#also recover from the socializing which is just as important but admittedly less of a strain on my physical self heh

[konstantya]

I survived my Christmas marathon!

Now I get to detox from three straight days of extreme food and drink decadence.

[charmspoint]

As much as I praised Talentless Nana and it’s handling of Nana, trauma she’s recovering from and the redemption she’s undertaking, I do have some problems of how it handles it’s other important character, this funky boy right here.

Lots of ranting and spoilers under the cut.

Now I do like Kyouya a lot. I think he’s a perfect blend of straightlaced serious and fun and quirky. One of his core motivations being making friends, where all of his attempts are at the same time so terribly awkward and so touchingly sincere, makes him potentially a very interesting and relatable character to have on board.

I say potentially because Kyouya himself is very underutilized both in the show and in the manga. I made a meme about it before, remember that. Most of my love for the characters comes from discussing the show with my brother and developing him in my fic, not from the actual story itself.

At first I assumed Kyouya is supposed to be a deuteragonist, an equal to Nana, mostly because of how much he and Nana were and are compared to L and Light (I might talk about that later but for now: It’s a hard comparison to call because ye I can see why but Talentless Nana is more about the characters while Death Note is more about the conflict so it’s mind games aren’t really comparable at all, Nana and Kyouya are more interesting and loveable than L and Light combined, Misa is the best character in Death Note.) But rn I can’t help but feel that Kyouya isn’t so much a deuteragonist as just an overly emphasized extra, maybe a relic from when the author did intend to make Talentless Nana more about the conflict before switching it over to more of a character driven story. Either way at this point I feel like Michiru, catboy Jin and Moe all have more development and backstory than Kyouya and Moe wasn’t even introduced in the anime. When you add to that Mr. bet you thought you’d seen the last of me, it kind of gets ridiculous.

Like there’ve been multiple times in the manga when Kyouya would show up and I’d have this moment where I just remembered ‘oh this guy is here too, he’s a character’, like I’d literally just forget he was in the story because he wouldn’t be there for the longest time and then would randomly show up when it was time to solve a murder. Like the author just remembered ‘oh yeah I’m supposed to use this guy too’.

And it’s really a shame because Kyouya has so much potential and it’s just never explored. Like his whole motivation to find friends? He does! And it’s just sorta…brushed off. Like when he introduced Fuuko to Nana as his friend, with Nana remarking she already met Fuuko here:

Like you can tell he is genuinely super excited to finally have a friend and with a good reason. Despite being technically on the side of good, through most of the story Kyouya is a lot less popular than Nana with their classmates, sometimes even suffering ostracization because they are starting to see him as a conspiracy theorist that ruins all the fun. While they respect him for his intellect they are quick to turn on him and his own awkward and blunt nature doesn’t help here at all. Nana said it herself when talking to Yuuka:

Nana presents herself as a sweet, caring, extroverted girl. She acts cute and clumsy in social situations but is trusted enough to be deemed Leader and her classmates genuinely believe that she is working herself to the bone to protect them. She is also heavily endorsed by Michiru who is the living definition of a cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure. On the opposite end, Kyouya is very stoic, sometimes even scary looking, He gives of an unfriendly air as soon as he arrives, he’s socially awkward, he doesn’t know how to talk to or connect with people, he can be too blunt and insensitive and he seems to have a habit of picking on the most popular girl in school, calling her out for horrible murders. And he seems to be always be proven wrong which cements him as someone overly suspicious, as someone who just has a bone to pick with Nana. As someone unlikable.

So when Kyouya, who’s been rejected by the majority for most of the story despite his best efforts to help, protect and befriend them, FINALLY gets a friend, finally gets someone who fully believes in him and tells him she will follow where he leads, someone who is willing to go through his stoic front because she truly believes he has the right answers and he’s doing the right thing…you’d think that would be given a bit more weight. You’d think we’d see some changes in Kyouya, a bit more focus on him, a story unfold. We don’t, not really. We see Fuuko following him around and helping him and they even get a solo scene together where Kyouya says he will tell her the weakness of his talent but then it…cuts off. Like ooo must preserve the mystery, forget about the fact that we’ve known this character for almost 40 chapters and we are long overdue any new information about him. A good way to develop him is dropped right in our laps but nothing happens with it aside from Kyouya being overexcited to call Fuuko his friend whenever he can, which is admittedly very cute.

That’s not even the worst arc that’s been left dangling for him, remember his missing sister? You know, his biggest motivation to come to the island in the first place? I honestly wouldn’t blame you if you forgot, because that plot is still stuck basically in the same place where it was introduced in like ch 2 or 3 (out of 56 mind you). Like he doesn’t go anywhere with that, at all, we don’t even see him looking for her. When they burn all those bodies Nana thinks about how he might have missed his shot because his sister might have been amongst them, but that’s never confirmed or denied. My absolutely favorite set of panels on that is this one where Kyouya looks like he himself genuinely forgot he had a sister to look for.

Only to immediately be interrupted by some shenanigans. This hint at conflict doesn’t even come to be, like later Kyouya is packing up completely normal and he leaves the island completely normal without any seen resistance or last ditch attempt to look for his sister. It’s like he simply just forgot she existed again. Like at least his wish to make friends is brought up often, I stg Nana mentions his sister more times than he does.

Again, his primary reason for even being involved in this plot, is not given any sort of development or even focus. 

And like when I talk about this I usually say smtng like; Well he and Nana are slowly getting closer and are starting to look like they will form a team so maybe then he will get development. But goddamn Nanao got more development and even a flashback, completely outside of Nana’s knowledge or influence, and he’s been presumed dead since ch 1.

Not to mention that the lack of Kyouya doing much of anything aside from what he’s strictly needed for leaves his and Nana’s relationship very lacking to say the least. Like I get the idea, they are supposed to start out as enemies and eventually grow closer and team up to defeat the real bad guy and that’s a perfectly solid idea, I love these two, I love how they bounce off each other. It sure would be even better if they, you know, actually got closer. Like we barely see them interact outside of immediate rivalry and while the times they work together to discover a killer that isn’t Nana are very welcome, they are also a far cry of what we should have gotten by now. We really get no sense of Nana starting to understand Kyouya better or him starting to understand her better. When he suggests a team up, it’s because that’s what comic book characters did, not because he came to understand her better as a person and grew a trust with her that made him want to start that partnership. And again it’s endearing that he mirrors his actions towards what he sees in a comic book but also…they REALLY needed that level of trust and connection they just never got.

 I really hope that this gets better, especially now that Nana is making moves to confess her crimes and is working side by side with Kyouya instead of against him. I really hope we get more on him , his backstory, his talent, his sister, I’d take his preferred idol at this point. But until that happens it’s really hard not to feel like so much about Kyouya has simply been wasted and neglected by the author.

[afoolforatook]

I liked your post on Qrow and grief. I think 99% of rwby discourse is people being upset with writers choices and handling of characters vs being defensive of character actions as commentary on real world situations. Like most Adam discourse is between the writers decision to make a civil rights leader an abusive villain vs people noting that abusers can and do hijack social justice movements. One is anger at the writers not the character the other is concern about the character not the writers.

Thanks (sorry, I just forget asks exist sometimes....oops)

Honestly, I avoid discourse as much as possible (the tiniest bit of possible conflict makes me feel physically ill, thnks rsd, which is why I never really actively participated in fandom as a creator before FG) so I can’t say much on other issues such as Adam, but I can see that. 

I think the issue usually starts when there’s a disconnect between understanding characters and their actions in the context of the world and story, and the context of why the writers choose to frame things the way they do. 

Which personally, is where most of my own frustration comes from about RWBY’s writing. Because there is so much of it that is genuinely brilliant, deep, powerful storytelling that has all the building blocks for some important subversive storylines, and has such amazing attention to detail and thought put behind it, but then doesn’t always get developed consistently enough to pull it all together with the appropriate tone/intent. We know they can do such powerful things with all the potential they set up, so when it falls flat, for reasons that seem like inconsistent direction and intent, or narrow understanding of complicated topics, or just plain sloppy oversight, it can be really disappointing

Grief is one of those topics that I take very seriously when it comes to how it is portrayed in media, and it’s something I hope to be able to be a part of creating better realistic representation for. So many people believe they understand grief because they’ve seen it in movies and shows and books that rarely show it in all its complexity and diversity. And so when they see characters, and even real people, grieving in ways that don’t fit that mold, that may seem callous or toxic from an outside perspective, it can feel like poor writing or characterization. Because we as a society don’t talk about grief, not really, not honestly, it makes us uncomfortable. So, through no fault of their own, people don’t understand how that kind of trauma changes how you think, and affects you on a daily basis.

There are a lot of complicated topics that RWBY has a lot of potential to do important, powerful things with, in how they tell this story. Some they have handled well previously, and some they *really* haven’t.  Mental health, abuse, racism, classism, lgbtq representation, morality, trauma, grief. And I certainly won’t say any single one of those is more important than any other. 

But, personally, grief is the one that will hit me hardest if they mishandle it. There will be other places to turn for diverse, informed, meaningful narratives about all those other topics, and of course the same is true for grief. I certainly don’t want to have those topics mishandled in RWBY, and RT and CRWBY have a responsibility to put in the work to avoid that and to admit when they don’t, and if all of those things were just horrendously mishandled it would be upsetting and infuriating, but in the end, there would be other material, other, diverse, creators to turn to. 

But RWBY is in a (certainly not completely unique, but fairly rare) special position when it comes to showing the place that grief in all its complexities has in storytelling. And how, in turn, storytelling can play a huge part in helping people process their own grief.  

Because RWBY is a story, a world, created by a man (of color) who died far too young, and whose legacy is now carried on by his friends and family (and a company that, while certainly popular and well known in its niche, is by no means mainstream). They know grief. And they have a rare opportunity —with a story perfectly built to address this kind of narrative— to be able to provide others who are grieving with a complex, inspiring, empowering reflection of their experiences, which are so often absent, or oversimplified, or treated as shock factor or tear-jerkers in media. 

For most other projects in that kind of situation (sudden loss of a young creator, a creator of color, not already backed by a huge production company, with not only story and animation development to work on, but a unique soundtrack that is one of the things at the core of the show’s appeal imo), the story would have most likely been abandoned after the creator’s death. Roosterteeth, and RWBY, certainly have a not insignificant following now (and even did to a lesser extent, at the time of Monty’s death, less than six months after the end of volume 2) but RWBY was still pretty new, not nearly as popular as it is now. I watched the first volume when it was brand new, and I think the start of volume 2, but then didn’t come back to it until the end of volume 6, so I don’t know for sure what things were like in both the fandom and production following Monty’s death. But I am sure that RWBY’s survival is due to tremendous work and dedication and love for Monty and his creation. Volume 7 ended on the fifth anniversary of Monty’s death, and regardless of your opinion on the quality of the show over that time, the fact that it has come this far at all is almost miraculous. 

For a story, and a team, so well suited for this point of view, to not simply ignore the topic (as so many writers do, aka one tribute episode and then it’s like it never happened), but to actually address it, only to fail to do it true, honest, important, justice, would be (at least personally) devastating. 

None of this is to say that because of their grief, or in order to ‘properly’ honor Monty, CRWBY was obligated to make grief an important part of this narrative, especially so soon after a loss and in a project where it is impossible to separate their feelings for the story from their grief over Monty. They did not owe us, or ‘Monty’s memory’, their personal trauma. Not everyone wants or needs to put their grief in their work. To have decided to gloss over that narrative thread and aspect of character growth, or included it but never make it a main theme, would, admittedly, still have been somewhat disappointing, but understandable given the circumstances. 

But they didn’t do that. They gave it a prominent role. (Also admittedly not as much as I would have liked at times, but still much more than plenty of other stories) In the music, in the symbolism, in the character development, in the main plot. Grief, in multiple manifestations, is a huge part of RWBY. I am immensely grateful for that, and regardless of the issues I have and may have in the future, that is something that will always be very important to me. 

But, in making that choice, they gave themselves an obligation to follow through. To consciously make grief a complex part of multiple characters’ narrative, and then fumble the execution and turn that pain into cheap shock factor or poorly framed justification is, in my eyes, an irresponsible failure that could work to only damage the vulnerable people you had gotten to trust you. Especially when it comes in the form of showing a character finally starting to recover, only to get torn down again out of nowhere. 

I’m not saying that this is already a failure in how they’ve handled Qrow’s grief, there’s just too much still to happen to be able to say that or not. But any trust I had in their intentions and narrative direction was destroyed by Ch12 (which is a different topic all together really), so I’ll just have to wait and see.

Ahhhhhh this got wayy too long (and probably not put the best way, oops brain dump.)

[silenthillmutual]

what Classic Film(TM) you should watch based on who your fave Danganronpa 1/2 character is

disclaimer - obviously as a film dude i’m gonna say you should watch all of these. but maybe watch the one correlating to your fave first!

Makoto: 12 Angry Men (1957, dir. Sidney Lumet) - strong themes of justice, it’s about a jury trying to determine a man’s guilt. it’s basically what Makoto does for the entire game. you’ll also like it if you’re a fan of Phoenix Wright.

Sayaka: A Star is Born (1954, dir. George Cukor) - it’s all about a girl’s rise to fame and how her relationships change with that. there’s three versions of this film, most recently with Lady Gaga. 

Mukuro: Vertigo (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - themes of murder and hiding your identity, losing yourself to a cause.

Leon: Animal House (1978, dir. John Landis) - a comedy about a fraternity. it’s THE college frat movie and i think Leon would enjoy it a lot.

Chihiro: WarGames (1983, dir. John Badham) - two teenagers might have accidentally started a world war during the cold war by trying to play computer games...fitting for the series, no?

Mondo: On the Waterfront (1954, dir. Elia Kazan) - struggling to do the right thing and being sort of frustrated about your circumstances as they pertain to class and missed opportunities. being dragged into bad situations by family. also Marlon Brando is a bicon and very hot in this movie.

Taka: Rebel Without a Cause (1955, dir. Nicholas Ray) - a lot of turbulent shit happens to three teenagers over the course of 24 hours. one of - if not the first canonically gay teenager on film. i think we all know by now that James Dean was mlm, but so were the director and Sal Mineo. big bi polyam vibes; if you like chishimondo as a ship you’ll probably like this film too.

Hifumi: Akira (1988, dir. Katsuhiro Otomo) - had a hard time figuring out what to put for Hifumi, but overall i think if nothing else he’d appreciate how impressive the animation was (and honestly, still is) along with the fact that the mangaka was also the director. so although there’s a lot cut out (the manga had not finished before the film came out), it’s still roughly the same plot as the manga.

Celes: Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning) - probably the most iconic iteration of Bram Stoker’s novel, this is the one staring Bela Lugosi. not terribly true to the novel from what i remember, but it’s peak aesthetic and exactly the kind of thing she’d enjoy.

Sakura: Rashomon (1950, dir. Akira Kurosawa) - finally getting onto films i haven’t actually seen but that are on my list. sakura’s another person i had a hard time deciding on a film for, but the “several characters telling different accounts of the same plot” reminded me a bit of her case in the game. 

Hina: West Side Story (1961, dir. Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins) - admittedly i had a different film in mind for her to start with, but Maria’s final monologue fits with Hina’s motivations during Sakura’s case.

Toko: Gone With the Wind (1939, dir. Victor Fleming) - another one i haven’t actually watched yet, but it’s based on a famous novel, described as “epic historical romance.” i think that vibes with Toko pretty well.

Byakuya: Citizen Kane (1941, dir. Orson Welles) - if you’re really interested in film, you’re gonna be made to watch this sooner or later. famous for being the “best film ever made”, it’s more or less about newspaper moguls like William Randolph Hearst - who is also the main reason why this film is famous at all. it’s not exactly a flattering depiction of those kinds of people and boy, did that ever piss Hearst off. if he hadn’t made such a big deal trying to keep Citizen Kane from seeing the light of day, something much better might have made it to the top spot. 

Hiro: The Music Man (1962, dir. Morton DaCosta) - based on the Broadway musical of the same name, a “travelling salesman” (read: con artist) starts to work his latest con on a gullible small town, but actually starts liking the people in it.

Kyoko: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - not to be confused with the other Hitchcock film from the 30s also titled The Man Who Knew Too Much. this is the one with James Stewart and Doris Day. it’s a highly suspenseful film that gave us the song “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)”.

Junko: Gaslight (1944, dir. George Cukor) - ever heard the term “gaslighting”? this is where it comes from! based on a play in which a woman’s husband psychologically tortures her into believing she is going insane.

Monokuma: Duck Soup (1933, dir. Leo McCarey) - all Marx Brothers films are as utterly silly (and sometimes as incomprehensible) as one of Monokuma’s MonoTheatres. i watched about half of Duck Soup and had to stop because it was finals week and i was supposed to be doing something other than losing my shit.

Hajime: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, dir. Frank Capra) - you probably already know this film. if you’re Christian you know it as That Film Your Parents Watch Every Year On Dec 24th Around Midnight. if you have seasonal depression, don’t watch it then; warning for suicidal ideation. it’s supposed to be uplifting. your mileage may vary on that one. 

Impostor: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, dir. Robert Mulligan) - i don’t have a good reason to pair these two up other than gut feeling. as far as film adaptations of books go, it’s pretty damn good, and Atticus Finch is the original DILF. themes of childhood innocence and racism. 

Teruteru: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961, dir. Blake Edwards) - apparently much different from the novella on which it is based, but i think Teruteru would really dig the aesthetic and romantic vibes of the film. Holly Golightly is probably the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Mahiru: Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - like It’s a Wonderful Life, chances are good you know this film - or at least, you’ve seen its plot recycled a hell of a lot. a professional photographer recovering from a broken leg thinks he witnesses a murder take place and is determined to get to the truth.

