#cannot wait for the two to have to parse through this stuff looking each other

[molinaesque]

Cooper Howard & Lucy MacLean | Betrayal

[gillianthecat]

blurry Tap with his beautiful smile

Fahlanruk - episode 6 Trashwatch:

~ I really like this opening credits sequence and the theme song. The montage looks like an interesting show!

~ Ok. Getting tired of this cute boy page stuff

~ Sher's drinking is getting pretty concerning. I still can't tell if it's going to be shown as a problem to be addressed or if the show is testing it as fine.

~ I think LITA and all the analysis I've been doing of it has made me more bothered by stalkery behavior than I was last week. It doesn't feel out of place in this show in the same way, I'm just more sensitive.

~ Tap is so adorable. His shy little smile.

~ I like this girl, she's an assertive flirt without being a creep about it. (A line many shows find difficult to manage with their female love rivals.) But poor Ping 🙁 Oh I see! Tap stops and looks guilty as soon as Ping sees him, lol.

~ I continue to love Sher's dancing.

~ 💙PingTap💙 This whole silent scene is legitimately wonderful, actually, if too brief a time with them.

~ Ooh, insight into Sher and Prince's codependency thing.

~ Poor Gear. "Another friend." Is Prince oblivious, uninterested and pretending to be oblivious, or interested and scared?

~ This poor girl. She just wanted a nice date with a cute guy and then his two friends show up at their table and proceed to get wasted. Lol, and then the cute guy is upset about them leaving him along with her. Although maybe she'll get a fun night out of it after all.

~ ☹️ heartbroken Ping 🥺

~ Oh! Tap couldn't go through with it! He's in love back, even if he doesn't know it yet. Hooray for Ping! Sorry your night was disappointing, assertively flirty girl. Hope you find other cool people to sleep with, you deserve it.

~ Who is this guy spying on Fah in the showers and then gossiping about it? (Creepy, btw) Should I recognize him? I don't care enough to go back and check.

~ Oooh, hints of Sher's (tragic? angsty?) backstory!

~ Damn. Sher is really in a punching mood these days.

~ Ooh and the mysterious bearded man appears!

~ More Anna! But at what cost? (The cost is that she hangs out with the creepy gossips.)

~ Wait WHAT?! Is Tam really scheming like that? Or is Sher making this up for some reason? Well, planned or not it did get mysterious bearded man's attention. What a weird family.

~ Lol, they didn't even need to change the wound makeup on Sher/Tam's actor. Convenient. Also, is dabbing at bloody wounds with a q-tip a thing outside of dramas? Is it universal medical practice? Or at least Thai medical practice? I dunno, it seems generally inefficient to me. 🤷🏻‍♀️

~ I was so distracted by musing about wound tending that I forgot to look for insights into mysterious bearded man. Let me go back. Ok. He and Tam sit very close and stare longingly at each other for 15 seconds. That's all we get. So I'm guessing history, mutual pining, some real or imagined obstacle? Exes? Friends who are scared to be more? Family enemies á la Romeo and Juliet? The people demand answers!

~ Tap has such a lovely smile.

~ Oh! An ex! I have to say that was my favorite theory. And a name! Hello Chama.

~ And legitimately mysterious. A disappearance, ooh. Oh wait. He has amnesia?! And a house full of paintings of Tam?! This storyline has gone full soap opera. None of this makes sense, but sure. Let's go with it.

~ Jesus, how many people were spying on Fah in that bathroom?

~ But I don't understand why Fah didn't just go home? Is the gym floor his favorite crying spot?

~ Ah, parents's bad example is the tragic back story, the reason Sher is afraid to love and be loved. Ok.

~ I kind of appreciate the actors lack of commitment to making these ads feel realistic or natural in any way.

~ "Being nosy makes people crazy." Thesis statement of the show? I honestly cannot begin to parse what this show is trying to say about prying and gossip.

~ Gear, baby, walking off to hide behind a wall because you accidentally confessed to your crush. I love it!

~ Next week: More drinking (seriously, what is the show trying to do with this?), the return of the white towel as Ping gets to gently caress Tap's feverish naked body, and Ping worries that his crush is obvious.

I'm not really taking about Sher and Fah because I don't have much to say that I haven't already said. The bones of an interesting story are there, and some nice moments, but sadly this particular execution still isn't working for me. They don't bother me anymore, I just kind of half zone out for their scenes. Really I'm in it for PingTap at this point.

[monicashipslokius]

Soulmates, Actually Pt 3

(read Part 1/Part 2)

Soulmates protect each other.

Loki paces the length of the small bathroom, turning after only two steps. On each turn they catch sight of themself in the mirror, as hard as they try not to. They don’t want to see the cowardice marring their own features. They don’t want to face themself, knowing they are standing here in relative safety at the cost of their soulmate’s.

Through the thin walls, Loki hears another pound on the front door. Mobius calls out, “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

Loki stops pacing and presses their ear to the bathroom door, straining to hear outside of it.

After the creak of a door opening, Mobius says, “Can I help you?”

“Are you Mobius M. Mobius?” Thor has a weakness for Midgard and its people. Even as he speaks to Mobius now, his voice isn’t quite as booming as Loki is accustomed to.

“That’s me. Are you selling something?”

“I...? No. May I enter?”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t. I’m kind of busy, you know?”

“I see,” Thor says. “Wait! I’m looking for someone.”

“Sorry,” Mobius says. The door creaks again, loud, like it tried to close but was blocked by a hard shoulder.

“I must insist,” Thor says, and there’s the booming authority Loki expected. Heavy footfalls step into the apartment. Loki instinctively leans away from the bathroom door. “Do you live here, or is this a closet?”

“Hey, why does everyone think that,” Mobius says, his following footsteps much softer. “My apartment is not that small.”

“It is,” Thor says, blunt as ever, though perhaps his own time on Midgard changed him a small amount, because he immediately adds, “But... nice. Very... brown.” A long, awkward pause. “Seeing this... I feel apologies are in order. I cannot imagine Loki hiding here.”

Loki knows that their usual love of decadent flair is what’s saving them now, but the words still sting. It’s one thing for them to think disparagingly about their new home. It is entirely another for someone else to speak badly of it. Even Thor.

Maybe especially Thor.

“It seems silly now,” Thor says. “I had heard you are their soulmate.”

“It doesn’t seem all that silly,” Mobius says, voice much softer.

“I mean no offense,” Thor says. “Only that you are not their type.”

“Oh? Too old?”

Thor laughs. “Too human. But consider yourself lucky, friend."

"I don't know, I'd think it'd be okay to be the soulmate of a god."

"Not this god," Thor says, and that familiar self-hatred claws at Loki's ribcage from the inside out. They place their hand over their chest, physically pressing down on the feeling, but it does not stop.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mobius clips his words short.

Loki braces themself as Thor continues, "They never stay with anyone for long. They haven’t met a person yet who could hold their interest.”

“Maybe they just hadn’t met the right person,” Mobius says, stronger.

"Right people tend not to hang around my brother. You may have noticed that they are..." Thor pauses and Loki holds their breath. "A villain." Thor, at least, sounds pained to say it, though that is little comfort for Loki.

The word shouldn't hurt them. It is true. Despite their glorious purpose, they will never be seen as a hero, but only ever as the one who stands in the hero's way.

“Or instead," Mobius says, stronger still. Irritation oozes from his words. "Maybe they got so used to being seen as a villain that they started to think that’s all they are.”

The scratching in Loki's chest slows until it ceases entirely. Mobius.

But the calming effect of Mobius's defensive fury does not linger.

Thor holds his tongue a moment, and in that moment, a thick dread buds in the pit of Loki’s stomach. Thor may be oblivious at times, but he is not totally obtuse. And Mobius is angry enough for even him to take notice.

“Have you seen Loki, Mobius M. Mobius?”

“I think you should leave now,” Mobius says.

“So it’s true?” Thor asks, like he still doesn’t believe it. “You are Loki’s soulmate?”

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

“They must be deceiving you. Tell me where they are, and I will take them back to Asgard. Then you will be safe.”

“Loki’s not going anywhere with you,” Mobius says, stupidly brave. Stupidly perfect.

Outside a storm brews. Thunder rumbles the walls, as loud as Thor’s voice. “Do not stand in my way, Mobius M. Mobius.”

“No, you don’t get to order me around,” Mobius says. “You barge into my home and try to kidnap my soulmate. You didn’t even do it at a reasonable hour. We were asleep!”

“I am a god.” Lightning cracks outside the window, the light so bright, it flashes under the door of the bathroom. “You are a human.”

Mobius huffs out a breath. “I’m not giving them up. You’ll just have to kill me.”

Every nerve in Loki’s body, every pulse in their brain, the very breath in their  lungs - all scream, No!

The bathroom door flies off its hinges from the force of Loki pushing through. Their daggers are in their hands, their armor has replaced their silk pajamas - there is no room for softness here.

Mobius glances behind him from where he’s standing, blocking the bathroom from Thor in the kitchen. “You broke the door,” Mobius says, entirely too calm for a man who was just about to throw his life away.

“We are going to discuss your blatant disregard for your own fragile life,” Loki tells him, stalking forward to Mobius’s side.

“I had it under control,” Mobius says.

Loki sucks in a deep breath to try to tamper down their roaring rage. “No longer will you risk yourself for me.”

“No, sorry, Loki.” Mobius crosses his arms. “You don’t get to boss me around either. I told you, soulmates protect each other. And that’s that.”

“You stupid, brave, impossible man.”

“Dying for you would be worth it.”

“And what am I to do at that point? Hm? Bid your corpse a fond farewell and move along?”

Mobius startles, like he hadn’t thought ahead that far. “Yeah, I guess.”

If Loki wasn’t holding daggers, they would grip him by the shoulders and shake him. “You have no idea what you are to me. You have no perception of how long I have waited for you. For us. For this tiny little room. For everything we shared last night. And all that we will share.”

Mobius’s eyes widen. “Loki -”

“No, Mobius. You will not be throwing your life away. Not now. Not ever. Not while I have strength enough to hold a blade.”

Mobius blinks. The surprise on his face lasts a moment longer, then softens entirely into fondness. “Let’s go to the store later. Buy some stuff. Spruce this place up a little. We can get a plant or two. And maybe a new bathroom door.”

Loki exhales, and the harshest of their anger slips away. “Only if we also buy you new clothes.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with my clothes?” Mobius is smiling now.

Loki almost mirrors it. Until he remembers their thunderous brother occupying the entire minuscule kitchen. Thor seems to lack his usual righteousness. Instead, he looks between Loki and Mobius like he has no idea what to make of them. His mouth hangs open but no sound comes out.

A moment, Thor tries, “Brother, you...” He closes his mouth. Opens it. “You... actually care for this little man?”

Loki’s answer comes easier than even they expected, “Yes.”

“I’m not that little,” Mobius says.

Outside the storm clears away and starlight returns. Inside, Thor lowers his hammer to his side, no longer holding it ready to fight. He stares at Loki for a long moment. “We thought you were dead. We mourned you.”

Loki’s impulse is to argue. They aren’t yet numb to the pain of Odin’s deception. Of Loki’s own monstrous truth.

But instead of drudging forward that pain, Loki draws strength from Mobius beside them. From the comfort of their home. From the promise of buying new drapes and bed sheets.

“I’m not going back,” Loki says, hating the way their voice cracks. Mobius inches closer to their side, and they stand taller.

“You cannot rule Midgard,” Thor says.

Loki glances at Mobius, who gives them a soft smile.

“Mostly,” Loki says, “I want to buy drapes.”

Mobius’s smile widens, and he dips his head, as if to hide it. Loki loses themself in the sight of such softness and warmth, until they remember their brother again.

Thor watches them, his confusion palpable. “This is not at all as father said it was.”

Loki tenses at the mention of Odin.

“A lot’s different since yesterday,” Mobius says. “Dubuque can really change a person, you know?” Mobius winks at Loki, and a fresh wave of comfort rolls through them.

“Yes,” Loki says. “Dubuque.”

“Perhaps I could return without you,” Thor says, confusion shifting gradually into something more sure. “If you hand over the tesseract.”

Loki pointedly refrains from glancing at the coat closet. As, to Loki’s surprise, does Mobius. Surely he had seen them place the scepter within. Surely he could parse together what the tesseract could be.

“You wouldn’t need it to buy drapes.” Thor’s grip tightens on the handle of Mjolnir, but he does not yet raise it again.

Loki’s body tenses like a bowstring. There is no way out of this then, without a fight. “You have no comprehension of its power, brother. Of what I could have, what I could achieve with it in my possession. With what I’ve been promised.”

“Promised?” Thor asks. “Promised by who?”

A chill creeps over Loki’s skin, inch by slow inch. They think of the creatures that invade their mind, that found them when they fell from the Bifrost.

You could have this, they whisper, even now. You are nothing without this.

“Loki?” Mobius whispers. “Are you okay?”

Shaking their mind free from the dark grasp, Loki thoughts travel instead to those same creatures wrapping Mobius in their viciousness. Tearing him down. Exploiting his deepest vulnerabilities.

The cold runs deep, all consuming.

