#heavier topics

[fuckyeahgoodomensfanfic]

Good Omens Fic Rec: The End is Where We Start From

“Aziraphale, hello. It’s er, been a long time.” “Yes, dreadfully long. You look different.” He immediately coloured in evident embarrassment. “I mean, of course you look different, as do I of course, I didn’t mean bad different, that is to say…” Something inside of Crowley, something that had been in a deep freeze for several eons, was starting to thaw. It was letting little bits and pieces of familiarity break loose to float back into their rightful places in his soul. One of those pieces, those round, blue eyes, suddenly snapped into place, and he felt a corresponding wave of long-forgotten feeling wash through him. Aziraphale is anxious. Make Aziraphale happy. “Yeah,” he interrupted. “D’you wanna… get a coffee or something?” *** Crowley and Aziraphale meet by chance on the street. They've met before, in their youth, in a different life. Some very difficult things have happened since then. Will they be able to find their way back to each other and to themselves?

Length: 23,411 words

AO3 Rating: Explicit / Spice Level 🔥🔥🔥

Best for: At Home, Angst, Romance, Human AU

Triggers: Grief, Period typical homophobia

Read it here, fic by tiresius

*Minor Spoilers* This is a very beautiful story of grief, longing, and healing. A human AU where Crowley and Aziraphale spent a summer falling in love as teenagers, and have now reconnected 30 years later. The years were not kind to either of them. Crowley's grief hangs off every part of him. I love that the author does not give his full backstory until he feels comfortable enough to tell Aziraphale. It feels almost like we, the readers, had to earn that trust as well. I loved all the flashbacks to their teenage years. That summer was all about new experiences and finding a joy that they weren't allowed to have. Only allowed the briefest moments of freedom before it has to be tamped down, hidden, explained away. Their adult selves are still dealing with that trauma along with a whole new set of pains. But they will learn to be patient and take care of each other. I love the hope that this ends on. I'm sure there will be more bad days in their futures, but now they are no longer alone with those burdens.

Love love, love this story. The author manages to write something melancholy, without being depressing. It knows grief, and how heavy it is. How hard it can be to manage, and treats both characters with such grace and understanding. Mostly safe in public, there are a couple sexual scenes but nothing too explicit. I suggest an at home read though, it's not a triggering story but it's heavier topics.

Read it here, fic by tiresius

[and-the-flame-burns]

hehhd, boredom

random headcannons, thought food for your brain ig

New York’s the type of guy to me to have 92847593 plushes somewhere in his room but nobody’s allowed to know or else he’ll knock them out. His favorites are the ones you can plop in the microwave to warm up

I appreciate this type of New York, I don’t think I’ve seen this type of interpretation of him yet. All of the states have some type of trauma, look at the shit they went through and look at their history. It’s screwed up.

gov is relatively ok, he’s not perfectly mentally healthy but he’s the healthiest out of everybody. He decided to collectively put everybody in therapy.

hh heavier topics below. I like talking about them in my headcannons because of reasons I am unable to put into words. It’s not a lot, but a mention of Alaska’s history with the russians is there

New York got taken by the British and all that happened and it’s probably scarred him for life

ahhh Alaska, poor Alaska. What he went through isn’t pretty, don’t try to put a mask over that to make it seem better. Not sure how to like, talk about it properly besides saying “long story short, the Russians almost killed all of Alaska’s native populations and almost succeeded in genocide”

coco? I like talking about this one every now and then. Not too familiar with the history myself but it’s just his Vibes that tell me he isn’t ok at all. Sure he’s athletic, he’s active, he gives “funny guy, the class clown” but it’s just his Vibes that tell me that his home isn’t in a very happy look. Like it’s a mess on the inside and he can’t bring himself to clean it.

also do you know how many states probably suffer from PTSD? If they experienced a lot of their history first hand, then it’s going to happen.

one a random side note, talking about the states being mentally ill or generally having problems feels incredibly important to me. I myself am,, not really on the mentally healthy side, and so it’s important that mental illness or behaviors caused by trauma is talked about in a serious or understanding manner. I try to talk about this stuff in the best ways I can, so if I ever end up misrepresenting something or say something not accurate or weird, please tell me.

[villainsally]

This is an old post, but I still use these tactics

Hey, I have been in a bit of a dark place recently. Just a lot of school stress and not being able to keep up as well as I feel like I should, y'all don't need to worry about it. But one thing that really helps me when I am in a really dark place is imagining little me, imagining her hopes and dreams. And trying to do something to honour her. Because while she is me, I'm not her. We're so different and she helps me stay here, stay healthy. And talking to little me, or imagining talking to little me has helped me greatly. Imagining talking to older me, me when I'm an adult, in college, has helped me too. To visualize where I'm going. I want to make little me proud, and be a person older me will look back to and say "I want to make them proud"

I think this tactic has helped me become more stable in not needing external validation. Because if I view past me as not me and she is proud of me? That's validation that comes from me but feels external. Little me would love all my mutuals on here and would be impressed with the amount I have.