Peko: Seven Samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa) - another one on my to-watch list, but it’s oft referenced and remade in film. a village hires seven ronin to protect them from bandits who will return to steal their crops. 

Hiyoko: East of Eden (1955, dir. Elia Kazan) - i’ll be honest here, i didn’t really know what to put for Hiyoko because i’m not sure i understand much about her, but i seem to remember her family playing a pretty big role in her being Like That and for “shitty family” the first two things to come to mind were this and Giant. and unless you like 3-hour long movies about the state of Texas, i’m not about to recommend you watch Giant.

Ibuki: A Night at the Opera (1935, dir. Sam Wood) - another Marx Bros film in which they help a girl both to be with her lover and to achieve her dreams of stardom as an opera singer. the kind of silly, manic thing i think Ibuki would like.

Mikan: The Shining (1980, dir. Stanley Kubrick) - i hate hate hate putting this on here, but since this is for film and not books i couldn’t exactly state to read the book. the book is about the cycle of abuse. the movie is more about... a trapped man going crazy in a spooky hotel. 

Nekomaru: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963, dir. Stanley Kramer) - comedy about five groups of people racing to get to a large sum of money buried by a recently escaped convict they stopped to help out after his car crash. it’s a comedy, and just kinda seemed like Nekomaru’s thing.

Gundham: The Seventh Seal (1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman) - i watched this in like 10th grade and all i really remember is a man playing chess with Death and if that doesn’t say Gundham Tanaka to you, i don’t know what does.

Nagito: North by Northwest (1959, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - i don’t really have a reason for this one either but it’s a spy film and i think komaeda could get behind that kind of intrigue. 

Chiaki: Metropolis (1927, dir. Fritz Lang) - not to be confused with the anime, this is a 1927 German expressionist film that seems to be about socialism and unionization. it’s also famous for its (purposeful) use of the Male Gaze and being one of the first sci-fi films ever made. be warned: it is a silent film.

Sonia: Strangers on a Train (1951, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - another one of those films you’ll get told to watch if you’re interested in the queer history of film, i was gonna put something else but honestly the character of Barbara kinda reminded me of Sonia. a famous tennis player meets a man on a train who attempts to plan a double-murder with him.

Akane: My Fair Lady (1964, dir. George Cukor) - i was trying so hard not to double up on the post about musicals, but Akane really does have Eliza Doolittle vibes. they’re both feral and nothing would be able to really domesticate them. for whatever it’s worth, this film and the musical on which it is based is itself based on the play Pygmalion, in which your typical rich cishet white dude bets he can turn any street urchin into a real lady because he’s just that good. you might know the plot better as Pretty Woman.

Kazuichi: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan) - i don’t really have a good excuse for this one, either; i haven’t even watched it yet (although i have read the play on which it is based). all i’m gonna say is i want Souda to have his gay awakening via Marlon Brando, as we all do.

Fuyuhiko: Casablanca (1942, dir. Michael Curtiz) - despite his love and adoration for Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart decides fighting Nazis is more important. i think Fuyuhiko would like the aesthetic, and the film. don’t let him know but i think he’d probably cry watching it.

Usami: To Sir, With Love (1967, dir. James Clavell) - issues of race and class intersecting in a film about a teacher working with inner city students. i was going to put Singin’ in the Rain here, because it’s what Usami would want people to watch...but i think this better fits the effect she wants to have as a being. 

[vermiculus-incipiens]

OOC INFORMATION:

What’s your name? Emmy

Preferred pronouns: She/Her

Timezone: PST (at the moment)

IC INFORMATION:

Character Name: Lily Ruth Potter, née Evans

What’s a hobby or pastime that your character enjoys? Lily enjoys baking, and it’s an extremely comforting activity to her. Strongly tied to memories of her mum, there’s something about the methodical nature, the familiar steps that puts her at ease. In addition there’s the balance of room for creative expression and experimentation but also the predictability of chemical reactions that underpin it. It is the sweeter version of potion making, with fewer adverse side effects.

Do you have any preferred ships or anti-ships? James and Lily together is the obvious canonical ship that is the basis upon which the entirety of Harry Potter is built—without them, there is no Harry Potter. That acknowledged, it isn’t my only ship for Lily. Exploring alternatives and different aspects of different relationships with her is just as important for me.

What do you think your character’s Boggart would be? If their greatest fear isn’t something that could easily take a solid form, what is it? Why? Greatest fears can change and shift over time. However, since about late 1975, Lily’s dominating fear has been a dark version of herself. Someone who has lost her moral guidepost and slipped down the path she could have seen herself following if she hadn’t ended her friendship with Severus back then, or gives in to the anger and frustration now. She knows how easy it would be to snap and start doing bad even in the name of goodness. In a bit of a cliche, this would have manifested as a slightly older version of herself, dressed in all black robes, a sneer on her lips and a hollow look in her eyes; a Lily that doesn’t look that different from present but feels decidedly off. Additional details that may make an appearance is a silver mask in her hand (after she’s seen those masks on Death Eaters in person) or the bodies of her loved ones around her feet (not excluding Petunia or Severus). Of course this has very recently taken another dramatic turn, even if Lily herself hasn’t fully realized it. Since Harry’s birth, her greatest fear has become losing him. Having the tiny life in her arms taken away or snuffed out. There’s a lot of guilt and worry over having a child in the middle of a war already, and the thought that she could be actively putting him in more danger weighs on her heavily. A particularly dark combination of these two boggarts could be that dark Lily holding a lifeless Harry in her arms.

What’s your character’s biggest pet peeve? Perhaps not small enough to be a pet peeve, or just a small aspect of a larger issue, but the insidious little backhanded complement of being ‘good—for a Muggleborn.’ So much praise she gets is qualified as such, as if her accomplishments and skills are amazing solely because she’s a Muggleborn and the implication of that being a severe disadvantage. Often it’s meant well, but it digs under her skin, another reminder of how much the magical society doesn’t value her and those like her, regardless of what might be said.

What would you consider to be an eccentricity of your character? Other witches and wizards would at least consider it an eccentricity that Lily still does plenty of things the ‘Muggle’ way. From ironing to doing dishes to cleaning up, Lily will go out of her way and inconvenience herself to do things without magic. It is some small rebellion, a refusal to conceded that magic is better in all things, that magical living is superior. There is nothing wrong Muggleness!

What is/was your character’s favorite subject in school? Why? There is a dual answer to this: Potion and Charms. Charms because it was the quintessential magic, what one thinks of with magic, what she dreamt of as a little girl on the banks of the grimy river in Cokeworth, planning out with Severus what their future would look like; Potions because of a resonance with her non-magical hobby of baking and the same scientific creativity. Plus it was something she excelled at and shared with her best friend for so long. These two subjects remain the focus of her magical research as well.

What time of day is your character’s favorite? What time of year? The liminal times are Lily’s favourite; sunrise and sunset, so full of possibilities, or new beginnings, the sort of raw reminder of life trudging ever on. Granted, these days that reminder is more of a grind, and those times bring more tension, breaths held as she waits for the return of those Order members out on raid. In an entirely bias move, winter is her favourite time of year, for the dual gift giving of Christmas and her Birthday. There’s also an adoration for cozy fires, chunky knitwear, and cuddling up against the biting cold of the snow.

What’s your character’s Patronus? If they can’t conjure one, what would it be if they could? Why? Lily’s Doe Patronus isn’t purely a reflection of her love for James. It is a representation of her gentle yet fiercely protective nature, nurturing through intuition and empathy, ruled by a sense of grace. Her current memory for conjuration would be the moment she first held Harry in her arms.

What is your character’s biggest vice (bad habit or immoral craving)? A flippant answer and a more serious once. Lily has a dreadful sweet tooth. The more serious vice is a strong predeliction to jealousy and envy. It would be easy to think that Lily, being pretty, intelligent, wouldn’t have anything to covet. Yet Lily has been denied something big since the age of eleven—being treated like a full, valid, worthwhile person by a large potion of her peers and people from this adopted world she is a part of. Her wanting nearly always is aimed at trying to fill that void. Wishing she was excelling more at a subject (Lily has always struggled with Transfiguration; while she does well and is accomplished at it, she had to work much harder at it than at any of her other subjects), wanting to be treated as a full equal (See again, ‘Good for a Muggleborn’), or the security of friendships and love and affection. Lily can crave things so deeply and turn into a narrow-minded, jealous little monster.

Is your character an introvert or extrovert? How well do they handle social situations? Lily is an ambivert, as comfortable in a crowd as she is in solitude. Always a popular person at school, she was infallible friendly, even if there were few people she actually committed and stayed close to as friends. That is a designation she values highly and holds close. She can hold up being the center of attention, but is more comfortable in a group of people she knows, and while enjoys quiet solitude, can’t put up with it indefinitely.

What is your character’s diet like? What’s his or her favorite food? Lily is still recovering from Baby Growing Diet and an almost excessive focus on eating well and nutritiously (the least she could do, if she was going to bring a child into this chaotic, war riddled world, is make sure they were healthy and given the best chance in life from the start). Prior to that, she had a fairly traditional, some might say bland, British diet. Meat and potatoes are what she grew up on in Cokeworth, which not much experimentation outside of that. There wasn’t much exposure to food from other cultures in a grubby town like that. To go with her sweet tooth, she would claim any number of biscuits, pastries, and cakes as a favorite. She has a particular fondness for Pepermint Frogs, however. The remind her of Winter all year round.

How do you think your character’s psychological issues have manifested and changed your character up to this point? Lily has been in a pressure cooker of stresses since she was eleven, and the root of those psychological issues stretch back to then. Her optimism has had a heavy damper put on it, and her openness with others is scorned and stunted. She is much more wary, less ready or able to believe in the innate goodness of people that was once so important to her. Her faith in justice and fairness are shaken and as the war drags on and on and seems more hopeless, she started to question if fighting here is even worth it anymore. She is incredibly tired and calloused towards the world. When they all hate her, how can she possible go on caring for them?

Give us a headcanon for your character. Anything is acceptable. Lily has a long standing, self-admittedly silly mental association between Severus Snape and Willy Wonka. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a childhood favourite story, and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory released in theaters in June of 1971, shortly before she and Severus went to Hogwarts. Between the two, a fantastical equivalency between Wonka giving Charlie the key to the chocolate factory and Severus ‘giving’ Lily the key to magic and Hogwarts was made. It’s a fond bit of nostalgia for her, even if it gained a sour edge to it over the years. Part of that has gone on to impact Lily’s relationship to movies in general; she doesn’t care much for going to see them anymore.

[sethfeliciano]

Generation Z: A battle for tomorrow (Individual Assessment)

Upon reading the articles a lot of descriptions and characteristics have been used to be able to describe Generation Z. This generation is known for being different and unique from the past generations. Although they are still similar with the Millennials.

Generation Z is known for being goal oriented in a sense that they plan for what they want their future to be. They give importance to what is given to them, especially their education. It is something they hold onto that they use as their tools to be able to strive in the world to make it a better place.  According to Parker, Igielnik (2020), members of Generation Z are the best educated generation with less likely dropouts of high school and are 57% more likely to enroll in college. 

Although this is not possible without having social interaction. Generation Z are young adults whose brains’ are more dependent on social interaction. At this time they strengthen the social ties that they make to be able to find their own place in society, (Kale, 2020). 

In relation to being goal oriented Gen Z strives to make the world a better place. The members of this Gen Z freely express their resolve and vision of building a better future (Deloitte, 2020). Furthermore, it is known that this generation is very different from older generations especially because they are born into the modern world. Information is greatly accessible keeping them informed of what is happening around the world. Through the modernization of the world Gen Z looks at things at a wider spectrum.

They use this as an advantage to improve the world and to take action on societal issues. Social media platforms are used to be able to show their opposition to injustices and to fight for greater causes in favor of society. The generation is not late to help those in need at challenging times. 

The aforementioned characteristics are definitely similar to what I see with my peers and in myself. Just like in the article of Deloitte, Gen Z has a resolve and vision to make the world a better place. Based on personal experience, this is evidently seen with the initiatives that several members of Gen Z have been working on and have successfully done. Their actions of caring for those in need in our society directly shows how much they care about everyone, especially those in need. Concrete action is seen in these initiatives through the use of advocacies or fund raising that aim to bring help amongst the needy at such trying times.

Although there are still some differences with the behaviors and circumstances that come to play. An example would be that not everyone has the courage or the thought to make some advocacies happen. Only those with leadership training and traits and connections are the ones who play an active role to set out these initiatives. While some do not really have the resolve and resources to do such acts. Their inability is not their fault but is definitely a point to improve on.

To assess one’s characteristics, behaviors and circumstances is important to know where he/she stands. In assessing the similarities and differences of characteristics and behaviors of yourself with others, you will be able to identify at which aspects you are good at and where you still need improvement. I myself am admittedly not good at setting out goals and helping others through such initiatives. Although as I went by in college I have gained the strength to go out and try to do some of the things that I lack for example would be leading. My lack of leadership made me assess myself all throughout my group works and it is definitely something that I need to improve on. Knowing so it helped me realize how I can improve on that aspect of weakness to be able to turn in into a strength slowly and gain the knowledge to do so. From there on I have set myself as a lifelong learner and never stopping at a roadblock but instead conquering every obstacle that comes my way.

Key Challenges facing Gen Z in today’s world 

1. Unstable society 

The world is now in a very fragile situation because of the coronavirus pandemic which has affected everyone on a global scale. Its effects reach into the very roots of how society works and upon how it was built in each country. The pandemic has attacked how social systems work in ways that people’s activities are disrupted which range from every work related to making the society function. The chain of how things are, is now broken which gravely affects the economy for without work, businesses and consumers the economy can collapse especially for countries which are underdeveloped. 

2. Unforeseeable future 

This stresses how the future for Generation Z is of a blur. Keeping in mind the aforementioned, the next generation to take over is put under compromise and that there is still the struggle trying to make it in their career path. For the reason that their future is unclear due to the current situation. Furthermore, those of Gen Z entering the workforce have limited opportunities, especially fresh graduates because of restrictions and lack of experience to be even considered for a job. In addition to this, society’s systems and functions are damaged that has hurt the economy and in which triggered a global recession, a period of global economic slowdown. There is still a lot of substantial amount of work and experience that Gen Z has to gain in order to fully take on the role of building the future generations but given the current situation it looks very unsettling with no assurance. The platforms that they will step onto going through the next phase in life will be unstable platforms. The future somewhat becomes a burden upon them on how the world is going to be fixed and how it's supposed to work and recover from the pandemic and the crisis it has brought. 

3. Quality of education 

Generation Z has been identified to be the generation born the year after 1996 (Parker, Igielnik 2020). Taking a look at this range it can be said that there is still a part of Generation Z who are learning in their schools and have not yet stepped into the working world. Given this information, it can be said that learning for those who are still underage will definitely be a challenge and a whole new scenario. The old norm of going to school is now tested with and being replaced with online learning. This affects the quality of education that students obtain because of the lack of assurance that they really are absorbing what is supposed to be taught to them. There is no other way to test if the teaching and learning styles are effective other than assessment. Furthermore, assessing what they have learned is a bigger challenge as well because there are no teachers who monitor their individual progress. To add to this, taking tests online makes a huge difference for students because integrity is put into question as well as memory. It is easy for the student to just look over their materials while taking a test online and in return may affect how much they have learned without depending on any material. 

4. Unemployment 

The goal of every growing adult coming from schools and universities is to go out in the world and join the workforce to be able to contribute to the greater good of the society. Although this will not be the case for Gen Z. The opportunities that they set out to take after their life in the university does not look promising. Due to the pandemic, companies took a hit especially because of less consumption by the population, businesses closing down in malls, and no business consumer interaction etc. In relation to this, their business progress and sales have also taken a hit which means that paying off the employees that work for them would be difficult and some would even put the going concern of the business into question. This will say a lot on how difficult it will be for Gen Z to get jobs opportunities. According to Parker, Igielnik (2020), they say that job opportunities are limited and harder to look for since not every company is hiring and are actually trying to layoff people. An example of this threatening time is that the unemployment rate in the UK has increased from 10.5% to 27% within this year. It was also stated that 13% of graduates are less likely to be employed in three years time in comparison with the time without the pandemic. In addition to this, it would be more than difficult to set out in the real world and start Gen Z’s adult life. Given this information, Gen Z will really struggle to find their places in the workforce and in the real world at such unsettling and unfavorable times. 

5. Financial instability 

There are several factors that affect how we measure financial stability. Given the previous challenges of an unstable society, unforeseeable future, and unemployment it is inevitable that people will experience financial instability at a difficult time. This is not only the case for the working class but as well as their families that they take care of. It is important to consider that there are a lot of expenses to be incurred knowing that everyone will be present at home. Consumption of electricity and water may increase thus affecting monthly expenses. On top of this there may still be children studying which will then include their tuition fees and more. If affected by the unemployment of one household member due to the pandemic it can affect how they pay off their expenses. Furthermore it results in a threat to their future if their job is lost. This is when financial instability comes to play as a challenge that everyone at a compromise will face. 

Key Takeaways to overcome these challenges

1. Adapting to the current situation

The knowledge of how grave the situations are today are something that should always be kept in mind. Moving forward will be a difficult task for everyone, especially those being groomed for the future which calls for adaptation. The present generation and the future generation should be ready to face whatever challenge there is to come. Furthermore, it is fairly easier to adapt to the current situation knowing that everything is easily accessible and within our reach given that knowledge is easily consumed online. Given this information we should adapt to carefully conduct business and learn useful information online. 

