#but as early and most likely the intended interpretations and commentary on them

[tgirlsaintlawrence]

St. Paul’s letters have good conclusions but bad logic. This is evidence of how the Holy Spirit guided his writing.

[spaceorphan18]

The Rogue and Gambit Project: The Basketball Game (X-Men #4)

Alright! Here we are! That pivotal moment we've all been waiting for! The introduction of Omega Red.... Wait, no, that's not why you guys are here? You don't want me to dissect another Wolverine story that digs into the seemingly never ending well of his past? You aren't really interested in the creepy twins that make up Fenris? And you don't really care all that much about what's going on with Moira?

I mean, fine, if you'd rather I get into all the other boring stuff going on in the issue... ;)

Today we're going to test the limits of how much of an issue Marvel will let me repost without getting in some kind of trouble....

X-Men #4 Ladies and Gentlemen....

I believe I said this previously, but one of the best parts of X-Men comics is really the soap opera shenanigans that go on in-between all the big villains. The inner personal relationships that happen among the X-Men are really the best, and often the most delicious part of the comics. I honestly think fans would be entirely happy if we got full issues of them just playing basketball, or baseball, or hanging out at Harry's Hideaway, or getting therapy.... Because these personalities are so much fun and play off each other so well that sometimes they are far better than the endless 'save the world' story lines we often get because - apparently - all published fiction needs a plot to hang on.

But I digress. It's a post-Claremont world now, and all bets are off. It's kind of interesting that - despite Gambit and Storm's initial friendship, the two X-Men Gambit has been spending the most time with lately are Wolverine and Jubilee. There's no surprise, really, that Wolverine and Gambit have an antagonistic relationship. Jubilee, however, due to her relationship with Wolverine, has been somewhat of a sass master towards Gambit as well. Except now we have Jubilee on the same team as Gambit, which, turns the dynamic a little on its head. And it's a delight.

And then we throw Rogue into the mix. How did this game even get started anyway? My guess - Jubilee wanted to play and taunting and teasing of some sort got the four of them paired off as they are. I kind of love that not only is Gambit goading Wolverine about relaxing, but Jubilee is, too.

Remember when I said Gambit spends most of his non-uniform time half naked? Continuity! ;)

Wolverine is not the only one who needs to relax. Rogue is wound tight - and I really doubt it's about wanting to adhere to a non-powered game of basketball.

All that skin and sweat? The girl's got some pent up needs that haven't been met during the entire previous decade. Probably time to rectify that.

I love Jubilee's commentary, she is so obnoxiously sassy, and I love it. Also, I kind of love that they are taking the time to set up Gambit's athletic skill.

Btw, I love the kind of smirk he gives Rogue as he easily tosses the ball over her head. He's having fun. Is she having fun? Hard to say - mostly she just wants to win. And Gambit is most definitely getting under her skin. The hilarity coming from Jubilee isn't helping.

Is this a good time to bring up the whole -- he's playing games and messing around with her and she takes things seriously part of their whole story? Is this entire game just a metaphor for the early part of their relationship?

I mean - you can read into it as deeply as you like! I have a feeling the writers didn't think think that hard about it - and this is merely just a way to show off all of their skills. But it definitely can be interpreted that way. I mean, what are we even doing here if we can't extrapolate intended and non-intended things from the text?

Of course, this is an X-Men story, so we can't go too long without the usage of powers. Everything is going to get thrown up a notch. Is Gambit using his powers of agility? Well, idk how he couldn't be using them since it's a natural thing.

But man, does Rogue hate losing or what? The escalation of this whole thing goes from 0 to 100 like that.

Jubilee lowering her glasses kills me every time.

I do think Gambit was just taking it easy and playing around at the beginning of this. I think he liked getting Jubilee on his side and cheering him on. He liked driving Wolverine crazy. And more than anything, getting under Rogue's skin is a challenge he really seems to take pleasure in.

But Rogue did take it up a notch, so Gambit does what he always does - and ups the ante.

It's interesting - I think if we hadn't had the little bit of flirting in X-Men #3, this whole thing may read a little differently (up until this point). But I think we're at the point where it's clear that they physical one-upmanship is masking the sexual tension.

I mean, their screwing around literally blows a hole through the mansion wall. Idk why, but this always has me dying, too. There's some very serious stuff going on with Moira - meanwhile Rogue and Gambit are at the playground throwing dirt at each other because they like each other.

No, but here's one of the things I like about them. It was all fun and games, and then Rogue did throw the first punch. And then Gambit pushed back. There's going to be a lot of shifts in power dynamics as we go through this, but the thing is, they don't really back down from each other. For better or for worse.

Ah, the infamous panel!

You saw how angry Rogue was just a second before, and then Gambit scoops her up in his arms and starts spouting all this romantic stuff she's longed to hear and for a moment, she's just kind of gone.

Btw, I love the details of this panel. The mansion is in ruins. Cyclops is like, uh, dude, you may want to throw some cold water on yourself. Jubilee, child that she still is, is like - ew bleck, they're gonna kiss now.

I love it!

I love that Gambit does not care that there is an audience (in fact - he may thrive on it), he's getting under Rogue's skin and it's worth all the fooling around. Meanwhile, Rogue maybe not really realize it yet - but she's getting someone who is not running the other direction due to her powers.

Plus, look, they're both just attracted to each other. And sometimes that fact is just fact.

I realize the above panel is the more famous one, but these ones. Man, they get me every time.

The first panel - Rogue just lets herself go with it. The second panel, though. That's a smirk. Rogue is 100% smirking because in that moment she is happy she is in the exact position she's in. And for that half second, she's enjoying it.

Which leads to an interesting thought experiment -- what if Rogue didn't have the powers she has. Would this whole thing end in a real kiss? (The answer is yes - some fucking around would have surely been had!) Would their relationship be as deep and real if they could act on their physical attraction? Would they have developed the good friendship they get over the years if there wasn't that initial barrier there?

Hard to say, but I think the story becomes richer having to work around her powers.

And.... we're back to the status quo as Rogue does have a skin condition that sucks the life out of everyone she touches. It's no longer a game, but the reality she has to face every day.

Also - I do kind of love she knocks him sideways. He does deserve being knocked down a peg every once and a while. Good for his humility.

The basketball game is now over, but I do think this is the real beginning of Gambit trying to win over Rogue's heart -- and yes, I think at first, it's merely for the sake of the challenge of it. I don't think he takes in account that he's going to change his own heart as we go along.

Just for completion's sake -- here's the last little bit of this part of the subplot. I do roll my eyes at the fact that Wolverine always has to come out looking the coolest. But it works for a nice tag to this particular scene.

So.... later...

Now, how did we get from the basketball game to what looks like a date? Especially since when last we saw Rogue was knocking him sideways? SHAMELESS PLUG TIME - I WROTE A FIC ABOUT IT. Or, you know, come up with your own headcanons. ;)

Of course Gambit rides a motorcycle - because this is the 90s, and this is the height of cool, lol.

I love Rogue in this moment. I love that she's owning him here. She knows she looks good. She knows she wants to go out and have a good time. She may even know she wants to have a good time with /him/ but won't think too much about that -- and instead enjoy the possibility of her own happiness first. Having an attractive man at her side is just a bonus. Go get it, girl!

This is why I love X-Men. Because they are such a family dynamic. Everyone is getting into everyone else's business. Jubilee is the younger sister just wanting to hang out with her ridiculous, cool older brother. Wolverine is that watchful, old uncle. Beast is the next door neighbor who doesn't care that he's butting in, he's just there for a good time. I love all of it! And I do love that there is a tad bit of protectiveness for Rogue. Gambit is still new to this dynamic (not that Rogue and Beast have spent any time together, lol).

The point is that they all love each other like family, and I adore that.

I love that Gambit just is not here for that family dynamic. This is almost a sitcommy moment, and it's delicious. I also love that Rogue is completely on board with this whole date aspect. Sure, her friends will be there, too. But she's not opposed to Gambit whisking her away for who knows what. Maybe she'll get that candlelight dinner and champagne and a little lite romance he's promised her.

I love Jubilee pouting! It also makes me wonder if he's already taken Jubilee out for a spin for the fun of it. He would.

So, her line is fascinating because there are different ways you can read it. Skeptical that he could actually out maneuver Beast. Or hopeful that he will. Read it any way you like! But the smile on her face says she won't be unhappy to lose her friends.

And BAM! Hit by the plot!

Stupid plot.

It's funny, because his first thought is to see if she's okay. Of course she is, she's invulnerable and she can take the hit. But I honestly think that in that moment, he is concerned for her. There is a bit of genuine care there -- even if she is quick to dismiss it.

And... as Omega Red inserts himself into our fun loving drama, the issue ends, with Rogue and Gambit tied up (and eventually in chains) which is going to become the norm for them, so get used to it. ;)

Honestly, I love this issue - and it's such a fun way to start their story. And I had forgotten that at least half of the issue is comprised of Rogue and Gambit development.

Shame we have to stop the development to get into the Omega Red arc that will take up the next few issues...

[xx-psych0-rabbit-xx]

I would like you to info dump about the kirby gijinkas 👀

AVA I LOVE YOU UM UM SO!!!

kirby:just kid stuff like rain boots, hair accessories n overalls, they also have two designs-one for older games n one for newer games!! n a scrapped off old one cuz it looked too fancy </3 also the bag is angel themed bc i thought thatd just look cute ngl

bandana dee:as i said on another post i got inspired by smash dedede having a shirt that rly looks like the beginning of a yukata or a kimono!! also he doesnt have a mouth, design on the right was an early concept lol (by "isn't allowed" on the sheet i mean im not sure if having it over the haori could straight be an insulting mistake or if its just something most people would not think of doing bc why would you) i bullshitted an eye design but my best friend rly liked them so i never changed them lol

marx: i literally finished his final design yesterday.even tho nothing changed i just gave him elf ears bc he looks silly w them lol.anyways its just a jester design tbh? since his hat has two differing patterns i thought itd be neat to add both the sun and the moon from his little villain plan to his outfit (i miss his fluffy hat balls a little though </3) also he has no arms tho his wings can work as them sometimes.bc im a firm believer in always having characters who lack limbs in their original design either not have them or have a fun replacement

elfilin:theyre themed around a more cutesy aesthetic for angels n space! contrasting forgo and elfilis more dark theme of those, also w an inspiration of retro futurism! and yes their outfit is completely stupid and overly complicated thats part of the charm <3 theyre like a scene kid to me.also a little star bc all of kirbys friends get one.fun fact they had 4 beta designs bc nothing looked good

fecto forgo:(sorry for bad pic i need to redo its entire reference sheet) just an hospital gown w medical tomes that werent removed from them (my best friend gave me that idea n what to add lol), i think theyre best described as a blob of weird elfilis slime that can take a humanesque form rather than a human form that can blob, theyre constantly melting n all its veins are visible, theyre v cold to touch n in the tube their body flows in a way that gives them cherub imagery similar to what was intended w canon forgo, also its legs are useless, theyre very weak and unstable and not naturally formed (also since i picture the elfilis split as some uh.physical form?? of disassociative trauma random trivia when they front post game elfilins eyes get replaced w theirs, just for the aesthetic)(credits to my bestie for coming up w that interpretation lol)

shadow kirby:they get two designs like kirby, both inspired off theirs but just like.emo lol.dont ask why their hair started doing that its whatever reason they became purple in canon.they have overalls beneath that coat btw

and miscellaneous designs i havent given a final sheet to yet!! taranza and dark taranza r based off more fantasy victorian (? medieval???) clothing, susie is holographic bc i didnt want to give her gray shading n her limbs r all floaty (i imagine shes always making some weird electric noise due to that), gooey is just like cute tbh? their cape is based off their mock matter form, chuchus hair is based off the shape the octopus species she apparently is has, i dont have any notable commentary for drawcia or claycia (was that her name) other than drawcia is like a paint blob.also claycias supposed to be way chubbier but i underestimated how huge her coat would look.gotta fix that

thats all the ones i have!! GOD it feels good to finally share them lol

[readabookknightly]

In his essay Regulated Hatred, D.W. Harding closely examines Jane Austen’s text, analyzing how she dissects the world around her through her text, and most especially, how she intended for the world to dissect her text. It is common, when examining Jane Austen’s books today, to view them through the lens of our own society. Individuals condescend to understand the social dynamics that are now foreign to the majority of cultures, haughtily dismissing characters as silly, naive, or simply ignorant. Even in class discussions, we imagine characters in each book to be representative of stereotypes which might have existed in Austen’s day and age for every culture. However, Harding takes a different approach, asking readers to examine Austen’s novels from one point of view alone: Austen’s. 

Through this, he suggests that we might find not only a storyteller, but a “delicate satirist, revealing with inimitable lightness of touch the comic foibles and amiable weaknesses of the people whom she lived amongst and liked.” (Harding 6). Harding uses Austen’s world to imagine the people in her life who served as unknowing actors in her tales. He suggests each one’s behavior has been exaggerated just enough to make the character’s true identity entirely inconspicuous from whom they were inspired. And behind even this layer, lies Austen’s true interpretation of the society in which she lived, buried just poor enough to be seen, and plainly enough to be ignored. In this, Harding argues that to truly enjoy her tales, is to fall for Austen’s trap. 

Jane Austen was a successful novelist, but as an unmarried woman in the 19th century, she was still not esteemed by her peers at the time. It’s likely to assume Austen faced many struggles culturally in her life. Appealing to those around her was not easy, and Harding suggests that readers might see a form of self-projection into her work. Because of her status both as a woman and as a writer, Austen held a seemingly unique ability to critique her culture while endearing them to her. He describes how “She found people eager to laugh at faults they tolerated in themselves and their friends, so long as the faults were exaggerated and the laughter ‘good-natured’ (Harding #12). Austen could describe every tedious facet of someone that drove her mad, but so long as she amplified that trait to be comedic, no one would notice. For example, in reading her novel Pride and Prejudice, Austen’s description of Mrs. Bennet alone is clearly harsh. She holds no metaphorical punches as she declares her “a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.” (Austen 1), however, Harding demands the audience wonder how many women in Austen’s world, Mrs. Bennet was written to describe. How many women between her own mother, sister, and acquaintances laughed at Mrs. Bennet's character, blissfully naive to how Austen perceived them similarly. 

Readers of Austen’s are often quick to view or judge her for her romantic writing or what degree of feminism she writes for. But it is curious to wonder if Austen’s novels were far more personal than only a commentary on the patriarchy. What might change in our understanding of her work if our perception of her was changed as well. Were Austen’s novels fantasies, perhaps? Or were they a projection? Maybe Austen had no desire to find love herself, but she enjoyed imagining it. Undoubtedly there are similarities between her character and the heroines she writes. Both are women who aim “to find the means for unobtrusive spiritual survival, without open conflict with friendly people around her” and over time learn new methods for managing this. However, it is curious that where Austen’s early protagonists accepted no compromise for their happiness, the last two novels she wrote conclude with their heroines conceding into their own happiness. Where we might imagine a young Austen found independence emboldening as it was for Elizabeth Bennet, Catherine Morland and Elinor Dashwood. An older Austen sought satisfaction through yielding to others’ guidance as with Emma Woodhouse and Fanny Price. 

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Pride and prejudice. Edited by Vivien Jones, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003.

Harding, D. W. Regulated Hatred and Other Essays on Jane Austen. Edited by Monica Lawlor, Bloomsbury Academic, 1998.

[uncloseted]

I recently sent a few chapters of my first draft for my novel to my coworker who is amazing and who has the same degree as me in English. she offered to be a beta reader and add her comments which was great, but after getting her comments I feel like some were a bit unnecessary.

