#but it's more like a short one shot

[bamsara]

trying to figure out if the continued nausea is related to intense stress and travel schedule or something simple like food poisoning or an infection

[altcvnningham]

canis major

adler x bell!reader

summary: adler doesn’t go back to berlin to forget, but he isn’t so eager to remember, either. after leaving you for dead on that clifftop in the arctic, he knows best to leave the past well alone. too bad that past seems to be alive and walking right in front of him; though where he wants to forget, it seems you’ve already beaten him to the punch. or; bell survives solovetsky and only has a hole in her head and amnesia to show for it. read on ao3

tags/cw: bell!reader, amnesia, light angst, referenced adlerbell, somehow bell survives the ending of cw, adler can't let shit go, adler is not capable of remorse but mayyybe a lil guilt?? dog symbolism always, no pairing yet but hopefully i continue this as a spicy drabble series idk wc: 2.7k

a/n: sooo this is my first fic for the cod fandom and the first fic i've posted online in a long time so hopefully this lil ramble suffices!! i've had adlerbell brainrot and wanted to get at least something out before bo6 ruins all of my headcanons so here's a snippet of something i hopefully find the motivation to continue into a mini series. enjoy :')

Sometimes, he goes back to Berlin.

Stumbling out of the muggy bar into the dank alleyway out the back, Adler fishes out a pack of cigarettes from the front of his jacket; two firm knocks of it against his palm before he plucks one out with his mouth, pockets the box, and flips open his lighter. The clink of the metal echoes into the empty around him, the sudden quiet suffused with the sounds of passing cars on the street, muffled laughter from inside the bar, and the distant barking of dogs. Strays.

The cigarette ignites, glowing a cherry red, and he gasps around the filter greedily. Upon exhale, he sighs.

Adler isn’t a sentimental man by any means. What little he clings to, he does so with a loose grip, less than happy but stolid enough to allow whatever else he deems unnecessary slip through his fingers. Places, people. Things. Memories. Tucks the important things- logic, rationality, work, duty- into orderly compartments at the forefront of his mind, archived and marked off ‘til he needs it, while the rest, the mess, gets done away with, thrown into the great black gorge of oblivion. Anything else that stays- more often than not a thorn in his side, an unbidden, wriggling tumour he can’t find let alone cut out- is sequestered to a dark aperture in the back of his mind, anchored deep where it can’t come back up. Yet somehow, some nights, they always do. The smell of his ex-wife’s hair. The day he got his scar. Vietnam. The lab. Solovetsky—

The next word, the name, forks across his mind like lightning, and he bites his tongue before he can think it. It sits at the back of his mouth, nestled like an aching cavity in his molars. A tremulous breath that he forces down with another drag of his cigarette. Out with the rest. Out with the rest.

The barking doesn’t cease. Dogs, a pair of them, he can hear a couple streets over. He pictures them from the gravelly register of their snarling- maybe German Shepherds, a Bullmastiff or a Rottweiler. Their fight enunciated by the violent rattling of chain-link fences, segregated, the only threshold that keeps teeth from necks.

But no, not a sentimental man. He tells himself that the itch to revisit Berlin every Summer is for superficial reasons, and by no means is renting out a shithole hotel room opposite a sewer-laden river considered a vacation from anything other than the luxuries he gorges himself mindlessly on at home- maybe this is to keep him humble, more than anything. It doesn’t do well to remind himself of old times, not when he’s lived the life he has. Remembering seldom accompanies itself with the bittersweetness of reminiscence, and the taste it leaves in his mouth is always acrid. He doesn’t miss Berlin any more than he misses that dismal safehouse, or that sterile room he wheeled you into, questioned- tortured- no, interrogated- well, he doesn’t care to remind himself of the picture. Or the person he strapped to the gurney. But he catches himself thinking back to the city divided more than he likes to admit, and for whatever ostensible reason it is that drags him back here, he relents to it every time.

He tells himself it’s the weather, the cool rain a nice reprieve from the scorching California heat. Or that the food is better, not so much overprocessed shit and sugars. Can take his coffee as black as he likes without the waitress turning her nose up about it and double-triple-checking if he’s sure. And it’s the people, maybe, who leave him well enough alone. Or the drinks. The views, some places. The- air.

