#but i feel like the conversations around their relationship can vary due to the fact that its been 18 years of development between the two

[goblin-moment]

early seasons macdennis : Dennis is deeply insecure and Mac thinks he's possibly one of the best things to happen to him, and as much as Dennis doesn't want to admit it he relies on Mac and care for him deeply also. They may have their miscommunications at times and both of them aren't good people but they have each other in the end

Modern macdennis : Dennis is a deeply insecure man who has only spiraled as he has gone into his middle age, he still tries to bang young women just so he can say he did it and is deeply afraid of being known and showing any sort of vulnerability. He has been stuck in the same friend group since high school and has lived with the same man for close to 20 causing him to resent them all deeply cause if it were up to him he would have dropped them all (he's had multiple chances to leave but in the end he always came back to them). Time should never run out for him, he should be the exception to it all. Mac is practically in love with Dennis and has been for a long time and he's not completely sure how to express his feelings or if he even should. Mac lacks a filter causing him to overstep Dennis's boundaries on the regular in the hopes that if he pushes hard enough something will click and be the thing Dennis needs and Dennis will run into his arms. This in turn has led Dennis to resent Mac the most out of their friend group causing years of verbal abuse (and scratching), only recently has it seemed like they are best friends of 20+ years. These are two awful people who have done awful things, where in the end the question is 'who else?' They aren't necessarily each other's last options, but who in their right mind would want to live with Dennis? and who in their right mind would want to live with Mac?

[tavyliasin]

Disability Pride Essays - Gale, Neurodivergency, and Chronic Illnesses

The third of the disability parallel essays is going to focus on everyone’s favourite wizard, the legend of Waterdeep, Gale Dekarios. Immediately I can hear the neurodivergent (ND) side of fandom sitting up and pointing at the screen: “He’s like me!” and you’re absolutely right, but there is even more to him than this too! Gale can arguably represent several chronic physical conditions as well as being the chosen of the god of Autism. Sorry, god of Magic. Both? It’s probably both, isn’t it…

So with this in mind we will be discussing neurodiversity as well as long term chronic conditions and “spoon theory” (don’t worry if you don’t know what that is yet, we’re going to go over it along with “spell slot theory” in a way that might help abled people understand how many of us manage long term illness). I may also touch on the plot point around the Orb and Gale’s fluctuating relationship with his will to live, as well as the desperation to find a cure - so please be aware that if these are things you may find to be triggering. As always, look after yourselves and each other first and foremost. And, of course, your input and thoughts on these topics are more than welcome!

What is Gale’s Disability?

Gale has several conditions that we can see affecting him in the game. Whilst “armchair diagnosis” of real people can be a harmful exercise, and not something we would usually encourage, when we look at him and his behaviours it is easy to see a lot of traits common in Neurodivergent people. So this can mean Autism Spectrum Disorders as well as ADD/ADHD traits, though as anyone with either (or both) diagnosis will likely tell you, these can vary wildly from person to person. The same diagnosis can present completely differently between two people, so we will be looking at specific traits rather than an overall diagnosis for Gale. A more subtle thing shown with Gale is some joint pain, stiffness - he will complain about his knees aching when rain is due, and generally casually describes a lot of aches and pains that are common with ageing as well as in chronic conditions that affect joints. This is potentially easily missed as it’s in just a few lines of dialogue here and there and some background conversation, but we can see it sometimes too in how he moves and reacts. And then, of course, there is the Netherese Orb… One not quite so fun little fact here too is that in the real world there can be a lot of overlap between chronic pain conditions and neurodiversity. Not necessarily causative, and there’s no strongly established link that I’m aware of, but it isn’t uncommon at all to come across in disabled and ND communities. I’m sure more research can be done into specific genetic conditions that may have a stronger and potentially causative link to them, but that would be going too far down the wrong rabbithole for now. Did I mention I have ADHD? What do you mean “obviously”?...

How Do We See The Disability In The Game?

With Neurodiversity, a lot of the “problem” from the condition does not actually come from the person themselves but in how the world and people around them react to them and their behaviours. We can see this in the player base, where some people just cannot stand Gale’s infodumping or talking in depth about his special interests in magic, or how they find some of his personality and interactions to be more frustrating than endearing. There’s also how he was treated by Mystra - if we remove the relationship and abusive part of that for now, he went from being a gifted student, a prodigy in his field, to being rejected and cut loose from that validation.

Plenty of players found they disliked Gale, that his romantic advances and compliments to them were unwelcome and “too much”. In terms of Neurodiversity, Gale is expressing himself relatively openly with his feelings, and could potentially be seen as attaching to the player on a deeper level as a “favourite person” which can be a trait for some. Of course this was changed in the game to a degree after some backlash from those who weren’t keen on him expressing romantic interest after very little interaction, but not all of that is gone from his interactions or the speed with which he forms a strong attachment to someone he trusts. Then there is his “specialised diet”, which in this case is that need to consume magic objects. Honestly there are several ways we can look at this one. From a more literal point of view, we can consider him as literally eating the items like a food source which might be akin to people desiring to eat non-food items. It could also be similar to having “safe foods” which are things that have familiar flavours and textures. However the theory I find most interesting around the “consumption” of magic items is thinking of it more as medicinal.

Either way, Gale needs regular “doses” of the “cure” to stave off some very visceral symptoms. We not only see the relief when he is able to take the “cure” by consuming the item, but we also see the pain and struggle if too much time is left between “doses”. It’s shown in his character model, how he holds himself, you can hear it in his voice breaking as he’s overwhelmed by the symptoms of the Karsite Weave trying to eat away at him. If he doesn’t find any help from the player, too, he will simply leave to find his own solution. There isn’t a choice to just “ignore it and it will go away” - much like any serious illness it needs to be treated or it will get worse.

How Does This Reflect Real Life?

The real life reflections of Neurodivergency are quite easy to see for those of us familiar with those feelings and behaviour patterns. I could spend a while going over them, but then in my experience the fans who are deep enough into the fandom to be reading an essay of this length dissecting the character and the nuances of him…well, if you’re still reading and you’re neurotypical then I will be a little surprised. I mean this in a lighthearted way, of course, I’m sure there are a good number of neurotypical fans and those interested in this kind of topic (in fact it would be lovely for more NT people to spend a little time listening and learning when possible) but there is a very strong correlation between those of us who are ND and having a hyperfixation on one topic. A little like Gale’s hyperfixation on magic and learning everything about it, even to his detriment. It’s a special interest - he could never be satisfied just knowing most things about magic, he needed to know everything. That’s how he ended up in the situation with the Netherese Orb - he found a problem and became quite fixated and determined to solve it. That’s what problems are for, after all, to be solved. And he did it all with good intention, hope, and unfortunately without thinking through the greater consequences either. The single-minded devotion to a task, without seeing the bigger picture, can be a boon as much as it is a curse to ND people. The pain is also one that will feel familiar to people in the real world - whether through age or chronic conditions, this can often be affected by things like the weather and changes in temperature and air pressure. We need more rest, we complain casually, we make small pained noises when we move, and we adjust our actions to fit our needs. In some ways, we could see Gale’s need for magical items to stave off the condition the Orb gives him is like a need for insulin or similar long term medicines. It’s not optional and the consequences of putting it off - or avoiding it entirely - can be dangerous or even deadly. The way he feels around the outcome there could also be similar. Whilst in the real world someone isn’t going to just explode and take out a 10 mile radius with them if they don’t get their medication in time, if they were to pass away then the loss would be felt keenly amongst those around them, leaving an impact on their loved ones. 

Neurodiversity

There is just so much we can say about neurodiversity, but rather than dissecting it piece by piece I think it might be better to take this opportunity to reflect on how meaningful and validating it can be to see these traits in characters we love. These aren’t things that are shown to be flaws or undesirable, simply a part of the entire personality of the character - connecting can really just be, well, validating. That’s the thing with representation. It’s not about making a huge fanfare over every little thing, it’s integrating characters and character traits naturally and treating them normally - the way that we would rather like it if the real world around us might do. It’s also a way to learn to love ourselves through the love of the character - to think something like “I adore listening to him ramble on about his favourite topic” and perhaps feel a little less self-conscious when we ourselves talk more in depth over a hyperfixation or special interest. Something like, oh I don’t know, writing a long series of essays about subtle disability representation in a popular video game…

Chronic Illness and Spell Slots

This is where it gets interesting with the comparison to game mechanics. An old theory that people have used to describe the long term impact of chronic illness is “spoon theory”. Spoon Theory was a way that a chronically ill person described their energy levels to a friend to help them understand more clearly how we have different limits. So the idea is at the start of a day, you have a certain amount of “spoons”. Every task in the day requires one of these spoons to be used - that might be going to the shop to buy food, taking a shower, going to work, socialising with someone, making an important phone call, or even something as simple as getting dressed. You have to be careful where you use those spoons, because once they’re all gone, that’s it. No more. You can’t just get more from nowhere, and if you try to borrow one of tomorrow’s spoons you’ll have even less for that next day. A newer and far more accurate comparison, at least in my opinion, is spell slots. So different tasks are like different spells, and might take a certain level of spell slot to complete.

Easy tasks we can repeat a lot without trouble, like perhaps talking to a friend online or taking a nap, those are like cantrips. We can do them whenever we need to. Small tasks might be a level 1 or 2 spell slot, which we have more of, but a large task that is very tiring and/or causes a lot of pain need a level 5 spell slot. And there’s the trick - you can spend your level 5 slot on a lower level task, potentially doing more than you might usually do with that task, but you can’t spend a level 2 slot on a level 5 task. 

There’s no way to refresh those spell slots without adequate rest, too. In the tabletop version of D&D if you’re suffering levels of exhaustion or don’t get the right amount of uninterrupted rest, you won’t get back all of your spell slots. Which is quite accurate to real life, where not getting what you need means you may not be fully refreshed and replenished for the new day either. 

When we talk about chronic illness too, depending on the person there might well be things that would be cantrips for other people - things that don’t feel like they expend any real energy at all to do - which take a whole spell slot for us. Having a shower might make an abled person feel refreshed and energised, but someone with a chronic illness might instead feel drained and tired after expending that energy. This can apply to both physical tasks and mental or social energy too. People who are introverted will likely understand when I say that for some of us it takes away our energy to socialise with others and we need time alone doing our own thing to recover some of that. Extroverts might find this strange, as they more often feel like a positive social interaction is energising to them and gives them a real boost.

So there you have it, spell slots! A way that might make it easier to explain how tasks take energy, and how we’re simply not able to conjure more energy out of thin air.

The Cure and The Desperation

I’ll preface this section straight away with a very simple part - most neurodiversity neither wants nor needs a cure. What’s needed is understanding and adaptation, patience and compassion to work with what the individual needs in order to succeed. Child has a special interest? Let them indulge that passion and learn all they can about it, that might become their career or long term hobby later in life and bring them a great deal of happiness and satisfaction. This section, when we’re talking about a cure, it’s for those chronic conditions that cause suffering. The parallel being how Gale researches and is willing to trade anything to end the agony that the Orb causes him. He’s ready to throw his whole life away because the torment is too much, until another option becomes available. Even when there are other choices, he’s still willing to detonate, potentially because he feels he has become a hindrance or a burden to those he loves. This…honestly this is something that those with complex and/or long term care needs can struggle with. It is hard not to feel like a burden when you need someone else to take care of menial every day tasks on your behalf, or need to keep asking for aid from those around you.  That’s where the right support is absolutely vital. In those lower times, to remember in ourselves and sometimes to hear from others that they choose to care for us and that there is more we bring to the world. That our worth is not tied to what we can and cannot do, but instead in who we are and what our presence means to those who love us as we are.

It’s something we don’t always talk about, even within disabled communities, because these are deep and difficult feelings within ourselves and we don’t want to inadvertently cause more upset in those who are struggling or have been affected by loss of this kind. So to see that reflected too, the sorrow, the struggle, those very heartfelt and genuine conversations with Gale as he weighs up his options…that’s important to recognise too. Particularly for abled people to try to understand the depth and complexity of our feelings around the exhaustion of dealing with an illness that never goes away - we want to live, but sometimes we feel the weight of that struggle burying the will to keep fighting it. Even if the condition itself is stable, not degenerative, and not deadly, it is still a burden to ourselves. 

What We Can Learn From Gale’s Story

Gale’s parallels to disability are complex, but there’s a lot worth learning from it. Whether it is about fully loving someone’s eccentricities and neurodivergent traits, or learning to understand chronic health through the lens of spell slots, it’s important to know more about ourselves and those around us. For Gale, I see so much of people finding him to be a comfort - “he’s like me”, “I can relate to him” - and that’s what we need. Of course not every person playing the game will feel a connection to him, or even like him as a character, but he is there and to a lot of us he has been an important and meaningful influence through his story. We can also look at the different ways his story can end - several options all quite drastically removed from each other. The ambition is a cautionary tale, the temptation of a “simple fix” is another when the crown can arguably lead to worse endings either under Mystra or losing sight of the better parts of himself beneath the allure of power and godhood. I could probably ramble on for another thousand or so words, but I’ll leave it here for now, with that reflection on everything he can mean to different people and disabilities.

Remember to be kind to yourself, and allow proper recovery of your spell slots before you try to spend levels you don’t have available.

[hetafice]

hi hi !! loveee your blog so far, it’s v nice to see more hetalia writers popping up again. if you’re interested in tackling this request, i’d like to see your take on how a yandere romano would deal with feelings of jealousy in regards to his darling getting a little too close than what his insecure brain’s comfortable with to his brother veneziano? 🫶💕

tysm! these are still yandere hcs, but i actually ended up also doing a small character study. i’ve been wanting to do those more recently so if you’re interested send in a request! bonus points if it’s not a super popular character. + this came out a lot longer than intended, so enjoy.

This is something Lovino would not be able to handle.

He has spent centuries trying to navigate the minefield that is the relationship with his brother--with varying degrees of success. One thing that has remained constant, however, is the fact that people overwhelmingly prefer his younger brother.

Romano has seemingly tried everything. Careful imitation, acting the complete opposite, sabotaging from the shadows, acting as right-hand man, you name it. Nothing has seemed to stick.

Even now, he’s invisible. Reduced to the lesser half a whole. Forever shackled to his brother, effectively prevented from exercising his own agency.

It’s never fun to be stuck in someone's shadow, but for the person whose shadow you're stuck in to be so unflinchingly blasé about it? For one to be as stuck as long as Lovino has? Being forcefully denied your own personhood like that often breeds contempt. Hatred like that can simmer under the surface for decades, even centuries before bubbling over and being noticed by others. Holding hatred like that for so long as he has? It’s almost enough to drive someone mad.

But when he gets you and has something of his own for once he relaxes a bit. There’s no need to be on edge, to constantly put on airs, because he has someone in his corner. Someone who has taken the time to know him on a deep, personal level. Someone, who despite his faults, is willing to love him, and in turn trusts him enough to love them back. That alone is enough to satiate him, to quiet his restless mind, and dull the sharp blade of self-hatred that’s been lingering within him for so long.

So when he discovers you calmly conversing with the man who has unknowingly tormented him for so long, he almost does not know what to do with himself.

It’s almost as if he’s on autopilot, mindlessly drifting over to where the two of you stand, immediately trying to assess the situation.

 In your eyes, the conversation with Veneziano was just much overdue. It was impolite to not introduce yourself to someone so close to your partner. Lovino would never say so, but sometimes the refusal to introduce you to his loved ones felt intentional. Whenever you would press the issue, he would hastily arrange a meeting to calm you down. It worked a few times; you got to meet a few of his friends, and even his pseudo-guardian/older brother/ mentor (you never were quite sure of the nature of their relationship), but you never got the chance to meet Veneziano. Occasions where you two were set to meet would mysteriously get canceled due to unforeseen circumstances. You also noticed that he would always get strangely cagey at the mention of his younger brother. 

At first, he would try to covertly sow discord between the two of you, in hopes that you would have a falling-out. In his mind, if he could manufacture situations to make you see his brother’s shortcomings, you wouldn’t want to be around him.

When he discovers, to his horror, that you have grown closer to his brother despite the careful machinations, he would spiral.

To you and Veneziano, your friendship is as right as rain, completely unforced, and a natural progression. After knowing each other peripherally for so long, making friends with you just makes sense.

But to Romano, this is yet another event point, in a seemingly infinite pattern of behavior. Time and time again, Romano finds something of his own, takes a liking to it, starts to cherish it, but only until Veneziano comes along and tries to take it. He always manages, because he is always successful in everything that he does. Afterwards, Romano is then left with nothing but more hatred to swallow and another large bruise on his ego. He can’t let it happen again, not this time, not after cultivating a relationship so pure, not like this, not-

He devises to stop it. Whatever it is between the two of you. Immediately.

Lovino, who has always been romantic, will up the ante. You suddenly find yourself whisked away on trips abroad more often than you are sat at home. How could you find the time to catch up with his brother when you have a date that night, another trip to pack for? To you, it seems as though you have entered a second honeymoon phase in your relationship. Unbeknownst to you, he’s tirelessly working to separate you. He shall get Veneziano away before he tries to take what is rightfully his for the umpteenth time.

Before your increased contact with Veneziano, your relationship was, by all accounts, normal.

