#i know a lot of people have their qualms! justifiably so! and i do share some of them

[masterkeynobi]

im sowwy im sowwy i cant bring myself to be cynical about this i simply cannot ladkshgkldjsghgkldshfjh like yes im looking at mm w a healthy amount of skepticism! yes a spinoff is usually not as good as the original! but also I'm Not Fucking Immune to D20 like each time i watch the trailer i have to flap my hands for a solid fifteen seconds the moment i see that fucking sword. i havent seen anjali play before but i LOVE the rest of the pcs and i love seeing iyengar & mulligan at the same table and i just. i dont want to get my hopes up too high but also my heart cannot quell its excitement you know. im not like a 2020 d20 discourse veteran or anything ive been here for <6 months but acoc makes me feel incredibly incredibly normal and i was so sure we'd never even get a mention again and. AUGHDGHGHFHGH... AUGH.......... 2 CROWN 2 CANDY......... I CANT NOT WATCH IT I CANT NOT BE EXCITED i feel. crazy. i have felt crazy since 10:30 am pst today. holy shit dude. i cant deny it the trailer looks fucking good i. my brain is being exploded over and over

[cpericardium]

So! I've gotten a host of messages and asks regarding recent disk horse and I wanted to address them as a collective.

I know I have anon asks off, I won't share your URLs, but I do want to thank you for asking and clarifying some of the frankly vile things people have been saying about me, my girlfriend, and friends. I value those of you who offered your words of support, and didn't jump to believe screenshots taken out of context and lies written with the utmost confidence and none of the facts. I am a little tired of having my morals questioned and my views conflated with every single person I associate with, but there it goes.

tumblr user cpericardium suspiciously silent on the subject of Gaza: does this mean you support ethnic cleansing???

My reticence when it comes to posting about topics like I/P is because:

-This is a fandom blog intended for lighter topics, except maybe the occasional vent about life stuff, which I usually hide under a cut. I don't have sideblogs. They seem tough to maintain and I don't post nearly enough to justify it. If I were to make one it would be for another fandom or maybe just the freakier bugs. I simply prefer my social media experience to be stress-free.

-Anti-slacktivism. It's a documented thing: posting about an issue makes you feel like you're doing something, you get that little shot of dopamine, so you don't actually go out and do something that effects meaningful change. I'm trying to do less of that. I'm good with the friends and people I follow who choose to post about it and this is a strictly personal belief, but when I engage in activism, it is offline or it is a donation. You're not going to hear about it.

But don't you reblog lgbt and women's rights posts?

Yeah, and that's usually when I want to save a post for one reason or another (e.g. to talk about with someone on discord later). The bottom line is that the main purpose of my blog is not to post political takes or to spread awareness of anything. It is just a collection of my interests (fan stuff, bugs) and hopefully a way to share those interests with like-minded people.

I will state my views clearly for the record: I support Palestine. The ongoing genocide is heartbreaking and so is the violence against protestors. Additionally, I am against antisemitism and the harassment of Jewish people in the name of supporting Palestine. This shouldn't even need to be said.

Is your girlfriend a Zionist?

No.

Does she support Zionists?

No.

Wasn't she in the military?

Yes, years ago.

But the military is evil?

It is. She's extremely hardcore anti-war and anti-military, does not believe the US should even have an army, and actively PMs strangers on reddit to try to convince them to not make the same mistake. If they're dead set anyway, she gives them detailed advice on how to survive. Because she actually cares about the human cost of war, not the social clout gained from shunning or sneering at people who make wrongheaded choices. I have seen her doing this, seen her seeking to understand their reasons for joining so she can systematically explain—from personal experience!—why they're not going to get any of that out of the army. It is a hell of a lot more effective than bitching them out or writing callout posts or starting whisper campaigns about them. She cannot delete those years of her life no matter how much she regrets them. There is only forward. I think we can all agree on that.

But what about all those things she said. "I regret nothing, I have no qualms, VA nipple money etc."

Well you have to understand that while of generally upright character, she is a bit of a scamp. She believes she fundamentally should not have to explain herself to randos who do not know her, who have never, not once, interacted with her, who are clearly digging for dirt and will twist anything she says no matter how banal. People see what they want to see and they look for evidence to reinforce their preconceptions; they'll go so far as to make alts to join servers, cherry-pick screencaps, crop them, and conveniently fill in the rest of the narrative for curious onlookers. So she decided to exaggerate and amplify and twirl her mustache like a supervillain. Give them a show, as it were.

To be clear, I'm not sold on this strat because it makes her look cartoonishly evil to people who can't understand sarcasm and hyperbole. But her friends and I are aware of her actual beliefs from actually talking with her for more than one (1) second instead of immediately believing two mysteriously cropped screencaps from a thirdhand source, and also aware that she did not in fact do those things people imagine she did. And isn't that what matters? Real-life harm? Do you even care?

Re: screenshots/so-called proof from shakertwelve & lakesbian's "callouts"

Girlfriend addresses them here. I will also note they have spread lies about me and other people before.