[charmac]

I wrote about Charlie and Dennis' paralleled childhood sexual abuse, and how their opposing trauma responses keep them from seeing themselves while they stay stuck in their own cycles of abuse.

// The content under the read more is an in-depth script analysis highlighting and discussing childhood sexual abuse and trauma response. Please read with caution or scroll past this post if these topics are known to affect and/or trigger you. //

Because Sunny walks an extremely fine line between sensitive, if not traumatic, character work and dark comedy, I've found that, in reading the scripts, the trauma being written is always much more blatant. You have to work a little harder to pick up on the underlying intent when watching the episodes (though the more and more we learn about the characters, the more the intent becomes clear), but the scripted versions of these scenes are solid evidence that the clear intent of these storylines is to reveal that these characters have extremely repressed childhood trauma, in-turn explaining to the audience why they have such fucked-up ideas of (and relationships with) love and sex. To put it more blatantly: the purpose of giving and revealing the childhood trauma these characters have is purposeful (if not needed), explaining why they are the predators that they are, and allows us to at least understand where their often psychopathic actions and rationales come from.

The fact that Charlie and Dennis were both sexually abused as children is all but obvious to the audience (and every other member of the Gang), but the extent to which these plots are intended to act as character work as opposed cheap-shot rape jokes is often lost on the casual viewer. In my opinion, the disconnect is not for lack of clear intention in the writing, but by the nature of the show being what it is.

It’s very clearly still there, easy enough to catch if you’re standing more than ankle-deep in the waters, but because Sunny is a dark comedy, it’s unfortunately easy to uncomfortably laugh past a rape joke if you don’t care to look deeper than the surface. Taking a look at the scripts helps paint a clearer picture, making it easier to point out, walk through and explore the CSA lore developed for both Charlie and Dennis, how they parallel and oppose each other, and how this trauma relates to their own predatory behaviours. 

An obvious starting point is Charlie Got Molested, which is, on the surface, an episode in which we learn that Charlie wasn't molested. What is changed from the script to the episode is this first line from Charlie, right at the very end of the episode, on his family’s response to his alleged molestation:

(Charlie's aired line is instead "Now everybody thinks that I've been molested. So, in a way, my life is ruined.")

Whether written with a specific intent at the time or not, this episode sets the stage (literally, lol) for a later building 'reveal' that (1) Charlie was molested as a child, and (2) his Uncle Jack is very much a pedophile, not just a perv (which is hinted at in the actual episode, both in dialogue and visuals), because the next time the show features a plot with Charlie and molestation (Sweet Dee's Dating notwithstanding, though important to mention, as it’s further evidence of the idea that there was clearly a thread being woven early on), it’s via the form of a play.

Charlie wrote The Nightman Cometh as a play about love, which was turned into a 'legible' play by Artemis, in which the Gang all "misinterpreted" his original intent and believed it to be about a child being raped. Charlie gets mad, because he doesn't see it, doesn't believe it, and instead believes everyone is destroying his artistic vision by refusing to let this idea go.

The script for The Nightman Cometh (which, I’d like to point out, RCG chose to make publicly available to everyone) has an alternate ending to the rehearsal of the bed scene between The Boy and The Nightman:

(The aired version shows Charlie more-comedically angry at Mac and Dennis by raising his level of frustration, physically with his hands. The mention of the Nightman taking The Boy face-to-face is never addressed in the aired episode, yet it does take place that way in the actual play scene following the rehearsal featuring doggy-style humping.)

What's heavily implied in the episode (and basically explicitly stated in the script), is that the Gang are not misinterpreting Charlie's art; the play is quite literally built around the idea that a child is attempting to communicate his rape, and Dennis is telling him that’s what it is. Charlie can't accept that, because this is a play about his life, he believes he’s created a play about love, and he is the boy and he was not raped so it can't be rape.

(And, following this, the audience can put the two and two together: Charlie’s clearly repressed CSA and the fact that his Uncle is a pedophile. In every.single.physical.interaction Charlie and Uncle Jack have, in every appearance he makes following Season 4, the fact that Uncle Jack is the Nightman is clear.)

Rolling back a little, it’s interesting that Dennis is the one to be audibly confused by (and frustrated with) the fact that Charlie can't understand his play is a rape play, because it's so very obvious to Dennis. Yet, 7 years later, he's in Charlie's exact shoes.

