#and obviously there were a lot of other games starting to trend in that direction

[transientsolution]

I feel like I have an odd relationship with TF2 because in my mind it's one of the last times I really enjoyed a multiplayer shooter and have so many fond memories of just hanging out on servers running endless matches of 2fort and stuff. But it's also, I think, largely responsible for the transformation of multiplayer shooters into microtransaction-laden, lootbox driven, cosmetic-spewing messes.

[thebreakfastgenie]

this is one (1) redeemable voucher to complain about AO3's tagging system (if you like)

Thanks for the voucher!

I probably should have phrased that post differently because upon reflection what I hate is more downstream of AO3's tagging system. The system itself does what it's supposed to do: it organizes the archive. Of course, users get cutesy with it (and I'm guilty of this myself) and other users will use inaccurate tags on purpose to get more attention (this is not acceptable behavior), but neither of those things are the system's fault.

But because the tagging system is so robust and fics are tagged based on tropes, this culture has developed of hyper-curated, trope-based reading habits. This didn't exist before AO3 because it just wasn't possible to filter fics to that extent. Some of my favorite fic reading experiences have been fics that I stumbled across by mistake because I didn't know what they were or because I had to comb through broader categories.

And this is where I start sounding like Ted Gup. Ted Gup wrote this essay in the late 90s called The End of Serendipity about how computers being so efficient at retrieving information was going to bring about the end of people stumbling upon topics they wouldn't have otherwise explored. I had to read and respond to this essay in English class in middle school and I raked Ted Gup over the coals, because I was writing on my laptop with dozens of open tabs. I still think I was right to point out Ted Gup's failure to foresee the wiki walk, but now that I'm older and technology has developed more over the last fifteen years, I'm starting to think he had something of a point.

I was thinking about this in a fanfiction and fandom context because I recalled a post I reblogged recently saying (paraphrased) "I have nothing against shipping but some of you are too focused on shipping to the exclusion of everything else." I agree with that post, but for me part of the problem isn't even the focus on shipping, it's that the shipping content is often so formulaic. Fandom talks a big game about diversity and creativity in fanworks, but a lot of the actual output I see is incredibly formulaic. In my opinion that's related to the extreme focus on tropes. Tropes are great, but if you're only looking at fic as a list of tropes you're taking a very narrow view. I don't know what the direction of causality is here, if there even is one, but I think the tagging system and the way the tagging system is used facilitate this reductive trope-based outlook.

I'm from the fanfiction.net era and I find the character and relationship tagging on AO3 useful, but I don't really care for the additional tags. I had to train myself to even read them. I prefer to select fics based on titles and summaries, because those are created by the author. Obviously writing a summary is very different than writing a story (and in fact it's a different skill and it's hard!) but a summary is still written by the author, so it gives me some sense of their writing style. When authors actually include an excerpt in the summary it does that even more. Tags can be useful in conjunction with a summary, because well-selected tags make me curious how all the elements listed in the tags fit together. But I don't want to sort by Enemies to Lovers or whatever.

I don't expect everyone to read like I do, this is nothing more than one crank's ramblings about my personal dissatisfaction with the current state of fandom. Maybe it resonates with someone, and if it does they're welcome to reblog it, but I'm not trying to do social commentary here. Maybe it doesn't, and that's okay too.

I also don't know if the trope focus on booktok and in the traditional publishing world comes out of fanfiction or not but it's even more distressing to me there and I think it bothers me in the fanfiction sphere because of the possibility that fanfiction is contributing to that trend.

[oddygaul]

Zenless Zone Zero

Well, I’ve been playing the shit out of this game, so fair warning, there will be significant brainrot ahead.

Overall, I really dig it. I’m a huge mark for character action games, and well-done life sims tend to suck me in; Zenless Zone Zero is nailing both those aspects pretty damn well. In fact, it’s nailing them well enough that… how do I put this… it starts to slip into the territory of being A Good Game Generally, rather than just a gacha. And while this is a big accomplishment for ZZZ, this also puts it into direct conversation with other full-price games, resulting in its gacha elements causing more friction than Honkai Star Rail’s ever did*.

*I’ll be comparing this to HSR a lot, because I play way too much of both and they’re made by the same developer. I recognize that it is pretty odd and potentially even problematic to A / B compare them when I could be looking at the game through the lens of, you know, Gaming At Large. But hey, that’s why this is a subjective journal and not a holistic review blog! It is what it is.

So, the aesthetic of this game fuckin rules - it’s like, late 90s to early 2000s VHS-core. The main characters run a Blockbuster, for Christ’s sake. Presentation-wise (and systems-wise, and, hell, music-wise), ZZZ is obviously borrowing a lot from the Persona series, but like… great? I’d love it if more things cribbed that style and made it their own, from the confidant hangouts, to the small but comfy explorable areas, to the dynamic menus with edgy character poses. The character design itself is all superb, all the way down to the crowd NPCs - some the shopkeepers here have cooler designs than the main characters of some other games. Even aside from the designs, ZZZ is doing a lot with lighting and color desaturation that really lends it its own unique vibe. They actually have a cohesive artstyle in here! wild.

The presentation of the story is also killer. Sure, a decent chunk of the conversations are just models lip-flapping at each other - although they at least emote and pose a bit here, unlike the Star Rail dialogue scenes with their demure princess waves. In the main story, though, we get not only a heap of fairly lengthy cutscenes, but also this really cool comic panel-style presentation.

I feel like there was a bit of a trend in the PS3/360 era of games to present a game’s story in this comic panel / storyboard style. I understood the motivation: games increasingly demanded a more involved, consistent storytelling approach, rather than the ‘One big rendered cutscene at the beginning and end’ they used to get away with, and the generation’s increased visual fidelity meant that doing even basic, in-engine cutscenes took a lot more resources to make something half-decent. In Spyro the Dragon on PS1 you could get away with a fun little 15-second gag with a barely animated polygonal yeti or whatever; in the PS3 era, you were going up against tryhards like Metal Gear Solid 4. Amidst this landscape, the pitch of having your illustrators pretty up some storyboards and put them in the game sounds like it’d save a lot of work - plus, consoles were finally outputting a high enough resolution that this sort of flat image wouldn’t be compressed to hell.

Thing is, I always kinda hated that approach. In some cases, I think that’s the popular opinion - I fuckin love Bayonetta, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defend its weird slideshow cutscenes. Even in games where the execution is perfectly fine, though, it rubbed me the wrong way. I think of Infamous - objectively, the art’s solid and fits the tone of the game, and the motion graphics aim to capture some of the dynamism typical cutscenes would provide. Despite all that, it still feels cheap to me - all of the panning, effects, and graphic imagery feel like they’re trying to polish up something that inherently doesn’t fit.

In ZZZ, though, I’m loving every one I come across. It’s obviously still done for efficiency reasons - there’s already a handful of characters that exist only in these panel scenes, saving the team the effort of having to model and rig them. But the freedom this allows for staging and storytelling is huge; the characters are more expressive here than anywhere else in the game, and we’re able to see situations with huge crowds and new locales much more often than would be possible in typical cinematics. And the illustrations are genuinely good, too - full of character, cool poses and creative compositions/angles.

if everything actually had to be modeled, there's no way we would've gotten Legally Blonde Nicole

Plus, the cutscenes are constant, and boy do I love the animation here. It feels so rare nowadays for a high-budget game to do stylized 3D animation of this ilk. Your biggest budget games are all going for the cinematic look, and pushing realism as much as they can - and while I know an immense amount of work and craft goes into animating something like The Last of Us, boy, I just could not care less about something so lacking in flair*. Even bigger properties that use a stylized artstyle these days, like Breath of the Wild, still tend to lean towards fairly naturalistic animation. Zenless Zone Zero’s cutscenes, on the other hand, spin and stretch motherfuckers around like we’re back on the PS2, are filled with forced perspective, and I am absolutely living for it. It’s not even reserved only for bombastic action scenes, either - we get honest to god character acting-focused conversation cutscenes.

*Seriously, take me back to the Naughty Dog that animated Jak & Daxter. Jak’s hero animation is top tier to this day

Of course, the combat animation slaps too; each of the playable agents is absolutely dripping with character. Even characters whose designs initially left me cold won me over once I saw the amount of care put into their movement and combo strings. It’s honestly shocking to me that this is the same studio that made Genshin Impact, a game I dropped after about 2 hours because of how lifeless all the animation felt*. Unique run cycles for every character, actual non-human designs, the flourishes everyone has when stopping mid-combo to snap them back to idle, the absolute synergistic audiovisual bliss of the parry… it’s really impressive stuff from a young team.

*Same studio in name only, totally different team, I know, but still

Mechanically, I have some mixed feelings about the combat as a whole. Zenless Zone Zero is, without a doubt, aiming to present complexity and depth as a team battler - that is to say, it’s more about team synergy, tag combos, and knowing who to use when, rather than soloing as any particular character. Nonetheless, I really would’ve appreciated individual characters having a bit more depth to their movesets; a jump, a launcher, cancels, anything. As outstanding as all the animation work is, there’s some characters that only have a normal attack string on square and one special attack on triangle. Like, sub-Dynasty Warriors level of complexity here. It’s rough.

This is where ZZZ’s gacha nature gets a bit ugly: so far, more complex kits and skill expression are mostly locked behind rarity, which is kind of scummy. In Star Rail, for the most part, 4-star characters are defined as such due to their numbers: they still have mechanics and complexity, they just aren’t tuned as high as the limited characters. Hell, in some cases they have more complexity. Ruan Mei is an almost incomparably stronger unit than Asta, but Ruan Mei’s play pattern is fucking boring: you use skill every three turns when it runs out. Asta, meanwhile, basically has her own risk & reward minigame that demands more thoughtful SP management.

In ZZZ, on the other hand, the lower-rank characters straight up have less going on in their kits. Nicole has like… one tech, sorta. Anby has one single animation cancel to chain her normal into her special quicker. Lucy’s only skill expression is choosing whether to tap special or hold special. Meanwhile, Zhu Yuan, a limited character, has a normal string that bounces between melee and ranged attacks, can be dodge-canceled at any point in the combo to branch into variations of the string, and a hold-normal attack string that’s completely different and has the same branching dodge-cancel tech.

It’s one thing to lock raw damage and meta viability behind a gacha, but locking the characters that are mechanically more interesting to play straight up sucks. If I hadn’t been lucky enough on the standard banner to pull exactly the two characters I find the most mechanically satisfying, I don’t know that I’d still be playing - and this is the point where ZZZ begs comparison to other, non-live service character action games. Sure, it’s probably not fair to compare a random A-rank’s moveset to Devil May Cry V’s iteration of Dante, a feature-creeped nightmare of a kit 3 console generations in the making. But what about Sengoku Basara Sumeragi, my personal character-action GOAT? By all accounts a mid-budget title, yet it offers 40 full characters chock-full of more unique mechanics and animation cancels than you can shake a stick at.

Fuck, can we please get a new Sengoku Basara? Please? I’m desperate out here. I’ll take anything, y’all.

There’s also the inherent issue that plagues every action RPG (usually deftly avoided by the character action genre), which is the delicate balance of player success depending on the numbers vs actual mechanical skill - a balancing act made even more noticeable due to the gacha genre-standard of characters taking weeks of grinding to level up. This is a topic for another day, but suffice to say, a big part of the reason Honkai Star Rail works for me as a very pretty version of Cookie Clicker is because of the Autoplay option. In Zenless Zone Zero, if you’re not willing to grind out the same mob fight for a week or two, you’re gonna hit an endgame roadblock of doing chip damage to a boss you’ve mechanically mastered because you’re underleveled, and boy, that never feels good.

For all those issues stemming from the gacha, I will say, it’s great that the story missions let you use the characters that are actually supposed to be present for those missions, even if you don’t own them. Aside from how nice it is to have an opportunity to put the whole roster through their paces, it goes a long way for actually getting invested in the story. Honkai Star Rail’s storytelling is a hot mess for many reasons, but it’s always particularly jarring rolling up to a sidequest at like, a local theater troupe with a wanted space criminal, the sitting president of a completely different planet, a ten year old child, and a shirtless cyborg cowboy, none of whom have canonically met each other; ZZZ’s approach sidesteps this issue. The proxy angle even provides a pretty valid diegetic explanation for why agents that don’t know each other might be working together.

Now that we’ve sort of meandered back to the story after talking about animation led us on a long detour - the story is surprisingly solid. In particular, I really appreciate how straightforward the writing is. I don’t know if the issue lies with the original text or the localization, but Star Rail’s dialogue, even in simple missions, tends to be incredibly meandering and overstuffed; ZZZ is a lot better about letting all its characters talk like actual humans. It also helps that the plot so far is a lot more grounded, and spends more time focusing on each faction’s group dynamics rather than the overarching plot. These games live and die by their characters, so leaning into those strengths is a smart move.

Zenless Zone Zero is, unfortunately, fully in line with Hoyo’s weird conservative politics - in particular, 1.0 and 1.1 are absolutely stuffed full of copaganda. With how many safety regulation jokes they made at the construction company, I initially hoped they’d lampoon the police faction a bit, or make a commentary on how comically heavily armed New Eridu’s police force are. In a vacuum, Zhu Yuan shouting combat lines like “Stop resisting!” or “Freeze, hands up!” while blasting someone with her gigantic, ‘JUSTICE’-emblazoned rocket launcher shotgun feels like it ought to be satire. Every time we talk to the officers, though, it’s just line after line about their solemn duty to protect the people of the city, how essential and important they are for the community, and so on and so on.

This wholehearted embrace of the world’s current power structure is something Zenless Zone Zero approaches in nearly the exact same way as Star Rail. In both games, your playable character is someone that’s sort of operating outside the law - in Star Rail, as the maverick organization that is the Astral Express, while in ZZZ you work as an illegal proxy. Despite this setup, any time the protagonists come into contact with a governing body, they are no less than thrilled to help them enforce the will of the law.

In Star Rail, you aid the local governments (one of which is an undemocratic monarchy) in committing massive cover-ups to hide their failures from the populace not once but twice. In ZZZ, you aid the police to an obsequious degree - playing along with them to not arouse suspicion is one thing, but helping them organize a fucking community day on Sixth Street? Fuck that. Hell, said community day is even shown to initially be DOA because none of the local residents trust the police - and you best believe we get two full scenes of the MCs changing the resident’s minds, resulting in them spouting shit about “Oh, it was our fault for judging the police too harshly - they really do have our best interests at heart!”

is it tho

There’s an argument to be made that the N.E.P.S. are a little different, given that they exist in a post-apocalyptic world with monsters popping up every day - and ZZZ’s copaganda is certainly a little less flagrant than something like Spider-Man helping the NYPD install civilian surveillance networks in Insomniac’s Spider-Man. And, sure, perhaps this can help excuse why they post fully armored, rifle-wielding soldiers in the Lumina Square DMV, and provides some justification that their existence is more helpful than the real world’s civilian-murdering property guards.

Thing is, though, at every turn you’re hit with dialogue and situations which make it clear that, no, they’re the normal cops. Every other sidequest seems to involve calling the N.E.P.S. in on somebody or helping with an investigation, and for every time we see them handle ethereal activity, there’s two instances of them being called in for petty property theft or something similarly minor - even the playable character has heaps of dialogue choices threatening to call the police on someone*. Much like Star Rail’s reactionary politics were strangely at odds with the ‘blazing a new path’ ideals of the trailblaze, Zenless Zone Zero’s obsession with the police puts a damper on its underground, counterculture aesthetic.

*Including a case where both options threatened this, leaving me without a non-narc dialogue choice.

illustration by Lv01KOKUEN

And finally… I don’t know where to fit this in, so I guess it just goes in its own little section at the end here. Lots of people, myself included, have touched on the Persona inspirations - and they’re certainly significant. One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention as a huge influence is Yasuhiro Nightow’s Kekkai Sensen / Blood Blockade Battlefront. From its sense of style to its worldbuilding, ZZZ damn near feels like fanfic to me. Hell, it’s right in the name - BBB? ZZZ? And this is on top of the dimensional crossover / big city vibe, the retro fashion, the different factions. Victoria Housekeeping might as well be Libra 2.0 - Von Lycaon is a damn near perfect 50/50 expy of Klaus and Stephen Starphase. And then Belle / Wise, who assist these powerful fighters in a noncombat role just like Leo, also turn out to have some sort of special magical eyes granted to them by untold powers from within the dimensional rift??