Not like Arctic air. Not like—

The one dog’s snarl rips bloodcurdling through the night, all froth and venom, and as the chain-link fence screeches and judders in its rusted welding the other mutt quiets a moment. Cowers under the meaner dog’s ferocity. Then, like it had been wounded, it lets out a low, anguished howl, beast reduced to a scared little pup. Adler holds the smoke in his chest around a stifled breath anticipating a release. But the first dog just grumbles, the fence clinks, and there isn’t much noise after that.

But the quiet doesn’t last long- just as Adler drops his cigarette and snuffs it with a wrench of his heel, another sound resonates, yowling through the alley.

The grinding of tires upon wet asphalt crunches from just beyond the alleyway entrance. The streetlamp overhanging the entryway glares bright yellow as it bounces off of the garishly coloured taxi cab, pulling up to a groaning halt outside the bar.

He thinks nothing of it, pulling at the collar of his leather jacket. It’s getting cold, and he’s left his drink inside. Wouldn’t want to waste good beer. Adler turns, and makes for the door.

And you step out of the car.

A half-finished cigarette bounces on the sidewalk before you exit, the softened heel of your boot following soon after in a splash upon the flooded curb. Your German is rusty- always has been- but it’s easy enough to utter a quick and easy danke as you pull yourself up out of the cab. The door shuts with a slam, and you tilt your head back to gaze up at the sign above the bar- Der Fluss Lethe glaring in faded lightbox red- and you let out a contented sigh, your breath suspended in the frigid air. Pink, bitten fingers pluck at your gloves, fingerless faded green knit, shovelling them into your jacket pocket.

Adler’s fist is already curled around the handle of the back door as he clocks your presence in his periphery, a stranger like any other- but your image resembles the one that coagulates in the borders of old memory, the dried blood of you he hasn’t been able to wash his hands of since ‘81. Enough that he does a double take, his eyes wide behind tinted glasses, and he stops, his heart following suit.

He’s seen enough bodies in his time to fill the morgue in his mind twice over, and plenty ghosts to wander coldly among the unmarked graves. Vietnam alone is an unwinding cemetery stretching endless, catacombs along the inside of his skull, lined with what his old shrink would call remorse. Guilt. As if the feeling mattered. As if self-reproach could turn self-flagellation into something so incandescent as redemption. As if the bile in the back of his throat could bring back the dead.

And it couldn’t, because it isn’t… that’s not—

Bell.

It’s in the way you stand, your back rigid, that slight slouch to your shoulders, always dragged down upon you like they bore the weight of the whole world (and they did, once, do you remember?). The pelting of rain smacks off of the lapels of your jacket and ricochets like stars, caught in the light of the streetlamp overhead, but for all he knows or cares it could be raining diamond and all he sees is you- the wrinkling of your nose as you accommodate to the cold, how your cheeks flush at the chill (as they had those nights he pulled you into the darkroom, evidence of your apprehension drowned in the red glow of safelights); your hair is longer, unkempt, but still that same colour (clumps he’d find in his clenched fist when you’d argue yourselves into a wrestling match, pinning each other by the throats to dented walls in Die Landebahn); that scar upon your brow; that wavering line of your lip, pursed and hiding behind your reticence as you always did, and your eyes- your eyes—

—you feel someone watching—

—your eyes turn, and fix upon him with the startled softness of a doe, hunter betrayed by the snapping of a branch underfoot. Adler’s heel crunches against broken glass, his hand lingering right in that threadbare threshold upon the doorhandle, and he can’t speak, can’t move, can’t think—

Open the door, Bell, open the door—

—and you stop outside the cab, your breath caught in your throat. You see a shadow in the alley, in the shape of a man.

The darkness of the alley gives enough cover that you don’t see much, but what you do make out of the man prickles at a part of your mind long dormant: the haughtily broad set of the shoulders; the halo of blond tinted red just beneath the flickering exit light above the door where he stands; the shadow of a strong, clenched jaw; and in the brief glinting of passing headlights as cars rush on behind you, you see a face half gorged by a thick, forked scar, a fissure struck down his furrowed expression. A pair of dark aviator glasses hide those eyes that you know are looking at you, reflecting back nothing but your own bewilderment.

