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jkpfr · 11 months

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OC-tober Day 19: Inspiration

I’m queueing this post because I know I’ll be away from the 17th to the 19th – and because the theme is “inspiration”, I get to talk about my boy Hideki yet again.

(…Though it’s very likely that I won’t have talked about Hideki as part of this challenge yet, but I don’t know that for a fact since I’m writing this way ahead of time. What I mean is: I love talking about this. Strap in.)

When I first created my sweet boy Hideki, his name was Daniel and he was white. Horrible history, I know. I completely revamped this character around 2018-2019 for a Danganronpa RP (horrible history, I know) which gave me the perfect opportunity to keep the same basic layout but make it better, and accentuate some aspects, such as his relationship with being a top-student, a lot more.

One thing that hadn’t changed was my warm memory of the song that inspired this character in the first place. And that song was Animal I Have Become by Three Days Grace.

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I created Daniel at some point when I was in high school. By that point, I already knew that song by heart. I’d discovered it via an edgy bloody anime girls montage on YouTube when I was like 10, and after years of listening to it via the AMV, I’d bought the album it was on, One-X, when I was in middle school. And for some reason, this was my go-to CD to put on when I was home alone and washing the dishes.

So it was one random day, as I was washing the dishes and listening to this song I loved, that inspiration struck and I came up with him.

I’m not going to lie, I still love this album unironically. Three Days Grace was never the same after their lead singer left – the new singer and direction never matched the raw and sincere frustration expressed in their earlier works. This album, generally, and this song were relatable as hell. When I listened to the song for the first hundred times, without really knowing what it meant and with English as my second language, I related this song to my personal experience of living in an abusive home (a theme explored in other songs on the album) and going to a school where I didn’t belong for many reasons. The “animal I had become” was, to me, the version of me that was too mentally exhausted to interact fully with the world, to be the real me I identified with. Years later, I could even add that the “monster” was my then-undiagnosed anxiety, which scared me and made me react in ways I didn’t understand. However, this song is ultimately about addiction. This is something I think I started to understand as my grasp of the English language gradually got better, and that I wound up confirming with a Google search.

It's with that personal relationship to the song and with that knowledge in mind that I came up with a character who had become someone they hated. A character who was a horrible version of themselves, but would internally beg for help, to be freed from this horror. I came up with a character who was initially a complete softie (in my more recent writings, I would make it obvious that he was too soft for his own good) and through abuse, confusion and exhaustion exploded one day and let himself become the worst possible version of himself. This “explosion” isn’t without the intervention of addiction, he lashes out on the person he wanted to build a life with, who then leaves him, and everything is interlinked.

(Of course, because I love a little bit of drama, there’s a misunderstanding with what really caused his boyfriend to “leave”. But that’s unrelated to any song. What matters to what is at the heart of what this song means to me, is what Hideki thinks happened.)

This was the gist of Hideki’s characterisation for a long time. Now, here’s the thing about that Danganronpa RP. Although Hideki was one of my most popular characters ever, and I went through a lot of effort to explore his characterisation as fully as I could within the limitations of that story, the person organising that RP, aka the GM, abused the shit out of me. Oopsie.

This post isn’t about me so I won’t go through the details, but taking advantage of the horrible mental state that I was in back then from going through undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder following my aforementioned situation of abuse, this person, among a couple others, made me go through hell and worsened my mental state to the point that I… went in shock one day from realising I had hit rock bottom a long time ago – that I had become the monster I’d feared all my life. This was accompanied by my own break-up, which was in fact what caused me to suddenly wake up.

And here was the inspiration for the second part of Hideki’s writing.

Funnily, my ex-partner had participated in that RP alongside me and had hated Hideki’s boyfriend for having left him, even if Hideki had in fact wronged him, because they knew that character knew what he was going through, and how dangerous it was to abandon him then. I shit you not my partner wound up doing the exact same thing to me. And it’s fine! I’d always defended the nuance in what Jun – the boyfriend character – was perceived to have done.

Here’s the thing, though: there’s a good ending to that story. Having suddenly opened my eyes to what was happening to me, I first went through so much shock that my mental health reached a brand new low and my life was in direct danger. And yet, this was a period in my life that was filled with hope. I was going through something extremely difficult, and that forced me to face the me that wanted to fight to the end. I’ll skip over the details – but after surviving this, having gotten some of the help I needed, having been faced with that strong ability to survive I had, I was able to take control of myself again. And I was free to be the real me again.

And that’s when it struck me that I’d never really conceptualised a good ending for Hideki.

My writing of Hideki kinda stopped in the middle of the conflict. As far as shoving him in different RPs where he would live through specific adventures went, that was perfect. But suddenly, I had a brand new experience, and something inside of me must have known just what made sense for such a relatable character as Hideki.

I know this is already very long, but here’s another song; one day, not too long after my healing had started, I was listening to some rock classics. One of those was Highway to Hell by AC/DC.

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And very fittingly for Hideki, randomly, for no particular reason, I started to think about a character who was going to heal.

I thought about a Hideki who eventually reached the right time. Who one day felt like listening to music to help vent his frustrations, and by chance discovered rock, hard rock and metal. Who listened to Highway to Hell, felt something, and suddenly had something he wanted to do. Ideas like “attending a concert”, hope like “I will enjoy it” and “I will be able to blend in”, and that was the start of a messy journey, but a journey of healing nonetheless.

This is the start of an iteration of Hideki which I often joke about, dubbing him “metal Hideki”. He dyes his overgrown bright orange hair an ashy brown, he puts on an edgy t-shirt, and there’s something so fun about how silly it is and yet how much it means to his finally putting himself out there.

This inspired me to finish writing his and Jun’s stories, and I’m very satisfied with how I was able to draw inspiration from different stages in my life to write a compelling character, and by how a song was somehow the starting point both times.

There’s a lot more I could say about Hideki; his backstory and his future, which I never used in RP, in part because I have a full story to tell now! (And also because I’m never doing that shit again. Holy shit.) I’ll leave it at this recent cutesy doodle of him, which is directly taken from a song I felt like he would relate to.

#jan-oc-tober #oc-tober #bweirdOCtober #que #hideki #hideki satou #original character #oc #three days grace

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faboover · 6 months

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4 Years of Making Videos on RWBY Volume 6

Introduction

Hi, I’m Fabian. I run a YouTube Channel called Faboover in which I post Let’s Plays, Fan-Trailers, AMVs, Toonami Promos, and Toonami Music Videos. I also make Video Essays discussing, analyzing, and criticizing RWBY, which I started doing with RWBY Volume 4 back in 2017.

Over a 4 Year Period (2019-2023), I made 5 Videos discussing multiple aspects about RWBY Volume 6. The video series is titled “Thoughts” and covers my Thoughts on the Topics of Story, Animation & Editing, Design, and whatever Miscellaneous Topics can be included in each. What I want to do here is go over what went into each of these Videos I made this time around for Volume 6 and why it took me so long to produce them. I also want to finish this up by explaining what I’m going to be doing for Future Videos for RWBY.

Links to the RWBY Volume 6 Thoughts Videos are provided below with the Date I released them and how long each are.

Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6: Story (12/1/19, 30:23)

Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6: Animation & Editing (7/1/20, 30:55)

Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6: Design Pt. 1/2 (4/15/21, 26:28)

Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6: Design Pt. 2/2 (9/12/21, 35:36)

Final Thoughts - RWBY Vol. 6 (10/23/23. 1:09:30)

If you want to read this easier and easily jump to different sections of the post, please go to the Google Docs Link for it provided below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D6j5usI6mTC-zvn8ioViyDvqcJ8hIKAfArg3Et3hS2E/edit?usp=sharing

Story Video

This is pretty standard fare for me as it closely resembles how I’ve done this Video for Volumes 4 and 5 in which I talk about the Characters and Overall Story Stuff for RWBY Volume 6. The change up here is how Ruby is the last Character and Topic for the Video after getting into all of the Other Characters and Overall Plot Stuff for Volume 6.

The reason I had Ruby as the Last Topic for the Video is because of how I felt it would be best to go over everything else first in order to get into Ruby’s Story for Volume 6. I especially felt that I needed to do it this way with the Overall Story Beats for the Volume as how the plot progresses would be important in understanding what is going on with Ruby.

My favorite Topic for the Volume 6 Story Video is Qrow. This is mainly because I hadn’t talked about him at length like this before. My favorite bits I talked about in relation to Qrow is how Qrow kept his distance during the initial phases of the heist and how important it is that Ruby kept approaching Qrow while his spirits were down.

I don’t have any issues with how this video turned out. I believe I started writing this video in the middle of 2019, recorded my Audio for the Video in September, and finally released it in December of 2019.

Animation & Editing Video

I’m going to start this one off and say that I really need to come up with a new way to introduce these Videos talking about RWBY’s Animation. I started this Video the exact same way I did for the previous two I made on the Same Topics for Volumes 4 and 5. I don’t remember if I noticed this repetitive intro after writing, recording, editing, or releasing the Volume 6 Animation Video. I most likely noticed when editing the video.

Anyway, this is a video in which I got to do some cool stuff with. Got to breakdown Oscar’s Character Animation for the scene in which Jaune comes at Oscar, which I hadn’t analyzed and brokedown the animation in a dialogue scene before. Got to revisit the Topic of Squash and Stretch and highlight the use of a Smear Frame on Nora, which actually isn’t the first time they’ve done a Smear Frame like that. The bit I’m more proud of is my breakdown for the Animation and Action during the Fight between Yang and Adam.

I actually took notes this time around starting from Blake and Adam’s Fight on the Antenna and through the Woods up to the end of Yang’s Fight with Adam. Helped me identify all of the strengths for these Fight Scenes. Obviously, I focused on Yang and Adam’s Fight. The part of the breakdown for Adam and Yang’s Fight that I got a lot of positive responses to is my analysis and breakdown for Adam’s 3 Drawing Slashes against Yang, which was adapted from Monty’s Test Animation for a fight between Adam and Yang.

One of the things I took major umbrage with is how people would passive-aggressively dismiss the quality of the Fight between Yang and Adam by saying that it was only Good because of Monty. This being because it took moments from the Test Animation Monty did for a fight between Yang and Adam that leaked. So, I started this section of the video by highlighting Yang’s Animation since the Test Animation mainly focused on Adam. Doing this would show how much additional stuff was done in this Fight that didn’t come from that Leaked Test Animation Monty made.

One of the last topics for this Animation and Editing Video was a small bit in which I brought up the Special Effects Animation for Volume 6. This section was originally going to contain more, but as you will come to see, the Topic became much more complicated as I first pushed it into the next Design Video. A Video which would then become a 2 Parter because of how complicated covering the Topic truly became.

Design Part 1

This Design Video covered Topics that I usually cover in my previous Design Videos for RWBY (Characters, Environments, Grimm, Sound, etc.), but I went about covering them differently. This time around, I took the approach of presenting what went into producing what was seen in Volume 6 and not just talking about what I think about each Design Topic, which obviously bloated the length of the Video.

The section of this First Design Video for Volume 6 I’m very proud of is the section in which I went over the Conception, Influences, Initially Planning, and Implementation of The Apathy. How I approached writing this section was mainly influenced by the “Exploring” Series on the YouTube Channel GoodBadFlicks. This is also a section that I spent more time scoring (implementing music) than anything I had done previously. Another thing I did is purposely not show the Apathy until I actually started talking about them. This is a section I put a lot of thought and effort into how I wrote, spoke about, and edited. I would later upload this section as a Standalone Video while editing my Final Thoughts Video for Volume 6.

Design Part 2

The Design Part 2 Video covers the Special Effects and Visual Effects (VFX) of RWBY up to Volume 6 with brief mentions about Volumes 7 and 8. This is the first time I have ever spent so much time researching a subject and writing about it in a presentation/video essay type format. I kid-you-not, I spent months going through the Commentaries, watching the Behind the Scenes, looking over Crew Demo Reels, reading Articles, etc. in order to understand as much as I could about the Production of RWBY in relation to Special Effects and VFX. What was originally intended to be a small section to be included in the Animation & Editing Video quickly became more and more complicated as I continued to gain knowledge through my research.

Why did I even start researching these aspects of RWBY’s Production?

It started with the 2D Special Effect for the Fire in the Fireplace at the Brunswick Farm.

My first reaction was, “This is odd. I know they don’t do Fire Effects like this from what I saw in Volume 2 Episode 4, Volume 4 Episode 8, and Volume 5 Episode 10.”

But then I went, “Wait, do I actually KNOW that they don’t do Effects like this or am I just making a Baseless Assumption?”

I later messaged Hypeathon, who had done a 3 part video series on Monty and RWBY, and asked if he had any resources on the Special Effects for RWBY (I was only focused on the Special Effects at this time and was looking to get sources for the Volume 6 Animation Video). Hypeathon would then provide me much more than I expected and directed me to review the Commentaries.

As I mentioned earlier, I found myself traversing down a Rabbit Hole I wasn’t expecting. See all of my Notes and References used for the 2nd Design Video in the Google Doc linked below.

RWBY Special and VFX Sources, References, Notes, etc.

I would write this section with the original intention of including it with everything I was writing for the 1st Design Video; however, when it came time to review my initial draft for the section that would become the 2nd Design Video, I found myself not liking it.

I felt like it was directionless and uninteresting. It came off like I was just spouting information rather than presenting information. That’s when I messaged Hypeathon again and asked if he would be okay with proofreading and providing feedback on the First Main Draft of the Special Effects and VFX Section for my Original Volume 6 Design Video Script.

Hypeathon accepted.

So I provided him the Current Draft of my VFX Script and a Document with all of my Notes and References so he would know where information was coming from and have context to how I was writing this part of my script. Hype would give feedback, suggestions, alternations, and notes to the Draft I gave him as I continued to write the rest of the Original Design Video with consideration to everything Hype was providing me and giving feedback to.

As we were doing this, the page count on this Original Design Video’s Script ended up getting pretty high and about to hit 20 Pages. Why this was a big deal is because the previous Story and Animation Video Scripts were around 10 Pages and ended up to be about 30 Minutes each. I came to realize that I was about to have an Hour Long Video on my hands. Thus, I made the decision to split the Design Video into two parts.

This decision helped give Hypeathon more time to go over and provide feedback on the rest of the Special and VFX Draft I sent him and also gave me more time to finesse my scripts for the now 2 Part Volume 6 Design Videos.

If you would like to see the Original Draft of the Special and VFX Script I sent Hypeathon and the feedback and notes Hype provided to it, it is linked below.

(I DID ASK HYPEATHON IF HE IS OKAY WITH ME SHARING THIS HERE FIRST)

Special Effects of RWBY Draft (with Hypeathon’s Feedback)

I am overall proud of how the Volume 6 Design Part 2 Video turned out. The only thing I wished I did better on is the section of the Video talking about RWBY Volume 3.

When it came to my research I did for this Video, I was initially only focused on anything dealing with the Special Effects of RWBY. It wasn’t until I started researching Volume 4 that I pivoted to research not only the Special Effects but also the VFX and Production of RWBY as a whole.

Despite this change in approach to what topics I was going to be researching and covering for the Video, I never went back to Volume 3 and is why I said that the Special and VFX for Volume 3 had little change. This is also why the Volume 3 Section of the Design Part 2 Video covers mostly the Production of RWBY and not the Special and Visual Effects. That said, doing it this way did help provide a smoother transition to talking about Volumes 4 and 5.

Final Thoughts

Talk about another mile and a half. This Final Thoughts Video for Volume 6 took me a long while to write and edit. Part of it was all the stuff regarding Adam and the White Fang I had been planning to cover in this video, and another part was the Jaune and Pyrrha Section of the video.

I was originally writing the section regarding Adam’s Character as a sort of play by play about Adam, what we see of him, what others say about him, and what he says throughout each Volume. That was getting very long. I got to the point where I was writing in this way up to Volume 5 and went, “This is too long” and I didn’t feel like this is how I actually want to talk about Adam’s Characterization. I’m referring to the Tone of my writing. Thus, I consolidated it with a complete rewrite so that it would be better focused. Even with that done, I still faced hurdles when it came to writing those sections about Adam and the White Fang.

The number of times I thought about removing specific sections of the Adam and White Fang Topics to the point where there were times when I did remove them. This is all because I was super anxious about covering these topics as I am obviously going to be getting into and discussing the Racial Subject Matter and Implications regarding the character of Adam and representation of the White Fang.

Running through my mind when considering whether to keep these topics were:

Is my perspective important?

What if I’m ignorant?

What if I say something in this video that someone could take major offense to?

What if I say or present something in a way that makes someone who respected me now think less of me?

What if I make the conversation regarding these issues in RWBY Discourse worse?

Thoughts like these would just spring up from time to time during the writing and editing process. Yeah, I even considered cutting these parts out from the video during the editing phase after I had already recorded my audio for the video. This anxiety once I got up to the Adam’s Character Section of the video during the editing phase really kept me away from the video timeline and hindered me from making any significant progress on the full video. I think it took me 2 to 3 months to finally edit those sections of the video. It took me about a month to edit the first 20 minutes of the video.

The reason I kept these sections regarding Adam’s Character and the White in the video despite my anxiety about them is because I essentially forced myself to. “If I don’t talk about this now, then I am never going to.” That was my mentality with keeping these sections regarding Adam’s Character and White Fang in the video.

“If I don’t do it now, then I never will.”

Now, why would the Jaune and Pyrrha section of this Final Thoughts Video be hard for me to write and such? Well, that’s because that section was originally intended to be a Standalone Video. One that I hinted I was going to be making in my Update #14 Video that I put out on 11/7/18. I later confirmed that I was planning to make a video regarding Jaune and Pyrrha in my Update #16 Video that I put out on 9/1/19.

I started writing the script for the Standalone Jaune and Pyrrha Video, but all I was able to complete is a single paragraph. That video would only make sense with what was already out for RWBY at the time when I first hinted at it, which was Volume 6. That’s why the Topic for Jaune and Pyrrha got added to the Final Thoughts Video. It was also to address the scene in which Jaune talked to Nora and Ren at Pyrrha’s Statue.

When I finally got around to including that section about Jaune and Pyrrha in my script for the Final Thoughts Video, I was at least able to start making good progress. That was the case until I actually got to talking about Jaune in Volume 6 in which I hit a wall.

The problem was how I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say and how to say it. This was because I essentially looked at what I was writing so far regarding Jaune and Pyrrha and went, “Where am I going with this?” It was the last part of this section to write before concluding it, and I had lost the narrative.

I think it took me quite a while to figure it out. Rewatching the scene with Jaune, Nora, and Ren helped me to finally develop a connective through-line for what I wanted to cover and get across.

The only other major topic in the Final Thoughts Video I want to talk about here is the Bumblby Section. It was a topic I had originally planned to be in the Final Thoughts Video since around the time I started writing the first Story Video. I originally wrote it as though RWBY Volume 6 had just ended and was focusing on a specific aspect about the relationship.

Did they pander with Bumblby in Volume 6?

I had finished writing the full Final Thoughts Video around October or November of 2022. Volume 9 had not come out yet. By the time I finally got around to editing the Bumblby Section of the Video, Volume 9 had finished and Yang and Blake officially became a couple. I was playing back what I had said in the Video in my Video Editor and asked myself, “Does it even matter anymore?”