2. Always improving

These trying times call for improvement. Today we see how everyone is tested in every aspect in life. It is evident that everyone is having a difficult time managing how their jobs are going to work, how they are going to pay out their rent and how they are going to feed themselves. At some point we realize that There are still things that we can improve on. This just sets us straight that we cannot remain stagnant all throughout the years but to always improve ourselves and the way that we work. 

3. Setting out plans

Planning is a life skill that all of us must master. It is a very important aspect of our lives because without planning it would be much more difficult to manage our time and our resources. In relation to the challenge of the unforeseeable future planning would help to resolve this. Through planning we get to set our foundation for the things that we set out to achieve. In doing so we get an eagle’s eye view of how everything we planned is going to work out. It is timely that we plan at such trying times because everything can change within the minute. Having a plan secures us from any rapid and unsettling changes for we have already set ourselves and that we are ready when things go as planned. 

4. Taking advantage of quality of education 

Although one of the challenges is taking in quality education we still have to take advantage of what is present in our midst. Today is the digital age wherein everything including information is easily accessible to everyone. We should take advantage of this knowing that we are still going to learn even if it's just online. The move towards a new educational curriculum of online learning should be maximized to its potential. Furthermore, those who are fortunate enough to experience quality education through online learning should not take it for granted. Instead they should do better to further adapt and understand what they are trying to learn. Through this one day they may be able to give back to those in need because when it is their time to go into the real world they are ready for any challenge. Just like in the aforementioned, Gen Z has a resolve to make the world a better place and what better way to start through giving to the less fortunate and sharing the growth of the world with them. 

5. Vision for the future

Though everything that is happening today is very rough, we should not forget where we want to be in the future. Yes, it may look bleak today but this does not mean that we should stop looking forward to tomorrow and stop where we are right now. There is still something promising about fighting to live another day and doing the best that we can in order to survive. Stopping at where we are now will get us nowhere but combining everything that you have learned to bear fruits for tomorrow is definitely a big difference. Taking into account the other four key takeaways, we can set out our journey into the future. Our lives do not have to stop at a single roadblock but instead to continue and go further than where we are now. 

[transrightsjimin]

Hi, it really sounds like you need to give yourself a break! In my opinion, the most important way of being on the left is making a conscious effort to be a generally good person. You feel it in your heart and treat people accordingly and are mindful about your actions. You also have no responsibilities beyond what you are able to give.That's how you live ethically. Being politically active in a traditional way is no guarantee at all that someone is a good person improving lives for the better.

ok so i had this ask in my inbox for like, at least half a year, but i’m going through my old asks now bc i’m in a mood to reply. i’ve tried to answer this ask at least once before but then closed the tab on accident or something (which also happened with a more recent ‘tell 5 things abt yourself / tag 10 followers‘ ask).

though i haven’t answered this ask publicly, i’ve often thought of your message throughout this year. seeing leftism as an active effort to continuously self-improve on being a better person really resonates with me. i can’t say this has fully given me a peace of mind, since i still feel like i’m not doing enough, when looking at how my friend is actively talking to others in a leftist organization i do think i could benefit a lot from talking to others like that, but i don’t know how to specifically affiliate with a group and i do tend to feel very ashamed and horrible in a social group after even the smallest struggle or a disagreement in a personal encounter. i deal very poorly with confrontation and tend to cry when it happens so seeking out a political organization / group seems counteractive.

this idea of self-improvement did help me though. i used to have this mindset in which i took everything i knew for granted. i never fully believe myself but i did notice that i put more trust in words of people who didn’t challenge things i already was taught to think (e.g. western ideas of how certain things should be). during the re-surge of BLM protests in recent months i realized just how i didn’t listen enough to Black voices and thinking i knew enough about this in 2016, or even wrote about a discussion on twitter which truly was not within my right to discuss. i think this has diminished a lot over the years, but i’m still finding myself sometimes seeking validation / acknowledgement for doing something good or offering support, as if people should deserve an award for showing basic human decency and respect. so i’m still not anywhere near i want to be, and i don’t think there should be an end goal either way, because to think you can’t improve any further is where you lose a progressive drive (which is quite relevant to the Netherlands, which keeps portraying itself as a progressive country bc of gay marriage, freedom of religion and women’s rights, while falling behind with other EU countries on many aspects such as the environment, social programs, anti-racism and the former three motives). i see old people who call themself leftist, but have decided to reach a point in their lives where they stop empathizing with groups they don’t understand and thus use quite conservsative views. i don’t think millenials, gen z whatnot are excempt from this end result unless we get rid of this idea that someone can at one point be - or already is - politically enlightened enough.

to touch upon the last aspect to this ask and what i was most concerned about, i.e. showing improvement and caring for others at an interpersonal level when something more isn’t possible: you’re absolutely right. i so often feel so stressed and defeated by everything going on in the world and i want to do more, help relieve as much pain as i can, get more inspired and edicated, whatnot. and i do not want to use this as an excuse but the reality is that i really find it hard to connect to other people due to autism and the continuous embarrassment i feel about myself, and only recently i realized i was so depressed 7 years ago after high school exams due to burnout and i never fully recovered from this. i’m in a somewhat better place mentally bc i live with my friend since 2 years now instead of with my parents, but i still feel lethargic and emotionally unstable and i’m not getting much done. ideally, i’d be doing a lot more than spreading information online / trying to unlearn racist, classist, ableist etc ideas / going to only 4 demonstrations within a couple of years, but that’s probably not realistic for now. i really cannot handle confrontation and currently i’m still hoping to get a more structured week schedule and less stress about income so i could hopefully get a better sense of what i could do in the future. admittedly i still feel bad for engaging with my special interests so much every day and often trying to shut out other things but maybe that’s just what i need for the time being. just, man, i thought the world would be inhabitable by 2020-2030 when i was a kid learning about climate change in primary school and i feel so helpless in all of this.

im crying a lot now up to the point where it’s gross / snotty but i’d just like to say thank you for this ask. you might not even read this as the ask was sent ages ago but i’m rly thankful and wanted to let you know i didn’t deliberately ignore your message or not think about it or something. thank you.

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

I think I’ve posted quotes from this piece, but I don’t think I ever read it in its entirety? Either way:

FIRST, a relevant excerpt! 

Donna and Cameron may not be the only heart of Halt and Catch Fire — it's a show that, despite only a small ensemble, has made remarkable use of the histories connecting each and every character — but they're certainly one of its hearts, the relationship that triggered the show's growth through its second and third seasons and the separation that has beautifully tinged this season with discomfort and regret. I assume I'm not the only Halt and Catch Fire viewer who has watched every episode this season just waiting for somebody to lock Donna and Cameron in a room and make them hash out their problems.

SECOND: do you ever sit around thinking about Halt and Catch Fire’s legacy? Because as a social scientist and critic, I know I sure do!

I admittedly don’t have a better name for it, but I don’t love the moniker ‘Sad TV’. I don’t think of any of the shows named in this article as ‘sad’ so much as I just understand them to be programming meant, for, you know, adults, who have enough life experience to appreciate the stakes involved? In particular I don’t think of Halt as ‘sad,’ by season 4 it feels like a hopeful (if not exactly optimistic), brave, future-facing show. Hope and despair go to together. (We learned that from The Dark Knight Rises, didn’t we? That movie deserves its critiques but it also deserves the love that bereaved folks have for it.) You only really know what hope is when you’ve been devastated, and you finally get to that point where you think that you will and might even want to survive. 

Halt is about a bunch of characters who want to survive, even if only out of spite, and who want to believe that they can effect real, positive change, even if only in the tech industry, who want to work together, because they’ve figured out that their partnerships are the actual most important thing. Especially at this juncture, I really can’t think of anything more uplifting than human beings realizing that it’s good and okay to care about each other and about wanting to make the world slightly better, and still trying, even after they’ve lost the people or relationships that mattered most to them, even after they’ve struggled for so long in isolation. Do you have to go through something like that in order to want your life and do good things with it? I mean, technically no, but realistically, that’s often how it works. Bad things happen to us, because they happen to everyone, and we deal with them as graciously as our mental health and other circumstances will allow. If we’re lucky, we learn from it, and we build solid relationships from it. 

Since Halt’s finale, I find myself looking for shows that remind me of it. Shows that are hopeful, but that don’t lie about how most hope is hard-earned. Shows that are about found family, about characters who have been through some real shit and are looking for and finding a place where they can build a personal and professional niche where they can thrive together and individually, and that focus on the effort that goes into that, and how interpersonal failures and setbacks can be really sad, but can also sometimes be really funny. 

This article suggests that Halt is part of a real trend, and I can’t tell you what the source of that trend is, exactly, but my hypothesis is that it’s another major ripple of what I think of as The Parks and Rec Effect (h/t @wuschwusch <3). Sometimes I think we might take for granted how Parks and Recreation represented a real departure in network sitcoms, which for a long time were literally just about how rich yt city people are unbearably annoying. For all of its flaws, Parks didn’t resort to ugly or oppressive humor, it found ways to draw attention to and make fun of that kind of ‘humor’ and it got most of its laughs from Leslie Knope’s knack for taking on just slightly too much, and then having to solve the problems that would create for her and her coworkers. We see this in writer and producer Michael Schur’s other big shows (Brooklyn Nine Nine and The Good Place) too: these are all shows about the wacky hijinks that ensue when you try to do good things in this hell world, and, uh, that’s pretty much what Halt is, too? Halt just has a slightly different tone, and it’s about how characters who don’t bounce back quite so well after a setback. 

Watching characters like the cast of Halt flail miserably, and other darker, less hopeful iterations of this (like The Americans, or the more recent Mr. Mercedes) isn’t going to appeal to everyone, as the article says. That they exist also indicates a real change in tv and the stories that we tell, especially now that we’re seeing uplifting downer shows on US network tv? It is now possible to see characters who are bereaved, mentally ill, recovering addicts, abuse survivors, alienated from themselves, and buckling under the weight of life and/or the state’s demands, even on network television, and not just on standard legal, medical, and crime dramas, but in their own stories and camp and melodrama-free series about coping with loss, illness, recovery, and adult loneliness! Quite honestly, what a time to be alive!

The article comments on how one such network drama, This Is Us, does have the numbers and the high viewership, which…I believe that there’s an entire article to be written on why that is, but for me to be able to write it I’d have to watch it first, which I haven’t, because the only thing I keep hearing about it is that it’s a cheesier, inferior version of Halt. (The author of this article even says as much, even though he makes a point of saying so as kindly and charitably as possible.) Because I have a lot of experience with watching many other US network family dramas and night-time soap operas, I’m familiar with the kind of melodrama such shows deal in, and so my hunch is that This Is Us (as well as ABC’s seeming copycat, A Million Little Things, the pilot for which I did watch, it was…something) isn’t actually as comparable to series like Halt, The Americans, and The Leftovers as this article makes it out to be.

This not entirely informed initial judgment aside: I don’t know exactly where this new approach to television storytelling came from, or quite how it jumped genres and channels, but it came from somewhere. My guess, based on my own tastes, is that at least part of it was fatigue with anti-hero series. (And just in time to provide an escape from the real-life political consequences of encouraging viewers to sympathize with and root[/vote?] for truly terrible, reckless, destructive people!) Maybe part of it is also a certain amount of fatigue with franchise and genre shows, which can sometimes feel a little too epic, and which can sometimes feel a little tedious even when they’re good and interesting? (…you know what I mean, if you’ve seen epic shows, it’s almost like getting kind of boring is built into them as a feature.) 

What I do know is that, I quite literally love to see it! Even for all of the complaints and critiques and griping I’ve voiced here, overall, Halt has always been the kind of tv that we deserve. Well-written, well-acted uplifiting downer comedies, dramas, and dramedies are what we all deserve, and having more of them be more accessible and not be limited to cable and streaming services feels like it can only be a good thing. 

[finsterhund]

So I lay in bed attempting to sleep for several hours. Slept through some of them

Trying to regain some form of composure.

And thought about things.

The self is a construct. Who we are is something we make entirely.

It's based on past experiences. So it makes sense that mine is just starting to manifest properly. I can finally make my own personal identity free from abusive consequence. I can have my own interests and opinions. I've been free for a shorter length of time than I haven't. Not only do I want to regain my childhood but I need to recover from my old one too.

The psychiatrist seems to think that who I am, my core personality, is a role I'm putting in place, and that there's a “normal [legal age] guy behind it" but she has that reversed. The more mature personality I'll present in situations where it is needed is an unnatural state for me. Not the other way around. The civil, quiet, polite child may be an unrealistic persona that hides an admittedly more volatile, obsessive, and feral variation, but that's just my regular personality with me not caring stronger about politeness and being respectful. My periods of maturity are almost always to influence others in some way. Often by an attempt at intimidation or knowing it will make me be more respected. She told me I shouldn't describe things in "flavorful language" but to me that's what being "mature and intelligent" is. Using big fancy words that I know the meaning of to try and more efficiently get my point across.

She also tells me that I'm smart and that I know things. The fact that I have a high literacy and read lots does not mean I'm smart it means I'm knowledgeable. Smart is how you apply your knowledge which I struggle to do in good constructive ways.

I actually want to get better about things. Like being more independent, not being so afraid, standing up for myself and having confidence. But she is conflating not being who I am with those things. It goes back to something I've thought about. About how is curing trauma but wiping someone's personality in order to do it really a cure or is it killing who they are and replacing it with a new person. I'm certain there are ways to make me stronger and better without sacrificing things that are Me.

I made the mistake of describing the Andy hat as a magic feather (even though yes I know it is) and now she's talking about how it doesn't actually help and I shouldn't need it. Well it does help. It just isn't actually doing anything. And her going on to say that nothing could be real later really cements the fact that nothing could be real in which case there's no reason to adhere to anything based on how real that it is perceived. If nothing is real then why should we give the things that appear to be more real any higher agency?

I want to be safe and I want to be happy. Ensuring these things is more important than adhering to society's draconian expectations of how I'm supposed to think and feel and act based solely on how long the broken meatsuit has orbited the sun. Changing my interests, personality, and values to reflect the grown ups won't actually make me more confident or happy or strong. I attempted to mentally age and it didn't work. It was an act that brought more stress and made me feel guilty for the things that made me happy.

I'm really annoyed at her saying that [even a ten year old] being accompanied by a stuffed animal "isn't normal" like, how dare people find comfort in things? Like, she told me that smell can be used to ground myself, so am I supposed to do that? Or is that wrong too because a scent doesn't actually help and it just tricks the brain or whatever.

Her logic just throws me off and it seems based in sacrificing the self in favor of being homogenized into the socially acceptable traits of adulthood.

And I know I'm biased because of the amount of horrible adults I've had in my life. But you have to understand that there very much is a difference in how I am and how they are. It impacts socialization too. All my friends are adults and the friendships that are stronger are ones where my differences are not patronized, mocked, etc. Or ones where they are even shared. Have a few friends who similarly keep childhood identity due to traumatic pasts and we have a lot in common.

She brought up me needing to have long-term constructive goals, and in the past I wouldn't have had any because of just wanting to die. But now I actually do. I want my dog for real, I want to be a better artist, I want my body to be fixed (so can we maybe do this? Thanks.), but to her it should be things like secondary education (can't afford it, can't be on my own in classes yet) and getting a job (once again, you need to be hire-able to get a job. But even with that road block I do have ideas) and get adult things. And I mean technically I do have an intended career in literature but I can't write anymore and I don't know why and at this point I think it's due to frustration with not being able to do things.

And it's hard to have long-term goals when I didn't think I'd ever get this far, and I've been struggling to have a home that doesn't get pulled out from under me for years. And of course, what can I actually do by myself? I go to a clinic to fix my body and they find out I'm age regressed and make it all about stabilizing my mental health first instead. I can function with age regression. Listen, if my body was fixed and I had more confidence in my physical self it'd be a lot easier to build it up mentally. The fact that i don't want to exist because of being perceived by others could be alleviated somewhat of I fixed blaring problems in my physical health. If I was able to walk properly and stand upright and not have to worry so much about getting sick.

I don't know if I have a personality disorder. I know I'm traumatized. I know I'm regressed and repressed. I don't know what an official personality disorder diagnosis would change, if anything, about what it means to be who I am.

But I cannot stress that aspects of me that I AM proud of, should not be the things that change. I like how I don't have adult interests, personality traits, and values. I like how I find comfort in stuffed animals and juvenile interests. I like when adults don't expect me to act and interact like their equal but treat me with care. It's not always patronizing.

For me stability and normalcy is about fixing my body, about making it so that I'm less of a coward or a pushover. Of teaching me how to properly destress. Those are good and constructive. Telling me that I brought this on myself and was asking for it when I'm glared at and antagonized by adults because I don't act like they do is NOT constructive. And makes me LESS inclined to cater to their world and whims.

I'm glad my next appointment will be an actual one and hope that my desire to have my immediately fixable problems dealt with will be more respected in the future. Still annoyed that mental stability is a requirement before having a surgery to fix a glaring problem with the physical body. You think I'll regret being made better?

[mad-madam-m]

Everbody seems to be *hating* the Voltron finale, so I wanted to ask your thoughts on it.

First off, I am sorry this took so long to answer, but I’ve been stupidly, stupidly busy since even before the season aired, so I haven’t had much time to respond.

A very short version: I didn’t hate the final season. Although there are many aspects of it that disappointed me or that I wasn’t happy with, there were also many aspects that I really liked or even loved, so my feelings are mixed and bittersweet.

I think I wanted to like it more than I did, but I also didn’t hate it as much as most people did, and processing all those feelings has taken me a while and I’ve mostly stayed off social media to do it. I can handle hearing disappointment/hurt one-on-one from friends, but I absolutely cannot deal with the unfiltered wave of emotion on places like Twitter and Tumblr right now. What little of it I did see was enough to stress me out badly (and the holidays are stressful enough already, oof), so I’ve mostly been hanging out on Dreamwidth, playing a 3-sentence ficathon, or searching for Tiger & Bunny art because it’s my happy place.