There is something you know. Deep inside that half rotted head of yours, where an incomplete recollection of your existence before you awoke bleeding on that clifftop lies, you feel a twinge of recognition. Familiarity. Something. Something stirring deep in your marrow- a fear inherited, a conditioned surrender, a faded polaroid, a kiss? Your migraine, chronic, comes clawing back with a vengeance, as it does most nights, but this time with a savage fervour that wrenches your face into an involuntary grimace. Where the hole in your head had once been all those years ago it tickles and burns, burrowing into your brain and groping greedy fingers along remnants of memory. It claws at you, digging through your amygdala to find something fresh, something old, something palpable, real, something- anything. Searching what little remains visible to you in the thick fog of your own mind to pin a meaning to this feeling, an answer to your question, a name to that face.

You’ve seen him before. You swear. Somewhere. In a dream, reoccurring, behind a red door. You don’t know how, or why you’d think you recognise him- in those dreams, the door never even opens. Your hand ever stuck on the handle, jammed and impenetrable, what sits behind it forbidden to you. Like not even your own mind wants you to know. It confines you to your ignorance, almost blissful.

Adler’s heart kicks violently in his chest. He shot you. He killed you. He’d heard your death rattle on that clifftop in Solovetsky and the sound was almost like singing, your last word, your last breath. A miserere for your short and fractured life. And he’s looking at your ghost, standing there all owl-eyed and as beautiful as the day he found you bleeding out on that airstrip. Before he took you. Before he took you and collared you and made a damned mess of things.

The only thing separating you from the Bell he knows he killed- his Bell- is the star-shaped scar split across your left temple. The only wound he never had to sit and heal as he belligerently patched you up, poking and preening you like his prize dog. Yet in spite of never seeing it before, he recognises the wound all too well. He put it there himself.

And as you stand there for that brief moment- no more than twelve seconds stretched to an eternity- he thinks for a moment that you’ve put it together. You recognise him. You see him. As he is. You’ve figured him out, Bell, as you always do. You’re the only one to have gotten away with it, nearly. Or so he thought. And now he’s watching a corpse having dug itself out of the grave he put it in, standing there, staring at him. Suppose you’ve always been a dead man walking.

You could do it, he thinks. Turn. Fling your heel round and barrel towards him with all the enmity of a cornered animal. He thinks of the strays, barking. Can picture your mouth frothing at the sides as you sink your teeth down into him- gnarled canines, hooked to your chain-link fence- which he probably deserves. Not an unfamiliar feeling by any stretch, but one faraway enough to seem almost sweet now through the hazy lens of nostalgia. If there truly is a sentimental bone in his body after all, then maybe it’s just for that. Still, he holds his breath, awaiting the killing blow he’s surely due. But it never comes.

You release your held breath, finally, tearing your eyes away from the callous faced stranger. It’s a ridiculous notion. Just an uncanny instance of déjà vu. You don’t know that man any more than you know yourself. You settle on a more rational answer- just one of those faces. And with a disgruntled sigh you rub the scar upon your temple to soothe the ache, turn around, and enter the bar alone.

Adler sighs, his heart sinking from up high in his throat back down to his chest. His hand has latched onto the doorhandle for so long it’s gone numb from the cold, bruised knuckles bluer than they were before (bar fights- not here, but another, as there will always be). He wrestles his jaw pensively, knowing he ought to take it off, keep the door closed, turn away, and leave. Slink back, tail between his legs, to that shithole hotel room to drink himself into a stupor. Let you haunt him there, instead. As you always have.

But he doesn’t. He has no idea what idiocy compels him, what soft, dewy-eyed weak link in him snags on that chain, to willingly wander back into the viper den of reminiscence, but he wrenches his fist around the handle, pushes, and lets himself back into the bar, the thick, hot air hitting him like a drug that he breathes in, tart and sour with the cloy of sweat and alcohol but still faintly- just faintly- of you. Like rain carried along the wind.

And Russell Adler is not a sentimental man.

But from across the bar he hides behind his beer glass, watches as you move about, a phantom, weaving through the faceless mass of people celebrating a championship he cares nothing to follow. You take your order at the bar with a smile he’s never seen on you before, boots folded to tip-toes as you lean over the liquor-stickied top, your perfect mouth pink and sweet and laughing and alive. The world seems to move about you in a haze, an indistinct mist of blurred faces and bottled voices and beyond all the light and life and joy that seems to burn bright around you like a halo all he sees is you.

Maybe, then, he’s a fool.

