#and if you still talk about something months later its release there are people who will tell you to move on

[empresskylo]

Hi！I really like ur story.And I was wandering if u could write about konig or ghost being jealous 🫂

my call of duty masterlist

reader referred to as a girl, called feminine terms, and afab.

Ghost

♡ ghost is an aggressive jealous. especially once you've been together for a while and he gets really attached. its definitely romantic but sometimes can drive you mad.

♡ one time, you and the rest of 141 were out at a bar, taking a load off after an intense mission. you went off to the bar to grab drinks for everyone and of course, ghost kept his eyes locked on you the entire time. as you stood there waiting, you rocked back and forth on your feet. a somewhat attractive man approached you and started up a polite conversation. the man didn't even have any ill intentions, he simply saw a pretty girl at a bar and decided to try and flirt... it's literally the whole point of bars. ghost watched with clenched fists, ready to storm over there and drag you back to their table, but soap convinced him to calm down. you were allowed to talk to other people. he hated the way you were laughing at whatever the prick was saying to you. you must have said something hilarious because the man laughed, reaching out and placing his hand on your shoulder. you immediately felt your gut sink, knowing what was about to happen. "might want to remove your hand before i decide to break your wrist." it was ghost, looming behind you. the man quickly retracted his hand, holding it up in defense. you turned to face the giant brute, "simon, he was just being nice," you whispered to him. "s'not nice to touch ladies without their consent," he growled, his eyes still locked on the poor man behind you who should have ran out the door by now if he had any brains. your eyes darted sidelong to soap, silently pleading for his help. within seconds, johnny was grabbing the man behind you and edging him out of the bar, telling him it was for his own good. you blocked simon's way, grabbing his sleeve and pulling, making him look down at you finally. "please, simon," you said breathlessly. "can we not ruin this night?" his face softened, his big hand coming up to caress your cheek, his thumb stroking you. "m'sorry," he said before placing a kiss on the top of your head. safe to say, he was glued to your side the rest of the night.

♡ ghost had gotten jealous of your relationship with the other members of 141, though this was more towards the beginning of your relationship, when he still didn't trust the guys with you--but now, of course, he trusts them with your life.

♡ ghost wasn't keen on the nicknames the guys would call you. but sometimes, he didn't really have much of a choice. when price would call you "doll", he would just silently glare at him. soap liked to call you "lass," and while that wasn't anything out of pocket, it still infuriated ghost. gaz sometimes called you "love," which drove ghost mad. you had to remind him that these were just terms of endearment because the guys cared about you, not because they were interested in you. he still didn't like it. and even months later, when he learned to trust them with you, he would still clench his jaw and fist whenever someone referred to you by anything but your name.

♡ he would even get jealous before you were together. one time he had overheard johnny inviting you out. he was in fact inviting you out to join him and the rest of the crew (including ghost), but ghost didn't hear that part. later that day, he slammed johnny against a wall, his forearm crushing him with such force even soap was surprised. "words, ghost. use your words," soap choked out, trying to shove the taller man off of him. "the hell you think you're doin?" he reluctantly released him from his hold. "what the bloody fuck are you talkin' about?" "invitin' her out?" he managed through gritted teeth. soap couldn't help the smirk that played along his lips. "whats it to ya?" ghost moved to step closer to him, his fists clenched. soap raised a hand in defeat. "bloody hell, mate. i was invitin' the lass to come out with all of us." ghost awkwardly shifted his stance, making soap crack a grin. a plethora of snarky comments rose in soaps throat, but ghost stopped them before they could come into reality. "not a fuckin' word about this, johnny, or I swear to god."

𝐍𝐒𝐅𝐖 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐖

♡ ghost was occasionally known to fuck the jealousy out of his system. (im sorry, but this idea is just so hot to me…)

♡ simon was not happy when he found out you had a "work husband." and i feel like thats a pretty fair thing to get upset over. “No, no, simon! He’s married! It just means we bicker and act like an old married couple at work. It has nothing to do with actually liking each other,” you pleaded. That didn’t really help your case. Like at all. It was a silent car ride all the way home. And once you got inside, simon had you pinned against the door, your hands trapped beneath his over your head. You let out a sharp gasp. “Ever imagine him while you’re fucking me?” his voice was low and scary, his lips coming down to tease your neck. You knew he was just trying to get himself worked up. “No! God, no, Simon. I would never–” he rolled his hips against you, cutting your sentence short. He nipped the skin along your neck making you hiss. He dragged you to the bedroom, tearing your clothes off, not being gentle at all. He didn’t have the patience to be. “Bet he wonders what color underwear you got on,” he mumbled more to himself than you. His fingers hooked along the band of your panties, teasing you. “Too bad for him, he’ll never know.” you gasped when simon abruptly shoved two fingers inside of you with no warning. He smirked. “And he’ll never know what kind of sounds you make.” he climbed up between your legs, intensely watching your face as his fingers pumped inside of you. “Only i get that honor, don’t i, pet?” You’d be lying if you said this side of simon didn’t turn you on. Your mind was already blanking as you panted, simon’s magical fingers working wonders. He stopped moving. “Dont i?” he asked again with more aggression this time. “Yes. only you!” you whined, bucking your hips up into his hand. Normally simon would chuckle, admiring how desperate you were for him. But right now, all he felt was jealous rage. Simon settled himself above you, his pants shedded. He peeled your panties off, licking his lips as he did. “Gonna fuck you so good so that prick never crosses your mind.” “He already doesn’t cross my mind, sim–oh fuck!” simon thrusted inside you, cutting off your rambling. He wasn’t gentle as he began to rock against you. “Say my name, love,” he demanded. “Oh god, Simon,” you babbled, already cockdrunk. “That’s right, baby. I own this pussy, don’t i?” You nodded your head hurriedly, your nails digging into his back. As much as simon’s jealousy drove you crazy, you fucking loved moments like this. Simon pounded into you, relentless as he claimed you, coming inside you just to prove to himself how you were his. And only his. 

König

♡ konig my sweet gentle giant. I do think he’s a bit insecure so when he gets jealous it more so makes him sad rather than mad. (i hate to paint him like a helpless, sappy baby, but i cant help it im so sorry.)

♡ “konig, what’s wrong?” you’d ask him, seeing him act more reserved than usual. You stood between his legs as he sat on a barstool. He was always shy in public, especially when you all went out to the bar, but he was acting it more so than usual. “nothin’ , liebling.” he takes a strand of your hair and twirls it in his fingers. “Konig,” you plead, clearly seeing something is bothering him. His eyes drift, unable to look at you when he speaks. “Jus’ didn’t like seein’ you talk to that guy at the bar.” Your face would heat up, upset that you might have hurt him, but also warming at the idea of konig being jealous. You rested your hands on the tops of his thighs, pushing yourself up so you were inline with his lips. “He’s not my type.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. he’s no where near tall enough.” konig’s ears pinked. “And he doesn’t call me liebling in that god damn accent.” you’ve managed to turn konig into a blushing mess. Even if you’ve been together for awhile, whenever you compliment him, he gets all bashful.

♡ he’ll do simple things when he’s jealous. Like if he starts to get annoyed that some guy is acting a little too touchy or comfortable around you, he’ll come up behind you and wrap his arms around your chest. He would literally engulf you. Just that simple action would send any smart man running as he loomed over you and stared them down.

♡ he is also not one to be into PDA, however, that is not the case when he’s jealous. Especially at base, with so many deprived men around, he tends to get overly protective of you. Whenever he spots you talking to someone that’s not him, he’ll come up to you, give you a kiss even if you’re in the middle of talking, and walk away. You always get flustered when he does that, but it gets the message across that you’re his. No one would dare mess with something that belonged to konig.

♡ there is a man on the team that takes interest in you, likely not knowing that you and konig are together. He begins to help you train. Eats lunch with you. Saves you a seat at meetings. And you think he’s just being friendly. You’re actually happy you made a friend. So it throws you off when konig confronts you about it. “I don’t like you spending so much time with that guy.” “What? Why?” you turn in his embrace to face him. “He’s clearly into you, liebling.” “Huh? No he’s not! We’re just friends.” you say, your mind going over your every interaction now that konig brought this up. “You’re naive if you think he just wants to be your friend.” he says it in such a soft way that you’re not even upset at him calling you naive. He’s clearly just concerned. You shake your head, not wanting to believe what konig is saying. “Have you even told him about me?” “Yes! I’ve definitely brought you up.” “But did you mention we were together?” You bit the inside of your cheek. “No… I guess I never specified.” you realized that konig was probably right. You had no idea you were leading this guy on because you genieuly thought he was just being friendly. “Oh, shit. Konig. I’m so sorry,” you said clearly upset now. Konig cupped the back of your head and pulled you into his chest, placing a kiss on the top of your head. You felt a chuckle rumble through his chest. “Don’t apolgize. You haven’t done anything wrong.” “I’ll make sure he knows i’m with you next time i see him,” you mumbled into his shirt. Konig spotted the man walk into the room you and konig were currently huddling in. perfect timing. “or…” he said, making you tilt your head to look up at him, arching a brow. The man looked over and spotted the two of you, so Konig bent down, lifting his mask so only you could see, and kissed you. It was more than a peck. He pulled you into him, his hands wandering down to your waist. When you pulled away breathless, konig smirked. “I think he got the message.”

♡ he often got jealous when others would gawk at you when you weren’t looking. There had been plenty of times where you were working out and konig watched as other man checked you out. He could feel his fists clench, trying to prevent himself from getting upset. It wasn’t your fault. And he wasn’t about to make you cover up just because men liked to be creepy.

♡ it isn’t until after one workout that you see konig huffing on the bench. “Bad workout?” you asked him, sitting across his thigh. His hands immediately went to your waist. “Jus’ sick of those guys oogling over you,” he muttered. You looked over to see the group of men konig was talking about. You were sporting a tight sports bra and tight spandex shorts, showing more than you usually would. “Let em’ look,” you replied. Konig looked at you, his frown deepening. “They can see me like this all they want. But only you can see me naked,” you whispered in his ear. Konig’s hands tightened on your waist, his pupils dilating as he stared at you. “Don’t start something you can’t finish, liebling.” his voice was darker now. Not with jealousy, but with lust. “Oh, I don’t plan on it,” you said, reaching down and palming him through his shorts. Konig immediately shot up, making you land on your feet, but his hands still firmly gripping you. “Your room. Now,” he demanded. He always got nervous when you spoke to him like that in public. But this was the first time you touched him in public. And konig was throbbing in his shorts, wanting you so desperately he already forgot about the other men.

𝐍𝐒𝐅𝐖 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐖

♡ after a night out with the gang, partying and drinking, you and konig found yourselves back at your hotel room. You had no idea he had been jealous all night long until he scooped you up as you entered your hotel room and tossed you on the bed. He had to watch as you danced and let loose, enjoying yourself, while the men around you watched you just as intently as konig was. Every time you bent over, he had to stop himself from punching every man in your vicinity. “Konig,” you said breathlessly. He loomed over you, grabbing the hem of your dress and pushing it up your thighs until it bunched around your waist. “You’re mine,” he growled. You were slightly shocked at his sudden change in demeanor, not as used to this side of konig, but not hating it either. You nodded your head as konig pulled your panties down. You were already so wet for him. It made him smile. He quickly connected his mouth to your throbbing core, his tongue devouring you. Your hands slid into his hair on reflex, your head falling back, silently mouthing his name. “I want everyone in the fucking hotel to hear you scream my name,” he grunted against you. Your eyes widened, looking down at the man buried between your thighs. His hands gripped your ass and pulled you closer to him, making you yelp. “Every. Single. Person.” You quickly nodded, calling his name out as he began sucking on your clit. His tongue teased your entrance, his cock throbbing as he listened to your pants. “Mine,” he said against your cunt, making you moan. “All fucking mine.”

[suzuran777]

Analyzing some of the very first BL visual novels

First of all, I've talked about most of these topics during my Citrus con panel on Augustus 24th, so for those who missed it or who wanted a list of all the visual novels mentioned during the panel, those are also mentioned in this blog post! Japanese BL visual novels have been something I’ve been interested in since 2010-2011, and even these days many people in English speaking fanbases are familiar with games like DRAMAtical Murder and the other Nitro + Chiral titles. I've played many older titles which I've previously reviewed on this blog, and in this post I will be looking at some of the very first BL visual novels and how the industry has changed throughout the years.

Before the very first "official" BL visual novels were released, some visual novels already existed in which a male protagonist had romantic or sexual scenes together with one of the other male characters. Some examples of this are games like Sotsugyou Ryokou (1996) and Ko-Ko-Ro (1998). Most of the other love interests in these games were girls, so they were not promoted as “boys’ love” games.

The oldest visual novel I could find that was promoted as a game which focuses on love between boys, is a game called Sei Valentine Gakuen, released by a company called B.M. in early 1999. This is a game in which you can name the protagonist, and none of the characters are voiced. While checking their old website through Waybackmachine, it seemed like the game had a lot of game-breaking bugs which they attempted to patch out, however the website quickly shut down within what seems like only a year (or maybe a few years) after its release date. Since there's not a lot of information about this game available online, I was surprised that someone bought the game second-hand and made a youtube video about it, so I recommend checking that out! You can watch it here. Despite being promoted as a game that focuses on love between boys it seems like there’s not really romance in the game, so I am curious why they marketed the game in this way.