My characters are from England (I'm American), and I've watched english shows my whole life and grew up with the accents, the dialect, etc. so I knew what I was saying when I included certain phrasing in my novel, plus I researched before including anything that relates to dialect and regional dialect. My coworker (American) made comments about things like I didn't know what I was talking about and pointing out things that I feel she just wasn't really thinking about.

The constructive comments were really good! But some of the other comments I felt were a bit... passive aggressive. At certain points she would just say things in the comments like: "No." or "WHY?!" or "Grumble grumble..." and it's like??? I love your helpful comments, but I feel like this doesn't help me at all. She doesn't usually read romance, she sticks to crime or sci-fi, so I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I really enjoy the idea for my novel and think it's strong. Of course, it's still early days, but I don't know. I think she's helpful but for most of her comments, I could explain why I did something in answer to her comments.

Should I not send her the rest of my novel? I feel like she's not really getting the whole picture at times...

Thank you!

I think any time you share a work in progress with someone who's not a professional in the publishing industry (like a beta reader or editor), you'll get some feedback that's helpful and some that's irrelevant. It's okay to look through their feedback and to say "these are the things I think are valuable and these are the things I'll be ignoring." If you've done your research on regional dialects and are sure you have it right, feel free to throw that commentary out. If she's saying something more along the lines of, "I know this is accurate, but it will make this part incomprehensible to readers who aren't from a particular area of England", then it might be worth at least considering whether to swap the dialogue out for something more generic, even if you ultimately decide to keep it as is. With the little comments like "no!" and "why?!", I think she's trying to give you a view into her emotional reactions throughout the story as well as her thoughts about what you could do differently, which I think may actually be really useful. If she's commented "WHY?!" on a part that's not supposed to elicit that reaction, maybe the story is creating a different emotional journey than you intended. It's also worth remembering that she only has a few chapters of a first draft- she doesn't have the full picture in her head the way you do, and so her interpretation of what she's reading is naturally going to be different from your idea of who these characters are and where the story is going.

Accepting criticism is hard, especially with work as personal as novels. I think when we share our work with others, we're secretly hoping that they'll love it as much as we do and have no criticism. So I think it's natural to want to push back and say, "no, I did that for a reason, you're just not understanding my vision." I think for a lot of people, criticism of their work feels like criticism of them as a person or of their innate talent as a writer.

But... that's not really what it is. Constructive criticism is just a lens into the feelings, opinions, and confusions a potential reader might have so that the writer can achieve their vision more effectively. It's also worth remembering that different readers will feel differently about the work. Just because one person isn't responding the way you expected doesn't mean that nobody will. But on the flip side, you can't expect that all readers will have your background and understanding, either. Unless you're trying to target a very specific demographic, it may be worth making some narrative concessions for the sake of readability. So for each piece of feedback, I think it's important to be able to take a step back and ask yourself if you're feeling defensive even though the advice is good, or whether the advice is something you disagree with from a narrative or artistic perspective.

At the end of the day, you're not obligated to accept every piece of feedback that you get. Take what feels right for your project and throw away the rest. You know what will work best for the novel that you're trying to write. As for whether or not to send her the rest of the novel, I think it depends on whether or not you feel like getting her feedback will ultimately lead to a better book. If you think it would, it's probably worth continuing to send her chapters. If not, maybe it's better to send it to someone else you know instead or to join a community of writers who provide criticism on each other's work.

[alianoralacanta]

Your post got stuck in my head, and I had to craft a reply:

I don't think Sky UK in the last 18 months has helped in general with this message (I cannot say if they’re the outright source), although I don't think this was the intended result. I think the elements of Sky UK's logic go:

Sky UK's paddock passes and working conditions depend on protecting the FIA

The FIA has grown increasingly sensitive to conduct by paddock members of late

The FIA has behaved in such a way that the only manner in which most of the press think the FIA can be protected is to distract people from its misconduct

This means making the alleged* beneficiaries of the FIA's behaviour, Red Bull and Max Verstappen, look good whether the extent of that is merited or not

Thus any error that can be plausibly ignored from Max or Red Bull is ignored

Ferrari's repeated errors are sending the Sky UK staff up the wall, and they're just watching the mess, and surely anyone else paying attention feels the same (this is the first part that gets expressed openly)

What must that be like for someone who actually has to work there every day?

A fortiori, what must that be like for someone who actually has to work there every day because it is "his" team, in a sense that nobody on the Sky UK team has ever personally experienced, sacrificed so much for it and (outwardly) received so little in return?

Thus, everything gets seen through the lens of the pressure resulting from the pain of failure (mostly others' failure but not always), and everything other than being a marble statue is treated as a sign of imminent collapse. Even if it's the opposite.

And so, any error that can be plausibly commented from Charles is commented

For the above reasons Sky UK will convince themselves that this constitutes equal and equitable treatment, and is an apples-to-apples comparison

I don’t think they meant to suggest Charles was brittle or fragile mentally, just more error-prone than Max. In the long run, I’m not even convinced they mean Charles harm because they’re not saying this will never change or anything to that effect. Also, they do see Charles’ identity and personality as a distinct and coherent whole, which drops some of the worst excesses of the “social media bad takes” out of the equation. (Sky UK is being misguided but I do not think they are being malicious). However, there are a lot of people who cannot square the concept of someone caring and feeling strongly about things with being good at enduring them, and many of those people don’t recall things that happened a month ago very well, let alone several years back. We also have some people who missed the memo that, for example, Charles can drop sarcastic comments if someone’s been sufficiently thoughtless in his presence (thus, things like Australia Q3 qualifying were interpreted as complaints instead of an attempt to state the obvious without dropping Carlos Sainz into hot water). Add a bunch of lowest-common-denominator viewers (many of whom don’t even have the a full commentary context to work with - Sky’s or anyone else’s - let alone alternate viewpoints) who are perfectly willing to be malicious, and Sky UK’s outsize global reach due to its social media presence and F1TV commentary provision... I think there are 5 subsidiary elements aggravating the effect of the angle, which I do not think Sky UK has taken into consideration:

Sky UK had initially picked Max Verstappen as their “golden boy” before it became apparent FIA policy to market him as such. Sky UK anointed Max early because he fit an early-1990s stereotype that Sky UK liked. There may even be inter-service conflict going on with Sky Italia (who consider Charles "il predestinato")

A seeming pressure to explain the lack of 2022-2023 competitiveness at the front of F1

Charles Leclerc’s radio gets broadcast more than anybody else’s except for Max Verstappen’s. And unlike Max who often gets his radio played out because he’s won and is therefore happy, Charles’ usually gets broadcast because something went wrong and he found a succinct way to summarise it, which some people find entertaining (the words, not the predicament that caused them) and some interpret as whinging (even when he has obvious reason to complain). The real whingers tend not to get broadcast much because people tend to find actual whinging dull and, well, actual whinging is the slow way round the track

Excessive desire for an antithesis to the thesis that Charles Leclerc is just about the strongest F1 driver there is mentally (a key part of the narrative with which he entered F1), because Sky UK's struggling to find other interesting ways to extend his narrative. I should point out that even among British journalists there is significant disagreement about whether this is the thesis-antithesis pair that should be used to extend Charles’ narrative, but you also hear less from them about it because I think they have convinced themselves that Charles is going to warrant a more nuanced narrative than that implies just as soon as he gets the results that will cause their audience to want to hear it

I get the impression some (and only some) members of Sky UK legitimately are worried about Charles. Part of this is because he is sweet, calm, kind, patient with the press - because it means a lot of journalists like him enough to worry, and to express it in ways that may intend empathy but are probably unhelpful. There's an essay within this point that I don't feel comfortable sharing in public, but I think it is OK to say the TL;DR of it is "driver and these specific interviewers have different social signalling expressions and expectations, with awkward consequences"

* - I'm not using "alleged" in the legal sense here, although that's also (mostly) applicable. I'm using "alleged" because if I have understood the FIA's misconduct correctly, Red Bull would not have agreed to it had they been made aware of it, and that Red Bull and Max also lost out; the FIA's actions cheated them of the opportunity to earn their achievements honestly by an organisation they at least somewhat trusted to provide it.

Journalists vs Charles Leclerc

I don't really know how else to start this conversation other than saying these interviewers need to start asking competent questions and respecting Charles for his kindness or I'm going to lose my mind. One thing you can know for certain is that if Charles has a shit weekend, some F1 journalist is going to make it extremely clear that they either have no idea what they just watched or that they have a hard-on for taking advantage of Charles for their stupid sensationalized interviews.

Maybe it was just the fact that the emotions from the DNF hadn't really hit me full force yet and this question just put it over the top for me, but I'm still in genuine disbelief that this over-emotional, desperate crybaby narrative still exists around him and it's not just trolls online. Other drivers have emotional narratives surrounding them but none of them are quite like the "crybaby" narrative that is applied to Charles. When it's applied to others, it's simply a personality trait, a slight abrasiveness to the public, or even a trait that shows why they're such a great and passionate driver. When it's applied to Charles, it's a detriment to his character, a mental disorder, the reason he'll never win a championship.

If this was the only time I heard it from a journalist, I wouldn't make a post like this. I see it on the internet all the time, and at that point you can chalk it up to the fact that those people just don't like Charles and they don't know what they're talking about. But that's not the case at all, because it's been proven to go beyond the internet multiple times now. Charles' post-DNF interview in France last year is the best example I can think of. I'm sure we all remember, he thought his radio was off and screamed in frustration. I can't find the actual video of the interview that happened directly after that, but I have my own tweets here from when it happened that explain how it went.

I want to make it clear, I think therapy is a great. I wish everyone would go to therapy. However, this was such a horrid fucking question to ask him because it was prompted by something that wasn't a big deal and, frankly, should have been forgotten instantly. Charles yelling in frustration after something extremely frustrating happened is not indicative of mental illness or being someone who desperately needs therapy to control his emotions.

I just don't get why he's treated like this. Maybe they just don't expect someone who's typically pretty calm and sweet to be verbally frustrated, but it still doesn't excuse the fact that they take advantage of him by asking these questions. As much as it might not matter, I think this kind of thing fuels the people who already think he's a desperate crybaby when he drives. They act like he's an angry, complete psycho whose emotions get the better of him when he drives, and then they get validated in these completely batshit perceptions of him because there's established people in the paddock realizing it with these questions. The hilarious thing is, the only reason these moments can even exist is because they know Charles is calm and kind and won't be an ass to them for asking such a stupid question.

Not to make the first post on this account so negative when there's hundreds of more positive things I could talk about but I don't even know what to do to get my frustrations out anymore.

[demonslayedher]

Hi! What are your opinions on Kanao? Like how her trauma was dealt with/developed, how she was just characterized in general? I sort of want to write a fic and I was wondering if you have any tips on how you would write her?

Gut reaction opinion: She’s baby.

But, to think more deeply on Kanao (a few thousand words more), I hope you don’t mind me borrowing a few lines from one of my own fics about the pre-canon Butterfly Mansion:

“Deep down inside, Tsuyuri may have always had the spirit of a Flower Breath user. She withered early in life, but she’s got roots, slowly, slowly strengthening her. She’s got Kanzaki to prepare food for limber and strong limbs, little ones to shade and protect, and a shower of love to help her grow. Deep in her heart, sleeping quietly, she may possess the will of a weed.” “The Wasp's Nest” – Chapter 5

If I bring up this fic a lot, it’s because it’s the result of all the questions I’ve asked about Shinobu, Aoi, and Kanao, especially in light of the Taisho Secret before Chapter 164 which details how Kanao learned Flower Breath by watching, and despite not thinking for herself, she decided of her own accord to do something as drastic as joining the Final Selection. I was stunned by that Taisho Secret, as without it, I would have interpreted Shinobu and Kanao's relationship completely differently, with Kanao having been raised to use Breath Technique and been told to go participate in the Final Selection.

Some of my reasons for that: 1. In the flashback extra chapter of Shinobu complaining to Kanae about Kanao being unable to think for herself, she says its “dangerous.” I had misremembered this as being in reference to taking her to battle, though the actual text doesn’t necessarily imply that. 2. In Chapter 100, Gotou describes Kanao as a seriously weird kid who doesn’t even talk, and that she’s been made to fight demons ever since she was a child. 3. The fact that we had zero indication of Kanao having made a choice on her own prior to Tanjiro’s influence on her.

The most damning evidence of the three of these is Gotou’s comment, though it’s possible to explain this in-universe as Gotou’s erroneous assumption. He’s not far off, as the other little girls might not have been forced to fight demons (perhaps for lack of aptitude) but they do have to work as nurses for slayers with gruesome injuries. What’s interesting is that in the manga, we aren’t presented with Kanao’s back story until after hearing that she makes decisions by flipping a coin, whereas Ufotable shaped our perception of the coin flipping scene with Tanjiro by giving Kanao’s back story and Kanae’s “when she meets a boy” commentary an episode earlier. (Also, the glittery-eyed moment with the wind sweeping by her is anime-only, and they removed the part with Kiyo startling her and making her fall off the engawa.) A part of me suspects this change in presentation order is because Kanao was a hard character for Gotouge to get right. Wani-sensei probably wasn't decisive on the skirt length and then blamed it on Maeda, I bet. There was a vision in mind for Kanao all along (no pun intended), but like the rest of the cast, she was extreme in ways that didn’t totally come across without more explicit explanation, and Gotouge might have gotten to know her better over the course of writing her. I also suspect that, in light of the cruel realities of fighting demons and the strictness that requires, and already being a world in which children often undergo grueling Breath technique training, the original intention might had been for Kanae to have taught her Flower Breath all along. However, this idea might had gotten ret-conned via Taisho Secret to soften the image of the Kochou girls and show them raising orphaned girls purely out of the goodness of their hearts, not to pass on their demon fighting legacy to the next generation of swordsmen, even though this is exactly what we see Shinobu doing by raising Kanao as her Tsuguko.

While I’m not an expert in trauma and recovery (and I look for a story to be convincing as opposed to realistic), what I found most jarring in Kanao’s development was the switch from Shinobu as “Shihan” (Master) to Shinobu as “Neesan,” and if it was always meant to be a “Neesan” relationship all along, then why did only Kanao, among all the other Butterfly Mansion girls, get this extra level of closeness? Those were questions I wanted to wrestle with in fic, which was why I created Tsuguko OCs to try to unravel how the Butterfly Mansion dynamic became the way it was (ultimately that fic is just my own personal take on how canon might had come about, but in the end it is still fanfic and can’t speak for canon, and everyone is entitled to their own imagination on how to work with any given character in fic. I still like my version, though).

So, with this as background for how I am most curious about Kanao’s development, let’s look at her from a chronological perspective with what clues canon provides.

Childhood: Sucked.

According to the second fanbook, Kanao was the eighth of eleven children, we know that at least a couple of her brothers died, and their bodies were just left around to be cold by morning. They were especially punished if they cried, which was why Kanao desperately tried to avoid that. She refined a skill of narrowly avoiding being hit in her vital spots, but one day, it was all too much, and something in her snapped, and she didn’t feel anything anymore.