But it isn’t lost on him, how your fingers skirt across your hair in an attempt to hide the scar upon your temple. Nor is it lost on him how you wince at the feeling, the stars in your eyes dimmed for just a split second as you shiver, like a touch imperceptible running fingers down your back. Nor even the way you fight the urge to look, to follow the feeling of his eyes fixed upon you, and surely not the way you lose that fight, surrendered to it, your sweet face turning and finding him in an instant. Without so much as trying, like instinct, like something as pathetic and saccharine as fate. Your heart called to it, a lighthouse in the fog. Port in the storm. Ships passing in the night but called crashing to the same shore.

(The pieces of you are scattered everywhere, Bell. He finds you in every split seam inside himself. Splintered shrapnel dug through his temporal lobe, severing synapses ‘til they go dark. Even stars die quicker than that. Quicker than you. Is that what it felt like for you, too? When the lights went out, was it him you last saw- or the sky, waxen, over the Arctic? A waning night, a distant moon. The inconsequence of death- brief celestial ephemera.)

The stranger across the bar looks at you, offering nary a smile, eyes indiscernible behind shadowed sunglasses. And where you ought to find his apparent coldness disconcerting, instead you wring out of your chest with a white-knuckled caress a feeling like… comfort.

Sometimes, Bell, you go back to Berlin. You don’t quite know why.

[broareweabouttoviberightnow]

Dallas' head snaps back, and he stumbles with the force of an unexpected hand on his shoulder. For the briefest moment, he goes entirely limp, lets his fist hang in the air and doesn't try to scramble back to the boy on the steady retreat in front of him.

Darry's got him. And if he'd thought it through for even a second longer that would have scared the shit out of him. But then the fingers are tearin' into his jacket and forcin' him backward and he finally whips his head around and realizes the reality: two very pissed cops have got him.

And he immediately starts fightin' again. He writhes in their grip and the kid he'd been whalin' on is suddenly skitterin' back with renewed fear. Dallas bares his teeth once and figures he's made his point.

The next ten minutes are a blur.

His heart is poundin' in his ears and he can feel his pulse as it rattles under the cuffs the cops slapped on him the second they could get his wrists within a foot of each other and his head is achin' and he realizes for the first time he tastes blood but he can't focus on anythin' because all he can think is Fuck, Darry is never gonna forgive me for this.

He says it all the time. When he rolls in an hour late and thinks Darry's gonna kick my ass. Or when he lets Pony have just a little too much of his beer and the kid's gigglin' fit to wake the dead when Dallas 'n him sneak back in. Or when he hauls off and picks stupid fuckin' fights for no reason.

But this time he means it.

He groans and drops his head to his hands in the little holdin' cell they have him waitin' in until they process him. Last night's argument flashes vaguely in stills through his mind. He wasn't comfortable with people... carin'. He just didn't know what to do with it.

You can't tell me what to do, Darrel. Dallas flew up from the kitchen table and paced wildly away from Darry. Pony watched him with wary eyes. Soda bit his lip and looked at Dallas like he was tryin' to tell him a hundred things Dally didn't know how to understand.

Yes, I can. I won't have you actin' a fool and gettin' yourself hurt. Darry frowned and he's got these lines in his forehead Two jokes he never had before Dallas moved in. Dallas can't stand to see them.

You're not my brother. And you're not my dad. I ain't never had no one tellin' me what to do in my whole life and I'm not about to let you start. He'd slammed the screen door and gone straight to Tim's, started a fight, wound up at Buck's 'n drank til he vomited, woke up this mornin', and started another.

Darry was goin' to throw him to the fuckin' curb and never talk to him again. And Dallas deserved it. He wasn't one of the Curtis boys. No matter how hard he wanted to be.

"Name?" A cop had reappeared in his cell and he kicked himself for missin' it.

"Curtis." Dallas opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. "Fuck. No, sorry." Since when the fuck did he apologize to cops! "It's Winston. Dallas Winston."

The man just stared at him, Curtis already written across the top of the paper in big, bold letters. "Are you sober, kid?"

"Yes, I'm fuckin' sober! My name's not Curtis. How the fuck do you not know me?" To his horror, he feels hot tears in the back of his throat. He's just some no-good juvenile delinquent every bastard officer in this town knows by name except this one apparently because all he is is trouble. And Darry hated him.

"Sure, kid." The man shuffles his papers together. "Officer Matthews has already called your- big brother is it? He's on his way."

"He's not my brother!" And now he's actually cryin' which is bullshit! Who cares! Who cares that Darry is gonna look at him just like his father did. Like he was a burden he'd do anythin' to get rid of. Like the worst thing Dallas ever did was simply show up in his life one day. Dallas is used to this. He's not someone who stays. He was meant to be left. He's a violent dog. He only knows how to bite.

