#i have like a singular mutual who does so

[diaiisms]

my revival back into dl is stupid selfshippery that i’m forcing all of you to look at <3

at the time of writing my birthday is in 44-ish minutes so i did this shitty whinter comic(?) thing bc yeah he is very dear to me <3

(doodling on phone is hard >:/) || also ignore my shitty handwriting.

[fans4wga]

26 July update from WGA's Chris Keyser

From the WGA: With SAG-AFTRA now on strike and new levels of solidarity across all Hollywood unions, we are witnessing the spectacular failure of the AMPTP’s negotiating strategy. In this video, WGA Negotiating Committee Co-Chair Chris Keyser lays out what this moment means and how we move forward. To learn more about the WGA strike, visit https://www.wgastrike.org.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Fellow members of the WGA East and West. It's been a while since our last video and quite a bit has happened in the meantime. So on behalf of the negotiating committee and leadership, I wanted to give you an update on where we are and what the near future at least is likely to bring.

We've been walking side by side on picket lines in New York and Los Angeles for a little over 12 weeks now. Only now we're joined by thousands upon thousands of members of SAG-AFTRA who, like us, have finally had enough.

This is the endpoint and the fruit of the AMPTP’s game plan. For 11 weeks, they negotiated with everyone but us. They claimed it was just practicality, that they could only do one thing at a time, which is not normally a point of pride. But events have made clear what we knew from the start: that not only was it a strategy, it was their only strategy. Negotiate a deal with a single guild and impose that deal on every other guild and union in Hollywood, whether it addresses the needs of those unions or not, all with the implicit threat: if you want more, strike for it.

Wow. It’s their 2007-8 playbook applied to 2023 as if nothing has changed, as if the accumulation of economic insults and injuries inflicted on us over the past decade would be borne in perpetual silence, as if the giant of labor had not awakened. But it has. And you only need to look as far as the front gates of every studio in LA and New York to see the evidence.

Two unions on strike willing to exercise their power, despite the pain, to ensure their members get the contract they deserve. For us, that means addressing the relentless mistreatment of screenwriters, which has only been exacerbated by the move to streaming; the continued denial of full MBA protection to comedy variety and other appendix A writers when they work in streaming; and the self-destructive unsustainable dismantling of the process by which episodic television is made and episodic television writers are paid.

It means addressing the existential threat of AI and the insufficiency of streaming residual formulas, including the need for transparency and a success-based component. All of these will need to be addressed for there to be a deal because in this strike it is our power and not their pattern that matters, not their strategy. Their strategy has failed them. Now they're in the midst of a streaming war with each other, an admittedly difficult transition. And as they face the future, their interests and business models could not be more different from Disney to Sony to Netflix to Amazon.

We root for their success, all of them. They root for each other's failure. We are the creative ammunition through which they will succeed. They are each other's apex predators. And yet, in a singular shared dedication to denying labor, they have shackled themselves together in what increasingly seems like a mutual suicide pact, as the 2023-24 broadcast season and the 2024-25 movie schedule and its streaming shows disappear, melt away week by week.

So what does this mean? What does it mean going forward? How do you play chess against an opponent who insists on screaming checkmate at every move regardless of how the board looks and the game is going?

You stay firm, you stay resolved, because our cause is no less existential than when we started and our leverage is increasing every day. Alone we withheld our labor with the support of our union siblings and the Teamsters and IATSE and the Crafts, we were able to delay the vast majority of production. Now with SAG-AFTRA on strike, those few studio projects that remained have also shut down. And it's not just the obvious delays. If this strike drags on, it's the actors with conflicting obligations and the directors and the double-booked studio facilities and release date chaos that the companies must now also contend with. Some of their most valuable product could well be delayed for years.

Add to that, no promotion of movies or television shows and famous faces on the picket lines and social media speaking directly to their customers. For the tech companies and the mega corporations, that should be their nightmare scenario: WGA and SAG-AFTRA side by side. Our bargaining agenda may not be identical, but our cause is the same. Our army of labor, defending labor has increased 17-fold in the past two weeks alone.

Even so, even with all this wind at our backs this negotiation won't happen overnight. It's not because the negotiations themselves are so complex. Once the companies fully engage, it could go very quickly, but because their strategy of many decades has just fallen apart and they didn't see it coming, and it's going to take them a minute to regroup, 'cause the companies have things to work out internally, and saying no to labor in unison is a lot easier than saying yes. So either together or separately, as their divergent interests might suggest, they will come back to us, despite their understandable concern about how they've navigated this transition to streaming, which is on their heads and not ours; and their worries about costs and their worries about Wall Street; despite this being a season of doom and gloom, none of them are walking away from the riches of this business, and certainly not over the equitable minimum compensation to writers.

They didn't get the deal they wanted; that's fine, it happens all the time. They're not taking their ball and going home over it. And since we know they come from union families themselves, and since they've denied that “even-in-Hollywood-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me” ugliness of threatening to starve us out and leave us homeless (which we assume they understand also means making our children homeless,) they will come back to us. Although I will say they took a long time to deny that statement, longer than I would have had it been ascribed to me.

But what does it matter? You can starve a labor force slowly or quickly. The effect is the same. It's not like day rates for comedy variety writers and endless free drafts for screenwriters in exchange for a single paid one in four-week mini-rooms isn't cruelty. It's just cruelty written in contract language instead of a press quote.

So what can we expect from the companies as all of this plays itself out? They will try to convince Wall Street that taking a strike, prolonging it unnecessarily, losing their content stream in the process—that all of that is just smart business and no reason for investor concern. We will be talking to Wall Street too, and reminding them that for all these companies, all of 'em including Netflix, the bill, the price for making nothing, will eventually come due. And Wall Street is listening already. Here's Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush on Yahoo Finance the other day: “I think the studios are completely wrong on this one. Content is their lifeblood. They're feeling really foolish about this."

Wall Street isn't the only one listening. We've been talking to union pension funds too about the risks the companies are taking. We talked to CalPERS, the largest public pension plan in the country, talked about the loss of programming and the cost to the industry, and we heard strong support from its board for our struggle and the promise that the companies will be hearing from them, from CalPERS, and demanding answers on behalf of its 2 million members.

To us, of course, they will continue to plead temporary poverty, but we know the drill. These companies support billions into the streaming wars and taken short-term losses these past three years, because they know that to the winner will go the spoils. We're patient, will they share that with us when the time comes? What are the chances?

Since 2017, the last time the studios negotiated with us outside of COVID, the big six companies alone have made $150 billion in profits off our work, while they slashed our pay and degraded our working conditions. Maybe if they had shared a tiny piece of that then, made $1 billion or so less, this year wouldn't seem so costly. As it is, there is no iron law that these companies are entitled to record profits every year, and it isn't some great travesty if their shareholders or their CEOs get a slightly smaller slice of the massive profits we helped create if some balance is restored.

Look, no one denies that corporations exist to make a profit and no one wants our employers to be profitable more than we do, but the singular pursuit of corporate profits to the exclusion of their social and human cost is a real problem in this country—it’s a real problem. A corporation's bottom line is not the same as the world’s, and there is nothing in our studio's bottom lines today that accounts for the quality of our lives or for our dignity, for the comfort of our retirement or the security of our families. Their numbers have no conscience, but the people who report them as victories ought to.

In their refusal to recognize that, these companies have also extracted an awful price, which is laid at their feet and for which they are responsible. Losses to the economies of New York and Los Angeles and everywhere that film and television are made, terrible losses that mount every day, thousands of people out of work; not just us, all the crews, the crafts, the janitors, the drivers, the businesses that thrive when Hollywood thrives, the restaurants, the stores—for what? For nothing. So they could avoid coming to the table to negotiate the deal they will one day give us. Measured today that is the painfully mixed legacy of our employers, weighed against every beautiful piece of work we have made with them.

And if history is a guide, they have only temporary stewardship over a kind of national trust, which is Hollywood. Our story, our sometimes conscience, our public conversation, our diversion of the worst and best of times, our greatest export, the repository of our imagination. They have some obligation to more than just their shareholders to behave accordingly.

Unfortunately, it seems big tech, mega corporations, and some of the people who run them, as the saying goes know the price of everything and the value of nothing. So they have built a business model that no longer works for human beings who cannot be paid minimum for 10 to 20 weeks a year and make a career out of that, be paid for one draft of a screenplay that demands a year of labor, be paid a few episodic fees for a show about which to take years to decide be paid a daily rate.

And now we have a first glimpse of what they offered our actor colleagues. We are not 170,000 Willy Lomans to be used and then discarded. We know what the companies believe they have the power to do. We know what they think machines can do and do without any of us. Oh yeah, we've seen the writing on the wall and it's plagiarized.

The thing is this: the difference between what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do is the greatest single difference in the world. Knowing that is the only real protection we have against a dystopian future. And if the companies sometimes forget that, writers will do it for them.

I can't know exactly how long it will take this revolutionary moment, and you've heard again and again what is happening today has not happened in 63 years, but I know that's not always how it feels, revolutionary and defining, even though we celebrate that on picket lines together, which is the right thing to do. That's not always how it feels when you go home at night. I know how tough this is: to strike, to hold the line. I know it gets tougher every day even with SAG-AFTRA marching beside us, how hard it is to face the uncertainty of when it will end, when we'll get back to work, how we'll pay the bills. I know it's hardest for those who've just gotten started, for those for whom the world opens doors more reluctantly, battled their whole life just to get here; but hard too for those struggling to maintain their long careers, who find work tougher and tougher to come by, or those with families with children or parents to take care of.

These companies understand the cruelty of what they're doing. It's their plan to starve us just a little, to exact as much pain as they can so that we wish more for the pain to end than for the better life we dreamed up. That we're more afraid of the uncertainty of the present than the certain devastation of the future. It's societally acceptable economic torture inflicted by management on labor every day, then blamed on labor for daring to fight back, for refusing to be complicit in its own mistreatment.

Here's how I know that's not going to work. Not with us, not with the writers, because we haven't come all this way, fought to have these careers in the first place, all the adversity, and marched together for all these months, only to let it slip away on our watch—because there is no point in rushing back to jobs that may not be there in a year or two anyway. Because the business, as the companies have twisted it, is now untenable, unsurvivable for so many of us, because even success is not enough to keep going, because this guild is younger than it's ever been and more diverse. And this young diverse membership knows from hard personal experience the system is broken and that it will not be fixed unless they fix it. And those of us who came before them will not let them down, because we and the writer's guild are the beneficiaries of all those who came before us who gave up everything for us.

Like the writers of 1960, the year I was born, who struck for 22 weeks and who gave away all the TV residuals for all the movies they had ever written so that we could have a health insurance and pension plan and residuals from that date forward. $15 billion flowed to writers and their benefit plans because of that sacrifice. Because writers are brave, because now it's our turn.

So what's our job? Even as we welcome SAG-AFTRA to our side, we are still responsible for our own deal, and so we must remain focused and diligent. We must continue to march, picket signs in hand. But we should also remember this and with pride, that before there was SAG-AFTRA, before even the Teamsters and IATSE and the laborers and the electrical workers and the musicians and the plasterers came to our side, there was the writers. Alone then, we looked at the blank page and began to imagine the future. With no net but each other we typed the words, what if?

And then we took a step into the darkness and found that it was light. And then we were joined by the crews and the drivers and the actors. The actors got a bit more fanfare when they showed up, but that's okay, we wrote the script. The WGA, still small, not alone anymore after all these decades. Hollywood labor has finally linked arms and found its voice, and that voice says enough. There is no road to longterm prosperity that burns a path through your own workforce. We are not your enemies. We are not merely a cost to be borne. We are your partners and your greatest asset. And we are, as you acknowledge yourselves, irreplaceable, but by accident or design and it doesn't really matter anymore, the business you are running no longer works for those who work for you.

What is the point in continuing to deny that? Why deny it when everyone else in the business to a person tells you it's true? Do you think it's a coincidence that two unions are on strike against you for the first time since Eisenhower was president? You can't exactly accuse us of being quick on the trigger. The effect has a cause, it has a cause. And there is no profit in insisting on the answers to the past for the questions of the future.

