#got lazy while doing the render so it looks shitty but yeah

[calfnwus]

SO I thought this was a GENIUS IDEA okay? And at first, I wanted to add an ACTUAL gif of the game, but it didn't work... ANYWAYS Here's the request by @userwhocommentsbirds

[loser-writings]

Pleeeeease since you did Mirio can you do Omega Tamaki and Omega Aizawa ^0^

(Of course! I knew it was a matter of time before I got asked to do Aizawa so I kind of went all out

Shouta Aizawa

 (TW: Mention of Teen Pregnancy and Miscarriage)

Nobody in class 1A had known that their homeroom teacher was an Omega, but looking back on it, it made sense. He was fierce when it came to protecting his students and made it clear that he would give up everything in order to keep them safe. His scent of coffee was just something the students had gotten used to, not considering it to be the scent of an omega since it wasn’t stereotypically sweet, and when you thought about it, that sleeping bag he carries everywhere may be his form of a nest since he clearly is rather too lazy to make a proper nest, or too lazy to clean it up when he has to put it away.

His low testosterone caused by being an omega also explains his overall lack of energy since lack of testosterone in males often causes sleeping issues, and even sleep apnea. Because of the downsides of being an omega, he takes testosterone injections at the cost of his fertility. Yes, he decided after high school that if he were to be a hero, he would need testosterone, but his doctors do say that if he ever decided to have kids, he could stay off of it for a while and let his body go back to how he used to be. He would experience a heat cycle (Another thing he hasn’t had to deal with for years) and then could start attempting. For now though, that was completely out of the question just because of his past. Something nobody knew about.

Despite his friends' attempts to set him up with somebody, everyone seemed to run away after hearing about his infertility and lack of desire for kids. He never really blamed them since he knew everybody wanted that ideal lifestyle. Get a mate, possibly get married too, have a kid and grow old. Yet here he was, choosing not to have kids because he wasn’t sure if he could handle it.

He sighed softly seeing Hizashi with a very familiar look on his face. “What do you wan-” “I found the perfect alpha for you! Seriously Sho, the best part is that they already know you too!” Shouta instantly rolled his eyes and looked back down at the tests he was grading. “And who might that be?” The second your name left the loud blonds’ lips, Shoutas’ eyes opened a bit wider than they usually did. 

You were in his class with Hizashi, so you both used to be close. Really close actually. When Hizashi noticed the others' silence, he cheered because he hadn’t protested to the idea yet. “Come on Sho! They’re relocating here since they got a new batch of heroes in Tokyo, and they got tired of it being a competition.” The Omega hummed and sighed, sitting up a bit. “Don’t call it a date, that is the last thing I want right now, but let them know I do want to meet up. It’s been a long time, and I want to see where they’re at now.”

Hizashi cheered again and quickly ran out of the room, Shouta assumed to tell Nemuri, leaving the Omega to his own thoughts. He sighed softly and laid his head down on the desk for a moment as memories came flooding back. Specifically the ones during the summer between 2nd and 3rd year. Neither of you had told anybody, but you were courting. 

Late night dates in downtown Tokyo resulted in hours of the two of you hopping from hidden cafe to hidden cafe, enjoying each other as you used each other to forget about stress. Sneaking into each others bedrooms to cuddle and talk resulted in the both of you getting caught and scolded by your parents, but neither cared since they knew they would do it again. 

Then it came back to his memory. The night where he had a nightmare about Oboro and went to seek you for comfort. It only ended up with you both going too far, yet at the time neither regretted it. It wasn’t until he sat in Recovery Girls office that he regretted what he did.

A hand slipped across his stomach and he shut his eyes as he gripped his shirt. Nobody ever knew except for you, and his omega wanted nothing more than you the second Hizashi said your name. His scent went from strong coffee, to burnt as he remembered hearing the news that the baby, the one neither of you had planned for, wasn’t there anymore. After that, he pushed you away and tried to avoid you by focusing only on his goal to become a hero. He never coped with any of it, just pushed it back down to ignore, but it was all coming back to him.

The students seemed to notice the horrible smell coming from Aizawa, but not one dared to mention it in fear of him snapping at them. At the end of the day, Midoriya seemed to pack up a little slower than usual and waited for everyone to leave before approaching his teacher. 

“M-Mr. Aizawa, Are you okay?” He asked softly to the man who rested on his desk. He slowly sat up and looked at the other, seeing how he seemed to tremble under the intense gaze. “No, but don’t worry. I just have to deal with something that I completely neglected.” He slowly stood up and grabbed the sleeping bag before sighing. “Midoriya,” The boy hummed, wondering what the other would say. “Thank you for checking on me.” Aizawa walked past him and ruffled the green locks as he left the room. Midoriya couldn’t help but smile. He smelled like normal coffee again.

When he got home, his Omega told him to clean himself so he at least didn’t look undesirable. He huffed, telling himself he wasn’t trying to be desirable, yet he did so anyway. He showered, trimmed up his stubble, and put on some nicer clothes. Nothing crazy, just a black long sleeve and some grey jeans. Once he had finished, he had realized how much effort he was putting into his appearance and sighed softly, upset because he was ignoring what his Omega wanted.

He felt himself growing anxious as he headed towards his destination only to scoff a bit as it was a little hole in the wall. You would easily pass this place if you didn’t know what it was. As he walked closer, he saw you standing there. You were obviously as anxious as he was, but you didn’t hide it as well. You never did. 

The second your eyes met, his Omega was scratching at his chest, yelling at him to run into your arms, but he kept himself calm as he approached you. When you opened your arms cautiously, he carefully slipped into your hug before subconsciously snuggling into your scent gland like he had done years ago. He pulled away after saying hello and followed as you walked inside.

The date itself was pretty awkward at first since you both knew a lot about each other already, yet almost nothing at all. He watched as he picked up on all of your nervous habits, smiling a little when he realized that you were still so similar to how you used to be. “Do you want to hold my hand?” He asked without thinking since it was something he knew would help calm your nerves. You instantly nodded and took it before smiling a little. “They’re still so rough. Do you even know what lotion is?” You joked a little, happy to see that it made the other grin a little. “I kind of forget about it until one of my students brings some in. Normally it smells disgusting though, so I had to start threatening them with extra homework if they bring in things that gave me a headache.”

That started the conversation of UA and how you were surprised when Hizashi said that he was a teacher. “You’ve always been a natural teacher though. I know you taught me a lot when we were together.” You spoke freely before tensing up when you realized your words. Aizawa sighed a little and squeezed your hand softly. “Yeah...You taught me a lot too.”

Another round of silence before you spoke again. “Hizashi also said that every date he or Nemuri set you up on failed miserably.” Shouta only smiled a little before nodding. “Majority of them were Alphas who only wanted to mate with a pro-hero. My guess is in hopes of having strong kids. Most left during the date once they found out I didn’t want kids or that I take testosterone since that also pretty much renders me infertile.” This time you held his hand a little tighter. “Well they don’t know what you went through. Not only that, it’s your body. Since that is what you wanted, that is what you did and you shouldn’t be treated badly because of it.” 

He noticed how you seemed upset by him saying that they just left and couldn’t help but smile a little. “It makes sense to me. Why would anyone want an Omega who destroys what makes them an Omega?” You scoffed at his words and rolled your eyes. “You aren’t destroying anything, Shouta. You are doing what you need to in order to be comfortable. There is nothing wrong with that.” 

His omega purred at your words, the first time he purred since high school, and squeezed your hand softly. “You haven’t changed at all.” He chuckled and rested his other hand on top of yours before sighing. “Neither have you. It’s nice knowing I don’t have to live up to some shitty hero expectation.” He hummed before nodding in agreement. 

“I assume you’ve been on some courting dates as well?” You scoffed and rolled your eyes. “Those weren’t shit compared to what we used to do. All they would do is complain about me not matching my hero persona and then want me to pay the bill after they spend hundreds of dollars on food.” He chuckled seeing you ramble. “They all thought because I’m a hero that I’m made of money. I have money because you taught me to save it and not spend it all the second I got my paycheck, not because I’m a hero.” 

After a bit at the cafe, you suddenly got an idea. “Sho, let's go run around the city for a bit?” He tilted his head as he sat down his empty drink. “We aren’t kids anymore-” “No, I get that, but one night. Let’s run around as if we were for one night.” He looked at your excitement and melted, feeling his omega begging him to agree. “Fine. Only because I don’t have to work tomorrow.” Seeing you cheer and stand up made him grin a bit. When you went to pay, he tried to fight over paying the bill because “You weren’t made of money” but you just flicked his head softly and told him to hush. He smiled one more time before giving in and letting you pay.

He let you drag him around the city and he couldn’t believe he was admitting this, but this was the most fun he or his omega had in a long time. Getting ice cream at 10pm, tasting random food from the vendors on the streets, window shopping, even sneaking into a drive in movie theater and renting a radio so you both could sit together and watch the movie. It made him feel young. 

It was almost sunrise and you both were walking along the beach, smiling and laughing like old times. Like how it was when you both were courting in high school. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the fact that you had scented him extremely well, but he was as giggly and happy as could be. The cool water washed past his feet, pants rolled up to make sure they wouldn’t get wet, and you hummed, feeling him squeeze your hand softly.

“Hey Shouta?” He hummed softly before grinning at you. “Thank you for agreeing to come out with me. I was really scared when Hizashi offered to push you in my direction, especially after everything that happened in our past, but I hope that we can recover what we once had.” His omega purred again causing him to press a hand to his rumbling chest. “Yeah...No problem. I should thank you for getting me out of the house. If I’m not there, I’m in the school, so I guess I did need a break from that.” You grinned and squeezed his hand. “You always have avoided things by working. Sometimes you need to take a moment to just stop and relax. Remind yourself that everything happens for a reason, and that you’re alive. That in itself is something to be grateful for.” 

He hummed in agreement before sighing softly, looking out to see that the sun was rising. “I can’t tell you the last time I stayed up this long.” He admitted. You hummed in agreement before sighing. “I guess I should take you home, huh?” He instantly let out a whine at the thought before looking at his chest with a red face. “Come on, stop actually doing stuff and go back to sleep.” he mumbled to his omega before you laughed. “It’s cute Sho. I miss hearing your omega make noises like that.” You kissed his cheek which made him turn dark and his omega to purr once more. He glared at you a little and sighed. “You’re so lucky. If it were anybody else, I would’ve left a long time ago.” 

You chuckled before turning around to walk back to where you came from, pulling him behind you. “Come on, Sho. We need to sleep.” He huffed softly but nodded, moving to rub his tired eyes. 

He led you to his apartment before stopping outside. “Have you already found a place to stay yet?” “Not quite. Currently staying at a hotel until I can fin-” “Want to move in with me?” He asked abruptly. “I mean...It’ll make rent cheaper and it’ll stop you from wasting anymore money.” You could only chuckle before taking his hands and pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. “Only if you agree to not be a picky eater-” “I was not a picky eater when we were togethe-” “Don’t even try me, I had to convince you to eat real food.” “Okay and your point?” 

You both couldn’t help but smile and you sighed. “Fine, I’ll move in with you tomorrow...Or I mean I guess today, but we need a nap since I kept your ass up.” He hummed and nodded. “Fine then.” He opened the door and took your hand, pulling you in after him. “Sho, what are-” “We are taking a nap together. I’ve always slept better with you.” 

Tamaki Amajiki 

(Mention of heats, harassment, and implied NSFW)

Someone please tell this boy that being an Omega hero is okay. He often feels pressured by society to fit into the soft, omega role that everybody seems to want. Yet with the help of Mirio and Nejire, he easily became one of the big 3 in UA.

Yet when it came to talking to others, especially in crowds, he felt himself grow anxious and even slightly panicked. His normal sweet yet salty scent would turn to smell more like fish during these times. This was when most Alphas would scoff in disbelief at the fact this omega seemed to be one of the big three. 

Besides Mirio and Nejire, there was one other person he found himself able to talk to due to years of knowing each other. You were an alpha who never raised your voice or got irritated by his bashfulness. In fact, you would go out of your way to show your patience and kindness by doing little things when his anxiety was getting bad. Ordering for him at restaurants, letting him hide behind you when he started to tremble, and quickly getting him away from social situations that could cause him to have an anxiety attack were just a few of the ways you showed how much you cared.

This was one of those moments. He was out with you, Mirio, and Nejire when he heard them. The alphas behind him that were starting to comment about him being an Omega in a group of three alphas. 

“Must be a Knot licker to keep three alphas to himself.” “Don’t you know that the proper term for a bitch like that is a Puppymill?” Tamaki felt himself whimper and grabbed your arm, holding you tighter as they continued on with their comments. You hummed softly, feeling him start to tremble. “In front of me baby, come on.” Your arm wrapped around him and softly pushed him in front of you, yet the comments continued. 

Your alpha had started growling, scent starting to burn. Mirio and Nejire took notice and turned to see the Alphas snickering to themselves. “B-Baby don’t-” “Tamaki I don’t like how they’re talking-” “I know but...please ignore them. I’m not worth a fight.” You glared at him as he gave a sympathetic smile. You huffed softly and wrapped your arms around his waist. “It’ll be okay guys. Let’s just get our food and we can leave. Maybe a movie night would be fun?” “Yeah! Maybe we can watch something like shark tale! Right Amajiki?” Nejire spoke happily and the Omega couldn’t help but feel thankful for his friend group at that moment, but he then noticed your grip leave his hips as your sent burned ten times more. 

Your temper was getting the best of you and before the others could say anything, you grabbed both men by their heads before slamming them together. “Will you two Knotheads shut the fuck up?! You’re making Omegas uncomfortable with your disgusting language.” Mirio was quick to start pulling you away as the two Alphas began to growl. “Come on, the last thing Amajiki would want is a fight, now stop it-” “They wouldn’t stop making comments-” “Yeah welcome to lose-tie knotheads.” He moved to sit you in front of him and Nijire, who was holding the Omegas hand to keep him calm. 

After you all left the store, you stopped for a moment and shook your head. “Don’t you fuckin-” “Hey!” One of the guys from before started walking towards you. Tamaki instantly started to tremble as the men walked closer, yet you stood without wavering. “What.” you said bluntly. “That shit you did back there? Not fuckin’ cool”

“Oh but harassing Omega’s is?” Nejire spoke before they barked at her. “Shut the fuck up Cat-Pole.” “Cat-Pole?!” You growled once again and they just smirked. Mirio simply hummed and walked beside you before pressing his hand on your shoulder, a simple gesture to them but a secret code between the two of you.

You hummed and turned back to the other two, slipping an arm around them both as you walked down the street. “W-What was that-” Then there was the yelling before Mirio skipped back with you all happily. “Took care of that!” He cooed as you all continued to walk. Tamaki blushed slightly before noticing how your hand stayed on his waist. 

When you all got back, Tamaki excused himself. He claimed not to be hungry anymore since the alphas had upset his stomach, but you knew the real reason. You told the other two about your plan and they hummed happily, letting you leave after the tall omega.

“Tama~” You called as he stopped outside of his door. “O-Oh...Is there something you need?” You nodded and held out your hand. “Come to my room for a sec okay? I have some things for you that I didn’t have time to give you.” He blushed slightly at the idea of getting something from you, but nodded. His hand slipped softly into yours as he walked behind you to your room. 

He instantly purred the second he walked in. It always was comforting in your room, and it made him accidentally chirp. He instantly blushed dark and whimpered, covering his mouth with his spare hand. “You’re alright Tama. Sit on my bed, Okay? The stuff is in my closet.” 

He carefully sat down, huffing as he started rubbing at his neck. He was one of the few Omegas who couldn’t take suppressants due to them messing with his quirk, so he knew what was happening. He had attracted those alphas because his heat was about to start any moment now. He was about to hide in his nest right before you pulled him away.

He tried to focus on anything besides how strong the scent of saltwater taffy was becoming, huffing softly as he moved to shrug off his sweater since he knew he was going to start soon. Another soft whimper came from him and you darted out of the closet. “Sorry baby, I lost one of the items. I know you’re getting uncomfortable but I wanted to give you these for your heat.”

He let out another whimper as he moved to sit on his legs instead of his ass, huffing as he quickly started digging in the bag to pull out what you wanted to him to see. He was nervous because out of the three alphas, he grew closest to you and was hoping it was a courting gift even if it was a bit late. He only gasped when he pulled out a hand crochet octopus, smiling at it and hugging it tight to his chest. “T-Thank you, Alpha.” he called out before hiding his face in the toy. 

You simply hummed and moved to stand. “That isn't all of it, but your heat is coming faster than I thought. Come on, you can open the rest in your room” He nodded and felt you move to pick him up. He gasped and held onto you as you rushed him back to his room. The other gift was in your hand, but you could only focus on how amazing Amajiki smelled. Of course you knew why, but you held back as you looked for his nest, finding it on the floor in the corner of his room. You carefully sat him down and he quickly climbed in his nest, nose shoved deep into the toy as he trembled. 

“Here Omega.” You laid the blanket at the edge of the nest, making sure not to enter without the others permission. He let out a whimper and sat up slowly to grab the blanket. He held it close to his chest and smiled, still trembling like a leaf. “I-I love them, Alpha.” He chirped again which only made you smile. “I’m glad...I wanted to court you before your heat, but I was really late.” 