Next is a game called BOYxBOY, released a few months after Sei Valentine Gakuen in April 1999. This is one of the games I actually got to play myself, and I was surprised to see this game was released by King Records (the record label) as I didn’t know they used to publish games, let alone BL games. The protagonist has a face and a name this time, but even though all the other characters are voiced, they decided to leave the main character unvoiced for some reason. This game does have romance elements, like confession scenes, but it's still quite minimal. There’s only one character who actually gets a kiss scene for example. This game did get a fandisc a year later, but it seems to be more of a collection of extra materials and minigames rather than something that really adds something to the story of the game.

Another BL visual novel that was released around this time in July 1999 is a game called Graduation (or Sotsugyou) by Joinac, which as the title suggests, focuses on the protagonist spending time with people at his school right before his graduation. This one actually got translated, so it's probably the first BL visual novel to ever get an (official) English translation. Unlike most other games from this time, this one can still be easily accessed too, as a digital version is available for purchase on DLsite.

Entering the 2000s, game developer AliceSoft created their own BL game brand called AliceBlue and released their first BL game called Kakurezuki in 2000. Even though AliceSoft released 18+ rated titles in the past, this first BL title was actually also all-ages. Some reviews mentioned that they don’t really consider the game BL at all, pointing out the lack of romance, and I can definitely see where they’re coming from. Pretty much all the other games I mentioned so far take place in a modern-day school setting, however this game is more of a historical fantasy game (although the plot still only focuses on the protagonist and his daily interactions with those around him).

A lot of the games during this time period still highly resembled the typical dating sim-style game, which was quite popular in the mid/late 1990s. This kind of gameplay means that usually, the player decides what the character is going to do that day, for example, what subjects he takes in school, which club he joins and which locations he visits. In games like Kakurezuki, it’s a bit different you decide what magic skills you want to strengthen that day. This kind of gameplay kind of limits what kind of story the writers can explore, as the plot mostly focuses on the main character’s everyday life and their interactions with other characters, and eventually also became something that’s not commonly used in BL visual novels anymore.

Later that year, in August 2000, one of the most well-known early BL visual novels was released. This was Sukisho (short for Suki na Mono wa Suki Dakara Shouganai) by Platinum Label. The company promoted this game as the “first 18+ boys love game” though Graduation also seems to be rated 18+ on DLsite. Sukisho gained a big fanbase, as many fans really liked the art (drawn by Tsutae Yuzu) and the characters. Even though the plot still focused on boys going to school, some characters do have a darker backstory. The company even created official forums where fans could discuss the plot of the game and fan theories. Some other boards also encouraged fan meetups at local conventions in Japan. It ended up getting 3 different sequels, a PlayStation 2 port, an anime adaptation, and various drama CDs and novels. These days a lot of BL visual novels get drama CDs, but back then this game really got a lot of extra content compared to other games. Like many others, I personally discovered this game through the anime many years ago, but I played the visual novel later as it has also been fan translated and was quite accessible back then.

Another visual novel that stood out, and which also got an anime adaptation, is Angel's Feather (2003). Unlike the rather confusing anime plot, which adds a new character that isn’t in the game, I think the plot of the visual novel is actually much better. Initially it does seem like another game about high school boys, but in reality it’s more of an RPG game that focuses on the characters learning more about the world they’re living in, and their own magic abilities. I think just like Sukisho’s artstyle, compared to many other games that were released at the time, the art of this game quite unique. The artist is Yamamoto Kazue, who worked on many visual novels, and is still active nowadays. This game also got a sequel and drama CDs, but sadly the third game they were working on was never released. The studio was also working on a completely new game called White Shadow, however this one also remains unreleased to this day. If you want to read a little bit more information about this game and other unreleased titles, I wrote a blog post about that too here!

The inclusion of RPG elements I briefly mentioned just now in visual novels was not something only Angel’s Feather did. For example, some of these other screenshots are from Ouji-sama Lv1, Teikoku Sensenki, and Apocripha/0. The gameplay varied from a simple battle system to complicated dungeons and hard to beat enemies, depending on the game. One downside of this is that it’s quite a time-consuming process if you want to see all kinds of different endings, as these parts of the game were usually unskippable. Gradually, this is also something that slowly became less common in BL visual novels.

Generally, a lot of older games were quite difficult to replay as most games only had a limited number of save slots, and sometimes there would be no preview images next to the save files either, so it was quite difficult to remember which save file you were supposed to load. Some of the oldest BL visual novels also don’t have a skip button, which means you have to play through all of the dialogue again if you want to see a different ending. The pictures below are my screenshots from Angel's Feather and Kannagi no Tori, a game that was released in 2001. Luckily both of these games do have a skip button, but there were never enough save slots!

Other than changes in gameplay and artstyles, something that has also changed quite a lot are the dynamics between characters in adult scenes. In most BL visual novels, the protagonist is either a top or a bottom, and this doesn’t really change throughout the whole game. For example, if the official website mentions that the protag is a bottom, that means he’s a bottom with every single one of the love interests. Something I noticed while playing older games is that this order wasn’t always fixed. In games like Laughter Land and Kannagi no Tori for example, the game would often let the player decide. A game that was released a bit later which also has this option is PIL/SLASH’s game Shingakkou -Noli me tangere. In every route, no matter what character, you make the decision. I think it’s kind of fun when the game gives you choices like this, although I’m not sure if they will ever bring it back.

Terminology and target audience When I talk about these games I use “BL game” and “BL visual novel” as these are easily understood when communicating with an English-speaking audience. However in Japanese these games are usually only called “BL game” or "AVG" which just stands for adventure game. In the early 2000s some official websites around this time would refer to these BL visual novels as ''boys games'' to distinguish them from a genre called “girl’s games” or galge, which are games that would typically target a male audience. Even though the term “yaoi” was becoming less common, some developers would also call them “yaoi games” on their website, as you can see in some of the screenshots below . It’s not like the term “visual novel” is something completely unknown to them, but it’s also not a term I ever see them using to promote their games.

As for the target audience, similar to a lot of BL manga, the target audience for many of these BL visual novels was also women. A lot of websites stated that these were games “made by girls for girls”. However, it’s better to not generalize the whole genre as something exclusively targeted towards women, as some games like Hotaru (released by Tarutaru in December 2000) and its sequels were specifically advertised as games "made by gay men for gay men". One of the games I mentioned earlier, Graduation, was also made by a doujin group that calls themselves the Gay Artist Support, and like the name suggests, they support gay artists and alleys. Therefore it can be concluded that even during this time period, it wasn't just women creating and reading BL.

Marketing and sales Some might be wondering; how did people discover these games back then? Around the year 2001, multiple websites were created by fans that kept track of new BL game developers, as well as any updates provided by the companies that were already established back then. A lot of these websites also gave fans the option to chat with each other in their forums. Some examples of these websites are BOY'S STREET and Boyslove Kenkyuujo (which translates to BoysLove research institute). They kept track of both commercial and doujin game releases. Companies and doujin creators would both sell their games at events like Comiket, Super Comic City and J-Garden too, where they would promote their games and chat with fans. Their games would also be sold at stores like Animate and Toranoana, which is not too different than how creators sell their BL games nowadays, as both of these stores still exist. A lot of BL game creators in the early 2000s were quite close to each other and collaborated. For example, some doujin groups like Anubis Label, Ritz, Moon Parrot and more created their own magazine called B-GAME, which featured information about their new doujin games, corporate games, survey results, game reviews and more. The picture below (on the right) is a picture I found on the website of doujin group Moon Parrot, promoting and selling their game Kuro no Tsuki at Super Comic City. Of course official BL game magazines also existed, but I think I will make a separate blog post about that (update: you can read it here!).

Well-known developers throughout the years Next I made a list of some BL game creators that established their brands in the early or mid 2000s, and who continue to be active nowadays. I will mention some newer games as well. There's way too many BL visual novels to include all of them, so I apologize if I missed some that were quite influential!

Langmaor/Tennenouji: The first game Langmaor released was a game called Enzai in 2002, illustrated by Yura. This game focuses on a boy whose name is Guys, who gets sent to prison as a result of a false accusation. In one interview, Yura mentioned that she was almost afraid that the plot of the game would be “too dark”, as the main character experiences a lot of abuse, but she concluded that at least the game would be unique. In 2004 Langmaor released Teikoku Sensenki, and a year later they released Zettai Fukujuu Meirei (or more well-known as Absolute Obedience). This game had a kind of unique system which focused on not one, but two protagonists. The final game this brand released was a game called Laughter Land (2006. The illustrations of this game were drawn by Yuzuki Ichi who had previously worked on Kannagi no Tori. Yura was also part of doujin group called Tennenouj, which already released their first BL game in 2000 called Sei Crain Gakuen, a BL game that you could play by opening HTML files in your browser. They released their second BL game in 2006, which was Miracle No-ton, a game about a notebook that could grand the protagonist’s wishes (horny wishes only though!). In 2009, Luckydog1 was released, which ended up becoming one of the most popular and well-known games in Japanese speaking BL visual novel fanbases. The game is about the protagonist Giancarlo, who’s a low-ranking member of the mafia and currently in prison, who receives the task to free 4 important members of the mafia from prison. Some BL gamemagazines like Cool-B have an annual popularity poll, and for years, LuckyDog 1 and its characters ended up in first place. On BL information websites like ChilChil it continues to be the highest rated BL visual novel to this day. Two years ago, Tennenouji also released the game Friendly Lab, of which the mobile version is still being updated, so even nowadays they are still very active.

Nitro + CHiRAL: Or just called “NITRO CHiRal” these days. They released their first game, Togainu no Chi, in 2005. In the early interviews the director stated that they wanted to create something different, as a lot of visual novels around this time focused on schoolboys and modern-day settings. So instead, they wrote a story that takes place in a futuristic version of Japan, devastated by a Third World War. Only a year later in 2006, they released their second game, Lamento -BEYOND THE VOID- which also takes place in a fictional world. Even though the characters look similar to humans, they call themselves Ribika and have cat-like characteristics. The characters in this game are struggling to survive, as a mysterious force called “The Void” is slowly destroying their world. Because of their unique stories and beautiful illustrations, Nitro Chiral quickly gained a big fanbase in Japan too. In some articles published in Cool-B magazine, they mentioned that they were taking even bigger risks with their next game, as the plot would be anything but happy. This was about their third game, sweet pool. Despite that, I think fans already expected dark and serious stories from the company, so it was still well-received. Before releasing DRAMAtical Murder, they released two more visual novels called Itsuwari no Alkanet and World’s end Nightmare, though these were only available on Chiral Mobile, an app that could only be downloaded on certain Japanese phones. These days these games are considered lost media, but I wrote a blog post about what I could find about them some years ago. Afterwards they released their more well-known games DRAMAtical Murder in 2012 and Slow Damage in 2021.

Pil/Slash: This is a BL visual novel developer that is well known for writing dark stories, with themes like abuse, noncon, physical and emotional torture. Though of course this is not too uncommon in BL visual novels, as all of the developers I’ve previously mentioned include themes like that in their games too.Their first game, Masquerade ~Jigoku Gakuen SO/DO/MU~, was released in 2006, followed by Koibito Yuugi a year later. In 2011, one of their most well-known titles, Shingakkou –Noli me tangere- was released. This game is about protagonist Michael who’s enrolled in a seminary. However, his school life is anything but peaceful, as his family gets murdered and he also discovers a secret society of devil worshippers in his very own school. At the moment this is the second highest rated BL game on ChilChil, after Luckydog1. After this they released Pigeon Blood in 2014, which was also a horror-themed game, and Paradise a few years later, which was quite popular in Japan too. In 2021 they released their newest game, Dystopia no Ou. This game focuses on protagonist Kiriku who dreams about becoming a rock star. Initially, this seems quite different than PIL/SLASH's previous games, but I promise the story still gets pretty dark. The writer credited for Paradise and Dystopia no Ou is Kyuuyouzawa Lychee, who's also the creator of doujin game group LOVE&DESTROY and games like CAGE OPEN and CAGE CLOSE.

Spray: This company’s first game was Saikyou Darling, released in 2001, but I think they are probably more well-known for their Gakuen Heaven series. The first Gakuen Heaven game was released in 2002, but since then they have released a few newer versions of the game, console versions and a second game. This is another one of these games that people might know because it has an anime and manga series. Spray has released quite a few different games like Soshite Bokura Wa, Piyotan, STEAL! and more recently Tsumi naru Rasen no Ori, but I think other than Gakuen Heaven their most well-known title is probably Kichiku Megane, released in 2007. This game focuses on protagonist Katsuya, a salesman who seems to be failing at everything in life. Just before he’s fired from his job, he receives a mysterious pair of glasses from someone. Whenever he wears these glasses, his personality completely changes. He suddenly becomes very skilled at everything, but also very sadistic. In recent years fans have started organizing fan events for this game at local conventions again, so it’s interesting to see how popular it still is.