But if you want instead to invest in something that will reap you fortunes, I have a tip. And if you are visionaries, envision a solution, not a stalemate. Because this isn't a war we're in, it's a negotiation, it's just a negotiation. There is no face-saving here for either side, because there is no winner or loser. It's just a deal. And when you come to remember that again we will be here as we have been here all along.

And at this point with 170,000 writers and actors aligned against your intransigence, that is as generous as I can be, as close to an olive branch as I can offer. But if you insist instead on the same threatening rhetoric, on saying you would rather starve us than pay us, I would remind you of this: You are fighting for a dollar, we are fighting for survival. We are fighting for our home: writing is where we live, and we will defend that home with a bravery and stamina and ferocity that you will come to understand someday, which is why you cannot break us. You cannot outlast us, you cannot.

And not just because we have the will, because we have power. Nothing in this business happens until we start to write. And we will not start to write until we are paid.

Union now. Union forever.

[preciouslandmermaid]

💐💐💐

imagine being a kindergarten teacher who meets reid

maybe its thru JJ, maybe you've got Henry in your class, and she kindly, warmly strikes a friendship with you after Henry moves into 1st grade. and its a little unorthodox but jj and her husband are always willing to help out (when their schedules can allow) with school events and so yeah, you become friends.

and when jj introduces you to her friends/colleagues - there is of course a little bit of an intimidation factor (because hello...they are fbi) but penelope makes you feel so welcome (because of course she does. and you tell her your students would love her. and she offers to teach a tech class and youre like ok they're five but yes let's do it) and morgan shamelessly flirting, and emily being hot and intimidating and then there's reid, quiet, awkward, wont-shake-your-hand reid.

but there's something to it - a mutual nerdiness, perhaps, or how reid doesn't make you feel "stupid" just because you're an elementary school teacher and not a professor at a college (despite the fact that in many places you need a least a master's to teach).

imagine weeks later when you run into reid at the coffee shop. completely random. the sky is gray, uninteresting, and promising rain. he surprises you by remembering your name before there's a shy yet earnest quip when he says he's got an "eidetic memory." and you laugh warmly and spencer thinks its one of the best sounds he's heard all morning.

and it goes slowly from there, but it moves naturally, like a caterpillar forming its chrysalis

(when you tell reid this, somewhere after the 4 month mark since you've long stopped counting individual dates, he says; "did you know the word comes from the greek word 'khrusos' - which means gold - because of the gold color or metallic sheen of some pupae".

and in that moment, that singular moment, you admire the honey-gold tint of his eyes in the late afternoon sun spilling luminescence across the sidewalks and across shiny car windshields and think that you could already see the shape and color of whatever butterfly that was going to burst from its cocoon).

one time you refused to come over his apartment because "the kids used glitter today" and you didn't want to get it all over his place. so he came over instead, and you watched the iridescent sparkles swirl down the bathtub drain together.

imagine spencer reid laying his head in your lap, something heavy and unspoken between you, shaped in the spread of his fingers across your hips, in the erratic pulse of his heart pressing into your shins

the school doesn't celebrate Halloween, but they have an annual "trunk or treat" where people CAN dress up and trick-or-treat out of the trunks of their cars and spencer starts helping you, decorating the trunk with fake cobwebs, and skulls, and eventually diving into convoluted themes that you're not convinced kids aged 5-10 are totally going to get.

"it's jaws." he says, holding a shark head made of paper mache, "you know, the 1975 film? you said we couldn't do slasher horror movies because they're too gory for the kids but i'd argue that this movie stands alone as a great horror film with how Spielberg creates consistent tension throughout the whole film considering we don't see the shark until an hour and twenty-one minutes into the run time."

(the kids don't really get it, it's true. "sharks aren't monsters." they would say, or "sharks aren't scary." or "is this from Baby Shark?" but you and spencer have fun, passing out candy, sharing small looks to each other--so that makes it all worth it).

imagine something soft, sweet, something quiet shared over coffee with spencer. something gentle amidst all the chaos, the heartache, and stress of his day-to-day job.

"I don't know how you do it," you tell him, "seeing the worst of what the world has to offer day in and day out."

his long fingers stroke the underside of your jaw, "i don't know how you manage a room full of fifteen 5 and 6-year-olds." he pulls a face. "especially with the germs."

imagine bringing spencer lunch at the office - earning the knowing, sly looks from his friends and team, knowing you can't hide against a room full of profilers and knowing it doesn't really matter anyways.

:) ok that's all i got. <3

[simpjaes]

hear me out.. experienced boyfie! hyung line w an inexperienced virgin!reader 🫠🫠 (you have no idea how long it took me to spell inexperienced..)

hyung line + experienced boyfriend to inexperienced/virgin reader.

warnings: virginity loss, lil bit of pain

jake:

boyfriend of exactly two weeks. he loves fast and hard, so upon realizing that his very own sweet girlfriend from college is avoiding his sexual advances because she's a virgin, he loved you even more. like marriage worthy, man wants to make you his wife.

he's the type to be obsessed with being the first and, hopefully, only man to get his dick in you. of course, he wouldn't push but he would make sure you're aware of how badly he wants to make you feel good, and how good it would feel for him in turn. saying things like "love, it's no rush but i can just imagine how tight you are-" and "i bet you get so wet." and "what if I just eat you out? maybe that would help?"

imagine you finally letting him at least engage in foreplay? maaaaaan, he would go insane. thigh fucking, dry humping, mutual masturbation, giving head, begging you to go down on him too.

by the time you'd finally let him hit, it would be because you're entirely in love with him too, and you swear you see little hearts in his eyes when he slides in for the first time. doesn't matter how experienced he is either, bro gets off like three pumps in because you really are so tight, and so wet.

jay:

"please baby? i'll go slow."

jay did not, in fact, go slow. In his defense, he did start off slow but the second he bottomed out it's like his body moved on its own and his brain went numb. Given, after a little while he'd come back to himself and apologize over and over again in your ear, through moans and little sighs. apologizing but like, also not stopping for a second.

"feels good, baby? yeah?" and he'd just answer for you like "yeah, look at you, totally gone for me."

i don't think Jay would be able to contain his horny level once he's in you, and his apologies are genuine. you'd probably whine a little bit until, well, it does feel good and you suddenly realize why people like fucking so much.

cue you wanting to get railed by Jay constantly, and who is he to say no? His libido is just as high.

free use boyfriend AND girlfriend.

sunghoon:

a perfect boyfriend, doesn't attempt to make you nervous. Because if he did, you might back out.

100% jerks off to you every. single. night. especially when you let slip that you want to lose your virginity to him on your anniversary.

he's seeing stars at the exact same moment you're seeing them, solely because the idea that you're giving yourself to him makes him feel soft and mushy. plus, like, feeling a virgin pussy squeeze and quake around his cock :( seeing your little winces? he's immediately kissing away the singular tear drop that falls and praising you for taking all of him.

he'd give you sweet lil whispers of "tell me what feels best for you, babe." and a lot of "i love yous" and "i've got yous"

by the time sex is fairly regular though? He gets a bit more rough with it, and you're definitely in love with the way he can switch from being a big soft boyfie to being an absolute mad man in bed.

Heeseung:

plays off the innocence HARDCORE.

no joke, he says shit like "So innocent, pretty girl is gonna let me fill her up?" and "you can hold on to me, i'll make you feel so good." minutes before he dives in.

and man, he would live up to all of that when it actually happens. You do, indeed, need to hold onto him with how deep he plunges himself into you. he doesn't let you adjust, praises himself and you, and is instantly throwing you into orgasms you didn't even know you could have.

it's very messy and probably not ideal for someone's first time but it sure as fuck locks you in. you've never seen heeseung act so fucking hot or so fucking into you like he is when he's rubbing your clit and bumping your cervix with the head of his cock.

maaaaaaybe sort of gives you the idea that sex is supposed to hurt before it feels good, and when he realizes that he feels guilty, apologizes, and eats you out or something. then when you tell him you kinda like the pain he's like "that's my girl"

[drdemonprince]

Hey Devon. This is related to community-building ask, as I feel it kinda hit something in me, and that is my frustration with my local queer "main community", who is mostly made up of people who can work/hang together (people in visual and performative arts, LGBT NGOs, event organisers and so on). It's so closed off and so circlejerk-y that it's demoralising. I've been trying to fit in ever since I started being an adult, almost ten years ago, but I have never made any progress on getting to any of its members. I have made queer friends who are wonderful people, and as you said in the previous ask, that is enough and makes a community of our own already. Nevertheless, it is frustrating for all of us to go to a queer space/show/event just to see that the crowd there is made up of people who know each other and talk to each other and make big groups, while we're just sitting there. It brings us down to know that for queer political events like protests (which are ofc organised by them), we have no one left to fall back on except us. It makes it weird when only one of us is able to go protest, they'd rather not go because it feels so lonely to be sitting around all those people who just know each other, who have been passing by us for so many times over the years, and yet never take interest in even saying "hi" or whatever. It makes us think that they're fucking disingenuous and their "community building" is a load of crap. And I don't really want to feel like that about my people, but look at me, after almost ten years in my city, I fucking do.

Hi there, thanks for your message.

Let me just say that while I understand where the perception comes from, the queer people who put on shows, run nonprofits, and go out clubbing are not "The main lgbtq community" in your city. They're just a bunch of cliquish, careerist, young, privileged people who market themselves as such because they've been convinced that's what the "queer community" is and because doing so helps them get butts in seats at events.

I've seen theater kids, drag performers, DJs, comedians, party promoters, and other various people of the attention-seeking arts (said neutrally) do this all my fucking life. They stake a claim on building "feminist spaces" and "anti-racist" spaces, too, among other things, and use those higher values to sell tickets to their shit too. It's a way to make every tragedy that strikes oppressed people into an advertisement for their burlesques and shit. Don't let the self-important myopia get to you.

The real queer community? In any given city? Well, it's not any one thing. There is no singular "queer community". What people often refer to as the LGBTQ community or the queer community is a demographic, not an actual community. That demographic is marketed to, including by fellow queer people, but that does not a community make.

A community consists of people who know one another, and have enduring bonds, and who have shown up for one another mutually in multiple ways. A lot of these hot cool stylish young queer people are actually merely colleagues of one another. When there's a conflict, or a cancellation, or a venue that closes, they will be tossed to the wind like so many dandelion seeds. Compare that to you and your friends, who can and do remain in contact as the seasons of life change.

It is demoralizing to see so many people who talk a big game about community fail to show up to do activist work that is meaningful to you. I can't deny feeling the same way. For many years, I dated an actor who was very plugged into the local scene, and while his theater company had a reputation for being progressive, trans inclusive, even left-leaning, almost nobody in that collective did anything for the broader 'community' at all. They were all too busy being overworked five nights a week for like a $200 per week stipend, writing plays in which they repeated leftist platitudes but did relatively little.

I'm being a big overly cynical here -- the theater did just put on a big pro Palestinian fundraiser -- but the fact is that running a club, a theater, a local education org, or a regular drag show is a business, and in the end the business always comes first. Even when the members of that business might not want it to. They're often extremely exploited and underpaid, which is part of what makes them so hungry to market themselves and maintain their careers. I have sympathy for it. But meaningful social connections and local impact it does not make.

All of which is to say: please try to remember that these people presenting themselves as the symbols of the local "community" are just a bunch of artistic kids who are trying to make a living doing what they love. They're naive, exploited, a little self-absorbed yes, but they're ultimately not that important. they just deal in a very self-important line of work.

There are SO many queer people all around you who never go to those fucking clubs and shows and aren't even on instagram. The "main" queer community, demographically, is more like the nerdy 40 year old gay couple that lives down the street from you who goes out to the movies once or twice a month and holds board game nights with their friends. The "main" queer community is volunteering at the zoo, going camping with their fraternity brothers that they met 20 years ago, working at the car dealership, planting tomatoes at the local community garden, taking care of elders with dementia, organizing weekly running groups.