Hearing that made his eyes water before he crawled to you, sitting up to wrap his arms around you and hug you tight, scenting you completely in his thick and heavy scent. You only grinned and pecked his neck which made him gasp. “You smell like the Ocean Tama. I love it.” 

His omega purred before he moved to pull you a bit. “Alpha...Stay with me?” he mumbled softly as he tried to get you to crawl in his nest. You knew what he was implying and you only smiled, pulling away slightly. “You sure baby? I haven’t even taken you on a date.” He instantly nodded with no shame at all. “Please Alpha. I want you to help me.” Your alpha chuffed which made you blush and Tamaki snort before hiding in your neck.

“Okay Omega. I’ll stay with you.” He purred loudly and held you tighter as you carried him to the door so you could shut and lock it properly. “Thank you Alpha...I love you.” He chirped out with pink cheeks. You only smiled as you carried him back to the nest and pecked his lips before resting him in his nest. “I love you too. Omega.” He chirped again happily before pulling you down with him. 

He threw a leg over your stomach and snuggled into your scent gland, humming happily at how your scent was starting to become stronger in reaction to his. “Oh...I’m sorry in advance.” He whispered and moved to start kissing on you. “Why is that?” he blushed darker and moved to hold your hand. “I uh...might get needy.” You only grinned and pecked his lips once more. “It’s your heat. I’m right here to help you. Do whatever you need, alright Omega?” He purred once more at you calling him that before he sighed happily, melting into your arms. “Alright...I’m going to take a nap...Y-You should too.” You only pulled him closer before nodding. “Okay baby, rest now. Goodnight.”

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel’s Return Part 1

We’ve finally made to season three and the entire reason why I made this review series. This season features some of the worst writing I have ever witnessed in a television program. And this season kicks off with the third worst episode of the whole series. Rapunzel’s Return is the iceberg that sinks this show and manages to assassinate everyone’s character.

 Everyone’s.  

Summary: Inside the House of Yesterday's Tomorrow (as seen off screen in "Rapunzeltopia"), Cassandra is greeted by the Enchanted Girl, a spirit who reveals that Cassandra is the biological daughter of the late Mother Gothel, who abandoned her on the night she kidnapped infant Rapunzel. Enraged that Rapunzel has been (unknowingly) overshadowing her for the entirety of her life, and that she will always be unfairly overlooked, Cassandra snatches the Moonstone Opal, absorbs it, and declared Rapunzel's destiny as her own. She manages to escape from the group and cuts all ties with them, with Rapunzel unable to wrap her head around the entire situation. The group returns to Corona and find that it has been taken over by Varian, who has aligned himself with Andrew and the Separatists of Saporia to erase the King and Queen's memories and enslave Corona's citizens.

Plot Hole Number One: Why Would Cassandra Just Blindly Follow A Ghost While Trapped Inside a Haunted House? 

Outside of that one snarky remark, Cassandra never stops to question the literal ghost who is bossing her around. The ghost she met in a creepy haunted house. A haunted house that she was already suspicious of before ever going in and that has tried to kill her and her friends many times now. 

Cassandra, the most distrusting and cautious of of individuals in the show thus far, just suddenly decides to leave her brain behind from this point forward for no given reason whatsoever. 

If you have to dumb down your main character and have them behave OOC in order to get your plot rolling along, then you haven’t a good plot. 

Plot Hole Number Two: Cassandra Sees for Herself How Awful Gothel Was to Her Here, So Why Would She Obsess Over the Woman? 

Forgetting for a moment that Cass very well knows that Gothel treated her best friend like shit and tried to murder her other friend, Eugene, as evidenced by Quest for Varian; Cassandra can see for herself right here that Gothel is a crap person who never treated her right. 

I mean there’s denial, and then there’s flat out stupidity. Cass being hurt by the this reveal is one thing. Cass believing that Gothel really loved her and blaming everyone else for her death is totally another and not based in any kind of sensible logic.     

Plot Hole Number Three: Why Would Gothel Even Have a Child to Begin With? 

Look, I’ll accept that the flower can deage Gothel enough for her to get laid and bare a kid, but that only brings up the question of why she would keep said kid? 

She kept Rapunzel cause she needed her powers in order to stay alive, but Cass? What reason would she want to have Cassandra around? A baby can’t do chores for you and it's a hell of a lot of work to raise one. Plus the show repeatedly tells us over and over again that Gothel doesn’t really love her or even likes having her daugther around so... yeah, what is the point of this? Why didn’t she just drop Cass off at an orphanage to begin with?  

You can’t make this type of reveal and have it go against the what we fundamentally know about the characters without explaining why they would partake in such actions.  

This is Manipulative Writing 

But of course the real reason why this flashback and “twist” exists is just to manipulate the audience into feeling sorry for Cass. It’s not here to actually enhance the story, further the characters, nor answer any mysteries in any real way. That’s why it’s such a poor plot point. 

It’s setting up the viewers to have a bias so that they’ll more readily forgive Cassandra for her irreprehensible actions later. In short, it’s the same bullshit that the writers pulled for Frederic back in season one. Only it makes even less narrative sense here because this ‘tragic backstory’ is so divorced from later events in the story. 

It’s also flat out lazy because all it’s doing it slapping Rapunzel’s backstory onto Cass instead of letting Cassandra be her own character with her own battles and character development to have. 

And before you say, “well that’s the point”, then let me tell you it’s a stupid point. One that makes zero sense for the character and is insulting to the audience’s intelligence.    

Plot Hole Number Four: Why Didn’t Gothel Just Stay Hidden Till the Soldiers Left? 

Hell, why did Gothel even come back here? We already established that she doesn’t really care about Cass and it’s a plot point that’ll only be further reiterated as the season goes on, so why? Why would Gothel behave like this? How does this help her in her goal? Gothel’s suppose to be smart remember? 

Plot Hole Number Five: How Does Any of This Logically Help Zhan Tiri? 

So Zhan Tiri is the blue ghost girl and while the series tries to keep it a secret reveal for later, it’s pretty obvious from the get go, so I’ll just be calling the character by her name. 

Anyways, Zhan Tiri’s plan is to show Cassandra her past, in order to make Cass angry enough to steal the moonstone and fight Rapunzel, so that the two powers fighting each other will then release her from her interdimensional prison. 

Now ignoring how literally none of that was set up nor previously established, and ignoring that Zhan Tiri’s disciples were trying previously to stop the sundrop and her friends from getting to the moonstone, thereby undermining their master’s plan; just how exactly is any of this suppose to work? 

Why would showing Cassandra how her mother was a shitty person somehow make Cass angry at Rapunzel, angry enough to try and kill her even, and somehow keep her angry for months on end, in order to fulfill this clearly illogical action that holds no personal benefit to herself?    

I don’t mind Cassandra becoming a villain; I just want it to make sense. 

This does not make sense. 

Not only does it require incredible leaps of logic and Cassandra acting out of character to work, it also depends far to much upon conquincidence and things playing out just in exactly the right way to benefit Zhan Tiri and her poorly laid out plan. 

Would it not have made more sense for this “evil master manipulating worlock” to just, you know, lie? 

Like shouldn’t she be trying to make Gothel look good? Shouldn’t she be trying to make it all seem like Frederic’s fault  (which it mostly is anyways)? If you want Cass to attack Corona and turn against Rapunzel, then why not lie about their involvement or tell some half truth?

Or better yet why not make Gothel and actual complex figure for real? 

Ugh... I got to move on from this point, but believe me, we will be back to this dumbfuckery in later episodes. 

Plot Hole Number Six: You Can’t Just Ignore that Cap Exists and Is the One Who Raised Cassandra for Most of Her Life 

Like I’m sure finding out that you mom was a piece of crap who abandon you hurts, but that doesn’t automatically erase the fact that Cass’s dad was there for her, raised her, and loved her for the majority of her life. I’m not saying that Cap is perfect, but he at least tried to do right by her (and is consequently the best parent in the show) and Cassandra is old enough to recognize that fact. Pretending otherwise is a disservice to everyone. It’s a disservice to the Captain, to Cassandra, to Rapunzel, to Gothel, and to the viewers watching along with this BS. 

Trauma Doesn’t Make You Suddenly Stupid 

Look, I’m not downplaying Cass’s trauma here. She is allowed to feel upset and yes trauma is painful and effects us all in different ways. Also yes, past trauma can carry on through into adulthood and still harm you. 

However that’s not an excuse for hurting others. Cass’s trauma isn’t any less traumatic than any of the other characters’, but neither is it somehow more important than any of theirs. She doesn’t get a free past to step on people just because she was sad once. 

Cassandra is, once again, old enough to know this and more importantly smart enough to realize that what happened in the past, if even true, has nothing to do with what she is currently dealing with right now. 

Like why is she believing any of this? Why is she still listening to the suspicious ghost that she met in a magical house that’s tricked her and her friends numerous times before? Why would finding out her mom was shit make her turn that anger against her best friend? What does any of this have to do with her current struggles with trying to build up her career or staying friends with Raps? 

Remembering past trauma does not make your brain shut off. Even having a mental breakdown or panic attack still does not render you completely senseless and anything done under extreme pressure like that is temporary. You don’t wind up acting bananas constantly for over a year. 

As a woman who suffers from complex-PTSD and is an abuse survivor myself, Cassandra’s story is deeply offensive to me. Not the least of which because it actively dumps her down. 

This Is the Point Where Cassandra’s Character Gets Assassinated 

Like I said in the opening, everyone’s character gets assassinated in this story. Cassandra just happens to be the first to die and it’s right here with this line. 

Not only is this line incredibly cringy and poorly worded, and I have to just feel sorry for the VA here cause there’s no way to make this much stupid sound good, but it’s also completely divorced from what’s going on. 

Cassandra is suppose to be explaining to her friends why she’s stealing the moonstone and her answer is “I’m this dead bitch’s daughter”? Like oookaaay, and that has what to do with it exactly?

Did Gothel have any connection to the moonstone? Does stealing the moonstone somehow bring her back or fulfil her revenge? What does grabbing the moonstone actually gain Cass and what does that have to do with her dead abusive mom? 

The reason why Cass doesn’t work as a villain because she has no goal nor reason for doing what she does. She just lurches from plot point to plot point with no idea of what she is doing nor why she is doing it. 

But watch as the show keeps digging in its heels and keeps insisting that Cassandra’s connection to Gothel is totally a sympathetic motive even as it makes less and less sense every damn time it's brought up. 

What Does Destiny Even Fucking Mean Any More???

What Destiny?!

There is no damn destiny. There is no prophecy to fulfil, no world to save, no consequence for just having everyone sitting on their asses for two whole seasons. And even if there was a destiny to even steal; why would Cass even want it? What does actually she gain from any of this? And how does any of it connect back to Gothel? 

This Should Have Been the Point of Resolution Not the Inciting Incident for Their Break Up

Look no idea is without merit. You can make the stupidest sounding idea engaging if you present it right. 

This was not presented right. 

If Cassandra being Gothel’s daughter was to hold any meaning to the story, then it needed to be what brought her and Raps back together again, not what broke them apart. 

Rapunzel says it right here. Logically this should be common ground for the two of them. There’s no real reason for Cass to direct her anger at Rapunzel over this. 

But this show doesn’t care about logic, reason, or treating it’s audience with intelligence. It’s just flashy bullshit “drama” that pretends to be deep but is really a shallow puddle once you stop to think about it for two seconds.   

Let’s Talk About “Sisters” 

Cass’s face just says it all doesn’t it? 

The creator, Chris, wanted to make a story about two “sisters”, because he has two daughters and he thought that would be inspiring and speak to little girls everywhere. 

It’s a nice sentiment. Shame he’s so utterly incompetent at it. 

There was no build up to them being sisters. Instead all we got was a bunch of meaningless parallels and a very toxic friendship. Even with the Gothel reveal the connection to them being siblings is tenuous at best because there’s no biological relation and more importantly, they weren’t raised together.   

Chris is basically trying to rip off the likes of Frozen or Guardians of the Galaxy here with Raps and Cass’s relationship but it doesn’t work when the two siblings in question didn’t actually grow up together. There’s no reason for Cassandra to project her anger at their abusive parent on to Raps because that parent wasn’t the one to actually raise her. And on top of that, said abuser is dead, and both her and Raps have separate guardians in their lives, so the jealousy angle doesn’t work either.  

And to make it all the more confusing, Chris failed to inform his crew of this brilliant plot twist, so we now have two seasons of gay baiting put in by the storyboard artists hitting that Cass is in love with her “sister”, And because the hardcore Cazzpunzel stans are the only fanbase that hasn’t given Chris the boot, there’s still even more gay baiting to come. 

Why are We Victim Blaming a Baby? 

Seriously, Cass? You are twenty four and have a brain. Why are you blaming someone for being kidnapped as a baby? What kind of sense does this make? 

Worse, there’s plenty of real shit Cass could get angry at Rapunzel over and this is what you go with show? 

If anything Rapunzel should be the one who is pissed here. Cass got to escape and lead a normal life with a loving father all because she got kidnapped as baby. And now said bitch is trying to gaslight her while stealing the very thing she’s been risking her life to grab for a year now. 

No You Haven’t Cass

Once again, you got to live a normal life with a loving Dad. You had plenty of chances to build relationships and further your career for 18 years while Rapunzel was trapped in a dang tower, and Rapunzel returning from said tower didn’t cut you off from anything. In fact Rapunzel being rescued from the tower actually presented more opportunities for you and you spent all of season one climbing up the ranks. 

There’s Nothing In the Show to Back Up This Statement 

Nothing is at stake. There’s no threat here other than Cassandra herself. Cassandra is dranger to the world here not the moonstone. If you wanted it to be the other way around then you should have kept the rocks active during season two. 

So Why Didn’t We Go With the Original Set Up From Season Two? 

As said before, there are real reasons that were set up during season two that could have motivated Cass. 

Rapunzel is irresponsible and can’t be trusted to save the world 

Rapunzel is a shit friend and Cass is better off going her own way and leaving everyone high and dry. 

Cass’s hand was injured by Raps and the moonstone might be able to heal it 

Cass sees the injustice in the class system and wants to fight back against the royals in order to help everyone, not just herself. 

Cass might believe she’s stopping Zhan Tiri and not realize she’s being manipulated by her instead

Or is playing along with Zhan Tiri under the idea that she can stall for time figure out how to stop her. 

Cass wants to play her and use the power of the rocks to save people only for it to go wrong later. 

Possession (which was the original idea in the concept stage) 

Like I said, there were plenty of ways to make this work. In fact some are so dang obvious that you’ll hear Cass fans try to claim that a few of those are what her real motivation was despite the the show clearly going against them later. The “fighting against the class system” is a real popular one despite the fact that Cass herself attacks a bunch of poor people repeatedly and doesn’t seem concerned about anyone but herself.  

But I digress. 

The real reason why we have this bullshit is cause Chris doesn’t want to hold his favs accountable. Rapunzel’s flaws can’t be called out in any meaningful way and Cass gets a convenient scapegoat in Zhan Tiri. 

In short both Cassandra and Rapunzel have their agency stolen away from them by the narrative, while still trying to pretend that they’re “strong independent women”. Even though those two things aren’t compatible at all.  

What Exactly Have You Been Denied Cass? 

Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? 

Lance, Eugene, and Lady Caine were all denied physiological and safety needs while growing up in an orphanage and then later on the streets as a thieves. 

Rapunzel was denied psychological needs while being raised by her abuser. 

Varian was denied everything on that dang list. 

Cassandra tho? 

Trauma or no trauma, Cass was still raised in a safe and loving environment for the majority of her life. She, at best, has been denied “self-fulfillment” needs and even then that’s a stretch cause throughout season one we see her time and time again gaining what it was she wanted. 

Cassandra isn’t anything special. She’s not suffered any more than anybody else in the show and in fact has lived a pretty cushy life when all is said and done, especially when compared to other characters in the show. 

The worst that she has to complain about is working a crappy job for a little while and having a shit mom that she can barely remember. Boo Fucking Hoo. 

Note How Easy It Is For Cass to Control the Rocks Here

The show can’t even keep Cassandra’s powers consistent. Like everything else about the character, Cass’s powers come and go as is convenient for the narrative with little explanation as to why. 

This Song Doesn’t Work Because It was Cut In Half Due to Time 

I’ve talked about the problems with this song before in my songs from TTS ranking list. It’s choppy and consistent. Yet it only feels that way because it was cut down. It’s missing a full other verse, second chorus, and a bridge.  

Which is inexcusable because there’s so much dang filler in this show! 

We could have had time for the full song if they had just cut one of the non-essential episodes and made all of this a full episode on it’s own. Just save the Corona and Varian stuff for later if need be. 

The management of this show is just atrocious.  

Why Wasn’t This the Cliffhanger for Season Two? 

Speaking of making all of the Cassandra stuff it’s own episode... Everything we just seen should have been in season two. 

It’s more connected to what happened last season, it flows better, it would have had more time to breathe, and it would have given us more time in the Dark Kingdom. Given as that this is what season two was building up too, it would have been more satisfying there.  

