home upset. Sometimes, I’d even cry because I was so frustrated that no one understood that I just wanted to be left alone with my book.”

Jimin was listening intently as a dry smile crossed your face at the memory. “My mom saw how upset I was, so one day, she asked me if I wanted to make bookmarks with her. She told me about how if I left each leaf in a book that I loved, the person who would find it would be the one who understood me.”

Jimin’s gaze pierced through yours as his hands suddenly but slowly wrapped around yours, still holding the fallen leaf. When you looked up, your breath hitched in your throat. “But that seems a little elusive, right?” you whispered. 

“After everything we’ve gone through the past few months, I think it’s plausible.” His voice was confident. Studying his features, the corner of your lip perked up into a smile. 

“When someone blushes, doesn't that mean 'yes?'” he phrased, referencing a book the two of you could probably recite by heart.  

Unable to repress your smile any longer, a warm blush fanned over your cheeks once again, but this time, you weren’t the only one whose face had gone rosy.

“Nice to meet you, Jimin,” you giggled, welcoming the warmth of his hands that enveloped yours perfectly. When he began running his fingertips over the tops of your hands soothingly, an awestruck expression flashed across his face. 

“Nice to meet you, Y/N,” he replied softly as your name flowed off of his lips like honey. 

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” 

[ettadunham]

A Buffy rewatch 2x15 Phases

aka male aggression and the Buffy feminism

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and point out / hyperfocus on one detail in it in 10-3k words. Or maybe go through each and every random scene I choose. Rules are fake.

And today’s episode is one that I enjoy and love immensely, but it’s also the perfect opportunity to talk about the dreaded subject:

Why does Buffy’s feminism feel dated?

But before that, it’s time for everyone’s* (*my) favorite segment - Buffy/Willow out of context.

Buffy:  Meow! Willow:  Really? Thanks. I've never gotten a 'meow' before.

Even Larry’s being gross about wanting ‘some of that Buffy/Willow action’... And like... I know that you’re going through stuff my dude, but still., don’t ruin this for the rest of us.

Willow is also complaining about guys and dudes in general at least three different times in this episode. (Sometimes to Buffy, but sometimes to Cordelia??? I’m definitely sleeping on that ship.) And I’m just sitting here being like... aw, honey... you really don’t need them... trust me.

Anyhow, we could be sitting here dissecting all that, but I set out with a different goal today, and I’m trying to cut it short, so let’s talk.

Buffy feminism.

At this point anyone in and out of the fandom is familiar with the debate of how Buffy’s - and in turn, Whedon’s - feminism has aged, and that while it had a huge impact on its time and laid the groundwork for today’s popculture scene, we’ve evolved since then.

And I don’t think many would negate a lot of that. The Buffy feminism certainly lacks intersectionality and works with a lot of tropes and archetypes that has its fair share of negative elements and implications. And Whedon’s later work have memorably been taken to court by fandom for such cases.

So the question that I ended up on some time ago was a natural result of that trail of thought.

Was Buffy ever intended to be feminist?

Spoiler alert: the answer is both yes and no. It’s Schroedinger’s feminism.

But first, I want to make it clear that I don’t intend to argue that Buffy isn’t feminist, or didn’t influence our culture massively in that direction. In the 90s, a show with a female lead was still the outlier, and the fact that it gained such a universal following is somewhat mind-blowing. Especially if you consider the grudge our culture holds against teenage girls, even today.

On top of that, Buffy’s character concept goes against the idea of the Strong Female Character (often known as Female Side Character With Some Masculine Traits To Show That She’s Not Like Other Girls Who Can Kind Of Hold Her Own Next To Our Male Lead But He’s Still Better At Things Of Course), by being both immensely powerful and unabashedly teen girly. And then only becoming more complex and memorable as the seasons went on.

Not to mention the fact that the show also had an even ratio of female:male co-stars for most of its run. Meaning that there were plenty of other female characters to develop beside the titular lead, making it a largely female-driven series in general.

As a result of all that, it’s no wonder that Whedon gained a reputation as a staunch feminist - and again, he was a trailblazer when it came to female-led television shows... But I think conflating his ideals with the show’s themes is where we fell into a pitfall.

People complaining about diversity in media often cite ‘agendas’ or ‘pandering’. Which is an immensely simplified (and stupid) way to look at things that is meant to paint going against the norms in a negative way. See, if the creators decide to include characters of different backgrounds because it’s important to them, or because they want to talk about their own experiences, then they have an ‘agenda’. The agenda being using art to talk about things they find important, I guess...

And then there’s this idea that studios / companies / creators just want to please an under-served audience, and profit out of their enthusiasm when they make such media. In contrast to pleasing the audience of the status quo 90% of the time otherwise. I guess.

I’m bringing this all up because the argument that a lot of these people bring up is that representation and diversity is okay if there’s a “reason” for it. Which... yeah, we already covered why I think this line of thinking is so incredibly flawed, but on the other hand... I think Buffy actually satisfies that criteria.