So, yeah, that’s kind of my brief thoughts on season 8. If you want the (much) longer version, including a more detailed breakdown of what I liked and what I didn’t, read on:

Things I loved:

- Hunk. Y’all. I loved Hunk. My headcanon for him has always been that he either ends up opening a restaurant, or that he becomes a diplomat who uses food to help bridge the differences between alien races. To actually see that happen in canon brought me so much joy, you have no idea.

- Pidge, particularly Pidge and her mom. Every scene they had together was fantastic. I especially loved their bargaining in the Clear Day episode. The Olkraion episode was also heartbreaking.

- The entire first episode. Oh my God, I thought the first episode was hilarious. The references to the previous series had me burying my face in my pillow so I wouldn’t wake anybody up with my laughter. The mall trip was absolutely fantastic, and I adored getting to see all the girls hang out together. And the scene with Coran and Lance? Hysterical. (Also, had to love that painting of Coran and Alfor; Coran, you are not subtle at all.)

- Lance and Allura. They were fucking adorable, which still astounds me because I wouldn’t have even been close to liking this ship in seasons 1 and 2. But they were super cute together and all of their scenes were very sweet.  

- Lance and Keith having a couple of surprisingly nice conversations? I missed their bickering, but I did like getting to see them actually being friendly with each other.

- The theme that people can change and find redemption, although I don’t know that it was handled as well here as I would’ve liked (see below), it is one of my favorite themes and I do think some of the .

- Zethrid and Ezor! Alien girlfriends reunited!

- Veronica being unendingly sweet and friendly to Acxa and Acxa being awkward and not knowing how to handle that is my fucking jam, you guys. I could’ve watched another 3 episodes of that easily.

- How much Keith has grown since season 1 and him acknowledging that growth. My chest actually clenched.

- I thought the documentary episode was cute. (Although admittedly, the scenes where the dog carried the camera, I had to stop watching because they were giving me motion sickness.) And I adored Hunk making the Altean dessert for the Alteans they’d recovered.

- The Clear Day episode. Really, the light-hearted funny episodes have always been my favorites, so I liked that we got more than one this season.

- Pidge and Allura having some truly great scenes together. We don’t see the two of them together very often, and the shopping in the first episode and the episode on Olkarion were both great for that. (And Pidge helping Lance get something shiny for Allura the way he helped her get the game system in Space Mall was just wonderful.)

- Everybody getting to talk to the previous Paladins. God, my heart. Even if I wasn’t particularly happy with that part of the plot, I really did like getting to see more of all the original Paladins, and the way it felt like the story was really coming full circle.

- I choked up when Atlas and Voltron combined to form one giant dual robot. I thought they were going to leave Shiro behind for the final confrontation with Honerva, but no. I loved getting to see the six of them fighting together, side-by-side, and that Shiro was there with them for the end of it.

- The final shot of the five of them watching their Lions fly away, with the focus on Keith and Shiro together as Black’s Paladins.

- And the final final shot of the Lions and Allura in the nebula. In the original Beast King GoLion series (the Japanese series that Voltron was cribbed from), there was a goddess at the center of the universe responsible for all creation (if I’m remembering it correctly), and that’s what this reminded me of. I don’t know if that’s the implication they intended—that Allura had become the goddess—but that’s what I took from it.

Things I didn’t love:

- Not enough Shiro, and I missed the little moments with him and Keith that we’ve seen sprinkled throughout most of the seasons. (I don’t expect The Black Paladins every episode, but good lord, would it have killed them to just have a couple of minutes of Shiro and Keith walking around the Clear Day carnival together? Hanging out on the night before launch day? Hell, just put Shiro on Black with Keith and Kosmo and give them a couple of lines of conversation before Lance comes up. It wouldn’t have been hard.)

- Allura actually letting the tiny evil creature inside her and then…nothing really happens? Like?? I really thought there was going to be more of a consequence for her taking that inside her because it’s pretty clear it can’t be controlled and I was seriously thinking she was not far away from going full darkside for at least an episode. But it just…did exactly what they wanted to do and that was that?

- Where the hell did Ezor even come from?! Like, I’m a-okay that she lived, but. Uh. What? I really wish that had been better explained, especially because she apparently had a pretty significant come-to-Jesus moment sometime between season 7 and season 8. (There were several moments like this, where like…I thought someone was dead, and they turned out to be alive, or they just randomly showed up somewhere after I thought they were somewhere else. It was confusing and a little bit annoying.)

- Much as I like to see villains getting redemption, by the end of the season, it felt…overdone? Like, they brought back a lot of previous villains and almost all of them either had reformed (the Warden and Ezor, for example) or were reformed by their interactions with the heroes (Zethrid, Honerva). Redemption arcs are hard to do well and I think the problem here was that there wasn’t enough time in 13 episodes to do that many proper justice, especially for someone like Honerva, who, uh…yeah. When your main villain for the season has literally destroyed almost all of reality and gets redeemed in less time than it took me to write this sentence, it doesn’t really give that arc the importance it needs.

- I really wish they’d left all the epilogues out entirely and just had the show end with the Lions flying off at the end and our original five Paladins standing together, watching them go. The epilogues felt a little hasty and last-minute, and I have to wonder if Shiro’s in particular was added only to deal with some of the backlash they got after season 7. Which, while I can appreciate that it’s a huge deal to actually show a same-sex kiss in a children’s animated series like this, it really does come across like it was just done for the sake of scoring diversity points/dealing with the aforementioned backlash, instead of allowing Shiro to have an actual on-screen romance like Lance and Allura.

- I’m still not sure how I feel about Allura’s ending. On the one hand, I don’t hate that there was a sacrifice like that that needed to be made, and I kind of wondered if they’d do something like that since, you know, series finale, saving all realities, etc. etc. But on the other hand, I feel like it could’ve been executed/explained much better (e.g., giving Coran a chance to say good-bye to her, at the very least), and I mean. Come on. I would’ve by far preferred it if Allura lived and got to go back to help rebuild her planet/people.

So yeah. Like I said, mixed feelings overall. I had intended to rewatch the whole thing before s8 came out, but I didn’t have time, so I may do that later, once the holidays are over and I’ve binged some of the other stuff I have on my list. I’m also sure rewatching will give me a different feeling on season 8 once I see it in context with everything else, so you know. We’ll see how that goes. XD

[flydotnet]

Tears of Venus

VRAINS Rarepair Weeks 2018-2019 - Day 10: Soulmate AU/Hanahaki

Summary: The first time she heard about the disease of unrequited love was when she was browsing the Internet for some stories to read while waiting for a pirated movie to download on her laptop. It seemed to just be a legend, a trope used by fanfiction writers and mangakas to have some tension, death stakes and angst for their characters’ relations. It was a way to add weight to a situation that, otherwise, may not have had it. This trope, because of its widespread character, was referred to “Hanahaki”. It was merely something to make people’s imaginations work and to break hearts in anticipation and suspense. It was all fiction even if, would she pay attention to probably false witness accounts, some said it was an actual thing, albeit very rare, and whose only cure really was reciprocated love. Ah, as if.

(Or: Ema doesn't believe in urban legends, and it bites her back)

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS Ships: Hireshipping (Ema/Akira), background platonic Ema & Aoi

Wordcount: 4.5K words

Notes: Realizing I'm writing these characters borderline OOC hurt more than it should have. (but hey at least it'll still be more accurate than most DSS-centric depictions of Yusaku and Ryoken amirite)

Y'all saw it coming, I saw it coming, everyone saw it coming, and I'm really proud of bring 4.5K words of Hire Hanahaki angst-H/C-whatever onto the table. This story is a weird mix but it was a blast to write, holy shit, I love angst and I love Hanahaki. But like I'm probably the one who proposed it in the first place for the event's prompt list so... Yeah. That has to be the longest oneshot I've ever written in one sitting.

Also, you'll quickly find out why this fic has a name that has nothing to do with flowers... at first glance.

Event hosted by @vrainsrarepairweeks

AO3 version available here.

The first time she heard about the disease of unrequited love was when she was browsing the Internet for some stories to read while waiting for a pirated movie to download on her laptop. It seemed to just be a legend, a trope used by fanfiction writers and mangakas to have some tension, death stakes and angst for their characters’ relations. It was a way to add weight to a situation that, otherwise, may not have had it.

This trope, because of its widespread character, was referred to “Hanahaki”. It was merely something to make people’s imaginations work and to break hearts in anticipation and suspense. It was all fiction even if, would she pay attention to probably false witness accounts, some said it was an actual thing, albeit very rare, and whose only cure really was reciprocated love.

Ah, as if.

 It’s when scrolling through the Internet again that Ema remembers about Hanahaki. She has heard rumours about someone in Den City being afflicted by the curse of flowers growing in their lungs because their beloved doesn’t love them back. It has this sensationalist character to it that makes people instantly intrigued: of course that’d reach her ears and that only sceptical and boring people would ignore it.

Thinking of overly-rational people who tend to see things the boring, practical and down-to-Earth way, she wonders what Akira would think about that. Aoi would be at least intrigued, considering her favourite Monsters are partially based on flowers (Lilybell, Holly Angel, Narkissus, Bella Madonna, Nightshade…), but her brother would most certainly dismiss it as yet another irrational legend. Oh well, it’s funnier to imagine his dismissive reactions to it rather than Aoi’s developing teenage curiosity.

 As such, she can’t help herself but mention these in a meeting they have for a new mission he’s giving her for, admittedly, a generous sum of money. If they were near her birthday, she’d see it as a gift: as it stands, it’s probably to be sure she doesn’t go to see if she can extort even more money from businessmen with little hacking knowledge (as it stands, Akira does have some and used to be better than her at it: his knowledge just caught all the dust around the place as soon as he could stop hacking to survive, or so she thinks at least). To be honest, when it comes to their personal relationship, she’s better off getting a bit less money but ensure she can tease her hirer about his awkward side.

“Have you heard about the person in the city who has flowers in their lungs?” she asks him as she thinks back to that story going across Link VRAINS and other social media outlets.

He doesn’t reply immediately, but when he does, it’s just as she expected him to do: “Hanahaki isn’t real, Ema. It’s just rumours going around.”

“I figured you’d respond that. You’re predictable, you know?”

He reddens at the insult before they part ways to go on their merry day and tasks.

 Still, it’s quite the heavy tip for what’s that job is worth. It’s simply making sure an AI chip doesn’t go rogue again in his boss’s back. It’s not risky, it’s not the worst he’s asked her to do, and yet he’s paying her extensively. Did he get a rise in his salary or something? Or is it Aoi’s way to thank her yet again for all her services? In both cases, it’s unnecessary and, for once, she doesn’t feel like accepting this big sum. Well, why does she find it so weird? Maybe Akira just overestimated what the job was worth because of all the “doing that in the back of the big boss of a gigantic company” gig.

When she gets paid for it, merely twenty-four hours later, the payment has even more of a tip joined to it, along with what seems to be a virtual present. Okay, that’s it, Akira is really overestimating his missions’ worth and wanting her to stay here. Fine. He better not make such a fuss about it anymore: that’s embarrassing to see him dig his grave even deeper all by himself. She accepts the tip anyway, thinks of what perfume or makeup set she could by herself with it because the ones she has already start to grow old, and settles on something glittery for once.

 The rumours precise themselves in the following days. The city now knows who the poor, poor sickie is: a man, presumably old enough to feel love but still young enough to worry himself over romance of all things. That’s all there is to it, but at least people have a precise noun or pronoun to use on that guy. Ema stays alert of it: it’s amusing to see all that speculation for something that has so many chances to turn out to be yet another urban legend spread through the streets and posts on social media. She never expected manga to have such an important cultural impact.

She starts to talk about it with Aoi over the net, the teenage girl being interested in what this is all about. Ema runs her through all she knows about it, from the little things she once read online to what is currently the consensus on today’s legends. A question then comes from Aoi who hesitates between believing in it for its Romanesque nature and doubting it because her brother taught her to be doubtful of everything she hears (even his opinions, but she has forgotten to do that for the most part), an interrogation that should have never interested Ema as much as it did: “Do we know what type of flowers it is? I’ve heard depending on the species that it can be a hint with flower symbolism”.

 Frankly, Ema doesn’t know anything about flower language or symbolism because she simply never buys flowers for anyone. The only times she does are when visiting her late father’s grave: she simply does like her mother does every time and put there a bouquet of forget-me-nots. Kengo has a slightly other idea of what to put on there, but she hasn’t taken the time to research it either. They have never discussed it yet: she gives him the time to recover from the idea that they are, indeed, brother and sister and should probably stick together even if he always wants to work alone.

The rumours come to her again when Aoi brings these up herself in their little conversation. According to a few, differing versions, this affected person has yellow carnation, anemones or daffodils growing inside their lungs. Quick searches on the Internet confirm Ema in her idea that this is all an urban legend spread among teenagers and people in need of sensationalism: really, flowers symbolizing unreciprocated love, deadly illness or rejection? Come on, this is too cliché to be real, too much like a poorly-written shojo manga to be happening in her plane of reality. She tells Aoi about that, how artificial it all sounds, how everything is way too much of a coincidence, but the girl still believes this may be happening near her while not giving much details aside from that.

 She takes another mission offer from Akira in a green-grassed parc in the city where cherry blossoms punctuate the floor and sky. He seems to not do so hot: if she isn’t mistaken, he’s usually not this pale and doesn’t have such dark rings under his eyes. Considering the recent crises at SOL Technologies which are, undeniably, partially caused by her doings, it wouldn’t be surprising for him to work overtime. He always manages to find a way to run himself to the ground anyway as if he was a fatigue addict. God, she’s glad she didn’t turn out to become a workaholic like him.

He coughs here and there, and that’s when he can’t keep it inside anymore, as he explains to her what it consists in this time. It’s eerily similar to last time, with too much money at the key again, and yet another element that shouldn’t be here: the way he slips in compliments on her capacity and resourcefulness, on how he’s grateful for her to always accept his mission offers. (That last part is wrong: she explicitly remembers turning down one or two offers in the past, and once of them recently on top of it). A sudden excess of gratitude coming from a man who never speaks about himself and his feelings simply gives off a wrong vibe on her? Does he want to seduce her or something? Because that won’t work. As it stands, Ghost Girl doesn’t do romance.

 The noise of the ever-going, omnipresent rumours soon inform her of even more details she isn’t asking for. The sick man is in his twenties, working for a company and, as they say, never revealed being infected with the disease to anyone. There is no clear evidence to support these claims, albeit she slowly starts to think about how this description fits Akira more and more. On the other hand, there are a ton of other men in their twenties working for big companies in this city who wouldn’t want anyone to know they’re coughing up flowers of everything a human being could cough out. That’s just unbelievable because of how ridiculous and impossible it sounds.  

There is still one picture that doesn’t live her mind. When she was leaving their meeting spot, she swore she could see him bent in half with a hand against a tree, coughing she guessed loudly. While this doesn’t exactly correlate to the rumour in its very details, the coincidence of this urban legend going around and a sudden striking coughing fit like that is still numbing at her mind from time to time during the day. Maybe she should wait for more information about the rumour’s sick man to confirm if this has any chance to be the case.

Well, she’s starting to believe it herself, and she finally understands for the first time was Aoi was willing to consider the possibility of the “Hanahaki Case of Den City” as it’s called to be real. The irony never stops.

 Soon enough, before she ever expected it to in fact, she learns of a new aspect of the rumour: the man affected by the case of Hanahaki works for SOL Technologies. Is linked to it a witness account by a secretary of the man who swore she had seen him cough more and more often, along with finding a tissue filled with wet and sometimes bloodied flower petals in his paper bin. That is one coincidence too much: that description would match Akira’s to the point she is certain he’s the basis for it. Maybe that secretary is the original source of the rumour’s more precise details. She has to be for such tiny precisions and descriptions anyway.

It starts to somewhat link inside her mind. He did look ill when they last saw each other, with how pale his skin was and how bad his coughing sounded at times. The more logical explanation – the one he’d take, in fact – is that he simply caught a bad chest infection somewhere, and it has around ninety percent chances to be the case. But then… He wouldn’t be afraid to not being able to thank her enough would it just be an infection like that, wouldn’t it? He sounded like he was going to go soon and never see her again. With how big her latest pay checks from him have been, she doubts it’s because he wants them to part ways.

 She gets a text message from “SOL Zaizen” on her phone right as she is about to ask Aoi if she has witnessed anything wrong with her brother. As soon as she opens it, she notices something has to be seriously wrong.

No matter what the offer is this time, she is going in-person to meet him and “discuss” the “matters”.

 When she arrives there, Ema gets her breathing stolen. Her footsteps are slow despite how much her mind is racing: he looks even worse than the last time, with a mask on the lower part of his face and deeper dark rings, a sickly red barely visible under the white of the mask, and her heart starts racing because he just seems to be doing terribly. She, however, cannot bring herself to run. How did he even get out of his house in that condition? The world may never know, after all.

“What the hell happened to you?!” is what manages to exit her throat as she walks up to him back against the wall.

“It’s complicated, really… I’ve also got a confession to make: I didn’t want to see you for an offer,” he replies with coughs interrupting his words every ten seconds or so, she isn’t sure, but it’s intense and almost frightening to see.

 Ema crosses her arms and waits in anxious anticipation for whatever he has to tell her.

“I’m… not sure of how I should go off about it,” he tells her in full honesty, hand in front of his mouth and the other arm around his chest, “so please excuse my abruptness.”