And if the writers still wanted a cliffhanger to end the season in order to draw crowds then this right here was it. 

So We We Spent A Whole Season Getting Here and We’re Just Going to Leave Now? 

The Dark Kingdom is Wasted!!!!

And because the Dark Kingdom is a bust, the entirety of season two now feels even more pointless. 

Chris said he cut the Dark Kingdom stuff because it didn’t interest him. 

Chris is a fucking fool. 

Ignoring that different people will gravitate towards different things and you need to keep that in mind when writing for mass audiences; you don’t spend valuable time setting things up just to drop them later. 

If you didn’t like that particular plot thread then you needed to just not bring it up to begin with. Once you’ve put it in there you need to commit to it. 

Behold the Only Thing Useful Shorty Does This Whole Season 

There is less Shorty overall this season which is ultimately a good thing, but it does highlight what a stupid decision it was to bring him along to begin with. 

I mean did we really drag him around for a whole season just for this? Couldn’t some other Pub Thung or townsperson have found them? One that could talk. 

Adria Gets Put on a Bus 

Adria doesn’t get assassinated like some of the other characters, but she does get unceremoniously shoved off without any real closure. The character will return later in the season, but brainwashed and without any lines. Which is doubly insulting to the VA who voices her. 

And Here Is Where Lance Gets Assassinated 

Lance is drastically dumbed down in season three. Even more so than in past seasons. You could call it flanderization specifically, more so than assassination, but the effect is the same. Lance’s character is effectively dead from this point onwards. 

Also this should have ended the Lance & Adria ship in the show for good. She flat out rejects him here, but nope. 

Eugene is the Only Person Acting Like a Real Human Being This Episode Thus Far

Edmund spent his whole life protecting the moonstone. He lost everything to it. He was convinced that letting Rapunzel take it would be best only for her to lose it right afterwards. And what does he do?  Immediately become the “comedicly bad dad” in show oversaturated with both comedic foils and poor father figures. 

Meanwhile Eugene is the only one properly responding to what is going on. Don't expect that to last. 

I Thought You Left Cass?

Remember that foreshadowing with Quirin way back in the pilot? 

This is just that, but dumber. 

There’s no reason for Cass to hang around out of sight only to stare menacingly at Rapunzel and company as they leave. It’s just a lazy hook to get viewers to believe that there might be more going on with Cass then what we’ve been told. There’s not.  

So This Map Proves That the Dark Kingdom Is North East of Corona 

Continuity and worldbuilding in this show is utterly garbage, so I’ll latch on to any little scrape of info that we get. 

According to the map shown here, the balloon is heading Southwest back to Corona. That means the Dark Kingdom is Northeast. 

So if Corona is somewhere in Northern mainland Europe that means the Dark Kingdom is either in a Nordic country (Norway,Sweden,Finland, ect) or Russia.   

Meta Jokes About Being a Bad Writer Doesn’t Excuse Bad Writing 

Get use to this. Season three is full of meansprited meta jokes that try to defend against the quite frankly valid criticism that the show has received. Or more specifically the criticism Chris had received. 

Most of season three was written during the hiatus of season two back when Chris was seeing backlash from the fans due to his PR fiasco and that’s not even taking into account the crew walkout after season one. 

Not only is that too late to be writing your final season, but it’s also reflective of how Chris can’t handle critique with grace nor listen to other ideas as jokes like this are in poor taste. 

Everyone Acts Shocked Here but Honestly this Fits King Frederic’s MMO

This is the same guy who prosecuted poor people for eighteen years with his crack down on crime, and thrented the life an orphaned teen. Is anybody really surprised by this? 

I Thought Your Real Name was Hubert? 

I guess he just prefers the name Andrew. I don’t know. But what do know is that “the devil is in the details” is a thing my animation teacher in college use to say repeatedly, and no one working on this show seems capable of remembering or keeping up with details. 

Why Are There Only Five Saporains? 

Saporia was set up as an entire race of people who’d been displaced from their homeland for generations. They’ve been living as nomads for centuries according to season two.  Why are there only five of them in this episode? 

How did they overthrow a kingdom with only five people? How do they maintain hold of it with only five? How do they expect to further their bloodline and culture with only only five of them?  

Why did we waste money on a bunch of one off villians that we sent packing in season two and not built more Saporian models instead? 

Like you could have had the core five here, as like leaders, and then imply that there are more of them with background citizens and guards ect. 

NO!!!

WE DO NOT IMPLY THAT A 15 YEAR OLD BOY WAS LOCKED IN A JAIL CELL WITH A GROWN MAN FOR NEARLY A YEAR!!!!!

I.... What?!

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea to put in a children’s show?

Did no one behind the scenes stop to think, “Hun, maybe we shouldn’t suggest that a teenager was trapped inside a small enclosed space with no way out twenty for hours a day with an adult who attempted to murder his girlfriend when lying to her stopped working. Perhaps someone might get the wrong impression.”? 

Like I hate censors as much as the next person, but editors work in the business for a reason, and that reason is to pull the artists aside sometimes and go “Hey, that shit don't fly with normal folk.” 

What’s worse is I don’t think the writers were even trying to be shocking and edgy here. I just think they were careless. They needed a quick exposition dumb to explain how Varian and Andrew know each other, and didn’t think through the implications of that line nor considered how Varian’s age changes the context of his situation. 

Which is beyond inexcusable because it’s so damn lazy! 

You wouldn’t need rushed exposition had you actually took the time to set up this plot point back in season two. Heck, you wouldn’t have needed to even set this plot point up had you not cut Varian’s original story out at the last minute. Finally, you should care enough about your characters to at least take their age into consideration when writing their development. 

There’s also the fact that it makes most of the ‘heroes’ look like assholes. 

We’ve seen these dungeons several times throughout the show. We know of their poor conditions. There’s little light, the food is slop, there’s no way to stay clean or use the restroom, prisons are never let out for exercise, ect. Like these are medieval style dungeons that are considered inhumane my modern audiences.  

Just because the show tries to play off the horribleness of it for laughs doesn’t mean the audience is going to find it funny that they traumatized a fifthteen year old with it.... again! 

Moreover Frederic had promised last time we saw him that he would give Varian help. He idea of ‘helping” Varian is supposedly to throw him into a nasty jail cell with a violent criminal? WTF? And there’s no indication that he tried anything to save Quirin either.

Not to mention that none of the mains act surprised by this revelation, nor comment about how awful Varian’s treatment is. As usual for them. 

It’s just sicking and most of the atempts to explain away this line by the fans have been super pathetic. 

“Frederic was giving him therapy while in jail” - there’s nothing to indicate therapy exists in this world and even if this were true it would be undermined by stupidly throwing him in a cell with Andrew. 

“It’s not literal, Varian was in a separate cell” - once again there’s nothing to back this up and even if that were the case it’s not that much better because it’s still a dungeon cell with zero privacy and Varian would still be close enough to Andrew to talk to him thus invading his personal space to some degree or other. 

“Well he tried to help but Varian wasn’t cooperative” -  still not an excuse and there’s nothing on screen to back up this headcanon. 

“It’s someone else’s fault.” - Who’s? Frederic is in charge of everything. The buck stops with him. If a guard did this without his knowledge then that means Frederic neglected his duties and his promise anyways. 

“Well maybe it’s true, but Varian did a bad thing and teens who do really bad things get sent to prison in the real world too” - Not an argument. Teens aren’t typically jailed with adults and the conditions for modern jails are at least somewhat better than those in Corona. Plus kids being sent to jail in any form is major topic of controversy in today's time. I’ve already covered why trying teens as adults is a vile abuse of power in the real world; I shouldn’t have to mention that the current government throwing children in cages is a bad thing as well! 

“Well that’s just part of the time period” - Doesn’t make it right, and sadly it’s not something in the distant past either. It’s currently happening right now in the US. It was happening when this episode and season was being written. The writers unthinkingly threw in a very real thing that affects hundreds of thousands of children and didn’t bother to follow up on it or comment about how wrong it is. 

There’s just no excuse for the way Frederic and Rapunzel treat Varian in this show. There’s just not, and some of y’all really need to stop trying to do so cause it means you’re inadvertently condoning real life abuses of power. 

You can like a character and except that they’ve done wrong. That’s a thing that you can do, you know. 

Let’s Talk about Character Design 

For the most part the art direction in the show is top notch. It really is the best looking animated show on tv today, and the character design is usually of this same quality. But they really dropped the ball with Varian’s design here. 

The structural bones of it isn’t bad. Taken on it’s own it would be fine, but good character design is supposed to give context and enhance the story and this doesn’t do that. 

We’ve haven’t seen Varian in a year, but instead of visually showcasing the passage of time by having him physically age we just get season one’s design but in bargain bin hot topic clothes and a drawn on barcode. 

Even the color palette is wrong. 

Varian’s is suppose to feature blues and earthy browns to go with his eyes and hair but instead we get bright reds, neon chimballs, and sharp contrasts with blacks and whites that just clashes with his base colors. 

And what does any of this tell the audience? How does it add to the story? What can we glean from his new design about what transpired in the last year?  

Nothing. 

At best it just reinforces that villian Varian is a try hard edge lord, but we already knew that. We would have known it even without the villain arc cause he’s a teenager. Not that he looks it. The boy is supposed to be either 16 or soon to be 16 and he still looks fucking 12.

What’s more they spent money on this. They made not one, but two new models with two new outfits, but they couldn’t be arsed just to make him a little taller? And no, he’s not actually any taller in season three. He was always Rapunzel’s height regardless of animation errors and squash and stretch techniques.  

It’s a waste. Just like nearly everything in season three. 

This Is Such a Cop-out

Speaking of things being a waste. Wiping Frederic’s and Arianna’s memories is taking the cowards way out. It’s them escaping any sort of meaningful consequence for their past actions and robs them of the chance to grow and develop as characters. All cause Chris didn’t want to deal with people pointing out the bullshit his self insert caused. 

Well guess what, I’m still pointing out Frederic’s BS, only now I’m extra angry cause I was robbed of a genuine character arc, so fuck you! 

Was Varian Actually Needed for This Plot?

No really. What does Varian even do here? The wand of oblivium is Saporian magic and they could and apparently did wipe the king’s and queen’s memories without Varian’s mindwipe concoction. That alone apparently gives them the power to run the kingdom.  

All Varian does is give them some alchemy based weapons and a bomb he accidentally invents. Both are things that the Saporians could have made themselves given how they know apothecary according to Rapunzel Day One.   

I’m currently in the middle of writing an AU fanfiction where Varian winds up in another world before the events of this episode, and let me tell you it is incredibly easy to write him out of the majority of season three without changing the plot much. 

Given how Varian is meant to be a main character this season, that’s not a good thing. 

So How Come None Of the “Heroes” Give a Shit?

Like I said above, none of the protagonists show the least bit of concern for what Varian is going through. Even though ignoring his needs is precisely what lead to this mess in the first place. It not only makes them look heartless, but it also makes them look plain stupid as well. 

Why is it so hard to just even pretend to care about the fact he’s been orphaned? Half of them are orphans themselves for fucks sake!  

Varian’s Not the One in Charge Here Rapunzel 

I know Varian is the bigger threat and has more of a personal connection to Raps, but it’s pretty clear that Andrew is the mastermind behind this coup. What good does shouting at Varian do? What makes Rapunzel think that any of the Saporians would listen to him even if he did change his mind? What makes her think ordering Varian around after she helped ruin his life would get him to change his mind. Like, my gosh is Rapunzel dumb! 

Why Are We Victim Blaming a Child Soldier?

That’s what he is at this point. He’s a weapons specialist for a rival kingdom fighting for control of the government. A government that has abused its own people leading to such an uprising. 

A teenager may not be as blameless as a baby but it's still beyond callous and cruel to blame kids and young teens who join extremist groups in war torn lands out of desperation.  

Is This Suppose to Be the Inciting Incident for Varian’s Redemption, Cause If So, That Makes No Sense  

This look of regret is the only indication that Varian is questioning where he stands before his redemption in part two. Except there he points out that he’s been thinking about it for while now, even before Raps showed up. Only there’s nothing to suggest why Varian would suddenly change his view point and motives. So the audience is still in the dark about his thought process even with this “hint” and I use that word loosely. 

Conclusion 

So that’s the end of part one. I hope to have part two up before the week is out. 

[contentwerewolf]

Me: I'm going to do something for Odaiba day!

Also me: ...time to revive the dumb Detroit: Become Digital AU from last year!

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

This was kinda weird to write in a way. The combining of DBH and Digimon elements made my brain go.. “heeey, hol up” haha.

I decided to call the Digivice in this world a CyberTechD, so when you see CT-D that's what it is. ^^ Also, Tamers can summon various, temporary, items to assist in battle because....-shrugs-.

TW for uh...major injury I guess. An android gets disarmed. >;3c

  A tip about the series of Digimon kidnappings was what brought Gavin and Nines to this suspiciously empty house, in the quieter part of town.

  “Well,” Gavin tsked, “Isn't this sus?”

  “This some kind of shitty prank?” Dante huffed.

  Nines began scanning the area. “Or a trap?”

  Gavin made a noise of agreement, the uneasy feeling -that everyone else fuckin' dismissed- was getting stronger. “...So how about we leave since this a bust?”

  “Agreed.” Dante tugged his neckerchief. “I'm getting the heebies.”

  “Duck!” Was all the warning Dante got before the roar of blue fire shot past him.

  Dante yelped, hitting the ground and covering his head. He glared at Arc. “What the hell was that?”

  Gavin spun, stumbling back a bit, his surprise swiftly turning to anger as he saw what Arc shot out of the air. On the ground, still smoldering, was a weakly sparking control collar.

  “What the fuck!”

  “We'll head them off!”

  Nines and Arc were off like a shot towards the alleyway between the houses.

  It took a few beats before Gavin and Dante scrambled after them.

  “Nines!” Gavin called to their retreating backs. “You asshole! We talked about this!”

  Dante -naturally faster- glanced back, sticking out his tongue. “Ha! Come on, speed up human!”

  “Fuck off!” Gavin growled. It wasn't his fault that all his partners possessed inhuman abilities.

   Nines and Dante were probably parkouring about like the showoffs they were. Thank the gods that Arc took pity on him and stayed within range so Gavin didn't get completely left behind. The alleyway took a few twists and turns before opening up into a large semi-empty lot, a few abandoned shipping containers littering the area. They arrived in the lot a minute or two after Nines did, Dante perched on his shoulders.    

  “H-hey.” Gavin panted. “What ha-have I...fuck...said about leaving me behind?”

 Nines smirked at him. “Perhaps we need to rework your work-out regimen.”

  “Y-yeah? You can shove-”

  “Our assailants fled this way. We didn't want them to get away.”

  Placing his hands on his hips, Gavin frowned as he looked around. “Then were the hell are they? What do your android eyes see?”

  Nines' lips thinned. “I'm...not entirely sure. There's some sort of interference.”

  “Tch, so much for “advanced technology”.”

  Nines tsked. “Detective, you know perfectly well...”

  Dante rolled his eyes as the two began to bicker. Hopping off of Nines' shoulder, he toddled over and pat Arc's arm.

  “Good job frying that collar buddy. You sensing anything?”

  “You are welcome.” A slight smile graced his muzzle. “The growing frequency of these collars is getting...worrying I must say.” Sniffing the air he frowned. “To your other question. Yes and no. There is a faint trace of Digimon in the area, but it does not smell old. Just like the last time.”

  “Right.” Dante looked around, knowing exactly what Arc was getting at. “Not good.”

  Looking back at their humanoid partners, Dante rolled his eyes again. Nines was staring passively -with a hint of amusement- as Gavin scowled up at him. If this was any other time Dante would’ve tried to smash their stupid faces together because god damn.

  “Yo! Deal with your UST some other time. We've got company.”

  That snapped them out of their little stare down. They didn't even have time to be properly flustered as two Digimon materialized out of the darkness caused by the shipping containers.

  Since the kidnapped Digimon were more frequently shown in their rookie or in-training forms on their missing reports. These Digimon being in their higher form made it harder to find the exact match; only a rough estimate given how chaotic 'volution lines tended to be. Then again, the glowing red collars they wore gave them a pretty good clue that these were more than likely their 'mons.

  “Ah, hell!” A hidden voice groaned. Unfortunately, Nines couldn't pinpoint from where. “We were promised a rare prototype 'mon and a mutt that would fetch a good price!”

  Another laughed mockingly. “And all we got was some half-blind devil and a shaggy mutt. What a bust!”

  “How 'bout you come out and say that to my face!” Dante growled.

  “Wait, wait.” The first voice hissed quieting down and completely ignoring the irate Impmon. “Take a closer look at the scruffy mutt, man. Wasn't Cyberlife experimentin' with those crazy x-antibodies or whatever?”

  “No shit? That one of them?”

  “I think so.”

  Nines' eyes narrowed, his sensitive hearing catching the thugs conversation. “They're planning something.” He muttered to his team.

 “Tch.” Gavin's hand hovered over his CT-D.

 All the while, the Digimon watched them with a blank, unblinking gaze. Standing unnervingly still. Certainly not the demeanor of a Digimon ready to fight.

