#because i think i relate to 11's story more than i am 12's

[tr4umaborn]

i. love. clara.

[cicaklah]

fic author q&a

thank you @the-lady-general for tagging me, I love to procrastinate by doing stuff like this.

1. Why do you write fanfic?

because my brain is a relentless what-if machine and it can't be stopped or tamed. If I wasn't writing it down I'd be losing time just thinking about it, trust me, its far better this way.

and because I love writing, love the fic community, and just love creativity. I've been reading fic literally every single day since I was 11 or 12 and I'm now 38. I'm passionate about the fic writing world and my experience in the 'conventional' writing space has been nothing but anxiety, inferiority and bitterness.

2. Which of your posted stories do you think about the most, even though the story is “finished”?

I don't tend to feel like that about my stories, because I am always up to write sequels or prequels to things, or add stuff onto various universes. I still think often about weibermacht, which is the name of the sex club in my Hitman stories, and one day I will write a proper weibermacht story, but the reason I still think about stories is because they aren't properly finished. I also think a lot about the watch me series because I feel guilty that I never finished it. I have at least another 3 stories in various stages of writing.

I'm planning on doing a WIP amnesty next year (once One Man is finished), and I'm hoping that it will get me to finish some of these things I want to return to, but haven't since.

3. If you could give yourself fic advice from when you first started writing fic, what would that advice be?

Use the momentum of being really into something to make more art. Write as much fic as you can, and don't let guilt catch up with you. It doesn't matter if it sucks; you have to love it, and if you love it in the moment, you are going in the right direction.

4. What’s your relationship to fic stats?

As a professional sort-of statistician I adore them, I wish there were more of them, specifically available over time, and also the number of subscriptions to series would help me as someone who writes in that way. BUT: comparison is the thief of joy. My big fic-related breakdown was over constantly comparing myself to the people I thought were my peers. Stats don't tell you why you aren't doing better than someone, and I know from my profession that you can't just assume things from numbers.

5. Is there a pairing or scenario or friendship you miss writing? If so, why? If not, why not?

I miss Stormpilot (Finn/Poe) circa 2017. What a beautiful time. It will never come again, even if we got something to make the ship sail again, the world has changed.

6. What motivates you to write?

Much like the lady general, I am motivated by wanting to tell jokes, or by specific ideas that enter my brain and won't let go. I am motivated to keep going on one man because there are specific stories I need to share with the rest of the class, but I must tell the rest of the story in order to get there. The journey is the point, but so is the punchline.

7. Why do you write for the fandom(s) that you write for?

Star Trek, specifically SNW, is my current blorbo, so I write for myself and my id on that one. Hitman is for the thirsty thirteen and because its OTP. Oxventure is...complicated. I am so very burned out on that fandom. Super Secret RPF pairing is because of my co-conspirators <3. I've also written way, way too many things because Phoenix and I have talked about them and I've then be POSSESSED.

8. If you’re stuck writing a WIP, what do you do?

As long as I'm still interested in the project, I do my best to push through. I have the philosophy that a story doesn't really exist until it is published anyway. I do have an abandoned WIP folder, and within that is a folder called 'look I'm never writing these ones'. There are 12 stories in that folder. Meanwhile there are 134 I have yet to give up on, not including the 4 that are currently in progress (not including one man.)

Basically I need another WIP amnesty.

9. What do you wish people knew about comments?

They really are the fuel on the fire. I have finished stories because of comments. I have written entire worlds because of comments. I do my best to answer every single comment, and I try to also leave comments as much as I can. At the same time, I have to, for my own sanity, try not to put too much stock in them, because we have to be self-fuelling machines, we have to be self-raising lazaruses. You have to write for yourself, because if you base everything on other people's opinions, you will die nobody.

10. Maybe there’s a question you wish had been on here. What’s that question (and answer)?

I think the question I'd like to ask is what is your personal greatest fic achievement? Not your most popular story, what was the story that you still look at and go: I will never not be proud of that achievement. Mine is the fact I have published 750,000 words and 130 stories and I still feel like I'm only just getting started. That the perseverance over the last 14 years proves that I can do whatever I set my mind to, that I am valuable in a way that matters, and all the doubters of my youth can go fuck themselves forever.

I'm tagging @postalninja, @stickthisbig, @android-and-ale and @alienfuckeronmain and anyone else who wants to do it. lets navel gaze, lads.

[weekend-whip]

-20 asks for Fic Writers-

hey-lo!! I was tagged by @rainofthetwilight for a fun ask game!! Thank you!! ^-^)/

for tags, any fic writer that comes across this and feels compelled! You have my blessing! Go forth and rant about thy fics!!! Share your words with the world!! Give people new stuff to read!! Flaunt your beautiful achievements!!

. . .

1.How many works do you have on AO3?

19! And counting!

2. What's your total AO3 wordcount?

...791,937 and counting *lies down* (at least most of it is just one fic? Ahaha? ha?)

3. What fandom(s) do you write for?

right now, just ninjago! I wrote for some other fandoms back in the day (with...equally ambitious endeavors) and I initially made my Ao3 account for Definitely Not Ninjago...but, here we are :d

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Born to Be a 21st Century Ninja: 1116

Thank You, For Giving Me Wings: 560

Way of the 21st Century Ninja: 546

Assorted Thoughts and Feelings: 201

Married to the Sea: 161 (which I'm sure will get beat-out by GNL here soon haha)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I TRY, REALLY, MOSTLY, AND USUALLY but sometimes I get too excited and things shift through the cracks (hence why I generally make it a habit to respond to stuff I missed before/around/after a big update! That way it's on my mind!)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

i haven't written it yet I MEAN WHAT it's Married to the Sea. I'm not big on writing overly bad/sad/tragic endings yet

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Paper Plate Moon, the only fic without an existential crisis of some kind (just a slightly lovesick Kai with a smaller scope crisis) Orrr, A Little More Than Sixteen Candles, which is also about Kai! Except he cries. But it's a happy cry!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not yet

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No

(...wait, there's 'kinds' of smut?!?! do i dare even ask)

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Braaaaah I looooooooved crossovers when I was younger. My biggest story from my youth was a crossover. ...I won't be telling you what it is, though. It's part of my dark, mysterious past.

(I also don't count Legacyverse as a crossover, either. It's more of a...fusion! But. Y'know. The roots are there.....)

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Only once, and it was the aforementioned crazy crossover fic from above. They were dealt with very swiftly tho :3

12. What's the longest time you've spent working on a fic? And what's the shortest?

Longest that I've finished would be Born to Be; that took me technically almost two full years to write x-x

Shortest would be all the Aftershock oneshots I manage to speedrun in a few scant hours on holidays lmao

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

I've triiiiiiiied a couple times in the past; only one attempt was successful though.

14. What's your all time favourite ship? From all the fandoms?

Destiny's Bounty! Man, I adore that ship so much.

15. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

THE MERMAID AU or the Jesse Fanseason or all the little prompt things from June '22 that still haunt me to this day or some of legacy!sidestories I should've done ages ago or-

16. What are your writing strengths?

*grabs some stuff from comments* I have strength in character development and providing emotional depth for scenes! *I* also think I write some kickass fight scenes, thank you.

17. What are your writing weaknessess?

BASIC GRAMMAR LMAO and probably using too many commas and ellipses but I am trying to ween myself off of it and incorporate shorter sentences. I always forget to vary up sentence length until the end waaaah

(I also miss typos a lot but I am of the camp that believes it keeps one humble~ *should probably just get a beta reader but hnnng*)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Intimidating

19. First fandom you wrote for?

...something video game related

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Probably Born to Be just because of how darn big of an achievement it is! and I reread it a lot <3 <3 <3 <3

[alarajrogers]

upcoming WIP

This is the first part of the next 52 Story and I wanted to share it with you guys because I cannot think of another place where this would be as profoundly relatable.

This isn't autobiographical at all. I don't even use Slack. :-)

The following is a description of ADHD hell (not literally hell, this guy is supposed to be alive) and may be triggering to, well, probably all of us.

***

Jason had promised his boss he’d have a debugged version of the code checked in by morning.

He’d been tracking down a bug when he’d gotten sidetracked reading Stack Overflow. Dammit. He’d just lost an hour, and he still had no idea why his code wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, and it was 10 pm. Teresa was expecting a new version to be checked in by 9 am and she was expecting that it would run.

This was a job for more Coca-Cola. Jason got up, went downstairs and got himself a slice of pizza and a cold Coke.

His mom, also burning the late night oil at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop, said, “How is it going? You think you’ll have what your boss is expecting by tomorrow?”

No. “Yes,” Jason said. “I just need a few more hours to track this down.”

“Well, you’re running out of them. You’d be better off getting a good night’s sleep, then waking up fresh in the morning early enough to work on it then.”

Mom was 57 and had apparently forgotten everything she had ever known about how night owls worked, despite having spent her younger years routinely staying up until 2 am. “Is that what you’re doing?” Jason couldn’t help saying.

“I’ve got a house showing tomorrow, I just have to make sure that I have my talking points memorized.”

“Why? Does the house really suck?”

“It doesn’t really suck. It’s a good house, really. Great bones, a nice big yard. But I’m gonna have to redirect the prospective owner’s attention away from how ugly the carpet is and things like that, because the seller? Whoo-ee. There’s people who have no taste, and there’s people who never fix anything, and there’s people who own dogs, and then there’s my seller, who is all three.” She sighed. “I tried to get them to rip the carpet out and install hardwood flooring before putting the house on the market, but the market is hot right now; I don’t blame them for wanting to charge forward. I just think they’d get more if their house didn’t smell like dog and look like water damage had a horrible transporter accident with the 1970’s.”

“That bad, huh?” He leaned up against the fridge, sipping his Coke. “You wanna go over your spiel with me, Mom? Some late night practice before you go to bed?”

“Yeah, actually, that sounds good.”

So Mom talked enthusiastically, if hoarsely, about the four bedrooms and the two and a half bathrooms and the recently modernized kitchen and how great the neighborhood was, and Jason listened, because he wasn’t contributing nearly as much to the mortgage as his mom was and she was also paying most of the utilities, so her career was important, not to mention what stress did to her heart.

When he got back to his computer it was 11:30 and he’d finished his Coke and pizza. He thought about getting ice cream, but best not to do that until Mom went to bed, if he didn’t want to get sucked into another conversation. Not that conversations with Mom were bad; they were much more entertaining than debugging code, which was the problem.

He opened up his coding window, stared at it for thirty seconds while doing nothing, and then convinced himself that maybe Reddit would have an answer to his question.

It didn’t. It did have answers to how to solve a particularly difficult problem in his current favorite game, a number of people who wanted to know if they were the asshole, some great reviews of movies on streaming that he hadn’t had a chance to watch yet, political rants, and some really entertainingly stupid coding mistakes that people had posted.

It was 12:30 am. Teresa was expecting this at 9 and she was expecting it to work.

His eyes glazed. The act of reviewing the code for the tenth time, looking for the bug he hadn’t yet been able to find despite knowing the general area it had to be in, was almost physically painful. He checked his brackets, again. The error didn’t look like a missing close bracket, but that didn’t mean anything. If he had a dollar for every time the error didn’t look like a missing close bracket but turned out to be one, he’d have maybe twenty dollars, which wasn’t a lot in terms of actual money but was a lot of times for the same stupid thing to happen in his code.

The software was supposed to warn him when there was an unclosed bracket, but half the time, if the code was particularly complex, it didn’t. It just re-interpreted the bracket locations and then his code broke.

One more time. Stepping through. Why the fuck was it stopping there? There was nothing there that could account for the error.

Time to go get ice cream. Maybe some sugar would help him stay awake and focused enough to get this done. Another Coke, possibly, too.

When he sat back down, he had Discord messages, so he needed to check them. And messages on Slack, which he could be checking in the morning, and probably should be, but maybe one of his co-workers had found an answer to his problem. They hadn’t, but Priyal had a different question and that one, he thought he could quickly get an answer to, so he fired up Google, dug in, and got her answer for her, which he sent. She’d have it in the morning. Unlike Teresa, who probably would not have what she was expecting.

It was 2 am. Stupid of him to get sidetracked with Priyal’s problem when he was having such difficulty with his own. He flicked over to Reddit again because this was unbearably boring and if he didn’t give himself a break from it, he’d fall asleep.

But he had to go back to debugging the code. Or to sleep. He could handle Teresa being pissed off in the morning a lot better if he got some sleep.

Third page of the subreddit he was on. Four. Man, he needed to keep up with this stuff, there was so much here he hadn’t read yet.

Fifth page of the subreddit. He really, really needed to get back to work. It was 2:30.

A screenshot of something really stupid from Cicada. Damn, someone actually posted something that stupid? Over to Cicada to see if there was context that explained it. There wasn’t, but there was a lengthy thread of people absolutely shredding the OP. Including someone he followed, and he should probably catch up with that.

No, he should get off Cicada and go back to coding. Or bed. His eyes were burning. Bed was probably a better idea. Give up on finishing the debug, tell Teresa he hadn’t found it yet and would need another day.

That was an interesting news article, though. He had to check that out.

No, he didn’t. He needed to go to bed.

Jason’s mouse clicked the link to the article. His eyes read the page, despite burning with exhaustion. Some frantic voice in his head was yelling, screaming, get up, put the computer down, you need to be awake to deal with Teresa in the morning, it’s late, you’re doing nothing useful, get up.

Back to Reddit.

Stop this. Get up. Go to bed. You need to go to bed.

3:30 am. He could barely keep his eyes open, but they were still riveted to the computer, his butt still glued to his chair.

Get up get up get up and go to bed, go to bed, turn the monitor off, you need to go to sleep so you can deal with Teresa tomorrow, get up, go to bed, go to bed

4 am. Look, there was his Firefox home tab, with articles from Pocket. A few of those looked interesting.

Don’t read them, you need to sleep, you need to sleep

Right, right, he didn’t have time to read them right now. He just needed to open them all so they would be there for him tomorrow. If he didn’t do that, Pocket would refresh and he’d lose all of them.

Wow, did they really find carbon deposits on the moon? He had to check that out.

Stop it, stop it, you have to stop it, you need to sleep, stop it

5 am. There was no way he’d be up at 9 to deal with Teresa.

Email. “Hey, I’ve been up all night bashing my head against this thing and I’ve made progress—” This was a lie. “—but it’s still not running. I’m gonna have to look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow. I’ll be logging in around 11 am.” This was also a lie, it would probably be closer to noon. But since he worked from home, all he needed to do was drag ass out of bed around 10:30 to send everyone a status update, tell them he was diving into the code and probably wouldn’t see incoming notifications until he came up for air, and then dive back into his bed instead.

Set an alarm for 9:30 am. Set an alarm for 10 am. He’d blow through them both, of course, but they’d wake him up enough to actually wake up when the 10:30 alarm went off, and then he’d convince himself to get up and send the status message by promising himself he’d return to bed.

Check out that article about a different way to manage your ADHD?

No. Go to sleep. Off the computer. Sleep.

Right, but obviously, he needed to put on his Spotify for music to fall asleep to, and adjust the volume because he couldn’t let it be too loud or it would wake Mom up, calm and peaceful or not.

Pop over to Reddit one last time.

5:30 am. Sleep!

The panic finally overwhelmed the inertia and he managed to drag himself off his chair, turn the monitor off, and stumble to bed. Now to get some sleep.

Oh, except now, he couldn’t sleep because he was overwhelmed by his anxiety and fear about not getting enough sleep to deal with Teresa even if he slept until noon because she was going to be seriously pissed off with him because this was the third time he’d blown the deadline.

It was another hour before exhaustion finally claimed him, and he knew that because the sun had risen.

***

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm.

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm, he’d blown through 9:30 and 10 just like he’d planned, but he’d never turned on the 10:30 alarm, so it was half past noon and he’d never sent that status message, so everyone would know he overslept way past the point Teresa would be okay with after an all nighter, and there was a meeting at 1 pm and he had to shower and shave because it was going to be a meeting with video so he couldn’t look like he’d just dragged himself out of bed.