Because in Dee Makes a Smut Film, Dennis' plot almost directly parallels Charlie’s from The Nightman Cometh:

Dennis wrote his Erotic Memoirs as a tale of his sexual conquests, the first of his encounters turned into a 'film' by Dee, in which Dee "misinterpreted" what happened between Dennis and the Librarian as him being raped as a teen. Dennis gets mad, because he doesn't see how it could possibly be rape, doesn't believe a guy can be raped, and instead believes Dee and Grieco are destroying his artistic vision by refusing to let the idea go.

(In the aired episode, Dennis does not avoid using the word rape, and instead insists you cannot rape a guy, and that he was willing.)

Just like Charlie, Dennis refuses to accept that the people who are acting out his writing at face-value are telling him straight up that it looks like, and most-likey is, rape. Dennis can't accept that, because this is a film about his life, it's about his first sexual conquest, and he is the boy and he was not raped so it can't be rape.

This goes one-step further when Dee airs the 'film' for the rest of the Gang:

(The aired version of the video does not show anything from filming, and only shows a slideshow of photos from when Dennis was a teen, overlay text claiming he was raped, and a photo of Klinsky repeating 'hoser' over and over.)

Dennis goes on a spiel and reiterates that he was not raped. The rest of the Gang are not convinced.

And at this point, Charlie and Dennis probably should relate to each other, or at the very least intentionally give each other a pass/miss whenever the topic of childhood sexual abuse emerges, but instead they continue to have no issue believing and pointing out that the other was raped while continuing to deny their own trauma. 

In PTSDee, this paralleled-refusal is made clear. Very clear. In the script, it's even clearer:

(In the aired scene, Dennis' line is clearly cut after he mentions Charlie's mom, and it picks up with Charlie's line at "the father thing")

They see it so clearly in each other, but don't see themselves mirrored—and there's no doubt that's intentional. Because while they were both sexually abused as children, their current relationships with love and sex (as portrayed from basically episode one) are opposing, and the circumstances of their individual rape and immediate repression are extremely illustrative as to why they behave the way they do:

Charlie's trauma response is typical of pre-pubescent, forced rape. Not mature enough to even recognise what happened to him (as Uncle Jack's abuse was likely his first exposure to sexual acts), he regresses and represses, subsequently developing a repulsion toward sex into his adult life (in Season 5, Mac and Charlie Write a Movie, there's a deleted scene that makes it evident that he's disgusted by and avoidant of sex decades later), and, clearly by the depictions in The Nightman Cometh play and the lyrics of Nightman in Sweet Dee’s Dating, believing that the harassment he faced was love. 

For the run of the show, Charlie’s interest in love and sex is almost exclusively highlighted by his relentless pursuit of the Waitress. In so far as the idea that every member of the Gang is a sexual predator, Charlie is depicted as a sexual harasser, unable to recognize that disinterest, avoidance, the word "no," and stalking that leads to legal action to restrain him from the person he's pursuing is inappropriate and predatory.

While his CSA results in a repulsion toward sex (in most instances), Charlie clearly associates the concept of love with the early harassment he faced, brought on him in his own home by a "loved one," he truly believes that his own relentless pursuit will end up buying him love. Charlie is stuck in an abstinent cycle (at least, until Dennis’ Double Life) of his own abuse.

Dennis' trauma response is typical of coercive rape and grooming. He was old enough to believe that sex is something that should be seen as cool, and therefore obsesses and brags about his experience(s), resulting in his hypersexuality. In Season 5, The D.E.N.N.I.S. System, it's firmly established that Dennis' pursuit of women is something outside of genuine attraction; in fact, it's almost devoid of it. Clearly by the plot of PTSDee, he sees a woman’s sexuality as a weapon he needs to fight against. 

For the run of the show, Dennis' interest in sex is deeply entwined with the fact that he gets off on having power over his "sexual conquests". In so far as the idea that every member of the Gang is a sexual predator, Dennis is depicted as a date rapist, having an aversion to recognising (if not an inability to understand) consent, he pursues sex exclusively for his own physical pleasure, with little care for the other party, getting off on the knowledge that he’s orchestrated the situation he’s in.

While his CSA results in an obsession with sex, Dennis clearly does not associate the concept of love with the act, truly believing that sex is used to overpower someone, most enjoyable when obtained via coercion, exactly as his virginity was taken from him. Dennis is stuck in a loveless cycle of his own abuse.

Charlie and Dennis meet after their own traumas; their clearly disordered relationships with love and sex is how they've always known the other to be. When there are hints of the other's abuse, they're able to easy recognise what it is, for they sense the paralleled familiarity of their own CSA—yet their polar opposite trauma responses result in an inability to reflect:

To Dennis, Charlie was clearly raped, and Charlie fears sex and Dennis loves sex, so he can't have been raped; To Charlie, Dennis was clearly raped, and Dennis doesn't pursue love and Charlie loves the Waitress, so he can't have been raped.