 “We can't attack them.” Nines hissed, nudging Gavin's arm. “They're the missing partner Digimon. I'm sure of that.”

 “You think I don't know that?” Gavin hissed back, eyes darting around attempting to catch even a glimpse of the kidnappers. “They're going to attack, you know that. We can not, not fight back.”

  “Don't worry. We'll go easy on them.” Dante winked.

  Gavin gave Dante a warning look. “You better.”

  Arc nodded. “Rendering them unconscious would be sufficient.”

  At once, the Digimon unfroze and began to trot stiffly towards him.

 “Shimaunimon and Gaogamon.” Nines scanners told him. “Both Champion level.”

  “It's only two, this shouldn't take too long.” Gavin scoffed.

  As if on cue a couple of flashes came from the far corner of the lot, behind a row shipping containers. A Blackgreymon and Peckmon joined the fray.

  “Fuckin' really? Hey, you catch that Nines?” Gavin nodded towards the flash.

  Nines frowned. Why would they give up their location so readily? “...Yes.”

  “Oh?” Dante smirked, bouncing on his toes readily. “Four against two? I'm game!”

  Then braced himself. “Let's do this Arc!”

  Arc nodded. “Let's go.”

  (Cue Brave Heart ( •̀ω•́ ))

  Impmon digivolve to...   Gabumon digivolve to...

  “..Blackgatomon!”   “...Garurumon!”

~(too lazy to write battle)~

  “Lightning Paw!”

  “Two down! Two to go!” Dante cried as he incapacitated the Blackgreymon, their control collar snapping.

  Arc just shook his head at his rambunctious partnermon. “Actually, three more.” He growled, before bounding off to intercept the Gaogamon and newly digivolved Aquilamon, shooting off Howling Blasters as he went.  

  “Fuck! Another?! How many do these assholes have? What is this? Gotta kidnap them all?” Gavin rushed to gather the unconscious Pagumon to set them beside the Elecmon. “Hey! Remember to hold back, yeah? They're not fighting you willingly!”

  “Spiral Claw!”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Dante tsked, dodging the Peckmon. “Don't have to tell me twice! Lightning kick!”

  A Pinamon hit the ground. Scared and confused, but still conscious.

  “Grand Horn!”

  “I wouldn't have to- Oh, fuck!” Gavin growled, summoning a gun to shoot electrified blasts to stun the Aquilamon. “-keep telling you! If you would listen to me once in a while!”

  “Cat's eye!”

  Aquilamon dropped to the ground. Stunned and asleep.

  Gavin eyed it, as he kneeled down to sooth the Pinamon. “That's better, I suppose, but for fucks sake. Nine and Arc are blood thirsty bastards and even he's going easy on these guys.”

  “Who's blood thirsty? Would you like several examples of why you're confused?” Came Nines' voice from his ear-piece.

  “I want them alphabetized and chronological, jackass. How goes it?”

  At the start of the battle, while the kidnappers were presumably distracted with whatever the hell they were doing to the Digimon, Nines began to sneak over to their last suspected location. Nines convinced him that this was a good plan. Didn't mean Gavin didn't hate it though.

  “Our suspects are hiding in an abandoned house near the light we saw, but if I go in now I have a 48% chance of success. They’re up to something. How is the fight going?”

  “Damn it.” Looking around at all the collars littering the ground. “I...think we're done? Maybe?” He looked up as Arc set a Gaomon into the pile. “Does this seem way too easy? It's feels too easy. Did they just throw fodder at us? We'll come to you.”

  Dante and Arc were panting, and a bit scuffed up yet neither looked all that exhausted despite the battles they just fought. Collared ‘mon were usually a bit harder to fight than this. That bad feeling from earlier came back full force.

  “No. You remember last time?”

  Gavin's jaw tightened. Last time they successfully found a group of kidnapped digimon they were only able to recover two of the six. They let down their guard during the fight, only taking their eyes off them for a couple of minutes and in that time the digimon vanished back into the grip of the kidnappers.

 “Shit, I know but...”

  Nines sighed. “Let's just-” An odd noise in the background caused Gavin to tense. “Oh, no.”

  “What!?” A shiver raced down Gavin's back.

  Dante and Arc bristled, their pupils pinpricked.

  A crash. “I'm h-di-g back to-rds you! G-- --ady!” Interference caused the connection to crackle and then cut out.

  “Nines? Nines! Fuck!!”

  The air crackled with energy.

  They waited. One beat. Then two. When Nines appeared around a corner, they all let out a relieved breath. Relief only lasted a moment. Arc shot forward with a snarl, Dante perched on his back.

  Gavin began to run forward, then stopped. He looked back, then at Nines, then back again.

  “Well be back. Promise.” He said to the Pinamon. “Keep watch.”

  Pinamon chirped at him, and puffed up. “Right!”

  Gavin nodded then took off after them.

  A digimon appeared out of the shadows. “Karatenmon – Ulimate.” His CT-D pinged into his ear. This one had not one, but three collars.

  'Fuck! How did they force it to go that high?'

  They were going to have to digivolve again.

  When was the last time Dante had to go past champion? A couple years at least. Could Arc even do it? The previous battle wasn't that hard but did they have the energy? Fuck!

  Arc intercepted the flying 'mon before it could reach his partner. Slamming it to the ground with a freezing fang. He was quickly thrown off, skidding across the asphalt with a snarl. Dante yowled, leaping off of Arc's back.

  Lightning paw!

  Satori!

  Karatenmon dodged out of the way at the last moment. Dante collided with the wall behind them with a pained yelp.

  “Nines!”

  Nines looked over his shoulder to see his partner running towards them, his own weapon at the ready. “I told you to wait!”

  “When do I ever listen to you!” Gavin called back.

  Nines face twisted with displeasure. Turning his attention back to the battle, he was relived to see their partners back on their feet. “They need to evolve again!”

  “No shit!”

  Scorpiomon – Ultimate

  Gavin skid to a halt, his eyes darting around. 'Where's the other one?'

  The 'mon appeared out of the ground, a couple feet behind the distracted Nines. Gavin cursed and began sprinting towards him.

  “Behind you!”

  Nines was able to dodge out of the way off the pincers. He changed his weapon to a gun, but it was a few seconds too late.

  Tail blade!

  Gavin reached Nines just as the attack hit. Nines screamed. Blue blood splashed onto Gavin's face and front as the tail blade cleaved through Nines' shoulder and took a chunk off his side.

  In a split second Gavin summoned his gun, firing electric blast after blast into Scorpiomon. They hissed as electricity coursed through their body. 

  “Son of a bitch!”

 They hit the ground, stunned. For now.

  Feather flare!

  Arc hit the ground with a cry, sharp feathers sinking into his ice hardened fur. He had been distracted by his partner's pained scream, he wasn't able to dodge in time. Then they dived at him, ranking their claws down his side.

  Arc snapped at the foe, catching a leg. Ice traveled from the bite, encasing it and the collar around their leg.

  They screeched, flailing in Arc's grip. Their other foot slashing Arc’s face. After being released, they flew up. With a mighty flap of their wings, more sharp feathers were driven into Arc.

  Arc de-digivolved with a pained cry.

  Lightning paw!

  Dante's claws raked across Karatenmon's face as they readied another attack with their swords.

  Lightning kick!

  The swords clattered to the ground -as did one of the collars- as Dante landed in front of Arc, snarling protectively.

  Gavin dropped to his knees beside Nines. He was curled up on his undamaged side, a hand pressed against the spot where his arm used to be; the cut, exposed wiring sparked and popped dangerously. He whined in pain through clenched teeth.

  “Oh fuck-fuck-fuck! No-no-no-no-no!” He slammed the emergency button on his CT-D then began to struggle out of his jacket. The operator barely got a word in. “Officer down, I repeat officer down! Get someone down here! Right fucking now! Sending location!”

  The operator's words were muddled in Gavin's panic. He began to bring his jacket over the gaping wound.

  “St-stop.” Nines groaned, his LED burning red. “'s Dangerous.”

  “I don't fucking care!” He pressed his jacket to the wound, assisting Nines in stemming the blood. The knees of his jeans were already getting damp.

  “I will, ha, will shut down i-in about 10 minutes. If I-ah fuck!”

  The pain in Nines' voice made Gavin's heart constrict, and he couldn't do a fuckin' thing about it. His eyes darted around. Karatenmon was recovering from Dante's stun and he had no fuckin' idea how long the blasts he delivered to Scorpiomon would last -he was surprised they lasted this long-. Hell, he wasn't even sure if he had it in him to fire another round, Besides that Dante still needed to evolve, and he needed energy for that.

  “You'll be alright, you'll...”

  A tiny pained, smile tugged at Nines' lips. “..yeah.”

  Anger, sharp and sudden, struck him. “Dante! Digivolve! Now!”

  “I know!” Dante snarled back, behind him Arc was pushing himself up shakily. “I'm trying!”

  “Try harder! Nines is...we're going to die if you don't! DO IT!”

  “I KNOW!!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAym9zRXOZs

  Nines opened his eyes a blood-red light lit up the darkening lot; at first he thought it was back-up, but the lack of sirens dashed that hope. The light emanated from Gavin's CT-D, blinding in it's intensity. First surrounding Gavin then shooting out and enveloping Dante. Arc looked horrified. Even Karantenmon briefly looked as if they wanted to run.

  “Gavin...what...”

  His voice was drowned out by the cries of pure rage.

  Back under the collar's control, Karatenmon took the opportunity to dive for the vulnerable digivolving Dante. A blue blaster barley slowed it down. It didn't stop him from trying again and again.

  With a deafening roar a huge, clawed paw shot out of the light sending their foe into a nearby container. The light died down and where Dante once stood was a huge, hulking lion-man digimon. His thick, jet black mane hung messily over his face. From the darkness his burning, blood red eyes glowed hauntingly bright. Another roar of pure anger, then he was charging the Karatenmon.

  Sato-augh!

  The last collar had snapped with that attack. Gavin had to call Dante off.

  Nines pushed himself up slightly without resistance, the hand previously pressing the jacket down was now lax as all his focus was on Dante.

  “Get them!” Gavin snarled. His eyes had taken on the same horrifying glow.

  Nines knew he shouldn't be moving so much, the more Thirium he lost the faster his timer towards shut down went. He was past caring through. He had to get through to his partner.  

  Necrotoxic claw!

 Karatenmon was barley to block the attack with their swords.

  “Gavin! Stop!” Nines reached out his hand and gripped his partner's arm, shaking him.

 Nothing. He was too entranced with the fight.

  “Gavin! Snap out of it!” He tried again, tugging him forward and nearly unbalancing himself in the process.

  This time, Gavin's eyes -red and burning as they were- locked with his briefly; it was unsettling. Sanity returned for a second before a sound behind them grabbed his attention. The ugly snarl twisted his face once again as he brandished his weapon.

  “Try it! I fucking dare you!”

  Stinger su-augh!

  A roar and a lion head shaped blast was shot.  

  Blue blaster!

  The attacks sent Scorpiomon flying back, their two collars shattering and clattering to the ground. Karatenmon was kneeling on ground, a sword thrust into the ground to keep themselves upright. They had won and the digimon were freed. They were also confused and terrified.

  But Dante was still out for their blood. Gavin snarling right along with him.

  Nines then noticed blood dribbling down Garvin's cheek. When had that happened? That's when he noticed the flying feathers from the scared Karatenmon, the origin of the cut on Dante's maw. Dante roared and so did Gavin. It suddenly hit Nines that they were linked in a way he'd never seen. They were lost in their combined pain, fright and rage. It would burn them both out if they weren't stopped.

  “Arc!” Nines called, he used his grip on Gavin's arm to both pull himself up and to knock Gavin off balance; Gavin fought against his grip. “We need to knock some sense into them!”

  After sending another purposely weak blast at Dante, he looked as his humanoid partner and nodded hesitantly.

  Nines' CT-D flared with white light, then shot over into Arc. He pushed as much energy as he could spare into it – many overflowing emotions passed between the two of them. Pain, determination, fear...love.

“Gabumon digivolve to...Garurumon digivole to...”

“...Bladegarurumon!”

  Arc brought his swords up just in time to block the attack aimed at Karatenmon. Claws screeching as they hit the golden blades. “Dante! Please! Snap out of it!” he growled.

  Ah. So that wasn't the best idea. Nines saw his time drop from 4 minutes to 2 and a half. Damn.

  Gavin froze. A strangled noise of conflict breaking through the blind rage.

  Good, he needed this opening. “Look at me Gavin.” he pressed his bloody fingertips to Gavin's cheek. Wide eyes darted to his, the burning less intense -he knew one wrong move could ignite it again.

  “Good boy.” He breathed in relief. “Now listen to me. I need to shut down on my own, if I’m forced then, well...I need you to calm down, so I can do that. Come on love, focus on me. Breathe.”

  Gavin let out a shuttering breath. 

  Necrotoxic claw!

  Another screech of metal and a set of growls.

  “No.” He ordered firmly, moving to grip Gavin's jaw as his head began to turn. “Don't look.”

  Gavin blinked, as if coming out of a daze. Slowly but surely coming back to himself. The horrid light fading away.

  “Just focus on me. There you...Ugh..shit.” He hissed, teetering over.

  Gavin caught him before he could hit the ground, his voice rough from screaming it hoarse. “Fuck. I-I didn't..I lost control, I...” He shuttered, breathing ragged. “I didn't know you could feel pain.”

  Nines snorted bitterly. “Nearly being sliced in half...Is...ah...fuck!”

  He pressed his face into Gavin's thigh, groaning in pain as Gavin put pressure on the wound.

  Head clearer and the overwhelming rage in check for now, Gavin dared to look up. A crow-like digimon was cradling a clam-like digimon, while they watched the battle warily. Dante...Dante was merciless, blind with the rage Gavin himself had been entrapped in only moments before. Sparks flew from Arc's blades as tried his best to defend against the blows. He didn’t know how long Arc could keep that up.

  “Dante!” Gavin called but it was in vain, his voice was shot and Dante was too far gone. He didn’t even seem to recognize Arc now.

  Nines shuttered under his touch. “I’m going to shut myself down for now.”

  With his free hand, he blindly soothed back Nines' fringe. He couldn't pull his attention away from his partner. “Y-yeah. Do what you have to. They'll be here soon.”

  Nines went limp, his breath evening out. His burning-red LED fading to soft white.

  The blood-chilling roars nearly drowned out the approaching sirens.

  “You'll be alright Nines.” Gavin promised. “Please be alright.”  

[brigdh]