We do see some light return to her eyes when she encounters the Kochou sisters. By that time, she is covered in filth and bugs, so much so the man who expects to make money off of her doesn’t even want to be physically near her. To expand on this, I’ve copied about half of this post of random Kanao thoughts: I was reading the section in this book about Kanao being sold as a child, and they theorized that between being sold to a factory or do agricultural labor or being sold into prostitution, she was most likely sold into prostitution, for she could be sold into prostitution to be a Kamuro at a younger age than she could had been sold to other places. Her parents likely could had gotten a higher upfront price for her this way (somewhere around the range of 1M-3M yen in modern currency) and gotten rid of her earlier. This makes me wonder if the reason we only see brothers in her flashbacks is because any older sisters were already long gone, and they had to hang onto the boys until around age 12 when they could legally work in factories. As for the man who bought her finding her so dirty that he kept her on a rope, the book proposes that perhaps like the Yarite of the Ogimoto-ya spotting a beauty like Inoko under all the ugly makeup, he also had a good eye for spotting diamonds in the rough and getting them for cheap. As for Kanao’s age, this is a bit of a mystery to me, as there is a big difference between her height and Shinobu’s, implying that Kanao is very, very young. However, I think there’s only a four year window in which this encounter could had possibly taken place, and given that Kanae is wearing that haori (though it’s possible she wore it since before becoming a Pillar) and Shinobu seems drawn more similar to the flashback in which Kanae dies than in the light novel chapter when the freshly orphaned girls meet bother Himejima, that makes me narrow it down to more like a 2-year window, and to keep Kanao on the very young side, I’m making a big assumption by saying she’s a very scrawny 10-year-old.

But it’s just so hard to see this Shinobu as 12! I tell you, one of the facts that shakes me the most, still!!! Is that when canon takes place, Shinobu is 18 and Kanao is 16. SIXTEEN!!!?? But… but she’s baby… but also, like how do they even know that!?!? She didn’t know her own birthday, so they picked they day they found her (which Ufotable totally did not follow, as they set this against winter scenery and the day they took her home was May 19). So were they like, “so how old are you? Aoi’s age?” and Kanao didn’t deny it, so they just decided, okay, she’s the same age as Aoi (even though she clearly seems younger, it must be due to undernourishment and trauma, right??? Did they not see she’s baby???)

So anyway. Baby who they have decided is only two years younger than Shinobu needs a name. We do not know if Kiyo, Sumi, or Naho were around yet, but Aoi sure was, though not in a Corp uniform yet. We also do not know what Aoi’s relationship with the Butterfly Mansion was in the first place. Aoi has her own story and we can make guesses but we will never know it. What we do know is that the four girls made a game of letting Baby choose her name, writing some ideas for names down (and I assume having read them aloud to her as I doubt she’d have ever been taught to read—she probably got a lot of education to keep her busy after entering the mansion). Among the first names, Shinobu added some fishy names that she didn’t realize would sound weird, and Kanao was about to go for “Kamasu” (barracuda) when Aoi swept it out of her reach. As for surnames, they let her pick this out too and gave her options that included “Kochou” and “Kanzaki” but she went for the rare (but existent) surname Tsuyuri. As for Kanao’s name sounding so close to Kanae’s, there is a theory in the Japanese fandom that there is a pun woven into it which shows Kanae’s wishes for Kanao.

Kanao doesn’t go out of her way to interact, and but will cooperatively do whatever she’s told. As a reminder, she was in such a state that even with her stomach growling with hunger, she won’t eat unless she’s told to (probably a rule around her family home about not eating without permission). With all her sense of suffering having snapped, she might not had even recognized that’s she felt hungry, and I’m willing to interpret her as having had other emotions, but being unable to recognize them. After all, years later when she’s slaying demons, she is still convinced that everything is “whatever” so there’s no need for her to decide a thing; it has been 5 to 7-ish years since Kanae told her to make decisions with the coin and Kanao has been doing exactly that for this whole time. At some level, Kanao has chosen via indecision to remain as she is, giving herself no pressure to get in touch with her own feelings.

However, she does have them.

When Kanae died, Kanao was distressed, and recognized this—was even troubled by the fact that she was distressed, and felt she should be crying, but could not. This was a moment when Kanao was forced to recognized that there was something wrong with herself, despite having given herself permission—by way of indecision—to remain in a numb “whatever” state in which she doesn’t need to face her own heart, and the pain it carries. She wasn’t only experiencing a physical inability to cry due to her history having to keep from getting physically harmed, but was forced to peer into her own Pandora’s Box. While we wasn’t aware of it, at the time she was probably facing a decision: open the box more, or close it? By way of indecision, it stayed as it was.

Kanao really couldn’t help that she felt pain and sympathy and righteous anger, especially when seeing (specifically, according to that aforementioned Taisho Secret) how Aoi and the little girls had lost their families to demons, and how Shinobu lost her parents, her sister, and her Tsuguko to demons. Kanao knew she had to do something,  but since she wasn’t good at nursing work like the other girls were, she became a demon slayer. THIS WAS A DECISION. The Taisho Secret makes it absolutely clear that this was Kanao’s will, even if Shinobu worried that this was a decision Kanao made because of the environment she was in instead of this being a decision Kanao wanted.

So maybe the voice in Kanao’s heart is small, and she still relies on the coin even for small things like whether or not she wants to train with the boys (the coin said not, at least in the anime, because the anime added tons more breathing room (no pun intended) to the Functional Recovery Arc) and whether or not to say anything to Tanjiro (the coin said yes). However, these are pretty innocuous decisions; Kanao has zero confidence in deciding what she wants, and is used to not even asking herself. It’s easier not to. It’s also easier not to get emotionally involved with other people…

…because Kanao has does care very, very deeply for other people.

While I considered more about Kanao’s potential relationship with her other siblings on this Ask, what I want to focus on here is that Kanao was of course scared for her own physical safety, but she had to watch her siblings suffer and die. Kanao, who was willing to risk her life because of the injustice she felt for her new housemates/sisters-ish, probably could no longer take helplessly watching her siblings perish.

I really like that one of the ways Ufotable added to her story was in a scene where the Kamaboko boys are training together, Kanao is watching, and Shinobu suggests she join, after all, they’re from the same batch (translation: You need friends, Kanao). Kanao silently smiles and bows and nopes off to the side (which Shinobu probably was resigned to expecting), and after pondering them a moment, Kanao flips the coin. The kicker is that Kanae instructed Kanao all those years ago to use the coin “when she can’t decide” and in this moment, Kanao really didn’t know if she wanted to train with (aka, bond with) those boys. Caring about people opens oneself to being hurt; it’s safer to feel nothing.

But let’s look back at that big decision Kanao made, resolutely. She went to that Final Selection and came out without a scratch. This was not due to any external pressure put on her or instruction whatsoever, Kanao knew to do this without a doubt. Her selfless empathy and righteous anger drove her to that, no matter how much she believes she doesn’t feel anything.

So anyway, Kanao, in this resoluteness while also being untouchable for as long as she never makes the decision to peer into her own heart, blasts through the first five of ten ranks within a couple months. Baby is bonkers, I hope Shinobu was astounded. But then Tanjiro BOOM-BOOMed his way into Kanao's life with his Functional Recovery period, and took the top of her box and threw it away as forcefully as he threw her coin. Kanao’s locked away emotions stood no chance.

Let’s be clear, Kanao might had fallen in love with Tanjiro in that scene, but it wasn’t until his declaration of how he was going to wrestle that box open one away or another—I mean, not give up if the first coin toss failed. No, Kanao was emotionally invested for other reasons. It was all a safe, if not awkward conversation until Tanjiro took possession of her coin, and Kanao fretted about having given someone the power to make decisions for her which might have emotional consequences; until this point it’s always been easy to follow instructions as long as she’s numb to the results either way. She’s put herself in a vulnerable position by letting Tanjiro hold that coin, which is for when Kanao is emotionally invested in something enough to not be able to decide something. But then when Tanjiro tosses it, she’s eager to know what fate will decide. On the one hand, she’s terrified of the result Tanjiro wants. Listening to her own heart means being vulnerable, to care, to suffer. But on the other hand, she does want this, but has been too scared this whole time to make the decision to do anything with that partially open box. Having someone else force the decision on her is what she’s been pining for all this time, a push which neither Kochou sister ever gave her, hoping she’d come around in her own time.

And then, once the box is open and the decision is made, Kanao’s changes are fast.

At least, in comparison to the numb-by-virtue-of-having-decided-nothing state she in for years, her changes are relatively rapid. It’s not overnight, but as Kanao learns to confront her own vulnerability, she is likewise able to better understand what she likes, and what she wants. Fanbook 1 tells us that she used to be happy just to sit and stare out into space when not training o on missions, but lately she’s been actively blowing bubbles (BABYYYY), helping cook, buying little candies and presents for everyone back at the mansions when she’s sent to run errands, and poking the pads of cat’s paws (BAABBBYYYYY). Now that she’s open to positive emotions too, she’s exploring the world with wonder for the first time. (BAAAAAAAABBBBBBYYYYY.)

This development as a human being seems to have come at the expense of her progression in the Corp, but Shinobu likely does not push this at all, now that Kanao is finally coming around and expressing her own tastes and interests (and defying a Sound Pillar’s orders, as one does). I dedicated a whole post to pondering how and why her accession through the ranks slowed so dramatically after she got Tanjiro’ed, including pondering in more detail why was at those particular ranks. We also see in the light novels that Kanao is progressing in her friendships with Aoi (who still found it hard to communicate with Kanao even after all this time) and Inosuke, whom she goes so far as to have an argument with when he’s being insensitive about Kiyo being distraught over losing one of her butterfly hairpieces from Kanae (righteous anger!), but when appreciative of him later, she asks Aoi to help her make tempura for him. Within the pages of serialized manga, Kanao can even listen to her heart when it wants everyone to SHUT UP because Tanjiro is sleeping. We see time and time again how Kanao’s deep emotions stem from how much she cares about others.

A big turning point, one which Shinobu points out, is when Kanao verbalizes an “I want” statement. She wanted to train with her own Shihan. This is when Kanao graduates from doing things for others like an extension of doing what other people would want her to do, to taking up her own space in the world. This when Shinobu can finally feel that Kanao can act as her own person, but this means she can also be trusted with the full responsibility of a Tsuguko.

(Quick tangent here. Kanao totally took part in the other Pillar Trainings and I wish we could had seen how it went. Any bad blood between her and Uzui? Blowing through Muichiro’s training like its nothing and making everyone else watching feel as inadequate? Her greatest difficulty in Flexibility Training being surviving a hug that’s too tight? Showing up to Snake Pillar training and hitting it off with a friendly snake only to have the Pillar say his training isn’t suitable for girls and sending her on her way? The meditation with the Rock Pillar being refreshing but then who knows if and how she succeeded at moving the rock? Showing up ready for hard training with the Wind Pillar but he goes very obviously easy on her because he doesn’t want to be the one to harm Kanae’s adoptive sister? No wonder Kanao would have wanted to train with her Shihan if she lost out on so much of it elsewhere! But at least she got to see a snake and that was cool, right?)

So. Kanao is now getting instructions from her Shihan which are hard to stomach (again, no pun intended), but it’s the true test of her abilities now to follow these instructions while also having vulnerable emotions.

Growing up: Sucks.

Even if she was prepared, Kanao is consumed with righteous anger and a slew of other ugly emotions when Shinobu is killed right in front of her, and this is when Kanao really must step up and live out her decision to be a demon slayer. That means keeping her cool, not being numb. That means making decisions in the moment, including social decisions to keep Douma distracted. I don’t think she planned everything she said to him; that was the ugly depths of Kanao’s heart open and doing all the talking when she told him how she felt about him. There was zero hesitation in saying any of it. Even if she was still in the habit of flipping a coin by that point in the story, she wouldn’t have felt even an itch of temptation for it because she felt those words so strongly. Taking her own place in the world means not only knowing her own likes, but also discerning her dislikes.

And man, she slays and slays hard. While the fight against Douma is impressive enough as it is (and yes, unlocking her ability to cry at the end of it (right before that big Taisho Secret reveal) is indeed a major moment in her character arc, as she’s finally been able to unlock that last hidden piece of vulnerability), the fight against Muzan? Everyone else went down, down to bits and pieces, she is deeply shredded with injuries that were too fast to avoid, but she still managed to avoid getting hit in her vital areas and, even if she fell to her knees, she did the best at standing her ground. When I had originally read that chapter (that awful, heartbreaking Chapter 191) I took this as Gotouge not wanting to rip the girls apart as viciously as the boys, which was why Kanroji was already removed from the fight, but haha… hahahaha…. Clearly this was never a concern and I was naïve. No. Kanao was not lucky. Kanao was acting on deeply rooted trauma and narrowly avoided getting hit in a “bad place.”

Sorry, my writing is getting all over the place as I’m mentally reliving this arc and how much pain it put me through as I was following week to week. My gosh, though, can we give it up for that Kakushi who was charging in to save her without a shred of hesitation? Charging straight toward a direct hit from Kibutsuji Muzan himself? Kanao was totally doing her best, deciding as hard as she could to stand up and keep fighting, she wanted more than anything to do that but she physically could not.

So anyway. After this, Kanao disappears for a while, which is why I called it when I suspected Kanao might be the key to dealing with demon!Tanjiro. I was right although for totally unexpected reasons, but dang, THAT WAS AWESOME. The final, defining Breath of this whole manga was Kanao’s, it was her moment, and she was amazing. She was still bleeding from her abdomen and limping and gasping for air (this is our 24-hour Total Concentration Breath pro, you know panting like that is a bad sign) but she knew she could do it and she did it. You’re amazing, Baby. I know I’m getting off-track, but if we bring this back to being a moment of characterization for her…

…Kanao, at some level, still believes in fate.

She believes in a reason for things happening, like every time she flipped the coin, the universe was making a better decision than she could. When she knows what she needs to do in this moment, she feels this must be the reason fate left her with one eye left. She is still a deeply emphatic person who cares about the welfare of others before her own; as she approaches the Kamado siblings she’s moved with pity for them.

Zero hesitation.

Kanao has reached a point of peace with herself that can she act on these feelings, which is what points in her in the direction of wanting to practice medicine. Although being vulnerable makes her open to pain, it makes her open to joy, she and doesn’t hesitate in embracing what she likes—and we can assume, she doesn’t hesitate about what she wants, either. The fact that she believes in fate may be something that helps her. It wouldn’t have been possible for her while she was numb to everything, but now she sees how good things came from the painful sacrifices, and she’s ready for all the suffering and joys life still has ahead. While every fic writer is welcome to take their own approach because that is how fic works, I choose to write my post-canon Kanao with a generally positive outlook. I don't write her with survivor's guilt; instead of wishing she could had died in her sister's place she wishes that no one had to die in the first place, and she remains filled with gratitude for her sisters. In the case of TanKana developments, I write her as knowing what she wants, being decisive about it, and embracing the joys as well as the suffering. I was never really sold on her being a capable doctor if she's freshly (near) blinded and never showed much aptitude for tending the injured slayers before, but I suppose where there's a will there's a way, and Kanao's got the will of a weed.

[princesssarcastia]

Thoughts on Star Trek AOS? (And do you think Kirk was on Tarsus?)

i have SO MANY THOUGHTS about star trek aos, so buckle up.  brace yourself.

star trek aos is a terrible disaster and i love it SO MUCH.  for me, star trek 2009 is still in that class of unreasonably pleasing movies like the mummy or stardust or jumanji: welcome to the jungle.  what they are isn’t exactly top notch but you love them for being exactly what they are.

star trek aos is a star-studded fucking phenomenal cast of some of the best actors working today, which makes up for the very inconsistent writing and unfortunate low-level current of sexism.

literally where would i be today if chris pine could not make faces Like That. i honestly couldn’t tell you.

overall, I have quite a few bones to pick with JJ Abrams for setting up a star trek universe that is less Wacky Space Utopia adventures with liberal political commentary ranging from unsubtle to im-hitting-you-over-the-head-with-my-opinions-like-they’re-a-brick—

to this kind of overtly militarized action-hero adventure porn where one white man saves the universe from Scary People Who Don’t Look Like Us And Are Crazy.  I also don’t appreciate what they did to Jim Kirk, turning him into this womanizing self-centered bastard who has to be in charge.  I REALLY don’t appreciate the casual misogyny, what with the last of rank stripes for women and the gratuitous sex-ed up scenes and the way that Amanda Grayson gets fridged for man-pain and and and— you get the picture.