With the tesseract still in Loki’s possession, maybe they could protect Mobius. Or, the opposite. Maybe those creatures will never stop hunting them until Loki finally does as they command.

When it was Loki alone, forgotten and fallen, following the icy commands was no question, when both vengeance and a crown were promised.

But Loki is no longer alone.

To Loki’s surprise, concern covers Thor’s face as well, and he has taken a step closer, hand half-lifted, as if in a halted attempt to reach out to them.

“The tesseract will not bring you happiness, Loki,” Thor says, and motions toward Mobius. “Not in the way your soulmate can. You must make a choice.”

“They don’t have to chose,” Mobius says. “I’m staying with them, regardless of what they want to do.”

“But they must,” Thor tells him. “I will be leaving here with either Loki or the tesseract. I’d prefer to do it without a fight.”

Mobius takes a step forward. “I already told you, Loki isn’t going anywhere.”

“If forced, I will take you both to Asgard,” Thor says.

Loki thinks of Mobius standing before Odin, of all the brave, protective things he would say to the All-Father in Loki’s defense. And Loki thinks of how fast Odin would cut him down, Loki’s soulmate or not.

“No,” Loki says.

Soulmates protect each other.

Loki disappears their daggers, then goes to the closet and draws open the door. They reach through Mobius’s brown suits and retrieve the scepter. It’s cold in their hand.

They could grab Mobius and teleport away. Together, they could go anywhere. Thor would need time to track them down. But they’d have to keep running. They’d never be able to stop.

Loki thinks of Mobius, sweating in the desert. Humans are weak, fragile things. Mobius would not be able to sustain that kind of life.

The scepter, the creatures, whisper to Loki, He will die anyway. Why shouldn't you have more?

"All my life, I’ve been in your shadow,” Loki says to Thor. Thor lifts his hammer, readying for the fight to come. “This is my chance to carve my own path. To find my own throne. The Midgardians are hapless. They are in desperate need of a ruler.”

Loki looks at Mobius and finds him watching Thor, body tense like he intends to jump in the way if Thor were to attack. He will die anyway.

“There is no happiness in the promise of a throne, Loki.” Thor frowns, and after a brief, sideways glance at Mobius, his eyes turn sad. “We have waited the same for a soulmate. You have found yours, while I am still waiting. I ask you, who lives in envy of who?”

A new feeling twists inside Loki - something like... pity? For Thor? No. Impossible. Thor has had a life filled with all of his whims being catered to. Ever the favorite. The favored.

Yet.

Thor has no Mobius of his own.

He will die anyway. But. Not yet. Not yet.

“To be honest,” Mobius says, drawing Loki’s attention. “Humans are kind of a drag. We fight all the time, can’t agree on anything. I know that’s half why you think you can fix it all, but really, it sounds like a bigger headache than it’s worth.” He shrugs. “You and I, we’ll do whatever you want. I’ve got your back 100%. But... if you were King of Earth, do you get any vacation days? Cause I got some places I really want to take you.”

Looking at Mobius, hearing his words, listening to the steady cadence of his voice, Loki warms from the inside out.

“We need to go to the beach. You saw my jetski picture, right?” Mobius turns to Thor. “You ever been on a jetski?”

Thor blinks at him. “...No?”

“You’ll love it. It’s so much fun. Out on the waves, just you and the ocean - with the wind in your hair, and the sun all bright.” Mobius turns his smile back to Loki, and Loki doubts any sunshine could ever be as brilliant as him. “What do you think, Loki?”

The cruel whispers grow dim. Thoughts of, You are nothing without a crown, are replaced with, What worth is a crown without him?

The chill burns away, until the scepter is too cold, too painful to hold.

Loki moves closer to the kitchen. Thor raises his hammer. Mobius hurries forward.

But everyone stops when Loki surrenders the scepter - the tesseract - to Thor. As soon as it is gone from their hand, Loki feels a heavy weight lifted away. The chill leaves entirely, and their mind is silent once more.

“You’ve made the right choice, brother,” Thor says. They lower Mjolnir to the ground to look closer at the scepter.

“Odin will not be pleased when you return without me,” Loki says.

Thor hums. “I will pass along your promise to behave yourself.”

“I made no such promise.” With Loki’s new weightlessness, a small, sly smirk slips onto their lips. It's shaky and unsure, but Thor doesn't mention it.

Thor slides his gaze to Mobius. “I think you will have your hands too full to do otherwise, with how quickly this one throws himself into trouble.” He pitches his voice low. “I like him. He’s small, but brave.”

Pride swells in Loki. They didn’t need Thor’s approval, but having it...

“Mobius M. Mobius!” Thor walks to Mobius and draws him into a tight hug. “Now my brother. I await the day our paths cross again!”

Mobius awkwardly pats him on the back. “Yeah, sure! Sounds great.”

As they break, Loki begins to steer Thor toward the door. Thor looks as if he also wants to wrap Loki in a hug, but thankfully thinks better of it. Instead, he simply says, "We will see each other again."

"We will," Loki says, a promise. And for now, it is enough.

Thor starts forward, when Mobius calls out, “Wait, you forgot your hammer.”

Loki and Thor both turn away from the door, toward the kitchen - where Mobius stands, hand gripping Mjolnir’s handle, holding it up off the ground. He brings it forward and hands it to Thor, who stares at him, mouth agape.

Mobius says, “Surprisingly light?”

Loki bites back a smile. They knew their soulmate was no ordinary mortal.

Thor looks at Mobius like he’s seeing him for the first time. “Only to those who are worthy. You are small in stature, but not in heart, Mobius M. Mobius.”

“Uh, thanks?” Mobius says. Softer, he adds, “I’m really not that small.”

*

When Thor is gone, with the slightly damaged front door bolted behind him, Mobius turns to Loki and says, “Told you I’d get rid of him.”

Loki reaches out, grabs Mobius by the shoulders, and pulls him into their embrace. They do not let go for a long time.

Mobius holds them back, nose tucked into the crook of Loki’s neck and shoulder. “I would have followed you,” he says, voice muffled. “You want to be king? We’d make it happen. You didn’t have to give it up.”

Loki will tell him of the whispers and the cold, of the dark promises made. Later. “Perhaps another time,” they say. “Plenty of life to find a throne of my own.” Though as the words leave them, they know they are only half true. Plenty of time for Loki. No time at all for Mobius. The creatures no longer whisper in Loki's mind but they still hear their mocking, He will die.

“I was thinking we could get a couple chairs while we’re out.”

Loki can’t help and doesn’t stop their grin, even as their heart aches. “See? My fortune is already changing.”

“I’ll buy you the best throne,” Mobius says. “You ever heard of La-Z-Boy?”

Loki closes their eyes, presses their forehead to Mobius's shoulder, and wonders how, with the cruel inevitability of human mortality, they will ever go on without this man.

[flatstarcarcosa]

Reese... i am absolutely clueless but i don't WANT to be. so. please explain to me who Zaeed is. i wanna know everything. what's his story. where is he from. what does he do. what is he like. literally use this as an excuse to talk about him at length and also tell me how he came into your life, pls and thank u!!! -heavenshipped

@heavenshipped

he's an old pissy mercenary with a fucked up face, a fat ass, and one good eyeball.

"isn't that just slade?" you may be thinking and the answer to that is........

no, but actually, yes.

also there do be light mentions of drugs and general Junkie ShenanigansTM below

he's a dlc squadmate that shows up in mass effect 2. unfortunately being dlc means there's a lot of content and ideas that were originally cut, and there's not as many dynamic conversations w him as there are with others. he's also not romanceable but it works for selfshipping because any of the romanceable characters (and one other who isn't) are too tied to my shepards for me to ship with them.

i've actually been Looking Respectfully for a while but it was before i started selfshipping so i didn't really do much aside from curse bioware and the home of phobia of not letting us romance him.

i'm still fleshing out the details of our ship but i'm thinking i grew up on earth, it was inherently BadTM so i jumped at the first chance to hit up a colony. it did not go any better, and i just spent a lot of time hopping from place to place, causing mild chaos and abusing Many, Many substances.

when we do meet it's because i was running a con/hustle to get some quick credits, and zaeed thought i was a Literal Child that was about to Get Murdered by some pissed off aliens and intervened. i lost out on my money marks, he discovered i was actually An Adult and it left us in an awkward position of 'well, what now?'

for reasons he cannot immediately parse, he decides to give me a place to crash, initially just temporarily. we're having a grand ol time when i suddenly inform him mid sentence that i may have Taken Too Much and proceed to hit the floor and have a mild drug induced seizure in the middle of his kitchen.

for reasons he also cannot parse, he decides against his initial thought of dumping me in an alley and instead locks me in his bathroom and proceeds to detox my ass after he digs through my bag and sees just how many drugs i have on me.

(later on we pointedly ignore any medical professional who comments that detoxing someone in this way is dangerous as hell and you're more likely to kill them anything else because like. we know. it was fine. move on, we sure did.)

i spend the first three and a half days beating on the bathroom door and telling him all the ways i'm gonna eviscerate him if he doesn't open the door and give me my fucking shit back.

all total it takes about 10 days to clean me out, with him opening the bathroom long enough to make sure i'm at least drinking fluids if i won't eat. withdrawal kills your appetite, and makes you prone to puking for no reason.

the 11th day, i'm sitting at the table in the kitchen of the shitty rental apartment on whatever crappy colony we're on while he scrambles eggs and fries bacon and i ask him why the hell he bothered with any of this.

"beats me," he says. "i'm normally not one for doing anything that doesn't have a payoff in the end."

"i guess it beats waking up behind a dumpster again," i say.

after that we kind of just fall into a natural rhythm with each other, a weirdly comfortable fit despite his usual aversion to others and my inherent skittishness around them.

it takes a while for him to think about it, to realize that maybe it was just the timing of everything. maybe even he of all people was tired of never being able to put anything back into the galaxy. maybe the way i just calmly announced 'oh shit, i'm ODing again', with more annoyance and exhaustion in my voice than panic just stuck out to him. made him think of all the people he's run into before, lost and strung out and on their own.

all of them dead or dying and none of them knowing it yet.

maybe he just wanted to know if he could even keep someone alive, rather than being a walking curse and death sentence for anyone he meets.

maybe he was just lonely, and figured i was too.

he never really settles on one single answer that seems like it fits, and after a while, he figures it doesn't matter. what happened, happened.

and more importantly, it happened exactly the way it needed to, and thats all that really matters.

by the time the events of ME2 start, and commander shepard comes to recruit zaeed, i'm figuring him and i have been together about 5-7 years.

after the events of me2 and 3, and after the reaper war is over, zaeed uses his money he's been hoarding all these years and we buy a plot of land of bekenstein. the only thing on it is a dock on a lake that needs some TLC.

we build a two story cabin bit by bit, and zaeed of course builds a weapons bunker underneath, "just in case". there's a porch on the second story, a hot tub in the back yard, and a fireplace in the living room.

he spends the mornings drinking coffee and watching the sunrise, and the evenings with scotch and a cigar, watching it set, and every time he's amazed the both of us lived long enough to get to settle into something as mundane as this.

there's also stuff obviously related to me2 and 3 that i'm fleshing out of course.

also, this is some of the best content of the whole game and it's a simple fact.

also related to the above video:

i have a cheap ass, well worn, purple plush krogan toy that probably ended up costing him as much as a case of heat sinks and a whole fucking box of other prizes from the same claw machine.

oh!

we both got drunk one time and ended up at a vegas style space chapel, and neither of us have any recollection about it. he doesn't even know until he's visiting the citadel one day and the citadel tourism VI has his name hyphenated to massani-wilson.

"fuckin wot did you just call me?" "records indicate you and reese wilson-massani were married three years ago at-" "the goddamn hell we were-" "-Slicky Rickys Love Shack" "oh goddamn it. well, that explains the matching rings."

i also love the idea this comes out after shepard's recruited him, and shepard is just like

"wait you two have had matching ring for three years and didn't wonder what it was about?" "reese gets sentimental about weird shit, i figured it was just that." "well, cerberus didn't hire you for your critical thinking skills, i guess." "keep talkin' shepard and you'll be learning to do it out your arse." "i do that well enough already." "fair enough."

[keepingupwiththekamados]

The wind pillar's day off 🌟

Part 1 > Part 2 

Giyuu was not lying when he said Sanemi should be bed-bound. He fell victim to a paralytic demon art on his last mission and it's only thanks to his breathing techniques and Shinobu's early intervention that he's managed to avoid permanent damage.

That doesn't mean he emerged unscathed. He's little more than a cripple now. Fine, he can walk a fair distance; but he can't run. He doesn't have the strength to train, but he can summon a quick burst of energy every once in a while.

Not that it matters.

Naturally, Shinobu instructed him to stay in his estate till he recovers. Naturally, Sanemi was pissed.

"Well, what am I supposed to do now?" he remembers asking.

"I don't know. Read a book?" came her offhanded suggestion.

The Updated Encyclopedia of Native Plants glares back at him.

He shuts the cover of the tome with a heavy thunk, and absently impresses his palm upon the embossed title. Genya's been trying to persuade him to read it for a month now - so he can stop accidentally killing their plants, he suspects - and now was as good a time as any to get it done.

