#i didnt realize when i was drawing these that they were kind of in chronological order

[rookinthecrownest]

mornings with Rook and her Talon and her Talon’s demon 💜

tiny spite - @/psin314

[blookmallow]

i finally rewatched Us watching for details... I also took a bunch of screenshots, I’ve mentioned before I live in santa cruz and grew up going to this boardwalk so im obsessed with this movie, I’m going to go try to take some better comparison shots sometime (here’s a few I took before) (and here’s a Tethered mannequin that was outside of the frightwalk for a while. i havent been inside for ages so I don’t know if they moved him inside or if he’s just gone now) (i HOPE they did something with the theme considering the frightwalk is literally a horror attraction beneath the boardwalk. i dont really want to go in there by myself though lmao. not a fan of animatronics jumping out and screaming at me) 

this is a lot, i have many things to say 

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- the opening news segment is 11 at 11 

- you can faintly see adelaide/red’s reflection in the tv screen, with a toy rabbit (her shirt also has twin lines on it in multiple places but that could be looking too far lmao) 

- in the “Hands Across America” segment (aside from the obvious red figures linked together in the logo) : “from the golden gate bridge to the twin towers” another possible 11/twinning, and it starts in california, which is where the tethered revolution begins 

- on “from sea to shining sea” the exact same coastline image is just flipped 

(there’s also another 11 on the side of the TV here) 

- “This summer, 6 million people will tether themselves together” 

- brief mirroring in the boardwalk ad, not just two girls running on the beach but also two girls with upside down reflections in the ground, 

- fairly obvious one, but “find yourself” (as a sidenote there’s nothing in that spot irl, the roller coaster and the swings are real but there was never a ‘vision quest’ or a ‘merlin forest’ as far as I know and there’s no door or anything there either, the interior shots must’ve been done separately somewhere else) (nothing’s left here from the movie now either, I have no idea when they filmed it because I never saw anything or heard anything about it) 

- adelaide/red whistles “the itsy bitsy spider” when the lights go out in the vision quest - “down came the rain and washed the spider out,” it’s raining outside when her tethered comes up (and she is dragged down). she also drops her red apple on the ground before she enters 

- zora’s rabbit shirt 

- everyone else is eating fast food of some kind, except adelaide, who is eating red strawberries 

as well as being a visual cue, its possible she has an aversion to meat if she was forced to eat raw rabbit as a child

- young adelaide arranging animals in the sand (it seems like some of the tethered tend to mirror their counterpart’s movements, so it’s possible she’s mirroring red, though it’s probably not that likely she’d be planning this early/the dance hasnt happened yet so its probably just foreshadowing) 

- young adelaide very pointedly watches “her” mother crying, saying “I just want my little girl back” - she will never have her little girl back again, though she doesn’t know it (I’m not sure if adelaide still remembers what she’s done at this point either) 

its also mentioned that ‘grandma’ has passed away as of the present time, likely adelaide’s mother (i dont remember if its stated outright but since the house belonged to the grandma, and it’s in santa cruz, that would line up) so. the tethered mother, if she’s still alive, would not kill red’s real mother in the uprising. dont know about the father, or if red knows/cares about this, but. thats there. that also means the original mother will never know what happened with her daughter (likely the father won’t either, it’s not clear if he’s still alive but there’s no mention of him being around/he’s not at the house so it seems likely he passed already too) 

- adelaide, her reflection, and a (not so) itsy bitsy spider 

theres even two spiders, one a toy, one real 

- jason crawls out of a cabinet at zora’s feet and scares her while she’s looking in a mirror (which is also a very pluto-like movement) 

- adelaide finds the toy rabbit in a box; assuming the intro was chronological, we saw “her” with it in the tv screen reflection before she went to the boardwalk, so this was red’s rabbit first (she probably does not remember this, though) (red also later finds this and cuts off the head, not sure why though)

- adelaide “sees” her child self in the room with her (in her memory) learning her dance alongside her reflection

 but the reflection is the one she “sees” looking directly at her 

(she’s also interrupted by hearing her son, above her, screaming because he’s trapped, but that might not be intentional) (though when red comes down here later, she is also interrupted by her son getting stuck in the closet too)

- she’s also wearing a choker necklace with a matching gold bracelet, maybe an allusion to. the choking and the handcuffs, again i might be looking into it too much, but. the white clothes which steadily become red with blood seems very intentional so i wouldnt be surprised if the jewelry was planned specifically too 