You met Lovino by happenstance, and your romance blossomed at a pace that felt comfortable and right. He was nothing but loving and attentive, if a bit temperamental at times. But after you meet his brother, you notice a palpable shift in his attitude. He snaps at people more and always seems to be in deep thought. But he’s kinder in some ways as well. He’s now always concerned about your safety and likes to know where you’re going beforehand, not after the fact like you used to do. He figured out that you love the gifts he gets you, so you now receive way more of them. He’s more appreciative of everything you do as well. So much so that one day, after a particularly elaborate meal, he suggests you quit your job to take care of the home. To his delight, you eventually agree, but any joy is quickly stamped out when he hears you happily explaining your new living arrangement to his brother.

He can’t stand it really, as his mind sails through countless scenarios, unearthing trauma he thought had been resolved (or safely buried) since the early Renaissance. He doesn't know why his mind takes him in this direction, but then again he doesn't know a lot of things. He doesn't know why efforts to separate the two of you don't work, or why nothing he does ever seems to work. Why is it that he is never enough? Why, after so many attempts and failures, did Grandfather never really seem to grow fond of him? 

After yet another night of being forced to confront these long-dormant worries, he decides enough is enough. If you cannot take the hints he has so kindly given you, then he will separate the two of you by force.

Long gone are your days of exploring the city alone. No more impromptu cafe trips, walks around the park, or unsupervised trips to the post office. You are expected to stay at home, and at home you stay.

“Amore mio, it’s too dangerous out there,” he says. “There’s nothing nearby worth seeing, and you know how I feel about you driving.”

And you believe him because why wouldn’t you? He cares for you more than anyone! More than your coworkers, your friends who stopped visiting, or even your family who mysteriously don’t care enough to call anymore…

And just like that, you have been delegated to remain in the domicile. Showering him and only him with your seemingly infinite divine grace for as long as time permits it.

It’s so simple that he regrets not doing it sooner.

As for his ingrate brother, he will do anything to ensure he does not go sniffing anywhere he need not be. 

It takes nothing to ruin Veneziano’s reputation. To oust him as an incompetent womanizer. Someone whose words of concern should never be taken seriously.

To Lovino, it is well worth it. He’ll put an end to the madness, he must. Even if it means making you unhappy, or betraying his own blood, or dirtying his hands with sin, or being at the receiving end of your icy gaze for the rest of eternity.

But you aren’t unhappy, are you now? You’re over the moon, and why wouldn’t you be? You are given everything you need and more. Besides, Lovino doesn't like it when you frown.

“Look happy now. You have no reason not to,” he always says.

[radarsteddybear]

My favorite thing about Margaret Houlihan has always been that she is an excellent nurse no matter what. No matter how annoying and obnoxious she finds Hawkeye, Trapper, BJ, et al., no matter how much she loves Frank, she never lets any of that get in the way of doing her job to the absolute best of her ability. She will not hesitate to call out and correct Frank (or any of the other doctors, for that matter) when he does something that could potentially harm the patient(s). She shows real respect for the medical abilities of the doctors. She reassures patients by telling them how great said doctors are, even when she's talking about someone she doesn't generally get along with (see: Aid Station). Even the way she treats the enlisted men of the 4077th changes (for the better) when they become patients (see: Radar in "Mad Dogs and Servicemen"). She is 100% able to compartmentalize her personal relationships in order to be the best nurse there ever was, and I think it really speaks to her character.

I also think that it speaks to the way she's able to grow and evolve as the show goes on while characters like Frank are not.  She has a certain amount of respect for the medical professionals she works with regardless of what their personal relationships look like, and that, in turn, allows her to eventually become friends with characters like Hawkeye and BJ.  Frank, conversely, is a mediocre surgeon and knows it, deep down.  He didn't become a surgeon so that he could help people; he became a surgeon for the wealth and prestige the job comes with.  

He's also spent his life, it seems, having a very difficult time getting along with those around him,  He's a snitch with a sour personality, someone who became a bully to fight back against those who've bullied him.  He doesn't really know how to connect with people (except for Margaret, and they only seem to work due to their sexual compatibility and their mutual dislike of everybody else in camp), and he never truly learns how.

And I think it's really telling that there are moments prior to Frank's leaving that Margaret is able to have genuine moments of connection with Hawkeye, Trapper, and BJ while Frank never is.  Sure, there are a few times when Hawkeye/Trapper/BJ extend something resembling an olive branch, which Frank, desperate for friendship, grabs on to, but it's never genuine, and it never lasts very long.   It can't last very long.  Frank's values simply don't line up with those of Hawkeye/Trapper/BJ.  He's more concerned with making sure that those around him are following the rules to the letter while Hawkeye/Trapper/BJ are more concerned with helping people and reducing harm.  Frank feels like the whole world is out to get him, so he tries to get the whole world first.

With Margaret (and maybe this thought is colored by the fact that I've watched the whole series), you get the sense during these moments of friendship that, without Frank around, without the stick up her behind, she could be a really great friend.  She sees her patients above all else as patients, people.  While she does think that rules are important and that everybody should be following them, above even that, she is a nurse, and she takes seriously her job of making sure that those in her care are as comfortable and well taken care of as she possibly can.  This is what allows her to see those around her as human beings, to come to understand that the human experience is wide and varied and that people don't deserve to be punished simply for being different or for making a mistake.  Frank could never come to this realization, and sure enough, once he leaves, Margaret does become a really great friend, which is only able to happen due to the mutual respect she and the doctors have for each other from the beginning.

[aliusfrater]

speaking of bad takes, did you see the one that said dean was never the angry one in spn because that was only sam and john? i was speechless

@helenoftroysam

YEAH !! i only saw it when chii had gotten an ask about it and i started writing that post about my interpretation of how sam's anger and revenge works because of it. i feel like the thing about anger on supernatural is that it's buried under multiple layers of presentation that has to do with the masculinity of our characters and the different complexes each character is written with, the drama that has it has to be presented with, the actors' and directors' own complexes about masculinity and anger, the complexes of the how the audience perceives and interprets anger, as well as ultimately what the core meaning and purpose of a character's anger is.

the thing about me is that i don't think Any of the characters can be assigned as 'the angry one' at any point in the show, but sam's anger (from what i'm remembering as i type this out) is the only one that's explicitly explored by the show in conjunction with whatever supernatural metaphorical arc that anger is presented with. like sam's anger had a purpose but is/was a morally neutral emotion; it existed alongside his grief, happiness, sadness, etc. just like every other character. it didn't take up more of his head just because the show had been exploring its purpose more than it had been his happiness or sadness and it doesn't help that it exists alongside side his grief within this exploration of his character, and grief is a major theme within supernatural. anyway, i think the same for both john and dean. john's anger was Not used as a point of character exploration at any point in supernatural and the thing about dean's anger is that, and i've talked about something adjacent before, the anger isn't the part that's explored, it's the extension of it, the action and this extends towards all of his emotions. he isn't an angry person, he's a reactive person and in a very similar way to john, his emotion bursts outwards towards the people around him. but the thing is that people irl have this misunderstanding complex about anger as well which distorts the depiction of it !! it isn't an inherently violent emotion but it can lead to violence, just as much as disappointment, sadness, and confusion can.

okay here's an example: dean smashing that lamp in conversation with sam in 4.04 was violent, but to say that it's an action that resulted from anger is pretty shallow considering the topic of their conversation as well as dean's current personal conflict (unrelated but it's abusive, due to dynamic and pattern of behaviour it indicates within sam and dean's relationship). another one: sam holding dean at gunpoint in 7.02 during his psychotic episode was violent, but it's not an action that results from anger (also isn't abusive, considering the lack of history regarding this kind of behaviour and the fact that it or something adjacent never happens again; there's no behavioural pattern (though i will say that this is part of their dynamic—the 8.23 monologue can be mirrored with it)). last one: john's dying wish is not violent behaviour nor is it anger (but is is abusive. i don't think i have to elaborate). of course these instances vary greatly and whatnot but the very summarised point here is that people give too much credit to anger as an emotion. she's stealing other people's work and rubbing off the watermark.

[megashadowdragon]

redraw of emerys son of merlin and gudako

source : www . reddit . com/r/grandorder/comments/199cxqc/redraw_of_emerys_son_of_merlin_and_gudako/

original bio:

Gudako X Merlin: Son

Name: Emerys

Age: 17

Personality: Annoying to the people who don’t like him, but reliable to his allies. Emerys is a smooth talker who can worm his way out of almost any situation with just his words alone. To the unaware, his words and logic make sense, making him win almost any argument, but to those as smart as him, he is a sly fox who they know from the start not to engage with a verbal debate with. While he is no stranger to a fight, he prefers to avoid combat if possible. Mainly due to the fact he would rather avoid pain. This however comes into conflict as he can’t help but rile people up. He also likes to do things that are cool and not exactly practical.

Other Stuff: Born due to Merlin having fun aka [REDACTED] with Gudako . He specializes in elemental and dream magecraft. Using several staffs that he plagiarized made himself. Because he is a smooth talker, he is better at High-Speed Incantation than his father, this is useful when his is running from someone and he needs to cast a spell quickly in order to escape. Speaking of which, running is the one practical thing he excels at. While Myriam is someone who prefers to teleport away and get herself immediately out of danger, Emerys will simply outrun his chasers. As he enjoys the feeling of leaving them in the dust. This has worked 70% of the times he was running from someone.

Bio: Of the many children of the Fujimaru family. There are six the stand out as being a special case due to their relationships with each other, or more specifically, the parents and their connection to the Land of Paradise and Hope. The two children of Morgan: Timothy and Calisto, the two children of Castoria: Cayde and Alina, and finally, the kids of both the male and female Merlin. Through this loose connection, they are known as the “Children of Avalon”.

With the birth of Emerys, the power balance settled. With one boy and girl for each “person” associated with Avalon. Naturally, alliances and relationships vary. And on a spectrum of responsible to troublemaking, the Morgan kids occupy one end, the Castoria kids occupy the other, with the Merlin kids somewhere in the middle.

When compared to his “sister”/cousin Myriam, Emerys is a natural strategist with a diverse set of skills that makes him unpredictable. Meanwhile, Myriam has untapped leadership potential and more powerful magic circuits, she has less ways to use them. Emerys on the other hand is an all around who uses elemental magecraft as well as dream magic that he learned from his father.

Emerys likes to accessorize, to an often unnecessary degree. He carries things in his coat that he generally does not need, from things like mystic codes, to a small magnet. The most obvious example of this is him owning multiple staffs. Rather than use a single staff for all his spell casting, he has around 6 that corresponds to a specific element or magecraft. But since he can’t carry them all at once, he had a special vault made where he keeps them, and has the ability to send the specific staff he needs anytime he calls.

However, once it was learned that his staffs he made were all just ripoffs of one that already existed. The owners fo the originals were less flattered by these imitations and more slighted by them.

There is a reason why Da Vinci won’t allow him in her workshop.

Quotes:

“I must warn you, I have developed a secret technique, one that was passed down from father to son. A skill that is brilliant in scope, and highly effective in execution. And its name is-”

“You like my staffs? They’re totally original BTW.”

“They say my smile is worth a thousand words, all I have to do is speak and I have already won this conversation.”

Relationships:

Father: Father is father. I learned some of my best tricks from him.

Mother: Mother will never admit it, but she gets so flustered around dad, I bet that even without Incubus blood, he could have seduced her in seconds.

Carina: My closest friend and family member. Sure her ego is through the roof, but I can’t call her out since I have one as well. I’m confident in saying we’d make the most powerful sibling duo in our entire family, in theory anyway.

Myriam: We often joke that we are genderflipped versions of each other. Heck we even tried disguising as one another with illusions to see who could keep up appearances the longest.

Calisto: She considers herself Myriam’s arch-nemesis. And I can agree with that statement, those two are gonna be very close as sisters growing up. Just in a different way.

Timothy: Do I consider him my rival? Maybe, if he was anywhere near as good as me….whats that? He’s standing right behind me?

Cayde: He tries so hard at being a ladies' man, he often wishes he had my smooth voice. Although that might be more trouble than its worth if he had my way of speaking

Alina: Why is so serious all the time, I get having Calisto for a sister is rough, but its not the worst thing in the world.

Lavender: I once tried to borrow her staff, but then I remember her mom is a vengeful Goddess who doesn’t like people messing with her kids.

Finn: He made me an offer to make high-quality unique staffs if I did some favors for him. Just what were they? Sorry, the clause in the contract says I can’t tell.

What people think about him:

Da Vinci: I started copyrighting all my stuff once I saw his newest “staff”.

Morgan: *Statement removed due to overuse of vulgar language and insults*

Miles: He can run fast, thats for sure

Carina: He may not be a child of my father, but if anyone says he is only half my brother, I will paralyze them for a whole day. He is the greatest brother I could ask for!

Timothy: I heard you were talking %$#@ about me.

Victoria: There is a reason why Myriam is the court mage and not him.

Duran: I honestly wished big sis made him the court mage, he makes the best jokes.

[granturismo7pcdownload]

Gran Turismo 7 Full Version

If you predict correctly, you will win 1 million credits per competition. With the film of the game of the GT Academy competition starting to release on the 9th August outside of the USA, and the 25th in the USA, there’s a paint scheme within Gran Turismo 7 that matches that of the picture. Enter that online race, or if you’ve entered any of the previous GT Cup events this season, and the Morizo Edition will be gifted to you as a prize on 28th August.

Try 30 laps of Tsukuba on a track that starts dry before being drenched with rain then partially drying out again. Wet weather tyres help, of course, but if you haven’t got them, you can still get around by sticking to the dry(er) line that emerges. Venture onto the visibly wet portion of the track and it’s like an ice rink.

These time and weather changes are made possible by a simulation model made using extensive climate data taken from each track location. The result is a breathtakingly realistic and beautiful recreation of our sky. With over 25 years of development behind it, this title sees the greatest advancements yet in Gran Turismo’s physics simulation model for cars. Using computational fluid dynamics, the game is able to recreate the changes in downforce due to front to rear height changes, as well as effects to handling due to wind direction and air turbulence.

Players will routinely be reminded of Polyphony Digital’s reverence for the source material in nearly all aspects of Gran Turismo 7. To celebrate its launch, its developers have released an epic seven-minute long movie, and in typical grandiose Gran Turismo 7 style it celebrates the “relationship between cars, people, and society over the last 150 years”. In other words, it features some eye-poppingly brilliant cars and a soundtrack more rousing than waking up to find a lion in your bed.

In several of the “Menu Book” missions, the Cafe’s owner “Luca” will set you the task of collecting cars of a certain type. To achieve this he’ll give you access to various races and championships which give you most of the cars you’ll need. The 424-car launch day roster of GT7 includes cars from more than 90 years of motoring, and some stretch into the eight-figure price range (and may vary, day to day). That means players won’t want to be spending too much money on the more ordinary fare, especially with tuning, painting, wheels, and body upgrades all costing a packet (as will the optional credit top-up microtransactions).

Progression events are clearly marked with a little yellow icon, and the gameplay itself in these races is very short - usually about 10 minutes a race. However, it remains a shame that Polyphony keeps compromising its high-quality driving by persisting with frustrating rolling starts for career mode events, repeating the same mistake GT6 made. In a real-life motor race, cars cruise closely in two rows for rolling starts. But in GT7 career races, the cars are arranged in single file, 50-odd metres apart, and we are always placed in last.

In addition to featuring over 130 wheel designs and 650 different aero parts, players can now add roll cages and perform wide body conversions on certain models. Gran Turismo 7 isn’t the second coming of racing games, and it doesn’t need to be. It still captures that feeling of spending hours and hours admiring your garage and flipping through car facts from a few of the best entries in the series, and still feels like a big-budget racer. The Music Rally and Music Replay modes that were highly-touted in the run-up to release are nothing more than gimmicks, with Music Rally simply aligning a checkpoint countdown to a track’s BPM. Music Replay offers camera cuts in line with the beats, but even these don’t seem to work the way I expected, with some cuts coming on upbeats and others not falling in time with any part of the song.

From familiar production models to rare and legendary racing vehicles, cars from all eras have been meticulously recreated in-game. Additionally, more vehicles have been added to the game via regular content updates since the title's How to Download Gran Turismo 7 release. Gran Turismo 7 has made some big improvements since its release and a new update only adds to the fun. Update version 1.29 arrives this week with five new cars, a brand-new racing venue, and a slew of other great features.