"Dallas?" Darry's voice makes him jump. He doesn't pull his hands away from where they're pressed so hard into his eyes that he sees stars. He can't bear to look up and see what he already knows he will—not hatred, but cold, cold indifference.

"Out." Darry isn't talkin' to him, Dallas can tell he's turned around by the way his voice bounces back to him off the cement walls. He flinches anyway. "Please." He adds like an afterthought and Dallas hears the door open and close.

"I'm goin' to touch you, ok?" Dallas doesn't say anythin', just makes a low noise in the back of his throat. He feels Darry gently tip his head back, eyes still squeezed shut. He feels him softly check the area on his jaw he knows will bruise tomorrow and run experimental fingers along his ribs for breaks. Dally hisses once and Darry immediately pulls back.

"Oh, Dallas." And suddenly Dallas is fuckin' cryin' again. Darry sounds so tired and worn down and old. Did Dallas do that? Did Dallas make him like that? And the sob that catches in his throat makes him choke.

But then he's pressed against Darry's chest and his hands are strong on Dalla's back and in his hair and Dallas doesn't even fight it. Just lets himself be held and doesn't even mind he feels as small as Ponyboy.

"Come on, Dallas Curtis. Let's go home."

[pkmoth]

ohhh my GOD this took so much time but WOOOO BATTLE SPRITES!!!!!!!!!!! HELL YES!!!!!!!!!!! i was Also able to mod them actually In Game which is SO exciting i feel so proud of myself

ANYWAYS UM!!!! heres king lucas hes fine and sane and normal i promise <33333 will yap more about him in the eventual au masterpost once i get this aus loop design drawn :]

party menu | in love and time au tag

[xxplastic-cubexx]

chat ima blow up i think i need him

original post

[nekittie]

once again obsessed with the “buck and stiles are cousins” concept because my brain truly hates me.

[ducktracy]

proper reupload in the high quality this fantastic segment so deserves; eagle pig and duck bias notwithstanding, this will forever be my favorite variant of the fabled switcheroo (and a reminder that Daffy was first at his own game!) the committal on behalf of both characters--especially the sincerity of Daffy's feigned sincerity--really sets it apart

[hollowsart]

seriously, Marvel. please consider a little series of comics that focus solely on the mundane side of Spider-Man's rogues' lives. like focusing solely on those who were and are a part of the Sinister Six cuz those are popular favorites.

let us see more about them beyond being villains and plotting and scheming to rob banks/tech facilities or take down Spider-Man. let's see more of their more mundane side.

I'd do ANYTHING for a comic about Mysterio and his every day life outside the villain persona. I already know a Doc Ock focused one would do MAD Numbers from his fanbase.

no lie, Electro fans would go haywire if there was a comic focused on Max Dillon and his less energetic lifestyle.

I ADORE world building and I think we could use some more for the villains. their environments can tell a lot more about them as a character and I think we really could use more of that in general within Marvel as a whole. there's a lot of focus on the characters and their relationships, but it's limited to purely dialogue. a telling and never really showing. and what it tells doesn't do too much.

slap some more DEPTH and INTRIGUE into these characters!!

What are their daily morning routines?? When they're NOT plotting and scheming and having to secretly meet up with other bad guys to make top secret exchanges to further their devious plans. Like.. HOW do they prefer to live and decorate their living spaces?? Show and tell us more about their likes and dislikes!!! DO they have other talents? Did they have any other career ideas they would have enjoyed besides the ones they ended up with? ANYTHING more would be nice!!

I'm just a sucker for world building and character developments beyond the base narrative limitations.

[quamaii]

Max when the contraption he built specifically for Jimmy to throw knives at Duncan is used by Jimmy to throw knives at Duncan:

[no-s-estelle]

I've been gnawing on The Librarians like a dog on a bone ever since I finished the series a few weeks ago, and now I have Thoughts:

I hope the new show explores more of the library's history and the magical universe around the library. There's so much potential for Lore there, and so many implications the show never touched on. The library's existed for over 2000 years, but all the Librarians we see are white Europeans/Americans? (Besides Ezekiel) Technically Charlene and Judson as the original Guardian and Librarian must have been ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian maybe, but that was never explored. The library went from Alexandria to the New York Metropolitan Library? Where was it in the interim? It could have literally been anywhere in the world! Show me the library in tsarist Russia, or Edo Japan, or the Incan empire. Or at least mention that the library spent time anchored there. You have 2000 years of history to play with, ffs.