The answer I came to was obviously, “No.”

So I cut out all the parts where I referenced anything regarding fan-service and pandering. Re-recorded some of my lines to remove mentions of those as well. All so I could just focus on the 2 small problems I had with Blake and Yang’s Relationship, how it was presented in Volume 6, and then talked about how I wasn’t impressed with how it progressed afterwards in Volumes 7 and 8.

If I had to pick what my favorite section that I did for the Final Thoughts Video, it would be a toss up between these two.

Adam in Volume 6

Jaune and Pyrrha

The reason for the Volume 6 Adam Section is because of how it is an overview and analysis regarding Adam and his Character. It also gave me the opportunity to cover aspects about Blake’s confrontation with Adam at the end of Volume 5 that I didn’t get to cover in my original RWBY Volume 5 Thoughts Series due to how I needed to compress and focus my talking points regarding the last 4 episodes of that Volume.

My favorite bit I talked about regarding Adam in Volume 6 was the line in which Adam said to Blake how he just wasn’t good enough for her for Blake to then retort back that it was way more than that. I really liked digging into why Blake would respond back with that in regards to Adam.

The Jaune and Pyrrha Section should be obvious as Jaune is one of my Favorite Characters in RWBY. So, getting into stuff regarding Jaune and Pyrrha and explaining why I have interest in Characters like Jaune was really enjoyable.

If I was to put out one of these as a Standalone Video, it would be the Jaune and Pyrrha Section. It was originally intended to be one and covers more about the Characters than just one Volume.

Why Did These Videos Take So Long?

The title for this part of the write up speaks for itself. The answer is due to a variety of reasons.

Motivation

Energy

Time

Distractions

Procrastination

Anxiety

Just to name a few.

One of the big contributors as to why I took so long to make each of these Videos is because I would just end up in a Writer’s Block pretty frequently as I wrote the scripts for the Videos. I would just get stuck. I would know what topics I wanted to include and talk about. I would have these topics titled and listed out in my initial draft. But then, I would just struggle with figuring out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I also struggled with the script writing process itself because of how I would just forget how to write. I cannot count how many times during the writing process for these Volume 6 Thoughts Videos that I would stop and ask myself,

Should I be starting a new paragraph?

Wait! When should a new paragraph be started?

Am I employing proper Grammar here?

Am I structuring my sentences properly?

I bet if you look over this whole write-up you are reading right now, you can find examples of me still struggling with stuff like that.

Another big contributor as to why it took me so long to get these videos out are the lengths of each video. Each video is 30 minutes or longer. Those are some daunting video lengths to produce.

I ended up developing a way to help myself not feel so overwhelmed by the length of each video by adding markers for each section/topic of the Video in the Video Editor’s Timeline and then moving these marked sections/topics far apart from each other in the Timeline. This is so I could just focus on the current section I am editing and not worry about how much more I have left to do in order to complete the video. Essentially, I broke down the video into sectioned tasks instead of just one large project. Despite that, I obviously still struggled to make progress when editing the Videos.

Another thing I would do to help me make progress when editing the videos is open my Vegas Project for whatever Thoughts Video I was working on at the time every time I started up my computer. However, I would also open other things such as YouTube, Social Media, etc. I would also spend time on my Phone reading through and watching the same stuff. I would just gravitate to whatever would be more interesting or immediately fulfilling for my mind to engage with.

One of the things that I do, which can be called a compulsion at times, is Day Dream whenever I’m listening to music. Not just Day Dream, but imagine and play out whole scenarios in my head to the music I’m listening to. This is how I develop the ideas for my Fan-Trailers, Toonami Promos, and Music Videos.

The reason this can be called a Compulsion is because sometimes my mind will just get stuck and locked into one thing, this one scenario. So, I have to grab my phone and start listening to music so I can play out what is currently running through my head until it’s done, but then like 30+ minutes have passed.

This can all be related to ADHD, which I have now started taking medication for after completing an ADHD Test that my Psychiatrist had me take. If you look through my Likes on Twitter, you can find me liking and retweeting stuff in regards to ADHD over the years because I just related them to my experience when editing these videos over the last 4 years.

Neurodivergent Kids when listening to music:

https://x.com/EthanTheRaccy/status/1690786287349846016?s=20

ADHD when you are passionate vs not:

https://x.com/AdonisThuul/status/1680623330800304131?s=20

“I just need to finish this project”:

https://x.com/choinheap/status/1651924410570350592?s=20

Markiplier Talks about ADHD:

https://x.com/ac_maestro/status/1642882059801698305?s=20

McNasty’s Quote Tweet adding onto what Markiplier said:

https://x.com/McNasty/status/1644400896221265921?s=20

Future Videos

I’m now 3 Volumes, 1 Spinoff, and a 2 Part Crossover Film behind in regards to my Thoughts Series of Videos for RWBY. Obviously, it now takes me too long to produce these videos. So, what am I going to do moving forward?

The Thoughts Video Series I’ve been making for each Volume of RWBY will be no more. One reason is the aforementioned time it now takes for me to write and produce them. The other reason is that my Format with these videos just won’t work with Volumes 7 through 9. Especially with the Story Videos as each of the Characters’ Stories are told through those Volumes and not isolated to just one.

Will I be making any videos talking about, discussing, analyzing, and criticizing RWBY?

YES

How am I going to do so if I’m not going to do it in my usual format anymore?

I will instead be producing Videos that are about a single topic rather than just a Broad Topic with a bunch of Individual Topics. This will make the Video focused and, hopefully, shorter. This will also be focused more on Topics that I want to talk about rather than Topics I’m not that interested in.

I already tested putting out Videos in that format by uploading sections of my previous Thoughts Videos for RWBY Volume 6, which are all linked below.

How RWBY Vol. 6 Put More Focus on Ruby (3:33)

Yang VS Adam - A Brief Animation BREAKDOWN (13:11)

The Apathy: Influences, Design, and Implementation (7:23)

A VERY GENERAL Overview of RWBY's VFX (12:56)

These also showcased the new Thumbnail and Video Title Formats I will be using when making Videos like this. I previously opted for just “Thoughts - <Subject>: <Subject about that Subject>” as I didn’t want my Titles to come off as Clickbait or anything like that.

The previous titles would communicate that these are my thoughts about this subject and will be talking about this sub-subject of the subject in the Video. The Title explains exactly what I’m doing in the video. Of course, this Title format is boring and doesn’t really prepare the person coming into the video with what to expect.

The New Video Title Formats I’m going to be doing, as seen in the Titles of the previous 4 videos I linked, are much more intriguing and attention grabbing. Each of these videos has already done better than the originals they came from in regards to Engagement (Likes and Comments).

I’m gonna be challenging myself over the next week to write, record, edit and upload a Video in this format. I will be discussing and going over a Scene from RWBY Volume 9. So, please look forward to it!

If you want to hear my early thoughts regarding Volumes 7 and 8, you can hear me talk about them on this Episode of the Dumb Weebs Podcast linked below.

Dumb Weebs Podcast Episode 9 - IRONWOOD WHY (RWBY Volume 8)

If you want to read an Analysis Piece I wrote and posted to my Tumblr Blog about Ruby for Volume 8, that is also linked below.

The State of Ruby as of RWBY Vol. 8 Episode 8

#blog #rwby #video #youtube #CRTQ #Thoughts #RWBY6 #analysis #review #critique

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twigstarpikachutroll22 · 3 years

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A breakdown of my broppy playlist

Nocreature asked for this, but I'm doing it anyway because I want to.

Strange Sight (from Tinker Bell: Legend of the Neverbeast): Somecreature recommended it on Wattpad at some point (I don’t remember who and can’t find the link now, sorry) and I didn’t know how I hadn’t realized sooner how right they were. It perfectly fits how Poppy saw him since before much of the movie’s story happened. That he was all rough and gray and unfriendly on the outside, but she was drawn to him and was certain there was goodness hidden under that and refused to give up on bringing it out.

I Won’t Say I’m In Love (from Hercules): An iconic tsundere anthem that I 100% see for Branch early on.

(By the way, I always debate with myself over whether to replace this with Not Another Song About Love, by Hollywood Ending, another tsundere anthem that fits just as well.)

King Of Anything (by Sara Bareilles): The version from Emma! A Pop Musical, where it’s arranged as a musical argument between two people. Honestly, with the way Poppy and Branch’s different views clash at times, it fits them so SO well. I put it just before The Other Side, like it could stand in for the disagreements they had before much of the first movie’s events (e.g. Poppy wanting Branch to give parties, singing, dancing, hugging, happiness, etc. a chance, Branch wanting Poppy to be more concerned about the bergens). It does bug me that I couldn’t find a video of this version of the song that just had the song without the conversation beforehand, but I’d rather have this than the normal version of the song as then people might not realize I’m envisioning it as a duet.

The Other Side (from The Greatest Showman): I can picture a whole AMV of this with Poppy as P.T. Barnum and Branch as Carlyle. It lines up with Poppy trying to convince Branch into taking this crazy adventure with her.

The Other Side Of The Storm (from TTBGO): An amazing duet between them from TTBGO. With their different perspectives, optimism vs pessimism, clashing like this while they’re on an adventure. Probably my favorite TTBGO song to this day. I decided to bump it up to the point where they were going on the journey to Bergen Town to save the Snack Pack. They did clash like this a lot on the way.

Give Your Heart A Break (by Demi Lovato): Got the idea from a drawing by Dawnbuneary using this as a song from Poppy to Branch. For hurt/comfort. And like...yeah. It works. I put it at this point to stand in for when he’s opened up about his grandmother.

Fearless (by Taylor Swift): This is SUCH a broppy song, y’all, I swear. With how Poppy keeps pulling him into Branch sorts of crazy, risky things he’d NEVER attempt on his own but finds himself able to roll with as long as it’s her? It’s just perfect and beautiful and I love it so much.

Friends (from the Angry Birds Movie): So at this point in the movie, before the True Colors scene but after Branch’s backstory and everything, we can see Poppy and Branch getting closer to each other. Neither confirms it as romantic at this point, but whether romantically or platonically, you can see it. The high-five-too-slow bit, the way they work together when they’re getting the locket, etc. And I put this song here ‘cause it kinda captures that. How this unlikely bond has been formed, though not explicitly romantic at this point.

Flashlight (FM Reset cover): I found this AMV on YouTube and it’s so, SO great. It fits them so well. Lifting each other up when they’re down, lighting each other’s way when they’re lost in the dark. Or in grayness. I love it. I love it so much.

True Colors (Trolls film scene version): Do I even need to explain this one?

September (Trolls end credits version): OR this one???

Faith (from Sing): Guydiiamond made an AMV of the second verse with them, and now that I think of it, this fits them too. And it’s, y’know, it’s fun. Somehow, I think the whole vibe fits them around the end of the first movie’s events.

Man I Think I Love Her (by Stereo Skyline): Oh, what’s this? Two people who love each other and also fight and get on each other’s nerves all the time? Don’t try to tell me that’s not Poppy and Branch right there. These two bicker like a cross between siblings and an old married couple and y’all know it. I cannot in good conscience make a broppy playlist without a few songs of that spice. Oh, and by the way this is the first song on the playlist that I imagine as standing in for the TTBGO times. I don’t know why I felt the need to use this AMV of another ship from another fandom, just go with it

Better In Stereo (from Liv and Maddie): Another song about how they have their differences and can clash and get on each other’s nerves but they still love each other and balance each other out and bring out the best in each other. This one not necessarily in the context of a romantic relationship. Definitely has the TTBGO broppy vibes, can totally see an AMV of it.

La Da Dee (by Cody Simpson): This is just a really sweet song, and I can see it for Branch’s POV during the TTBGO times, while he and Poppy are getting closer as friends, with him just silently crushing hard on her the whole time.

Jump Then Fall (by Taylor Swift): I felt like this playlist needed another song or two from Poppy’s POV, particularly from before they get together, and honestly, I can see this one being that. It’s her once again encouraging him to take a chance, and it’s her being proud of all the progress he’s making from the movie events onwards, and it’s her wanting to be there for him through all his struggles.

Friends Don’t (by Maddie and Tae): TTBGO does like to insist up and down that they’re friends while sneaking all the obvious ship teases that they can and winking at us. So of course us broppy shippers imagine that during this time, neither Branch nor Poppy knows if the other likes them as anything other than a friend or not so they try to proceed with their relationship as a friendship, but the romantic feelings are most definitely THERE. And this song is basically about a pair of friends starting to realize they both like each other as something else, so...yep. I especially like to imagine the words of the bridge coming from Poppy. (“I keep telling myself this might be nothing / but one look in your eyes and god there’s something / you can lie to me and say you don’t / but i know you do / and i love you too”) I dunno, we don’t QUITE get to see enough of Poppy’s side of this in canon so I like the idea of her being the one to get to that first.

Shut Up And Dance (by Walk The Moon): This song is a LOT of fun and I can totally see this happening with them at a party. Also, narrative note, I believe Dreamsinger-rose mentioned that for Branch to be trying to tell Poppy early in TWT how he feels, it seems quite possible that something would’ve happened between them not long before the events of TWT to sort of nudge him towards that. So this song and the next one are kind of meant to stand for this. And yes I used a PMV what about it?

Sparks Fly (by Taylor Swift): I can see this for a really sweet romance moment (or, for this point in the narrative, ALLLLMOST-romance moment) between Poppy and Branch. And I can see them trading off parts for this. Like, “My mind forgets to tell me you’re a bad idea” is Branch. Most of the chorus is either or both of them. Most of the bridge can be Poppy. Second verse’s “I’m on my guard with the rest of the world, but with you I know it’s no good”? THAT’S BRANCH. The following “I could wait patiently but I really wish you would / Drop everything now”? THAT’S POPPY.

Trolls Just Wanna Have Fun (from Trolls World Tour): So this is where we hit TWT. I absolutely had to include this, there was no way I could leave it off, I mean BRANCH’S VERSE AND HOW HE CALLS POPPY BEAUTIFUL AND SAYS “JUST NEED THE GUTS TO TELL HER THAT SHE’S THE ONE” AND THIS IS CANON GUYS ASDFGHJKL this is where they first made it EXPLICITLY canon to us.

Things I’ll Never Say (by Avril Lavigne): Honestly, from the first time I listened to this song all I could think of was Branch thinking of Poppy, with ALLLLLL the Pining TM. I ended up moving it here after Trolls Just Wanna Have Fun because it fits that part of TWT when he nervously and awkwardly tries to confess his feelings to her, ends up not being able to spit it out, and gets friendzoned. Oof. Poor guy. Look at him. Look at that thing he does after the high five fiasco, hand on his chest like he’s literally been shot in the heart. Ouch. You’re killin’ him, Poppy, you’re killin’ him.

Perfect For Me (from Trolls World Tour): I...do not think I need to explain this.

My Life Would Suck Without You (by Kelly Clarkson): It’s pretty much about a dysfunctional pair that split after a particularly bad fight, but then missed each other really bad and ended up getting back together with new appreciation for each other, even the parts of each other that make them clash at times. And this TOTALLY fits Poppy and Branch near the end of TWT. The way the climax ends up with them patching things up having learned to appreciate differences and all after the fight and everything they had earlier. MMPH, I love this. It fits so well. I love it.

I’m Yours (by Jason Mraz): Not gonna lie, first time I heard this song, all I could think of was Branch confessing his love to Poppy. I don’t know why, I just did. So because this seems to have officially happened in TWT, I positioned it here. Why did I specifically use a ukulele playalong video? I dunno I just liked the vibes of the bright colors in it better than the lyric videos that were all black and gray and I thought it fit somehow ‘cause it’s Trolls I dunno man why am I calling more attention to these things I need to stop kgjfslg

I Can Do Better Than That (from The Last Five Years): Bunkerbranch posted about when they listen to Anna Kendrick’s rendition of this they keep picturing Poppy singing it. I listened to it and YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!!!!!

Beautiful Crazy (by Luke Combs): I found this AMV of it and just… Bro. Just freaking listen to the words. Watch the AMV. It’s amazing. I could not in good conscience leave it out.

11/17/21 edit: Together Now (from Trolls: Holiday In Harmony): Obviously I had to fit this into the playlist after seeing Holiday In Harmony. Not sure if that special took place at exactly at this point in the timeline I've made here, but it seems pretty early in their relationship anyway, and I feel like the lyrics work for them having just gotten together too, so I put it here.

You (by Hollywood Ending): Recommended by Trollitup/Rmg91. I didn’t totally see it for awhile but...somehow after TWT, I just suddenly got it. I can totally picture a TWT AMV of it, and yes, it 100% has the TWT broppy vibes.

Walking On Sunshine (by Katrina and the Waves): This song is SUCH a Poppy song and I can totally see her singing this and just dancing and rocking out to it one morning when she and Branch have just gotten together and she’s still super giddy over it.

Classic (by MKTO): Discovered this one when George Beard made a kinda-sorta-AMV of this once with the same two Trolls clips (well, one TWT clip and one Trolls Holiday clip) looping over and over, which has been taken down now. And honestly, yeah, I do get the Trolls vibes from it, and I can see it for Branch wanting to impress Poppy and, like, be a good boyfriend and all, once they’re together.

Never Ever Getting Rid Of Me (from Waitress): I can totally imagine Poppy singing this to Branch when he’s in a pit of self-doubt not thinking he’s good enough for her. It’s just SO her.

Teenage Dream (cover by Boyce Avenue): Discovered this from a no-longer-available post somecreature made saying it’s the ultimate broppy theme song. Honestly, yeah, the broppy vibes are pretty strong and it’s so, SO sweet. And the line “I wasn’t happy until you became my queen”???? BROOOOOOO. I think. I think that one speaks for itself.

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better (from Annie Get Your Gun): Again, as sweet as Poppy and Branch’s relationship can be, they bicker like a cross between siblings and an old married couple and drive each other nuts. I don’t that’s ever totally going to stop, and I wouldn’t want it to. This playlist wouldn’t be complete without more than one song of that, and Writerofberk made an excellent AMV of this song with the two of them, so I threw it in here.

Rather Be (by Clean Bandit): I can see this for some Poppy-and-Branch-being-happy-together fun fluffy sweetness. Perhaps especially since they and the Snack Pack sang this for some karaoke at a sleepover in a Dawnbuneary fanfic.

Can I Have This Dance (from High School Musical 3): Look, I’m an aroace and don’t know much about romance, but this song is peak romance to me. I don’t know, something about the way they phrase how they feel about each other and the helping each other through the ups and downs of life and stuff and having it all connected to dancing together--I don’t know, it’s just SO sweet and wonderful and gives me ALL the feels, and I can absolutely see this being Poppy and Branch.

Mirrors (by Justin Timberlake): I always, always imagine Branch singing this about/to Poppy when I listen to it. It’s beautiful on so many levels and it works with their development and growth and it’s by Justin Timberlake to boot and it was even in a chapter of a great fanfic by WaruiOkami and I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

Stay Stay Stay (by Taylor Swift): I can 100% see this from Poppy’s POV and it’s fun and super sweet and just works so well for them. With her talking about how sweet and loyal and dependable Branch is and how much he really knows her and cares about her and all.