Their reflections being mirrored causes them to harp on the other's trauma and keeps them from being able to truly recognise their own abuse. Call the other out and deny what’s shot back, stuff it down and continue spiralling in their own cycle of abuse.

[tls12lessthan3]

thinking about orvs metatextual engagement with its genre and specifically how that interacts with its women again. kim dokja is a self insert for the reader - what he thinks is largely meant to represent what we think, especially in the beginning before sing shong really fleshes out his character. kim dokja sees the world through tropes, directly acknowledging the genre around him and the cliches we expect e.g. the overpowered mc, the scheming villain, the beautiful heroine.

but a major part of his arc is deconstructing this reductionist view of the world in a way that parallels the author's deconstruction of the genre, and that plays really well with the way orv writes women. yoo sangah is perhaps the best exanple - shes introduced as the heroine, a one-dimensional pretty girl who in any other novel would become kim dokja's love interest. but the authors allow her to be her own character, directly challenging the stereotype of the heroine and calling attention to the genre's typical lack of depth for such a character. i think this undercurrent plays in the background often but really comes to the forefront when yoo sangah reminds kim dokja of her putting pepper in their bosses' coffee, a memory kim dokja had supressed because it didn't fit with the pretty girl persona he made for her.

i interpret that moment as yoo sangah pushing her way out of the mold of heroine often found in these stories, demanding a depth be added to her character, asking kim dokja - and thus the reader - to see her in her entirety, to see the heroine archetype for what she could be. orv is at all times in conversation with its genre, and its simultaneous writing of female characters with agency and depth and acknowledgement of the tropes these women are expected to fulfill is undeniably a part of that. and its a part i enjoy. most of the time.

[genericpuff]

I'm not sure if anyone else has made this connection, but I've never seen it mentioned before. I think, similar to Lolita, RS was also inspired by the art of Trevor Brown. His work has a lot of young girls and medical fetish themes (to put it lightly) in a style reminiscent of RS's earlier stuff.

sigh

CW: medical fetish art often depicting children / child-like characters and medical equipment such as needles, gas masks, etc. seriously don't hit the jump if medical equipment or young girls in nurse's outfits or with open wounds makes you squeamish, I will not blame you for turning around now LOL

OP I was about to just... dismiss this. Wave it away as a funny coincidence that is indeed funny, but doesn't have any real evidence to back it up. I had a post typed up in response already declaring this, after which posting I was gonna move on with my day, work on Rekindled, play some XIV.

Because sure, there are a lot of resemblances between Trevor Brown's work and Rachel's old art, but nothing that can't be dismissed in good faith as a simple coincidence of being within the same genre of fetish art (first three are Trevor's, last three are Rachel's).

But then that little voice in the back of my head whispered in my ear, "Puff. You should double check. Just to be sure. Do your due diligence." And I once again found myself on the precipice of the rabbithole that somehow becomes deeper every time I jump. This time though, I knew it couldn't be that bad, I mean, I had enough confidence in knowing that there's no fucking way she listed Trevor Brown as one of her favorite artists-

God fucking dammit. How in the world did I miss this? I mean, I suppose I missed it simply because I'm not familiar with the works of Trevor Brown, but you can bet your ass I became familiar with it in my digging. Yeah, this guy is a supreme creep.

Again, I am not going to accuse Rachel of being a pedophile because that's just not an accusation that should be thrown around without undeniable evidence. What I will say, which has largely remained the same - though even more confidently now than ever before - is that she's clearly someone who took a lot of inspiration and influence from very problematic artists when she was young (I'm talking in her late teens which has me wondering if she started making medical fetish art when she was still a minor-) and then, BEST guess, she started to drop the medical fetish stuff around the time she went to college (which was also the same time she dropped The Doctor Pepper Show, which later got reworked into The Doctor Foxglove Show which was a lot less reminiscent of her medical fetish style from the early 2000's, but still had some of her usual preferences at play) and that's led up to today where she's drawing comics that look like they're for kids but tackle heavy adult subject matter in the worst way possible that straight up perpetuates grooming.

No matter how much experience I have with this already, no matter how much I think I've already seen, I always find more, and this time was no different. In fact - though unrelated to the original topic - thanks to this one fucking ask, I even found the full Mads Mikkelson comic with the completed caption. You know, that one.

And apparently Mads Mikkelson did very much replace her crush on Jeremy Irons.

Who's Jeremy Irons?

Oh yeah.