“You haven’t responded to my question, but go on, I guess.”

“I… I’m not sure how long I’ll last for, so… can you promise me to keep an eye on Aoi and Hayami for me?”

“Hayami is your secretary, right…? Wait, what the fuck are you going on about?!”

Akira gives her an excuse of a smile in return. There really is something wrong with this man.

“A… terminal illness of sorts, let’s put it that way… Which brings to something else I wanted to tell you…”

She cannot tell if his face actually is redder by the minute or if it’s just her noticing how ill he truly is.

“I… I may very well be in love with you, Ema…”

 Her world stops and shatters before her eyes. There isn’t a lot of people who truly matter to her in this little sphere of hers: her mother, her late father, her half-brother Kengo, Aoi, perhaps Playmaker for saving her life… and Akira. They have grown closer with the years and it’s only now that she realizes how much he does matter to her and how terribly she is receiving this. A terminal illness, so suddenly, for a man who isn’t even thirty yet? This is… this is awful.

And he’s revealing right here and now why he was being generous these past few days. He knew he was going to die and, perhaps, wanted to please her one last time. She can barely handle the first part of the news: the second is finishing her off. She wants to cry, to deny this as lies, but she knows better than this from Akira: he has never been as dramatic as her, down-to-Earth. For him to tell her all of this, it has to be true and urgent.

Her breathing gets caught in her throat and she cannot find the strength to answer.

 Ema externally freezes despite the storm taking place in her skull. Time has stopped and everyone else has disappeared from her consciousness as she helplessly stares, unable to move even a finger, at the man whose breathing suddenly gets worse and whose chest seems to squeeze before her widened eyes.

“I…” She attempts to respond. “I don’t know what to say…” She admits to him and herself all the same.

“It’s fine… I expected this to be sudden and shocking…”

Before he can finish speaking, another coughing fit takes a hold of him to the point of forcing him to uncover the bottom part of his face as to spit something.

 Everything shatters when Ema gets to see what’s coming out of his mouth or, to be exact, his lungs.

Flower petals.

Hanahaki is real.

An entire flower tainted in dark reds and smelling like spring and iron.

The Hanahaki Case of Den City isn’t just a legend, and he is the one they were speaking about.

 And it’s all because of her.

 She swallows a sob back as he puts back his mask and looks at her, eyes glassy and almost unfocused, tempted to look away in shame. This is tragically real, tragically close to home. Fuck this! Fuck this so much, from Hell and back!

“I… I’m sorry for this, very much so, Ema,” he tells her as he goes from supporting himself with an arm against the wall to doing so with his back leaning against it instead.

She timidly picks up the entire flower and tries to identify it.

“It’s an anemone,” he attempts to state very calmly, as if to ease her back into what she’s used to, but it’s all a failed façade.

Ema then remembers what she read online and what Aoi told her before: anemones are a symbol of death, illness and forsaken love depending on cultures. She can distinguish a faint blue hue to the one she has in her hand.

“I have to go,” he suddenly tells her in a faint and groggy voice, starting to lose his capacity to speak, “please take care, Ema…”

“I promise I’ll watch over Aoi for you, then,” she tries to look stoic when she just wants to cry. “Please… take care too, Akira,” she continues and ends her sentence as her legs finally move and take her away from the scene.

Another timid, sad smile.

 Her mind blanks during her trip back home on her bike, but as soon as she reaches her flat, all her tears fall from her eyes and trail on her cheeks. She pathetically lets her helmet go, takes off her shoes and lets herself fall onto her bed. She is causing another person’s death without ever meaning to, and one she cares about on top of it. Fuck. Akira deserved better than that kind of cruel and unusual death.

But there is nothing she can do about it, isn’t there? It’s uncurable and terminal unless feelings are returned, and there’s where it stings. She doesn’t love him the way he loves her: she has prevented herself from falling in love with anyone as to protect herself from heartbreak and ex-partner drama. She cannot respond back and that’s what is killing him.

This is all her fault, all her goddamn fault!

 She’s surprisingly dramatic and heartbroken about it, for someone who has already lost her father to an illness. She remembers being torn and extremely saddened for a few days following his demise, crying after him even, but she cannot for the life of her figure out why this is also such a tragedy with Akira. They’re friends, at best. Shady friends making unwritten contracts behind everyone’s backs, but friends and that’s it.

That’s surprisingly hurtful to hear herself think.

 She needs to calm down and think the situation through. Panicking and choking on her sobs isn’t going to make anything better. She gets up and paces in her flat, trying to piece together every fragment of her feelings she can decipher as to paint a global picture of her part of the situation. It’s a giant mess she’s facing with all the disdain she can have towards herself for never cleaning it up before today. Clean your room, they said.

There is no denial that she does care for Akira enough not to want to seem him go so early. Wait, early? That means she wants to spend more time with him, just like friends do. So, they’re friends, that’s for sure. Comparing to her other friends, she finds herself thinking more of what she felt towards now ex-partners… In a way, when she was surprised to hear him confess his love to her, a part of herself seemed to have rejoiced, or rather, to have been relived. That doesn’t make sense with all the sorrow she feels! Why would she be happy to be the reason why he’s dying young after spending so long trying to survive in the streets with a six-year-old under his wing?!

…Oh.

 Ema smashes her fist into a wall she finally, finally understands everything. Of course, of course that had to turn out to be denial all along! If she was so broken, so glitched out when learning of his upcoming death and how she was its cause, it was because she had, all along, wanted to be the cause of this. Well, not that way, but she was hiding her feelings to herself to avoid heartbreak again. If nobody could love her because she was shady and prone to backstabbing, when why should she allow herself to fall in love with others?

And then came in Akira, and everything fell apart because that illness, eventually, means nothing. It has no place to be because she has just learnt how things truly were: he’s in love with her, and she’s in love with him, and it’s all going to go down the sewer if she doesn’t do something soon. She has the power to change the tide, to prevent his early death. She needs to act, quickly.

She gets out her phone and gives him a last meeting time.

 The meeting happens the day right after, and she can guess by how he didn’t have any issue to respond “yes” to her pleas that he has been given an illness break by SOL Technologies (hah, surprising). To be fair, if Ema had made sure her motorcycle was all charged up, it was to ensure she could make it quickly to the hospital or the Zaizen flat in case everything would fall apart. As it turns out, she sees a familiar room and an even more familiar face come out of it.

Instead of waiting next to the tree where he asked her for the first time to do a mission for him and where he told her he loved her, she runs up to him in a worried hurry. Despite his bittersweet smile and his ever-so polite “Hello, Ema”, she feels how fragile he is in her arms, how she feels like she’s handling a crystal statue who matters so much to her, a statue she has fragilized by her own hands without meaning to. She has, after all, never truly wanted to destroy people, merely play with them and maybe be a bit mischievous. She wanted to be Aphrodite, to play with men and their desires and their capacity to spend money on her, not Death and her scythe reminding people of how feelings can suck.

But she’s no goddess.

Won over by the one naïve about love guy she’s met, that’s what she is.

 They sit down on a bench, his head on her shoulder because she’s afraid he won’t stand on his own in his spot of the bench if he doesn’t have some support, his unnatural body heat piercing through her clothes. That’s ironic to say the least. Despite how simplistic it seems to say three words to someone, she’s still hesitant and doesn’t know how Akira, the always-stiff man with zero skill in romance, has managed to pull this off. Her pride vanished the moment she knew she was killing him from the inside: she has nothing keeping her away from it, except maybe her guilt that doesn’t waver.

“How many days do you have left?” she asks instead, out of concern and morbid curiosity as to tell herself that, maybe, later, she’ll be able to be cocky about how narrow she saved someone from his death.

“They told me a week at most, probably less” he replies with his voice even weaker than yesterday’s, a petal exiting his lips. “I didn’t expect you to call me again so soon… My doctor will be mad to learn that I’ve come outside to meet up with you… Haha…”

Why does he everything he say or do break her heart, these days?

 Ema looks down, her sins facing her directly in the face.

“Akira, I’m not sure how I should tell you this knowing what’s going on with you,” she continues as earnest she could be. Her pride really ran away on her.

“It’s fine… I’m glad I didn’t scare you away yesterday… You seemed so shaken…”

“You’re not allowed to worry for me when you’re about to die, you… fool.”

Insulting the dying isn’t very cool either, Ema, you should know that.

“What I mean is that I have to tell you something too personal for it to be said on the network. It’d break its meaning.”

He sighs. She can just feel how weak his breathing has become over the past weeks through this single exhale and how barely audible it is. Declaring her love to a shadow hurts.

“It’s fine if you can’t do it anything about it… Just protect Aoi for me…”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

 Despite his heavily weakened condition, she can still see how surprised he is to hear her say that. He should know better than anyone else that Ghost Girl can do anything. She excuses it for today, forever even, and holds her hand in his.

“I wish I could have been more dramatic than this, like I usually am, but this is an urgent matter and I won’t let you slip away from me so easily when it’d be easy to win against the illness,” she starts rambling almost as a way to shield herself from her own words.

Funny enough how curing his Hanahaki case seems so easy all of a sudden. She glances at him to see his eyes desperately trying to focus on her.

“I love you too, Akira.”

 There is a single, then a couple tears exiting his eyes as she finishes to tell that, and he somehow finds the strength to grip her hand as he coughs out what she guesses to be the last anemone to ever reside in his lungs without rotting away. She doesn’t know how the flowers in his lungs are going to fade away, but that’s not what matters for now.

She enlaces him from his side and pulls her against her own body, feeling the fever disappear in moments, breathing starting to sound normal again. He looks exhausted from fighting the illness, she is herself tired from crying and panicking, the smothering anxiety and fear of death soon to come taking their toll on them both.

“Could you… stay over for the night?” He asks her as he’s falling asleep. “The driver must still be here…”

“My pleasure,” she answers. “Let’s get there before I have to carry you like my bride to bed.”

 As she carries him on her shoulder again, they leave behind a trail of pale blue petals smelling like copper and iron. The last one people will ever see, she hopes. The last ones she’ll see for sure.

End Notes

Writing about Akira almost dying is my new specialty.

[neruran]

Kippou

Series: Boku no/My Hero Academia Rating: T (for language mostly) Genre: Fluff Relationships: Bakugou/Kirishima/Uraraka [Kirikacchako] Characters: Uraraka Ochako, Bakugou Katsuki, Kirishima Eijirou, Bakugou Masaru, Bakugou Mitsuki, Uraraka Ochako’s Parents, Kirishima Eijirou’s Parents, OCs, minor characters created for the story Other Tags: Established Relationship, Polyamory, Future Fic, Pregnancy, Bakugou Katsuki Swears A Lot, probably a little OOC Summary: Informed that all is well and healthy so far, Ochako, Eijirou, and Katsuki decide to tell their parents the happy news; that they'll all be grandparents in a few months. 

Check notes for AO3 link, because this hellsite has a vendetta against links within posts and I hate the link post format, so I gotta make a workaround.

(Title means "good news" in Japanese)

Remember when I said “famous last words” regarding not writing a continuation to Tsuwari? Yeah I was right. I also told myself when I started writing this “oh this’ll be short, just a couple snippets from different points along the timeline of Ochako's pregnancy and their forays into parenting” - you know, like a fool - then 2k later and I still hadn’t gotten to the main point of this so-called snippet, and I finally accepted that this was going to be its own oneshot. Sometimes I hate being so rambly. I admittedly struggled with this more than Tsuwari for various reasons, and I've also done further research and found a couple minor things in Tsuwari aren't quite correct, largely with how Japan deals with pregnancy and childbirth, but it's ultimately relatively minor stuff so I'm not arsed to correct it. It's actually been a little fascinating reading up on the official (as in government-related stuff such as paperwork and healthcare) and social/cultural differences between Japan and North America, so I tried to incorporate hints to some of what I learned, and if I can wrangle my focus and inspiration to write more about Kirikacchako's adventures into parenthood, I'll try to show the differences in those fics/snippets as well.

Once again I have footnotes, which are not really necessary to read to enjoy the story but add flavour, you could say.

As always, comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated, but likes, kudos, and bookmarks are nice too! Hope you enjoy!

The day after her little discovery, Ochako books an appointment for that week with her ob/gyn. When she goes in a couple days later and relays the story to Dr. Houkou, they laugh heartily for a good five minutes, much to Ochako's embarrassment. [1]

"I'm terribly sorry for laughing, it really is a little amazing you didn't put the pieces together until now,” they say once they've calmed down, dabbing their eyes with a tissue.

"You can't entirely blame me," Ochako mumbles, hiding her red face. She knows Dr. Houkou doesn't mean any insult, and honestly it is a little funny, but still, she can't help but feel embarrassed for herself.

"That's true, and to tell you the truth, this is not the biggest case of lack of observation; I've heard stories of people who didn't realize they were pregnant until they went to the hospital complaining of stomach pains, when it turned out they were in labour!" [2]

"Oh gosh, I hope I would've noticed long before then!" Uneasily, she rubs her belly. "If not me, one or both of my partners.”

"I'm sure you would; from what I know of those instances, there were certain factors that led the parent-to-be to not recognize the signs, or made the signs less than obvious, which while that's evidently somewhat applicable to you, those situations were more...extreme, I suppose you could say?"

"I'm just glad the worst that's happened to me is this broken wrist," Ochako says, lifting her cast. "I forgot to ask at the hospital, but will this affect the baby at all?"

"No, it should be fine. At worst, it'll be a little slow to heal as most of your body's resources are focused on what's in your womb rather than healing your injuries, but I'm sure the extra downtime will be good for you. Oh don't pull that face, you workaholic," Dr. Houkou scolds, rolling their eyes at the poorly concealed pout Ochako has. "I know you're a busy hero, but it's important you take time to recover, especially now it's not just yourself that you need to look out for.”

"I know, it's just going to be tough," sighs Ochako. "I love helping people! After being in this field for so many years, I feel restless at the idea of not doing anything more than paperwork or small tasks, but I'll have to get used to it for the next while."

"Don't worry, before you know it, you'll be having your baby and jumping back into the fray. Now, let's figure out that due date."

~~~

"We're home!"

"Welcome back!" Ochako calls back, peeking her head over the back of the couch to smile at her partners as they make their way into their apartment. "How was work today?"

"Nothing super exciting on my end, just broke up a scuffle between a couple of rowdy yankii while out on patrols," Eijirou reports.

Katsuki huffs, evidently jealous. "Boring as shit."

"Oh calm down, you got to stop a robbery last week."

"Doesn't make this week any less boring."

Rolling his eyes, Eijirou picks up a meowing Hotaru, placing her on his shoulder as he plops down beside Ochako. He peers curiously at the various booklets and pamphlets she has scattered around her. "How about you? How'd your appointment go?"

"Well, besides giving them a good laugh when I told them how I hadn't noticed I was pregnant"—she shoots a pouty glare towards the kitchen when Katsuki snickers, but he ignores her as he starts on dinner, so she continues—"they confirmed everything's going well and that I'm probably on the tail end of twelve weeks, and we worked out my due date."

"Oh, that's awesome! When is it?"

"February 20th!"

"February, huh," Eijirou muses aloud. "We're just at the beginning of August; February seems so far away...The due date's just a guesstimate, right? So it could be born on a different day. Think it'll be a Valentine's baby?"

"I fucking hope not," Katsuki gripes. "People would probably only give them chocolate and Valentine shit for their birthday, I sure as fuck don't want our kid subjected to that."

"Hey Eiji, you think we'll have to implement a swear jar when the baby's born?" Ochako says teasingly. "Or do you think Katsuki'll manage to get his language under control before then?"

"Shut up, my language is fine."

"Sure, sure, I'm sure all of our mothers would appreciate it when one day while babysitting, our kid says ‘fuck' out of nowhere, and I'm sure it would not be much of a mystery as to who they learned that word from," Eijirou replies. [3]

The noise of Katsuki preparing dinner pauses for a moment. Ochako and Eijirou exchange knowing looks.

"...I'll work on it."

"Wary of what Mitsuki would say?"

"Hell no, that old hag can nag all she wants, she's not much better. It's your mom's disapproval I'd rather avoid," Katsuki answers, pointing at Eijirou.

"Mine? Do you mean Mom or Mama?"

"Ikane."

"Really?" Ochako questions, giving a little laugh in disbelief. "But she's such a sweetheart like Eijirou here." She reaches up to ruffle Eijirou's hair, earning a half-hearted complaint about his drooping hair spikes being messed up.

Eijirou chuckles as he gently swats her hand away from his head, petting Hotaru when she meows at him. "You haven't seen her in full mom mode. Once when I was in middle school, I said something crass without realizing while Mama was babysitting some neighbour kids, and the look she gave me could've pierced right through my Unbreakable state. Not to mention the ear twisting I got shortly after." Absently he rubs his ear, recalling the pain.

"I...suppose I can see that. If it's anything like the expression you make at villains that make you angry, it must be something."

Katsuki mutters a "you have no idea" unnoticed. For the best; he doesn't care to explain to Ochako the incident that lead to him earning Ikane's ire, however brief it was.

"Mama does like to say I inherited her passion instead of her quirk," Eijirou says with humour. "Though, speaking of; do we want to start telling people we're expecting? I mean, I know some people wait until the end of the first trimester anyway since the chances of miscarriage are pretty low after that point, so then it's pretty set in stone that a baby's on the way."

Ochako hums thoughtfully, drumming her fingers absently on Eijirou's knee. "I think I'd like to tell my parents first, but I'd prefer to do it in person or on video call. It seems impersonal to give them the news any other way."

"I wanna tell my moms right away; I just know Mama's gonna love hearing that she'll be a grandma. But I'm also excited to tell all our friends.”

"Why don't we just conference call all our parents and tell them all at once?" Katsuki proposes, scraping some vegetables he just cut up into a pot. "I know the hag'll complain if she's one of the last informed, so if we do it that way, it gets it all out of the way at the same time and I don't get my ear nagged off."

"That's...not a bad idea," Ochako says, blinking in mild surprise.

"Of course it's not, I came up with it. You make it sound like I come up with bad ideas on the regular basis."

Eijirou smirks slyly. "You mean ideas like putting too much hot sauce in your food just to prove you can take it, only to get hit by the consequences later in the bathroom, Kacchan?"

"Shut up, at least I can take it!"

"Now, now, your unfortunate dietary decisions aside, I didn't mean to imply you don't have good ideas," Ochako interrupts. Katsuki grumbles, but puts up no further argument. "I was just surprised I hadn't considered it. Since I have the next couple days off to give my wrist a little more rest, why don't I contact everyone and coordinate it?"

"Sounds like a plan! And then we can start telling all our friends and stuff!" Eijirou giddily hops in his seat, which of course disturbs the cat on his shoulder. She lets out a growl and bats at his head. "Ow, yeah, sorry Hotaru, I deserved that." He sets her down, letting her stalk off to cuddle up with Kyou who's laying in her doggie bed in the corner, touching his ear to check that she didn't scratch him.

Ochako giggles at him. "You think everyone will assume we're adopting another cat at first?"

"I mean, they might, but we only did that once with Hotaru and it was funny! I think in this instance though, I'd prefer to tell some people face-to-face first before announcing it on our social media. Mostly I wanna see Denki, Mina, and Hanta's faces when they hear the news.”

"Yeah, Dunce Face will probably flip his shit, it'll be hilarious."

"I'm excited to tell Tsuyu-chan, Tenya-kun, and Deku-kun. Oh, stop making that face, Katsuki."

"What face? I'm not making any face," Katsuki replies petulantly. "I'm not even facing you."

"Yeah, but I know you and I know you're pulling a face at the idea of involving Deku-kun, because you always do even though you two are friends now," she says, rolling her eyes. Eijirou snickers to himself.

"We are not friends, I just tolerate the stupid nerd enough to work with him on occasion."

Once again, Eijirou and Ochako exchange looks then simultaneously roll their eyes affectionately, fully aware that whatever bad blood the two had as children has long been resolved enough that they frequently trade spots on the hero rankings and collaborate on missions, all the while throwing harmless barbs and challenges back and forth. The relationship is complicated, as "friends" doesn't quite describe them, but "rivals" or "frenemies" doesn't seem right either. They're just "Deku and Kacchan", a category of their own.

"Point is," Ochako continues. "Deku-kun is my friend, and I'm looking forward to sharing the news with him. I know he's going to be very happy for all of us."

"Think he'll cry?" Eijirou asks.

"Definitely," Ochako and Katsuki answer simultaneously.

Eijirou laughs, leaning into Ochako. "You're right, dumb question. He may be better than when we were first-years, but I should know better than to underestimate the secret Midoriya secondary quirk. Now, what's all this you got here, Chako?"

Lighting up, Ochako eagerly explains the various pamphlets that cover things like her recommended diet, the baby's development, and what sort of information she needs to submit to the Health Office. Eijirou just as eagerly listens, nodding his head and asking questions, and though he's busy making dinner, she knows Katsuki has an ear on the conversation so she makes sure to talk loud enough for him to hear as well.