ME! (by Taylor Swift): It’s a very fun, colorful song, especially with a music video like THAT. Speedforcespector made a mini-AMV of it because it just gave them so many Trolls vibes, and yeah, I can see that. And like, from the first time I listened to this song, the idea that came to my mind was of a couple of people who both have very strong personalities and tend to clash, but at the end of the day they love each other all the more for that. And, yeah, that can fit Poppy and Branch pretty well.

Paper Rings (by Taylor Swift): Super fun, super sweet, can totally see it for when they’ve been together for awhile and are at the point where they actually could get married. Especially love the bridge. “I want to drive away with you / I want your complications too / I want your dreary Mondays” I can’t not love imagining those lines between the two of them.

7/14/22 edit: Get This Right (deleted song from Frozen 2): I can't remember who, and I can't remember where so I can link it, but I remembered somecreature had told me this song totally had broppy vibes. I finally got around to listening to it (no idea why the frick it took me this long slkdjlkfg) and honestly? Yeah! That's exactly Branch's kind of awkwardness and insecurity when it comes to this entire relationship. There are lines that fit entirely too well. ("Gorgeous, funny, brave and brilliant / Beautiful, won't give up on anyone" I'm sorry you can't tell me these exact words aren't Branch describing Poppy skljglkfsjg). And tbh it definitely highlights how much these two are honestly a couple of goofballs. Still, I wasn't totally sure about it for awhile, and then I heard Anna go ahead and shout out the "will you marry me" herself, and then it was like. .....OKAY YEAH Y'KNOW WHAT THIS IS TOTALLY GOING ON HERE. Part of me is still a little on the fence for some reason, I might take it off later, I might put it back again, I dunno. For now it's on there.

For The Dancing And The Dreaming (as sung by Stoick and Valka in How to Train Your Dragon 2): Awhile ago I rewatched this clip, and I could totally see Branch in Stoick’s place (he even mentions poetry! And protecting her from all harm!!) and Poppy in Valka’s place...and also Cloud Guy in Gobber’s place with the interruption momentarily killing the mood (causing Stoick/Branch to scowl at him for a bit) and the overenthusiastically dancing along and holding the last note way too long at the end. RobotMonkeyGirl91 even made a drabble where Branch actually uses this song to propose to Poppy and it was BEAUTIFUL and I loved it. So yeah, I decided to throw this in at the point in this narrative where I could see a proposal as being.

Surprise Yourself (from The Fresh Beat Band): FYI, this was played at a wedding in an episode of The Fresh Beat Band. With Poppy and Branch actually helping push each other and helping each other be better in different ways, plus how fun and upbeat of a song it is so it easily fits into the Trolls franchise, I imagine by this point it would totally work as a wedding song for them too!

Lover (by Taylor Swift): I can see this for some of the really soft and tender moments between these two when they’ve been together for awhile already. Like, say, the 2-years-later epilogue of The Woes and Antics of Living Together, by RobotMonkeyGirl91, and some of the things written by Lollytea and/or Ask-artsy-oncie for married broppy. It gives me that kind of vibe.

#broppy #dreamworks trolls #trolls the beat goes on #ttbgo #trolls world tour #twt #twt spoilers #trolls world tour spoilers #dreamwork trolls spoilers #trolls spoilers #major trolls spoilers #major twt spoilers #trolls fandom #favorite

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uchihasakurawrites · 4 years

Text

Of T-Shirts and Monsoons

Rating: T for language

Summary: In which Sasuke proposes to a fuming Sakura in a cave in the middle of Rain.

Word Count: 2,243

A/N: Hello everyone! It’s been about seven years since I last wrote for this fandom (or wrote creatively at all, really). This random idea popped into my head while I was watching old SasuSaku AMVs, and I just thought I’d go for it! I have a few ideas for longer SasuSaku fics, so I wanted to test out a few drabbles/oneshots to shake off some of the rust since it’s been a while. Let me know what you think! Also feel free to send prompts my way. This was done in about an hour, but I hope you enjoy~

Cross posted on Ao3 and Fanfiction.net

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Sakura was fuming as she stomped into the cave, ignoring Sasuke’s wary gaze as she slung her pack to the ground with enough force to create fine cracks in the stone beneath it. She stripped out of her blood-and-rain soaked jonin vest and tossed it equally as haphazardly to the side, not sparing a glance to where it landed with a decided thwack. Sasuke rubbed the bridge of his nose and made quick work of using a small katon to set a small fire in the back of the cave. Typically, it wouldn’t be worth the risk of attracting unwanted attention, but he figured the benefits of not having to deal with an angry and cold Sakura were decidedly worth dispatching any rogues that were foolish enough to have followed them. Not that he and Sakura had left any of the nin in a state to pursue them, he thought with a smirk.

“Stupid Rain with it’s stupid freak monsoons and stupid rogue nin who ambush anything that fucking moves through their ‘territory.’ Sure, take out the fact that you’re bored in a time of peace out on civilians who can’t fight back.”

The clang of Sakura’s weapons pouch against the cave wall punctuated her impatience with the recent trend of rogue bands staking claim to smaller civilian towns and merchant paths. They’d managed to defend three different merchant caravans and liberated two villages from rogues in the past month and a half alone. She didn’t mind helping the civilians, of course, but why couldn’t these rogues get it through their skulls that this was peace time? She just wanted a little peace, dammit!

Sasuke crouched down next to his own pack to dig out a spare change of clothes. After just over a year and a half of traveling together, he was more than used to Sakura’s flinty temper and knew she would tire herself out soon. Best to keep out of it.

Sakura dropped to the ground to hunt for a clean shirt of her own. She pulled out shirt after shirt, noting with growing frustration that each was either covered in blood, lacerations, or sand. If she ever saw another grain of sand, it would be far too soon. A growl tore from the back of her throat.

“Stupid Suna with it’s stupid sand. Why the hell can’t some other village have poison experts so I don’t have to trudge through the damned desert just to collaborate on our new Inter-Village Poison Center? Who the fuck even came up with that idea?” Sasuke sent her a pointed look, knowing full well that she had fully supported Shizune’s initiative, which Sakura missed. “And why the hell can’t an epidemic break out in, I don’t know, the Land of Tea and not the middle of fucking Rain? At least then-”

Sakura nearly choked when she glanced up just in time to see Sasuke pull off his rain-soaked shirt and wring it out. No matter how long they spent together or how intimate they became, Sakura’s mind never failed to short-circuit at the sight of Sasuke’s bare skin. It didn’t matter where or how much - one glimpse, and her mind checked out. Although he would never express it outright, Sakura surmised that Sasuke knew exactly what his body did to her and used it to his advantage - say, when he was trying to distract her from a particularly troublesome conversation or train of thought.

It worked more often then she cared to admit.

Her sharp eyes caught the way Sasuke shifted his weight away from his left side as he moved to pull on a fresh shirt - crisp black with the Uchiha fan emblazoned proudly on the back. After a brief moment admiring his figure before it was hidden by the fabric, Sakura frowned at the inflammation beginning to flare up around his ankle. She cleared her throat and motioned for him to come over, tirade momentarily forgotten. Kami knows Sasuke would never admit that he had lost his footing for a moment during their earlier confrontation, unused to fighting on branches that had been rotted through from near-constant rain, and actually ask her to heal him. He’d become much more willing to allow her to heal him after a particularly difficult fight, but it was rare for him to outright ask for her assistance. She usually offered before he needed to.

She met his withering look with a hard gaze of her own.

“You,” she jabbed a finger in his direction, and he raised a brow, “stop being a stubborn ass and sit.” She motioned to the spot next to her with a touch more force than necessary. Sasuke didn’t budge and continued to ruffle through his pack. Sakura’s eyes narrowed.

“Sasuke-kun, --”

With a sigh, Sasuke fixed Sakura with a stern look and tossed her one of his extra shirts before coming to sit next to her. Laying a hand on Sakura’s shoulder, he formed the tiger seal to send a small katon over her skin to dry off the remnants of water that clung to her skin and hair. His jaw tightened at the blue-purple tint her lips had begun to take in the chill. A smile worked its way onto Sakura’s face when she realized the telltale signs of concern in his posture as he hovered near her.

“Change, Sakura. Then heal.”

His gaze dropped pointedly below her chin, and Sakura’s cheeks heated as she followed his eyes and realized her state of undress. Over the course of her rant, she had stripped down to her chest bindings and fitted shorts. Although Sasuke had seen her in far less, embarrassment washed through her as she scrambled to unfold the shirt he had tossed to her.

Her demeanor shifted when she went to slip it on. Sasuke glanced over when he felt Sakura stiffen at his side, brow furrowing when he noted the pensive look on Sakura’s features. Her eyes, previously a battle-worn seafoam green, took on a deeper, more thoughtful jade. She snagged her lip between her teeth, and Sasuke glanced down to see her fingers gently tracing the outline of the Uchiha fan printed on the back of the shirt.

Spine going rigid, Sasuke wracked his brain for the other instances Sakura had borrowed clothes from his pack - a shirt here, a poncho there. Her hands-on approach to fighting combined with the blood, bile, and poison that came with being a medic meant that her clothes tended to ruin more quickly than his. The sight of her rummaging through his pack for a spare change of clothes was a familiar one. What he hadn’t noticed, however, was that Sakura was always careful to select one of the few articles of clothing he carried that didn’t carry his clan’s symbol. He kept a few basics on hand just in case they needed to be incognito through a town that was still hostile towards the Leaf.

His mind jumped to the easiest explanation he could think of for her hesitation: she was ashamed. Not that he blamed her for wanting to distance herself from his clan’s marred legacy, but the very thought lit a fire in his veins that had him pulling away from her. Anger and bitterness combined with a pang of disappointment that he didn’t particularly want to address.

Sakura started, broken from her thoughts as she took note of Sasuke’s sudden change in demeanor. It was a testament to the time she had spent becoming attuned to the small giveaways of Sasuke’s emotions that she pieced two-and-two together. His flinty eyes shifted between the shirt in her hands and the cave wall as he refused to look at her.

With another quiet smile, Sakura carefully folded the shirt, laid it on top of her pack, and moved to stand next to Sasuke. She could feel some of the tension leave him when her shoulder brushed his, but his eyes remained stony.

“Sasuke-kun.” She waited for a moment before his gaze flickered down to hers, hoping that the softness in her own gaze would convey whatever she wasn’t able to in words. She placed a gentle hand on his bicep, hoping to ground him as she mulled over her words. Talking about the Uchiha Clan with Sasuke took a delicate touch, a touch she had learned after a short but explosive period of trial and error.

“Sasuke-kun, your clan’s history has nothing to do with why I won’t wear the Uchiha fan. Your legacy is a part of you, and I love you. All of you. Even the darkest parts that you don’t think love can reach. You know I’m damn persistent, and if I can wait this long to get you to accept that I love you, then I can wait as long as you need me to before you accept that that includes everything about you.”

She took a deep breath, averting her own eyes now that he had fixed her with an unreadable gaze of his own.

“Even if you won’t outright admit it, I know that your clan is precious to you. I’ve watched you carve the clan’s symbol into your kunai every time you replenish your stock. And I’m not an Uchiha, Sasuke-kun, so wearing the clan’s symbol - even casually like this, just feels like I’m not giving it the honor it deserves.”

Silence. Sakura was used to silence from Sasuke, and had learned how to interpret his different silences. There were the more distraught, brooding ones that required a bright, calming touch and the occasional pouty silence after she had smiled just a touch too openly at a flirty cashier; the explosive silences that she usually drew him into a spar during to release some energy and the frustrated, yet concerned silence when he thought she was too reckless in a battle.

This seemed to be one of his thoughtful silences - one that she didn’t feel she should interrupt. Noting with no small amount of satisfaction that most of the rigidity had melted away from his body, Sakura moved to turn back towards her pack.

“As for clothes, I’m sure I can put together something for tonight, so don’t worry about me. I’m pretty sure there’s a little merchant town not to far from here that we can stop by tomorrow to stock up on some new -”

Sakura swallowed her words as a cool hand enclosed her wrist and tugged her back. Her eyes widened when she found herself pressed to Sasuke’s chest with his arms wrapped tightly around her back. While Sakura was no stranger to small acts of affection from Sasuke - a forehead poke here and a sleepy arm around her waist there - it was incredibly rare for him to initiate a hug. In fact, she was pretty sure she could count the number of times he had hugged her on one hand.

“Sa-Sasuke-kun?”

He huffed into her hair, something between a laugh or a sigh - she couldn’t quite tell. So she simply decided to remain quiet, tracing her fingertips along his back as she waited for him to voice his thoughts. She swore Sasuke Uchiha was going to be the death of her when he spoke again and she quite literally choked.

“Marry me.”

The words were so quiet that Sakura nearly convinced herself that they were a figment of her imagination. A statement, not a request. She pulled back slightly, wide eyes meeting Sasuke’s steady gaze.

“W-What?”

Sakura winced as soon as she asked the question, knowing Sasuke loathed repeating himself (though it was a well-kept secret that Sasuke didn’t mind repeating himself for her and her alone). But surely he couldn’t hold it against her given the situation. He simply sighed at her request, arching a brow that said he knew that she had clearly heard him yet repeated himself anyways.

“Marry me and wear the damn shirt, Sakura.”

When she continued to stand in front of him with nothing more than a shocked stare, Sasuke huffed again and half-rolled his eyes in a rare display of amusement. Tonight seemed to be a night for rare occasions, it seemed.

Sidestepping Sakura’s frozen form, he retrieved his spare shirt from its place on Sakura’s pack, unfolded it, and gently worked it over her head. A warm glow replaced the earlier fire in his veins as Sakura came to and allowed her arms to be guided into the shirt’s sleeves.

Sasuke spent a minute admiring the fan on her back, pride burning in his chest at the thought of Sakura as the Uchiha matriarch. A small part of him idly wondered if his mother would be pleased to see her position passed on to Sakura. He liked to think she would.

Sakura turned towards him, feeling a tug in her chest at the vulnerability in Sasuke’s expression. She wasn’t sure what kind of proposal she had expected from Sasuke - hell, she hadn’t even been certain she should expect one at all. At least, not for a while. She certainly hadn’t imagined one of the happiest moments of her life to come in the middle of a freezing cave in Rain after treating a minor epidemic, getting ambushed by a plucky squad of overambitious rogue nin, and nearly drowning in a monsoon.

So yes, she hadn’t expected a proposal to come in this type of situation, but she had known her answer to this question for nearly a decade.

“Yes.”

#sasusaku #sasusaku fanfiction #sasusaku proposal #sakura haruno #sasuke uchiha #naruto fanfiction #sasusaku blank period #blank period fanfiction #sasusaku fanfic

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lethal-liability · 3 years

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Ari's ranking of Imagine Dragon's discography

Here's something literally no one asked for! Anyway rankings are out of 10 and I'll have album stats at the end. Also any songs in the EPs that would later appear on Night Visions are just going under the album. I know that'll screw with their averages but I don't really care.

Imagine Dragons (2009) average rating: 7.2

I Need A Minute: 6/10 A nice fun song I used to like dancing around my room to. The lyrics are completely incomprehensible but I guess that's the point, I like it. The vocals are just a little bit too low

Uptight: 7/10 Funky beat, I really like the synth. I didn't listen to this one much as a kid but I really missed out this song kinda fucks.

Cover Up: 7/10 Some more funky bass and synth, getting into some of the more poetic lyrics that I like from them. Pretty solid.

Curse: 9/10 This 👏 was 👏 my 👏 favorite 👏 song 👏 back 👏 in 👏 the 👏 day 👏 Here's where my bias comes in cause this one gets an extra point purely for that. The lyrics don't really make sense but I would lay up at night coming up with complex amvs in my head to go along with it :) Still holds up to 11 y/o Ari's love.

Drive: 7/10 Again, another one I never really listened to as a kid. It's a pretty good, relaxing song, really different from the rest of the upbeat songs on the EP.

Hell and Silence (2010) average rating: 6.75

All Eyes: 6/10 Another funky song, nothing really special but pretty solid

I Don't Mind: 4/10 Honestly not a fan of this one, the synth is kinda annoying and the lyrics are kinda irritating

Selene: 8/10 Idk what to say I just like this song :)

Emma: 9/10 Honestly pretty much the same as Selene but with a chiller vibe, I like the raspier vocals. Extra points for that nearly yelled bridge HELL AND SILENCE I CAN FIGHT IT

It's Time (2011) average rating: 4.2

Tokyo: 3/10 Look I'm a sucker for funky synth OKAY. I don't speak Japanese but I don't have to to tell you Dan's pronunciation is really cringy. Deducting points for the kinda fetishy lyrics too.

The River: 8/10 This is one of those songs I like to listen to when I'm sad to make myself sadder so I can cry my feelings out. It's got a pretty, soothing melody and nice lyrics.

Leave Me: 2/10 This song used to make the feminism leave my body as a kid but I just can't bring myself to really do that anymore lmao. Come on Dan, that's two kinda gross songs on one album :/

Pantomime: 2/10 I. Really did not like this song as a kid. Like I had a playlist on youtube of all their music except this song. I was right.

Look How Far We've Come: 6/10 Hearing this song for the first time in like nine years was an experience. Not a bad song but dome of the lines are a little clunky.

Night Visions (2012) average rating: 7.33

Radioactive: 9/10 Ya know this is the song that got them famous and for good reason. It's a good song and great amv fodder.

Tiptoe: 8/10 It's gonna be harder to write about these songs going forward because these are ones I listen to regularly so I know I like them but yeah. Good song.

It's Time: 10/10 Radioactive may have been what got them famous but this was their first real big single and it was my favorite. I'm a big sucker for a mandolin and I think this is where they started to lean more into the folky sound than the synthy sound.

Demons: 9/10 Another one of their songs I used to listen to to cry and I don't listen to it much anymore because of that but it's still a good, poetic song that hits me in the feels.

On Top Of The World: 6/10 My mom had this as her alarm when I was in middle school so I couldn't listen to it for a long time. The lyrics are a little heavy handed sometimes and a little incomprehensible at others but it's an alright little tune.

Hear Me: 8/10 This album is a little confusing because they include some of their older synth heavy songs alongside their newer folky songs, but I won't complain with this song. Frustrated 13 year old me loved this song because I, too, felt that no one ever heard me when I talked. Ya know, 13 y/o things.

Amsterdam: 7/10 I have no idea what this song is about but it's pretty good.

Every Night: 5/10 This was their first and last try at what I call a "first dance bait" song. Ya know like Perfect by Ed Sheeren or Marry Me by Train? It's alright, just really heavy handed.

Bleeding Out: 10/10 Oh emo eleven year old me ate this edgy shit up. Is it a grimdark? Yes. But that's a plus for this song. This song makes me wanna scream every time I listen to it I BARE MY SKIN AND I COUNT MY SINS AND I CLOSE MY EYES AND I TAKE IT IN

Underdog: 6/10 Another cute song, not much to say about this one, it's alright.

Nothing Left To Say: 9/10 ANOTHER another song I cry to, this one still hits home for me. It's pretty and soothing but the lyrics are still heart wrenching. The instrumental at the end is nice and I like to fall asleep to it.

Rocks: 8/10 A nice upbeat song that is a little repetative but it's only about a minute long so it doesn't over stay its welcome.