Ideas such as gender roles are baked into show’s concept. Buffy is literally fighting the patriarchy and rape culture (among other things), so it only makes sense that she’s a girl. Meanwhile the character who will end up being gay is the one who struggles the most with their identity. These things are literally building into the bigger picture that the show’s attempting to make.

Now, I will say this though - differentiating and drawing the lines between these things (sincere desire for representation vs. financial strategy vs. exploring themes) is impossible. Everything can be a little bit of each or something else entirely. That’s also why debating intent to undermine representation is such a cheap transparent move.

Nevertheless, I have decided to approach Buffy’s feminism and many of its other themes from the angle of thematic intent. And this episode is a prime example of how the heightened reality of toxic masculinity and its deconstruction look like on the show.

Phases is very unsubtle when stating its thesis. All men are beasts (a reoccurring theme for sure). And for that we have three male characters to examine: Oz, Larry and Cain. (And to a lesser extent Xander and Giles)

Cain is pretty much the least complex of all. He’s a misogynistic douchebag who constantly berates Buffy for “being a girl”, while also hunting essentially human beings for money. He’s completely one-dimensional and irredeemable, and the only thing he’s good for is so Buffy could destroy his gun and tell him to get the hell out of town.

I suppose he’s also there to contrast Giles, but there’s not much there to talk about. Giles respects and supports Buffy, I guess.

Now, Larry and Oz - that’s a more interesting contrast.

Larry was previously introduced as Xander’s bully, but this episode goes above and beyond establishing him as an all around creep. He makes gross comments at all the girls and literally gropes Buffy, and it all culminates in the Scoobies deducting that he must be the werewolf for being so aggressive and douchey.

And then it turns out that... no, he’s just gay. Which, like... the Gay Bully is certainly a trope that’s probably died out at this point, but this does make sense in the context of this episode and the show’s tendency to deconstruct. The idea that performative aggression like Larry’s can actually be a sign of an unresolved conflict with ourselves. And once that’s resolved, we can find a way to live without that facade and be our more authentic self.

Which is an interesting way to contrast him with Oz, as he appears to be the sweetest, chillest guy in the whole Sunnydale area. He literally tucks the tag on Willow’s shirt back like??? Too good for this world.

But then it turns out that he’ll now also become a werewolf 3 days out of a month, a creature of pure instinct and aggression. And given how reserved Oz is in his day-to-day life, that’s an interesting dichotomy. Is that supposed to represent him getting his rage on and finally letting loose of his emotions, or does it suggest a more aggressive inner layer of his character in general?

(Future knowledge mostly points towards the former, but I feel like it’d be interesting to talk about Oz from the latter perspective.)

It’s also an interesting tidbit how the episode mentions that the werewolf could be female, but then continues to refer to them as a ‘he’ anyway. It’s as if the episode is self-aware of its own theme.

...But then we get a lycanthropy- period cycle parallel made in the end anyway, when Willow’s like ‘well, I’m not much fun to be around 3 days-a-month either’. So there’s that.

Then there’s Xander. I’ve recently heard about an alleged quote where Whedon apparently said that they considered writing either Willow or Xander as gay at some point. And that was certainly in my head during Larry’s coming out scene, which makes Xander’s intense no-homo reaction much more layered. He’s essentially Larry in that scenario, aggressively trying to ignore his own inner conflict.

...Which also made me think of another coming out scene on the show and Buffy’s initial, if brief reaction to it.

Looking at Xander’s character from this angle also puts his obsession with his masculinity into perspective. Although his character arc, especially given the show’s themes about gender roles, remains interesting either way.

Oh yeah, and he’s super jealous about Willow and Oz. We’ll definitely get back to that in S3.

Buffy’s comment about Oz being the loyal type meanwhile is S4 material.

Onwards!

[segadores-y-soldados]

Fic Updates

Hola, hola!

This here is JUST the fic update information for my fics “Old Habits” and “New Wars” (aka the “And Overwatch For All” series).  The short version goes like this:

Moira has been integrated into the overarching plot of “And Overwatch For All”

All the OCs have survived.  Or well.  They survived only to die.  You get what I mean.

Major changes have occurred to Gabriel/Reaper’s backstory.  This is the big one that is causing me to take the time to rework things.

Because of this, I am currently rewriting major portions of Old Habits.  Yesterday, I finished a major rewrite of chapter 10 (the “evil council is introduce” chapter).  I have the majority of chapter 11′s rewrite done and hope to finish that today as well.  With luck, I will start working on a rewrite of Chapter 13.

Shockingly, I’m keeping a lot of the “present day” plot elements the same (aka, all the stuff leading up to Recall), with minor changes to the Eichenwalde battle to fit in “Honor and Glory.”

More under the cut!

For those of your who have been waiting patiently for information on “And Overwatch for All” I do have some good news that I’m finally ready to share:

Moira has been integrated into the plot.