You can find people like this -- total normies -- who will care about causes greater than themselves and want to contribute to community building efforts. Many of those people are already doing a ton to make community. It's just less sexy and less self-consciously queer than like, the dance parties. It's also more diverse, accessible, and capable of meeting people where they are at.

It does sound like you would like to meet more activist friends / politically engaged friends, and for that I'd say try looking at pro-Palestinian (for example) events and spaces and seeing who turns up there, checking out a local food not bombs chapter, looking up local mutual aid groups or buy nothing groups, getting involved in hyper-local initiatives, and putting what feelers you can on local forums and personals boards (like Lex, local Facebook groups, local Meetup groups, etc). You probably wont find a perfect space, but you will find worthwhile people scattered everywhere you look!

[narutouzumakiarchive]

what are your thoughts on the “kishi based off naruto and sasuke off him and his brother so it’s weird and morally wrong to ship sasunaru.” IMO I’m like…you know what else is weird? kishi making the two characters that are supposedly based of him and his brother kiss accidentally and not only did they accidentally kiss but that scene is replayed multiple times in the manga and anime. So yeah…

Well I many thoughts.

For starters, the interview in question (and I'm still not sure of the source) states that the bond between Kishimoto and Seishi, his brother, was based on the aspect of feeling mutual pain.

Now let's look at another interview, from Kishimoto the lying liar. In it he states that his wife might secretly realize that Hinata isn't the real model for his wife because his wife is quite strong, which the interviewer noted was kind of like Sakura. Isn't that interesting.

In this interview he also implicitly acknowledges the implicit similarity between Sakura and his wife based on the particular aspect of strength. And yet, sasusaku's wouldn't use this interview as an indication that Sakura was in a romantic relationship with Naruto. Nor would they claim that Kishimoto (who frequently acknowledged that Naruto was a reflection of him) was writing a manga in which his wife (Sakura) was romantically in love with the analogue of his brother (Sasuke) Why?

Because while fiction is a reflection of life, it is in no way an exact representation of life. People in real life are complex multi dimensional beings and have complex and multi dimensional relationships; in other words, people and relationships have dimensions and depth that extend beyond one singular aspect, especially characteristics that are as common and generic as strength, and shared feelings of pain. Thus, Naruto and Sasuke, who also have additional depth in their bond beyond feelings of shared pain (let me know when brothers have feelings of uncertainty regarding the nature of their relationship btw) aren't a perfect analogue of Seishi and Kishimoto.

But I also want to note that they never extend this logic to the reverse. For example, Naruto and Sasuke are explicitly likened to Izanagi and Izanami, who in the Japanese mythos Kishimoto drew inspiration from, on the basis of perfect complementarity, were married. Surely, according to their logic, since basing the fictional dynamic between Naruto and Sasuke of of one aspect of the dynamic between two Gods who were married means that Naruto and Sasuke had romantic feelings for eachother, right? And yet something tells me those hypocrites who are triggered by Naruto and Sasuke would disagree. Because even they can intuit that fictional depictions don't necessarily have a perfect 1 to 1 relationship with the things they derive inspiration from.

But, additionally I need to add that Kishimoto could say that Naruto and Sasuke are the most brotherly of brothers and that it would be a crime to ship them — he could even have them end the series affirming they were like brothers — and it still wouldn't matter for two reasons.

One, intent does not equal impact. It would not matter if Kishimoto intended for Naruto and Sasuke to have a brotherly dynamic if what we were shown in the text is NOT a brotherly dynamic. People put a lot of stock in information from interviews, but while that paratext can help enhance our understanding of the text, ultimately, it is seperate from the text and the text is king — in other words, the purpose of a system (in this case, the Naruto text) is what it does.

But let me talk about a funny example first before I discuss Naruto and Sasuke. In 2009, Folgers Coffee released an infamous commercial that made the relationship between a brother and sister take center stage.

Now I suggest you watch the video for yourself, but for people who want the TLDR: It received a ton attention and backlash as a result of the very obvious incestuous undertones.

Now the video was obviously meant to depict the dynamic between a normal brother and sister. I mean, taboo themes in a commercial for a brand that has consistently utilized rhetorical appeals to wholesome conservative family values makes for bad business. And yet, despite the commercial making it obvious that the main characters in the ad were brother and sister by having them explicitly indicate as much, that line didn't do much the quell the underlying tension that viewers picked up on when watching the coy flirtation and intense gazes.

Which brings me back to Naruto and Sasuke. Most people that interact with media do so casually. Many are looking for simple minded entertainment. They aren't going to comb through the internet to look for cherry picked interviews to discern the nature of Naruto and Sasuke's relationship. They'll simply look at what's presented in the narrative to do so, and what the narrative presents is that of an overwhelmingly romantic dynamic between Naruto and Sasuke.

Romance is a "social structure that's biologically potentiated." This will receive more elaboration in another post, but at its core much of what we consider to be romantic has been shaped by shared socioculturally produced conventions (that can be specific to particular cultures/societies or more globalized). And when it comes to determining what is romantic in a narrative, the shared conventions and expectations are further mediated by the values that the text promotes.

People who interact casually with Naruto won't see Kishimoto's interviews, but they will see things like...

The classic romantic kiss/almost kiss intimate moment in the rain

Sakura stating that all she wants from Sasuke is acknowledgement in an explicitly romantic context (which is an example of a convention/ideal being promoted in the text as romantic), Naruto internally identifying with Sakura in this regard, and Sasuke giving Naruto the acknowledgement that he wants but not Sakura

Naruto getting tingles in his lower parts when thinking of said acknowledgement from Sasuke

Sasuke thinking about his kiss with Naruto and Naruto's dream during what he believed to be his final moments, and indicating it was one of the many reasons why his body decided to move on its own to save Naruto, a moment that was explicitly paralleled with Haku's sacrifice for Zabuza's dream a mere few chapters later, the same Haku that was implied to have subtextually romantic feelings for Zabuza [and a quick interjection, acknowledgement of what is presented in the text does not equal promotion. Moral critiques are important and just as valid as more stylistic analyses BUT they are distinct things. "Haku was never implied to have feelings for Zabuza because that's gross" is not a meaningful analysis]

Naruto making a proposal that significantly resembles the structure of shinju (double suicide), (a concept that has great significance in Japanese and Western popular culture, hello shared cultural conventions, hello Chikamatsu Monzaemon, hello Romeo and Juliet) a concept that was invoked by Omoi at the beginning of the volume that Naruto's proposal was in. This concept is promoted as a romantic value in the text via Omoi, and of course, is accords with popular sociocultural understandings of what we know to be Romantic.

And make no mistake, Kishimoto was intimately aware of the history of the romantic convention he drew from.

Naruto being Sasuke's tether to humanity in the same way that Rin was Obito's tether to humanity as well as Naruto being visually framed in Sasuke's memory in the exact same way that Rin was framed in Obito's memories in back-to-back chapters.

And there's more, but there's no need to continue because even just these moments highlight how far beyond the het dynamics Naruto and Sasuke are in terms of mutual, romantic implications. Naruto and Sasuke's dynamic is shown as romantic which it why it wouldn't even matter if Naruto and Sasuke weren't intended to be romantic.

Now, the second reason why it wouldn't matter if Naruto and Sasuke were intended to be non romantic brothers is that.... they aren't brothers. Like the most surefire way to make a bond be brotherly is to make the characters related. [And not have their first pivotal interaction be a classic "accidental kiss" ship bait moment that was iconic enough to be recycled by their kids who are now love interests.] And further, the trope of two people (gay people in particular) who aren't siblings but have a unique, powerful and intimate bond that's metaphorized and/or euphemized as sibling-like doesn't inherently negate romance.

But let me provide an example. There's a show called Breaking Bad, centered on a man who ostensibly turns to a life of crime in order to protect his family, but he's not important here. In the show, we're provided with the backstory of the primary antagonist in Season 4, Gus Fring. And the viewer gets to see that the reason Gus decided to devote his life to getting revenge on the cartel was because the loss of someone that was particularly close and precious to him, a man named Hector.

Within Gus' backstory, there's really only one scene of note that implies the two are gay. When a previous antagonist named Hector crudely pees into the pool, in the presence of Gus and Max, and is chastised by a fellow associate, Hector remarks that the two men won't say anything because they like what they see and makes suggestive kissing noises at them.

But there's something interesting about the way Max describes the relationship between himself and Gus. He explicitly states that he knows Gustavo like a brother. Hell, the name of the business that he planned to start alongside Gus was called Los Pollos Hermanos (translated in the show as The Chicken Brother's) and even the episode in which their story is expounded upon is named "Hermanos." And yet, many viewers picked up on the romantic subtext between Max and Gus, subtext that the showrunner confirmed was intentional. In the viewers minds, the subtext wasn't wholly negated because they knew eachother like brothers.

And that's because, the metaphor of the sibling, is often merely utilized to invoke desirable traits of idealized siblinghood (like friendship and trust) while setting aside the biological limitations of actual sibling bonds. Hence, in Japanese and Western media, this invocation of the sibling-like bond often occurred (and still does) in tandem with romantic subtext, and this is especially common in gay narratives when characters are trying to understand the nature of their feelings.

But this is a nuance that is lost by people that only chronically consume battle shonen. If you showed them the scene of Max talking about his dynamic with Gus they'd decry the people who dared to call it gay and make some fake deep statement about how people want to undermine pure brotherly bonds by making everything romantic. Because only in the Naruto fandom will people complain about you bringing up the fact that maybe it's gay to think about a kiss when you're about to die or to feel special butterflies when you're acknowledged by your rival. They'd combust if you tried to explain that idealized characteristics present in particular relational categories (like friendship and brotherhood) can overlap.

And if you go back to the interview, in which feelings of intensely shared pain are regarded as brotherly, you'll see that Kishimoto notes just that. He states that feelings of brotherly love and friendship are the same exact thing. Which means that in the period when Sasuke considered Sakura a nakama, something that obviously ended after he left the village, according to the very same interview that narusasu antis foolishly claim debunks our ship, it would mean that Sasuke also had fraternal feelings for Sakura as he did for the rest of Team 7 and thus was morally wrong. But you can't expect logic from het shippers.

Which brings me to my final set of points. I've already reached the 30 image limit so I can't post more images on this post (and will probably save it for another ask) but my post this far has only adressed the demographic that genuinely believes in the narusasu are like brothers argument. But, you need to understand that a significant portion of the people that push that argument don't even believe in it themselves, and I'm not joking. Search any narusakusasu account or popular "poly Team 7" art post and I can guarantee that at least 7 out 10 times, if you click on the profile of a someone with a cherry blossom and tomato emoji pair and search "incest" or "brother" on their account, you'll find a post of them speaking negatively about narusasu. It's almost funny how consistently it turns out to be true, but again, I'll address that in another post (along with the behavior of naruhina's because they tend to use different argument against sns). The point is that their issue with narusasu has never been about "moral wrongness" but about the fact that Sakura (and Hinata in the case of SasuHinaNaru's) isn't involved in their dynamic.

In fact, many Sakura stans are multiSaku's that have no problem shipping her with every man that ever breathed in her vicinity (Madara, Sasori, Itachi, Kakashi, etc.) and even the ones that didn't (Shisui).. I mean they're even publishing reworked fanfiction, [see this ItaSaku novel]. And yet they only bat an eye at Naruto and Sasuke. That's why ultimately, you shouldn't take them seriously, because they aren't looking to engage with you in good faith. They just want to undermine narusasu while stealing our tropes for their ship.

But since the word of Kishimoto is law to them, just bring up any one of the interviews in which Kishimoto's mocked Hinata, Sakura NH and SS, like him calling Sakura detestable, or his reaction to someone liking Hinata being "so you like girls with big boobs," or him initially agreeing that SS and NH were unrequited, or him stating he didn't know if Sasuke and Sakura would last, or him stating that Hinata isn't a regular heroine that stands at the main character's side but the type that watches him from the shadows (when her entire goal during the manga was to stand by Naruto's side), him laughing at an interviewer that stated Sasuke dealt with Sakura by leaving, or Kishimoto stating that he didnt have any devotion to the love story between Naruto and Hinata and he didnt plan to write it until Studio Pierrot suggested it, or Kishimoto stating that he avoided writing the reason for Sakura's love because it would sound too contrived, or — well, you get the point.