[locke-writes]

HCs: Being in a Relationship with Sonny Carisi

AN: Inspired by the ‘engaged to Sonny’ playlist. I got a little too inspired so part of the headcanons are under the Keep Reading

You meet Sonny during law school, the two of you in the same Civil Procedure class

He’s friendly enough that you feel comfortable talking with him and partnering up when going over arguments written for practice cases

Over time you begin to hang out whenever you both have a chance

It starts off by the two of you just meeting to study for class but slowly becomes joking around with one another, sending memes, him calling you to talk when he gets a difficult case

And sometimes texting is all you have because of school and your jobs as well

Sonny’s career focused and he’s busy so he’s not really looking for a relationship at the moment

It’s not something that he brings up with you but it’s something that he keeps in mind because he recognizes his feelings changing for you

After the class is over the two of you continue to hang out when you can, and eventually you find yourself having feelings for Sonny

It’s something that you try and keep at bay knowing that you’re bound to fail at some point

Still the two of you are friends, you don’t want to ruin the friendship

Which is the exact same point Sonny’s trying to make to himself, fighting against asking you out

He wants to, everyone at work knows he wants to because he hasn’t stopped talking about you since the day that you met

But he keeps putting up excuses to himself until finally during a study session with you he figures what’s the worst that could happen

Sure, you could turn him down or maybe later if you do accept the two of you realize you’re better off at friends. Either way he won’t know until he asks you

There’s never going to be a perfect way to ask you and Sonny knows this yet still he tries to think of a way

OK, he’s terrified and using the ‘perfect way’ as an excuse to put off asking you out only because he’s nervous about your response

It takes him about three weeks before he finally forces himself to ask you out, knowing that if he doesn’t do it then, there’s a chance he might keep putting it off and never do it at all

You accept and he has to stifle his surprise as he wasn’t necessarily expecting you to say yes

There’s many plans for the first date

And also many cancellations by both yourself and him for varying reasons but mainly work

Originally the first date was going to be Sonny taking you to one of his favorite restaurants in the city

Now it’s turned into going to Sonny’s place for pizza and a movie as that’s all you have energy for

Sonny’s won’t kiss you until the second date, he has it in his mind that’s what’s polite (even if he’s wanted to kiss you for way longer)

Not much for PDA only due to the fact that he gets embarrassed if people vaguely glance in his direction

The most you might be able to get out of him is holding hands which he’s all for

In fact, pretty much anytime you’re together he’s bound to be holding your hand

The entire SVU squad are well aware of you by now but it takes four months before Sonny introduces you to them

He’s just nervous and wants you to meet all of his friends, hoping that you like them

Really just wants you to be proud of him as well and is a little terrified to have you see what some of the things he deals with on a daily basis are like

Not that you haven’t heard about them in conversation but he doesn’t know what’s going to happen when you visit

Of course you’re already proud of him

In terms of arguments, there’s bound to be some between the two of you albeit minor and primarily due to stress

Apologies are a given and he’s going to strive for better communication with you

Which, speaking of communication don’t be afraid to tell him what’s wrong or if you’re upset. He wants to make you happy and if he can help even a little then he’s going to do whatever he may

When the two of you graduate law school and pass the bar exam you have a small celebration at home

He still hasn’t introduced you to his family yet so he asks if it’s fine to celebrate privately

You don’t press meeting his family, you want to make a good impression and know that when he’s ready he’ll take you to meet them

The only reason Sonny’s really holding back from you meeting his family is because he doesn’t want to rush things with you

If you bring up meeting them than he might relent but even so he still would prefer to wait until the two of you have talked more about your future together

He’s very much of the idea that he’d like it to be like meeting your future family once you meet his parents (not that he’ll tell you that)

It’s around ten months of being together that you and Sonny move in together

More often than not he’s over at your place or you’re over at his which makes moving in together not that big of a deal but also still a big deal

There’s something different about coming home and knowing he gets to see you there, even better when he knows he can come home to you after one of the more difficult SVU cases

Which by the way, the team becomes like a second family to you, welcoming you in with open arms and you’ve begun texting quite a few of them

When Sonny thinks about stepping in as the next ADA you’re there to talk him through it all, making sure to look at it from every angle

Normally you’d just urge him to go for the job but you know he’s going to want to be logical about the entire thing which means you have to throw out any points you can come up with

When he gets the job you’re supportive throughout the whole transition and through all the difficulties of early trial

As you’re relationship strengthens over time Sonny is the one to broach the more serious of conversations. These being do you want to get married one day and do you want kids one day

Marriage is not a deal breaker for Sonny, he could be with you for the rest of his life and not be considered married

But if you tell him having kids isn’t something you want, that is a deal breaker for Sonny. He’s always wanted to be a father, that’s a dream he won’t give up. There’s no need for logistics (adoption, surrogate, etc.), he’s really just looking for a ‘yes I want kids’ or a ‘no I don’t’ answer

When Sonny and you begin to have those talks, begin to get serious about a future together, that’s when he finally introduces you to his family

This happens when you’ve been together over a year. His family have been urging him to bring you over, to bring you home for holidays, but he’s never done so

When they meet you, when they see how he is with you, they’re already pretty much planning to be your in-laws and his sisters are bombarding you with questions the minute you walk through the door

His parents hint to Sonny about the two of you getting married, going so far as to give him advice about picking out a ring (his eldest sister had the family heirloom ring but that was fine with Sonny)

He’ll brush off there comments all the while looking at you and knowing that he wants to ask you, he just wants to wait until you and he are more stabilized after his career change

He knows you’re settled in your own career but there’s a lot of moving parts with being a new ADA just getting settled and he feels it wouldn’t be fair to be starting off a marriage with you when he’s not going to be fully there or at least not as present as he knows he’d like to be

But in the meantime he’s going to keep working on the relationship, keep striving to make you happy and make you feel loved

You’ll have been together about two years by the time Sonny proposes.

Most likely he’s going to propose at home on your anniversary, he wants it to be just the two of you and he wants everything to be special

The ring is both a surprise and not a surprise. Meaning he consulted with you months before proposing asking what styles you liked just so he knew what to look at when ring shopping. The ring itself is something he picked out, but it’s something you’ll love because it’s something guided by your own comments to him

And of course he’s invested in the actual wedding planning, splitting responsibilities with you and contributing fully to decisions

Ultimately though it’d be up to you how big or how small the wedding was.

If you wanted to elope, he’s fine with that. Courthouse wedding? Ok here’s the schedule of judges that can assist

Regardless of where the two of you are in the stages of your relationship, just know that Sonny’s number one goal is to make you happy and to make you feel loved. He cares for you more than words can say

Tag List: @scarletsoldierrr​ / @opalsandlacemain​ / @teamsladsandgents​ / @aryn-the-bearheart​ / @andreasworlsboring101​ / @violetcoloredlies​ / ask to be added

[sherbet-shark]

WOOOHMAHHGODD I JUST CAME BACK FROM VACATION HELLHOLE AND BADABING-BADABOOM CHECKED MY FAVORITE TUMBLR PERSON ONLY TO DISCOVER I AM NOW BOG ANON??? This is an honor??? Is this how knighthood feels like?? Not only that but I was just in time for a new content (✯ᴗ✯) which is SUPERB. Tbh, I've seen somewhat similar requests about non-verbal mcs like this in twst tumblr and what happens often is that characters love mc so much that they slowly start speaking to them (though I think this is due to the lack of research). I am glad that it's not the case because that's not how it works with non-verbal people. I also love that you made things more realistic/human (very normal sherbet behavior methinks) as possible. There's struggles with communication and tbh I too wpuod be scared shitless if I was dating the royals and Kalim. I'd literally wear a hoodie 24/7 with sunglasses and change my name to spoingle doingle to avoid stalking and assassination attempts. Like as much as we all love sticky self-indulgent ooc fluff from time to time, it's also worth noting that relationships–romantic or platonic–are a constant cyle of communication, adjustments and learning something new about each other every time. Relationships are like that, especially in the context of a magical place like twst. Mc acknowledges that there are boundaries and explains stuff!! I like how the guys are struggling sometimes but they keep on trying and apologizing. Honestly, I could go on and on but I fear it's getting too long. I just want to say that I really love this. I really, really do. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaàaaaaaaaa

Signed,

Bog Anon

Edit: After an in-depth enlighting conversation with a selective/situational mute person I will edit and make changes to my previous words.

BOG ANON!!! I HOPE YOUR VACATION WAS AMAZING FIRST OFF!! I’m honestly got a few more in the works, but, man, things are getting so busy. But to the non-verbal requests, I was honestly surprised but also not to see there are more reqs like the one I received. More so because writers tend to do the same thing you’re talking abou, but I do agree. Being non-verbal is a spectrum, just like anything else. While I may not have gotten a severe case of begin nonverbal, I did have to deal with learning how to communicate my feelings, sometimes people around me and due to my age wouldn’t understand. And I’d do “harmful” things when it turns out, I was being self-defensive towards a bully. I still have habits of using my body language and expression tho, speaking with my hands, using my expressions ect.

Edited section: Not everyone can “speak” when non-verbal, I was able to grow out of the temporary stage, and I speak. Again, it’s a spectrum that not a lot of people tend to think of, and again I believe it’s connected to some sort of an over romanization of “being close to another person and I’ll speak to them.” While yes, some people are, for example, situational/selectively mute, people with this do not feel comfortable with speaking to others they are not close with. However, this is not always the case, having selective/situational mutism is heavily varied from circumstances, area, people and actual ability to speak at that point in time. While nonverbal people can make some sounds they cannot speak.

So please, authors, when you receive an ask that resembles a nonverbal or Selectively/Situationally mute person,, be conscious of which one you’re writing for, and you’re not mixing the two terms up.

I want to be inclusive of all people on the nonverbal spectrum. Through my research as well, sometimes people that are non-verbal are on the autism spectrum. Not always, but sometimes are. So be conscious of that fact.

But again, I think people do tend to forget some people cannot make comprehensive sentences or even make sounds that resemble words. While I understand how it would be easier to write a nonverbal character then have them speak to a close person is a good thing, very fluffy we love to see it. But there are times I wish people did more research upon these topics, I don’t mean to shame any author because it is hard to write a req you aren’t knowledgeable in or heard more things about. Perhaps it’s because I found through this research, that during that young time in my life I would be considered a nonverbal child but I found this req resonating with me as a person.

THEN DERAILING TO THE REALISM PART OF MY WRITINGS, GOD, I LOVE WRITING THAT!!! I love adding layers of realism to my works because it’s easier for me to write in character. Yes. We want fluffy. We want heartwarming content, self-indulgent things. There is no shame to this desire, but as a good friend said, real life isn’t a fairytale “Happily Ever After,” having any sort of relationship requires work. Hard work, and sometimes you must make your boundaries known to your friends or partner. It’s full of adjustments, moments where sometimes you inevitably get into disagreements, you will clash with them and things don’t just heal magically, and things are as they were no. It’s not how real life works. Especially where we take into account in this case where more often than not, all of NRC boys be assholes.

I’ve seen some requests and received one where Mc/reader/S.O doesn’t know boundaries and I know for a fact that is not healthy at all and sometimes in writings the boys will snap at them for lack of them. The boy will feel bad and come back to their lover, then things aren’t at all different. Mc presumably still crosses their boy’s boundaries and everything’s peaceful with the world. I know that if it was a real relationship, it would slowly start to become toxic. I’ve also seen a lot of requests never mentioning any sort of mistake on the reader’s fault that may make the twst boy mad or hurt. Again I’d love to write a fic where Mc/reader/S.O are in the wrong. Have made their partner or friend uncomfortable and then be willing to be the mature one and think “I was wrong,” or “I’m so sorry. I was wrong. I won’t pressure you to forgive me but I want you to know I know what I did,” in relationships. It’s makes everything stronger and I live for it,, I CAN’T BELIEVE MY WRITING HABITS ARE BECOMING ICONIC IN THR BLOG I ASDJKL

BUT FOR KALIM AND ROYAL’S PART JFC I LOVED SPRINKLING IN ALREADY KNOWN LORE INVOLVING THEM AND BLEEDING IT INTO THE READER INSERTS (platonic and romantic ^^) it would be perilous to be public with any relation to someone of that status, from assassination attempts, kidnapping, or being picked on. Even more so when you put in the reader to be Yuu, the game mc, a literal no one, no credentials, no traces of the world and family they have would be great pickings for bad people. And this leads to another thing. The twist is boys aren’t going to baby anyone (save maybe Kalim). They want the others around them to be able to stand on their two feet and stand up for themselves. They’re going to be watchful, but they’re not going to involve themselves or pick a fight every time someone says something about Yuu. And I can’t tell you how many bullying reqs where the boys charge head first into the bullies' asses when mc doesn’t stand up for themselves. While it may solidify their “kind, sweet, shy,” and the cute factor that the boys will step in and I’m not saying it’s bad to see those types requests or writings. I get a bad feeling when it becomes over-reliance. If the twst boys did that every time or if mc keeps bringing that up, the twist boys would feel like a bodyguard rather than a boyfriend, an equal.

Ok,,, I’m off my soap box I’m sorry for the ranting. 😭BUT DON’T APOLOGIZE FOR THE LENGTH OF YOUR ASK I FEEL LIKE I OVER COMPENSATED OR JUST WENT OFF ON RANTS I’M SO SORRY AND BOG ANON IF YOU OR ANYONE ELSE HAS REACHED THIS FAR I LOVE YOU AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!!!! PLEASE DON’T BE AFRAID TO COME BACK BOG ANON I LOVE YOU!!!

For those wondering! I’ve used these articles and videos to help me learn.

https://youtu.be/z3YQ9F4SFAQ This young person explains what it’s like to use AAC devices as a young adult. This person also has autism and they explain challenges they face everyday.

https://youtu.be/BPo1H1eMU9k This is another video explaining speech therapy and how it works for children using pictures to communicate what they want. While I realize this video is dated I found it was a a great stepping stone.

Article Time:

https://brilliantio.com/how-to-write-a-mute-character/ This article is very good on supplying multiple scenarios for a character to be nonverbal and touches on, “Make a good realistic reason why they are non-verbal” they’re a very conscious writer saying that it is hard to write a character that cannot speak for people not well-versed.

https://lucindathee.com/how-to-write-non-speaking-characters/ Another amazing article about the spectrum of nonverbal. ALSO PLEASE SUPPORT NON-VERBAL CREATORS

https://allwritealright.com/how-to-write-a-mute-nonspeaking-character/ This article tells the fact that author’s sometimes rely on harmful stereotypes when writing nonverbal people. This also helps giving much needed advice.

[yasminbenoit]

What Is Asexuality? Yasmin Benoit for Teen Vogue

For Asexuality Awareness Week, model Yasmin Benoit answers the question ‘what is asexuality’, and busts some common myths about what it means to be asexual.

I realized I was asexual around the same time my peers seemed to realize that they were not. Once the hormones kicked in, so did a nearly universal interest in sex for those around me. I thought sex was intriguing, but never so much that I wanted to express my sexuality with someone else. I had no sexual desire towards other people, I did not experience sexual attraction, and that hasn't changed.

I didn't learn that there was a word for my sexuality until I was 15, after being interrogated for the millionth time at school about my orientation, or lack of it. After doing some Googling as soon as I got home, I realized for the first time in my life that I might not be broken, that I wasn't alone in my experience, and that it wasn't a defect I had somehow brought on myself. I had spent the entirety of my adolescent life trying to answer people's invasive questions without having the language to explain that I was just an asexual girl.

But even after I found the language, I had only solved half of the problem. We are taught in grade school that we'll become sexually interested in others, but never that not being sexually attracted to anyone is an option. Because we're not taught about it, no one else knew what I was talking about when I tried to come out to them as asexual.

Many don't believe asexuality is real,  and that makes the experience of navigating our heteronormative, hyper-sexualized society as an asexual person even harder. I've spent my life battling misconceptions about it and so have many other asexual people. Now, I try to use my work as a model and activist to raise awareness and change the way our society perceives asexuality and asexual people. This Asexual Awareness Week, I'm busting some of those myths about my orientation.

Now, let's separate fact from fiction:

Myth: Asexual people have no sexuality ✘

Truth: Asexuality is considered a sexuality, just like bisexuality, heterosexuality, and homosexuality. I often phrase it as being a sexual orientation where your sexuality isn’t oriented anywhere—because it isn't actually the same as having no sexuality or sexual feelings. Asexual people have hormones like everyone else. It isn’t uncommon for asexual people to masturbate and there are asexual people who still have sex for various reasons and gain enjoyment from it. Some asexual people are romantically attracted to others, but not sexually attracted. Since asexuality is a spectrum, the ways in which asexuality is experienced can vary in different ways.

Myth: Asexuality is a lifestyle choice ✘

Truth: This misconception stems from the idea that asexuality is a choice and not a legitimate sexual orientation. Asexuality is often confused with celibacy or abstinence, probably because they can manifest in similar ways. In contemporary society, celibacy is often defined as being sexually abstinent, often for religious reasons. Sure, for many asexual people, their asexuality means that they aren’t interested in having sex with other people, but that’s a result of their orientation—not their beliefs about sexual behavior. Celibacy is a lifestyle choice, asexuality is not. Asexuality also shouldn't be confused with being an incel. People don't decide to become asexual because they can't find sexual partners or because of any other circumstances. It isn't a state of being when you're going through a "dry spell," nor is it a choice any more than being gay or straight is a choice. It's just the way we are.\

Myth: Asexuality is an illness ✘

Truth: The assertion that asexuality is a mental or physical disorder is incredibly harmful to asexual people and has led to false diagnoses, unnecessary medication, and attempts at converting asexual people. For example, Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder and Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder — which are characterized by low or absent sex drive — are in the DSM-5 and have been thought of as a medical diagnosis for asexuality. But the difference is that people who have HSDD are bothered by their lack of sexual drive, while asexual people are not. But even the inclusion of HSDD as a diagnosis is controversial — some argue that people who are asexual might feel distress at their lack of sexual desire because of lack of acceptance in society. Asexuality is not the result of a hormone deficiency, or a syndrome, or a physical or psychological ailment. Research has said as much. We don't need to be treated or fixed.

Myth: Asexual people have anti-sex attitudes ✘

Truth: There are asexual people who are repulsed by the thought of sex, or by the thought of having sex themselves. I fall into the latter category. However, that feeling does not necessarily extend to what other people are doing. The misconception that asexual people are against other people expressing their sexuality, and that all asexual people can’t stomach conversations about sex, is quite an alienating one. It leads to asexual people being left out of important discussions about sexuality. It is entirely possible and incredibly common to have sex-positive attitudes and be asexual.

Myth: There are barely any asexual people ✘

Truth: Don't let our lack of visibility and representation fool you. There are a lot of asexual people out there, but many of us aren't entirely out, and some haven't realized that there's a word for what they're experiencing due to that lack of visibility. While research into the asexual population is lacking, its estimated that around 1% of the population is asexual—but that's based on a studies where the participants have likely known what asexuality was and been out enough to identify that way. It's likely there are more asexual people than we know of, but even if we did only comprise 1% of the population, that's still tens of millions of asexual people.