Or maybe he could. He sent Teresa a message on Slack. I think I’m sick. My throat’s sore, and I’ve got a migraine. And I don’t have the program working anyway, so there’s really nothing to show anyone. Can we postpone until tomorrow?

The response was almost immediate. You need to figure out how to manage your time better. You’re sick because you stayed up all night.

Yeah, but I was trying to solve the bug.

If you can’t get something fixed by 11 pm, it’s not going to get fixed. You should have gone to bed.

I know, but I wanted to try. I was getting close. This was a lie. I thought I could get it done before morning.

Yes, and instead you made yourself sick and the program still doesn’t work. ☹ I’ll postpone the meeting this time, Jason, but we need results before tomorrow. Sorry that you’re sick but you know as well as I do it’s because you didn’t get any sleep.

Yeah, I know. I’ll pull myself together, have some coffee, and get back to work. I’ll try to have it done before 5. This was a lie. He knew perfectly well he wasn’t going to get it done by 5, not when he was this tired.

Do you want me to have Jorge review it? Maybe he can see something you missed?

No, that would be the worst possible thing, because then Jorge would know that he’d made basically no progress last night. I don’t want to add to his workload, but if I’m running into trouble later today I’ll pass it over to him, see if adding some eyeballs might help.

All right, I’ll let him know.

And now Jason was awake, the imminent terror of Jorge finding out that he had done basically nothing last night flooding him with enough adrenaline that he could focus enough to turn on his monitor and get back to work.

[treadmilltreats]

PTSD in relationships

So recently, I wrote about the effects of PTSD. Today, I want to get into another kind of PTSD.

Relationship PTSD, or post-traumatic relationship syndrome (PTRS) as it is sometimes called, refers to the response a person may have to one or more exposures to a traumatic event within the context of a relationship. While you are in these types of relationships, verbal, physical, emotional, psychological, or sexual.

It has been shown to leave lasting marks.

PTRS results in some PTSD symptoms, but often with more intensely emotional reactions that often lead to negative social interactions.

Due to the slow and insidious nature of PTRS, you might not notice symptoms until after the relationship ends. The relational patterns and relationship itself, rather than a single event, become the trauma. You may notice that you have lower self-esteem, blame yourself for relational troubles, feel more insecure than you once did, or overthink in relationships.

In this state, you have triggers, and it feels like you are reliving the events you went through. You may have nightmares about your previous relationships. You may jump from one relationship to another or pick the same kind of man. (Sounds familiar? It would if you read my blogs)

Little things may set you off, like someone belittling you or trying to control you. Other people like your boss or co-workers may trigger this response in you.

These are all the lasting effects of the abuse. Even for me, who has been divorced for the last 11 years, I still kept picking the same kind of men afterward. Even when I thought I was out and doing better. I don't have depression, I am not usually anxious, but boy put me in a situation where someone is acting like my ex, and here it comes, rushing back like it was yesterday.

This is when we must realize what is happening to us again and get the help we need. This will never go away unless you address it. You need to learn your triggers and how to deal with them.

So today, my friends, I am here to help you with your mental health as I am working on my own. We may think we are better because we are no longer in that abusive relationship, but the side effects linger on. We must always try to improve ourselves, and we must realize when we have a problem and seek a solution. As I say at the end of every blog, only you can be the change you want to see.

"Be the change you want to see,"

@TreadmillTreatsCheck out my daily blogs @ https://treadmilltreats.blogspot.com/?m=1

Www.treadmilltreats.com

**Now released my latest book**

The Blessing in Disguise.... revealed

https://www.amazon.com/Blessing-Disguise-Revealed-story-faith/dp/1074340493/ref=sr_1_19?keywords=the+blessing+in+disguise&qid=1561392004&s=books&sr=1-19

***Now available***

My 1st book The blessing in Disguise

Selling on my website:

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And on Amazon.com

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[heloisedaphnebrightmore]

Heloise's 3.5k Followers Sleepover [Closed!] and Writing Challenge [Closed!]

Hello my lovelies <3

On Wednesday we reached another milestone once again! I can’t tell you how happy I am to know that so many of you have been enjoying my writing. All the support I’ve gotten from my followers has been beyond my expectations and I’m just so very grateful. I never imagined getting 50 let alone 3500 followers. Mind blowing really! I wanted to do something fun for such a huge milestone and as it’s a writing blog, I thought, let’s write. I want the writers to enjoy writing and the readers to enjoy reading. However, on the other hand, I didn’t want to leave out my non-writer followers so a sleepover should be in place as well.

Therefore, welcome to⁠—

Heloise’s 3.5k followers Sleepover and Writing Challenge

Part 1. Sleepover [Closed!] (Please click on the link above!)

Part 2. Writing Challenge [Closed!] (See below the Keep Reading option!)

Let's have fun and send your Ask! ^^

Heloise's Map | Masterlists

Heloise’s 3.5k Followers Writing Challenge Masterlist

Part 2. Writing Challenge!

Disclaimer! I do not own any of the prompts listed below, they all belong to @screnwriter and @dreamy-prose and each prompt list I have used for creating this event are listed at the bottom of the post. [Numbers] next to prompts refer to the prompt lists you can find them at.

Rules!

➵ You don’t have to follow me to participate, although it would be much appreciated. ➵ Chose as many prompts as you’d like. No limits. ➵ Write for any universe and any pairings, I basically read everything. ➵ No incest, racial, religious, or sexual hate openly, not related to the story line, but to hurt others. If you have any of the above in your fic, I will not reblog it. ➵ Fluff, angst, smut, anything goes, just please use appropriate Warnings!  ➵ Use the Keep reading option above 500 words. Tutorial from phone is Here! ➵ No deadline for submission, but deadline for entry closes on 27 September 2021. Clarification: You can submit your fics even next year if you wish. End date is only for entering the event. I will not be able to accept entries after 27 September 2021. ➵ If you would like to participate, just send me an Ask with the prompt(s) and character and Reblog this post. ➵ Please use the tag #heloises3.5kcelebration and tag my name @heloisedaphnebrightmore when you post your fic. If it's not reblogged in 48 hours, please send me an Ask or DM. My tags seem to be funny at times. ➵ And most importantly, Have fun! :)

I decided to use both Scenario prompts and Dialogue prompts to take on a different approach compared to my last writing challenge.

Scenario prompts

Enemies to lovers / Tension prompts

1. “I’ll kiss you right now to prove that I don’t feel anything for you.” “Okay.” The two characters kiss, and whoops they felt something, followed by lingering, as they’re catching their breath, trying to make sense of what just happened, and the feelings rushing through them, and then there’s this urge to dive back in for another kiss. [5]

@goddessofdawns (x) Loki Laufeyson x Reader

2. Your enemy has never let anyone touch their scar, until you come along. [7]

@natashxromanovf (x) Bucky Barnes x Reader

3. Character A and B kiss each other to prove there's nothing going on between them, but they get so caught up in each other, they prove the exact opposite. [2]

@wearywinchester (x) Dean Winchester x Reader

4. For one night, Character A and B give into temptation and sleep with each other, hoping it will solve the tension building between them. It does the opposite. [2]

5. Character A and B avoid each other after sharing an intimate moment, be it a kiss, a hug, holding hands, or just looking at each other's lips longer than appropriate. [1]

@wearywinchester (x) Dean Winchester x Reader

6. You're upset one night, and you don't know where to go, so you end up at your enemy's house, and as they open the door, you stay silent for a second, before saying “I don't know where else to go.” Your enemy doesn't say anything, instead they pull you into their arms, giving you a shoulder to cry on. [1]

@goddessofdawns (x) Bucky Barnes x Reader

7. The best friends to lovers “Let’s just kiss to see what it’s like.” They kiss, followed by the characters pulling away, eyes still closed, forehead against forehead, lingering… and then they go in for the second kiss. [5]

@goddessofdawns (x) Newt (Maze Runner) x Reader

8. You threaten your enemy, and when they close the distance between you, you realize how attracted you truly are to them. [1]

9. Pinning your enemy against the wall. Or straddling your enemy’s hips whilst they pin your arms above your head. [1]

@theravenclawgal (x) Sirius Black x Reader

10. You end up on your enemy's lap, and you yank the belt from their pants “Let's just get this over with.” [1]

11. You're about to leave the room, but your enemy slams the door shut, and with one hand on either side of your head, barricade you against the wall... (cue the reckless make-out session). [2]

@band--psycho (x) James Potter x Reader

12. You’re sharing a bed with your enemy and being told “Stay on your side or I'll set this whole bed on fire”. Only to wake up the next day with your enemy's arms wrapped around you. [2]

@forever-and-more (x) Lorcan Salvaterre (Throne of Glass) x Reader

13. Your enemy has been badly wounded, and somebody needs to bandage them up, so you agree to help them, and suddenly they're shirtless, and you can't help but admire their body, something that cheeky bastard takes notice of. [1]

14. You've been wounded, your face is all bruised up. Your enemy puts a finger under your chin, bringing your eyes to theirs, asking “Who did this to you?”. When you don't answer, they ask you again “Who did this to you?”. [1]

@band--psycho (x) Klaus Mikaelson x Reader

@grimdevil (x) Regulus Black x Reader

15. You've just been hurt, you're bleeding out, and your enemy is freaking out, dropping the “I love you. I can't lose you” card, begging you not to close your eyes. [2]

@goddessofdawns (x) Loki Laufeyson x Reader

@forever-and-more (x) Lorcan Salvaterre (Throne of Glass) x Reader

16. Two characters look at each other, a tense silence between them and then bang, lips crash into each other as they can’t resist anymore and then one of them pins the other against the wall. [6]

@forever-and-more (x) Lorcan Salvaterre (Throne of Glass) x Reader

17. You had a really good time on the date tonight, and your date is asking for a good night kiss. It was only meant to be on the cheek, but then you pull back, our eyes meet, and there's a gravitational pull pulling you closer again. [6]

18. You’ve never been kissed before so your friend volunteers, but you decline because you’ve been best friends and it would be weird. But a couple hours later you lay awake in bed and can't stop thinking about what it would be like to kiss them and suddenly you regret what you said. [6]

@queen-of-brokenhearts (x) Hermione Granger x Female!Reader

Intimate / Domestic prompts

19. You are wearing your lover’s clothes when they say, “Can I get my shirt/hoodie back?” and you say “No.” or “Come and get it.”. [4]

@oliverwoodmarrymepls (x) Oliver Wood x Reader

20. You're talking on the phone and your lover quietly comes up behind you, wraps their arms around you, and starts gently kissing your neck. You begin to lose focus on your phone call as you concentrate on not making any noise. [3]

@band--psycho (x) Fred Weasley x Reader

21. You’re supposed to be mad at your lover but they’re holding your face and smiling, and you just can't resist it when they're pouting like that. [6]

22. You and your lover sitting next to each other at a table, and they rest their hand on your thigh, gently rubbing their thumb back and forth. [3]

23. Looking at your crush or lover only to find them already looking at you and when you make eye contact, they smile at you. [3]

@iliveiloveiwrite (x) - Benedict Bridgerton x Reader

24. You think mistletoe kisses are lame, but your love interest brings you under one, regardless of the season and suddenly you're all for it. [6]

25. You and your lover are in bed, when you say, “It’s time to get up.” and your lover pulls you back down, wraps their hands around your body, snuggles up close, preventing you from getting out of bed. [4]

26. Your lover is resting their head on your lap, falling asleep whilst you are playing with their hair. [4]

@oliverwoodmarrymepls (x) Oliver Wood x Reader

@band--psycho (x) Young!Remus Lupin x Reader

27. Having a piece of hair brushed off your face as you're reading or looking down. [3]

28. You're sick, and you can't kiss your lover, and it's an absolute torture. [6]

@msmarvelouswinchester (x) Jensen Ackles or Dean Winchester x Reader

29. Being asked “Are you sure?” (There's nothing sexier than consent) [3]

30. When it’s a slow burn, and the characters just look at each other like “Fuck it, I’m done with this.” and they finally kiss. [4]

@acourtofbooksandfantasy (x) Azriel (ACOTAR) x Reader

Dialogue prompts

Flirty / Sarcastic prompts

1. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing I like the sound of your voice, because you don’t seem to ever shut up.” [9]

2. “Is that a challenge?” [9]

3. “You’re cute when you’re nervous.” [15]

@will-be-a-fineline (x) Harry Styles x reader

4. “When have I ever put you in danger? Actually, don't answer that.” [11]

@wearywinchester (x) Dean Winchester x Reader

5. “I dare you.” [9]

6. “If you don’t shut up, I might as well kiss you to put that mouth to good use.” [9]

7. Character A: “Do yourself a favour, get laid.” Character B: “Why, are you offering?” [9]

@grimdevil (x) Draco Malfoy x Reader

@theravenclawgal (x) Sirius Black x Reader

8. Character A: “What if bite you?” Character B: “I’m into that.” [10]

9. Character A is returning a priced procession to Character B and says, “I want something in return.” Character B “What?”  Character A “You.” [2]

10. Character A: “What changed your mind? “ Character B: “You.” [7]

11. Character A: “What do you want?” Character B: “You.” [9]

12. Character A: “Just admit it.” Character B: “Admit what?” Character A: “I’m the best you’ve ever had.” [13]

13. Character A: “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you?” Character B: “And yet for some reason your mouth just keeps on going.” [8]

@wearywinchester (x) Dean Winchester x Reader

@theravenclawgal (x) Sirius Black x Reader

14. Character A: “I shouldn't have kissed you” “ Character B: You're right. But I should've.” [7]

15. Character A: “Do you flirt with everyone?” Character B: “Unfortunately, you’re the only one who caught my attention.” Character A: “Unfortunately?” [8]

@sexysirius (x) Sirius Black x Reader

16. Character B: “I like to keep my options open.” [8]

17. “I hate you. Oh, I hate you so much right now.” [11]

18. “Jesus Christ, you're annoying.” [11]

First kiss / Confession prompts

19. Character A: “Come over here.” Character B: “Why?” Character A: “You said you’ve never been kissed before. I’m planning on changing that.” [10]

20. Character A: “Just… don’t make this weird, all right?” Character B: “Meaning what?” Character A: “Meaning, don’t treat me like I haven’t been kissed before.” Character B: “But you… haven’t been kissed before.” Character A: “Look, I just want this over and done with, okay. I don’t want to be treated like a delicate flower. Kiss me like you mean it.” [10]

@band--psycho (x) Damon Salvatore x Reader

21. Character A: “I love you.” Character B: “I know.” Character A: “You knew?” Character B: “You haven’t exactly been discreet.” [15]

@band--psycho (x) Natasha Romanoff x Reader

22. “Listen, I know you’re busy, but… it’s important.” [15]

23. “I love you, and I don’t care if you don’t love me back. I just need you to know that I do.” [15]

24. Character A: “Do you have feelings for me?” Character B: “What?” Character A: “Do you have feelings for me?” [14]

25. “Is that truly, all it is? Just, two friends, hanging out?” [14]

@pregnant-piggy (x) Sirius Black x Reader

26. “I need to ask you something and I don’t want you to brush off the subject or turn it into a joke… I need you to be honest with me.” [14]

@grimdevil (x) Young!Sirius Black

27. “Are you… are you in love with me?” [14]

28. “I can’t stop thinking about you.” [14]

29. “All this time I thought you didn’t want me.” [14]

30. “If there’s something you want to tell me, now’s the time.” [14]

@wearywinchester (x) Dean Winchester x Reader

31. “There’s nothing going on between me and Character C. because the person I want to be with is standing right in front of me.” [14]

32. Character A: “I want this to work. I really do.” Character B: “Then we’re on the same page.” [16]

33. “I’ve missed you so much. I didn’t even think it was possible to miss someone this much.” [16]

34. “I know we're not together, but I might die today so I'm going to kiss you just in case there is no later.” [6]

Reassurance / Sweet prompts

35. “You could stay here, tonight. For as long as you'd like.” [7]

@oliverwoodmarrymepls (x) Oliver Wood x Reader

36. “Could you ever love someone like me?” [7]

37. Character A: “I've never been in love before.” Character B: “Then let me show you.” [7]

@goddessofdawns (x) Sam Wilson x Reader

38. “I can’t get up. You’re gonna have to carry me.” [11]

@goddessofdawns (x) Sam Wilson x Reader

39. “Are you okay with me kissing you?” [12]

@deanwanddamons (x) Jensen Ackles x Reader

40. “I feel safe with you. I always have.” [12]

@band--psycho (x) Newt (Maze Runner) x Reader

41. “I need you to know that you can always come to me.” [12]

@iliveiloveiwrite (x) - Benedict Bridgerton x Reader

42. Character A: “You’ll wait for me?” Character B: “For as long as I need to.” [12]

43. “I’ll always be there for you. Don’t you ever doubt that.” [12]

@band--psycho (x) George Weasley x Reader

44. “Don’t hide from me. you’re even more beautiful in the morning.” [13]

@will-be-a-fineline (x) Harry Styles x reader

45. “I’m going to kiss you until you’re sick of it.” [13]

@goddessofdawns (x) Sam Wilson x Reader

46. “Just hold me. I’m not ready to wake up.” [13]

@pregnant-piggy (x) Sirius Black x Reader

If you have any questions, don’t be afraid of sending me a message. My inbox is always open for everyone :)

Prompt lists used from @screnwriter and @dreamy-prose

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]

[living-with-pmd]

11 Women With PMDD Share What It's Really Like

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is the evil cousin of PMS. They share the same types of symptoms—moodiness, increased hunger, cravings, fatigue, cramps, pain, brain fog, and depression, among others—but for PMDD sufferers, those symptoms get so bad they can cripple a woman's ability to lead a normal life.  

