#eventually deciding to become better in order to ''deserve her'' (they say this explicitly)

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

"Is Amphibia gay like The Owl House?" It is gay, but certainly not like The Owl House.

[maikingsenseofit]

The Grand Maiko Defense Post

Okay so I originally meant this to be a reblog for a post referencing my post - but I decided it would be better standalone - and in order to avoid controversy (something I attract a lot of) it would be better to try and not invoke any direct mentions - considering the last time I did I was flooded with troll posts shipping Mai and her infant brother.

That being said - this is long and juicy. This is the reference post:

I made my original post debunking common anti Maiko arguments off of this premise, right here:

“If Mai truly knew Zuko, she’d know that he wouldn’t be comforted by ordering servants around.”

I concede that the hot towel part wasn’t the best evidence. However, like OP admits -

“and also because yes, like any normal person, he does enjoy having people do things for him. Hence the little smile, the reassurance that it’s okay for him to be pampered, which assuages some of the guilt he’s been feeling since Ba Sing Se. He’s the prince, he can tell himself, he deserves it. That’s also why he takes the time to show off to his girlfriend a little a scene later by offering her anything she wants.”

Mai’s immediate thought to cheer up Zuko is to offer him the same things that cheered him up - or at least made him smile , which we explicitly see in both scenes-five minutes before. Mai obviously knows that Zuko is unhappy and is experiencing emotional turmoil. That is once again covered in The Beach episode. But despite all his emotional anguish, discomfort, and guilty conscious- he does eventually accept and revel in some of the comforts associated with being fire nation royalty. We explicitly see him smiling, accepting, and taking the palanquin ride or happily ordering fruit tarts for Mai. His guilty conscious here, no matter how powerful, wasn’t strong enough for him to completely disavow every and all of the comforts he was offered as a product of trying to be the perfect fire nation prince.

But let’s try and understand my main point here and something else I thought of while writing this. Zuko’s emotional turmoil isn’t meant to be assuaged by a palanquin ride or fruit tarts. Mai initially offers it because her immediate thought is to cheer Zuko up. Mai, as a character, is taught to be restrained with her emotions and there is an explicit parallel between what her mom says to her in Omashu “Mai your father was appointed Governor here. Be happy and enjoy it.” And what Mai says on the ship is “Stop Worrying.” As a product of her environment, she never learned how to sit with her emotions and truly understand the root of her issues. So yes, her immediate thought is to cheer Zuko up at least in a superficial way, because that is what she’s conditioned to believe all along - that emotions can simply be willed away.

Except it doesn’t work. And Mai doesn’t force it to work or become angry or frustrated at Zuko when he doesn’t listen to her. She lets him go. I cannot emphasize the importance of this enough. To say that Mai fundamentally doesnt understand Zuko - and in the same vein failing to acknowledge that after her attempt at cheering him up didnt work, Mai doesn’t get angry or frustrated. She realizes that this is a problem fruit tarts cannot solve and that what Zuko is going through is much deeper and he needs time and space to process this. So she does exactly that - she gives him the time and space to process his emotional turmoil.

She knows Zuko is experiencing difficulty, and although she is not privy to why he is experiencing it (unlike Iroh, she wasn’t there in Ba Sing Se and we never see Zuko explaining his entire journey to her (and yes I will address the life story part)) she offers him care and company - despite her limitations. Something we see was never offered to her - by her parents or her best friends, especially Azula. And to emphasize for what feels like the millionth time, Zuko and Mai are both products of emotionally abusive, unhappy families and childhoods. They never learned the right way to cope with emotions or to help others cope with their emotions. What we see here is Mai undoing what she learned by sticking with Zuko instead of shutting him down or attempting to Will away his emotions after her first offer.

To reiterate- She might not know the full reason why he’s feeling the way he is - but she knows he’s hurting, needs a shoulder to lean on, someone to accompany him during this difficult time. She knows he has had a troubled past and isn’t fully accepted or loved by his own family. It’s not easy being the girlfriend of one of the most complex people in the story. She’s a teenager - there are plenty of other Fire Nation nobles who she could sit and bitch with and order fruit tarts all day long. But she loves Zuko and she tries her best to be there for him. That is undeniable and canonically evidenced.

Part 2: regarding Mai’s purpose. Let’s analyze Mai’s purpose and relation to Zuko’s arc through a different lens, one in which she represents the hero’s goddess in the hero’s journey. For this, I’m going to reference another brilliant author, jill_rg on Live Journal, who states the following:

“Zuko knows what he has to do: join the Avatar and prepare him to defeat Fire Lord Ozai once and for all. It should be an easy decision. After all, what will he miss? Not his father, not the pomp and pleasure of palace life, not the glory and respect of his people; he believes ending the war and bringing about peace is what is best for his own country as well as the world. He knows he is doing the right thing, and he won’t miss anything he leaves behind. No, it would be too easy if there wasn’t one thing he regretted leaving behind, one thing he would miss, one thing he cared about: Mai.”

In short, Mai is the one tie to the fire nation that Zuko, our hero, has to narratively sacrifice to fulfill his journey. He can’t attain happiness or true enlightenment until he fully realizes his destiny, and in order to do that he must leave Mai behind.His sacrifice of their relationship makes his decision all the more heroic and poignant. The pain he suffers from making this decision makes it all the more meaningful - showing that it wasn’t easy for him to embark on the journey to teach Aang and a personal sacrifice had to be made for the greater good. Mai matches this sacrifice in the narrative by jeopardizing her life, her personal relationship with Zuko - for the greater good.

This makes Mai Zuko’s goddess, a trope and characterization that has been explored multiple times throughout popular hero’s journeys from The Odyssey to Star Wars. According to Jill-rg, who quotes Joseph Campbell from A Hero With a Thousand Faces,

“The role of the Goddess is more than a love interest; she is a powerful force in the hero's life and represents the fulfillment of all his desires. She can be a protective force who holds the power he needs to achieve his quest. When he falls, she will save him. When he succeeds, she will reward him. According to Campbell, she represents the totality of what can known, and "the hero is the one who comes to know."

What I see many anti-Maiko/pro Zutara people do is confuse Mai being Zuko’s goddess with Mai being Zuko’s temptress - a character in the hero’s journey who represents the fulfillment of all the hero’s desires at a cost. The temptress leads the hero down a self destructive path - and it’s little wonder who I’m talking about : Azula. Azula promises Zuko everything he ever wanted - to come back to the fire nation a crown prince with the respect of his father that he fought so hard to earn. But there are malicious intentions behind this promise - and if Zuko doesn’t comply with Azula’s expectations, it will lead to dire consequences.

“Mai further lives up to her role when she opposes the Temptress. Azula wants to destroy Zuko, but Mai does not let that happen. Zuko and Azula battle in The Boiling Rock, and she thinks he will be killed, but he is saved by Mai. Mai's protective force proves to be more powerful than Azula's destructive force. Azula brings Zuko the curse of spiritual death; Mai gives him the gift of life.”

The main point here is Zuko needs Mai in the narrative - she saves his life. She eventually realizes her position of fulfilling Zuko’s destiny, instead of leading it astray like Azula does. She represents a tangible, personal sacrifice that Zuko has to give up in order to fulfill his destiny - and she matches it by doing the exact same thing. We have two people here who love each other so deeply but cannot truly end up together UNTIL they fulfill their own responsibilities and roles. If this isn’t the bedrock for a beautiful relationship, I don’t know what is. Also - please refer to this link if you’re wondering why Katara doesn’t serve as Zuko’s narrative goddess:

This next part is something that I disagree with so much that I’m just going to state my piece and go. Part of online discourse is recognizing when nothing will change how someone views a character - so I’m just going to state my piece and leave it be.

Zuko was angry, irritable, and emotionally disregulated the entire beach trip. From the very first scene

Zuko [Cut to closer view of Zuko and Mai. Angrily.] Doing nothing is a waste of time. [Rises from his seat next to Mai.] We're being sent away on a forced vacation. [Walks over and grips the railing of the boat.] I feel like a child.

Then, as I mention in my other meta, despite Mai explicitly saying she doesn’t like sea shells, Zuko offers her the first thing he sees and erupts when she rejects it. Zuko accuses Mai of being attracted to another guy - when she barely even looked at him - and then erupts in a jealous fit of anger when Mai is simply having a conversation with another guy. Yet despite all his unjust behavior towards her - Mai is the one to offer the olive branch for Zuko by reaching out to him first in an attempt to offer support. Yet she is spurned again by Zuko.

Mai [Side-view. Hesitating at first.] Hey.

Zuko [View of both from behind. Turning to Mai.] Where's your new boyfriend?

Now to address the most ridiculous thing in this whole post - that “Mai only shows she cares for Zuko when she doesn’t have to support him emotionally” let’s look at this scene, where Mai, along with Ty Lee and Azula, helps Zuko divulge the root of his pain and why he’s so angry at himself - instead of shutting him down or feigning disinterest, like you allege she does throughout the show. She genuinely cares. She puts in the work to help him - at the height of him externalizing his emotion, symbolized literally and figuratively when the flames erupt around him.

Also, internalizing emotions means to keep emotions bottled up. Externalizing emotions means to vocalize them and act on them, btw :)

Zuko [Close-up.] No one. I'm just angry.

Mai [Side-view of the three girls.] Yeah, who are you angry at, Zuko?

Which is in direct contrast to what you claimed here:

“At no point does Mai dig into the root of why he is angry.”

“At no point did she offer him emotional support when he was in turmoil.”

But Wait - here she is quite literally providing him emotional support when he’s in turmoil, because despite him revealing that he’s angry at himself, it still does not pacify his feelings of turmoil and how his moral compass has gone awry. Yet despite all his anger, Mai takes a stand next to Zuko - showing she truly cares for him when no one else does. And it is exemplified by the small expression of relief on his face.

Now to counter this point:

“ That also means Mai can get Zuko back without having to do any of the hard emotional or ethical work herself.”

Im not going into the ethics or morality of Mai because I believe she falls under the ideology of putting herself and the people she cares about above ideals and morals. Explained in another meta, but basically she’s the Avatar version of Katniss Everdeen. And I answered why that doesn’t make her incompatible with Zuko in my “Yin and Yang” meta. But to claim that Mai is never introspective or doesn’t do any hard emotional work or is just wrong. And heres why:

Zuko [Aerial view of campsite. Walking up to the campfire.] I'm sorry, too. I wish you would be high-strung and crazy for once instead of keeping all your feeling bottled up inside. [Frontal view.] She just called your aura dingy. Are you gonna take that?

Mai [Aerial view of campsite. Leaning back.] What do you want from me? You want a teary confession about how hard my childhood was? Well, it wasn't. [Close-up.] I was a rich only child who got anything I wanted ... as long as I behaved [Cut to shot of the sky.] and sat still, and didn't speak unless spoken to. [Close-up of Zuko.] My mother said I had to keep out of trouble. We had my dad's political career to think about.

Zuko wants Mai to express herself and her emotions instead of keeping it all bottled up inside, something that we’ve seen she’s been trained to do not only from her mom (like you yourself acknowledge) but from her own account. Instead of resorting to her apathetic demure, she takes the second to consider what Zuko says - and decides to not take what Ty Lee said and move on - she addresses it. She reveals why she keeps up the “I don’t care about anything” facade. She does the emotional work. But it that wasn’t prove enough, Zuko still wants her to express her emotions and to break free from that facade. And what does she do?

Zuko: “I like it when you express yourself.”

Mai: “you want me to express myself? LEAVE ME ALONE.”

Mai: “I love Zuko, more than I fear you.”

So to claim that Mai never had character development, or that she, Like Zuko, didnt learn or grow from her past self is a deliberate and malicious interpretation of canon to support another ship or character. And what better to exemplify then the very next part of your argument?

“She’s the only one other than Iroh because she helped put Iroh in prison. You can argue about how loyal she is to Azula and whether she had a choice, but the fact of the matter is that the reason Iroh ain’t around, and Mai is the only one Zuko has to rely on, is because Iroh is in prison and Mai and Zuko would not have a relationship otherwise.”

W. H. A. T. What WHAT WHATTTTTTTT?

Are you forgetting that Zuko literally betrayed Iroh moments before? That his decision to join his sister meant rejecting his uncle and that Zuko knew that by doing this Iroh would suffer the consequences? Since I guess we all need a refresher let’s look at the Avatar wiki:

Mai was on Azula’s team, but Zuko made the deliberate choice to betray Iroh - knowing that it would brand Iroh as a traitor and result in his imprisonment. So what is the argument here? That Mai imprisoned Iroh? So she could continue a relationship with Zuko? That Mai would have imprisoned Zuko too? This is genuinely misogynistic. This entire paragraph reeks of making a woman culpable for something she literally didn’t even do - literally ignoring Zuko’s éxplicit and deliberate decision - to thereby prove some sort of point that I don’t even quite understand.

The real fact of the matter is that “the reason Iroh ain’t around, and Mai is the only one Zuko has to rely on” is because of ZUKO’s decisions and choices. He chose this. And yes relationships are all borne out of conditional necessity. Let’s look at Zuko and Katara. The only reason why Zuko makes amends to Katara and had to be introspective and evaluate his own decisions is because she was the only person in the Gaang who wouldn’t accept him. If Katara didn’t verbalize how upset she was in front of Zuko and the Gaang, he would have never asked “Why is your sister so mad at me?” And even then didn’t understand or remember the extent of his betrayal until Katara explicitly stated that she was the first person to trust Zuko.

Again, ship who you want to ship. But if you’re going to, in good faith I presume, evaluate a relationship based on its conditional necessity - let’s look at one where if it wasn’t for a mission and Zuko’s decision to enter the Gaang again - Zuko would have never apologized or reflected on how he deeply hurt a person who offered to heal his scar, despite being enemies.