Or at least, that’s what they tried to do to jim kirk.  and god fucking bless chris pine for being able to make facial expressions, because i firmly believe if pretty much almost anyone else had played Jim Kirk as written by JJ Abrams, that’s exactly what he would have been.

But because of chris pine’s acting, instead, most of the AOS fandom and I realized/decided that this “womanizing” version of jim kirk actually really really hates himself so much, most likely for trauma reasons. 

we took that shit and ran with it and never really stopped.

zachary quinto is also like god tier casting.  unfortunately the writers for the first two movies mostly gave him Anger as a primary motivator, which like, is not exactly how I would interpret Spock at all, but quinto played this Angry Spock so so well.

ZOE SALDANA PLAYS THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE, NYOTA UHURA, PERFECTLY AND THAT’S ALL I’LL HEAR ON THE MATTER.

john cho should be cast in everything ever he’s amazing and I love seeing him.  this man has the range. hikaru sulu is the backbone of this fucking ship.  this man wins the big damn hero award every single movie. 

i still miss living in the same world as anton yelchin. i really, really do.

I also have found family feelings all over these movies, where these baby versions of iconic characters from the sixties are brought together too early to witness too much fucking trauma.  harry potter references aren’t exactly in vogue right now, but there’s this one piece from a—well, actually, its a harry potter reference in an mcu fic i read years ago, now that i think about it, but anyway:

it was something like, there are some things you can’t go through with a person—like that mountain troll in harry potter—without becoming friends for life.  there are some crucibles that will bind you together forever.  and awful as it is, I think Nero and the Vulcan genocide were the AOS crew’s mountain troll.  there’s no going back or separating, after that.

also I feel like there’s a ton of competence porn in this trilogy that i deeply, deeply enjoy.

star trek: 2009 and into darkness are both grimdark male power fantasy bullshit that only accidentally hits all the right buttons for me.  I love them dearly but i know EXACTLY what they are, thank you.

star trek: beyond is a delightful movie with no real plot where our favorite crew are finally Adults With A Modicum Of Common Sense And Stability, instead of Disaster Children Angsting All Over The Place, and they get to save the universe with the power of excellent rock music and friendship. how cool is that?!?  i wanna give simon pegg a high five for making this movie.

on a more meta note, what I find kind of satisfying about these movies is that—for all his many faults that i’m always happy to expound upon—JJ Abrams actually went for it.  He Did That.  He just made his own brand new timeline, killed jim kirk’s dad, then gave him an abusive uncle/step-dad, then literally destroyed one of the founding planets of the Federation, then he, in an iconic fashion, switched Jim and Spock’s places in the infamous “wrath of khan” death scene, so instead Spock gets to watch Jim die. 

and you know what? I can forgive a lot of bullshit for that kind of poetic angsty fanfic plot detail. 

every time uhura says, “an alternate reality,” in star trek 2009 just gives me chills.  every time she says it, you feel the weight of sixty years of history and legacy sitting on these people’s shoulders, the weight of arguably one of the most popular TV shows of all time.

imagine, living in a new world you’re aware isn’t the one that was supposed to be.  imagine that!

oh! and on the question of tarsus:

what I think is probably true irl: JJ Abrams has never thought that far ahead in his life.  correct me if i’m wrong, but hadn’t he.....not even watched star trek.........when he made these movies............like lol i’d bet you this man didn’t even really know Tarsus was a thing.  And even if he did, I don’t think he thought it was part of the new canon he was creating.  AOS is much more self-contained than the serialized universe the original star trek was, so I don’t think that AOS was intended to encompass all those things, like tarsus, that we as a fandom like to obsess over.

what I personally enjoy: i love me some AOS fic that explores the ridiculous amounts of trauma that comes from living through a genocide.  I think that, given we all decided AOS Jim Kirk hates himself, and engages in a shit ton of self-sabotaging and destructive behavior to cope, it’s a reasonable jump to think that at least some of that comes from some survivor’s guilt bullshit from Tarsus.  And honestly, hit me up if you want recs for this, because boy do I have them.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no one does angst quite like AOS!Jim Kirk.

what I believe wholeheartedly: this is like Schrödinger's Plot Point, okay, it both exists and doesn’t exist simultaneously.  it’s easy to read tarsus into some of jim’s behavior, and it’s easy to read none of it in, and both of those choices are valid.  go with your gut, go with what makes you happy, go with what you think makes sense.  This is where fandom lives, in these little details that fall through the cracks.

anyway WOW did I talk a lot.  those are at least some of my star trek thoughts.  i do have others, but i’ve expounded on them before on this blog, and y’all don’t need me to repeat myself

ask me my thoughts on ______

[absynthe--minded]

Generally I have some diverging hcs concerning LaCE but assuming it's just like Tolkien stated: how does sex ed work in a society where sex=marriage? Or in other words: US american style abstinence only sex ed and teen elves accidentally marrying each other left and right lmao. (like yes because of that it's to be assumed that parents would have 'the talk' with their children pretty early on to avoid exactly that from happening but the thought is just too funny for me)

So while that mental image is funny (I’m picturing some poor harried Tirion High teacher now), it’s not quite how I picture sex ed working for elves. I’m so so sorry because I get the feeling this was meant to be a shitpost and instead you’re getting a long and meandering series of thoughts.

(tw: brief discussions of sexual abuse below the cut)

There are a lot of different ways to read LaCE, but here’s mine, to sort of set a baseline for how I interpret things (I’m also drawing from other drafts and published material here):

The existence of the marriage bond is the foundation of elvish marriage. Ceremonies, formalities, social perception - none of that truly matters, unlike with humans. If two elves have a marriage-bond, and therefore have either had sex or taken steps to form that intimate bond other than having sex, they’re married, and that’s that.

Elves not only aren’t human, we have zero indication that they experience sexual arousal or desire in the same way humans do. They genuinely do seem to mate for life, so to speak, and the first person that they feel any long term serious attraction for is The One For Them. We see zero canonical evidence of sexual promiscuity, and it’s not because we’re told that socially it’s forbidden - it’s as if it hasn’t occurred to them to be promiscuous in the first place.

There’s also zero evidence that elves see sex as something that’s inherently taboo or dangerous. Sex = marriage, and except in three cases (Celegorm, Eöl, Maeglin) across several thousand years, we don’t have any sexual predators or sexual abuse to contend with as a serious threat. Not only that, but there’s no wrong way to have sex except as an act of violence. Elves have no organized religion and their societal taboos stem from doing harm to others or threatening harm, not from failing to adhere to a strict series of codes of conduct. As a result, the idea of sex as something that’s inherently more “adult” and must be kept behind a locked door for fear that it’s abused or misused probably doesn’t exist for them except as an extension of “don’t hurt other people”.

I don’t think we have any evidence in-canon of homophobia, transphobia, aphobia, arophobia, or any kind of exclusion or philosophy regarding the “right” way to have sex or form lasting relationships. At no point are we told that any elf is expected to marry or to procreate, and the existence of elves who remain single for millennia is not unusual enough to be remarked upon in the text. We also see zero textual proof that elves have prohibitions against same-sex marriage. (Tolkien can be presumed to intend for us to perceive elvish marriage as heterosexual, but he never said this on the page or in any of his commentary or letters, so we don’t have to include that as a default.)

There’s also no explicit proof of gendered power dynamics as a societal norm in any elvish culture. Again, we can perhaps presume Tolkien was implying these things, but to my eyes he comes across more as someone who’s attempting to describe an egalitarian society but doesn’t have the words or the framework to do so because he himself is sexist and not examining this sexism.

With that out of the way -

What can we assume about the sex ed of a culture that isn’t human, that doesn’t experience sexuality as humans do, that has zero institutional prejudice against different ways of doing relationships or marriage or sex, that has zero on-page sexism or gendered power dynamics, that has zero evidence of sexual abuse or violence as a chronic and serious social ill and a strict taboo against even the threat of harm to someone else?

Well, first off, I don’t think that formal sex education is something that really exists. You’d learn about it from your parents, or grandparents, or other relatives and trusted adults, and they’d have no reason to hide things or cut corners. Questions would presumably be answered as they come, starting with simple age-appropriate answers to things like “where do babies come from?” and “how do they get made?” and progressing as you aged. You’d probably have the opportunity as an adolescent elf to ask questions of all kinds of people about their marriages or single lives. You’d also learn as you were growing up that not everyone gets married, and not everyone wants to have sex, and not everyone experiences romantic love, and that two néri or two níssi might marry in the same way that a nér and a nís do, and all of these are normal ways to live.

And as to the mechanics of sex - yeah, it probably would be relatively early in adolescence that you’d find out about how it works, because that way you’d be empowered to make the right decisions going forward about love and marriage. I’m picturing anatomical models, drawn charts, maybe an elvish version of the ever-present “condom on a cucumber” explanation (even though prophylaxis and contraceptives are unnecessary as elves can’t get STIs and only have kids if they want to, I can’t resist the analogy). Also whatever talk you got as a young elf would include things like “use lubricant” and other queer-friendly education that most US schools are averse to including in their curricula, and there wouldn’t be any shame in hunting down someone to give a better answer to a question if (for example) your parents were straight and you were gay and wanted to better understand how that would differ from heterosexual PIV intercourse.

Ultimately I think the goal of any talks you got or questions you had answered would be to prepare you to make safe, autonomous decisions about your body and your potential marriage (including the right to say no to anything for any reason, and the knowledge that “no” will be respected by your family), empower you so that you felt confident those decisions were the right ones, and tell you that you had a safe social framework to turn to in the event of some kind of confusion or uncertainty. You’d be given all the tools you needed and all the necessary knowledge beforehand, and that would enable you to make whatever calls were right for you.

So, basically, the opposite of US abstinence-only ed? which. good.

[arttheclown]

violator's character is handled best when he's treated as a representation of a disenfranchised person in a society that doesn't want them - specifically gay people, because that's how they code him in the earliest issues of spawn, the animated series & to a much lesser extent, the 1997 movie (which i'm not gonna talk about a lot because they did him REALLY dirty otherwise). throughout spawn canon, vi openly flirts with other dudes, specifically al (calling him things like baby, sweetheart and tough guy in the cartoon). in the violator vs. badrock mini-series, they go so far as to confirm his interactions with badrock are meant to be read as homoerotic; badrock reacts with disgust to violator’s comments towards him, and vi himself breaks the fourth wall & criticizes the comic industry for its censorship of gay relationships at the time. in the very same mini-series, violator says outright that he has no interest in a hyper-sexualized female character when he encounters her. his alienation from his brothers in his own 3-issue solo series (which were written by the same man, mind you: alan moore) can be seen as a metaphor for homophobia or transphobia within families, particularly violator’s brothers’ rejection of his “new” body. and for all of my issues with alan moore, he’s no stranger to writing LGBT characters (see watchmen, v for vendetta, lost girls), so i struggle to see that as a coincidence.

then we have the movie, which depicts violator with his right ear pierced and a padlock chain around his neck - some of the most telltale flags within the gay community (which makes the way they wrote his character in spawn ‘97 all the more disgusting, but that’s a rant for another time). in the earliest issues of spawn (i’m currently on #17), violator is written as being completely uninterested in women (even when presented with very beautiful ones). these issues were written by the series creator todd mcfarlane, and for all of my many, many problems with mcfarlane, it makes me wonder if the gross, misogynistic behaviour violator unfortunately becomes known for in other versions of spawn was never intended to be part of his character in the first place. i’m very curious about who started that trend, when that started, and if it had anything to do with the movie’s gross mishandling of his personality. alternatively, if it was mcfarlane’s decision to do a total 180 on vi’s portrayal, i have to wonder if perhaps moore interpreted the character differently - if maybe he saw something in him that mcfarlane didn’t.

not only is there a shit-ton of evidence that violator is gay, there’s a lot to be said about the way his boss, malebolgia, treats him - how he lashes out at violator the way an abusive parent or employer would, criticizing him for thinking for himself and for attempting to strike out on his own. malebogia goes so far as to reveal, way later on in the comics, that that he looks down on violator for embracing his new “human” identity - for attempting to be anything other than the image malebolgia moulded for him. there’s something else to be said about how jason wynn's disposal of al simmons serves as a parallel the way malebolgia ultimately discards violator. wynn and malebolgia are representative of abusive, wealthy, powerful men. al, a Black person, and violator, a presumably gay man, were the ones to suffer most at the hands of these people - especially al, who deals with the brunt of violator’s frustration as well. early spawn was ripe with social commentary, and it frustrates the hell out of me that the writers didn’t do more with that.

i think that’s also why it makes me so angry that violator is usually written off as nothing more than a joke, or a nasty gross-out character, when he doesn’t have to be. furthermore, i really don’t like that vi’s weight is the butt of so many jokes and seen as such a bad and undesirable thing (even in-universe - especially in-universe). one of the things that caught my attention about him in the cartoon is that not only were his proportions finally drawn correctly and not as an awful parody of a fat person? he was allowed to be a confident, sexually attractive, pretty much openly gay fat person. maybe that’s not what the writers and artists intended, but that’s certainly how he came across to me and a number of other gay people whom i introduced to the series - which, i think, says a lot.

vi deserves better. vi deserves some credit. i hope one day he gets it.

[inventors-fair]

Limited Engagement Commentary (Finally)

Trying to subtly slip this in before the commentary for this week’s challenge. Thanks again for your patience.

This Last week’s contest was a little bit different. Because the design space is narrow – and because the abilities tend to need lots of words – there was only a little bit of room to maneuver in, and yet (fortunately) there weren’t too many significant overlaps in the final designs. That said, it also means that many of the obstacles your submissions faced were similar, so rather than sound like I’m harping on about the same things, I’m going to take a less structured approach to my commentary this week. To that end, I’m also not going to spend time nitpicking templates for the draft effects, little used as they are. Anyhow, without further ado, we can dive in.

@aethernalstars - Whispergear Shifter

The callback to Whispergear Sneak here is cute, even if it did have me confusing which was which all week. The play pattern for this is to remove a relatively common card, and then you’re able to exchange it for one of three cards you chose not to include in your deck. There’s always a pretty high barrier to being worth not simply including a card you want (let alone three), and having to find both this and the card to activate it is probably difficult enough to make it not worthwhile in a lot of cases. The ideal use case would be to have lots of a single common that you would be playing anyway, and three situational cards that you wouldn’t want to mainboard, but even in that case I’m not totally convinced the value of ‘upgrading’ your playables into situational cards really makes the card worthwhile. It’s an interesting idea to add flexibility by accessing parts of your card pool you aren’t planning to play, this card just feels like it may introduce a few too many hoops to jump through to achieve that.

Anonymous - Soul Bargain

This is a really clever approach to a draft-matters removal. Black classically gets two-mana instant speed removal with relevant exceptions, and allowing your opponents to choose the exceptions based on their draft pools is such an interesting direction. There’s value both in revealing bombs (protecting your best cards, albeit with a high information cost) and in revealing commons (which also increases the value of those cards as they appear later in the draft). The biggest obstacle this one faces is tracking: seven different card names every time one of these is drafted is a lot of notation. Regicide required noting three different colors as it was drafted, and I would consider that about the most you would ever want to force players to track. If you could find a way to compress this down to track less information (treat the reveal like a vote, and only note the most voted for CMC or something), I think you’d have a really reasonable design on your hands.