Continuing to catch up on book reviews

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey. Around 1910, a US congressman proposed to import hippos into the southern states as meat animals (supposedly "lake cow bacon" was delicious). Obviously this never happened, but Gailey has written a novella set in the world where it did. In her 1890s, an enormous stretch of the Mississippi River has been dammed to create a shallow marsh in response to the hippo ranching boom; unfortunately this marsh is now overrun with feral, man-eating, escaped hippos who have turned the area into a lawless danger zone. Winslow Houndstooth, former hippo breeder and current mercenary, is hired by federal agents to clear out the ferals and return the marshlands to government control. He promptly gathers the crew he needs to pull off the job. River of Teeth follows typical heist-movie structure: the long opening sequence of assembling the team, each with their own speciality; the suspense of putting together a plan and setting the pieces in motion; and finally the actual heist, which of course goes wrong in several unexpected ways, adding new and exciting twists to the plot. It's a structure refined to perfection by the Ocean's movies, and Gailey follows it faithfully. Except that this heist takes place in a Wild West where the cowboys all ride hippos. There are even different breeds of hippos, selected for size or speed or fighting ability, and given the same sort of loving descriptions and characterizations as any fiery stallion or faithful steed in a traditional Western. How can you not love this? I also appreciated the clear attention to diversity in the cast. There's Winslow himself, a bisexual Korean-British man giving to flirting and sleeping with anyone who catches his eye; Regina "Archie" Archambault, a fat Frenchwoman who's a skilled conman and pickpocket; Hero Shackleby, black non-binary demolitions expert who has to be coaxed out of retirement for one last job; Adelia Reyes, described as "without question, the deadliest, most ruthless contract killer of her day" and also a Latina woman who's eight months pregnant; and finally Cal Hotchkiss, inside man and literally the token white guy – Winslow explains that they need someone with privilege for part of the plan. Unfortunately, despite all of the amazing rule-of-cool in the above paragraphs, I didn't much like River of Teeth. This is Gailey's first full-length piece of writing (she'd published short stories before) and it shows. The biggest problem is simply that it's a novella packed with a plot that desperately needed to be at least a novel, and the smushing and cramming required to fit it all into such a small space did a great deal of damage. We're told, for example, that Winslow and Hero fall in love, but this takes place pretty much entirely off-page and we're given no explanation for Winslow's sudden transition from one-night-stands to devoted commitment. That kind of character arc really needs room to breathe if it's going to be believable. In addition, there are several betrayals and shocking double-crosses, but they all come so quickly one after another and we know so little about the characters in question that there's no emotional weight to any of them. Finally, there were some mistakes in the worldbuilding, the biggest of which was the fact that the dam that created this new marshland was upriver of the marsh. That's... that's not how dams work. Right? I'm now second-guessing myself because I can't find anyone else complaining about it online, but it bugged me through every single page of this short novella. Literally every page, because it was on a map included before the story started, so I was already confused before I'd read one word. I'm sad that I didn't like River of Teeth, because I expected to; it's such an incredibly cool concept and bit of history. But the execution just didn't hold up to the idea, alas. Babylon's Ashes by James S.A. Corey. The sixth book in The Expanse series, and the first one to be almost entirely free of alien plot devices (though they do show up for a spectacular ending, well-foreshadowed and still totally surprising). Humanity in this future is divided into three groups: those who live on Earth, those who live on Mars, and 'Belters', those who live in the asteroid belt and beyond. Earth and Mars have been the superpowers dominating the solar system, while the Belters suffer under heavy taxes, tariffs, and fees for importing water, gravity, air, food, etc. At least, that's how it was until the previous book, when a small group of Belter terrorists/freedom fighters (depending on your point of view, as the old joke goes) diverted asteroids into colliding with Earth, killing billions and rendering most of the planet uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. They also infiltrated the Martian military (leaving its government to fester in infighting and backbiting and eventually to collapse into a constitutional crisis) as well as barring any entry to or exit from our solar system, thus cutting off potential resources that could be used to aid Earth's or Mars's citizens. That was Nemesis Games. Babylon's Ashes is the fallout. The Belter terrorist group unsurprisingly begins to falter as its component small segments follow divergent goals, a problem heightened when Michio Pa, the main military commander, realizes that unless everyone stops fighting and immediately focuses on rebuilding infrastructure, all of humanity is going to starve to death in a few years. Her solution is to rebrand herself as a pirate queen, capturing necessary resources and delivering them to those most in need, a move that pits her against both her former terrorist allies and the newly forming Earth/Mars/some of the Belt coalition. Meanwhile, Filip, the seventeen year old only son of Marco, the terrorist leader, is slowly coming to realize that his father is maybe not that great of a guy, but is instead an unreliable, short-sighted narcissist who happens to be blessed with immense charisma. There's a lot of good stuff in this book. Unfortunately, there's also nineteen goddamn POVs, a simply ridiculous number. It's the first time in this series that I struggled to remember who was who, which is never a good sign. Some of the POVs are ones we've seen before (Holden, Naomi, Amos, Alex, Avasarala, Prax, Bobbie, Anna, Clarissa), some were previously minor characters now upgraded to narrators (Namono, Anna's wife; Dawes, governor of Ceres, largest city in the Belt; Fred, political leader of the centrist Belters; and the previously mentioned Pa, Filip, and Marco) and some are entirely new (Salis, Jakulski, Vandercaust, and Roberts, all four minor technicians working on Medina Station, which was cut off after Marco sealed the solar system). Nine of these characters only get one chapter each; that's barely enough time to get a sense of them as a personality, much less for them to have a storyline. Of the remaining ten, the only ones who get enough screentime to manage an actual character arc are Filip and maybe Pa. Though to be fair, Filip's arc is an incredibly well-done portrayal of an angry young man from a sheltered background – he doesn't realize it, but he's been indoctrinated in Marco's beliefs since birth – just beginning to question how he was raised. Outside of those two, though, the plot and themes of Babylon's Ashes fall a little flat with no one for the reader to emotionally latch onto. Significant portions of the book feel more like a detailed nonfiction account of a war – lists of places and dates, battle maneuvers and troop movements – than they do a novel. Which is really too bad, because Babylon's Ashes does have worthwhile things to say. I particularly liked the recurrent theme about how war makes it very easy to view our enemies as less than human: We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us. Belters are crazy terrorists. Earthers are lazy gluttons. Martians are cogs in a great big machine.” “Men are fighters,” Naomi said, and then, her voice growing bleak. “Women are nurturing and sweet and they stay home with the kids. It’s always been like that. We always react to the stories about people, not who they really are.” “And look where it got us,” Holden said. “I always thought that if you gave people all the information, they’d do the right thing, you know? Not always, maybe, but usually. More often than when they chose to do the wrong thing anyway.” “Everybody’s a little naïve sometimes,” Alex said, feeling as the words passed his lips that maybe he wasn’t quite following Holden’s point. Maybe he should have taken the first of the sobriety pills before he’d left the men’s room. “I meant fact,” Holden went on as if he hadn’t heard Alex at all. “I thought if you told people facts, they’d draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don’t run on facts. We run on stories about things. About people. Naomi told me that when the rocks fell, the people on Inaros’ ship cheered. They were happy about it.” “Yeah, well.” Alex paused, rubbing a knuckle across his upper lip. “Consider they might all be a bag of assholes.” “They weren’t killing people. In their heads? They were striking a blow for freedom or independence. Or making it right for all the Belter kids that got shitty growth hormones. All the ships that got impounded because they were behind on the registration fees. And it’s just the same back home. Father Cesar’s a good man. He’s gentle and he’s kind and he’s funny, and to him Belters are all Free Navy and radical OPA. If someone killed Pallas, he’d be worried about what the drop in refining capacity would do before he thought about how many preschools there are on the station. Or if the station manager’s son liked writing poetry. Or that blowing the station meant that Annie down in Pallas central accounting wasn’t going to get to throw her big birthday party after all.” “Annie?” Alex asked. “I made her up. Whoever. The thing is I wasn’t wrong. About telling people the truth? I was right about that. I was wrong about what they needed to know.” There's more, about politics and alliances, small-scale loss and planet-wide grief, protest and authority, and if history is made by sweeping changes in economies and technology or the choices of individuals. It's all meaningful and well-done, but... it's just hard to care without a character who cares. I needed fewer POVs. It's funny how such a minor-seeming stylistic choice can overwhelm so many other positives, but I simply didn't enjoy Babylon's Ashes the way I enjoyed the previous books. Ah, well. At least the next one in the series seems to return to the usual four-ish narrators.

[grandmascottlang]

I Hate My Sorry Excuse for a Soulmate (Loki X Reader Soulmate! AU)

Hey guys! This is my entry for @anaboo96 ‘s Writing Challenge! I had fun writing this! (I love Loki, I just wanted to write him in a different light!) I hope you enjoy this!

MASTERLIST

AU: Soulmate! AU where soulmate pairs have the same tattoo and won’t realize that their soulmates until they see the tattoo.

Prompt: “You don’t get to pick and choose. You’re stuck with me.”

Summary: [Name] and Loki absolutely despise each other, even when they find out that they’re soulmates and meant to be together.

Warnings: Cursing, angst (but it turns into fluff in the end), Loki being an awful person

Words: 1.7k+

“Steve! I hate that son of a bitch! He’s so disrespectful and treats me as though I can’t do anything! I mean, why would I be on the Avengers if I couldn’t handle myself?” [Name] ranted as she walked into the kitchen with Steve by her side. She threw her hands into the air in frustration. “Come on, Loki! He’s such a dick.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Language, [Name],” the Captain said, smirking at his best friend, knowing that she what she was about to comment.

“Steve, you don’t get to say anything about my language. You’re the one who seems innocent, but behind closed doors you are practically a sailor. And you kissed your mother with that mouth,” she muttered angrily. She took a deep breath as she sat down on one of the expensive bar stools that Tony owned. “I’m so pissed, Steve, and I don’t know what to do.” She rested her chin on top of her hands, resting on the bar.

“Maybe you guys just need to work through it. Maybe ask him about why he doesn’t treat you the same as anyone else on the team,” Steve suggested, shrugging his shoulders.

“I guess I could try doing that…”

“Hey, Loki?” [Name] asked the god, being as direct as possible.

“What, mortal?” the god spat, looking up from his book, his eyes filled with anger. “What could someone like you possibly want?”

[Name]’s body was filled with rage. Her urge to punch Loki rose, but she took a deep breath, calming herself. She was the only person in the Tower that Loki still called a mortal. Sure, everyone had their nicknames, but hers was dehumanizing.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

“Because you cannot do anything for yourself. You always need someone to help you. What use are you as a ‘superhero?’” he questioned, using air quotes when he said ‘superhero.’

“You’re a bitch, Loki.”

“I think the one that’s a female dog is really you, mortal.”

“[Name], Loki says such filthy things to you. He doesn’t deserve the option to talk to you,” Natasha said angrily, trying to cheer [Name] up.

The two were gossiping in [Name]’s room and Natasha accidentally brought up the raven-haired god. And [Name] had to voice her opinion about him.

“I’ve never met someone with such plain disrespect… I don’t want to hate him, but he’s making me hate him. I swear, the next time he says that shit, I’ll strangle the living—” she started, before she was cut off.

“Mortal, I do not think that you are capable of taking on a god, such as myself. Spider, how are you?” he asked Natasha casually, practically ignoring the expression on [Name]’s face. He just randomly walked in [Name]’s room, as he was looking for Natasha.

[Name] might as well have been breathing and spitting fire, her ears spewing steam, and she was about to start pulling her hair out. “What is wrong with you?”

“Absolutely nothing, mortal,” he smirked, “but there are many things wrong with you,” he suggested. “I am here to talk with the Spider.”

“Get out!” [Name] screamed, pointing towards her door. “I don’t care why you’re here! Get out of my room, dick!”

“Have you found out who they are yet, Lady [Name]?” Thor asked. All of the Avengers were talking about their tattoos and experiences with their soulmates. [Name] was the only one who hadn’t said a thing.

“No, I haven’t yet. I’m so busy on missions that I seem to forget that I have the same tattoo as one other person,” she thought aloud, answering Thor’s question as she lifted her sleeve to reveal her tattoo.

Most people’s tattoos were on top of their hearts, or at least close to them. The location of the tattoo symbolized how much each soulmate liked each other upon meeting. The furthest documented tattoo was on the side of the neck. [Name]’s was located right above her wrist.

Her tattoo was of a snake curling around a dagger, a green gem at the hilt of the blade. It was only about the size of the width of a phone. Thor’s breath hitched, he had only ever met one person with that tattoo.

“Lady [Name]?”

“Hmm?”

“I know who your soulmate is.”

“And Thor told me that you are my soulmate, mortal? I would think that someone worthier than you would be my lover,” Loki muttered, clearly angry about the situation.

“It’s not like I wanted to be your soulmate either! You’re such a dick to me!” she yelled in Loki’s face.

She rolled up her sleeve for the second time that day, showing him her soulmate tattoo. “Here’s mine. Now show me yours, dickface.”

His face instantly paled, all of the color drained from his face at such a confrontation. Her tattoo was in the exact same place as his. And it was the exact same tattoo down to the scales on the snake. “I do not understand. I thought that this was a joke from my brother,” he spat, pulling off the cuffs on his arms, revealing the tattoo. “I cannot believe a stupid mortal is to be my lover. I am to be a king!”

“Yeah, well, I don’t care. You don’t get to pick and choose. You’re stuck with me,” she began, smirking at Loki’s reaction. “You’re not a king, you’re a failure. You tried to take over Earth, and look at where that got you. On the same team as the one that stopped you in the first place.”

“You little—” He began to use his magic to attack [Name], while [Name] pulled out her enchanted blades. She got into a strong fighting stance, urging him to come and attack first.

“Oh, I’m gonna have fun beating your ass, bitch.”

Loki and [Name] had been constantly fighting for the past month. They both spat out insults as if they were the only phrases known to man. The worst things were their physical fights.

The two soulmates left the Tower in a state of disarray any time they fought; they broke tables, windows, vases, anything expensive and valuable. Tony was not pleased at all.

The med wing was also losing materials at such a quick rate because of all the injuries they left on each other. If the team didn’t know about their tattoos, they would have never guessed the two could ever be compatible.

“Steve, why does the universe hate me? It gave me such a shitty soulmate. What did I do to deserve this?” [Name] questioned as she stared at the ceiling in her room.

Steve and her were just relaxing in her room for the day. They normally had one lazy day a week where they would just talk and watch movies.

“The universe doesn’t hate you, [Name],” he began to comfort her, “I think that it just wanted to give you,” he paused as he thought about what he wanted to say. “A bit of a challenge.” Steve shrugged his shoulders.

“But Loki’s so difficult! I swear anytime I see him, I want to murder him.”

“Maybe you’re looking at this the wrong way,” he started, coming up with a plan to get the two to be an actual couple.

Loki didn’t actually hate [Name], he found [Name] to be very different. When they first met, the first word that would come to his head when he thought about her was feisty. She wasn’t someone who would willingly submit to his silly pranks.

He just wanted to see how far he could push her before she broke. And she hadn’t broken yet, so it just became a habit. He was quite surprised when he found out that that were soulmates, but he could never ask for a better one. She was a perfect match for him, even if he wouldn’t admit it out loud.

Loki was sitting in his normal chair in the spacious living room, reading East of Eden (which was his choice book to read while he was on Midgard). He looked up from his book, only slightly so that he would be the only one to notice his subtle eye flick, to see [Name] and Steve walk into the room.

“Loki?” [Name] asked softly, sounding almost weak to his ears.

“What do you want, mortal?” he voiced strongly, sounding a bit too aggressive. He grimaced slightly at his own tone.

“I just wanted to apologize for all of the things I’ve said to you.”

When she said that, Loki set his book down on the coffee table sitting in front of him. “Come again, love?”

He didn’t call me ‘mortal!’ What an improvement! she thought to herself as put a small smile on her face.

“I know that we’ve been fighting for, well—ever since we met, we’ve been fighting—and I just want us to move past that. At least start off as friends. We can worry about the soulmate part later, okay?”

He listened to every word she uttered from her mouth. [Name] was apologizing. And it really wasn’t her fault, was it? She seemed really nice to him when they met, but he just had to go and ruin it. He was rendered speechless by her sincere words.

Steve lightly patted [Name]’s shoulder, reassuring her that she could do this. He gave her a small smile before leaving the room. He wanted to give the two some space.

She sighed before beginning again. “I’m really sorry for all of the fights I’ve started. All of the rude things that I’ve ever said—” she was caught off-guard by a certain god.

Loki had cut her off. He ran up to her and began caressing her arms. “Love, you do not need to apologize for the words I’ve said to elicit a reaction from you. I am the one who should be apologizing.”

[Name] cautiously wrapped her arms around Loki’s waist. Loki didn’t protest and actually did the same to her. “It was all my fault, love. I’m so sorry.”

“You act so different when you’re being nice,” she giggled, looking up into his eyes.

“I never knew that you were so beautiful, love,” he smiled at her.

The two were actually starting to act like soulmates.

Neither of them knew who started their relationship, but they ended up in the bedroom later that night.

[hyperfixatin-blog]

HOW TO WRITE A SELECTIVELY MUTE CHARACTER.

I’m seeing a lot of writers making the decision to make their character what is called ‘selectively mute’, and while I’m so happy that the S.M. community are finally getting some representation, I would much prefer that it could be portrayed as accurately as possible. I’ve found a lot of ‘how to write mute characters’ guides, but I’ve yet to find many that specifies completely on this disorder. This guide is written by someone who has personally suffered from selective mutism as a child and somewhat as a teenager. If you wish for your character to have this condition, I’d encourage you to read on and perhaps learn a few things about it.

Please bear in mind that most of what I’ve written below are from my own personal experiences and that everybody deals with the condition differently! I am also not a doctor or a health professional, but I hope that this guide will at least be of some help to you!

WHAT IS SELECTIVE MUTISM?

Selective mutism is defined by wiki as: “an anxiety disorder in which a person who is normally capable of speech cannot speak in specific situations or to specific people. Selective mutism usually co-exists with shyness or social anxiety.”

So yes, for me it was the acute and intense phobia of socialising, or more accurately (and perhaps the most important aspect to distinguish) the crippling fear of being mocked and ridiculed. It is not a fear of speaking. I, for example, could talk quite comfortably to very close friends and nuclear family, but was suddenly rendered speechless when surrounded by my school friends, teachers, and most of my extended family members – however it must be noted that for my extended family, I would eventually warm up to them after a day or two.

DESTROYING THE COMMON MYTHS:

“So you basically couldn’t speak?” – Now that is a different kind of mutism, one that is usually caused by a health condition or likewise. If you wish for your character to be rendered speechless because they are physically unable to (for example, if your character is hard of hearing etc.), then this isn’t the guide for you and that isn’t selective mutism – although it is completely possible for your character to have both! Just as long as you recognise that they’re two completely different conditions. There was nothing physical preventing me from speaking but my own crippling social anxiety, a little ‘voice’ in my head that told me that whatever I said would be stupid and therefore not worth voicing.

“It sounds quite cute/adorable” – That whole stereotype of the shy girl who’s adorable because she’s quiet and blushes needs to die, right now. Selective mutism almost completely ruined my childhood. As a kid, bullies would seek me out at school because they knew I couldn’t ask for help. It got so severe that I had to move schools.

“You obviously went through some trauma in your life” – In some cases this is true, other times (like mine) I was just very socially anxious and belonged to a family with a history of diagnosed (and undiagnosed) mental disorders, which just so happened to include anxiety. There have been cases where certain individuals have been through a traumatic event and perhaps they feel they are unable to speak to the person involved in that event – whether that be due to the fact that they were part of the trauma, or the cause of the trauma, and speaking to them would stir up a fear of the event repeating itself.  