It wasn't so bad once he got started, he has to admit. There are whole chapters dedicated to each and every plant native to Japan; its origins, its variants, its medicinal properties, and of course, how to grow them. He can see why Genya is so passionate about this stuff.

Still, Sanemi has his limits. He's exhausted. Two hours had flown by since he started - two hours, and he's barely a quarter way through the tome.

Two hours...

... without interruption?

He fiddles with the thread of the spine as he mulls it over. Oddly enough, he hasn't seen neither hide nor hair of the demons since Giyuu dropped them off.

Suppose he shouldn't be surprised. They seem to be wary of Sanemi - and rightfully so. He stabbed them a couple times after all. Or maybe it was thrice. Or maybe… well, the details are irrelevent. He should be happy that they've finally culminated the self preservation skills to stay out of his way.

There is just one problem.

He's bored.

He didn't expect them to actually listen. He thought they would set out for revenge, because they are evil, spiteful little creatures. He would prefer it if they do violate his rules, actually; to force his hand, to put them in their place. It would be a nice break from this week-long monotony.

Perhaps he should investigate. Not because he's concerned or anything. In fact, he's the opposite of concerned: he's suspicious. What if they're plotting something? They could be waiting for the moment he falls asleep - the moment he slips his guard even just a little - and then they'll strike.

Hah. We'll see about that.

The flame of the oil lamp is extinguished with a quiet hiss. He pads out the library, his feet as light as a draft. It's more out of habit than anything. In reality, there's no point in being subtle - the red demon can probably smell him from a mile away, like the demented sniffer dog he is.

The black demon, however...

A shadow whips around the corner.

He follows.

The demon is quick, but he is quicker. It's only Nezuko. Sanemi cannot tell where she came from, nor where she's headed, but he'll know soon enough. He watches as she swishes down the length of the engawa - leaving a trail of dotted red in her wake.

Sanemi's instincts flare at the sight. It's blood, it must be! The demon must have commited some act of terror while he was holed up in the library. Damnit, he should've kept a closer eye on them! Now he has no choice but to decapi--

Ah, nevermind, it's just adzuki beans.

Sanemi pinches one off the floor with a frown. She'd stolen it from his courtyard. A little weird, sure, but not exactly a sin.

Further on, he reaches the end of his path: the kitchen. The first thing he notices from the other side of the door is the sweet smell of his crushed adzuki beans. They're cooking? What the hell? They don't get hungry, there's no reason for them to mess about in his kitchen. Unless they're trying to piss him off on purpose. He jerks the door open, and opens his mouth, ready to shout-

Except they don't even acknowledge his entry. Their backs are turned to him; huddled together, and bent over something that's hidden from view, and Nezuko giggles, and Tanjirou whispers shush. A ring of stray adzuki beans surround them, and to the side, a pot is sat upon the irori, clumps of rice spilling over the lip.

Sanemi is at a loss.

"Oi... what do you think you're doing?"

Tanjirou's face pops up. He's practically glowing with excitement as he jumps to his feet, and he trots over, Nezuko in tow, the sleeve of his haori masking whatever it is he's holding. It is a nerve-wracking moment. He places himself before the wind pillar. Takes a deep breath. Looks up, eyes twinkling innocence. And he raises the plate above his head.

"Dada!"

A single ohagi.

It is a rudimentary thing. Something tells him that this is one of many attempts that came from the past two hours. But he doesn't understand. Why him?

"Are you making fun of me? Is that it?"

"Mm?"

Tanjirou rocks on his heels, insistent. No, he really is trying to offer up this sad creation. Sanemi eyes it warily. As pathetic as it looks, it does smell rather nice. And he may have forgotten to eat today. And it is his favourite food...

So he snatches the plate. His glare floats from demon to demon as he tries to parse their intentions. Even still his cynicism refuses to let up. This could be a prank, or a poison attempt, or...

... maybe they're just trying to be nice?

In which case.

"Come with me," Sanemi grunts, and he leaves the kitchen.

[rigelmejo]

If you happen to learn like me (I guess try it out, see if it helps), then I cannot emphasize this enough: read.

Read early. Read immediately. Read when you know 10-50 words in the language, even that early. 

It will motivate you to learn more words - then read as you learn more words. And get you used to a few things immediately: you’ll see grammar immediately, often, and if you read a grammar guide then all those grammar points will be constantly reinforced as you read and see them again. And 2: you’ll be training the skill OF reading from the very beginning.

There’s multiple parts to reading. One part, is having the actual knowledge necessary to read something - do you even know the words in the text (or have the ability to look them up), do you even recognize the grammar enough to identify what it’s function is meant to be (or at least enough to look it up)? This is one part. 

The other part is how you parse through that information. How used you are to seeing the grammar - so that you can recognize what you’ve previously studied, so that you’re used to how it works and can read through it without pausing to think about it. So that you can recognize when words are being used as nouns or adjectives or verbs, recognize proper nouns, recognize what are key points versus details. Whether you need a dictionary for some words/a grammar reference, or you already ‘know’ enough to read without reference - the ability to process what you read will still be weak if you have not practiced it. But if you’ve been practicing it, then like everything else, it gradually gets better. 

When you do both parts at the same time - then when your knowledge of grammar/words is weak, you can rely on your ability to ‘process’ to help make the text easier to figure out. If your ability to process something is low (maybe its difficult), you can rely on your knowledge of grammar/words to help you figure out the text. If you work on both, then you can have them both supporting each other as you improve reading. 

---

In theory, maybe you could ‘only’ practice the processing, and rely on word/grammar lookups constantly until it got easier - a difficult road though, probably. Likewise, many people wait until they know X amount of words before trying to read - and as a result they have zero practice ‘processing’ this language reading material, and sentences they know every word for still don’t make sense and feel difficult. Doing both is difficult at first - just like doing one alone would be. But if they’re done together, then they also improve together, and so the middle stages of reading skill feel much easier than they might otherwise. 

If you know 2000 words but have no idea how to process text, even graded readers are going to feel painful at first. If you’ve been making yourself practice processing text, even back when you only knew 500 words? Then by the time you get to 2000, processing is also at a relative intermediate stage. And the biggest difficulty is generally just lack of vocabulary - which is easy to lookup with a dictionary. Whereas, you can’t ‘look up’ anything to improve processing skill. You can lookup knowledge you lack. But the only way to improve processing skill, is TO read, and to keep practicing reading. 

I remember how difficult reading used to be. It’s still not ‘easy’ like french is easy yet, but its happily following the same trajectory reading french (or I imagine even english when I was young) did. I rememeber the first few months, grammar absolutely anihilated me. Even though I’d ‘studied’ it recently. I sort of knew all these grammar points in theory, I just had no idea how to process them in practice. I could look up words all I wanted, to fill in my gaps in knowledge. But I couldn’t improve my processing except by reading. And just over time... grammar got so much easier. It just clicked, a few points making sense at a time. Then those points getting easier for me to recognize faster, then those points getting intuitively understood. Etc, as it happened with more.

Likewise - I could learn words, but it was hard to process all the ways they were used, until I practiced processing them more. Even if I looked words up, even in sentences with grammar I could process, some words just did not make sense to me in their context. Then just over time, more and more made sense. I used to be very confused by ‘weile’ and ‘zhexie/zhege/zheshi’ as some basic examples. Or later words like ‘kanqilai’ and ‘qilai’ and ‘yihou’ ‘yiqian’ ‘dao’ etc. Eventually they made more sense, and then more did in more context, etc. All just from reading practice. I couldn’t read a definition to get these words to make more sense, I just had to read more.

I’m still noticing these areas of processing getting better over time. But I do remember, back when I tried reading 3 paragraphs of the MoDaoZuShi intro in like month 5? I looked up all the words, recognized the grammar, and understood nothing. Then in like month 8? I read the prologue with no dictionary and guessed at the unknown words, and knew enough to understand the gist and most of the details. Mostly, because those things I knew before just ‘processed’ better in month 8.

over time, subtitles got easier to ‘process’ so now I don’t have to pause them as often to figure out what they mean (parse through the sentence for meaning).

Now most novels don’t hit me with any sentence that I can’t at least figure out with a dictionary. I’m still stumbling over some things, but now since I can process overall a lot of things better - I have more surrounding understanding to help me figure out the more confusing parts. Like right now, I’m really struggling with PRECISELY how ‘yu’ and ‘you’ get used. As in ‘yu’ by/with/at/for, ‘you’ - by/done by etc. I roughly understand these words - I know their definitions, and I can roughly guess their meaning in sentences and follow the plot. But because they do mean slightly different things in various contexts, I clearly just need to see them more and more in examples before they’ll ‘click’ and be easier to process too. I have to say though... its way easier to focus on these words/grammar points, since I have so much surrounding understanding. If I had just waited for X words learned before starting reading? Then I’d be learning ALL the processing skills from point 0. That would be... discouraging.

In a way, I already waited to long to start reading as much as I sort of WISH I had. I read about once every 2 weeks, until month 8. It was only in month 8, that I started reading roughly a few times a week - and reading full chapters per sitting, instead of just several paragraphs. As a result, it WAS brutal at first. Because my processing skills were clearly lower than my vocab. I tried graded readers, and even though I knew all the words, they were a struggle to read. So, as my typical silly self, I picked a webnovel instead - with even MORE unknown words, even Harder. I read 15 chapters of it. Which was hard... but clearly helped. Then I went back to the graded readers, and they were a breeze - so I’d clearly built up some processing skills.

After that, I again brutally myself, decided to try reading a harder print novel I owned. That was... again, brutal. Then I went back to the webnovel? And the webnovel was notably easier! Again, those processing skills had built up some more, and I’d probably picked up some more vocabulary as well. 

And its basically been repeating since then - a much quicker rate of progress, where it seems a significant amount easier every 2 months or so. I feel like I’m at like - the reading level I had in 4th grade in english? I was in one of those accelerated reading programs, so we’d read some middle-school level books by looking up like 20 words before each chapter and then having to read X amount a week. A bit challenging, definitely compared to whatever the 4th grade reading level was supposed to be (I remember liking Catwings and Bunnicula a lot which I think was my 4th grade level, and I feel like chinese graded readers I’ve been picking up feel like Bunnicula in difficulty). But also, back when I was that young sometimes I’d pick up my dad’s big huge Mitchner novels like ALASKA or his Sherlock books, and I’d read a few pages - they’d be super difficult to understand, a little painful, so I’d only read a few pages. But I’d usually understand the gist. And I’d pick up some of my moms books on Aliens and supernatural stuff, and mostly read the captions on the pictures, maybe a paragraph or two. I feel like my chinese reading level is around this right now. I can pick up adult novels and it hurts, but I can follow whats going on without a dictionary roughly. And with a dictionary, decently. I can pick up ‘teen’ level books and follow them easier, but need a dictionary for total understanding of all details. And I can pick up graded readers and they’re basically extended reading, if they’re at a low enough level (like HSK 4 vocabulary wise, to maybe 2000 words - after 2k words, I run into more and more I need a dictionary for if I want to follow details). 

---

anyway yeah. I remember in french I started reading at 50 words, then 100, then 500, and just kept reading. And it just ‘magically’ got easier. And I sort of did that with chinese, and am so glad I did. I wish i’d done it even more. I’m doing it more now. 

It felt so good last night, to be able to just binge a few chapters of a fanfic in chinese, without feeling drained. It felt so good to be at the reading level where I can look up words I need to fast enough to not slow me down enough that I lose interest. 

don’t wait until you’ve ‘prepared’ enough. don’t wait years. i waited years in japanese to read, and it was the biggest thing holding me back. i didn’t wait in chinese, and in part reading MOTIVATED me to study what i needed FASTER. It certainly helped my processing skills. And when processing skills are higher, reading overall is just less painful. A dictionary can lessen the pain of not knowing enough vocabulary. But only reading practice can lessen the pain of processing skills being weak. And - if you start to read later, it’s fine. Its okay if it seems ridiculously difficult at first, that will pass. Its just you working on the processing skills, and as those develop reading will go up to feeling mostly only as difficult as the vocabulary.

[shepherdsoreydidnothingwrong]

Tumblr is being a brat so I'll just resend: Short prompt list: either 5, 6, or 15, for sormik

Happy to oblige :)

#5. “You tried a different hairstyle than the one you usually do, and um shit you’re attractive...”

#6. “I told you I’m a werewolf and you’re being very accepting but I don’t actually work up the courage before the next transformation to tell you that I’m actually a weredog. A small dog at that.”

To his credit, Mikleo takes the news very well.

They have been dating for two months when Sorey finally tells him. They spend an evening together having dinner and bantering back and forth, and Sorey feels as though his heart is going to come bursting out of his chest whenever there is a lull in the conversation. He looks for the right moment for a good two hours of company before he realises that there will probably be no such thing. Eventually, the moment just catches up to him, in the form of Mikleo’s concerned tilt of the head.

“Are you alright?” he asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Cold panic zaps through him for an instant. He swallows and clears his throat, if only to buy some time to put the words together.