I’m here for it, don’t get me wrong - love Nightow. But that can’t be coincidence, right?

[bimboficationblues]

why do you think Gamers have the politics they do

interesting question, I feel like this might be an appearance rather than a reality. a lot of people play video games to the degree that they might reasonably be called a "gamer," but not necessarily everyone who plays a moderate to high amount of video games will identify as such.

there could be something about like personal self-identification specifically through the lens of a commodity, and a consumer product that is largely regarded as "low art", that fosters resentment and inferiority complexes which in turn gets directed at removing or responding to "threats" to the subculture. we've seen the same thing in a similarly lame way in punk rock subculture. gamers getting outraged at someone criticizing their hobby is a long-standing habit: flipping out over Roger Ebert's dismissiveness of games as an artistic medium, the vitriol for Jack Thompson and other "moral majority" types who believed games caused or promoted violence/sexual degradation. I personally agree that both of them are wrong in pretty obvious ways, but the sheer anger that came out of this was pretty astonishing.

from there it's somewhat easy to see how self-identified gamers could be primed to take "games should probably have non-racist depictions of black and Muslim people" and "not every female character needs to be a sexy lamp in a crop top" as attacks from outsiders, especially if they are white men and already have a culturally informed predisposition to get their hackles up over criticisms like that.

"nerd ressentiment" is also not a gaming-specific thing, near as I can tell. hence "ComicsGate," hence anime weirdos who concoct conspiracies that Western translators are inserting gender ideology into their subs, etc. but nerd ressentiment is both financially lucrative AND politically useful for right-wing movements: GamerGate, for example, struck at a time when reactionaries were getting loud about "politics(/'forced' diversity) in media" around a bunch of different mediums, not just games.

so it seems likely to me that this is like, a deliberate (or at least self-deceiving) fabrication on the part of right-leaning ecosystems. like the sheer loudness of GamerGate could lead one to believe that maybe they are the "true representative" of the subculture, and in fact this was their explicit message. its biggest individual targets were Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn, both of whom could be constructed as outsiders to gaming (from my understanding this was "true" of Sarkeesian, insofar as such a silly claim can be true, and obviously not true of Quinn). Quinn making a game that was explicitly about disempowerment, bucked against prevailing trends, and then getting praise for it from gaming websites allowed for the construction of a narrative where there are malevolent elites uplifting "(post-)modern" cultural trash in order to subvert something the true fans love, which ties in with right-wing narratives about degenerate art.

social media and algorithm shit also likely contributed to this. right-wing news ecosystems picked up on this basically uninteresting story about gamers having a depraved fit and fed into it, so if you're a resentment driven young man with a limited political education, a lot of time on 4Chan and YouTube, and a passion for gaming, who's been watching Sargon of Akkad "owning" Feminist Frequency, you might start getting Paul Joseph Watson and Infowars videos about it in your recommendations, then you get Peterson videos, &c. the fact that this all got perpetuated through YouTube, 4Chan, Twitter, etc. is also indicative to me of how much this was engineered by both deliberate radicalization efforts and the systemic issues with online platforms contributing to political fanaticism.

when you break it down, this "silent majority" rhetoric is obviously untrue, as it usually is with conspiratorially minded and reactionary groups. there are a lot of people who play video games who are not white men, and there are a lot of people with large audiences who play, write about, critique, and care about video games who skew liberal or socialist. it's a kind of Manichean strategy where if you make it clear enough that people who aren't politically conservative (or right-libertarian) white men aren't welcome in gaming spaces, large swaths of those "othered" by this will eventually self-select out of those spaces. meanwhile, being some kind of supervillainous arch-reactionary looks more and more like a prerequisite to being in gaming spaces.

[hopeymchope]

Thoughts on MDA: Rain Code so far as I approach the end of Chapter 2

(...which is the game's third full-length chapter...)

I'll start with SPOILER-FREE thoughts before shifting into SPOILER MODE after the cut.

Yuma is so spineless and unable to stand up for himself or his own sense of what's right/wrong that he gives me some "Early Part of V3" Shuichi vibes. The poor bitch... I feel like this might come to bite him in the ass before he'll manage to toughen up.

However, it's really other characters I've met who remind me the MOST of specific Danganronpa characters. Of course the game is still in its early going, so there's plenty of time for most characters to get more development/focus. But right now, THE EXAMPLES: Take Sonia Nevermind, but imagine a woman from a powerful noble family who is even MORE clueless about reality because she lives in even MORE of her own insular bubble, and that's Fubuki Clockford. She's Sonia²,if you will. Zilch Alexander? He's reminiscient of Byakuya "Twogami" — he starts off giving you the snobby egotism of real Togami before swiftly displaying that surprisingly kind undercurrent of the Imposter's version. And one particularly weird example is Vivia Twilight, who is giving me strong echoes of a Danganronpa spinoff character. To be specific, Vivia strongly resembles the, er, "public face" of Takumi Hijirihara from Danganronpa Gaiden: Killer Killer. Y'know... the super-lowkey almost-sleepy guy who is constantly cramming himself into tight spaces that he finds comforting?

Panels such as this could easily be describing Vivia Twilight. They're even both detectives!

3. As has been pointed out by others, Rui Komatsuzaki really just straight-up gave Halara Nightmare the same face and hairstyle as Chiaki Nanami. At least Halara has a different hair color, I guess? And I suppose a lot of Komatsuzaki's characters share similar faces, which isn't uncommon among Japanese manga/anime-style artists. But it's still pretty striking to see Tall, Stern Nanami stroll up if you're familiar enough with the DR characters.

Beyond this cut, there will be spoilers for Master Detective Archives: Rain Code Chapters 0 through Chapter 2.

But nothing beyond that.

4. At the risk of stating the obvious: Yuma totally entered his pact with Shinigami because he wanted a "Forte" power, right? That's where that part of the backstory is obviously going.

5. We're still a long way from understanding Yuma's backstory and/or how he got into this contract with Shinigami, but we have a few hints at least. We know Yuma found a book in the WDO headquarters taht contained Shinigami, and it's been implied that maybe she's contracted with detectives in the past. But despite how their pact is core to the gameplay loop of Rain Code, I don't think it's going to turn out being a good thing for Yuma. Lil' Cocoa-Head keeps getting himself cornered in situations where he or someone else will die unless he can solve a mystery right fucking now, which means he keeps relying on Shinigami to save his ass, which means we KEEP KILLING THE CULPRITS by the end of each chapter, which is a really fucking bad trend that is going to eventually bite us in the ass for sure. The natural, obvious result of this is that Yuma will become the prime suspect for the extremely sudden deaths of all these killers. But I think it might go even harder than that... because what if, by the game's end (or maybe in a future sequel), we have to direct Shinigami (or some other spirit if we play as a different character later on/in a later game) to reap Yuma's own soul for his crimes? I feel like that's the obvious endgame here — Yuma is so incredibly complicit in these killings that he could be argued to be their murderer, and that's going to come full circle on him. But I guess we'll need a lot more time to tell on that front.

6. The loss of the Chapter 0 characters still kinda hurts, because so many of them were fascinating. Pucci Lavmin in particular was unlike any other character we've ever seen in Kodaka's ouvre, and it sucks that she was taken out of the mix without us getting any chance to develop or explore her further. My hope is that eventually we'll see some kind of AU side-story DLC or game that lets us dive deeper into even the deceased characters... I mean, Danganronpa always did that, and Rain Code DOES have its own Season Pass after all :P

7. I really thought for a while there that Chapter 2 would end with us having to accept that the real culprit was the very person we were attempting to exonerate and free from the Peacekeepers' sinister clutches. It doesn't go that route, but I feel like that's a twist that could (and SHOULD) come up in the future. Before this game is over, I expect to see a chapter where the real culprit is the very person we're trying to prove innocent. Can't wait to see how wrong I am! :P

[chuyinstheaterib]

Week 27 feb / 1 march

27 feb : Theory class... not much to sayy altouhgt the teacher did say we'd work with diff artistic designs but we didn't :( but oh well we leart acting techniquies whichh will be very very usefull for this partial beacouse...

1 march So after what felt like a month of theory ( obviously exagerating here xD ) well we did finally actingg and more excercises ( continuing the trend of being able to feel safe and in comfort with everyone in the class )

( representation of how we looked after today ) So we started with the energy bath like usual and we played/ did two activities / games ( I want to call them games couse they are... and even the teacher calls them that but like xxD it's so weird to call them games couse at the end of the day they are activities with purpose, they are educative games and of the best kind I would say :3 ) The first game was called ¨Only questions¨ which we started doing pretty chillingly, we just sat ina circle and in clock or counter clockwise we were tasked with doing questions about whatever without repeating what someone else did, we then added the difficulty levels of a specific place where the questions had to be based on and the asking whoever you wanted to ask and now this exercise.... xD was very funny we all said questions and the teacher did say we didn't have to think of questions, a sin I commited :(, but even when I did have questions in mind like Istg my mind changed of questions and came up with a new one, I remmember asking someone if they had parents when I wanted to ask them if they liked VOLTEC which came out of nowhere and gave for some laughs xD, it made everyone very comfortable with each other as making questions and hearing people and reactions made the enviroment a very friendly, I forgot I was in a class with lots of people I have never talked to / never talk to, and it made me even share laughs with people I thought I would dislike :) good exercise I want to play more of this and seeing how we get creative.

Some of my fav questions were ¨was it dirty¨ - Juanpablo ¨should we go to a jacuzzi alone?¨-Gera ¨Did you get back with your ex AGAIN?¨-Evellyn ¨DID YOU DRINK?!?!'¨ - Claudette ¨DId you like the girls¨-Myself and not a question but ¨Saldas¨-Emilia was a funny quote xD

The last exercise was the most chaotic and the best at putting us in a good enviroment, ( i'm realizing it either didn't have a name or I forgot xD ) basically we had a line in kind of a circle and in the moddle 3 chairs where 3 people would be participating at once, 2 people would speak to the one in the middle about whatever and the person in the middle had to talk to both of them as we all watched, it was chaotic and it was funnny how literally almost everyone created drama and like venting type of talks and a lot of them were real.... which when presented in a comedic way making fun of them and exagerating made them really interesting and gave insight to more of our peers. I personally just ranted about some things which had happened to me while exxagerating abit jsjs and I honestly regret not talking about more personal things and turning them into satire/ comedy as I was a bit scared at first and when I felt more relaxed about them it was too late. However i twas nice to hear the conversation about dead mothers, cheating scumbag exes, dogs that died, crashing cars, alcohol, more exes, crushes, more more more exes from our peers, I feel so much comfy with the group and while I might not talk to people outside the class inside I think we can all have a really good time :) I want more of this improvisation and talking, it is way more enjoyable than the cordination and movement activiites but that's a personal opinion, mainly couse I like the direct interaction these imply. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand talking about our exes and love is funny

(@ everyone in the class....)

[trafficsitespeed]

No gimmicks needed

That pass helped us get the ball to the tailback later in the game. Most of the time we’re going to give the ball to the tailback. “We threw a touchdown on the 1-yard line, based on how they were playing.

You can go three weeks and not throw one, and go three weeks and throw nine, based on how things come up. “Touchdown passes, you know, it’s just a funny thing. Turner said he’s not getting caught up in the number of Rivers’ touchdown passes. Anytime you’re playing against a Brett Favre-led team the game is never over.” “It obviously didn’t start too good with the interception for a touchdown on the first throw. “We were getting used to each other in terms of the offense and he was getting used to the way we go about attacking and playing offense.” “I just see it as a growth pattern,” Turner said. Turner pointed to last season, his first as San Diego’s coach, when Rivers and the rest of the team struggled early before making it all the way to the AFC championship game. “I just think it’s a progression,” Coach Norv Turner said. Stop Comparing Us To Negative Approach 4. He’s thrown two interceptions, including one on his first pass Monday night that was returned 25 yards for a touchdown by Jets cornerback David Barrett. No Gimmicks Needed by Kill Your Idols, released 20 December 2017 1. Rivers leads the NFL with nine touchdown passes and a 124.8 passer rating. All he wants back now is Dean, who isnt as happy to watch his fall from grace as he wants to be.

We didn’t all of a sudden become 3-0 like we wished we were.” Seths lost it all: no Authority, no briefcase, no friends, nothing. He was great at drawing heat from a crowd. Chris is a legend that doesnt get the recognition he deserves. I am only 3 disks into the 6 disk set and I can tell you its well worth the price. “It was a good win, a good win to build on,” the third-year starter said. 'No Gimmicks Needed', : Reviewer: Bryan Houghtling Jr (Ormond Beach, FL) The title says it all.

Picked by many to make it to the Super Bowl, the Chargers got the victory they desperately needed after gut-wrenching losses to Carolina and Denver. With Rivers matching his career high with three touchdown passes for the third straight week, the Chargers beat Brett Favre and the New York Jets, 48-29, on Monday night. John Cosper and Jonny Candido reveal the full story of the No Gimmicks Needed superstar through the eyes of his family, friends, and fans. We’re scoring a lot of points and don’t have a need to do that.” They don’t have our quarterback,” said Tomlinson, who started to laugh. “There’s a couple of things those teams have in common. Instead, the two-time defending NFL rushing champion praised the one player who’s been consistent for the Chargers in all three games, Philip Rivers. didn’t jump at the chance to lobby for the Chargers to start snapping the ball straight to him, a la the Miami Dolphins and Ronnie Brown, and the Oakland Raiders and Darren McFadden. SAN DIEGO – Minutes after the San Diego Chargers finally got their first win, star running back LaDainian Tomlinson was asked what he thought of the recent trend of running backs taking direct snaps.

[corpsedaydream]

Hi! I dont know if you write this, but can i request for angsty-fluff imagine for corpse? Maybe when you’re jealous? Thank u❤️ love ur writings

u ask for jealousy and angst, and i said hell fucking yeah

hope u enjoy! 

word count: 1.6k

_________________________

it’s fine

Corpse was ever so charismatic. It was something about him that was impossible to deny. Even when he would get misjudged by people, thinking he may be this intimidating presence purely because of how he dressed and sounded, it would only take a few exchanges of sentences between him and a stranger for them to instantly change their mind and feel drawn to him, instead. You knew this better than anyone, after all, it had been one of the factors in what had made you fall for him so hard and so fast.

The only issue was that, sometimes, he could have the same effect on others and, sometimes, when you caught someone else clearly having some heart eyes for your man, that brought forth the little green monster inside of you. He was magnetic, and as happy as you were that the world was so intrigued by him and he was having all the success he deserved, you couldn’t deny that there was a part of you that wished that magnetic pull only worked on you.

It seemed there were certain days when Corpse managed to turn on this charismatic side of him even more so. Today had happened to be one of those days. It was good, because it was a day the two of you had planned to spend together. But when you went out to lunch and the server definitely let her hand rest on his arm a little too long and said things a little too flirtatious and hardly acknowledged your presence, you started to lose that good feeling.

You didn’t say anything about it, even though you kind of wished he would have figured that him giving the girl a back and forth was encouraging her more and upsetting you further. But you were determined to have a good day with your boyfriend, you didn’t want to start any drama with him.

He asked you if you were okay on the way back to his place, noticing you were being quiet. You told him you were and left it at that, even if you did want to say more.

Finally, in the safety of his home that was like a bubble in which was just for the two of you, you were feeling better. Quality time was your love language and his was physical touch, something you could both give each other with ease when there was no outside interruption. Between the little talks, the exploration of hands over each other, the giggles that turned into wiping tears of laughter from your face and shared kisses, you swore you could spend the rest of your life like this and be happy.

And then the bubble burst.

“Ah, shit, (Y/N).” He began, and the mood between you instantly changed.

“What?”

“They need a tenth player right now and no one else can get online.” He had promised that today was about you. And usually, you would be completely okay with him going and joining in on the streams, often you loved sitting by him and watching him get so invested in the games. Except lately, you’d been feeling at an arms length from him and you hated it. You wanted his undivided attention today.

“And?” You were being short with him, you wanted him to know you weren’t okay with this right now.

“It’ll just be a few games...”