And then in the earlier seasons the show implied the existence of a whole magical society, and then barely did anything with it. Show me how the library as an institution impacts the magical world, beyond just collecting and locking away artifacts! Give me more librarians mediating disputes between pissed off dragons, except we don't have the CGI budget for actual dragons so they're just guys in fancy suits! What happened with the lake forum??? I kept waiting for that to be a bigger storyline, and it never went anywhere, even though Cassandra kept using magic. It felt like an unfired Chekhov's gun. Just. Just give me lore, please.

From press releases, it looks like the new show is going to at least start off in Serbia? Or just generic Central Europe? So I'm interested in what they do with that. Idk, I mostly want them to really lean in to the world-wide storytelling potential, even if they shoot it all in Oregon. I believed the same one forest in British Columbia was 50 different alien planets for Stargate; I'll believe Oregon is China or Japan or West Africa or wherever they want me to believe it is.

[beanghostprincess]

Thinking about giving Shanks a weird obsession/ Pavlovian response to lipstick of all things. I’m imagining Buggy as a teen practicing his first stage makeup and going trough the motions, glitter, eyeshadow, liner, spending ages getting the crossbones right. He’s not quite satisfied with his first try of lipstick and wipes it off before he even finishes his upper lip. Shanks teases him from his bunk, Buggy’s been looting the kitchen for cooking oil, since that’s the easiest makeup remover he can acquire, for weeks now, but the other boy is on a mission and he’s so close to figure out his first perfectly flashy look, so he’s uncharacteristically hard to rile up today. He goes trough the motions again, liner, lipstick, swabbing of a bit of excess color with a paper towel. It’s hypnotic to Shanks for some reason he can’t quite explain yet. He watches as his friend pops his lips once, twice, sticks his thumb in his mouth. „What was that last part for?“ „Getting it off my teeth.“ Buggy turns, lips bright red and white teeth flashing him a ferocious grin. "What do you think?" Shanks thinks he will never get sick of watching Buggy try out every color under the sun on his face. That hes like a Parrot, loud and colorful and just as silly and ridiculous and pretty. That he wants to taste greasepaint and kiss that pretty shade of red off of Buggys face himself. "Flashy!" is what he answers instead with a thumbs up.

Years later Shanks still thinks the act of putting on makeup is mesmerizing, catches a look of a young woman lining her lip with a compact mirror and stares for a second. It’s awkward, always having to excuse himself later, because of course this reads to everyone around him as flirting, but it would be cruel to make someone hope for something like this. It’s not like it’s their fault after all. The color might be right but it’s never the right person.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha I am so normal about them hahahahahahahaha

Thinking about Shanks always remembering how much he wanted to kiss Buggy that day and how close he had been to doing it,,, If I can make it gayer and angstier please because I can't stop thinking about this,,, Can I,,, Can I use this for a fanfic,,,, Can I please,,, I will beg if you want to pleasepleaseplease can I,, Can I write a fanfic,,, About this,,, Anon pleas-

[transmascutena]

finding a good reaction series for any anime is so hard, and then trying to find one for utena is like trying to find a needle in a very small haystack, i think i've only found like one or two??? that have actually been pretty enjoyable?? and by that i mean, like, where the reactors actually take the show seriously and try to analyze and understand all of the symbolism/meaning/commentaries on society instead of being just like 'woahhh that was weird ig, oh well' and just moving on. although one of the ones i enjoyed also completely missed that juri was in love with shiori in her first episode but honestly i found that more hilarious than frustrating considering how good they were at picking up other small details and how blatantly it was spelt out hfsiuacjk. suffice to say, they figured it out later.

but like when I found the other good reactor to utena it was SOOO nice. like. i don't need the reactor to be absolutely correct on everything and catch every single detail, i just need somebody WILLING to actually engage with the show, and have the ability to look deeper than surface level. i've watched this reactor regularly for a while and i figured utena was the type of weird symbolic stuff he would really enjoy, but when I was proven right and he loved the show and loved the characters and created well-reasoned theories and predictions it was SOOOO satsifying. and i can probably never recommend him to anyone in good faith because he can make some tasteless jokes that i've been pretty desensitized to over the years because he says them more as a bit, but it's still to the extent that I can't tell how other people would take it if they were to watch him for the first time. but when it came to the utena and akio stuff he immediately understood that the show was depicting grooming and abuse and treated it as such in his commentary even before episode 33. and i know like that's probably a low bar, but after seeing people think it was a legit romance, it was so gratifying to see the actions of akio being responded with immediate disgust. he said that utena was probably in his favorite shows of all time at the end of the series, and he was so excited at almost every twist of the plot, so altogether my favorite reactor.