I just... y'all I can't. This is un-fucking-real. I'm gonna go take a shower, I need to scrub myself off of this 😭

[t-u-i-t-c]

Toku Pride Month Challenge │ LGBTQ+ Characters

Ichika Sakurai

[the-awful-falafel]

I really hope Rick and Morty as a series will finally move on from portraying Rick's love for Morty / his family as this special, redemptive trait that Morty just needs to open his eyes to. Or portraying it as something Rick just needs to be emotionally honest about, finally admit in a grand gesture, and then everything will be healthy and resolved.

Two things can be equally true: Rick can sincerely care about Morty, deeply enough to be tender with him, showing gestures of affection, being protective of him, being truly proud of him... and can also constantly let Morty down, put him in mortal danger, make Morty feel responsible for his emotional health, treat him awfully and in manipulative controlling ways, and not be there for him when it matters most. His love is real, but is also a fickle thing that Morty cannot always rely on. That uneven dolling out of affection is exactly what entrenches the abuse and damages Morty further. Even now that Rick is slowly improving as a person, his simultaneous love and unreliability persists in milder ways, and the long pattern of abuse leaves deep scars on his grandson.

In my opinion, it makes perfect sense for Morty to see Rick's care for him as this unreliable, dangerous, and potentially non-existent thing, but also to paradoxically crave it nonetheless. Every time he lets his guard down and starts to trust Rick too much, he's been kicked in the nuts for it to varying extents-- even recently. I don't think he actually believes Rick cares nothing for him, but he's been trapped in this cycle of good and bad for so long that his self-worth is eroded and wholly defined by his grandpa's conditional affection, and he's scared of and dependent on it simultaneously. Even if Rick became truly healthy and openly caring from now on, that won't change how he's screwed up Morty with his behavior.

The series isn't going to make any meaningful progress if the writers keeps cycling around the superficial "does Rick care? does Morty know how deeply Rick cares?" question that they've asked since Season 1, instead of progressing to more meaningful, realistic questions about what Rick's love even means after all the past seasons of codependent abuse, and how much it should be worth to Morty in the end. (Ideally, much, much less than it's worth now.)

Yes, Rick cares. Yes, he loves his family deeply. But as with many forms of abuse, that's part of the problem.

[jesse-pinko]

Y’all keep talking ab Warrior Cats incest like y’all think the Erins are going to respond normally if they deign to give a response and just Stop Writing Incest when y’all should know by now that if they address it at all it will be w Moonpaw or basically any Firestar descendant turning to the screen and saying yes my parents are related six times over but it’s okay bc I’m a cat :) no homo tho or the sinister voice in Moonpaw’s head will be like Moonpawww… the clans have to stop inbreeding or terrible things will come to passss… and then we’ll get an entire Warrior Cats psa arc ab why incest is bad is that really what y’all want? Is it?? The monkey’s paw is getting carpal tunnel

[lakesandquarries]

why are people trying to insist that ghibli movies are secretly like. dark and edgy somehow

there's this pushback against people characterizing ghibli movies as "cozy" and "hopeful" and it seems really silly to me. yes ghibli movies are about war and violence and loss of innocence. they are also about hope and love and kindness and are very cute and cozy. these can coexist! people who reduce ghibli to #cottagecore #hopepunk #cozycore are wrong but the solution is not to swing hard in the opposite direction and claim my neighbor totoro is like. dark and edgy. it's about two little girls struggling to cope with their mom's illness and there's sad moments and thats an important aspect. howl's moving castle is about war very explicitly. but they're still kind and hopeful and have a focus on the small, mundane joys of life.

yes i'm vagueing another post.....i don't wanna start shit i just think. lets all chill. sometimes things can handle heavy emotional topics and also be sweet and cozy. these do not cancel each other out. they can and should coexist

[sweetfoamspirit]

~🛡️ Madeleine Cookie Headcanons 🛡️~

Definitely some flavor of Cluster B personality disorder. Personal projection leans into Borderline.

Was one of those kids in school that would turn a three page assignment into ten pages except half of it is a really long run-on sentence and doesn't make any sense. Teachers hated him.

Loves reality dating shows. Has not missed an episode of cookie Bachelorette since it started airing.

Grew up with an "anti-clutter" ruleset but now has a ton of trinkets and souvenirs from his travels. Also has a vinyl record collection and a scrapbooking hobby.

He canonically, at least according to one of the Aunts, skips meals. Perhaps not full-blown anorexia but definitely some type of disordered eating/complex relationship with food.

NEEDS to hold something to sleep. Usually a pillow, sometimes a stuffed animal.

Kouign-Amann is his cousin but with how close the family is, they were pretty much raised as siblings.

I've posted this elsewhere but he and Financier were childhood besties that had a severe falling out due to typical high school drama (on Madeleine's part 100%. dumbass kid.) They've sort of resolved it in adulthood but it's still kind of awkward.