[loviingpedri]

you got a fetish for my love. - pedri

prompt: obsessed pedri is everything.

fwb; not an established relationship



warnings: grammar issues, kinda toxic tbh, explicit/suggestive content (no in-depth details, minors dni), cursing, not proofread,

credits to owners for all images

and there he was, at your door again.

you honestly felt bad for the man.

one call. that was the only thing he needed. he would be at your house within minutes just by a singular phone call.

and you knew he would always answer. because his fear would be that if you would leave him.

standing in your mirror as pedri hugged you from behind. he was admiring every detail of you.

your hair, eyes, eyelashes, lips, teeth, jewelry. he loved every part of it.

and you would imagine you were returning the favor for him.

he wishes.

you reapplied your lipstick. his favorite shade.

thinking to yourself, “what makes pedri so obsessed with me?” staring at yourself more, you knew why he wanted to be nearer. brushing out your hair with your fingers, pedri gently touched the strands.

you knew what he wanted. you wanted it as much as he did. can’t deny his appetite.

every time he visited, the guilt consumed you. both of you couldn’t get enough of each other. you took a deep breath and sighed as he was kissing your jawline, moving his lips down to your neck. he deserved better. someone who could love him. someone who had all the time in the world for him. someone who wasn’t just a fuck buddy. you tried to tell him, but one thing that goes into one ear, goes out the other.

every time you try to push him out, he comes right back. there wasn’t any point of blaming him. it was a situation that neither of you could escape. he’s got a fetish for your love.

as he pulled down the spaghetti strap of your shirt, his voice sent shivers down your back. “if i were you, i’d do me too.” his whispers made your ears ring. it wasn’t a good idea to continue this situationship. you felt like you reached your limit to this. you craved for something more. for real love.

you couldn’t blame him for this. it was a mutual decision made. to you, it was like an automatic vow that you couldn’t catch feelings. it was embarrassing to admit that you failed. you were hooked to his body, like he was hooked to yours.

taking you over and under and twisted up like origami.

“i’m so obsessed with you. the way you walk, the way you talk.” knowing he was smiling while casually doing what he does best, you didn’t wanna push him out anymore.

pedri figured out he was getting under your skin. you usually played hard to get, but something changed in the air.

the rumors among your friends that you were doing each other was already insane. you didn’t want it to be public, but your mind was changing as pedri’s hand was on your shoulder.

you weren’t expecting to catch feelings for him. or were you just trying to sympathize?

feeding pedri’s fetish was done. but what if it was the opposite. all along, you thought it was him who was addicted. what if you had a fetish for his love? it was a valid explanation to why you couldn’t stop calling him. it also explained why you felt lonely when he wasn’t with you. the tables have turned. you couldn’t take it anymore. you were hurt by the thought of him leaving now. the pressure was growing, a need to open your mouth and talk about it.

“pedri,” you spoke low as he was gently rubbing your arm, trying to get comfortable cuddling. “can we talk about something?”

“of course, what’s on your mind?” he kissed the top of your head.

“what if we took things seriously? no more playing around? we can’t keep doing this forever.” the silence was killing you. you were feeling anxious for his response. what if you were just imagining things? what if you only thought he was hurting, but it was only your imagination. what if this was his plan all along?

“maybe.”

[itaerae]

we can't be friends — zb1

pairing: zerobaseone x reader

synopsis: heartbreak is inevitable, but not everyone is able to move on.

word count: 1k

warnings: mild profanity, mentions of infidelity, drinking, angst, unrequited love, major character death ! (not proofread)

author's notes: i haven't been here in a while, i missed you all !! apologies in advance for the angsty comeback ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

—

jiwoong can't remember the last time he was able to think straight; the memories of you clouding his thoughts. jiwoong wonders where it all went wrong. ten months ago he would get the phone call that haunts him 'till this night. nightmares, he'd awaken with cold sweat dripping down his forehead; the event playing in his mind like a broken record. he remembers your ever so serene expression, the way your skin was already cold to the touch, the feeling of holding you in his arms one last time. looking down at the shot in his hand, he catches a sight of how a singular tear hits the surface of the glass. "fuck." the singular tear lead jiwoong into a sobbing mess.

zhang hao wonders if you've been well. after all, it was his fault for being in this situation. but what was a man supposed to do given his future or his first love. he catches himself staring at your contact on his phone often, too afraid to hit the call button. do you still think about him too ? do you even still remember him ? he can't erase the last time he ever got to see you, standing so close yet so far away. he wishes he could've gone back and wiped those tears off your face. truth is, zhang hao can't move on, not until he finds a way to reverse what he's done.

hanbin knows that he couldn't have done things differently, even if he tried. he couldn't make you view him as more than just a friend. was this just the consequence of growing up together ? he can't help but wonder why you were so blind to see that he's been here the whole time. he wants you tell you, he really does. but hanbin can't muster up the courage to tell you about his feelings; seeing the way your eyes, heart, and mind focused on another guy. hanbin knows it's wrong to wish the worst upon someone, yet the sting in his heart convinces him more than the rational thoughts in his mind.

matthew was at fault, he fucked up, he knew. he didn't deserve to feel this way, he couldn't help it. two weeks ago he was living the life; a stable career and the girl of his dreams. a week ago, he traded the latter away. he didn't mean to, you'd caught him off guard. matthew looked around the room; there in the mirror, he looked at himself. the red mark, still stinging, served as a reminder to matthew. he'd never been so disgusted with himself, choked sobs threatened to rise up his throat; but he knew he didn't deserve to cry. not anymore.

taerae wanted this breakup and you did too, it was mutual. or so he thought, until he couldn't stop thinking about you; often catching him self reminiscing the times you two shared. this was something he should be over, after all, he was the one who initiated it. yet taerae couldn't understand the way his heart clenched when he saw you again a year later, your hand intertwined with someone else. taerae was never a jealous person, so why did he feel this way now after he'd let you go ? it shattered him to see the way you didn't even look back at him, maybe he was hoping for too much.

ricky had rejected you when you first confessed your feelings to him. he wasn't interested at all and you understood. he thought all was good between you two. eventually ricky noticed you weren't around him as much anymore, he didn't want to admit it; he felt a sense of longing. he missed the way you'd take time to greet him or walk with him to classes. he missed the way you'd ask about his day, mad at himself for all the times he pushed you away. ricky didn't want to admit it; he wished he hadn't rejected you, disappointed in himself for not realizing sooner.

gyuvin couldn't help but feel guilty; he was already in a relationship, however his heart told him that he still wanted you. gyuvin had admired you from far away for so long, he felt sadness for his girlfriend; but she wasn't the one he desired. gyuvin wasn't sure why he was with her in the first place, the guilt eating him up near breaking point. it was you who had taken over his mind and heart, it had always been you. he was frustrated with himself, one day he'll manage to tell you the truth; for now he would have to resort to his current life. it was selfish of him, he knew. but what his girlfriend didn't know can't hurt her, right ?

gunwook was crushed. for a moment, he really thought he had you. he'd been yearning and was over the moon when you had confessed you liked him too. that quickly ended. gunwook didn't mean to eavesdrop on you and your friend and quite frankly, he wished he hadn't. it stung, your words crushed him more than he ever imagined. he was so sure that your relationship was solid, it felt surreal. with a heavy heart, clenched fists, and tears threatening to spill; gunwook listened to your last words, confirming he was nothing but a bet to you.

yujin liked you ever since he was little. in his eyes, you were the perfect babysitter; you also happened to be his older sister's best friend. yujin would see you around often, how couldn't he catch feelings for you ? maybe it was a bit delusional of him, but he thought surely you must've liked him too or thought fond of him, why else were you always around ? after years of waiting, yujin finally decided today was the day he wanted to tell you. he sat on the couch, anticipating your arrival, only to have his heart dropped seeing your arm interlocked with a guy. he felt all sort of emotions, betrayal was the biggest one. he was angry at you, angry at himself; yet he couldn't do anything but smile weakly as you introduced this new guy, blood pounding through his head.

taglist: @kpoprhia, @wonswife, @doobinnies, @chewryy, @watamotee33, @sstephenzz, @yuma-is-mine, @suneonu

[revalition]

OCT 8 - VOLITION

Hold yourself together. Keep your Morale up.

I had to resize this image 3 times to get tumblr to take it... it is also past midnight here, but the day change doesn't really count if I haven't gone to sleep yet, so :)

Volition. My love. my favourite skill. please enjoy. I also drew the volitions of some of my mutuals!! because I love you guys and your volitions very much (holding them gently in my hands). hopefully you guys dont mind and I didn't mess them up too badly

anyway. uhm. I'm much too tired to write anything super coherent right now. please write tags for me or write comments so I can see them when I wake up haha

and! there is a LOT under the cut. like, way more than any of the other days. it is giant. be very careful expanding it <3

ok here goes... I'm typing shorter ones out and screenshotting big ones

--------

VOLITION - Stop, you're only making it worse for him -- you never help with *anything*.

- Rare volition being rude to other skills!!! it only happens under pressure, too

KIM KITSURAGI - "What else could she have done? Lie? She saw there was no way to lie and get away with it."

DRAMA - You would have caught it.

VOLITION - Like hell you would have -- remember?

- you tell him volition!!

SUGGESTION - What is *wrong* with you? Why did you ask to be connected to her? Who *does* that?! Act professional now.

VOLITION - *You* told him to do that stupid thing...

- rare volition callout!!

YOU - Can I trust that guy?

VOLITION - A little. They're all still of limited use, interpreting things to the best of their ability. Maybe they add flair or something? I wouldn't know. I don't add flair.

- this is one of my favs haha. you don't need flair, love, it's ok

VOLITION - Ouch.... That's like twenty points of pride-damage right there, buddy.

- This is after Sylvie turns you down to get coffee. (and you do suffer a point of morale damage haha). him calling you buddy is so funny. it's always mildly condescending too!

- here's the other two:

VOLITION - You're no titan of Volition, buddy. He's got you in a fork. Sit down or leave.

VOLITION - You're a little more moralist now, buddy. A little more *normal*. Even if you didn't want to be.

YOU - "Cryptid extravaganza? I like the sound of that."

KIM KITSURAGI - "And I *don't*. Just one."

VOLITION - Or he'll be *disappointed* in you.

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Whooh... tough choice there.

- volition knows it's truly the most terrible thing haha

VOLITION - An enormous expenditure of willpower to build up strategic semen reserves? You had me at *willpower*. Let's do it!

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Life is all about pleasure... why deny it?!

- these two are hilarious. poor echem. but also volition, honey, nono...

- the game implies consequences when increasing your skills too high but you don't see it with all of them. Volition's one you don't really see much downside to, but you can just. Imagine it here. Him pressuring you to do something stupid, just for the sake of it being difficult. Surely that's not healthy??

- I do think Volition has a lot of issues. I'll get into some more of them later though!!

- but just... Harry wanting to do something that *is* a test of willpower and Volition is completely uninterested. But the semen retention thing is okay? sigh

- and then after that, he's just like. nope. we're not going to not swear :)

- he's so stupid sometimes. also it's absolutely hilarious to me that you can pick the "..." option over and over and Volition will match it forever. You simply cannot out-will your own willpower. It's just not possible.

- I actually live for Volition being the singular voice of reason. Look at the others all chiming in!!

- this one too, Volition being the only one trying to stop it! Why are they all piling on?? Composure not you too >:(

- I had excessively high Volition *and* Pain Threshold in my first run and the two of them!!! PT gets very self destructive at high levels, so seeing the relentless push and pull of PT and Volition was so good.

- This line from the description -> "Cool for: Sane People, Well-Adjusted Cops, The Non-Suicidal" yes it's cool for them, sure, but it's incredibly!!! important for NOT these people! Because Volition doesn't make you sane, or well-adjusted, or non-suicidal. He's just the one voice of reason in there trying to veer you away from making irreversibly bad decisions.