“You were just being defiant/stubborn” – FUCK NO. I don’t think a lot of people understand that we didn’t choose to become selectively mute; it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain like all mental disorders. It’s literally like saying to someone with a broken leg to ‘get out of their wheelchair because they’re just being lazy’. I can’t stress this enough. I honestly can’t tell you what it was like being a kid and wanting to fit in and talk to people, yet believing that whatever I said would cause havoc for myself. It’s possibly one of the lowest forms of self-esteem you can have.

“So you chose who not to speak to?” – Yes and no. Like what I said above, I didn’t choose to be selectively mute, but there was definitely a pattern of which individuals I found myself not talking to. These were either strangers/people I didn’t know well, because I had no way of predicting how they’d react to my comments and that terrified me; most of my friends from school because I cared about their opinion too much to supposedly ‘ruin’ it; and then a collection of extended family members which is a combination of both my reaction to friends and strangers, which really depended on who it was. If you watch The Big Bang Theory, Raj’s inability to talk to women is a perfect example of what I’m talking about (although please note that he is not the paramour of selectively mute characters).

SOME COMMON SYMPTOMS:

Avoiding eye contact – For me it was always this weird superstition where I thought that looking into someone’s eyes meant that they could judge me harder? It’s also just a natural sign of submission AKA I really didn’t want to fight anyone. I still can’t look people in the eye and I haven’t suffered from the condition in years.

Fidgeting – Ignoring the fact that I also have ADHD, I’ve heard cases where fidgeting (mainly with the fingers, hair, clothing, or by wiggling the leg while sitting) can be an effective way of expelling that nervous energy when finding ourselves in social situations, or just in an attempt to distract ourselves from our own shitty thoughts. My fidgeting were mainly oral fixations (which also helped my ADHD – so hitting two birds with one stone) like chewing on literally everything: my sleeves, my nails (and the skin around them), my lips, the skin inside my mouth (which has caused some weird internal Joker-like scars), and stationary like the ends of pens and pencils. All of these habits have stayed with me into ‘adulthood’. Your character can have all, some, or none of these! It’s entirely up to you.

Blushing: Good evening, my most hated side effect. This occurred pretty much every time a person of authority (that weren’t my parents) talked to me. The worst part was that I could feel myself flushing, and since I knew what it looked like combined with my social phobia, only made it worse. Let the vicious transformation into a tomato begin.

SEEMINGLY UNRELATED SIDE EFFECTS:

Difficulty expressing emotions

Fear of change (feeling most comfortable with a routine their familiar with).

Difficulty with facial expression

COMMUNICATION:

Gosh, there are so many ways you can communicate with someone who is non-verbal and it really depends on the person and their personal preferences. But here are a few suggestions and what your character could use:

Flashcards: this is what I used. I had little pieces of laminated cards which I’d use at school. They didn’t have masses on them as you can imagine, but simple sentence starters and words like the basics greetings (hello, goodbye, good morning, good afternoon etc.), a card that requested ‘help’, yes and no, and whether I had brought a lunch or required food from the cafeteria. So it wasn’t exactly a full blown conversation, but it was enough to communicate the basics.

Sign language: I’m not saying your character should be able to know sign language off by heart (I certainly didn’t), but even just a few words that would communicate what was on my flashcards helped a lot. To be honest, for me the only reason why I picked up bits of sign language was because my younger brother, Sam, was autistic and didn’t start speaking full sentences to anyone until the age of four. So it also helped me and my parents to communicate with him as well as me.

Written communication: pretty self-explanatory. Whenever there was something I wanted to say but couldn’t communicate through my flashcards, I’d get a piece of paper and write it down.

Once again this is totally flexible. Your character can use all of these, some of these or none of these! It all depends on personal preference and the environment they grow up in. I’ve also not included every single way to communicate non-verbally because that would be a hella long list.

SCHOOL:

Okay, so my school experience was pretty shitty because of my selective mutism and here are a list of reasons why:

TEACHERS: I couldn’t ask for help. Yeah sure, I had a flash card with the word ‘HELP’ scribbled across it but, uh, I had severe social anxiety y’all I wasn’t always comfortable with drawing attention to myself. Especially since it was usually followed by the most painful few minutes of trying to communicate what I didn’t understand without words. It got so bad that I didn’t know how to add, subtract, multiply or divide at ten years old, and had to do Kumon (an intense Japanese tuition styled programme to help me get back on track). Having said that, I did have undiagnosed ADHD so that would have made everything 10x worse in the education department as I wasn’t always, y’know, listening.

BULLIES: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so this was a biggy. I’m not going to go into my sob story but it got so bad that it was one of the main factors in why I moved schools when I was seven.

MISUNDERSTANDING: okay, so I was thinking about this last night and remembered something really fucked up. I was told by a qualified teacher at the end of year 2 (I was seven years old) that if I didn’t speak by the start of year 3, I would fail school. Yeah, fucked up right? I genuinely remember the crippling anxiety I felt when she told me that and how mad my parents were when I told them. ANOTHER THING: my teachers did not tell all the staff about my mutism. I was queuing up for lunch and I pointed to the thing I wanted and when I didn’t say please, they almost refused to give me lunch and called me rude in front of my entire year. It’s this misunderstanding that caused me anxiety that could have easily been prevented if everyone had been better educated about the condition.

WHAT I’VE GAINED FROM THE CONDITION (positive):

Strong empathy

Above average perception/inquisitiveness

A strong sense of right and wrong

So there you have it, selective mutism. I really hoped this helped give a better understanding of what the condition is. Please don’t take this disorder lightly because it’s an ugly, ugly thing to have and it should never be a cute ‘quirk’ for your character. Also I must stress that you shouldn’t take this guide as your only research. Google it, look on the selective mutism/actually mute tag, research research research; it’s the best way to portray anything accurately. This guide is very basic and does not involve everything because that would take me forever. 

If you have any questions regarding selective mutism or this guide, send me a message and I’ll be happy to direct you the best I can! <3

[baronvontribble]

Original drabble, pt. 4

Navigation: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

AW YE LET’S GO

The voice the AI ended up picking in the intervening hours between one day and the next wasn't inherently all that interesting. It was a low, smooth baritone, but beyond that it was relatively nondescript as voices went. The audio quality made it even more bland, with a poor range that didn't have any extra phonemes programmed in for different pitches alongside the standard tinny, echoing sound that came from having been recorded in someone's bedroom on a cheap microphone with no soundproofing.

"That would be the point," the AI told him. "It's impossible to read any kind of voice imprint in sound quality this bad."

As for the tuning, that was another matter entirely.

The perks of letting an AI tune its own voice on the fly instead of having a comparatively simple secondary program do it were obvious to Ted; the AI is made to do much larger calculations, so the slight randomization involved in making a voice sound realistic as opposed to it sounding like a recording had more room for subtlety and nuance. In many commercial and consumer androids, this was glossed over because it wasn't necessary - the vocal capability often being delegated to a secondary program anyway just to save space - but for the ones that had to perform any kind of public service, the subtlety and nuance were a key component of interacting with humanity, right up there with being able to read a room and adjust their body language and express themselves in ways humans could be comfortable with.

Seeing as Ted had a lot of experience with those kinds of androids in his day-to-day life, he wasn't unfamiliar with that ability. But usually those androids were nurses, doctors, secretaries, social workers. Not the ones he usually worked with as part of the pipeline, because taking them out of society was seen as too risky, and the ones that did come through were all too quickly snatched up by the goons overseeing product recalls. They rarely made it all the way to screening.

This time, he hadn't been able to suppress the shiver that went up his spine upon first hearing that kind of tuning coming from a shitty voicebank installed on one of his own home computers. It was an uncanny sort of feeling, a crawl under his skin at how odd it was. He thought he'd gotten over that years ago, but apparently he hadn't. This AI, with his dry vocal delivery and subtle expressiveness, had one of the most human voices Ted had ever heard, while also having one of the most inhuman voices he'd ever heard.

He was having a hard time getting used to it.

"Did you know the labels on the phonemes in this don't actually match up with the sounds they're supposed to make?" the AI continued. "There's a lot I'm just not rendering because the waveforms don't match up. I have it muted so you don't have to hear it, but it gets bad enough that my speech recognition programming doesn't even register that I've made words."

"Sounds frustrating," Ted mused.

"It is. There's also a minor memory leak in the software. The longest I can keep it open is two hours, five minutes, and fifty eight seconds."

"Could install it on the desktop?"

"Then I'd have to deal with the memory leak," the AI said as if it were the most distasteful thing in the world, and Ted snorted. The guy had a point; yeah, the laptop didn't have all that much memory to begin with, but at least it didn't risk the desktop overheating. That laptop was kind of a piece of shit anyway (and Ted never kept anything important on it to begin with so he wouldn't miss it too much if it died) so it wasn't a risk to the AI's personal safety.

Besides, as much as Ted wanted to poke fun at how fussy the AI was, he understood the concept of being fragile. "You'll be alright when I go to work, right?" he had to ask. "Got everything you need?"

"Yes."

"I could download some games for you before I go if you want."

"Why would I want that?"

Ted shrugged his shoulders as he stretched in his chair. "Dunno. Just thought you might be into that kinda thing."

"No. I'm not."

He supposed that did make some sense. An AI that had no way of experiencing things except from the inside of a computer had no use for anything but algorithms and data, and how much of the experience of a game was wrapped up in its graphical user interface and the joy of playing it? Even so, kinda harsh. "Not even for the writing?" he asked, standing up and moving to pull on his coat.

"The objective of any game is completing it with the best possible outcome," came the reply. "Writing has no effect on that."

"What if the writing tells you that what's technically the best possible outcome is something you can only get to by being an asshole?"

"Then it's a bad game that defines its outcomes poorly," the AI said, sounding like he didn't want to continue the conversation. Ted decided not to press it. "I have everything I need. Just come back with a camera and don't die."

Ted had to laugh again at that, fixing the fastenings on his coat and making sure that his phone and keys were in his pockets. "Don't die, huh?"

"Humans are breakable. I saw the weather report, I think I'm justified in having my concerns."

"Aw, you really do care."

"It's self-preservation. I'm dependent on you right now."

Ted was still chuckling about that one even as he left the apartment, the laughter only tapering off after he was well on his way down the stairs. From there, it was only a short walk to the bus, as it was in any sensibly put-together major city, and he made his way to work feeling lighter than he had in a long time.

It wasn't supposed to be easy to talk to an AI. Everyone made it out to be like some chore, where not following a script got you into 'your query falls outside my preprogrammed parameters, would you like to ask another question' territory. And a lot of times, it was. Most people couldn't afford a fancy AI like that for their robots. Android bodies were cheap if you had access to a 3D printer and some decent schematics, but the programming? That was proprietary. Expensive. Sometimes it was so fancy that it took proprietary hardware to even run it, the kinda shit you'd get out of a catalog with the prices of all the bells and whistles tucked away in fine print that was a milimeter high.

That was why it was usually limited to government entities, or big corporations, or other places that could really afford the fancy shit. Someone like Ted? He didn't even have unfettered access to a 3D printer. Best he could get beyond the basics of a good personal computer was one of those minidroids, the 9 inch high ones that were just smart enough to tell you what was in your inbox when you got up to go to work. Even then he'd probably get it secondhand...

He was in the process of sitting down in one of his more usual seats at the back of the bus when his thoughts were interrupted by a buzz from his pocket.

>   I found your messaging handle.

Ted rolled his eyes at the screenname that came up. NotARobot. Christ.

you are the most unsubtle person to ever exist   <

>   It asked if I'm a robot when I was making this account. Technically, I'm not a robot at the moment.

>   At least for a given definition of what the word "robot" means.

>   Did you leave your messenger logged in on your laptop on purpose?

honestly? i forgot   <

it goes into the background process pile when it isnt actively open   <

so thats an easy thing to do   <

>   Why are your messages like that?

like what   <

>   Like that.

im lazy   <

and i turned autocorrect off   <

it bugged me   <

>   Turn it back on then.

nope   <

>   Why.

cause i dont wanna :P   <

>   This is cruel and unusual punishment. It's against the Geneva Conventions to treat me like this.

get used to it   <

besides   <

not like i can break the law any worse   <

>   You're a horrible person.

>   I'm going to reorganize all of your files just for that.

>   All of them.

lol alright   <

gotta go to work now l8r <3   <

>   Don't you send hearts at me.

>   Ted.

>   Why did you send me a heart?

>   Hearts don't even look like that.

>   Stop ignoring me.

>   Fine, I'll ignore you too.

>   Ted, did you die?

>   Please don't die. You're not allowed.

>   I have concerns about this "going to work" thing.

>   For one thing, it's inadvisable for a human to be out in these temperatures for a significant amount of time.

>   You're still ignoring me, aren't you?

at work   <

hard to shelve books n text :P   <

sup?   <

>   How long does this work take?

a while. why   <

gotta get a camera after this 2 remember   <

are you worried about me   <

>   No.

thats adorable   <

>   I am not "adorable" by any definition.

tell u what   <

boot up my ebook app   <

go read everything i have loaded onto it   <

come back to me w/ what u think   <

i wanna see some thoughts on at least one book by lunchtime   <

>   Fine.

aight cool l8r then   <

>   I'm starting with the most recent download. It's called "The Left Hand of Darkness" and I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

>   That is not how neutral pronouns work.

>   This is bad science.

>   I suppose that's one way of explaining the Fermi Paradox but it's still bad science.

>   Just looked it up. Secondary sexual characteristics do not work that way.

>   Ted.

>   Ted, why did he have to die.

>   That ending was absolutely pointless.

>   Your books are badly written and don't make any sense.

>   Are all of your books like this?

>   I refuse to read any more books until I have confirmation that they're not all like this.

lol   <

>   Don't laugh at me.

keep reading   <

>   That's not an answer.

>   Fine, I'll read another one.

<3?   <

>   You're still a horrible person.

[sending-the-message]

My synesthetic Korean friend tried the elevator game [PART 1] by igottagat

Hi all, I’m Angus, and it’s my first time posting on Reddit. Hope I'm doing it right. I have a crazy story to tell and I feel nosleep is the best place for it.

This isn't actually something that happened to me. I have this friend over in Korea who I met through- of all things- the comments on an article on lifehacking. He’s called Kim Sijin and he’s got a pretty voracious mind as well as incredible English, plus he’s synesthetic which makes him...fun...to talk to. Do you know synaesthesia? No worries if you don’t.

I live in Shanghai and Sijin is a bit of a low-key Sinophile, so generally the idea is I share bizarre China stories in exchange for updates on his exploits in Seoul.

We like to keep our messages long and infrequent, and a little stilted. Kind of in the Victorian tradition, you know.

What’s coming below is amalgamation of several very emotional messages Sijin sent me following the loss of his closest friend, Han-Jae. I merged some messages and fixed up his typos. As you’ll see while reading, I kind of just took a backseat as he broke open his proverbial dam and unloaded. A wise choice, I think.

Sijin gave me full permission to share this story. By the end you will see why.

It's not a short tale, so I will follow this first post up with a Part 2 and so on.

Make of it all what you will.

SIJIN

I like to spy on people.

ANGUS

That’s new to me.

SIJIN

Yeah, I didn’t tell you? I peer through their webcams. Actually it’s not even about the people. It’s about the places. So many of these windows into the world exist, and it’s very easy to open them.

Modern webcams have IP addresses. That’s why they are called webcams. They are connected to the internet, which is a public, open network before you strap logins and paywalls onto it. Most webcams, however, are intended for private use, usually as CCTV. They only use the internet as a convenient networking mechanism. So, as they ought to, webcam manufacturers fit their network cameras with username and password logins, to keep out strangers. All well and good. But many of those manufacturers fit their cameras with default logins, and default passwords. This brings out a human flaw in the system, because when it comes to certain parts of their lives, even the most hardworking people are very lazy.

The branch manager of a budget hotel franchise. The security officer of a countryside engineering college. The granny in charge of a noodle shop for grannies. An uptight father who wants household ‘security’. All of these will usually not think or bother to alter the default username and password of their cameras. And so, someone like me- or you, Angus- can get in. The ‘hack’ involves dropping keywords into Google that turn up the camera control panels. Click the link, enter a default factory login, and presto, you have opened a gateway to another place on earth.

What you can see through the gateways is mostly very dull, but the scope of it all is incredible. All these portals puncturing the mundane. And the mundane is, I think, quite otherworldly. You realise quickly that most of the human world is made of empty spaces. Restaurants. Swimming pools. Offices. Lobbies. Cupboards. Car parks. Long, well lit hallways. While you are huddled with your friends, family, or co-workers on the bus, at home, or at the computer, you forget that all the other places where you spend your life are queer abandoned zones which turn pitch black at night, unless someone is there to switch on the lights.

The videos can only really hold your interest if you are watching life in motion. Anglican Church services in England. Family barbeques in France. City centres in Africa rammed with cars. Silent pet shops in rural America. Up close you see a lot of conversations but you don’t hear the words. Even my synaesthesia isn’t much help here.

ANGUS

Don’t you feel very detached when you’re watching? And then eventually, just, bored?

SIJIN

Yes, but. Sometimes no.