Holicworks: Also known as LoveDelivery, as that’s the name they used to release some of their very first games, like Tsukigami (2007) and Beniiro Tenjou Ayakashi (2008). Their most well-known title Taisho Mebiusline, released in 2012. This game is a historical fantasy game which takes place during the end of the Taisho period, in 1923. The protagonist, Kyouichirou, moves to Tokyo in order to go to university. However, he runs into trouble soon after his arrival, as the Imperial Military becomes interested in his ability to see spirits. The writer of this game, Nakajo Rosa, is often praised for the historical research she did in order to write this game. The story covers all kinds of political issues, international affairs and military activity, and combines it with religious themes such as Shintoism. This also means that even for Japanese speakers, the game can be a bit difficult to read, as it tends to use difficult words and kanji. However, I think with a bit of research it’s not impossible. They also released games like Tokyo Onmyouji, Tokyo 24ku, and more recently Tokyo Satsujinki Gakkou no Kaidan, though the only game that has an English translation is Tokyo Onmyouji, which takes place in a more modern-day setting, but still focuses on supernatural themes like ghosts and spirits.

Karin Entertainment: Another developer that has been around for a long time, who released their first BL game series called Bois in 2002. Afterwards in 2004, they released the game Animamundi Owarinaki Yami no Butou~ (Animamundi: Dark Alchemist), which I’m not sure if I should be calling BL game as there are also a few female love interests. The games they released after this aren’t BL games, but instead they created a new branch called Karin Chatnoir Omega, which released the game Omertà ~Chinmoku no Okite~ in 2011. In this game the mafia controls the government, and the protagonist J.J. is a hitman who’s taking all kinds of assassination jobs. In 2016 they also released the game Omega Vampire, which is the first omegaverse BL visual novel.

Parade: This is a game developer known for creating games in which the protagonist is exclusively a top, or seme, which is also something that was not super common in the past. In a lot of other games almost all of the love interests are younger guys, so I think it was interesting to see at least two of the other main characters in NO THANK YOU!!! were over the age of 35. Even though most Parade games have a lot of 18+ content, like NO THANK YOU!!! and their second game Room No. 9, one should not underestimate the plot, as the writing is really good. My favorite game is probably their latest game, which is Lkyt., a historical fantasy game and my personal favorite.

CORE: This is the BL branch of a company called Orbit, and their most well-known game is Messiah, which was released in 2006. Though their first game was a game called Ever Loyalty in 2001, followed by Fanatica in 2004. Most of CORE's games only have 1 or 2 characters the protagonist can end up together with, although sometimes other characters in the game also have their own bad endings. In Fanatica, the protagonist only has one true love interest, but a lot of the other main characters are also paired up with each other, so even if they don't have their own route, you do get to see different scenes with them. Even though CORE released their last game in 2008, which is the Messiah fandisc Messiah ~ Paranoia Paradox. It was announced that they are actually working on a new BL project called Tokyo Gentou/Tokyo Phantasmagoria, under the new name Procyon.

Adelta: Not really 2000s as their first game was released quite some time later, but I think still important because they've gotten quite popular in recent years. This is a doujin game group created by Kurosawa Rinko. The first games this group worked on were Cocoon and Cocoon Black Noise, released in 2014. The game they’re probably most known for is Koshotengai no Hashihime (Hashihime of the old Book Town). This game is quite well known for its references to literature and real writers, and the story also takes place during the Taisho period. Originally it was advertised as a time-loop murder mystery. In 2020 Uuultra C was released, which is a completely different kind of game that takes place during the Showa period and focuses on heroes you’d typically see in a Super Sentai Series, or Tokusatsu movies in which the characters fight kaiju. Adelta is currently working on their newest game, Ooe.

Conclusion Of course there are many more BL visual novels which left a big impact on people, even less serious games like Gakuen Handsome which still get referenced a lot to this day. Another well-known title is Mada Koubou's Hadaka Shitsuji, which was mostly created by artist and writer Togo Mito. It kind of difficult to determine how many BL visual novels currently exist, but BL information website ChilChil currently lists 345 titles in this database. This does however include fandiscs and games that aren't technically BL games, and also doesn't include all doujin games ever released.

The early 2000s was a good time for BL visual novel fans and a lot of developers were making BL games back then, which also meant that there would be many new games to play. These days the number of active developers has significantly decreased, so most of the time you get about 1 or 2 big releases every year. Of course, there are still doujin groups and individual creators who make their own games, but the number of commercial releases is pretty small nowadays.

Some games that were released earlier this year however, are Tokyo Satsujinki Gakkou no Kaidan and Haiiro no Arcadia. I am personally also looking forward to the release of Adelta's new game Ooe, and Procyon's Tokyo Gentou/Tokyo Phantasmagoria, so I recommend checking those out when they're released!

[idontknowanametouse]

Presenting to gringos (people that aren't from Brazil) Mundo Torajo (Torajo World)

Mundo Torajo is a brazillian animation youtube channel that will be very soon releasing a series thanks to a gofundme. Unfortunately, there is still no english translation, so I can do it here if you want.

Torajo was a channel like Jaiden (same video format) until about august/september of 2023, when a short was released (this one) beggining the lore, in which a red version of Torajo took his place. This continued on for almost 2 months with no sign of Torajo, only through glitches and links on the shorts that lead to audios of Torajo and Morajo (the red one) talking about the channel's future and video format. 2 months after Torajo was gone, Morajo made this video showing all the audios together. He said he made all of this to prove Torajo the audience didn't really care for him (their whole argument was about youtube algorythm vs passion and a nice audience) because they only stayed for the mystery. In the next video, this one, the two fight and we find out that they are brothers and Torajo called Morajo when the channel grew and he needed help, with everything getting more and more unstable between them. At the end, they set apart and Morajo starts his own channel. The two start a "war" between them until this video (followed by this one), when he introduces a new character, Zulmi (I love her, you'll see more about her later). She is friends with the two and stops their fight... at least, for a while.

Then, this happened. Basically, Morajo got infected with algorythomus, a substance that is, well, the youtube algorythm. He goes a little crazy and threatens Torajo while hacking other youtubers, and then Torajo posts this video. He explains he lives in another planet, Verade, that can be only kept alive when people watch their videos. The next video, this one, is the last part of this series/saga. The two have a fight with a really emotional flashback of them as kids, and in the end THE POWER OF LOVE WINS AND THEY MAKE UP YAAAAAAY

And, for a while, all is well. They continue Torajo's channel together (the 3 of them), introduce a new character, Linn (I love him, you'll see more about him later) and even post a compilation of the fight. And then something happens.

The channel is hacked by an unknown person and this video is posted. In it, we meet the "hacker", Abel, who is basically Verade's god/narrator and that does propaganda to the gofundme for the creation of an animated series (he also wipes Torajo's memory after this). 1 week later, they reach their goal and publish this video, with a sneak peak of the series (also wiping the character's memories). Now, there's just 2 videos left for its release, and the story is warming up. They post shorts daily and this week, Morajo seems very unwell, and as we know algorithomus is coming back, this is surely the cause of it.

This is the lore at the moment, and I can keep you aware of it. They are very popular with kids. I recommend, even if you don't know portuguese, to watch their videos, cuz they are really fun and charismatic. Now, I'll show you the characters!

Torajo

[ID in alt]

He is the main character. He is, as you can see, a green apple and is very nice, though a bit sassy and dumb. There are many memes about him, like him bald or as a banana. He has a crush on Zulmi but won't say it. Loves coffee and minecraft.

Morajo

[ID in alt]

Torajo's brother and former antagonist, now a co-protagonist. He is a red apple and kind of an emo, grumpy, kind of mean sometimes but actually very emotional, soft, shy and nerdy. People often call him a mango. He wears glasses but usually doesn't do it on videos. Loves Tetris and cats.

Zulmi

[ID in alt]

She is a co-protagonist. She is a blueberry and kind of a diva, but also very extroverted and likes gossips, also being nerdy about science stuff. Is often called a pineapple. Has a crush on Torajo, but won't say it. Loves Club Penguin.

Linn

[ID in alt]

He is a co-protagonist. He is a lemon and very introverted and shy, being very nerdy about anime and videogames, also kind, calm and phylosophic. Is besties with Morajo. Likes to play ukulele, ducks, Zelda and bread with lettuce.

Azedo (Sour)

[ID in alt]

He is Linn's little brother and a side character. He is a lemon and basically an ipad kid (looks like the collector from the owl house, is currently called Enzo Gabriel/Azedo Gabriel). He likes spider man, chicken nuggets and saying stuff on the community's discord server (I've seen him there sometimes).

Abel

[ID in alt]

He is Verade's god/narrator. He is a mango and kind of crazy, but really funny. He hasn't appeared much, so we don't know a lot about him, but we'll probably see more about him soon.

Pessy

[ID in alt]

She is Zulmi's best friend. She is a peach and very detective-like, making theories about everything that happens on Verade and being also very nerdy too. She is nice and kinda shy, but very persistent on what she wants. Her hat is kind of infinite as she guards a lot of stuff inside it. She likes rock music, Gravity Falls, Dark Souls, Sherlock Holmes, sci-fi movies, tea, editing, toddynho and coffee.

[jgroffdaily]

The episode was recorded on 24 September, before the death of Gavin Creel. The hosts are Andrew Chappelle, who worked with Jonathan on Hamilton, and Cody Rigsby. Highlights:

Jonathan talks about Cody Smith, his first boyfriend, and says they are still close. They met during 'Bat Boy' and Cody is six years older. "And I love him."

Jonathan talked about his plans to transform '& Sons Steakeasy' (currently a restaurant) back into the gay bar where Barbra Streisand first sang (previously discussed in an interview). He would change the name of the restaurant to 'The Lion' (its original name) and make the upstairs a gay bar and call it BARbra. He has never met Barbra.

Cody talks about meeting Ru Paul that day. Jonathan says he would love to be on Drag Race. He also said he was with Cody (a Peloton instructor) 'on' the bike, crying, during Covid "you are a light".

Jonathan went on a silent meditation retreat after 'Merrily We Roll Along' closed. He has now done three Vipassana meditation reteats in Quebec, Lava Hot Springs Idaho and Massachusetts and gave up his phone for the duration. "With your breath, your demons, a lot of things and yourself... giving shared bathrooms and roommates... The presence you get from being silent, and just with your breath all day is kind of incredible." Jonathan agreed that it was one of the hardest things he had ever done.

Jonathan says he still deletes text messages after replying to them. He says it started from a break-up when he was 24 or 25 [likely Gavin Creel] "and I kept Googling this person, I kept re-reading our texts over and over and over again and I was like, 'Groff, you've got to let go of re-reading everything over and over again. The good, the bad and the everything in between. I need to delete this chain. Let it go.' And then I thought, why am I holding on to any conversation?" He says he's slow at getting back to people, but usually responds (but can respond to a joke a month later).

Andrew says he is the most un-Hollywood person, and Jonathan had warned him about moving to LA. "The alone time is very quiet there, or was for me at least. The tumbleweeds." Andrew said he wanted Jonathan for the podcast and said he would reach out to his publicist, but was concerned when Jonathan said he could just text him, as he may not respond quickly (but he did respond).

Talking about the Bobby Darin project 'Just in Time', Jonathan said: "I'm so excited... It's something I've been working on for about seven years... This guy is fire. He talked about his relationship to the audience. For example he would wear a condom on stage in case he ejaculated. [A video clip of this part has been released.] He was a primal, primal, profound, epic, epic live performer. Sammy Davis Jr said the only person he wouldn't follow was Bobby Darin... The magic of him, and of his essence, was his live interaction with the audience." He brought Alex Timbers on originally because of the 'environment' he creates.

He then describes the conceit of the show [around 23:45, will not be discussed/spoilered here]. But he talks about wanting to evoke Darin's primal energy as a love letter to entertainment and the relationship with the audience.

Jonathan talked about the opening night gift he gave the off-Broadway Hamilton cast and crew [apple cider donuts?] before he was officially announced as being part of the show, even to the cast. Lin-Manuel Miranda told him he had one song and it would be pretty easy, and he was given sheet music and the script but no further information or a video.

Jonathan says King George was the hardest thing he had done because you on stage so briefly, come out cold, sing through your range and then leave. Merrily was easier because he was on stage the whole time.

Andrew said Jonathan as the King made himself available to the cast in Hamilton, and not all people in the role could do that.

In tech for Broadway, Jonathan and Andrew would sit in the mezzanine, and one of Andrew's favourite memories involves sitting with Jonathan and watching Renee Elise Goldsberry in a dispute with the crew about her wig. Jonathan: "And these gays are dying for it. We are loving it so much." [Both cracking up with a lot of cackling.]

Andrew ditched college for three days to see Jonathan in 'Spring Awakening'. They discuss the false rumour about Lea Michele and Jonathan says Lea can read. Jonathan talks about how he was cast in Glee after Ryan Murphy said he would write a show for Jonathan and Lea, and Ryan wrote the role of Finn for him. Jonathan was asked to sign a seven year contract and declined, and Ryan then wrote the guest star role of Jesse St James for him.