Now why do I point out Mai being concerned for Zuko’s safety or Mai listening to Zuko when he talks - despite you considering it to be “low bars?” Because time and time again - this is how anti Maiko/pro Zutaras characterize Mai. They conveniently ignore the times where she a) actually listens to Zuko instead of shutting him down or b) shows genuine care for him or his safety. Let’s make something else clear here. It might be a low bar for Aang, or Katara, or Suki - all of which are characters who have loving parents, mostly happy families, and were loved or cared for by their community. Mai - like Zuko, Azula, or Ty Lee - did not have that. She had a mom who shut her down instead of allowing her to express her emotions. She had to put on a facade of apathy and not caring for anything or anyone because she was conditioned to behave or face the consequences - both by her parents and Azula. In the same way Azula fans especially cherish and mention moments where she expresses empathy - even though it’s a low bar for any other character- we do for Mai because it represents growing from her past instead of regressing back to coping mechanisms.

I have again wrote another meta where Mai learns how to cope with others emotions from her mom. In the same way her mom shuts her down when Mai explains “her life story” she does the same thing to Zuko. There’s no denying that. But to characterize her WHOLE arc or her WHOLE relationship based on her actions in the beginning instead of how she learns and grows in the end. It’s like taking the fact that Zuko called Katara a “water peasant” at the beginning of the show and saying Zuko never changed or their relationship never changed from the beginning. It’s discounting the times where Mai ASKS Zuko for his life story “Yeah Zuko who are you really angry at?” Or “How did the war meeting go?” And sits there and listens to it. Yes the scenes are cut off - but not because Mai cuts Zuko off or shuts him down. So to say that -“it was enough to convince Zuko that he couldn’t confide in her in person about his realization that he needed to leave and join the Avatar and restore honor to the Fire Nation” is in direct contradiction to when he says “I’m angry at myself because I don’t know the difference from right or wrong” and “I was the perfect prince but I wasn’t me” or “Im doing this to save my country” where Zuko DOES confide in her in person ABOUT his realization. He attempts to reason with her because some core aspect of him believes he can confide in her. Also the last thing Mai does in the Boiling Rock is turn her head. For me it shows she’s frustrated, but yeah, I don’t see her refusing to listen to him. But I guess THATS up to interpretation? Lol?

But does Mai really understand why Zuko did what he did?

Let’s see - she puts her own life on the line and risks facing the wrath of Azula to ensure Zuko and his friends arrive safely. Straight from your words - Why would she stand up to Azula unless she had a realization that Zuko’s life and mission were more important than selfishly clinging to her relationship with him?

But she did that just to save his life! She still doesn’t understand his values or his mission!

Yet when Zuko returns to the fire nation - Mai helps him get dressed. She’s not angry that he dumped her to run off with his friends. She knows that he had to do that because it was the right thing to do and his destiny. That’s why when Zuko asks Mai “does this mean you don’t hate me anymore” Mai answers “It means I actually kind of like you.” If she didn’t understand why he did what he did and that he truly never meant to hurt her and that this mission was more important than his own life - why would she reconcile with him at the end? The answer is right there - and you yourself said it.

Both Mai and Zuko, along with every other character in the series, had to sacrifice something personally for the greater good.

But she demands Zuko stay in a relationship with her!

And the inevitable next step - which is Mai “was abusing Zuko and threatening him into staying with her.” Cracks knuckles.

The difference between one statement and an actual, credible threat is intent. The viewer needs to critically think at junctions like these and determine authoral and character intent.

Throughout the season, we never see Mai control or demand Zuko into staying in a relationship with her. Her intent is not to make and force Zuko into being her boyfriend. The evidence?

1. During The Beach - Mai breaks up with Zuko when he’s acting like an ass. She is willing to walk away from a relationship. She doesn’t force herself to stay or for Zuko to stay.

2. At The Boiling Rock, Mai is willing to die for Zuko to live. She betrays Azula - knowing that it means Zuko makes it safely and she’ll face death. Mai made This decision knowing she couldn’t be in a relationship with Zuko or that they would be together after that.

Not once do I see in any of Mai’s actions or interactions an attempt to control or possess or force Zuko into staying with her. To be frank, I see it in Zuko given his actions on The Beach and also how he literally orders Mai to stay in the comics (that’s beside the point).

But I’m not someone to say how a character should feel about something they interpret as potentially abusive or threatening - cause most times it’s a reflection of their own personal history. But I’m simply describing what the authors intended, what 99% of the people who watched the show saw, and what Mai and Zuko fans see. I think @attackfish did a really great job explaining this here:

“she clearly expects to die for it. Again, there is no vindictiveness here, no attempt to punish Zuko for leaving her, in spite of the fact that she is obviously hurt. Instead she performs an act of profound love and sacrifice.”

“And this is why her joke in the finale works, because when she tells Zuko “Don’t ever break up with me again,” she is reminding him, and the audience of the last time he did, when she “sav[ed] the jerk who dumped [her].” Zuko, it’s also clear understands the joke for what it is, since after giving her a nervous, guilty, little smile, he relaxes happily into her arms.”

both of the times Zuko left her - he put his own life at risk. And given that Mai cares about Zuko’s safety and has quite literally saved his life - this means that she doesn’t want him to die again but if he were to put himself in a compromising position (she would begrudgingly save his life, again).

The real reason why he left her - someone who we see disobey Azula and joins random missions for fun is because in CANON he says he does it to protect her.

“Everyone in the fire nation thinks I’m a traitor. I couldn’t drag her into it.”

Above all, Zuko loves Mai. He wants to protect her. And if it meant protecting her physically but hurting her emotionally in order to save her from Azula’s wrath - he does it. But little does he know that Mai is willing to face the consequences of being a traitor to protect Zuko. That’s why I love Maiko everyone.

Now that most of the exposition is done, here are bullet proof points to refute the rest of your arguments:

1. “Zuko doesn’t pick up on this because he’s desperate for his father’s approval, but he will after the meeting. Mai doesn’t pick up on it because she doesn’t really know Zuko or his inner turmoil, nor does she really understand the depth of how evil the Fire Nation really is.”

Zuko HIMSELF doesn’t know the depth or extent of his inner turmoil at this point. Mai understands that he’s feeling confused and angry, Zuko understands that he’s feeling confused and angry, yet neither of them fully know or have the solution to assuage his problems. He comes to this realization at the end of the episode. Mai understands that Zuko is an emotionally complex teenager who was raised in a less than loving environment. He’s experiencing difficulties right now and moral and emotional conflict - she doesn’t understand the full extent of it, but neither does Zuko:

Because I'm confused. Because I'm not sure I know the difference between right and wrong anymore.

So what does she do in the mean time? She listens to him - an effective and safe sound board for him to come to terms with his emotions, tries to rationalize with him, and when that doesn’t work a provides him company, and trusts him and believes him.

2. “Nor do I think she really understands the very real danger he is in, otherwise she wouldn’t be happy when Zuko does go to the meeting, knowing what happened to him the last time he attended one. Because Zuko is not safe any time Ozai has access to him.”

Except wouldn’t Zuko also face the consequences of refusing to attend a war meeting he was specifically asked to attend by his abusive and overwhelmingly powerful? ISNT that why Mai waits outside of the war meeting the whole time so she can ensure that Ozai didn’t do anything to Zuko, moreover that Zuko wasn’t harmed - unlike the last war meeting he attended?

3. “How did she hold him accountable? By deciding that she cares about him after he internalizes his anger and the conversation is over?”

Right here:

Zuko [Side-view of Mai.] My life hasn't been that easy either, Mai.

Mai Whatever. That doesn't excuse the way you've been acting.

And Shit on Bryke as much as you want but they do an incredible and powerful job of conveying something that all children need to hear:

And that's a great line [Laughs.] from Mai. [Katie laughs.] Like she's, she's like she knows, [Katie affirms.] you know, [Katie gives affirming murmurs intermittently.] she knows, she's li-Z-Zuko her-her whole life, she knows his life's been intense, but, that's a good line that it doesn't excuse the way you've been acting, and at a certain point everyone has to take responsibility for... the choices they're making and rise above the things that happen to them. And, you know, that's, everybody's dealt a different deck of cards, but that's the-ultimately the challenge, is can you... rise above your sit-your situation, and-and kind of solidify your own identity.

4. “Morality and redeemable actions, as it happens, absolutely are two of those conditions that love depends on. if person you love doesn’t have morals that align to yours and doesn’t have redeeming qualities in your eyes, then there’s nothing to base the relationship on”

I concede - I could have done a better job explaining this. So I’m going to explain what I was referencing here.

For Zuko and Katara - morality and redeemable actions are the ONLY pillars on which a relationship would work. Katara makes this very clear when she makes a tangible (and extremely well justified) threat to Zuko:

“So let me tell you something right now... you make one step backward, one slip up, give me one reason to think you might hurt Aang, and you won't have to worry about your destiny anymore, because I will make sure your destiny ends... right then and there... permanently.”

Conditional in the sense Zuko had to prove himself worthy to Katara - and Katara only fucks with Zuko as long as he doesn’t hurt Aang and pays for his actions. A relationship solely condition on morality and redeemable actions. Because if Zuko were to ever hurt Aang in the future even after the show ended- there would be no relationship between him and Katara. And if Zuko never redeemed himself for his actions - there would never be a relationship between him and Katara.

Sure all relationships require people to be morally aligned and have redeemable qualities - but if those are the ONLY pillars for the core of your relationship - it’s a much more tenuous bedrock - not even bedrock actually- for a solid relationship. Something to consider before launching into dissertations about why the canon relationships won’t work.

Oof my fingers are tired. Also I’m tired. Of explaining why Mai fulfills Zuko’s needs yadayadayada. My next post will be about how Zuko fulfills Mai’s needs. Cause let’s make this shit equal.

[delicrieux]

☆ﾐ 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚊𝚢 “𝚘𝚑”

PART 10: BIG DICK IS BACK IN TOWN

y/n is back in brooklyn for the holidays. thinking that a stream will make her feel less homesick for cali, she starts working on her famously titled hentai.free.srv. what was supposed to be a relaxing stream turns into a special delivery about two hours in.

─── corpse husband x reader ─── soc. media + written fiction! ─── word count: 2.2k ─── ❥ req: Here's one... You know those apps for delivery like Domino's or whatnot... What if reader is streaming Among Us with Corpse, and reader mentions they're hungry and Corpse offers to order them food, and readers like no no it's fine... Then there's delivery at the door (Corpse ordered beforehand) 

author’s note: fucky format is also back in town baby!!! also if you find any mistakes - no u didnt <3 thank u everyone for enjoying this story sm i literally cant believe how feral yall going strawberry cow was a nuclear explosion im still recovering tbh. got an ask a while ago and decided to incorporate it into myso. happy holidays everyone! myso will continue on monday!

ultimate masterlist.  ҉  myso masterlist   ҉   previous.  ҉   next.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

Indeed, being soft on any social media platform was the biggest disgrace and needed to be eliminated post haste. Moreover, it was a slippery slope - once you start flooding your timeline with cute imagery and heart emojis, what will stop you from posting inspirational Facebook quotes? Disgusting. If Rae were here, she would chide you (not you thinking about her as if she’s dead or something). For once in your life, you feel like you deserve it. 

Alas, you hope this little chaos you’ve caused is enough to throw everyone off. The stans, especially. You know the hashtags, you’ve seen ARMY scourging for info online with the same fervor and ruthlessness 1 Direction fans hacked airport security cameras just to spy on the boys. If you had any dirty secrets online, they are out to the public now - thankfully, besides the Harry Styles stan account (with edits and all), you have nothing. Though, now that you think about it, exposed nudes would have been better than your Punk!Harry edit receiving almost a million views. God, your life’s a fucking mess.

Your fans aren’t the only ones out for info - you, too, are trying to decipher Rae’s message. Code: Barbecue Sauce. The two of you had come up with it roughly two years ago, around the same time when you promised that if you didn’t find significant others by the time you’re 40, you’ll just marry each other. It was one of the many rules found in your friendship codex. Barbecue Sauce signifies information - an exchange of information. And depending on how it ends or begins (”So I’m sitting there” alludes to Rae, “On my titties” alludes to you), secret data on that person is given away, usually free of charge. 

But why? And to whom did Rae give away what? You had pestered her mercilessly and even sent some voice messages where you were crying. You were only crying because of a video of a grandpa smiling you saw on TikTok, but you are a snake, and so you put those tears to good use. If streaming doesn’t work out, you’ll just become an actress. Hollywood would love you. Your PR firm sure as fuck wouldn’t, though.

Rae was having none of it. She said you’ll figure it out eventually. Told you to channel your superior puzzle skills. You were quick to remind her that you can barely count to ten without having an aneurysm. Oddly serious, she admitted that she worries for you sometimes. Why only sometimes?! you demanded. She merely sighed. uttering under her breath something that sounded closely to “Boke.”

You leave her for barely a week and she’s already neck deep in the gay volleyball anime, hoodie and cardboard cutout and everything. Your life is falling apart.

But Brooklyn is nice. It had snowed when you stepped off of the plane. Thousands of snowflakes sprinkling into your hair, dotting your cheeks and nose. You missed this sight back in Cali. You missed your parents, too. 

Home cooked meals, old sweaters, your old room and about 40GB worth of old high school pictures on your computer. You went through them all one night. Some were stomach churning, cringe inducing nightmares. You were especially fond of those. Texted some of your friends that were still in Brooklyn, met up, decided to bake. Bad idea, Rae was the resident chef back in Cali. Besides laughing till your stomach hurt, and almost burning down your kitchen, nothing all that significant happened. Somewhere down the line, at about 3 am, half-way through a cheesy rom-com you had the overwhelming urge to text Corpse.

That’s where the problems really started. God, you missed California, missed being in the same timezone with a guy you hadn’t even met yet, how embarrassing is that?! You missed skating around and taking pictures of the beach in the setting sun, sending it to him, silently wishing he was with you to admire the view. 