@col-seeker-of-the-memiest - Preventative Reconaissance

This is a new take on white protection effects, protecting a player and their permanents from a specific set of cards your opponents reveal. I’m not sure whether it’s intended to be drafted early (to protect you from your opponents’ first-pick bombs) or late (to cover commons that will actually appear in more matchups), but I think that question is probably interesting enough to warrant the confusion. The bigger issues I see with this design are that it’s really narrow - effects like this don’t often make the cut in Limited to begin with, so it’s especially hard to imagine one that only works against one card per opponent being playable - and the amount of bookkeeping it demands in tracking seven essentially random card names. When you’re playing with this, you’ll likely find yourself (and your opponent) checking and re-checking your list of names every time an opponent plays a new threat. The end result is that this asks for a lot of attention during gameplay, but will rarely actually reward that attention in a meaningful way. The design asks some interesting questions, but I suspect the actual logistics of playing with it outweigh most of those benefits.

@deg99 - Lieske, the Collector

Interpreting Companion as a Limited-focused mechanic is an interesting take; it always struck me much more as a Constructed mechanic (since you have more control over your deck construction), with the occasions that you make Companion work in Limited being a fun exception. This card takes it in the opposite direction, having its Companion ability only able to be satisfied while drafting; indeed, all four of its abilities only function within the context of draft. The gameplay pattern this demands is that you remove creatures with desirable activated abilities rather than drafting them, and that you remove three creatures with the same name to turn on Companion. I think my biggest issue is that I struggle to see how this is ever better than just playing the creatures you’re removing with it. You’ll rarely ever turn on Companion with this (not least of all because it broadcasts to other players when you’re about to), and whether you do or not, the picks that you invest in it to make it playable should probably just be spent on cards that are playable themselves. I like the idea of a more Limited-oriented application of Companion, but I suspect there are other ways to approach that design space.

@dimestoretajic - Invoker of Sacrifice

I really liked what this one was trying to do, enough that seeing it in the workshop inspired a design of my own based on it. It’s a little hard for me to tell if the quirks of this one were conscious design decisions, or if they were attempts to make an initial design work without reconsidering the end result. Most cards like this that want to work only once simply turn themselves face down when you use them, and the only part of the chosen card you really need to note is its power; those two changes together would’ve streamlined the templating a lot. Also of note: this card is at its most interesting when it’s having you remove cards that could otherwise be playable for you, but the largest creatures you’re likely to see in draft will often be in green rather than red. That’s not to say the draft environment couldn’t have some high-power red things to tempt you with this, but it’s something to consider when your design starts pulling you in a direction like this one. 

@fractured-infinity - Tibalt, the Chaosbringer

This is a pretty interesting card with a lot to evaluate: both how good it is when you bring in the three extra cards, and how good it is without them. Because this circumvents color requirements, it allows you to access cards you couldn’t just include in your deck anyway, but uses randomness as a cost for doing so. All of the mechanics of this card are easy to understand what they’re doing and work together in a cohesive way, which can be tough to do with 13 lines of abilities. The biggest obstacle this one faces is the same obstacle that any card that attempts to balance itself with randomness faces: if getting a free off-color bomb is the fun part it should probably do it more reliably, and if it isn’t then making it unreliable just means we’re allowing one in three games to not be fun. It does change the draft experience by allowing you to grab off-color bombs as you see them, but I’m not sure if that’s an improvement: draft relies on players getting passed the cards that only they can use, and this encouraging you to pick up those cards with no real downside seems disruptive to that process. That the ultimate and the downtick pull in different directions feels like interesting tension, but I think in practice it almost certainly just means that you won’t be using the ultimate. I would probably rearrange the uptick to make the loyalty counters dependent on exiling a card rather than the damage, that way ticking up to the minus (or the ultimate) actually requires you to reset the odds. There’s a lot going on for this card, as is always the case for planeswalkers, and a lot of it feels like good design work. Tibalt was a good choice for this kind of random effect, and I think with a little tweaking there’s probably something of value there.

@hiygamer - Leovold’s Enforcer

This design is encouraging you to include as many of your draft cards in your final deck as possible, generally lowering your average card quality to increase the quality of this one card. The ceiling is obviously quite high (a six-mana 20/20 with trample is very strong), but in a normal draft environment you’ll leave out 22 of your 45 draft picks (running the other 23 with 17 lands), making this nonfunctional without special consideration. Like others in this vein, it may work well with cards that remove picks from the draft altogether, though it would require a lot of support to remove enough to make this worth playing. The biggest issue this runs into is actually outside of draft: in Eternal and casual play, this is ‘just’ a six-mana 20/20, and while the theme for this week definitely encouraged you to look at cards through an explicitly Limited lens, it’s still important to consider what those cards do in other scopes. It’s generally more interesting (and safer) to reward players with extras that only work in the format than it is to assume the format and make downsides specific to it. Perhaps there’s space for a conspiracy (which are actually only playable in draft) that leans into similar space as this, as that would sidestep some of those issues.

@hypexion - Court Doppelganger

This is a cute take on a clone effect that is unique to Limited. I’m not sure why this one is a 3/3, as clones are typically 0/0 and this one doesn’t even have the downside of not having something to copy: as long as you noted a card while drafting, it just has access to that for 2UU, so also adding a floor of being a vanilla 3/3 seems unnecessary. I’m not a huge fan of the way cards like this encourage you to draft other player’s bombs - when another player in the draft pod watches you reveal an off-color mythic that would’ve been perfect for their deck that is now suddenly mono-blue for you, they’re going to know it was this card that undermined their draft - I think some restrictions as to what you can clone would go a long way. But the biggest issue that this one faces is actually logistical: this allows you to clone a card that exists somewhere within your deck without a point of reference, meaning that every time you play this card, you will need to call a judge to verify the Oracle text of the card it’s cloning. As a rule of thumb, any card that comes with a built-in judge call probably warrants a redesign to avoid that; something like one of our runners-up this week, which exiles the relevant card before the game for the ease of referencing it later on.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes - Riches to Rags

I think what I like most about this one is the way the in-game effect seems to align with the out-of-game effect - both effects encourage you to trash your two least favourite cards, either to or from two different places. Functionally, the out-of-game effect really doesn’t do anything: the last several picks in any pack aren’t much of a choice, so players always wind up with junk they would never play anyway. Each player choosing the two most worthless cards in their pool and shuffling them amongst nearby players doesn’t feel like a really meaningful decision, or that it’s likely to impact the games that follow in any real way. The design feels like there’s something to it, and perhaps with a few more restrictions it could create some more interesting scenarios with a similar framework.

@ignorantturtlegaming - Lutri, the Redeemed

I do love a good redemption arc (I assume that’s what the electricity in its paws is), and Lutri is definitely cute enough to deserve one. I like that this acknowledges some of the similarities of revealing cards before the game with the Companion mechanic, and it’s mindful to play in space that is familiar to Lutri as a character. This design actually comes so close to being especially interesting with a Commander Legends-style draft format, but because it actually casts the exiled card you wouldn’t get any extra value from additional castings of Lutri after the first. If it had used a format more similar to Arcane Savant, it would’ve been interesting in that sense...but that also highlights its biggest issue, simply that it feels very close to a card that already exists. That said, I understand most of the decisions that resulted in them being so similar, and I think with just a few changes you could carve out some space for this that Savant wouldn’t be able to touch.

@machine-elf-paladin - Prismatic Assistant

This takes what a lot of the other designs this week were doing, and pushes it in the opposite direction: looking at what you don’t have in your card pool. The obvious question is how big does this need to get to be worthwhile: if you play your entire pool, this would be a 4 mana 6/7, though that obviously impacts the average quality of your other draws. A four-mana 4/5 is pretty good by most colors’ standards, and that limits you to having two colors among your unplayables - so basically all of your pulls need to be in your colors. There’s a question of how many pool-removing cards you would need in a format to support something like this. I think the biggest issue is the logistics of revealing large numbers of possibly relevant cards from your sideboard - it’s correct for your opponent to want to record every card you reveal, even though the majority won’t ever be relevant. Lots of the designs this week struggled with managing the amount of information that they required to be tracked and shared, so I can’t be too hard on you, but it’s certainly something to keep in mind as you design cards like these.

@misterstingyjack – Coveted Bauble

As you probably noticed, your entry was actually surprisingly close to one of our winners this week, which you should take as a good sign! The idea behind your card was quite clever, and had it not been for its similarity to a winning design, surely would’ve been at least a runner-up. What gave the winner the edge over your Bauble was mostly the innovation of making the ability a keyword, but also a few logistical considerations that the winning version executed more cleanly. For instance, the only drafts that could reasonably be interpreted to have ‘turns’ are Competitive events with called (timed) drafts, with most casual events (like this would appear in) using zone, or even looser draft structures. Finding a way to make this ability work in those looser structures is admittedly tricky, but it was probably worth figuring out how to do.

@nicolbolas96 - Diplomatic Study

This one is also a lot like one of our winners this week, though this one plays up the advantages of trading more than either of the others. I quite like the flavour choices on this one, and I really like the design space of things that work best after having moved around the table a bit. The biggest frustration I have with this one is that because the upside is so big, it’s hard to imagine anyone feeling tempted to draft this in the first place - somebody has to, but nobody really wants to be the one stuck with it initially. I suppose it’s better the earlier in the draft you open it, but the card itself isn’t really the kind of game-winning bomb that would be likely to get traded for...well, a game-winning bomb. I think I’d like it if it offered a little more to incentivise taking it initially, so that trading it off is slightly more mutually beneficial when it inevitably happens. It’s worth noting that the “draft table” clause is kinda clunky, but I appreciate your trying to keep it reasonable for casual Constructed as well.

@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff - Goblin Librarian

I saw your comment mentioning that you missed a line of text on the final version - I appreciate your pointing it out, as the design makes a lot more sense with that included. Missed lines don’t tend to win you prizes, but they do allow for better feedback. This is (supposed to be) a really cute design exploring how big of an advantage you have to offer for players to use their entire card pool. The flavour on this is top-notch, and the effect is interesting enough to make you wonder whether it’s worth trying. One clever quirk of the design is that it (almost) allows you to casually experiment with the Kablooey Decimal system, then switch back to your normal 40 if that isn’t working out. I would probably open it up to “card pool” rather than “cards you drafted”, both so that it theoretically works in Sealed (which this design can do more smoothly than most) and so that it includes basics you add to your pool after the draft (that’s the ‘almost’: since it doesn’t let you add basics, as written you do have to decide to include those in advance, but with a little tweaking that would be fixable). If I had any qualms, I do wish this had a slightly more meaningful in-game effect; I know it’s mostly there for the gimmick, but I think there’s flavourful mechanics that could make this card interesting even after the game begins as well.

@shakeszx - Chancellor of the Void

This wasn’t the challenge I expected to see a sixth Chancellor in, but I’m always a sucker for a good callback. That said, it’s important to recognise when making such a callback is valuable and when it isn’t. The Chancellor cycle has an identity as 4MMM creatures that have a small additional effect if you happen to have them in your opening hand. Now, this design does have an effect when it’s in your opening hand, but that effect doesn’t actually do anything when it’s revealed. What’s more, the whole card doesn’t do much of anything if it’s not in your opening hand: it’s a very hard to cast vanilla 4/4. On top of that there’s the concern that there’s never been a draft format where triple-colorless was a reasonably payable cost, as well as the logistical nuisance of your opponent counting your deck every time you reveal this card (to ensure you’re not accidentally on 41+ cards). Overall I get the feeling that this design was torn between doing something interesting in Limited and calling back to an old cycle, and both of those goals just got in the way of really delivering on the other.

@snugz – Sokenzan Onsen

I appreciate the attempt at subtlety, though I did try to let on that subtlety wasn’t expected with this week’s contest: I gave you free rein to explicitly reference elements of Limited. Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to agree that minimum deck size manipulation is primarily a Limited thing after watching Yorion terrorise Standard over the past six months. Challenge aside, something like Yorion’s success proves that for certain decks (namely Control variants) there is relatively little cost to adding extra cards, and in this case five cards is an especially small hoop to jump through. Logistically, it seems a little unpleasant to verify – when you play this on turn 3, your opponent suddenly needs to count your library, your hand, your graveyard, your battlefield, and anything you have in exile to make sure you actually had five over when you started. It’s honestly a pretty neat idea and I’d like to think there’s some design space for deckbuilding restriction duals, but I think there’s a little cleaning up to do on this one before it’s practical. 

@starch255 – Shambling Scrapheap

I see what you were trying to do with this one: the balance between how many of these commons you keep in your deck (to increase how often you see it) and how many you leave out can create an interesting tension. I see why you say it’s most interesting in draft, as it’s certainly much less interesting as a 3-mana 4/4 that eats your sideboard slots. But even more than that I’d be worried about this in casual, where a card like this is actually liable to see play: where players are encouraged to collect them by the dozen, but where the result isn’t particularly fun when they do so. There’s definitely room in Magic for Relentless Rats-style cards that encourage players to collect lots of them, it’s just important to be mindful of what actually happens when a player finally ‘does the thing’, and whether what you’re subtly encouraging them to do makes the games where they do it more fun, or less.

@teaxch – Custodi Apocrypha

This is an interesting build-around rare that if drafted early allows you to really shape the rest of your draft around it, and automatically tells you something about the draft environment it must fit in. I think rare is probably the correct place for this to sit, both because it has a pretty huge color pie effect and because multiples in a single draft pod would create lots of competition for Auras. This is a solid design that I can imagine as part of an interesting draft format, and the only thing holding it back was that – as you noted – it’s just not doing anything especially breathtaking.

@thedirtside - Common Enemy

Thinking to use the other players in a draft pod (or sealed event) as a resource is a really clever take on this week’s challenge. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a way that the rules can actually support “players from outside the game” - I’m afraid it’s something that will be relegated to silver border for some time. I think the closest you could come to this would be to do the vote as part of the draft process: that reliably gives you seven other players, and the game can reasonably obligate them to make a choice (whereas this design currently doesn’t do much if there’s no one to ask or they decline to choose). In practice, this card seems awfully swingy - often you’re going to have players outside the game simply picking a winner, as anything more than one outsider results in very large life total changes. There’s a slight templating hiccup here as well: this spell as written only has one target, so you’d have to do a little reconfiguring for a spell like this to determine the correct number of targets as you’re casting it.