You let out a huff and turned your head to the side, looking away from him. You were being stubborn. You didn’t want to tell him what to do, you wanted him to figure it out on his own, that you didn’t want him to play and wanted him to stay right here in this moment with you.

“You can come sit with me?” He spoke again as you remained silent, seemed as if he wasn’t figuring it out.

“Just go play. It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine.

-

Sitting on your own now, you felt bare without your limbs being all tangled with his beneath the blanket like they were earlier. You had tried to turn on the television to watch something, but everything on just seemed to annoy you.

With a sigh, you pressed your hands to your knees and stood up, walking towards Corpses gaming room. At first, you were going to walk in, giving in to the want that was craving to be by his side, but upon hearing a number of female voices, that jealousy appeared inside you again and you walked away.

It was slightly irrational, you knew these people were his friends, but today had really gotten to you.

At an attempt to distract yourself, you opened up Tik Tok, but all your for you page seemed to be was more girls wanting your boyfriend.

“Fucking hell.” You said out loud, closing the app and opening up Twitter next. But you should’ve known it would’ve been worse on there, Corpse seemed to be trending every day on that app, you told yourself you really should have known better for that one.

However, the next social media app click was deliberate. You knew that Corpse had been reposting stories of people using his song and you decided on treating yourself to some more sweet torture. And sure enough, his story was filled with more girls. Firing that jealousy and insecurity you had been feeling today even more.

“Fuck this.” You announced, standing to your feet and feeling tears of frustration build in your eyes.

Once you had finished gathering your belongings, you were just about to make an exit when that crazy thing of timing pulled a fast one on you as Corpse emerged from his gaming room.

“What are you doing?” He questioned you, spotting your hand gripping the handle on his front door.

Seeing him should’ve made you feel better, but it only caused more tears to well up, so you quickly looked away from him.

“I’m going home.”

“What-no, why?” He came closer to you then and you turned more towards the door.

“Because you obviously don’t want me here.”

“What the fuck? (Y/N), of course I do. What are you even saying right now?” He was by your side now, grabbing your hand from the handle and holding it in his. His other went up to cup your cheek, tilting your head up to face him and that’s when he saw the glaze of tears in your eyes. “Hey, baby,” Worry sparked up in him. “You’re upset...” He stated the obvious and you shook your head out of his grip, directing your vision to the ground.

You thought he might create some distance between you both when you did that, but instead, he did the opposite. He pulled you into a tight hug, one arm wrapping snugly around your waist and his other hand resting on the back of your head to encourage you against him.

“Don’t, I’m going.” You spoke, but your words were meek, you didn’t actually want to leave and he knew that.

“No. You’re not.” He argued back, his arms pulling you in even closer. “I want you here.” He told you and that’s what made you snap.

“No you don’t!” Your voice got louder, matching the movements of you bracing your arms against him and pushing him back, breaking the human contact. He was in shock, watching you with cautious eyes. “If you did, you would’ve spent time with me and only me today. You wouldn’t have left me alone!” You became more emotional as you spoke, a few tears managing to spill onto your cheeks.

“Baby-”

“No!” You cut him off. “Don’t ‘baby’ me right now.” You took a moment to wipe under your eyes before continuing because you knew this next admission would cause you some more tears. “You know how hard it is to compete it with every other girl who’s all about you right now? They’re everywhere, and they’re all so fucking beautiful. I know you see them, I’m not them, Corpse.” Your voice broke into a sob as his name left your lips and he felt his heart break to see you in that state.

He wasn’t sure if you still needed space, but he couldn’t stand in front of you while you cried and not do anything. So instead, he once again brought his arms around you, but this time he scooped you up, encouraging your legs to hook over his hips so he could carry you.

You continued to cry against his neck as he walked the both of you to his room and when he placed you down onto his bed, he was instantly beside you, cradling you against him.

“I need you to listen me,” He began once you had started to calm down, he wanted to make sure you paid attention. “You are so important to me. So fucking important to me, (Y/N).” His eyes were boring into yours and he brought his hand up to wipe the wetness from your cheeks before continuing. “I don’t want you to be anyone else.” He was speaking with force, but it wasn’t aggressive, he was wanting to make sure that you really understood the depth to his words.

“It’s just, everyone seems to want you and I’m just-”

“Don’t you dare put yourself down.” Corpse cut you off before you could finish. For a moment, he pressed his lips to your forehead before moving his face back so he could look at you again. “I only want you. You’re it for me, baby.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“With my whole fucking heart.”

“I love you, I really love you.” You told him, your emotions were still running high, but you were feeling a whole lot better.

“I love you, too.”

[dourpeep]

i have even more ideas now...

what about like the moment you open up about your relationship with kazuxiao the fans who were already seeing that happen were celebrating and on both of y'alls insta or something is where you announce and it's like a picture of all 3 of you chilling together or something

and then when they finally appear on a variety show they're just questioned throughly and they talk about how you guys meet and what they like about you

ok but the moments where you just feel sort of insecure since being an idol is hard and you're technically dating your seniors and you're just hit by the antis who are against yourself relationship so you lock yourself in your room in your dorm by yourself to cope. your roommate (can be whoever) contacts them both and they immediately come over and come in and offer soft kisses and soft murmurs of reassurance that they'll never leave you and that everything's gonna be ok.

side note i can see xiao just being a whole meme without realizing?? for like variety shows he's just known for his dead pan expression and then i can see him being so competitive on shows like running man..mans ripping tags left and right, while kazuhas just hiding in a weird spot or something

kazuha on the other hand i can see him being a troll, he likes to mess around with the hosts of the show and manages to mess up some of their plans, he also likes messing with his group members, where xiao likes to say that kazuha looks innocent but is a part of the devil line with venti

onto albedo i can see him like answering questions in his vlive and fans realize that a lot of his songs are more romantic and sort of pining?? and they're asking where the motivation is from. he answers that it's just something that he saw recently so he felt motivated (it wasn't the fact that he had realized that he was 100% in love with you)

but like all of this mans inspiration comes from you, he's had multiple songs dedicated to you before your relationship was even open to the public, and when your relationship finally does, it just clicks for fans and it suddenly makes sense, your ship name trends worldwide for the day

but how you and albedo met, i can see both of you guys being in the industry already and you guys are sort of know each other but it was for a one time off collab with other artists involved so you didn't really talk with each other. like i said before albedos a solo artist while i can see you being a part of a popular group already. but then both of your companies decided to do another collab and especially picked you two since you guys already worked on a collab before.

at first it was like awkward since albedos really socially awkward but then things click when you guys start writing the song together. everything just matches so well?? and you guys just compliment each other?? and that's when you learn of albedo just staying at the studio so late so you often bring food. this leads to you guys getting closer and albedo even stops his work just to talk to you more. when your song comes out and everyone is waiting for the stage, there's just so much tension?? but the good kinda and everyone is awed by the song and the vocals coming from you and albedo.

i can also see the both of you guys appearing on variety shows together too, like appearing on a show where you two travel to another place and experience the culture there, with albedo being your tour guide and showing you all the famous places (one of the many times where fans were awed by his research and knowledge) and then if you guys were to appear together again after you guys reveal your relationship, a lot of the times they show idols as they wake up, they'll see you and albedo being clingy af to each other.

on another side note, albedos totally a troll on variety shows, he likes messing around with the hosts and other contestants since a lot of the time he's not really interested in the show itself, it's more for publicity. however, when he first appeared on a show with you fans noticed that he actually seemed interested for once and that's where your ship name started.

albedos totally a golden child tho, he's like basically perfect in everything so a lot of the times variety shows don't catch him slipping, however the one time that he did was when you were mentioned, the clip of with his ears bright red was trending for a couple of days :)

GIVING ME SO MUCH GOOD FOOD THANK YOU ANON

I think that this covers everything hehehe so I won't add to-

wait wait I put it all under the cut b/c it's a lot again-

Okay okay but like for the 'announcement' picture, what if it's like those photo booth pics (but like each picture you need to scroll through like on Insta) where it's cute and wholesome! The three of you are having fun wearing some silly glasses or hats, doing peace signs or finger hearts....and the very last photo is the three of you sharing a kiss- or, at least trying to.

It's sweet, a little silly, and most of your fans take it really well! After all, they can see the chemistry that you share and can't deny that the three of you would have a good relationship.

As for the insecurities of dating your seniors, Kazuha and Xiao are quick to knock back any of those worries. They love you so, so much and hate the fact that something like that makes you doubt for a single second. If anyone ever tries to bring it up, you know that they're going to immediately quip back.

Naturally, you're roomed with Venven :D He's technically an up-and-coming after he stopped doing idol stuff for a few years, so not only does he know the ropes, but he's also one of your biggest fans and biggest supports (outside of Kazuha and Xiao).

Though he's silly and light-hearted, he's quick to recognize when things are serious and need handling.

So as soon as he sees that you're not doing so great or if he notices the comments on your posts are going in a bad direction, he speed dials Xiao and the two of your boyfriends are right at the door in under 15.

Not only are they fast about it, but they have all your favorite snacks, a movie or two, some popcorn, and a ton of love and affection because they'll be damned if their love is going to be affected by some asshole's comments about their love life! What do they know anyway??

Actually this all could work too if Kazuha and Xiao are part of 4NEMO-

Hmmm

That'd cause so much more ruckus- not only is half of one of the most popular idol groups are taken, but by the same person??? And each other??? Man, that's wack.

BUT THE GAMESHOWS

Xiao would most certainly be super intense with those. He just can't help it--competition drives his blood and makes something snap in him. He's dead serious about doing well, regardless of the game. I actually have never watched said game shows, but--

Like...he's out for blood. No one is safe. Not even you or Kazuha if you're on opposing teams, though he'll be a bit more gentle. Maybe even with the hint of a smile while you have an expression of utter shock at the fact that he's just so fast-

Or if it's not a game show and instead you're doing some sort of idol group activity with a few others to get to know each other?

Someone suggests ping pong and, knowing how competitive Xiao gets, he's pitted up against Tartaglia and man. That's scary. There's no doubt that someone would clip the video and make it into an overly-dramatic retelling complete with music.

Hilarious.

As for Kazuha! He'd be a bit of a mish mosh! He enjoys poking fun at others, and he's so sly! Those poor hosts don't realize that he's goading them on, but sure enough--he is. Who knew that his charming smile and mild-mannered attitude could be so devastating?

But even then, he's mostly wholesome! There's a lot of little clips, mostly of your doing, of him in a 'kiss the chef' apron getting caught off guard while cooking something up. The videos aren't great because you're giggling while recording and he ends up placing the ladle down calmly before wrapping you up in his arms. Half the video ends up being the two of you laughing and joking while it's pointed at a weird angle towards the counter.

Sometimes it'll point just right and you'll get a half-blurred view of Xiao sitting at the kitchen island with his reading glasses perched on his nose and book forgotten. He tends to get up and join in for a few smooches before reminding Kazuha of the food that's still cooking.

--

Albedo!! He absolutely is the golden child. He's fantastic handling things under pressure in a cool, calm manner. Handsome, charismatic, incredibly smart--man's hit all the stops and just keeps going.

It's not until it comes out that the two of you are together that his cool façade (hardly one, though) falters and at the mere mention of you, he'll go soft. There's a tenderness in his eyes, a small smile on his lips, and his blush? Absolutely adorable. How can anyone object when he's obviously so in love with you?

And the idea you mentioned with the two of you traveling and experiencing stuff together sounds so cute (':

He particularly enjoys exploring new cuisine, so expect him to feed you some food from his plate-

There's also a few times where you two have gotten lost in the new places, more because you're both so busy taking in the sights to realize you've taken five wrong turns- But then you make it into a whole adventure, foregoing the map and deciding to wander around. What better way to discover and learn about somewhere than getting lost and wandering?

You find quite a few hidden gems this way since otherwise you'd be hitting more popular areas!

Wait- do they really show idols waking up???

Ahh regardless, Albedo's definitely a cuddler. He loves it, can't get enough of it. It's not often that he gets a good night's rest, but with you it seems like he's fully recharged and ready for the day! It's cute too because it doesn't matter--big spoon or little spoon, you on his chest or him resting on yours. Even a few times with you facing each other with your hands intertwined.

I also agree that Albedo would mess with the game show's hosts and contestants. Not only would he, but he'd be entirely smug about it (after all, we need to have that #smugbedo going on).

No doubt, there's been times where the cameras even focus/zoom in on him where he's sitting because he's got that smirk on his face.

[kylie-writes-stuff]

“wife”

pairing: corpse husband x reader (female)

words: 1,714

requested?: no (send some in tho pls :) )

plot/summary: felix invites his friend, y/n, to play among us when they need an extra player. her and corpse get along well

authors note: so this isnt that good and i know a lot of corpse fics use a similar plot. i just wanted to try to write for corpse. hopefully things i write for him in the future are better. let me know what you think tho! also i really wanted reader to be best friends with karl bc i love him sm. uh every swiggly line is like a small time skip. this was written late at night btw and i didnt take much time to go over it

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

You sat up from laying down when you heard your phone ring. You looked at the caller ID.

Felix.

"What's up Felix?" You ask with a small yawn.

"Aww, how sweet," You hear in the background.

You giggle and ask, "Is that Sean? Hi Sean!"

"Yeah, we're playing Among Us and need an extra player. You down?" Felix explained.

"Sure, just give me a few minutes. See you soon, whore"

"Bitc-" You hang up before he can finish.

You got up and turned off your TV, going to get ready. 

⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒

You quickly tweet out that you're going live and say something on your insta story as well. You start your stream and slowly watch people flood in.

"Hey everyone! How are you guys doing?" You wave and smile, reading the chat.

"Everyone doing good, awesome! And i'm sorry to anyone having a bad day. I hope i can brighten it a bit!"

"Okay, sorry i didn't give you a further notice. I didn't even know i was gonna stream. Felix invited me to play Among Us so... here we are!"

You quickly join the discord and pull up the game, putting a cover over where the code goes.

"Hello?" You ask as you join the call. A chorus of greetings came your way.

"(Y/n)?"

"Karl!" You smile brightly.

Karl Jacobs was a good friend of yours. You would play on the Dream SMP sometimes. When you would, it would mostly be you being stupid with Karl and Alex, also known as Quackity. You were even a well know citizen of El Rapids.

"LET'S GOOOOO!" He yelled, making you laugh.

"Hey (Y/n), do you know everyone here?" Sean asks you.

"Um," You quickly scan through the names, "no, i don't think so."

You recognized names but you only personally knew Felix, Sean, Karl, and Ethan.

"Oh my god! Your voice is so cute!" Pokimane exclaims.

You giggle softly, "Thank you Poki!"

You're voice wasn't high pitched or anything like that, you just always spoke very softly and calmly. You were also a bit quiet.

Felix introduces you to those that you didn't know.

"There's one more person we're waiting for," He says.

While everyone waits, you and Karl run around each other's little characters and make jokes between yourselves. You mute yourself to read donations every once in a while.

You hear the discord chime, signaling that someone joined the call.

"WAIT CORPSE! DON'T SPEAK YET!" Felix yelled. "We have a new player. This is my friend (Y/n), say hi to her"

"Hello (Y/n)," Corpse said. You were taken aback by how deep his voice was but you didn't show it.

"Hi Corpse! Nice to meet you!" You said happily.

"Okay, how is she not freaking out?" Bretman said, making everyone laugh.

"Uh, (Y/n), do you mind letting me have black? It's cool if not.." Corpse asked gently.

"O-oh sure, no problem." You were usually black with the pink flamingo hat, but you ran over to the little computer and changed your color.

"Simp," Ethan mumbled, knowing you never switch from black.

"Thank you," He said, then the game started.

The word “Imposter” appeared on your screen in red, yours and Corpse's characters underneath.

As the game started, you thought no one could hear you so you spoke to your chat. "His voice was so deep, what the fuck? Holy shit that was hot, i'm gonna-"

"(Y/n)," Rae laughed, "You know we're playing proximity chat, right."

You blushed as you realized and said "Ha, anyways..." and ran to start faking tasks.

You ended up in electrical with Karl. "(Y/n)! My good friend, my buddy, you would never kill me right? Haha..." He said.

"Of course not, Karl! My good friend, my buddy. Why, I'm not even imposter," I said as i quickly dipped into the vent and back out, making him laugh.

I decided to show him because I knew Karl wouldn't say anything, and it's funny.