I got a number of comments here and on twitter that were really supportive of my current version of “AOFA” and I just want to say, thank you all so much.  It means a lot to me that you guys have liked the version of Overwatch I’ve built up and that you found all the characters, including my silly OCs, to be engaging and well-written.  It was soul-crushing to think I would have to lose some of them, but after some time and doing more research on Moira, I feel ready to talk more about her and how she’s going to factor into the updated plot.

To start off with:

None of the OCs will be cut, but some of their roles will change.

Lmao, this surprised me as well, but I’ve figured out a few different ways to make all of the OCs, especially the very obviously contrived “Death Agents,” stick around in the updated plot.

Only one OC (and you can probably guess who, if you’ve started “New Wars”) will change names: the character called “Reaper” in “New Wars Chapter 1″ (the “young Hanzo chapter”) will be called “Reaver.”  This is due to his updated role in the plot.  His background has changed only slightly.

If it wasn’t apparent, this “Reaper” was meant to act as a plot device to cause confusion over Gabriel/Reaper’s actions after the fall of Overwatch, but that has changed because:

I’m switching to Crisis-era and “undercover mercenary” Reaper.

THIS ISN’T A SPOILER FOR MY OWN STUFF, I PROMISE.

This is revealed as early as Old Habits “revised chapter 2.”

If you’ve read some of my more recent posts on Moira, you’ll know that I’ve switched over to supporting the idea that “something went wrong with Gabriel Reyes during SEP/the Crisis.”  This is due to the fact that you can find a folder labeled “Soldier ID: 24″ in Moira’s Oasis lab, that Michael Chu said that Reyes was interested in getting her help on “matters of genetics,” and that this appears to mesh the “Reaper has existed for decades” concept in Reaper’s hero profile.

Truth be told, I’ve actually been a supporter of this idea of “Gabriel has been Reaper behind the scenes for decades” plot point for a long, long time, almost as long as I’ve been posting Old Habits.  “Reaper”/“Reaver” was semi-messy OC that attempted to bridge Reaper’s original hero profile with the “Old Soldiers” explanation that Gabriel/Reaper gave that “Jack and Overwatch ‘left [him] to suffer.’”  However, I also knew when writing Old Habits that the “Mercy is evil” theory was ALSO not true, so I was kinda stuck:

“If Gabriel = Reaper for decades, why did he appear to blame Jack and Overwatch for his current condition?”

My original solution was to make “Reaper” a different character and have him operating the situation in the background (like a mystery story), but over time this solution got trickier and trickier to work with.  With Moira, I have a chance to rework much of Old Habits/AOFA to better suit some of the details that have come out since drafting it.

This does mean, unfortunately, that all the “76+127″ content is going to become its own, standalone series.

To switch over to integrating “Soldier: 24,” the “76+127″ stories will have to become their own standalone series.  Don’t worry - I’m not deleting anything.  Old content from “Old Habits” will be moved to their own fics, so you can read the whole thing in chronological order.

A new version of my updated ideas on SEP has already started being drafted.  Writing it out is just a matter of time at this point, haha.

The conspiracy/Talon council “mysteries” will become more transparent almost immediately.

With Moira, I finally get the chance to explore some of my ideas in “full format” instead of the kinda awkward “Sombra hacking a chat log” parts yall originally got.  This DOES mean that written portions will suddenly be much, MUCH longer.  For example:

Old Habits original chapter 10 (Sombra hacks an SSO chat log): 17 pages

Old Habits revised chapter 10 (Moira discusses the Route 66 battle with council members + Sombra hacks a chat log): closer to 34 pages

The explosion fight has been changed.

Because of the changes to Gabriel’s plot, the nature of the explosion fight between him and Jack has changed significantly.  It does incorporate new information that Moira revealed.

If it wasn’t obvious, I’ve had a draft version of my ideas for the fight sitting in GDocs for about a year now, and I use that for all my flashback/memories, and also for when Reaper and Soldier: 76 are arguing in the present.  There was a major plot point in the explosion fight that I was extremely uncomfortable with, but found it to be “solid angst material.”  In retrospect, I dislike this plot point and have removed it for another plot point that sits better with me, and fits the overall story more comfortably (I think).

So yes, I DO have a new draft of the explosion fight - written completely from scratch, 100% different in tone and emotionality.  Parts of this should begin to show in updates to Chapter 13, when Soldier: 76/Jack reflects on some of the fight.

The Goal:

The goal for AOFA right now is to update Old Habits in “two big batches” - update the first half (Chapters 1 - 15) within 1 - 2 weeks, and then update the second half (Chapters 16 - 31) shortly after.  Optimistically, before January, but realistically, closer to late-January/early-February.

I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to notify people of changes to an AO3 chapter that’s already posted...through AO3, so for now, please keep and eye on my tumblr and twitter accounts, where I will start linking to updated/changed chapters there.  I will likely also put up a “placeholder chapter” on “New Wars” with all this information, where you can find links to updated chapters in both “Old Habits” and “New Wars,” but if anyone has better suggestions, I’m all ears.

Thank you all so much for your patience!  I hope I can start putting up some of these changed chapters soon!