They discuss Looking, Raul Castillo and Murray Bartlett. Asked if he hooked up on the show, Jonathan said there was some hooking up on the show but not with the core group. Andrew then discusses Jonathan's cameo in 'Blindspotting' with Emmy Raver, filmed in San Francisco.

Asked about the rumored kiss at Battle Hymn on Pride this year, Jonathan said he did attend and make out with someone. Jonathan said he has gone a couple of times to Battle Hymn by himself. He says he shot a movie in Berlin and learned from friends he had met there the joys of going out all night and dancing all night. So when he came back to New York he wanted to "scratch this itch of going out". The first time he was at Battle Hymn he was in line during Pride ("in my harness, in my shorts") and Oak Onaodowan called him. Asked if he cared about the kiss being made public at Battle Hymn, Jonathan said "It makes me laugh. I'm not bothered by it. It's OK." He said in his early days he would have been scared to even walk past a gay bar due to career ramifications and the thought of being considered gay.

Around 55 minutes Jonathan said he is very lucky to be an out actor at this time, and that he came out publicly because Spring Awakening had been everything he ever dreamed of and wanted, and then he fell in love due to Gavin Creel. He said he was such a fan of Gavin's, they started dating, and then he came out publicly at the march on Washington. He remembers thinking at the time he would rather be in love and be out publicly than have a career if he was giving up movies and television.

Asked if it was difficult to date an actor, Jonathan agreed that "it's been a thing" when work was the priority over a partner. Andrew said Jonathan has dated a lot of peers, and mentioned an ex of Jonathan's has a new series out. Jonathan: "ZQ [Zachary Quinto]? Love ZQ. We are still very close. Love me some ZQ."

Andrew said he still wants Zach and Jonathan to work out as he found them together visually pleasing, and Jonathan said "No, we're friends through and through at this point... It's lovely to... however much time you spend time together as partners, and then you separate, and then you maybe come back together as friends, and the sort of beauty of coming back together as friends, and being reminded of why there was that spark. Reminded why... that connectivity..."

They hosts then ask him to play Marry, F..., Kill with his characters and shows.

Jonathan says a lot of Looking was based on his experiences, for example the uncut d... discussion was based on his talk with the creators about being insecure, and the douching talk was based on his previous boyfriends.

Patrick, King George, Jesse St James: He says he would marry Patrick because he has shown growth, and personal growth is a huge thing in someone he would marry. He would f... the King because there would a lot of rage that would be interesting and a unique experience, and he would kill Jesse St James.

Hamilton, Merrily, Spring Awakening: He would kill Spring Awakening because it was so underage, f... Hamilton because “Hamilton is my sexuality because I was so attracted to every person in Hamilton" and would marry Merrily.

Glee, Looking, Mindhunter: Kill Mindhunter because there is so much depravity there, f... Glee and marry Looking.

Asked to pick between people, he starts with Lin, then Michelle Obama and finally Beyonce, including over Lea ("she would understand"). He saw the Beyonce movie twice and says "she is everything".

Asked for a scam, Jonathan said he doesn't think standing ovations are overdone ("Why not? What's life? Let's live. Let's celebrate.") He discussed drag queen story hour, the protests in Lancaster, the celebration in Lancaster the week before, and said he remains frustrated by drag queen story hour being considered wrong and how hate and discrimination has localised to story hour protests.

[tfwyouloveher2]

/r9k/Elsa Ten Years Later: A Retrospective

Ten years ago today, on July 22, 2014, r9kElsa is Suffering was completed.

If you're reading this, you probably already know the gravity of that event. Let's talk about it anyway :)

r9kElsa is Suffering was one of the earliest fan fiction works written for Frozen, its first chapter published only a few weeks after the movie's release, and was decidedly the most influential.

It was the first widely-read modern-alternate-universe take on Elsa's and Anna's characters, and the way it painted their relationship into a reluctant and tragic romance almost singlehandedly inspired the wider Elsanna ship.

Despite its legacy, it's not the most practiced prose, nor is the plot meticulously planned.

So why did it leave such a mark on its audience? And how was it conceived?

Come with me back to 2013 and we'll find out.

A History

Frozen was released on November 27, 2013, to unexpected critical acclaim and unprecedented box office success.

The internet was quickly buzzing with thoughts about it. A hundred communities in the far-flung reaches of a simpler Web gathered in their respective forums to articulate what the movie meant to them.

Within a few days, a few thoughts began to coalesce in many different places at once: these characters are important to us. They're relatable. They're inspiring.

And, in some strange new way, the scattered diaspora found that the message had spoken to their hearts: love is stronger than fear. There is hope.

The first Frozen fan fiction to gain any traction was "Songs of Ice and Snow", published on November 23 by a lucky author with the privilege of seeing a pre-screening of the movie. It would go on to reach almost 140,000 words over the next several months, and explored the characters in their canon environment, written to take place immediately after the events of the movie.

Soon though, another fic was written with a bold twist: For the First Time was published on December 3, and suggested something previously unexplored: a romantic angle to the sisters' relationship. Niche artists and shitposters had already asserted the notion, but this very early work fleshed out the idea into something surprisingly charming. If love is an open door, then For the First Time opened it just a crack, and readers everywhere were tempted by the glow from beyond.

One specific forum that was quick to latch on to the hard-to-swallow concept was /frz/, a thread on 4chan's /co/ dedicated to Frozen. The trolling effortlessly began to morph into ironic, then tongue-in-cheek, and finally occasionally genuine consideration of what this romance would mean. The trolling never stopped, of course; but in the margins, there was a growing understanding and even affection for this relationship. Why?

Like so much well-loved fiction, it was because people saw themselves in it.

In Elsa, some saw a shut-in who just didn't want to be ostracized anymore. Some saw a dutiful figure who couldn't allow herself to be happy.

In Anna, some saw a socially awkward romantic, starving for affection and acceptance. Others saw an endlessly forgiving empath.

And in both, they saw someone who might understand them.

And in that moment, they fell victim to the fantasy: that two people could be so different and yet could love each other so unreservedly. That two people could understand each other's failings and doubts and grief, that they could be so wounded by each other, and at the end of it all, still sacrifice everything for the other.

In a world of cynicism and transactional relationships, it turns out that these sisters bound by blood scratch an itch: a need to be accepted despite all our flaws. And in some corners of the internet, there grew an quiet desire to be loved like that.

It was in this context that an anonymous /co/ reader, usually only browsing the board for DC comics, began to engage with /frz/. She hadn't ever written fiction before, but at the moment unemployed, was sucked in by the concepts being set forth. She wrote a first chapter that was an exceptional attention grabber, starting with the line "She heard the crossbow bolt thud into her shoulder before she felt it." Many readers will recognize that opening line immediately from Frozen Fractals. The first chapter was initially published in a pastebin for /frz/ to read, on December 6, with promises of violence, cuteness, and sex. Despite very little initial response, the anon is fully engrossed in her work, and posts the next few chapters in the following two days.

Over the next couple weeks, Frozen Fractals becomes the foremost image of the romantic portrayal of the sisters. The writing style is unpracticed, the character choices sometimes stretch disbelief, and the story is occasionally brutal; and yet, the work is outstanding.

The critical response is enormously positive, even reaching the point of other fiction authors in /frz/ asking the author -- having at this point earned the nickname "Fractals" or "Frac" -- for writing tips and constructive criticism. Additionally though, there are some constructive criticisms offered back, which undoubtedly aided Frac's later work.

During this same period, the image of Elsa being a broken, self-doubting recluse, while Anna waits determinedly for her to open her door to the world, begins to take a more distinct shape in the /frz/ threads.

Anons start to see Elsa as one of them.

And so it began, slowly at first. But over the next couple weeks, this idea started taking center stage in threads.

And then, the first greentext from the character of /r9k/Elsa:

There grew a consensus, a common understanding of who this persona was.

It was initially tongue-in-cheek. But later, like Elsa's monster, it was often the person that we most fear to be.

And the storm raged on.

Then, the next day, a turning point is reached: a greentext that realizes the core of the character. These 12 lines precipitated years of community fixation and the story that would come of her.

And the rest is history.

Over the next few days, an onslaught of r9kElsa greentexts are posted. For a short while, threads are overwhelmed with discussion of the character. People can't stop talking about it.

Some suggest temporarily banning it from threads so as to stop derailing every discussion.

Despite the proposed ban, some discussion continues behind spoiler tags. Frac is wrapping up Frozen Fractals and becoming increasingly engrossed in the character.

Then, finally, on the Winter Solstice 2013, Elsa's first birthday, tfw She Loves You is posted on Fictionpress.

Frac posts it under an alias in an ultimately-doomed effort to fly under the radar.

Over the next few days, up to and through Christmas 2013, Frac cannot stop writing. She writes ELEVEN CHAPTERS in four days. The rest of /frz/ is caught up in the r9k storm right along with her.

And then, there's a pause. A couple days go by without update. Finally, a few days later, chapter 12 Drawfriend is posted, and Frac seems a little burned out. Anons ask her what's up.

She realizes that her story is beginning to diverge from the greentexts that /frz/ has written. What started as a collection of one-shots based on scattershot 4chan replies is beginning to feel more important than that. None of the offered greentexts are hitting the spot like they used to. Somehow, the characters need more.

From this moment onward, Frac takes a new direction. Only a couple chapters after this point (16 and 21) are based on greentexts, and even those are loosely adapted. Instead, the fic ceases to be a collection of one-shots and starts forming into a true story, the story that everyone now knows and loves.

She posts the next chapter the same night. Chapter 13 Past is in the Past is a unique installment in the series, going back in time to detail the moment Elsa believes that she fell for Anna. It briefly scales back the angst and drama, and gives a cute slice-of-life of a simpler time for the characters. Some consider it the most human chapter in the story.

From this point on, the story progresses in a remarkable way. In case you haven't read it, I'll avoid too many major spoilers here. But as you can imagine, certain chapters (like 20: Implode-Explode) prompted clamorous reactions from the /frz/ threads.

After a few more weeks, other sites start taking notice of what's happening here. Tumblr picks up on the fic and begins rallying behind it. Artists begin painting r9kElsa portraits. It's when r9k starts wrapping up that r/Elsanna is founded and starts gaining traffic.

Other well-known stories also start being published once r9k hits its stride. During a very short period between mid-January and early February 2014, you see Extra! Extra!, A Formal Arrangement, Feel, Don't Conceal, Drum Major, You Are, A Snowflake in Spring, Winter Girl, the Cake Fic, and others published for the first time. Almost every modern-AU fic can trace its characterizations at least partially back to r9k. In some cases, e.g. Tessellate, much more than partially!

A Reason

If you read any post or thread from any Elsanna community in 2014, you'll find one thing repeated over and over: r9kElsa is Suffering brought me here. The story is the most common elevator pitch for the ship, because especially at that time, it meant something more to people than just sexy cartoon girls (though it undoubtedly meant that too).

In a world of isolation, where many traditional sources of community have been whittled away, people are desperate for hope.

This is the core of why Frozen succeeded so tremendously.

It came at exactly the right cultural moment, when both adults and teenagers the world over were feeling more alone than any prior point in history; and it showed that there's a reason to open your door. Even when you're feeling like there's no way out, like no one could ever see past your faults and doubts, you can remember that there IS hope. It's not in Prince Charming or a genie in a bottle. You can have hope in knowing that there are other people, broken in their own ways, who WILL love you for you. Unreservedly.

Frozen has been criticized for its resolution being too easy. "Love," they say, "what a shallow fix for everything!"

They are wrong. Love is an anomaly of nature. It breaks every rule. It is supernatural and spiritual and it is real life magic. And realizing that you can always choose to love the fixer-upper beside you is the surest way to thaw your own frozen heart.

r9kElsa is Suffering has likewise been criticized for its ending. Readers wanted to see something sexy, thrilling, or at least certain. Instead, they got something ambiguous and thoughtful.

Personally, the last two chapters are my favorites of the whole story.

We see a broken family trying to piece itself together. We see a father reckoning with his abject failure, and seeking a new way of living with his family. Any parent would feel overwhelmed, angry, afraid in that situation. He doesn't want to be consumed by fear and frustration. He just wants to love his daughters. And he does. Even after everything, he does.

And critically, he trusts Elsa to make the right decisions, even when he himself doesn't know what they are anymore.

And then, ultimately, in the final chapter, we read a beautiful mirror of the first. Elsa is in her room, but the curtains aren't shut anymore. Sunlight streams in through the window. Anna enters freely, their tension long released by their figurative walls having been dismantled.

In an often-overlooked moment of clarity, Elsa ceases to be consumed by her preferred method of isolation, her computer. Whereas in the first chapter, she can't look Anna in the eye, and only stares at her ever-illuminated computer screen; now, she does something new. She turns off her monitor and momentarily contemplates her reflection in the black mirror. Who is the woman she sees staring back at her?

She would be unrecognizable from the girl who sat in that chair six months before.

Finally, in the last moment, Elsa is faced with making the "right decision".

Unburdened by fear or requirement, she is prompted for the first time to determine honestly what the right thing is, for herself, for Anna, for their family.