Working Man: 5/10 This song isn't on spotify so I don't get to hear it often and I actually hadn't heard it in a while when I listened to it to do this. It's kinda trying to be a 9 to 5 type song but it doesn't really do it for me.

Fallen: 8/10 Another song I hadn't heard in a while since it's not on spotify but I'm more of a fan of this one. Another amv bait song to me but one with more of a triumphant vibe to it. I really like the vocals in the chorus.

Cha-Ching ('Til We Grow Older): 8/10 The hook of this song, cha-ching x3, has a big potential to become really annoying like some of their later songs (cough cough, Thunder) but they actually somhow make it work. This song hits me a lot harder now than it did as a kid cause god. Yeah. They're so right. We are all living until we grow older.

Smoke + Mirrors (2015) average rating: 9.06

Shots: 9/10 Hell YES my favorite album finally let's get into this shit. Anyway songs that make me wanna lay in a field of wildflowers. Well the music, the lyrics are pretty depressing. But that's what makes a great song ya know.

Gold: 9/10 Songs about the rich losing their humanity? Hell yeah. I fucking love the percussion and the synth in this one too.

Smoke and Mirrors: 10/10 The under appreciated masterpiece of this album in my humble opinion. Everyone always talks about Dream as the best song on the album but I really think it's this one. That yelled OPEN UP MY EYES gets me all the time I just really really love this song.

I'm So Sorry: 9/10 Real sexy bassline on this one. I can't tell what the fuck this song is about but I don't care because it goes pretty hard.

I Bet My Life: 8/10 I like the gospel vibes, especially the backing vocals, some of them out-sing Dan a little bit. This one also hits a little harder now that I'm grown up a bit.

Polaroid: 8/10 Another one with cool percussion, some of the lyrics are lost on me but I get the overall vibe of it.

Friction: 10/10 I have no clue what that string is at the beginning of the song but man does it fuck hard. God actually everything in this song goes pretty hard, I'm especially a fan of the vocals.

It Comes Back To You: 8/10 Nice chill song, I feel like this is one that's gonna hit in a few years. Not much to say about it tbh besides I like it.

Dream: 10/10 This song really does live up to the hype even if I like other songs better. It's really poetic and well composed. You really just have to listen to it to get it tbh.

Trouble: 8/10 The piano at the beginning is a little grating but it gets better. Again not much to say about this one, it's solid, just not one of my favorites.

Summer: 8/10 Another sexy baseline, another set of incomprehensible lyrics. I like it.

Hopeless Opus: 10/10 This one's a little weird but it was my favorite for a while. I like weird. Idk if anyone would agree with me but this one was kind of a self fulfilling prophecy, this really was a hopeless opus since, in my opinion, they've yet to make album as good as this one. Also. Guitar solo.

The Fall: 10/10 I like to put this song on when we get the first cold snap of the year after summer :) It's just really chill and I like the vibes and the vocals

Thief: 10/10 AAAAHHHHHH SONGS THAT MAKE ME WANNA RUN THROUGH THE WOODS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

The Unknown: 9/10 Cool percussion, I like the intermediate piano, it's a nice touch.

Second Chances: 9/10 I like the strings and the vocals. Another nice chill song.

Release: 9/10 I like that this one is completely acoustic, it's a nice send off for a great album, if a little depressing.

Evolve (2017) average rating: 5.5

I Don't Know Why: 10/10 I have wanted to choreograph something to this song for the fucking longest time oh my god. I really love the vocals and the synth in this one.

Whatever It Takes: 5/10 This one's alright. It's not great but it's definitely not the worst. Perfectly average pop song.

Believer: 10/10 I am a little bit biased with this one because I use it for my OCs a lot but like. It's a really good song. And I don't watch TV so I haven't gotten it ruined for me by commercials.

Walking The Wire: 6/10 I hadn't listened to this song in a while and it's really not as bad as I remember. I guess you can really tell that he was having marital issues when they made this album and that didn't really connect with me back then. But I'm kinda into a little bit of it now.

Rise Up: 4/10 Another really average, inspirational pop song. I like the raspiness of Dan's voice in most songs but it sounds so over processed in this song I can't stand it.

I'll Make It Up To You: 3/10 Wow okay never mind the marital issues vibe is coming back real heavily in this one. Idk it's just such Straight People vibes, I don't like it :/

Yesterday: 1/10 I associate this song with someone I don't talk to anymore and really wanna forget so it's kinda running at a deficit already. But. Um. It's not a good song otherwise. It's another weird song but something about this one just doesn't work.

Mouth Of The River: 7/10 I think I liked this one when it came out, idk why I stopped listening to it. It's pretty good. Not great. But I like the river imagery. Well. I like river imagery in general.

Thunder: 2/10 hhhhhhhhhhhh why did they think this was a good idea. Probably their most notorious song, I know a lot of people cite it when they say Imagine Dragons makes shitty music. I just think it's tragic that this is one of the ones that got super popular for some reason. However as someone who teaches children's dance classes, however annoying you think this version is, you haven't heard anything until you have to listen to the KidzBop version twice a week for a year. Not a complete 0 because I do like some of the vocals that aren't. That Part.

Start Over: 6/10 Another one I hadn't heard in a while, but it's pretty groovy. Not as heavy handed as some of the other songs, and that flute in the chorus is pretty cool.

Dancing In The Dark: 8/10 I like this one a lot, the processing on the vocals is a little wonky but I like the vibes.

Next To Me: 4/10 Yeah this was the "please don't divorce me" song. It's. alright. Really heavy handed, they probably should've waited to release this one but you know.

Origins (2018) average rating: 4.8

Natural: 10/10 Another one I'm biased for because I associate it with a beloved OC. But It's still a good song. I like it.

Boomerang: 5/10 Another song that just has an awkward hook with awkward delivery.

Machine: 9/10 I like this song a lot more now that I know the band is really outspoken about their experiences with mormanism and escaping it. But the irony of a song with a nonconformist message from a pop band is not lost on me.

Cool Out: 5/10 Idk I don't have much to say about this one. It's alright.

Bad Liar: 4/10 Oh boy more divorced dad energy. Hhhhhh I'm getting burnt out on this. For the record I have no problem with people going through things like this, I'm just not into these vibes in my music, especially when they're super desperate like this.

West Coast: 3/10 East coast supremacy. Also why are you trying to be Mumford and Sons.

Zero: 4/10 You know, the Ralph Breaks the internet song? God. That sure was a movie. The song is better, but not by much. It is fun and bouncy but I don't like listening to it too often.

Bullet In A Gun: 5/10 I used to really like this song but now I just associate it with an embarrassing character I used to stan so :/ I do still like the lyrics even if I don't listen to it anymore.

Digital: 3/10 I can't tell if this song is pro or anti technology??? And the electronic melody is annoying.

Only: 4/10 Hhhhhh I'm so tired. I don't like this one.

Stuck: 2/10 idk man. bad.

Love: 3/10 Really trying hard to be the Beatles here. :/ That's really not a compliment.

Birds: 5/10 This one's kinda nice, a little more original but like. I'm so burned out on this theme. hhhhhhhh

Burn Out: 10/10 Speaking of burn out. lmao, no I actually really like this one. I just recently listened to it kinda intently for the first time and I just. Wow. The second verse really gets to me. I feel like this song has a lot of the poeticness I liked from Smoke + Mirrors.

Real Life: 0/10 Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh obligatory "PHONES BAD" song from the folk pop band. At least when Bastille does it they don't literally say "turn your phone off!" in the song. I'm so tired. I'm gonna take a nap before I listen to the next album.

Mercury - Act 1 (2021) average rating: 7.46

Okay I'm still tired but let's do this. Also I've only heard this album like three times so far so this ranking is most definitely gonna change as I listen to it more.

My Life: 9/10 Holy shit this song is fucking heart wrenching and I first listened to it at like just the perfect time for me to ball like a baby listening to it. Literally my only gripe is I wish the tempo would've picked up a little bit earlier.

Lonely: 9/10 This song is equally fucking depressing but it's upbeat and I eat that shit up. The vocals are a little weird sometimes but I really like the pre-chorus a lot.

Wrecked: 8/10 Okay so this album is just gonna be gut punch after gut punch huh? Look, I was really going through some shit when they dropped this album so I like really connected with a lot of it. But yeah I like this song.

Monday: 4/10 Alright. Not a fan of this one. The metaphor is kinda cute I guess, even if it implies that like literally everyone else things your sweetheart is fucking insufferable. Actually. Who tf thinks monday is the best day of the week? Like what kind of person? But, uh, musically, it's kinda annoying.

#1: 7/10 Self-care babie!!!!!!! Okay but this is a nice song. Yes we all need to learn self love it's a fucking journey babe.

Easy Come Easy Go: 9/10 I really like this one, it might be my favorite on the album. My only gripe is the bridge/3rd verse/whatever it's called is a little bit clunky

Giants: 8/10 god DAMN those vocals. This is another kinda weird song but I'm into this one like I am with Hopeless Opus.

It's Okay: 7/10 Honestly I'm kinda tired of hearing "it's okay to be not okay" Like yeah I've been depressed for most of my life now I think I got that at this point. But I am a fan of "I don't want this body, I don't want this voice, I don't wanna be here but I guess I have no choice." Like damn even my gender crisis? Y'all are really just hitting all my nails from the past year right on the head huh?

Dull Knives: 9/10 OKAY ROCK RIFF I HEAR YOU, I just wish it would've lasted through the song instead of going slow again during the second chorus. But yeah, songs that make me wanna scream in the woods in the middle of the night.

Follow You: 8/10 ME AND WHO???????

Cutthroat: 9/10 HELLO AMV BAIT I MISSED YOU I wish it was longer. Also, love Dan's screamo debut I wish he'd just fucking scream his throat raw more often.

No Time For Toxic People: 4/10 okay I think we've established that I'm not a fan of completely unsubtle songs so I don't think it should be a shock that I'm not a fan of this one. The music doesn't really save it either.

One Day: 6/10 M E A N D W H O ? ? ? Not as much of a fan of this one as Follow You though.

Additional Singles but only one's I've already heard because fuck you there are so many of these

Battle Cry: 6/10 I thought this one was from some soundtrack but idk. A transformers movie I think? I can't find anything on it. Anyway, okay song. I like the line stars are only visible in darkness. The rest of the song is kinda repetitive

Born To Be Yours: 8/10 I like this song a lot. I have no idea who Kygo is but I'm a fan of this beat. For the record, this is more something I would use for my first dance.

Destination: 6/10 Another song I haven't hear in a while. I enjoy the vocals from the other band members. But it is an itunes sessions song so it's a little messy, probably could have been better if they'd recorded it as a regular song.

I Was Me: 7/10 A nice sad acoustic song, not much to say, I like it

Levitate: 6/10 This one is from that Jennifer Lawrence Crisp Rat movie no one saw. It's okay. I like the sci-fi vibes.

Lost Cause: 4/10 This one is from the Frankenweenie soundtrack of all things. This is another grimdark edgy song, but it just doesn't have the staying power to me that Bleeding Out did.

Monster: 8/10 This song was my fucking jam as a kid and was the song that got me into Nightcore in middle school so you know it's important to me. Still a big fan of it.

Not Today: 7/10 I actually saw the movie this was from, Me Before You. I would say this is another first dance bait song but I think they were just trying to match the vibes of the movie. The song is better than the movie though. In case you were wondering.

Ready! Aim! Fire!: 7/10 continuing the trend of songs from soundtracks, apparently this song is from Iron Man 3? Seems kinda weird to put a song about rebellion and revolution in a movie about a billionaire 🤔🤔🤔. Anyway it has a more electronic, industrial sound than most of their stuff which i appreciate. Still have to deduct points for being from a marvel movie though oops.

Roots: 10/10 Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh I love this song. Another another biased one because I associate it with one of my OCs but like. It's a good song.

Sucker For Pain: 5/10 Ya know that song from the Suicide Squad soundtrack? The masochist anthem? It's alright, I mean Dan's part is probably the best, the rap is okay I guess, I'm not a huge rap fan so I don't really know what constitutes a good rap. I guess the appeal of this song was all the big names but it just gets tiresome that there's a new voice every 30 seconds. Really gimmicky but Lil Wayne's part is kinda funny so I'll give it that.

Warriors: 8/10 More amv bait, another one I could've sworn this was from some soundtrack but I can't find anything on it. Pretty solid song.

Who We Are: 6/10 This sing is from one of the Hunger Games Movies, I can't remember which one though. Anyway it's fucking incomprehensible but I like it.

Conclusion

Okay so in order from Highest to Lowest ranked the albums and EPs are

Smoke + Mirrors: 9.06

Mercury - Act 1: 7.46

Night Visions: 7.33

Self Titled: 7.2

Hell and Silence: 6.75

Evolve: 5.5

Origins: 4.8

It's Time: 4.2

See and this is completly objective because if you had asked me to rank my favorite albums I would've put Night Visions above Mercury 😠 I did have a good time going back and listening to a lot of old songs I hadn't heard in forever

anyway I'm tired and this post no one asked for is over 3k words so I am going to bed good fucking night

#long post #even with the read more hhhhhh #oh well #anyway #enjoy the most basic band that I like lmao #imagine dragons #ari screams into the void

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go-team-snakemouth · 4 years

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Super self indulgent Bug Fables YouTuber au (or what a random mishmash of characters’ channels would be)

Vi: literally does whatever she feels like. Hates clickbait so is very literal in naming and descriptions. Vlogs about missions (and complains when maki doesn't accept them as reports in the next vlog). Has a playlist of abandoned let's plays she started. The only completed game she's done was Mario 3d world with Leif and Kabbu (which was a feat in and of itself as Leif and Vi constantly sabotaged each other while Kabbu struggled with the course. Before anyone asks, Leif played as Princess Peach cause he likes the floating, Vi was Toad because he’s the fastest, and Kabbu switches back and forth between the brothers cause although he likes Luigi, he is slippery to control). Liable to disappear for long periods of time and her fans like to tease that you can find her on Leif's channel more

Leif: Let's plays and food challenges. The game recordings are pretty nice thanks to Vi but Leif consistently sounds like they're standing far away from the mic. Mostly chill but Leif gets. Very into voicing characters and the storylines. Also Very looooong livestream videos. Vi is a frequent guest (KabbuWatch is an injoke with the chat because Kabbu usually stops the stream if Leif has been going too long). Mostly plays older games but he does Minecraft for Tod.

Kabbu: Educational videos to encourage people to explore and learn more about the world! Also does some storytime and safety videos. Kabbu puts a lot of effort into them but also he does use clip art and the cheering sound effect unironically. He collaborates frequently with Neo and his channel! Has a small playlist where he reviews Bug Rangers things. (also has a single let's play upon request that was him playing a free mahjong app calmly and quietly for forty minutes)

Neo: Kabbu's channel but more advanced and in-depth topics. Also unironically uses the cheering sound effect. Usually just lecture style recordings of him talking with a whiteboard instead of edited videos. Unfortunately his most watched video was one where someone broke into his house while he and Kabbu were recording (Kabbu fought them off and then they continued discussing the effects of invasive plant life in the local area like they hadn't been interrupted)

Jaune: art Time-lapses babeyyyy. Vi helped her set up and helps edit her videos (vi puts more effort into Jaune's videos than her own shh). rarely posts but always a treat. Got a huge boost after she did some art for a Mothiva album.

Mothiva: Official channel with lots of live performances and music videos! She has... Influencer energy in her vlogs. Many clickbait. But honestly a lot of good vibes and a mostly good community?? She highlights fanworks and makes sure her stuff is accessible too. Despite some drama about properly crediting work and that she can be petty at times, she works hard on her image. Be sure to like and subscribe!

Zasp: Runs a Mothiva fan account that makes high quality amvs and such. Mothiva is aware of the account but doesn't know it's him and he fears when she finds out. Leif knows but does not care.

Kut: professional as hell cooking asmr videos. Does not consider then asmr. (Fry does not care and Crisbee prefers to bake rather than make.)

Crow: Hearthstone. Brings Leif in sometimes to discuss strategies.

Team Maki: Kina does story time vlogs and records Maki sword demonstrations. Upon her request, Maki made an account too. All he has done is upload videos of caterpillars he's found. He met and became friends with Yin over mutual bonding of caterpillars to Kina's distress. Yin has a channel now and also posts caterpillar videos to Kina’s further distress.

Tanjerin: strange tofu-chan-esque workout challenge channel on tiktok. No one is sure if ironic or not.

Gen and Ari: run the local explorer association’s youtube page! Running it is actually part of their job and they do it really well. Very snappy editing and shows off work done well. Accidentally turned Artis into a meme for a week (small playlist dedicated to when they catch other guild members recording themselves. Mothiva and vi are the most frequent offenders)

#hello I'm just going to sit over here and make extremely niche content for myself #marge voice: I just think they're neat!#roo rambles about bug fables #team snakemouth #they're the only ones I'm tagging there's way too many #I wasn't sure if they were still bugs or not until I got to Maki #/insert that picture of Vi I drew that says don't @me I'm vi bing

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antihero-writings · 4 years

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In the Temple of Dust

Fandom: The Legend of Zelda (Breath of the Wild)

Character Focus: Link

Summary: After Link completes all the shrines, even though he's stronger than he's ever been...he still isn't sure he can be the hero everyone expects him to be. So some old friends try to cheer him up. Or...maybe they're more than just friends.

Notes: I've been playing Breath of the Wild for the first time lately, so when Tale Foundry's prompt this week ended up being "In the City of Dust" that's immediately where my mind went to, haha! I had to get the BotW fic idea out of my system first. I've also wanted to write a BotW fic since starting, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity!

This was also a bit inspired by a couple youtube videos: Zeltik's video on the Forgotten Temple potentially being Skyloft, and the Deathly Loneliness Attacks amv.

Please note that I have a very limited knowledge of the Zelda series as a whole (and I have actually not reached this point in my game yet)...so please forgive me if there were any inaccuracies! I tried my best, and I hope it was cool!

I hope you enjoy it! If you do, please consider reblogging, and/or leaving a comment!!

In the Temple of Dust

The hero took a look behind him at the crumbling columns and moss covered stones, the tree breaking out of the wall, and the now destroyed guardians lying among the ruins like the rest, a great sigh of this place, the last things alive silenced.

This whole place felt like a memory, long buried. What once must have been a grand temple now home to skeletons and monsters…and sometimes creatures that were both

He wished he remembered.

He turned forward and made his way to the foot of the goddess, where three chests sat waiting.

As his steps sounded, he heard the faint notes of music. Something like an ocarina. He looked around for the lone player, but there was nothing, no ghosts nor memory. Just, imagination or hallucination.

Did he know this place somewhere, sometime? Now it was nothing more than forgotten; forgotten by more than him alone, enough that that was a part of its name.

The goddess smiled down upon him from her place on high, the statue here taller than any of the others he’d seen, like the people who once lived here were closer to her than anyone else.

He bowed his head to say an extra thanks for good measure.

As he knelt down before the chests, and reached out to open one, his throat held his heart.

This was it. This was the reward of more than a hundred shrines worth of work. The worth of the weight of the world. Surely this would be far more than an ordinary weapon or arrow. This would be the treasure of ages.