anyways, all that's to say, do you have any reaction series recommendations for utena that you think were a good watch? thanks for your time and all of your great utena posting!

only utena reaction series i remember liking pretty much all the way through was the one by semblance of sanity. there were probably things they missed or whatever as there will always be on a first viewing, and some of the things they said about the final episode in particular were a bit odd (though i've forgotten what exactly it was), but generally it was very enjoyable to me. you could tell they liked the show a lot and wanted to understand it and i think it also helped that they were two people who could bounce ideas and theories off each other. most reactors do it alone which can in my opinion get a bit stale at times. it was really just one of those things where i was looking forward to the new episode from them every single week (maybe helped too that it was only my own second or third rewatch and i was looking for new stuff myself still). i even subscribed to their patreon for a month towards the end so i could view the full uncut reactions, meaning i effectively watched the whole thing twice, but i don't think that was the smartest use of my money or my time lol

[sannyo-appreciation-posts]

What Exactly Is Sannyo Smoking?

Well of course it sucks Mamizou, don't you remember what she said it's made of?

Now, an herb you can smoke that can grow on a mountain. The first, most obvious, initial guess would be marijuana. It's a weed after all, it can grow basically anywhere. Plus, let us be honest, it would be a little funny.

marijuana can definitely grow on mountains, it even grows on mountains in Central Asia

Plus, it is apparently spreading over northern Japan right now as a weed. They used to grow it for hemp material, not to smoke, it would probably not do much, but that wouldn't stop Sannyo if she wanted to give it a shot.

(Except I'm deliberately teasing)

There is a very, very obvious reason why it's not marijuana.

Marijuana has no nicotine, even though you can smoke it, it's not by any stretch of the imagination "tobacco"

Even if we imagine a world where this is the only thing Sannyo ever smoked, Mamizou smoked it with her and just said it was bad tobacco, not to mention Mamizou has recently been to the outside world and would probably know weed in seconds. (Which, although hypothetical, would have made for a hilarious Mamizou thought bubble)

We are looking for "tobacco" after all, we need nicotine, not just anything you can smoke, but it's a weed and a popular joke, so I obviously had to tease.

I could go through every variant of wild Nicotiana, tobacco was even imported to Japan by Portuguese sailors in 1542, and it's cultivation was legalized in 1625. The Hakurei barrier was formed in 1885, that's actually plenty of time for actual wild tobacco to spread.

But it might not work either.

While we might find some enthusiastic and previously cultivated tobacco growing as a weed that spread up to the mountains, it's not going to be unique enough. It'll be growing all over the place by the time it gets up a mountain. And the village would be smoking that exact same thing.

But most importantly, it's no fun.

Truth be told, there is a genus of Nicotiana that would work well in mountains, furthermore, Portugal actually had some at the time as an import from the Americas. But thats no fun, so I'll just return to this later when I inevitably run out of exotic options.

After all, if its tobacco made from "herbs" it would boarder on cheating to just use nicotiana, regardless of the form it ends up in.

Thankfully, there are other herbs and weeds beyond nicotiana that actually have nicotine, it really would be worthwhile check one of those.

And I've got a fun one. A whole family in fact.

Just above the Genus: "Nicotiana" is the Tribe: "Nicotianeae" and above that we find the family Solanaceae.

The Solanaceae, also known as the potato or deadly nightshade family

Nicotine is a naturally produced alkaloid in the nightshade family of plants

It contains everything from eggplants and other vegetables to the infamous Deadly Nightshade. (Atropa belladonna)

And of course, like I said, further down the family, it even has nicotiana itself. All of them contain nicotine to some greater or lesser extent. (Yes, hilariously even eggplants, a little bit)

Solanaceae consists of about 98 genera and some 2,700 species. They grow naturally in more parts of the world than wild Nicotiana.

But we are just going to be looking through the nightshade variations, maybe some fruit, but no potatoes today. And these are coveniently famous for their narcotic effects.