"Oh that's good then. Are you sure you're not imposter?"

"Mhm, pretty sure," You said, going back in. As you came out, Sykkuno walked in and froze.

"Uh, (Y/n)?"

"Fuck... Karl run! Go!" You said, Karl starting to leave. You walked closer and quickly killed Sykkuno then vented to security.

"That was close..." You told your chat.

You saw Corpse as you made your way around the map and walked into navigation.

"Hey, Corpse, how ya doing?"

"Ah you know, good. Just being crewmate and all."

You stifled a laugh, "Oh yeah I feel that, buddy."

"Yeah because there's no way that i'm imposter. No way i could be faking tasks and there's no possible way you could be the other imposter" He said quickly.

"For sure. Hypothetically speaking, though, if you were imposter, how many people would you have killed by now?"

"I would say probably around two."

"Interesting," You said right before a body was reported. It was Sykkuno's. Felix and Rae were also dead.

"WHAT!" Corpse yelled.

"Where was the body at?" Sean laughed.

"Uh I found it in electrical," Bretman said.

"I'm pretty sure Karl was in there earlier."

You calmly said, "It's not Karl, I was with him for most of the round."

"How do we know the two of you aren't imposters?" Sean asked.

"I was alone with him, he would have taken the chance to kill me."

"No, he's your best friend."

"He's also ruthless,"

"TRUE! SO TRUE!" Karl yelled.

"So skip?" Corpse asked.

Everyone agreed and the voting was skipped.

The next round, I spent with Ethan. He was pretending to be mad at me because Sean said Karl was my best friend.

"What happened to Blue Boi Buddies, huh?!" He exclaimed.

"Neither of our hair is even blue anymore!" You argued back.

You were in reactor with him when Corpse and Poki walked in. He hit the lights and you took it as a sign to double kill. He killed Poki, you killed Ethan, and the two of you made your way to electrical to help fix lights.

You and Corpse went the opposite direction of reactor after the lights were fixed, Karl going with you.

Poki's body was reported. That double kill only left you, Corpse, Sean, Karl and Bretman. You only needed two more kills.

"I still think it's Karl and (Y/n)," Sean said quickly.

"I was with (Y/n) the whole time," Corpse said, "In fact, I think it's you."

"That does make sense. Why so quick to accuse others, Sean?" You ask.

"It's not me!" He yelled.

"I actually agree with Corpse and (Y/n)," Bretman said.

"I was with you!"

We all voted for Sean, him voting for Karl. Sean was ejected.

When you load into spawn, you wait for the kill cool down and kill Bretman, saving Karl.

"Victory" appeared on your screen.

"God damn it!" Sean yelled.

"Good job, (Y/n)," Corpse said lowly.

You smiled, a slight blush on your cheeks, "You too Corpse."

"Their voices go together and they're a fuckin dream team? What have i done...," Felix sighed.

⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒

A few more games went by. Most of them you and Corpse spent together, whether you were both crewmates or if one of you was imposter.

You really enjoyed his company and you actually got along with him pretty well.

⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒

"(Y/n), before we get serious, I have one question to ask you." Corpse said as both of your characters stopped.

"What's that?" You giggled.

"Do you know Bingus?"

"Bingus? As in, our lord and savior, Bingus?"

You could hear the smile in his voice, "It's settled, you're my wife now."

This made both of you laugh and your chat go crazy.

⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒

Eventually, people had to start leaving. You said your goodbyes to everyone and left the discord call and the game.

You set stream to where it was just your face cam.

"Guys, what should we do now?"

You saw some people asking what time it was for you.

"It's 3 AM right now... I’m not tired though.” You had been streaming for a few hours; You never even noticed how late it got.

People in chat were yelling at you to go to sleep, making you chuckle.

“How about we do a quick QnA, then at 3:30 I go to bed. Deal?”

You watched as the chat filled with questions. They obviously seemed to like the idea.

“‘Who is your best friend? Karl or Ethan?’ Neither, Alex Quackity. Next question.” You answered quickly.

You laughed, “I’d like to clarify that that’s a joke, i love all my friends equally.”

You answered more questions. Some were from new viewers asking basic questions, some were about future streams and videos. 

“‘How do you feel about people shipping you and Corpse?’“ People are already shipping us?” You laughed, “I’ve said before that I’m okay with shipping, as long as the other person is too. I think it’s funny.”

You continued to read chat. “Wait, we’re trending?”

You checked Twitter and “#(your and corpse’s ship name)” was trending in the US.

You laughed as you scrolled through the tag, “Oh this is so funny.”

“Fanart already?! You guys are so talented!”

You read chat, looking for more questions. You saw people telling you that it’s 3:30.

“Okay fine, a deal’s a deal. I hope you all have, or had, a great day and I’ll see you guys later. Depending on what time it is for you, you should also get some sleep. Stay hydrated, love you!” You ended stream.

⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒⌒

You scrolled through Twitter as you laid in bed, liking fanart and dumb memes. Also replying to a few of your friends’ tweets.

karl :) @/KarlJacobs_

@/(your username) what the honk ?

*clip of you saying Quackity was your best friend*           

You liked the tweet and replied, “karl no,,, look away,,,”

You continued scrolling, feeling your eyes get droopy. Your eyes fell closed but quickly opened when your phone vibrated. It was a DM. 

From Corpse.

You two had followed each other earlier.

Corpse: hey (y/n), just wanted to say you’re really cool and i’d love to play again with you soon 

You smiled, a light blush spreading across your cheeks, and replied.

You: i’d love to, corpse

Corpse: ok, see you soon ‘wife’

You: back at ya, ‘husband”

Corpse: :)

You: :)

[pi-cat000]

BNHA: Kakashi dimension hops crossover (2)

Summary: Kakashi gets dumbed into the My Hero Academia universe through random plot devise.

Characters:  Kakashi Hatake

Fandoms: My Hero Academia and Naruto

WARNINGS: Mentions of violence/injury

... PREV / NEXT

...

Life in his hospital bed passes slowly while he waits for his chakra to replenish. Always a sluggish process for Kakashi. With nothing to do, nowhere to go and a significant lack of motivation to find either, there is a lot of time to think. Too much time. With what was shaping up to be the fourth great shinobi war, there was no time for reflection or resting. To suddenly have this much downtime thrust upon him is throwing him through a loop. And he doesn’t even have his periodic trips to the memorial as a distraction. If only Sakura could see him now, resting and recuperating like a good injured shinobi.

Doctor Wada, the ever-attentive physician, returns a few more times to ask more questions and offer more reassurances. He seems set on his theory that Kakashi’s yet to be properly identified quirk was the cause of his memory problems. Kakashi runs through a sweet of memory and vision tests. A baseline for later testing when his eye is healed he is told.

“The police have a few questions regarding your situation. With your permission, they would like to conduct an interview,” says Wada on Kakashi’s third day of being officially awake, “Of course, as your doctor, I have the final say in the matter so if you would rather wait just say the word.”

Kakashi gives another bland smile, “Ah, you are too kind.” Police…as in, an authority the dealt with civilian conflict? “I think I’ll answer their questions. Wouldn’t want to stall an investigation.”

He had been wondering when or if he would be investigated. How similar would it be to Kohoha’s internal police force?

“Humph. If you think you’re ready for it.”

He maintains his smile. It was as good an opportunity as any to continue gathering information with the bonus of breaking up the monotony of waiting in a hospital bed for his injuries to heal. Doctor Wada spends the rest of the check-up muttering about pushy police officers and how underappreciated his medical opinion was.

..

The two men that come to question him are wearing matching uniforms which are very telling of the sort of organisation they belong to. White and dark blue. Not made to camouflage or reinforce. Restrictive seaming around the arms, preventing any extreme movement. Their shoes are sturdy but inflexible with heavy soles. Manurable but not designed for any excessive combat. Not a uniform you would give a force intended to physically subdue threats. Whereas Konoha’s police force was comprised mainly of genin and chunin, these men were closer to civilians in pure physical ability. Ah, but he is beginning to suspect that this was the norm here. The people here were softer in a way that was hard to define. 

Kakashi watches them approach, seated upright in his bed, hands resting loose in his lap, aiming it create an impression harmlessness. One good thing to have come from agreeing to this interview was getting his own private hospital room. Now there was no one around to raise an alarm if something went wrong and he was forced to act.

“Good morning,” The older one of the two starts, politely dipping his head, “Kakashi was it?”

“Hmm,” he smiles, “Morning.” There is a pause like they are waiting for him to give his last name. He doesn’t.  

“Well,” The man clears his throat, “I am officer Takata Toyokazu, currently in charge of investigating the circumstances surrounding the assault on your person.” An ID card, very similar to Konoha’s own ID cards is presented, “This is my partner. We’re from Hosu’s Central Police and we have a few questions if you don’t mind answering them for us.”

“Ah,” Kakashi eyes the ID, lamenting the fact that his sharingan is covered under a swatch of bandages and thus inaccessible without obvious movement, “I am afraid my memory just isn’t all there. Apologies in advance if my responses are lacking.”

He lets a little humour leak into his tone. It was time to do a little prodding and gauged how this place's ‘police’ conducted their investigations.

“Yes. We were informed about your memory problems.” The two share an obvious glance and there is a definite note of scepticism there. “Nevertheless, any information would be appreciated.”

“Of course.”  He easily agrees, shrugging, projecting an air of casual nonchalance.

Takata blinks “Right,” and Kakashi can practically see his brain stalling, “Well, you were found on the corner of First and Eleventh street in Hosu’s Central Business District. Would you say this is accurate?”

Kakashi thinks for an exaggerated moment, “I do remember a lot of people. I think someone called for help?”

“You were picked up in an ambulance yes. Do you remember what happened before that?”

“Hmm, I was attacked…there were a lot of trees.” He nods like he has just delivered a useful bit of intel.

“Trees?” Is the deadpan response.

“You know…tall plants with leaves and a….”

“We know what trees are. So, you were in a place with a lot of trees before you were in Hosu’s business district.”

“Probably.”

“A park maybe? There are a few around Hosu. Do remember anything else. Distinctive landmarks?”

“Ah,” he waits for a beat, “No.”

Kakashi is the subject of a disbelieving squint. “No names. Streets. Nearby locations?”

“Nope. All gone.” He says cheerfully and Takata’s brow twitches into an irritated frown.

“You were admitted with multiple stab wounds. Do you remember how you got them?”

He shrugs, “A knife probably.”

“Well, do you remember anything about who was holding the knife?”

“OH!” The two men startle at this sudden exclamation, “It was a man.”

There are a few seconds of silence. “What did the man look like?”

“I don’t remember that bit.”

This time he gets a very obvious frown. Apparently, realising that the current line of questioning is getting them nowhere, the officer motions to his partner and is handed a large envelope. After some shuffling around, a paper file is produced and flipped upright in Kakashi’s direction. It is a photograph of kunai, shuriken, senbon, razor wire and assortment of other weaponry he carried around on his person. He had wondered what the hospital had done with his stuff.

“These are the weapons found on your person when you were admitted to hospital. All confiscated. It’s illegal to carry these sorts of thrown weapons and knives in Japan.”

He scans the photo with interest. The image has his weaponry all laid out in neat lines.

“Really?” He is not even faking his curiosity this time. No one carried around any weapons at all? That wasn’t just a trend limited to the hospital? 

“Yes.” Comes the short response, “what were you using them for.”

“Oh, I don’t remember,” he says gleefully, “How scary.” And gets another round of scowls. After doggedly refusing to give more than vague answers and misdirection, the two increasingly frustrated men prepare to leave.

“If you do remember anything, please call.” A small paper card displaying a string of numbers is presented to him. “You’ll have to come down to the station and give an official statement once the hospital clears you as well so don’t forget. We’ll  get in contact if any arrests are made regarding the perpetrator.”

Kakashi knows enough about investigations to recognise that one, the two standing next to his bed were searching for some specific information and had found Kakashi’s responses lacking, and two, they had no idea who Kakashi was and knew even less about how he might have gotten here.

In the end, they just leave. No threats. No mind games. No attempts to arrest or move him to a secure location for further questioning. Nothing. Kakashi follows after the pair, pausing behind his door to listen to the two talk just outside his room. Officer Takata is obviously angry going of his slightly uneven breathing.

“That was a waste of time,” he grumbles.

“Do you think he was lying?”

“Oh, that smiley bastard definitely knows something more than he is letting on. Tch. Memory problems my ass…”

The is a pause before the younger man asks, “still think it’s connected to that Hero Killer sighting from a few days ago?”

“If he is telling the truth then no. The stabbing lines up with the Hero Killer’s MO but the target is all wrong. There is no Kakaski with a ‘sharingan’ quirk listed on the Registry or as any Hero, Sidekick or Hero agency employee. If he did have a run-in with the Hero Killer, it wasn’t targeted. Probably annoyed the guy into stabbing him if anything.”

There is the sound of footsteps as the two men begin to retreat down the hall.

“A dead-end then.”

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“What a shame. I thought for sure, what with the extent of the injuries, that this was a Hero Killer case. Perhaps it was another Villain? Or a vigilante maybe?”

“Who though? Hosu doesn’t have any active Vigilantes or big-name Villains. Not ones who go around stabbing people to that extent. You saw the hospital report. The man was seconds away from bleeding out and that head wound was obviously aimed at disabling his quirk.”

“Tch. Without any leads, we have nothing to go on. And if Kakashi is a Villain or criminal himself, there’s no evidence and nothing we can pin him with other than a fine for carrying banned weaponry.”

The voices grow fainter as the two walk further away from his room. They seemed suspicious but not overly concerned with Kakashi’s lies so it is not a huge surprise that nothing came of the interview. Despite their obvious irritation, their response had been ones of mild annoyance and moderate distrust. If either of them had had a kekkei genkai it hadn’t been used. Perhaps, their abilities weren’t suited to interrogation. Kakashi had been obtuse enough that surely, they would have been tempted if it were a possibility. It does conform to a general trend in which people underestimate his threat level, treating him  like a civilian. It was probably for the best.

Kakashi returns to his bed and stares at the paper card with the numbers. Obviously, they expected him to know what to do with it. Something to do with communication. Probably related to the small plastic devices nearly everyone in the building carried and spoke into on occasion. A radio of some sort. He had seen a few with numbers running across them. 

From the exchange, he has a few more points to consider and mull over. Villain. Hero. Vigilante. He knows these terms, has heard people in his ward mention them before and knows they are important in some way.

…

Having a new room meant he needed to relearn everyone’s schedules.  While doing so, he finally pinpoints why the people here feel so off. They lacked a level of…weariness…vigilance…that was both hard to describe and hard to notice until it wasn’t there anymore. Kakashi eyes the young nurse as she enters his room yawning, fixing her hair up as she walks, talking over her shoulder at someone behind her.

He had always thought the civilians of Kohoha lived free from most trouble. Not completely relaxed but still having a calm enough life. Well, calm when the village wasn’t being invaded. Now, he is revaluating that opinion.  When compared with these people, Kohoha civilians were stiff, suspicious, almost paranoid. Konoha’s people had hardiness to them, a useful trait when living in a Hidden-Village. They were especially wearily when it came to interacting with shinobi no matter how banally and harmless the shinobi acted. It was an attitude to be expected when there was a very real chance of deadly injury should the shinobi be unfriendly or unstable. A very real possibility with all the war and ever-present threat of enemy invasion and chakra monster attacks.  

Or maybe that was just his own experience as he never really interacted with many civilians and he his reputation wasn’t great.

“Hello Kakashi, how are you this evening,” The nurse greets him with a relaxed grin. He gives his bland smile and watches as she checks the various medical apparatus around Kakashi’s bed.

“I talked to the ward supervisor about your television. It should be working now.”

“Is it?”

Kakashi knows what a television is…they had a few of them in T&I, used for surveillance, and for a few more for monitoring remote training grounds like 44’s Forest of Death.

“Here is the remote. There are quite a lot of channels so now you’ll have something to keep you entertained.” He stares at the metallic rectangle object. He thinks that there might be a cultural difference between his understanding of a television and the nurse’s because watching an interrogation was never something he found particularly entertaining.

“Maybe it will help jog your memory as well.” The nurse gives him an encouraging smile before returning to her work.

Kakashi examines the object, bemused, “Ah, thank you Ms.”