“I’m fine,” he says, but his voice comes out far too high pitched to be truthful. He stops, does his best to collect himself. Then he looks Mikleo earnestly in the eyes.

“There’s just… something I need you to know.”

Mikleo’s frown is deepening as he sits back in his chair. 

“Okay?” He sounds worried.

“It’s not-” Sorey stops, because he was going to say “anything bad”, but the truth is that he is not sure if it will be. “I mean, there’s something about me you should know, if we’re… If we’re going to continue, um,” he gestures uselessly between them, “this.”

Mikleo has gone from relaxed and playful to gravely serious in a matter of seconds. He knits his fingers on his lap and nods, slowly and uncertainly.

“Alright.” He speaks slowly and deliberately as well. “What’s is it?”

Sorey draws in a long breath through his nose. He steels himself and resolves to just push out the words. Unfortunately, they seem to all come to him at once.

“I’m a were-dog-uh-wolf-thing.” He speaks far too quickly to make much sense. “A shifter. Time of the month and all that… stuff.”

Never in his life has he referred to it as anything he just said, and never before has he regretted speaking something out loud so much. He sits wide-eyed in mortified shock and just watches Mikleo’s expression.

Mikleo takes a moment to look confused, and probably to parse the information that was just hurled at him at high speeds. He blinks, then his frown becomes ever deeper, only to lighten again as he realises what the words actually were.

“You’re a werewolf?”

Sorey breathes so deep he thinks he might be getting too much oxygen. A stuttering nod is all he can do as his first reaction.

Mikleo tilts his head again, and now there is faint amusement visible in his eyes. He realises the gravity of the situation, however, and quickly composes himself.

“Sorey,” he says, and his voice is soft, comforting. “That’s not a problem for me.”

Sorey blinks. Relief floods through him at once, and he feels more than controls the relaxing of his tense shoulders. All breath goes out of him as he realises that he has not in fact ruined what might be the best relationship he has ever had.

“It’s not?” he asks, because he has to make sure. He might have heard it wrong somehow. There is always a chance.

Mikleo nods. He smiles slightly.

“It’s perfectly alright. I mean, it’ll take some time to get used to,” he admits, leaning forward and reaching across the table for Sorey’s hand, which he offers. “But it’s not a dealbreaker by any stretch. You might have to be a bit patient with me, but I love you. This won’t change that.”

Sorey stares at him. For a long moment, it is all he can do. Mikleo waits patiently, but when no answer is forthcoming, the concern comes back in full force.

“Sorey?” he asks. “Did I say something wrong?”

Sorey blinks.

“You said ‘I love you’.”

Fear and shock and mortification, it all mixes in with warm reverence of what has happened. They have never said it to each other before.

Mikleo looks then like a deer in headlights. He opens his mouth. Hesitates.

“I said I love you,” he mutters, looking down at their hands on the table. Sorey squeezes his hand, bringing his attention back to him.

“Hey,” he says kindly. “It’s okay. I love you too.”

The way Mikleo looks at him then makes his heart feel five times lighter. As though it is going to float up in the air and take him along with it. He lets it, and stands up.

He makes it around the table in three long steps, and Mikleo comes up to meet him. They kiss, and Sorey gets ever lighter. He holds Mikleo’s face and looks into his eyes.

“I love you too,” he repeats. Mikleo leans his forehead to Sorey’s.

“I love you.”

***

It only occurs to him later on that he did not correct Mikleo’s understanding of his condition. It only serves to make things worse, because he cannot bring himself to do it over text.

After that date, Mikleo goes away for a week with his mother, leaving Sorey to wonder what he will do when he comes back. The full moon will be just a couple of days after it, and their schedules will not be coinciding well enough to meet up before that. That leaves the question of whether he wants to tell Mikleo on the night it actually happens, or leave it for the days that come after.

He has almost made up his mind, but then Mikleo asks him all sweet whether he can be there during the full moon to help. He admits with a shrug over video call that he has no idea what he would be doing, but his conviction in helping Sorey be as comfortable as possible makes for an uncomfortable tug at Sorey’s heart strings.

Sorey almost tells him right there, but some small inkling of doubt still drags him from it. He wonders whether it is even worth the worry. Mikleo is not the type to judge, and the difference between dealing with a wolf and a dog is significant. Mikleo would certainly feel safer if he knew what the situation actually is.

Still, there is some sense within him that perhaps Mikleo thinks it cool to be together with someone who turns into a wolf at full moon. It is well known that wolves are more popular in media and social circles, that they are considered noble and exotically wild. To get to see one up close is an experience, and one he is upset he will have to deprive Mikleo of. It is present in all the good shows and books, that meeting between worlds. The human getting to carefully approach, to fully appreciate the power of this majestic animal.

He thinks about it for too long, and Mikleo begins to yawn on the other side of the call. They wish each other good night and he hangs up, staring at their chat history with unseeing eyes. He is going to have to tell Mikleo. He cannot just let it reveal itself.

Can he?

***

The next full moon is more awkward than any other in Sorey’s life, and that is saying something.

He paces the length of his kitchen and living room all afternoon. He has made up his mind.

The fact that this feels harder to tell him than the condition itself feels ridiculous. He knows that Mikleo would never judge him for such a thing. It does not stop him from judging himself.

Mikleo calls from the road. Traffic is holding him back longer than he would have thought. Sorey regrets not warning him, as this is usually the time when people take their families to local parks and forests. A courtesy to the relatives who will need the space to work off some energy in their alternate forms. If this were not a special occasion, Sorey would be waiting outside in his backyard.

There is no more than half an hour left when Mikleo's car pulls into the driveway. Given how irregular it usually is, Sorey would be surprised if they even have that much. He greets Mikleo in the door, and stops completely when he takes in his appearance.

Mikleo is wearing a long coat and black boots appropriate for the autumn weather. His cheeks are rosy with the chill and his hair is loose and spilling over his shoulders. He is wearing a beanie, settled neatly over his bangs.

Sorey can only stare for a moment, because he has rarely ever seen Mikleo with his hair out of a ponytail. It looks good. Really good. Enough for Sorey to fall just a little bit more in love right then and there.

“Hi,” Mikleo says. He is smiling, which only helps to further short circuit Sorey. He sounds breathless, as though he got to Sorey's house on foot as opposed to the car that stands in the driveway behind him. Sorey wonders if he ran to the door.

“I'm sorry I'm late,” he says, glancing sheepishly sideways, towards where his car stands hastily parked. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Sorey says. “Yeah, it's alright. Come in.”

He takes Mikleo's coat and watches him toe out of his shoes. When Mikleo takes off the beanie, it leaves behind a ruffled halo over his head. He is wearing a warm sweater and jeans, matching Sorey quite well.

“So,” he says, drawing out the pause hesitantly. “How does this usually work? Is there somewhere you should be? Anything I can do to help?”

Sorey blinks. “Right. No, I don’t think so. It’s mostly just waiting around for it at this point. There’s no special place or anything.”

“And you’ll…” Mikleo looks worried. “You’ll be aware of things, right? You’re still in there?”

Sorey nods, trying to make his smile as reassuring as possible.

“Yeah. It’ll be all me.”

Mikleo nods. He looks nervous, but determined. It makes Sorey very happy to see it.

Sorey opens his mouth to speak again, but then something tugs inside his chest. His eyes widen and he staggers back a bit. It seems that things are beginning.

Mikleo takes a step back too, his eyes wide.

“Are you alright? Is it starting?”

Sorey can only nod. The transformation is not as painful as it used to be, but there is still enough times in between the occasions that he has time to forget how odd it feels. He backs up another step and leans against the back of the couch, steadying himself.

“What can I do?” Mikleo asks.

“Stay still,” Sorey warns. “It’ll be a second before I get back my bearings when it’s done.”

The transformation in itself is very quick. His muscles contract and stay that way, only to contract again and again. It goes on until he is shorter than the length of the sofa, then shorter than the footstool at the end of it. His clothing pools around him, his shirt falling over his head.

When he sweeps it away, he is shifted enough that his vision has lost most of its colour. Everything looks blurry, slowly coming back into view. Mikleo’s legs appear before him.

He is expecting some sort of a reaction. Confusion. Amusement. Stunned silence.

He is not expecting the way Mikleo yelps and leaps backwards, stumbling and falling over a chair.

***

“In my defense,” Mikleo says, “I entered this experience on false premises.”

“And I am very sorry about that,” Sorey says as he comes to stand by the counter next to him. He draws Mikleo into his embrace and Mikleo leans into him, huffing his displeasure and disrupting his drooping bangs. His hair is a mess. Sorey will have to find him a hairbrush later.

Not for any reason having to do with himself, of course. He is very much enjoying this development in Mikleo’s personal style. He only wishes it came from something other than sitting up all night wringing it in his hands.

“You never told me you were afraid of dogs.” He says it simply, without being accusatory. Most of all he tries to keep the amusement and concern out of his voice. The way Mikleo glares at him tells him that he is failing.

“You didn’t tell me you turn into a Yorkshire Terrier every full moon.”

Sorey has to shrug his agreement. “In my defense, I thought it would be embarrassing. Not…” he gestures vaguely “like this.”

Mikleo sags in his arms. Sorey has offered him a coffee cup shaped like a cat’s head, and it seems to be appeasing him somewhat. He takes a long sip of his drink. Sorey squeezes him lightly.

“Can I ask you a question, though?”

Mikleo shrugs, his cup still put to his lips.

“Did you think it would be easier to be around a wolf than a dog?”

The cup remains in place for a suspiciously long moment. Then Mikleo turns and looks him in the eyes.

“No laughing,” he says. Sorey has no time to make such a promise before he speaks again. “I was thinking that I’ve never met a wolf, and I can get used to one acting in an human way if I’ve never seen one before.”

Sorey tilts his head and attempts to make sense of that. Mikleo barrels on.

“But I’ve met dogs before. Mean ones. And a gut reaction to something familiar is harder to get rid of than a gut reaction to something unknown. If that makes any sort of sense.”

Sorey considers it.

“I’m not sure it does,” he says honestly. “But I do consider it incredibly sweet that you were prepared to be around me for this. I didn’t realise how hard it would be for you.”

Mikleo sighs. He turns around fully, leaving his cup on the counter, and wraps his arms around Sorey.

“It turns out there’s a lot of things I’d do for you,” he says.

Sorey smiles into Mikleo’s hair. “And I love you for it.”

Mikleo nuzzles into his neck. His voice is low and muffled.

“Now I’m going to get some sleep, and next month we’re sorting out some sort of game plan. I’m still not leaving you alone for this.”

Sorey squeezes him again. He smiles.

“If you like we can go shopping for a nice leash.”

Mikleo’s laugh rumbles against his chest.

“Better not tell Zaveid,” he says, “he’d never run out of jokes.”

Sorey grins. “If I’m good, do I get a treat?”

Mikleo only smacks him lightly. His smile is wide against Sorey’s throat.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S1 Ep 25: Yugi Has (Another) Melt Down

It’s the weekend, so lets sit down to some Yugioh. Recently, our protagonist has had a pretty big break up--with himself.  Pharaoh was either just so exasperated or just so drained that he didn’t even show up this episode, I gather because he’s still pissed that Yugi didn’t do a murder.

Yugi’s voice actor, I’m sure, breathed a sigh of relief because sometimes it’s super apparent that this is just one guy arguing with himself in a sound booth and he sometimes doesn’t fully flip form person to person as he’s jumping up and down 2 octaves.

So, Yugi does what people do when they break up, by flopping down catatonic at the steps of Generic Castle.

If you’re the same age as the kids I work with who think Greenday is “retro,” first of all, how dare you, and second of all, you’re probably too young to know the most emo album of the 00′s, Transantlanticism, AKA the album that gave America depression for about 4 years. I guess you too-young children don’t get know the sound of slowly sinking into a tar pit while beautiful little birds cry on your face.

Anyway, I just erased about 5 rants about smol kids calling the the Killers “retro”, so I’ll segway back to the anime at hand before I do it, yet again. Uf, my weakness.

Yugi’s friends are doing whatever they can to try and reach Yugi without actually doing the emotional labor of trying to reach Yugi. They can physically move him around (and my guess is that they’ve just been picking him up by the scruff of the neck like a kitten and just walking him place to place.) When they straight up ask what they can do, he has a predictable reply of no reply at all.

(read more under the cut)

Like I make fun of this show a lot, but this is some interesting stuff. I have seen so many people wax long about Sailor Moon for their college theses but, very few get on the Yugioh train despite the fact that there’s some good literary action going on here. You have to parse through some voice acting but, I mean--we’ve all seen the original Sailor Moon dub.

It’s also completely--sorry I’m listening to Transatlanticism as I type this and they just got to the cowbells. Gotta live in the moment for a little bit. Ugh, so good. OK, cowbells over--anyways, this show is also completely nutballs, but it’s a shame that it’s reputation for being a wacky nutballs extravaganza distract from the fact that there’s some clever subtle(-ish) stuff going on underneath it.

So, lets dive a wee bit deeper. Not super far mind you, most of those waaaay too deep college anime papers are nonsense that the student wrote at 4AM on 5 redbulls (SO ENTERTAINING THOUGH), but, lets step back about 3 or 4 episodes from here.