You really want to call him. And to hang out with him. But for some reason, the thought of that springs up immediate anxiety and you shy away from asking. Him sending you cute good morning texts doesn’t help, either. Maybe it’s better he doesn’t know that you’re a blushing, stuttering mess each time you read “baby��. 

Late evening. Your stream is already set up, people are slowly trickling in and you greet them with a grin and a soft “Hello! Hi hi!”. You did your best to make your room a perfectly chaotic backdrop - led lights, an embarrassing amount of anime merch and plushies. You always try to balance out your weeb side by dressing hot as fuck for your streams - today’s inspiration just so happens to be egirls. Mostly because you watched one too many egirl make-up tutorials on TikTok, and also because you’ve been listening to Corpse’s song all day.

Yeah, no, who are you kidding, you dressed up this way because you were hoping Corpse was watching your stream. You didn’t forget your cat headphones, either. You know he likes them. You want to make him suffer. Perhaps then, finally, he will ask you out, so you wouldn’t have to.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

“I feel like,” You start when you put away your phone, staring idly at the chat, “I feel like I need a new name for you guys. Calling you guys after two years of streaming is just... weird, no? I also don’t respect men so I don’t want to call you guys. Like, so many creator’s have, like, a name for their fans. Uhm, Cody Ko has the chodesters, Kurtis Conner has, uh, folks? Kurtis Town? Citizens! Markiplier has mommy issues--” You can’t help snorting, “So, I’ve been, like, thinking - I know, shocking! - so I was thinking I’m gonna name you cockroaches. Because you’re grimy little shits impossible to kill. And also then I can use the legendary Minaj meme ROACHES!”

Your stream enthusiastically echoes ROACHES, making the chat swim. Yes, if anyone would enjoy such a name, it would be your audience. You’re as equally proud as you are disturbed.

“Well, anyway.” Leaning back into your chair, you throw your arms out with a bright grin, “Big dick is back in town, baby! If you noticed the backdrops different, it’s cuz I’m in Brooklyn now. Don’t ask me when I will return to Always Sunny, I don’t plan that far ahead.”

While Minecraft boots up, you decide to answer a few questions.

r u dating sykkuno?

You want to smack your head into the keyboard, but as it is, you can’t exactly afford a new one, so you refrain, “No, Sykkuno and I are not dating, we are just good friends. Uhm, I’m not sure how much I’ll have to repeat this, but, we really aren’t, so if the roaches could chill - Oh my God, that sounds so stupid, I love it - uh, yeah, if the roaches could chill that’d be great.”

the roaches lmao sounds like we’re a sports team

“Oh shit, yeah it does, uh-- maybe I can make like, jerseys or something. That’d be cool, I think.”

how disappointed are your parents with the way your life turned out?

“My parents are actually not disappointed at all!” You say with a cute little smile, “Uhm, they’re both really proud, actually. They’re glad I found something I love doing and made a job outta it. Dad finds my Youtube videos endearing. Yes, they watch pretty much all of my videos, unless I explicitly tell them not to. And yeah, with all the fucks and thirsting for anime characters. Uhm, it was very embarrassing at first, but I mean, after a while, shame just...doesn’t exist anymore, I guess? Funny thing about my parents, actually, when they watch my videos-” You eye catches a comment, “Oh! No, they only watch my Youtube videos. They don’t know how to use Twitter, thank God. Uhm, anyway-- when they hear a name they don’t know, like, I dunno, Dabi, or something, they google--” You’re grinning by now, eyes crinkling, giggling softly, “--who that is, and buy me like, merch and stuff. It’s really cute. 

can i be adopted by ur parents plz

will you and corpse ever collab?!

You were about to answer, though the man of the hour himself decides to do it for you.

Corpse_Husband: yes.

Okay, not to say your heart skipped a beat, but it totally did. With a pleased smile, you nod, like one of those bobble head toys sold at the dollar store. The motion is oddly reminiscent of Sykkuno’s own nod. Perhaps you had picked it up from him. The chat seems to notice.

pack it up, sykkuno

More questions pile about this mysterious collab you and Corpse are planning. Yeah, you’d like to hear more about it, too, since he single highhandedly decided one was happening right now. Corpse remains silent. Fine, keep your secrets. 

“Okay, guys, oh, I mean, roaches, Oh my God--” You’re covering your mouth, giggling, “-calling all roaches, calling all roaches, calm down. Everyone grab a snack and a blanket I’m turning up the music volume so we can all chill. Entering chill zone. Entering chill zone. Roaches, prepare.”

we are prepared

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

An hour or so passes and you grow hungry. It shows with the amount of cakes you had baked in your server. Currently, you find yourself throwing eggs at the wall of one of the renovated houses, your face scrunched in concentration and slight frustration. 24 of the 50 eggs have been wasted. “What’s a girl gotta do to get some chicks around here?” you had uttered under your breath, until, finally, a screech - the egg finally spawns a mob. Your mouth falls open, “Aww, look!” You approach it, so small, walking in zigzags beside you, “It’s a baby chicken! Die, bitch.” The baby chicken is no more as you swing your bedazzled (you have mods) diamond sword. You’re cackling by the time the dust settles.

y/n is a child murderer

“Roaches,” You address your fan-base, spurring another fit of laughter - you can’t get over the name, “I think I’m like, forgetting that eating in Minecraft won’t actually make less hungry in real life.”

take a break and go eat queen <3

“Fuck no, we starve and die like men. Now I actually really need another chicken.”

Another twenty minutes trickle by and you’re trying to lure back a panda from the jungle when there’s a knock on your bedroom’s door. Whipping your head to the side, you slide down your headphones. At the same time, your mom pokes her head through the ajar door, “MOM!” You scream, “Get OUT of my room I’m playing Minecraft!” But your yell has no actual bite to it, as you don’t manage to hide your smile. Your mom laughs, doing some sort of sign language and motioning for you to follow her with her head. That or it’s some sort of performative dance. 

“I’m live right now,” You tell her, pointing at your screen. She knows this already, though, “do you want to say hi?” 

The roaches spam the chat with friendly hellos. You mom, quite impatient now, waves you over. 

“Sorry, roaches, mom needs something. Be back in a bit!”

Stopping the stream, you rush out of your seat and pleased she slinks into the hallway. “What’s this about?”

“Your pizza came.”

“My what now?” You echo, confused.

“Domino’s. You ordered pizza?”

“What? No? I was busy with the stream, I never--”

Thankfully, you had managed to grab your phone from your room before you exited. You almost choke on spit once you read the messages.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

You decide that it’ll be impossible to stream after experiencing what you had just experienced. You tweet out a quick apology to the roaches (God, that fucking name) and say that you had a breakdown but you’re okay. That is as a close to the truth as you managed to muster. It’s a sad sight, chewing and crying; your mom winced when she saw your state - disheveled hair and rundown eyeliner and everything. “D’aww,” She had muttered, caressing the top of your head, “don’t cry my little raccoon.”

If anyone was ever to ask you where did your chaotic nature come from, you’d answer with my mom. To make yourself feel better, you took a selfie - duck face and peace sign and the horrible 2000′s angle. Sent it to Rae. 

looking hot, her message read. 

thanks, was all you replied with.

You couldn’t just leave things as they were. Once you calmed down, you wanted to text Corpse, but how would you follow up the ungodly caps lock and screeching? Impossible. An idea sprung to mind, one that was brave. Taking the first step.

Instead of sending a text, you sent a voice memo.

“Thank you for the pizza, it was delicious.”

You voice still sounded a bit raspy. His reply was instant. Your heart skipped a beat. He sent a voice memo back.

“Glad you liked it, baby.”

He was going to be the death of you.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

tags (in italics is those i couldn’t tag! make sure all’s ok w your settings!) : @littlebabysandboxburritos - @fairywriter-oracle - @tsukishimawh0re - @ofstarsanddreams - @bbecc-a - @annshit - @leahh19 - @letsloveimagines - @bellomi-clarke - @wineandionysus - @guiltydols - @onephootinfrontoftheother - @liamakorn - @thirstyfangirl - @lilysdaydreams - @pan-ini - @mxqicshxp - @tanchosanke - @yoshinorecommends - @flightsandfantasy - @liljennyx3 - @slashersdream - @unknown-and-invisible - @sinister-sleep - @fivedicksinatrenchcoat - @mercury–moon - @peterparkerspjsuit - @unstableye - @simonsbluee - @shinyshimaagain - @ppopty - @siriuslystupid - @crapimahuman - @ofthedewthesunlight - @mythicalamphitrite - @artsyally - @corpsesimpp - @corpsewhitetee - @corpse-husbandsimp - @hyp-oh-critical - @roses-and-grasses - @rhyrhy462 - @sparklylandflaplawyer - @charbkgo - @airwaveee - @creativedogs - @kaitlyn2907 - @loxbbg - @afuckingunicornn - @fleurmoon - @yeolliedokai - @truly-dionysus - @multi-fandom-central707

more tags are in the comments bcs tumblr only allows me to tag 50 people max 💙

[juniorgman187]

Any Day Now (Reid Fic)

A/N: Plz imagine being impregnated by season 10 Spencer Reid. WHEWW CHILE

Summary: Reader’s pregnancy finally takes its toll on her, leaving both Spencer and Reader to navigate through rough waters from miles away.  Category: Fluff, Soft-soft-soft angst, One-Shot Pairing: (POV)Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader Content Warning: Pregnancy Word Count: 3.2k

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

At first, it was nothing I couldn’t handle.

Multiplied mood swings? Understandable, her hormones were everywhere. 

An ever-changing appetite? Great, at least now it wasn’t such a hassle for her to decide where to eat. 

A suddenly much tighter FBI vest? Well, that’s what the adjustable velcro straps were for. 

Again, nothing that I hadn’t already planned for. Even before I delved into parenting books galore, I had a pretty good general idea of what to expect. Not only because of JJ’s earlier pregnancy or Kate’s recent one, but more so because of my extensive knowledge of the human anatomy. This made riding the storm of (y/n)’s pregnancy easier ... until it didn’t. 

It was somewhere in her 35th week that things finally got the best of her. 

There was a linear increase of events that suggested things were taking a turn for the worse, so I slightly anticipated a steep decline to occur at any moment. For instance, soon after (y/n) started showing, I began to lose count of how many times I had to insert my hand between her seatbelt and her bump to create a gap just big enough so that the belt wouldn’t have such a suffocating restriction on her. Nor could I fully account for all the hours of sleep she’d lost tossing and turning, just trying to find a comfortable position where she wouldn’t be crushed by her own weight. And I certainly couldn’t remember, not even with my eidetic memory, how many times she’s almost walked out of the house completely barefoot after getting frustrated with her inability to put shoes on by herself. 

In some sad way, I knew she wished to regain some normalcy in her life. Not that she regretted motherhood, but that she wished she didn’t have to experience so many small inconveniences that summed up to something larger than the life she was helping come into fruition.

She just wanted to drink coffee again without running the risk of a miscarriage. She wanted to climb up a flight of stairs without getting winded by the first few steps. She wanted to put on a tight shirt without looking exceptionally overweight. And most of all, she just wanted to keep working.

If she had to go to hell and back to stay in the BAU while pregnant, then to hell and back she went. 

My wife, as stubborn as ever, had made me - and the entire team - promise not to baby her as soon as we revealed that we were expecting. 

“I don’t want any of that ‘but you’re pregnant’ crap, got it?” She narrowed her eyes darkly at all of us, pointing an accusatory finger. “Anything you can do, I can do pregnant.”

And from that day on, she did what she vowed to do, what I knew she could do. She still chased after unsubs, shot all the bad guys, arrested the felons, but eventually - inevitably - it wore down on her. 

The easiest effect I could identify was her drowsiness. It used to take her a while to fall asleep on the jet, and sometimes, she’d stay awake the entire flight. But after the grueling hours she’d endured during her pregnancy, we would barely board the plane before she knocked out. I think falling asleep in the seats gave her the comfort she couldn’t find lying horizontally in a bed. No one said anything, though, because she’d already made it explicitly clear that she didn’t want us to pay her any special treatment, which I understood. Nobody likes to be pitied, but after today’s incident, this went far beyond pity. 

It was just plain concern. 

“The doctor said I’ll be fine.” She grumbled, waving me away with a flick of her hand. However, seeing as she was currently lying in a hospital bed, donning a gown that only partially hid from me all the wires and pads that stuck to her body to monitor her health and relay it to the machines - she wasn’t fine. And I needed her to know that I wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was the team. (I didn’t tell her this because she would’ve quite literally took my head off, but they were all out there in the waiting room instead of working on the case). 

“Emphasis on the future tense ‘will.’ You will be fine, but right now, you’re not.” I prepared myself to deliver the news I knew she didn’t want to hear. My voice became significantly quieter, reaching such a low decibel I wasn’t sure she’d even hear it, but maybe that was by design. She didn’t want to hear it as much as I hated to say it. “Maybe you should consider going on maternity leave now.”

Immediately, my wife shook her head with the biggest pout I’d ever seen. I could see it in the way her lip quivered that she was about to cry, no doubt because of the hormones, but especially because this job was her last piece of normality. She clung to it because it was all she had left to remind herself that she was still, in some capacity, the woman she was before. 

“Spencer, please.” She begged, as if I could do anything. “I’m not ready to leave yet.” 

I pursed my lips and looked away for a second to hide my own emotions. Seeing her cry was never easy, but being the cause for it made this even harder. I felt the formation of a lump in my throat and the pricking of tears in my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I croaked. “But I can’t let you keep risking your health,” I explained, neglecting to voice the final part of that sentence. ‘Or our baby’s.’ But I didn’t say that. How could I? It would’ve only guilted her further. 

“Your blood pressure’s getting higher,” I explained, keeping my eyes steady on hers, not letting them stray to the machine that she clearly didn’t know how to read. But with one glance at the numbers, I already knew they weren’t good. I didn’t lead on just how bad they were, though. “You fainted today, and if you’d landed even a little bit differently, you would’ve ended up with a lot more than just a few scratches on your stomach.” That was the extent of my guilt-tripping. It didn’t feel right coming out of my mouth, but it was the only way I knew she would understand the severity of the situation. 