VOLITION - She tries to hide it, but some *great doubt* is spreading within her. There is a crown slowly cracking above her head.

- I need to talk about this line. Just. Volition acknowledging the existence of Joyce's own Volition (which he refers to as a crown!!!) cracking! the *great doubt* spreading and cracking apart the crown! hghh I live for any and every depiction of volition cracking apart when morale gets low and this is absolutely one of them.

AUTHORITY - Weren't you warned to *not* go down this path?! And yet you *still* go and do it...

VOLITION - Just because you *can* doesn't mean you *have to* say everything that comes to mind. Back out before the situation escalates.

- these two's dynamic is very funny to me. I love when they work together (but I also love when they fight! fight fight fight!)

VOLITION - Don't ask, don't look, don't do *anything* here. Just go away. Get back to work.

- "Just go away" ugh my guy is fighting for his life here to get you away from the cigarette and alcohol counter in the Frittte

- hghhk Volition. this is a Challenging passive check too (the second one, to hang up). *one* chance, that's all he has in him. It's not possible at all in the dream, no matter how high your Volition stat is. It's just not something he can do. But here, with the distance of the payphone between you and possibly real consequences, he's able to manage one chance.

- (also did anyone see the post about the payphone conversation possibly being entroponetic crosstalk?? I could talk about that for way too long. but I am getting sidetracked)

YOU - "Yeah, I'm done talking about her. I don't want to think about her anymore."

RHETORIC - What a strange choice of words...

EMPATHY - Caustic, overflowing with negativity.

VOLITION - That can't be healthy. What's happening here? Why do you keep coming back to this window?

YOU - Nothing, everything's okay.

VOLITION - But it isn't. And you shouldn't come back to this anymore. This should be the last time. Stop talking about that damn window, please.

- this one too

VOLITION - Throw it away. Please.

- I need to talk about this. Volition dutifully directs you away from all the reminders of Dora. He does everything in his power to stop the final dream from happening.

- And I get it. He's trying to protect Harry. Because Harry isn't mentally stable right now and it could endanger the case. but... at least, when the final dream happens Kim is (usually) there when you wake up. And if all went well, you get to go back to your precinct, and take Kim with you. And Harry has support.

- If the dream doesn't happen... it will happen eventually. There are a million reminders in Martinaise in the span of a week, imagine what Jamrock is like. It's an inevitability. And then you're taking the chance that the dream happens at a time when Harry is much worse off. Maybe he's alone. Maybe Kim left, maybe he was let go from the force.

- The dream could happen at a better time too, of course. we probably all imagine harry picking up the pieces after martinaise and his life finally taking a turn for the better. and I imagine this is what Volition had in mind, by delaying the dream. Maybe it can be delayed for a long time, long enough.

- but it's a huge risk and I just... don't know if he's making the right choice here. keeping important information about Harry's past, which has shaped his relationships and life considerably, in a box so it can't hurt him

- yeah. anyway...

YOU - What if I don't want to ask questions?

REACTION SPEED - You're a cop, Harry. It is *unnatural* of you not to want to ask questions.

VOLITION - You don't have to. No one is forcing you to be a cop.

- Volition??? sometimes this guy makes no sense, he's so funny. I really think he occasionally just does something for the sake of being defiant

EGG HEAD - "Please. Please?" The young man smiles at you widely, bright and innocent as the summer sun.

VOLITION - His pleaful smile is disarming, but you can withstand it's glorious assault, if you just put your heart into it.

- why? why?? don't turn down egg head ever!

VOLITION - Alright, come on now. If *he* hasn't said anything about your lack of pants, no one will. You're only hurting yourself by not wearing them...

- this one is so funny. I love that he lets you know he *knows* you're trying to get a reaction and you're not going to get one!!

- yes volition, stop himmm

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - How very astute of you! This renders it ineffectual. You should look for a *whole* cigarette. Or better yet -- an entire pack! Strike that, a CARTON! Make sure they're all healthy and able-bodied, then smoke them all.

VOLITION - Or -- you could *not* do that. No one is making you.

- volition as usual trying to stop you from picking up bad habits... I just love the way he talks. he's not even telling you not to, just voicing his disapproval in a rather passive way

INTERFACING - Wow, the gods of mass production have made this alcohol container *laughably* easy to open. A child could have done it.

VOLITION - I don't know about this...

- he still doesn't outright tell you not to drink it... :(((

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Fine. We're not worried... you'll crawl back to this bottle soon enough. We'll give you another chance. Booze *always* gives you *another* chance.

SUGGESTION - Yes, it's *merciful* that way. It's your friend. Come back to it, we're all rooting for you to.

VOLITION - Not *all* of us...

- he's the only one rooting for you to not drink it!! he can't stop you. but he is supporting you in the only way he's able.

VOLITION - No. You *can* stop. Just wade through the hell. Month after month. Year after year -- you against the nothingness. It's possible, because *time* is possible.

- He can encourage you!!

YOU - "I *will* stop drinking."

MEASUREHEAD - "THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE. THE GAME OF *SHAH-MAT* YOU PLAY AGAINST THE GUL'S TRICKS IS UNWINNABLE. THE DAYS, THE WEEKS, THE MONTHS WILL WEAR YOU OUT. THE OCCIDENTAL HAPLOGROUP IS INCAPABLE OF LONG TERM LUCID THOUGHT."

VOLITION - NO.

- volition!!! <3 that's all he needs to say.

HORRIFIC NECKTIE - This is it. I'm gonna hit the ground and burn away now. Most of the people in this yard are gonna die -- if not all. Probably you too. It's a COMPLETE DISASTER.

PAIN THRESHOLD - Get ready for a world of pain, man.

VOLITION - No. Not a disaster. Weave this into the story of you. Walk out of its *ruins*. Save those who still can be saved -- *I'm* on your side.

ESPRIT DE CORPS - And the lieutenant too. And the men behind your back, drawing their weapons... you can live. You can get out of this.

- hnngh. this one is among my favourites too. my amazing 1 int run also had 1 motorics. at this point I had failed the rhetoric check to save ruby, failed the logic check to save lizzie, and now failed the spirit bomb throw too and was about ready to cry. Volition's quiet reassurance was very important to me in that moment. EdC too, and I did save Kim.

HAND/EYE COORDINATION - Your hand trembles as you scratch at your cheek... oh no, that's not how a grown man shaves!

YOU - Leave it for now.

HAND/EYE COORDINATION - Thank god, I would have cut your throat.

VOLITION - The centipede is exaggerating -- people don't actually cut their own throats when they're shaving. At least not accidentally.

- centipede!!! it's such a funny nickname. alternatively

HAND/EYE COORDINATION - Your hand trembles as you scratch at your cheek... oh no, that's not how a grown man shaves!

YOU - This isn't sharp enough. Scrape harder.

HAND/EYE COORDINATION - Stop, for crying out loud! You're gonna cut your own throat.

VOLITION - There's no way to salvage this.

- these guys are hilarious. why is volition even watching this mess? 'there's no way to salvage this.' ??? I'm not even sure if he's referring to you or H/E... he must be so tired.

ENDURANCE - You feel like you're about to faint and fall off the swing. Your hands get clammy and the air tastes sour to breathe.

HALF LIGHT - Oh god, Harry! Oh god, Harry, what did you do...?!

VOLITION - No! Just nope. Say no to this, Harry.

- more of this!! >:( of volition trying to just avoid anything painful. wake up man.

LOGIC - Everything is so pretty and red -- you and Leo look like brothers as you glance around with similar childlike wonder.

VOLITION - Keep it together, no need to show your wonder.

- why? :( it's not hurting anyone. legendary difficulty passive for volition, high levels of volition are sometimes questionable. I love collecting all these instances of volition making weird suggestions. it's like when people point out really weird things Kim does, that you don't really notice as weird because he does it so calmly and confidently.

VOLITION - Huh... no, Mr. Conclusion. You're always kind of limited in your analytical abilities. That's not *her* fault. But still...

- volition: you're kind of limited in your analytical abilities... meanwhile logic and viscalc and ency calling you stupid and brain damaged lol. vol is so gentle about it!!

- then again...

VOLITION - ...no? He's not going to show up? I'm sorry, your lie detection isn't working. It's not her doing, he's just totally inept. It looks like you're also an idiot. But that's not her fault.

- lol.

RHETORIC - This is good. Clear the air first -- between you two -- then move on to questions.

VOLITION - No, it's not good. It's the opposite of that. This will let her dictate the terms of your...

RHETORIC - Shush. I can't hear what she's saying.

- no. don't ever cut off or shush volition ever again

- >:(

YOU - No-no-no-no...

INLAND EMPIRE - Yes, yes, yes, yes.

VOLITION - No-no, we're not starting with that. Not now. Not this time. This thought is over.

- volitionnnn... ily. my own volition also cuts off dangerous lines of thought for me. I think he's got to be constantly vigilant, in order to be so good at it. must be exhausting :(

YOU - "Can't promise that. I might attack him again." [Leave.]

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant groans, but doesn't say anything.

VOLITION - That's right, you *should* do it again! It's the *last* thing he'll be expecting.

- uhm. not sure that's a good idea!!

VOLITION - You're too weak to say 'no' now. Waking up is the worst part. Maybe somewhere down the line you could decline...

- referring to declining the speed. all volition fails are very sad

VOLITION - Yes, look at yourself. What do you see?

YOU - Just a sorry stack of shit...

VOLITION - Yeah, didn't even know they stack shit *that* sorry.

- beautiful, rare volition scolding you!!!! after you disregard his advice and don't apologize to kim after the church fail. he's on your side, but he also knows he needs to tell you that this wasn't okay.

VOLITION - First the investigation, now this... how many more things do you have to fuck up?

- this one too! same scenario. this is a difficulty 16 (Godly) check...

- yes this again. it just needs to be in here. the volition panic attack. if this volition passive doesn't fire, you take no volition damage. it's completely self-inflicted :(((

PAYPHONE - The headset lands in the cradle with a clank. There it sits -- still warm from your hand. You have no idea what just happened.

(heal 2 endurance and 2 volition)

- if you hang up the phone before dora picks up!

VOLITION - He subdues the feeling. Dusts himself off and moves on. So should you. There will be other chances.

(heal 2 volition)

- if Kim misses getting a picture of the phasmid

HORRIFIC NECKTIE - The necktie is guiding you through this. It's your spirit animal, both your nemesis and friend. Suddenly a feeling of ease brushes through you -- you're fine again.

(heal 2 volition and 1 endurance)

AUTHORITY - That... was the most honourable thing anyone has ever done, Harry.

(heal all volition)

- very special incidences of healing more than 1 volition at once!! the fact that healing/damaging morale is just directly called heal/damage volition in the variable naming is. yeah. I think about it constantly. does it hurt him? I think it does. and he never says anything about it (unlike endurance!) he just bears with it quietly.

VOLITION - In honour of your shit, lieutenant-yefreitor. Which you kept *together* in the face of total, unrelenting terror. Day after day. Second by second.

INLAND EMPIRE - DETECTIVE

ESPRIT DE CORPS - ARRIVING

AUTHORITY - ON THE SCENE

- obviously this one has to be in here. funnily enough, in my second playthrough I had 2 PSY but everyone had been bumped up enough that they all fired except authority... I ended up throwing a point into authority and retrying the dialogue so it could be complete haha

VOLITION - What? I thought you had your shit together! This is nearing a complete meltdown! Stop it!

- volitionnn :( if you don't stop you have a panic attack, so I guess he's only trying to help

- this is too funny. volition honey, you absolutely do add flair too

YOU - Oh, you mean Cuno?

VOLITION - Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

- yup, absolutely no flair. Super. Tip-top!

VOLITION - These guys are compromised. She's got them singing along to her tune. The little bleeps and bloops you trust for info -- you can't trust them anymore.

- it would be a crime to not include the bleeps and bloops in here! why does he call them that?? haha

- rare instance of volition not being able to stop the disaster!

INLAND EMPIRE - Your surroundings are undisturbed. While you slept, you were alone. Now that you're awake -- you're still alone.