[inumaqi]

top ten tagged by @linkspooky 🍊 explanations under the cut! sorry for rambling xo → rules: name your top ten favourite characters from ten different fandoms, and then tag ten people - @osomanga @kara-suno @anonimarevolts @zeninmaki @wildbishonen @shysheeperz @tkmewthyou @kaldurlenn @joxterism @marshmallowdonutsprinkles

snufkin okay so he’s the only one not from an anime or manga but i had to put him on bc he’s the most important fictional character to me, ever. i grew up watching the moomin cartoons in the 90s and thinking about it instantly calms me down - they used to air the episodes early in the morning when it would still be dark outside: the landscapes were moody and cosy, the characters were so softly spoken and articulate... it’s just peak nostalgia. anyway, snufkin is moomin’s best friend; he returns to moominvalley every year to be with his friends during the spring and says his goodbyes to go adventure again come winter. it upsets moomin when he leaves but snufkin is adamant that quiet and solitude are important and healthy, and it’s not fair to expect him to compromise on his independence - that made a really big impact on me as a kid, especially as someone who never really had their ‘own’ space (twinsies). relationships aren’t weakened by physical distance or time, they’re about communication and understanding. that was important too. i don’t think i realised just how influential it had been until i was an adult but snufkin is an anarchist. he first shows up in the comics when moomin and sniff are talking about opening a bank - he tells them they should plant fruit trees instead. he destroys private property and rescues orphans, he refuses to participate in things that don’t bring him joy. when he’s asked where home is, he replies, “nowhere. or everywhere! it depends how you look at it” - the whole world belongs to him, and the whole world belongs to everyone else too.

yomo renji in general, i like characters that trudge along in the background and do the nitty-gritty work that supports the main story. i like people like that irl too. more than anything else, yomo is desperate to form human connections, even though he’s shackled by self-doubt and self-loathing. he just wants to positively contribute to a community, thinking he’s most useful keeping a quiet eye on people who might need protection/guidance (while still giving them space to grow and act themselves) or foraging for human corpses so that others aren’t in danger or moral anguish doing it for themselves.

bird boy is a total weapon - “the perfect ghoul” - and you’re reminded over and over again but a lot of his growth is about rejecting violence and repurposing his power as something productive that he can use to help the people around him instead of hurting people (the yang to uta’s yin). in the first few chapters, he says he kills humans (he’s a ghoul, humans are food, it’s natural) and yet he’s consistently framed as a scavenger who seeks out ‘roadkill’ [suicide victims] for sustenance, even before coming to anteiku, and implements a system so other people can do the same.

suguru getou i was originally gonna say meg bc i love him but, having just finished The Flashback Arc, i can’t stop thinking about getou and i’m beyond impressed with how akutami has managed to ground him so well, so sympathetically. getou is the sick, warped darkness to the hopeful light that gojou commands but... in an uncomfortable twist, the reverse is true, kind of.

actually, gojou is arrogant and confrontational and hyper individualistic. he’s a dissident. getou is obedient, compassionate, self-aware... he has a sense of social responsibility and passionately believes that his skills should be used to protect those who can’t protect themselves - non-jujutsu sorcerers - and all of the suffering he endures as a result is worth that. idk if others are reading his downfall differently but, from where i’m standing, that overwhelming responsibility never goes away, he doesn’t give up on it - he just starts to view the social landscape differently and begins to see how jujutsu sorcerers are vilified and mistreated in spite of all the good that they do. the ‘weak’ aren’t really weak when they’re able to organise and assert collective power over a minority, and so his sympathies shift.

the nail in the coffin for getou is learning that the hurt and pain could be eradicted from the world by cutting the head of the proverbial snake: non-jujutsu users generate cursed energy, so get rid of non-jujutsu users and cursed energy won’t be generated. it’s all horribly, weirdly rooted in good intentions that weigh him down and misdirect him.  shinazugawa genya i feel like the bond that slowly starts to develop betwen tanjirou, and zenitsu and inosuke (in particular) is nicely foiled by genya’s lonely journey towards becoming a pillar. after losing almost all of his family and having sanemi walk away, genya is angry, antisocial, rude, violent, evasive...

he’s characterised as competitive, as if he hates his peers and wants to leave them in the dust as an act of self-satisfaction, a power fantasy or whenever, but this is a deliberate misdirection to cover for the fact that he’s scrambling to be a pillar so that he can reconnect with his brother and prove to him that he can protect himself; that sanemi doesn’t need to shoulder everything alone like he used to. his entire goal is an act of apology.

and in a story where so many characters are able to hone these exceptional skills, genya is uniquely disadvantaged as the only one who can’t master breathing techniques. rather than having a hero moment and powering up, his need to reconnect with sanemi is so strong that he essentially decides to compromise his humanity and become a kind of monster by ingesting the demons he’s pledged to annihilate. amajiki tamaki i wish i had a a longer explanation for this one but it’s actually super simple: tamaki is a really, really, really good portrayal of a person burdened with severe anxiety. the way he physically carries himself, the way he hides his face, his manner of speaking, his dependency on his mirio, how he interprets compliments as trickery, how he needs to be pushed and pushed and pushed before he’s finally able to release his potential... every single scene with tamaki felt deeply personal when i was reading bnha and i knew exactly what he was supposed to be feeling. shinmon benimaru sometimes good, nice people don’t fit a little friendly mould and i like that benimaru is hostile and rough and antisocial, even with people he cares about. he doesn’t expect anything of people, he doesn’t want them interfering with him, and he wants to help and support them all the same because he believes in community. he’s completely oppositional to the special fire force because he thinks it’s a tool to pursue an ideology rather than to protect people, which is why it’s so important when the eighth are finally able to win his approval - they become the only company the seventh consider allies, and it’s proof that their objectives are righteous. despite his reputation as... kind of a nuisance, his skill is acknowledged by everyone and he’s universally regarded as the strongest fire soldier there is. in spite of his antisocial attitude, he agrees that it’s important to share that with younger fire soldiers - he’s incredibly patient and understanding with them, helps them to individually adapt. the way he (and others in company seven) operate in contrast to the other companies when fighting infernals is really cool to me for two reasons: (1) it provides a commentary on how cultures and traditions often struggle to survive when they’re systematically (forcefully) replaced through power and wealth - although the subtext is a little troubling because it’s unclear whether ōkubo is conflating multiculturalism with globalisation which, uh, big nope; and (2) philosophically speaking, the approach to death is interesting. where the other companies essentially perform last rites and offer absolution to the deceased, benimaru personally takes responsibility - at the request of the people in his district - for sending them off in huge public display, kind of like a festival intending to celebrate their life. i think it speaks to how profoundly he values life. akihiko kaji i liked akihiko from the beginning because he’s stoic and introspective and also excitable and dumb. he’s a people watcher and waits for opportunities to softly guide uenoyama and mafuyu when they’re quietly crying out for help but doesn’t interfere any more than he thinks is necessary because he knows they can make their own way to where they need to go. i liked akihiko even more when he got really fucking messy. his relationship with ugetsu is sweet and it’s incredibly ugly and unhealthy because they both fail utterly to communicate with one another - they’re both to blame for avoiding and hurting each other, and i think that’s a really normal issue that people find difficult to overcome. i’m super interested (and really nervous) to see how his relationship with haruki develops. he’s done some horrible things to haruki and i want him to be accountable for those things and have them affect their relationship in a realistic way.

tanigaki genjirou one thing i really, really love about golden kamuy is the way noda satoru incorporates the importance of minority cultures into the story, and tanigaki’s apparent abandonment of his matagi heritage is really beautifully written. matagi hunting traditions shaped his life as a young man, it’s how he was able to really assimilate to the people around him and form relationships and - without getting too spoilery - he divorces himself from it all when he’s overcome by grief and hatches a plan for revenge against the person responsible. so, by allowing himself to surrender to negative feelings and thoughts instead of seeking support and learning to heal from what happened, he becomes a total shadow of himself. 

makimura takeshi i know i’ve gushed about it before but i can’t properly explain just how incredible it felt seeing an asexual character in manga dialogue about being asexual, and devils’ line does it twice. the reason i’m so attached to makimura in particular is because he doesn’t seem to have fully figured it out - and he’s kinda... comfortable with that. he wants to be with someone and he wants to be monogamous but he can’t understand why he doesn’t feel sexual desire towards her; he knows his feelings aren’t platonic but doesn’t know whether they can really be called romantic either.

not to go dark mode but i very vividly remember just how lonely and horrifying it was battling with those uncertainties when i was a teenager, thinking i was broken because i didn’t have Normal Human Feelings and needed to be fixed. i was so worried about it that i thought about all the boys i knew, picked the one i thought was the nicest and actively tried to develop a crush on him. it was dumb as fuck but, ten years later, i realise it was really desperate and sad too. i forced myself to have ~my first kiss~ (it was horrible) because i felt like i was getting left behind and i think i would’ve put myself in worse situations as i got older if i hadn’t suffered with such bad social anxiety.

i hadn’t really thought too much about a lot of this stuff for yeaaars but it all came flooding back when i was reading devils’ line. it was bittersweet bc i was remembering all of those shitty feelings but also watching this character grapple with those same questions and go: i don’t know yet and that’s not weird, let’s just grow with it. i still don’t totally know whether i’m ace or aro or bi, or whatever, but i’m trying to be okay with just... not knowing.

misora shuuji anyway, devils’ line isn’t actually a manga with a specific focus on sexuality and gender but shimanami tasogare is and all of the characters are written beautifully. if you haven’t read it yet... then why haven’t you read it yet? misora is only about twelve years old and watching them battle with their growing pains is really compelling - they’re closeted but, through the lounge, they have somewhere to explore their gender and all the questions they have about it. they’re amab and present as traditionally feminine wrt clothes, wigs, makeup, etc. but can’t quite tell if they see themselves as a girl, a boy or non-binary.

with the onset of puberty and anxieties about physical changes to their body, misora’s story puts a lot of emphasis on the pressure they face to just ‘make up their mind’ about something that’s actually incredibly complex and doesn’t have any easy answers. they snap and shout and get upset, especially when tasuku (the protag) tries to push them into a corner because he wants a concrete label or identity he can attach to misora, even though space is exactly what misora needs.

[aion-rsa]

Every Cyberpunk 2077 Controversy So Far

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Cyberpunk 2077 may be the most anticipated game of 2020 but its long road to release can be measured by numerous controversies that have often attracted the wrong kind of attention.

From delays to questionable tweets, Cyberpunk 2077 can easily be considered one of the most controversial games in recent memory, and it hasn’t even been released yet. While time will tell if Cyberpunk 2077 can “usurp” The Last of Us Part 2 and become 2020’s most divisive game, the project is already at the center of several heated debates that are causing fans to take sides.

If you’re wondering where you stand on the game’s most contested topics, here’s a rundown of every notable Cyberpunk 2077 controversy (so far):

The Numerous Delays and Long Development Time

Believe it or not, there have only been three official Cyberpunk 2077 delays so far and all of them have happened in 2020.

Cyberpunk 2077‘s first official release date was April 16, 2020. While developer CD Projekt Red noted early in the year that the game was “complete and playable,” the studio delayed the game to September 17 as part of an effort to better optimize its performance.

On June 18, the Cyberpunk 2077 team announced via Twitter that the game’s release had been delayed again and was now (at least at that time) scheduled to be released on November 19. Again, CD Projekt Red cited a “huge number of things to iron out” as the reason for the delay.

Finally, on October 27, CD Projekt Red announced that Cyberpunk 2077‘s final release date had been rescheduled for December 10. This time, the team cited not just bug fixes and optimization as the reason for the delay but the challenges presented by their desire to release the game across so many platforms.

Before we dive into some of the other delay related controversies, we should point out that much of the fan frustration regarding Cyberpunk 2077‘s delays are closely related to the fact the game was revealed via a teaser trailer released in 2013. While we don’t know what the status of the game was at that time, the popular perception is that Cyberpunk 2077 has been in development for seven years. That means that each one of the game’s 2020 delays has stung some fans harder than they otherwise may have.

The Crunch Schedule

You can’t talk about Cyberpunk 2077‘s delays without talking about the game’s controversial crunch development schedule.

We’ve covered this topic before in greater detail (you can read our full report on this subject here), but the gist of the situation is that developer CD Projekt Red had previously stated that they would not force the Cyberpunk 2077 team to work through a crunch schedule. In September, though, CD Projekt Red boss Adam Badowski confirmed reports that the studio asked employees to begin working additional hours. In exchange for the extra work, they would be compensated with overtime pay and additional funds offered by the company’s profit-sharing program.

That information triggered two additional debates. The first saw those who opposed the company’s crunch schedule battle those who claimed the company’s employees were being fairly compensated for their extra work. While it was generally agreed the company was compensating its employees for overtime more than other game developers have done in the past (and that some employees anonymously stated they were fine with the schedule), many argued that crunch development is an industry problem which needs to be addressed whenever it appears.

Finally, there’s the matter of the game’s delays. The latest Cyberpunk 2077 delay was confirmed after the report of the company’s crunch schedule had broke. If the insinuation was that the crunch schedule was implemented as a desperate measure intended to ensure the game was released on time, then could CD Projekt Red have skipped the crunch schedule and just delayed the game a little longer?

The PS4/Xbox One Controversy

When news broke that the most recent Cyberpunk 2077 delay was partially attributed to the struggles of launching the game across so many platforms, it didn’t take long for some fans to worry about the PS4 and Xbox One editions of the game.

Why? Well, some people expressed their concern that the previous-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077 may hinder the day one quality of the next-gen editions. CD Projekt Red has stated that the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of Cyberpunk 2077 will benefit from day one upgrades, but the “full” next-gen versions of each title will not be available until a later date.

Others had the opposite concern and worried that the next-gen editions of Cyberpunk 2077 would be the “real” versions of the game and that the PS4 and Xbox One versions would suffer from serious performance downgrades. There’s currently no evidence which strongly supports that claim, but it does ring loud at a time when it’s nearly impossible to find a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S.

The Gender Tweet

One of the earlier Cyberpunk 2077 controversies involved this now-deleted tweet from the Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account:

The tweet itself was sent in the midst of a greater debate over the use of that term and whether or not it had become a way to mock transgender people or those who sympathize with the struggles of transgender people. Basically, there was some concern that the Cyberpunk 2077 team’s use of that term was meant as an insult

CD Projekt Red deleted the tweet and issued the following statement regarding it:

“Sorry to all those offended by one of the responses sent out from our account earlier. Harming anyone was never our intention.”

As some noted at the time, this controversy was amplified by another incident in which GOG (a digital store owned by CD Projekt Red) tweeted a GIF of a Postal character urinating on a tombstone that read “Games Journalism” and “August 28th, 2014.” That date is believed to be a reference to GamerGate.

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The Transgender Poster

Arguably the most infamous Cyberpunk 2077 controversy involved this in-game poster:

The poster showcases a transgender model advertising a soda with slogans could be interpreted as references to transgender people. Given that this poster was circulated shortly after the aforementioned tweets, some felt that this was another example of CD Projekt Red using transgender people as a punchline.

In an interview with Polygon, the CD Projekt Red artist who designed this poster, Kasia Redesiuk, explained her thought process behind it.

“Personally, for me, this person is sexy,” Redesiuk said. “I like how this person looks. However, this model is used — their beautiful body is used — for corporate reasons. They are displayed there just as a thing, and that’s the terrible part of it.”

Redesiuk also stated that she had no intentions of directly offending people but did note that she was aware the image was inherently provocative.

“I would say it was never the intention to offend anyone,” Redesiuk said. “However, with this image of an oversexualized person, we did want to show how over-sexualization of people is bad. And that’s it.

The Gender Choice Character Creator

Cyberpunk 2077 would once again find itself at the center of a gender-related controversy, but this one was a bit different than the others.

In an interview with Metro, Cyberpunk 2077 artist Marthe Jonkers explained that the game would not offer simple male and female gender options during the character creation process.

“You don’t choose, ‘I want to be a female or male character’ you now choose a body type,” Jonkers explained. “So you choose your body type and we have two voices, one that’s male sounding, one is female sounding. You can mix and match. You can just connect them any way you want. And then we have a lot of extra skin tones and tattoos and hairstyles. So we really want to give people the freedom to make their own character and play the way they want to play.”

While some felt that this was the company’s attempt to cover up for their previous actions, much of the blowback in this instance came from fans who saw this as an example of the Cyberpunk 2077 team “pandering” to critics. There is currently no information available that suggests the game’s character creation process was drastically altered in response to any such criticisms.

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The Animals and Voodoo Boys

The reveal of Cyberpunk 2077‘s gangs caused some to question whether or not the game was relying on racial stereotypes.