“You were already planning on going on maternity leave next week, what’s a few days earlier?” I asked, briefly referring back to her obstetrician’s recommendation of not flying after her 36th week. 

We both agreed that after week 36, she’d take her leave of absence since she couldn’t join us on the jet anyway. It was our ‘compromise.’ If she insisted on still going in the field, then she had to listen to the doctor’s orders and not fly for the last month. 

“Spencer,” She whispered again, this time with tears running down her cheeks at the bat of her eyes. With the pad of my thumb, I gently wiped them away, wishing I’d never caused them to be there in the first place. “I can’t do this anymore.” 

She never let on how difficult things had become for her. She never said it’s too much (and it must be too much some of the time). So when she finally admitted the burden her pregnancy had created, I could already sense its arrival. So without a second wasted, I pulled the guest chair right up next to her bed and sat in it while reaching for her hand. Despite the presence of the pulse oximetry on her index finger, I still took her hand between both of my own, not minding the gap that the device created. 

“You are the strongest woman I know. There aren’t many pregnant women out there who can do what you’ve done these past eight months. They wouldn’t even think of it.” We shared a brief laugh, which lightened the atmosphere enough to encourage me to continue. “You are bearing our child, (y/n). Nobody else gets to do that. Not me. Not another girl. Just you. It’s only you who can truly give for our baby right now and you’re -you’re my girl ... and right now, I need you to take care of our girl, okay?”

She nodded rapidly with still glistening eyes. For the first time, that day, she stopped thinking her job was as an agent and started knowing her job was as a mother. 

And a damn good one at that. 

_ _ _

If there was anything I’d learned over the past years, it was that I should never expect my wife to follow the rules. Today was no exception. 

She should’ve been in bed right now, taking it easy, but instead, she was standing right beside the jet, saying goodbye to each and every one of us before we boarded. 

This would be our first flight without her. 

“You take care, mama, okay?” Morgan told her, kissing her cheek before waving goodbye. 

“I’m gonna miss you so much.” Kate sighed, engulfing (y/n) in a hug that I knew couldn’t have been comfortable with each of their bumps in the way, but they relished in it anyway. If I didn’t know any better, it looked like Kate was about to cry. Maybe that’s because their dynamic was different than any other. Their simultaneous pregnancies meant that they knew one another’s struggles far better than any of us could, so granted, it would be hard for Kate and (y/n) to be away from each other. They’d been in this journey together after all, in a way I couldn’t have been.

“Oh,” JJ sighed happily, taking (y/n) in her arms and swaying gently from side to side. “You are going to be the best mother ever.” 

“Said the best mother ever.” (Y/n) remarked, laughing bittersweetly. It was something in her smile that let me know it was just for show. 

Then, in one of the rarest moments of history, Hotch hugged (y/n), earning a slightly more real smile from her.

“Get some rest. You deserve it.” He whispered. 

Not even a second after they pulled away did Rossi wait to take (y/n)’s face in his hands and plant two kisses, one on either cheek. 

“If you need anything, you call us.” He ordered, mimicking a drill sergeant.

And though, I wasn’t ready, I found myself making my way to her, getting ready for one of the hardest goodbyes. 

She wrapped her arms around my torso and let her head press against my heart. “I don’t know how I’m gonna do this without you.” 

For the first time that night, she wasn’t faking a smile or putting on a face. I knew when she was saying goodbye that she was only laughing and grinning for everyone else, but underneath it all, she was experiencing a great sadness that no one else could understand. Everyone was just as excited as we were for this baby, if for no other reason than I was finally going to have a family of my own. That I’d finally found the people who were going to be there for me forever. And maybe it was that knowledge, the knowledge of how happy this baby made others, was the reason she never let it show just how hard it was for her. Otherwise, it’d ruin the fantasy. And so she wore happiness like a mask to hide the profound pain that would’ve wounded our spirits. 

“Hey, I’m not leaving you forever,” I whispered somberly, hugging her a little tighter. “And if anything happens, I’m just a phone call away.” As much as I tried to believe my words, neither of us could find the truth in it. Even I knew I wasn’t just a phone call away. I’d be miles and miles and miles away from two of the best things that have ever happened from me. 

She inhaled sharply and pulled away from me, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the hope that I hadn’t already seen them. “I should probably let you go now.” She laughed lightly. 

Our bodies parted, but I had yet to let go of her hand. I shook it up and down gently as I told her, “I love you.”

She shook my hand back in just the same manner. “We love you, too.” 

A smile crept onto my face after the immediate realization of what she meant. 

My girls.

At last, when I walked up the steps to the jet, I finally let go of her hand at the last moment possible, and even after we released hands, our arms stayed outstretched for a passing second as the distance between them got further and further. With the warmth of her hand leaving mine vacantly cold, I watched as she replaced it on the very top of her stomach, as if to say, “We’ll be okay.” 

_ _ _

“Reid?” 

I refocused my vision to Morgan who was calling my name. From the look on his face, I realized he probably tried to get my attention multiple times before this. 

“Sorry, what did you say?” I shook my head to clear my mind, but it didn’t work. A part of me was still in another world, lingering in thought. 

My mind would never shut up about her, but it seemed like today, it was firing all these things at me at 2x speed. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact event that I felt guilty for, but really - take your pick. It could’ve been anything, it could’ve been everything. 

It could’ve been the fact that I was here and she wasn’t. It could’ve been the fact that in those last moments I saw her, I realized just how strong she was being this entire time, and how I was asking her to be even stronger, as if the weight of the world wasn’t enough. It could’ve been the realization that she was struggling this entire time, but never asked for help, thinking that she’d be a burden - the very thing she made us promise not to let her be. That is the reason after all, that she told us not to let her pregnancy be an excuse for anything. Because if she didn’t contribute anything, then she’d be holding us back - she’d be dead weight. I knew that, and yet, what did I do?

Nothing. I walked away and boarded that fucking jet like a brainless idiot.

I should’ve stayed with her. 

Morgan’s eyes turned to slits while he tossed the manila folder onto the table, seemingly setting it aside so it wouldn’t be a distraction from his question. “What’s going on, man?” 

I shrugged, pretending not to know exactly what he was talking about. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just zoned out, that’s all.” 

Clearly exasperated, he said, “Come on, man. Don’t do that. Tell me what’s wrong.” 

Whether it was defeat or a sweet surrender, I tucked my hands in my pockets and let my head hang low, eyes glued to the ground. Unexpectedly, I was sniffling and wiping my nose before I could register that tears were already coming. “I’m just worried about her.” 

It felt stupid to admit, especially considering I saw her only 8 hours, 37 minutes, and 12 seconds ago. But the absence of her and our baby was growing more and more apparent with every passing moment I spent in this office without her. Usually, she would be here to keep me company, bothering me while I located the comfort zone - not that she ever really did bother me. I quite liked her presence. 

Sometimes, when I was left alone, the room would get too quiet, and it’d just be me and my thoughts. And maybe she knew how scared of my own mind I was when it wandered, so she never let me be alone with it - never let the room get too quiet. She would talk and talk and talk, and I could never get tired of listening. Her voice was like white noise. If she was here, things would be as they always were. I would be standing at the map, and she’d no doubt be sitting in a chair, rubbing gentle circles around her protruding stomach as I felt her watching me intently. 

“Found it.” I would say, drawing a big red circle around the zone. 

To which she would say, “You’re a genius.” 

Sure, I’ve been called ‘genius’ a million times before, but it never felt the same as when she said it. 

Morgan could see the invisible pain in my chest, and he pulled me in by my shoulder to wrap his arm around me. It might not have looked like it, but it was the most reassuring hug he could’ve given me. I can’t explain it, but it felt like (y/n)’s warmth and love had possessed his body and he was radiating it now. 

“I know it’s scary, man, and honestly, we all wish we could be with her right now. But trust me when I tell you she’s not alone.” He treaded carefully with his words, and I could tell there was something he wasn’t saying but that wanted me to figure out.

I didn’t even have to verbalize my question because soon enough, when Morgan pulled back, his phone began to ring.

“It’s Garcia.” He told me, though he didn’t answer the call, which was weird enough. But then he gestured to the computer on the table, and so I half-heartedly watched as the screen changed from the blue background to a video call with Garcia. 

And who else would be sitting beside her but my wife?

“Look who I’ve got with me!” Garcia squealed, clapping her hands together excitedly.

“You’re supposed to be on bedrest.” I playfully scolded her.

“I was! I was, I promise. But after I said goodbye to you guys, I went home and got four hours of sleep, and then I went to my doctors appointment, but then when I was driving home, I thought why would I go back there when I’ve got everything I need right here?” She motioned around Garcia’s lair, even lifting up a hospital-go bag that Penelope no doubt compiled just for her. If there was anyone I trusted to take good care of her, it was Garcia. 

Like I said before, I learned to expect (y/n) not to follow the rules. So naturally, she found a way to still work even on maternity leave. 

At this point, the rest of the team neatly filed into the room, erupting in cheers of excitement at the sight of (y/n) in the bat cave. 

“Is everything okay?” JJ worriedly asked. 

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine! Baby looks good, my blood pressure’s getting better, so we’re doing okay.” She smiled proudly, and so did I. That was her first appointment on her own, and though it couldn’t have been easy, especially this late in her term, she did it anyway. Because that’s my girl.  

“When are you due, again?” Kate asked (y/n), earning an enthusiastic, “Doctor says if she’s on time, New Year’s Eve!” 

It never failed to make me smile whenever she brought up her due date. She was always excited to proclaim that our daughter might be brought into the world at the exact time we brought in the new year. 

“But if I’m early, it could be any day now.” She explained. 

Here’s where I had to cut in. “Hopefully not any day now! I don’t wanna miss it.” 

“You won’t!” She promised through a wide grin.

Something else you should know about my girl? She always keeps her promises. 

And on January 1, at exactly 12:00 - just as promised - I had the privilege of watching (y/n) deliver a healthy 6 pound and 9 ounce baby girl.

The weight of my whole world.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

Can you tell I love it when someone says “my girl”? I think that’s my favorite pet name ever. 

taglist: @rainsong01 @calm-and-doctor​ @inkstainedwritergirl​ @rexorangecouny​

click here if you want to be added to a taglist!

[stormsbourne]

the homestuck epilogue, summarized by me

edited after: I’m leaving this here for my own reference but there’s a decent amount of stuff I got wrong in these. I’ve tried to correct most of it. still please don’t bother with these if, for some reason, you’re still free of this dark knowledge in the post hell 2020 timeline

there’s doubtless parts of both sides (which are actually only one side, big spoilers there) that I’m going to forget so I apologize in advance for that but I read the entire thing very quickly and some parts are more memorable than others. this is also only slightly polished up from when I posted it on discord, which I did in a tremendous hurry. so pardon the grammar

please be wary that I literally CANNOT tag this with everything there are warnings for so if you’re not sure, check the actual epilogue tag list, because literally all of it is mentioned in some capacity.

letsa go

LET’S START WITH CANDY.

john decides not to go. immediately, things start going strangely well for literally everyone, who all get exactly what he thinks they want (or what SOMEONE thinks they want, more on that later. I think it's still john doing the influencing.) davejadekat hook up. john and roxy get married. etc. gamzee gets “redeemed” by which I mean john rescues him at calliope’s request and he goes around saying he’s good now. but as always there's trouble in paradise and the things that seem to be "good endings" end up being bad. jane becomes president of earth but this leads her to become a fascist dictator who may possibly be responsible for the future genocide of trollkind (this shit is full fascist racism shit. “troll camps” are a thing.). dave and karkat are in love with each other and jade getting in with them has actually just made it harder for them to be honest with one another. gamzee basically serves no purpose except to be annoying and gross. 

at some point literally all the trolls start getting resurrected because of timeline shenanigans where the black hole is spitting out their ghosts onto earth c (which is actually inside of the black hole in paradox space somehow. don’t think too hard about it). rose and kanaya adopt a grub they name vriska to honor her sacrifice and also because it looks like vriska. john and roxy have a kid named harry anderson. jane basically rapes jake (he's drunk and also the lollipop is invovled) and conveniently gets pregnant with a kid they later name tavros. AS TIME GOES ON, karkat breaks up from djk because he's sick of it and then goes on to lead a troll rebellion against jane. jane starts cucking jake with gamzee. roxy and john break up because john is depressed and also because john is way more interested in texting terezi than in his real-life spouse. dirk kills himself for reasons that have more to do witht the construct of the meat timeline than the candy one.

all of this is slightly out of order but I’m trying to be succinct so when things get crazy I can keep the relevant details close together.

QUICK MEAT DETOUR (MEATOUR).

john decides to go. he makes a quick stop to grab the ring of life from aranea, then scoops up the other game over kids, who head off to face caliborn. the masterpiece goes down as you would expect it to with the beta kids getting stuck in the juju. the betas are later released from the juju by vriska but it doesn't actually kill english (dave does with his sword, then gets decapitated), and john gets nailed hard in the chest by caliborn's gold tooth, which begins to poison and kill him. davepeta appears for like two seconds and then vanishes into the black hole. jade's corpse is the only one of the kids that isn't fucking vaporized but it gets sucked into the black hole. we'll come back to this later. john runs into meenah, who steals the life ring and peaces out into the black hole. then he runs into terezi in the remains of paradox space and the two of them fuck. 

IN THE MEANTIME, on earth, karkat mounts an opposition run to jane's presidency, at dave's urging. dave and karkat are explicitly not together but also explicitly dancing around how they both know they love each other; jade keeps trying to start a threesome and both of them are like "UHHHHHH." roxy and calliope are together. jake and dirk have a stupid wrestle rap tv show but it is iterated on over and over again that dirk thinks jake is a useless idiot who he can't treat well and who deserves nothing and whom he needs to babysit and control so cool I guess. dirk goes to talk to rose and it becomes clear both of them are experiencing the same thing with their expansion of consciousness giving them awareness of other timelines and vague control over them (”ascending”) AT WHICH POINT it becomes clear that dirk is actually the narrator+controller of the entire meat timeline. the narration turns orange and dirk’s character voice (or what the epilogue says his character voice is) begins to leak into how it’s written.