[galatoma]

i understand quackity not wanting to be as hands-on in this project because you also want to enjoy it as a player, but when it's tied to your name and shit starts going south with management then you have to put your hands back on the wheel.

I'm glad the qsmp admins are putting more eyes on the behind the scenes issues because the way they talk about how management treated everything is bonkers, and there needs to be an intervention of some kind

[gdomggdsss]

PSA to any of the people who followed me for flavor frenzy or any Dandy's World fans

One of the creators is a major weirdo and I thought I should post about it due to the sudden influx of BC members/fans from DW. Viewers discretion is advised this document has mentions of grooming and drawn cp and the likes.

[strawberry-seal77]

What is kitakawa

Kitakawa is short for Kitanai Kimi Ga Ichiban Kawaii, a manga featuring some not-so-healthy yuri!! One might call it toxic, in fact.

English title translations ive seen have been "I love your cruddy" and "The filthy you is the cutest"

Starring Airi Sezaki and Hinako Hanamura, we see their rather codependent lives together, and the fallout of a certain classmate discovering them! Or rather, discovering what they do together after school. Which includes such things as; making Hinako vomit, and forcing Hinako to eat (as it turns out, not that bad tasting) bugs.

However, nobody in this manga is normal, and Hina has her own reasons for sticking so close to Airi. Which you find out over the course of the manga !! teehee

[curedigiqueen]

So you loved Kira Kira Precure a la Mode, and/or some of the other seasons of the past 10 or so years. So you go to watch the season that started it all, and its probably not what your expecting. And there's a good chance you don't like it. That's fair. The two could not be more different. Now, Kira Kira Precure A la Mode is not a bad magical girl anime. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It has charming characters and creative battles. But is it a good Precure show? It is Futari wa Precure's antithesis. At least as much of an antithesis as it can possibly be while still being a show targeted towards young girls. Kira Kira Precure A La Mode is a colorful show, with 6-8 larger than life characters as they battle against hatred. They fight in confection themed outfits while wearing heels and being unabashedly cutesy. It's main protagonist always saving the day with an energetic "Whip Step Jump" or a "Bright Idea". To be fair, many modern Precure series are more similar to Kira Kira. Girls who are role models. Girls who chase after their dreams with everything they have. Who even without being Precure live extraordinary lives. There is only one Whip, there are many like her. There is no Cure like Black.

Now excuse me while I get really emotional and overdramatic about Futari wa Precure.

Futari wa Precure is not modern Precure, Modern Precure wouldn't really start until Fresh. Splash Star took the first steps, and Precure continues to evolve, but the first seasons of Precure, particularly the first 3 are not the Modern Cure. Futari wa Precure is not a story about Extraordinary girls, doing extraordinary things. It's not loud, nor bright spectacle. A show is not wrong for being these things. But these things are not Futari wa. It is a story about ordinary girls, who live ordinary lives, who fight against eternal forces that seek to destroy the normal things they hold dear, with only each other to count on. There are two sides to Nagisa and Honoka's lives. Their day to day lives, filled with people they love. Takoyaki and Chocolate and Dogs and Lacrosse and a million other simple things. Slice of life filled with unapologetically ordinary vibes. The world they seek to protect. And the things they do to protect it. The lonely brutal battles. The interruptions to their day to day. The threats on those they love. The villains dismissal of their important feelings and things in a battle that feels bigger than them. There are only the two of them. And 2 fairies who, themselves, only have each other, desperate refugees stuck in a world that makes them so tired that they cannot navigate it on their own.

And when I say there's no Cure like Black, I'm not exaggerating. There aren't many sporty lead cures anymore. But even when there were. There was no one like black. Melody, Rouge and Bloom are closest. But even then. Cure Black is not an optimist. She is not confident. Nagisa does not want to be a Cure. She does not want things to change. She bullies her little brother, she argues with her fairy. She is irresponsible and struggles to do things she dislikes. She hates fighting. But she fights anyway. She is not hope. She is courage. Because if she's going to die, she will die fighting. Bitterly.

When I say there hardly any Cures like Black, I mean there are also no Cures like White. We have cures into Science, though even now not many. And when we do, they are mostly into biology. (Doctors, Nurses, Marine Biologists, Botany). The closest we have is Himari, and her way of connecting sweets to science. We do have two cures who want to be astronauts (Tsubomi and Hikaru), but even then their primary interests are Botany and Cryptids respectively. Not that these are bad goals. But they are not White's more nebulous interest in science, that extends beyond the life sciences. Beyond domesticity. She loves learning, pure and simple. Honoka is well off, but gets her hands dirty. She is a woman of science, but takes the supernatural in stride. She is kind, but does things her way. She is graceful and polite, but temperamental and bold. In this way, Rhythm and Egret perhaps resemble her though not each other. Egret shares her independent nature, and mild obliviousness. Rhythm shares her temper and hands-onness. Honoka is hope. But she is not the loud Hope, like so many pinks, burning towards a dream. Burning with the possibilities. She is the quiet hope. The stubborn hope. She is the hope born of sorrow and things that cannot be. The hope that hears "This is the way it is" and says "No".