I realized something kind of obvious that went right over my head until this episode. It’s a riddle:

A boy walking through the woods comes to a crossroads. Two twins are standing there, and they explain one lies and one tells the truth, and one way down the fork is certain death and the other way is the way home. The boy decides “Oh, yeah, I know this one,” and starts solving the riddle, but then realizes very quickly that both the twins are liars. The riddle cannot be solved. Either fork in the road will always lead to death.

At the time I didn’t understand the riddle, I looked online and got only other confused people, but now it makes sense why there was no real answer. Yugi and Pharaoh are the two lying twins at the crossroads. Yugi and Pharaoh are a type of twin: they look the same, they finish each other’s thoughts, they both can’t stop withholding information, they also share the same body.

The riddle of ParaDox wasn’t really about how to get out of the labyrinth, it was to illustrate this choice that Yugi will never be able to make. He cannot be cured. He can’t escape his mind-labyrinth. While Yugi could choose to completely become the Pharaoh or completely become Yugi, both choices would end in a type of death for the other.

And apparently, Yugi deciding to go full-Yugi is a lot like watching Windows reboot itself on safe mode.

Bless this story boarder.

Nice of Mai to show up just a few minutes too late. She could have just given 5 chips to Kaiba but whatever. Speaking of Kaiba.

And that’s where Kaiba’s gonna be for the rest of the episode. Kaiba’s walking speed must be at an ants pace to explain this season.

Meanwhile, Mai decides to show off her own strange form of tough love. It’s very similar to Joeys, and very much not what Yugi needs right now. Can anyone on this show recognize what a break down looks like?

At least everyone else’s weird approach to self care does make for good TV.

Maybe it was poor animation but I really think based on other people’s reactions that she was trying to fake punch the kid. Seems to be a normal reaction in the Yugioh universe to just punch punch punch until it all works out.

Also Mai is way more productive than the rest of them combined. It’s kind of unfair that the clearly best player here is clearly not going to win this tourney. I’d do the math exactly, I exaggerated for this panel, but I believe she won 10 chips in one day? About?

The show never actually has Yugi say “I don’t want help, leave me alone.” but about ten episodes back we saw this same exchange with Mai and Yugi but in the reverse. Interesting parallel. Of course, now it’s got the added element of no one wants to be the first to tell Mai that Yugi nearly killed the head of Kaiba Corp. Youknow...the people who are, in fact, funding and hosting this tournament.

I mean I guess it would be weird to bring up that 10 minutes ago Kaiba was standing on a ledge and Yugi was flinging a hologram yo-yo at him but what could be weirder than this already is?

Tea can duel!? I mean I guess we saw her deck once, back when Bakura talked shop before he youknow...turned them into cards...but man, I thought everyone on the show would end up dueling before Tea does.

So, they decided to hike all the way to platform 15. I haven’t been keeping track of their numbers but like...how many are even on this island? How many are hanging out never to be used again because No One Lives Here?

So is Tea any good at cards? I mean she’s not NOT not dating a card wizard Pharaoh.

She’s not. She’s not good at cards. I mean...she’s Tea.

Also, Tea never shuts up about the power of friendship through this whole fight. It was like...girl there comes a point. You passed the point. This is past the comfortable point.

Why, Tea?

I get the feeling that this show was written by writers who knew their forte and it was not romance.

This shot right here is the closest we’ve gotten to romance this season. Incredible.

And again, I don’t want it to happen, I’m just surprised that the writers didn’t, either.

Joey kinda leans over to Yugi after a while and is like “IS ANY OF THIS GETTING TO YOU!? CAN YOU HEAR ME LIL BUDDY!?” and Yugi’s like “I’m standing right next to you!”

It’s during this that Mai delivers some hard to swallow pills. Things that aren’t necessarily wrong.

We got the only two girls on a show that funnels girls into the emotional support role fighting it out to see who has the right form of moral support. The honest answer is they both do, in their own weird way.

Tea standing up to Mai inspires Yugi to stand up to his dark side, because apparently Mai is just a darkside version of Tea? Kind of a weird thing to inspire him but the episode needed a clean solution to this problem that they’ve already told us can’t ever be solved.

Yugi’s eyes dilate back to their normal scary hell state, he makes eye contact with his friends again, and he is ready to move this plot forward.

Because...Tea? I dunno.

GOL THIS FACE.

So lets get this straight--he hasn’t spoken a word to Pharaoh, he’s just decided "Well Tea can’t be wrong so we’re good now” and booked it straight for card wizard Magic Palace? Again, this bizarre heel turn would actually make sense if these two had shown any sort of...wait...

Did they have to edit out the romance in post? Is that what happened? That’s what happened, wasn’t it?

Anyways, next week, on Yugioh, maybe we’ll get an actual resolution to this problem. Also:

Who will Yugi almost kill next? Will Kaiba have to walk down yet another hallway with a big ass endless rug? Is Bandit Keith just lounging in Pegasus’ infinity pool drinking strawberry juice out of a wine glass through all this?

[hydrus]

Version 310

windows

zip

exe

os x

app

tar.gz

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a productive week. A bunch of stuff is fixed, and I finished a first version of multi-file url downloading.

multi-file support

A limitation of the old download system is that it always assumed a single 'post URL' could only ever produce a single file. This week, I have added full support for multi-files-per-post-URL to the new downloader. If a new parser generates multiple 'downloadable' URLs, the file import queue will generate and insert new download objects for each. Tags and associable URLs should all be passed along to the children as appropriate.

As a result, I can finally roll out support for several sites that provide files in this way. I've updated the inkbunny post parser, and added twitter tweet and artstation post parsers, so all these should now be drag-and-droppable onto the client. The twitter parser only supports images--no videos yet. The inkbunny parser may put its multi-files slightly out of order, and in one of my tests it pulled the artist profile picture as well, so it may need some tweaking. IB have a proper API, but it requires some login stuff, so I will look at that again when I have the new login system done.

And of course I have added a pixiv manga parser, which has been highly requested for a long time. This was fairly complicated, but I think I got all the referral URLs and tags lined up correct. It can even add 1-indexed page tags. Unfortunately, pixiv just changed my test login to the new (currently broken) JSON/javascript layout just today, as I did final testing. If it turns out pixiv have switched everyone over to the broken layout on the very day I finally roll out manga support, I think my head is going to explode, but even if so, I am confident the javascript layout is parsable--it'll just take a bit more work. I expect to have a fix for all pixiv users for v311 if another user doesn't post one sooner.

This multi-file parsing is a first version. There may be bugs, so please let me know. I also don't really like how the initial post URLs' file import objects get counted as 'successful' like a regular file, so I may make a new 'successfully parsed' type to distinguish them a bit and alter the file progress counts appropriately.

misc

The new 'x% in' video thumbnail generation works better and fails better now, including some better workflow and error-reporting when regen is manually started by the user. If you had some videos that failed to import or regen last week, please try them again and let me know if you still have problems.

The multiple watcher now has a 'check now' button.

I added a semi-crazy prototype checkbox to options->gui that puts all your page tabs on the left. It needs a restart to kick in. Test it at your own risk.

The new download system now informs the new network engine of file limits in your 'file import options'! So, if you say 'don't get gifs bitter than 32MB', and the server clearly identifies a newly started download as a gif with size 50MB, the download will be abandoned and a veto/ignored status set immediately! It also works with the regular min/max filesize as appropriate. Let me know if it goes wrong!

I cleaned up some file repository thumbnail sync and display code all around.

github

Github got bought by Microsoft, so I am considering migrating somewhere else. I only use Github as a file/code host and the workflow of syncing there is easy, so I may or may not go, or may just put it off and see what happens during the transition. I am interested in your thoughts on the whole deal and what you think of the alternatives.

full list

updated the inkbunny file page url class to acknowledge that inbunny pages can have multiple files

updated the inkbunny file page parser to handle multiple file urls (although they may be out of order and possibly sometimes include the artist profile image--this was not super easy)

added a parser for twitter tweets (only images supported atm, but it can handle multiple!) (hence tweet drag and drop now works!)

updated the artstation file page url class to redirect to a new api url class

wrote an artstation file page parser that also handles multiple file urls

updated/added pixiv file page, manga page, and mange_big url classes

updated pixiv file page parsers to be ok with manga links

wrote parsers for pixiv manga and manga_big pages to fetch manga files (with page tags)!

file import objects can now create semi-duplicate children for multi-file post urls and insert them just after themselves in the file import queue.

file import objects can now receive and remember referral urls. this referral url is associated with the file if appropriate. the watcher and simple downloader now uses this in addition to the multi-file post system

jumbled around some parameters and merged the two new file import url commands (import 'file' vs import 'post') into one single simple 'work on this url, thanks' call that is now used across the program

the parsing system's 'content parser' no longer fetches file urls and post urls, but 'download urls' and 'source urls'. this helps some pipeline logic and also lets post urls be download urls

when file import objects parse post urls as the urls to download, it now creates 1-n new import objects, just like if multiple file urls.

improved some file import object file association code

the new parsing system will de-dupe parsed urls

refactored the 'seed' code, which handles all basic file import objects, to the new ClientImportSeeds.py

added a new string transformation type, 'integer addition', for shifting page number tags up and down

fixed thumbnail generation for some videos that failed to do the new x%-in generation--it reverts more reliably just to the old frame 0 method

file reparsing popup now has a stop button

fixed an issue where extremely thin or wide (ratio > 200:1) images would not generate a full-size or resized thumbnail

the file reparsing/re-thumbnailing now reports errors better (including with full path) and does not abandon the larger job as it works

misc thumbnail generation code improvements

improved some thumbnail and file regeneration/moving code when the existing file has read-only status

the multiple watcher now has a 'check now' button

added a checkbox to options->gui that will put new notebook page tabs on the left

for all file download network jobs working in the new download system, the file import options for min size, max size, and max size (gifs) are now applied _during the download_! if the server tells the client the exact file size in the response headers, it will test max and min size before the content is actually downloaded--otherwise, it will test the max size as it downloads. if the server clearly says the file is a gif, the max gif size rules will also be tested in the same way

cleaned up some bandwidth announcement code--now, if bandwidth is due in less time than override time, that will now correctly be the status text

the bandwidth status no longer says 'in in' typo

fixed up some tag repair code from last week

the 'print garbage' debug function now dumps a whole bunch more data to the log

the thumbnail cache should now be a bit more stoic about missing repository thumbnails--it should now just present the hydrus default backup without error popup spam

the repository thumbnail sync will now get as thumbs in blocks as high as 10k at a time, rather than the old 100

hydrus network requests no longer generate web domain network contexts (and so won't have a default one-request-per-second bandwidth limit and should stream through thumbnails a bit faster)

hydrus network services are now willing to wait longer for bandwidth, so big thumbnail queues should keep working even if other bottlenecks pause them for a bit

hydrus network services will no longer sometimes have double-sync popups if synced from the advanced 'sync now' button in review services

changed the default global 'stop-accidents' bandwidth rule of 120rqs per minute to 512MB per minute. this only affects new users, but users trying to sync to large file repos might like to make a similar change manually

doing giant full file delete (i.e. purge from trash) jobs should now be a bit gentler on the gui

improved how the client deletes paths, clarifying in the code when and when not to allow recycle (usually disabled for thumb disposal)

switched the hacky text widgets on the popup system to a newer object. seems to still render ok, so lets see if it fixes some unusual layout issues some users have seen

if the temp folder cannot be created on boot, the client will continue anyway

fixed some url-domain text handling in db storage that was also breaking v309 update for some users

fixed some additional domain generation error handling at the db level

the list of url classes in the system:url panel is now the list of all url classes that are considered associable (before, it was file and post urls)

if a url class now api-links to itself or otherwise forms a loop with n other api url classes, the client will now throw an error (rather than lock up in an infinite loop!)

in the parsing ui, tag parse test results are now cleaned before being displayed

fixed misc url matching error reporting bug

when consulting the current file limit, the gallery page downloader will now try, when it has that number, to consult the total number of urls found it the current search (old behaviour is to only consult the number of _new_ urls, which lead to some bad edge-case workflows)

misc refactoring

next week

I am going to take a light week next week so I can shitpost E3. I will try and keep up with messages, but I'll only do a little fixing work. I will get back to regular schedule on the 16th, which means v311 will be on the 20th. I will make a 'No Release Tomorrow!' post on the 12th.

I am a little ill and completely exhausted, so an easy week is coming at a great time.

I am still really enjoying making hydrus. Thank you for all your continued support!

[spamzineglasgow]

(ESSAY) amber, by Rosie Roberts

In this essay, Rosie Roberts attunes to the vibrational synchronicities of everyday life: the interval moments that hold us thickly, the centrifugal tendencies of coming to reality. Speculation, matter and perception glitter in multifaceted form; a phenomenology of this flickering present, with all its distortions and possible clarities. Throughout ‘amber’, Roberts also parses the semiotics of Glasgow’s sigil and other vital objects of mythological anchoring, infinity, psychic preservation, sounding out.

> We step out.