This debate focused on two gangs: The Animals and Voodoo Boys. Some fans felt that the “Animals” name was intended as an insult directed towards a gang that appeared to largely be comprised of people of color. As for the Voodoo Boys, there were concerns that the gang’s name, design, and background were designed to exploit racial and cultural stereotypes.

CD Projekt Red later stated that The Animals is actually a multi-racial gang and that that the initial portrayal of them as a gang that consisted entirely of people of color was based on the specific scenario of the gameplay demo they were showcased in. Cyberpunk 2020‘s creator also offered this response in regards to these controversies:

“As for the Animals–the WHOLE FREAKING POINT is that they think of themselves as POWERFUL, DANGEROUS, WILD ANIMALS. You’d have thought the Lady named ‘Sasquatch’ would have given them a clue…The original Voodoo Boys were a scathing commentary on cultural appropriation. I LOVE the idea that real practitioners of Voudon moved in and took back their turf. And they even got the Creole right…Who the (bleep) do YOU think you are to tell ME whether or not MY creation was done right or not?”

The Microtransactions

Earlier this year, CD Projekt Red’s Adam Kicinski caused a stir by implying that Cyberpunk 2077 would have microtransactions despite previous implications that the game would not.

“We’re never aggressive towards our fans!” Kicinski said during an earnings call. “We treat them fairly and we’re friendly. So of course not – we won’t be aggressive – but you can expect great things to be bought. The goal is to design monetization in a way that makes people happy to spend money. I’m not trying to be cynical or hide something; it’s about creating a feeling of value.”

The Cyberpunk team later clarified that statement somewhat with the following tweet:

Nothing changed. Cyberpunk 2077 is a single player game with zero microtransactions. One single purchase. No tricks. Don't believe the clickbait. https://t.co/qX0iZwsAf2

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) September 7, 2020

The issue of microtransactions is typically controversial in and of itself, but the debate was amplified in this instance by CD Project Red’s apparent “anti-microtransaction” culture and outward consumer-friendly image. Furthermore, Cyberpunk 2077‘s multiplayer has been its own source of controversy due to the mysterious nature of the concept and concerns its development has further delayed the release of the Cyberpunk 2077 campaign.

The First-Person Controversy

It feels so quaint now, but one of the earlier Cyberpunk 2077 controversies involved the game’s first-person perspective.

In 2019, the Cyberpunk 2077 team confirmed the game would largely take place in first-person with third-person angles being used for certain cutscenes and driving sequences. This upset some fans who were not only led to believe the game would be third-person based on early footage (and The Witcher 3) but were concerned by the implications of a first-person game. Namely, they worried that the game would end up being a first-person shooter and that first-person cutscenes would not be nearly as “immersive” as the third-person storytelling featured in The Witcher 3.

Some fans also felt that a first-person perspective would limit the impact of the game’s character customization options, but CD Projekt Red later clarified that you’ll be able to see your character in mirrors and on the inventory screen.

The post Every Cyberpunk 2077 Controversy So Far appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[danganronpa-21]

Naegiri Week Day 7: Investigate

Awwww... it’s the last day of Naegiri Week already. I have to say, I’m going to miss writing about Naegiri every day. Posting work that so many of you have interacted with is ridiculously fun, but... also quite tiring. So here’s my last prompt for Naegiri Week 2019. And look, guys! I finished all seven days this year!

Before I let you read though, I want to give special thanks to everyone who’s been supporting myself and other creators for this week. Seeing other people reblog our content, so many of them filled with that sweet tag commentary, it brightens up everyone’s days! So thank you for that!

And thank you to Eon of @naegiriweek for organizing! I know it was harder to do on your own this year, and I really appreciate all of the work you put into managing everything. Thank you very much for what you’ve done -- you were spectacular! 

Alright. I think that’s all I have to say for now. I hope you enjoy Day 7: Investigate.

______________

Christmas Eve traditionally tended to be a bad time to ask Kyoko for help. 

“It’s a challenging day of the year for me,” She had told him a few days prior, her tone not at all mimicking the nature of her words, “So I prefer not to be bothered much throughout its duration.”

When Makoto had inquired as to why, she pushed past it. Something sharp and snappy was said, but it went ignored. They’d been friends for long enough for him to know when he was supposed to take certain things to heart. So conversation-wise, they left it at that. They left it knowing that Kyoko found Christmas Eve to be a tough day of the year, and that Makoto shouldn’t bother her too much because of it. Pretty simple stuff. 

But even if that was the conclusion that was drawn, that certainly wouldn’t stop Makoto from doing what he could to cheer her up. One could always assume that there were a few certainties in life: One, death. Two, life. Three, Makoto Naegi being physically unable to avoid doing nice things for friends that were feeling down. So naturally, the luckster picked up the slack. He’d been oh so proud of himself at the time; so glad to have found a way to help Kyoko feel better during such a rough time of year.

Really, the only problem was that the slack he’d picked up had gone horribly missing. 

“Where could they be…?” He groaned to himself, shuffling through just about everything in his bedroom. He’d already torn apart his desk and the top of his dresser trying to figure out where he placed it, and so far had come up with nothing. He hoped that wouldn’t be the case for the surface of his bedside table as he turned towards it, expecting more than what it would give. “Of all the times to lose something…!”

With one fell swoop, he pushed all of the books off of his bedside table. Probably not the best idea if he intended to keep his present in tact, but he thought that it could maybe be a good way of revealing the contents of its surface. The issue was that only books and personal hygiene products hit the ground, spilling papers and deodorant all over his bedroom floor. No signs of the little box he’d wrapped Kyoko’s gift in. 

“Of course. Of course it’s not here!” He griped to himself; his arms thrown into the air dramatically. A low grumble escaped his throat as he glared at the table, cursing it for not being the hiding spot of Kyoko’s present. “God… where could it be…?”

Pushing a hand through his hair, Makoto decided to take a couple of steps back. Perhaps if he surveyed the room for a minute or two, the box would make itself seen. He just had to make sure he was keeping an eye out for the right things. A little box covered in pink wrapping paper; tied nicely with a silky white bow. It shouldn’t be so hard to find. It wasn’t like Makoto had a lot of shiny pink things in his bedroom. 

His eyes scanned the room once more. As he looked around the room, he swore he could feel the weight of his worry on his shoulders. Christmas Eve in Japan was… well, it was one of the most romantic nights of the year. And even despite her hardships with the time, Kyoko had agreed to go out with him for this one night. He planned to take her somewhere nice, and give her a gift, so maybe she wouldn’t have to feel so sad. Whether she chose to interpret his actions as a flirtatious gesture was up to her. He would accept things no matter how they came. All he wanted was for her to feel loved. In order to do that, though, they would need to fulfill his other want: finding that box.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Of all times to get there! The knocking on his front door was unmistakable. Of course Kyoko would be there early. Normally she was the kind of person who didn’t really think of other people’s time; it all but showed in her tendency to be late to class. Almost every other time he’d asked her to hang out were another piece of evidence to the case. Of course just this once, when she needed to be tardy, she wasn’t. His hands curled into fists at the frustration of hearing the door open, and the sound of his mother’s voice greeting Kyoko.

“Hi Kirigiri-san!” He heard the older woman’s silvery voice chirp, “It’s good to see you again. Makoto’s just upstairs getting ready. I can go get him for you, if you like.”

Makoto sighed. At least he could be comforted by the fact that his mother had finally learned that Kyoko wasn’t a talker. The first time she’d come to visit the house, she’d bombarded her with all kinds of questions about herself. When Kyoko dodged practically every single one, his mother worried that the girl disliked her. Which, in turn, led to her son explaining to her that Kyoko was shy and reticent. Fortunately, that had been enough to get her to stop pushing the next time the two of them were in the same room.

“Actually, Mrs. Naegi, I wondered if I might speak to Naegi-kun myself. I have something I need to ask him before we leave.” 

He froze when he caught those words. Oh god, what was he going to tell her about his bedroom? He planned for her gift to be a surprise. He’d need to come up with some sort of excuse for the mess of papers and knick-knacks strewn across the hardwood floors. 

“Sure thing! His bedroom’s just up there, first door on your right.” 

Makoto didn’t hear Kyoko say thank you, but he assumed she probably nodded it. Her choosing to be quiet around his mother seemed more likely that him choosing to be impolite. Dread built in his stomach as he listened to her footsteps as they pounded against the staircase hard and strong as she made her way up. Likely on account of her high-heeled boots; she seemed to pair them with every outfit. Even for a winter’s night, he noted. Which was absolutely the wrong thing to note, given that his room was a mess and he had no excuse as to why. He supposed it was at least something  that made her entrance more dramatic, as she swung into the doorway of his bedroom. Her brows were raised in surprise almost immediately. 

The first and only thing he thought to do when she caught sight of him was grin sheepishly, offering a tiny wave. “H-Hey, Kirigiri-san.”

The detective’s face screamed confusion; her head tilting as she rushed to comprehend the information she was taking in. Her brows were furrowed together slightly, and he could see her pursing her lips. 

“Did a bomb go off in here?”

Kind of rude, he thought, but pushed the thought away. He forced himself to laugh instead, but he could tell it did little to convince Kyoko that what she said something humorous. “N-No, I just…” He paused, scrambling for a last minute excuse, “I was looking for something.”

Pathetic and also truthful. Jeez, he hadn’t realized that he was such a bad liar. Maybe he needed to get Celestia to coach him sometime.

Kyoko’s expression remained dubious; still scrutinizing the details of his bedroom rather than the details of his face. “... Right.” 

“Actually… Kirigiri-san, do you think you could help me?” He asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet, “I really need to find it before we go out.”

She folded her arms across her chest; he couldn’t help but notice how she puffed it up proudly at being asked. She wasn’t kidding about taking pride in her work, no matter how small the job. “What am I investigating?” 

Blood flowed to Makoto’s face at the question. Well, now that she’d seen the room, he imagined he would have to tell her what she was looking for. Sure, it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore, but hopefully it was still possible for her to enjoy the gift anyway. 

His inner self-reassurance didn’t stop him from scratching at his cheek, though. “You see, the other day, when you told me that you don’t feel so great on Christmas Eve, I got to thinking… I know this time of year is hard for you, and I don’t really know what for. So I decided I would make you a little Christmas gift. You know, to help you feel better.” 

Kyoko nodded in recognition, but showed no semblance of happiness. Typical. She could be bouncing for joy underneath that iron mask of hers, and he wouldn’t have a clue. 

“I see…” A hand flew to her chin; her usual signal that she was diving into deep thought. “And I imagine you misplaced my gift?”

His shoulders slumped a little at the confession. “Unfortunately.”

“Well, I suppose now I have to help you find it, don’t I?” She sighed, striding into the room with a complete and total disregard for the floor clutter. This would prove to be her downfall, for she nearly got taken out by the stick of deodorant that had been swept to the floor. It was a stroke of good luck that allowed Makoto to catch her elbow and steady her. 

“If you’d still like it. What I thought we might do together tonight wasn’t anything time sensitive. We can afford to spend a few minutes looking around for your present.”

Letting out a small sigh, Kyoko steadied herself. Her gaze failed to meet Makoto’s as she studied the room; the gears in her mind already turning. With the way she acted, one might almost have believed that he hadn’t heard what he said. “What does the gift look like?”

“It’s small, and pink-”

“How small?”

“About… uh…” Makoto straightened out his hands and made the distance; he kept them about a shoebox-length apart. “This big.”

She nodded. “And you said it was pink?”

“Yes. A shiny pink. I tied it up with a white bow.”

For the first time that night, Kyoko laughed. A relatively small one, but still a laugh. She covered her mouth in an attempt to hide it, but he could still see it. He almost thought it to be the first he’d seen her laugh all day. Did his diligence with presents humour her? He hoped she knew that he always took gift-giving seriously. The birthday party they’d thrown for Mukuro and Junko at school earlier that day should have clued her into that. 

“Of course you did,” She sighed, “You are the kind of person to do that.”

He struggled to understand whether or not he should be offended“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She waved it off, choosing to step further into the room. “Just one more thing I can discern simply by examining you for more than three seconds.”

Makoto bristled slightly; unafraid to pout at the comment. Once again she was teasing him for being so open. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if she liked that about him, or if she found it annoying. He could only hope that this time it was meant to be complementary; he did intend to be subtly romantic with her that night, after all. It wouldn’t exactly bode well for him if she thought him to be an overt fool. 

He huffed half-exasperatedly. “Do you need any other clues to search? Like where I saw it last?”

She shrugged, closing one of her eyes as she searched the room. What that did, he couldn’t help but wonder. “Was it here that you last saw it?”

He nodded. Wrapping her gift was the last thing he’d done before bed. He remembered the whole thing so meticulously: placing the gift on the sheet of wrapping paper, measuring out the exact dimensions of the box, placing the tape on each individual corner. He found he could even recall the tying of the bow, and how he redid it a few times to make it perfect. Then, he’d placed it down somewhere for the next day. The same place where he’d put the presents he wrapped for Mukuro and Junko’s birthday. But when he returned home after a long day at their school party, Kyoko’s box was no longer there. And he knew he didn’t take it and give it to one of the twins by accident.

“Who else has been in this bedroom lately?” She inquired, her expression slowly but surely falling flat once again. “Is there anyone who comes in when you’re not here?”

“Not… usually, no. Most of the time it’s just me. Sometimes my mom if she needs a couple extra pieces of clothing for a load of her laundry…” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Other than that, no real regulars…”

“I see.”

A brief silence fell between them, but not for more than a few seconds. Instantly, a memory popped into his mind. One that he’d forgotten amongst all of the Christmas and birthday bustle.

“Oh, wait! Dad was in here last night. He asked if he could hide his gift for Mom in my room. They’re supposed to be going out on a date later tonight, and he didn’t want her to find it before he could give it to her.” 

Kyoko snapped her fingers, but it didn’t register in his ears. On account of it just be leather rubbing together, he predicted. He wondered if she ever missed the click ungloved hands made. “Where did he hide his gift for your mother?”

Makoto gestured towards his closet. “Top shelf. Where that box of old action figures is.” 

She laughed softly once again, strutting over to the closet. She pulled the doors open with ease, starting her search without wasting a lick of time. “Bit of an action figures kid, were you?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah,” He admitted, “I had a really big superhero phase when I was a kid. I collected all kinds of figures. Unfortunately, I can’t bear to part with them quite yet, even though I’m almost eighteen.”

“That’s perfectly normal,” She assured him, “I'll admit that I still have some of the dolls from my youth. Also, a bit of a side note really, but I think I found out the answer to your mystery.”

His ears perked up at the second phrase. Man, was she fast. Her Super High School Level Detective title was no joke. “Really? You did?”

She nodded. “Simple case of misplacement. Your father wrapped his gift in the same wrapping paper as you.” She pulled the gift down from the shelf to prove her point, the shiny paper glittering at both of them, “He probably thought that you’d taken his out for him, and he brought it along with him. You do kind things like that so often; it’s likely he wouldn’t have thought twice.” 

“That makes sense,” He laughed slightly, “Dad’s usually dragging me into his gifts for Mom. He can trust me not to blab like Komaru will.”

Kyoko chuckled softly, holding the present out to him. “Well, if it’s a logical conclusion, then you’d better go exchange the gift before your father goes out on that date. Judging by the weight of this box, I’d say he probably got her something as valuable as a necklace. We would not want him to panic over a switch like that, given how expensive Christmas Eve jewellery tends to be.”

Makoto accepted the package from her gratefully. “He did get her a necklace; he told me so. Green zircon pendant, I think. He said something about it reminding him of her eyes.”

“It would match her eyes well, yes.”

He blinked, taken aback by the observation. “I’m surprised you noticed.”