BACK TO CANDY FOR A SECOND.

jade's corpse from the meat timeline crashes down into the candy earth c through a ghost black hole portal. nobody knows what the sweet christ is happening, but roxy proposes having another funeral since the kids only see one another at funerals (the last one being dirk’s) and aren't very close. they have the funeral but in the middle of it, jade sits up and has been possessed by the spirit of red calliope, who claims she is protecting this version of the planet and is keeping watch out for a bad actor who could destroy everything.

kid vriska is horrible to kid tavros. john and terezi talk a lot and it's routinely implied that john cares more about her than about roxy, and that john is the only person she talks to. jake eventually walks out on jane with their kid but only after she’s treated him horrendously and continued to cuck him with gamzee. meenah also comes down through a hole in the sky, where she meets karkat and they hook up romantically. dave and jade get married but it’s implied to be a very troubled marriage. kid vriska begins banging harry anderson once they are teens. also once they are teens, ACTUAL (alive) vriska comes crashing down onto the planet from being sucked into the black hole. she and kid vriska have some conversations about terezi, but only after vriska hatefucks gamzee. vriska sends terezi a message. we don't see how this pays off, which makes me think that more is probably coming. 

dave, while trying to help karkat with the troll rebellion, comes upon actual literal barack obama, has a conversation about sexuality with him and how he’s not really into jade (here he calls himself “gay” while in the meat timeline he is very explicit about being bisexual). obama tells him that ascension to one’s ultimate self is impossible for the normal human body to withstand and helps him turn into a robot so he can handle the transformatiin and help save another timeline. 

btw a war has started between jane’s fascist empire and the trolls, led by karkat, who has an eyepatch. john, having patched some things up a bit with roxy, reconciles with his son. this is basically how candy ends.

OK. LET’S GET BACK TO THE MEAT.

now that dirk's control over the narrative is firmly established he actually starts exerting some level of control over people through his narrative voice. he uses this to start making people do things he wants.

anyway jade falls into a coma at some point and when she wakes up, the spirit of red calliope is using her to "transmit" and dirk and red calliope start literally fighting over who gets to write the story. red calliope wins at first, and dirk's narration is reduced down to small font where he passive aggressively swipes at calliope. alive calliope takes one look at possessed jade and runs away almost literally screaming. oh also I forgot calliope and roxy both go by "they" at this point in time and dirk+calliope spar a bit over that as dirk also keeps calling roxy "her." fun times. 

anyway while calliope is running the narrative jake agrees to endorse karkat's presidential run as dirk makes plans involving a rifle and the phrase "jake english, your ass is mine." during the rally where jake is about to endorse karkat, dirk fools calliope into thinking he's trying to shoot jake, but wheels around and hits jade instead with a tranquilizer through a window. this makes red calliope's influence go away and dirk resumes control of the narrative. 

using his regained control of the narrative, dirk presses his thumb down on jake to remind jake how much he loves dirk, how he’s IN LOVE with dirk, and how "to love dirk is to obey him" and jake, obligingly, endorses jane in front of the entire crowd gathered there to watch his speech about karkat. 

dave and karkat, drinking together after jane handily wins the election, hook up though dave basically has to shout dirk out of his head because he wants to do it on his own terms instead of the way dirk keeps writing it, and dirk WILL NOT LET HIM because dirk knows best. eventually dirk leaves him alone but only after dave basically forcibly chases him out (without knowing what he’s really doing, sort of like Aimless Renegade in the comic). john and terezi come back to earth, where john dies and terezi captchalogues his body. dirk (as narrative) and terezi (as herself) spar a bit until he makes an offer to her to come see him about her dead boyfriend. this is the last we see of her. 

dirk then convinces kanaya (using the narrative) that he and rose are in love and he's better for rose than she is and she needs to let them go if she really loves rose. kanaya obligingly does this. dirk leaves kanaya some medicine that will wake jade up and goes to talk to jake, where he sex blackmails jake into lending him a spaceship. jake thinks he's coming along on the trip but dirk assures him this is not the case. jake breaks down literally sobbing and begging to go, dirk kisses him and tells him he'll never let jake break his heart again, and dirk leaves with rose (in a coma which dirk will resolve by putting her into a robot like dave).

jade wakes up and, with memories of red calliope's goals, shouts that dirk has to be stopped, pointing out to various people (namely kanaya) how weird they’ve been acting because he’s been subtly influencing them using the narrative as lowkey mind control. they all make plans to go find dirk though none of them can figure out where the sweet fuck john is (terezi is awol). they ask jake who, sobbing, confirms that dirk took a spaceship, and then go plan to get one of their own and follow him using red calliope's instructions.

also this is impossible to get in anywhere else but roxy is going by “he” now and dirk has a whole paragraph about how suave and manly and cool and masculine he is

WOW THAT WAS HAIRY. THAT IT?

the actual ending of each consists of the following: candyverse davebot shows up on candy earth as red calliope opens a hole presumably back out to the furthest ring (after literally eating caliborn’s body). he and aradia (she was in candy for a while now but did pretty much nothing) are like cool let's go and vault into the hole. meanwhile, meatverse dirk and robot rose draw closer to a new unnamed planet as rose does dirk's laundry. they both know the planet is destined for a new sburb session in the future.

YIKES!

yeah yikes.

WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS?

if you’re like me you should ignore it and just keep doing what you want to do. have fun. the author is dead, long live the fanfic author.

[snowstories]

I criticize the ‘vengeance = bad’/’constructive justice is more important than retributive justice’ theme in fma a lot, and I just want to state, for the record, that I’m not necessarily saying that it’s a writing flaw. I just fundamentally disagree with the message. 

While I certainly think that there are flaws with the way it was written (particularly in Scar’s arc), at the end of the day, within the narrative, the theme is mostly solid and I do think there’s some very real merits to it. I like how Arakawa elevates ‘constructive’ justice (for lack of a better word; rebuilding the thing that was lost and moving forward by living your best life) over retributive justice (aka ‘revenge’; punishing those who have wronged you). However, I think she takes it a bit too far, which is where she ultimately loses me with the message. In addition, I disagree with her assessment on what ‘vengeance’ actually is, and by extension, I disagree with her stance on it, which is what makes the theme fall apart for me.

Arakawa seems to think (from what I can tell from the way FMA is written, at least) that ‘vengeance’ is defined more by emotion than by action. Time and time again, we see that the way ‘vengeance’ is portrayed is more about losing yourself than the actual act of punishing those who’ve done wrong; we see this most prominently when Roy is held back from killing Envy despite the fact that Envy is a war criminal who’d deserve it; the problem wasn’t killing Envy in and of itself, it was killing Envy in a mindless rage that threatened to consume him. If Roy had captured Envy, and then calmly assessed the situation and decided that his death would be for the overall good, I don’t think Arakawa would have presented that as a problem. After all, Roy is praised for his plan to become Fuhrer in order to eventually put war criminals to death. With all this, in addition to several elements in Scar’s arc (that I won’t get into because that’s a whole different beast), I think we can safely assume Arakawa defines vengeance as a primarily emotional act, one that you will always lose yourself in, while justice would be a primarily rational one, focused on the betterment of yourself and those around you. 

And I just plain disagree with that. I think that vengeance means ‘punishing someone who has wronged you’, regardless of whether that punishment is dealt with a rational mind or an emotional one, and regardless of whether or not the punishment is actually deserved. I don’t think that all forms of vengeance are on the same level as ‘always bad’; I think that vengeance can sometimes be good, and sometimes bad, and sometimes somewhere in between. As an extension of that, I don’t think that wanting revenge is inherently wrong and I don’t think that it’s something you will always lose yourself to. While it’s often not productive, and I therefore tend to lean towards ‘constructive’ justice as a solution on a society-wide scale rather than ‘retributive’ justice, I do think that some level of retributive justice/revenge is often warranted (the level depends on the situation); aka, I do think that, depending on the situation, vengeance could be an appropriate reaction to the wrongs done to you, and that it can be a form of justice in and off itself. And those appropriate situations DEFINITELY include ‘having your entire culture and people slaughtered by order of the government’.

While Arakawa definitely knows that the war criminals from the Ishvalan Genocide should be punished (she states this explicitly, and it’s Roy and Riza’s primary motivation), she never quite seems to deliver on that front. Part of that is the universe where FMA takes place in, true, but by the end of the story, there really is no reason to hold off on it anymore. Grumman is now the Fuhrer, and since he seems to (at the very least) have a decent sense of morality, he really ought to be working towards prosecution of the Ishvalan war criminals. However, when we see him as Fuhrer, there is no talk of it, and Arakawa has confirmed by Word of God that Mustang takes over the presidency, showing that the Ishvalan war criminals probably weren’t prosecuted under Grumman’s rule. While Mustang will probably go through with his original plans, the fact that Grumman seemingly makes no move towards punishing the Ishvalan war criminals is still an oversight at best, and an unwillingness to actually hold any of Ishval’s war criminals (those who weren’t antagonists, anyway) accountable at worst. 

Instead, the matter of the Ishvalan Genocide is ‘solved’ (as much as genocide can be solved, anyway) almost completely by means of constructive justice, by allowing the Ishvalans to return to their homeland and rebuild their society from the ground up. While that’s definitely a good ending, the fact that this is shown as the only form of justice the Ishvalans receive leaves a bad taste in my mouth. They deserve to rebuild their society and to flourish once again, sure, but they also deserve to see those who burned their society to the ground in the first place held accountable for that. I do not believe that the rebuilding of Ishval alone, without holding any war criminals (that weren’t already antagonists in the narrative timeline) accountable is not an adequate resolution to this storyline.

I would argue that, by refusing to show any real push towards punishment for the Ishvalan war criminals within the timeline of the narrative (aside from Roy and Riza’s motivation, which holds no substance as long as neither of them are Fuhrer), FMA displays a disproportionate preference for constructive justice over retributive justice that I just plain don’t agree with. In addition, I do not agree with its definition of ‘vengeance’, which makes a lot of Scar’s arc very hard to swallow. Those two things combined make the ‘vengeance = bad’ theme, as presented in FMA (mangahood at least) probably one of my least favourite parts of the story.

[Note: I do not actually know what Arakawa’s views on vengeance are. I’m extrapolating from how I interpret FMA’s themes, and as the author, I’m assuming Arakawa’s opinions are in line with them. I could be wrong; I obviously have never met her, let alone had an in-depth conversation about the morality of revenge with her.]

[uhhhhhhokay]

Shows With Good LGBT+ Rep

Now for starters, I’ll admit that I do not watch Riverdale. I tried it, didn’t like it, that’s basically it. The show does have LGBT rep (but not ace rep), I would never dismiss that, but they make sure to do the bare minimum. Based off the people I follow who are fans, scenes for the characters, more specifically Chonie (Cheryl x Toni), are either constantly deleted or they are nonexistent. 

They have romantic scenes together but not nearly as many as the rest of the leading cast. This matters because one of the girl in the relationship, Cheryl, is advertised as a main, but yet she’s treated as a side character, and Toni is given even less. From what I’ve heard of the show, they dedicate an immense amount of time to the pairings of the main characters, but this focus does not seem to apply to Cheryl and her relationship with Toni. This applies to them as individual characters and as a pairing, as I’ve heard that neither character get much screen time. 

I understand wanting representation and I understand wanting to support representation, but the point that I’m trying to make is that Riverdale is not the show to put your desire and need into because they will never give the proper treatment or storylines that these characters and relationships they deserve. You can still watch but just know that there are shows out there with much better rep. So I’m here today, writing this long essay that no one asked for, to inform you guys of LGBT+ rep that actually gets treated well by their writers and is given the screentime and love they deserve. 

Warning: Some of these shows have been cancelled. If they do not say they’ve been cancelled, then that either means the show is still going or that it ended on it’s own terms.

Also this list does not include shows with the bury your gays trope.

Feel free to add on! This list is mainly comprised of some of my favorites. I tried to very best on the descriptions but I am a tired student with little free time. 

#1: The Bold Type ~ Kat x Adena

Kat Edison, the head of the social media department of Scarlet magazine, meets Adena El-Amin, a proud Muslim lesbian photographer in episode one. The two bond and grow closer and closer, eventually causing the “out and proud hetero” Kat to question her sexuality and acknowledge her romantic feelings for Adena. Adena, as I said earlier, is a lesbian and Kat is bisexual. 

#2: Black Lightning ~ Anissa x Grace

Ah, the first black lesbian superhero! The second season is currently airing on Tuesday’s at 9pm on the CW. Being the daughter of the infamous vigilante Black Lighting has it’s unexpected perks, like having superpowers! The intelligent activist Anissa Pierce discovers her powers of super strength and decides to use them for good and defend her city under the name of Thunder.

Grace Choi was in a few episodes of season one, but her relationship status as girlfriends with Anissa in the comics assures us that she will be coming back and we will see her and Anissa’s relationship develop further.

#3: Doctor Who ~ Bill x Heather

Throughout all of time and space, these two manage to come back to each other. After being split up by an alien in ‘Pilot’, Heather comes back to Bill’s rescue in the season finale, kissing her and making her immortal, leaving the both of them to travel across the universe together. Their journey has sadly come to an end in the series, but it came to a spectacular and happy one!

#4: BBC Class ~ Charlie x Matteusz

Part of the Doctor Who universe comes Class, a teenage sci-fi drama that takes place in Shoreditch. Now, first I should say that this is one of my favorite shows and you don’t need to watch Doctor Who in order to watch it. It is its own separate show.