While up to 85 percent of women get PMS, according to the US Department of Health, only about 5 percent of women experience PMDD, according to the American Journal of Psychiatry.

We asked women with PMDD what it's really like living with the disorder. Here are their stories:

"I was diagnosed with PMDD last summer. Six months prior to my diagnosis, I started taking a certain birth control and soon every month I was experiencing severe PMS issues. I am a generally happy person, but during those few days I was someone entirely different. I was extremely depressed and anxious, having much more frequent panic attacks, and was super sensitive and lonely. I was even suicidal, which was terrifying. And the worst part was I was convinced that I had always been this miserable, and that I would always be this miserable, and it was never going to change. It felt as if someone had completely burned out the light in me and all happiness and joy and hope was gone. I didn't make the connection that it was related to my period but thankfully a close friend did. I have since switched birth control, which helped a lot, and increased the dosage of my anti-anxiety and anti-depressant meds. Most importantly, I am aware of the way I feel those few days so I know to expect it, and I can logically remind myself that I will stop feeling that way soon. Looking back, I realize that I've probably always had pretty bad PMS or PMDD. The birth control worsened it but it was also causing a lot of issues I wasn't aware of previously as well." —Katherine H., 22, Edmonds, WA

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"PMDD is out of control. I cry really easily for about a week. My biggest issue is that I am convinced that I am failing at everything—being a wife, a mom, work projects, fitness, my whole life! And even though it feels so real I constantly have to question if my feelings are valid or if they are amplified by my cycle. I just set an alert in my phone to remind me to consider my hormones the next time I feel that way." —Krysten B., 32, Toronto, CA

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"A week before my period, I become a complete psycho, completely unlike myself. I'm tearful, want to eat everything that's sweet or salty, have absolutely no tolerance for anything other than perfection, and prefer to be left completely alone. I already take an antidepressant but my PMDD was a complete nightmare so my doctor gave me Prozac to take for just 10 days a month. Basically, I start it when I start to get that irrational feeling and keeping taking it until my period starts. And that's just the emotional stuff. On the physical side, I have debilitating cramps, backaches, and headaches that last for days. Yep. I'm a peach." —Kristen L., 40, Knoxville, TN

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"In the past, PMDD almost made me suicidal and totally broke my spirit. Yes it wasthat bad. Every month. Eventually I got tired of being a 'crazy PMS woman' and decided I needed to fix this. Since I don't like to take pharmaceuticals, I branched out to homeopathic remedies and I discovered St. John's Wort and essential oils, especially clary sage and Doterra Calm-Its. It's a lot better now but I still have my hard days." —Amy S., 43, Zebulon, NC

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"My PMDD got so bad I had to go to a psychiatrist and be put on Prozac along with another antidepressant I was already taking. I was a mess—anxious, crying randomly over the smallest thing, and eating everything in sight. One example is someone made a YouTube mashup of the Age of Ultron trailers with Pinocchio footage and the 'I've got no strings on me' song and that wrecked me for weeks. Every time I thought about scenes from Pinocchio I would start panicking and crying at my work desk. It's been a few years and I'm better now. I'm off birth control and weening myself off the Prozac. I notice a week before my period I will sob during any sad part in a movie or book I'm reading, and a day or two before, I notice I'm more likely to be anxious." —Kate W., 36, Alaska

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"This has impacted my ability to work effectively. My pet peeve is when people say 'it must be close to your time of the month' when they simply don't like what I'm saying. I have run into that problem a lot at previous jobs and it makes it really hard to be taken seriously. It's bullshit because my feelings are valid regardless and also PMDD is not a joke. I am so lucky now to have a male boss who understands but it wasn't always that way. I have also have found a lot of relief with naturopathic and herbal remedies." —Amalia F., 28, Vancouver, Canada

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"My PMS was tolerable until my second child was born and then everything went off the rails. I'd be looking forward to plans with others, happy, and then about 10 to 14 days before my flow would start, my mood would turn on a dime. I'd be horrible—crying, screaming that ~nobody understands~, just so much emotional pain. I'd basically lock myself up in the bedroom for a full day to cry, get angry, and feel sorry for myself. It took three doctors before I finally found one who would listen to me before I was finally diagnosed with PMDD. I took Prozac for three years for it but it made me feel numb, like a zombie and not like myself. So I quit and my family just deals with me now. As I've gotten closer to menopause the PMDD is not as bad, but can be very unpredictable due to hormonal swings from perimenopause. The worst part now is I feel like my friendships have suffered. I always seem to have episodes around major holidays and events and I end up bumming everyone out if I do show up so I end up staying home a lot." —Colleen T., 50, St. Paul, MN

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"I'm overly emotional for the week before my period. Saying that makes it sound like it's not that bad but I get so distraught that my fiance has actually scheduled it in his phone as 'blood sport' to remind himself what's coming. I'm thankful that he's patient because I also feel like everyone hates me that week, too." —Kenlie T., 36, New Orleans, LA

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"All month long I'm fine and feel even and calm and then suddenly, the week before my period, I can't handle even the tiniest little thing. My irritability goes through the roof (which is not great since I have a 5-year-old) and I feel like I have no friends. It really makes me sad." —Jessica S., 28, Broomfield, CO

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"I know my period is coming because all of a sudden all of my joints hurt, especially my knees and ankles. I also get crazy gnarly cramps and once I even had a cyst that ruptured while I was on a date and the guy had to take me to the hospital! It was so embarrassing. Thankfully my husband now is very understanding when this time rolls around each month. The worst part is people who just think I make this stuff up. Some months are better than others and sometimes the pain is completely debilitating! My emotions are also a rollercoaster. Anytime I see something cute or inspiring, I burst into tears." —Ivie C., 21, Rexburg, ID

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"My PMDD manifests in both mental and physical symptoms. From the time I got my period at age 12, I've had extreme cramps and heavy bleeding. I'd leak at school through a super maxi pad every class so I'd tie sweatshirts around my waist and have to scrub my clothes when I got home. It was super humiliating. I'd have to take six to eight ibuprofen at a time to deal with cramps, and if I didn't I'd end up on the floor sweating like I had the flu. Sometimes I'd even throw up. This meant I ended up spending a lot of time sick in bathrooms and knew where every restroom was at all times. Birth control helped manage the PMDD and other issues, but as soon as I was done having kids, I had a hysterectomy. That was the best thing I've ever done." —Mandy P., 39, Mendon, UT

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a19972132/premenstrual-dysphoric-disorder/

[sonicasura]

Balan Wonderworld Review: Favorite Costumes Part 2

Before we get started, I like to say something. I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE TIM TRAPS. If you don't know, there is a specific plant that tends to appear in certain levels called Tim Traps. A carnivorous orange flower that's favorite meal is TIMS. If you kick the plants, you can free your Trapped Tim or prevent one from getting trapped for a short period of time. Problem is if the Tim is trapped for too long, your baby is gone for good. Chapter 3 and Chapter 5's Act 3 are loaded with these annoying plants. To the point if I can't find the trapped Tims, I exit out of the game just to save my poor fluffballs. Ain't sacrificing my little birds for Drops and Trophies! Mini rant over.

Rules are the same as before. I'd be ranking both a Common Costume and Rare Costume. Common Costumes are easily to find whether it be in multiple levels and Rare Costumes are those that rarely appear or are difficult to get.

I'll be doing my favorite Secret Costume after playing all Act 3s for each chapter. Now let's begin.

Chapter 7

Common Costume- Floaty Flower

The Flower Fairy and greatest glider found in the main story. Floaty Flower is a costume that can be found in the Act 1, 2 and the Boss Act, it offers a slower descent but faster movement than the hover for Soaring Sheep.

I love this costume not for its aesthetic but a cute Easter Egg I found in Chapter 7 Act 1. On rare occasions, this costume is an NPC that actually flirts with you! Some NPCs in certain chapters act differently from their standard counterpart. They often try to disguise themselves or runaway. Catching them grants you a free costume of the one you caught.

Floaty Flower will appear and follow you, similar to a shy school girl with a crush. If you go to her, she will run which is a similar action to any shy person getting approached by their crush. Also... I think there is some lore hidden in this one that might be quite sad if it's directly linked to Cal, the human whose heart created this particular world. If so then... OOF.

Rare Costume - Paladin Puncher

A knight fights with his fists than a sword. This costume can be found in Act 2 and is a stronger version of the Pumpkin Puncher that can break iron or ice blocks. He's a bit slower than his Chapter 6 counterpart but perfect breaking the more blocks and defeating spiky enemies.

I also love the fact this costume goes against the traditional tools of a knight. Knights often fight using swords, shields, lances and rare occasions bows or axes. If you give me one who PUNCHES or straight uses martial arts to fight then you got my vote in seconds.

Chapter 8

Common Costume - Snow Fairy

Elegant dancer of ice and snow. The Snow Fairy costume allows the wearer to walk on air for a short period of time and can in found in Act 1 and Act 2. This costume does have a shorter usage time than Air Cat but makes up for it with the added elevation.

I absolutely adore how elegant and beautiful this particular costume is. You can compare the Snow Fairy to myths often related to fae or hidden in the freezing mountains. An otherworldly beauty that makes any hardship worth seeing just a being before your eyes. Being a reindeer type Faun just adds to the mystique and creating snowflakes to walk on is a perfect extra touch.

Rare Costume - Amadeus

Sophisticated pianist. A costume that can only be found in Act 1 and is a performing costume. Now I am a big fan of piano covers, whether it be covers of game osts or actual songs, there is rarely any piano music I don't like.

I love the fact he's wearing piano keys as a collar and even has a tutu made out of those very keys. A very creative take to a normally grounded instrument. And the big white wig is a nice touch since it's often portrayed with pianists in various media.

Chapter 9

Common Costume- Iron Panda

Adorable crusher. Iron Panda is a costume found in Act 1 and Act 2 with the ability to break iron blocks using both its jump and weight. This costume is surprisingly fast for a rather large and heavy form, perfect for fast stomps on enemies or quick getaways if you have rare costumes you don't want to lose.

This costume reminds of a rolling Russian Doll with a panda theme. Very adorable, the bluish purple color suits the white very nicely and I love that sleepy look on its face. The large blue dots on its sides are actually the arms too, they mimic panels! Only thing that unnerves me is when the costume turns their head by a 90 degree angle. Super creepy when using it.

Rare Costume- Merry Ghost

Cute and Spooky! The Merry Ghost is a costume that can be found in Act 2 and gives the ability to constantly float. It's main purpose is to avoid ground hazards like poison swamps and has a larger slightly floaty jump. The only downside is that you can't harm enemies with this, it's only for quick mobility.

Very adorable especially with the stitched rag cloak covering the body. It has this Mimikyu sort of vibe but also a Casper the Friendly Ghost aura too. Friendly spirits are often tossed aside for more vicious or antagonistic ones in a lot of media. Getting an adorable friendly one just adds points in my book and a good pal for Casper.

Chapter 10

Common Costume - Inky Blaster

Yuji Naka's take on a squid kid. This costume can be found in Act 1, Act 2 and the Boss Act. She allows the wearer to throw fast globs of rainbow paint at opponents or targets and is decently agile.

Love that her hands are paintbrushes and is based on the octopus. Tentacles mimicking the frills of a dress and used for hair and feet? A very creative take and splattering rainbow paint on the annoying types of Negati (looking at you ya divebomb happy Pelican and destroyer of most of my good costumes) is very therapeutic.

Rare Costume- Air Unicorn

The first unicorn I like?! This costume can only be found in Act 1 and allows the user to walk on air farther than Air Cat. The practical godfather of mobility, and recovery. You won't believe how many times this costume has gotten me to very difficult areas and saved me from death via falling into the abyss.

It is a very tricky costume to find but if you turn around, there's a large paintbrush on the wall. You need the Double Jumper to get on top but you'll be able to see a hidden mirror. That is where the Air Unicorn is located.

I won't lie that unicorns are not my preferred mythological creature. I live in America where unicorns tend to be oversaturated to oblivion and don't get me started on My Little Pony. The show isn't my cup of tea but I do have some followers and friends who are fans. People have their own opinions and it's rude to question them about it.

I honestly love the elegant but cute design, the purple, pale pink and cyan just fit well with the white, I also love that the mane mimics a paintbrush tip and the large light purple collar of fur is a perfect touch to this fine design.

Chapter 11

Common Costume - Bulldozer

A man's punny best friend! This costume can be in Act 1, Act 2 (?), and the Boss Act. It lets you push special construction blocks and you can boost the push speed by button mashing.

They definitely took a lot of creative for costumes in Chapter 11 amongst the other ones in my opinion. Fire Stations tend to have some animal companions with dogs being the most common but instead of a Dalmatian for the design they used a Bulldog! 😍

Like the aforementioned machine, this good boy is bulky, has the appropriate color scheme and even the hands turn into bulldozer's shovel when using the ability! I love the fact his tail is wagging when you push a block and it wags faster if ya button mash!

Also the name is a pun!

Rare Costume - Fiery Blaster

Pyromancer of Lions. The Fiery Blaster costume can only be found in Act 2. It gives the wearer that ability to throw large fireballs alongside fire and lava immunity. If you hate lava levels or have difficulty with this Chapter's boss then I recommend getting this Costume.

First thing I like to say about this particular design is how they use the colors. Looking at the mane, you can see how the red and darker red are patterned in a way to mimic flames. The dark red fur on the feet are even in fire like a pattern. The outfit such as the yellow and brownish kilt alongside the gloves spewing fire around the wrists just reminds me of a fire dancer.

I can see this fella wielding one of the torches a fire dancer uses and just put on a spectacular show.

Chapter 12

Another loveable version of a beloved icon. The Invisible Man costume can be found in Act 1, Act 2 and the Boss Act. It has the power to turn the wearer invisible for a period of time and become undetected to enemies that aren't bosses.

Agile and perfect to deal with enemies who are very annoying or are difficult snipers. You don't know how satisfying it is to give the more aggravating Negati an invisible middle finger by sneak attacking them. I have lost many costumes whenever enemies got the drop on me so it's fair to dish out payback.

I love how this design takes aspect from the popular icon but also have it relate to their human counterpart. Bandages were used by the original Invisible Man to cover skin his normal clothing couldn't cover in public and made it easier for him to disappear when needed.

The shoes and arms being covered in bandages and some of the bandages being used as bangs for the hair is a nice touch.

Rare Costume - Jolt Tiger

Immovable Taser. This costume can only be found in Act 2. It grants electricity immunity and create a barrier when you stand still. One of the better costumes for baiting particular enemies. You do have to be careful because a single itch will stop the barrier.