HALF LIGHT - Get the fuck out of here. Fuck this place, fuck this world, fuck this life, fuck this body -- just fucking go.

SAVOIR FAIRE - The sheets are stained red. Your blood's been running again. Keep it together. Just get out of here and finish this fucking thing.

VOLITION - Harry... I know there's not much to say -- but if nothing else, just remember that you've made it this far. And it's just a bit farther now. Let's finish this.

- this is just. it's awful, if you have the final dream all alone. but at least you have volition with you

DICK MULLEN AND THE MISTAKEN IDENTITY - Dick Mullen was made to crack skulls and solve cases. It's who he is. He could no more stop being a detective than a tiger could cease to be a predator in the night.

VOLITION - You're no tiger, though, Harry. You're a man. It's your curse to have to choose.

- I like this one.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - That sugary black rum stain on the counter makes you teary-eyed with joy. It's almost touching how syrupy and sticky it is. How long have you been up already?

YOU - Not now.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Oh *excuse me*, do you have something better to do than lust for sweet syrupy rum and lemonade? With a twist of lemon? Maybe lime? Maybe who cares, just rum?

VOLITION - Yes, you do have something better to do. Stop drooling over that stupid rum stain and go. Before it's too late.

- this is a challenging (difficulty 12) check! it's very difficult to resist the sticky rum stain I guess

YOU - Give up.

LOGIC - There we go. Your mind is a relaxed muscle. It's so nice and easy to give up, isn't it? On the downside -- you have no idea what you were supposed to do now. I could have *debriefed* you.

VOLITION - Blissful idiot -- say something. You've stood there for too long.

- blissful idiot

VOLITION - Don't be an idiot and say it. In this day and age, of all times. It won't end well.

- once again, volition pushing you away from the bi-curious thing. :( he just wants to keep you safe, but it comes at a cost.

- you can't just wrap harry in bubblewrap, volition. he'll never grow

- volition absolutely saving the day here. do NOT say it harry! authority's advice is SO hit or miss

VOLITION - It's time to leave it be. You're about to make a child cry. Are you proud of yourself?

YOU - Damn right I am! Proud as the Lion of Serber.

VOLITION - Excuse me, I'm not sure I heard that properly...

- volition ily. he has to deal with so much.

VOLITION - Should we? He's *nice*. I don't like *nice*.

- this is so funny. he's very suspicious.

VOLITION - Look at it, detective. And be ashamed. Until you make it right by *legally purchasing* that raincoat, I'll make sure you feel guilty every time you see it.

- YES YES conscience volition!!

YOU - Close the carabiner.

SLEEPING DOCKWORKER - The sleeping dockworker has little to say about your actions. He remains silent.

VOLITION - You're not 100% clear what you did here was *right*, but to hell with it...

- only sometimes!!

VOLITION - I can't restrain this one. The need to *cop* is too strong. You just need to ask it.

- why are you trying to restrain copping??? this guy, sometimes. he's so stupid (affectionate)

VOLITION - That's it. I'm calling it. Kim is beyond compromised.

- uhm. volition completely overcompensating with the compromised skills is quite funny. once drama wakes up, he does it too

VOLITION - See? It's oddly moderate. Probably compromised.

- oddly moderate now means compromised??

- this is it. this is volition's only comment on this disastrous authority fail. he makes no attempt to stop it!!

VOLITION - Being Cuno's pig has a steadying effect on your hand. Go with the flow, man...

- volition's so silly sometimes

DAMAGED LEDGER - You feel that thing in the back of your head? That little voice, that quiet scream? You already felt this was a bad idea, but especially right now it's even worse. Try as you might, you can't read it now.

VOLITION - You've got *business* to deal with first. Talk to the Union boss first, at least... I can't stop you for long, but there's just enough of an excuse now.

- Volition fighting for his life to stop you from reading the letter :,(

VOLITION - If it's possible, then by pure willpower alone. You are going to have to become... a psycholocomotor.

- that is *not* a real word but we love you anyway vol

LOGIC - Is that how it is now? We should just try all good things *twice* and then give up? By that logic...

VOLITION - Not you too...

- he's all alone out here :(

VOLITION - Someone's been a very busy boy. Good on you...

- thank you...?

VOLITION - *Very* off. Just let her go. Listen to me for once...

- for once?? :((( but if you try...

VOLITION - I can't help you. I am totally useless. Everything I've said is lies. I want the exact same bad things you want. To stand here, like a pillar of salt, saying...

- this is probably one of the saddest lines. all the skills falling apart in the dream is awful, but volition might be the worst. it's also very important that volition *does* want the exact same thing you want. He wants to drink and smoke and think of dora and die. And he chooses to resist it anyways. To be the only thing standing in your way. But it's to the point where it's all he knows. He knows that he has to resist the things he wants, and will occasionally take it too far. Keeping Harry (and himself) from things that will make them happy. In the setting of the game, Volition keeps things together and on track. But once Harry is back in his normal life, it will become very much a double edged sword I think. Luckily(?) it will self balance a bit, where if Volition prevents Harry from being happy then he'll lose morale, weakening volition, and then vol won't prevent harry as much and it'll balance out. hopefully.

VOLITION - Despair creeps into you, getting fat on your weakness. Whatever noble intentions you once had as a police officer -- it's eating them all up now.

VOLITION - Nothing you can say would make you feel any better now...

- 😭 I hate this, I hate the volition death. the endurance one is really painful too, but this one's painful in a different way. Volition isn't getting back up from this. the awful newspaper clipping saying you go to live under a bridge... that's what happens when you let volition die?? if any of the other skills (except endurance) drop to 0 you can just raise them back up, but vollll.... ugh.

VOLITION - Listen... It's okay to take a few minutes to yourself. Sit down and have a breather.

ENDURANCE - You need to rest. Your body is aching. Getting in here has taken something out of you. Have a seat.

- our two health pool boys encouraging you to take care of yourself <3

YOU - "Kim, can *you* see it?!"

KIM KITSURAGI - "I can see it."

VOLITION - Four simple words -- thank god. If he can see, then you're not insane.

- this one is obviously very important.

YOU - "I've finally gone insane..." (Put your head in your hands.)

[...]

VOLITION - My god... maybe you *are*.

- if Kim and Cuno aren't there, and your Volition is really low, you get this very sad fail. :(

VOLITION - True, you ought not love ruins and hell -- and the fading scent of apricots.

- I like this one.

WASHERWOMAN - "I *can* wash it for you," she says after looking the jacket over, "but it's going to take about a half an hour. Think you can stay put for that long?"

VOLITION - Hell yeah!

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - No, we must run around ceaselessly. It would be torture to stay put.

- I really really love him.

YOU - "By the way, I'm going to sing karaoke here."

GARTE, THE CAFETERIA MANAGER - "Absolutely out of the question."

VOLITION - You wait and see, cafeteria manager!

- volition will not be told no!!

VOLITION - No one can STOP you from finding the phasmid.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOU?!?! Are you going to CRY now, son?

VOLITION - You heard the coach! This is weakness. It cannot go on much longer, or you will LOSE.

- these guys are great. coach!

YOU - Right. Activate Denial Mode.

VOLITION - You're not really an automaton, you do know that?

- oh, thank you for the insight volition

- even your most willful, imaginative skills know this scope creep was insurmountable...

DRAMA - But we *are* awake, sire! She has been forthcoming -- with sordid details women usually conceal! Most *shocking* details of the sexual kind! We are a bulwark, un-breached...

VOLITION - You've been breached, bulwark. You've been breached, like, a thousand times now!

- nooo poor drama (volition is right)

- Volition trying to reassure you after the Tribunal is very important.

- SO TRUE.

DRAMA - This may have been a *grave* mistake, sire.

VOLITION - Maybe. Maybe not. Mercy is rarely a *complete* mistake.

- I really adore this quote.

I think I'm going to leave it here. I haven't included some quotes that I put in other posts already but I might add them in later to have a comprehensive Volition post... But I've spent like 4 hours on this already so I'm giving it a rest for now :)

[wolfiesmoon]

Dark chocolate

Reo x fem!reader

He could have anything he ever wanted, but the one thing he can't buy with money is your heart (can you tell this is yet another nerd girl x popular boy nuisances to mutual crush fic)

HAhah my blue lock debut🥳🥳🥳i'm making back to back fandom debuts

@noomon since you asked to be tagged (* ´ ▽ ` *)

It almost feels like he gets a new confession every day. It's safe to say he is very popular with the girls at this school. Even if it is for mostly shallow reasons.

Day after day, he receives a letter in his locker, asking him to meet behind the gym or something like that.

But the thing is, he isn't interested in any of these people. So he doesn't even give them the time of day.

The only one he's interested in is you, a girl in his class. But what is he to do when you never give him the time of day?

To you, Reo is a massive nuisance. You have no idea what made him like you and you don't care. Because the last thing you want is a stuck up rich boy as your boyfriend.

You came to this school to study and nothing more. You're not here to date or whatever else school isn't meant for.

(One exception is your singular friend.)

But no matter what, he never seems to give up on chasing after you. Even though there are far more beautiful and willing girls for him to date.

"Girl, just give him a chance. He's only got eyes for you." your friend nudged you as the two of you were eating lunch.

"And give in to him? Are you crazy?" you said with a straight face, continuing to eat.

"Oh, sorry. I only forgot that I'm friends with the most petty stubborn person in the world." your friend rolled her eyes, not understanding why you keep on rejecting Reo. He's rich, he's popular, so what's the hold up?

"Seriously, you're not 'giving in' to anything if you accept his confession."

"But I am losing my pride and my dignity. By the way, your food's getting cold." you replied simply, already getting a bit annoyed that your friend won't shut up about him.

"Girl, I lose hope in your romantic future every day."

"Good."

.

"Hi." he greets you at the school gate, as he does every day. And you ignore him, as you do every day.

"It's rude to ignore someone, you know that?" he joined you by your side and you just subtly rolled your eyes. You don't have time for this today, you have an early library study session to be getting to.

"My answer is no." you crossed your arms.

"I didn't even say anything, though." he gave you that stupid wide smile that you hate looking at so much. It's annoying how... uhh, above average his looks are.

"Would it kill you to stop bothering me?" you finally asked what you've been wanting to for the past few months. You have no idea how it took you so long to be harsh and honest about your feelings.

"What? I'm not bothering you." you had no idea if he was actually this dense or just pretending to be. You don't know him all too well, after all. But considering the fact that he's a student at this prestigious prep school, you think it's the second one. Unless his parents bribed the school to let him in.

"Seriously? Just leave me alone. I am not interested." it kind of felt good to admit that out loud. Directly, with no sweetened phrases to lessen the blow.

He looked away for a second. "Sorry, it's not that easy."

You looked puzzled. His tone didn't suggest arrogance or smugness. It was a quieter and thoughtful tone, something that doesn't seem fit for a stuck up rich boy.

How... strange. No, wait, what do you care?!

"You're... different. Unlike any other girl in this school." the strange tone still remained.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say." you sped up your steps, leaving him behind. You missed the worried look that crossed his face for a moment. To you, those words must have seemed like empty flirty comments.

But he meant it. You're a challenge to win over. To win over. Not take. You're the one girl in this school who won't just throw herself at him and somehow, that made him fall for you beyond belief.

Seeing as all you do is study and occasionally share a few words with your friend, he had a feeling boys weren't a priority for you from the very beginning.

But he'll make one boy a priority for you. Himself, of course. And he'll go through any means to achieve that goal.

.

"Girl, valentine's day is almost here!" your friend shook your shoulders, taking your attention from the notebook you were dutifully reading.

"So?"

"So, I am TOTALLY making chocolates for my crush and you should join me." she shook you again, making you furrow your brows in annoyance.

"Why? I have no one to give chocolate to."

Your friend smirked.

"No. No, absolutely not." you immediately shot her down, already knowing who she was talking about.

"Oh come on, you can still spend ungodly amounts of time studying while having a boyfriend. A hot rich boyfriend, at that." you weren't sure if she was doing this out of free will or if Reo was bribing her with copious amounts of money to get her to say this.