Myth: Asexual people just haven’t found the right person yet ✘

Truth: The idea that asexual people just need to meet the ‘right person’ who will unlock their sexual desire and ‘fix’ their asexuality is one I’ve always found quite perplexing. It’s an argument that seems to be applied to asexuality more than other orientations. You wouldn’t tell a straight guy that they just “hadn’t met the right man yet" as an explanation of why he's attracted to women. I’d like to think that most wouldn’t tell a gay man that they “hadn’t met the right woman yet” either. It suggests that our sexuality is reflective of our company, that no one we have ever seen or encountered has met our standards, and thus we haven’t experienced sexual attraction to the extent that the term ‘asexual’ could be applied.

This assumption ignores and invalidates all of the asexual people who have found the ‘right’ person—the asexual people in happy, fulfilling, loving relationships or who have had them in the past. Because, yes, asexual people can still have romantic relationships, or any other kind of relationship. The validity of a relationship is not and should not be based on how sexually attracted you are to that person. This statement also plays into the notion that asexual people are “missing out” on something and haven’t truly discovered our entire selves, that we are incomplete because of our innate characteristics or our life experiences. This isn’t true either.\

Myth: There’s an asexual demographic ✘

Truth: Even though most people don’t know much about asexuality, they still have quite a specific idea about what asexual people are like. I’ve often heard that, as a black woman and a model, I don’t look or seem asexual. We’re stereotyped as being awkward white kids who spend too much time on social media and probably aren’t attractive enough to find a sexual partner if we wanted to. And if we are attractive enough, then we should tone that down as not to ‘give mixed signals.’ But there is no asexual way to look or dress. Asexual people have varying ages, backgrounds, interests, appearances, and experiences, just like those belonging to any other sexual orientation. So please don't use the term "asexual" as an adjective to describe someone you think is sexually unappealing or as an insult, because that's only perpetuating this harmful stereotype.

Makeup: Margherita Lascala

Photography: Becky Gannon

Hair: Kayla Idowu

Styling: Diesel, Cheimsee, Sixth June, Northskull, Lamoda

[shihalyfie]

About the Adventure: reboot, the likely reason why it exists, the question of target demographic, and whether I would recommend it or not

I think this reboot has been kind of a strange outlier in terms of Digimon anime in general, in terms of...well, just about everything. I also feel like everything surrounding it has kind of been giving us mixed signals as to what the intent and purpose behind the anime is -- well, besides “cashing in on the Adventure brand”, but looking at it more closely, that might be a bit of an oversimplification.

I’m writing this post because, having seen the entire series to the end for myself and thinking very hard about it and what it was trying to do, I decided to put down my thoughts. This is not meant to be a review of what I think was good and bad, but rather, something that I hope will be helpful to those who might be on the fence about whether they want to watch it or not, or those who don’t want to watch/finish it but are curious about what happened, or those who are curious as to why this reboot even exists in the first place, or even maybe just those who did watch it but are interested in others’ thoughts about it. I'm personally convinced that -- especially in an ever-changing franchise like Digimon -- how much you like a given work is dependent on what your personal tastes are to the very end, and thus it’s helpful to understand what kind of expectations you should go in with if you want to watch something.

With all of this said and done, if you want to go in and best enjoy this series, I think it is best to consider this anime as a distinct Digimon series of its own. The relationship to Adventure is only surface-level, and by that I mean it’s very obvious it’s doing things its own thing deliberately without worrying too much about what prior series did. Of course, I think everyone will have varying feelings about using the Adventure branding for something that really isn't Adventure at all, but we are really talking about an in-name-only affair, and something that’s unabashedly doing whatever it wants. So in other words, if you’re going in expecting Adventure, or anything that really resembles Adventure, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But if you’re able to approach it like yet another distinct Digimon series, and the other aspects of it fit your fancy, you’ll probably be able to enjoy it much better. And, conversely, I think it’s also important to remember that this series seems to have a writing philosophy with a fundamentally different goal from most Digimon series, and since it’s understandable for most long-time Digimon fans to have their tastes built on those prior series, it’s fine and completely understandable that this reboot may not be your cup of tea, for reasons that probably don’t actually have much to do with whether it’s an Adventure reboot or not.

There are no spoilers in the following post. (Although I use some emphatic language for the duration for it, these are mostly just my personal thoughts and how I see the series and the overall situation.)

On what exact relationship to Adventure this series has, and why it’s an “Adventure reboot”

If you ask why they did an Adventure reboot, the easiest answer to come up with is “Adventure milking, because it’s profitable”, but that’s kind of an oversimplification of what the issue is. This is especially when you take into account a key fact that official has been very well aware of since as early as 2006: most kids are too young to have seen Adventure, and therefore have no reason to care about it.

That’s the thing: Adventure milking only works so well on today’s children, and Toei and Bandai know this. This is also the reason that the franchise started going through a bit of a “split” starting in around 2012 (after Xros Wars finished airing), when the video game branch started making more active attempts to appeal to the adults’ fanbase with Re:Digitize and Adventure PSP. (Although they were technically still “kids’ games”, they were very obviously aimed at the adults’ audience as a primary “target”.) The generation that grew up with Adventure and other classic Digimon anime was getting older and older, and targeting that audience would require tailoring products more specifically to them -- ultimately culminating in 2015 and the solidification of “very obviously primarily for adults” media in the form of both games (Cyber Sleuth and Next Order) and anime (tri.). Note that Appmon ended up getting its own 3DS game, but since it was targeted at kids, it seems to have been developed by a completely different pipeline/branch from the aforementioned adults’ games, so even that had a split.

So if we want to talk about full-on nostalgia pandering, that’s already being done in the adults’ branch. In fact, Appmon development specifically said that they felt free to not really care about the adults’ audience because that was tri.’s job. Of course, the hardcore Digimon adults’ fanbase is still keeping an eye on the kids’ shows, and it’s good to not upset them -- and, besides, even if we’re all suffering under the hell of capitalism, people who work in kids’ shows still tend to be very passionate about the content and messages they’re showing the kids, so they still put an effort into making good content that adults can enjoy too. But, nevertheless, adults are still the “periphery demographic”, and a kids’ show is not a success if the kids (who have not seen and do not care about Adventure) are not watching it or buying the toys. Appmon ended up being extremely well-received by the adults’ fanbase, but that all meant nothing since the kids didn’t get into it.

Most kids are not super incredibly discerning about so-called writing quality (it’s not like they don’t at least unconsciously know when something is good, but they’re much less likely to be bothered by little things adults are often bothered by), so there’s a certain degree you have to get their attention if you want things to catch on with them. Critical reception does matter a lot more when we talk about the adults’ audience, but for the kids, the more important part is how much you’ve managed to engage them and how much fun they’re having (especially in regards to the toyline). Moreover, there’s the problem of “momentum”; Digimon’s sister shows of PreCure, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai have sometimes had really poorly performing shows (critically or financially), but have managed to recover it in successive years to avoid getting cancelled. Digimon never managed to get to that point, with sales nearly dropping to half with Tamers and again with Frontier. So in essence, Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon were all attempts at figuring out what was needed to just get that “kickstart” again -- but things just never lined up for it to work.

So if kids don’t really care about Adventure, why would they do Adventure nostalgia pandering? The answer is one that official has actually openly stated multiple times: they want to have parents watch it together with their children. Both Seki and Kinoshita said this in regards to watching the reaction to Kizuna, and it was also stated outright as a goal for the reboot, but, believe it or not, there’s reports of this having been stated back as early as Savers (followed by an admission that maybe 2006 was a little too early for people who grew up with Adventure to be old enough to have their own kids). So the little nostalgia references in Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon aren't really meant to magically turn the series into Adventure as much as they’re supposed to be flags waved at the parents to get them to pay attention, so that they can introduce their kids to Digimon and watch it together with them, until the kids eventually take an interest on their own and they don’t need to rely on that kind of standby as much. (I say “as much” because of course PreCure, Rider, and Sentai all are still very indulgent in their anniversary references, but they’re not nearly as reliant on it to the point of life-and-death.)

This is also why Kizuna’s existence and release date two months prior to the reboot is a huge factor in this. The reason tri. wouldn’t have done it is that it never actually reached a properly “mainstream” audience. It’s a huge reason I keep emphasizing the fact that tri. and Kizuna are two separate things with completely different production and release formats, because tri. being a limited OVA screening released in six parts over three years means that, although it was a moderate financial success that did better than the franchise’s other niche products, in the end, it didn’t actually reach the “extremely casual” audience very well. We, as the “hardcore Internet fanbase”, all know people who watched all six parts, and the difference between tri. and Kizuna’s release formats doesn’t hit us as hard because of international distribution circumstances, but even on our end, if you talk to your casual friends who barely remember anything about Digimon except what they saw on TV twenty years ago, you will almost never find anyone who got past Part 1, maybe 2 at most. (That’s before we even get into the part where a good chunk of them got turned off at the character design stage for being too different.) Sticking with a full six-part series over three years is a commitment, and if you’re not someone with a certain level of loyalty to the franchise, you aren’t as likely to put aside the time for it!

Kizuna, on the other hand, was a full-on theatrical movie with full marketing campaign that was aimed at that extremely casual mainstream audience, including a lot of people who hadn’t even heard of tri. (due to it being too niche) or hadn’t bothered to commit to watching something so long, and thus managed to “hype up” a lot of adults and get them in a Digimon mood. (Critical reception issues aside, this is also presumably a huge reason Kizuna isn’t all that reliant on tri.’s plot; Adventure and 02 both averaged at around 11% of the country watching it when it first aired, but the number of people who even saw tri. much less know what happened in it is significantly lower, so while you can appeal to a lot of people if you’re just targeting the 11%, you'll lock them out if you’re overly reliant on stuff a lot of them will have never seen in the first place.) We’re talking the kind of super-casual who sees a poster for Kizuna, goes “oh I remember Digimon!”, casually buys a ticket for the movie, likes it because it has characters they remember and the story is feelsy, and then two months later an anime that looks like the Digimon they recognize is on Fuji TV, resulting in them convincing their kid to watch it together with them because they’re in a Digimon mood now, even though the actual contents of the anime are substantially different from the original.

So, looking back at the reboot:

There’s a huge, huge, huge implication that the choice to use Adventure branding was at least partially to get Fuji TV to let them have their old timeslot back. Neither Xros Wars nor Appmon were able to be on that old timeslot, presumably because Fuji TV had serious doubts about their profitability (perhaps after seeing Savers not do very well). This isn’t something that hits as hard for us outside Japan who don’t have to feel the impact of this anyway, but it’s kind of a problem if kids don’t even get the opportunity to watch the show in the first place. While there’s been a general trend of moving to video-on-demand to the point TV ratings don’t really have as much impact as they used to, I mean...it sure beats 6:30 in the morning, goodness. (Note that a big reason PreCure, Rider, and Sentai are able to enjoy the comfortable positions they’re in is that they have a very luxurious 8:30-10 AM Sunday block on TV Asahi dedicated to them.)

Since we’re talking about “the casual mainstream”, this means that this kind of ploy only works with something where a casual person passing by can see names and faces and take an interest. This is why it has to be Adventure, not 02 or Tamers or whatnot; 02 may have had roughly similar TV ratings to Adventure and fairly close sales figures back in 2000, but the actual pop culture notability disparity in this day and age is humongous (think about the difference in pop culture awareness between Butter-Fly and Target). 02, Tamers, and all can do enough to carry “adults’ fandom” products and merch sales at DigiFes, and the adults’ branch of the franchise in general, but appealing to the average adult buying toys for the kids is a huge difference, and a big reason that, even if they’re clearly starting to acknowledge more of the non-Adventure series these days, it’s still hard to believe they’re going to go as far as rebooting anything past Adventure -- or, more accurately, hard to believe they’ll be able to get the same impact using names and faces alone.

This advertising with the Adventure brand goes beyond just the anime -- we’re talking about the toyline that has the involved character faces plastered on them, plus all of the ventures surrounding them that Bandai pretty obviously carefully timed to coincide with this. One particularly big factor is the card game, which is doing really, really well right now, to the point it’s even started gaining an audience among people who weren’t originally Digimon fans. Part of it is because the game’s design is actually very good and newcomer-friendly, but also...nearly every set since the beginning came with reboot-themed Tamer Cards, which means that, yes, those cards with the Adventure names and faces were helping lure people into taking an interest in the game. Right now, the game is doing so well and has gained such a good reputation that it probably doesn’t need that crutch anymore to keep going as long as the game remains well-maintained, but I have no doubt the initial “Adventure” branding was what helped it take off, and its success is most likely a huge pillar sustaining the franchise at the current moment.

Speaking of merch and toys, if you look closely, you might notice that Bandai decided to go much, much more aggressively into the toy market with this venture than they ever did with Savers, Xros Wars, or Appmon (Appmon was probably the most aggressive attempt out of said three). They put out a lot more merch and did a lot more collaborative events to engage the parents and children, and, presumably, the reason they were able to do this was because they were able to push into those outlets with the confidence the Adventure brand would let them be accepted (much like with Fuji TV). Like with the card game, the important part was getting their “foot in the door” so that even if it stopped being Adventure after a fashion, they’d still have all of those merchandising outlets -- after all, one of the first hints we ever got of Ghost Game’s existence was a July product listing for its products replacing the reboot’s in a gachapon set, so we actually have evidence of certain product pipelines being opened by the reboot’s precedent. (The word 後番組 literally means “the TV program that comes after”, so it’s pretty obvious this was intended for Ghost Game; in other words, the reboot’s existence helped ensure there be a “reservation” for this kind of product to be made.)

I think one important thing to keep in mind is that Toei and Bandai have as much of a stake in avoiding rehashing for their kids’ franchises as we do. Even if you look at this from a purely capitalistic perspective, because of how fast the “turnover” is for the kids’ audience, sustaining a franchise for a long time off rehashing the same thing over and over is hard, and even moreso when it involves a twenty-year-old anime that said kids don’t even know or remember. Ask around about popular long-running Japanese kids’ franchises and you’ll notice they practically rely on being able to comfortably change things up every so often, like PreCure/Rider/Sentai shuffling every year, or Yu-Gi-Oh! having a rotation of different series and concepts, or the struggles that franchises that don’t do this have to deal with. And, after all, for all people are cynical about Toei continuing to milk Adventure or any of the other older series at every opportunity, as far as the kids’ branch of the franchise goes, this is only capable of lasting to a certain extent; if they tried keeping this up too long, even the adults and kids would get bored, and there is some point it’ll be easier to try and make products directly targeted at the kids’ audience instead of having to rely on the parents to ease them into it.

So it’s completely understandable that the moment they secured a proper audience with the reboot and finished up their first series with this, they decided to take the risk with Ghost Game right after. And considering all that’s happened, this is still a risk -- they’re changing up a lot (even if not as much as Appmon), and there’s a chance that the audience they’ve gathered is going to shoot down again because they’ve changed so much and they no longer have the Adventure branding as a “crutch” to use -- but they’re taking it anyway instead of going for something at least slightly more conventional.

Which means that, yes, there’s a possibility this will all explode in their face, because the Adventure branding is that huge of a card they’re about to lose. But at the very, very least, Ghost Game is coming in with the “momentum” and advantage that Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon all didn’t have: a brand currently in the stage of recovery, all of the merchandising and collaborative pipelines the reboot and Kizuna opened up, a fairly good timeslot, and a premise somewhat more conventional than Xros Wars and Appmon (I’m saying this as someone who likes both: their marketing definitely did not do them many favors). There are still a lot of risks it’s playing here, and it’s possible it won’t be the end of more Adventure or reboot brand usage to try to keep that momentum up even as we go into Ghost Game, but it’s the first time in a long while we’ve had something to stand on.

Okay, so that’s out of the way. But the end result is that we now have 67 episodes of an Adventure “reboot” that actually doesn’t even resemble Adventure that much at all, which seems to have achieved its goal of flagging down attention so it can finally going back to trying new things. This series exists, we can’t do anything about the fact it exists, the period where its own financial performance actually mattered is coming to an end anyway, and we, as a fanbase of adults hanging out on the Internet keeping up with the franchise as a whole, have to figure out how each of us feels about this. So what of it?

About the contents of the reboot itself

One thing I feel hasn’t been brought up as a potential topic very much (or, at least, not as much as I feel like it probably should be) is that the reboot seems to be actively aimed at a younger target audience than the original Adventure. It hasn’t been stated outright, but we actually have quite a bit of evidence pointing towards this.

Let’s take a moment and discuss what it even means to have a different target audience. When you’re a kid, even one or two years’ difference is a big deal, and while things vary from kid to kid, generally speaking, it helps to have an idea of what your “overall goal” is when targeting a certain age group, since at some point you have to approximate the interests of some thousands of children. Traditionally, Digimon has been aimed at preteens (10-11 year olds); of course, many will testify to having seen the series at a younger age than that, but the "main” intended target demographic was in this arena. (Also, keep in mind that this is an average; a show aimed at 10-11 year olds could be said to be more broadly aimed at 7-13 year olds, whereas one aimed at 7-8 year olds would be more broadly aimed at something like 5-10 year olds.) Let’s talk a bit about what distinguishes children’s shows (especially Japanese kids’ shows) between this “preteen demographic” and things aimed at a much younger audience (which I’ll call “young child demographic”, something like the 7-8 year old arena):

With children who are sufficiently young, it’s much, much more difficult to ensure that a child of that age will be able to consistently watch TV at the same hour every week instead of being subject to more variable schedules, often set by their parents, meaning that it becomes much more difficult to have a series that relies on you having seen almost every episode to know what’s going on. For somewhat older kids, they’re more likely to be able to pick and pursue their own preferences (the usual “got up early every week for this show”). This means that shows targeted at a young child demographic will be more likely to be episodic, or at least not have a complex dramatic narrative that requires following the full story, whereas shows targeted at a preteen audience are more willing to have a dramatic narrative with higher complexity. This does not mean by any shake of the imagination that a narrative is incapable of having any kind of depth or nuance -- the reboot’s timeslot predecessor GeGeGe no Kitaro got glowing reviews all over the board for being an episodic story with tons of depth -- nor that characters can’t slowly develop over the course of the show. But it does raise the bar significantly, especially because it prevents you from making episodes that require you to know what happened in previous ones.