- its really hard to see and its a split second throwaway comment but kitty goes “oh isnt that beautiful” showing her the magazine and i thhiiiink thats a white girl in a native american headdress :’  ) probably doesnt have. much deeper meaning other than ‘clueless white friends’ but 

- guy buried in sand comes bursting to the surface again and scares his friends (also eyyooooo you can see the wharf in the background im down there all the time) (sorry this is still wild to me. i grew up here ive been to that beach like 9 million times)

- i didnt catch it and was waiting for it to be shown again and it wasnt and i dont want to go back for it but anyway jason has a drawing of a bunch of people holding hands in a line like the hands across america thing in his room, theres a lot of drawings around and we see his drawing of the first untethered, so he probably drew that as well

- jason has a hard time communicating, but he seems to use drawing as a way to express himself. he doesn’t tell his mother about the encounter with the old man (and only shrugs when he’s asked about it) but he does draw it. adelaide found self expression through dance when she was a child before she was able to talk, so he probably got those traits from her. her voice also goes low and hollow on the line “I just didn’t know if you were lost, or... taken” 

- her voice also gets very strange when she’s talking about her memory of the encounter in the vision quest. low, shaky, harsh. its fascinating hearing how much alike the voices are (obviously they’re both the same actress/if the tethered are clones it makes sense that they’d have identical vocal chords but like. red’s got a fucked up voice. hearing echos of that in adelaide is wild and i didnt notice it at all before) 

- its not clear whether adelaide actually remembers what she did, or even realizes she was the copy - is she trying to protect her family from what she believes was the girl who almost took her, or trying to stop her from getting her revenge? she describes the event to gabe as if she was the one who was attacked but escaped, and im not sure if she’s lying or has convinced herself that’s the truth

something’s going on with jason and pluto too but I don’t quite know what it is. when we first see jason he’s wearing a Jaws shirt, kind of a similar vibe to the thriller shirt, and when the tethered arrive he’s wearing a white tuxedo t shirt, white matching his mother’s white outfit. the others all go off to kill their doubles but pluto holds jason’s hand, sits with him quietly, watches his magic trick, he’s told to go “play” which. obviously has a violent undertone to it but he doesn’t actually try to kill him. i dont even remember seeing him with the scissors. why are jason and pluto different. why does pluto get stuck mirroring jason’s movements even to the point of his death but the others dont. why didn’t adelaide mirror red

i guess its possible its because pluto is the youngest in the family so maybe he hasn’t broken out of his connection yet? they didnt really ever explain how they learned to do that 

and as for the connection with adelaide it. could just be that jason takes after his mom more and zora takes after her dad more but that seems too simple. i mean theres the theory going around that jason was actually switched with his clone too at some point and its got some good points (jason forgetting the magic trick, getting stuck in the closet again, etc) but theres a whole line of logic to debunk that too so its just. What’s Going On Here  

cal 11 

i took the first pic to get a comparison shot at the same place later irl but then noticed the ambulance they come across is the same one (#2) they saw earlier 

pretty obvious but the real rabbit comes out through the picture of an identical rabbit (there’s also probably a “rabbit hole” allusion here) 

i noticed this before too but now i have a screenshot of it, im the rabbit in the background just chilling on the floor during the climax here

- im sure i must have seen this before but i forgot about it. the 11:11 guy’s tethered didn’t have a sign so he just.......carved it into his head

- it never healed, either, he did it badly enough to scar

- red says “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, how you could have taken me with you” - she doesn’t mean adelaide ran off and left her there. adelaide made the choice to trap her in the underground. its possible red might have even been thinking how she would have let adelaide come with her if given the chance, which. i mean, i dont know how her parents would have reacted to suddenly having identical twins out of nowhere, but like. knowing there’s a chance red might have accepted her. and all this could have been different 

this is definitely a movie that’s not really intended to be fully explained, there’s a lot of questions that aren’t really supposed to be answered, but nonetheless one of my biggest concerns is where do the clothes come from underground. red tells us they were all abandoned down there generations ago so nobody’s supervising or providing anything. how do they end up with copies of the clothing their counterparts are wearing. and here adelaide has a messed up faded old shirt that either looks similar to red’s shirt or is the same shirt just badly damaged, she switches it with red’s before she goes out for good so that explains how she gets the new shirt, but where did this one come from. why is it different if the other clothes aren’t

and of course there’s the whole question of “where did they all get these red jumpsuits from” but again. questions that aren’t really the point, i guess

[seijch]

BY DAY, you attend classes and sling drinks at the campus cafe. By night, you’re known as the Harbinger, an individual with the Gift of shadow and darkness. Your two jobs have never had any reason to collide…not until the appearance of a fellow Gifted by the name of Ace, anyway.