Charlie Smith, an alien prince from the planet Rhodia, comes to earth to escape the Shadowkin, the monsters that killed his race. Him and the only other survivor of his planet, Miss Quill, come to earth and are instructed by the Doctor to hide themselves as human. Charlie attends Coal Hill Academy while Quill teaches.

Once prom comes around, Charlie asks the Polish boy, Matteusz, to be his date. The prom is hijacked by the Shadowkin and it is revealed to Matteusz that Charlie is an alien, but he doesn’t mind because it does not change the way he feels about him. The two continue to date throughout the series whilst fighting off aliens with four of their friends and Miss Quill

This show has been cancelled, but audios have been made since then to fill in the gaps between episodes and there is a chance there might be more! Also there are three books!

#5: In The Flesh ~ Kieren x Simon

The dead have come back to life! Kieren and Simon are both PDS sufferers, meaning they have partially deceased syndrome, meaning that they died and were brought back to life. Series 1 is centered on Kieren Walker, a 18 year old boy who died back in 2009, who is adjusting to his new zombie life and dealing with the people who want him back in the ground.

In series 2, Simon is introduced as a part of an PDS activist who is fighting for equal treatment for PDS sufferers while trying to find the first risen to bring on the second rising. Connected by a mutual friend, Simon and Kieren are introduced to each other, and the two strike up a relationship which develops into something romantic.

#6: Faking It ~ Multiple Characters

In an attempt to gain popularity, Karma and Amy fake being lesbians, but after a kiss at the school’s prep rally, Amy realizes that she isn’t as straight as she thought she was. In fact, she is head over heels in love with her childhood best friend, Karma. She confides in the out and proud Shane about her feelings for Karma and asks for advice on how to get a girlfriend. This show, while not always perfect, is incredibly diverse. Amy is bisexual, Shane is gay, Lauren is intersex, and in season 3, Shane forms a crush on the new student, Noah, and after their first kiss Noah comes out as trans to Shane. 

The show was unfortunately cancelled after three seasons, leaving much of the story still left unsaid, but the show still has an enjoyable and satisfying ending, even if it wasn’t the ending the creator wanted. The creator’s ideal ending, had he been given the chance to write it, was that Karma would eventually realize that she herself is bisexual too. 

#7: Hit The Floor ~Multiple Characters

Jude x Zero

Junior sports agent Jude Kinkade brings basketball sports star Zero to LA on the promise to be a star. One night in a limo before Zero flies to an away game, Jude, to his surprise, kisses Zero. When Zero comes back, the two begin a friends with benefits relationship that develops into something deeper, and the two fall in love.

Lionel x Eve

Lionel’s sexuality has never been explicitly stated in the show. She had sex with many men and the majority of viewers assumed she was straight. That was until the cunning Eve came in. The two decide after a brief meeting to go and get drinks together which ends up with them having sex. Later, Lionel admits to Jude, that she has slept with many women before Eve. Their relationship is complicated and it’s much different from the other relationships on the show. 

Jude x Noah

Due to the show’s unexpected renewal and switch from VH1 to BET, not all actors returned. Adam Senn (Zero) did not want to return, but never fear, because the show’s creator wasn’t about to let the beautiful Jude Kinkade go to waste!

A year after his break up with Zero, Jude’s best friend Lionel takes him out for drinks in the hopes to find him a hunk and get him laid. Later that night, Jude and Noah meet, hook up, and move on with their lives. Until the next day when Jude sees Noah at the Devils arena and finds out that the two will be working together. 

Hit The Floor has not been renewed or cancelled.

#8: Wynonna Earp ~ Multiple Characters

Waverly x Nicole 

i’m sure many of you have heard of these two, but incase you haven’t, let me introduce you to Waverly and Nicole! Waverly, the younger sister to the Earp heir, and Nicole, a sheriff at the Purgatory police department, strike up a romantic relationship after Waverly ends things with her shitty boyfriend Champ. These two are so cute and are head over heels in love with each other. 

Jeremy x Robin

Jeremy is introduced in season 2 and Robin is introduced in season 3. After discovering a murder tree, Robin goes to the police station in search of help. Directed to Jeremy, Robin explains everything he saw, then the two go on a date to investigate the murder tree, and after that the two become boyfriends.

Warning: The show, while amazing with LGBT characters, does not treat their POC characters well. 

#11: Brooklyn Nine-Nine ~ Holt and Rosa

Raymond Holt is captain of the 99th precinct. He is married to his longtime partner Kevin, who often guest stars on the show, and the two of them are truly iconic. Holt has fought hard for gay rights in the police department since joined the force. As a out gay black man, Holt had to fight and work hard to get to his position as captain. 

Rosa Diaz is bisexual and she is played by a bisexual actress. Rosa is a secretive, hard, ruthless, and a soft bean of a character. She is one of the key characters to the Nine-Nine. She has yet to have a steady girlfriend but here’s to hoping that she will have one next season!

#10: BBC Cuffs ~ Multiple Characters

Jake x Simon

Don’t sleep with the enemy. New PC Officer, Jake Vickers, joins the police force and meets the well known and disliked solicitor, Simon Reddington. Despite the fact that they are on opposing sides that hate each other, the two begin dating. They try to keep their professional life out of their relationship to avoid conflict. But alas, that’s where the sweet angst comes in. 

Donna x Alison 

The time these two start dating it unclear, but when the show begins it is said that they’ve been together for a few years. They’ve been living happily together for quite some time. Donna is part of the main cast as a police officer and is given a lot of screen time in action. Alison is a side character who makes a few appearances throughout the show but her interactions with Donna are sweet, beautiful, and realistic. 

This show has been cancelled.

#11: Shadowhunters ~ Magnus x Alec

Ghaad, these two are the best. A gay shadowhunter and a bisexual warlock fall in love. Malec has good communication. Magnus and Alec have their own storyline and a storyline with each other, making them both equally important and have intimate/emotional scenes. The show also makes sure to tackle harmful bisexual stereotypes. (Thanks to @spicychipsdemon for helping me write this one.)

This show has been cancelled but it’s being given a special to wrap up the story.

#12: Superstore ~ Mateo x Jeff

An employee and district manager meet at the Cloud 9 store during a strike. Mateo is a out gay man and so is Jeff, the thing is that his cannot date the employees at the store so the two of them keep their relationship private from the other coworkers, because they would not be able to keep it a secret from Jeff’s boss. These two are actually really cute and they’re hilarious and underrated to be quite honest.

#15: Orphan Black ~ Multiple Characters

Besides the white girl dreads, these two are nice. They are the sci-fi couple that beat the shit out of the bury your gays trope. A clone and a woman who is assigned to look after that clone, uncoincidentally meet. What starts as an assignment is developed into something much deeper, leading Delphine to realize she’s bisexual. These two are happily living their life making crazy science with each other.

There are more LGBT characters in the show. There is a trans clone but unfortunately he is only in one episode. One of the main clones, Sarah is revealed to be bisexual in s4 and her foster brother Felix, a series regular, is gay. 

#16: Picnic at Hanging Rock ~ Multiple Characters 

Three schoolgirls and their governesses mysteriously disappear on Valentines Day in 1900 at the infamous Hanging Rock. This show, while slow in some areas, transformed the 1967 book written by Joan Lindsay. What was initially about the disappearance of three girls and the attempt to find them was changed into a six part series about the repression of sexuality and expression of young girls. Miranda, Irma, and Marion, are the three young women that go missing, and they are all lesbians. There are two more characters in the story: Mike and Albert. They had a close relationship in the book but the tv show made their relationship canonically romantic. 

The show does suffer in the sense that hetero couples that barely existed in the book get more screen time and make out sessions than they should. I included this show because character wise it’s so drastic from it’s original content and it ends up putting wayyyy more focus on the girls than the book did. It turned a simple plot into a meaningful story about gender roles and sexuality and three girls trying to break free of them and two boys falling in love and running away together. Not a perfect show, but damn if it didn’t do some things right. Still recommend.

This show is a miniseries. Unlike other series, it ends where the book ends.

#17: One Day At A Time ~ Elena x Syd

If you haven’t watched these two then I don’t know wtf you’re doing. This show is precious and they are precious and god just watch it already honestly. Elena is a lesbian and Syd is a non-binary lesbian. Once a criminal breaks loose and the two have to cancel their plans to go to comic con, the two are trapped in their home with the rest of their family. As the evening builds up, Elena finally gets the courage to kiss Syd.

#18: Crashing ~ Sam x Fred

This show and this relationship is f*cking wild and it’s amazing. The show surrounds a group of people who are guardians to an abandoned hospital and they live in it. Sam meets Fred on his birthday when the two are paired up for a scavenger hunt. They relationship is odd at first with Sam constantly flirting with Fred and blatantly ignoring his feelings for him. These feelings rise to the surface and force Sam to confront them when Fred gets a rich bf who wants them to move in together. 

This show has been cancelled. The show does not end with a cliffhanger. The show does end with Sam finally leaning in a kissing Fred. 

#19: Charmed (2018) ~ Mel x Niko

Now this show is only one episode in so who knows where this show and relationship will go but it’s off to a good start with having the Mel and Nico relationship as the only romantic relationship in the show so far. I did not pay attention to the advertising of this show but as far as I know the show kept this relationship under wraps as a happy surprise for it’s premiere. The pilot has it’s flaws but it is cute, and to me personally, it works for me better than the original. These two have been dating for a while. Nico is a detective while Mel is just finding out months after her mothers death that she is a witch. A lot is going on. The pilot was interesting enough to get me to continue. The sisters are amazing and I hope the writers keep this relationship up front. This show not only has a lesbian relationship as it’s main love story right now but the three sisters are all women of color. 

This show and the actresses have been facing a lot of racist backlash so any support to ensure a future seasons be amazing!

#20: The Halcyon ~ Toby x Adil

(Ayyyeeee I got to use my own gif go follow at @tlmedits please)

Honestly f*ck BBC for cancelling so many good shows with LGBT characters. The Halcyon is a tv show that takes place during the 1940′s. Now, unlike many other periodic shows, this one is diverse, including poc and gay characters in the cast and giving them good storylines. The Halycon hotel is own by the Hamilton family, and Toby is the youngest son. Adil is a bartender in the hotel lobby. One night, while Toby is hiding from a woman his mother had set him up with, he runs into Adil who then kisses him. The two the next day begin a relationship. 

As I mentioned before, this show was cancelled.

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 2x06 Fog of War

This episode has one major character introduction (and one minor one), which might have been a cool reveal the first time I saw it, if I hadn't been always spoiled on it; some really tense moments involving major revelations for the characters themselves, which made me think for a moment I'd give this episode a higher rating; and a very questionable follow-up to the major storyline from the previous episode, which made me rate it lower than the previous few episodes, but nowhere near as low as an upcoming episode all focused on that storyline, and that's just because it's still a minor part of this episode.

Rating: 7.5/10

You've probably guessed what I meant already: the way the show deals with the aftermath of Finn's mass murder in the Grounder village is full of problems and annoying character behavior. Which gets even worse in episode 2x08, but it starts here, when we learn that Finn was questioned by the Council*in Camp Jaha and fully cleared, because, according to Abby: "He thought he was rescuing his friends". Sorry, what? Usually it's the Grounders that get on my nerves with their dumb decisions and attitudes, but this time, this storyline always made me extremely irritated with the Arkers. WTF is wrong with their judicial system and their moral views? They used to give death sentences on the Ark for any damn thing, from smoking weed to stealing medicine for your kids to giving birth to a second child to getting born as a second child; they announced they aren't doing it on the ground, but then were insisting on maintaining law and order by locking people up for hitting someone, or shock-lashing them for letting some of them go on an authorised mission; but killing 18 unarmed civilians who weren't posing a threat, all on your own - that's what they're OK with?

*Speaking of which, who’s in the Council now? Not any of the old members, since they died in Diana’s terrorist attack last season. We never see any of the new council members and I don’t we ever even hear about the council again. It’s always apparently just the Chancellor – whoever it is at the time (Abby, Kane, Pike) – making decisions on their own.

Now, if they had released Finn on the grounds of him suffering from PTSD, having diminished capacity - that would be a different matter. But they didn't. No one ever says explicitly that Finn is suffering from PTSD or has any kind of mental issue, and if they do think he has, why haven't they tried to help him? Do they even know anything about mental health? Do they have psychologists and psychiatrists? Going by everything we see in this and the following seasons, they have no clue. But in this case, the writers didn't seem to have much of a clue, either. (The show did much better with Jasper's storyline later on, though characters in-universe treated it just as poorly.) They even let Finn carry a gun and go on a recon mission with everyone else, and this time I’m totally with Octavia when she says she can’t believe they did it. (But does this mean that Octavia is the only one bothered because she is the only one who knew one of the victims?)

There are just mentions of how Finn has changed, etc. And then Raven even tells Finn "We all have battle scars, Finn. Suck it up and build a brace for yours." Um, no, no, Raven, you cannot do this with mental scars. That's not how it works. But, ironically, she'll find that out herself with what she will go through in seasons 3-4.

When I binged the show for the first time, I thought Finn’s character was a big failure because he was supposed to likable and a good guy, but never really came off that way. On rewatch, I realized he works much better as a character if I assume he was never meant to be all that likable in the first place. But “did they actually expect me to find him likable here, or not?” is something I’m still not sure at many points, and that’s the case in this episode. If they did, they really failed. It would be different if Finn was showing real guilt over what he had done, instead of going around trying to talk to Clarke and complaining because she’s not comfortable around him. “You don’t look at me the way you used to.” Duh! What did you expect?