~~~

Coordinating the conference call with their parents ends up being a more difficult task than Ochako expects; each set of parents has different schedules and events, not to mention there's Eijirou and Katsuki's schedules to consider, so it actually takes several phone calls and emails to figure out a day and time that works for everyone. The entire time Ochako also finds herself dodging the question for why this is so important, merely explaining that their triad had some good news for them and wanted to announce it to them all at the same time. She admittedly flushes when Mitsuki teases that perhaps one of them proposed to the other two or vice versa—the idea of getting married to Eijirou and Katsuki flustering her even if they're already expecting a child—but clumsily acts coy to keep her from guessing the actual news.

After two days of back-and-forth, they finally all agree that the upcoming Friday after dinner will work for everyone, barring any emergencies. Which gives Ochako several days time to build up her excitement, but also her anxiousness. What if any of their parents don't approve? Her own parents had been rather apprehensive about her being in a poly relationship back when she first told them, but now that it's been several years with only a couple hiccups, they're happy for Ochako's happiness, but what if this changes their minds again? Sure she's a grown adult capable of making her own decisions in life, but she's always been close with her parents so she'd hate to lose that relationship over this. Mitsuki's reaction also worries her a bit, as while she does like the woman, she can be rather brash and critical like Katsuki at the most unpredictable of times.

She quietly admits this to Katsuki as they're snuggled up on the couch waiting for Eijirou to get home from a late-running patrol shift; he gruffly assures her that both his mom and dad will be ecstatic at the news, so her parents will surely feel the same, which means she has nothing to worry about. In return, he confesses feeling a little apprehensive himself regarding her and Eijirou's parents reaction to him being involved, but Ochako's quick to tell him that if she's fine, then he's fine as well because their parents all know what a good person he is and seen how wonderful and loving a partner he's been, so they should have no qualms.

Eijirou, on the other hand, seems to vibrate with anticipation with each passing day, as if the information that they're expecting is waiting to burst out of him like an explosion from Katsuki's palms. It even seeps into his aura while out doing hero work, enough that one of Ochako's sidekicks happens to take notice.

"Red Riot-san was more energetic than usual when I happened to pass by him doing patrols on my way home yesterday," Subspacer muses when Ochako stops by the office to pick up more work to do from home. "When I asked him if something good had happened on patrol, he grinned and said no, but he did get some news that made him really happy recently, but didn't elaborate further." They turn to her, head tilted curiously. "Any idea what that's about?" [4]

Ochako gives a chuckle that she hopes isn't as nervous-sounding as she feels. "Oh, I wouldn't think on it too hard...You've seen him in casual work settings, he gets excited over the smallest stuff." She does her best to maintain a smiling poker face as they eye her a moment, before they let whatever it is they're thinking go, going on to fill her in on what's happened at the office in her absence. Ochako knows they're suspicious, but mentally thanks them for not pressing the matter.

The days pass and Friday arrives without much fanfare. All three of them are antsy in their own ways during dinner; Eijirou can't seem to sit still at all, Katsuki's foot bounces restlessly, and Ochako frequently slips into her natural Kansai accent as she talks, excitement and anxiousness starting to come to a head as the promised time ticks closer. Soon enough, their dinner is eaten and cleaned up, their pets are fed, and then they're sitting on their couch with Eijirou's laptop opened up on Ochako's lap.</p>

On her right, Katsuki's phone makes a little ‘boom' noise to indicate he has a new message. "My old man says he and the hag are ready when we are," Katsuki says after checking.

Eijirou's phone dings to her left a moment later. "My moms are good to go!"

Sure enough, hers buzzes less than a minute after, and a quick glance tells her that her parents are also ready. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she smiles at both her partners, then clicks the button to start the conference call.

Eijirou's mothers are the first to pick up, but her parents and Katsuki's follow suit seconds after. It's almost overwhelming seeing six faces on the screen, but besides the big news she intends to drop during this call, this is something they've all done before in lieu of separate phone calls and emails. Besides, it's been weeks since she's seen any of them through anything besides social media, so it's nice to be able to talk to their families face-to-face, even if there's a screen separating them. Smiling brighter, she gives a little wave, Eijirou doing the same. "Hello everyone!" she greets. A chorus of greetings echoes back from their parents. "I'm glad this worked out, it's been so long since we've been able to do a group call like this!"

"The woes of adulthood and having busy jobs, right hon?" Mitsuki turns to Masaru, who nods in agreement.

"How is that new line coming along, Masaru-san? I recall Mitsuki-san mentioning before you two had a deadline this week," asks Karuko. [5]

"I've finished everything that's within my control, so now it's just a matter of waiting for the samples to see if there's anything that needs adjusting before going into full production." [6]

"That's good to hear! Considering your other work, I'm sure it'll be a success."

"Not that I don't want to hear how the rest of you are doing," Tomoe interrupts, blunt but not unkind. "I think I'd like to hear from our children, since it's often so hard to get a hold of them with their unpredictable jobs." Ikane smiles a little, apologetic for her partner's abruptness. [7]

"Aw, but we wanna hear what you're up to too, Mom!" Eijirou jokingly complains, grinning.

"She does have a point though," Saburou says. "Ochako, how's your arm? I hope you're getting proper rest so it heals properly."

Katsuki snorts. "As if either of us would let her do anything reckless on our watch."

Ochako shoots him a sharp look hidden behind a smile that says “be glad you're sitting on my injured side, because I would be giving you such a pinch right now if I could”; Katsuki simply smirks back at her. Huffing, she turns back to their families. "I promise I'm getting plenty of rest; all I've been doing the past week is paperwork, which I'm glad I can do on my laptop because it's difficult writing left-handed! I feel so antsy sitting around barely doing anything though, so at my next check-up I'll ask if it's okay to go out for runs or something."

"I understand feeling restless, but please be careful, Ochako," her mother chides worriedly. "We wouldn't want you to get hurt further."

"Agreed!" Ikane cheerfully pipes in. "As amazing as that takedown was, it wouldn't do if you were out of commission for months instead of weeks."

The trio shares a glance at that, which doesn't go unnoticed by Mitsuki. "Now what's that look for? Is that related to whatever news you had to share with us?"

"Oh that's right, you did mention having some sort of good news. Did one of you go up in rank?"

"Did you get new sidekicks?"

"Are you being recruited for another overseas assignment?"

"New sponsors?"

"Whoa, whoa, one at a time," Eijirou laughs, holding up his hands. Once their parents settle a bit, he continues, "It's not anything related to our jobs, though it will kinda affect them."

"Particularly for Ochako here," Katsuki adds, nodding to her.

Confused and curious faces stare at them, bringing Ochako's nerves back, but she steels herself; after all, what do any of them have to be unhappy about? "So, when I had told you that they didn't have anyone with a healing quirk on staff at the hospital to heal my wrist, I wasn't being honest with you. Truthfully, they did have someone there, but because of some tests they ran, they were hesitant to use the quirk on me as they weren't sure how my body would react."

In the corner of her eye, Eijirou's grin gets steadily wider, his hand gripping hers as he tries to contain himself from bouncing in his seat. With a roll of his eyes, Katsuki reaches behind her and gives his arm a gentle swat, but it does nothing to hinder Eijirou's energy. On the screen, Tomoe's eyeing them intensely, to the point that if Ochako wasn't absolutely sure her quirk doesn't work through screens or cameras, she'd almost think that she's reading their auras to try and get a bead on whatever it is they're building up to. Not for the first time, she finds herself glad she's never considered going into business law, as she'd hate to be stared down by Tomoe during negotiations or prosecutions.

"Why is that, Ochako-san?" Masaru inquires. "What did they find?"

"Well, turns out that I—"

"You're going to be grandparents!" Eijirou blurts excitedly, unable to hold himself back any longer. When Ochako and Katsuki both turn to him with fondly exasperated expressions, he at least has enough awareness to look sheepish at his outburst. "Sorry, I just couldn't wait any longer."

All their parents are quiet, faces in various levels of stunned and surprised. It's Saburou that speaks up first. "Pardon me, what?"

Shaking her head at Eijirou, Ochako turns back to the laptop. "Turns out I'm pregnant, nearly fourteen weeks now. We're having a baby!"

"Wait, really?" Mitsuki exclaims, and it seems the Urarakas are about to speak as well, but everyone's interrupted by a joyous scream that makes them all jolt.

On the Kirishima-Keshiki part of the screen, Ikane's leapt from her seat and started hopping around, still squealing happily. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, I'm going to be a grandma! Tomoe we're gonna be grandmas! Oh my god!"

"You really did get your passion from her," Katsuki observes dryly, earning a giggle from Ochako.

"She's going to be like this for a minute or two, so I'm going to mute us until she calms down so the rest of you can talk," Tomoe says, rolling her eyes fondly before Ikane's happy screams go silent, though she's still jumping around on screen.

"Your mother really does love children, doesn't she, Eijirou-kun?" teases Mitsuki.

"Oh you didn't see his reaction when Ochako told us the news, he did pretty much the exact same thing as Ikane."

"Katsukiiiii, they didn't have to know that!" Eijirou complains, flushing a bit.

"You literally just shamelessly blurted out the surprise, you have no right to be embarrassed now!"

"Boys, play nice," Ochako chides playfully, patting them both on the leg.

"While I am happy at this news," Karuko butts in, expression stuck between elated and concerned. "You said you're close to fourteen weeks along, right? That means you've been doing all that strenuous and stressful hero work. Are you sure everything is okay?"

Ochako nods, turning her gaze down and placing her uninjured hand on the bump that's become a little more prominent in the past week but is still easily hidden by her clothing. "I was really worried when I first heard the results for that exact reason, but I got a check-up at the hospital and have had two appointments with my doctor since then, and they've said I've got a healthy and hardy baby growing despite all the factors that could have made it otherwise."

Sound returns to the Kirishima-Keshiki feed, with Tomoe and Ikane settled back in their seats. "Whew, I'm sorry for my outburst, everyone," Ikane says, looking a little out-of-sorts and somewhat teary-eyed, but still positively glowing from joy. "I got a bit overzealous. But still, I'm so happy and proud of you three! To have a baby that's managed to hold on and stay healthy without you being careful means it must be fate for you to have it. Do you have an idea on which of you is the father?"

"No," Ochako's quick to answer before either of her partners could. "And I don't think we'll really know until it's born, but to be completely honest, if possible I don't think I want to know at all, because even if only one of them will be related by blood, both Katsuki and Eijirou will be raising them with me together, and I think that counts just as much if not more than whoever contributed chromosomes." She looks up again, and her eye strays over to Tomoe. There's a subtle expression of understanding and gratitude on her face, and her hand's wandered to grasp Ikane's, and Ochako knows that she sees her point more than any of the other parents on this call. "No matter what, they'll both this baby's father. No ‘real' father or bullshit like that."

Everyone's silent for a moment, stunned by the sudden conviction and seriousness in her words. She knows her partners are both staring at her, but she stays looking at the screen so that she doesn't lose her nerve. It's only when she hears a quiet sniffle beside her that her concentration breaks, but before she can turn to see what's wrong, Eijirou's got his arm around her and pulling her close, face buried in her hair.

"That was so manly," he whispers, voice a little choked up, and he presses a soft kiss to her head. "You're the best, I love you so, so much."

On her other side, Katsuki all but shoves his face into the space between her neck and shoulder, his hand gripping her bicep. He murmurs something, but she doesn't really catch what it is. While she appreciates the sudden affection, she's a bit embarrassed that it's happening with their parents right there, and she's not really sure what's brought it on. "I— Uh— What—" she stammers, stuck between looking for help from their onlookers and avoiding eye contact with them. On screen, her parents and Masaru have politely chosen to turn their attention elsewhere while Mitsuki grins, unbothered by the PDA and in fact looking oddly proud. [8]

"You're right." Ochako turns her attention to Ikane and Tomoe's feed, where Tomoe seems to be holding back giggles at Ochako's predicament but also looking away politely. Ikane, on the other hand, is watching their triad with fondness, gaze soft. "That was rude of me to say, especially when I'm fully aware that love and family aren't defined purely by blood." Her hand finds Tomoe's, and she gives it a gentle squeeze in apology. "You're going to be a wonderful mother, Ochako-chan, and I'm glad my son has such loving partners in you and Katsuki-kun."

Eijirou whines, ears turning pink as he hides his face further. "Mama, don't say things like that, I'm gonna cry more! And then Ochako will start crying because hormones, and I'll feel bad for making her cry, and then Mom might get involved—"

"Hey now."

"—and maybe Katsuki will get overwhelmed—"

"Oi, don't just assume things—!"

"Nothing wrong with some manly happy tears, Ei-chan; I know we taught you that!"

"I know, but it's still a bit embarrassing to do it in front of everyone!"

"Says one of the two currently clinging to me without shame..." Ochako mumbles.

Both Eijirou and Katsuki stiffen, realizing that yes, they're practically smothering Ochako while their parents are watching; Ochako can't move her head much in this position, but she's sure they're both starting to flush. After a moment, the two finally pull away, their heads turned to avoid eye contact with everyone.

Eijirou lets out a sheepish chuckle, ruffling his hair. "S-Sorry about that, I guess we got a bit overwhelmed and forgot about our company."

"No harm, no foul," Saburou assures gently, waving off the apology.

"Besides, it was kind of cute. It's not often I get to see my Katsuki get so emotional," Mitsuki teases.

"Shut the fuck up, old hag," Katsuki grumbles, flushing more and sinking a bit into the couch.

Masaru puts a hand on Mitsuki's shoulder when it seems like she's about to scold their son. "Be nice, you two," he chides, waiting until Mitsuki's hackles lower before looking to Ochako. "Really, we're delighted at this news, and we're happy that you've shared it with us all. I'm sure all of us parents can agree that it's not always an easy road, but we're all here for you if there's anything you should need along the way."

"Of course!" Karuko pipes up. "We'd be happy to give you advice and help whenever you need it. Now, tell us more about everything, like when are you due?"

From there, the conversation flows smoothly, starting at talks about Ochako's pregnancy and what the three of them are to expect in the future before eventually moving on to general life updates such as new projects at work or what their neighbours are up to. As the group call edges towards the two hour mark, everyone notes with amusement that Ochako's eyes have begun to droop. Ochako tries to insist she's fine when Saburou points this out, but before long her head is leaning against Katsuki's shoulder, barely able to stay up. The families all say their goodbyes, promising once again that the three of them are welcome to come to them for anything and kindly demanding to keep updated, then the call ends. Eijirou reaches over to close the laptop, taking it from Ochako's lap as he stands and chuckling when Ochako shifts to sleepily cuddle with Katsuki now that she's free to move.