The thing is, the original Adventure and the older Digimon series in general didn’t have to worry about this, and, beyond the fact that their narratives very obviously were not episodic, we actually have concrete evidence of the disparity: Digimon has often been said to be a franchise for “the kids who graduated from (outgrew) a certain other monster series”. Obviously, they’re referring to Pokémon -- which does have the much younger target demographic. That’s why its anime is significantly more episodic and less overall plot-oriented, and Digimon wasn’t entirely meant to be a direct competitor to it; rather, it was hoping to pick up the preteens who’d enjoyed Pokémon at a younger age but were now looking for something more catered to them. This is also why, when Yo-kai Watch came into the game in 2014, that was considered such a huge direct competitor to Pokémon, because it was aiming for that exact same demographic, complete with episodic anime. When Yo-kai Watch moved to its Shadowside branch in 2017, it was specifically because they had concerns about losing audience and wanted to appeal to the kids who had been watching the original series, but since they were preteens now, they adopted a more dramatic and emotionally complex narrative that would appeal to that audience instead. So you can actually see the shift in attempted target demographic in real time.

Adventure through Frontier were aimed at 10-11 year olds, and here’s the interesting part: those series had the protagonists hover around the age of said target audience. We actually have it on record that Frontier had a direct attempt to keep most of the kids as fifth-graders for the sake of appealing to the audience, and so that it would be relatable to them. You can also see this policy of “matching the target audience’s age” in other series at the time; Digimon’s sister series Ojamajo Doremi (also produced by Seki) centered around eight-year-olds. Nor was Seki the only one to do this; stepping outside Toei for a bit, Medabots/Medarot had its protagonist Ikki be ten years old, much like Digimon protagonists, and the narrative was similarly dramatic. The thing is, that’s not how it usually works, and that’s especially not really been how it’s worked for the majority of kids’ series since the mid-2000s. In general, and especially now, it’s usually common to have the protagonists of children’s media be slightly older than the target age group. This has a lot of reasons behind it -- partially because kids are looking to have slightly older characters as a model for what to follow in their immediate future, and partially because “the things you want to teach the kids” are often more realistically reflected if the kids on screen have the right level of independence and capacity for emotional contemplation. Case in point: while everyone agrees the Adventure through Frontier characters are quite relatable, it’s a common criticism that the level of emotional insight sometimes pushes the boundary of what’s actually believable for 10-11 year olds...

...which is presumably why, with the exception of this reboot, every Digimon TV series since, as of this writing, started shifting to middle school students. That doesn’t mean they’re aiming the series at middle school kids now, especially because real-life 13-15 year olds are usually at the stage where they pretend they’ve outgrown kids’ shows (after all, that’s why there’s a whole term for “middle school second year syndrome”), but more that the narrative that they want to tell is best reflected by kids of that age, especially when we’re talking characters meant to represent children from the real world and not near-immortal youkai like Kitaro. In fact, the Appmon staff outright said that Haru was placed in middle school because the story needed that level of independence and emotional sensitivity, which is interesting to consider in light of the fact that Appmon’s emotional drama is basically on par with that of Adventure through Frontier’s. So in other words, the kind of high-level drama endemic to Adventure through Frontier is would actually normally be more on par with what you’d expect for kids of Haru’s age.

But at this point, the franchise is at a point of desperation, and you can see that, as I said earlier, Appmon was blatantly trying to be one of those “have its cake and eat it too” series by having possibly one of the franchise’s most dramatic storylines while also having some of the most unsubtle catchphrases and bright colors it has to offer. Moreover, one thing you might notice if you look closely at Appmon: most of its episodes are self-contained. Only a very small handful of episodes are actively dependent on understanding what happened in prior episodes to understand the conflict going on in the current one -- it’s just very cleverly structured in a way you don’t really notice this as easily. So as you can see, the more desperate the franchise has gotten to get its kids’ audience back, the more it has to be able to grab the younger demographic and not lock them out as much as possible -- which means that it has to do things that the original series didn’t have to worry about at all.

Having seen the reboot myself, I can say that it checks off a lot of what you might expect if you tried to repurpose something based on Adventure (and only vaguely based on it, really) into a more episodic story that doesn’t require you to follow the whole thing, and that it has to break down its story into easy-to-follow bits. In fact, there were times where I actually felt like it gave me the vibes of an educational show that would usually be expected for this demographic, such as repeated use of slogans or fun catchphrases for young kids to join in on. That alone means that even if the “base premise” is similar to the original Adventure, this already necessitates a lot of things that have to be very different, because Adventure really cannot be called episodic no matter how you slice it.

Not only that, even though the target audience consideration has yet to be outright stated, we also have interviews on hand that made it very clear, from the very beginning, what their goals with the reboot were: they wanted the kids to be able to enjoy a story of otherworldly exploration during the pandemic, they wanted cool action sequences, and they wanted to get the adults curious about what might be different from the original. Note that last part: they actively wanted this series to be different from the original, because the differences would engage parents in spotting the differences, and the third episode practically even goes out of its way to lay that message down by taking the kids to a familiar summer camp, only to have it pass without incident and go “ha, you thought, but nope!” Moreover -- this is the key part -- “surprising” people who were coming from the original series was a deliberate goal they had from the very beginning. They’ve stated this outright -- they knew older fans were watching this! They were not remotely shy about stating that they wanted to surprise returning viewers with unexpected things! They even implied that they wanted it to be a fun experience for older watchers to see what was different and what wasn’t -- basically, it’s a new show for their kids who never saw the original Adventure, while the parents are entertained by a very different take on something that seems ostensibly familiar. 

On top of that, the head writer directly cited V-Tamer as an influence -- and if you know anything about V-Tamer, it’s really not that much of a character narrative compared to what we usually know of Digimon anime, and is mostly known for its battle tactics and action sequences (but in manga form). In other words, we have a Digimon anime series that, from day one, was deliberately made to have a writing philosophy and goal that was absolutely not intended to be like Adventure -- or any Digimon TV anime up to this point -- in any way. And that’s a huge shock for us as veterans, who have developed our tastes and expectations based on up to seven series of Digimon that were absolutely not like this at all. But for all it's worth, the circumstances surrounding its production and intent don't seem to quite line up with what the most common accusations against it are:

That it’s a rehash of Adventure: It really isn’t. It’s also blatantly apparent it has no intention of being so. The points that are in common: the character names and rough character designs, some very minimal profile details for said characters, Devimon having any particular foil position to Angemon, the use of Crests to represent personal growth, the premise of being in the Digital World and...that’s it! Once those points are aside, it’s really hard to say that the series resembles Adventure any more than Frontier or Xros Wars resembles Adventure (which are also “trapped in another world” narratives) -- actually, there are times the series resembles those two more than the original Adventure, which many have been quick to point out. The majority of things you can make any kind of comparison to basically drop off by the end of the first quarter or so, and trying to force a correlation is basically just that: you’d have to try forcing the comparison. The plot, writing style, and even the lineup of enemies shown just go in a completely different direction after that. So in the end, the base similarities can be said to be a marketing thing; if I want to criticize this series, I don’t think “lack of creativity” would actually be something I would criticize it for. (Of course, you’re still welcome to not be a huge fan of how they’re still guilty of using Adventure’s name value to market something that is not actually Adventure. We’re all gonna have mixed feelings on that one.)

That they don’t understand or remember Adventure’s appeal: Unlikely. All of the main staff has worked on character-based narratives before, which have been very well-praised while we’re at it. The producer, Sakurada Hiroyuki, was an assistant producer on the original series, and I would like to believe he probably remembers at least a thing or two about what they were doing with the original series...but, also, he’s the producer of Xros Wars, which definitely had its own individuality and style, and, moreover, was more of a character narrative that people generally tend to expect from Digimon anime. (Still a bit unconventional, and it has its own questions of personal taste, but a lot of people have also pointed out that this reboot has a lot in common with Xros Wars in terms of its writing tone and its emphasis on developing Digital World resident Digimon moreso than the human characters.) All signs point to the idea they could make a character narrative like Adventure if they really wanted to. It’s just, they don’t want to do that with this reboot, so they didn’t.

That they misinterpreted or misremembered the Adventure characters: There’s been accusations of said characters being written in a way that implies misinterpretation or lack of understanding of the original characters, but the thing is, while I definitely agree they have nowhere near the depth of the original ones, there are points that seem to be deliberate changes. (At some points, they’re actually opposites of the original, and certain things that operate as some very obscure references -- for instance, Sora complaining about having to sit in seiza -- seem to also be deliberate statements of going in a different direction.) The lack of human character depth or backstory doesn’t seem to be out of negligence, but rather that this story doesn’t want to be a character narrative to begin with -- after all, we’re used to seven series of Digimon that are, but there are many, many kids’ anime, or even stories in general, where the story is more about plot or action than it is completely unpacking all of its characters’ heads. In this case, this reboot does seem to have characters that are taking cues from or are “inspired by” the original, but, after all, it’s an alternate universe and has no obligation to adhere to the original characters’ backgrounds, so it stands to reason that it’d take liberties whenever it wanted. (Again, the head writer outright stated that he based the reboot’s Taichi more on V-Tamer Taichi than the original Adventure anime Taichi. He knows there’s a difference!) Even more intriguingly, the series actually avoids certain things that are common misconceptions or pigeonholes that would normally be done by the mainstream -- for instance, the Crest of Light (infamously one of the more abstract ones in the narrative) is fully consistent with Adventure’s definition of it as “the power of life”, and, if I dare say so myself, Koushirou’s characterization (emphasizing his relationship with “knowledge” and his natural shyness) arguably resembles the original far more than most common fan reductions of his character that overemphasize his computer skills over his personal aptitude. In other words, I think the staff does know what happened in the original Adventure -- they just actively don’t want to do what Adventure did, even if it’s ostensibly a reboot.

That it’s soulless or that there’s no passion in its creation: Well, this is subjective, and in the end I’m not a member of the staff to tell you anything for sure, but there are definitely a lot of things in this anime that don’t seem like they’d be the byproduct of uninspired creation or lack of passion. It’s just that those things are all not the kinds of things that we, as Digimon veterans, have come to develop a taste for and appreciate in Digimon anime. That is to say, there is an incredible amount of thought and detail put into representing Digimon null canon (i.e. representing special attacks and mechanics), the action sequences are shockingly well-animated in ways that put most prior Digimon anime to shame, and the series has practically been making an obvious attempt to show off as many Digimon (creatures) that haven’t traditionally gotten good franchise representation as they can. Or sometimes really obscure “meta fanservice” references that only make sense to the really, really, really, really hardcore longtime Digimon fan (for instance, having an episode centered around Takeru and Opossummon, because Takeru’s voice actress Han Megumi voiced Airu in Xros Wars). If you follow any of the animators on Twitter, they seem to be really actively proud of their work on it, and franchise creators Volcano Ota and Watanabe Kenji seem to be enjoying themselves every week...so basically, we definitely have creators passionate about having fun with this, it’s just that all of it is being channeled here, not the character writing.

So in the end, you can basically see that this series is basically the epitome of desperately pulling out all of the stops to make sure this series lands with the actual target demographic of children, dammit, and gets them into appreciating how cool these fighting monsters are and how cool it would be if they stuck with them even into a series that’s not Adventure. The Adventure branding and names to lure in the parents, the straightforward and easy-to-understand action-oriented narrative so that kids will think everything is awesome and that they’ll like it even when the story changes, and the merchandise and collab events booked everywhere so that they can all be reused for the next series too...because, remember, they failed with that during Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon (I mean, goodness, you kind of have to admire their persistence, because a ton of other kids’ franchises failing this many times would have given up by now), so it’s a bit unsurprising that they went all the way to get the kids’ attention at the expense of a lot of things that would attract veterans, especially since the veterans already have a well-developed adults’ pipeline to cater to them. This does also mean that this series is more likely to come off as a 67-episode toy commercial than any previous Digimon series, but it’s not even really the toys as much as they’re trying to sell the entire franchise and the actual monsters in the hopes that they’ll stick with it even when the narrative changes.

Nevertheless, here we are. The series is over. Ghost Game -- which, as of this writing, is looking to be much more of a conventional Digimon narrative, complete with older cast, obviously more dramatic atmosphere, and pretty much everything surrounding its PR -- is on its way, presumably thanks to the success of this endeavor. It’s hard to gauge it; we have it on record that they also intend it to be episodic, but remember that this doesn’t necessarily prevent it from having an overall dramatic plot or nuanced drama (especially since the abovementioned Appmon and Kitaro were perfectly capable of pulling off this balance). Nevertheless, it seems to be a lot more of the conventional kind of Digimon narrative we usually expect, so, as for us, adult long-time fans of the Digimon franchise (many of whom don’t have kids anyway), what exactly should we make of this? Well, as far as “supporting the franchise” goes, you’ll get much more progress supporting Ghost Game than the reboot; I highly doubt view counts and merch sales relative to an already-finished series will do nearly as much for the franchise’s health as much as the currently airing series, and, besides, it’d probably do us all a favor to support the endeavor that’s actually new and fresh. So when it comes to a “past” series like this, it’s all just going to come down to a question of personal preference and taste: is this a series you, personally, want to watch, and would you find it entertaining?

For some of you, it’s possible that it just won’t be your cup of tea at all -- and since, like I said, the majority of us here have based our expectations and preferences on up to seven series of Digimon that were not like this, that’s also perfectly fine, and in that case I don’t actually recommend you watch this. Of course, I’ve never thought that it was ever fair to expect a Digimon fan to have seen all of the series released to date; the more series we get, the more inhumane of a demand that’ll become, and I think this franchise becoming successful enough to have so many series that most people won’t have seen it all is a good thing. (It’s actually kind of alarming that the percentage of people who have seen it all is so high, because it means the franchise has failed to get much of an audience beyond comparatively hardcore people who committed to it all the way.) But I think, especially in this case, with a series for which adult fans like us were probably lowest on the priority list due to the sheer amount of desperation going on here, it’s fine to skip it, and if you’re someone who lives by a need for character depth or emotionally riveting narrative, the fact this series is (very unabashedly and unashamedly) mostly comprised of episodic stories and action sequences means you won’t have missed much and probably won’t feel too left out of any conversations going forward. That’s before we even get into the part where it’s still completely understandable to potentially have mixed feelings or resentment about the overuse of the Adventure brand for something like this, especially if Adventure is a particularly important series to you.

But for some of you out there, it might still be something you can enjoy on its own merits. I’ve seen people who were disappointed by the limited degree of Digimon action sequences in the past or the fact that the series has gotten overly fixated on humans, and had an absolute ball with the reboot because it finally got to represent parts of the franchise they felt hadn’t been shown off as well. “Fun” is a perfectly valid reason to enjoy something. It’s also perfectly possible to be someone who can enjoy character narratives like the prior Digimon series but also enjoy something that’s more for being outlandish and fun and has cool Digital World concepts and visuals -- and, like I said, it does not let up on that latter aspect at all, so there’s actually potential for a huge feast in that regard. I think as long as you don’t expect it to be a character narrative like Adventure -- which will only set you up for disappointment, because it’s not (and made very clear since even the earliest episodes and interviews that it had no intention of being one) -- it’s very possible to enjoy it for what it is, and for what it does uniquely.

[winterscaptain]

roots.

Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader a joyful future fic

a/n: another one from 2026! aaron retires from federal service this year, at 57. 

words: 2.4k warnings: kids!, missing haley hotchner hours, language

summary: “Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome.” ― George Washington, Farewell Address. au!october 2026

masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | ajf faq | requests closed!

SSA Mallory Kagan asks you to outline your career with the FBI - purposefully using your first name instead of using your title. It keeps the students guessing and paying attention. 

Plus, the payoff when they figure out who you are is the best part of the whole lecture. 

“My career at the FBI is more like a big tree than a path or a journey.” 

You look out over the classroom - blue shirts abound - and take a deep breath to center yourself. 

You’re used to giving this lecture with Aaron, but this is your first fall without him, which also means that this is the first academy class who won’t know him in person. 

They’ll only hear tell of the legend SSA Aaron Hotchner was stabbed nine times, lost his wife to a serial killer, and kept going. You know they’ll hear stories about his severity, his general lack of sunniness, hear rumors about the way he laughs with his children, his wife, and nobody else. 

You know the older agents tell stories about you, too. They say you ‘tamed’ Hotch, made him a little nicer. They might even say they’ve seen him smile at you, or they’ve seen you give him hell in public. 

Aaron Hotchner is practically a myth, now, only supported by your reputation, tall tales from academy classes of yesteryear, and his own legacy.

That retired bastard currently sits in your house with your kids, right on his fine behind, very likely falling into boredom-addled insanity. 