> Glaswegian psychiatrist and scholar R.D. Laing opens the preface to The Divided Self by saying, one cannot say everything at once. I hold in my mind that each thought uttered takes a moment to say and a moment to witness. That these moments form conversation, argument, intimate whisper, lecture, reparation, awkward impasse, forgiveness, etc. They are interaction, which deserves care and time; and in a time where moments can seem both finite and unruly Laing’s statement rings in my ears – you cannot represent everything – a landscape of aural, visual, affective and contextual perception – at once.

> Even from within the site of one body, one moment or one’s reality can be experienced as a multi-faceted synchronisation of varying perceptions, augmenting the feeling of that moment. What follows then, perhaps, is the futility and dogmatism of an attempt at the realistic representation of a moment. Instead could there be an anti-real moment and its documentation, or disintegration into the flow of constant thought.

> Wait…what? Press the button to stop the traffic, pause on a surface specifically made to help you survive.

> Realism and idealism deal with the relationship between our minds and the world, but perhaps this is too much of what Laing would refer to as a centrifugal tendency, focusing on the reality of the seed instead of the potential of a tree. So, I begin to think from in between, creating a sapling space, supple and sweet.

> Look up to the Tron tower, pause the clock, or at least dial it down, right down. Wait for a clicking sound.

> As the pendulum swings there are seconds not seen where the chime is suspended in air, untouching and unsounding. It is this slow moment that is the preoccupation of the writing that follows, before the chime of thought to voice in air, before the branching out and rooting down. Spiral into this in between and there perhaps you can hold time with me.

> I’ll try to offer a frame, a beat, and a swoop into inertia. A beginning which starts from my own bell chamber and chiming voice which honestly/obviously is not my own, of course actually it sounds out through many others. Reading and writing at a one to one scale, those words are slanted into this text, as they lean into the thinking, the inner brain voice where parsing happens during moments of strike and struck.

> From this place what may be glimpsed is an imaginative or speculative way of achieving either documentation or activism through art and literature. These notions that have played a key role in leftist and emancipatory traditions are active within the speculative science fiction of say Octavia Butler or Ursula K. Le Guin, where a capacious foil to the close doldrum of capitalist realism is opened. Truth through fiction is perhaps more pertinent now than ever. It is likely not news that ‘true’ documentation can be an unconvincing record, that leaves some nuance or feeling lacking, an undoctored recording, like the you of Laing’s statement cannot ‘represent’ everything all at once. Documents are never a self-standing entity but are connected, haunted and contaminated by their readers and their histories.[1]

> I opened my mouth as the signal changed and I forgot what I was saying in order to do what I was doing.

                                                             ∞

> I find another bell (and it’s time stopping chime) to work with in Glasgow’s sigil, I have found it before in service and school and I came across it by chance on an archival tour. I heard it this morning, in my home. The bell chimes on a Sunday to gather a gospel community in a Pentecostal church. From my bed, through open windows I was party to it from outside its walls and inside my own. The plague of seagulls from Hamden Stadium responded in wracking craws, the sounding of my locality.

> Following Doreen Massey’s analysis of her locality, held within the essay A Global Sense of Place, of her position within it and its position within the world, and applying her method to my own; I would like to begin a forever process of sketching a geographically near moment, held both within and outwith the self.

> An act which draws in time, like the chord of the chime, in order to understand a place as undefinable, in relation to passing moments, themselves undefinable things that are slippery and constant. To find in Massey’s words, a sense of place which is adequate to this era of time-space-compression. To recognise space, and time as processes, like capitalism in the Marxist sense that we exist with and through. Like the journey to work.

> Glasgow’s sigil contains many objects, varied forms to represent a varied community, and they have been depicted in everything from tile mosaic, to bus stop, to tea towel. They are held within a shield that seeks to say something about people and what they make of where they are and what they do, but sometimes a shield is used to obscure rather than protect. People make Glasgow many things, including some nice stuff and some horror shows, people are at once the beady eyes, bystander behaviour and broken hearts.

> The story of the sigil is known and liked. A dispute, a lovers’ tryst, an overbearing father’s authority, a natural place, and a magical fish. The sigil and its storied ephemera could perhaps represent one of ways through which a trial to extract sustenance from the objects of a culture - a culture whose avowed desire has often been not to sustain[2] its inhabitants - could take place. Objects through which to think about what’s happening here and now in my locale.

                                                            ∞

> For Edinburgh-based experimental obituarist Melissa McCarthy, objects and processes that hold particular moments are often re-simulated in media to strange effect. In her book Sharks, Death and Surfers, McCarthy enacts an imaginative close reading[3] of the film Jaws as it unravels into a not so subtle metaphor of the killing of Mary Jo Kopechne, the young woman found dead in Ted Kennedy’s semi-submerged car in 1969.

> While he escaped from the vehicle, she did not. Like the political corruption that existed behind the fragile film of glamour that the Kennedy’s sustained, the reality and protagonists of the two tales – a car, a shark and a dead woman – lurk beneath a surface. This is what McCarthy describes as a moving image of motionlessness, a space-time-compression; an obscurus. And this in turn has a relationship with archives, books and the internet, if she had known what she was going to find, the findings would not exist now in the form of her book.[4]

> When we walk past and look at the surface of the Clyde’s water, seemingly stilled, we cannot see the infinity of happening underneath, time stops and continues. In an insidious inversion of this process the Kopechne incident becomes a happening under a stilled surface, paratextual, an ugly footnote, to the smash-hit-cult-classic, Jaws; demonstrating a slippage where moments repeated in media become paratextual to events themselves. But the paratextuality of metaphor in media, writing and film does not always have to act within a framework of paranoid hermeneutics, it can be reparative too.[5]

                                                            ∞

> Since the mid 1990s, the relationship between event, the self and fiction has undergone significant change. A space has opened up where the intersection of imaginative speculation, reality and theory can take place in texts as documents of autotheory, autofiction and speculative memoir. Synchronised happenings have come to be held in texts that perhaps don’t represent a moment of so called ‘truth’ but do truthfully document a certain moment in some of its labyrinthine ways.

> A noted local text in this genre could be 2014’s You Are Of Vital Importance where Sarah Tripp’s Is, yous and theys speak through, during and around group activity, gendered expectation and a global turn towards conservatism, happenings which become textually condensed into Book. A similar method is enacted in Kate Briggs’ 2017 This Little Art, where the process of translating How To Live Together by Roland Barthes and its effect on her life and thinking are held in the same moment, together, through a book shaped essay. This is then encircled once again as she reteaches the matter documented in ‘a bit, a piece, a thing, a twin’ written for The Yellow Paper in 2019.

> As examples of synchronised relational epistemologies – of one thing’s meaning and presence to another’s in a slowed-motion-moment – an intertextual interaction – the texts create a space in between, a decompression of time, for thinking’s sake. Perhaps of all the names for writing that we talked about with Briggs it is ‘the twin’ now that strikes me to be most apt, the text and the happening step out together, the seed and the tree as circuitous tandems.

> From within the site of the body I use, physically and textually, reality can be experienced as a multi-faceted synchronisation of varying perceptions, here documented by elongating a moment, demonstrating the feeling of that moment of thinking and being here walking around in Glasgow. A twinning of feeling and documentation, a united division.

> For hope and thinking’s sake We stopped and looked and listened, the lights changed red to blue to green and then cyan, magenta, yellow, then bells, voices, engines, static. And then home and back to suspended silence.

                                                            ∞

~

[1] Daniela Cascella

[2] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

[3] Sedgwick

[4] paraphrased quote from an interview with Melissa McCarthy in Edinburgh in December 2019

[5] Sedgwick

~

Text and Image: Rosie Roberts

Published: 9/2/20

[kimamanitranslatesnovels]

Fiancée Observation Record c1

Index | Next →

T/N:

So, the title of this WN is a bit ambiguous. It seems to be using ‘Self-Proclaimed Villainess’ as an adjective when normally you would expect it to be a noun in this situation. Personally, because it’s being treated as an adjective even if it’s weird, I am going to interpret it as observing the fiancée in question rather than as the fiancé’s observation record.

I’ll update it if necessary if it’s ever made clear in the story, but I don’t believe it is. 

Chapter 1: Bertia, Age 8

I, Cecil Grau Alfaster, the first and crown prince of the Kingdom of Alfaster, met my fiancée for the first time when I was ten.

Lady Bertia Ibil Noches, a Marquis’ daughter.

She had crimson hair and amber eyes. She was fair-skinned and slightly plump… actually, let me honest here. With notable characteristics like her fluffed-up dress and her snowman-like fat round body, she was a pig – I mean girl – from the prime minister’s house.

She was two years younger than me. After we met each other for the first time with my father, the king, and her father, the prime minister, in attendance, we headed out to the garden. She then immediately said the following.

“Prince Cecil! I am a noble girl villainess! My role, after I start school at Halm Academy, is to break apart your relationship with a heroine you meet, then in the end have my engagement annulled and be put in my place!”

She shoves her finger in my face decisively and glares at me sharply.

Hm. I don’t get it.

Her personal maids that had come along with her are paling… actually, let me amend that. Their expressions are more along the lines of “Oh dear. She did it after all,” like they expected this to happen.

“However, it would injure my pride as a Marquis’ daughter to be in an unsightly state, even if it’s to help you two grow closer! And so, I have decided. I will become a first class flower of evil! And so, your Highness, please become a gentleman so lovely that I won’t mind being put in my place by you!”

What should I do? I honestly don’t understand what she’s saying at all. Could this be because I’m still an immature child?

… Doesn’t seem like it. My attendants’ jaws have dropped open as they blink rapidly, after all.

Ah, but for now…

“Lady Bertia, standing around chatting is rather gauche. Shall we go sit and have tea while we talk?”

I smile sweetly and hold a hand out to her, deciding to invite her to a table where tea has already been prepared for us.

Though I’m still a child, I am someone who will eventually be responsible for an entire kingdom.

Let’s begin by calmly cleaning up this mess.

Father always says that when you’re in trouble, it’s important to take a breath and calm down before dealing with the problem after all.

“… Y- yes, you’re right.”

Lady Bertia, looking rather bewildered at my words judging from her rapid blinking, obediently lets herself be escorted to the tea table. Perhaps she lost steam because of my calm attitude.

“Prince Cecil, aren’t you a little too composed considering your age? Have you perhaps reincarnated?”

After taking a sip from a nice-smelling cup of black tea, Lady Bertia looks at me searchingly. She has a dollop of cream on her cheek from a cake – from a popular bakery – that had been brought out along with the tea.

… Could my fiancée have forgotten that I’m royalty?

It’s not like we’re old friends or anything – I think she’s acting a little too casual.

Well, this is good too since it’s more interesting than her being all weirdly nervous and tensing up.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘reincarnated’, but if you think that I’m composed for my age, that’s probably because I’m royalty, no? Royalty is taught to conduct themselves like that from a young age. It’s natural,” I respond, my smile not fading.

“Is that so?” she asks back, but she seems to accept my explanation even as she cocks her head to the side.

… Behind me, my naggy personal attendant Zeno is shaking his head. He always says things like “Even putting aside that you’re royalty, your Highness, you look at things too long term,” and “Let’s do some more childlike things!” and “I think childlike cuteness is important as well at your age!”. But I decided to ignore him.

“Alright then, now that we’ve calmed down a little, could you explain the things you were saying earlier in a way I’ll understand? About the phrases like ‘noble girl villainess’, ‘heroine’, ‘annulling the engagement’, and ‘being put in your place’,” I ask, requesting a more detailed explanation the moment she reaches out for a second cake.

… It’s not like I care or anything, but even considering their relationship as master and servant, aren’t her maids being a bit too lenient with her?

In regards to her manners in front of royalty and the amount she’s eating.

“Yes, of course! I need you to become someone worthy of rejecting me after understanding my story fully after all, your Highness!”

Lady Bertia grips her fork tightly and looks at me seriously.

It seems like she hasn’t realized that no matter how serious she looks, she won’t be taken seriously with cream stuck around her mouth.

… It seems like I’ve overestimated my own power up until now.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I always thought that I was fairly intelligent in comparison to other children my age.

My enrollment to Halm Academy, where many nobles of similar age gather, has already been decided, but that’s mainly to increase my circle of influence and to learn how to interact with others as royalty. I’ve already learned everything there is to learn on an academic level at Halm Academy.

I had really thought that as a ten-year-old who’s already learned up to an eighteen-year-old level that I could say that I was pretty smart.

But, how could this be? I cannot understand what this eight-year-old girl is saying in the slightest.

Even considering that she’s terrible at explanations, I still can’t understand.

“What I’m saying is that your Highness, you’re going to meet this noble lady and be drawn to her innocent nature, eventually falling in love! Seeing your relationship, I become green with envy and start bullying that noble girl. After learning about this, you become furious and annul our engagement. This kicks off a chain of events that ends with the ruin of my family!”

Her passionate words are apparently all about “stuff that will happen in the future”.

And apparently she had her… previous life’s memories?... or something, and in those memories she saw… a novel that appeared with moving pictures?... that talked all about what was going to happen in the future.

Apparently there was also more… nitty gritty details?... or something, but she decided just to tell me the broad strokes today.