If you don't know, the Tiger is my Chinese Zodiac and electricity is one of my favorite elements. Love the yellow lightning bolt flairs and even the black stripes mimic lightning too! I also like the will o' wisp pattern on the stomach and the large tuft of grayish fur around the chest. The design puts it above the Sun Walker.

And that is it! The next thing I will cover is the level design and it's music. The bosses will be done last since it's good to save the best for last!

Until next time folks, see you back in Wonderworld.

[melodyalanaroster]

To answer some Fanfic Questions...

So, this is my response to @broxklynn‘s post... I decided to make this its own post... So that It can be properly answered.

1. How and why did you start to write? Is there some kind of story behind it?

I started writing in general when I was in elementary school... Back when I just had a Platform 9 3/4 journal, not many friends, recess, and a desire to immerse myself in the world of Harry Potter. I enjoyed writing, and even joined the Writer’s Club in High School (but I eventually left to join Anime Club and Divergent Thinking Society). As for writing MCL fanfiction, I began writing Sam’s and Alana’s stories as early as when I first got into the fandom, back in 2013. Alana’s story started out as “A Fresh Start”, had a one shot called “When I Wake”, then turned into “Let The Dawn Be Broken”, and is now “The Melancholy Of Melody Alana Roster”. The final product barely has any hints of the first 3... In fact, Sam’s story, “Fighting Darkness”, has been completely debunked due to what I’ve decided to canonize in “The Melancholy Of Melody Alana Roster”. Writing MCL fanfiction has been a major help in distracting me from the depression that was caused by family issues, severe abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, my mom’s disease and her death, as well as working at several shitty jobs. Writing has helped me escape reality and keep myself sane enough to not be a black hole of hate, anger, and sadness to my friends and boyfriend.

2. What do you struggle the most with your writing?

There are 2 major things I struggle with... 1 is Timing. I often set deadlines for myself that I never meet and it makes me so frustrated that I miss them... There are currently things in my drafts that were meant to be “Holiday Specials” for Valentine’s Day and Halloween 2020 that are still unfinished... It makes me feel like I’m letting my readers down, when its more of me letting myself down... The other thing is Inspiration. Because I hate my job, I often think about Alana’s story in an effort to not be completely consumed by the fact that I do hate my work... Due to that, I often come up with ideas for my story that I think are FANTASTIC for my story... But, by the time I get home, I’m either in too much pain or too tired to write, or I’ve forgotten the ideas...

3. What is your favorite genre to write?

I love writing Romance with a bit of Slice of Life and a hint of Action/Adventure... 

4. Slowburn or “Flame”/PWP?

Slow burn any day.

5. How do you overcome writer’s block?

If I absolutely can’t write... I work on other stuff I need to do... Typically, something around the house, or something online I need to do... I also look for cool stuff to add to wish lists... I’ll occasionally play videogames or read comic books... In an effort to subvert writer’s block, I like having multiple chapters in my drafts at once. If I’m not in the mood to work on one chapter, I can work on a different one.

6. What kind of thing you dislike the most, when reading a fanfiction? (for example: particular plot, grammar mistakes)

One thing that makes me upset (and it makes me madder when I do this) is misspelling... Especially when it looks like its almost blatant... You have autocorrect, USE IT! Or when a fanfic is so awful, yet the author acts like their work is a gift from god... I don’t mind a “bad” fanfiction... Hell, the concept of “My Immortal” is so bad that its hilarious... But Fifty Shades did a lot of damage and E.L. James acts like she’s bigger than Jesus... Seriously, she wrote Twilight fanfiction, changed some minor details and names, people who have no knowledge of BDSM ate it up, and she acts like she’s a “Sex and Relationship Guru”...

7. What’s the biggest issue for you, when writing a Beemoov fanfiction?

The biggest issue for me is finding out when to allow for Beemoov’s writing and placement to take place in my story. I don’t like a lot of the events of UL and LL, so I’m often finding myself in a position where I have to watch video playthroughs and go “Okay, how can I omit this character, but keep this scene?”. I’ve had to do that A LOT with Alexy and Rosalaya.... Although, to a certain extent, I’ll often cut their scenes out altogether. I really hate what Beemoov did to them. They were great characters in HSL, but became utter shit in UL and stayed shit in LL. To make up for Beemoov’s writing style, I’ve created my own characters, added in old characters (like Kentin and Armin), added in bits from the manga (like Viktor, Severina and their fathers), and gone off on my own storyline. The Melancholy Of Melody Alana Roster is close to MCL at times, but often veers off onto its own road.

8. Have you ever created a character based on person in real life? (celebrity, someone that you know, etc)

YES!!! A LOT of characters in my story are based on real people! Alana’s step-father, Nate Films, is closely based on Nathan Fillion. A lot of her family members are based on members of my own family, just changed a bit to fit the story. Lynne Roster, Alana’s mom, is what I had always dreamed my own mom would be... Hell, Alana’s cat, Sylvester, is based on my own childhood cat, Luna.

9. How do you feel about your own characters? Do you think of them as your babies or have rather love-hate relationship with them? (And, do you have favorite one?)

I love most of my characters. I do hate 3 in particular... But, you’re supposed to hate, or at least not respect, them... That’s why I poured my hatred into them... Those 3 are Carol, Kai and Azrael. Carol has aspects of my abuser in her. You’ll see more of her when I finally post the HSL related chapters... And understand what I mean... Kai is based on one of my real life cousins that I’ve not been happy with for years (the one who my bf has deemed “the family failure”). You mainly see him in the Cousin Mels chapters, and in the Christmas Special... Azrael is the one who is seen the most in the UL chapters, and she is a main adversary for Alana. She is the one who broke her the most, the one who ended Alana’s relationship with Nathaniel, the one who truly traumatized her. As for ones I love... The one I love the most is Alana... I know, she’s a reflection of me, so that’s kind of vain... But, she’s a part of me. When I do finish her story and am at the point where I need to say “Goodbye”, it will hurt....

10. Enemies-to-lovers or friends/bestfriends-to lovers?

Definitely friends/best friends to lovers. I also like toying with what happens when best friends turn to lovers, but circumstance parts them and one moves on...

11. Is it easy for you to get inside your character’s head? Can you empathize with them? Is there’s some similarities between you and your main character?

It is VERY easy for me to get into Alana’s head... Like I said in #9, she is a reflection of me. She looks and acts like how I’d like to in a lot of situations... Her life is more interesting, traumatized, and more well off than mine... But, she is still me in major ways...

12. Who has been the biggest supporter of your writing?

Definitely my boyfriend. He doesn’t really understand the game itself... But, he likes how happy it makes me and he respects how much of my heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears that I’ve poured into writing my story. He loves listening to me read passages from it to him while I’m working. He gives me advice and his opinion is highly valued... My family knows I’m writing a large story, and have seen some of the images that I’ve gotten commissioned, but they don’t really know or care about the game. They do respect the fact that I am writing. They love the fact that I’m slightly following in my mom’s footsteps in that regard (she wrote 3 books and several poems). My online friends have been very supportive as well! I’m constantly updating them on what I’ve worked on each day in my Discord Server and the words of encouragement always help.

13. How do you handle criticism?

Not well. Due to the abuse and family issues mentioned in #1, for a good amount of my life, I’ve gotten nothing but harsh criticism... So, now that I’m away from all that, at 26 years old, I’m just now getting to a point where I’m starting to take it better... But, I’ve got a long way to go.

14. Do you like giving your characters trauma? Why/why not?

I hate sounding like a sadist... But, I’m going to anyway, so fuck it... Yes. I have done awful things to Alana over the years. In A Fresh Start, she got sexually assaulted and ostracized. In When I Wake, she gets into a car crash, put into a coma, and in her dream state murdered by Francis in front of Nathaniel. In Let The Dawn Be Broken, the plan was for her to end a war. In “The Melancholy of Melody Alana Roster”, her childhood cat dies, her mom gets sick, she gets abused by Carol, her best friends get ripped away from her for a bit, she gets sent to a country halfway around the world alone, she gets assaulted and ultimately turned into a weapon of mass destruction.... I’ve even thought of killing her mom off at one point... But decided against it...

Now, granted, A Fresh Start and Let The Dawn Be Broken never saw completion, but happy endings were planned for them...

I do this, all while giving Alana happy endings in each story because “If Alana can go through utter hell and make it through, then so can I.”... I know, I’m “god” in that regard and I can control how Alana’s life is.... But, the fact that in my writing, she ends up standing tall, happy, with everything she wants, after everything she goes through does make me feel better.... 

15. Are you proud of yourself? When you look at first piece you wrote and compare it to the latest one?

Yes. If you look at A Fresh Start, you can tell it was written by someone fresh out of High School. There’s no real depth to it. Let The Dawn Be Broken isn’t much better... But, The Melancholy of Melody Alana Roster has become my magnum opus. It is the largest piece I have EVER written, and will probably remain the largest piece I write. I am very proud of what I have created... And when its last word is written, and I am ready to get it made for it’s place on my shelf, I will feel very bittersweet about it... That being said, my original plan for a sequel involving Nathaniel’s and Alana’s daughter, Aurora, has been discarded. I don’t believe Aurora could ever have as much of my heart that her parents do...

And there you have it! Some insight into my world, writing, and history!

[popculty]

52 Films by Women: 2020 Edition

Another annual challenge complete!

Last year, I focused on diversifying my list. This year I kept that intention but focused on watching more non-American films and films from the 20th century. Specifically, I sought out Agnès Varda’s entire filmography, after her death in 2019. (I was not disappointed - What a filmmaking legend we lost.) 

I also kept a film log for the first time and have included some of my thoughts on several films from that log. I made a point of including reviews both positive and negative, because I think it’s important to acknowledge the variability and breadth of the canon, so as not to put every film directed by a woman on a pedestal. (Although movies directed by women must clear a much higher bar to be greenlit, meaning generally higher quality...But that’s an essay for another day :)

* = directed by a woman of color

bold = fave

1. The Rhythm Section (2020) dir. Reed Morano - Not as good as it could have been, given Morano’s proven skill behind the camera, but also not nearly as bad as the critics made it out to be. And unbelievably refreshing to see a female revenge story not driven by sexual assault or the loss of a husband/child.

2. Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda - If you ever wanted to take a real-time tour of Paris circa 1960, this is the film for you.

3. Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig - Still my favorite Little Women adaptation. I will re-watch it every year and cry.

4. Varda by Agnès (2019) dir. Agnès Varda & Didier Rouget

5. Booksmart (2019) dir. Olivia Wilde - An instant classic high school comedy romp that subverts all the gross tropes of its 1980s predecessors.

6. Girls of the Sun (2018) dir. Eva Husson

7. Blue My Mind (2017) dir. Lisa Brühlmann

8. Portrait of a Lady On Fire (2019) dir. Céline Sciamma - Believe the hype. This film is a master thesis on the female gaze, and also just really effing gorgeous.

9. Belle Epine (2010) dir. Rebecca Zlotowski

10. Vamps (2012) dir. Amy Heckerling - With Krysten Ritter and Alicia Silverstone as modern-day vampires, I was so ready for this movie. But it feels like a bad stage play or a sit-com that’s missing a laugh-track. Bummer.

11. *Birds of Prey (2020) dir. Cathy Yan - Where has this movie been all our lives?? Skip the next onslaught of Snyder-verse grim-darkery and give me two more of these STAT! 

12. She’s Missing (2019) dir. Alexandra McGuinness

13. The Mustang (2019) dir. Laure de Clermont-Tonnere - Trigger warning for the “protagonist” repeatedly punching a horse in the chest. I noped right out of there.

14. Monster (2003) dir. Patty Jenkins – I first watched this movie when I was probably too young and haven’t revisited it since. The rape scene traumatized me as a kid, but as an adult I appreciate how that trauma is not the center of the movie, or even of Aileen’s life. Everyone still talks about how Charlize “went ugly” for this role, but the biggest transformation here isn’t aesthetic, it’s physical – the way Theron replicates Wuernos’ mannerisms, way of speaking, and physicality. That’s why she won the Oscar. I also love that Jenkins calls the film “Monster” (which everyone labels Aileen), but then actually uses it to tell the story of how she fell in love with a woman when she was at her lowest, and that saved her. That’s kind of beautiful, and I’m glad I re-watched it so that I could see the story in that light, instead of the general memory I had of it being a good, feel-bad movie. It’s so much more than that.

15. Water Lilies (2007) dir. Céline Sciamma – Sciamma’s screenwriting and directorial debut, the first in her trilogy on youth, is as painfully beautiful as its sequels (Tomboy and Girlhood). It’s also one of the rare films that explores the overlap of queerness and girl friendships.

16. The Trouble with Angels (1966) dir. Ida Lupino – Movies about shenanigan-based female friendships are such rare delights. Rosalind Russel is divine as Mother Superior, and Hayley Mills as “scathingly brilliant” as the pranks she plays on her. Ida Lupino’s skill as an editor only enhances her directing, providing some truly iconic visual gags to complement dialogue snappy enough for Gilmore Girls. 

17. Vagabond (1985) dir. Agnès Varda – Shot with a haunting realism, this film has no qualms about its heroine’s inevitable, unceremonious death, which it opens with, matter-of-factly, before retracing her final (literal) steps to the road-side ditch she ends up in. (I’m partly convinced said heroine was the inspiration for Sarah Manning in Orphan Black.)

18. One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (1977) dir. Agnès Varda – Probably my favorite classic Varda, this film feels incredibly personal. It’s essentially a love story about two best friends with very different lives. For an indie made in the ‘70s, the diversity, scope, and themes of the film are impressive. Even if the second half a drags a bit, the first half is absolute perfection, engaging the viewer immediately, and clipping along, sprinkling in some great original songs that were way progressive for their time (about abortion, female bodily autonomy, etc) and could still be considered “bangers” today.

19. Emma (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde

20. Black Panthers (1969) dir. Agnès Varda

21. Into the Forest (2016) dir. Patricia Rozema - When the world was ending (i.e. the pandemic hit) this was the first movie I turned to - a quiet, meditative story of two sisters (Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood) surviving off the land after a sudden global blackout. Four years later, it’s still one of my favorite book-to-screen adaptations. I fondly remember speaking with director Patricia Rozema at the 2016 Chicago Critics Film Festival after a screening, her love for the source material and desire to “get it right” so apparent. I assured her then, and reaffirm now, that she really did.

22. City of Trees (2019) dir. Alexandra Swarens

23. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) dir. Eliza Hittmann - To call this a harrowing and deeply personal journey of a sixteen-year-old who must cross state lines to get an abortion would be accurate, but incomplete. It is a story so much bigger than that, about the myriad ways women’s bodies and boundaries are constantly violated.

24. Paradise Hills (2019) dir. Alice Waddington

25. *Eve’s Bayou (1996) dir. Kasi Lemmons – I’ve been meaning to watch Kasi Lemmons’ directorial debut for many years now, and I’m so glad I finally have, because it fully deserves its icon status, beyond being one of the first major films directed by a black woman. Baby Jurnee Smollett's talent was immediately recognizable, and she has reminded us of it in Birds of Prey and Lovecraft Country this year. If merit was genuinely a factor for Oscar contenders, she would have taken home gold at eleven years old. Beasts of the Southern Wild has been one of my all-time favorites, but now I realize that most of my appreciation for that movie actually goes to Lemmons for blazing the trail with her story of a young black girl from the bayou first. It’s also a surprisingly dark story about memory and abuse and familial relationships that cross lines - really gutsy and surprising themes, especially for the ‘90s.

26. Blow the Man Down (2019) dir. Bridget Savage Cole & Danielle Krudy - Come and get your sea shanty fix!

27. Touchy Feely (2013) dir. Lynn Shelton - R.I.P. :(

28. Hannah Gadsby: Douglas (2020) dir. Madeleine Parry - If you thought Gadsby couldn’t follow up 2018′s sensational Nanette with a comedy special just as sharp and hilarious, you would have been sorely mistaken.