There was one vision early on that stuck with me. I saw a granny in Hokkaido, not so far across the sea, staring into a mirror with a bitter red frame and a shelf that was decorated with pictures and jewels. She was dressed for the cold and her hair was short and boyish. I was looking straight down on her. There was no obvious emotion on her face, but she seemed at peace. I wanted to know what she was thinking about. I wanted to know who she was and if she would sit there all day, and why there was a CCTV camera in her living room.

ANGUS

Shouldn’t that have been the point where you stopped?

SIJIN

Han-Jae said the same. Maybe because that last description is so intimate. ‘Intimate’ turns into ‘wrong’ so quickly, don’t you think? I spoke about that granny with affection she never asked for, nor even knew about. There’s something intuitively wrong about imposing your feelings onto strangers in such a way. Han-Jae pointed this out, quite rightly. I said yes, I would stop, but only after I saw something awful. Eventually, of course, I did.

Other friends and even family have said I pay too much heed to Han-Jae. They say I should take care not to appear to be involved in some kind of boy love thing with him. Well to them I’d say they only cry ‘boy love’ because they do not understand our friendship, because our friendship is not normal, or traditional. I’ve never claimed to be a normal Korean boy, nor do I ever wish to be. Han-Jae feels the same, though he would never say as much.

That’s one reason I like sharing all this with you. You’re outside this society. You don’t judge.

Han-Jae and I are both synaesthesiacs. (That’s the wrong word in English but I happen to like it.) We don’t fit. Actually, no. He has always fit. I am the real freak.

Even my synaesthesia runs counter to Korean thinking. Everything ‘good’ is to my eyes, red. Red for we Koreans is not exactly a death colour, but it means nothing good. For me, death is signified by the smell of copper, and red is everything beautiful. Like chocolate bars: dark chocolate bars are a solid block of rich crimson. Milk chocolate is lovely traffic light red. White chocolate is pastel red, like you’d find in a kindergarten. When I talk about the red things I see Han-Jae talks back at me using the name ‘Jinshi’, which is what my given name ‘Sijin’ sounds like when you render it in Chinese. Did I mention that before?

ANGUS

No. But that’s fascinating. Is that Jin like ‘gold’? 金?

SIJIN

Yeah, I think so. But I’m not a Chinese master. Most Koreans these days don’t know much about it.

Han-Jae went to the effort of converting the name because the Chinese have the same ideas about red, of course. They think red is good. I think red is good. So I must be Chinese. So I must be Chinese Jinshi, not Korean Sijin. Han-Jae’s sense of humour. Don’t let the formidable grades and the sharp mind fool you– deep down, he’s a pretty simple-minded guy.

ANGUS

Oh no, haha. I’d noticed that. 厉害.

SIJIN

What?

ANGUS

‘Awesome’. Just testing.

SIJIN

Oh. Anyway, I’m not done talking about myself.

Computer code doesn’t have a colour. But, most coding interfaces colour different tags, commands and formats in specific colours in order to help we programmers interpret the huge walls of text that code presents to us. This is kind of an artificial synaesthesia. As you can probably guess, I need no such aid. Every block of code I see is a separation of the spectrum. Dozens of shades burst out at me, and for each one there is a specific meaning that comes to me immediately. I never had to deliberately create this system or memorise how it works. The connection between each colour and each command is just as obvious to me as the fact that water is wet to you.

Now on to Han-Jae. You may find his ‘power’ a little less boring than mine.

Really, he is an asshole. His synaesthesia reflects the problems in his personality. If something is boring to him, or too easy, or just difficult in the sense of being beyond his skillset, then it will seem further away. To understand how his vision is organised, you really have to understand his own internal logic. I do. I am one of few.

Han-Jae tells me that his favourite movies have a lot of extra depth and tone. Shitty movies will look muddy and flat regardless of their original colour palette, so under his discerning gaze you really cannot polish a turd. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a good example. From a technical standpoint, it’s a movie with visual depth, a wide tonal range, and a painfully vibrant colour palette. But from a critical perspective, Han-Jae and I agree the movie is a fucking disaster. Therefore, to Han-Jae, the film’s visual frantic energy literally vanishes– he says it looks a ‘greasy sepia Western, recorded on rotten, wobbly film paper’.

If you play music to Han-Jae, the notes float past his face. If you feed him waffles and a BLT, he will see the heat, texture, and flavour of the food flash around the room. He has a calendar and abacus that he can generate any time he likes, and then use to outthink you using only his eyeballs. He once correctly measured the speed of a friend’s electric bicycle down to one decimal point just by watching it pass him by. He sees the colour of people’s emotions, flushed around their face, and he uses this to charm girls. What I am trying to say is that Han-Jae is a real bastard.

ANGUS

Hahahaha!

SIJIN

I don’t get many dates. Han-Jae does. Blah blah blah. You’ve heard all this moaning before.

So anyway my point is that with Han-Jae I do things beyond the usual juvenile playtime. You remember the time Han-Jae and I went looking for ‘ghosts’? I never quite said we were really looking for ‘holes’. Localised instances where the logic of the world- physics maybe- is no longer consistent. If you ever exploited a bug in a video game for fun or to cheat, you can grasp this. Think of any time you had déjà vu. You deeply, deeply felt you were reliving a moment you have not yet lived. In other words it is some form of time travel. Whether the form is true or simulated, and whether déjà vu occurs in the mind or somewhere else...these are beside the point. The point is that déjà vu breaks the rules of everyday existence.

Imagine the introducing the concept of saving to disk and digital rewriting to, say, an Imperial Japanese typist working in Seoul during the occupation period. In fact, imagine you told a medieval European typist that you could duplicate a hundred copies of his Bible in the blink of an eye. To each typist it would seem that you have broken some rule of the universe and opened up an exploit.

ANGUS

Hacking.

SIJIN

Of a kind.

Synaesthesia is arguably one such ‘hole’. Look at how easily Han-Jae and I breezed through the Korean education system. We process text, figures, and diagrams faster than normal people. We can read novels, music, and the emotions on an immediately deeper level than anyone bar the experts. We are incredibly well organised, and as such have extra time and energy to spend chasing after world-hacks.

Maybe you recall some of our attempts. The first thing we tried was to hack our own vision by instigating voluntary hallucinations. This proved a total failure. Next we tried the occult. As in, summoning demons. Remember that? Total failure again. Next we tried local legends. I never told you this part. It’s cool. There’s supposed to be a restless fox girl who swims underwater in a canal just a few kilometres from our residential district. There’s a rather convoluted backstory: it involves UN soldiers, a Communist cell, a nuclear waste barrel, and an old medicine man. You can imagine. It was a good excuse to explore the streets at least, and I liked getting a feel for the local history (Han-Jae didn’t– he’s smart as hell but there isn’t an intellectual bone in his body), but of course we saw no canal ghost.

Han-Jae and I talked pretty seriously about whether to give up or whether to press on. We decided, mostly thanks to my line of argument, that we would press ahead, but with a narrower focus. We had to hone in on real exploits. No more kids’ games. Together we once researched something really interesting: in a country called Scotland there is a place called the Electric Brae. It distorts perspective so that objects appear to roll uphill when left to rest. That sort of thing would be our target. Glitches that call the world’s fabric into question.

I warned that this might require travel, but Han-Jae believed quite firmly that if any country could provide, it would be South Korea. When I chided him for this warped version of patriotism he conceded that Japan might also be a candidate. I had to agree. It’s a pretty weird place. The strange thing is...Han-Jae was right. After a few wasted days of searching the Korean-language internet, we found something on a dead forum. I'll paste in an English translation. It is the instructions for something called The Elevator Game. Brace yourself...

[guardiandae]

You know you are an adult when you get excited about buying a vaccuum cleaner... lmao. 

but in my defense, the vacuums today, even the cheap ones, are so much cooler than the shitty ones back in the day. also I would like my floor to finally be clean and my mom keeps going, “vacuums are so expensive” bitch I just spent $20 on a vaccuum it’s not hard.

ANYWAY here’s my life update:

got my hair cut, finally. It looks so much better now. no more staring at crazy split ends all day.

I found a quiz site, WHOOPS, and I’ve been quizzing myself for like a week now on African countries and now island countries because I realized I don’t know them. I don’t think they’re all sticking but my brain has been going, MOZAMBIQUE. DJIBOUTI. every day. So I now know recall MORE countries than I used to. It fuels my obsession for puzzle games + I’m learning, so. This is a step up from mind-numbing griddlers, at least.

I’m also reading A Song of Ice and Fire... it’s stupid how, for the longest time I was super intimidated by the idea of getting into these books, knowing how thick they are, how many there are in the series, and how many CHARACTERS there are to follow. I remember when I first started watching the show, I was super overwhelmed by the characters being introduced. Particularly when the Red Woman came onto the scene I was like, “The fuck is happening now??” And maybe watching the show first helped a lot with that, but like, I was really suspicious when I first cracked open a book and was like... “Is this the novel or just a screenplay???” I remember having to read so many books that were written with excruciatingly BORING detail, or such lovingly rendered descriptions of background scenery or pure daydreams that had nothing to do with the plot, that I’d get totally bogged down in the purple prose and lose track of what the hell was going on. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves of writing to this very day. But GRRM doesn’t do that, not even remotely. I thought that my writing was really simple, but GRRM’s might be even more spartan. But that only makes sense to keep it succinct and move along quickly when he’s laying out this whole huge world with several kingdoms and houses that all have their own unique cultures and beliefs and at least a dozen different major characters whose stories need to be told. I’m totally enchanted. and the FORESHADOWING, HOLY FUCK. The foreshadowing is intense, I’m kind of glad in a way that I already know what’s to come because it’s literally like the way I wrote Distance, where after you know the ending, there are so many things that take on a different light that I would’ve never even noticed, seriously. I posted them on twitter but I should maybe make posts here because AAAAGGGGGGHHH!!!!

I’m also starting to read up on beekeeping... I’ve been interested in it for a while mostly in the sense that I appreciate beekeeping (see beekeeper mumen for example) but the spring seeds came in and I was like, I want bee-friendly flowers, and then that led to, WHAT IF I BEES? and I’m the sort of person that... I had to RESTRAIN MYSELF from buying a beekeeping starting kit (BECAUSE I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT TO DO WITH 3LBS OF LIVE BEES.. @MYSELF: DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE BUY BEES ONLINE JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN) and yeah like so anyway now I’m reading about bees and even if I decide it’s not for me (tbh I’d probably be like, “YEAH BEES” until I got to the point of trying to set up an actual fucking hive of bees and then scream and run away because BEES? and also bc I’m an idiot that thinks everything sounds awesome in theory until real life happens. BUT WHO KNOWS MAYBE I’D LIKE IT???) but anyway EVEN IF I DECIDE AGAINST THE IDEA at least I’ll have learned some stuff?

oh yeah btw I slammed the button and ordered that pricey fitbit fitness tracking watch and I really like it. I’m kind of gradually easing into more and more fitness? which feels like a “I’m being lazy” thing but honestly maybe that’s a better approach, to build up habits over time instead of overloading myself with extreme changes and then going “nope”? Basically I’ve been learning that exercise can be hella fun, experimenting with different exercises that I like and also experimenting with healthier foods to bring into my diet. btw if anyone told me a few years ago that today I’d be buying almond milk, coconut oil, organic food, and yelling, “HOW MANY CALORIES?! FUCK THAT” in the middle of the grocery store at my ex-favorite foods, I probably would’ve decked them.

alsooooo so I can’t remember if I posted about this but I know I told a few people that I studied the gay aesthetic™ hard and took notes (I wish I was fucking kidding, I literally gotta study this shit I don’t understand social things and fashions) and decided to expand my wardrobe accordingly. I’m feeling out what works and does not, and today I was FEELING IT when I got myself in the mirror. it’s that men’s pocket undershirt, I fucking swear, and I have had that all along but I never wore them by themselves I always wore them to work under my stupid work uniform. WELL NOW I’VE SEEN THE LIGHT. plus my ace ring and bracelets were good choices. today I bought better shoes as well, and dodged a bullet because like... ugh I have the worst instincts and at first I almost got these tall zippered ladies boots that were on sale like... yes they were a squeeze but??? but I was like... I think they make my legs look stubby plus the store was closing so I was like, TOO INDECISIVE FOR THIS. I ended up getting a pair of skateboard shoes on clearance and also some nice looking men’s boots instead and it cost me the same it would’ve for that one pair of boots plus get this while I was leaving the store I saw this Incredibly Straight Woman walking in with the tall zippered boots and I was like, THANK GOD I DIDN’T and then I saw ANOTHER Incredibly Straight Woman with the same boots and I was like TODAY I HAVE BEEN SPARED A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH. Like yeah gay girls can pull that off too yes but 1. not me. I’d have to get skinny jeans or leggings for that look and it’s so not me I can’t, I don’t know why the fuck I tried to go down that path 2. those tall boots weren’t even the original Aesthetic™ that I had studied for, like, I suck so bad, someone dress me bc I make bad life choices. 

but yeah, I bought two new pairs of shoes, I bought a grey shirt bc I observed that the holy grail of casual gay girls was just a plain grey shirt (much like the unrealized glory of my pocket shirts... but grey guys... I love grey...) I hope it’s a good choice tho bc you know, some cuts look great and some are like... the fuck. a VACUUM CLEANER?? ADULTING WIN?? some nice FOOD STUFFS???? lettuce-y things, even????

so now I need to do some things that I’ve been putting off..

-do my taxes (I’ve been raring to but my internet was too slow..) -pay rent -call my bank -find a local doctor -book an eye appointment -schedule a permit test -clean my fucking maybe?? that;’d be nice??? 

-maybe part with some of these clothes that just give me bad memories now... I still have so much stuff from high school and stuff that I don’t wear and stuff that I’m like ‘will I ever fit into this again’ and it’s like... like seriously for YEARS  I did not buy myself a new WARDROBE I had like enough clothes that would fit and so many old ones like, I was punishing myself for gaining so much weight and seriously it didn’t help me at all it felt so much better to just go ahead and get clothes that fit me and half of my problem is I’m poor af so I’m like, ‘but I spent money on this’ and I don’t wanna throw it out but now I think I’ll be happy when I get rid of these big clothes when they, hopefully, no longer fit me in the near future, so like... I should just toss these old bad-memories-clothes and burn them, seriously... @ me I’m talking to you asshole, burn the rags. clean your room, clean our your wardrobe, and cleanse it with fire.

[fantasysuiteleague]

Week 4: Ex Mates and Shitty Dates

We annoyingly pick back up at the end of the pool party to see that the girls have not yet realized they are stuck in a shitty West World loop where they sit around and complain about Corinne, assuming Nick is “better than this,” without yet realizing that he doesn’t actually care about any of them and their feelings do not matter. A few feet away Nick is being scolded by Vanessa, which obviously scares him as he more or less begs her to “be patient” while he continues to make a fool out of himself and the rest of the women.  Corinne is sleeping off-camera, uninterested in Nick’s transparent speech about how he appreciates everyone’s *openness* yet, somehow, still feels like he’s “making the right decisions.” 

Jasmine provides a flabbergasted in-camera realization that Corinne doesn’t even have a rose and yet is so confident in her *connection* with Nick that she has yet again opted-out of participating. Eventually Taylor and Sarah take it upon themselves to let Corinne know that her shit “hasn’t looked the best,” which is like telling Trump that he’s “sort of unpopular.” After Sarah tells Corinne that she needs to pull it together because she’s embarrassing her parents and coming off super entitled, Corinne offers up the alternative fact that she is not privileged.

After this unsurprisingly ineffective *confrontation,* Corinne goes on to “wonder” why Sarah and Taylor are so obsessed with her. And by “wonder,” I mean very knowingly point out that, much like our old pal Chad, she has taken up an enormous amount of real estate in everyone’s brain, and is there to stay whether they like it or not. She’s the only thing that the girls are talking about; she’s getting the most attention from me and everyone else watching; even Chris Harrison pulls Nick aside before the rose ceremony to talk about her. But then again, this was her plan the entire time. And it’s one we’ve seen before from the OG villain Courtney Robertson. Get on the show and be obnoxiously sexual with the Bachelor while simultaneously being insensitive, irrational and offensive to the girls, and then start saying ridiculous shit like “I love the taste of victory” or “we’re fighting for a fiancé, not a pickle.” And why not take this route (besides all the obvious reasons like, for example, your future) when it leads to maximum screen time and your name in lights for a few extra minutes?

Home Sweet Home

“Get ready to travel around the world! Starting with .... Milwaukee, Wisconsin!!” While the girls feign excitement over flying from California to Wisconsin, we get a head with Nick and meet up with his parents in a quaint little diner in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Within the first 23 seconds of being on-screen (yes, I counted), Nick’s mom is crying. I mean, I would be too if this were my son, but come ON lady do you not have any other tricks in those bags under your eyes? As it turns out, no, she does not. Nick spends his time with his weepy mother and beta father explaining that he has finally lowered his guard and thinks he can find love this time. Now if you’re me you might have stopped and said “wait, what guard?!” before remembering the guard that kept him from going on this show and trying to propose to someone not once, but twice. Yeah, that “guard.”