To be honest, I can’t imagine that I’d annul an engagement with so many strong political reasons behind it because I went crazy with love or whatever, and at least at the moment, I really can’t imagine the noble girl in front of me becoming green with envy.

There’s so many holes in her story that my head’s in a bit of a jumble.

The time set aside today was just to “see my fiancée face-to-face”, so my tea-time with her is drawing to a close. And anyways, if she gives me any more new information, even I won’t be able to parse through it all.

Ah, but there is one thing I want to double-check.

“Lady Bertia, could I ask just one question?”

“You can ask as many as you want. I’ve been waiting for this day where I tell you everything since my memories returned after all!”

I almost smile wryly at her words, considering that they were said right before we had to part.

To be honest, I don’t care if she’s just a bit delusional or she really has the power to see the future.

All I care about is…

“What kind of person would this ‘first class flower of evil’ you mentioned be?”

… this. This is the most important thing.

From this day on, she has technically become my fiancée.

As she’s become my fiancée, in the future, she will become the Queen.

Ignoring the strange existence of this ‘heroine’, if being this “flower of evil” she mentioned means she isn’t suited towards being a Queen, I’ll need to trai – I mean, lead her onto the correct path early-on. If that seems impossible, I’ll need to consult with Father as soon as possible about breaking things off.

After all, I will be King in the future.

“That’s obvious! She’s strong, dignified, and beautiful! She’s someone who makes her own path in life no matter what anyone says. Even if that path leads to ruin, she walks along it with no hesitation – a flower of evil! I’m going to become someone like that!”

“Strong, dignified, and beautiful… I see.”

Let me apologize.

At that moment, I casually looked down at her stomach.

I had been a bit curious about what she thought about her own appearance, but she apparently hadn’t noticed it at all… well, I won’t be too harsh since I don’t intend to explicitly berate her.

I did think that it was bad to look there with this timing considering what we were talking about, so I immediately looked back up at her face and smiled.

But it was too late.

She realized what I had been looking at.

And having realized, her face goes bright red.

“I – it’s not like that! Lady Bertia, Marquis’ daughter, is an underdog-type character so her appearance is kind of questionable.”

“’Underdog’? That seems… like a sad existence. Are you alright with that?”

“N – no I’m not! That’s Bertia’s story – I’m… I’m… I’m not just Lady Bertia! I am myself! I will reach greater heights… I will become a more pure and good flower of evil!”

Is she losing control of herself?

I really feel like a pure and good flower of evil is an oxymoron, but it looks like she hasn’t realized this at all.

Bright red from head to toe, she stands up with a clatter.

“Y – your Highness. I will improve myself before coming again! I will take my leave now! Good day!”

She bows hurriedly and runs out before I could even think about stopping her. Afterwards, following their master’s lead, her maids bow hurriedly and leave as well.

I stared after her blankly until I couldn’t see her anymore.

“… What was with her?” I murmur.

“Your Highness, what will you do?” asks Zeno in response to my murmur.

His question didn’t mention about what I was going to do, but he’s probably talking about my engagement with her.

As royal marriages are usually arranged for political reasons, I won’t be able to do something about it immediately. But if I talk about how she acted today to my father, even if it took time, I would probably be able to bring up the topic of annulment using her “unsuited personality to be a Queen” as the reasoning.

But…

“She’s kind of interesting, isn’t she? And even though she’s of noble birth, she isn’t weirdly warped or twisted. She’s straightforward so she’s probably easy to control… I’ll just observe her, she seems like she’ll be fun for a while.”

Somehow, I’m having fun for the first time in a while.

It’s not like I’ve fallen for her in a romantic sense or anything, but how should I put it… dumb kids are cute? I’ve found a new toy?

… I don’t really get it myself, but I am feeling more excited than I’ve ever felt before.

Generally, I can do anything if I try it once, so the world is rather boring to me.

I’ve almost never felt that feeling of satisfaction on successfully completing something that all the other kids have. My world has always seemed a bit dull and washed out to me.

But after meeting her today, my world has definitely become brighter.

This feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen uplifts my spirits.

“Heh heh…”

Before I realize it, I’m smiling naturally.

This is a very rare occurrence for someone like me who’s used to smiles being something you force onto your face.

“Your Highness, you look like you’re having fun.”

“Yes, I’m thinking that this feeling of uncertainty isn’t bad. It uplifts my spirits.”

“… You’re free to have fun, but couldn’t you have fun in a more childlike way?”

“But I am having some innocent fun, just like a child?”

“… Oh, right. You left behind your childishness in her Majesty the Queen’s womb. I apologize for asking for the impossible.”

“You really always say the rudest things. Well, I don’t mind. I’ll let it go since I’m in a really good mood right now.”

“Thank you very much.”

After glancing at Zeno, who lowers his head with a displeased expression, I turn my gaze back towards the direction she left in.

Just how much fun will she let me have, this girl who’s become my fiancée?

“Don’t let me down, okay?” I say quietly despite no longer being able to even see her.

I turn my head towards the sky and close my eyes.

T/N:

This was someone’s request I took on since this story’s short anyway - only 19 chapters including the extras - and appears to be abandoned. I plan to release a chapter a week from now on every Thursday (not including this week).

edit: Due to requests to start translating the newer chapters but my lack of motivation to start in the middle ^^; I will instead translate 2 - 8 within the next two weeks and post Ch. 9 during the first week of August, at which point I will begin releasing a chapter every week. 

Index | Next →

[lindwurmkai]

I had the weirdest dream last night tho?? It started out as some kind of situation that reminded me of bike riding/racing scenes in video games, then later the whole thing gradually morphed into a communal kitchen/dining area where I was waiting in line to get food. Once I had my tray, I started looking for a place to sit but was too shy to ask anyone to let me through, so anytime someone was in my way, I just stood there stupidly. This apparently wasted so much time that I never got a chance to actually eat, because suddenly an INTIMIDATING NURSE appeared (I had not previously parsed the place as a hospital or anywhere you’d find nurses) and said it was time for my EXAMINATION. I ended up hastily setting down my tray at a random spot on the table, apologising to the people around me and I think also asking someone if the food could be left there so I might eat it later.

The EXAMINATION involved having blood drawn, briefly being hooked up to a machine of some kind, and then SITTING ON A CHAIR WHILE UNCONSCIOUS for an amount of time that varied from person to person. Like, there was just this waiting room full of people who were unconscious but sitting perfectly upright. As one does. (I mean, some occupants were awake? Presumably because it hadn’t been their turn yet. The athmosphere was very casual, as if everyone were thoroughly used to this.)

Now, that one guy from the hospital (you know ... that guy) was also there, and as it happened we got ready for our Period of Unconsciousness around the same time. We chatted as we found our seats, sat next to each other, and then I suppose we passed out. Except we immediately regained consciousness as blue ghosts rising up from our unmoving bodies??? We were invisible to everyone else but could see each other, as well as I think a few other blue ghosts of people who had already been asleep before us.

Such out-of-body experiences were not a regular part of the process; there had been rumours that it happened sometimes but most considered it nonsense. Nevertheless, we found two or three fellow astral travelers as we explored our surroundings. What exactly we did as ghosts, I cannot describe because it wasn’t coherent enough to make much sense of, but it felt like a criminal investigation or something??? We tried to solve a mystery by asking questions of the other ghosts and snooping around. Whatever it was, it was something we weren’t allowed to speak of in the physical world, or perhaps it was too dangerous to speak of.

Time moved more slowly on that plane and we stayed unconscious longer than average, so when we finally returned to our bodies, we had bonded over the course of a pretty long adventure. This was, of course, when my brain decided he was going to kiss me. (“How unrealistic,” commented some part of me that was a little more awake than the rest.) At the same time, chaos broke out around us! We must have done more than just investigate. Lots of stuff happened, someone fought a guard, I think a book needed to be protected?? I never got to eat my meal. Then I woke up, I guess.

?????????????

[flauntpage]

End of Season Availability: Brett Brown and Bryan Colangelo

45 minutes of Brett Brown.

46 minutes of Bryan Colangelo.

Holy cannoli, we’ve got quotes for days after an immersive and comprehensive end of season availability.

I figured the best way to do this would be to just pick out the most relevant quotes and do the snippets for easy reference moving forward. It would take me about 400 hours to transcribe everything verbatim, so let’s truncate the best parts for smooth reading.

There’s a lot to “parse,” which has become one of my favorite crutch words in 2018.

Brett Brown

On Ben Simmons’ jump shot:

each player received a document RE: this is what goes on with summer development, from a skill package perspective, strength and conditioning component, and what preseason looks like… 4 sheets for a detailed roadmap for each player

for Ben, it’s very much a part of conversation, his offensive future involves free throw line, efficiency finishing, and jump shot, maybe you talk about a three-point shot at some point

evolution of jump shot – he understands his world will become easier when that becomes part of his game

On his future and a contract extension:

has spoken briefly with Bryan Colangelo about a contract extension, loves being in Philadelphia, “we’ve grown something, collectively as an organization so proud of where we are.”

Looking back on Boston series:

do I wish I had played T.J. more earlier? probably. do I wish I had used Justin Anderson more? maybe. could Markelle have played a role? maybe, but when you coach a team to 52 wins, 16 game win streak, beat Miami 4-1, I’m happy to “go down” with the people who got us there

On the criticism of his coaching:

“I have heard it. I think the things that come up are, at times, wildly unfair. It’s part of our landscape, and we can go specifics if you want, but I get it. I’m the son of a coach, I get it. I am my harshest critic. I’m fine on my personal judgment day. I sleep at night. I sleep just fine at night. What we did and what we’re going to do makes me say that with confidence. The disappointment inspires emotion from passionate people and there’s nothing wrong with that. I understand but don’t pay attention enough for it to keep you up at night.”

Simmons’ shot part two:

We have a shooting coach in our program, but actually looking at other shooting coach possibilities to include in our staff design. John Townsend is a valuable asset, Ben will be spending intense time with him.

As far as completely rebuilding Simmons’ shot, no. “Intense refinement,” but not a complete blow up.

It’s an “easy sell” for Ben to fix shot this summer, to focus in on free throws, jump shot, and finishing efficiency

Ben “wants to be great,” as a team “we were exceptional in the final third of year, he was a rebound away from averaging a triple-double.” Had we played him a bit more he would have reached that easily. Celtics experience helps him with real-time learning.

On being “owed” something because he coached a bunch of terrible teams during the “Process” years:

It isn’t being owed. “I don’t feel like I’m owed anything. I feel like I deserve a lot but that I’m not owed anything.” Five years ago we talked about pace, space, and pass offense, but program also has to reflect the city and we have to play defense. We play with pace, space, and we pass the ball. Defense, we were third in the NBA this year. We finished 3rd in the east and most of us were just doing cartwheels at the thought of making the playoffs. “Our culture is not to be denied.”

On Markelle Fultz:

huge conversation, to shrink it – want him getting back his mojo and playing basketball in a high level, energized environment

had a long chat Thursday, we know what he had to endure this year, can’t wait to coach him again, we’ve seen signs of brilliance with what he’s done this year, think he’ll have a great summer

On Joel Embiid’s summer:

first summer that he has come back and will be healthy

fact that we played that volume of games, we all would have been happy with that in preseason

strongly believes Joel’s future is his body, mastery of diet, rehab/prehab, and strength and conditioning

deserves so much more credit than what he receives, coming out of an operation and wearing a mask with a lens and “trying to figure out playoff basketball,” commitment and navigating through setbacks is historic throughout his early career

health will bring post game to a new level, ability to turn and face, back down, pass out, that world he has to own

feels like Embiid is becoming a leader in the locker room

On growing the roster “organically” vs. adding a superstar free agent, the dichotomy in the fan base of how to proceed:

starting with fans, they have showed a consistent resilience, conflicted at times, but my feel is that there’s been an acceptance of growing it organically, “we all live with the pain of what we went through.”

if that portion of fan base is still prepared to take that notion and think it equals a championship, it’s “noble, but I don’t agree with it.”

another high level free agent is required and we have the ability to attract one

when the time is right, “we need help” to win a championship

Does Ben need to bring his elbow down when shooting? 

yes

also feet are important with his shot

free throw – he was a 77% FT shooter at LSU, dipped this year and then went back up in playoffs

want him to get to the free throw line more next year

Clarification on Markelle’s injury situation and what he was going through:

it is so documented, but I’ll answer the question again

he hurt his shoulder, it affected portions of his psyche, I get it, he was injured, then he didn’t play much basketball, brought him back and resurrected some stuff and I “thought he did quite well.”

felt fine with decision not to use him in playoffs, 19 year old with 19 games under his belt

feels like Markelle is doing fine now, spirit and motor is back

confident that he will have a great summer

On report that Boston committed a foul and traveling violation in final moments of game five:

respects the league for doing report and admitting it, owning it

you would love to have it back, 2 free throws for Embiid or Marcus Smart travels and you have time to get a shot up

“that’s the fragility of many things, here it’s the playoffs”

What is the makeup of a high level free agent? Shooter? Floor spreader? 

for the first time since I’ve been here, there’s tremendous clarity on roster, no mystery of Ben Simmons skill package or what Embiid has

what complements that? drape those qualities over the free agent market and say, “yep, that fits him.” we’ll make our own assessments but I’m not here to name names

Follow-up effort about the free agent question, specifically about Ben not playing with another ball-dominant perimeter player (LEBRON JAMES):

“if this player you’re describing was great, we’d figure it out, truly. we’d figure stuff out. it’s as honest and simple as I can answer that.”