She hesitates. What is right? Is it right to push Anna away?

She decides. She loves Anna, and she's never going to erect a wall between them again.

Her father asked her to remember what's important. Anna is what's important to her. All of the rules, all of the shame, all of the worries -- they don't matter.

You love her, and she loves you. That's all that matters.

Dear reader: today, now ten years older, remember what matters to you. Love the people in your life. Love boldly and selflessly and unreservedly, and frozen hearts will begin to thaw.

- tfwyouloveher

---

A/N: many thanks to the people and resources that made this retrospective achievable

frac, also known as @kate---kane and anonelsa, who so many of us have to thank (or curse?) for our years spent in this community

desuarchive.org and archived.moe make this digital archaeology possible

/frz/ will hate me for posting their activity across the web but I don't mind :)

there is a wealth of fascinating and entertaining material in the /frz/ threads of these archives. I spent weeks reading through old threads long considered lost for this post

neiromaru and @spooths are among the top connoiseurs of frozen fanfiction, and their ancient lists made this research much easier

the various archivists on r/elsanna and elsewhere who saved so many important pieces of fic history before they were deleted

the dropbox and mega archives were instrumental

enormous thanks to my editor, who ended up rewriting most of this post, but who wished to remain anonymous. seems unexpectedly appropriate :)

[rainofaugustsith]

Bad SWTOR choices

I accidentally reblogged and replied on a post I didn't mean to, but I did want to talk about this - how many times the LS/DS choices in SWTOR and particularly KOTFE and KOTET seem completely off base. Top four: The reactor in KOTFE chapter 3. 

Okay, to recap: the Outlander has just been freed from carbonite, where they were slowly being poisoned to death. They are doing so poorly that Lana has to help them walk at some points. They are on a planet they know nothing about. There's a nuclear reactor Vaylin has ripped from its moorings, and the actual nuclear physicists who tend to the thing have given up on it. So of course it's perfectly reasonable to expect the half-dead Outlander to fix it, and to treat them like a monster if they make the sound decision to not try to learn nuclear physics in two seconds. 

Better decision: give the Outlander a choice to try to help people evacuate and make that LS/DS. That would still fit with Koth's desire to help people and could still be used to influence his opinion of the Outlander, but would be more realistically and logically in line with what could be done. Since nobody knows what the Outlander looks like at this point it could also be used to create more conflict/nuance for Zakuulans. They've been told the Outlander is a monster but - this person who looks just like the Outlander saved them. Could Arcann be lying to them?

Senya in KOTET chapter 1. 

So the planet of Voss is being bombed to pieces, and Senya doesn't give a single fuck about that. She just wants you to save her son, the dictator. Who has shown zero remorse and has literally run the Outlander through with a lightsaber. Your two choices: let Genocidal Dictator Boy join the Alliance and work right alongside the people he's actively tried to murder, or refuse and be considered a monster. Choices, choices. 

Better decision: Refuse to save, imprison for war crimes, save, save without joining Alliance. All of which should be neutral. They could have even branched this off further - does Arcann go off to atone through his actions of trying to help rebuild? Do you just let him flee and become a ghost? Is he turned over to the factions and put in jail? Or do you execute him?

SCORPIO in KOTET chapter 5.  HOW many times has SCORPIO lied to you, tried to do away with you and otherwise caused extensive trouble? Bonus for Imperial Agents, how many times in the class story did she casually mention she eventually wants to murder you? Of course, by all means, let her merge her consciousness with the homicidal cyberplanet who has just tried to murder you and has horrific weapons at its disposal. I'm sure no harm could come from that. After all she promised she won't bother you. It's not personal. 

Better choices: - Let SCORPIO merge with the promise of helping you destroy the faction of your choice later (DS - hey, I SAID it's a dark side choice so let's go for the goalpost with it) - Kill SCORPIO (neutral), - oho, what's this? You've been able to completely neutralize SCORPIO and contain her in the Gravestone with the super special top secret program Doctor Oggurobb has been working tirelessly on for months since you learned SCORPIO wasn't dead?? Whoohoo! Victory without death! (LS). 

Dramath in KOTET chapter 7. 

Because you haven't been subjected to Valkorion's family enough, here comes Daddy Dramath. Who is imprisoned in a holocron in a max-security basement crypt and swears, up and down, that he will go away and not bother you if he's set free. I mean, you have so many reasons to take Family Valkorion/Tenebrae at their word, right? It's not like this could be a malicious Force ghost. You've never run into any of those, nope. And it's not like you're on a planet that has been corrupted into something terrible in the Force (or lack thereof) which might make it even more dangerous to release ghosties you meet. 

Better decision: - Free (LS), - Keep - but swear to release after you've defeated Valkorion and keep that promise(LS), - Imprison and tell Dramath he's your servant forever, mwahahaha (DS). Let that be the differentiating factor in whether he helps you or not in KOTET 9. 

[naturally-dazed]

as someone who was completely (almost) not paying attention to the gpu market at all until 2 months ago when i suddenly needed to get something new, but im still in the rabbithole of watching benchmarks and reviews for fun now - the impression im getting is that when deciding on buying one:

the high end gpu releases first (which i didnt know), most people cant afford it, everyone waits for the less expensive ones in the series (talking about nvidia)

the other ones get released, they're still expensive, performance not worth the price, wait for other versions?

then ti super duper uber different but the same gpus get released, prices go down a bit, time to get one! but wait, no no dont get one now - wait for the 5000 series its coming soon

wait for the 5000 series to get cheaper, wait for the other variations of the gpus to be released, wait for benchmarks and reviews, wait AMD is cooking but no they're not ha ha raytracing, but are they? but will they? but wont they?

repeat cycle

did i get it right is this how people function nowadays lol i really feel like all this waiting is stupid like, get what you can when you need it - if a year later you find a reason to get something new then sell what you got to cover most of the price? am i wrong here? its what i did and i dont feel like im going to want anything new for at least 3-4 years anyways

[barlupiins]

The Lamb of God: Fyodor vs Jesus parallelism analysis

With the new anime episode that has ran ahead of the official manga release, every BSD fan's timbers have been shivered upon Dazai's feign in the face of death once again, Chuuya's year-long vampirism turning out to be also an act (go theatre kid go), Fukuchi's death, and Fyodor's supposed "death." While the manga readers have been fed these cliffhangers every month and endured them through crazy twitter threads and coping mechanisms, anime watchers received this within a week…

Anyway. Everyone is talking about Fyodor's "death" scene, and I'm certain that 90% of people are convinced he is not dead yet, amplified furthermore through his recital of Jesus's final words before his death on the cross:

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”

This translates to “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—God, why have you abandoned me?, this being said in the middle of the darkest hour of Jesus’ suffering when he had died on the cross (this will be elaborated even more later).

It's evident that with this knowledge that our favourite rat man is not dead as he harbours many parallels to Jesus Christ; the crux of the Christian religion, who ultimately on the third day, Jesus rose again and "conquered" death by spilling his blood which is necessary for salvation. Death in Catholicism is the ultimate punishment of sin. If we were to link the context of sin from Christianity to Fyodor's perception of sin, this sin that Fyodor came to believe to be found within ability users.

In this analysis, I won’t draw any theories, as I am not a theory person, but through analysis and examination of the current sources in theology, I aim to perhaps solidify our current understanding of Fyodor’s character and his motivations. I also aim with this little analysis that Fyodor's death is indicative of something much larger than we have; a transcendence of body, mind, and soul, something similar to the Holy Trinity, which is the sole pillar of the Catholic faith. To do this, we would need to further inspect Jesus’ function within the Christian religion. 

Jesus Christ: The Religious Figure

Jesus died on the cross as a consequence of sin that he had not caused, but sin that was imposed upon him due to the external world riddled by sin. In the bible’s fashion, this is again also another fulfilment of the Old Testament, via Psalm 22, here, Jesus becoming the new King David—his crown being the crown of thorns, the cross being his throne (I love religious imagery so much ugh). Jesus' crucifixion is the enthronement of Jesus Christ to the "upside down" kingdom of God.

In this way, Fyodor ‘died’ because of the success in the execution of Dazai’s plan. I don’t believe that Dazai is a parallel of Judas, as Judas was a follower of Jesus prior to his betrayal. Dazai was evidently never a follower of Fyodor—this more suiting Nikolai’s character. This however is perfect, as Nikolai was the catalyst for Fyodor’s death as he had initiated the escape game, which thus triggered Dazai to enact his plan of small things that converged into the death of Fyodor. 

Fyodor’s motivations and ideals are still very mysterious to the fandom, but we can gauge the best we can by observing the function of Jesus within Christianity. Jesus is dubbed by many titles—"The New Moses", "The Son of God", "The Son of Man", and "The King of The Jews." All of these names highlight a specific nuance in Jesus' role, and why he is so praised and worshipped upon in the Christian faith and its sub-branches. Jesus fulfils old scripture, in Christianity, the Old Testament. Jesus is a medium of God that had been delivered to earth to example the definite Word—which essentially is the ultimate desire of God and his vision of what he deems as the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. In short, before I go on a whole tangent, Jesus’ name, Emmanuel, translates to “God among us”—therefore, is the fulfilment of God’s promise to save the world from sin that had been threaded throughout the abundance of prophecies in the Old Testament (I can elaborate on this if anyone is interested as there are a few biblical technicalities as to what God is restoring the world to [which is the Garden of Eden, but what is the Garden of Eden, if that makes sense, you know?]!). Because again, as a consequence of original sin (note: ‘sin’ is a divergence from God–the lack of ‘good’) sin became virulent. 

With this brief religious education segment of Jesus’ role as a Messiah, we can thus gain perhaps a little context on Fyodor’s ideals and his motivations. 

Fyodor Dostoevsky and Jesus Christ

Fyodor’s ideals have been established earlier in the manga that his goal is to utilise the book in order to make a world without the sin of ability users. This ideal carries far too many religious context, and aligns with the mention of New Jerusalem in his ability’s namesake novel, Crime and Punishment.  

Now, of course, Fyodor is not actually Jesus. While this conclusion may be non-sequitur, there are various justifications which make this apparent, thus eradicating some crazy theory of Fyodor being the legitimate Jesus in BSD as…he’s Fyodor. But I will lay the bones out here anyway: Fyodor didn’t die on a cross lmao, the fact he is completely dressed up in contrast to Jesus who had been stripped off his humanity via clothes (which were donned upon humans in Genesis by Adam and Eve as a consequence of sin)...this can also be indicative of the fact that Fyodor himself is riddled with sin—this sin in his eyes being the fact he is an ability user. That is out of the way now. 

However, this also raises and further supports the links that people have been grappling with in terms of Fyodor's parallels with the themes discussed in the novel Crime and Punishment (C&P). To preface: Fyodor does not completely embody Raskolnikov, nor the entire narrative of C&P, but it does retain a few features within it. I don't claim to be the most intelligent about this novel, and I am still trying to arrive at my own conclusions and understand it. That will take time. This is what I know: putting Raskolnikov’s obsession over the story of Lazarus aside, it’s revealed that Raskolnikov believes in the new Jerusalem, which is a world that has been completely and ultimately fulfilled of God’s promises—which is to eradicate the world from sin. With the book, we can conclude that Fyodor is trying to reach this “New Jerusalem” due to his ideal to create a world without the sin of ability users. 

Within this as well, we can gain some insight into Fyodor’s character and the possibility of his resurrection through Psalm 22. As aforementioned, I mentioned the link between Fyodor’s ‘final words’ and Jesus’ final word, with Jesus’ quotation of Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? being a direct reference to the first line of Psalm 22 in the darkest hour of his suffering. Therefore, Psalm 22 is exemplifies the entire experience of Jesus’ passion during the crucifixion as he died for his people whom he bore the sins of, the most profound expression of suffering and eventual declaration of faith within that suffering and grief. 

(Psalm 22:19)

It wouldn’t be too divergent if we were to consider the possibility of Fyodor’s suffering through this lens. “My God, My God” exemplified Jesus’ relationship with God as his Son, thus making Fyodor’s recital of these lines serve as an amplification of Fyodor’s perspective and devout intimacy in his relationship with God. While I doubt Fyodor is feeling every visceral human emotion during his death—with the possibility that he is alive and made it out with a plan, this is a suffering he has experienced before, and currently—just not as saturated as he would in his ‘darkest moments’ which is in his mysterious/unrevealed past. Here, Fyodor, as Jesus had felt, is experiencing the withdrawal of God’s fellowship as well as God’s wrath towards humanity by utilising Jesus as a substitute—being impaled in the stomach, and crashing into the tower. 

This raises the inquiry of why ability users are considered as a sin. With the biblical context of sin, we can draw the conclusion that it’s the mere existence of ability users that Fyodor is referring to—this however also raises the inquiry of where do abilities come from. I have a processing meta-theory regarding the metaphysical nature of Bungou Stray Dogs, but I doubt that’s something that I can completely develop here, as it’s just a thought that I’d like to develop more by re-dabbling into the franchise once I have the time.