Cure Black and Cure White are not merciful. They do not redeem their enemies. A general hurts Black's brother and laughs. She kills him in rage. He was desperate. But she was vengeful. The enemies they fight are not all encompassing evil. They are darkness, and a threat that needs to be eliminated. But for many they merely want to survive. But so do Black and White. Cure Black and White fight, pitting the survival of their world against the survival of their enemies. It's them or her, and she chooses her and she loses. Her brother is vengeful and angry, and its him or them. And he chooses them. They lose a friend to this pointless struggle. But they continue on. The battle continues on. Honoka cries and cries for him. Did it have to be this way? It doesn't matter because it is. And there is no one she can talk to aside from Nagisa, and Mipple.

There is no one shouting to cheer on the Precure, no miracle lights. Those wouldn't come until Yes 5! They are merely rumors. A half seen fight. A figure seemingly out of a dream. Are they even real? Their imitators on the playground are more real than they are. Bring more smiles than they do. The universe is more vast than any of them could comprehend. There are entire other worlds with people who laugh and cry.

And there is no setting quite like Futari wa's setting. The setting in Futari wa, which I don't believe is named in show, is based on the Tokyo area. Not a made up city. A real one. Sure their school is fictional, as are the stores they visit. But the amusement park they visit is directly inspired by a real one. Nagisa lives in an Apartment building I believe to be modeled off a real one. They travel busy trains. Honoka's grandmother lived through war and tells stories of bombings. This is the Tokyo of a world not quite unlike our own. And perhaps most notably, this world is melancholic. Not bright.

Nagisa does not have pink hair. She does not have blond hair. She has orange hair. Not bright orange. Orangish brown. Though not one common in Japan, a real color. Honoka has black hair. Some might say blue. Although with its darkness its otherwise indistinguishable. It might as well be black. Shiho has red hair. And later Hikari will have blond. Kirya's will be green, but like Honoka so green it might as well be black. These may not be real hair colors, exactly. But they're close. Their muted. In the same way this is Tokyo but not.

With all of this said, there is still one core tenant Kira Kira holds to. It is still a story about girls, different kinds of girls, protecting the things they love. In Kira Kira, it is sweets. In Futari wa... its sweets.

Sweets. Precure was always about sweets go home.

[rimeiii]

I hate beating up a dead horse (and in fear of incurring the wrath of the fandom once more) but the way WHB handles content warnings is just...

Where are the detailed content warnings? Not just for the angels, but for everything? Because honestly, I think the game would've garnered less backlash for having them - a "this game is made for mature audiences, viewer discretion is advised" screen before logging in would be the bare minimum honestly.

Say what you want about the angel cards including dub/non-con content and the cards themselves veering towards that sort of territory but at least give a fucking warning about it? I've always criticized the devs for not having 18+ rating all across the board when clearly mature games like Limbus Company get the 18+ rating. If WHB is NSFW because of the sex and kinky stuff, Limbus is NSFW because of the immense amount of gore and dark content.

"But they have content warnings-" ONLY FOR SEX. AND PAIRED WITH 16+.

It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that, for people who played this game without following any of the pre-release contents, with this combination THERE WON'T BE ANY DETAILED DUB/NON-CON.

This is in Indonesia's Google Play Store, and if it's different in other regions, then it also begs the question - why the FUCK is it not just rated 18+ across the board?!

Limbus Company, the closest comparison I can think of being with their devs (Project Moon) also being a Korean indie company that created a gacha with mature content that has a staff team the size of a high school class (in fact I wager Limbus has less staff working on the game because around half of their staff works almost exclusively at their merch café), only had warnings for extreme violence and strong language, but at least they had the decency to put more warnings in their earliest trailers and the game website - and it's always common courtesy in the fandom to warn potential players with one particular image I'll show down below, containing a list of the game's content warnings.

Oh, and they're rated 18+ across the board, including a Mature Content Description on Steam.

And sure, you can make the argument of "well you know what you're getting into upon looking at the card art", but therein lies the issue of not warning at the very start of the game - nobody knew for sure what triggers would be in the game upon startup.

Whatever way you slice it, dub/non-con is a genuine trigger for other people despite it also being a kink (I personally don't get it and it's a no-no for me even in fiction, but you do you). Adding clear content warnings would literally harm no one and helps people avoid things they know they don't want to consume. Yes, despite the in-game context clues providing hints, a clear indicator is still preferable.