Brett Brown https://t.co/GkdZrSS0bX

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) May 11, 2018

Bryan Colangelo

Opening statement:

had a great year, lot of things were accomplished, but we’ve got so much more to do

coaches and players did a tremendous job and deserve a lot of credit

we’ve got flexibility built into our plan, ability to improve this team this year, but if we decide to defer, we could wait until 2019 free agency, have optionality with both years and been diligent protecting that, if we feel like there’s a deal to improve our team then we’ll more forward, want “sustainable winning”

On adding a high-level free agent: 

would agree that team needs to add something to get better, but great young core that continues to improve, Celtics series was worst you’ll see them play

i’ll say “talent, not free agent,” talent comes in many forms whether its trade, etc, we have cap room to explore any and all options

but to say this group can do it now, they obviously proved that they cannot, adding more talent or another piece is something we’re striving for

have about $25m in cap flexibility right now if they go for a free agent now, “does require some sacrifice,” will know more after draft lottery to find out where draft slots are

in order to use full cap flex, will have to “renounce” JJ, Ersan, Marco, and/or Amir. those four were a “big chunk of our production” at the end of the season, replacing that is difficult, would love to have all for back, but picture is not likely

Markelle Fultz playing in the summer league:

been aware of this topic, season just ended a few days ago and need to finalize a summer plan for him. Thursday meetings were more of a surface level discussion, exploring “various other hires” for basketball program and organization, may or may not factor into his development

summer league is “on the table” but need to discuss more with him and his agent and reps and everyone else

On Markelle working with his own people in the summer and keeping tabs on him when he’s not with the team: 

people train with various people, our coaches have done a great job, he’s come a long way, I’ve often said he’s not completely there yet, with respect to his offseason and where he trains, we’re still working out those details, our coaches, for the most part, will always be present

guys like to go to gyms and have a friend or former trainer rebound for them, we’re okay with that as long as it fits our plan for developing his game

On Brett Brown’s contract and how he did as a coach this year:

Spoken with Brett on a few occasions to let him know that it’s the intention to sit down and discuss a contract extension for him. Don’t think it’s healthy for a coach to go into a season with one year on their contract.

“Hopeful” to sit down and discuss his situation. “He realizes how much we value him as the coach of this program.

Brett does have what it takes to coach this basketball team, everybody asked if I’d give him the opportunity to coach – absolutely, he deserved the opportunity to coach better talent and finish the job, he’s going “a very good job, which is why we will be talking about a contract extension at the appropriate time.”

On T.J. McConnell:

his option will be exercised

  On Jonah Bolden:

has an NBA out clause in his contract, is able to leave Maccabi and join the Sixers

  On Furkan Korkmaz and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot:

injuries set both players back, but they aren’t being forgotten from a development standpoint

both will likely play for their countries during international qualification this summer

Korkmaz added 20 pounds to his frame, but not all good pounds, still thinks he’s a young and bright talent, more likely to play summer league than TLC

On the Boston series:

this series with Boston was a bit of a wake up call, adjustments were made, it “exposed us to some degree, individual and team weaknesses” and we all have to learn from that.

no issues selecting Fultz over Jayson Tatum, very complimentary of what Tatum did in the playoffs (what the fuck else is he supposed to say anyway?)

That’s about it for Colangelo. He was asked at least 7-9 questions about Markelle Fultz specifically, so I’ll go back in and dig those up for a story sometime next week. For now, here’s the video:

Colangelo https://t.co/BLntKWsFYh

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) May 11, 2018

End of Season Availability: Brett Brown and Bryan Colangelo published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[flauntpage]

End of Season Availability: Brett Brown and Bryan Colangelo

45 minutes of Brett Brown.

46 minutes of Bryan Colangelo.

Holy cannoli, we’ve got quotes for days after an immersive and comprehensive end of season availability.

I figured the best way to do this would be to just pick out the most relevant quotes and do the snippets for easy reference moving forward. It would take me about 400 hours to transcribe everything verbatim, so let’s truncate the best parts for smooth reading.

There’s a lot to “parse,” which has become one of my favorite crutch words in 2018.

Brett Brown

On Ben Simmons’ jump shot:

each player received a document RE: this is what goes on with summer development, from a skill package perspective, strength and conditioning component, and what preseason looks like… 4 sheets for a detailed roadmap for each player

for Ben, it’s very much a part of conversation, his offensive future involves free throw line, efficiency finishing, and jump shot, maybe you talk about a three-point shot at some point

evolution of jump shot – he understands his world will become easier when that becomes part of his game

On his future and a contract extension:

has spoken briefly with Bryan Colangelo about a contract extension, loves being in Philadelphia, “we’ve grown something, collectively as an organization so proud of where we are.”

Looking back on Boston series:

do I wish I had played T.J. more earlier? probably. do I wish I had used Justin Anderson more? maybe. could Markelle have played a role? maybe, but when you coach a team to 52 wins, 16 game win streak, beat Miami 4-1, I’m happy to “go down” with the people who got us there

On the criticism of his coaching:

“I have heard it. I think the things that come up are, at times, wildly unfair. It’s part of our landscape, and we can go specifics if you want, but I get it. I’m the son of a coach, I get it. I am my harshest critic. I’m fine on my personal judgment day. I sleep at night. I sleep just fine at night. What we did and what we’re going to do makes me say that with confidence. The disappointment inspires emotion from passionate people and there’s nothing wrong with that. I understand but don’t pay attention enough for it to keep you up at night.”

Simmons’ shot part two:

We have a shooting coach in our program, but actually looking at other shooting coach possibilities to include in our staff design. John Townsend is a valuable asset, Ben will be spending intense time with him.

As far as completely rebuilding Simmons’ shot, no. “Intense refinement,” but not a complete blow up.

It’s an “easy sell” for Ben to fix shot this summer, to focus in on free throws, jump shot, and finishing efficiency

Ben “wants to be great,” as a team “we were exceptional in the final third of year, he was a rebound away from averaging a triple-double.” Had we played him a bit more he would have reached that easily. Celtics experience helps him with real-time learning.

On being “owed” something because he coached a bunch of terrible teams during the “Process” years:

It isn’t being owed. “I don’t feel like I’m owed anything. I feel like I deserve a lot but that I’m not owed anything.” Five years ago we talked about pace, space, and pass offense, but program also has to reflect the city and we have to play defense. We play with pace, space, and we pass the ball. Defense, we were third in the NBA this year. We finished 3rd in the east and most of us were just doing cartwheels at the thought of making the playoffs. “Our culture is not to be denied.”

On Markelle Fultz:

huge conversation, to shrink it – want him getting back his mojo and playing basketball in a high level, energized environment

had a long chat Thursday, we know what he had to endure this year, can’t wait to coach him again, we’ve seen signs of brilliance with what he’s done this year, think he’ll have a great summer

On Joel Embiid’s summer:

first summer that he has come back and will be healthy

fact that we played that volume of games, we all would have been happy with that in preseason

strongly believes Joel’s future is his body, mastery of diet, rehab/prehab, and strength and conditioning

deserves so much more credit than what he receives, coming out of an operation and wearing a mask with a lens and “trying to figure out playoff basketball,” commitment and navigating through setbacks is historic throughout his early career

health will bring post game to a new level, ability to turn and face, back down, pass out, that world he has to own

feels like Embiid is becoming a leader in the locker room

On growing the roster “organically” vs. adding a superstar free agent, the dichotomy in the fan base of how to proceed:

starting with fans, they have showed a consistent resilience, conflicted at times, but my feel is that there’s been an acceptance of growing it organically, “we all live with the pain of what we went through.”

if that portion of fan base is still prepared to take that notion and think it equals a championship, it’s “noble, but I don’t agree with it.”

another high level free agent is required and we have the ability to attract one

when the time is right, “we need help” to win a championship

Does Ben need to bring his elbow down when shooting? 

yes

also feet are important with his shot

free throw – he was a 77% FT shooter at LSU, dipped this year and then went back up in playoffs

want him to get to the free throw line more next year

Clarification on Markelle’s injury situation and what he was going through:

it is so documented, but I’ll answer the question again

he hurt his shoulder, it affected portions of his psyche, I get it, he was injured, then he didn’t play much basketball, brought him back and resurrected some stuff and I “thought he did quite well.”

felt fine with decision not to use him in playoffs, 19 year old with 19 games under his belt

feels like Markelle is doing fine now, spirit and motor is back

confident that he will have a great summer

On report that Boston committed a foul and traveling violation in final moments of game five:

respects the league for doing report and admitting it, owning it

you would love to have it back, 2 free throws for Embiid or Marcus Smart travels and you have time to get a shot up

“that’s the fragility of many things, here it’s the playoffs”

What is the makeup of a high level free agent? Shooter? Floor spreader? 

for the first time since I’ve been here, there’s tremendous clarity on roster, no mystery of Ben Simmons skill package or what Embiid has

what complements that? drape those qualities over the free agent market and say, “yep, that fits him.” we’ll make our own assessments but I’m not here to name names

Follow-up effort about the free agent question, specifically about Ben not playing with another ball-dominant perimeter player (LEBRON JAMES):

“if this player you’re describing was great, we’d figure it out, truly. we’d figure stuff out. it’s as honest and simple as I can answer that.”

Brett Brown https://t.co/GkdZrSS0bX

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) May 11, 2018

Bryan Colangelo

Opening statement:

had a great year, lot of things were accomplished, but we’ve got so much more to do

coaches and players did a tremendous job and deserve a lot of credit

we’ve got flexibility built into our plan, ability to improve this team this year, but if we decide to defer, we could wait until 2019 free agency, have optionality with both years and been diligent protecting that, if we feel like there’s a deal to improve our team then we’ll more forward, want “sustainable winning”

On adding a high-level free agent: 

would agree that team needs to add something to get better, but great young core that continues to improve, Celtics series was worst you’ll see them play

i’ll say “talent, not free agent,” talent comes in many forms whether its trade, etc, we have cap room to explore any and all options

but to say this group can do it now, they obviously proved that they cannot, adding more talent or another piece is something we’re striving for

have about $25m in cap flexibility right now if they go for a free agent now, “does require some sacrifice,” will know more after draft lottery to find out where draft slots are

in order to use full cap flex, will have to “renounce” JJ, Ersan, Marco, and/or Amir. those four were a “big chunk of our production” at the end of the season, replacing that is difficult, would love to have all for back, but picture is not likely

Markelle Fultz playing in the summer league:

been aware of this topic, season just ended a few days ago and need to finalize a summer plan for him. Thursday meetings were more of a surface level discussion, exploring “various other hires” for basketball program and organization, may or may not factor into his development

summer league is “on the table” but need to discuss more with him and his agent and reps and everyone else

On Markelle working with his own people in the summer and keeping tabs on him when he’s not with the team: 

people train with various people, our coaches have done a great job, he’s come a long way, I’ve often said he’s not completely there yet, with respect to his offseason and where he trains, we’re still working out those details, our coaches, for the most part, will always be present

guys like to go to gyms and have a friend or former trainer rebound for them, we’re okay with that as long as it fits our plan for developing his game

On Brett Brown’s contract and how he did as a coach this year:

Spoken with Brett on a few occasions to let him know that it’s the intention to sit down and discuss a contract extension for him. Don’t think it’s healthy for a coach to go into a season with one year on their contract.

“Hopeful” to sit down and discuss his situation. “He realizes how much we value him as the coach of this program.

Brett does have what it takes to coach this basketball team, everybody asked if I’d give him the opportunity to coach – absolutely, he deserved the opportunity to coach better talent and finish the job, he’s going “a very good job, which is why we will be talking about a contract extension at the appropriate time.”

On T.J. McConnell:

his option will be exercised

  On Jonah Bolden:

has an NBA out clause in his contract, is able to leave Maccabi and join the Sixers

  On Furkan Korkmaz and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot:

injuries set both players back, but they aren’t being forgotten from a development standpoint

both will likely play for their countries during international qualification this summer

Korkmaz added 20 pounds to his frame, but not all good pounds, still thinks he’s a young and bright talent, more likely to play summer league than TLC

On the Boston series:

this series with Boston was a bit of a wake up call, adjustments were made, it “exposed us to some degree, individual and team weaknesses” and we all have to learn from that.

no issues selecting Fultz over Jayson Tatum, very complimentary of what Tatum did in the playoffs (what the fuck else is he supposed to say anyway?)

That’s about it for Colangelo. He was asked at least 7-9 questions about Markelle Fultz specifically, so I’ll go back in and dig those up for a story sometime next week. For now, here’s the video:

Colangelo https://t.co/BLntKWsFYh

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) May 11, 2018

End of Season Availability: Brett Brown and Bryan Colangelo published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/