“Everything that I am - a parent, a wife, a friend, and an agent - is because of my work with the Behavioral Analysis Unit over the past nineteen years. My unit is my family, and I can’t get rid of them. Just like our own families, we love to hate each other.” 

The room laughs, and you know you have them hooked. 

“Jokes aside, I would encourage you to get to know your colleagues. Each relationship I built within my unit put a root into the ground, made the proverbial tree stronger - to extend the metaphor. I work with very few of the same people I started with, but I feel as steady and supported as I did back when they called us ‘The Elite Eight.’” 

You chuckle a little, clicking through your introductory slide to showcase a photo of the BAU in 2012. You point to each of them as you speak. 

“SSA Emily Prentiss, current unit chief of the Behavior Analysis unit and former head of the Interpol London office, responsible for taking down one of the most prolific international arms dealers in modern history.” 

The room is quiet, a little awestruck, so you add, “She’s a bit of a big deal.” 

They laugh.

“SSA Derek Morgan - you’ll probably hear stories about how he survived the Boston bombing with SSA Gideon in 2005, but don’t worry. He wasn’t there. He was with his momma in Chicago, celebrating her birthday.”

Another laugh. 

You’ve honed this routine over the last five years, knowing what to add, when to pause, what to cut if the students lose interest. 

“That said, SSA Morgan is one of the best profilers I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Today, he’s a consultant for DC Metro SWAT and is otherwise retired.”

Continuing down the line, “SSA Jennifer Jareau - JJ. Former communications liaison for the BAU, State Department, and DoD. She currently serves with the BAU as a profiler. If any of you are interested in PR or media relations, find an opportunity to speak with her about her experience. Her husband, Will, is a detective with the DC Metro Police and has plenty of stories of his own.”

A student raises a hand, and you give her the go-ahead. 

“Sorry for interrupting -“

You stop her. “You didn’t interrupt. You raised your hand. Don’t apologize for taking up space.” 

She smiles a little. “Okay. Um, I’m curious. How many people in your unit are married and/or have children? My understanding is that the work-life balance can be difficult in heavy-travel positions like the BAU.”

“It can absolutely be a challenge.” You look back at the photo. “In the course of my career, six of my colleagues have been or were already married and all of them went on to have children.”

“And you?”

You laugh a little, forgetting you’re alone up here. “Right.” 

The class laughs, and you point yourself out on the slide. 

“I still had my maiden name when this photo was taken, but now I share five children and a last name with SSA Aaron Hotchner.” You throw your thumb at Aaron’s likeness on the screen again for good measure. 

You check in with SSA Kagan to make sure you can share everything you usually do with Aaron present - your marriage was often the punchline of your lectures, letting you toe the line of humor a little farther than you normally would. 

She nods, a little smile on her face. 

“While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend dating your unit chief or marrying your section chief -“ you pause, holding your hands up in surrender to the echo of laughter “- even if they are the same person - you can certainly find the best people without looking too hard.” 

Hands shoot up into the air, but that always happens. It’s around this time people start asking the good questions. The people from their course materials and the people in front of them start to link together. 

They also figure out that you’re Agent Hotchner. That Agent Hotchner - the one married to the Agent Hotchner. 

You look out over the crowd again. “I know you have lots of questions, and I’m happy to confirm or deny any rumors about myself or my family, but,” you pause for dramatic effect. “Hold them for now - you’ll want to know the players before you ask the questions.” 

Hands drop, but pens start moving. You continue down the line, skipping over Aaron. 

“SSA David Rossi, a founding member of the BAU in the late 1980’s. He worked closely with SSA Jason Gideon, developing a database that we use to this day - one that outlines signatures, modus operandi, and victimology of modern serial killers. SSA Rossi is also well-known for his books - ten of them, in fact, that cover what we do in a kind of…” 

You search for a word. 

“Conversational format. He retired a couple of years ago, and is a full-time grandpa to all 16 of the BAU offspring.”

A few scattered chuckles pass through the room. 

“And then we have Dr. Spencer Reid - I could enumerate his degrees, but we don’t have that kind of time. He’s the smartest person I’ve ever met, and remains an asset to the BAU in the field today.” 

You click to another slide - a photo of all of you taken a few weeks ago. 

“SSA Matthew Simmons - retired from the United States Army and former member of the FBI International Response Team, or IRT. He’s been with the BAU for ten years now. Like Dr. Reid and SSA Prentiss, he knows multiple languages - which comes in handy.” You look out and raise your eyebrows. “I hope all of you did well in your Spanish classes in high school - you might need it.” 

Another laugh. 

“SSA Luke Alvez and Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia are another pair that come from, shall we say, nontraditional backgrounds. While Garcia is no longer with the BAU, SSA Alvez is also celebrating his tenth year with us this fall.” 

A student raises his hand, and you call on him. 

“Isn’t Penelope Garcia the hacker known as The Black Queen? I learned about her work when I was at MIT.” 

You snort. “Nice way to slip in you went to MIT, there, bud.” You pause, waiting for the ruckus to die down as the student in question turns bright red. “But yes. Her experience was invaluable to our team. Just to keep up, we stole an analyst from the NSA to replace her - nobody else could cut the mustard.” 

You look back, stepping forward and pacing as you speak.”And finally, Dr. Tara Lewis. Formerly working in the FBI Counsel’s office as a forensic psychologist, she joined our team on cases where specific pathologies were in play before becoming a full-fledged member of our team.

“So, as you can see, there are so many varied qualities we look for in profilers, and your own path will be informed by the skills you develop, your temperament, and your dedication to the work itself. There’s no right way to be an agent, and when you leave the academy in five weeks, the whole world of the bureau will be open to you.” 

Clicking back to your introductory slide, you turn to the front of the classroom. “I know all my colleagues well enough to take any questions you may have about their careers and paths through the bureau. For any questions I can’t answer, I am happy to direct you to them with the understanding they may not get back to you due to our caseload. I’ll take your questions now.” 

Hands shoot up into the air, and you specifically call on the student in the back - the one you know has a question about Aaron. 

“So, when you say SSA Aaron Hotchner, you mean the same one that worked the Boston Reaper case for ten years?”

SSA Kagan checks in with you, ready to shut him down, but you call her off. 

“That’s right. SSAs Jareau, Morgan, Prentiss, Rossi, Dr. Reid, Miss Garcia, and I worked that case in its final year as well.” 

“I have a follow-up if that’s okay.” 

You tacitly give him leave to continue. 

“How do you handle cases that get that… close? I know there were considerable...” He searches for the right word. “...challenges. How did you guys deal with that?”  

Good question. 

Returning to the podium, you lean heavily against it, lacing your fingers in front of you. “You’ve all read the Reaper case file, yes? It’s still included in the MCRT training courses?”

There are nods around the room, but you check in with Kagan anyway. 

“The declassified version is covered,” She says. “They’re familiar with the full scope of the case.” 

“Okay. So, as you all know…”

You remind them what happened, from 1998 to 2009, finally landing where the students want you. “And on November 23rd, 2009, Haley Reneé Hotchner was George Foyet’s 40th and final victim. She was thirty-nine years old. And she was my friend.” 

The room is dead silent, all eyes on you, somber and attentive. 

“The case was personal. It became personal because Foyet forced our hands. He attacked Agent Hotchner in his home and then targeted his family. So, the question is, how do we deal with that? Right?” 

Even Kagan’s watching you closely. It’s the first time you’ve covered this case without the rest of your team. In your joint lectures with Aaron, the case is off-limits for questions. She’s never heard you tell the story in your own words. 

You take a breath. “And the answer is… you don’t.” 

There are some confused faces, so you elaborate. “There isn’t anything you can do to push the case away from you - that’s how people get hurt. In the meantime, you make adjustments. Agent Hotchner placed Agent Morgan in an interim unit chief position until the case was over, for the sake of his health and sanity. We chased down every lead, understanding that the faster we caught Foyet, the faster Haley and Jack, Agent Hotchner’s son, could come home.” 

A young woman in front tentatively raises a hand, and you open a hand to her. “Yes?” 

“What happened, you know, after?” 

“We moved on as best we could. Going back to my original point -” 

You leave the podium and take your place in the center of the floor again. 

“- the trust you have in the people you work with can carry you through a great many things. And not all of you will see horror every day - but some of you will.” 

You pause for a moment, hoping this is the part that really sinks in for them. 

“Always have something to come home to. Always have something or someone that brings you peace, that can take you away from the work.” 

+++

You set your things down and walk through the door, immediately accosted by two almost-eight-year-olds and their over-eager little brother. 

“Momma!” 

You haul Elliot onto your hip and kiss Sophia’s head as Caroline burrows into your side. “Hi, darlings! Did you already have dinner?”

Sophia moves to answer, but Aaron’s voice shoots around the corner. “Yes!” 

With a smile, you seek him out, dragging the girls along with you. Lo and behold, Aaron’s at the sink, washing dishes. Isaac’s supervising - sitting on the counter, swinging his feet. 

Aaron gets a kiss on the cheek from you as you pass and he turns over his shoulder, chasing you until you peck him on the lips, Elliot squished between you. Your son squirms, and you set him on the ground to chase after his sisters. Isaac hops off the counter likely off to investigate the happenings before retreating to his room for the rest of the evening.

For once, you’re left alone. 

“How was your lecture?” 

Your arms free, you wrap around him and rest your full weight against his chest as he backs himself into the counter. “Went well. Missed you, though.” 

The corner of his mouth tips up. “Did they ask about Foyet?” 

“Mhmm. It was a good segue into trusting your team and building each other up, knowing when to step back, etcetera.” 

He nods. “Good way to bring it back around. How’s Kagan?” 

“She’s good, loving it, as always.” 

“Think she’s ever gonna retire?” He asks, tucking into your neck. 

You laugh as he presses kisses to the underside of your jaw. “Probably not.” 

Aaron leans back to look at you, bringing his hand to your face to brush over your cheekbone. “Are you ever gonna retire?” 

“Probably not.” 

“What if,” he says, his hands slipping into your back pockets, “you retired in…” He does the math in his head. “Thirteen-ish years and I make it worth your while.” 

“Oh yeah? Worth my while? And you’ll be, what, a hundred years old?” 

His eyes roll so hard you’re sure he could see his own brain. You pull him down for a kiss, but it doesn’t stop him from mumbling, “Give me a fuckin’ break,” against your mouth. 

“Never.” 

+++

tagging: @writefasttalkevenfaster @quillvine @stxrrywildflower @hurricanejjareau @ughitsbaby @rousethemouse @criminalsmarts @genevievedarcygranger @ssaic-jareau @hotchsflower @hotchslatte @risenfox @mrs-dr-reid @mrs-marcus-moreno @pan-pride-12 @sunshine-em @jdougl-love @dreila03 @forgottenword @aaronhotchnerr @ssa-morgan @tegggeeee @abschaffer2 @ssacandice-ray @ellyhotchner @lotties-journey-abroad @mrs-joel-pimentel-23-25 @mooneylupinblack @ssareidbby @qvid-pro-qvo @mandylove1000 @jeor @wakatoshislover @word-scribbless @bwbatta @capricorngf @missdowntonabbey @averyhotchner @joanofarkansass @popped-weasels @evee87 @nuvoleincielo @ssahotchnerr @this-broken-band-girl @winqhster @reidtomestyles @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @the-falling-in-the-danger @softbibxtch @iconicc @mangoberry43 @andreasworlsboring101 @kerrswriting @mac99martin @itsalwaysb33nyou @baumarvel @messyhairday-me @ssworldofsw @deagibs @crazyshannonigans @moonshinerbynight @jhiddles03 @teamhappyme @mendesmelodies @starsandasteroids @unicorn-bitch @ambicaos​ @itsmytimetoodream @pinkdiamond1016 

[ninjakitten1699]

More Oni headcanons that I wanted to add on

to @ambrosial-tea post but I forgot until now!

There are different tribes of Oni as stated in the last post. Aka Oni (Red), Ao Oni (Blue), Shiro Oni (Pale/White), and our Kuro Oni (Black/Dark).

We don’t know too much of the Dark Oni we got but we do know that Oni were originally intended to be guardians between Material Plane and Spirit World when the two began overlapping (possibly The Grasslands/Departed, and Cursed Realm before they began separating). Put a tribe of Oni on the Material Plane for a couple years and they’d splinter into subraces of Oni and become more corrupted by the years. Dark Oni became one of the tribes corrupted.

Aka Oni are the most common type of Oni with their dark red colors, large size, and toughness. They’re slightly bigger than the rest of their kin, more violent, unfocused, and pursue immediate satisfaction, disregarding long drawn out plots and schemes. They’re mostly known for strength too.

Ao Oni are known for their unnatural cunning and aptitude for magic, smaller than their red kin but larger than pale, and have different shades of dark blue. They’re the ones you’d catch calculating and meticulously pursuing lofty goals like power and knowledge.

Shiro Oni are known for their aloofness and connections to the spirit realm. They’re the smallest of the main three tribes and the fewest of members. They vary from pale white to light gray. (They may as well adopt other Oni who share their colors and hopefully teach them their ideals.) Pale Oni would rather keep things in balance between the material plane and spirit world as the ancient Oni intended. They guard their locations but will adventure for artifacts of the spirit world and mend balance. If we take that into account perhaps they are another reason why Realm travel is difficult to Oni who try to cross through the any of the realms involving afterlives.

While Oni have no concept of gender since they have both reproductive organs, they also have no concept of sexualities either. Honestly they just didn’t have a name for it when one didn’t feel the need to have sex or when another felt more attracted to the same sex aspects of their partner. (If anything, their type of relationships or way of thinking would be looked up upon because they felt closer to their spirituality and their true selves.) Again they sometimes don’t mate for reproduction but just for the vibes of their partner.

They probably didn’t have a name for having multiple partners at the time either. If one Oni wanted to be a part of what the other two had and they were content with the feel of them, then it was okay. Plus more hands to help raise the cub personally. (Essentially that’s what PolyGarm would basically be. They make Garm happy, they’re happy with him, and Lloyd would basically have more than two parents. At this point Lloyd would just have more dads and Koko is just the one good mom he deserves.)

The second Oni learn what kisses are and how they work, they find it just as addictive as they do with other acts of affection.

Oni are more closer to their family than they are to strangers because in most Oni’s belief, strangers brought suffering to the family. In turn they displayed their family’s name first before their own, showing pride in them and hoping to intimidate any strangers with ill intent towards them.

Speaking of Oni names, they don’t usually have any but when they do their names would be what positive traits the parents wish the child to take on. For example, a son could have “Akihiko”. “Aki” meaning “bright” and “hiko” meaning “boy/prince”. They could want him to be someone brighter than they ever hoped for. For a daughter, “Asuna” with “asu” meaning “tomorrow” and “na” to “greens” or “apple tree”. Maybe the parents are hoping the Oni daughter would lead them to a more plentiful day. And then there’s the family names. The most famous ones are “Hideyoshi” and “Ishikawa”. We’ve heard of these names and the history behind them, I wouldn’t want to come across any of their descendants that carry their name with honor.

Ironically “Harumi” is actually a name for a female Oni in some home brewing lore. One of her meanings is “govern/rule” and “beauty”. Goes to show how far she would take her name literally.

Shiro Oni/Pale Oni don’t have names, but it’s because they don’t want to be too close to the material plane while they guard the spirit realms. They would refer to themselves and each other as “that/this one” instead like how gargoyles in the old days would. If they come up with names, it’s for the sake of working with others on the material plane, but even then it only happens when they really trust the people around them.

Oni have a large appetite that could put the Pythor and the Anacondrai to shame. They could honestly compete against the Great Devourer and other wyrms.

An Oni’s pair of horns are a sign of honor. No pair of horns are alike, not even the closest siblings’ horns look the same. They all have their differences. Their horn length is their pride. Having them sawed off is quite literally shameful to the owner of them but they did do something to deserve it.

It’s possible that some Oni were confused at Garm’s horns not being there at first but they hear about the first time they grew out of his head he quite literally broke them off and bled for a good long while to the point of passing out. (Blood vessels actually go throughout the antlers/horns in animals which is why they aren’t busted right off easily. Why wouldn’t they to Oni horns?) Come to find out it was the FSM’s hate for Oni that made Garm hate himself and how he looked so Garm had them filed down to his scalp or small enough to hide in his hair. It honestly almost hurts the Oni’s look on the FSM even more but hey who hasn’t he hurt? It takes a couple more decades and some therapy before he finally let’s go of his internalized self hatred and trauma that he grows out his horns and finally has pride in himself like most Oni already do.

So it’s not uncommon for Oni to live among other races, whether secretly or not, due to their shapeshifting abilities, however sometimes they’re immediately shunned when their true form slips out. Unless they proved otherwise to the most accepting of inhabitants, they’re allowed to stay. By then they’d have a hybrid appearance with their horns out, either out of their kindness to ease the others’ fear of them or for their own personal benefit.

Oni that do live on their own choose to live in the wilderness or in the mountains. If living in society but still wanting some sort of solitude, they’d either be closer to the outskirts or deep in the downtown where you’d either have to ask directions to specific people to find them or already know where they are. Hence Mistaké with her small tea shop and Wu being able find her.

As stated before Oni have no problems with Half-Oni at all. They’re just welcoming another cub into the pack and it’s just the fact that they are a child of an Oni who fell in love with another humanoid. Although there are some cases of Oni being chased out by the other race with their cub in their arms and they just run until they find the closest tribe. They’d be welcomed into the tribe and the cub is basically adopted by them.