[ read luck of the draw here !! ]

this is an extra post for me to infodump on all the worldbuilding details i never got to fit into my already obnoxiously large fic 🕺🏻🕺🏻 its holding my brain hostage so maybe posting this will help!!!

please read luck of the draw before clicking the readmore !! there are spoilers abound (and you probably won’t understand much of what i’m saying if you haven’t read the fic LMAO)

ABOUT THE CONCEPT

the very core of luck of the draw isn’t actually unique to kenji or to haikyuu in general; in fact, it was originally a part of a superhero!skz series i was planning to write but never got around to. the foundation of this fic -- kenji’s power and the idea of them being opposing forces that slowly draw together -- was originally given to stray kids’ hyunjin. i never went past the Thinking Stage with it, so it was fairly easy to hand the concept over to futakuchi when i moved fandoms.

the dynamic of this fic in general was inspired pretty heavily by miraculous ladybug’s “love square,” but i ... obviously wasn’t going to write all four sides of it so i stuck to the civilian identities (the reader and kenji) and the alteregos (harbinger and ace). in the kpop version of this wip, the reader and hyunjin were coworkers, but in moving from one fandom to another and reworking it for futakuchi, i decided to make them friends instead. they’re not particularly close (they’re definitely comfortable but not close Emotionally) to start with, but there’s potential for something to start!

ABOUT THE WORLD

in this universe, the city is ruled by two major factions that control much of the economy: seijoh, who controls the entertainment/tourism industries and has its fingers in most of the smaller businesses around the city (such as johzenji and dateko) and nekoma, who is partnered with the equally large fukurodani to control shipment of all kinds as well as the food industry (among others). nekoma has allies within the local government, and seijoh all but controls the law enforcement.

karasuno, on the other hand, works entirely from the underground to overhaul the way things are run in the city; it’s a bit .... corrupt as of right now, and they seek to change that. 

at the top are typically individuals blessed with special powers known as gifts. these gifts can be as mundane as the ability to make flowers bloom wherever you walk or as powerful as being able to alter the flow of time. there exist a series of regulations (and a shit ton of paperwork) that come about whenever an individual happens to manifest a gift. 

however, the city’s gifted demographic is incorrectly represented; a chunk of the gifted population are instead drawn to the allure of making money by doing illicit deeds for companies like seijoh or nekoma. these individuals’ gifts are never properly documented due to the traceability it lends itself to, should a job go wrong.

the government is supposedly in talks to enact stricter laws on the gifted, despite them making up a comparatively small percentage of the population. the head of the department of gifted individuals, ushijima wakatoshi, is a particularly overwhelming force in support of better regulation of his fellow gifted.

ABOUT THE CHARACTERS

in the first draft of luck of the draw, the sequence of events and relationship dynamics were MUCH different. in the final draft, you see the alteregos being drawn to each other first before you see the civilians come together. 

in that first draft, it was originally centered on the civilians getting together despite kinda-sorta being attracted to each other’s alterego? as a result, the kiss scene between the alteregos was still there but it was DRASTICALLY different. the whole idea of it and imo moral ambiguitity (kenji and the reader never went official with their relationship in the first draft) didn’t sit right with me at all; it felt a little like i was using cheating as a plot device which ??? no.

to make the long story short, the execution of that (tbh poorly developed) idea was.......less than stellar.

so i took a look at the chronology and basically upended the entire midsection to make the concept something that was less awful morally? that’s what i hope happened, anyway LJSKDFLSD

in the first draft, the reader (as harbinger) was also much less competent than they are in the final draft as a result of having been affiliated with karasuno for a shorter time. in truth, the harbinger’s origin story didn’t surface until i was in the middle of writing the second draft!

when it comes to the other characters:

oikawa doesn’t have a gift, which is rather rare for someone with their thumb sitting so heavily on the city’s pulse point

iwaizumi’s gift is entirely up to interpretation! him and oikawa making formal appearances in the story was something that only came up towards the end of draft two, so i didn’t have the space (word count wise) to really give either much thought

kyotani came into his gift without any control over it, and is only given amnesty because he was found hiding by iwaizumi

i really really wanted to talk about kyotani in this fic but ultimately it wasnt revolving around him + i once again didn’t have space to even tease an encounter with him (so in the fic proper he’s mostly there as a cameo + to scare you as you read into a potential action scene)

aone and kenji actually come from the same company that happened to come under seijoh’s control, so they’re more comfortable with each other than anyone else!