By examining the biblical undertones referenced through Fyodor's character, and examining said source material, we can perhaps gain some more insight into his motivations and perspective. I wouldn't say that it would reveal everything about his backstory, the true core of his ideals, but by beginning here, it's perhaps a solid first step towards understanding his character. If anyone wants an elaboration for anything I mentioned within this little analysis ramble, please let me know and I'd be happy to provide !!

[almadesarrollo]

MLB London Special, S6 and the bad decisions they are making 😱Part 2 and end.

PART 1 :

Ok, let's talk about the S6, it hasn't been released yet, and I would almost say that it's better because for what awaits us, I prefer it🤣 :

ANIMATION: WE HAVE NEW ANIMATION AND IT SHOWS, the good thing? that they will prevent errors of this type from happening again🤣:

The bad thing is that there will be a longer hiatus because it means more time and more work, and could this be bad in the long run? Yes, and this is what causes me a big problem with Miraculous.

MLB has POOR ADMINISTRATION AND ORGANIZATION, BUT, IN ADDITION, THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO KEEP THE "FLAME ALIVE", WHICH CAN REALLY KILL MLB 😓.

Ok, let me explain better, there is a long hiatus from one premiere to another, right? And if we receive news and updates etc… but that doesn't help people to be aware, you have to give them something else, logically Thomas is anti spoiler 😂 , precisely what makes people think and elaborate theories and therefore, make content, which makes the series continue to be popular, but then what does it give us in that interval? NOTHING!!! that's the problem 😑.

You're telling me that with all the money they make, they can't even release a comic that talks about, for example, how Emilie and Gabriel met? What about the chibis series? We don't even see them anymore… and if we do see them, it's a chapter every 3 months and how long do they last? seconds. Isn't there anyone who can release things while the other thing is in development? Something that TAKES LITTLE TIME AND MONEY? It seems not🤨 , then people get tired… everything has to be done at the same time, everything has to be synchronized, and of course, since then they don't even clarify anything, what happens happens: they release it, then they don't release it, it gets cancelled, it doesn't get cancelled… errors in animation, etc.

THEY ARE NOT ORGANIZED WELL 🙄​, there is no need for everything to be SO CONTROLLED… while one thing is developing another can be done, because this series has many things to explain and it does not necessarily have to be tied to current events (I mean what happened to Emilie and Gabriel) this is where the series is in danger, I have seen very little activity from the fandom since the premiere in London and I am not surprised if they do not give us anything… but wait there is more 😂

THE STORY: THIS IS THE WORST 😂

LOOK AT THE S6 CHAPTERS LIST:

do you notice something strange in the titles 😐? HALF ARE RECYCLED, HALF!!!! Look, I have always defended this for the reasons you know in my previous posts, but I think that everything has a limit, 😐 how is this possible with the new animation they have, then what does it mean? that s6 will have something new in half of the chapters more or less, and that is where the important thing will begin (it is certain that Felix will appear in 3 or 4 chapters, for the importance that it should really have) then put yourself in that situation​🙃​:

To those who are waiting with enthusiasm, don't get your hopes up😂, because you'll have to add some more time to the wait, taking into account that these recycles are filler… and no, it's not worth it for you to tell me that it will be more dramatic, please, don't treat us like fools because we're not… we all know what's going to happen in season 6 with the protagonists…😑​ S6 and we're still like this and on top of that with a delayed date?

We can talk about more things but I feel like this is the main thing so nah....

[conclusion] Miraculous and its fandom are going to die, it's just a matter of time, if not now, then later, so, you know what I'm saying? While these people get organized, I'll go back to my favorite Disney hero 😍 because now with the sequel, there's a lot to talk about and theorize and (so if you're a fan of Disney and Hercules, you already know 😍) do you know what's the strongest? THAT THIS SEQUEL IS CARRIED OUT BY 4 CATS, AND IT'S FUCKING WELL DONE AND WRITTEN​​🤩​ , if comic format, not the greatest thing, but well done, where you can see how the writers and cartoonists really know the characters well and give them their continuity knowing what they write and draw and how they do it… how is it possible that Miraculous can't do this being so big now… anyway…😑

I am currently with MLB 😎.

Like, reblog, and follow me if you liked the content and also to see more of this type.

[kay-i-guess]

snow on the beach | Percy Jackson

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 | Percy Jackson x gn!Reader

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 | Swearing, a monster

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 | an unlikely meeting results in something fucking beautiful

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 | based on this request <3 

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 | 1.4k ish

Holly shit I need to clear my head. I hear our apartment door slam behind me as I rush down the stairs. My head was reeling, why was this happening and why am I the only one who can see it? I feel their cool air hit my face and I just start walking not sure where I'm going. I'm brought back into my thoughts at the sound of a car horn. I stop and look around I know where I am just a few blocks from my family apartment. I rub my arms to keep myself warm even though it's still early winter it's a cold day and my fleece isn't doing much to keep the brisk wind out. 

I bite my lip as I try to get my thoughts together. Not going to lie to myself my entire life has been pretty wacky. But the last year has been something else. Today was the typing point, the tv was on with the news of some massive fire, but I could have sworn in the crowd amongst the smoke I saw 3 massive dogs, and not like mastiff size like a rhino size with glowing red eyes. When I pointed them out my family all thought I was joking and I played it off like that but the truth was I've been seeing things like that on and off for months now. I know what I saw but no one else can see it and it infuriates me.

I scan my eyes wildly for some answer as if one would be on the streets of new york. 

Fuck it, if no one else can see them then ill just have to pretend to be like them, I've been doing it my whole life just because now I have to add giant scary dogs to the list doesn't mean I can have a giant life crisis. 

I turn to head back but I stop in my tracks just a few meters away was one of them staring right at me. Okay, maybe the pretending could start when I was safe inside my home. I turn the corner and start running I can hear the pounding of its feet, or maybe that's my heart I turn to check if it's behind me but suddenly I slam into something. I tumble onto the sidewalk and I feel burning pain on one side of my body.

“Oh my gods I’m so sorry are you okay” I hear a voice say 

“Im alive if that's what you're asking” I push my body up so I can see who is talking, and my eyes widen as I see what he's holding “fuck dude is it even legal to have that!” I scramble away from the buy with the might I add very deadly weapon” 

“I think so?” his eyes widen as if releasing something “Wait you can see it” 

I wince as I stand up “You mean the fucking sword in your hand? yeah. I can see it” I scan my injuries “Dude these are my favourite pants!” where my knee and leg hit the ground there was a giant tear

“You’re more worried about your pants than the gash in your leg?” he says jokingly 

“Skin will heal my pants will not” I eye him “Who are you anyway and why were you surprised I could see your sword?”    

“Oh um this might sound weird but do you ever see anything” Taking in my bewildered expression he tries to explain “Like weird things and other people cont see them or see something else” 

 My eyes widen in shock my brain is telling me to run as far as I can but for some reason, I blurt out “Like the monster dogs?”

He seemed to be thinking then his eyes lit up “Yes! The ones with red eyes?” 

“That's what I was running from dude! There's one a few blocks around the corner!”

“Oh! Why didn't you say so?” his eyes snapped from me to the corner of the street and back to me “Meet me here tomorrow at noon okay?” 

“Sure?” I’m confused, my head is spinning and the pain from my fall is starting to kick in 

“I'll answer all your questions I promise but right now go somewhere safe. Now!”

 I do just that as I sprint away taking a different route to my home.    

Later that night I was lying in my bed my thoughts spiralling.

Who was the (quite attractive) guy?

Why can he see the same stuff as I can?

Why can I see it?

I groan as I roll over in bed, I can't deal with this right now. Even though I would see him in a few hours it felt like I would have to wait a lifetime. 

✭✭✭

I tap my foot as my eyes dart around the street, I had gotten there early due to my nerves. I gnaw on my lip. What if he died? I would never know, and I would never get answers. 

I glance around again and this time I spot the sea-green eyes I was looking for, I smile out of relief and almost break into a grin as he smiles back from across the street. I can't help it this guy is seriously cute. 

“Oh thank god I had thought you had died” I grab his arm pulling him towards a coffee shop to get out of the cold air.

“Awwww missed me already?” he teases as I push the door open and step inside.

“Don't flatter yourself, you owe me answers.”

We slip into a booth in the back where no one would hear us. 

“So?” I ask 

“So what?” he asked cluelessly

I roll my eyes “Well I know nothing about you except you can see stuff like me, a name would be helpful for starters”

“Percy Jackson at your service, and you are?” he extends his hand 

“Y/N L/N, a pleasure to meet you” I shake his hand and giggle slightly at the formalness of it.

Percy explains about the gods and monsters and how it was all real in our world, then about how he was a demigod and went to a camp with all of them.

I nod slowly “Okay” I can hear my voice shake slightly and I take a deep breath “Cool, cool, cool monsters and Greek gods I can get my head around 

Percy tilts his head slightly scanning my face “You seem to be taking this well”

I laugh lightly “If I'm doing well I hate to see others, but yeah after what I've seen in my life it's not hard to put a reason behind it, even if the reason is slightly mind-blowing” I joke

Percy smiles but then scans my face again,

“What?” I ask he furrows his eyebrows “You keep looking at me like you're trying to figure something out.” I explain 

He sighs “I'm just trying to figure out if you're a half-blood”

 I cut him off “Like you?” 

“Yeah like me, but if you were we should have found you already,” his face told me it was a long story for another day “This might sound weird but do you have both of your parents?”

I laugh thinking he's joking but I stop when I see no humour in his face “I do yea” I tense I don't like where this conversation was going 

“Then you probably like my mom, she is completely mortal but can see through the mist”

“The what? Like fog?” my head was spinning 

“No, like a magical veil”

I shake my head “Can we talk about something else for a minute I think my head is going to explode,” 

“Of course, I remember when I first learned about all this.”

I smile gratefully “Tell me about your friends, from this camp place”

He tells me all about Tyson Grover Annabeth and Jason, it's obvious how much he cares about this place. We're both smiling and laughing, it was the happiest I felt in a while. His smile was contagious.

 After not long enough I look out the window and realized it was getting late 

“I should go, my dad is waiting for me” I sigh

“Oh okay,” he sounds as disappointed as I felt “Can I walk you back?”

The question takes me by surprise 

“Only if you want of course-”

 I cut him off “I would like that”

We grab our coats and I start leading the way.

Too quickly I stop at our apartment complex 

“So this is goodbye?” I ask 

“For now” he smiles reassuringly  

“Oh fuck it” I mumble and lean forward to kiss him on the cheek 

His eyes widen and a smile grows on his face “You missed” he jokes 

My nervousness melts into happiness “I guess il have to try again”

I pull his head down to meet mine, before our lips meet I whisper “I kinda have a crush on you Percy Jackson”

“Me too” and with that he closes the gap between us.

As we pull apart I can feel the coolness on my exposed skin, I look up and gasp

“It's snowing!” 

Our eyes meet and time feels frozen for a second, I'm afraid to speak too scared of ruining the perfect moment. It's like snow on the beach unlikely but fucking stunning.

[didhewinkback]

OMFG I just read something old and MANNNN. You got me feeling all types of ways holy shit. The most I’ve ever felt reading a series holy cow. You are so fucking talented. Wowza. Please continue with the blurbs I feel like they are part of my life now.

Also does the fans know about Y/N and Harry’s current relationship? How did they feel when things were first announced after the wedding was called off and their relationship was exposed for the first time?

omg helllloooo you angel on earth !!! this message is soo lovely and kind and idk what i did to deserve it. i am so grateful that you took the time to write me and that you love the story so much!! i appreciate this message more than you knoow.

sorry this took me ages to answer as an apology i essentially wrote you a blurb pls see below

so per harry and erin's teams' agreement, the public never knew a wedding was supposed to take place. anyone who worked it had signed a pretty ironclad nda & all guests in attendance knew to stay silent about it, though some of erin's friends did try to go to deuxmoi at one point months later but that got shut down pretty quick. when the press release about the engagement ending came out, there was obviously endless speculation about it, discourse, tiktoks etc. people had a lot of feelings about harry and erin's relationship, they either absolutely loved the fashion power couple or they absolutely hated it and it was best to avoid any and all discussions on the matter, made easier by the break up being announced when you were on pause and doing your best to ignore any and all celeb news (though you did do some google searches at 3 am when you couldn't sleep but it immediately made you feel terrible so you avoided it like the plague, knowing if you needed to know something, harry would tell you)

as for your relationship, you both kept it realllly low key and private for the first year, wanting the broken off engagement to become old old news before anything got speculated about the two of you, harry was pretty adamant about ensuring no one connected you to the breakup. it was much easier than it sounds, he can really disappear when he needs to and it was important to both of you to protect what you had, shield it from prying eyes. his relationship with erin had been highly publicized and he had no interest in doing that again and you couldn't agree more, you've got no interest in that world or leaning into the public eye, so that first year was quite lovely, going on dates around london, moving in together around his birthday, 8 months into dating officially but conventional timelines never applied to you both. if you ever were spotted out together by fans, any speculation got shut down pretty quickly, people recognized you as his lifelong childhood friend and had no reason to assume otherwise, which worked in your favor when his tour started up again and there was tiktok upon tiktok about how "yes you've been to more shows than usual but jeff's at every show and no one thinks he's dating harry so why would they think it about you??" you avoided it all but roxy loved to take the piss, sending you screenshots every so often when you would show up on her for you page with a text "cannot seem to escape this bitch" to which you would reply "just how many videos of h's concert were you watching to get this on your algorithm?"

its in december 2021, the start of his few months off before the work craziness resumes, a lazy sunday morning. you're lounging on the couch, half heartedly clicking through netflix when you hear him come back into the house from his coffee run, hearing snippets of the phone call he's having getting louder after he kicks his shoes off and makes his way towards you.