The episode starts with an interesting scene where Clarke and Bellamy are making plans how to save their friends from Mount Weather. Bellamy actually says at one point that, if the Council doesn’t authorize the mission to save them, he’ll go there on his own. Which he seriously meant as that’s what he does in 2x09. Bellamy then asks about Finn (the second and last time the two of them ever talk about any of each other’s love interests) and Clarke replies she hasn’t talked to Finn, while Bellamy is trying to make lighter of Finn’s actions, saying “We’ve all done bad things” - .obviously to try to make her feel better, and because he feels guilty for allowing Finn to continue the mission with just Murphy to look after him, since we know from before that he’s well aware of the gravity of Finn’s actions. Then Finn arrives, his body language saying: “Go away, I need to talk to Clarke, since my relationship with her is the most important thing in the world”. Bellamy is understanding and walks away, while Clarke is following him with her eyes until he leaves, her body language saying “I much preferred you company, why did you have to leave me with him?” She’s obviously creeped out and doesn’t know how to act around this new, murderous Finn, who appears to be so much different from what she thought the guy she fell in love was. The time they spend together – hiding from the acid fog – in the house, where Finn killed Delano, the Grounder prisoner, doesn’t help – Finn takes a chance to give her Jake’s watch, but the moment is obviously spoiled for her by Delano’s dead body she sees lying there. What do you mean, murder isn’t a great way to say “I love you”? But it seems like I’m supposed to feel sorry for him, when he and Clarke have an exchange about how war has changed them all:

“I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

“What have we become?”

With how I feel about this storyline, it may seem odd that I’m still rating this episode rather high, but 1) it is still a rather small part of this episode (and I’m going to pour all my hate for this storyline into episode 2x08), 2) Clarke’s extreme discomfort with Finn is character and makes sense –they may have released him, but that doesn’t mean people really feel like nothing has changed, and 3) the other storylines in this episode are really good.

I really like the scenes where Bellamy and Octavia go on their own to find an entrance into Mount Weather to save Lincoln -together with some Arker guards who decided to help them rather than listen to their orders - and are shocked to find him as a Reaper, who doesn’t recognize them but seems to have some sort of a reaction to Octavia’s voice. Those scenes are really intense, and the literal darkness of the Mount Weather hallways combined with the cheesy Christmas song that starts playing all of a sudden from a wind-up toy, just before a Reaper attack, makes for one of the creepier and more effective season 2 scenes.

(Season 2 was by far the most harmonious one for the Blake sibling relationship. Or rather, the only one. Their relationship is usually extremely dysfunctional.)

Major developments happen in Mount Weather itself. This is when Jasper, Monty and the other Delinquents finally learn the truth about their hosts – thanks to Maya, who has found out that her “accidental” radioactivity contamination was planned, and realized that the 47 may soon meet the same fate as the Grounders caught in MW. I’ve always liked Maya – I trusted her since first seeing 2x01. She’s one of the most underrated characters on The 100, IMO.

The scene where Maya shows Jasper and Monty the cages with people in them and people getting drained, is a really strong one. I love this dialogue where she tries to explain the mentality of the ordinary Mountain Men and their silent complicity in what their regime is doing:

Maya: “Everyone knows, we don’t talk about it (…) Look, without the treatments, we die. What were we supposed to do?” Monty: “Die.”

It’s one of the times when the show really successfully did moral ambiguity. Monty’s answer is kind of harsh, but completely understandable since he’s just seen the horrors happening, and he’s kind of right, but he’s also kind of wrong… Because it’s not exactly easy for people to ignore such a basic instinct as survival, for the sake of morality and humanness. But as we later learn, Maya’s mother did make that choice, refuse the treatments, and die. And Maya herself will help the Arkers, and die, as a result – kind of killed by Monty himself, saying “None of us is innocent” as her final words.

We also get more insight into the Wallace father-son relationship, with signs of their upcoming conflict, and some more info about MW. Though Dante’s title is President, we learn that every president of MW has been a Wallace. They’re basically a dynasty like the Kims in North Korea. We learn that the initial plan for the 48 was to “assimilate them into our gene pool”, which explains the chocolate cake and all other attempts to charm them. Dante must have been happy to see Maya and Jasper get close, in that case all he needed to do was let nature take its course, but how did they intend to do that with the rest of the kids? Arrange marriages/relationships? Ask them for sperm/egg cells? Dante is against draining the kids and says he “won’t put them in cages like animals”. You mean, like other people you already have in cages? Mount Weather will, in Dante’s opinion, eventually will be breached by radiation, which is an explanation for the panic of the Mountain Men, but Dante insists that it’s not just important to be able to go the surface, but that he won’t deserve to survive if he allows it. Um… you already don’t deserve it. Why does he draw the line with the kids? Is it because he thinks of the Grounders as “savages” and finds it easier to dehumanize them?

(BTW, what on Earth made Dante give his son the name Cage, of all the things he could have possibly named him?!)

At the end of the episode, the kids in MW have decided to pretend and work within MW to get out, with Jasper and Monty have decided to volunteer for blood donations to fool their hosts. Raven has meanwhile discovered the secret MW channel, realized that it was MW that crashed the Exodus ship and that they are jamming all radio communications. She and Abby discussed whether to destroy the Mountain Men tower that does the jamming, which would allow them to get in radio contact with other possible survivors from other Ark stations, or to not do it and listen in to the Mountain Men conversations instead, which would allow them to rescue the kids from MW – and Abby finally made the decision to do the latter, which means she’s finally supporting Clarke in her determination to save her friends. The consequence of this is also that the Farm station survivors (including Pike, Hannah Green and Bryan) will only join the other Arkers in season 3.

The big character introduction in the episode is, of course, Lexa. Her right hand man/bodyguard Gustus is also introduced, and he utters the line “Blood must have blood”, talking about retaliation for Finn’s massacre, which is the first time we hear that line. I’ll never know if the twist at the end of the episode that Lexa is the Commander would have been a surprise for me. I was already spoiled, long before I started watching the show, that there was a character called “Commander Lexa”, that she has a relationship with Clarke at some point, and gets killed by a stray bullet after the first time they had sex – because that was a huge controversy in 2016, which you couldn’t avoid if you were visiting any online fandom sites, even if you knew nothing about The 100. So, when she introduced herself as Lexa, I knew “oh, so she’s the Commander”. The show did a good job playing against expectations by introducing her as a frail-looking young servant girl, playing on her youth and looks, so I might have been fooled otherwise, or I might have gotten suspicious after she was just standing there listening and observing Jaha and Kane all the time? Or maybe I would have thought she was someone spying for the Commander. In this episode, we just learn she’s smart and can be sneaky and likes to get a measure of her opponents/enemies – but we don’t really get more sense of what she’s like as a person and leader until around 2x09.

The thing with Kane and Jaha being made to fight to the death to supposedly decide who will live and be set free, reminds me of the Blodreina gladiator fights in season 5, except those were actual fights to the death, while this was just a ploy, and Octavia got the idea from the Roman history. But I guess that type of death match wouldn’t have been a foreign concept to the Grounders from the Wonkru.

The show tried to play with expectations for a second with Kane taking the knife to do something, as if he was going to kill Jaha, but at that point, we already knew what Kane was really like, so his attempt at self-sacrifice, in order to end the war, was not a surprise. He is still haunted by guilt for the culling (Jaha: “You didn’t order the massacre” – Kane: “Not this one”). One of the reasons I started liking him is that he is one of the few characters, alongside Clarke and Bellamy, who show genuine remorse for their actions. Another good piece of dialogue is when Jaha says that the things they did on the Ark were for survival of the human race, with Kane pointing out that the human race was, in fact, surviving without them anyway – to which Jaha replied that they are, then, doing everything for their people. Which is the justification/guiding motive Jaha has from this moment on: “for my people”.

I’m still not sure what exactly Lexa’s take from all of this was, since she declared to Kane“Your intention are honorable, and your desire for peace is true”, so apparently, she appreciated his conviction – but then she let Jaha go to be a messenger and deliver the dramatic message to the Arkers to “Leave or die!”, while detaining Kane to further talk to him, or observe him (?), or keep him as a hostage? What exactly was she planning to do with him?

Anyway, this is the only time that Lexa and Jaha ever interacted. It would have been interesting to see them talk about leadership some time, since they strike me as similar type of leaders: both are ruthless, believe that the end justifies the means and justify their actions by saying it’s all for their people, but their concept of “their people” is an abstract one, because they are less concerned with the welfare of individuals that make up the collective called “my people”, and are ready to sacrifice quite a few of them if their goals require it.

Timeline: 2 days after Human Trials. This is one of the few times we actually get some pointers about the time that has passed – and one of the few times we get a.. mini time jump. It’s weird to call 2 days a time jump, but most of the episodes start right after the previous one. It was only late in season 3 (after the “Six months earlier” tag in 3x13) that I realized how condensed the show’s timeline was.

Body count: 1 Arker guard killed by the fog, other two killed by Reapers, a couple of Reapers killed by Bellamy.

[linkspooky]

Persephone and Phosphenes

A phosphene is a ring or spot of light produced by pressure on the eyeball or direct stimulation of the visual system other than by light. While the symbolic meaning of the title is not immediately apparent at first the heavy V14 parallels in the current situation, there is a parallel in Kaneki who had pressure specifically applied to his eyes by Arima. 

What does this mean for Touka tough? Read under the cut below. 

Which is a pretty iconic and well remembered scene from V14. It was even referenced again by Arima later in chapter 8. There are a lot of possible symbolic meanings for seeing a sudden ring of light. Rather than pick a specific one I am going to attempt to float them all. Light in the darkness, false light (and all that symbolizes, probably a false hope to attach to in a hopeless situation) your mind imagining light where it is not, light you only see with your eyes in the absence of true light. light seen after the darkness of being in the 24th ward for too long.

The image itself which preludes the poem depicts a nondescript woman standing in a darkened room where the light also obscures her face as well as most of the room. There is also a time code in the corner “17:09″ which indicates that this woman is likely being filmed by security camera. This, in line with the contents of the poem itself seems to suggest that the woman is being held prisoner. Possibly in a cozier room than most prison cells considering the room itself while bleak does not look barren. 

That and the actual content of the poem, while the drawing itself looks like a long haired woman such as Rize, after reading the poem it’s most definitely Touka. From this point forward I am going to go forward in my interpretation that this poem is about Touka, and also hints that the next arc will likely feature a kidnapping rather than a death of Touka rather than holding her prisoner at the CCG. 

The first sentence pretty much confirms that is it Touka. 

If behaving like a god is a sin, even the act of creating life would be blasphemous. Wouldn’t doing this be mocking the gods?

(If behaving like a god is a sin), could either refer to Kaneki or Furuta, perhaps both. The two of them are elevated onto the same stage above everybody else as king, and the two of them both have been referred to gods of death before this point as well.

Touka then, as Kaneki’s female counterpart refers to her own act of creating life to be a sin. This references both her previous poem, that is extremely bleak about the process of creating life and parenthood in general. It’s even entitled ‘Her Womb Smelled Like It Was Burnt’. I wrote a meta on it here [x]. 

The children who were meant to be born, died. The vision of the future convulses. 

[...]

“Did you know that our voice is the mixed voices from dad and mom? No wonder it’s so disgusting.”

There are a few other parallels between the two poems, so I’m going to continue to reference it. The fact that creating life for Touka might be forbidden also refers to the taboo that is creating life between a human and a ghoul. 

Ukina is explicitly referenced as creating a miracle when her child is allowed to survive. Miracles are god’s domain after all. 

Wanting to be judged, I entered the prison of my own free will. I play around with sludge in a silent room. “So you’ve come back again,” I was being cursed at with a timbreless voice.

The line heavily parallels another line from ‘her womb smelled like it was burnt’.

Sin is irresponsible. I’m getting tired of being forgiven. My shoulders have even forgotten about my legs.

‘I am tired of being forgiven’ and ‘Wanting to be judged’ are remarkably similiar lines. These are possibly referring to Touka’s own mental state post Anteiku raid, her feeling that she actually did deserve to be judged just as her world came crashing down on her the same way that Koma and Irimi were.

There’s also the idea of Touka entering her cage willingly which, I am going to be floating a few possible interpretations with this poem because I am not entirely sure whether the poem is meant to be figurative or literal, but in a metaphorical sense you could call Touka’s emotional repression and her tendency to over forgive her willingly walking into her own cage.  Here is a meta about Touka’s emotional repression [x] and here is a meta about the tendency and symbolism of the 4th ward and it’s occupants willingly walking into their own cages [x]. I am going to reference both of these meta lightly, but try to stick to the main topic of the poem. 

Touka has been pictured, being in a room with prison like doors before due to the bare nature of the 24th ward hideout’s construction. This could be a bit of foreshadowing as well as just a symbolic theme for that particular chapter. 

The next passage is what I will build up most of my theory off of. The following passage, especially the italicized part heavily resembles ‘eat the food of the underworld and you are trapped there’ which is once again tied to the myth of Persephone being abducted to the Underworld by Hades, and then eating three seeds from the pomegranite and being forced to stay there. 

That place was dazzlingly beautiful. I was starving to death, and then from when I was gnawing on someone’s body, that’s right, from that moment, it all became strange. There definitely have must have been poison in there. Only beautiful merely to the eye, and shit.

I don’t want to put anything in my mouth, I don’t want to hear anything. I don’t want to see anything, anything at all.

Tumblr user @floppyamon pointed this out quite a long time ago that V14′s events, a god of death coming down in a field of flowers heavily resembles the greek myth ‘The Abduction of Persphone’. 

Especially since Tatara’s flashback reveals that all along, Arima’s intention in V14 had been to snatch away Kaneki.

The myth of Persephone and Hades begins as such. Persephone is shown playing in a field of flowers, oblivious, until the god of death comes to snatch her away. Persephone was a spring goddess of new life, who often gave away flowers quite easily.

It’s likely no coincidence that Touka is revealed to be the one giving away flowers, on the same chapter that Juuzou referred to as a god of death appears standing before her suddenly and unexpectedly in a flower field. 

He’s also compared directly with the barely mortal Arima, which could either mean that he was on the brink of dying, or that he was immortal seeming and godlike, both of which connect to the idea of a god of death.