“My name is Iori Ie I handle this ward on weekday evenings. I’ll be happy to answer any other questions if you have any. Anything to make this transition process easier.” She is sincere in her next assurance, “Just you wait, by the time your injuries are healed, we’ll have you right back up to speed.”

Television is…interesting and somewhat baffling. It’s not that Kakashi hasn’t seen examples of this sort of technology before now, it is just the availability and use he finds strange. Whereas a sensible village might hoard any new technology of its own use, here it is distributed and shared without limit. There was one of these things in every patent’s room! The same went for the information it communicated. Information so undervalued there was almost too much of it. Kakashi gives up trying to make sense of anything a few days into gaining access to the television and its hundreds of ‘channels,’ pumping out a constant stream of information. Some of it was obviously fictional, movies, entertainment, but most of the time it was hard to tell if what he was looking at was staged or if he was misreading a cultural difference. There were ‘channels’ devoted to daily status updates, delivering ‘news’ on everything from the weather, local politics, villain attacks, general crime and everything in between.

One thing he does confirm is that he is nowhere near any hidden villages or even on the continent, maybe not even in the correct world. This place was separate. This village or city as it was called, consisted of millions in a country of billions. There were more people in ‘Hosu’ than there were in the whole Fire Country. A logistics nightmare for sure. No wonder security was so lax around the hospital. Kakashi shakes his head and ends up switching off the television. Never would he have thought that having too much intel could be a bad thing.

“Ms Iori how would I go about getting something to read,” he asks the next day. She seems to be genuinely happy about his sudden sudden request. Kakashi hasn’t spoken or interacted much since waking, to busy trying to gauge whether the people surrounding him were threats.

He ends up with a pile of old manga volumes detailing the heroic adventures of some up and coming Hero protagonist and a stack of thin ‘magazines’ belonging to the nurse’s grown up son. The magazines are full of Hero analysis, speculation, and rumour like some sort of super detailed self-defeating bingo-book.  He just…doesn’t understand why anyone would let this sort of information circulate.

At least now he has a better idea about what a Hero and Villain was. A Hero was this word’s shinobi equivalent- if shinobi went out of their way to draw attention to themselves- acting more like a police force in that they managed threats to civilians instead of taking commissions and repelling external threats. Actually, they were nothing like Shinobi apart from their use of blood line abilities in combat. A Villain was like a missing-nin, hiding among the ridiculously large civilian population…sort of…

He needs to start working on a way home because he definitely doesn't understand this world.

...

NOTE: When Kakashi discovers the internet his brain will explode. 

PREV / NEXT

[caramelcal]

Fool for you

a/n: eye- y’all wanting a part 2? cause i have it planned lol x

it gets much more interesting i promise oml...the enemies arc really do be one of my faves tho

word count: 3.15k

warning: swearing

She couldn’t believe how much shit that stupid kiss had landed her in. Her head was clouded, arms crossed over her chest as she stared down at her lap, trying not to grumble. Not only her own manager was sat in the room, but 5 seconds of summer’s too, along with their bassist, one of the people she hated most, Calum Hood.

“We have seen how everyone reacted to the speculation,” The woman in front of her started, legs pressed together with a large binder sitting on her lap, hands folded gently on top. Normally Y/N got on quite well with her manager, Caroline, but right now she wanted to scream due to the words coming out of the woman’s mouth, “You’ve been gaining popularity from it, Y/N. This could be a great way for you to gain more of a following.”

Y/N had dreamed of the day she started to trend on Twitter, but this was not what she wanted to be trending for. She wasn’t trending for her music, not even her newest single. No, she was trending because everyone thought she was Calum Hood’s girlfriend.

Speaking of the boy, he sat beside her, keeping quietly to himself. This had to have been the first time that he had ever been in her presence where he hadn’t been annoying the shit out of her. Must be because his manager is in here. He had already been approached about it and seemed sold on the idea.

An idea of them being in a fake relationship.

Her, with Calum Hood. She wanted to scoff at the thought. He was unbearable at best, constantly annoying her to the point where she wanted to rip her hair out. When she had first been asked to be the opening act for 5 Seconds of Summer’s tour she had been ecstatic. The boys were nice, welcoming her onto their tour with open arms. Honestly, Y/N got on with all of them, apart from Calum. From the moment he set eyes on her he seemed determined to do anything and everything in his power to piss her off, slowly waiting until she finally lost her cool and lashed out. It was frustrating, especially considering Y/N knew she couldn’t do much about it.

Now, not only did she have to put up with Calum normally, but they wanted her to get close with him. To be in a fake relationship, which, obviously, meant spending more time with him.

“So, of course, you guys will have to be seen out in public with one another every so often so we were thinking you guys get ‘caught’ kissing my paps again, then we’re thinking dropping hints,” Ink began to get scribbled across a piece of paper, writing out a messy and brief plan which Y/N didn’t even want to look at, “Possibly y/n being caught wearing Calum’s shirt...We aren’t entirely sure yet but we will make sure to keep you updated. Do either of you have any questions?”

Despite the question seeming like it was for both of them, it was directed at Y/N, and she knew that. PR stunts and fake dating amongst celebrities were never unheard of, but she never thought she would be getting into one herself, not now and definitely not with Calum, “I do, actually. What’s in it for him exactly?”

The question was asked towards the two managers, y/n honestly didn’t want to even look at Calum right now. He probably wanted to do this simply to annoy her because he knew that he was the bane of her existence, but y/n just hoped that he wouldn’t get even more annoying, despite knowing he definitely would take advantage of the situation.

“Publicity,” His manager stated simply, nodding his head slightly in her direction. Y/n didn’t know what else to say, and they all were enveloped in a very uncomfortable silence before Caroline let out a sigh, snapping her folder shut.

“Well if that’s all,” She stood up, making y/n’s eyes travel up to her as she began to walk away, “We will leave you two be.”

With that, the two managers left without another word, shutting the door behind them. Y/n and Calum sat in awkward silence for a few moments, y/n’s eyes set firmly in the door before she stood up, going towards the door before Calum caught onto her hand.

“Where are you going?”

“Away,” Y/n huffed, tugging her hand away from the boy’s grip as she glared down at his hand. He awkwardly pulled his hand back, putting his hands down in his lap, “Going to get my last few hours of peace before we have to start this PR stunt.”

“Aw y/n/n, not wanna spend time with me, huh?” Calum teased, making her roll her eyes. He was already annoying her and he had barely spoken three sentences to her; something he had a special gift for.

“No, not really,” He gave her a fake pout before a smirk rose to his lips, making her roll her eyes.

Calum was acting as if she would actually enjoy his company. The same Calum Hood that woke her up by pouring a bucket of water on her that morning. Freezing cold water. Dickhead.

“Why are you doing this? Like why are you actually doing this?” She asked suddenly, making Calum meet her gaze with those brown eyes of his.

He shrugged, averting his gaze for a moment before speaking, “Publicity. It might not get us any more listeners but it’ll get people talkin’.”

They fell into an uncomfortable silence before y/n nodded her head, “Fair enough. I’m gonna get going. Bye.”

And with that, y/n left the room.

  Both y/n and Calum were walking together, hand in hand after a lovely ‘date’ together. It, honestly, was nothing short of awkward. Honestly, they didn’t know what to talk about with one another when they weren’t fighting; something that they became painfully aware of on their trip out that evening.

Calum, despite normally being reserved and quiet in public, actually took the lead in the conversation. Mostly because y/n didn’t know what to say and they knew that they couldn’t sit in silence, especially if someone noticed them and noticed that they didn’t even talk to one another.

It was the first PR date that had been set up, only three days after their meeting discussing the start of their fake relationship. Y/n couldn’t lie, she was incredibly nervous and uncomfortable, her white dress doing nothing to protect her from the cold air nipping at her skin.

As instructed, she was holding onto Calum’s arm, one wrapped around and intertwined with his bicep and the other one clasping their hands together. It’s a strange and awkward movement to uphold, especially when walking but they do it nonetheless.

“Calum, stop going so fast, I can’t keep up properly,” Y/n muttered to him quietly, almost tripping over her own feet when she felt herself getting tugged yet again due to her hold on Calum.

His eyes briefly flicked back to her, “I can’t really help it, y/n. I’m already going as slow as I can.”

“Well sorry I don’t have legs like the BFG like you, I’m trying not to fall ‘cause you keep tugging at me. This dress was not a good move for this,” She grumbled quietly again and Calum doesn’t even reply. Instead, he started walking even faster, “Calum! Slow down!”

She was pulled into a lane by Calum by the time she had finished that sentence, his hands on either side of her arms holding her in place. His broad shoulders are obstructing her from being able to see out of the small alleyway but before she could ask why he did that, he’s shushing her quietly and whispering, “Saw the paps. They saw me, too. It’s time.”

God, he made it sound so dramatic. It wasn’t like they were fighting off any evil spirit or villain, all they had to do was get caught kissing by the paps. It didn’t seem like it was going to be a particularly difficult job, just one they had to execute properly, and right now everything was going pretty smoothly. They just had to make sure that it looked authentic and like they actually wanted to do it.  

He let out a breath he was holding as he looked down at her, asking her silently for permission to start as his fingers went around the back of her neck, thumb resting on her cheek. She nodded her head and he began to lean in, y/n standing on her tip-toes with her arms splayed over Calum’s shoulders woth him bending down and pressing his lips on hers.

They kissed for several moments, taking little breaks in between. No tongue was a rule they had decided on so instead they stuck to closed mouth. On the last peck shared between the two of them, Calum gently pulled away, y/n’s bottom lip trapped between his lips before her feet hit the ground, their lips now completely disconnected.

She, discretely, tried to peek around Calum to see the paps, but couldn’t, so instead, they stayed in that position for a little while longer. Her eyes glanced up at Calum, seeing him still staring down at her, she whispered, “What?”

“Nothing,” He dismissed, shaking his head hesitantly before he took a small step back before putting his hand out for y/n to grab onto. She shot him a smile as she laced their fingers together, tugging him along and out of the alley.

The games had begun.

  It’s only about a week later when y/n was doing her washing as normal in some hotel’s launderette. She had been off of social media for the past few days, paying no mind to the several thousand people talking about her and Calum's 'relationship’. It surely had blown up, and some might say more than they had expected it to. Y/n had accumulated thousands of more followers after the whole fiasco and although she wouldn’t admit it, she enjoyed seeing the fan theories.

Calum had actually been a lot nicer to her recently, something she hadn’t expected, but enjoyed very much. A smile is on her face as she thought about the lack of pranks that he had been playing on her, and sure, he was still irritating her but it was simply with his words. He walked her down to the launderette, before turning to get his own load of dark clothes.

Surprisingly, despite having rather heavy music, y/n owned quite a lot of white clothes. Sure, she mostly wore black, but right now she was washing her white clothes. Well, what were her white clothes...

Now? They’re pink.

She took the wet fabric out of the washer, noticing one of her favorite white dresses is now dyed an ugly pink, one that she knows she won’t pull off. Her eyebrows are furrowed, a frown settling on her face as she tried to pull the clothes out, trying to find the root cause of the problem.

That’s when she found it. A red sock; Calum’s red sock.

Suddenly everything seemed to make sense as to why he was being so nice to her; so he could pull another prank on her when she least expected it. That’s why he had waited behind once she left the launderette, that’s why he seemed so interested in her white, now pink, clothes that she apparently ‘hadn’t washed in a while and should definitely wash’. 

“Calum!” She screamed out in anger, glad for the lack of other people in the small room, clenching her fists around the wet, pink clothes in her hand. They’re all ruined, inconsistent blotches of different shades of pinks coating the fabrics.

It was only seconds later when Calum popped his head up in confusion, “Yeah?”

Except, Y/n didn’t reply, and instead trained her e/c eyes onto his brown ones with a firm glare, one filled with frustration and anger. He, however, hadn’t seen her glare just yet as he surveyed the room before he catches onto her crouched-down figure. She watched as they trailed down to the pink clothes in her hand and he struggles to fight a grin off of his face.

“Thought you were doin’ a white load, y/n/n?” His voice had snide amusement in it and it only made y/n even madder.

However, before she replied, she grabbed onto the red sock of his and threw it at his head, letting out a complaint that sounds more like a whine, “You’ve ruined my favorite dress, asshole!”

“Woah calm down sweetheart, don’t be rude to your boyfriend,” Calum teased, walking around to where y/n was sat, reaching down to ruffle her hair. She quickly swatted his hand away with a grumble.

“Fake. Fake boyfriend, Hood.”

Calum simply rolled his eyes in reply, waving her off, “Yeah, yeah whatever. Enjoy your pink clothes.”

     It was only a week later when management is rushing them to take nice pictures together and becoming Instagram official. Theories are still burning in the air, especially after they were ‘caught’ by paps, kissing, for a second time. Everyone knew something was going on, that much was obvious, but they wanted to hear it from them.

They snapped pictures off stage, the last one being of Calum’s arm over y/n’s shoulder, holding her close to his body with her lips placed on his cheek. Her eyes are closed upon instruction, and he has a bright smile on his face, looking straight at the camera. The photos they snapped were quickly looked over before they’re approved to post on Instagram.

Y/n doesn’t know what to say, and in fact, she’s finding it hard to breathe. It was only fifteen minutes before she had to go on stage for their next concert, and this was the most nervous she had felt in ages. What if she gets hate? What if the whole fandom hated her? She knew that most likely some fangirls would be jealous, that was perfectly understandable, she just hoped no one went far enough to send her tons of hate; especially considering it was fake.

Y/n didn’t like this situation any more than they did but there was nothing she could do about it. Watching over Calum’s shoulder, she saw him press post, and she felt like she couldn’t even breathe. She felt like the air was being restricted from her lungs, and she can’t even bring herself to opening her phone to see people freaking out over the announcement of their ‘relationship’.

“Well, that’s that.” Calum looked at her over his shoulder, letting out a soft sigh as his brown eyes wrack over her face. She’s pale, and she didn’t even seem to hear his as he talked, making his eyebrows furrow in confusion, “Y/n? You good there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” She dismissed quickly, taking a step away from him, wringing her hands awkwardly. She’s nodding her head, but her eyes are firmly set on the ground now and Calum knows that she’s nervous. Sure, the two weren’t close and Calum took enjoyment in annoying her, but he was surprisingly good at telling how she was feeling simply from her body movements.

He hesitated, lips parting as he thought of what to say as he stared at the smaller girl who looked like she wanted the ground to swallow her whole, but after a few moments, his lips snapped shut. He wasn’t good at consoling, especially not her. And even if he did want to try, what could he possibly say?

This situation wasn’t ideal for her. Sure, it got her publicity, but he knew it wasn’t the type that she wanted. She hadn’t been fully introduced to the famous lifestyle yet, articles written about her, fan accounts, everything so he knew this was going to be hard for her. It took him a while to adjust to the lifestyle, and sure things like paps were still uncomfortable but they weren’t scary anymore.

As he stared at her, a frown prominent on his lips, he studied her. He noticed how awkward and uncomfortable she had become from the moment that he had posted the photo, almost as if she was awaiting an attack. He knew it was scary, the paps, the fangirls, and he also knew that this abrupt change in lifestyle from this moment on was going to be difficult for her; so he would make it easier.

He would answer the questions, take the heat about the relationship. He would protect her from all of the nasty comments as best as he could because no one deserved to be flung into the lifestyle like she was being right now, despite wanting publicity. This was a whole new life starting for her from the moment he posted the picture and as he nodded his head discretely, it was like a deal had been sealed with himself.

He was going to help her through this, even if she still hated him.

      It was three hours after the show had taken place and she still hadn’t turned her phone back on yet. She felt sick to her stomach, staring at her phone almost as if it was taunting her; itching for her to open Instagram but at the same time, wanting her to stay far, far away from the app.

Yet, soon enough she found herself booting up her phone and going onto Instagram, almost immediately finding Calum’s photo. She clicked on the comments and was pleasantly surprised. People were actually being supportive.

“omg look at them!!!”

“THEY LOOK SO GOOD TOGETHER WTF”

“I want someone to look at me the way Cal looks at Y/n”

That last one made her smile. She knew exactly what picture they were referencing. The one where y/n has her back to the camera in Calum’s embrace, and he’s staring down at her with a smile, arms wrapped around her, pulling her flush against his chest. She remembered her face buried deep into Calum’s shirt, surprised that the makeup she was wearing didn’t rub off on the material.