"Yeah, I'll talk to her 'nd get back to you." he says, as he turns the corner, still bundled up with his beanie and hoodie pulled over his head, brow furrowed as he listens to the other end while still balancing the coffees and bag of pastries in his hand. "Yeah, for sure. Okay I'll call you back. Love you bro, bye."

He hangs up the phone, placing the treats on the coffee table before taking out his airpods and shuffling over to you. He hovers over where you lay, resting his hands on the back and arm of the couch before leaning in.

"Hi," he murmurs with a soft smile on his face, leaning in to kiss you.

You shudder when you pull away, the frost from outside having seeped into his face. "You're cold," you say with a small frown to which he immediately rolls his eyes and nudges his cold nose down the side of your face, pressing kisses all along your cheeks, forehead, jawline, until you push him away with a giggle. He smacks one final kiss to your head before pulling away, tugging his hoodie off his head and taking his beanie off to shake out his hair.

He leans back to grab the coffee off the table, handing you your cup while throwing the bag of pastries onto your lap before he grabs his own cup, lifting your legs temporarily before settling on the other side of the couch, placing your ankles over his lap. He leans back, resting his head against the back of the couch and closing his eyes for a minute, taking a deep breath. You assume you're the "her" he mentioned on the phone earlier but you opt to give him time, peeling open the pastry bag to see what he picked up.

"Got something weird to talk to y' about." he says, making you pause in your rifling efforts as you look over at him, finding him in the same position, his eyes still closed.

"Oookay."

He squeezes your ankle once, opening his eyes and rolling his head along the back of the couch to look at you.

"There was a pap yesterday. Last night. On our walk. Don't know how but - here." He pulls his phone out of his sweatshirt pocket, quickly unlocking it before handing it over to you.

You feel an uneasy pit in your stomach as you swipe through the photos, though there's nothing bad or damning or embarrassing about them. Objectively, they're quite lovely. The two of you bundled up through the blustery London night, his arm wrapped around your shoulders with yours around his waist, him pulling you into his chest as you laugh, his chin resting against your head, then pressing a kiss to your hair. You both look happy, really, really happy, completely unaware of any eyes on you. You keep scrolling through and - ah. There's the most revealing one, the two of you smiling up at each other before he pulls you into a kiss with his hands cradling your face.

You can feel his eyes on you, intently watching every emotion that passes over your face, thumb rubbing circles along your ankle. It's so weird, is the thing. To see this intimate moment between you two captured by a complete stranger who you had no idea was watching you. You've somehow managed to avoid this happening up until this point, the combination of lawsuits he has against paps in London and being able to blend in with the crowd having worked in your favor for the last year. It's a bizarre feeling, to feel like you got too complacent in your own life, should've been more aware of your surroundings. But also? Fuck that. You're not going to live your life differently because of what other people are doing or thinking. They're the ones with the issue, not you.

"'m so sorry," he says, 'Had no idea -"

"No no no," you say quickly cutting him off, as you hand him his phone back, sitting up and taking his hand when he offers it. "No need to apologize."

"Daily Mail and a few others got a hold of 'em, that was Jeff earlier. He and Sadie wanted to see if we wanted them to run any kind of interference." he says, small frown on his face as he plays with your palm, fingers drawing mindless patterns. "The photos are getting published regardless but like they could try to keep you as a mystery woman or summat -"

You snort, shaking your head as you rest your forehead on his shoulder, his arms wrapping around you and pulling you close. It takes a second of rearranging your legs before you're sat on his lap, his hand rubbing up and down your back. You pull back to look at him, hands coming up to cradle his face. He leans into the touch, turning to plant a kiss to your palm.

"You okay?" you ask quietly.

He nods. "Just don't like getting caught off guard like that. Don't like that people who don't know us will get to -"

"Yeah."

"And I don't want to fuck things up for you. Like your job or -"

"Everyone at work already knew. And those who didn't met you last week. Most people are barely on the internet there, I'm not stressed. " you say, sliding your hands to rest on his shoulders as he nods, brow furrowed in thought.

"'s gonna be intense for a bit. Might be good to hop on a call with Jeff and Sadie, see what boundaries we can set, control what we can control."

"Yeah, that'd be good," you say, your mind whirling as the reality of the situation sets in, photos of you kissing your boyfriend splashed all over the internet. Christ.

"Hey," he says gently. "Talk to me?"

"Sorry," you say, shaking your head. "I'm good. Just - it's a lot. It's definitely gonna be weird, nothing I can't adjust to but still just. Bizarre."

"Yeah." he says, his hand coming up rest at the back of your neck. "You look really fit in the photos if that helps."

You laugh, watching as the smile grows across his face, his thumb catching on your jawline.

"It does, thanks." you say, smiling back at him.

"'m really sorry this can't be easier. Being with me -"

"Shut up." you say, surprising a laugh out of him. "Please. This is nothing. Easy to ignore at the end of the day. All that matters to me is you."

"Same here," he says, taking a deep breath, lips twitching up. "All that matters to me is me."

"You're so stupid, I knew you were gonna say that -" you say, laughing as you slap him on the chest, trying to twist out of his hold but he pulls you back in.

"'s you, 's you. You know 's you darling, come here." he murmurs, smiling when you press your lips to his, gripping your neck a bit tighter as he kisses you back. You know you have to call back his team, figure out some logistics but that can wait. All you want is right here.

---

so yes, the photos get published, the fans freak out. lots claiming they always always knew, many spending their time trying to piece together the relationship timeline, no one connecting it back to erin thankfully. it helps that she is busy with her new billionaire boyfriend, (you almost clicked on their architectural digest tour the other day before deciding against it). but you both really ignore it all, keep going about your lives, nothing really changes because you don't let it. you both still want to keep your relationship out of the public eye as much as you can, it doesn't stop fans or paps from taking your picture when you're out together but its easy to ignore it, just focus on each other, ignore the noise and the crazy corners of the internet.

he rarely talks about you in interviews, confirming you're together, maybe a brief mention or two of his girlfriend but refusing to go beyond that. it's only in his zane lowe interview in late 2024 that he goes into a little more detail when describing his inspiration for his new album, but at that point he's calling you something entirely different :) :) :)

---

[ronansullivan]

Oh, is that RONAN SULLIVAN? I heard the FORTY-TWO year old is SAGACIOUS. But don’t let that pretty face fool you, they are also JADED. Makes sense seeing how they are the PRESIDENT of the GHOST RIDERS MC gang.

pinterest

full name: ronan james sullivan

nicknames: sully, big sully, prez

faceclaim: jensen ackles

birthdate: november 22nd

alliance: ghost riders mc

gender: cis man

pronouns: he/him

occupation: gang leader

hometown: the bronx, new york.

sexual orientation: straight pan but repressing the shit outta that

relationship status: single, divorced

height: 6"4

gunpowder and cigar smoke, measuring the ingredients for a loaf of bread, a smile like a knife, stretching over a pool table to line up the perfect shot, blood on your hands, stitching patches into leather, feeling at home in the shadows, whiskey burning hot in your chest, calloused fingers and a wicked grin, the sticky table at a local strip joint, a trail of hickeys up your spine, a bar with an old jukebox, scars you won't talk about, an engine so loud it makes your bones shake, stubble burn between your thighs, flipping pancakes on sunday morning, split lips and busted knuckles, never knowing when to back down.

knocked around the bronx with his younger brother for most of their childhood, father was a drunk and a no-good who made their lives hell. as the eldest ronan bore the brunt of the spiteful abuse, drawing the ire away from the rest of the family. uncle was a biker, taught ronan everything he knows about mechanics and mcs.

big sully and little sully were inseparable, climbing the ranks through the mc easily with their loyalty and skills. earning the nicknames pinky and brain. tommy was loveable where, ronan was suspicious and street-smart. he had one finger permanently hooked in his younger brother's collar to keep him out of trouble, which worked maybe 50% of the time.

then he got recruited, the navy sank its claws into him and he lost 5 years to them. returning to find tommy embroiled up to his neck in gang business, having made mess after mess in his absence. sully went back to his old ways, harder and without care this time, trying to stop his brother drowning with one hand and watching his own back with the other.

though he started off scared of fighting, his street brawling and time as a teenager fighting in various ny boxing gyms gave him a good base for training and soon he was near-lethal. the power felt good, the hurt felt good.

sully started spending time behind bars here and there, tommy falling faster, using harder and harder gear. during his longest stint in jail, tommy was fatally shot by cops during a job gone wrong, in the 20 minutes after that phone call ronan added a year to his sentence.

as he dragged details out of people in the months that followed his release, the whole thing didn't make any sense. it just stinks to ronan, the whole situation and even years later he wants to figure out just what actually went down that night. most people think he needs to let it go and that he's making up something to solve since he wasn't there for tommy.

ronan got married, to his on-again off-again girlfriend since high school. their love was all-consuming and real but awful for the people around them, for them both. too much of their time spent screaming in one another's faces and then making up to be tenable.

ronan has this way of making you feel confident, filling you with a sense of assuredness with a grin on your face. over time he started to resent how well he could bolster people: when the world would chew them up just like everybody else.

tried extremely hard not to grow up to be as angry as his father. he's angrier. after sully's brother died the red mist descended and he carved a bloody path through new york on his rise to leadership, anyone who knew ronan then will tell you something died behind his eyes when tommy did. a couple of nicknames a few bars have him still banned under are 'ronan the red' and 'ronan the barbarian'.

tries to give back quite a bit? though their work is grimy, the money dirty bills, not honest at all, sully throws block parties in the bronx, supplying food and drink for whole streets during the summers. businesses under the mc's protection get taken very seriously. there are big charity drives, donations. they settle neighbourhood disputes with street-corner town halls. they move abuse victims out of unsafe homes, sometimes still big sully will roll up his sleeves and knock out a husband if he needs to teach a lesson.

whitney and ronan divorced when freya was three, something better for everyone involved. they still had that chemistry that could cause arguments but the space allowed them to revisit the friendship that had kindled it all with their shared custody. whitney died in a hit and run a few years later when freya was seven. until about 5 years ago he wore the ring and told everyone he was widowed to just have some fucking peace for a while: he got married young, fell straight into the life and was so busy with work that a relationship was simply another target to add to the dwindling collection on his back. so he didn't.

sully has mellowed out a lot since rising the ranks. he's learned a lot of hard lessons told in the scars that mark him, eating at and cutting through the ink that covers his fingertips, all his arms, and across his shoulder blades to meet in the middle. those that haven't seen him at his worst, wouldn't know that above the slighter softer middle of his forties the breadth of his shoulders still houses someone strong enough to kill a man in one poorly or well-aimed punch, without blinking.

ronan takes all kinds, the downtrodden and the spat-upon can all find a place with the mc as long as they have heart and grit. sully is pretty hands-on at ensuring no one is abusing power in the ranks. views all of them like his kids but has to divorce himself from those feelings for the sake of his sanity and operations. doesn't stand for intolerance or prejudice either, if you say a slur he's feeding you your own teeth, he's an old dog but freya has taught him a lot.

freya is thirteen now and he shares custody with her grandma, he bought them a house in long island in 2008, one of the big victorian wooden ones, and renovated it. sully spends half his time up here down the big driveway, behind the tall pines with the people he loves most. too self-indulgent to give them up completely.

can often be found kneading huge mounds of dough for the bread at 3-4am in the bakery or enjoying a powdered sugar snowstorm out back while wearing an apron. it's something he, his mom, and his brother used to do together and it's meditative to him.

sully has his left eyebrow, his septum, and his tongue pierced as well as the cartilage of both ears. and his left nipple, you'd have to get one of the ghost riders to swear that on their bike.

[aura-acolyte]

🎙 Where did you first get the idea for Mare?

//Okay, so, story time. Let me take you back to August 2018. The world had gone to shit, Avengers Infinity War had recently released in theaters, and I was a 14 year old boy (probably) who had just discovered the internet.

//I had taken to browsing TV Tropes in my spare time, still do but not as frequently. Something, something, ruin your life. Anyways, TV Tropes has many pages for many different things, far beyond just TV and Tropes. Among those was fanfiction and through it I discovered a treasure trove of ages long past. That Golden Fandom Era of great cringe.

//You see, most of TV Tropes' pages on fanfiction are for some pretty old stuff. They've got pages on newer fics too, its a great source of advertising, but the website was launched in 2004 it goes back ages and newer fics aren't crosswicked as much. So much of my fanfiction exposure was older stuff. The classics. And, of course, one of the fic types I came across was Nuzlocke fics. The idea of doing a Nuzlocke Challenge intrigued me, and the idea of writing a fic about it more so. And thus, my journey bega.