It clicked, and he raised the lid. Sitting in the belly of the treasure chest was a green tunic.

He paused a moment to look at it quizzically, before gently reaching in and pulling it out, observing the craftsmanship, the design…trying not to feel disappointed. He wouldn’t have thought the armor of ages would be so plain. But he shouldn’t judge it for looks alone. Surely it was very valuable.

He lay it across his leg and moved on to the next chest. This was a pair of pants to go with the tunic, and the final, a hat, something like a nightcap.

Before he let disappointment overtake him, he decided to put them on. Surely he’d feel something when he did—stronger maybe? They had to be special, important, powerful. They couldn’t be anything less.

But when he put them on, he didn’t feel any stronger, any braver, any better equipped for life’s trials.

He looked at his reflection in a rusty shield in a last ditch attempt to unearth some sort of memory from his subconscious, but only more memoryless mind remained.

The echo of a hero. That’s what he always saw. Echo of a voice laid to rest a hundred years ago. A simple green tunic, without any special abilities, wouldn’t change that.

His face twisted as he groaned, pulling his sword from his back, and swinging it angrily at the air before shoving it into the ground, the sword that seals the darkness merely a stake in the mud, a monument to a lost cause.

He thought this sword would prove his worth, to others as well as himself. When that didn’t work, he thought completing all the shrines would give him answers, make him feel like the hero they all said he was. And though he was stronger than ever, it seemed the emptiness was deeper than that.

He sat on the edge of the staircase.

“Aren’t heroes supposed to have some special powers or something?” he scoffed to the empty air, leaning back against the staircase. “Or at least a sidekick? A memory to their name?” a pause. “I’m sorry I just...” A whisper: “I don’t know if I can save Hyrule after all.”

“What are you talking about?” He started at the sound of a child’s laugh…though the voice sounded oddly distant.

As he reached for the sword he found the speaker was resting his arms casually on the sword. He was indeed a child, but one that looked…oddly similar to himself. Not to mention, well…half transparent.

“You’ve had many powers over the centuries. ” He almost jumped as he saw another version of himself.

“I could control the wind! ” Another raised his hand, this one a child too, even younger than the first.

“I could walk on walls, and between worlds.” If he wasn’t mistaken, it was the painting on the far wall that spoke—he was sure it hadn’t been there before.

“I could become whatever I wanted to be, through the power of putting on a mask, ” said one leaning against the shrine, hiding his face.

“I could control time, ” said the original speaker.

“But that doesn’t make you a hero.” A wolf with strange markings walked in silently, and spoke seemingly with his thoughts.

“Can’t…Can’t you take me back to her then?” the hero asked the ghost of the first speaker. “Before all this started?”

He’d seen more than one ghost before—they even gave power to him. He knew there were enough strange things about this world to be all too fazed by this sight. Besides, perhaps it was just a dream after all. Best enjoy it while it lasts, rather than waste time being freaked out.

The child smiled. “Time was my game. This... ” he backed up, lifting his hands to gesture around him. “This is yours. ”

“What is?”

“Why this world, of course! ”

“It’s so wide, ” the shadowed one spoke.

“You’re freer than you’ve ever been,” said the wolf

“I guess…”

“What’s wrong? ”

“I mean, sure I’ve defeated monsters, and helped some people, and succeeded at the trials but—! What’s that matter if I don’t remember anything? I just…I don’t feel like the hero they all want me to be.”

“Do you think any of us felt like a hero? All we did was go around defeating monsters. ”

“And go on adventures! ” The wind one said, and they chuckled in reply.

“Did you ever consider that maybe being a hero was about more than that?” the time one spoke. “About something in here?" He touched his heart, (though the hero couldn’t feel his fingers).

“And he doesn’t mean the spirit orbs!” the wind one called, and the others laughed.

“You already have it in you.” He held out the sword to him. “I promise.”

“...Does…” He took the sword, observing his reflection in the metal. “Does it have to be this lonely?

“What are you talking about?”

Another version walked out, one who perhaps looked more like himself than the rest, and for a brief moment this place was a city in the clouds. This one’s eyes flicked briefly to the sword before saying,

“You’ve never been alone.”

Link looked around at all the ghosts, seemingly of his past selves, who all smiled in turn, and finally noticed they were all wearing the green tunic. The same one he got from the chests, now placed on his own.

“Now go kick Ganon’s butt!” The wind one put a fist in the air.

More laughter, even a few cheers, and Link smiled, rubbing the back of his neck as he replied.

“Well…I suppose I can at least try.”

The world breathed, and he shut his eyes against the wind. When he opened them again, they were gone.

The scene was a strange one to be sure, and he’d never profess to understand it. He still wasn’t quite sure he’d ever feel like the hero they all expected him to be. But as Link picked up the Master Sword, and walked back out in the world, the words of ghosts and lost memory ringing real in his head, he felt, at the very least, more like a hero than he did yesterday.

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thatmomentwhen345 · 4 years

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Ok ummmmmmmmmmmmmm

These last two weeks have been very emotionally exhausting because of finals and what I’m about to tell you and I don’t really know how to sum it up so I guess you’re getting the same treatment as my Facebook (this is copied directly from the post on there and was posted on December 12th for context)

(This is the beginning of the Facebook post)

You guys, I don’t know what to do.

You might have gathered from my last few posts, but I’m not okay. And it will sound like such a stupid reason to the majority of you. But I made an irreversible mistake back in 2019 that has been haunting me for the past week. This is the first time that I can remember regretting a decision this much. Was it my stubbornness, my closed-mindedness? Was it my see-it-to-believe-it tendencies? Was it my inability to learn from my mistakes?

For those who don’t know, on November 13th of this year, the YouTube channel Unus Annus was deleted from the platform forever. After one year of daily videos by Markiplier and CrankGameplays, it was all gone. The point of the channel was to remind us to use our time that we have alive wisely, because Memento Mori. Remember that you must die.

The channel started on November 15th of 2019, and, well, I don’t know anything about their beginnings. I just saw their introduction video in my recommended or on trending or something and thought, “Is that Markiplier? Shouldn’t he be focusing on his own channel? Who’s this other guy?” and moved on without a second thought. I occasionally saw their videos in the trending tab but ignored them. I didn’t even know they had such a big following. I thought it looked stupid and didn’t think about it until, well, the end.

A few weeks ago, my brother was watching the final livestream that would mark the day that the channel was deleted for good. I was in the room with the livestream on the TV, watching their final hours tick by, still not thinking about the channel at all. Just like, oh hey that thing that people were talking about, wasn’t it like, a cult? I didn’t think about it at all until... the fifth of December? Was it really only a week ago? That feels like a lifetime away now...

The YouTuber FootofaFerret released a video called “Pretending Unus Annus Isn’t Over” and I saw it in my reccomended. https://youtu.be/8SMpCbI9U00 I was like, hey, yeah, I remember that thing that ended. I trusted Foafy’s judgement because of his previous videos about saying goodbye to Steven Universe. So I watched it and don’t really remember how it made me feel. I just remember him saying that the Unus Annus fandom was in mourning and I was like “aw poor guys I’ve seen on TikTok some people are sad about it”. Foafy also suggested that people who were wanting more of the Unus Annus vibe to watch Mark’s Markiplier Makes playlist. I watched some of them and, again, moved on.

The timeline is fuzzy from here on. I’m still processing it, honestly. I think I might have looked up the Unus Annus theme (Turncoat by Michael Rothery) first? Then I think I found some compilations or clips from their videos and was like wow this stuff is funny. And then I realized that there are archived versions of all of their videos (that’s against the rules of Unus Annus for those who don’t know) and... don’t hate me... went looking for them. I watched two in full. I won’t say which two but just know that the second one I specifically searched out because I knew that they did a lot of random stuff on there and that there was a chance that they would do it too. And they did! It was a funny video. I realized how much of a fun dynamic that Ethan and Mark had and looked for more compilations. The more I watched, the more I realized that I had made a terrible mistake in 2019.

I had missed out on so much. And I couldn’t take it back without breaking the rules. The concept of Unus Annus intrigued me so much, all of the people involved on the channel worked so well together, they were all so funny, but now I could never experience it in full because I was stubborn and, well, thinking about other things this year. I could have jumped in at any point between then and November 13th of this year but I chose not to.

Monday was a rollercoaster. 1st stage: denial. I was like well this doesn’t matter, I’m not even in the UA fandom, it’s gone and I don’t care. But it wasn’t that simple of course. I kept watching the Markiplier Makes videos and the UA compilations and became particularly interested in Ethan. He seemed very genuine and sensitive and his on-camera chemistry with Mark was really entertaining. 2nd stage: anger. I was furious at myself for missing out. Those two videos I watched in full were just small teasers for what the entire channel was like. I hated that I couldn’t take it back. And I hated that if I did, I would’ve broken the rules and gone against Mark and Ethan’s wishes, which I also wouldn’t be able to take back. I was horribly conflicted. 3rd stage: bargaining. I desperately went after any content surrounding Unus Annus that I could without breaking the rules, and was still considering watching the illegal archives. I haven’t watched any more of them in full, but sometimes I watch parts of them in incognito mode when it becomes too much to bear.

Tuesday was... Tuesday had to have been the longest day I’ve had the entire year. 4th stage: depression. It was slowly sinking in, the gravity of my mistake. I was starting to realize how much of a phenomenon Unus Annus was and that it was so unique and had such a cool message and that it made so many peoples’ 2020 just a little bit better, but not mine. I then did what I always do and found my comfort in music. I put on a bunch of good songs that I hadn’t heard in a while and just... sat there painstakingly doing my math homework. I couldn’t concentrate on anything the whole day. Monday, either. The song Goodbye to a World by Porter Robinson came on and I was like hey, this song perfectly suits the way I’m feeling right now. I wondered if anyone else had made connections between this song and Unus Annus and looked to see if there had been any AMVs (animated music videos) about the idea and the end of UA. Lo and behold, this popped up and I watched it! https://youtu.be/-q-oByQWdlM It hit all the right spots and I just started bawling. What had I done? Why had I missed this opportunity to improve my 2020, just a little bit? Why had I missed this opportunity to get to know Mark and Ethan better? Everyone who had watched all of their videos could feel peace after the end, like Mark and Ethan. But I couldn’t. I could only forever regret my mistake. MY mistake.

Terrible things have happened this year, but all of them have been out of my control. This, however, was my fault. And I can never take it back. And I am having a very hard time handling that.

I don't know how many times I cried on Tuesday. The next song to come on after I watched the AMV was As the World Caves In by Matt Maltese which of course broke me even further. This song also perfectly encapsulated my dilemma. Later I finished my tribute drawing of the channel logo and felt the smallest bit better. The rest of the day is a blur.

Wednesday was better, I guess? I thought I had made it to the 5th stage: acceptance. I was still very sad and mad at myself but I was starting to realize that there was nothing I could do. I subscribed to Ethan’s channel and started getting to know him better. He’s so sweet and talented ☺️

But no, acceptance is still far away. Thursday and Friday were barely better than Tuesday. I painted my nails black and white as a way of coping. I went to a livestream on Ethan’s Twitch and it was really fun! I started watching more of his streams and on one of them he mentioned that his Twitch chat mods had TikToks. So I wondered if he also had a TikTok, which he does! I looked to see if he posted one on the day UA ended. The answer was no but he did post one the day after asking if someone with the skills required could make a mashup of the song Cancer by My Chemical Romance and As the World Caves In. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJqgyrkR/ I was like wowie this guys got taste! And so I looked up if there was a mashup. As a matter of fact, there was one by Clem Turner on YouTube that came out only three days after the end of Unus Annus. https://youtu.be/a5RTVoreSAY I cannot express how much I love this, what it made me feel, and how much it hurt/helped. So I commented on Ethan’s TikTok about it and only a few hours later a new comment appeared on Clem’s video. Ethan had seen it! So I’m just gonna assume I was responsible for that... not only that but half of the comments on the mashup were about Unus Annus as you can see below. I realized how big of a following UA had and felt bad (because of course the people who had actually been with UA the whole way would be grieving a lot more than me), but also, comforted by the fact we could all connect over the loss of something important to them, if in a lot of different ways.

I’m far from getting over this. I’m far from being okay. I’ve never really felt like this before. I feel like a different person than I was last week. But I wanted to write all this down to let it out, process it a little bit, and maybe get some comfort from you guys. It’s completely understandable if you didn’t read this all the way through so...

TLDR: Memento Mori.

(This is the end of the Facebook post)

What I just described really shifted a lot of things in my head in a way I didn’t expect and in a very short amount of time. So, long story short, my Steven Universe hyperfixation ended very suddenly because of an outside factor and I probably won’t be posting a lot about it anymore. Hope you understand.

(art by me but I used the official UA logo as a reference)

#personal #long post #my art #please read if you are wondering about the change of atmosphere

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transsexualhamlet · 4 years

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me going off about yoichi again

What the fandom sees Yoichi as: basic ass katy perry song from 2014

What Yoichi actually is: Karma by ajr

I mean, I don’t really know how this applies to the fandom now, but it’s definitely anime fans and most yoichi fans. I just, I wanted to watch a yoichi amv because I was working on Yoichi stuff but like. I could not find a SINGLE one that was even voiced by a guy?

Now, in general, that’s not an issue, just because he’s a guy obviously doesn’t mean that he can’t have a girl song because that would be dumb to say so. But that’s just not something I see for anyone else. When I see Mika or Guren or Yu centric amvs and stuff, there’s plenty of edgy boi songs and shit. Sometimes Mika gets sexy bitch songs as a joke, but when they’re actually trying to be about that character, they’re all songs sung by dudes.

And I mean, I just...

Here.

Yeah so @autpunk-godling and I like to complain about kagami I know but right now I’d like to complain about the fandom

I don’t really think it’s any of you on tumblr to be honest but it’s just the shit I’ve seen from a few years ago

Yes we’ve established that Yoichi isn’t a smol baby bean boi so fucking stop, a lot of people just kinda ignore that but even without the manga, even without taking into consideration a single thing he said in chapter 51 onwards, the way that the fandom likes to see him is just... not right.

yeah I’m defending him bc i’m a yoichi kinnie go off ig

Jupiter’s response pretty much sums it up but basically it boils down to

1. fangirls who see yoichi, think “gay”, and think they know his entire character because of a stereotype, honestly this was probably something to do with kagami, I feel like I’ve heard around for a long time Yu was supposed to have a fucking harem like guren and they just basically never developed yoichi beyond ‘clearly is gay for yu as a plot point for like three episodes before forgetting about him after school arc’

2. The fans basically just thinking that he just ✨ tried harder ✨ not to have trauma and now he’s fucking fine, I was glad to see that wasn’t the case but people don’t understand how or why it happened, I’ll gladly explain

3. People forget so easily how terrible he had it. It’s not just “gay boy fucking mans up” it’s “gay boy is consistently told for eight years that he’s completely useless if he can’t kill things and every trait he has is terrible because it’s weak and associated with gayness so he internalizes that to an unhealthy degree”

I mean, I’ll try to explain how I see his character, but yeah.

Back to my “I don’t understand how people were suprised when Yoichi admitted he would have killed himself if Yu hadn’t showed up” point... do you remember what he was like back in school arc?

He was not ok. Bro, that guy was so soft and scared. He didn’t want to hurt or offend anyone. He didn’t want to get into any conflict and his first instinct was to submit to abuse or run away. He was desperate for validation and friendship, and he fell for things like bullying easily because he wouldn’t fight back and he wanted someone to like him so bad. He didn’t really want to be in the army, he was glad he got saved even if his sister didn’t make it, he didn’t truly want revenge. Obviously he wasn’t over it, but he didn’t think “boy howdy do I want to kill a vampire”.

The only reason that he got so stuck on that was because it’s been pounded into his head from moment one. He got called every manner of weak, weakling, wuss, crybaby you can think of by not just shitty high schoolers but by authority figures. They live in a militarized society where your worth is determined by your physical and mental strength, so people with disabilities, mental illnesses, shit like that- they’re not doing so hot. Their way of dealing with Kids Have Trauma is “get over it” or “seek revenge against the vampires who did it”. This is actually a thing Kureto stated very clearly at the beginning of resurrection when he gave his dumbass speech to a bunch of traumatized 11 year olds right after the catastrophe. He’s weaponizing a bunch of kids by putting all these ideas into their head- giving them all fucking hero and martyr complexes because it makes them better soldiers. He tells them that they should want to get revenge and they should be strong and suck it up and use strong emotions against them.

So Yoichi basically grew up conditioned to absolutely fucking hate himself because that’s the ideal. He isn’t like that, and so he sees Yu who is basically the shining example of that kind of thinking, at that point in time. Basically just toxic masculinity central. He’s aggressive and strong, is much quicker to pull a sword on someone than hold out a hand, doesn’t want to make friends, he’s serious and dead set on revenge, he doesn’t cry in front of people and he uses his trauma as a weapon. Yu’s actually a total dick at the beginning of the story, to be honest, and I was surpised to find out the shit he said straight to Yoichi’s face. “give up” “weaklings like you would only get in the way” “nice guys like you shouldn’t be here” “we’re not here to make friends” basically telling him to suck it up or leave, bro, the dude was a fucking jackass to Yoichi, and Yoichi internalizes everything these people say to him, he believes every terrible thing people say.

And Yoichi still completely idolizes him because that’s everything Yoichi isn’t, as this obviously queer coded side character, and everything Yoichi is told he’s supposed to be. *clears throat* toxic masculinity

So in the beginning of the story Yoichi aspires to people like Yu and Kimizuki who are very,,, not open with their emotions. Gee whiz I wonder why he’s keeping up this facade to all his friends instead of trying to sit down and talk about how fucked up he is now. But let’s now talk about how Yoichi got to be the way he is now.

People, again, seem to think that when he got a demon he just decided to stop being traumatized or something, that he just finally got the strength to deal with that and it wasn’t a problem again because he gained confidence. But uh... remember what actually snapped him out of being possessed? You’d immediately go to Yu, but when Yu said all those idealistic things about friendship, Yoichi was still pointing his weapon at Yu. What actually stopped him?

Right after that, it was Guren telling him that becoming a demon was the equivalent to running away and hiding. (which, well, guren, I have a few things to say about that but)

He didn’t stop having those internalized ideals, the things he’d been told over years didn’t just go away or suddenly work at “fixing” him. He was just accused another time of being weak. He didn’t get over or resolve his trauma in any way, he just found a different way to deal with it, with a demon. The reason this actually works for him is that if you’ve literally ever looked closely at the times Yoichi interacts with demon stuff, he’s very innately talented at it, which is odd. He was completely immune to Guren’s test, he came back from being possessed out of sheer force of will, he learned manifestation by himself, he talks to his demon like he’s the one that Gekkouin should be scared of. He finally found something he was good at, that made him strong, and boy, he really clung to that one. He found a way to make himself the ideal they all wanted: in control, powerful, an asset to the team, stuck on revenge and without hesitation to kill- even if it’s not really something he should aspire to be. He just hides the fact that it’s a problem even more because it’s not something he’s supposed to talk about. because. toxic masculinity-

And so if you realize that, it’s not very surprising to see that reveal coming the whole time.