And some varieties, such as the Datura stramonium (occasionally called the Devil's Trumpet) had its leaves smoked in pipes and cigarettes, so much they were traded by the East India Company in the 18th century. And since it was popular for traditional medicine, some people might have even planted it.

But that type is not native to Japan, so it's got the same problem as the nicotiana. Not to mention, even though its an invasive weed, and can survive a little below the freezing point, in its current state, it probably doesn't like mountains. It probably wouldn't last a full winter on one.

This might be definite enough to just say it can be some hypothetical, wild, non specific variation of nightshade with the right combination of alkaloids and nicotine and presumably, relatively non deadly in the form Sannyo uses it.

Or maybe it is just better adapted to mountains form of imported of the Datura stramonium I just mentioned. I doubt even if it spread like a weed, that anyone but Sannyo would bother to figure out you can smoke that type of plant as tobacco.

But we are mostly just having fun at this point.

I doubt we could possibly think Zun cared up to this point, and definitely not beyond this point, we are just doing a fun overanalysis after all. Zun almost always seems to go for extinct species anyway, so it wouldn't be fun to follow that train of thought regardless..

[But if we just want a probable canonical answer Zun thought up. He might have just meant some non specific extinct variation of nightshade, since if there is at least one native version then that's enough to claim there could have once been others,

Besides, it's even possible zun just imagined she could possibly even mix her favorite flowers somehow, which while she probably could not, it would definitely be cute. ]

But we are going to take this further anyway to see if we can find something real and possible that currently exists today.

The simplest thing to think of native to Japan is just Japanese belladonna (Zun's proof of concept for an imaginary extinct nightshade if he really wanted a hypothetical one)

Scopolia japonica, also called Japanese belladonna. It's about as dangerous as the name implies. If eaten by mistake it can cause hallucinations. And while it no doubt contains at least some nicotine, it also contains the alkaloids Scopolamine

And more hilariously Hyoscyamine, known for helping the colon or bladder...

yes, you can use this extract to help you poop or pee if you want too.

Which is even funnier than the marijuana joke i made earlier.

And the only other species in the Scopolia genus is pretty similar and in Korea.

So we'll want to find something different.

But we are trapped. We only have imports left.

And the Datura genus we'd likely want is stuck in the Americas so we can only really consider a variety that came from those possible 18th century imports of Datura stramonium.

They are pretty perfect, tbh, spread widely to the Old World early where it has also become naturalized, and since it was already a weed that could endure dry climate and fairly cold environments. It could probably spread up a mountain.

They are our best bet for something you can smoke for recreation, with nicotine, outside the nicotiana genus that only Sannyo would use. If smoked people used its properties for recreation but you can also use it for anesthesia. Inject it's primary ingredient Atropine and you can use it for all sorts of weird stuff. (Though I pretty much resigned myself to having Atropine in the plant the moment I decided to run up and down the nightshade family).

Though in truth, she's probably just smoking wild tobacco that has lost a lot of flavor while struggling to adapt the mountain. So I'll move on to the most likely answer.

Portugal's more early tobacco is Nicotiana rustica, also called Aztec tobacco.

It is pretty tough and would probably adapt to a mountain pretty well.

I'd like to think it's the Datura stramonium since it's cooler and weird though.

In overview:

The simplest, best answer is just wild imported Aztec tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) from Portugal. Which had trade with Japan open up extremely early. Its honestly perfect for this

Followed by the more provocative option of Devil's Trumpet (Datura stramonium) imported later in the 18th century.

and the funny option. The only one actually native to Japan

Japanese belladonna (Scopolia japonica)

But it's almost definitely just that Aztec tobacco. (Nicotiana rustica)

We could just imagine she mixes flowers or herbs into it to validate her "herbs" comment if we want (which again, would be cute)

[zappedbyzabka]

NEVER FORGET

[thebirdandhersong]

the miserable angry person I become when I haven't eaten is, in a word, atrocious. it is 9pm I have not had my dinner murder is about to be on the menu if I don't fix this soon

[yeyayeya]

I was scrolling through my abandoned drafts and found a Scáthach/Arthur fic that I started writing almost 6 months ago that I forgot about, and I surprisingly wrote quite a lot

I might have enough motivation to eventually finish it, but I ain’t exactly sure if I will

I might eventually post it, but don’t be surprised if I don’t actually finish