Katsuki, on the other hand, rolls his eyes, though it does nothing to diminish his affectionate smirk at Ochako's drowsiness. "C'mon Ochako, let's get your ass to bed."

"Nooooo..." Ochako tiredly protests. "'m fine, yer just"—she yawns—"just warm and cozy..."

He snorts. "It was fucking thirty degrees outside today and it's not even that cold in here with aircon, why the hell do you want to be warm?"

"Shhhhh..."

"Alright then." Despite her protesting, he stands, scoops her into his arms with no more than a quiet grunt, then saunters off towards their bedroom even as she half-heartedly wiggles about. "If you behave and go to bed, you can cuddle me all you want."

"But I dun wanna go to sleeeeeeep," Ochako whines, pawing at his chest in a lazy effort to get away.

"Oi, if you don't stop wriggling around, I'm gonna drop you and it'll be completely on purpose," he warns.

"No you won', 'cause 'm pregnant, injured, 'nd cute, 'nd I know ya love me too much to drop me..."

As they enter the room, Katsuki hears Eijirou—who's getting changed into his sleepwear off to the side—laugh at Ochako's sleepy retort, so he levels a frown that says "don't encourage her" at him, even though he knows that she's completely right in that statement. He would maybe consider dropping her on her butt just to show that he won't put up with her being a little shit if she wasn't pregnant, but circumstances are not in his favour, so instead he unceremoniously deposits her on the bed, earning a squeak.

"Uncalled for..." she grumbles, pouting petulantly as she rolls to the side and hugs her pillow. "What if I hurt my wrist more?"

"I know you're not that fragile, Round Face, so don't try to guilt me."

"Eiiiijiiiii, Kacchan's bein' mean to meeee..." Rolling his eyes again, Katsuki goes to change into his own sleeping clothes.

"There, there, if you really don't wanna sleep, you can cuddle with me and watch me play some Street Fighter," Eijirou says as he slides into bed, handheld console in hand. "Do a bit of backseat gaming. How's that sound?" [9]

Ochako hums, her tired brain considering the offer. "...'Kay..."

"But first, you're getting changed out of your day clothes," Katsuki announces, tossing a set of her pyjamas on the bed. When Ochako makes no move to do so, he huffs, then reaches over and pulls her towards him, tugging gently but forcibly at her clothes. "C'mon, you're not going to be comfortable sleeping in those shorts, let alone your bra."

"Whoa, getting frisky, are we?" Eijirou teases, waggling his eyebrows with a sly grin. Katsuki responds by throwing a pillow at Eijirou, who cackles even as it hits him in the face.

Before long, Ochako's changed into her pyjamas and curled into Eijirou's side, her head resting on his chest so she can watch the screen, her cast wrist pillowed carefully. Katsuki slips in on her other side after finishing his nightly routine; instead of cuddling, however, he chooses to sit up against the headboard, reading glasses perched on his nose and a book open on his lap. Eijirou's game and the occasional turning page are the only noises in the room, until barely half an hour later, both boys glance up at a quiet snore, smiling upon seeing Ochako out cold as predicted. Eijirou lets her continue sleeping on him for a little while longer, then carefully shifts her to sleep on her proper pillow, kissing her brow softly. Katsuki sets his book and reading glasses aside as Eijirou gets up to finish his own nightly routine, shuffling down under the covers and putting an arm around Ochako, who shifts closer to his warmth in her sleep. When Eijirou returns to the room ten minutes later, he's greeted with the sight of Katsuki spooned protectively against Ochako and just as asleep as her. While not a new sight, it's one that Eijirou can never get tired of, and he can only imagine how much better it will get as Ochako's belly grows, and then when their new addition comes into the world. Quietly, he takes a picture to appreciate later, then goes to join them on the bed, leaning over Ochako to peck Katsuki on the cheek before turning off the bedside light and settling in to sleep himself.

Footnotes: [1] - This time the doctor is not named for their profession, but still named for their quirk; I had a thought a little while ago that went something along the lines of “you know people probably take on jobs that have nothing to do with their quirk all the time, why don’t we see more of that in the HeroAca world”, and so we have Dr. Houkou. Their quirk basically makes them a human GPS; their name is made up of the kanji for “direction” and “navigation”.

[2] - This is apparently a thing that has happened to some people, believe it or not. Not something that happens often, mind you, but it happens. Factors for why the pregnancies go unnoticed include the person’s weight, the size and position of the baby, and things like spotting being mistaken for light periods. Which is why if you thought I was stretching the truth too much by having Ochako not notice for three months, surprise! Reality is weirder than you think.

[3] - Me: You know Bakugou’s language in Japanese isn’t really full of swearing, it’s just very blunt and rude because Japanese doesn’t have the same equivalents to curse words so the likelihood of a child imitating his speech is unlikely.

Also me: Meh who cares, gonna write it like that anyway, it’s funnier to think about it this way.

[4] - Unlike the doctors I’ve named in this story and Tsuwari, Subspacer is a full-fledged OC of mine! I’ve given careful thought into their quirk, name, and personality, though I’ve been undecided on their age and professional status for a while. I decided to add them in as one of Ochako’s sidekicks for giggles, but if I do get around to writing more of this storyline, you’ll likely be seeing more mention of them!

[5] - Since Ochako’s parents don’t have names (truly a travesty; they’re an important part of her motivation, but they have yet to get profiles like the Bakugous or Jirous? I call unfairness), I decided to give them names. Following Horikoshi’s current naming conventions for parents—which involves separating the kanji in the children’s names and giving at least one to each parent as part of their names (i.e. Katsuki “勝己” separates to get Masaru “勝” and Mitsuki “光己”), the only exception so far being the Midoriyas as Izuku “出久” only shares kanji with his yet-to-be-seen father Hisashi “久”—I took the “茶” and “子” from Ochako’s name and searched through various kanji readings and meanings to get Saburou “茶奉郎” and Karuko “軽子”. The sa in Saburou means “tea” and an alternate reading of the kanji, while bu means “offer, dedicate” and rou means “son” (this same kanji is in Eijirou’s name; it’s a relatively common kanji for boy names). Karu means “light (opposite of heavy)” which is supposed to reference what I can only assume is the family quirk (again, we have no idea what her parents’ quirks are; I DEMAND TO KNOW HORIKOSHI), and then ko means “child” and—similar to rou being common for boy names—is pretty common for girl names.

[6] - I will admit I have no idea how the production of fashion lines work, and unlike many other things, I’m not arsed to research it for a single line of dialogue (I do that enough as it is...I’m very easily distracted) so if I’m horrendously wrong on how fashion designers work in a company, please ignore it.

[7] - I actually have come up with entire profiles for Eijirou’s mothers, but I do not have the room in the notes to go into complete detail on them on here, so feel free to read about them here instead. I unfortunately don’t draw so they don’t have ‘official’ appearances, but I’ve tried to describe them as I see them in my head as best I can.

[8] - I think it’s relatively well-known that PDA in Japan tends to get the side-eye if it’s anything more than holding hands, and while Japan as a culture does seem to be slowly getting laxer about it and this fic is set in the hypothetical future, I doubt there would be significant change, plus I’m sure they’ll still think PDA in front of one’s parents is pretty taboo. Personally I’d feel a bit shy about hugging/cuddling with my S/O in front of my family, but I’m also aroace af so what do I know, hahaha.

[9] - Just imagine the gaming console Eijirou’s using is similar to the Switch, but like...a future version. Maybe it’s not even a Nintendo product, who the heck knows what game technology is gonna be like.

I considered also writing about the trio telling their friends the same week in-universe, but all the ideas I have for that are kinda vague and I’m not really sure how to write the scenes out without seeming repetitious, or how to keep them interesting to read, so I nixed that in favour of ending at this point, especially since I’ve struggled so much to get here. Maybe that’ll be an actual snippet, but no promises, hahaha.

[aphgermanyheadcanons]

👀👀👀 I would love for you to talk about Lud's development from ww2 to modern day for hours

anon ur feeding my ego here who knows what disastrous consequences may spawn from ur actions but??? just know that ily

WELL my friends since we are here!! B) let me divulge to u ,,, the evolution of Lud. i could start with him as a child but i admittedly know way less abt that time period n also that would take ten years so that shall be for another ask

ludwig during ww2 was rlly rlly messy in the sense that he wasn’t exactly in his right mind. he’d defo been brainwashed by the propaganda n in general he wasn’t a fun guy to be around. ludwig was arrogant, impetuous, too hyperfocused on exacting revenge n showing everyone wrong. he thought he knew best which rlly caused a rift between him n his brother

his desperation in the time period just before ww2 led him to grasp at literally any promise of smth better, but instead of rising back up he fell down the slippery slope to some place even further from where he’d originally started. ludwig turned a blind eye to many things he shouldn’t have at the prospect of havin smth- anything- better for his ppl n a shot at revenge n power aka proving himself bc he was young n stupid. he ostracized those that truly cared abt him like his brother (who was never rlly for what was going on), rod, eliza, liech n im sure a few others as well, isolating himself to soak in that damn web of lies

ofc disillusionment is never pretty esp when ur the one who made the mistakes n as we’re all aware ludwig had screwed up big time. by the end of the war ludwig’s eyes were opened n his middle name was Regret his first name was Guilt n his last name was Failure. ya boi was not in a good place emotionally not to mention economically, socially n politically but yk thats another story!! 

what i would like to touch upon is where ludwig was maturity wise at this time. i’d like to remind u all that ludwig at the time of ww2 would’ve been hm 130 at most?? less than two centuries thats for sure. in nation years he was a child, he should’ve looked like a gotdamn child but nah lud grew up too fast by the start of ww2 he was already lookin 18-19. ludwig was forced to grow up fast n tho this is applicable for many nations he grew up at a time when many of his “peers” already had centuries beneath their belts. i’d argue this is esp important to note considering how most of the european nations grew up at roughly the same ish time. this explains some of why lud was so eager to stake his claim on the world. he would’ve felt a heckin lot of pressure to show he rlly was on their level

anyways ludwig was young af when he was thrown to the wolves n tho that doesn’t justify his actions it’s smth to keep in mind

so lud’s out here coming to terms w the fact that’s he’s screwed everything up n likely if it weren’t for the western aid ya boi would’ve been a goner. he was to keep it short depressed n basically ready for Death™. it was legit just alfred’s marshall plan n the fact that his ppl were still a thing that forced him to power thru. but yessu the aid sent by the west spurred on the miracle of the rhine which marked the bringing back up of germany to his feet after the war n lud eventually did recover from his depression say, around the 50s bc u gotta do what u gotta do when ur a nation

ludwig from then on out did experience better times i mean discounting a few things like the berlin wall- ah yes i should talk abt this

alright so before the division of germany ludwig had always had gilbert around for him. gilbert had raised him since the v beginning n even thru his ugly stages aka ww1 n ww2 gilbert had stuck w him. it was only after ww2 that ludwig was truly separated from his brother, forcing him grow up once n for all n shoulder the true burden of a full fledged Adult™. war guilt, recovery n repercussions ensured it. moreover, ludwig felt responsible for the abolition of prussia amongst many other things that had occurred as a result of the war so a big part in his magically doubled maturity was the desire to recompense for his wrongs n become someone his brother might someday be able to forgive

which is ridiculous considering gilbert would die for ludwig get it bc he did

so anyways!! ludwig builds himself back up into a respectable member of society n bam we get all the goodies of present day germany like the EU, etc. germany rn is one of europe’s most influential players n i would say?? a lot of this is bc ludwig wanted to make up for what he did wrong tho this eventually was coupled w a desire to become a nation his ppl could be proud of again n i’d say he’s done a fine job of it! ofc this isn’t to say he’s without his problems but ludwig today is a much more mature n agreeable man than he once was largely due to what the world forced upon him n how he decided to handle it

tldr; ludwig was Messy during ww2. he realized that was bad n felt rlly guilty esp bc of gil gettin demoted from nation status so ya boi worked rlly hard to become someone his bro n his ppl could be proud of n matured n accomplished a lot making him into the gr9 dude he is today

also im writing a fic on the subject of post ww2 germany (that will be gerame based) that i should prbly post the first ch to but !! follow me @realmwrites for news on when i do eventually post it B)

[thetaplowgroup]

Taplow Group – 6th Pandemic Business Overview

The Taplow firms have been active throughout the pandemic, this is the sixth in our Business Updates series from our partners around the world. The situation is showing clear signs of recovery although nuances exist in every country and region Human Resources Consulting Firm .

Key Findings:

Business Leaders: With re-start plans under way across sectors, leaders are watchful of subsequent “virus waves” and revising their plans to carry on working if sub regional lockdowns occur .

​Employees: Those who have restarted work are juggling employer and Government advisory notices with delivering within their roles. There is a growing impatience from those still in lockdown and Governments seem to be experiencing restlessness across workforces to return to work.

Companies: Positive signs from countries that have ensured they were active in locking down their countries, point to a V shape recovery. Problematic recovery is seen where Governments are not controlling the virus and economic indicators point to an L shape economy in 2020 with hopes of a bounce back in 2021 board member recruitment consultants .

AFRICA:

South Africa:

The pandemic is seeing countries in Africa going into various versions of “lockdown”.

The business community is striving to come to terms with the situation with the backdrop of little or in some countries no assistance.

Although Africa has not seen as many cases primarily due to there being less travel spreading the pandemic, there are notable clusters emerging.

ASIA: Australia:

Progress continues to be made in Australia on economic recovery and movement.  Several state borders have been opened for travel internally.

There continues to be some community transmission of Covid-19 that is untraceable, and this is slowing progress for a return of office workers. Major Central Business Districts continue to have Government directives to work from home if you can. Traffic has noticeably increased indicating there is increased movement of people for work.

The equities markets continue to rally towards pre Covid-19 levels. June 30th is the end of the Australian financial year. Companies and individuals will be finalising    affairs for this. There have been some indications Government will continue the fiscal and economic stimulus, particularly with the reporting that employment has reached 7.1% nationally.

There were some protests held in major Australian cities that resulted in large gatherings of protesters. The timing of the protests has been questioned when the health of the Australian people has been such a high priority. Major sporting codes have resumed competition with crowd attendance at the stadiums.

Australia’s international borders remain closed with very limited air travel services available.

India:

India, the third largest oil consumer, expects fuel demand to return to normal earlier than projections by the International Energy Agency and OPEC. At the end of June, India has already achieved 85% of demand compared to June 2019.

For defence procurement, the Government has enhanced the FDI limit through the automatic route from 49% to 74% to help global players to set up manufacturing facilities within the country and thereby supplement the domestic manufacturing capabilities.

​As a positive indicator, Reverse Migration has started in India i.e. several trains bound for major Indian cities housing Industrial complexes have started running with over 100% booking, since migrant workers are coming back to work showing signs of revival of economic engine.

India’s first Payment bank - Airtel Payments Bank's revenues rose 87 per cent to Rs 474 crore during FY20, driven by surge in digital payments, money transfer and offtake of new services, The Payments Bank sees a "massive headroom for growth" and its promoters remain committed to unlocking this potential.

​Indian Government is planning to launch Bharat Craft, an e-commerce portal, on the lines of Alibaba, and should soon see turnover on the platform to the tune of Rs 10 lakh crore in the next few years and this would benefit MSMEs in a big way. State Bank of India is working on setting up an e-commerce portal for marketing of products manufactured by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the country. The bank and the Government would jointly run the portal called Bharat Craft.

Singapore:

Up to S$920 million has been set aside to extend foreign worker levy rebates for firms in the construction, marine shipyard, and process sectors until the end of 2022. This will help these industries cope with significant higher costs of implementing safe management measures at workplaces.

Singapore’s manufacturing output fell 7.4 per cent year-on-year in May after two straight months of increase as demand weakened across most segments, with only the biomedical manufacturing cluster reporting gains. Excluding this cluster, the country’s output fell 10.4 per cent.

​Singaporean’s will be heading to the polling station on 10th July. This comes shortly after the announcement by the Singapore Government to dissolve the Parliament last week, paving way for the elections to be held just as Singapore emerges from Phase 2 Circuit Breaker.

A Fair Tenancy Pro Tem Committee under the Singapore Business Federation, SBF has been set up to develop a tenancy framework to deal with current and long-term issues, as well as establish industry norms on tenancy practices and terms between retail tenants and landlords. The formation of this new committee comes after months of simmering tension between retail tenants and their landlords.

New Zealand:

BNZ (one of New Zealand’s major banks) states that it is fortunate New Zealand is so exposed to the Asian region (especially China) and less exposed to the “old-world” countries of the United States, Europe, and United Kingdom. To put this in perspective, at the end of the June quarter, US economic activity is forecast to be 10.7% down on year earlier levels. Over the same period, the UK takes a 15.9% hit and the Eurozone 15.8%. Compare this with China +1.2% (though admittedly, its big hit was in Q1 when the annual decline was 6.8%), Korea -2.2% and Taiwan -2.2%. Putting all this together, New Zealand’s trading partner activity decline troughs at an annual -5.5%.

According to BNZ forecasts, New Zealand doesn’t get back to its pre-Covid starting point until Q3, 2022 but BNZ concedes that there are upside risks to its GDP growth view. To start with, BNZ has weaker-than-consensus expectations for New Zealand activity. BNZ is forecasting a contraction of 8.0% for calendar 2020 followed by a bounce of 4.8% in 2021. The consensus view is -6.1% and +5.9% respectively. Secondly, if the trading partner forecasts that are being espoused prove accurate and, in particular, if China takes off in the manner assumed, then it may be that New Zealand’s export performance will turn out to be stronger than BNZ has anticipated.