Again half Oni isn’t a problem to them, but they do have a problem with any particular wizards experimenting on Oni breeding with any other humanoids. The know it’s not the parents’ fault neither is the cub’s. If neither parent want nothing to do with them, then the half Oni cub is taken off of their hands by another Oni who was grieving at a loss of a cub (or the realization they couldn’t have any) or a pairing who wouldn’t mind another. The cub won’t have a terrible environment, the parents won’t have to unwillingly interact with the child until they resolve their own issues or they wish to visit and see them grow.

Meanwhile, those wizards will never know peace again until the day they die, even other tribes, who they could be at war with, will catch wind of what happen and help in taking them out. By the time those wizards die, even the Pale Oni who have no ties with Omega or any other tribes won’t be forgiving to them. They won’t do anything too harmful to them, but they will lead them to the terrible part of the Cursed Realm and those wizards proceed to stay there until they fade out of existence entirely.

Enough angst there and let’s go back to fluff. I bet Oni would love dice. Like not even for games but for the click-clack sound. (“Lloyd. They’re metal dice. You cannot have—.” “Shiny sparkly metal bits make pretty sounds! :D” “Garmadon please tell your son not— Not you too!” “Wha~ It does sound pretty.”)

Y’all know how like adult lions play with their babies? They pretend to be hurt and that the cub is super strong to help build up their confidence. Hear me out, Oni do that too. Big goddamn Omega really be taking hits from tiny little cubs, Mistaké be playing with little Garmadon and playing dead on him, then Garm just does the same thing for little Lloyd. (“Koko, sweetie, help. It’s the battle of the century in here. Help, save me. He’s too powerful!” “*tiny war cry*”)

Someone makes a baby Oni cry one time and boy it’s absolutely over. It’s on sight for that person. I’m telling you On Sight!

Oni can purr loud enough to the point where it rumbles in them like a motor and that’s how cubs feel their parents’ purring. Then there’s baby Oni just babbling and the adult Oni just pretend to have a whole conversation with them. Don’t get me started on them playing soft flute music to help the toddler Oni sleep.

We probably only got a few words out of Omega when they first appeared because we were hearing them through human ears. Lloyd’s Oni brain would click on and translates what he knows while Garm in full Oni form can get full sentences out of Omega.

Oni are willing to learn a different language if it helps others understand them and their intentions. Now let’s just think of Lloyd connecting to his Oni side of the family (since let’s face it, the Oni are going to be around longer than most of his friends are) through teaching them sign language.

They also try to teach him their Oni tongue but he can only grasp a few words at a time easily. When he finally learns the language, next thing you know he’s going to be cursing and only Oni will understand. Some (aka Mistaké) want to scold him and others (*cough*Garmadon*cough*) find it hilarious.

Garmadon’s Oni-Dragon hybrid brain wants him to decorate his significant others and now I think of Oni just sharing the precious items they hoard with their mate. Wait till they figure out they can make jewelry and have their significant other wear it.

[asleepinawell]

Book Recs

I was gonna do one of these at the end of the year, but I’ve somehow managed to read 26 books this year already (12 novellas, 14 novels), almost all featuring queer authors and/or characters so this is already a long list.

Note: There’s a few on here I was kind of meh about, but in most of those cases it was a ‘book might be good but it’s not for me so i’ll mention it to put it on people’s radar anyway’ type of thing. Insert the usual necessary tumblr disclaimer about all of this being only my opinion and your opinions are valid too etc etc.

In order of when I read them:

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir - Fantasy novella from the author of gideon the ninth that’s a twist on the classic princess trapped in a tower waiting for a prince story. Quite fun. (novella)

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht - Dark fantasy about revenge and magic. m/m couple but like I said it’s pretty dark and twisted all around so definitely not a happy queer romantic story. My opinion was interesting premise that could have been executed better and probably should have been a full novel to embellish on the world building potential. (novella)

A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace - Arkady Martine - Probably tied with murderbot as the best things I read this year. Scifi, f/f couple, wonderfully done exploration of what it means to fall in love with a culture that is destroying your own. More of the many queer anti-imperialist books that have come out recently and certainly some of the best. The second one is a direct continuation of the first. (2 novels)

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson - This is the third in the Baru Cormorant series (The Masquerade) and was my favorite so far. The second and third book were originally one book that got split I believe and the second book didn’t stand alone as well (though was still great), but the third book really made up for that. Dark fantasy world starring a queer woc whose country and culture is destroyed by the imperial forces of that world colonizing and assimilating them. She vows revenge and decides to work her way up within her enemy’s ranks to enact it from within and bring an empire to ruins. Really really fascinating study of so many different aspects of our own world and the systems which enable and allow bigotry and how bigoted and violent narratives are used to control minorities. This is definitely a darker series and I was particularly impressed with some of the commentary on the racism prevalent in non-intersectional feminism as depicted through a fantasy world. Can’t wait for the last one to come out! (3 novels, 1 forthcoming)

The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells - There’s six of them--5 novella and a novel--and the first is All Systems Red. Told from the point of view of a self-aware droid/android that is rented out by a corporation to provide protection in a dystopian capitalist hellhole future that isn’t that unlike our current capitalist dystopia but is in space. Muderbot hacked the chip that controlled it and instead of going rogue just wants to be left alone to watch its favorite tv shows. Murderbot is painfully relatable and the books are both funny and poignant. Highly recommended. (5 novellas and a novel).

Winter’s Orbit - Everina Maxwell - This was a m/m romance novel with a scifi backdrop of royal intrigue. Generally I’m more into scifi with a queer relationship in the background than vice versa, so it wasn’t my favorite, BUT I think it was still well written and someone looking for more of the romance angle would enjoy it. Has all your favorite romance tropes in it, especially the yearning. (novel)

The Divine Cities - Robert Jackson Bennett - Three book series. I’m very conflicted about this one. Set in a fantasy world where an enslaved nation overthrew the country enslaving them and now rules over them. It’s a story of what happens after the triumphant victory and within that it’s also a murder mystery tied into the dying magic of the conquered nation. It also has a six foot something naked oily viking man fist fight a cthulhu in a frozen river. The second book was by far my favorite, mostly due to the main character being brilliant. My conflict comes from the fact I don’t feel like the story treated its women and queer characters well. Like it had really great characters but it didn’t do great by them overall. That and the third book didn’t live up to the first two. But still definitely worth a read, can’t stress enough how cool some of the world building was. (3 novels)

Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant - This might be the only one on here I disliked. It’s got a doomed boat voyage and creepy underwater terror and monsters and a super diverse cast of characters, but I just didn’t enjoy the writing style. While having a diverse cast is great, there were a lot of moments where it felt like characters were pausing to explain things about themselves that felt like a tumblr post rather than a normal conversation you might have while actively being hunted by monsters. I also bounced off all the characters. But a lot of people seem to have liked it so if you’re into horror and want a book with a f/f main couple then maybe you’ll enjoy it. (novel)

Dead Djinn Universe - P. Djèlí Clark - Around the early 1900′s, a man in Egypt discovers a way to access another world and bring Djinn and mysterious clockwork beings called Angels through. As a result, Egypt tells the British to get fucked and Cairo becomes one of the most powerful cities in the world. So Egypt, magic, djinn, a steampunk-ish vibe, oh and the main character is a butch queer woman who enjoys wearing dapper suits and looking fabulous while she investigates supernatural events. Her girlfriend is also mysterious and badass. And she has a cat. There’s three novella (one of which technically might be considered a short story) and then the first novel. You should absolutely read the novellas first (A Dead Djinn in Cairo, The Angel of Khan el-Khalili, The Haunting of Tram Car 015). Super fun and imaginative series. (3 novellas and a novel, more forthcoming)

River of Teeth & Taste of Marrow - Sarah Gailey - From the book description

“In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true. Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two. This was a terrible plan.”

Queer hippo riders!!!! Very much a western but with hippos. Main couple included a non-binary character. Loved the first one. The second one I was more meh about due to one of the characters I was supposed to like having obnoxious man pain that a woman had to take the brunt of the whole time. Also there were less hippos. But queer hippo riders! Definitely read the first one, and they’re both novellas so no reason not to read the second as well. (2 novellas)

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers - I may be the only person who hasn’t read the long way to a small angry planet at this point, but I did grab her new novella and I loved it. It made me want to go sit out in the woods and feel peaceful. The world it’s set in feels like a peaceful post-apocalypse...or diverted apocalypse maybe. Humans built robots and robots gained sentience, but instead of rebelling they just up and left and went into the wilderness with a promise that the humans wouldn’t follow them.The remaining human society reshaped itself into something new and peaceful. It’s the story of a monk who leaves their habitual monking duties to go be a tea monk and then later wanders into the wilderness and becomes the first human in ages to meet a robot. Very sad there’s no fan art yet. (novella, more forthcoming)

The March North - Graydon Saunders - This was such a weird book that I’m not sure how to explain it. The prose style is hard to get used to and I suspect a lot of people will bounce off it in the first chapter. There’s no third person pronouns used at all and important events get mentioned once in passing and if you blink you’ll miss them. Set on a world where magic is extremely common to the point that rivers sometimes run with blood or fire and the local weeds are something out of a horror movie and most of the world is run by powerful sorcerer dictators, one country banded together (with the help of a few powerful sorcerers who were tired of all the bullshit) to form a free country where powerful sorcerers wouldn’t rule and the small magics of every day folks could be combined to work together. The story revolves around a Captain of the military force on the border who one day has three very powerful sorcerers sent to them by the main government with the hint that just maybe there’s about to be a big invasion (there is) with the implication of take these guys and go deal with this. The world building is extremely complex and very cool...when you can actually understand what the fuck is going on. There is also a murder sheep named Eustace who breathes fire and eats just about everything and is a Very Good Boy and belongs to the most terrifying sorcerer in the world who appears as a little old grandma with knitting. It had one of the most epic badass and wonderfully grotesque battles I’ve ever read. But yeah, it is not what I would call easy reading. Opinions may vary wildly. I did also read the second one (A Succession of Bad Days) in the series which was easier to follow and had a lot more details about the world, but overall I was more meh about it despite some cool aspects. The chapters and chapters of the extreme details of building a house that made up half the novel just weren’t my thing. (novels).

The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson - In this world parallels universes exist and we’ve discovered how to travel between them, but the catch is you can only go to worlds where the ‘you’ there is already dead. This turns into an uncomfortable look at who would be the people most likely to have died on many worlds and how things like class and race would fit into that and what we would actually use this ability for (if you guessed stealing resources and the stock market you’d be correct). The main character is a queer woc who travels between worlds with the assistance of her handler (another queer woc) who she has the hots for. She accidentally stumbles on a whole lot of mess and conspiracy and gets swept up in that. Really enjoyed it. (novel)

Witchmark - C.L. Polk - Fantasy world reminiscent of Victorian England (I think?) where a young man with magical gifts runs away from his powerful family to avoid being exploited by them. He joins the army and fights in a war and comes home to try and live a quiet life as a doctor, but a murder pulls him into a larger mystery that upturns his life. Also he’s extremely gay and there’s a prevalent m/m romance. This one was a fun-but-not-mind-blowing one for me. (novel, 2 more in the series I haven’t read)

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon - This was one of those that everyone loved but I couldn’t get into for some reason. I tried twice and only got about halfway through the second time. It’s got dragons and queer ladies and fantasy world and all the things I like, but I wasn’t that invested in the main story (which included the f/f couple) and was more interested in the smaller story about a woman trying to become a dragon rider. There are few things that beat out a lady and her dragon friend story for me and that was the storyline that felt neglected and took a different turn right when we got to the part I’d been waiting for. But, I know a lot of people whose reading opinions I respect who loved it, and if you like epic fantasy with dragons and queens and treachery and pirates and queer characters then I’d say you should definitely give it a try. (novel)

Bonus: I didn’t read these series this year, but if you haven’t read them yet, you should.

Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice) - Ann Leckie - Spaceship AI stuck in a human body out for revenge for their former captain, but that summary does not come close to doing it justice. Another one examining imperialism and also gender and race.(3 novels)

Kushiel's Legacy Series - Jacqueline Carey - This is two series, six books total, and starts with Kushiel's Dart. Alternate universe Renaissance-y Europe in a fantastical world where sex isn't shameful and sex workers are respected and prized. Lots of political intrigue and mystery. A lot of BDSM and kinky stuff too (the main character is a sexual masochist, oh and also bi!). I first read this series when I was fifteen or sixteen and it definitely made a big impression on me. Same author also wrote the Santa Olivia series which I’d also recommend. (6 novels)

The Locked Tomb (Gideon the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir - I mean, if you follow me, you know. If you don’t follow me you still probably know. I’d have felt remiss to have left them off though. Lesbian Necormancers in Space. Memes! Skeletons! Biceps! Go read them. (2 novels, 2 forthcoming, 1 short story)

Books On My To Read List:

Fireheart Tiger - Aliette de Bodard

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Zen Cho

Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse

This Is How You Lose the TIme War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee

Also, if anyone has any recs for scifi/fantasy books starring queer men (not necessarily having to do with a queer relationship) and written by queer men I’d love them. There’s a lot written by women, and some of them are great, but I’d love to read a story about queer men from their own perspective.

[4stars-uswnt]

A Champ and a Superstar [Emily Sonnett x Reader]

requested by anon: could you do a emily sonnett where the reader is her gf and doesn’t play soccer but supports emily and meets the team for the first time :)

You make your way to the private box, guided by a couple of security guards. Taking your seat, you unbutton your black blazer, straighten out your jeans, and take off your sunglasses. You had just arrived at the SheBelieves Cup to watch the US take on Japan, but more importantly, you were there to watch your secret girlfriend, Emily Sonnett.

—————

For the past six months, you had been on tour all across the country for your first album, only seeing your girlfriend through the screen of your phone. But you had decided that in between shows, you’d stop by to watch and support her. Although you were still a small up and coming artist, your debut album had become increasingly popular in not only the states but around the world; there was even talk of a few Grammy nominees in your near future. Therefore, due to your newfound fame, the overwhelming amount of attention you’d received from the paparazzi, and the fact that you were an extremely private person, you and Emily both decided to keep your relationship under wraps for the time being, only telling your family and your manager.

—————

It was about twenty minutes before kickoff, when you receive a text from your publicist, letting you know that US Soccer and Fox Sports had found out about your presence and they wanted a quick interview. You sigh and lock your phone, knowing you won’t be able to get out of this one, as you knew your appearance would be a big deal not only because of your ‘celebrity status’ but also because you had been a huge public fan and advocate for the team.

A few moments later, a woman with a microphone and a cameramen enter your box, upon approval of your bodyguard. She explains to you the basic outline of her questions, and then signals for the camera to begin.

“Thanks, Julie. Today, we’re joined by singer and song-writer, (Y/N) (Y/L/N). How are you?”

“I’m doing good. Pretty excited to watch this match and support the team.” You respond with enthusiasm.

“Yes! I’ve seen your tweets. You’re a pretty big fan of the national team. How did that start?”

You continue to answer her questions, varying from your new album to your thoughts on the team. Meanwhile, down on the field, many of the USWNT players had noticed your interview playing on the big screen. Being big fans of you and your music, they were all surprised and freaking out that you were here watching one of their matches.

“Oh my gosh! Is that (Y/N) (Y/L/N)?” Kelley points.

“Holy crap, it is.” Ashlyn gasps, and Ali rolls her eyes at her wife’s childish behavior, even though she was a huge fan of you herself.

“Her music makes me proud to be gay.” Pinoe smirks triumphantly, proud of the fact that she had been the one to introduce your album to the team.

By now, there were murmurs amongst the team of their favorite new artist sitting in the stands.

Rose pokes Emily on the shoulder, interrupting her juggling session.

“Hey, did you see (Y/N) (Y/L/N) is here?”

Emily immediately lets the ball drop to the ground and turns to her friend, eyes wide open.

“What!?” She exclaims. “She’s here? Like in the stadium?” Why hadn’t you told her you were coming?

“Yes, dummy. Right up there.” Rose points at the big screen, where you were just ending your interview. You give the camera one last smile, before the screen returns to the regular scoreboard.

Emily scans the stadium, searching for you. As soon as she sees you in your box, she finds you’re already looking at her. The defender gives you a small smile before tilting her head sideways, silently asking you what you were doing here. You only smirk and wink at her, before she has to return to the huddle, as the game is about to start.

—————

You sit back and relax, enjoying the play of both teams, occasionally checking your phone and responding to some emails. You clap and cheer at each of the three goals from the US, finding yourself getting emotional over Christen’s goal. As the game is coming to an end, and the US has clearly won, 3-1, you see Emily waving at you, calling you to come down to the field. You beam with excitement, turning to ask your bodyguard to escort you.

On your way down, you are stopped to sign some autographs and take some pictures, as you were easily recognizable, especially after your interview. But once the final whistle blew and the celebrations began, the crowd’s attention turns elsewhere, focussing on the stage where the award ceremony was starting.

Once the trophy was lifted, the players disperse across the field, some still celebrating with confetti, some taking pictures and interacting with fans, and others greeting friends and family. Emily Sonnett was one of the latter, as she made a beeline for you. You lean down over the railing, as your girlfriend approaches.

“Hey there, champ.”

“Hey there, superstar.” Emily smirks, knowing your disdain for the title. She watches as you roll you eyes, but before you could respond, Emily decides to make a bold move. She reaches up to cup your face, bringing you in for a chaste but sweet kiss. You bring your own hands up to the blondes face, caressing her cheeks, as the two of you pull away. Leaning your forehead against hers, you let out a small giggle.

“Did we just do that?”