hinata has the gift of manipulation as long as you’re making eye contact with him; unfortunately, if he wills it, it’s rather hard to break eye contact once you’ve made it -- aone made the mistake of glancing at him during the takeover at seijoh hq, leading to his hold on harbinger loosening

kageyama obviously has the gift of ice/hail/snow manipulation to a rather strong extent, considering he can create it where there is none and lower the temperature of the air around him (the reader cannot create their own darkness, only manipulate what is around them)

he also has some beef with oikawa (or is it the other way around?) that involves him formerly working under seijoh -- not one of their many smaller companies, but seijoh itself (much like iwaizumi and after kageyama leaves, kyotani)

in terms of who’s been with karasuno the longest of the introduced cast, it’s tsukishima/three-eyes > hinata = kageyama > reader (but not by much)

MISCELLANEOUS

following the takeover of seijoh, tsukishima finds himself at wit’s end much more often LMAO

there are a good amount of deleted scenes and scenes that were only added in at the very last second!

among the deleted scenes is a scene where the civilians are at the park -- in the first draft, it happened in the middle, but in the second it was towards the end. it got taken out because come the end of the second draft, i realized it no longer fit ...

in terms of completion status, it probably ?? took a little over a month from this to go from Thinking Stage to the 14.2k monstrosity you see now? there were a couple of weeks early on where i did nothing on my ipad and laptop except outline and write, respectively

i definitely got burned out halfway through (which is abt the time i posted the xc2 au .. i NEEDED to work on smth else)

the idea of the clock tower wasn’t present at all in the first draft!! i only really came up with it in the second draft because i’d rather have them meet somewhere consistent and identifiable rather than some nondescript building

the running joke (?) of them getting drinks together wasn’t present until the third and final draft -- originally the scene where ace asks “do you remember our last conversation?” had a different beginning

in fact, a lot of the scenes that are a bit more...emotionally charged (see: every scene after ace’s unmasking as well as the movie night scene where the civilians struggle to define what their relationship has become) had to be overhauled dramatically

ummm i love kenji thats it! none of this would be possible if i didnt have the strongest mf brainrot for him so ... ! theres that LMAO

(theres probably more im forgetting to say ........ if any of you want to pick my brain regarding the chronology or the characters or why i had them say something or do something send me an ask! this post tbh is almost entirely for me but i didnt put this much thought into a fic that long to NOT share it with everyone else)

[perfectionistincrisis]

Day 37 (& 36,35,34,33 ..blabla)

Not much to tell.

It’s just that um. Yeah, things are different. Life is different. I am different.  I am not that familiar with this version of me and don’t know how much I am capable of. But I know that I got a lot weirder. I could hardly care or give a shit about most of the things. Ignorance is my best defense mechanism; I tend to ignore/ keep away things which get to me.  However, everything comes with a price. I get crazy crayyy crayyy zee cravings from time to time. Sometimes it’s food, sometimes it’s shopping. Sometimes it’s taking a perfect picture of food maybe, or of something. Idk. depends on situation os surroundings. Sometimes its looking for the perfect shoe online, and other times the perfect lipstick shade. Or other times its making a list of all the make up products I want to buy. Sometimes im deciding which mall to go to and when. Other times i am thinking which restaurant to go to and when. Sometimes in the most random way possible i start thinking of any specific food and crave it badly and almost feel its taste in my tongue, other times I am making decisions of how I will be eating healthy and making big lifestyle changes.  Sometimes thinking of how little minor details in life, the ways people interact, the comments people make, the way people look at you, the way you respond to someone, the feelings that are being expressed, the feelings that are being suppressed can mould a persons life in such different ways and affect someone so deeply.. thinking of it all draws tears to my eyes.. The world is a harsh place. We might consider ourselves as “human beings”; the civilized creatures but in reality.. I think there is not much difference. We are only a little better than animals who need to be “tamed”. Infact, even harder when we are the ones who need to tame ourselves because everyone is damaged in their own way. No one is perfect, no one was taught how to survive life. Its like you were dumped on earth and you need to figure things out for yourself but hey that’s kind of okay once you know that this is what youre supposed to do. But what about those people who think they are doing right. Who think it is okay to be exactly the way they are now. Hahaha, I guess I sound like I am angry with humans lol. But nah, I dont really care tbh. Now this would be a lie maybe in the past where I would just be “trying” to not care, but now! I actually dont! but that doesnt mean I can totally ignore bullshit happening in this world. but yeah, it doesnt really get to me so much! Anyways, moving on. So yeah! How i survive. Well at times I kind of lose it and get really attached to materialistic/ worldly luxuries! Like i-neeed- to buy this. I -need- to go there. I -need- to eat this. Sometimes it is posting a pic on instagram, where life is so sugarcoated and nice. I have been working on it for a long time. I really have a thing for taking pics of food mostly or other things or myself and when I pick some of them, and put them together and theres a chronological order being maintained to some extent. Just scrolling through it, your life flashes in front of you to an extent. Its nice.  Now one might think that i could do the same scrolling through my gallery too but theres a difference. First, since i am a person who is a sucker for taking pics, my gallery is overloaded! Back in high school, my pictures wouldnt just take up the whole of my gallery but also would fill up my friends’ phones too! they would literally have way more pics of me than their own selves. But the difference is that id chose pics which i would want to upload, which are okay to be shared. Btw its not really like i upload my -best- pics. most of the times it is one of the average ones. As much as i would like sharing ‘dark’ parts of me, I am also not comfortable sharing good ones all the time. well anyways, so yeah thats enough about pics i suppose lol i can go on talking all day wow ‘-’