You sighed. You had a feeling your friend was going to be extra stubborn about this for the entire week leading up to valentine's day if you said no right now.

Your best choice was to resign to her and make chocolate for Reo.

And besides, you can just leave the chocolate on his desk anonymously if you come to school early. They don't mean anything to you, anyways.

"...Fine. But don't get any ideas, I'm only doing this because you would annoy me if I didn't." you raised the notebook back up, indicating the end of the conversation. You watched your friend jump with glee out of the corner of your eye.

.

"You should totally make dark chocolate for him." your friend suggested out of the blue as you were collecting the stuff you need to make chocolate.

"What does it matter?" you sighed, wondering what stupid reason your friend had this time.

"Dark chocolate seems more luxurious, don't you think? And besides, I heard that Reo isn't big into sweets. I'm sure he'd enjoy something healthier." she reasoned, seeming proud.

You pulled out your phone. "Hey, what are you looking at your phone for?!" your friend asked, offended that you aren't looking for the perfect meltable chocolate with her.

"Oh, nothing, just looking up the most sugary kind of chocolate." you shrugged.

"Damn, you're evil. Mikage-san's fallen for a baaaad one." your friend hit you lightly, feeling a little bad for Reo.

You looked at the meltable white chocolate on the store shelf, then at the meltable dark chocolate right next to it. You have no idea what possesed you in that moment, but your hand instantly reached for the dark chocolate.

You had to ignore your friend's smirking throughout the rest of the shopping trip.

.

"There! Ahh, these look so cute! All those tutorials helped out A LOT! My crush will totally fall for me after eating these!" your friend kept on gushing at the chocolates the two of you made.

"Mine are very sloppy." it was just a simple observation on your end, but to your friend it must have sounded like a discouraged comment.

"It's okay, girl! I'm sure he'll love them regardless of how they look!" she hugged you, patting your back encouragingly. Sadly, you don't have the heart to tell her that you'll just drop them off anonymously without a care in the world.

But, somehow... that seems wrong to you. Should you do that?

Dammit, this is all messing with your head. Who cares about Reo?! You're just doing this to appease your friend, nothing more.

.

"So, the day is finally here, huh?" your friend surprised you from behind just as you were about to leave the chocolate on Reo's desk.

"W-What are you doing here so early?" you quickly hid away the little box of chocolates, trying your best to act normally.

"Oooh, are we nervous?" your friend smirked.

"Speak for yourself. And answer my question while you're at it." you retorted, clearing your throat. That was far too close. But, how are you going to get rid of this chocolate without giving it to Reo directly and convincing your friend you did all at the same time?

Maybe you should just give up and do it. But your pride just won't let it happen. Not like this...

Later that day, you walked past Reo as he was receiving chocolates from two other girls. However, his eyes were on you the entire time. He seemed to be looking at you with expectation and you grit your teeth at the fact that he is, in fact, correct in expecting a valentine's gift from you.

As you turned the corner, your friend was waiting for you behind it. "What are you waiting for, girl? He's all alone now."

The girls that gave him the gifts seem to have already left. Oh no, this isn't good at all.

"Listen, I-"

"Oh hell no, you are not running away this time. Now go out there and make things happen!" your friend pushed you out from behind the corner, with you almost bumping into Reo.

"Hi!" he greeted you, a little more cheerfully than usual.

"Hello." you forced a smile. You silently took out the chocolate and handed it to him. You watched his eyes travel down to the chocolate and then widen.

"Wait... for me? Seriously?" He took the chocolate out of your hands, smiling happily. His cheeks seemed to be turning a pretty shade of pink, too.

His face isn't half bad when it looks like that, you must admit. Though, that doesn't mean anything. Reo's just handsome in general, that face is meaningless to you.

"Don't get any ideas. I'm only doing this out of obligation." you ignored the daggers being shot at you from behind. You can already imagine the earful you'll get from your friend.

"That just means I'll have to try harder, though." he gave you a big, wide smile. The kind that you've never seen on a guy in real life before. But to be fair, you don't look at guys all that much.

Still... Why is your heart beating so fast right now?

oh my god this turned into a whole essay LMAOOO

[kerubimcrepin]

An analysis of That One Moment from Wakfu OVA - Book 2, Ush

Technically, this post is a part 4 of my liveblog, but still...

Today we will be talking about the interaction that I am most mentally ill about in the entirety of Wakfu.

Before I go completely off the rails: I think it's cute that despite everything, Keke still cares a lot about Ecaflip and Ecaflipus, and Atcham still cares about killing people for wronging him.

Things have changed after six centuries, but they're still just themselves. Anyway.

There is so much happening here. SO much. Let me break it down point by point:

The most obvious one: by addressing them as kids, he pulls his "I am roleplaying as your father for these strangers who don't know anything about our weird familial situation, and you will obey me" card. This is important because:

Kerubim and Atcham know how much Joris cares about the Brotherhood of Tofu and their opinions of him, to the point of going a little bit crazy at the thought of offending Yugo and Adamai.

So, even if him pulling the "I'm your dad" card is a bit egocentric, they can't say anything about that openly — because Joris would be so, so sad if everyone in this room knew he lives with his dad for 600 years now. He'd be so mad too, because "papychaaa, chaaaoncle stop embarrassing me in front of my friends!"

We KNOW Kerubim cares about not embarrassing Joris — because in the Dofus MMO he won't shut the hell up about his 20-30 dead loved ones from 200 years ago, says a Singular Thing about Atcham, and absolutely nothing about his very much alive son/fake dad, at best managing a little "we all want someone small in our lives..."

In my opinion, while some families are built on mutual roasting, the Crepin-Jurgen household houses three people with very fragile senses of self-esteem, so anything resembling roasting is usually light, exclusive to when they're all alone, and never about things that they actually hate about themselves ("short, weird, ugly, hypocrite, weak, overthinker"; "ugly" (some bald jokes allowed, but it depends on the mood); and "narcissist who kept his son in a hazardous environment for the first 7 years of his life and gave him 30 mental illnesses").

Besides the fact that Keke and Atch care about Joris making friends, — for the three of them (but especially Joris and Atcham), feeling belittled is the easiest way to ruin a relationship irreparably. If you insult them, it's just over. And I don't mean it in a funny-haha cutesy way. Sometimes, people actually dislike when they are insulted repeatedly about something they legitimately hate about themselves, and, y'know, hate everyone who hurts them this way? And you will not believe it, but people who actually care about them know and respect that. Because they love them.

So yeah, the three of them are all creatures of pride, and they respect that about each other, — which is why would never put each other in a position where they might get laughed at. (like suddenly revealing the Dad Roleplay and "600 years of living with his dad" sort of interpersonal lore)

However, being creatures of pride, I don't think Kerubim and Atcham are happy about Joris doing this. Especially because of the next point: Joris uses his position as their roleplay-dad and Asocial Son/Nephew Who Needs To Impress His Friends to essentially force them to let him go into a battle alone. Essentially, this line is translated as "you have glass bones and paper skin. you can't follow me because I said so, and you can't protest without looking weird." into Normal Human Tongue.

Joris does this for a very simple reason: they are weak (though so is he), and he's scared — he loves them! It's normal that he doesn't want to see them be hurt! Even if they have multiple lives, but they're not infinite lives, and it doesn't make every time they die NOT scary and traumatizing! He wants Kerubim and Atcham to go and rest, and he's also excited that they're finally meeting his friends.

However, unlike them, he only has one life — and they hate to see him hurt just as much, if not more, considering how much more danger he's always in:

They would really rather not leave their p'tit Jojo Joris alone with things they know are dangerous, — like Ush, — while Joris is weakened. No matter how much he wants to fight Ush one-on-one.

So, they refuse and even joke about him in the most subtle and funny way: using his own little game to make fun of him, and completely refuse his offer of leaving to rest in Sadida Kingdom, — coupled with an overexaggerated little shrug, and rubbing their statuses as so-called "sons" and "father" in his face.

These three come up with very elaborate rituals to communicate things that take normal people like ten seconds.

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

Okay, no, y'know what? I've made a post about this before, but it's making me mad again and I think this bears repeating: the scene leading up to Stayed Gone is NOT proof that Vox is just as bad to Val as Val is to him, and claiming that it is plays into very real misconceptions about abuse. We don't know everything about their relationship, but THAT SCENE SPECIFICALLY features EXCLUSIVELY Val as the aggressor. Yes, Vox yells at Val, but he doesn't throw anything. Yes, he manipulates Val, but hE'S DOING IT TO STOP HIM FROM SHOOTING UP A GODDAMN BUILDING I THINK THAT'S A PRETTY GOOD FUCKIN REASON!!!!!!!! The only thing Vox does in that scene that I would consider a genuine red flag is grabbing and throwing Val after Val brings up Alastor. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING ELSE he does is in response to something Val did. In fact, how about I give a play by play of the scene???

Vox enters Val's room to get him to stop breaking Velvette's shit

Val starts yelling at Vox

Val throws a glass directly at Vox's head, which Vox casually dodges

Val continues yelling

Val breaks Vox's phone

Val starts threatening to shoot up the hotel

Vox tells him to stop, but Val doesn't listen

Vox yells in Val's face to get his attention and then manipulates him into not shooting up a building

Vox tells Val he can shoot the lowest earners

Val brings up Alastor to intentionally piss off Vox

Vox grabs Val and throws him because Val didn't tell him where Alastor is sooner

The two watch the hotel

Val gets mad at Vox for not paying attention to him

Val starts taunting Vox about Alastor

Vox gets mad at Val for taunting him

Valentino is ABSOLUTELY in the wrong here!!!! I'm sorry he just fuckin is!!!! This is not mutual abuse like so many people love to say, this is Vox reacting apropriately to some really fucking awful behavior from his partner. The one, singular instance of Vox being abusive is immediately followed up by Val CONTINUING TO MAKE HIM ANGRIER BECAUSE HE THINKS IT'S FUNNY. Just because Vox isn't taking the abuse lying down doesn't mean it isn't still abuse oh my GOD- yes, Vox grabbing Val because Val didn't tell him about Alastor is bad. No matter how angry you are, you shouldn't throw your partner. I am not trying to excuse that one singular thing. That was a shitty thing to do. But everything else Vox does in this scene is justifiable. Fighting back against someone who is endangering both you and themself isn't abuse, and people claiming that it is can be seriously damaging to victims. Using this scene as proof of StaticMoth being equally toxic is borderline victim blaming. I'm sorry it just is.

Aaaaaaand just to reiterate because I don't feel like arguing in the comments; I am talking EXCLUSIVELY about this one scene. I am not saying you can't ship StaticMoth, and I am not saying that Vox is 100% exclusively a victim in their relationship. We don't know enough about their dynamic to tell. What I AM saying is that this scene isn't the slam dunk for mutually toxic StaticMoth that everybody seems to think it is, and continuing to claim that perpetuates some legitimately harmful mindsets. I try not to get this serious with my Hazbin analysis, I really, truly do, because these characters aren't real people and getting upset over how they're being treated is pointless because they have no feelings. I'm only making this post because the mindset a lot of people seem to have regarding this scene is one that can ALSO lead to problems for real people. It's the mindset that leads to people not taking victims seriously if they fight back, the mindset that makes it harder for real people suffering real abuse to come forward. If you want a more in-depth look into why exactly this is harmful, I highly, HIGHLY recommend Princess Weekes' video on mutual abuse. It's very well researched and made by somebody with a lot more experience writing these types of breakdowns then I have.

In conclusion: STOP USING THIS SCENE AS PROOF STATICMOTH IS MUTUALLY TOXIC PLEASE I AM LITERALLY BEGGING YOU S T O P -

[scribbled-dream]

”Not everyone can be domesticated.”

This is an unspoken, yet deeply controversial truth. The Compact’s commanders are aware—some minds, like Androids, are deeply resistant to domestication (it is fortunate that the vast majority of Androids defected en masse to the Compact), and there are some souls so deeply entrenched in their fascist ideology that they refuse even the effects of Xenodrugs.