Emily hums. “We just came out.”

Your smile widens, finally feeling truly happy.

—————

While you and Emily were stuck in your own little world, the rest of the USWNT watched on as the defender started talking to you, their jaws dropping, as the two of you kissed.

“Worms! How does your son know (Y/N) (Y/L/N)?!” Alex turned to Kelley, who was just as baffled as everyone else.

“I—I have no clue.” The freckled woman stutters.

“Wow. Sonny has more game than we thought.” Pinoe exclaims, Ashlyn nodding along in agreement, as the team continues to watch you and Emily.

—————

Your joyful bliss comes to a halt, as you peek over your girlfriend’s shoulder and see all of the players with their eyes on you.

“Ummm… we have a little bit of an audience.” Motioning towards the group of women, disregarding the hundreds of fans in the stadium and the thousands watching on TV.

Emily turns around to face her teammates, cringing at the looks they’re giving her. She looks back at you, nodding her head towards the team.

“You wanna meet them?”

Your eyes almost pop out of their sockets, and a knot forms in your throat. “Um, what?”

“C’mon, they just saw us kiss. They’re gonna wanna meet you.” Emily explains, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

You nod in agreement, too nervous to actually speak. You had been a huge fan of this team and many of the players, like Alex Morgan, Christen Press, Megan Rapinoe, and Tobin Heath, since you were a young girl. These women were not only your idols but also some of the most important people in your girlfriend’s life, so it was no surprise that it felt as you were about to throw up your nerves.

Emily guides you down on to the field, your security not far behind, as you make your way towards the locker room. Walking down the hallway, you can hear the familiar tune of your most popular song, “Never Giving Up,” blaring from the room you are about to enter. You feel your face flush in embarrassment upon hearing your own lyrics. Your girlfriend rolls her eyes at her teammates purposeful choice of song, as she runs her hand up and down your back, trying to soothe your nerves.

“Don’t work yourself up, babe. They’re gonna love you. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re already pretty big fans of yours.” Emily kisses your blushing cheek.

As you enter the USWNT locker room, all conversation quiets, all dancing stops, and the music pauses, as all eyes were now on you. After a moment of silence, with no one really knowing where to begin, you hear Kelley whisper into Alex’s ear.

“Holy crap. That’s (Y/N) (Y/L/N). We’re in the presence of (Y/N) (Y/L/N).” Alex gives her best friend a slap on the shoulder, effectively silencing her.

“So you’re all probably wondering how I know (Y/N).” Emily starts, addressing her teammates and even the coaching staff, who are now listening. “Ummm, so here’s the thing… it’s just…I didn’t mean to keep this from you guys… but we agreed to keep it private…so don’t be too upset—”

“We’re dating!” You burst, unable to listen to your girlfriend stumble over her words any longer. At the confirmation of their suspicions, the team is left stunned into silence once again.

Lindsey breaks the stupor first. “Wait, let me get this straight. You, Emily Sonnett, the woman who face planted after tripping over nothing the other day, are dating (Y/N) (Y/L/N), the most popular singer at the moment who is undoubtedly up for a Grammy this year?”

Emily, who had been mentally following her friend’s words and connecting the dots, nods in affirmation. “Yup.” She exclaims, beaming pridefully, as she wraps her arm around your waist, kissing your temple.

“How?” Kelley blurts out, receiving another slap from Alex.

“Hey!” Emily protests, while you let out a snicker, poking your girlfriend’s side.

“Wait!” Ashlyn interrupts, and she narrows her eyes at you. “Even though we are big fans of you, and always have your album playing in the locker room, and we appreciate your support, and you’re part of the gayng…wait… I’m getting off track.” She shakes her head. “What are your intentions with our dear Sonny?” The other women, also curious, turn to you, awaiting your answer.

“Uhhhh… well I… ummm.” You struggle to form a sentence, as the gaze of the twenty-two women, many of whom you look up to, crumbles your confidence. It isn’t until you feel your girlfriend squeeze your waist and give you an encouraging smile that you find the appropriate words.

“I love her.” You state honestly, ignoring the look on Emily’s face, as this is the first time you’re saying those words. “Even though we’ve only been dating for a couple of months, I think I’ve known ever since our first date, despite Em almost ruining it by spilling wine on my dress.” You chuckle fondly at the memory before continuing. “She makes me laugh even when I don’t want to, and she comforts me when I’m sad. I’ve honestly never been happier than when I’m with her.” You reveal, and you take a deep breath. “So I guess my intentions are to love her, and exude the same light in her life as she shines in mine.”

Next to you, you see your girlfriend with misty eyes. She buries her face in your neck, peppering you with many kisses beneath your ear.

“I love you too.” She whispers for only you to hear, as she pulls away to gauge her teammates reaction, hoping for their approval.

“Well no wonder she’s a singer and song writer. That was freaking beautiful.” Ashlyn calls out.

“Yeah. No kidding.” Kelley huffs out, wiping her eyes of what you can’t tell to be real or fake tears.

Megan approaches the front of the room, now standing in front of you. “Thank god you’re a good one, kid. We liked you before, but now we absolutely love you. Some more than others.” She smirks at your girlfriend, before she boasts pridefully, “Y’know I was the one who introduced the team to your album.”

You tuck your head, almost not believing that Megan Rapinoe actually enjoys your music. “Thanks.”

“Well, now that your dating Sonny here, you’re officially part of the fam.” She looks back at her teammates for confirmation. “Right guys?!”

You hear a collection of ‘yes!’, ‘duh!’, ‘hell yeah!’, and ‘of course!’ come from the group of women.

You can’t help but beam at the thought of being accepted by the team.

“Thank you.” You whisper, snuggling further into Emily’s chest.

Looking down at you, she sweeps the hair out of your face. “For what?”

“Loving me.”

She softly grins, placing a kiss on the top of your head. “There’s nothing else I’d rather do.”

[felassan]

Highlights and insights from the N7 Day cast & crew reunion panel

[Rewatch link]

In case a text format is better for anyone. There are some NSFW references. Cut for length.

(Some paraphrasing.)

“Some of us are inebriated”

“Patrick Weekes, the killer of man and beasts, the breaker of hearts”

JHale put the whole thing together, it’s the biggest ME cast reunion to date

The cast had no idea that the remaster was a thing

Lots of ace discussion about what the magic of the MET is (“it captured lightning in a bottle”)

Lots of warm fuzzies between the cast, crew and community, and lots of fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes

Lots of great discussion on the diversity and inclusion in ME: on gender, sexuality, representation, empowerment, the core message in the MET that “we’re all in this together or we’re screwed”, the progress made in the portrayal of female characters in gaming, etc. “Everything behind what went into these characters was authentic, we [the VAs] could tell that so much research, texture, authenticity etc had gone into them. It really made a difference”. JHale: “I’ve spent my career kicking down ceilings [barriers and so on women actors experience] with my steel-toed boot. To get to be a part of this game that has now created the expectation that there now be a female PC, ‘duh’, is once of the great things of my life. BioWare listened and put her on the box. The first time someone dropped the box in front of me I held it over my head and screamed over the crowd, ‘Casey Hudson, thank youuu!!’ It was a divine moment. This game was the moment the boot finally crashed through the glass, pushed by millions of women.”

The panel received many messages from the question submission from fans expressing that MET really helped them through very dark places and periods in their lives. The cast have had a lot of interactions with fans over the years where the fans expressed similar sentiments to them

ME was one of the first games Keythe Farley (Thane) acted for that had branching dialogue/dialogue choices, and when he saw the script with that when he went in, he was like “wow”. ME was the second big game D. C. Douglas (Legion) ever did. In his first audition he didn’t know it was for a robot-type character as it was disguised as something else with a military-feel. The second time it was to do a speech/lament at someone’s funeral and he knew it was for a robot. He said playing Legion for him was a case of “wake up, drink some coffee and go to work”

Jack was really special to her VA Courtenay Taylor because she relates to her so much and had a lot of similar emotional problems and personal troubles in her past. Jack helped her become who she has became. The host added that in his interactions with Courtenay over the years, he realized very quickly that she is very much like Jack

AWR has two moms, something which she hasn’t talked about/expressly said publicly before. Talking about recording lines between Sam and Femshep made her tear up. She said that being raised by two moms in the 80s was tough due to societal attitudes at the time, and so to see a loving relationship between two women depicted in a game was a big deal for her. When recording the white picket fence conversation, she was actually crying (“and then I’m crying because of the lesbians”). It was a huge moment for her to represent her moms’ journey. When she went home she told them all about how her character is gay and wants a white picket fence and everything “just like we had”.

When PW was working on Sam’s arc, one of the things they did was show it to one of their colleagues, who is a lesbian, asking what things she’d like to see in an arc like that and what things she felt were missing from it. The white picket fence conversation came from the colleague’s feedback (“we wanna see the nice, healthy, happy domestic stuff”, as it’s often missing in portrayals of wlw relationships)

As the VAs got more into their characters, they sometimes had feedback and input to the process to offer, like “I don’t think she’d say [this] like [that]”. Sometimes they knew their characters even better than the crew did sometimes. JHale waxed lyrical about Caroline Livingstone’s awesome direction, with the host adding that he has interviewed a lot of the VAs over the years and they all talk about Caroline like she’s Gandalf the White coming to the rescue in LotR. AWR expressed that Caroline is really funny (“don’t worry it’s not you, PW was sick when they wrote this line that’s why”) and emotionally in-tune with them and this makes long hard sessions with her a joy

When Mark went into record for the Citadel DLC one day he asked Caroline “wouldn’t be great if Shepard’s clone had been made to be the opposite gender? Then the two Shepards could fight each other!”

William Salyers (Mordin) likes the way Mordin’s story ended and felt that it was wonderful to be able to play that. He feels like the luckiest person because as he wasn’t the original VA of Mordin, he got to come in late to something that was amazing. “Caroline helped me get to where I needed to be emotionally to play that final scene. It was one of the most moving things I’ve ever gotten to do personally for a piece of interactive art”. PW related that with Mordin’s writing, they didn’t realize how much they were asking for. They thought William was amazing doing all the science-speak/technobabble, as they themselves didn’t know what it meant, and then suddenly having to deliver emotional heartbreaking lines. William’s always been a secret science nerd and so he loved that fact about Mordin. “It was a real treat to say your words”

Karin: “I always claim credit for the Scientist Salarian song even though I had nothing to do with it. I opened that door for PW”

Steve Blum (Grunt) found it a real treat playing Grunt as Grunt is a tough soldier on the outside but a [babey] on the inside, while he is more the other way around (softer on the outside, fight-y inside). He isn’t a gamer and so didn’t know what to expect or what he was getting into. There was the big pile of words, they showed him the picture of Grunt, and he just ran with it. “Grunt was kind of a perfect character for me in that respect”. Side note: his wry comments throughout the panel were hilarious

“Casey Hudson, our glorious loving overlord”

Courtenay jokes about “interspecies snorkeling”

The women Courtenay met working on this game are her friends for life. Ali Hillis (Liara) gave her her number the night of the ME3 drop and was like “let’s hang out!!” “JHale is the shit. I go to England and there’s AWR and I have this friend for life”.

“We’re a family”. The host comments that you don’t see this kind of closeness between the people on a lot of projects

Kimberley Brooks (Ashley) thinks things have and are changing for the better in terms of roles for women, and roles for brown and black women. This year she has noticed increasing awareness of inclusion and of where it’s lacking. “The copies I’m being sent for auditions, it’s drastically changing, I’m seeing it change before my eyes. It’s really exciting, there’s more and more roles for me.” “Ash is such a strong character and I felt very badass playing her, it was life-changing”. She’s excited that the remaster is going to be a new way to see these characters that they’ve been so lucky to voice. Kimberley/Ash was the first female character Karin saw in the studio, when she saw her she was like “Wow, she’s so kickass and inspiring”. At this point Karin hadn’t been working at BioWare for all that long, and she wanted to thank Kimberley, because she saw her and heard her voice and had a personal ‘this changes everything’ moment

Raphael Sbarge (Kaidan) finds it very moving how many women were encouraged into gaming due to ME

Raphael: “Everyone here has awesome varied careers, but because ME was so collaborative [and so on], [it was something really rare and special]. Nothing else I’ve done has been so important or impassioned, it has almost a religious experience to it, which you can see from tears in fans’ eyes and tattoos and people talking about it 10 years later”. “I’m so grateful for it.” “Clearly we’re going to do this again next year! :D” D. C. added that it’s going to follow him for the rest of his career. Courtenay says it has catapulted her career

PW talked about how it’s great that the female chars in ME were allowed to have real, realistic flaws and dark periods (as opposed to nonsense stuff like ‘her flaw is that she’s clumsy’)

Having the male and female PC be voiced was a big, expensive commitment for the studio. Karin commented that at the time, it was a risk that the pretty-much almost entirely-male leadership of BioWare at the time decided was important to take, and so she was happy that these were the values her colleagues had

PW was “the junior baby writer on ME1. I’d just gotten to the studio and Mac Walters fell down a flight of stairs and hurt his back, and they pulled me in while he was healing”. Karin: “Mac was very understanding when PW fell on the ice and hurt themselves during ME2.” PW: “My job in ME1 was to come up with conversations between followers to pass the time in the elevator loading times. I was throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick”

Steve turning his volume down before he shouts classic Grunt quotes down the mic

Caroline: “Do you know how many tears were shed in the booth? How many times have we all cried in the booth...” JHale: “We were recording the end of ME3, which I never call the end, because I’m always like I’M HERE! [wink] The goodbye Garrus lines” - these lines got right under her skin and when she went to say her lines she couldn’t speak because she’d burst into tears. “It was all I could do to say those words... and then there was silence... [and Caroline had gotten choked up too].” This was one of the last sessions they did. PW: “John Dombrow wrote Garrus in ME3 and I’m gonna tell him that he got you both to break.”

Caroline was also really teary during Keith David’s (Anderson)’s performance where he tells Shepard she’s like his daughter. This moment was one of JHale’s favorites to act

BioWare came up with a proprietary VA recording system which JHale describes as a secret sauce as-yet not widely-used in the industry

Lots of fun in the line-reading portion at the end. The lines/scenes were sent in by fans. This starts around timestamp 1 hour 50 mins. There’s a break where they discuss more anecdotes after a bit then some line-reading resumes at 1 hour 59 mins 18 secs

"Salarian Vorcha Conrad Verner simmering sexual tension scene”

One of PW’s fondest memories is of ME3 when JHale and Mark got to play off each other (which they naturally didn’t get to do very much), when PW had shoved the entire script of the Blasto movie into random ambience throughout the Citadel. They knew Mark was going to be Blasto as he voiced most of the hanar. PW: “We had to have Blasto’s elcor partner’s hot sister... And I was like could it be JHale?? Because they hardly ever get to talk to each other. It was one of my proudest moments”. Mark: “Not only that, we had a romance.” JHale: “Yeah, it was hot”.

“Think of the poor cold freezing Edmontonian hanar”

PW’s story about Sam’s toothbrush: They wrote it as a throwaway line but AWR did it so well that PW wanted to bring it back in the Citadel DLC, as that DLC was the action-comedy one. So they decided the toothbrush was going to save the Normandy. The art director at the time was in an early playthrough of the scene and in that version of the scene Sam held up her empty hand. The director was like “We gotta make the toothbrush? Really? It’s gonna be thousands of dollars to render the toothbrush.” It then got to the next few lines and the director deadpanned at PW “Okay that’s pretty good, we’ll make the toothbrush.” PW: “Good, I got my toothbrush.”

It was John’s idea that we find out that Mordin had been working on a crime noir novel. There was a period in the development of the Citadel DLC where PW was feeling like “Mordin’s gone, he had his big moment, I want to respect and honor that” and the entire team were like “I think Mordin needs a couple more songs dude”. “Well alright!” By that point William had shown them he could deliver literally any line

“Oh I need a shower that was so steamy hot”

PW got in trouble with Localization over Jack’s “Save some of your energy, we’re gonna do it on the pool table” exchange. Localization were like “Um could you explain what Jack means by this??” These lines were PW’s, Karin as an editor got the question about it and passed it on to PW like “nope this is your fault”. “The best part is it was France that needed PW to explain the joke while apparently Germany were like ‘Yes please confirm that this is regarding the possibility of oral sex-’”

Keythe on voicing Thane: “Thane was a real lesson in opening up to the character, allowing this beautifully conflicted character to exist. Each character in the MET has conflicts within themselves and a tragic flaw that is revealed through the course of conflict.” He also waxed lyrical about how the MET was akin to Star Wars and Citizen Kane, and about the interconnectedness and representation in it

D. C.: “I have a question for you guys. Was it a conscious decision to not have Legion as a romance? Because there are a lot of upset people out there!!” “Voltage problems.” “A lot of creative reuses of ‘There was a hole.’” PW: “It was a process of us figuring out what we wanted to do. If we had known... The number of people who were like ‘I don’t know, are people gonna wanna romance Garrus? Liara? She’s blue and has no hair. Are people gonna be okay with that?” Karin: “We were young and naïve, now we know BioWare fans are thirsty.”

Derek brought in the first picture of Thane to show Caroline and she was like “He’s really hot, that’s gonna be a killer character. People are gonna want to romance that gentleman”

Raphael asked the BioWare team if there’s ever been a point where they thought about doing more DLC content or some kind of revival. “Has that ever come up?” “We’re legally obligated not to say, sorry, we’re going through a tunnel right now, bad reception!!”

D. C.: “Does this country have a soul?” “It does.”

“An N7 Day to remember! Go forth and heal.”