29. Girlhood (2013) dir. Céline Sciamma

30. Breathe (2014) dir. Mélanie Laurent

31. *A Dry White Season (1989) dir. Euzhan Palcy

32. Laggies (2014) dir. Lynn Shelton

33. *The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood – Everything I’ve ever wanted in an action movie: Immortal gays, Charlize Theron wielding a labrys (battle axe), kinetic fight choreography I haven’t seen since the last Bond movie…Watched it twice, then devoured the comics it was adapted from, and I gotta say: in the hands of black women, it eclipses the source material. Cannot wait for the just-announced sequel.

34. Morvern Callar (2002) dir. Lynn Ramsay

35. Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

36. *Radioactive (2019) dir. Marjane Satrapi – The story is obviously well worth telling and the narrative structure – weaving in the future consequences of Curie’s discoveries – is clever, but a bit awkwardly executed and overly manipulative. There are glimpses of real brilliance throughout, but it feels as if the director’s vision was not fully realized, to my great disappointment. Nonetheless, I appreciated seeing Marie Curie's story being told by a female director and embodied by the always wonderful Rosamund Pike.

37. *The Half of It (2020) dir. Alice Wu - I feel like a real scrooge for saying this, but this movie did nothing for me. Nothing about it felt fresh, authentic or relatable. A real disappointment from the filmmaker behind the wlw classic Saving Face.

38. Mouthpiece (2018) dir. Patricia Rozema - I am absolutely floored. One of those films that makes you fall in love with the art form all over again. Patricia Rozema continues to prove herself one of the most creatively ambitious and insightful directors of our time, with this melancholic meditation on maternal grief and a woman’s duality.

39. Summerland (2020) dir. Jessica Swale - The rare period wlw love story that is not a) all-white or b) tragedy porn. Just lovely.

40. *The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) dir. Dee Rees – As rumored, a mess. Even by the end, I still couldn’t tell you who any of the characters are. Dee, we know you’re so much better than this! (see: Mudbound, Pariah)

41. *Cuties (2020) dir. Maïmouna Doucouré – I watched this film to 1) support a black woman director who has been getting death threats for her work and 2) see what all the fuss is about. While I do think there were possibly some directorial choices that could have saved quite a bit of the pearl-clutching, overall, I didn’t find it overly-exploitative or gross, as many (who obviously haven’t actually watched the film) have labeled it. It certainly does give me pause, though, and makes me wonder whether children can ever be put in front of a camera without it exploiting or causing harm to them in some way. It also makes one consider the blurry line between being a critique versus being an example. File this one under complicated, for sure.

42. A Call to Spy (2019) Lydia Dean Pilcher – An incredible true story of female spies during WWII that perfectly satisfied my itch for British period drama/spy thriller and taught me so much herstory I didn’t know.

43. Kajillionaire (2020) dir. Miranda July - I was lucky enough to attend the (virtual) premiere of this film, followed by an insightful cast/director Q&A, which only made me appreciate it more. July's offbeat dark comedy about a family of con artists is queerer and more heartfelt than it has any right to be, and a needed reprieve in a year of almost entirely white wlw stories. The family's shenanigans are the hook, but it's the budding relationship between Old Dolio (an almost unrecognizable Evan Rachel Wood) and aspiring grifter Melanie (the luminous Gina Rodriguez) that is the heart of the story.

44. Misbehaviour (2020) dir. Philippa Lowthorpe – Again, teaching me herstory I didn’t know, about how the Women’s Liberation Movement stormed the 1970 Miss World Pageant. Keira Knightley and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s characters have a conversation in a bathroom at the end of the film that perfectly eviscerates well-meaning yet ignorant white feminism, without ever pitting women against each other - a feat I didn’t think was possible. I also didn’t think it was possible to critique the male gaze without showing it (*ahem Cuties, Bombshell, etc*), but this again, invents a way to do it. Bless women directors.

45. *All In: The Fight for Democracy (2020) dir. Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes – 2020’s 13th. Thank god for Stacey Abrams, that is all.

46. *The 40-Year-Old Version (2020) dir. Radha Blank – This scene right here? I felt that in my soul. This whole film is so good and funny and heartfelt and relatable to any artist trying to walk that tightrope of “making it” while not selling their soul to make it. My only initial semi-note was that it’s a little long, but after hearing Radha Blank talk about how she fought for the two-hour run-time as a way of reclaiming space for older black women, I take it back. She’s right: Let black women take up space. Let her movie be as long as she wants it to be. GOOD FOR HER.

47. Happiest Season (2020) dir. Clea Duvall - Hoooo boy. What was marketed as the first lesbian Christmas rom-com is actually a horror movie for anyone who’s ever had to come out. Throw in casual racism and a toxic relationship treated as otp, and it’s YIKES on so many levels. Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy, and an autistic-coded Jane are the only (underused) highlights.

48. *Monkey Beach (2020) dir. Loretta Todd

49. *Little Chief (2020) dir. Erica Tremblay – A short film part of the 2020 Red Nation Film Festival, it’s a perfect eleven minutes that I wish had gone on longer, if only to bask in Lily Gladstone in a leading role.

50. First Cow (2019) dir. Kelly Reichardt – I know Kelly Reichardt’s style, so I’ll admit-- even as I was preparing for an excellent film, I was also reaching for my phone, planning on only half paying attention during all the inevitable 30-second shots of grass blowing in the wind. (And yes, there are plenty of those.) But twenty minutes in, my phone was set aside and forgotten, as I am getting sucked into this beautiful story about two frontiersman trying to live their best domestic life.There is only one word to describe this film and that is: PURE. I’ve never seen such a tender platonic relationship between men on screen before, and it’s not lost on me that it took a woman to show us that tenderness. Reichardt gives us two men brought together by fate, and kept together by a shared dream and the simple pleasure of not being alone in such a hard world; two men who spend their days cooking, trapping, baking, and dreaming of a better life; two men who don’t say much, but feel everything for each other. The world would be a much better place if men showed us this kind of vulnerability and friendship toward each other. Oh, and it’s also a brutal take-down of capitalism and the myth of the American Dream!

51. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) dir. Patty Jenkins - My most-anticipated film for the past two years was...well, a mixed bag, to say the least. Too many thoughts on it for a blog post, so stay tuned for the upcoming podcast ep where we go all in ;)

52. *Selah and the Spades (2019) dir. Tayarisha Poe

I hope this gives you some ideas to kick off your new year with a resolution to support more female directors!

What were your favorite women-directed movies of last year? Let me know in the tags, comments, or asks!

[ops-on-loop]

OP Review #2: Death Note

For my first solo review I wanted to review openings for another series very near and dear to my heart, Death Note. Death Note is my absolute favorite anime of all time (you can read my review where I gush about it here), so I’m very excited to dive into the openings! 

Death Note has two openings for its anime, “the WORLD” for the first 19 episodes and “What’s up, people?!” for episodes 20 to 37. They’re very interesting openings, I’m excited to dive into my thoughts on each!

“the WORLD” (link to OP)

Category 1, Artstyle/Animation: The art and animation in this opening is incredible. Of course, it was made in the early 2000’s, so it isn’t as crisp and clean as the openings that we see now, but it’s still up there. The beautiful renaissance painting parodies across the opening, the detail to each character (even in moments where I’d imagine it’s REALLY hard to animate, like :08-:11 specifically), just the variety of shots in general is amazing. We never stay in the same environment for more than 3-4 seconds, the opening is always taking you to a different shot of a different character doing something that holds great symbolism to the story. It’s pretty great. They’re also able to pair the music REALLY well with the shots in the opening which is just… mwah. So good. 2/2

Category 2, Song: Bit of an unpopular opinion here… I’m not the biggest fan of the song by itself. I still love it paired with the opening, but when I hear people praise it as “a banger” in the same way that I’d applaud an opening song like “Sakura Kiss”, I just can’t agree. It’s a great song! I really like it! But I wouldn’t say it’s as god-tier as everyone makes it out to be. I rarely listen to it by itself, and I listen to a LOT of OPs when I’m driving/walking to classes so that’s saying a lot. One thing that’s pretty cool is that the song itself REALLY relates to the show. It’s in Japanese so even I missed it the first time around, but when looking up the lyrics some important/telling lines are  “I won’t let anyone interfere with everything that will come about from now on”, “am I a broken Messiah? everyone wished for a finale”, and “someday, I’ll show you a shining sky”. If you’re familiar with the show… it feels like an opening song directly made for this anime. I can respect that. 1.5/2

Category 3, Relevance: This opening is filled with symbolism and references. There’s a lot of Christian symbolism, nods to events in the show, at some points the way that certain characters are LOOKING represents different views in the series, I LOVE openings that are packed full of references like this one. I’m not going to do a full-blown analysis on the opening as A) I’m probably gonna miss stuff and B) that’d take too long, but there’s plenty of “Death Note OP analysis” videos out there so feel free to check those out if you’re interested. I love openings that connect so much to the show it’s just… so good. 2/2

Category 4, Originality: Like I mentioned, it’s pretty PACKED, so even if it does a stereotypical anime opening thing (characters in a line/walking dramatically, etc.) it’s not for a very long time, and it’s surrounded by plenty of originality. The pseudo-renaissance art, different shots of Light in his god-like mindset above the city, all the great shots of Misa, it’s great. I wouldn’t say this is your typical anime opening, even if it does have some familiar elements. 1.5/2

Category 5, Bias: I really like and appreciate this opening, but I’d never call it one of my top favorites. Not to give away too much of the second half of this review, but I actually like OP2 better, so more of my bias points will go to that. To keep it at an even score I’ll give it a 1/2

Death Note’s first opening, “the WORLD” , scores an 8/10. I really like this opening, and even if it’s not one of my favorites I can respect how jam-packed it is with symbolism and references, which I always appreciate and like to see. Song is good too, not to the point that I listen to it by itself, but it’s a nice addition. 

“Whats up, people?!” (link to OP)

Category 1, Artstyle/Animation: This opening upholds the same quality of animation as the first Death Note opening, if not even better. Shit gets crazy. I love the new effects and crazy backgrounds that this opening presents. Ryuk dancing with the apple, Misa on the bed sheets, Light in the MANY shots where he’s just losing his shit, and my absolute favorite shot with Light walking through his “ideal world”. This opening is so chaotic, which perfectly represents the latter half of Death Note… Light is losing his shit, everything is getting chaotic. 2/2

Category 2, Song: I might be in the minority here but I LOVE this opening song. It pairs with the opening so perfectly, and though I’m 100% not a heavy metal/screamo/whatever genre this is fan, I still absolutely rock out to this opening from time to time. My favorite part of the song also pairs with my favorite part of the opening, Light walking through his “ideal world”. The sudden calm pairs so perfectly with the scenery, and when it builds back up to the levels of madness it was at before it’s just gold. The lyrics… are interesting… lots of cursing and screaming and I can’t say it means a lot, it certainly sounds like what the inside of Light’s head probably sounds like by the end of the show. I love it. 2/2

Category 3, Relevance: While there aren’t as many symbolic shots as the first opening, a lot of it still relates to different characters in the show and how they’re portrayed. Misa, instead of being depressed and upset like she was in the first opening, is now simply doing her modeling biz, reflecting how she loses all of her memory of the Death Note in the latter half of the series. Light… we can all tell what the shots of Light are supposed to represent. He’s losing it. There’s a lot less L in the opening (for… sniff… obvious reasons), and all of the other important secondary main characters get pretty cool shots too. Going back again to my favorite scene in the opening (starting at :44), you can see Light walkling by all of the prominent figures in the second half of the series, with his view of each of them very clear based on where they are in comparison to him. In his ideal world, Mikami and Takeda are very prominent figures, with Mikami being closer to him than Takeda (shown by how he walks next to Mikami and away from/above Takeda (because… you know)). He also walks directly above Mello, who in his ideal world is living in the sewers, not much of a threat (which is pretty true for his role in the series). Finally we have Near, who lives in what would be darkness in Light’s ideal world, fighting against his idea of justice, perfectly representing how he views the figure “N” and how the series concludes. It’s just… I love it. While it doesn’t have meaning in every shot like the first opening, I still think that the second opening holds up with its madness and sprinkles of references thrown in. Also, seeing Light scream and thrash around is very therapeutic as he rarely loses his cool in the show. It’s nice… ( ￣ω￣) 2/2

Category 4, Originality: This opening is anything but ordinary. Not many shows go this crazy with their opening song choice and visuals, and I respect Death Note for changing it up a bit. It’s pretty cool and memorable, definitely sets it apart from a lot of the generic openings out there. 2/2

Category 5, Bias: While this opening isn’t on my “TOP 10 EPIC ANIME OPENINGS OF ALL TIME” list, it’s definitely up there around #11 or #12. I’ll always remember this opening as being a crazy cool viewing experience, I still listen to the song until this day, and for that I’ll give it a 2/2 bias points.

Yes, Death Note opening 2 scores a 10/10. Maybe I’m jumping the gun a little bit with this score but I really love this opening and think it deserves it! I’m probably in the minority with this opinion, hopefully not(?), but I have been confronted by a few friends going “?? how can you like the second opening better, the first is a classic” so please… don’t bully me. Death Note is my favorite anime, Light Yagami is probably my favorite anime character, clearly I already have pretty trash taste so don’t rely on me for the most “based” opinions~ (>ω^)

Death Note openings are pretty damn cool. They’re definitely made with a lot of care, they have a lot of relevance to the plot of the show, and they’re anything but typical and ordinary! Love this series and love the OPs just as much!

-zantids

[ouyang-zizhen]

Headcanon, part 2

So, I’ve seen a few posts in which ZiZhen has plenty of siblings due to his dad being old and all, and I raise you with: ZiZhen has many moms.

A total of 6, to be precise, would have been 7 if his own mother had survive. So here’s the thing:

1 - ZiZhen is an only child.

2 - His father realized, after marrying his third wife, that the problem of conception does not lie with the women he beds but with his own genetic. He’s still hoping it might happen with the right woman though. 

3 - ZiZhen is pretty much a miracle baby from an infertile (but not sterile) father.

4 - His mother was the first wife. After she died, the second concubine got that title. The third concubine arrived a year after the first wife’s death. 

5 - Ouyang Dad still tried to have more kids, marrying 3 more women, yet never earning any results (3 more instead of 2, because 4 is a bad omen). 

6 - He would have kept only those, but his fourth wife got badly sick and she was expected to die within the year. Not wanting to keep only 4 women in his household (again, bad omen), he took another wife during that time. The fourth wife survived, and they are now 6 in total. 

7 - All the wives, fully aware they’ll never have a child of their own unless Ouyang Dad adopts (which is unlikely), dotes on ZiZhen like he is their own son. 

8 - The second concubine, now first wife, was raised in the Meishan Yu sect, although not part of the main Yu clan. Her family has been part of the sect for three generations. She is the third daughter.

9 - When the Second Concubine married into the Baling sect, ZiZhen’s mom was still childless. She got pregnant with ZiZhen a year or so after the arrival of the Second Concubine, who also remained childless.

10 - ZiZhen knows many stories of his mother through the bedtime tales of the Second Concubine.

11 - The third concubine is from YunMeng. She was a dancer, born from a rogue cultivator, who taught her to train her golden core, and a dancer, who taught her the skills she made a livelihood of after her parents death when she was 16. She was 19 when she joined the OuYang household. 

12 - She and the Second Concubine slowly fell for each other and became lovers. 

13 - ZiZhen once caught them kissing. They both told him beautiful stories of soulmates and how easily those bonds can be broken by the cruelty of the world. ZiZhen listened with rapture and promised never to tell a soul about what he saw, for his aunties were true soulmates. (Yes, they both manipulated ZiZhen into not telling his father of what he saw).

14 - That moment sparked ZiZhen’s interest in love stories and slowly shaped him into the romantic he is. 

15 - He later understood what Second and Third concubine truly meant by their story. It fueled his passion for WangXian more than anything. 

16 - The Fourth Concubine was from the Chang clan. She got sick after hearing of their horrible death at the hands of Xue Yang, and how the latter escaped justice for it. Her cultivation has always been weaker than most, which is why she was thought to die from her pain, but, with the help of Second and Third Concubines, she got through. Her body still does not allow her to travel very far, but she enjoys taking long walks in the gardens of the previous First Wife, lovingly tended to by she and the other concubines. 

17 - During her recovery, she began to write stories to keep herself entertained.