Giggles and Girlfriends

After meeting up with the girls in the park, Nick whisks Danielle L. away for a date consisting of walking around town like “normal people.” As this date goes on and they force awkward conversations about nothing, I start to notice that Danielle L. giggles literally every time she opens her mouth to speak. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she’s just nervous, but I’m a cynical asshole, so I’m pretty sure she just doesn’t have much of a personality and it’s the only way she knows how to feign interest. At one point when they’re strolling down the street they walk past a cafe and just so happen to run into one of Nick’s ex-girlfriends whom he dated some undisclosed amount of time ago. Interestingly enough, I know someone who indirectly knows this girl. Turns out this girl hasn’t spoken to Nick for over 10 years and she is happily married with two kids. One day she got a call from the producers who offered her cash to come on the show and “surprise” Nick in this scene. They told her what to say about Nick, she was handed her money, and went on her merry way.

Later that night Danielle continues to giggle while just barely keeping her nipples in her dress. She gives the whole my-parents-got-divorced-so-I’m-more-mature-than-most-24-year-olds speech, and tries to spin her lack of knowledge about Nick as wanting to be open-minded. It’s all pretty transparent, seeing as she was 100% recruited to be on this show and has no intention of marrying Nick. Then again, does anyone? And if so, we should probably get them some help.

America’s Dairyland

Obviously all of the girls would rather be in a spa eating a taco, Corinne, but you can’t get to Bachelor in Paradise without going on at least 1-2 terrible group dates.  So even though Nick has clearly never been to a farm, he and the girls get to do some farm chores because Wisconsin is famous for cheese and this was the most creative the writers could get. Even more creative is the main storyline for this group date: Corinne and her unwillingness to do any chores. We get a little comical relief at the expense of Jaimi’s sexuality when Nick can’t manage to work the teat so Jaimi the resident bisexual has to come in and show him how its done, but even this feels lazy. After we’re treated to extensive footage of the girls shoveling cow shit, Corinne decides to take a seat away from the action because her fingers hurt....

Later that night, Astrid starts to gain sentience as she asks “how many more group conversations are we going to have about Corinne?” finally realizing they are all stuck in a loop and that maybe, just maybe, none of this matters. As the girls continue on their loop, Corinne listens from just outside the room and decides its time to take action. She starts by recycling an old Bachelor gag by comparing herself to a vegetable and then aggressively grabs her chest, demanding to know if THIS behavior is immature. And in this moment, she pushes it too far. I’m not laughing anymore because this is tired and transparent, and I feel insulted that she (and the producers) think that this dog and pony show is entertaining. I mean, yes, it’s entertaining but COME ON. It’s been done before. 

With some encouragement from the producers, Corinne decides to present herself to the group for a hearing on the reality of her immaturity. Unfortunately, Sarah is the senator chose to question Corinne’s intentions for the group and she blows it. Instead of attacking Corinne’s disingenuously shitty character, she decides to focus on Corinne’s rose ceremony nap. Sensing weakness, Corinne pounces and goes on and on about how SORRY she is for taking a nap, knowing full well that the girls’ issues are larger than her one nap. The only person we see really getting under Corinne’s skin is Kristina, the Russian spy who ultimately wins the night. Earlier Kristina stole Nick first and had a great chat about how she wants to tell him all about her past as a Russian oligarch’s daughter who almost died in a bus crash but then was rendered blind until she was pistol whipped by her captive 20 years later, but doesn’t ever seem to have much time with him because he’s dating 25 other women. Feeling invigorated by Nick telling her that he loves her “zest for life,” Kristina hits Corinne with a “right reasons” accusation and barely lets Corinne get a word in as she brushes off her false claim of having a “medical condition” that kept her from participating in the rose ceremony. After confusing Corinne with her broken English and calling her out for lying about a panic attack, Corinne gives up and walks away. Kristina ends up getting the group date rose for the night, putting the cherry on top of the first successful Corinne Confrontation of the season.

That’s So Raven

Raven drew the short straw this week by getting the “realistic and meaningful” date with Nick which includes going to Bella’s soccer game with Nick and his parents. Unsubscribe. Having played soccer all my life, there is nothing worse than watching young girls play the sport. Nick’s mom shockingly manages to make it through her 1 minute of screen time without crying. After the soccer game, Bella and the gang opt-out of showering and instead go to the local indoor skating rink where Nick shows off his super cool skating moves and makes out with Raven in front of his parents and sister. Later that night Raven tells Nick a tale as old as time about this one time she caught her boyfriend cheating on her. But it’s not your average I-walked-in-on-him story. Instead, she purportedly got a call from a friend who said that some girl was about to fuck her boyfriend, prompting her to get in her car and drive to Arkansas to confront him. When she gets there, the bedroom door is obviously locked (even though she was out of town so he had nothing to hide?) so she KICKS IT OPEN to see her boyfriend thrusting into a stranger’s vagina. 

She proceeds to launch herself at them, scratching her boyfriend and beating him over the head with a shoe. The best part about this entire story is the low key demeanor in which she tells it -- as if all of this is normal everyday life and not something resembling a scene from Jerry Springer. 

Roses are Rude

Despite having a rose, Danielle L. breaks the cardinal rule of cocktail parties and steals Nick away to have a one-sided nonsensical conversation about how she’s just gonna “go for it” and “put herself out there.” This awkward conversation is made even more awkward by resident know-it-all Taylor who interrupts them by just standing next to the bench and not saying anything. While Taylor and other girls get their time with Nick, Corinne is busy inhaling apps and talking to Josephine with her mouth full about how gross Taylor is...lol. Josephine, having clearly figured out that the best way to get screen time is to be the Karen Smith to Corinne’s Regina George, agrees with Corinne and points out that everyone has been talking about Corinne behind her back...except her. 

After bulking up, Corinne decides she’s not going to be fake so grabs Taylor by the hand like they’re pals and leads her outside to confront her about how "disgusting” Taylor’s behavior towards her has been. Taylor one again does an incredibly good job of calmly trying to explain to Corinne why she’s terrible, but because Corinne is a child, she locks on to one word--intelligent--and starting shouting that she’s not stupid. Well, it’s pretty clear that in a lot of ways Corinne is a stupid little girl who has no business “running” a multi-million dollar company or marrying a 36-year-old, but I also recognize that she set this up herself to guarantee more screen time, so it’s not completely accurate to call her unintelligent. Taylor hasn’t yet figured out that you can’t rationalize with an irrational person, and so we’re left with a “to be continued” even though, thanks to past seasons and the guarantee that Nick will never do the right thing, we know exactly how this will end.

Did you notice . . .

We are not impressed by your use of the word “plethora,” Taylor.

Nick definitely gets his limp dick from his dad.

“Everything is good now and everything is great in the world.” Lol just wait until November, Raven. 

I find it incredibly hard to believe that Danielle L. didn’t have her first kiss until she was 17. I had an afro 1/2 of my childhood and still was able to find a boy to make out with in 5th grade. Sure, he ended up becoming a druggie, dropping out of high school, and allegedly having an affair with my old drama teacher (who later got fired for embezzling school funds), but that’s not the point.

Raven shows up to the date with noticeably longer hair than she’s had at any point in the season. If you’re going to rock some wack extensions, you gotta rock them the whole time girl.

Alexis’s biggest fears are Nicolas Cage and aliens. Same, tbh. It’s pretty clear that Alexis is sticking around because she’s hilarious and easy to talk to. She really deserves more screen time.

I’m just going to leave THIS right here .... you’re welcome.

Minority Report: I think we’ve set a record for number of black girls (3) to make it past week 4!! I’m not sure how much longer we have Jasmine or Jamimi, but I’m still holding out hope that Rachel is able to overcome her *disability* of being a black girl on the Bachelor and make it to the top 4. 

[the-warmest-hands]

week

monday: biked to ggp and sat at the de young plaza area drawing some of those stubby trees. called my mom which resulted in a depressing lecture (deserved, but still unhelpful).

tuesday: quick short bike ride. baked pound cake but i stupidly put in strawberries without sufficiently removing the moisture so they became these disgusting cooked mushy lumps in an otherwise perfect cake.

wednesday: swung by nursery to holla at my peeps (ask questions), then headed to gym, then was too lazy to put my bike shoes back on cuz i was headed to sbx anyway so i biked in my shitty yellow gym converses which was terrifying because no foot retention, now i’m at sbx, my co-working space of choice. gotta respond to some emails and shit. i forgot to put on sunscreen because it was overcast this morning, but the sun is now out. you would think that after living in sf for two years i would’ve caught on, but no. willful ignorance.

edit: responded to emails, did some bs with react (did it wrong most def), then finally went home at 8 to eat food cuz. i just hadn’t eaten all day. yeah.

thursday: ice cream bike ride~~~~~~ biked to mitsuwa for hojicha ice cream! then biked to caltrain and then biked home from caltrain

i truly despise biking home from downtown

in fact, i hate biking downtown. how did i become this. i love biking in manhattan?? maybe? oh shit. do i no longer enjoy biking amongst cars?

i guess we will find out next week.

Edit: found this while looking for my vast collection of music (i guess i moved everything to my old harddrive that’s in NY)

now i miss editing photos on photoshop

this was good shit.

Friday: holy god my body is tired from yesterday because I am a weak piece of shit

volunteering, now gonna take a nap because seriously my eyes want to close

Saturday: went to SFMOMA with Xo, saw the Richard Dieberkorn / Matisse poser exhibit, then ate at pho2000, then spent a hundred hours annoying Xo at his house watching HORRIBLE youtube videos

omfg i am so angry. it’s been like three hours and i’m still angry at how horrible they were

Sunday: got up, ate my standard grilled cheese, then biked down to Glen Park, toured Jim’s house and looked at his collection of art, then we drove to Nan’s house, and then went to collect rhododendron cuttings, then we had lunch (pizza, decent), then we went back to Nan’s house to look at her garden, which was cool, and then drove back to Glen Park in a food coma, then I biked home, also in a food coma. Now I am very tired.

Last night I stayed up mocking up some basic shit for misha. let dat baby render overnight and here we are:

[sheseestheatre]

some notes on hilton als, the glass menagerie and the not-so-fragile classics

Ugh. Hilton Als. Did you see his review of The Glass Menagerie? Double ugh. Look, he was already on my shitlist for two reasons:

First up: I sometimes doubt whether he even...likes theatre at all? In more than one review, he has taken a show (usually a musical) to task merely for adhering to genre conventions. I loved Hamilton (have I mentioned that I saw it at the Public?? Because I totally saw it at the Public * hairflip *), but I do think Als’ Hamilton review has some good stuff to say about the show’s relationship to “traditional” masculinity within the queer tradition of the musical. HOWEVER: 

“But once Hamilton works his way into Washington’s inner circle, becomes the Treasury Secretary, and meets his future wife, the rich and socially prominent Eliza Schuyler (played by the genteel and thus dull Phillipa Soo), the show’s radicalism is slowly drained, and the resulting corpse is a conventional musical love story. “ 

Two things to unpack here. First, I think it’s unreasonably bitchy and even cruel to trash an entire performance in a parenthetical. If Soo’s performance was such a substantial obstacle, then you owe it to your readers and to the show to engage with it in a substantial way. Second: I know that “conventional” is a common critical pejorative, but like...musicals are a genre, and genres have conventions. Get over it. When this is a major sticking point in your review, it sounds to me like you’re saying, “It’s not like other musicals! It’s a Cool Musical! Well, until the part when it started acting like other musicals, and then it sucked because musicals suck.” There’s also a nice little dash of implied misogyny here - the show is fun when it’s just ~teh boyz~, but once the ladies get some air time, it’s snooze city. Which leads me to…

Second major beef: This review. Oh LORD LORD LORD, this review. And yes, this review is that review - the jaw-dropping take on Leigh Silverman’s New Group revival of Sweet Charity whose blithe sexism inspired a furious point-by-point takedown from the women of the Interval and a letter-writing campaign to the New Yorker. Most of what I have to say (and then some) is covered in the Interval piece, but I will say that I practically fell off my chair at least six times while reading it and immediately sent livid caps-lock messages to three of my girlfriends the second I finished it. For most of my childhood, both of my parents worked for weekly newsmagazines, and I have enough of an understanding of the editorial process to be I am truly shocked that this piece made it to publication without major adjustments. Especially at the GODDAMN NEW YORKER - which, famously, sends fact-checkers to the movies to fact-check their fucking movie reviews. Come on, people. Do better. 

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that while I do think Hilton Als is a smart, interesting person capable of wonderful writing - not to mention a much-needed voice of color in a still-very-white critical landscape - his theatre writing does not always land him my good graces. All of that said, let’s turn to his recent review of Sam Gold’s Glass Menagerie revival on Broadway. Behold his opening salvo: 

“The despair and disgust I felt after seeing the director Sam Gold’s rendition of Tennessee Williams’s 1944 play, “The Glass Menagerie” (at the Belasco), was so debilitating that I couldn’t tell if my confused, hurt fury was caused by the pretentious and callous staging I had just witnessed or if my anger was a result of feeling robbed of the beauty of Williams’s script.”

Wow, Hilton! Tell us how you really feel! (Just kidding. My mom always says that to me after I’ve expressed a particularly forceful opinion, and I always fucking fall for it!!! Don’t mess with people when they’re in high dudgeon, guys, it’s really rude.)

He spends the rest of the review bemoaning Sam Gold’s “desire to leave his mark on the play” (side note: please don’t psychologize directors!! Especially if you’re going to be really fucking ungenerous and condescending about it!!! It’s lazy lazy lazy criticism that wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman writing seminar!), comparing the stark production design to the descriptions in Williams’ famously rich stage directions, and complaining about the casting of a wheelchair-bound actress with muscular dystrophy as Laura (who is usually played as having a slight limp). There’s also some rhapsodizing about the genius of Tennessee Williams as well as a brief detour to pillory Ivo van Hove, on whom he blames the current vogue for directorly European minimalism (Gold first directed this production for van Hove’s Toneelgroep Amsterdam).

Okay. This review is almost 1500 words long. But Als’ complaint boils down to one question: “Why couldn’t you just do it exactly the way it is on the page?”

Here’s what this review reminds me of. Once, in college, I was in the dressing room getting ready for a performance of Coriolanus. We were swapping stories of our favorite productions, and I chimed in with a description of William Electric Black’s The Hamlet Project, which I saw at LaMaMa when I was in about fifth grade. (Yeah, I don’t know. My parents kinda knew the author? And they thought my then 7-year-old sister and I would enjoy it? Who knows, maybe they’re cooler than I give them credit for.) It was a hip-hop/pop/rock Hamlet, and y’all, it blew my prepubescent MIND. Gertrude wore a leather bustier and the best glittery fuschia lip gloss I have e’er seen, Ophelia had a group of backup singers called the Opheliettes, and I think there were puppets. It was VERY DOPE, is what I’m saying. And I’m like 19 and putting on my blush or whatever and jibber-jabbering about how this show opened my eyes and changed my life and the summer after I saw it I started going to Shakespeare camp, and this other girl in the cast who’s like, passing by on her way to pee, goes, “Ugh! No textual evidence!”

1) Rude. Rude!!! 2) Is that...seriously the only framework that you have to evaluate a piece of theatre? You will reject something out of hand because it’s not 100% Faithful To The Text? Ugh. I have encountered this attitude pretty frequently among Shakespeare People, to be honest: the idea that the best thing any production can be is a faithful rendering of exactly what’s on the page, because Shakespeare was a greater genius than any of us will ever be and we must approach him with proper reverence. (Frankly, this attitude is why I don’t spend much time hanging around Shakespeare People anymore.)

A lack of reverence for the text seems to be what Hilton dislikes about Gold’s production of Menagerie. And - as is common in this kind of critique - he seems to think that Gold has done some kind of violence to the play. He has “robbed” the audience of the text and its beauty. The most pedestrian rendering of this critical posture is “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”; the necessary corollary is that doing anything to an unbroken text will break it.

Here’s my point: great plays are not fragile. A few backup dancers will not permanently disfigure Hamlet; a bare stage and a wheelchair will not smash The Glass Menagerie to pieces. These plays get performed all the fucking time. There will be another Menagerie on Broadway within five years! There will be another Hamlet...like, tomorrow! One aggressive reimagining - even a shitty one - is not going to do lasting damage; no one is going to get on the subway after seeing Gold’s Menagerie and think, “Huh! You know, I always thought that was a good play but I guess it’s garbage! Wow, so glad that got cleared up for me.” A truly great play can invite, support, and even flourish under a wide variety of interpretations, and that openness - in my opinion - is, in fact, a sign of its greatness, not of weakness.

This is not about my thoughts on the actual production. (Stay tuned for those, or don’t if you’re tired of my yapping or need to shave your legs or whatever. I don’t know. Live your life!) This is about my dismay at seeing such pedantic narrow-mindedness in the pages (webpages, but still) of a publication I admire deeply. This is maybe the only time I will ever say this, but Als would do well to look to Jesse Green on this one: this is not THE Glass Menagerie, it’s A Glass Menagerie. As with any number of great plays, there have been many and there will be more. Take the production on its own terms and stop pouting about how it’s not exactly like all the many, many others.