Simply put, if you liked yoichi, y’all should have realized he was never ok. Boy’s got issues. He’s a really complex character that, well, kagami kind of fails to do justice, but the fandom just kind of warps into smol uwu bean boi I could go on but my brain isn’t working so take this

#owari no seraph #seraph of the end #yoichi saotome #ons #sote #yuichiro hyakuya #shiho kimizuki #guren ichinose

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icequeenoriginal · 4 years

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The Prince of Mean

Summary: Takes place right after Putting Others First, when Roman goes to his room with the knowledge of what he is

Warning: Roman angst, spoilers for new episode, no happy ending, ducking out. self-hatred, putting yourself down, bad choices, heartbroken, self-deprecating thoughts, crying (let me know if I need to add anything else)

Author’s Note: Omg, what an episode, this is definitely one of my favorite ones. We got so much info and this just proved to me more than Roman is definitely not okay. I probably won’t make a reaction post to episode but I putting a pause on everything to write this because I need to get it out of my brain. DM if you want to talk about the episode though

Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9o1QS-itsU If someone makes an AMV with this song and Roman, please send it to me

I'm so tired of pretending

Where's my happy ending?

Roman fell to his knees when he reached his room. His palms hitting the floor in a dramatic fashion that would have impressed himself if he wasn’t so upset. Everything, everything was so so wrong. Why couldn’t anyone else see that? He was right! He was the prince! The good guy! He had to be right! ...Right?

I followed all the rules

I drew inside the lines

I never asked for anything that wasn't mine

Roman forced himself and over to his desk. He looks at what littered it: Unfinished ideas, sketches, project ideas. All the hard work he did. Because he was good. He did everything he needed to do. He was a good boy. And yet...

I waited patiently for my time

But when it finally came

He called his name

What was Thomas thinking?! Letting Deceit, or Janus as he claimed, be at the table, and working with them! Virgil warned them against that! He is just trying to protect Thomas. This was clearly a bad idea. He didn’t even come up with it, so it must be. He is the one who comes up with good ideas. That’s who he is. That is his job.

And now I feel this overwhelming pain

I mean it's in my veins

I mean it's in my brain

Roman whipped his eyes as the tears began to form. It hurt, everything hurt. He just wanted to scream, curse, or fight. Thomas and Patton could spin it any way they could. He knew that look in their faces. They were definitely disappointed with him. Or many they did not want him there. It was both. He knew it. Then he let himself cry more.

My thoughts are running in a circle like a toy train

I'm kinda like a perfect picture with a broken frame

I know exactly who to blame

This was all Janus’ fault. He called that snake out on what he was doing to him and the snake did what he always does. He twisted the situation so that it would look like he, Roman, was the true bad guy. He wasn’t going to fall for it. It was a classic trick all villains use to try and make the protagonist lose all his allies. But Thomas was smart enough to figure it out, sooner or later. Patton says he will always need Roman so he won’t push him to the side. ...Right?

I never thought of myself as mean

I always thought that I'd be the queen

And there's no in-between

Why was everyone glaring at him when he said it? He was just laughing, it wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before? But...they told him to stop during the first time with Virgil? He really can’t stop being mean, can’t he? He just a big fat meanie who will always be this way. He is just like his brother, isn’t he?

'Cause if I can't have that

Then I would be the leader of the dark

And the bad

Roman sat on his bed and just...thought to himself. He through all of his memories of how he is with everyone. The name-calling, the dismissals, his behavior. Wow, maybe he was the evil twin after all, and Janus was right. Wow. Everything is truly falling apart in front of him. Perfect.

Now there's a devil on my shoulder

Where the angels used to be

And he's calling me the king

There are four spots. That was how it always was. They were the core four. But now there were five? It doesn’t work, it’s uneven. Thomas’ living room isn’t big enough. They all have to squish together. Unless someone left. It made the most sense. Someone would have to go.

Being nice was my pastime

But I've been hurt for the last time

And I won't ever let another person take advantage of me

Why could he never do anything? Why was he always in the wrong? He could never pick a side without everyone tell him that it was the wrong side. He switches, he has now tainted that side and made it wrong. He was just wrong. When everyone hated Janus, he was the only one to agree with him? He was the one who played into Janus’’ hand. And now hating Janus was wrong?! Maybe they are just looking for reasons to hate him.

The anger burns my skin, third-degree

Now my blood's boiling hotter than a fiery sea

There's nobody getting close to me

They're gonna bow to the Evil King

How would he be like as a dark side? Could he even do it? Working with his brother, wearing black? Not seeing his family again? No, he couldn’t do it.

Your nightmare's my dream

Just wait until they fall to my wicked schemes

Roman knew it was selfish, that him getting the boot from the light sides was not something he could deny. But he didn’t want that. He liked being a good guy. He liked all the fun things he got to do with Thomas and the others. He did not want to give it up. He wanted to do what Thomas needed but he didn’t want to lose what he had. Roman groans and leans back, laying on his bed. There was nothing he could do.

I never thought of myself as mean

I always thought that I'd be the queen

Wait a minute...

And there's no in-between

'Cause if I can't have that

There is something he can do.

Then I would be the leader of the dark

And the bad

Now there's a devil on my shoulder

Where the angels used to be

And he's calling me the prince of mean (calling me, calling me)

He just hopes Virgil doesn’t get mad at him for stealing his idea.

The prince of mean (calling me, calling me)

Roman sighed, he accepted his decision. And this time no one was going to influence his choice, much less change it.

Something's pulling me

It's so magnetic

My body is moving

Unsure where I'm headed

Roman looks up at the knock of the door. “Kiddo? Can we talk?” He put a pillow in his face to muffle his batted breath.

All of my senses have left me defenseless

This darkness around me

Is promising vengeance

“Kiddo?” Patton asks again, shaking his doorknob. Thank Zeus he always makes sure it’s locked. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.” Patton’s voice sounded a bit desperate, maybe he knew what he was about to do.

The price that I'm willing to pay is expensive

There's nothing to lose

When you're lonely and friendless

“I’m fine Padre” Roman replied, make sure his voice sounded as normal as he could, even holding his breath when he felt it about to break. When Patton tried to continue, Roman was quick enough to cut him off “I just don’t want to talk right now? I just need to be alone.”

So my only interest is showing this prince

That I am the queen

And my reign will be endless (endless)

Patton sighed from behind the door, he knew he wasn’t going to get through to Roman. He understands about needing space to process his emotions. “Okay kiddo, just call me when you are ready to talk”.

I want what I deserve

I want to rule the world

Sit back and watch them learn

It's finally my turn

“Will do!” Roman shouted and waited for Patton’s footsteps to descend down the hallway. He had a lot of work to do and needed to so before he got too tired from all this crying he was doing. He first sent all the work on his desk to the Mind Palace. That was a place anyone can go to. If anyone cared enough to look for him, they have those ideas. It should be enough so no one will come looking for him. Not like they would anyway.

If they want a villain for a king

I'm gonna be one like they've never seen

I'll show them what it means

He summoned plenty of food, water, and movies to keep himself occupied so he would have no reason to leave his room. It was proud of his ability to do so with so many tears falling. He then ripped off his prince outfit, he didn’t deserve it. Like he didn’t deserve his famILY, or Thomas’ praise or anything.

Now that I am that

I will be the ruler of the dark and the bad

'Cause the devil's on my shoulder

Where the angels used to be

Lastly, wished them all well. He summoned a flower and picked off a petal “To Patton, I won’t get in your way anymore.” Pluck “To Logan, you never have to deal with me again.” Pluck “To Virgil, I won’t annoy you again.” Pluck “To Remus, have fun being the main creativity” Pluck goes the last petal “To Janus, enjoy my spot”

And he's calling me the prince of mean (calling me, calling me)

The prince of mean (calling me, calling me)

Roman climbed under his blanket with a broke smile on his face. This was it. They didn’t want him so he didn’t need them. He could sleep for a very, very long time. He hadn’t done that in a while and boy did he need it. He didn’t have to worry anyone kissing him awake.

He knew this was the right choice. Now the stupid, egotistical, annoying baby was gone. He finally killed what was making Thomas’ life difficult.

I want what I deserve

#thomas sanders #roman sanders #roman angst #sanders sides #ts sides #deciet sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders

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becauseofthebowties · 4 years

Note

Still not enough creators love here!!!

Once you receive this, pick 5 favorite creations you made and tell us something about them! What inspired you, maybe? Or how long did it take you to make it? How was the process? Anything!

Your mind is creative and beautiful ❤️

Pass it on to your fav content makers, let’s share some love and respect!

Ooohhh thank you for this, anon ♥

I’d say these are my 5 fave creations:

1) my destiel wedding edit, this was so much fun to make, for dean it was easy because i knew i was going to use clips from “season 7 time for a wedding”, but for cas it took me some time to find the right clips of him in his suit without the trenchcoat and with the right tie haha but i’m very happy with how it turned out, and i was so happy so many people liked it as well :)

2) my dean birthday gifset, i made this at the last minute before his birthday and i just wanted to celebrate it with gifs of him being a happy little bean ♥ (and since this was last minute i just went with the moments i had at the top of my head, hence the fact that most of these are from later seasons)

3) this gifset of jackles’ microexpressions from 15x18, i was rewatching the confession for the millionth time and overanalyzing each frame and these microexpressions absolutely destroyed me every time, and i hadn’t seen any gifs of it on tumblr so that was actually what made me decide to start making gifs again (i hadn’t made any since 2015 and never for spn before)

4) this dean gifset from frontierland, i randomly rewatched this episode and i’ve always loved this line and the cute dumbass face he makes afterwards, and i like the coloring i used for this (also it reminds me of the clicky noise amv)

5) this gifset of dean’s prayer from 15x09, i rewatched this episode for the reason that i am a dumb bitch who apparently likes to suffer, and was having a breakdown over jackles’ acting and microexpressions (imo this scene is some of the best acting he’s ever done on the show) so i decided to gif this, and i had fun coloring purgatory and i like how it turned out

#anonymous #asks

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13eyond13 · 5 years

Note

For the sleepover ask (and you've probably talked abt this for the 100th time, sorry): What was your first impression of Death Note and how has that impression changed over time? And what was it that made this show 'stick' with you? :3

Ohh that's a good question, thanks for indulging me @trueffelmaiden!

I discovered Death Note way back in like 2007 I think, and it was an extremely random way to find it. I think I just came across an AMV on YouTube or whatever and thought that L looked strangely compelling and liked his energy, so I wanted to know more about his character. I found the anime on a site online and then IMMEDIATELY had L's death spoiled for me by a commenter on the first episode that said he dies in episode 25 ;__; . I had never really seen any anime except for a few episodes of Pokemon and such when I was a kid, so I didn't realize it could be so good! I binge watched the entire thing within about 2 days alone in my room and then couldn't get over the show. I was fascinated and haunted by the characters and the unique world-building and all the possibilities that might have been with little changes to circumstances and everything like that. Nobody else I knew was as obsessed with it as I was either, so I ended up reading a lot of fanfic and leaving rambling comments on the ones I really liked. I hadn't ever been involved in a fandom before either, but I met someone very smart and kind on ff.net ("serria" is the username, you can still find her fic on there now) who taught me a ton about the series and how fandom culture works and everything like that! She was much more involved in it than I was, she had actually read the entire manga and participated a lot in writing thoughtful meta and such on LiveJournal (no Tumblr or AO3 or whatever back then). I attribute her kindness and encouragement toward me back then as the reason I ever felt comfortable participating in the fandom myself, and the reason I have a blog here now!

I was into DN from about 2007 to 2009, then got busy with life stuff for a long while and drifted away from it. I got back into DN in my twenties around 2016 I think? This time I actually read the whole manga, and then I watched the English dub of the anime for the first time too (which wasn't even available to me anywhere back when I was into DN for the first time). I was amazed at how well it held up and how good the entire manga was, better than the anime imo.

Soooo after that long-winded explanation here are the main things I remember about how my impressions changed or didn't change:

-I didn't fully appreciate how beautifully drawn and funny in a dark way the manga was back in the late 2000s, and didn't bother reading the whole thing after L's death, because I figured since I'd already seen the anime I already knew what happened. In a plot sense this is baaaasically true, but I now see that the anime altered the successor arc a lot and made quite a few of the characters from that half of the story more wooden and less interesting and comprehensible than they were in the manga. I was especially surprised by how much I liked Near's character in the manga, because I thought he was boring and unsympathetic in the anime, but he was actually one of my favourites in the manga when I read it all the way through. I also think I liked Mello a bit less this time around because he just came off very violent and repetitive to me in most of the things that he does, and I always sympathize with the characters he is traumatizing more than I sympathize with him (though he's definitely a very cool looking character and I love his design).

-Back in the day my impression of L was based totally on how he came off to me in the Japanese dub of the anime, and I definitely saw him as well-meaning and gentle and a bit naive as well. I remember Serria telling me that she thought he was cruel and I was like ??? Stuff like how he confined the Kira suspects never occurred to me as being shady and I always felt sorry for him because of how Light killed him. Oh yeah and I also hated Light, though I cried a lot when he died. It wasn't until I read some good fanfics that I started appreciating Light's character more and seeing how L was perhaps a bit shadier than I first believed him to be. Back then I was less of a critical thinker and also a bit naive, always assuming people have good intentions deep down no matter what. I also think the anime version of L somewhat alters his character and makes it a bit harder to know how you're supposed to be interpreting him and his actions. I definitely prefer the manga now for everything including L's characterization and dynamic with Light and everything else.

-I finally fully saw what an excellent character Light is when I revisited the series as an adult. I have read a lot more and watched a lot more and learned a lot more about good writing over the last decade so I have a much better appreciation for when a character and a plot are really well done. I think he is the absolute best part of the entire story now and that it wouldn't work at all without his character as the center of everything, he's the whole reason the story is a classic and so interesting and fun to watch or read.

-I think I was also a bit taken aback by how strongly I still got Lawlight vibes when I revisited the story again as an adult. I didn't care about shipping them anymore and set out to just read the story exactly as it was, because I assumed I had just been projecting a lot of wishful thinking onto things back in the day. But the whole time I read and watched it again I was still like... 👀 jeez hahah they're really hitting it off. I think I used to always see it as L being obsessed with Light and Light hating L back in the day, but this time I saw it more as Light being obsessed with L. The way he continues to think about him and compare everyone else to him years after he is gone is the shippiest thing about them to me now. I enjoy the series for way more reasons than just that, and I do think the fandom kinda goes overboard on this ship sometimes in ways that aren't very interesting to me, but their strange chemistry is definitely the heart of the story to me, and that's something that hasn't changed over time.

#ask #trueffelmaiden #light yagami #l lawliet #p #thx!#lawlight #near #mello

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araxiis · 5 years

Text

The Art Of Anaesthesia- Kuzupeko

For @let-it-be-canon ♡

Words: 2547 (jesus)

Based on the song The Art Of Anaesthesia by SayWeCanFly (video above)

Read on Wattpad

A/N: I had an idea for an AMV but I can't draw so I wrote it out :) it's really long and the format screwed up and I'm sorry

Bold italics are lyrics

---------------------------------------------------

Sometimes I think about who I should believe,

The people who are dead or the people who are free.

Sometimes I hear them as they whisper to me.

I try to stay awake so I won't die in my sleep.

The game was over. The Neo World Program had been destroyed, the students freed from their false reality. The 5 survivors woke up in a hospital, fashioned with everything they needed to recover from their stasis. Luckily for them, it was a rather quick process to get them back on their feet. When they could walk steadily on their own, they were permitted to go to the wing where the 'dead' students resided.

Sonia found Gundham's room first, with Kazuichi trailing behind her like a lost puppy. She tested the handle, but found the door to be locked. Akane did the same to Nekomaru's door, and received the same result. It seemed all the doors were deadbolted, impassable. Hajime lingered behind the rest, quietly coming to terms with the fact that there was no door with Chiaki's name written on it.

Fuyuhiko walked slowly through the wing, reading each nameplate carefully until he found the one he was looking for. He put his fingers on the edge of the door's small window and peered inside. She was there.

Lying unconscious, facing away from the window, glasses missing, but she was there. And according to the doctors, she would be okay. Fuyuhiko fumbled for the doorknob, but came up disappointed as he remembered the boundaries set. He heard Sonia's bright voice from behind him.

"Don't worry Fuyuhiko, it should not take too long for everyone to return to us."

She was wrong.

And I was quick to take a second look through

The window on the door of the operating room,

And the adrenaline, it threw my eyes

To the table on the floor where the patients lie.

I saw his face and I could not speak,

As the anesthetic kissed his cheek,

I felt my lips go cold and my limbs go weak

Because the body on the table where the patients die was me.

It was me.

It should have been him.

He should've been the one that got executed, not her. The whole thing was his stupid fucking idea anyways. He leaned his head back, resting it on the cold steel of Peko's room. Ever since the wing was opened six months ago, he spent every day sitting in front of her door. He would stay there all night if he could, but the staff weren't too fond of that idea. Sometimes he would talk to her, about how everyone was doing, about the final trial, whatever he was thinking about. He knew she couldn't possibly hear him, but it made him feel better either way. He saw Sonia down the hall, crying in front of Gundham's room, Kazuichi trying desperately to comfort her. Fuyuhiko closed his eyes tight, on the verge of tears but refusing to cry. It was gonna be okay. Just a little fucking longer.

Give me back my oxygen mask,

Cause I don't want to feel the walls of my heart collapse,

So put me under.

I would sooner die on this table

Than face what causes me to be so unstable.

The five of them sat in a small lobby in the hospital, waiting for the patient's wing to be open. They were talking normally, trying to distract one another from the harsh reality they were living. At seven precisely, a tired-looking doctor opened the door to the wing and addressed the classmates.

"Good news. The first of your classmates has woken up."

The doctor continued talking, but was unheard. The group sprinted past him and frantically started testing the doorknobs on the rooms. Fuyuhiko ran to Peko's door and clumsily reached for the handle.

It didn't move.

Something in his chest dropped. He couldn't contain his disappointment, but was distracted when he heard crying down the wing. Blinking his eyes clear, he continued to run until he reached the open door. Upon entering, he saw Sonia, crying, arms thrown around Gundham's shoulders. He looked like absolute hell, but there was no denying he was alive. Akane and Hajime were smiling politely, and Kazuichi was in the corner of the room, face as pink as his hair. Fuyuhiko half-smiled, nodded to Gundham, and left. He walked towards the room he was staying in, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He was happy for Sonia, and Gundham, obviously, but he couldn't help but wish it had been Peko. He stopped by her door and placed his hand on the thin, wired window.

"Cone back to me soon, okay?"

There was a lie between my demons and me,

And a body made of paper in the passenger seat.

As I open my eyes, I could not see.

I felt the stitches come loose and the blood run free.

Six months after Gundham had woken up, almost all of their classmates had returned to them. There was no structure to their recovery. Two days after Gundham, Mikan woke up. About a week after, it was Mahiru. (That was a rather uncomfortable reunion for Fuyuhiko.)

Twelve of them were awake, but three remained asleep.

Nagito, Ibuki, and Peko.

Fuyuhiko sat in one of the poorly-upholstered chairs in the lobby, staring down at his hands. It had been two weeks since Teruteru woke up, the next person had to wake up soon, right?