18 - ZiZhen is her most fervent fan, always poking in her rooms to have a sneak peek of her next story. 

19 - Because of the involvement of the Jin Clan in the absence of justice for the Chang, she is the most suspicious of the budding relationship between ZiZhen and Jin Ling. While not outright disagreeing, she always keeps her eyes open to any clues that might tell Jin Ling is not right for ZiZhen.

20 - The Fifth Concubine is the 5th daughter of a rich Baling family. She was raised in the sect, developing a strong core, often helping Young Master ZiZhen, age 14 by now, to train. At age 25, still unmarried, the Fifth Concubine was noticed for the first time by OuYang Dad, on a day she actually bothered to dress nicely. She went back to what I would call an “Ancient Chinese Butch Look” shortly after the wedding. 

21 - Fifth Concubine then proceeded to thoroughly seduce Second, Third and Fourth Concubine into a relationship all together. Their laughter can often be heard in the courtyard linking each of their pavillion together. 

22 - Sixth Concubine was a rogue cultivator herself. Fifth Concubine saw her at the market one day. They talked and fell in love. Fifth Concubine, with the help of Second, Third and Fourth, who also met Sixth and were charmed, managed to convince her husband to take Sixth in with them. “Four is a bad omen husband, you need another one of us!”

23 - When Fourth fell sick, that’s when OuYang Dad hurriedly tried to find Seventh Concubine. She was a merchant’s daughter, selling her father’s ware at the market. Ouyang Dad tried to haggle something much cheaper than it was worth. She stood her ground. He asked to marry her. 

24 - She refused at first. “I am not a cultivator, what am I bringing to you?” OuYang Dad, at this point trying one last time before calling it quit, decided that maybe it would work, a baby with a non-cultivator. 

25 - It did not work. But Seventh is pretty happy with her lot. She’s well taken care of, especially by the other concubine who all warmly welcomed her, and they all promised to take care of her the same, even once she’s old and grey. 

26 - So ZiZhen is really well loved by his father’s remaining 6 wives. That’s where he gets his “Respect Women” juice from. 

27 - The only reason why he’s been feeling down lately with his father’s expectations and mistreatment is because said father also cut the time ZiZhen is allowed to spend with them, he has “Sect Related Duties” now, he doesn’t have the time to play around anymore. 

28 - The Wives eventually called bullshit. ZiZhen has been feeling better ever since. 

29 - OuYang Dad is painfully oblivious to his Wives relationship together. He is just happy none of them are giving him any headaches. 

30 - One day, Jiggy went to Ouyang Dad and congratulated him on the harmony of his household. Jiggy, of course, thought he would be subtly blackmailing OuYang Dad with the scandal of his wives together (where did he learnt that? Fuck if I know!), but Oblivious OuYang just smiled and thanked him, which kinda messed up Jiggy’s plan. Not that he needed to blackmail Sect Leader OuYang, but it’s always useful to do so. Anyway, Jiggy left the conversation thinking Ouyang Dad thought everyone knew already and he was happy with it. 

31 - Eventually, Ouyang Dad DID learn the truth, well into ZiZhen’s 20′s. He got mad for about 5 minutes before calming down. “At least they can’t get pregnant from this, it won’t bring me any shame.”

32 - He lets them be, especially since they let him be. He enjoys his quiet evenings away from whatever his wives are doing. 

33 - Which is ironic considering he is friends with one of the loudest mouths in the Cultivation world, Sect Leader Yao. 

34 - All the wives avoid him like the plague whenever he visits Baling. 

35 - All the wives having a golden core, they go to Night Hunts together from time to time. Seventh sometimes tags along despite not having a golden core, while Fourth tends to stay at home after her sickness. 

36 - They are all very careful though, since they know ZiZhen’s mother died during a Night Hunt and they all promised ZiZhen they would not be careless.

37 - ZiZhen started calling the Concubines “Autie”, but one day, he accidentally called Fourth “Mom”, and all the others got jealous and wanted to be called “Mom” too, so he now calls them First mom, Second mom, Third mom, etc.

38 - He uses a different, more childish word when talking about his deceased birth mother. 

Aaaaaand that’s it for tonight folks! I know some of what I’ve written gets change a little now that I have this headcanon in mind, but I’ll keep this for whatever’s coming next in the OG world (well, canon-divergence world now XD). See you guys soon with some new OS!

[retphienix]

Alright, this is gonna be tough because I desperately want to say so much for the game's sake and my own, but it's just so much.

At least the playthrough as a whole exists to show a lot of those things, and there's no shame in some of the impacts the game had for myself going unsaid :)

LONG POST INCOMING, NO 'READ MORE' BECAUSE IT'S RELEVANT TO THE POST AND NOT AN AFTER-THOUGHT

CLICK 'J' ON YOUR KEYBOARD TO SKIP. (Sorry mobile users)

8:48 - Do you have any idea how good a step forward it felt to smash the repressing bulb?

9:50 - So I'll get ahead of myself because this fight shows a lot of the visuals that play into this: Something being the manifestation of guilt for Mari is so incredibly visualized.

Between the base 'Something' being extremely close to the shadow she cast and including the one visible eye that bore down on Sunny and Basil after the hanging, to the stairs incorporating into the design.

The seaweed and spider are more general anxieties though they do circle back to Mari since she saved Sunny, but those two forms don't feel as directly related as the stairs (heights) and base 'Something' forms and what they represent for his repressed guilt.

Could be wrong ;) Tell me what you saw in the forms of 'Something' if you'd like to expand on them :)

12:39 - Just to prove the point before you get to fully see the truth- Something morphs into the figure of Mari hanging. It doesn't fully demonstrate the "eye" aspect yet, but still I just wanted to say kudos on the way 'Something' is shown visually. Formless for a reason, and that form becomes more defined as you understand what it is, exceptional damn thing.

15:43 - Basil's part in all of this makes me so damn sad. Plenty to say later (obviously), but he harbors so much guilt, wants forgiveness so much, and is so (not shown yet) desperate to believe in Sunny's innocence while knowing but not comprehending the truth. The fact he harbors his own 'Something' due to the guilt of all this is heartbreaking, these kids endured a hell no one should. Losing someone so important to you and harboring the guilt and fault of it when nothing of the sort was intended. A childish fight with raised emotions got out of hand and all this came of it.

Hell.

16:30 - I absolutely adore how the photo album is used for this reveal.

Absolutely incredible execution that's specific to this story and its characters and makes piecing (literally) this together tense and grim.

22:27 - I NEVER SPOKE TO OR INTERACTED WITH THE THING IN THE CENTER OF THIS ROOM AND I'M A NORMAL AMOUNT OF UPSET ABOUT THAT >:( lol

29:41 - Okay.

So this reveal as a whole is so unbelievably well paced and incredibly hard hitting.

All game long there's a weight of having lost Mari. Repeatedly it's told that she killed herself and no one can understand why and everyone (MYSELF THE PLAYER INCLUDED) is looking for meaning in little moments, seeking out hints that maybe she was suffering or depressed or this or that.

And while that has gone on FOR THE ENTIRE GAME there has also been this uneasy weight surrounding Sunny/Omori. Visions of Mari twisted and deformed into phantoms of horror.

For the most part I assumed it was just him coping with having lost his sister and maybe a dialogue on how when she was alive he was in her shadow (in his mind) and now that she's gone he remains there?

That was the best I could figure, more or less. But it continued to seem more and more malicious in design and MUCH more 'heavy' in how it's presented as a shadow behind Omori/Sunny throughout his adventure and life.

The weight and 'overshadowed' looks of the scenes felt more and more foreboding and less like a simpler "I'm living in her shadow" story, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Then these pictures come out and piece things together.

The final result:

Sunny and Mari fighting. (Context appears to be his growing disdain towards playing. It's stated he loved playing, but it's also shown that he begins to dislike how much Mari is dragged away for classes and the like up to and including playing. So my read was that Sunny was upset that their fleeting time together was dedicated to the recital and broke his violin in an emotional blur and the fight occurred.

Alternatively it was accidentally broken and both of their emotions were running high as it happened)

Mari falling to her death.

Sunny and Basil carrying her upstairs and tending to her.

Sunny breaking down as it sinks in.

The visions having Basil say "It's going to be okay" by the bedside. (I perceive that as a memory of what Basil was saying as he tried to manage his emotions during the event)

Sunny and Basil carrying her back downstairs and to the backyard.

The makeshift noose.

And finally the sight that burned itself into Sunny's eyes of her hanging after it was all said and done.

Just holy shit to it all in how it's revealed and handled.

Stories have twists all the time, and I ain't gonna make some bold claim like "Most unpredictable!" "Best twist!" "What a twist!" or whatever, though that'd be funny.

I just want to say this twist worked BEFORE the reveal as a foreboding sense of unease and curiosity- it lent itself to intentionally vague and easily misconstrued explanations, basically- instead of it outright misleading you beyond the characters that believe the lie repeating the lie, it allowed you to mislead yourself.

It did the twist the right way! And well! YOU trick YOURSELF! The people repeating the lie are being lied to or have motivation to repeat the lie! The GAME isn't lying (as so many twists handle it) the game is giving the world reason to mislead and allowing you to be mislead!

Now am I yelling affirmations for the way things SHOULD ALWAYS BE! YES! BUT THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S NOT AS NORMAL AS IT SHOULD BE! lol

31:40 - All the "You will really miss them"s hurt :(

33:25 - Right out the gate, a spoiler for what isn't here:

I looked up the alternate endings of the neutral route and my heart hurts to know Sunny doesn't stick around and Basil dies :(

34:00 - BASIL BEING OVERWHELMED WITH DENIAL AND GUILT AS HE ATTEMPTS TO MENTALLY PROTECT HIS VIEW OF WHO HIS FRIEND IS BY INVENTING A SECOND PARTY THAT DID THIS IS SO FUCKING REAL AND AMAZINGLY DONE.

And it explains the name behind the 'Something'.

'Something' behind you did it. There's 'Something' behind you, isn't there.

'Something' all around us, that potentially being the truth comin' in.

When 'Something' ruined my photos, Basil repressing protecting Sunny by destroying the proof.

Just expertly done.

'Something' being repression of the memory and impending guilt. Dannnng.

36:26 - It's 24 hours after I beat the game as I type all this so here's a gag.

Here's the part where Basil beats some sense into his friend, because after this Sunny gets knocked out and wakes up 200% improved and ready to save Basil from his own guilt by releasing them both from the secret.

So basically Kel dragged us out of bed, then a couple days later Basil beats us up, and that's how Sunny gets better :^) Game Over.

38:46 - This fight made me feel utterly terrible, a highlight being the energy bar saying "Everything is going to be okay".

or at 40:17 - when Basil pokes out Sunny's eye and the screen does this? That's an underutilized but always awesome visual.

41:12 - I THOUGHT I WAS DEAD AT THIS POINT :)

Because just before entering Basil's home on this night you see his Grandma's ghost here. So seeing Sunny here told me "WELL. YOU FUCKED UP!"

42:25 - Like I said, beat some sense into Sunny.

Here's the mental side of things where Basil's beatin' told Sunny to go remember the good times and confront his inner self and I'm being partially facetious because there's plenty to say about what's coming up.

43:15 - Goosebumps every time due to the sincerity and hope of this.

43:40 - Hug for anyone needing that.

51:11 - I could cry again and I just might before this post is done being put together.

This accident was never meant to be.

55:09 - Timestamp is arbitrary, I won't go over every flashback but I do want to say what a beautiful way to use these photos. To relive the memories? To find the strength to overcome and all that? After all these years of suppressing memories? DANNNG I love this game.

1:04:09 - I stepped in poop.

1:04:15 - Barefooted.

1:04:22 - I embraced my failure.

1:12:00 - The violin.

1:13:00 - "The anxious feeling-" "They believed in you" "No matter what you didn't want to disappoint them" I'm filled with love and gonna cry about it.

1:14:00 - So an important theme in the game, as if it has just one, is Sunny suppressing emotions and demonizing himself.

Obviously the ending shows him breaking free from both but I think it's important as hell to look at how he builds up to being able to.

After all the dark moments show him as a bloodied monster, demonstrate a perceived lack of remorse for what he's done (as in he sees himself so poorly that he says "I must not have felt bad about it, I'm a monster", not that he actually doesn't feel bad about it, that he thinks he shouldn't because he's bad), have him stab dream Basil to protect his repression of the memory, the build up to breaking free from that is him remembering the good in him through the lens of his friends.

Both in the real world and in revisiting the memories within the photos.

He hears about the good in himself that he has pretended isn't there and finds the power to overcome this deadened shell he's made.

He learns how to forgive himself by finally remembering he's worthy of forgiveness and is more than his mistake, that even the person he grievously harmed would want him to forgive himself and would understand the mistake didn't define him.

1:15:15 - Just because you did something bad doesn't make you bad, to put it more eloquently than my rambles. He had to learn that.

1:19:20 - I've done this fight 4 times.

You may be wondering why 4 times, it ain't like I replayed the game a ton or anything.

The short of it is:

1) For the good ending :)

2) To see what happens if you go "up" in the hospital- it's a dead end- I assumed it'd be a bad ending. So I got the good ending again :)

3) For the bad ending.

4) FOR THE GOOD ENDING TO WIPE THE HORRIBLE FEELING IN THE PIT OF MY STOMACH AWAY FROM THE BAD ENDING :)

In doing so I did get one layer deeper on the BG of Omori in the fight, here it is:

And I learned on the fourth run that the fight is simpler than I gave it credit lol, Cherish refills your juice, so there is no reason to use Encore. You can get to the end (and deeper more easily) by just using the triple attack and Cherish and Calm down when necessary.

1:29:00 - A summary of the fight is that it's extremely impactful emotionally, but very obviously isn't a "Fun fight". It's great mechanically and story wise for what it's trying to do :)

I'll just say it here: I'm surprised there wasn't an end-game "Omori" fight, you know, in dream world? Because combat is SO good in this. I am lead to believe that the Omori route where you never go outside in the real world has more bosses and zones and would fill what I just implied I wanted- but you're also railroaded into the Neutral endings which are both sad :(

And honestly? That makes sense and I applaud the decision :) Embracing the fantasy world for more 'fights' isn't exactly the path to recovery. Also and I know someone will be bothered I say this because *I'm* bothered I'm saying this- it makes sense since a big predecessor did the same thing lol.

Undertale Genocide has new bosses and a harder end game challenge (Sans) while being the worse ending, while the good ending has a flashy and story/emotionally impactful final fight that isn't as challenging because challenge isn't the point of the morals being explored.

I just bring it up because it's interesting, has a parallel, and after fighting Omori 4 times I really REALLY wanted to do an end-game fight in Dream World.

1:30:00 - forgive me as I cry again. goosebumps and more.

OH NO~!

DRAT!

So I use a cheap video editor and I use the free format of it which limits to 720p and I didn't think twice of it.

I recorded at max, but downgraded after editing.

At 720p you can't see the detail that made me break down crying!

At 1:31:55 Sunny's eyes go wider as he sees Mari as they finally get to experience the duet in this dream state (White Egret Orchid, this is real and happening, I'm taking this to my grave :'( ) he sees her smile and that smile made me break down, but in the 720 it's blurry :(

That's on me, I could have posted the scene raw in HQ but I didn't know it'd compress just enough to be invisible :(

still. that duet scene can make me cry on command. just because of that alone, but also the entire thing.

1:33:42 - Sunny breaks from his shell and feels his emotions again.

1:37:07 - I wish every game would end with a mirror to see yourself.

The 'Despite everything, it's still you' vibe just cements all the growth and experiences that have happened as so much more real when that happens. Bonus points because mirrors in Omori are a time bomb where you can be reminded of the guilt following you- and this one is safe. This one is pure and clean. You did it.

1:37:50 - As I said earlier, going up does nothing. Dead end.

1:39:00 - I have to tell you something.

Simple ending. And yet slams me like two trucks. I'm so proud.

1:41:00 - Post credits scene.

This is so heartwarming and their smiles are the purest thing in the entire world.

1:42:50 - BAD ENDING RECORDING.