She was subconsciously shaking her head as she pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on top of them. She flicked back up to the pictures, almost analyzing the way Calum stared down at her. The fan was right, Calum looked at her with so much “love” in his eyes, a look that y/n had never seen on Calum before.

It was crazy. If y/n didn’t know any better she would think that Calum actually was in love with her but the only thing he loved about her, was how annoyed he could get her. Calum was certainly a good actor, looking at her like she was the sun and he was the revolving planets; like the only girl in the entire universe. Well, at least if Calum got bored of music he could go into acting.

They already had everyone fooled, and they were just getting started...

[chibivesicle]

Golden Kamuy - Kikuta really deserved better [part 2] 277-279.

Can you tell by my title that I’m a fan of Kikuta and I have some choice words for Noda?  Chapter 277 starts out with an introduction to the regional politics of Meiji era Japan.  The entire political shift occurred with the marriage of convenience between Choushuu and Satsuma (the Sat-Chou alliance) and how that is playing out in government and the military. With Hanazawa on the Satsuma side a commanding officer is having Tsurumi deal with the damage control.  That being Lt. General Okuda (and Kikuta’s boss)

He discloses how he’s the person who helped to cover up the scandal for Hanazawa and more of the regional politics comes into play as he pulls Tsurumi into this.

Recall that Tsurumi is from Niigata and we know he is from a family that lost power and wealth due to political changes.  He assumes that of course Tsurumi would hold a grudge towards those from the Sat-Chou alliance.  Usami is also from a fallen samurai family in Niigata and we know that Ogata is from Ibaraki and also from a samurai family on the losing side.  Tsukishima is from the island of Sado where unwanted people were dumped in Niigata so he is also an outsider.  We learn of his ‘true’ feelings as the tells his core group his opinion on things.

I love how we get unhinged Tsurumi calling it all a farce and he’s over Central.  But most importantly Okuda confirmed his own intel about the gold he learned while in Russia at some point in time.  His gold plan can slowly move along.  So Tsurumi becomes in the Hanazawa scandal cover up looking for the young 2nd Lt. and Kikuta, working under Okuda’s direct orders.

Despite his best efforts, Kikuta’s plan is revealed by a secretary at the Military Academy, while we know that Sugimoto and Kikuta are en route to the engagement dinner.

Hanazawa panics and sprints out to determine what is happening. Right on his tail is Tsurumi and his key team of Ogata, Tsukishima and Usami.  Clearly this is going to become a huge mess.  The next few pages are amusing, but really don’t add value to the plot.  I am impressed that Kaeko has an excellent plot to get Sugimoto naked and I commend her efforts!  GK is never short of strong female characters.  Who enjoy sex.

This sets up a hilarious moment where he’s naked and trapped in a bedroom while she leverages the potential scandal to her advantage.  By that point Tsurumi has caught up to them.  What is most interesting is when Usami addresses Ogata as Hyakunnosuke and asks him what he thinks about meeting his brother.  It is clear this isn’t out of concern from Usami’s part, we know he hates Ogata to his very core.

But as usual, Ogata doesn’t respond and we just see only a part of his eyes, not even a glance of his lips to give us an idea of what he’s thinking.

Kaeko and Sugimoto continue to talk as she reveals what she knows from Hanazawa Hiro.  She had been a nurse during the first Sino-Japanese war so it has allowed her to reflect on the impact of war on individual soliders.

This tells us a few things;  Hiro’s patriotism is more nuanced.  If she were being selfish and just saying she doesn’t want her son to go off to war without experience it, that would be one thing.  Instead, she knows being a military spouse first hand what happens - no one could say she didn’t do her own duty and go likely above and beyond.  Ultimately, she wants to protect her son from her own experiences and observations and be a mother.

Sugimoto then realizes he needs to bail and leaves poor Kikuta confused.  And then bam! The 27th is there.

Of course this leads to the most Sugimoto situation of all time!  Tsurumi threatens Kaeko with his handgun and Ogata asks where Yuusaku is.  Of course Sugimoto flies out of the bathroom naked sans Kikuta’s hat and Ogata is just amused beyond belief.

This would be complete if he were relaxed eating a box of popcorn or something like that. 278 continues this absolute chaos and lots of fan service for Miss Kaeko!  I really don’t think the fight scene needs much meta.  Ogata just finds it amusing (and btw sucks at hand to hand combat) while Usami rumbles with Sugimoto.  Tsurumi realizes he’s not Yuusaku and Kikuta rushes in and gets shot in the shoulder by Tsukishima.

Somehow, Kikuta is able to get the rest of them to flee but not without running into the actual Hanazawa Yuusaku.  Awkward.  Tsurumi only then realizes that Kikuta was doing his job and they run out into the street.

Kaeko tries her best to convince Sugimoto to marry her.  Granted he is a very heroic figure and he fought to protect her.  However, reality wouldn’t allow that to happen and Sugimoto decides to join the army - thinking he won’t starve that way.

Kikuta looks so sad and disappointed when he hears this.

He’s definitely thinking of his younger brother who died b/c he told him to join the army with him.  I loved the fact that we learn that Kaeko got to be a successful woman who was also compassionate to others. 

There is a quick exchange that shows the first encounter between Ogata and Yuusaku.  Yuusaku notices Ogata and salutes him as a cadet.

Ogata doesn’t even return the salute and he look he gives him out of the corner of his eyes.  What is he thinking?  I’d say Yuusaku doesn’t know who Ogata even is.  But something has him very suspicious to be this leery of him.  This also makes me think of this previous encounter between Koito and Ogata in chapter 200.

This time Ogata is bolder when he walks by Koito who is also currently still in the Army Academy.  Except unlike Yuusaku who doesn’t seem to pick up on Ogata’s vibes, Koito does!  And the two of them stare each other down.  I think that this in part shows that Koito has more innate awareness of things and could be considered more of a ‘natural’ in the military.  Which Yuusaku isn’t.  We have no evidence Yuusaku has any sort of military talent or skills. 

The chapter ends with Kikuta asking Sugimoto if he’s serious about joining the military and how he’s already fated to go to hell based on what he’s done in his life.  279 continues the conversation between Kikuta and Sugimoto and he flat out tells Sugimoto about how his brother died of illness in the army during the Sino-Japanese war.

Sugimoto then becomes Kikuta’s younger brother telling him that it is time to move on.  This continues the trend in GK where a character that is speaking becomes someone else to the listener.

This is most evident with Asirpa when she becomes Yuusaku on more than one occasion to Ogata.

But this facial expression from Kikuta [sobs].

No wonder Kikuta worked so hard to save Ariko’s life!  He can’t just always be responsible for the deaths of others.

Sugimoto convinces Kikuta that he’ll be alright in the army and he relents and lets him keep the cap.  This shows that Kikuta has moved on from the death of his brother - a big deal!  In an unusual way, Sugimoto has helped Kikuta move on and take the next step in the healing process. Kikuta reports to his commander in the 1st.  Okuda wants him to keep an eye on Tsurumi.  Obviously, he knows now that Tsurumi interfered with Kikuta’s plans for Hanazawa rather heavy-handedly so he would need someone else to balance it out.

It then reveals that Ogata is also working for Okuda in the 1st.  This explains why when the two of them crossed paths in the brewery they did not engage but nor did they appear to exchange any information.

I can’t help but feel like something is still off with this.  Ogata does have skills from working in intelligence with Tsurumi.  He’s observant, makes himself invisible and can get others to talk easily.  But Ogata being a 100% willing spy - it seems like he wants something else out of this. Kikuta’s character screams secret agent - but Ogata, he’s something else.  I’m not sure if Ogata’s choice to be a spy on Tsurumi was a real choice.

When Ogata and Tsukishima had their shoot out in Yubari at Edogai’s, Tsukishima told him he was a pet cat for Central.  Ogata replied that they were part of a rebel element.  We know that Ogata was working with Tamai at the beginning of the manga.  I struggle to see how Ogata has loyalty to anyone honestly.  He seems to be moving throughout this game with again his own mysterious objective.  Ogata is cynical and has no belief in the nation state nor does he harbor any sort of deep patriotism towards Imperial Japan.

Since Okuda is friends with Hanazawa and is based in Tokyo, he may have known Ogata since his birth and has kept tabs on him after the Ogata grandparents took him back to Ibaraki with his mom.  Ogata’s existence might be a sort of trump card that Okuda is keeping . . . but others found out as well like Tsurumi.  Did Okuda have Ogata tell or leak information that Ogata is Hanazawa’s first son? The chapter jumps to the 203 meter hill in the war and we see Yuusaku fallen on the battlefield.  Ogata watches from distance, his face cut off while other members of the 27th run out to help Yuusaku.

This finally reveals Yuusaku’s eyes!  Not the anticipated reveal - I kept thinking this was something that Ogata was going to see but it shows us clear eyes.  Which look sort of similar to Asirpa’s eyes.

So many thoughts are jumping around in my brain about this reveal.

1.) These eyes are not the ‘trademark’ Hanazawa eyes.  Dark black orbs with those eyebrows!  This indicates his eyes aren’t from his father.

Seeing this, I can’t help but think that Yuusaku is not Hanazawa’s son.  Instead, Hiro had an affair with someone else.  A major theme in GK is that the children inherit the skills of their parents.  Asirpa is able to do many things as she inherited the intelligence of Wilk.  And that Ogata is the true inheritor of Hanazawa’s military skills.

Recall this from chapter 58.  Ogata leads the crappy local gang against Hijikata and acts like a commander.

We know that Tsurumi’s lie about Ogata wanting to avenge Hanazawa is to keep Nikaido in the dark.

This would also explain why everything we learn about Yuusaku is terrible at military things.  If he also isn’t Hanazawa’s son it would make it even more reason for Hiro to try to prevent him from entering the military since he’s not even genetically related to this great line of Hanazawas.  I wish we knew more about the Ogata side of things - I think we’ll also learn that the Ogata side had competent military men on it as well.  2.) Yuusaku’s eyes are the same as Asirpa’s and indicate their sort of innocence.  In this case, it would perfectly explain why Ogata sees Yuusaku instead of Asirpa when he has the fever and then the melt down on the ice floe.  Yuusaku kept himself naive and innocent to meet his father’s expectations.  A man who I don’t think is even his father at this moment.  Therefore, Ogata’s guilt on killing Yuusaku is tied to his sort of innocence in these situations and why he can’t seem to shake his mental confusion when it comes to Asirpa.  However, unlike Yuusaku, Asirpa has never forced herself on him to do things or guilt tripped him so it leaves things open for him to not link her to Yuusaku.

3.) Yuusaku was going to blow Ogata’s cover working for Okuda.  Now that we know that Ogata was working for Okuda while in the 27th it means he’d have to keep his role quiet.  If Yuusaku found out that Ogata was working for Okuda, I could see him going to Tsurumi and telling him this information.  Therefore, to protect his status, Ogata used this as his rationale to kill Yuusaku on the battle field.  I have never figured out if Ogata was nudged to kill Tsurumi by his ‘don’t kill him right now.’ comment as one of Tsurumi’s backwards motivations that lead Ogata to directly killing him. So many possibilities!  I want more Ogata backstory dammit!

Anyhoo, to not make this meta super long let’s get back to the action. Asirpa begins working out how to try to break the code.  Hijikata notes that Wilk could have used something other than kanji, since he’d know the Latin alphabet for Polish and Cyrillic for Russian.  Shiraishi makes a clear point that this could be a message from Wilk towards her, though it feels like he’s channeling Kiro.  Out of many of the Japanese characters Shiraishi time and time again comes out much more sympathetic to the minorities than others.

Asirpa begins to wonder how the coin is linked to the skins. She’s thinking things through and is on her way to solving the puzzle.

After saving Ariko, Kikuta is returning to Tsurumi’s group in the church.  Oh Roger, this is why I love you so much.

Look at that smirk with a slightly watery eye.  At the same time Tsurumi is also looking at the coin and realizes he’s figured it out.

Kikuta approaches the rest of the group and comments on if he’s found the location.  Tsurumi states that things are just getting started.  He casually pulls out his gun and fires two shots into Kikuta at point blank range.

And with this I am deeply saddened and shocked.  How dare you do that to Kikuta!!!  He was my Kiro replacement and now he’s also going to die.

First Boutarou died and now Kikuta.  [cries].  We know that Tsurumi is a shinigami but this is just brutal.  The bear death trio died early on in the manga.  Ogata escaped.  Kikuta now is the next link to Central that goes down.

[laequiem]

No tricks, only treats [ONESHOT]

/ Cardan and Jude join the rest of the family to enjoy Halloween in the Mortal World.

Part of Tales from the Mortal Realm, a collection of random moments in the lives of the Queen and King of Elfhame.

"Is it strange that I find you attractive dressed as such?"

I was looking at myself in the mirror, assessing my outfit, when Cardan sneaked into the room. His training with The Ghost was paying off, he was as silent as ever.

"Strange? Yes. Surprising? No."

Read it on ao3

"Is it strange that I find you attractive dressed as such?"

I was looking at myself in the mirror, assessing my outfit, when Cardan sneaked into the room. His training with The Ghost was paying off, he was as silent as ever.

"Strange? Yes. Surprising? No."

I saw him prowl towards me through the glass. He slid his arms around my waist, staring at me through my reflection.

Today is October 31st and Oak insisted we join him in celebrating Halloween. Of course, this means we all need costumes. I decided to go as the one character I knew more than anyone else.

Cardan.

I looked through his wardrobe for my outfit. It was quite hard to find a top that was loose enough to account for my breasts, as most of his clothes were tailored to fit him perfectly. I also found a dark blue coat, its collar covered in iridescent feathers. I gave up trying to find pants in his collection, as my hips would never fit, and just wore a pair of black leggings with black combat boots.

"What do you mean, dear Jude?"

"The only thing you love more than booze is yourself."

He raised his brows, making a show of looking offended. 

"Your capacity to lie to yourself will always impress me,” he said then plucked a kiss to my temple, “I love you more than I love wine."

I don’t think I will ever get over him being  caring . It felt as if he was a completely different person from the boy who would disturb lessons just to get attention.

Cardan turned me to face him, then inspected my face. “Something is missing.” He took my hand and directed me to his personal vanity. He opened the drawer and pulled out some cosmetics. He lined my eyes with kohl and coated my lashes with dark mascara. I suppressed my laugh when I saw he was so concentrated that he had stuck out his tongue. Then, he took out some glittery gold powder and applied it on my cheekbones. 

He took a step back to look at his handiwork and smiled.

“And the final touch,” he said as he plucked his crown off his head and put it on my head at an angle, “Voilà!”

I looked at myself in the mirror. I did not bother with any kind of wig. I put my hair up in elaborate braids, letting a few short curls hang in a few places. Yet, even without his signature dark hair, I still looked like him. I made faces at myself in the mirror, trying to get his grin right. 

Finally, I got up. “Your turn now, dearest Cardan.”

When Heather learned that Cardan would be coming too, she started suggesting outfits for him. She even went as far as drawing some of them. Something about his otherworldly looks inspired her. Maybe it's the tail, since a lot of her designs included it: a devil, sexy cat man and my personal favorite, a cute puppy.

In the end, I chose my own, petty idea. I walked in the closet and pulled out the outfit I had the servants clean for the occasion. 

“A King needs his Queen,” I grinned as I revealed the Queen of Mirth dress and crown.

Cardan threw his head back laughing. “You sure know how to hold a grudge.”

Thankfully, my husband was a team player, and he went with it. Even in this, he looked strikingly handsome. Or pretty, I guess. Unfair.

We landed in Maine in the early afternoon. It was strange to be awake so early, but Cardan did not seem bothered at all. We met up with Vivi, Heather, Oak, Taryn and Garrett at the entrance to FallFest, some kind of harvest festival that was held every October in the local park. It had everything from harvest contests to food stands, a section with typical carnival games, a small hay maze and even a haunted house.

I was not surprised to see my eldest sister dressed up, she went crazy for Halloween every year. Vivienne would dress up for a week straight before Halloween, even when she still lived in Elfhame. She was wearing a tight black bodysuit with a tail and claws as well as a black leather mask with cat ears. Heather dressed up as some kind of … plant lady? She had a short bodysuit made of green ivy leaves, green stockings and a long red wig. Oak was with them, wearing a reddish pink shirt with a big yellow star on it. I can only assume they went for pop-culture references I am unfamiliar with.