Just then, he heard shouting down the patient's wing. His heart filled with hope. Someone woke up. It had to be Peko, right?

Yeah, it had to.

He ran towards the sound of voices, anxious and hopeful, but was stopped short when he found the source. The class was gathered in the room across from Peko's, door propped open, talking to Ibuki.

Ibuki...

Fuck.

Fuyuhiko's body began to shake. Why the fuck wasn't Peko waking up? It was his fault, wasn't it? He felt anger, worry, hate, building up inside of him, and he punched the wall at full force. The walls were sturdy and solid brick, but he couldn't feel anything but his blood boiling. He kept punching, yelling, until his fist was bloody and mangled. One punch hit a nerve that shot sparks up his arm, and he dropped his hand to his side. Sweating and overwhelmed, Fuyuhiko looked down at his broken, bloody hand, the pain of his actions finally setting in. His head went light as the pain started to spread, he felt his knees give out below him. He heard Hajime distantly call his name, and everything went dark.

And as my thoughts began to shake,

I felt the hand of the darkness kiss my face.

And then the devil woke up and he grabbed my throat.

He pulled me down to the place where the silence grows.

He looks at me with hollow eyes,

And he whispered my name as the flowers died.

I felt my heart go cold as I sank between

The ocean I am and the river I'm meant to be.

I'm meant to be...

Fuyuhiko opened his eyes to find himself lying in a hospital bed of his own. His clothes were still dusty and stained with blood, but his hand had been stitched up and wrapped in gauze. Running his good hand through his hair, he leaned back onto the paper-covered pillow.

"What the fuck happened?" He mumbled towards the ceiling.

"You passed out," a voice replied.

He was talking to himself, so he was rather startled when he heard the response. His head snapped towards the door, where he saw Hajime leaning against the doorframe.

"It was either shock or blood loss," he continued. "Twogami and I got you here, and Mikan helped the doctors fix you up. We're just across the hall from everyone else. You should be fine to walk around now, just be careful." Hajime turned to leave, but paused outside the door.

"Don't take too long though," he said over his shoulder. "There's.. something you should see."

With that he left, leaving only Fuyuhiko, considering his words. Something he needed to see? What the fuck was..

Holy shit.

Give me back my oxygen mask,

He practically fell out of the bed in his panic to get out of the room.

Cause I don't want to feel the walls of my heart collapse,

So put me under.

He ran faster than he ever had before, shouting breathless profanities at the nurses that tried to stop him.

I would sooner die on this table

He sprinted through the lobby, down the blank white halls, to the door he had spent so much time talking to. He forced his way through the group of his classmates gathered outside of it and-

Than face what causes me to be so unstable.

She had been looking for him too.

As soon as he burst into her room, their eyes locked. They stayed frozen like that for a while, Peko sitting perfectly straight in her bed, Fuyuhiko struggling to catch his breath in the middle of the room, eyes never leaving each other's. Eventually, Fuyuhiko slowly crossed the room to Peko's bed, and perched himself on the edge. Peko had so much she wanted to say to him, but for once, she wasn't able to find the right words. He rested his good hand gently on her leg and started the conversation himself.

"You look like hell."

Peko smiled weakly. "So do you," she retaliated, noticing the bandages on his arm. She reached out to take his hand in hers, but pulled her hands quickly to her chest when she realized what she was doing.

"Forgive me, Young Master, I wasn't-"

Fuyuhiko leaned forward and took her clasped hands in both of his, startling her into silence. He held their hands between them, even though the rest of the class was only feet away.

"Forget that shit, Peko. I'm just so damn happy you're okay."

Peko felt her face go warm as the reality of his words set in. She could remember their last moments together on the island, but that hadn't been real.

This was real. They were real.

Fuyuhiko let go of her hands, which saddened her for a moment, until his hands came to rest on either side of her face. She felt her heartbeat quicken as he rested his forehead against hers. He stroked her cheekbone gently with his thumb, able to feel the corner of her mouth twitching up. Cautiously, Peko rested her shaking hand on his side, just to see what would happen. His smile grew wider, almost splitting his face in two, and he whispered something she could hardly hear. She couldn't be sure, and it could've been wishful thinking, but she could've sworn he said 'I love you'.

She slid her other arm around his waist and locked her hands behind his back. They could hear the quiet words of their classmates, as well as Kazuichi scoffing "fucking finally" and getting shushed by Sonia. They were both smiling wide, eyes closed, beyond thankful to be together again.

Now I'm standing by the window on a Sunday.

And I can't quite recall

Why I cannot move at all

Neither one of them wanted to leave the other's side, but Fuyuhiko insisted Peko start the recovery process as soon as possible. Her body was weak from being immobile for so long, so, much to her dismay, she was bound to a wheelchair. Most days she sat with her back to the room, staring vacantly out the window.

And I feel so tired and wounded,

Like the stitches on my soul came apart.

I'm standing here in the dark.

Despite his protests, the doctors refused to let Fuyuhiko stay with Peko at night while she recovered. During the day, however, you would never find him anywhere else. He stood by her side when she stared out the window. She would admire the view, he would admire her.

Well, maybe it's from the drinks we had last night,

But good god, I love those friends of mine.

The best that alcohol can buy.

Sometimes they talked, but mostly they enjoyed the silence. It was that special kind of silence, where you don't have to talk to enjoy each other's company. On this day in particular, though, Peko's voice cut through the quiet.

"I could hear you. While I was asleep."

Fuyuhiko raised his eyebrow slightly, but said nothing. Peko was still staring out the window, but her eyes seemed less vacant than they were before.

Or maybe it's from the lack of sleep,

But all those secrets I've kept, trying to be so sweet to you.

It's dark, my dear,

But it got me through,

It got me through.

"Most of the time, it was just dark. Dark and quiet," she continued. "Sometimes, though, I heard you talking. It was difficult to tell what you were saying, but I am certain it was your voice. I was unsure what it meant, but," she paused. "But I had reason to believe you were okay. And it was.. very relieving. Before I woke up, I remember hearing you yelling. You sounded hurt, but it got suddenly silent a moment later. I believe-" she looked down at her knees. "I believe my concern for you in that moment was the reason I was able to wake up."

Fuyuhiko stayed silent, causing Peko to fear that the words she chose were the wrong ones. She searched for the right words to apologize with, but her panic was cut short by the feeling of his lips on hers.

So give me back my oxygen mask,

She would be lying if she said she had never imagined this moment before, but never in a million years did she think it would actually happen.

Cause I don't want to feel the walls of my heart collapse,

So put me under.

It wasn't just their professional relationship that wavered her hope; she knew him well enough to know he wasn't exactly the sentimental type. She was unaware at the time, but losing her had been the thing to change him.

I would sooner die on this table

She wasn't complaining though, quite the opposite. She was rather inexperienced though, so she was unsure what she was meant to do. Luckily, she wasn't the only one who was nervous.

Then face what causes me to be so unstable.

She brushed her fingers through his hair, their kiss growing more intense.

Causes me to be so unstable.

He rested one hand on the back of her neck, pulling her closer.

Causes me to be so unstable.

They could worry about consequences later. For now, they were the happiest they had ever been.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm only a ghost,

Wearing human skin I never chose.

I listen to the devil as he spoke

Because he tempted me with a beautiful rose.

#kuzupeko fanfic #fuyuhiko kuzuryuu #kuzupeko #fuyuhiko x peko #peko pekoyama #araxi's rambling #araxi's writing #this is long #fuyupeko #danganronpa fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #please don't let this flop #otp: i heard your voice

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untitledtallgeesepodcast · 4 years

Text

[TRANSCRIPT] Episode 0: The Anime They Once Saw (Or Didn’t See)

Kat 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Untitled Tallgeese Podcast, a podcast where four of us will watch Gundam Wing and then tell you all about Gundam Wing. My name is Kat, I write about comics on the internet, and I will be your episode moderator for today.

Mallory 0:17

And I'm Mallory, and I also write about comics.

Cathy 0:20

I'm Cathy, I don't write about comics. I am actually a lawyer, which sucks.

All 0:26

[laughter]

Caitlin 0:28

I am Caitlin. I'm a PhD researcher in Tokyo right now working on Japanese film. Yeah.

Kat 0:33

Extremely legit.

Caitlin 0:35

Are we?

Cathy 0:36

and we're all here to talk about the Gundam Wing.

Kat 0:38

[crosstalk] I mean we might be.

Kat 0:41

We are here to talk about Gundam Wing, the maybe not critically acclaimed, but fandom, okay, audience favorite anime that was released in 1995 in Japan and then made its way to the US in March 2000 on Toonami. So, we're going to talk about our fandom history and our history with the show Gundam Wing and I guess I will kick that off. So I-- I grew up watching anime because my dad is a huge nerd. So we were obviously watching Toonami. And the promos blew my mind. My friends and I all got really into it in middle school. Then we discovered fanfiction and we started with Heero/Relena fan fiction. [Caitlin: Ugh.] And then then we realized people could be gay.

Caitlin 1:29

Uugh, thank god.

Kat 1:30

That opened up like, I know it was like the clouds parted. rainbows fell from the sky. We were like, Oh, wow.

Mallory 1:39

[singing] "A whole new world"

Kat 1:40

[laughter] And then I don't know. I wrote a lot of fanfiction posted it on FF dotnet, got into fandom and then stayed in fandom. So, Mallory?

Mallory 1:53

I didn't have cable growing up. So whatever anime exposure I got was like, whatever was on Saturday morning cartoons. So Digimon was my first fandom and I was really into that.

Kat 2:08

Hell yeah

Mallory 2:09

And that sort of like bled into Gundam Wing somehow, I don't really remember how. But I found my way to Gundam Wing, read a lot of fanfic, hadn't ever really watched the show. And then in high school, my friend had some like random episodes from the first season question mark. I have no idea. So I watched those, and really enjoyed that? But I have no idea what their context was, so I'm coming at this pretty, pretty new.

Cathy 2:44

So you have never watched it from beginning to end?

Mallory 2:47

No.

Cathy 2:47

Got it. This will be fun.

Mallory 2:50

I'm expecting to be really disapproving of all the adults in the room. I find that like, now that I'm watching anime about kids, I'm really protective of these kids like, "Hey, this is really unethical!"

Cathy 3:02

So I'm like Kat, I started watching anime when I was I think around Middle School. I had a friend who got me into Sailor Moon, then I think it was Dragon Ball that was on Toonami at the time? I can't really remember the chronology.

Kat 3:16

Yeah.

Cathy 3:17

But then they did the promos for Gundam Wing, so then I started watching that on Toonami. And it was my first mecha series. And my first Gundam series, I think it's a lot of people's first Gundam series in the United States.

Cathy 3:31

I have attempted to do similar projects to this multiple times where I go back and I rewatch, and I haven't really had the opportunity to actually finish those rewatches. But my memory of it is still kind of stuck of when I was in middle school slash high school. I did get into fandom, so I expect to remember a lot of inaccuracies about what happened. [laughter] Because a lot of what my facts have with this series are have now mutated and changed. But I was a huge Gundam Wing fan, I think it still remains my favorite of the Gundam series just because I have so many memories of it? But I really excited to talk to Mallory, about what you feel and your experiences because it's been so long since I've talked to somebody who actually has never seen the series and doesn't know the story. So I'm super excited about this.

Caitlin 4:24

Yeah!

Cathy 4:25

All right, Cait, tell us about your family history.

Caitlin 4:27

Yeah, so similar to all of us, I guess, I watched anime growing up. I got into Sailor Moon sort of through an accident of just happening to see a very specific episode on Toonami in like 1999, 1998 maybe. So after that, I got really into anime and really into the internet. I think I was very depressed as a child. [laughter] So I spend a lot of time online. I believe that like my my first memories of Gundam Wing are when it was on Toonami: Sailor Moon was on first and then Dragon Ball Dragon Ball Z, and then Gundam Wing. And then they also were showing like the quote unquote unedited versions late

Cathy 5:09

Yes!

Kat 5:09

Yes, the midnight run

Cathy 5:11

The midnight run Right.

Cathy 5:12

Yeah. So very specific memories of like, I think I was mainly attracted to the, like, team format of Gundam if that makes sense? [Cathy: Yeah yeah yeah!] where it was used to sailor Sailor Moon where you have a team of color coded characters. And I'd, at a younger age been really into Power Rangers, where you had a team of color coded characters. So the marketing of Gundam Wing really appealed. You know, cuz I was just a kid watching on TV, I never really, I don't know if I watched the whole thing as a kid, but I got really into the fandom. And by 2000, 2001, I already knew about gay stuff online.

Kat 5:48

Wow. Look at you early bloomer.

Caitlin 5:50

Yeah. So So I got really into the various Gundam Wing pairings, I think it was mainly, I was mainly a 3x4, I think as a child. I went through some, 1x2, and then 2x5 phases. [laughter]

Caitlin 6:09

I still am a big advocate for 2x5, I think it's underrated.

Kat 6:12

I'm a big 2x5.

Cathy 6:13

2x5 is a good pairing, it definitely is.

Kat 6:16

Yeah.

Cathy 6:16

It's a better pairing as an adult.

Kat 6:17

So okay, I think that's actually a pretty good bounce off. So these are the things we remember about Gundam Wing. It was marketed, like, I remember the Toonami marketing 'cause I was really hype for this show. They had like these really extreme commercials.

Caitlin 6:34

Yeah.

Kat 6:35

Um, and I thought the voice acting was good. I don't know, maybe we'll revisit that during this watch, to see if it still is,

Caitlin 6:43

[crosstalk] Was it dubbed?,

Cathy 6:44

[crosstalk] It was dubbed, yes.

Kat 6:44

But I was ready for it. It was dubbed.

Caitlin 6:46

It was dubbed. One thing with the with the Japanese voice acting though, is that it's every single famous voice actor from the 90s. And so you can, you can use Gundam Wing is like a six degrees of every single voice actor from the 1990s.

Caitlin 6:59

Oh, that's cool.

Mallory 7:00

I mean, there are a lot of big American or like, dub dub names on the dub side, too.

Cathy 7:06

One of the things that I remember very strongly about Toonami is that they had what I think we would now call anime music videos, AMVs.

Kat 7:16

Yeah

Cathy 7:17

But they would play

Caitlin 7:18

Yeah,

Cathy 7:18

These montage trailers, where they'd stich together all their different series. And as they accumulated more anime series, these became really, I think, cinematic and gripping tales, where they would kind of try to tell a story to be about, like bravery or honor or like,

Kat 7:36

It's like, plugged directly into my little 11 year old brain like, Whoa,

Cathy 7:40

Yes. And one of them was, I remember was called, like, "technological development" or something like that, that featured a lot of the Gundam Wing clips.

Kat 7:47

Oh, yeah, cuz you only download them from like, KaZaa, or whatever horrible thing I was putting into my computer.

Caitlin 7:52

Yeah. We gotta see if we can find those. [crosstalk] They must be online somewhere.

Cathy 7:56

They are online. And I think they actually came out with like, I think somebody had either like hand by hand remastered them.

Kat 8:03

[crosstalk] Oh sick.

Cathy 8:02

Or they created a remastered version of it. They're wonderful. But that's I think one of the things about Toonami that I remember really strongly was Gundam Wing kind of is one of their, like epitome of like, Cool Anime that I feel like Toonami did and what it did was like they stiched together all these different things Outlaw Star and Tenchi Muyo and all these other stories to create a story about teenage growth, which is kind of strange and also weirdly fitting at the end of the day about like where Gundam is in the whole universe.

Kat 8:07

I think that's one of the reasons it blew up so much here because the marketing was really intense. Like Toonami, like it sort of right at the beginning, like people were into Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z was getting big. And like the manga boom was sort of happening in bookstores. So contextually, I think, Cartoon Network knew what the hell they were doing. They were like, "We can market the hell out of this."

Caitlin 8:55

And also objectively speaking, Gundam Wing was one of their cooler series. Like, Sailor Moon is cool. Tenchi Muyo is not cool.

All 9:04

[laughter]

Kat 9:06

Yeah.

Caitlin 9:07

Even even if you love it, it's not really cool. Dragon Ball. Love it. I don't know if it's really cool. Gundam Wing had like a very strong -

Kat 9:14

[crosstalk] like the chad of animes

Caitlin 9:16

- adult aesthetic to it, even though it was like, relatively, well, relatively appropriate for like 12 year olds.

Kat 9:23

And they swore during the midnight show.

Caitlin 9:25

Oh yeah,

Kat 9:26

They swore and there was blood.

Caitlin 9:27

So it was very cool. And so I felt very adult watching it even though I didn't really understand what was going on because it's all this fake politics crap.

Kat 9:35

Yeah, I was gonna say I did do a rewatch in like, like, right after college, so it was probably around 2010 ish, maybe? And I don't think we finished the series, but it was like, wow, I used to think this was very deep. [laughter] And I thought all the people in it who are the adults like Mallory, you were mentioning earlier, like they're actually like 17 and 19

Cathy 10:01

Yes!

Kat 10:01

in this show. So watching it at the age of 21, I was like, "Ooh no, don't give these people anything."

Cathy 10:09

I was actually thinking about that. Because when you said Mallory, "oh, well, I become very protective of the children. I disapprove the adults," in my head of thinking "what adults?" [crosstalk, Caitlin: yeah what adults?] because actually, in Gundam Wing, there's a funny thing where people are either 15, 25 or like 70. And there's no in between and nobody really makes adult decisions. So it, That was one thing that really shocked me because as I go back to revisit it, I think, "Oh my god, I'm actually older than almost everybody in this series."

Caitlin 10:39

How old, how old is Treize supposed to be?

Cathy 10:41

He's like 23, or 24.

Kat 10:42

He's 19.

Cathy 10:43

No, Zechs is 19.

Kat 10:44

Oh, Zechs is 19. Right.

Cathy 10:47

I just the idea of giving people who, you know, would have either been in college or just graduate college in my worldview, huge robots.

Kat 10:58

I think the ages of all the characters gets obscured by the anime art style, you know?

Cathy 11:03

Yeah.

Kat 11:03

In a lot of anime fandoms.

Mallory 11:04

And when you're watching this, when you're a kid, you want to see yourself as the protagonist. So it makes sense that, you know, a 17 year old seems like old and cool, and I want to be that person. And then when you're 30, you're like, the 17 year old should not be at war.

Kat 11:23

Relevant is that we definitely watched Evangelion. That was our last series.

Caitlin 11:29

I don't know, I think, I think Heero Yuy is doing fine in war. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be honest, as a 30 year old, I think these kids are much better at war than I would be.

Cathy 11:39

Well, so that's what I find kind of interesting, is that I think this series actually... I don't, I know this wasn't the point but when I rewatched it recently, or just like the first couple of episodes, it seemed, it made a lot of sense, because they were like 15 or 24. Like the series, actually stitches together...

Caitlin 11:58

Yeah.

Cathy 11:58

...really well, because of how young they are, and kind of like the purity of feeling that they have, which I think is

Kat 12:05

Yeah, it is, like

Cathy 12:06

only maybe

Kat 12:07

like that [indistinguishable?]

Cathy 12:07

which I think is like only really, truly possible because I have to think of them as like 15 or 21 or 19 year olds. that is not at all when I took away when I was watching in high school. Right?