All I'll say on that is the bad ending made me feel terrible inside. Give up, live in your bubble, and subconsciously end it all so you never have to confront reality again.

My gut felt heavy to be honest.

And the fact that THAT is when Bo En Time is played is INCREDIBLE.

Having the sky shift like that gave goosebumps and cemented my dread.

Just seeing it now has me feeling very poorly.

Okay. Video done.

Now for general thoughts.

First off this White Space cycle has been going on for YEARS with Sunny only getting worse as he suppresses things more and more and the reason he found the strength to overcome is because of his friends and I'm gonna yell about it.

THE REASON SUNNY IS BREAKING FREE CAN BE DIRECTLY POINTED AT KEL THINKING "FUCK IT, I'M ABOUT TO LOSE A FRIEND, AND I DON'T WANT TO"

And I just think that is sweet as hell. The strength was inside himself, but the problem itself caused Sunny to demonize and not trust himself- he needed someone to break him free and help convince him that he's not irredeemable. And boom.

The way this game handles Denial and even gives it physical form with the 'Something's that both Sunny and Basil harbor is just awesome.

I touched on it but combat in Omori is very, very good.

I've said it here and there as I played and I feel like going at length in the finale post is pointless because this isn't a review but to put it concisely.

Types changing mid-combat, the character archetypes being so well defined, the follow up system, combat in Omori is some top notch turn based RPG stuff.

Like up there with the greats, the timeless masterpieces. This is GOOD fighting. So it was surprising the good ending didn't emphasize it- I explained why that makes sense, but even still! It'd probably be lesser for it (as explained previously) but it's interesting they practiced that restraint for the message they wanted to send.

Repeatin' that Mari's smile in the recital made me cry. Burned in my brain.

I'm still surprised I got the post credits scene because I DID water the plants a lot but when the game showed me them all dead I assumed that was the fail condition.

I genuinely do want to try the Omori route some time down the road. I hope I get around to it.

I am slightly dissuaded just because the Omori route only gets the neutral endings which are not Good To Be Blunt :(

But I want to see what dream content there is and I hear there are other bosses!

Other small bits from my notes:

Replacing denial (the black bulb) with hope (the white bulb) was good as heck.

The imagery of the 'Something' is so top notch- using the shadow of her body combined with the piercing gaze of her single eye- MY GOD.

The fragility of life being so present- between memories of near death experiences, to the way in which Mari dies, to the ease at which either Basil or Sunny can end the game. It's tense and heart-wrenching.

The way the 'Something' behind Sunny almost always shadows over him like an ever present weight.

Tearful, hopeful, pure, kids enduring a guilt metric tons heavier than their bodies could ever handle and finally, finally moving beyond it.

I said more in a personal post, and I'll reblog that.

Honestly, just timestamping through the video took it out of me and got the point across.

Omori is a wonderful game.

It's definitely a favorite for me, high up there on my list.

Between the themes, the gameplay, the humor, the ending.

This is a good one.

And now I get to end having experienced all the care and love in this title, that's such a sweet thing.

Now I know this finale post is a mess, illegible even. I have gotten sloppier as I've begun embracing just 'experiencing and rambling' and perhaps my formatting with change yet again until I find something more easily shared.

Despite that. I want to thank any who popped in on this playthrough.

This was a good one, a highlight of the blog for sure- and I'm always happy when I see some people enjoying the absolute mess I toss online when I do one of these :P

So thank you for your time, and thank you to any ridiculous enough to read my nonsense here.

Have a good one :)

And just as expected I feel I've said nothing and barely touched the surface as the post-game-head of mine does a poor job lol. Even still :P

[staggeringsmite]

HELLO! just finished properly listening to your (amazing!) corruption arc playlist! I have many thoughts, and so I wanted to ask you about specific moments and/or characters that you associate with songs (as mentioned in your tags), as I am simply SO intrigued. (did you have certain songs that were added for certain character(s)? were any songs for specific what if's? etc.) also, please consider this a free pass to ramble about anything related to the playlist that you wish. it is SO excellent!!

AHHHH!! thank you jade (both for the compliment and the free space to yell about my thoughts here because when i get playlist brainrot i get it Bad <3) // the playlist in question

i think i'm genuinely going to do a song-by-song thoughts below the cut, but here are some overview thoughts/associations if you don't wanna read all of that or don't have the time!

overall this started with athena by nova twins! i thought the sp*der imagery and overall vibe was great for a more sinister look at the wacky (mostly) chaotic neutral party as they are, just going full lolth. i wanted the pacing to be semi-slow and then drop into the more rock-heavy reckless villain-y section before moving into a (?) bittersweet? i guess? end that feels a bit more like a question mark of if it was worth it.

i think this party is full of extremely interesting motivations to side with an evil power for their own gain/the benefit of the people they care about, and each one of them has a very complex relationship with that so things spun wildly out of control as a thought about this.

for songs i associate with specific characters here's an overview, but you'll notice there aren't a lot for fy'ra rai or orym which i get into a bit more in the song-by-song:

all: i come with knives, into the spin, steady/steady, control, bad dreams / lolth: million years, athena, diggers / dariax: diggers, plenty, hollow / dorian: athena, grenadine, dangerous / fearne: plenty, you should see me in a crown, black wave / fy'ra rai: home / opal: home, grenadine, black wave, you should see me in a crown / orym: i'm not calling you a liar, dangerous

song-by-song >:)

1. i come with knives (acoustic) - this song, zoowee, so i went with the acoustic version because i think it's a nice slow but sinister start and it very much gave me the feeling of whenever you begin as a character to question taking this kind of power, that is a Source yes that you can do whatever with but is rooted in temptation and associated with evil, is there any real justification for that which is not in some part selfish. "i come with knives and agony to love you" if that isn't the chosen ones to a T in their overall reasoning for even considering a deal with lolth. and as much as that may be rooted in care, and wanting to be strong and powerful enough to protect the people they care about, it is a painful way to love when you really choose that path once and for all.

2. into the spin - this one is based on "slow climb but quick to descend" and i love the instrumentation as a part of the overall vibe, but it's about sowing the seed here. planting even a hint of consideration in accepting the power of the circlet and lolth's words is going to need time for the person to mull it over, but once it's on it is On baby.

3. million years - this is what i mean by All In Baby, and while it isn't the playlists narrative point of anyone actually accepting the power for good, it is a glimpse intended to shake things up after an 8 minute slow start with the first two songs, and this is all about lolth who is a Chaotic Evil entity, who is a reckless and hauntingly destructive force <3

4. home - "everything you made will end up broken" i think this song to fy'ra rai is more of an omen, of everything that she cannot fix but wants to, knowing that she cannot make choices for the group and seeing the potential path they could wind up on and knowing that fundamentally if they go that way it is their decision no matter how much it will hurt her - for opal there is SOMETHING about the tone of this song that feels very much like her, and the complete lack of care it seems to have to rattle off mundane things to the intimate drama of the place, to omens, to demands/declarations i think it shows her personality well and how that pairs with a chaotic neutral entity being offered something like the power of the circlet

5. steady, steady - idk if this is necessarily everyone but the mix of you know when you're ready and i am ready to be the one, this is the song about taking the leap and grabbing for power and/or fy'ra rai and orym's feelings of diving in with them or resisting/leaving them

6. diggers - for lolth this is just the consistent "i've been waiting for you" in the bg which i found fun and disconcering but also i think this is the perfect party and perfect storm for her to convince someone to use the circlets power >:) - for dariax! it seems with what we know he doesn't really know that he is a divine soul sorcerer? unless that is a show he is putting up. still, i feel like him carrying the circlet is Very interesting as someone with a divine bloodline who is in a way being given/chosen for that type of power holding onto this artifact born from evil and perhaps being tempted by it & i think this song works as an interesting back and forth for him with the strange double-entity grab for him in a way

7. athena - truly just a banger that fit the vibes wayyyy too well and started this whole thing, it's loud and reckless and out for blood babey <3 - i think i associate it with dorian mostly because i also associate it with lolth and he is the closest to really taking that leap in canon (and also probably the first one the go if we're following this playlist like a story with everyone/most everyone going corrupt, though it can be read truly infinite ways these are just compiled songs) i think it has a certain flair and appeal that just makes me Feel like it's the song that would play the second dorian puts the circlet on (which! fun fact! decreases your charisma by 2! have fun beloved bard!) - i think it's a very intense conversation

8. i’m not calling you a liar - okayokayokay it's orym thought time bc there are sooo many worlds and routes for orym here and i truly have no idea where he would even end up in this hypothetical. do i think that orym loves these guys and wants to protect them? yes. do i think that he may genuinely take the pain of loving them and keep his morals by walking away and/or turning on them if they all go evil? maybe. do i think he also might love them enough to throw that away? maybe. in a party of all chaotic neutrals besides him without fy'ra rai he is surprisingly the wild card here. while they have each other and no one else, he has the teachings and wisdom of the voice of the tempest and a moral compass that does not align with theirs at all. so, something has to give! dorian's slide into chaotic neutral was natural, but i think orym would be giving up Much More of himself to let himself slide from neutral good to chaotic neutral. i have no answers only sad, sad hypotehtical questions and scenarios so i will just, leave you with "and i love you so much, i'm gonna let you kill me." - this song also comes here before the storm of the 3-5 because whatever way he goes i think orym sees it all happen before anyone else does.

9. grenadine - Do Not Tell Me You Couldn't Hear villainous opal and dorian say the lines "what a big heart i have, i'll be your savior now. what a real catch i am, all the more to pull you down." - i see this song as playful but more genuine for dorian in terms of Truly Really believing any action he does to protect his friends is justified and good to him in his eyes whereas this is a very playful song for a villainous opal - they both give off this vibe strongly though (could see this one for fearne as well but don't have a good a justification)

10. black wave - helloooooo my favorite druid and warlock?? going apeshit with power? more so than they already are on a day-to-day basis (esp given episode 6 combat)? that's what this song is about. "stumbling down the street i swear to god you don't wanna test me" - i also think they both have an interesting question with "what do i believe?" with fearne being of the feywild which is a place of considerably different moral standing to exandria and opal being so young that she doesn't have the world figured out at all <3 terrifying and upsetting when you get into those questions on a corruption arc <3

11. you should see me in a crown - okay i knooooow this one is on the dorian playlist BUT vibes for my brutal babes <333 something about opal’s whole personality and fearne confronting the mirror self But eventually choosing/heading down the path anyway?? impeccable i love it there’s very few other thoughts here

12. control - OKAY not only does this song Fuck but i put it as party wide because i think it transitions nicely into the end of the mix which is more of the “questioning this decision after going all in but not being able to turn back/was it all worth it in the end?” part - i mostly love the “though i like the idea of providence... i’m in love with control” repeated because! i think the circlet is very interesting in that it has been iterated many times over that though it has connections to lolth and she has some claim/twisted abilities with it, it IS just a power source. so, the idea of going all in and accepting this power is an incredibly interesting dilemma of “who’s in charge here? did you really put it on/would you have without these dreams and lolth’s influence? are you really in control?” i think this song really represents that admission/delusion of control in this situation.

13. plenty - okay this song in any context is just my Feywild/Faerie Vibe song so i think this trails back to my feelings about fearne leaning into that different set of fey morals along a corruption arc, and as for dariax i think this is about abundance! following through that mixture of divine power source and chaotic evil god origin over dariax and his chaotic history of vast and varied experiences in emon, i think this very much befits a corrupt version of him.

14. dangerous - this song makes me insane, and the first reason i put it on the mix was the “the dead are true believers. rest assured. we are all believers” really just made me think of a terrible and cinematic moment of them discovering the circlet with the dead aboard the ship ESP in the context of this playlist’s narrative where that was the point they were destined to claim its power and go through their corruption arc - “how does it feel to be your own deceiver?” is the main reason and feeling as for why i made this a dorian song as well in line with “don’t worry i would do anything for my friends.” bc i personally find dorian’s corruption arc to be disillusioned with his own intentions and takes a lot of convincing himself that taking this power for his friends is noble in the scope of this group’s collective morals and self-interest in keeping each other safe and prosperous so <3

15. hollow - woowee dariax corruption, at least in this scope, i think is very frightening to me in that i think he’s going full maximalist, abundant, greedy, impulsive chaotic evil if we’re realllly leaning into a villain arc but still many of those things if we’re just going “this group is the only thing that matters and i’ll do anything for them no matter the cost” - i also think this song has a tone of resentment towards this? apprehension a bit? recognizing that this is how the person singing is but not entirely enjoying or feeling justified in it? as impulsive as dariax is, i think he cares A Lot, and is even a character i could see pulling a reverse dorian and going chaotic good in a different story than we’re in? “so simple when i was younger” and “i’d be a dancer of a different tune” really give me angsty dariax vibes in the height of his corruption arc

16. bad dreams - “don't you worry about your bad dreams cause I'm not in them. don't you worry about what change brings cause you can't stop it.” WOOF i don’t know that this one really needs to be explained but it’s the climax and the descent all in one of the party/corrupted individual being too far gone in their decision to step back or be saved. i think the tone of the song lends itself well to a mixture of uncaring but also giving some question to if they regret it or not based on the narration of the crowd against them.

[borisbubbles]

ESC 2021 Preshow: 08. France

Barbara Pravi - “Voilà”

Autoqualifier

France going from 3rd last on my ranking / likely last place in the finale to 8th place in the ranking / probably top 3 in the Grand Final. 😍 WHAT A GLOW-UP.

So, “Voilà” is epic, obviously. Yeah I will skip the theatrics, each and every one of you know this song and we all know it’s probably the best French entry in ages. 

Funnily enough, I didn’t care for “Voilà” when I first heard it lmfao. It felt similar to the song Patricia Kaas went to Eurovision with and while “Et s’il faillait le faire” has its fans, I was never one of them. Worse, the internet immediately resorted to refering to “Voilà” as a “masterpiece” which is probably the pretentious statement you can make about Eurovision songs. Guys, it’s an Edith Piaf-inspired tribute act. Calm the eff down. Still, even at this early a stage I was instantly charmed by Barbara’s introspection and pluck even if I didn’t care for the music at first. After all, Barbara was the mastermind behind jesc HITS “Bim bam toi” and “J’imagine” and if she wants to bring a song that puts HER SELF at the forefront, she’s perfectly entitled to do so. About fucking time. On top of that, I thought the ending was sublime, even in studio version. “Why can’t the entire song be like that”, I thought. And then, E:CVQD arrived and Barbara SERVED, OUTSOLD, SLAYED, etc every superlative under the sun. 

So remember when I aired my critique regarding Gjon? “Tout l’Univers” is an “Objectively Strong” composition in that it employs music theory to conjure up a song that sounds impressive on first listen. But behind that academic skill lies virtually nothing of interest. I cannot connect with it beyond a base level because what does it tell me about Gjon or his story? Technique without a heart or a soul is merely pretense. But I suppose it can sound sophisticated to someone who doesn’t know what “sophistication” is. 

Barbara, however. Her personality just SPRINGS FORWARD on an approachable level from the first note. “Voilà”s’s technical expertise and Barbara’s own perfomance talents carry this vibe, this SERVE of personality, through the full three minutes without ever getting boring or tedious and they leave me craving for another listen. ALL OF THESE ARE AMAZING TRAITS IN A EUROVISION SONG. And this is just from the studio version, the live stage show makes it even better. 

So yeah, homeboy’s got his work cut out for him because if this is his competition he’ll have to graft hard for his victory.

NF Corner -  C’est Vous Qui Décidez

In what would become a running theme amidst countries this year, France led the charge in a personal project called #OperationForget2020, in which every trace of last year would be subsequently memory-holed. To acheive this, they revived their NF, gave it a new name and pretended it was ~The First NF of Its Format~ (so basically doing what Lithuania did last year when they rebranded Atranka into PiN).

INCIDENTALLY, this would also wind up the best NF of the year, pretty much by default because France had the most to win. Even though Barbara was the obvious winner from the instant the songs were revealed, the French had some excellent back-up options in their arsenal. Let’s rummage through them shall we?