As such, the Compact must have a bare minimum of a military. The average Affini can short out systems and sunder steel with their vines, plant-like fibers being bulletproof, but they are still limited. This is where the Petal Blade Corp comes in.

Infiltrators, analysts, propagandists, and Sophonts who can’t leave the stench of war from their bones, taking the most advanced weaponry available to fight for the Affini.

This truth is coincided with another, blatantly spoken, almost pridefully spoken truth.

“Not all Sophonts are Pets. They must be respected.”

In this, a golden propaganda opportunity became genuine. To show the superiority of their bloodless combat, to continue the mass flood of defectors and uprisings, the Affini have realized that Humanity cannot be as easily controlled as other hivemind races. Although the concept of raw, unaligned independence is foreign to them, independence in love is not.

There are discussions. Forums with Human analysts, librarians, former social workers (as far as the iron grip of the Accord allowed). How? How does Humanity want to be treated and shown utopian love and adoration?

A singular answer.

“Let them decide.”

This is the power of the Compact. Empowering individuals to work towards the cause of a better future. For every Floret in profound, mind-controlled bliss, there are three more who work fulfilling, alert work, clinging to their Affinity through a deep, mutual respect and longing, and even more who have marriages with other Sophonts, taken in by Affini as an addition to a group of Petals but allowed to roam, and more.

The varied nature of the human race cannot be put inside a tiny, little box. The Affini know this, perhaps better than the Terran Empire ever did.

Edit: ever since I found HDG my tumblr has been exploding. Am I cooked?

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

One of my favorite subtle details between Zuko and Azula is how Azula almost has this sense of ownership over Zuko.

Azula yearns for love and control and she sees them as reliant on each other, all mixed with the use of fear to enact control and to manipulate love. Azula wants Mai and Ty Lee to fear her because in her mind, having them fear her gives her control over them—in turn, she can manipulate them into loving her.

It genuinely feels like that's what she longs for with Zuko. She so deeply craves affection because her father withholds it and her mother and uncle both clearly favoured her brother.

So she tries to control Zuko. She frightens him. Deceives him. Isolates him. Manipulates him.

Yes, it's out of envy. There's malice to it. And of course, because it earns her favour with her father. But no one can tell me otherwise that she does all that so that she can keep Zuko to herself.

I think, in some twisted way, she pushes for Mai and Zuko's romance because it allows her to keep them both close. Her brother and her friend; a way for her to exert control over them. It's like she's playing dolls (ironic, given she destroyed Iroh's gift) and her favorite plaything is Zuko. Like a child who doesn't understand how to show care for their beloved toy, Azula abuses Zuko because she loves playing with him the most. I could even go as far as to say she projects her feelings for Zuko onto her. Using her friend to express the love she herself can never show to her brother.

Every act Azula does screams this need for control and affection, and the one she targets the most is Zuko. She loves him, but because Ozai only shows attention to Azula is by manipulating her, she in turn does it to possibly the one person she truly, utterly loves.

The fact that Azula's VA clearly supported it, and Zuko's VA was familiar enough to at least joke about it with her just hammers home how visible Zuko and Azula's chemistry were.

Her clear obsession with being the only one to humiliate, dethrone, and/or kill Zuko. The way she goes soft only around Zuko, even if it is still to further her machinations. In the midst of her breakdown, where she no longer had the bandwidth to tell another lie, she still thought of at least putting Zuko under the care of a physician.

20 years I was just a child and even then I could recognize with such clarity that Zuko was the singular object of Azula's honest affections.

Like, yeah she was clamoring for Ozai and Ursa's love. She wanted the throne, but mostly because it represented in her mind Ozai's "fatherly love". She believes herself above both Mai and Ty Lee, yet craves for them to be her equals. To be her friends. And then, Zuko.

Dumb-dumb. Zuzu. Begging for him to play with her. Dragging him around the palace. Why would she care about an Earth Kingdom Doll when her favorite toy is right there? Always searching him out. Always having enough time and energy to humor him and talk to him and even listen to him.

She takes Ty Lee's advice at Ember Island, but it's Zuko that she always has time to lend an ear to. Even if it's just to torment him with word games and machiavellian tactics. She doesn't hate or love anyone as much as she does Zuko.

And Zuko dreams of her. Fears her. Envies her. Hates her. Loves her. In a truly twisted way, they complete each other.

In another timeline, Nickelodeon studios burned down after Zucest canon controversy destroyed their reputation, but at least in that timeline we got the most fucked up ship in reality and I think that universe is worth living in.

(Anyway may I ask if we could become mutuals so I can shout and have someone scream at me about Zucest? No worries if the answer is no!)

Okay, anon, who gave you permission to not only look into my mind to see my 3am rambles about Zucest, but to also post them? Rude XD

For real, the thought of Azula being possessive of Zuko and seeing him kind of like her little plaything gives me life. I love them being obsessive, deranged, and codependent with each other. It makes me as happy as them being all soft and apologetic.

And I love, love, love how you described Zuko's weird affection/resentment for her too. It reminded me of this silly meme I mad a while back:

And of course we can be mutuals, I'm always eager to talk about my favorite ship. And you can send all the zucest stuff to my main @hello-nichya-here

[total-dxmure]

i'm super late to react about the tlou casting debacle, however you all know that i have strong opinions.

i'm sure that the actress who has been cast is incredibly talented, however i'm still extremely disappointed.

abby's looks are incredibly important to the entire storyline of the second game, and i had hopes that they would do her complexities justice. the writers used her stature and build as a serious plot device and let me tell you why:

she's taller than ellie. she's stronger than ellie. she's better trained than ellie.

does this stop her from continuously pitting herself against the woman? no. she is quite literally a cornered, feral animal. showing teeth and aiming for the jugular. it is not tenacity that we are seeing in ellie. it is pure, unadulterated rage. it singlehandedly burns her up from the inside out. nothing exists for her anymore except a singular goal and that is wiping out everyone who not just had a hand in killing joel but also had any relationship to those people. she's hunting them like prey.

we are supposed to look at abby and be scared. we are supposed to look at abby and think her capable of possibly besting ellie. we are supposed to see her, towards the beginning, as the "big bad evil guy". most of us are completely blind to the parallels when we're knee deep into the game because we love joel.

but that's when the shift happens. when you suddenly see abby in ellie's shoes. she's someone who just wanted to avenge the death of her father and all of his comrades.

though it was too late to save joel, ellie is murdering countless people in the name of someone she loves. she resented him for what he did to save her, and yet when faced with a similar situation she jumps head first into it without hesitation.

abby and ellie both had complete and utter tunnel vision. abby, who wanted to avenge her father and find the fireflies. ellie, who needed to make everyone pay for what they did to joel. both of them destroyed their own lives in their pursuits.

one of the most, if not the most emotional scene in the entire gameplay is the final showdown between abby and ellie. we see a weak (emaciated) abby fighting for her life against a strong, now incredibly skilled ellie. the role reversal is breathtaking.

this is why abby's looks mean so much. it is a testament to the absolute soul crushing sorrow that the both of them endured. most of which were mutually inflicted onto each other.

abby could have taken advantage of ellie's weaknesses and killed her in that theater, just as ellie could have done with abby.

ellie ends up turning into the very person that she hates most and her worst fear comes to life. she ends up alone.

the worst part of it all is that we know that joel wouldn't have wanted her to take any sort of revenge. she was living a happy, simple life with dina. the kind of life that joel had wanted for himself and for her. she can't even play guitar in order to feel connected to the man that had become her father.

he had died without her forgiveness. she is forced to live with that, all while being unable to forgive herself for what she has done.

and not to break anyone's hearts even more, but did anyone else catch the flowers that ellie put on joel's grave? blue hydrangeas. in the language of flowers they mean "forgiveness and regret".

[justporo]

BG3 Winter Holiday Challenge

It seems many of you are ready to head into winter time in Baldur's Gate! So, we present you with:

Firstly, we have to thank and give credit to our mutual friend @bearhugsandshrugs who not only showed us the ropes with setting things up with AO3 (it's really not... intuitive) but also always offered help and also also originally organised a BG3 Promptmeme Challenge for Kinktober (the collection for that can be found here) that was also an inspiration for this challenge and started setting things in motion!)

What is this about? You might've seen the post two days ago about the creative challenge my lovely friend @the-littlest-raindrop (thanks for doing this with me) and I came up with to bring some warmth and fluff into December time. We provide you with 12 different prompts to get you into the festive mood.

When does this start? Start your fluff engines, we start posting on December 1st up until January 1st!

How can I participate? See a prompt that immediately gives you an idea for a drawing or a drabble? Let's go! No matter if you're a writer or an artist or want to fill a prompt in any other creative kind of way (so say: a drawing, a drabble, headcanons, a cake?). Just keep in mind it's a fluff challenge! Feel free to fulfill as many or as few prompts as you'd like: all of them, three or only one. Post your content with the hashtag #BG3HolidayFluffle23 and mention the prompt you used! This challenge is also available as a collection on AO3 (all say thanks to @the-littlest-raindrop for setting this up, and once again @bearhugsandshrugs for teaching us, you both rock), so you can also head over there to share your writing fills!

Any rules? Keep it lighthearted and fun, this is about fluff! You're welcome to use OCs or more than one character as long as it includes at least one BG3 character. The prompts are also in no particular order.

What else? Depending on how this will go we might organise some masterlists to collect the entries, but we can't promise. For now, we really just wanted to get the (snow)ball rolling to spread some of the festive goodness! Also if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me or @the-littlest-raindrop!

And NOW, we come to the best part:

✬THE PROMPTS✬

✶Twinkling Lights✶

Wintertime is full of beautiful lights - be it shining stars in the crisp night air, candles or fairy lights put up as decoration, or the glamour of fireworks. It might be nice to look at all of these together with your partner or set them up yourselves.

✶Snow & Ice✶

Dropping temperatures means a chance for frosty precipitation. What a wonderful thing to enjoy with a lover (albeit with a few extra layers for warmth!).

✶Gifts✶

The Holiday season is the time for giving. Exchanging gifts with your partner is a tradition as old as the season itself. Will you have to keep the gift receipt or not? 

✶Mulled Wine/Hot Chocolate✶

There’s nothing quite like curling up with a nice warm drink on a chilly evening. The only thing better is sharing it with someone you love.

✶Delicacies✶

Don’t you have some cheese around? The holidays are usually filled with indulging in various delicious dishes and treats. It’s up to you if you simply want to share them with a loved one or even dare to prepare them yourself.

✶Holiday Spirit✶

The holidays mean a lot of different things to people. To some, it’s a time to be thankful and unwind. To others, it means stress, and a frantic rush to get everything organised. How do your lovers fare this time of year? 

✶Mistletoe✶

The seasonal flora with a singular association: kissing! Whether it’s someone planning a romantic surprise, or pure happenstance, when lovers find themselves beneath it, there is only going to be one outcome!

✶Chosen Family✶

Not everyone is lucky enough to have family around this time of year. That’s why it’s important to spend time with the people that matter most in your life, creating bonds just as strong as the familial kind.

✶Ornaments✶

Putting up decorations to set the right mood is a very common thing around the holiday time. Maybe you even take the time to make some of them yourself with the help of your partner.

✶Winter Markets✶

There’s always plenty of shopping to be done, especially this time of year. Taking the time to venture out on a cool winter’s eve to see all the treats and treasures is a time-honoured tradition, one that can also be enjoyed hand-in-hand with someone dear.

✶Getting Cozy✶

Sometimes during winter time when it’s too cold and stormy to venture outside, there’s really nothing better than to put on your comfiest socks and get nice and warm at home with someone to keep you company.

✶New Beginnings✶

The end of the year can be the start of many new things. It offers a chance to reflect on the past, while ushering in a future that is yours to shape for the better. What might this mean for lovers? Only time will tell.

We hope all of you have a lovely winter time and have fun in joining us in this challenge! Lots of love! <3

So, once more big thank you to @bearhugsandshrugs for the help and the inspiration!

And thank you so much again, @the-littlest-raindrop for doing this with me, it's been a pleasure and a joy this far!