So we have the utlimate v14 parallel here, the god of death appears before Kaneki not to kill him, but to snatch him away. In E14 then, the real danger is not Touka’s death but rather her being snatched away by yet another god of death. 

There is of course the second part of the Persephone myth. That once she is in the underworld, she cannot leave because she ate the food of the dead. 

I was starving to death, and then from when I was gnawing on someone’s body, that’s right, from that moment, it all became strange. There definitely have must have been poison in there. Only beautiful merely to the eye, and shit.

In the legend Persephone is so upset at her kidnapping at first, she refuses to eat and drink. This is quite similiar to the way Touka has been starving herself and eating human food recently.

This also connects with a theory purported primarily by @midnight-in-town​ that Touka’s current method of saving the baby will not be sufficient, and eventually she will be introduced to either Itori or Kanou in order to help along her pregnancy. Which goes with my own theory of the clowns being the ones to interfere in the Goat raid and save it at last second when it seems that all hope is lost. 

However, that is not the only possible path this could take. It could also be Juuzou deciding to call ownership rights on Touka and spare her, bringing her back to the CCG. Either route I say Touka will likely surivve, but be in the hands of the CCG by the end of this arc. This might even be our introductory to a sunlit garden arc and the full reveal of how exactly the Washuu were crossbreeding children. 

As to the food of the underworld, it’s likely the CCG’s labs and resources will better be able to take care of the baby. Hinami made a reference to Soup, which is what the prisoners eat and likely what Touka might be fed eventually too after starving herself for so long.It’s also likely what Sasaki ate while he was in the CCG that gave him enough RC Cells to reverse the fast aging that turned his hair white. 

If the CCG had the resources it would likely be able to feed Touka something that would be able to keep her child alive, but that’s also the trap in itself. If Touka would want to keep her child alive she would be unable to leave. Just like how Persephone was unable to leave the underworld when in she ate the fruit of the underworld. 

Touka Kirshima’s associated tarot card is the high priestess. The fruit depicted in the background of the High Priestess card itself is the pomegranate, a reference to the Hades and persphone myth. 

Place myself on a scale, along with the things being sold off, along with the ripped-apart bodies given away in pieces, along with playing by peeling off scabs, don’t, don’t.*

Throw away everything you don’t need out the window. It’s okay if you fall and die. Until the very end, lend your ears to just the sounds fading away.

Hey, how many things did you get that you wanted?

The last part of the poem is where I assume it becomes the most symbolic. The reference to throwing everything away, and giving body parts away piece by piece could be yet another reference back to the poem Her Womb Smelled like it Was Burnt. 

Falling down, falling down. It’s as if right has become left.

And on the brink of collision, I recall Björk’s song,

As for a Bjork song, most assume that song is Hyperballad, the song played during the New Year’s livestream. The lyrics are a bit abstract, but basically it is about a girl throwing away things off a mountain, pieces of herself so she can be happy with someone else. At some point in the song she also considers throwing herself off of the mountain too.

Every morning I walk towards the edge And throw little things off Like car-parts, bottles and cutlery Or whatever I find lying around It's become a habit A way to start the dayI go through all this Before you wake up So I can feel happier To be safe up here with you

Which could reference of course, Touka’s completely willingness to forgive every offense that the CCG does unto her and her family, in hopes that she can live in peace like the promise of Anteiku originally gave to her. Consider how much already Touka has sacrificed for the world, her future amibitions at college, her job at Anteiku, not one but two cafes, and now at the moment her only small want is to have a child with the man she loves, her dreams scaled severely back as the two of them are not even living on the surface right now but even then the CCG had come from them. Which is what possibly the last line of the poem is referring to “How many things, did you get what you wanted?” For Touka then it would be nothing as she sacrificed everything and still had nothing to show for it. It reminds me of the despair in Tatara’s death as well. The CCG will take everything from you if you are a ghoul and they will never stop. 

Which is what makes Touka’s insistence on humanizing and forgiving investigators so strange to me. Especially when she’s not really willing to see the moral gray in the situation represented by her own father Arata. 

She can’t forgive her father, but she can forgive the man who stripped her father’s skin off repeatedly over the years and wore it like armor in order to kill her surrogate father and destroy her newfound place of home without really one shred of remorse or even seeing ghouls as human beings?

Shinohara was capable of a lot of things, but possible empathy towards ghouls was not one of them. It’s the same with Kuroiwa, they bought the party line too easily because it fit their lifestyles and they fit the frame of a CCG investigator too much. 

This isn’t really about Touka’s own passivity and her over selflessness though, which is often something I write about, but rather her attitude in this. Touka has always been deeply ashamed of her identity of a ghoul, something passed on to Touka subconsciously from her father ironically enough. What Touka wants, similiar to what Kaneki wants is to blend into human society seamlessly, even to the point of self harm. In the sense of eating human food in front of Toriko even when she does not have to is an act of self harm, but also that discarding her identity as a ghoul is self harm in a metaphorical way, harm of her identity. 

So it makes sense she would forgive Shinohara and see the complexity in his situation, but not her father. Just as in Kaneki’s mind, humans are just simply more human in her mind and more deserving of that complexity than ghouls. Which is where you get the irony in Touka and Kaneki’s mindset, that the two of them are leading a rebellion to destroy society, but what they want more than anything else is to be accepted and comforted by society, even to the point of conformity. 

Touka’s never spoken about the ghoul world in a positive light or something worth saving. She seems incredibly uninterested with the rebellion of the one eyed king as a whole, and only invested in supporting Kaneki in it because he is Kaneki. 

So that’s what this latter section of the poem is referring to, Touka’s own conformity, her offering up pieces of herself for society in the hopes that she’ll be more acceptable.

It could also refer to the revelation of the Arata armor. 

Place myself on a scale, along with the things being sold off, along with the ripped-apart bodies given away in pieces, along with playing by peeling off scabs, don’t, don’t.*

What is described here sounds much like the making of quinques too. The way that ghouls and their dead are treated, like objects to be made and sold for the profit of the CCG. 

It’s likely that both the sight of her father being worn as armor, and also Kanou treating her baby more like an object of scientific interest rather than a person could bring out a revelation in Touka that there is no reasoning with, and no forgiving certain things the CCG has done.

Ironically, it’s in her capture that Touka might finally realize that the cage is not something that can be reasoned with or made comfortable. It can only be destroyed. 

[innuendostudios]

I Want It To Hurt: Thoughts on Night in the Woods

[massive spoilers ahead, but I’ll warn you before we get to them.]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ending of Night in the Woods. Finished the game a couple weeks ago; it’s pretty much the only game I’ve managed time for other than 20-minute bursts of Nuclear Throne when I’m waiting for footage to render or just decompressing between obligations. I have a weird jumble of feelings about the game, many of them deeply appreciative and some... confused.

These capsule reviews aren’t meant to be any kind of consumer advocacy, but if you’re waiting for me to tell you whether or not you should play the game: yes. Whatever else I say, yes, you should go play Night in the Woods. You may not know what you think of it by the end, but if you’re the kind of person who reads my stuff, you aren’t going to regret playing it.

The game’s protagonist, Mae, seems exquisitely designed to remind a certain type of person of themself. I might be one of those people, or, at least, I was when I was Mae’s age. Mae is a 20-year-old college dropout living with her parents in her jerkwater hometown, unsure of what to do with herself and generally unwilling to talk about it. Her town's economy is drying up and it’s a lingering question whether it will still exist in a decade or two. Everyone’s out of work or working for less than they deserve. Most of her friends from high school are still there, working the same jobs, playing in the same bands, eating the same crappy pizza.

It’s horribly familiar. When I was 20, I was piddling around community college with no motivation to transfer to a university. My dad had been laid off during the pre-Recession recession and hadn’t seen comparable pay since. I spent most of my time hanging out in coffee shops in my own jerkwater town, chatting up all the kids who’d never moved away, killing time. I worked my first job at the video store that was also a liquor store, around the corner from the hardware store that was also a deli. Our local businesses were also dying, save the few that secured a spot on Main Street, though by the time I was 20 my town was becoming a bedroom community for San Francisco and, instead of turning into vacant buildings, the local shops were getting muscled out by Peet’s Coffee and Jamba Juice. We even had our own parallel to NITW’s annual Harfest, but we called it Pumpkin Festival.

Admittedly, I was never a delinquent like Mae, and never managed to play in a band, even badly, so the sequences when I got to smash fluorescent lightbulbs and play bass were a kind of wish fulfillment (Mae’s bandmates sound for all the world like they’re covering Joy Division). And it’s moments like these that create the simple pleasures of Night in the Woods. It’s a game where stealing pretzels to feed to some rats you found in an abandoned parade float constitutes a major time sink and a minor, beautiful victory. Like, maybe I’m a fuckup but I can keep some rats alive and that’s not nothing. It’s a game where the conversation trees talk about the selling out of the working class, about punching fascists, about anarchy. It’s a game where the critical decisions you make are about who you want to hang out with on a given evening. (For the record: I agree that Gregg rulz ok but as soon as I realized that Bea didn’t like me very much I decided, oh no, I’m gonna make this girl my friend. So I saw pretty much none of Gregg’s or Angus’ optional content in my efforts to be best buds with Bea, and I regret nothing.)

So this game is something special. Play it. Let’s talk about the ending.

*SPOILER TOWN*

If I had sum up my overall impressions of Night in the Woods, I guess it’d be a more extreme version of my feelings on Oxenfree - somewhere over the course of the game I went from actively liking it very much to just kind of respecting it. Only more complicated than that.

OK, so Night in the Woods hints at a larger, darker plot from pretty early in the game, and such a thing was directly teased in the Kickstarter pitch, so by the time such things make their way into the game we’re all amply prepared for it. We’ve known all along that "there’s something in the woods.” I’m still not sure how to put into words my feelings on what that something is.

OK, OK, here goes: in the early stretches of the game, Mae has dreams that hint at what her mental state is up to, but as the game goes on, the dreams become more and more consistently about confronting giant animal gods. She also sees what appears to be a ghost man kidnap a kid at Harfest, but no one else sees this. Mae becomes convinced that there’s some kind of ghostly power that’s getting inside her head, while her friends worry that she’s cracking up. Still, they help her investigate various ghost stories around town, for her sake, and Mae’s health visibly declines and her dreams get more intense, until one night she finds herself communing with what may or may not be an utterly indifferent God who does not care about her or anything that lives on Earth.

Eventually, Mae and her friends track the ghost men into the woods and it turns out they’re not ghosts, they’re local men in hoods who are some kind of death cult. They believe they can keep the town from dying by kidnapping and sacrificing undesirables to the demon goat who lives deep beneath the old mines. They tell Mae that this is what’s been visiting her in her sleep.

So: Mae thinks she may be dealing with ghosts or God, the cultists think it’s a demon. Meanwhile, Mae’s friends think she may have some poorly-treated cognitive issues - turns out Mae had some kind of psychotic episode years back where she hospitalized a boy because she just couldn’t see other people as people anymore, and she’s been grappling with this disconnection for some time and going to college without good treatment may have made it all much worse. And maybe all this talk of careless gods and demon goats is just Mae dealing with the ugly parts of her own psyche.

Anyway, so Mae’s friends straight up shoot one of the cultists with a crossbow and then cause a mine cave-in that dooms the rest, which is, no matter how you slice it, a pretty sharp tonal shift from what most of the game has been. And, before escaping, Mae has a vision of sorts, where she feels herself sucked underground and once again confronting some kind of supernatural being.

And she just talks to it. She says she’s done disassociating from people. She knows that maybe nothing lasts, that maybe her friends will all drift apart and her town will die, but if that’s what’s going to happen, she wants to accept it. If everything disappears in the end, she wants it to hurt when it does.

The question, then: in this moment, are you, the player, talking to God? A demon goat? Or the dark parts of a mind in need of treatment? Or, a similar question: is the town dying because of the stagnation of wages, the shipping of jobs overseas, the failure of government to support small towns? Or is because the town needs to sacrifice to the beast that lives in the mines?

The game doesn’t have an answer for you. Instead, the game’s stance seems to be: whatever the answer, it’s out of your control. Be it economics, fate, religion, superstition, or mental illness, it is not a mystery you can solve, a villain you can shoot. It’s something you will have to live with, day by day. It is inexorable that, on a long enough timeline, everything ends. Maybe it doesn’t matter why. When you stare into a void, maybe it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking to God, a demon, or your own broken mind. Maybe what matters more is what you say.

You may never know the truth. So hold on to what’s good and live with uncertainty.

I feel like this is a very profound thing for a game starring an anthropomorphic cat to say. I also can’t shake that it felt more profound when I typed it out just now than when I experienced it myself.

As a person from a jerkwater town, who’s spent his entire adult life working his ass off and yet perpetually broke, who’s spent the last five years grappling with depression and anxiety and the radical acceptance it takes to know that his thoughts can sometimes be extremely alien to him, and who has walked the long path from Christianity to wishy-washy agnosticism to weary atheism, I feel this moment should have slugged me in the gut. I can’t think of a single game that would say such things, and I can’t think of a game that seems more explicitly tailored to my sensibilities and experiences.

But while I respect the hell out of Night in the Woods’ ultimate message, I still feel conflicted about how it plays out. I don’t think the game is wrong to veer into odd genres at the end - so many of its themes are internal and philosophical that literalizing them in order to build to a climax feels like a smart decision. I don’t know if it’s that the game spends such a long time raising questions and then kind of rushes the answers. I don’t know if it’s that Mae and her posse seem a lot more credible cracking wise and worrying about money than shooting people with crossbows. It’s certainly hard for a game about normal people with normal problems to throw in highly abnormal problems for the final hour.

I don’t know if I maybe just need to play it again.

I feel like the more I think about the ending, the better I understand it, but I still can’t say with confidence that I like it. And my appreciation of the game seems deeply rooted in the front half and not the final third.

And I don’t know when I’ll have time to go back in and play it again. For now, I’m glad I played it once. Whatever it was, it was certainly something.