The real surprise was seeing my twin Taryn and her quiet lover also dressed up.

"What are you dressed as?", Cardan inquired, cocking his head to the side, "You ought to have dressed as Jude, you have already proved to be so good at it."

I snapped my head at him and slammed my foot as hard as I could on his. He was joking, of course. But the peace between me and Taryn was still fairly new. We mostly kept to ourselves and rarely talked. Garrett was back with the Court of Shadow and we were friendly, but he kept his professional and personal lives completely separated.

Cardan was hopping on one foot, scowling at me like he did not understand why I was upset. Taryn understood, though. She was sheepishly looking at the ground.

"I… I'm sorry for tricking you, Cardan."

I tried finding something to say to end the awkwardness. I wanted Cardan to apologize for what he said, but I knew he would not. Fae don't apologize.

Thankfully, Vivi broke the silence. "C'mon guys, we're here to HAVE FUN!" she complained, "What ARE you two dressed as?"

"Phantom of the Opera." Garrett replied.

"Nerds."

"Says the one dressed up as Catwoman." Garrett mocked.

The bickering continued, though less mean-spirited than Cardan’s original comment, as we walked down the main path. Our first stop was the pumpkin carving station. Each couple got their own pumpkin to carve, though Vivi and Heather’s pumpkin was mostly Oak’s handiwork and the couple making sure he did not stab himself. Taryn and Garrett made some intricate flower design on theirs, Garrett being the one doing the carving of course. As for us, well… Cardan had creative ideas, but no skills with a blade, and my skills were more of the  stabbing  variety. We settled on giving our pumpkin a traditional jack-o-lantern face. 

After the effort of carving pumpkins, we were starving. Oak was complaining, dragging his feet on the ground so much that Vivi and Heathers were holding both of his hands to pull him along. Behind them, I saw Taryn with her arm looped around The Ghost's.

I was suddenly very aware that Cardan and I were the only ones not holding hands.

Nobody knows us here. We needn't keep the appearance of the power couple, together to rule and nothing else.

I took my hand out of the pockets of my borrowed coat and tentatively brushed my fingers against Cardan's hand. I saw him whip his head towards me, and I blushed when I witnessed the surprise in his face. Soon enough, he smiled. One of those smiles he kept for me and only me, blissful and happy. The smile he gives me when we have the time to spend hours cuddled together in bed, enjoying each other's presence.

Cardan took my hand and squeezed. I squeezed back.

We spent the rest of the afternoon eating good food, trying to guess the weight of giant pumpkins and visiting a haunted house. Cardan was fascinated by the weird human traditions and absolutely ecstatic about the food. Pumpkin-spiced flavored food will become the new trend in Elfhame, judging by his reaction.

When the sun started to go down, Taryn and Garrett left for Madoc’s, who decided to try giving out candy to the trick-or-treaters. Heather and Vivienne had initially volunteered to take Oak trick-or-treating himself, but when one of their friends invited them to a party, we offered to take him instead. Oak was excited to spend more time with me and “Uncle Cardan”. 

I had not gone trick-or-treating in...10 years? Maybe 12? Since my parents died. Cardan, obviously, had never gone. So, dressed up as each other, with Oak dressed as some cartoon character, we roamed the residential streets of the city to beg for sweets.

“If it is called ‘trick-or-treat’, does that mean I can make bargains if someone refuses to give me candy?” Cardan asked as we watched Oak go up to a house.

I gave him my best ‘I’ll-strangle-you-if-you-do’ stare. “No. No turning people into cats, no curse making them hear imaginary insects buzzing around their ears.”

“Why is it called trick-or-treat, then?”

Vivienne told me they had to explain this to Oak, too, a few weeks ago. Someone at school had mentioned being excited to go trick-or-treating and my brother had been very confused.

“I don’t know.”

Cardan hmmed and smirked, “Perhaps the Folk were involved when the holiday was first established.”

I crossed my arms.

“If that’s the case, not all traditions need to be brought back.”

He laughed at that, then reached around me and pulled me closer to him.

“You win. I won’t trick anyone,” he crooned in my ear, “but I want a kiss for being well behaved.”

I rolled my eyes dramatically. “So needy.”

Once again, I had to remind myself that nobody knows us here. Nobody recognized our costumes today: in the mortal world, dressed as each other, we were only The Guy In An Ugly Dress and Fashionable Emo Boy. Nobody knew we are King and Queen of Elfhame, therefore there are no expectations to be the hedonistic king and his murderous wife.

I slid my hand behind his neck and pulled him down. I felt him smile as I captured his lips with mine.

“Ew, gross!” Oak’s voice came from the other end of the driveway, “Stop that, come here.”

Reluctantly, we pulled away from each other and looked towards the house. Oak was in front of the opened door, talking with a couple. 

“Honey, look,” the tallest woman exclaimed as we walked down the driveway, “She’s dressed as High King Cardan!”

“Oh my god,” the other one replied, sounding so very human, “that sounds kind of profane. Do you think he would have her hung for this?”

As I looked at the two women, I realized that Oak had stumbled upon the house of a Fae couple. They saw through his glamour, and he saw through theirs.

“This is my sister Jude,” Oak started, “and this is my Uncle Cardan.”

Both females had gone completely still and were staring at Cardan with wide eyes. Simultaneously, they bowed deeply. 

“Forgive us, Your Majesty. We weren’t expecting you.”

“We so rarely see our kind around here,” the shorter one said nervously, “we… wanted to meet who little Oak was with.”

“We have tea, if you would like.”

I dared a glance at Cardan and noticed he seemed amused. Was he delighted to make them uncomfortable?

“That won’t be necessary,” he said as he took my hand, “My  wife  has us on a tight schedule, we have other houses to visit. Have a nice evening.”

I caught the emphasis on  wife  and realized they only recognized him as royalty. ‘  Your Majesty ’, singular. I could tell from the two females’ expressions that they also understood their mistake. I felt bad for them knowing they had no ill intent, probably unaware of the situation in Faerie. Yet, I could not help the grin that crept on my face. I worked hard to become High Queen. I fought and killed my way through the ranks, almost dying. Multiple times. I made decisions that will haunt me until the day I die. I am High Queen, and the Folk must know. 

“It was nice meeting you,” I say as I take Oak’s hand, “You are welcome to visit us at the palace if you wish.”

My memories from before Faerieland were to blurry, I did not remember getting so much candy. Did Taryn and I get that much? How could we possibly have eaten all of that? Cardan and I each had a smaller bag, only accompanying Oak to some of the doors, but Oak had multiple full bags. Once he went to sleep, Oriana was more than happy to give us some. She had learned how bad candy was for children’s teeth - even little Fae kids. She filled little bags for us to take back to Elfhame. 

Like anyone eating candy for the first time, Cardan went a little crazy. He wanted to try everything. Faeries might be different in a lot of ways, but I now have proof that chocolate is addictive even to them. 

The High King of Elfhame ate so much candy that he fell asleep on the couch, to the former General’s dismay.

[mamamittens]

Long Awaited LoZ Thoughts

I’d like to start this off by explaining my background. I have a BA in English with a minor in Humanities. I have lived all my life in the Bible Belt of America, so my PoV of this series is inevitably going to be, at least in part, from the perspective of a Western-centric, Christianity-influenced woman. I have grown up with a deep interest in folk tales and mythology though, and took several classes on ancient cultures, so my base knowledge of religion all over the world is broader than what you’d probably expect. I am not religious myself, I’m actually agnostic. And this is just an in-universe look at the very strange religion of Hyrule. So, to make things easier, let’s just put aside the obvious meta issues with this world. The wonky timeline, complex lore changes between said timelines, and the fact that the whole series has clearly grown wildly over the course of its development without an overarching plot. The game mechanics being game mechanics. All of it. This whole thing will just be me trying to make sense of the world without the ‘it’s just a game, bro’ crutch. I will be drawing on what I know from the many games I’ve played myself, so if I don’t mention a big piece of lore from a specific game, it’s because I didn’t play it. Go ahead and rule out the early games before Ocarina of Time, as that’s the first game in the series I can remember playing. I was legitimately too young to have ever played anything prior to that, having been born in 1996. Now let’s get started, shall we?

 So, obviously everyone knows that the LoZ world is said to begin with the three goddesses. Din, Nayru, and Farore came together to create the world and before they yote themselves out of the narrative as direct players, they created the Triforce. A powerful artifact capable of granting a wish and giving their respective bearers undefined power. This is directly from Ocarina of Time and we see their symbol, the Triforce, all over the many games with very few exceptions. Now, to be clear, having a polytheistic religion with three main gods is hardly new. Hinduism has three main gods after all (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva), and depending on your flavor of Christianity, you have the holy trinity (God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit). There’s even the Celtic goddesses that come specifically in threes (collectively called The Morrigan; Eriu, Fodla, and Banba). This isn’t an exhaustive list of three divine beings, by the way, just know that three is a weird trend in western-centric stories, including religion. But what’s different about the three Hyrule Goddesses? Well, they’re weirdly small for big shot gods. Let me explain.

        So, the three Hindu gods I mentioned earlier each handle a specific aspect. Creation, destruction, and preservation, not necessarily in that order though (which god does what isn’t the point, so just roll with me here). These are very broad and powerful subjects. Christianity is much the same, even though it’s a monotheistic religion. God is literally an all-powerful, omniscient, omnipotent deity. Jesus is his son who gave his life to basically forgive all sin. And I’m not totally clear on the Holy Spirit, but these three are clearly Big Deals with Big Ideas behind them. A good rule of thumb for old religion is that the older the deity, the wider the scope of their job or what they represent. Which makes sense. If you had to personify the forces of the universe, you’d probably start with the sun instead of like… whatever god is responsible for the creation of rice specifically. The bigger and scarier the natural force, the bigger deal that god usually is, putting aside politics and cultural trends. Egypt is a good example of this, as their roster of gods tended to change a lot depending on who was Pharaoh at the time and wherever the city center was. Horus is the god of the sun, or at least one of them, and is generally considered king of the gods. Which makes perfect sense for a land largely made up of a desert.

But what are the three goddesses’ rulers of? Power, Wisdom, and Courage. Each with clear elemental associations and people that are obviously affiliated with them. Nayru, Goddess of Wisdom, is clearly associated with water and likely has a close connection with the Zora. Din, Goddess of Power, is associated with fire and has clear connection with the Gerudo (unclear if the same goddess as the one present in the desert temple in Ocarina of Time). Farore, Goddess of Courage, is associated with all things green and of the earth, including the child-like race of Kokiri who perpetually inhabit the forest. Sure, these are broad topics, but not really… the first thing you’d think of for creators of the universe, are they? And it raises the question about the Hyrule people, who are said to be able to hear the gods due to their pointed ears… let’s put a pin in that and move on.

So, we know there are many gods in this universe, primarily because we meet them. For example, Zephos, God of Winds, in Wind Waker. But he’s clearly a fairly forgotten god, as he shares a shrine with Cylcos, God of Cyclones, which is about as bare as it can be. Just what appears to be a Tori gate with two stone monuments with the simple notes to summon them, almost completely out of the way. Which… I mean, I don’t know many gods with their extension number written on their monuments. That would kind of like going to church on Sunday and seeing “Hit me up if you need me, J-Boy 555-TAKE THE WHEEL” written on the podium. And remember, this is a world and game where the gods actively flooded the world and would therefore hold or have held enough power to directly interfere with Hyrule.

And Skyward Sword clearly has divine beings, one of which even flooded a whole area, though they’re subservient to Hylia. Who we will get back to later, I promise. The three dragons (again, that magic number), capable of divine power, though where that power comes from in unclear. The dragons are of a high status though, as evident by their servants and clear reference to high-class dress of their clothes. These dragons are revered, but clearly not worshipped, much like nobles in that regard. A curious note is the parallels to the three goddesses, and how the symbols are muddled and mixed for these dragons.

Lanayru clearly has the symbols associated with the Zora, and by extension Nayru, but is yellow. He also is saved by time travel used to grow a magic fruit, which Link often uses (time travel) in many games to advance the plot himself (and wouldn’t you know it, but mixing blue with yellow does produce green. Weird). Faron is the water dragon who flooded an area, and she is almost entirely blue (as well as unsettling to look at), surrounded by a species clearly related to the Zora though closer to octopi. But her name is Faron, which is weirdly close to Farore’s name, not Nayru. I mean, they are close to locations that resemble their names of course, but it’s still an interesting note. Finally, there’s Eldin, clearly bearing a symbol associated with the Gerudo without any strange mixes of symbols for the series. Oddly, he’s also the most open of the three dragons, especially considering the Gerudo’s traditional stance of being a ‘no-sausage’ club. Not terribly relevant, but I just thought it was interesting to point out. You can consider the Giants in Majora’s Mask on the same level as them, though their status is unclear (Since they’re summoned by a song and can stop the moon from falling, they probably straddle the line between mortal and divine).

Now, spirits also exist in this world, both as the ghostly variety and the more pseudo-divine. Not to be confused with actual divinity. Divine being can be spirits, but not all spirits are divine. In this context, spirits can be defined more as being of power capable of granting aid in return for something. Zephos can change the winds if called upon, but you don’t need to feed him, for example. But the spirits in Twilight Princess need aid before they can help you. And they’re also not very independent and are able to be fooled easily, which isn’t usually a god-like quality. While more physically present than the three goddesses, they’re also not strictly tangible, and seem to be extremely limited to their location. At best, these spirits could be classified as minor deities below the gods we see in Wind Waker. They also share the same abilities in keeping the realm of Twilight from falling over the land of Hyrule, as well as their weakness to parasites of undetermined origin. An interesting note is that they all seem to live in bodies of water. Let’s put a pin in that one too.

Someone that also counts as a spirit would be Fi and her counterpart, Ghirahim. Literally two halves of the same coin, these two are both very limited in power and function. They don’t represent anything on their own and are very dependent on others to achieve results. How or why they were made is unclear, but it is obvious that both were forged at some point, and clearly gained sentience. Even their personalities and allegiances are a bit odd. Fi for her sci-fi appearance and calculating personality in a fantasy land, and Ghirahim for his… well, everything. I don’t know why the root of all evil would make his weapon a full-tilt diva, let alone on purpose. Ghirahim always struck me as odd since his bombastic personality seemed to clash with his ultimate fate of just being a weapon for Demise.

Okay, so the Great Fairies are weird, okay?! Like, really weird. They act as spirits (I can’t think of any that aren’t restricted to a body of water in some form), but are very independent. They also don’t necessarily need anything from Link to offer assistance. Sometimes, just opening the fairy fountain is enough to gain items needed to progress. And there’s also the fact that fairies heal you upon ‘death’, though with a limited heart capacity. Sometimes they need you to do something though, like the Breath of the Wild fairies need rupees to function or items to upgrade equipment. They also usually look human, like Majora’s Mask Great Fairies are clearly just… giant women with color coded accessories. But like, they float. Where Great Faires come from, or even just regular fairies, is unclear. Until Wind Waker, Great Faires were adults. But when you finally meet the real Great Fairy in Wind Waker it’s… a child. With a doll that looks just like the ‘Great Fairies’ you’ve seen along the way. This sort of implies that Great Fairies age and die, though clearly with a different lifetime than most races in Hyrule (the child Great Fairy also only looks somewhat human compared to other Great Fairies, so make of that what you will). And it also implies that all the adult Great Fairies are dead (you’re welcome for that depressing thought), with the last one trapped in a hollow tree only accessible by the power of a God.

In Breath of the Wild, the Great Fairies are both diminished but more powerful. They literally are stuck in a giant flower with water in it, with few fairies around them, and require riches to get stronger. The connection to their new restrictions to this need for material wealth is unclear. It’s also interesting to note that their fountains are no longer places that appear to be man-made holy temples and they seem to be out of the way… well, for a given value of ‘out of the way’ (looking at you ninja village). These fairies can accomplish more tasks, but certainly won’t be doing it for free or with minimal effort. A far cry from their first appearances (no, I don’t consider using explosives a difficult task).