//I booted up my favorite game in the series, Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, and restarted. incidentally wiping several years worth of event legendaries and the event Blaziken I'd carried over from XY out of existance. I'm sorry XY Event Blaziken with Speed Boost and Blazikenite. You will be missed. What was I saying?

//Oh right, I restarted Alpha Sapphire, selected the female pc with blissful ignorance of my own gender fluidity, named her Mare, and began my run... I wrote one chapter and then gave up because I got too attached to the Pokemon and having to release them made me cry. But, while that was the end for that fic, it was not the end for Mare. I tried to write several more fics for her which, uh, weren't good and can hopefully stay buried forever. 14 year old me had a bit of a perverted streak that I am not proud of.

//Then roleplaying came into the picture. I've been roleplaying for... this'll be my 8th year roleplaying online. Jeez. Anyways, I used to do forum roleplays before I got kind of tired of that and stopped. Takes a lot of effort to maintain a forum roleplay and, honestly, a lot of the people on the site I used were assholes, elitists, gatekeepers, or all three. But I'm not here to trash talk people behind their backs.

//So, I started a Pokemon forum roleplay and repurposed Mare for it. Because my Nuzlocke fic was inspired by classic Nuzlocke fics, Mare could understand Pokemon for no explained reason other than to make it easier for the reader to grow attached to them before they die. I also gave her enhanced strength because I thought a teenage girl punching out Archie would be funny. Now, for the roleplay space, I had to explain it. Luckily, I remembered a movie I'd watched as a kid, Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, and also by that point it was 2020 and I was an avid Smash Ultimate player who mained Lucario. So I gave her Aura powers to justify it, added on Aura Vision, discovered Sapphire Pokespe existed halfway through making her character sheet and used her as Mare's faceclaim, and bada bing bada boom, Marie "Mare" Birch was born. But we aren't quite at final form Mare yet.

//In February of 2023 I joined Tumblr and one month later, in March, I discovered Pokemon IRL. Eager to join in, I created a blog for... Caleb Vixen, normal fox guy and intended self insert. I created Mare's blog 20 days later. When I created the blog I expanded her Aura Powers to include durability, healing, and any moves a Lucario can use (Aura Sphere mainly), and gave her the epithet Chosen of Rayquaza. Also, she was the worst. Like, she was still a hero but she was also an asshole. This was true of all versions of Mare up to that point. Its kind of incredible looking at her right now where her defining personality trait is being nice vs back when I started where her defining personality trait was being an asshole. Oh, also, when the blog started it had been six months since her Journey ended not five years I don't know how that happened.

//So, Chosen of Rayquaza, what did that mean? Nothing. I just thought it sounded cool. But, when I had Mare make a little joke about "I don't know what Chosen of Rayquaza means" it quickly gained a meaning, largely thanks to @pinkhairandpokemon, who introduced me to the concept of Chosen AUs which I had no idea existed at the time. Anyways, Mare ended up with Rayquaza powers and a savior complex and also became much nicer. Then a bunch of other stuff happened and a good chunk of it had to be retconned away and now you're here.

//tl;dr, she came from a Nuzlocke fic.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

it's me, hi! i'm the anon for last night, it's me!

i think i should use an emoji to identify myself

so, again you were very spot on! as you elaborated perfectly: unfortunately most of the time these partners don't even do this on purpose, it's usually a consequence of this habit of most men always thinking that the woman will solve everything, of being used to having their needs always be taken care of and are catered to. in simply being used to not thinking too much about this kind of thing. and this custom is only broken if the man has some form of will and motivation to try to change and really try to help his partner, whether in emotional or domestic issues, being willing to live as a team where one helps the other. but as you mentioned, most of the time that's not what happens

as for adulthood: exactly! everything is kind of a mess. and I also have a close friend who ended an engagement and was very embarrassed by the situation, in her case, the relationship was already full of problems, she said yes to the propouse but after a few month she realized it wasn't right. they had been dating for a few years, she had even moved to another country with him because of his work, it's a very long story lol.

but anyway, what I also find interesting is that all the situations you mentioned are so common, but when we are going through them we feel so alone. Some women are embarrassed to tell their friends about these problems while things are still being resolved with their partners, some only tell them many years later (I know cases of some women who were betrayed during the relationship, but decided to stay with their partners for a while, so they omitted this issue from some friends). like, we know that adult life is very chaotic and surely know someone (or will you eventually find out) that has been through the same thing as you, but when everything is going on it's normal to feel a little alone too.

lastly, taking advantage of your references to peter and ylm, I wanted to say that I really admire taylor for talking about this, I know it was expected, but sometimes I think it must be very difficult to deal with such a sensitive and vulnerable subject with thousands of people. sometimes I see some people commenting that they thought she made everything too blurry, but to be honest I think that's normal, I think the way she was able to share it all with us was the limit she could go at that moment and I already I think she's very brave. I think we in our late 20s or early 30s can pick up what she's putting down.

Hi anon! Welcome back!

“What I also find interesting is that all the situations you mentioned are so common, but when we are going through them we feel so alone” this is so, so, so true, and tbh I feel might be a big reason why Taylor decided to release TTPD the way she did and when she did, and I think being able to perform it on tour has been so gratifying and liberating.

I’ll tell you that in my friend’s case with the broken engagement, she was incredibly private about their problems — and this is someone I’ve been friends with nearly my entire life. My spidey senses picked up that something was going on with her after a particular day hanging out at their house, but when I gently pressed my friend chalked it up to pre-wedding jitters. So I gave her grace to speak about it how she wanted but just continued to support her as best I could. It wasn’t until the aforementioned bathroom floor breakdown that everything spilled out and I found out what was going on and how bad a place she was in. After it came out, I think it finally gave her strength to understand what she needed to do and do it, as painful and embarrassing and sad as it all felt at the time.

So I really do think Taylor writing and releasing music about it, more or less in real time, is her own way of doing that, and she’s said as much on tour about how cathartic and healing it is. It took a lot of guts to write the album, plan its release in the middle of a global tour and rejig an entire set list to fit it in and get that catharsis every night on stage. And I think about how many stories I’ve seen on here and other platforms in the last three months of people relating hard to the song and having their own Smallest Man or So Long London moment in their lives and I think that’s very much part of Taylor’s intention with the album. All at once the ink bleeds.

I love TTPD. Like, unabashedly and completely. I love how long The Anthology is and there are few, if any, skips on the album for me. And even if there were, I’d still respect Taylor’s right to release such a length album because a) she can and should do whatever the fuck she wants and b) I truly feel every one of those songs had to come out of her and each one says something about what she’s gone through and what she’s processed in the past year. I know people feel like the album needed more editing or whatever, maybe there’s an argument there from a commercial or production point of view, but like I said, I think every song relays an experience from her life, either literally or metaphorically, that she felt she wanted out in the world so people know and understand her.

This isn’t directed at you at all, but I can’t take any argument against her making the muses too “blurry” seriously whatsoever. IT’S HER WRITING AND SHE CAN DO WHATEVER SHE WANTS. She doesn’t owe anyone a verbatim telling of her life, and art takes on so many forms. No one would demand an explanation from any other artist over the inspiration for their work, and Taylor shouldn’t be expected to either. Maybe songs are about one person, maybe they’re about five, maybe they’re about no one and from her imagination, but regardless of the inspiration, it’s all her. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, after all, lol. But in all seriousness, this is songwriting, and while we know Taylor writes from her own experiences, and we are lucky to be able to take those stories and use them to gain insight into her as a person, she is within her right to share as much or as little as she wants. All she does is release her music, and now it’s up to everyone else to take it forward. It’s incredibly brave and generous of her as an artist and I wish she got more credit for it, but ultimately she’s getting the last laugh.

Luckily, I feel like it’s pretty easy to pick up what she’s putting down, and I’m glad we have this art to reference when speaking about situations like these.

[eylih]

The fake news around Frozen 3 (PART 2)

This part is less about facts more about charcters interpretation and opinion coming!!

| NUMBER TWO | - Elsa will get married to woman at the end of Frozen 3

- Guys, really? Nah cause how did people even believe thet? 🤡

This is where that news came from. This account is a whole satire and claim that they are faking...

- But, okay. Let's say it wasn't obvious to see the trick. There are some evidences.

- Mrs "You can't marry a man you just met" getting married, doesn't it sound weird to you? For it to be true, the movie would have to take place at least 3-4 years after F2 beacause how tf would Elsa take less time to get engaged than Anna? Then, unless F3 takes place over several years, Elsa would have to already be in a relationship with a woman which leads to three possibilities: Honeymaren, bringing Disa/Marisol to the screen (Idgaf about them, for me, it comes down to the same thing ) or another woman that Elsa would have met in the meantime and who would be directly introduced into the movie.

- That option seems impossible for three reasons which include a shorter time skip :

1- There will be a 4th movie and I have a hard time imagining Disney letting Anna and Elsa age up to 30 which makes the three years time skip more difficult (unless F3 and F4 are a single adventure cut in two like Spiderverse, sounds like they're gonna be)

2- Kristanna Wedding. Yeah, it has happened in this type of musical show before, but Disney LOVES money. It'd be really stupid of them to pass up the opportunity to create a second version that would bring back more viewers and could be ruined by the reason for the existence of these other two films (i want my hc to become true). Which leads me to think that the time skip will be very less than two years.

3- The idea that Elsa could be with someone is already quite unpopular (so as a lesbian...). Therefore I think it would be easier to digest if she got into a relationship rather than getting married (even more so if she falls in love during the film and not before)

- Disney keeps the information on its new original releases secret later and later so announcing something this big so early, yeah... If I'm not talking nonsense, Jennifer Lee only revealed about three months ago before the release of Strange that Ethan was gonna have a boyfriend. Announcing only three months before the release the homosexuality of a character that no one cares about in a film that no one cares about still created backlash. (Remember that poor kiss in Buzz's movie...) So Elsa who is surely the most popular character after Mickey and his team? Think about it for two seconds. (Do it.) Especially since I can't count the number of parents who've already decreed that their children won't see the film just because of this false rumor and without bothering to find out more. (They can't stand the brightness lf lesbianism)

- Don't get me start on that AI image...

Last(?) part in my next post!

PS : Please someone kill me, the current insta icon of the elsamaren tag is a jelsa ai image 💀🔫 (as an art student doing realistic traditional art all day, the fact that'is ai hurts me more than the jelsa side)

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

Welcome Back. 🥳

If you have to list most fave songs within album. How would each of the song rank in your list?

Thank you.

Hi @misslauwie! I assume you're asking about Face. If not, then so be it because that's what I'll be talking about 😄

I'll make this brief and not an in-depth analysis. I actually avoided Face for a while after its release. I did listen to all the songs immediately and as a first impression, I liked everything, but I took a step back. It's difficult to explain because I myself don't know exactly what was so odd. It felt like I'm listening to the music made by a stranger, but then again isn't a good thing when an artist reveals a new side of themselves through creative means? So why the cognitive dissonance? Well, one answer would be because all of us have this image in our head of that person. And while there is a general consensus, some things we perceive or make up in our heads will differ because we project onto them. And it happens often and really easy when we're focusing on that artist every single day. I find that it's a bit too much, at least from me. It was difficult to be able to fully understand, appreciate or even critique the music without some distance. Which is what I did and a couple of months later I decided that I can and want to listen to Face casually.

And I'll tell you what transpired. Like Crazy the English version is the only song from the album that I have added to a spotify playlist that I listen to everyday at work when I'm writing/editing. It's right there in between an IVE song and Kylie's Padam Padam. It's such a damn good song. From the musical arrangement, the lyrics (emotions on ice, let me have a taste???? Damn, I'd have that tattooed somewhere), the way Jimin sings. The entire production is top notch. I want to listen to it on a vinyl record at a party in an apartment at 2 am in the morning kind of vibe. An 80s throwback, but it also has that contemporary aspect to it. It's a type of song that fits well with the trends in the last couple of years, but impressive enough to stand out. If it had radio play, it would have become a hit with the gp. Like Crazy is that song that could have been BIG if only it got the means to it.

Second it would be Letter, but not for some deep reasons or whatever hidden meaning behind it. A lot of the times when I listen to music, I don't think about some back story. I doesn't mean I don't think about the meaning of the lyrics, but maybe I just like the melody and the voice. Letter initially made me think of a Studio Ghibli movie, something about adolescence and young adulthood in the summer. It would be perfect for a soundtrack. And now I also associate the song with that period in my life in March because who was on a 3h train ride running away from town because life is shitty and had Letter on repeat the entire time while crying and wearing sunglasses so the other people on the chairs nearby wouldn't see? Yep, that's Letter for me.

Coming in third, Set Me Free Pt. 2. No need to go into detail, I've written about it when it was released. But I don't listen to it anymore and I'm still not a fan of the rap part despite understanding the creative reason behind it.

Alone and Face-Off. Both good songs, but I don't think about them. For no particular reason, it's just that I'm not in the mood to have them casually in a playlist. But if from time to time I choose to listen to Face entirely (usually on a train ride), I don't skip them. I do the album entirely, beginning to an end (and skip Interlude: Dive).