​Domestic air travel capacity in New Zealand continues to recover with expectations that it will recover to just under 80% of its pre-Covid-19 levels by the end of 2020  Life science executive search .

EUROPE: The EU region has seen a remarkable recovery in the past few weeks, Governments have reopened borders with neighbouring countries and regionally business life is returning in stages with positive results. Recent changes to regulations by the EU look to have saved Europeans “Summer Vacation plans” which are incredibly important for Southern European nations.

France:

The French economy is expected to experience one of the worst recessions in the world in 2020, according to the new forecasts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which now anticipates a 12.5% drop in 2020, compared to 7.2%, initially announced in April, in its latest global forecast. A recession close to that of Italy (-12.8%) and Spain (-12.8%).

IMF anticipates a rebound in growth for France at 7.3% in 2021, a figure close to that expected by the Banque de France (7%). This would be one of the strongest growth rates among developed countries. France is thus ahead of the United States (+4.5%), Germany (+5.4%), Italy (+6.3%) and Spain (+6.3%), according to IMF forecasts. However, "this apparent strong rebound would not allow the level of activity at the end of 2019 to be restored before mid-2022," the French central bank has already warned.

​The business climate in France recovered significantly in June, although it is still at a low level, according to data published on June the 23rd by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), the synthetic indicator of the business climate in France gained 18 points in June, to 78. If it "exceeds the level of the trough reached in March 2009 (70)", it "remains well below its long-term average (100)," INSEE said. The rebound in the indicator "is explained in particular by the more optimistic view that companies have of their business prospects, in all sectors, under the effect of the deconfinement," says the INSEE.

The deconfinement having "mechanically led to a recovery in employment in a number of sectors", these figures "are a sign of a gradual recovery in activity, but the situation remains difficult", the Labour Ministry stresses in a press release. Another indicator suggesting that the recovery is beginning on the French labour market, reports of hiring for more than a month in the private sector, excluding interim workers, jumped 75.9% in May in France, after two months of sharp decline.

To accompany the recovery, while trying to spare public finances heavily impacted by the measures put in place to try to avoid an explosion in the unemployment rate, the Government has notably decided to lighten the health protocol imposed on companies since June the 22d and is changing the partial coverage of activity with new regulation that will start from the first of July. Discussions are also under way with the social partners to change the unemployment insurance rules.

Germany:

Lufthansa gets funding of 9 billion EUROs to support the aircraft sector.

The Government's economic stabilisation fund is to acquire 20 per cent of Lufthansa shares worth 300 million euros, plus two silent partnerships worth 5.7 billion euros. Three billion euros will be borne by the development bank KfW. In addition, the Federal Government will be represented on the Supervisory Board through two mandates, whereby the mandates will be awarded to independent experts. The EU Commission's competition authorities have released the Lufthansa rescue package. However, the EU Commission has made its approval subject to conditions. The release of the recapitalization aid in the amount of six billion euros is subject to the condition that the largest German airline complies with obligations to avoid distortions of competition. These include that Lufthansa must relinquish take-off and landing rights at its main locations in Frankfurt (Main) and Munich.

At The Taplow Group Germany, Clients are reviewing their HR-strategy for 2020 and are starting to hire again – e.g. Electrical engineering and IT-companies. Others are planing to hire from September again.

Russia:

With the daily infection rate slowly decreasing since the beginning of June, Russia is further easing restrictions, and more companies are starting to shift back to working from the office. The country is now also allowing a one-time entrance to foreigners that are holding a highly qualified specialist Visa (HQS). This is an incredibly positive and essential step for businesses, as many expatriate General Managers were not able to return to Russia before this.

Like in many other countries, the automation and robotics industry was able to grow during the time of pandemic due to the high and urgent demand of mask and disinfectant producers to increase production capacities. Furthermore, we can see the trend towards automation growing in Russia in other industries as well. For example the first fully automated “no-contact” KFC opened in Moscow this month. Other sectors like pumps and pipelines have not been affected by Covid-19, but the ongoing low oil prices are influencing their business negatively. The fashion retail industry did suffer losses during the pandemic; however, leisure and sportswear producers were able to stabilise and, in some cases, even increase their business due to strong online business and advanced delivery services. In general, companies in Russia are trying their level best to keep their staff and are aiming at returning to business by the autumn and also restart recruitments by then.

Taplow Russia is receiving more requests for targeted salary research by local subsidiaries, as the salary statistics provided by the headquarters are too general and not specific enough for crucial positions. Salaries in Russia are varying a lot with wide ranges strongly dependent on the Region. Hence a general overview can seldomly showcase the real picture.

Spain:

Spain will be one of the countries that will suffer the greatest recessions among the main advanced economies and emerging markets.

12.8% contraction in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020.

CEOE gives green light to the extension of the ERTE (Temporary Employment Regulation Scheme) until 30 September.

UK:

The UK Government announced a reduction to the pandemic risk. This now sees retail, holiday venues, cinemas and importantly restaurants and pubs reopening from July 4th – dubbed as “UK Independence Day” by the media.

The airline industry is restarting but the Government’s 14 day “self-Isolation” scheme on entering the UK will severely restrict the travel industry to relaunch. There are plans being announced to form “Air Corridors” with EU and other European Countries. This will see UK summer holidays being saved along with a return to European business travel in Q3 2020.

Recruitment sector has returned. Many projects that were “stopped” have been reactivated and some businesses are starting to reassess their growth strategies now as they can see how the business has survived in the lockdown period.

AMERICAS: Latin America is the latest centre of the pandemic, North America is seeing signs of recovery but with numerous states seeing a rise in pandemic numbers, the situation could deteriorate quickly without clear leadership and plans.  

Brazil:

Brazil is seeing its fourth month of the pandemic impact. Number of cases and deaths are relatively high, comparable to the countries of highest indexes in Europe, but still below the US, in terms of absolute numbers.  The State of São Paulo responsible for a little over 20% of all cases in Brazil, both in infected population and in deaths started its gradual, well-structured recovery plan back starting June 15th. There is no collapse of medical or hospital/intensive care attendance, but only in a few cases in the Northern area some weeks ago.

The Brazilian economy has shrunk 6% in March and another 10% in April, according to bona fide sources. The numbers for the month of May are still being analyzed but should not be worse than April. According to the INC (Industry National Confederation), in May, the country has seen more industrial activity, an almost regular activity in the field. As a matter of fact, our crop this year will be a all times harvest record, estimated to reach 246.4 million tons of cereals, leguminous, and oleaginous crops, higher than 241.5 million tons in 2019.

Our official annual interest rate/SELIC  has dropped to 2.25%, and our current annual deflation rate is -1.6%, the smallest rate since 1979,  due to the current stage of depression. In fact, our 2019 unfinished recession was hit by this current pandemic recession.

Current key world-wide and our own strategic concern points out to the potential, eventual second Covid-19 pandemic wave and its consequences to the world economies.

USA and Canada:

North American markets have been very measured during the last almost 90 days since the COVID19 disruptions and lockdowns have been in place. Several phenomena are noticeable.

Current executive search and consulting assignments are moving slower as our clients are being very measured about adding more staff and team availability to participate in consulting efforts has been limited.  New roles are being actively considered but timing for hiring is still reasonably uncertain.  Action oriented consulting on new markets and new approaches to market are moving at a sub-optimal pace.

Some of our clients appear to be using the current environment to release their less successful employees and are being incredibly careful to avoid legal risk with re-alignment of functions.

Opportunities to revise organizational design and realign functions are being hampered by the lack of certainty.

The recent and continuing racial discord is distracting as corporations and faith communities are taking center stage rather than leadership from national or in some cases, state officials.

Curfews and “stay at home” orders are still in places in some areas causing significant distractions.

The news of this week about an increased rate of new COVID19 cases is not surprising as the lifting of “lock downs” is now elapsed for over 14 days.

Cautious optimism is just beneath the surface, but the unnecessary distractions must be mitigated.

We hope that you, your family, and work colleagues continue to stay healthy and safe. We at The Taplow Group are here to support you and your company through this crisis and beyond. We will be back with more updates soon!

[downsbeatrice]

How To Save A Marriage And Ruin Your Life Movie 1968 Awesome Cool Tips

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Quit Drinking To Save My Relationship

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[andrewdburton]

Socially Responsible Investing: Is It Also More Profitable?

Since the Dawn of Mustachianism in 2011, the same question has come up over and over again:

“MMM, I see your point that index fund investing is the best option. But when you buy the index, you’re getting oil companies, factory farm slaughterhouses and a million other dirty stories.

How can I get the benefits of investing for early retirement without contributing to the decline of humanity?”

And in these nine years since then, the movement towards socially responsible investing has only grown. Public pension funds have started to “divest” from oil company stocks, and various social issues like human rights, child labor, climate change or corporate corruption have bubbled to the surface at different times.

And all of this has led to the exploding new field of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), and a growing array of new ways to do it.

So it seems that this is not just a passing trend – people just might be starting to care a bit more. And since capitalism is just an expression of human behavior, the nature of capitalism itself may be starting to change.

This leads us naturally to the question:

What can I do with my money to help fix the world? And even better, is there a way I can make money in the process of fixing it?

The answer is a good, solid “Probably.”

As long as you don’t get too hung up on getting every last detail perfect, because just like real life, investing is a haphazard and approximate and unpredictable thing. But by understanding the big picture, you can make slightly better decisions on average, which lead to slightly better results. And slightly better results, stacked up consistently over time, can lead to a much better life, or even a much better world.

This is true in all of the main areas we care about – personal wealth, fitness and health, even relationships and happiness. And while your money and investments are certainly not the most important thing in life, they are still worthy of a bit of easy and effective optimization.

So anyway, the first thing to understand with SRI is, “what problem am I trying to solve?”

The answer is, “You are trying to make your investing (especially index fund investing) have a better impact on the world.”

On its own, index fund investing is ridiculously simple. You just get an account at any brokerage like Vanguard, Etrade, Schwab or whatever, and dump all your money into one exchange-traded fund: VTI.

When you do this, you are buying a stake in 3500 companies at once(!), which is both impressive and overwhelming. How do you even know what you are holding?

Well, this is all public information, and easily available with a quick Google search. For example, here’s a list of the top 90 holdings in VTI (click for larger):

Top 90 holdings in Vanguard’s VTI Exchange Traded Fund

As you can see, the biggest chunk of money is allocated to today’s tech darlings, because this index fund is weighted according to market value, and these are the most valuable companies in the US today.

Through a convenient coincidence, the total value of the VTI fund happens to be just under $1 trillion dollars, which means you can just throw a decimal point after the ten billions digit of market value to get a percentage. In other words, about 4.7% of your money will go towards Apple stock, 4.4 towards Microsoft, and so on. Together, these top 90 companies are worth more than the remaining 3,540 companies combined, so these are what really drive your retirement account.

And within this list, you will see some of the usual suspects: Exxon and Chevron (oil), Philip Morris (tobacco), Raytheon and Lockheed (bombs), and so on.

But what about the less-usual suspects? For example, I happen to think that sugar, and especially sugar-packed beverages like Coke, is the biggest killer in the developed world – a major contributor to 2 million of the 2.8 million deaths each year in the US alone. Should I exclude that from my portfolio too?

And what about drug and insurance companies – aren’t they behind the political stalemate and high costs of the US healthcare system? Comcast funded some election disinformation campaigns here in my home town in the early 2010s, should I exclude them too? And if you’re part of a religion that is against charging interest on loans, or in favor of pasta and Pirate costumes, or against a spherical Earth, or any number of additional ornate rules, you may have still more preferences.

The higher your desire for perfection, the more difficult this exercise will become. However, if you are like me and you just want to get most of the desired result with minimal effort, you might simply have a look at the Vanguard fund called ESGV.

ESG stands for “Environmental, Social and Governance”, and in practice it just means “We have tried to avoid some of the shittier companies according to some fairly simple rules.”

And the result is this:

Vanguard’s ESGV Exchange traded fund (ETF) – top 90 holdings

The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s almost the same. In fact, the top five holdings – Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet (Google) and Netflix not far behind, collectively referred to as the FAANG stocks – are completely unchanged – and this means that there will be plenty of correlation between these funds.

It’s also the reason that the stock market as a whole has recovered so quickly from this COVID-era recession: small businesses like restaurants and hair salons have been destroyed by the shutdowns, but big companies that benefit from people staying at home and using computers and phones are making more money than ever. The stock market isn’t the whole economy, it’s just the publicly traded companies, which are the big ones.

But let’s look at the biggest differences between the normal index fund versus the social version.

The following large companies listed on the left are missing in the ESGV fund, in order of size. And to make up the difference, the stake in the companies on the right have been boosted up to take their place in your portfolio.

Main differences between VTI and ESGV (source: etfrc)

The omission of Berkshire Hathaway was a bit of a shocker, as it is run with solid ethical principles by Warren Buffet, one of the worlds most generous philanthropists. And in fact the modern day nerd-saint Bill Gates is on the Berkshire board of directors, another person whose work I follow and respect greatly.

(side note: Apparently the company fails on the “independent governance” category. And Buffet disputes this category, but in his characteristic way has decided to say, ���Fuck it, I’ma just keep doing my own thing with my half-trillion dollar empire over here and you can have fun with your little committee” – I’m paraphrasing a bit but he totally did say that.)

Furthermore, both funds hold the factory meat king Tyson foods, while neither holds Roundup-happy Monsanto, because it was bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG a while back. Nextera is a giant electric utility in the Southeastern US that claims to be the world’s largest generator of renewable energy. Some do-gooders are against nuclear power, while others (including me) think it’s the Bee’s Knees and we should keep advancing it. And all this just goes to show how nobody will agree 100% on what makes a good socially responsible fund.

But What About The Performance?

In the past, some investors were nervous about giving up oil companies in their portfolio, because while it was a dirty substance, it was also what made the world go round – which meant it was a cash cow.

Now, however, oil is on its way out as renewable energy and battery storage have crossed the cost parity threshold – meaning it’s cheaper to make power (and vehicles) that don’t use oil. In its place, technology is the new cash cow, and tech is heavily represented in the ESG funds. The result:

Traditional index fund (VTI) vs Socially Responsible equivalent (ESGV)

As you can see, the performance has been similar but the ESG fund has done significantly better in the (admittedly short) time since it was introduced at Vanguard.

Of course, we have no idea if this will continue, but the point is that at least our thesis is not a ridiculous one – environmentally sustainable companies do have an advantage, if the world gradually starts to care more about these things. And if you look at the share price of Tesla and other companies that surround it in electric transportation and energy storage, you will see that there are many trillions of dollars already lining up to benefit from this transition. And the very presence of so much investment money creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Tesla is now building or expanding five of the world’s largest factories on three continents simultaneously.

So What Should You Do? (and what I do myself)

My latest home-brewed ebike project – this one can reach 42MPH / 67km/hr!

First of all, it helps to remember a fundamental piece of economics: your spending dollars will probably have a much bigger impact than your investment dollars. This is because you are sending a direct message to the world rather than an indirect one:

When you buy a new gasoline-powered Subaru (or a tank of gas for your existing guzzler) or a steak at the grocery store, or a plane ticket, you are telling those company directly that consumers want more of these products, so they will produce more of them immediately.

When you buy shares in Exxon, you are only subtly raising the demand for those shares, which raises the average price, making it ever-so-slightly easier for Exxon to maybe issue more shares in the future. In other words, you are making it easier for them to access capital. But capital is only useful if there is demand for their products. And with oil there is a nearly constant surplus, which is why OPEC and other cartels need to work together to artificially restrict supply, just to keep prices up.

Plus, as a shareholder you are theoretically eligible to place votes and influence the future direction of companies – even companies that you don’t like. If you look up the field of “shareholder activism”, you’ll see this is a tradition that goes way back.

So I have tried to take a few simple steps on the consumer side myself, and I find it quite satisfying: Insulating the shit out of all of my properties, building a DIY solar electric array on one of them, and buying one electric car so far to eliminate local gas burning. And a few electric bikes including a super fast one I made myself.

Each one of these steps has provided a very high economic return, percentage-wise, but that still leaves a lot of money to account for, which brings us back to stock investing.

As someone who loves simplicity, I have done this:

Bought almost entirely VTI (or similar Vanguard funds) from 2000-2015

Started experimenting with Betterment in 2015, liked it, and have been adding a percentage of my ongoing savings to that account to that since then. (Note that Betterment now also offers a socially responsible portfolio option.)

Switched the dividend re-investing of my old Vanguard VTI over to Vanguard ESGV, to avoid “wash sales” in making the most of Betterment’s tax loss harvesting feature.

Bought some shares of Berkshire Hathaway separately, and also make a few sentimental investments in local businesses, including the MMM HQ Coworking space.

But you could choose to be more hardcore in your ESG/SRI investing:

Buy your own basket of stocks based on the index, but with different weighting based on your own values

Spend more money on other things that generate or save money (a bigger solar array on your house, better insulation, electric car, an ebike to reduce car trips, etc.)

Invest in local businesses of your choice, rental real estate, community solar projects, or other things which generate passive income – publicly traded stocks are just one of many ways to fund an early retirement!

Like most areas of life, investing is not something you have to do perfectly in order to succeed – even socially responsible investing. If you apply the 80/20 rule to get the big picture right, you have probably found the Sweet Spot and you can move on to the next area of life to optimize.

In the Comments: What is your own investment strategy? Have you thought at all about this ESG / SRI stuff? Did this article bring anything new to the table?

from Finance https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/08/22/socially-responsible-investing/ via http://www.rssmix.com/