Take, for example, the Lobelia summer skin controversy in Granblue Fantasy. People already know Lobelia as the twisted Evoker who not only murdered his own parents but recorded their dying screams of pain in his conch shells, doing the same thing to his countless victims afterwards. All of this is mentioned during the Fate Episodes to recruit him. You want to know the problem with his summer skin, Danger Beckons by the Shore, though?

There's a home screen voiceline where he offers one of his conch shells for the player to listen to, wherein you will hear the pained and tortured screams of one of his victims as she's attacked and later on eaten alive by a shark. Keep in mind, this sort of voiceline wasn't even in his base art, and while his Fate Episodes had tortured screams it wasn't even half as bad as this particular voiceline.

It's even given a content warning in the wiki.

For a rather significant amount of players who bought the skin, the inclusion of this voiceline despite the subtle warning in the skin blurb (which, fyi, is only accessible AFTER you bought the skin) hampers their enjoyment of the skin when they put it on their home screens then tap Lobelia - which many people who get character skins do. Mostly because there wasn't any clear indicator of the scream and a lot of people never appreciated the sudden jumpscare scream. The fact that Lobelia is a psychopath and doing this shit is in character for him should also be able to stand together with the fact that including a scream out of nowhere is pretty scummy and not a good time. Especially for non-JP speaking players, who essentially got jumpscared by a scream out of nowhere, as they never understood the fact that Lobelia was offering one of his conch shells.

Back to the rating issue, though. Why not rate WHB as 18+ if you're going to include content that could very much be considered controversial, like non-con? Like, say, Limbus Company (which I hate bringing up again bc fuck kjh)? Which not only has the warnings in the app store but plastered in the earliest trailers (still viewable on Steam and Project Moon's YouTube channel but not on the Google Play Store) and the official game website?

And sure. Some of these trigger warnings sound silly (reference to traffic accidents is more or less Charon driving Mephi like a maniac iirc based on the content we already have in the game). But I did genuinely appreciate the warning because let's talk about the first three Cantos after the prologue, hmm?

Canto 1 already includes cannibalism, war, torture, and body modifications, among other things! Canto 2 has references to alcohol and gambling, as well as mentions of homicide - despite being a lighter Canto overall! And in Canto 3, we experienced discriminatory violence, more body modifications, enforced ideologies and/or actions, and religious torture and violence among other things!

I can stomach gore easier compared to non-con and even I appreciate the warning, particularly with regards to Canto 3. Kromer's fascination with everything pure (i.e. no body modifications), all stemming from seeing...something...in the basement of Sinclair's old mansion, the cult behaviour that led to mass murder and torture by the faction she leads (up to and including brainwashing as detailed by Kleinhammer Heathcliff's Identity story) Kromer's obssession with Sinclair and him standing beside her as an ally...it's all genuinely so unnerving, and are story beats the game handles really well despite how disturbing it all really is when you stop and think about it.

"But you should've known considering the game's aesthetics-"

Maybe, especially considering one of Gregor's launch cards is literally this, and most if not all Uptie II arts are gory at the very least.

However, again, I have to underline the importance of content warnings - this time with an irl example.

I have a friend who was interested in Limbus Company. I've talked extensively about Gregor and how much I love him, and it started because I have a drawing I made of him in the back of my phone case and Liu Gregor's Uptie II art as my phone background at the time. They said they were interested, then I had to explain the sorts of contents she would encounter in my native language, Indonesian.

"Blood and gore, violence, a lot of mental health issues - Gregor has PTSD and his chapter depicted it pretty well, human experimentation, homicide, so Nagel und Hammer is basically the Inquisition and kills people to 'purify' them, oh yeah cannibalism is also a thing-"

"Stop, stop, I'm not playing if that's the content I'm going to see. I don't think I can handle it."

This same friend was also interested in playing If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers - a free point-and-click adventure game that deals with themes like depression, homophobia, racism, and suicide. She was willing to try that game out because it wasn't as gory as Limbus Company. For context, the Mature Content Description for this game on Steam:

In both cases, I had to personally explain the content warnings in Indonesian since my friend isn't the most fluent in English and she has a far lower limit for dark content compared to me, but I did send that image of content warnings for Limbus Company and urged people to read the Mature Content Descriptions on Steam for anyone who wanted to try any of the two games and is fluent in English. Why?

Because it's basic human decency to try and keep people informed of any potential triggers and content they might not be comfortable seeing.

Either way, main takeaway from this issue:

Dub/non-con might be your kink, but it might not be for others - it might be uncomfortable or downright triggering as all hell for others, in fact. So, clear content warnings (in particular for any and all triggering content) harm nobody, especially as it helps people avoid story beats where their turn-offs and, more importantly, their triggers.