But Fairies are also companions with nebulous tasks, such as in Ocarina of Time, where Tatl follows Link until the end of the game. And Kokiri have their own fairy as a sign of whatever accounts for adulthood in their race. The Skull Kid in Majora’s Mask has two fairy friends who seemed to have been either lost or abandoned. Who or what gives them purpose and life is unclear, though the Great Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time can give commands, it doesn’t seem to be something he does normally? As a side note, it’s really not clear what, if anything he can actually do. Though the relative safety of the surrounding area is clearly tied with his wellbeing in all iterations, he doesn’t seem to directly influence it, or be capable of self-defense.

Now, onto the elephant in the room! Hylia! Who the hell is this?! A more recent entry to the series, her divine roll is unclear (though she clearly guards the Triforce in some capacity). It can be assumed that she’s somehow a goddess tied directly to the Hylian people, but when she appeared is up for debate. Timeline wise, it’s almost like knowledge of her was suppressed for some reason, giving rise to the Triforce mythos we all know and love without hide or hair of her seen. We know that she favored the original Link greatly, enough to shed her divinity to be reborn as a mortal and assist him. How or why is also unclear, though it wouldn’t be unfair to assume she loved him, as divine ladies holding an affair with a mortal isn’t uncommon in mythology (or even male gods doing the same, before anyone brings up Zeus). But she makes a resurgence in Breath of the Wild, with statues and everything, with the three goddesses left to only vague references in the background. Which is super weird, though not uncommon for places like Ancient Egypt. The fact that the ruling family was literally descendant from a goddess is what makes it weird though, since any monarchy worth their salt would milk that until the peasant folk revolted and made a new religion to justify killing a god.

Zelda in every incarnation is literally descendant from the original and still held at least a fraction of that divine power. So much so that a cornerstone of a powerful religious artifact inevitably ends up in her hands (or on the back of her right hand, as it were). But what is Hylia a Goddess of? We don’t know. It’s never said. Anywhere. And that’s super weird, even for a ubiquitous deity. Sure she’s a Goddess of Hyrule but… what does that mean? That can’t be all she is? Her reincarnation is literally locked in a generational struggle against the forces of darkness! What can she do as a Goddess? Well, she makes Link stronger in return for items, but that seems to be it. In Ocarina of Time, Zelda was capable of sending Link back to the past, but that was with a magic item. And we know Hylia isn’t the Goddess of Time, because Zelda references her in Majora’s Mask (sequel to Ocarina of Time, therefore implying that there are more gods unmentioned at that time), when Hylia should be mortal or at least fragmented (because Zelda exists at the time with powers and a Triforce piece). The Guardian of Time in Hyrule Warriors also fell in love with Link before splitting into Cia and Lana (and was unable to fuse back together again), so it’s unlikely that she’s the Goddess of Time Zelda was referring to, though that detail is interesting to note. No, I will not discuss if Hyrule Warriors is canon (either game), as this is already long enough as it is.

So, that brings us to Ganon, or in his original form, Demise. Which… what’s up with that? Who is this guy? He directly opposes the gods and just… gets away with it! Repeatedly! Sure, he loses most of the time, but still. It’s unclear where Demise came from, or even what he is, though judging by Ghirahim’s ‘Demon Lord’ title, it can be assumed that he is some type of demon himself. And that the many monsters we see are also considered demons, which makes sense with how they always work for Demise (or his many iterations) in some form or another. Considering how much it takes to simply seal him away, he can’t be just a demon though.

        Demise obviously pulled the same trick Hylia did, which directly sets him up as a counterpart to her, but what does it mean? Why would he do that? What is Demise that he can’t be beat with the power of a Goddess alone and needs not only a brave knight but a blade literally made to counter him? Within the context of religion, the best guess I can make is that he’s some form of a God of Darkness, possibly also Temptation, Greed, and Pigs Corruption. It fits within the narrative since power is often the strongest form of temptation and we know that demons capable of opposing the gods exist. The Horned Statue literally takes Hylia’s blessings in exchange for wealth, and was turned into a statue for it. What it stands to gain from any of it is unclear, but interestingly enough, Hylia doesn’t mind that it closely resembles her own statues. So, this raises the question… why isn’t Demise a forgotten statue somewhere along a dusty road? How did he curse(?) both a reborn goddess and a human in an eternal struggle for the fate of Hyrule?

        Being a god is about the only explanation for why he can do the things that he does. It explains why, in every incarnation, he ends up a rule (like Zelda). How he controls so many different species with ease. He corrupts the conflicted as easily as breathing. An interesting note is how Demise in his many forms usually ends up corrupting once good forces in some way, typically with parasites or evil spirits. And with this context, Hylia must be a Goddess of Light, and possibly some form of Will and Purity to oppose Demise’s power. It would also make her a good candidate for looking after the Triforce in that case. And yet we don’t know any of this for sure either, which is, again, very strange considering their presence from the very beginning. Literally.

Now, I want to mention the temples as a last point before wrapping this up, because it has bothered me since I was a wee little whipper snapper. For a place of worship, they sure are hard to navigate, even when they’re empty of monsters. And it’s not like Hyrule doesn’t get this, because the Temple of Time in Ocarina of Time is straight up a church. Just… without pews, so clearly not perfect, but it is possible for people to come in and… worship time, I guess. And no, not the Goddess of Time, because there’s no statue for that. I mean, I know it’s secretly hiding the Master Sword, but it is definitely a church otherwise. What a normal service looks like I can’t say for sure, but it’s definitely not like literally any other temples we see.

        Now, I know it’s a little hard to remember, but temples are usually places where one goes to worship the gods (or even just a god). And we know gods exist in a very real way in Hyrule! They still manage to name Zelda the same thing despite having seemingly buried their divine origins, so some knowledge of gods walking the mortal realm exists. But the temples/dungeons we see usually don’t have much in the way of religious iconography, with a few exceptions (interestingly it’s typically the desert area that actually has statues and could feasibly have had a real capacity for worship). You want to be a devout follower of a god anywhere else? Well, fuck you. Hope you brought a sword and a good pair of boots. If you’re allowed inside at all, since it’s usually the local leaders that are only allowed inside for some reason. And most games don’t seem to have very religious people, despite all the references to divinity. Not like we’d expect them to, at least. And I personally can’t blame them. If I tried to join a religion but found only a wall as an entrance, I’d be pretty disheartened too. Then I’d be pretty pissed to find out I needed not only a royal instrument handed down the monarchy, but their freaking lullaby to even get in to the place of worship. But we know they pray to the gods at least semi-often, since that’s one of the inciting incidences in Wind Waker. And they have offering to statues of Hylia.

        The temples suggest the bar to impress the gods is pretty high, and not in a ‘sacrifice your eldest child’ kind of way. To even get the chance to reach the inner chambers you better hope it’s been kept well and that you didn’t skip leg day recently. Something I didn’t really mention before is that usually, the less involved the gods are, the more independent the people are from worship. If you worry that your local deity will flood your fields, you’re probably leaving regular offerings at their nearby shrine or temple. But if you know that the gods don’t care about literally anything you do, why worship them at all? Why make statues, art, or temples? Why bother with any of it? The answer is you don’t. So these highly selective temples are pretty weird unless you go with the idea the gods are just really done with people and never want to talk to them unless absolutely necessary.

So, I’ve rambled for over twelve pages now. What’s the point? What does any of this mean? I’m honestly not sure, but I have a sinking feeling that there’s some serious shit going on in the Hyrule pantheon. Mortals have been mostly abandoned to their doom. Gods cast out and forgotten entirely. And somehow advanced civilizations keep forming and getting destroyed with only remnants left behind with zero explanation. Assuming the original gods are even alive at this point, which I’m not entirely certain of. Their death certainly explains how Demise/Ganon keeps getting stronger, looking less and less Hylian as time goes on, if he looks humanoid to begin with.

I wouldn’t even assume it’s entirely voluntary at this point either, as Ganon clearly doesn’t have the same motivations in every incarnation (see my previous post about Wind Waker). I’m rather excited about Breath of the Wild 2, as the implications of dehydrated husk Ganon is compelling. Particularly in light of the character development Link and Zelda have received in the first Breath of the Wild. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ganon/Demise turns out to be a fallen god trying to get back home (a nice parallel to Wind Waker, actually), cast out as a scape goat. Blamed for every form of corruption and greed that naturally follows in his wake. I think I said this before, but it is interesting that he is always reborn among the Gerudo, a race famously all females. Sometimes thieves, but nearly always in a position that would naturally crave power to take control of their lives compared to Hylians. Regardless of the consequences.

Is it true? I don’t know. Probably not, but the fact that I can draw these conclusions in three hours of writing is pretty neat. I have a lot of feelings about this franchise, having grown up with it, but I eagerly await what comes next. And I should probably go to bed. Make of all this what you will.

[jocia92]

(Google translated)

Dan Stevens, who grew up in Wales and south-east England, spent his summer holidays at the National Youth Theater at the age of 15, and he was drawn to the stage while studying English in Cambridge. Since his big breakthrough as Matthew Crawley in the hit series “Downton Abbey”, he has also repeatedly appeared in films such as “Inside Wikileaks - The Fifth Force”, “At Night in the Museum: The Secret Tomb” or “Beauty and the Beast” . Most recently, Stevens played the Russian Schnösel singer Lemtov in the Oscar-nominated comedy “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” from Netflix. At the beginning of June, the German film “Ich bin dein Mensch” by Maria Schrader celebrated at the Summer Berlinale Premiere, which starts on 1.7. comes to German cinemas regularly. Stevens plays the role of a love robot in it. Unlike on the screen, however, the 38-year-old prefers to speak English in the zoom-conducted interview. He chose a brick wall with a lion motif as the digital background. No allusion to the song “Lion of Love” from “Eurovision Song Contest”, but a photo of the famous Ishtar Gate in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, where “I am your human” was filmed last summer.

Mr. Stevens, in your new film “I am your human” you play a humanoid robot that is entirely geared towards fulfilling the romantic needs of a skeptical scientist. You yourself recently described the film as “delightfully German”. How did you mean that?

I wanted to say that here pretty big questions - such as what actually makes a person or how much perfection love can take - are negotiated in a very light-footed, elegant and sometimes humorous way. In my experience that is a very German quality. At least I have often seen with many of my German colleagues and friends that they are very good at not discussing difficult issues exclusively deadly serious and melancholy.

Where does your personal connection to Germany and the German language come from?

My parents had friends who lived in Bielefeld and we used to visit them in North Rhine-Westphalia during the school holidays. Traveled from England by car! That’s how I learned a little German as a child, and later I learned it as a subject at school. I even did a short internship there through our friends in Bielefeld. I really love the language. Funnily enough, I was later able to use my knowledge of German professionally, because my first film was “Hilde”, in which I was next to Heike Makatsch played the British actor and director David Cameron, who was married to Hildegard Knef. After that, I always hoped that there might be another chance to speak German in front of the camera, because playing in a foreign language is an exciting challenge. When the chance arose to shoot “I am your person”, I could hardly believe my luck.

Did you know the director Maria Schrader who gave you this chance?

Funnily enough, when the script for the film landed on my table, I had just watched the Netflix series “Unorthodox”, which she directed. I had also watched a few episodes of “Deutschland 89”. In general, I knew that she was a great German actress, not least because friends who knew their way around the German theater scene often raved about her. Working with her was a joy now. Her understanding of actors is quite instinctive and brilliant. I have seldom seen someone who can help an actor who is having difficulties with a scene with such simple means.

The fact that you had already seen “Unorthodox” shows, of course, how quickly “I am your person” must have been implemented in the past year …

Oh yes, that was really quick. In March I was still in New York and was about to premiere a new play on Broadway. But then the pandemic came, everything was canceled and I flew back to my family in Los Angeles. A few weeks later, Maria and I met each other via Zoom - and shortly afterwards I was sitting outside in a café in the Berlin June sun for the first time in months to discuss the upcoming shoot with her. That was pretty surreal because I hadn’t actually left the house since March.

Is it correct that you oriented yourself to Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart to portray the romantically programmed robot Tom?

In any case, these were role models that Maria and I spoke about. When you think of the game between the two of them, you always see an enormous clarity and directness. Cary Grant, for example, was always quite funny, especially in his romantic roles, but also flawless in an almost artificial way from today’s perspective. I found that very suitable for a robot. Apart from the fact that the ideas that Tom and his algorithm have of romance and love are certainly also shaped by the classic romantic comedies from Hollywood. Oh, the woman is sad, so I’ll bring her flowers! Such automatisms from the stories from back then were very appropriate for Tom now.

Keyword role models: Who shaped you in your career as an actor?

There were of course many. Jimmy Stewart was certainly something of a role model. My mom and I watched a lot of his films when I was little and I was always impressed by the kind of sweet tragedy that went into all of his roles. But maybe Robin Williams’ work influenced me even more. I always found the incredible variety of his films remarkable. He could make his audience laugh hysterically like no other, but also move them to tears in other roles. I always wanted to emulate this range.

In fact, the range of your roles is enormous and ranges from the Disney blockbuster “Beauty and the Beast” to a comic adaptation in series format such as “Legion” to bulky independent films such as “Her Smell” or the horror thriller “The Rental “, Which we just released on DVD. Is there a method behind this diversity?

Not in principle. I like variety, but I’m not just looking for roles that are as different as possible from one another. Rather, there are always similar factors that I use to select my projects. Sometimes there is a certain director that I really want to work with. Or the role itself is irresistible because it presents me with acting challenges. And sometimes a script is just fantastically written and I am interested in the topics it is about. With “I am your person” it was definitely the latter, especially since the timing was just right. In 2020 there were so many societal questions that ultimately touched the core of human existence. Such a script, which deals with something very similar in a light-footed way, was just fitting.

A few years ago you said in a questionnaire from the British Guardians that your greatest weakness was not being able to make up your mind. So every time you are offered a role, do you ponder whether you should accept?

No, no, when a script appeals to me, it actually does it very quickly. It’s such a gut feeling. If I’m unsure and skeptical, that’s a good indicator that this is not the right thing for me. That with the difficulty in making decisions related rather to something else. For example, it takes me forever to order in a restaurant because I can never decide what on the menu appeals to me the most.

You became famous with the role of Matthew Crawley in the series "Downton Abbey”. Did you immediately suspect at the time that something big was going on?

At first we were all pretty clueless. There are really many British history series, and we were one of them. When the first season aired in the US and was a huge success there, it was pretty unexpected. I never expected the impact the series would have on my career.

Barely ten years later, are you still being asked about the role?

Oh yes, regularly. Probably nothing will change about that either. I got out after three seasons!

In the meantime, however, the flamboyant Russian singer Alexander Lemtov from “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” should also be a character with whom you will be immediately associated, right?

Right, it has been mentioned more and more recently when people recognize me on the street. This charming, silly film obviously had a nerve with the audience last year in the middle of the corona pandemic. Especially since the real Eurovision Song Contest had been canceled.

The film was the number one topic of conversation on the Internet for a while - and Lemtov GIFs and memes were everywhere. Did you follow that?

It was really hard to avoid it. I wasn’t looking specifically for what people were posting. But of course my friends passed a lot on to me, and there were already some very funny Lemtov things. But he’s also a figure made for GIFs.

Another question every British actor under 40 has to put up with these days: Would you like to become the next James Bond?

Oh, of course, everyone gets to hear this question again and again who meets certain criteria. But it is completely hypothetical. Although a few years ago I read in an audio book by Ian Fleming’s “Casino Royale”.

You mentioned earlier that you and your family have lived in the United States for a long time. How big is your homesickness?

I actually feel very comfortable in Los Angeles. But every now and then I miss the sidewalk culture of European cities. People on foot, street cafes, things like that. Last year the longing for it was particularly great, although it was of course clear to me that there was a state of emergency in Europe too. In any case, I found myself reading books that were set in Europe and made me homesick. Which is why the unexpected trip to Berlin was really a boon.

You are also an avid cricketer. That’s certainly difficult in Los Angeles, isn’t it?

There are quite a few cricket clubs here. The only problem is that the few people who do the sport here are so good at it that I have problems keeping up. That’s why I always lose sight of the matter here a little. Even as a pure TV viewer, it is not easy to stay on the ball, because of course there is no cricket broadcast here at prime time. But as soon as I’m home in England in the summer, I really want to play again!