Mallory 12:21

Well, I mean, right.

Caitlin 12:22

Part of the ideology of Gundam in general is like trying to restore a form of hope, and youth to, like, young people growing up in Japan, who are the target audience for this, and this idea that, like, you still have the power to change the world, you still have the power to bring about peace in a way that you want, even though you're being manipulated and oppressed by all these crazy adults who make you pilot giant robots. So I think there's a significant, like part of the series is the fact that they are kids who have been recruited into child warfare, and now have to find some way out of that. And like my memory of the series is that even though most of, most of the decisions made are very bad, the kids in general are not making terrible decisions. They're making pretty good decisions.

Kat 13:12

Yeah, the pilots themselves...

Mallory 13:14

[crosstalk] Yeah

Kat 13:14

...are like doing the best they can be doing in that circumstance.

Cathy 13:17

[crosstalk] Exactly, exactly

Kat 13:19

But I think it's sort of interesting, 'cause it's like, to me Gundam Wing is definitely like a fandom era, because I think a lot of stuff exemplifies like...there's like a lot of tropes cycling through it. But also like, the series itself, is so perfectly...like, I think of it as a series that are so perfectly set up for fandom because there's a lot of like, here's my one episode mission, and we have to be at a safe house, I guess. And it's just like, a long interminable war. So there's like, a big, a lot of world building. Yeah, that creates all these spaces that sort of separate from all the political machinations of the series.

Caitlin 13:58

And that's also I think, a lot of what it was meant to be when it was created within the Gundam franchise like it was it was designed to have sort of a BL appeal to girls writing for comic market and that sort of thing. So it had like the setup of five hot guys who you could combine in various forms. And then also like Gundam itself, in general, it's designed to be and a sort of open universe that you can step into at various points, which also facilitates fandom engagement

Mallory 14:28

[crosstalk] literal fandom bait.

Caitlin 14:29

usually in the form, yeah, usually in the form of model collecting, which is like one of the main Gundam forms of fandom which we probably won't talk about too much on the show. But you, you kind of

Kat 14:41

Uh I've definitely built some Gundam models.

Caitlin 14:43

Yeah. Well, you will be the expert on that because I've never touched a Gundam model in my life. But that is like the big thing where you can you can get the model you can construct it, you can learn a little bit more about the, like, the technology and the different like details of the models and stuff like that. And it just gives you like a slight, like Little bit more of these like tiny narratives and that sort of what the fans are consuming rather than an overall plot that makes sense, which is not what Gundam has really.

Kat 15:11

So Gundam [Wing] has like the cool robots but also these hot boys in them.

Caitlin 15:15

That's what I want.

Mallory 15:16

I mean Well, that's exactly what I want to show right now. So it sounds perfect?

Kat 15:21

Honestly, yeah.

Mallory 15:23

I think Evangelion, sort of, because, Kat, you and I just finished -- or are almost finished with -- Neon Genesis Evangelion [Kat, crosstalk: we haven't done all the movies yet] which was also it was my first time [Cathy, crosstalk: Congratulations, laugh] watching the whole series...wow, grim

Kat 15:40

I also only consumed

Mallory 15:42

[crosstalk] grim

Kat 15:42

[crosstalk] I consumed it like piecemeal too

Mallory 15:44

And depressing

Kat 15:45

It was great.

Mallory 15:46

Very good but um grim.

Kat 15:50

Yeah it's pretty grim.

Cathy 15:52

Yeah, it's interesting to me because I feel like Evangelion doesn't make a lot of sense as a cultural product unless you've consumed a series like Gundam or its ancestors before watching it and yet Evangelion is a lot of people's introduction to giant robot series. So I always find that kind of interesting...

Caitlin 16:13

[crosstalk] It's very weird.

Cathy 16:14

because it, it is subversive, and I think it's subversive even if you don't know the tropes of the giant robot series, of which Gundam is perhaps a prime example. Gundam Wing...

Kat 16:27

So I was gonna ask that and like, would you say, since Evangelion is definitely a like the subversion of this genre, would you say Gundam Wing is like the type of series that it is subverting? Or do you think it's in a different place?

Caitlin 16:41

Gundam Wing and Evangelion came out the same year? Gundam Wing is in some ways a, it's already like a parody form of the original iteration of Gundam.

Kat 16:55

Okay, so it's--is it like, um, like the pure essence of teens-robots.

Caitlin 17:02

It's, it's more like, I feel like by the time of Gundam Wing, the tropes of the original Gundam series are so well set that a lot of things in Gundam Wing to, like the fans who watched the original Gundam or like later Gundams, seemed like a rehash but it was designed to bring in new fans. So something like Zechs Merquis is very clearly like a Char Aznable character. It's just sort of a reiteration of that.

Kat 17:29

So is it like a Star Wars, like a Star Wars sequel?

Caitlin 17:33

Like how the Force Awakens is kind of a rehash of yeah, of A New Hope. And then, but it still brings in a lot of fans and has appealing characters and good aesthetics

Kat 17:43

Right, yeah, I guess I think of them, the two shows, as sort of like, splitting the take on... like, what would you say is like the ur-mecha show?

Cathy 17:52

The original Gundam

Caitlin 17:54

Original Gundam?

Cathy 17:54

Yeah, Mobile Suit Gundam.

Caitlin 17:56

I mean, they're, they're older iterations, there's other robot shows. But I feel like when people think of mecha, the first thing they think of is Mobile Suit Gundam.

Cathy 18:06

So the way like I now think of Gundam Wing after the fact of experiences I have now is that like Gundam Wing is actually a perfect like K-Pop boy band way that they built it and so if you can kind of think of it like that, like it's, you need enough of the tropes and symbols, so that everybody watches it and immediately knows it's a Gundam series.

Cathy 18:30

Like the colors of Wing Gundam are so obviously

Kat 18:34

Yeah.

Cathy 18:34

a Gundam Mecca and you need that you can't get away from it. And same thing with like Zech's having a mask it the reason I think of it as being in in the Kpop industry is like there's a derivative sense. And that's animated by both like Merchandising, and advertising and what audiences want but at the same time, it's like this incredibly pure understanding of what makes us like things? And like when you get that when you really get it, like, it doesn't matter how like, quote, unquote manipulative or exploitative it can seem like you love it. And that's enough, right to make it like a thing that we all want to keep coming back to.

Mallory 19:12

And there's basically like, an archetype right? In all of the different characters like you have the more

Kat 19:18

Yeah, you have the serious one.

Mallory 19:20

That's what I was thinking.

Kat 19:21

Like, the goofy one.

Mallory 19:23

Yeah, the goofy one, the sort of mess

Kat 19:25

the ugly one,

Mallory 19:26

like really cute one.

Kat 19:29

Yeah, that's why I was thinking American boy bands cuz they all have to have like a type of heartthrob. Yeah, I'm a bad boy. I love death.

Caitlin 19:38

One of them's, one of them's a rapper.

Kat 19:40

Okay, so we talked a little bit about how we got into it. We talked a little bit about fandoms. And we touched on pairings, do we want to go into pairings at all? Or like our fave characters, or who we think our fave characters will be Before this rewatch?

Cathy 19:54

You know before we do that--Mallory, can you try to tell us what you think this series is about? I'm actually really curious, like before you do a complete viewing, like what? what is what is your understanding of what happens in Gundam Wing?

Mallory 20:08

Um, there's a long interminable war. These boys are recruited by some shadowy government whatever. And they're piloting these mecha. Uugh, I just remember Duo being really annoying.

Caitlin 20:28

[loud gasp] [laughter] [crosstalk] Oh my god.

Mallory 20:29

I mean, not annoying, like, being sort of...

Kat 20:32

Wow.

Mallory 20:33

...the one the pushy one like, he's the challenging one to Heero's "I'm serious and dour." Literally, I have the most broad strokes impressions of what this show is. I just know it looked really fucking cool every time I saw it in, like, a commercial and couldn't watch it.

Cathy 20:55

Fascinating.

Caitlin 20:57

Honestly, even having seen Gundam Wing, I'm not sure I could explain it much better. I don't remember who recruited them.

Mallory 21:03

Okay. Okay, that does make me feel better. Because I was like, Oh, I don't? Do I actually know what the show is? What am I getting myself into?

Caitlin 21:14

There's there's a lot of weird politics.

Mallory 21:17

Well, I'm really excited for that. And I don't mean that sarcastically. Like, I'm really excited to, to see what this world is like, because I remember, like images or impressions. But everything is like out of context. So it'll be cool to see what that context is. Like deja vu? Oh, I remember that. I've seen that in AMV.

Kat 21:48

I remember this from fics that just rewrite scenes from this show.

Mallory 21:55

Yeah, like, what do I know? What do I know of Gundam that is from fanfic only, or is actual canon? I'm curious to figure out.

Kat 22:10

I think everyone's a lot less obnoxious in canon.

Caitlin 22:14

That's true.

Mallory 22:15

Okay, okay.

Caitlin 22:16

This was a this was a really good fandom for the the fandom phenomenon of, you take a character's most, like, annoying trait, and you emphasize it like times 10 in your fanfic.

Cathy 22:28

Yes.

Kat 22:28

Yeah

Caitlin 22:28

Just so everybody knows you know what that character is like.

Kat 22:31

Heero's gonna threaten to kill everybody all the time, constantly.

Caitlin 22:34

"Omae o korosu."

Cathy 22:36

[laughing crosstalk] And so, it's funny that you guys mentioned safe houses, because actually, there are very few safe houses in the original series. In fact, I think there's like maybe one or two scenes ever, where they are all in a safe house provided by one of their allies. And it's a really fascinating trope, because it like pervades the fanfic? But I remember, that I remember was like a big deal, like, I went back and I was like, actually, these people spend very little downtime with each other in the actual series and I find that fascinating.

Kat 23:12

Right? So you have to fill it all in.

Mallory 23:13

Oh, wait, what?

Caitlin 23:14

They actually barely know each other.

Cathy 23:16

Yeah, they truly barely know each other. [crosstalk]

Mallory 23:18

Wait. Oh no, I thought, I thought this was going to be like..

Kat 23:23

[crosstalk] They actually never interact.

Mallory 23:24

we're going to get together and become like a team

Caitlin 23:26

No, no.

Cathy 23:26

Absolutely not,

Caitlin 23:27

They don't fight together; It's 50 episodes of them not interacting.

Cathy 23:31

They, they literally have like, they like, there's probably one or two scenes in which all five of them are on the same battlefield at the same time. And almost every single one of those scenes involves them fighting with each other because like,

Kat 23:44

[crosstalk]Oh, yeah, they fight each other alone.

Cathy 23:45

What's going on? And this was the thing that I'm sure we'll come back to when I came back to this is when I was rewatching. It in college, I realized that of the two people who spend the most time with each other, it's like Trowa and Heero. Because, yes, it is what arc where they actually go on a road trip, which like,

Kat 24:03

it's great. I wrote a thing

Cathy 24:04

like wiped it from my memory when I was thinking about the series, but it really drives home. You know, again, to your point like what of this series do I did I remember that was just from fanfic, and was just what like the fanfic I read very specifically. And so that was one of the things is like, when you come back as an adult, I was like, all of this stuff is so much more interesting to me because like, I actually, like, I don't get me wrong, I still have shipping opinions. But like, I'm older and I have I I'm famous for this. And Kat knows this. I like don't have OTPs. And I'm like not very good about actually being very loyal to pairings. And so as an adult coming back to this, I was like, Oh, this is actually really interesting because the permutations that fandom came up with also came from, like, non-canon material, because there's a lot of non-canon material, like promotional images that bear no resemblance whatsoever to canon.

Kat 24:54

Okay, I would, I would call those extra canonical, right?

Caitlin 24:58

No, they're, they're extra canonical, they count in some form.

Kat 25:02

Right? 'Cause they're official.

Cathy 25:04

I guess so. I mean, sure, we'll talk about that as time comes but like.

Caitlin 25:08

Listen, a canon is not just the story. It's the entire media mix around it. It's those, it's those things that you can collect. It's the extra manga. It's Frozen Teardrop,

Cathy 25:18

Like, Gundam Wing actually, I think is one of the few franchises I know where like "pair the spares" was a real merchandising tactic.

Kat 25:26

Yes, it was.

Cathy 25:27

And so, so everybody had somebody... gay, I mean, like, not like,

Kat 25:34

Wufei had two!

Cathy 25:35

They had a gay and a straight interest that they were paired up with. And so, um, so it's like, fascinating to me to come back and be like, actually, the canon is a lot more flexible and interesting than I remembered it.

Caitlin 25:49

The canon for me is like, remarkable in its commitment to not officially putting anyone together. Like it was, it's very good at balancing out all of the different pairings that it wants to support.

Mallory 26:01

Mm hmm.

Caitlin 26:02

Um, it's interesting to see which ones got picked up as the main two in fandom, which for me, were always 1x2 and 3x4 dominated the fandom, because they're both like, friendly, maybe talkative, personable guy and like silent, brooding, weirdo,

Kat 26:22

Warrior.

Caitlin 26:22

What fandom loves! Fandom loves that exact dynamic in every form. And so like, what 1, 1 and 3, were never going to work together because they're both silent and brooding. Fandom was never gonna pick that up. It's too It's too boring. It's not dynamic enough, right?

Mallory 26:37

Like, you can't fight. There's no banter,

Cathy 26:39

Which is actually weird, because if you go back and watch the episodes, you'll see it. Heero actually is not that quiet. And Trowa is like a nutcase. And so

Kat 26:48

they're really funny together,

Cathy 26:49

when they are together, they're actually incredibly dynamic in ways that in fact, the canon doesn't establish 1x2, or 3x4 to be. And so it is really fascinating, because I do agree with Caitlin. What came out of this canon is very different from what I think the show gives. And I don't know the show was like, open minded because it wanted to sell as much merch as possible or

Caitlin 27:13

It's that.

Cathy 27:13

Yeah, so I don't know.

Mallory 27:14

Capitalism.

Kat 27:16

I am gonna say I think the show is a 3x4 shipper. Like I think if the show had a pairing, it would be a three, it would be 3x4, like from my recollections of the show

Mallory 27:26

Yeah

Caitlin 27:26

I always thought that was true. But now

Cathy 27:28

I disagree.

Caitlin 27:29

I feel like I'm gonna go into this and and be like, they never

Kat 27:32

Nobody else has a musical interlude.

Cathy 27:34

But the but the thing is, here's Okay, so not to, like, make this too much about the pairing... But I also think 1x2 and 3x4 become established. I put that in quotes early in the series. And so it becomes entrenched and people assume that that's the pairing. But actually, I just remember so strongly when I went back and rewatched that I was like, there really is not that much evidence for Trowa and Quatre's like instantaneous connection because Quatre has that with almost every other pilot, and Trowa's relationship with Heero is like so much more interesting when I come back to it, even though I definitely think they would never work. They would like killing each other and instead as an adult.

Kat 28:12

And I mean, I love that pairing. And like the one thing that came out of my rewatch a million years ago was I wrote a 1x3 fic cuz I really love those episodes, and fandom didn't do anything with it. But I feel like, I feel like Quatre and Trowa are framed slightly differently than all the other potential pairings so that they could be together.

Cathy 28:33

Even up until Endless Waltz like, I really just feel like that that was an early series thing. And then as you go on into the series, that relationship while still important, was not really emphasized any more or less.

Kat 28:47

But I mean, if it, if it comes out of the gate strong, [laughter] like

Caitlin 28:51

That's all that matters

Kat 28:52

I still think that the show was pushing that one if it pitched. Like if it was giving the most evidence to any one of them, I think the early stuff was really like, ~look at this beautiful pairing.~

Caitlin 29:04

So wait do we all want to, maybe to end this episode, we should all go through and predict what are OTP or pseudo OTP for Cathy will be by the end of this rewatch.

Kat 29:16

But also tell me your fave character because that's what I asked like, 15 minutes ago.

Cathy 29:21

Okay, Kat you first.

Kat 29:23

Oh, well, my favorite character has always been Duo Maxwell. And I'm predicting that he's still going to be my fave character. And I am going to stake my flag on Duo/Wufei, 2x5.

Cathy 29:36

Mallory?

Mallory 29:37

I think from what I remember, I really liked Trowa, I thought Heero was too dour, but I also think that I might relate to him a lot more this time around. So I'm going to say that Heero is going to be my favorite character. And I've always liked...see, I don't know about fandom pairings. I want to say it'll be...well it was Duo/Heero before? No, but I've-- I really like Duo/Wufei so, like, I think that's just always gonna be my Gundam Wing ship.

Cathy 30:20

So when I was a kid watching it my favorite was Duo Maxwell, but I know from my prior rewatching, or attempts to rewatch the series, that as an older person coming into the series, I actually like the girls a lot more, like Relena and Dorothy and Noin became my favorite characters and I did not give them the credit they deserved when I was watching it as a younger person.

Cathy 30:41

I also was 1x2 shipper but again, I know that what I came out of the series really shipping was disastrous Heero/Trowa, and then Duo/Wufei.

Caitlin 30:56

Okay, I see we are all Duo/Wufei fans now.

Kat 30:59

[crosstalk] That's why this is going to be the superior Gundam Wing podcast.

Caitlin 31:02

Yeah. I feel like so, my favorite character when I was originally watching as a kid was Quatre. I think probably because like I always liked like, the friendly blondes in boy bands?

Kat 31:13

That go apeshit?

Caitlin 31:15

When I got older, I was more into Duo and Duo is was probably still my favorite character. I was into Duo/Wufei for a long time. I just think that they are funny together and terrible. And I actually really like Wufei a lot. I sort of admire that fake honor sort of thing. But I, since everybody said Duo/Wufei, I feel like I should say something else, which is that I think that I will get more into 3x4 again after this rewatch, because it's a comforting pairing, in some ways. It's a return. And we're all very full of anxiety right now. [laughter] And so we just need Quatre and stupid, crazy Trowa, you know, having their pure love connection that fandom imagined for them from the beginning.

Kat 32:02

It's real.

Mallory 32:03

I look forward to it.

Cathy 32:04

I do too. I also look forward to hating Treize because that's what happened the last time I rewatched this. He's such a fuck boy.

Kat 32:12

I'm excited to love Dorothy and Relena.

Cathy 32:14

My god, they're so good. Yeah, they're so good. That's what I should have said is my favorite pairing.

Kat 32:20

Fandom definitely ruined me for a little bit, like, "urgh, Relena!"

Caitlin 32:24

When I was a kid, part of the appeal of Gundam Wing fandom was in some ways that it was so sexist, and so I could like act out my own internalized misogyny at the time. And so like, I like I was definitely participating in that of like a group breaking up the boys, whatever. And then in later iterations, I like love Relena. So.

Kat 32:45

Yeah, she was just such an easy reason for them to get together, right? For 1x2, but in the show, she's way more than a plot device. So that was kind of frustrating.

Caitlin 32:56

In the show, she's easily the most one of the most interesting and active characters for sure.

Kat 33:02

As podcast Daddy, I declare Episode Zero officially over. Thank you everyone for your time and catch us in two weeks with Episode One: The boy whose wings killed adolescence.

Caitlin 33:16

Byeeee [laughter]

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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