She shrugged. “They’re the same colour as yours.”

Nothing about how noticing things as a detective was in her nature. Just the simple statement that he and his mother shared the same eyes. Such a tiny comment, yet Makoto felt his heart skip a beat. He hoped she couldn’t see him start to blush at her comment. 

“Y-Yeah…” He paused for a minute, staring at the box in his hand.

“Well don’t just stand there. Go give it to him.” She urged, “I’ll be waiting in the foyer when you get back. We mustn’t take any longer getting to this amazing sight you wanted me to see.” 

A soft smile began to curve across his face. God, if he hadn’t liked her before, he really liked her now. 

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Kirigiri-san.”

She winked. “It’s a detective’s job to investigate.”

___________________

“Wow…”

Deciding which was twinkling more was a challenge — Makoto found himself severely caught between Kyoko’s eyes or the city lights. The sight didn’t allow him to fight off his smile as he leaned into her, his tone full of amusement. “Well, what did I tell you?” 

Her gaze fixed itself forward on the view. She didn’t seem prepared to look at him… but that was fine. He liked looking at her. “It’s… beautiful. Just as much as you said.”

“I knew you would like it.”

“I imagine I would have a harder time not liking it. The city is absolutely radiant from up here.”

So are you, Makoto desired to say, but he kept his lips sealed. Comments like that would be too forward, and he knew they both weren’t ready for that yet. They were still just two friends, having a nice night. Watching each other’s faces among the gleaming city lights. 

He didn’t quite catch what drew her back from the otherworldliness of the view. From one minute to the next, it seemed like she slowly slipped out of its hypnotism, turning to him with a smile on her face. Something he hadn’t expected to see, after how scantly she’d laughed that day.

“So am I allowed to open this gift of yours now?” She shook the package at him excitedly. He could see in her expression how much more relaxed she was now; her smile being a relatively lazy one.

“Of course. Rip into it.”

She wasted no time tearing into the wrapping paper like a small child, but not before she undid the bow and gently placed it aside. Makoto couldn’t help but remark to himself how cute it was that she had so much consideration for the aesthetics and maintenance of the bow. Just another one of her charming quirks, he supposed. 

Kyoko finished off the wrapping paper easily; practically the moment she tore into it. As soon as the wrapping paper had been torn from the box, the detective’s next challenge was sliding her finger underneath an edge to pry it open. Fortunately she was able to do so with little struggle, reaching into it. A small tray sat inside, and when Kyoko pinched it between her fingers and pulled it out… She revealed a gift of chocolates.

“Naegi-kun… did you make these?” Her voice was wrought with disbelief; her eyes wide.

He nodded. “I did. You know, there’s actually a lot of research that suggests that chocolate makes you happier. So I thought, what’s better this time of year than some homemade chocolates? Plus… a-admittedly, Asahina-san sort of told me about your secret fixation on chocolate.”

She shook her head. “Betrayed by my confidant,” She said mockingly, staring off into the distance as if she were in a detective noir, “How harrowing.”

There was no use in him fighting off his laugh; he chose to embrace it. Despite her tendency to be stoic, she always could crack a good joke. “Do you want to try one?”

“Undoubtedly.” She plucked one from the tray and popped it into her mouth. Within an instant, her eyebrows raised. She chewed for a few seconds, only to stop suddenly. He hoped that meant something good. She confirmed his hopes by starting to suck on the chocolate; her intent to make it last longer clear as day.

Nervously, he leaned in closer to her. “Do you… like it?”

“I love it.” She replied, her answer deeply muffled by the chocolate on her tongue. “This is… some of the best chocolate I’ve ever had. It’s… wonderful.”

He felt himself start to blush at her words. He’d never really been quite so sure of his dessert-making skills, so having the reassurance was comforting. “I’m glad.”

Before she had even finished sucking on the first one, he watched her pop another one of the tray and into her mouth. “Naegi-kun, honestly, this is amazing…”

He swatted the comment away, taking on a ‘you flatter me’ gesture. “Oh, it’s no problem.”

“No, it is. You were under no obligation to do any of this for me, but you did it anyway. All because I told you I found Christmas Eve challenging. Taking me here, and giving me this… it’s amazing. Naegi-kun, you’re amazing.”

You’re amazing. 

Makoto felt his heart skip its beat once again. Maybe he wasn’t ready to tell her that she was radiant. But she was ready to tell him that he was amazing. And that was enough.

“So are you, Kirigiri-chan.”

[travllingbunny]

Quarantine tag game

Thanks for tagging me, @sometimesrosy!

ARE YOU STAYING HOME FROM WORK/SCHOOL? I am staying home but not from work, because I work at home. Not just now, I always work at home, so there hasn’t been any change in that respect. The volume of work was the same as always during the last few weeks, too. I haven’t had any new work since Friday, so I’m enjoying a few days of rest, but I don’t know if this has anything to do with Corona. A few days of rest and no work has happened before. It will give me more time to clean my apartment.

IF YOU’RE STAYING HOME, WHO IS THERE WITH YOU? My two dogs and two cats. They are probably happy that they get even more time with me than usual. I think that some people don’t consider pets real company - probably people who don’t have pets - which I find funny. They are amazing company and I never feel lonely or bored. It’s never boring with them. Taking the dogs out two times a day, having to feed the cats 6-7 times a day or however often they start mewing and asking for food (especially the kitten - the young one is just 9 months old), having to stand guard to make sure dogs don’t steal cat food :D and all the petting and displays of affection.

ARE YOU A HOMEBODY? Not really? But I’m also not not a homebody? LOL Normally, I enjoy going out and meeting people; I have salsa classes two times a week, which are really fun; I go clubbing on weekends; and my favorites are the Language Cafe type events, which used to be up to 3 times a week before the Coronavirus situation started (these are events for people to meet and practice languages, where you can just come, choose the table with the language you want to practice, introduce yourself and join the conversation). I go to concerts, film festivals, public lectures/debates etc. 

But at the same time, I don’t mind staying at home, and I’ve had experience in having to stay for a week or two when I had a ton of work and tight deadlines. I talk to people a lot via phone, Viber, Whatsupp and social media, exchange memes and satirical articles about the current situation, etc. I’m online a lot, and I’m trying to finally catch up/check out some of the many TV shows, movies and books I have on my watchlist/readlist and do other stuff I never had enough time for.

AN EVENT THAT YOU WERE LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT GOT CANCELLED? I don’t think it’s been officially cancelled yet (?), but I doubt that the Tindersticks concert in early May is gonna be happening. I had already bought the ticket so I hope it gets postponed. I’ve also bought a ticket for a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds concert in early June (it’s probably too optimistic to hope that will happen?) and a Pixies concert in early September (I don’t have to worry about that one, do I?)

WHAT MOVIES HAVE YOU WATCHED RECENTLY? Since the curfew started, I’ve watched just a few movies that happened to be on TV  - which were all very different, but I wasn’t impressed by any of them (Divergent, Ironclad, and Francis Ha). 

The last time I was in cinema was for the FEST film festival, which ended on 8 March, and I watched Jojo Rabbit on the closing night. I really loved it. Before that, at the same festival, I watched Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut, Blood Quantum (pretty good Canadian horror that’s a different take on the zombie epidemic genre, as it takes place in a First Nation reserve, most characters/actors are First Nation and it deals with social issues), Spanish period drama by Alejandro Amenabar  Mientras dure la guerra (During the War) about the Spanish Civil War and Miguel de Inamuno’s role in the events, The Lighthouse (really good, really dark psychological horror drama that can have a bunch of interpretations) and Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmush’s zombie comedy with some very on-the-nose social commentary).

WHAT SHOWS ARE YOU WATCHING? The list is pretty long! Some shows I’ve been watching on TV include: Peaky Blinders (really good!), Babylon Berlin (still in season 1), Penny Dreadful (I’m almost finished - I didn’t like season 1 that much but it got much better in seasons 2 and 3), Wynonna Earp (not great but it’s just a fun show with some cool actors/characters). I'm about to finish S1 of The Witcher and I want to rewatch it immediately to figure out the timelines. I’m finishing my rewatch of The 100 and I’m going to resume my rewatch of Agents of SHIELD (hopefully I can finish it by its premiere date, 27 May). Also watching Outlander season 5, Harley Quinn, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, need to catch up on Roswell: New Mexico, Prodigal Son and Stumptown and finish The Outsider, and have recently started The Plot Against America and Mindhunter (the latter because my best friend has recommended it). I’ve even checked out the pilot of Lucifer, which I may or may not continue soon, and I’m continuing with 12 Monkeys season 1. And I intend to check out Kingdom. Quite a mix of genres there.

WHAT MUSIC ARE YOU LISTENING TO? I haven’t listened to that much music lately as I used to, but my routine for putting myself to sleep is to turn on MTV Rocks (or the Rock Alternative radio channel) on my TV, in low volume, program the sleep function for 2 hours, and go to bed. It works like a charm. I always have trouble falling asleep in silence. 

Other than that, I’ve been listening to a lot of Haelos since I first discovered them when I heard their song “Alone” in season 6 of The 100, and I’ve listened to othe songs from The 100 and Tree Adams’ soundtrack for season 3.

WHAT ARE YOU READING? Before all this, I borrowed 3 books from the American Corner library: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved and Tea Obrecht’s The Tiger’s Wife.  I’m reading The Bluest Eye at the moment, but I’m also going to finally start reading GRRM’s Fire and Blood, which I had never found time for.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR SELF-CARE? The usual stuff I do - a bit of exercise, nurturing bath once a week, regular skin care. But last week, I also had to make an effort to relax and try to lower my level of stress and blood pressure, thanks to something that happened last Sunday. 

Rant incoming....If you don’t want to read about my bad experience with the police and idiotic government measures, stop now.

Namely, the idiotic government of my country has imposed “measures” which are supposed to be against the spread of Coronavirus but mostly don’t make any sense - they are constantly extending curfew and changing the time of it, and have changed the times when dog owners are allowed to walk their dogs. At one point, it seemed like there was no allowed time for that in the evening or afternoon. You had to listen to the news all the time (and listening to news and the President’s speeches is one of the things that annoys me the most) to figure these things out. And the weekend before last was their first experiment in an extra-long 3 day curfew, which I wasn’t even aware of, when they actually had the police patrol and arrest people for just walking on their own (or, in one case, a young farmer in his tractor - two days after the minister of agriculture said on TV that farmers would be exempt from the curfew - they changed it). So I got manhandled, put in handcuffs and taken to the station for walking my dogs all on my own, with no one else around (which is endangering people and helping the spread of Corona - how exactly??!) where i had to sit for 2 hours while a cop was writing stuff down from the records, and about 60 other cops walked right by me, 10 of whom didn’t have masks, while 3 had but pulled them up/down, then in a police car with 3 other people they picked up - who can’t sit any further than half a meter from you as there’s not enough room, then about 1.5 hours more at the court, with a bunch of other people (and everyone was sitting right next to each other - I was the only one who was like “Nope” and stood a couple of meters away from the others), where they passed the judgment that I have to pay a fine of almost 450 EUR - the amount that’s prescribed for everyone. (And in Serbia, that’s about 1.5 of the minimum wage. I can pay my bills for 3 months from that amount.) Turns out, they arrested some 700-800 people that weekend, so I guess they’re gonna extort a lot of money from the people - if all of them are able to pay it within 15 days (which I doubt. I can withdraw the money from the bank, but I don’t think everyone can). My temperature, pulse and probably blood pressure went up immediately and took an entire week to come down - due to stress, a lot of anger and fear - I had my mask and gloves, but that was still the most close contact and exposure to a lot of other people, much more than I’ve had in weeks. I yelled and ranted and told them that they’re the ones putting others and themselves in danger of contracting Corona, and they probably knew I was right, but it makes no difference -  President Vučić is either an idiot who actually thinks the virus is lurking outside in the air to jump at people, but only during the hours he decides, or, more likely, he doesn’t care, but is a wannabe dictator who likes to act self-important and playact at imposing “strict but necessary measures”.

/end rant. Sorry about that. But that’s why I bought a temperature meter and blood pressure meter, because I was having high temperature, heart palpitations and pressure in my chest, which hasn’t happened to me in a long time (I was also starting to feel PMS, which added to it and didn’t help, but is normally nowhere near as bad when I’m not stressed out) so I needed a lot of self-care last week - which included tranquilizers, but mostly trying my best to relax and feel better. And I’m finally well now and close to how I was before the whole arrest idiocy.

Tagging @jeanie205 @kizo2703 @weareagentsofnothing @turtle-paced @wolfheartgirl @theatre-steph @selflessbellamy @mytly4 @katersann @linzzmorgan100 @immortalpramheda @iishallbelieve @misskittyspuffy @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer @justbecauseyoubelievesomething @angearia @ladyofthefrostfangs - I know some of you have already been tagged, I’m sorry if you’ve already done it but I haven’t seen it, in which case I’look for it on your blog. Sorry to everyone I didn’t tag, too. 

[nmc-ocs-and-stories]

So some info posts coming up, maybe not all tonight Bc it’s getting late-ish and I have to get up early for school tomorrow. But yeah, this is on the different times/universes/places in my writing and oc making and all that. Right now there’s three universes, only two of which I can share for reasons, one way more extensive than the the others Bc I’ve had it way longer. I’m going to call the more extensive one the main universe and the only other one I can share the small universe Bc it’s smallest. So original I know. If any details regarding any of my work could be offensive please let me know, giving some description of how if you can so I’m able to do the right research and fix or remove it.

Main universe: Has various mythical creatures, both from actually stories/mythology/etc, and stuff I just made up. Several things are my own interpretation or have my own spin on them. (This is mostly why I mentioned some things could be problematic without my realization) They at first remain in secret as, well, humans tend to be cruel to what we characterize as different. Look at how we treat each other. But as humans took over more and more of the world, these creatures could hide no longer and attempted to make peace with humans and live alongside them. The success of this really depends on the area and culture in that area. There’s a lot of social commentary in this dynamic and a lot of complication in how to explain the dynamic between various species, and how it changes across different areas. It’s too much to explain in this post alone likely. But there are various points in time and various places and storylines in this universe that needsto be mentioned, but this is already getting longer than intended so in another post.

Small universe: Like I said. It’s small. There’s only one time line, one set of characters, a few notable locations and one point in time. In this universe, during the times of the witch trials, evidence was discovered that there actually were people who, while they weren’t performing witchcraft, did have magical abilities. Once more ‘human don’t like different’ comes into play, these people begin to be hunted down out of fear. Time skip to present day and they still are, but as these people are born with these powers for the most part at random(having parents with powers makes you more likely to but there’s no gaurantee you will) they’re impossible to fully drive out and have learned to live under the radar. Our story follows an organization hell bent on destroying magic possessing people, and a man named Robert who can imbue power into symbols he creates, who works for them to hunt other magic users down. While he doesn’t necessarily want to, for reasons he wishes very strongly to remain secret to the world, he doesn’t have much choice. Robert is sent to hunt down a woman named Daisy, who can bake magic into her food. She has been using her power, from her little bakery, to give people happiness to luck, however to the organization Robert works for, all magic users are the same(only reason he isn’t dead is because he’s using his magic to aid their efforts). Daisy outsmarts him and pretty much kidnaps him, fleeing her home and trying to find a way to make sure Robert won’t just kill her right away or turn her in if she lets him go, she’s honestly regretting taking him with her. Robert’s little sister, Annelise, who he has custody over, has no clue what her brother does for a living, believing he’s a police officer.. however he hasn’t been home in a while and she’s tempted to go out looking for him at this point. Wow I managed to fit the entire universe into one big paragraph Cool.