LMK - “Magique”

R&B Trap wench <3 “Magique” starts off pretty and cute for fifteen seconds, before whiplashing hard into kick-ass tropical house territory. Her Slovene spirit mothers Raiven and Lea Sirk are so proud of her <3 She definitely deserved much better than the result she got (being NQ with the audience O_O), but lol it’s France, they ain’t NEVER crowning a sexually confident sassy woman, let’s not kid ourselves. 

Céphaz - “On a mangé le soleil”

This Hat God had me at that title. “We have eaten the sun” 😍😍😍😍. More songs should adopt a fatalistic environmental angle by using consumption-related metaphors à la “we’ve devoured out planet :burp:, MOAR”, and then set this suuuuper cynical and depressing text to an upbeat and optimistic soundtrack <3 The “Hey ya” tease of it all. 😍

Amui - “Maeva”

So cheerful it turns a surly cretin such as myself into a blundering mass of uwu. It’s like a nillies Eurovision semi NQ’er suddenly wandered into the set, so derivative and repetitive and tacky but SO fun and happy-go-lucky <3 The entire premise of “Maeva” is basically like: “VISIT FRENCH POLYNESIA, WE ARE THE MOST HOSPITABLE PEOPLE ON THIS EARTH” <333 using this message in the middle of a worldwide viral pandemic <33333333 Normally fun-trash like this would be murdered at first sight by any jury, but whoops “Maeva” turned out a massive televote hit HEHEE 😛 and finished third in the televote despite being last or second last with the jury. Those Tahitian diasporia votes coming through <3

Adriamad - “Allélujah”

TACKY EUROTRASH <3 Lol when I think of it, did I like this NF because it was good or because it was so fun-trash. Anyway, this display of diversity would normally be on my shitlist but it’s honestly SO OTT in its ~People Of The World Of All Colours Are Equal~ message it circles back into funny. The eye gimmick, the hammy choreography, the obnoxious fusion of several cultures into a nondescript ethnotrash hodgepodge, the fucking LYRICS everything is so funny and so entertaining it’s giving me LIFE. 😍 I’d say it deserved better but “Allélujah” stranding in the demifinal (not a typo) is honestly a much, much more satisfying result <3

Predicted Journey - France

Barbara is going on that Mahmood trajectory, I see. Early fave who gets near unanimous critical acclaim, rules solely on top until the other contenders show up and is then put on the backburner because she’s an autoqualifier and therefore isn’t a part of the “who will qualify?” discussions. Then, the rehearsals will happen and everyone will remember “hey, that French chick we almost forgot about is actually REALLY good” allowing her to pick up momentum again, catapulting her into the top five. So it is written, such it shall be.

The question is... Can she win? 

The answer is: yeah, possibly? At this point we have three potential contenders: Gjon for Switzerland and Destiny for Malta are the main rivals and I’d say Barbara has one big advantage over Gjon and Destiny: She already has a great live performance to back up her potential winner status. In fact, Barbara is a fave to win because we know what she’s going to bring in Rotterdam.  Gjon and Destiny could theoretically still bomb if their staging is off (and both are getting theirs done by Sasha Jean-Baptiste, soooooo) and their contenderness is based on things such as hype and expectation. Barbara meanwhile already had her baptism by fire when she competed in E:CQVD, which she handily won.

The problem though is Gjon Muharremaj. For the average eurofan, France and Switzerland have similar entries and it will result in a tug-of-war between which of them has the better song. Either could win this televote bout, and whoever does could beat Malta.. .but that would require Malta to have a disappointing televote result and with each passing day this is starting to look less likely. (Jury results matter less because they’re probably the top 3).  Personally I don’t really have a preference between Barbara OR Destiny as a win for either would push Eurovision in a better direction (A Gjon win though... I am TERRIFIED that may result in a 2022 contest filled with Vincent Bueno’s and Vasils), but if these three are indeed the top three, Barbara’s position is the most secure although she’s probably also the least likely one to actually win. Pray that I’m wrong though and we can all meet at her flat in Montmartre for a covid-proof afterparty. 

Projected placements:

> Grandfinal: 1st-5th (predicted Runner-up)

THE RANKING: 

01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. FRANCE - Barbara Pravi - “Voilà” 09. BULGARIA - Victoria - “Growing up is getting old” 10. LATVIA - Samanta Tina - “The moon is rising” 11. GREECE - Stefania - “Last dance” 12. SWEDEN - Tusse - “Voices” 13. IRELAND - Leslie Roy - “Maps” 14. CROATIA - Albina - “Tick Tock” 15. MOLDOVA - Natalia Gordienko - “Sugar” 16. ITALY - Måneskin - “Zitti e buoni” 17. ALBANIA - Anxhela Peristeri - “Karma” 18. UNITED KINGDOM - James Newman - “Embers” 19. LITHUANIA - The Roop - “Discoteque” 20. ESTONIA - Uku Suviste - “The lucky one” 21. FINLAND - Blind Channel - “Dark side” 22. AZERBAIJAN - Efendi - “Mata Hari” 23. the NETHERLANDS - Jeangu Macrooy - “Birth of a new age” 24. CZECH REPUBLIC - Benny Christo - “Omaga” 25. DENMARK - Fyr og Flamme - “Øve os på hinanden” 26. SLOVENIA - Ana Soklič - “Amen” 27. SWITZERLAND - Gjon’s Tears - “Tout l’Univers” 28. ROMANIA - Roxen - “Amnesia” 29. SERBIA - Huricane - “Loco loco” 30. POLAND - Rafał - “The ride” 31. ISRAEL - Eden Alene - “Set me free” 32. GEORGIA - Tornike Kipiani - “You” 33. PORTUGAL - The Black Mamba - “Love is on my side” 34. SPAIN - Blas Cantó - “Voy a quedarme” 35. NORWAY - Tix - “Fallen Angel” 36. CYPRUS - Elena Tsagrinou - “El Diablo” 37. AUSTRIA - Vincent Bueno - “Amen” 38. NORTH MACEDONIA - Vasil - “Here I stand” 39. GERMANY - Jendrik - “I don’t feel hate”

[peachfaeryy]

Hi 🌙

It's my birthday right now. I'm 26 now.

1. What is my fondest childhood memory?

My fondest childhood memories definitely consist of the lovely people who I grew up with and derived my sense of humor/silliness from: my cousins Anna & Emily, Savannah -- my childhood best friend, and Kaleb, my eternal crush. These memories consist of them in elementary school, camp, and my grandma's house in San Antonio.

2. What is my favorite comfort food?

Probably nachos/chips/chips & queso.

3. What’s my favorite way to exercise?

Uh...DANCE.

4. Am I a morning person or a night owl?

I lean more towards night owl but I try to avoid both.

5. If I could have any superpower, what would it be?

The currency of youth.

6. Do I prefer cooking, baking, or neither?

I love both cooking and baking :) I find both extremely rewarding and cathartic.

7. Am I an introvert or an extrovert?

Ambivert strongly introvert-leaning.

8. What superhero do I find most relatable?

None, I detest all superheroes.

9. What is my favorite season of the year — and what do I love most about it?

Winter because it provides me with the most amount of physical comfort. I love sleeping in a very cold room, opening my windows with no AC on. Sitting in my car listening to music/eating with engine off. Less humidity. Food is tastier. Style is better.

10. Do I believe in the existence of angels?

Not particularly? Well, yes but I believe they have absolutely no role or effect on our world.

11. What are my favorite TV series?

American Crime Story (OJ & Versace), Fleabag, Atlanta...90 Day Fiance, Game of Thrones

12. What was the last movie I watched (or the last movie I enjoyed)?

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (let's gooOoo)

13. Am I a tidy person or a messy one?

I used to be very messy but not I'd consider myself pretty tidy. My nature is messy though.

14. Am I afraid of the dark?

Nah.

15. Am I more of a coffee person or a tea person?

Mostly coffee.

16. What talents do I possess that I’m proud of?

I don't have any natural-born talents but I suppose my ability to teach myself a new skill over time.

17. Do (or did) I like school?

I loved school and literally work at a school.

18. Did I go to the prom?

Unfortunately, yes.

19. What is my idea of a perfect date?

Definitely grabbing pizza at a nice restaurant.

20. Do I enjoy DIY or crafts?

Not at all, sounds awful, lol.

21. Do I forgive others easily?

Yes. But not so much anymore now that I'm older and more experienced. My instinct/nature is very forgiving.

22. Do I have a nickname — or did I ever have one?

None.

23. Do I have any phobias?

I'm scared of most anything anything everything...I'd say my daily fear is mistaking my razor for my toothbrush in the shower.

24. Have I ever met one of my heroes? If yes, who was it, and how did it go?

No?

25. Do I speak any other languages?

No, but I told myself I would learn Spanish before I die.

26. Have I ever traveled outside my native country?

Yes! I have been the Mexico and Ireland.

27. If money were no object, what would I want for my next birthday?

Maybe a trip to South Korea/Germany/Rhode Island

28. Have I ever been addicted to something?

Yes. But as far as substances? I'm addicted to Nsaid.

29. When I was a kid, what did I want to be when I grew up?

I wanted to be a wildlife photographer when I was a kid-kid.

30. Have I ever won something?

$75 with scratch offs

31. Have I ever narrowly escaped death (or serious injury)?

I'd say so, yes.

32. Do I prefer baths or showers?

Showers.

33. How am I feeling right now?

Changed.

34. Have I ever played any sports?

Soccer, Basketball, and cross-country

35. Do I prefer the beach or the mountains?

Beach, but I feel connected to both.

36. Do I prefer a Mac or a PC?

Uh...PC?

37. Do I prefer dogs or cats (or some other pet)?

Cats...I honestly do not like dogs at all.

38. Do I have any piercings or tattoos? Would I like to get any?

I have three tattoos: three rune, a sword, and a butterfly. All of which are on my arms.

39. Do I have kids?

Not right now.

40. Do I have siblings?

None.

41. What do I do on a typical Friday night?

Same thing I usually do: practice dance/choreo for a couple of hours. Read, cook, watch Youtube. If I’m going out, I’ll maybe grab dinner/hang with my friends. I MAY go to ~the club~ in a blue moon.

42. If I could go anywhere in the world with unlimited funds, where would I go?

SOUTH KOREA

43. What do I do to relax?

Shower, listen to music. Do my makeup for fun.

44. What do I do to wake up or boost my energy levels?

Blast Stray Kids

45. Would I rather have unlimited energy or unlimited money?

Unlimited money

46. Am I a collector of anything? If yes, how big is my collection?

I collect Kpop bullshit...(albums, photo cards, posters, etc.) essentially merch from my favorite artists.

47. What sort of gift would I want from my significant other on Valentine’s Day or on my birthday?

JUST flowers. All I care about it getting flowers on both of those days.

48. Which would I rather avoid — excess heat or extreme cold?

Excess heat.

49. Would movie genre would I rather watch: action, romance, fantasy, or horror?

Of those choices: horror. I also like a solid journey story.

50. Have I ever been on a diet? If yes, how did it go?

More like a mini eating disorder, lol? I went through phases where I only consumed 1500 calories.

51. If I could live anywhere for a month with whomever I choose, where would that be?

Greece with I suppose...someone I get along with.

52. Have I ever gone camping? Or do you look at a tent and think, “I feel like that’s the wonton wrapper, and I’m the filling.”

Yes, several times. I actually thoroughly enjoy camping.

53. What’s the last song I listened to?

Ribs -- Lorde

54. What’s my current obsession, and how much have I spent on it?

Anything kpop...hours. I’m talking hours and hours.

55. What’s a favorite book of mine?

We Need to Talk About Kevin

56. What should I be doing right now?

Sleeping.

57. What’s my best feature?

Physically? Boobs.

Personality? I would say kindness but that’s basic. Witty? Self-discipline.  

58. What’s the most expensive article of clothing (or shoes) that I own?

Damn...shoes...? $100?

59. What is one thing I could not live without?

Music. My one coping mechanism and literally the reason I’m alive and functional.

60. What’s one thing I can’t leave the house without (other than keys and my wallet)?

Phone... BC packet?

61. What’s one of my pet peeves?

Slow walkers

62. What wild animal would I love to have for a pet (as long as it didn’t eat anyone)?

Maybe like...a toucan?

63. What’s my favorite drink?

An ICE COLD fizzy SODA boiii

64. What’s my spirit animal, and do I own anything featuring that animal?

I guess I’m very cat-like. I used to have a lot of cat stuff, but not anymore...

65. What’s my favorite restaurant, and what’s my favorite splurge order?

I like basically any fast food joint. I’m also a sucker for Chili’s. I’m really basic. A splurge order for me would be ordering a margarita with my meal.

66. What’s my favorite movie — or the best one I’ve seen in the last three years?

I’ve been obsessed with We Need to Talk About Kevin, Pirates of the Caribbean...I’ve been wanting to rewatch Little Miss Sunshine

67. What’s a favorite hobby of mine?

Dancing :)

68. What’s my favorite go-to snack?

Health-wise: apples and peanut butter. But if I don’t care: chips

69. What are my must-haves for watching a movie in a theater?

True interest in the film

70. What’s my favorite kind of competition to watch (sports, cooking, etc.)?

Not really into competition shows.

71. Would I rather get an electric shock or get an intramuscular shot (tetanus, etc.)?

Electric shock?

72. What’s my dream car?

Bella’s shitty red truck let’s gooooo

73. What are the must-haves in the home of my dreams?

LOTS of open space, sunlight, heated bathroom floor

74. What’s my favorite sandwich?

Chicken salad, BLT, plain peanut butter

75. What’s my favorite kind of dinner? (comfort food, four-course, take-out Chinese…)

Comfort food

76. If I could change my eye and hair color, what color/s would I choose?

I would DEF change my eye color to a warm brown and my hair to very dark brown. I’m growing my natural hair out. I’m going dye-free right now.

77. Who is my favorite fictional character (or one of them)?

Jack Sparrow

78. What’s my longest relationship so far (other than family)?

4 years...

79. What is my star sign — or do I usually avoid that question?

I DO NOT care about this but I’m a Leo

80. What is my lucky number, or what is a favorite number of mine?

Uh? N/A

81. What city do I live in now, and what’s my favorite thing about it?

I still live in Denton and I detest it.

82. What state do I live in now, and what do I love about it?

Texas, its diversity.

83. If I had to move to a different state, where would I rather go?

New Mexico

84. Have I ever colored my hair? If yes, what’s my favorite hair color experiment so far?

Yes, most of my teen and adult life. But my “crazy” hair experiment right now is going dye-free and wearing my natural color.

85. Whom do I miss right now?

My 14-year-old self

86. Have I ever made a mistake that someone else refused to forgive me for?

Apparently.

87. Do I have a celebrity crush? If yes, who is it?

JOHNNY DEPP and all of Stray Kids lol. Jungkook?

88. If I could meet any celebrity for coffee/tea and a chat, who would it be?

Marina Diamandis

89. As desserts go, would I rather have ice cream or cheesecake?

Ice Cream

90. Would I rather live in a house or an apartment, and why?

A small house.

91. Would I rather live in a treehouse, a cave, or a submarine?

Treehouse

92. What is one big goal that I want to accomplish this year?

Move out of D*nton.

93. What do I want to do for a living?

I’m happy being a teacher, but ultimately I’d like to counsel kids.

94. When I feel sick, where do I usually feel it first or most noticeably?

My head.

95. What sort of smartphone do I use, and what made me choose it?

Uh? Android?

96. What’s one movie that I’ve watched repeatedly? What do I love about it?

I watch signs pretty frequently. Midsommar? I connect with its characters because they seem like real actual people? I’ve been wanting to rewatch the Lovely Bones.

100. If I could afford one, would I rather hire a chef, a personal assistant, or a housekeeper?

Housekeeper!

97. What is one food that I refuse to eat?

Liver

98. What exotic food would I be willing to try?

I’d be open to trying most any food.

99. What is one item on my bucket list, and what made me choose it?

I’m kind of working on it now. I want to put a few years in while I’m young and able to become a very good dancer. I know that to obtain that it IS going to take years. It’s something that’s really important to me because I’ve always wanted that for myself but never made actual steps to obtain/execute it. And ultimately, I want it because it allows me to feel like my true self.