Okay then there’s me having this strong urge to eat something, or go shopping and buy something and all of that. How i deal with that? well sometimes it really gets on my nerves and that is bad. And then i realize i am diverting my aims in life and yeah that is pretty much it. I just get my mind to think straight and I am fine for some time. it sounds really simple yeah, but its really really bothering when i crave for anything! like it really gets to me to really extreme levels. its all i think of and i cant concentrate or do anything peacefully. but when i get back to my senses, everythings fine again.

This was just one side of things. There is another side to. This one’s easy! I sleep. or just sit and do nothing. When i say nothing i mean it. Its not like i am on my phone and im going through every social media app scrolling on and on and doing nothing. its not like i am sitting on my laptop and doing nothing. It notttttt! When i say doing nothing i mean it. Nothing. I am just sitting with no gadgets, nothing. No i am not even lost in deep thoughts about anything. Like i said, ignorance is my escape. I just dont care enough to get to do something, anything. So i end up sleeping! And except for pee breaks, i can sleep for hours and hours like wow! this was so not me lol! I actually didnt like sleeping so much, well not like i like it now. I mean yeah i do sleep a lot but not because i like it. I am neutral, there is nothing it like about it and i might have hated it earlier but now i dont hate it either. I mean before i used to think there is so much to lose of people keep sleeping all day. Well right now I still have the same idea but i mean at this phase in life right at this moment, for me, there isnt much I am losing while sleeping so its ok. 

So yeah, those are the two extremes i keep shifting between! extreme cravings for the weirdest things followed by letting go of all this materialistic desires/ urges and getting my thoughts clean! Or doing literally nothing, not caring at all, ignoring anything and everything and sleeping! 

Um well thats it. Now before finishing up there are two things I wanted to point out! 

One is that my food cravings dont really have anything to do with the fact that its Ramadan, because I havent fasted a day yet. i mean food was always important to me. It helps me deal with things both mentally and emotionally since always.. Same as spending money on shopping! 

And the other thing I wanted to point out is him.  There is nothing new i can tell about him. just that he is always on my mind. Always. To keep it short, its like the ONLY  thing that has changed is that we dont talk. AND that is a big big big thing. but that is the only thing. That is how i feel! And since it is a big big big big thing (way bigger than all the bigs I put in there) it s not cool! But idk  I just miss telling him how much i love him.. Okay i was never a person who was into ‘telling’ that cause i really really believe that actions speak louder way louder than words when it comes to those 3 words -i-love-you- but yeah! that doesnt mean id be cool if someone would just act it out and not tell me so lol.  And yeah so its the same right now. I mean i really feel like I would never fail in acting out my love for him. I am  just that certain and aware of how much he means to me. So yeah, that is why i said. that i miss telling him so. that i love him.. I miss being able to do so.. Ummm yahhh So that’s it! Pretty long post ik but kinda making up for the extremely tiny mini posts for the last few days but yeah i pretty much covered what is going on with me this whole time so yeah!  :)