[subzeroparade]

*chant* New fic! New fic! New fic!

So excited you’ve posted a new ER fic, and with a teaser for more to come! 🎉🎉🎉

Since it’s been awhile, maybe I poke your brain on what your thoughts on the DLC are (game play, lord, sceneries, anything you’d like to share with us really)? Has it changed your headcanon on any of the characters, or did you find ways to incorporate the new lores into your interpretations? Most importantly, did you have fun?

*tagged for spoilers but just in case - spoilers •‿•*

Did I enjoy it? YES. Did I have qualms with some gameplay bits? YES but I’m a filthy casual on NG+2 or something and generally Not Good at Game. But I beat it. 

As for lore, it’s really a mixed bag. There’s a ton of stuff I’m delighted to have new or expanded lore for - Marika’s origins, Belurat and the entirety of Hornsent culture, Godwyn’s Death Knights, BAYLE???? VILE BAYLE!!!! etc etc (sometimes I listen to Igon’s voice lines just to psych myself up for real life). There are things I need to adjust my headcanon for a little, as well - St Trina, for example, has always been a facet of Miquella himself to me, a sort of alter ego he willingly takes on, which is how I enjoyed writing her in fic. To have her elaborated here as a separate person means taking that a little further if I write him/her/them again, but I think the parallel it draws between Marika/Radagon is hugely interesting as well.  

iirc there are a couple of instances in the base game where lore almost contradicts itself, but I think in some cases the DLC got a little sloppy. The timeline is also way foggier to me now than it was previously. I was a big fan of the idea that Messmer was entirely unknown to his siblings, written out of history after the Crusade (predating Marika ushering in the Golden Age of the Erdtree), but that contradicts the lore we get on Gaius and Radahn as they’re both personally acquainted with Messmer, and makes me wonder which of the other demigods might’ve been aware of him, and under what pretences might they have met. It makes for a lot of fic ideation, but I’m of the opinion that if you’re writing fic, sticking too closely to (the sometimes unhelpful) lore will stultify the work; so I’m trying to pluck little instances of new lore that interest me to bolster the story I want to tell.  

Like most of the fandom I have a huge beef with Promised Consort Radahn, and I’m still struggling with how to work that into my headcanon. To me, there is simply no reason for it. There are no indications of it in the base game, and you have to tie yourself into continuity knots for it to make any sense - and that’s just bad writing. I’m not against retconning things if they serve a purpose, but this was neither useful nor necessary (nor well done), and that’s fundamentally disappointing for a Fromsoft game. The more people aggressively try and justify it, the more I feel like the potential explanations unravel. If we’re going along with the assumption that Miquella *needs* a lord to ascend, we’ve had Candidate #1 since the base game: Godwyn. Half of what we know about base-game Miquella is that he spent time and resources trying to grant Godwyn some form of peace, while his hideous fate hangs over the narrative in perpetuity. And we give Radahn closure literally in the first act of the game. I’m a firm believer in Miquella knowing 100% what he’s about, but in this singular instance blinded by love for Godwyn and an all-consuming desire to *fix this* by resurrecting some nightmarish, malformed version of him. There’s so much juicy story to be told in Miquella refusing to acknowledge the thing he brought back is not his brother, and for all that godhood and remaking the world into utter passivity can do, it can’t retrieve Godwyn’s irretrievable soul. All that to say, I’d even take Malenia as his promised consort - it would made more sense than Radahn, too.

Anyway tldr I don’t have to think about how disappointing that is now, because the fic I’m working on is around Marika’s ascension, and more specifically Messmer and Melina’s upbringing. There’s another on the backburner but I’m on the fence about it since it hasn’t reached an outline stage yet, and I don’t start anything unless I am 100% sure I know how to finish it, and finish it well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Ty for the ask! As is the case with me, the rest of my musings on the lore come through in fic writing, because those are the texts dumps I’m good at. Here’s a little (young) Melina and Messmer wip as thanks. 

[preciouslittlecreature]

Some general Nikolai headcanons because why not! I've got so many more, but I'll try to keep this post short. As always, please let me know if anything posted is harmful, and have a wonderful day!

Can operate many different types of vehicles and holds licenses for many in areas he frequents or that are strategic or significant to any causes he is a part of. No, they are not obtained legally (that'd be too much time and work)

I don't know enough about them to say which one specifically tops them all, but helicopters are his favorite vehicle. His helis are his babies, and he treats them well.

I can't see him liking vodka. He'll drink it if it benefits him (i.e., gaining approval from potential clients, informants, etc.), but beyond that, he avoids it.

Speaking of alcohol, he keeps a high tolerance. Not because he's Russian (though, from what I understand, the drinking culture there may contribute to that), but because it's beneficial to him. It's not uncommon for people to get others drunk, so it's easier to attack or manipulate them. Since it's not always possible to skip a drink, tolerance is the next best thing.

Hairy. I don't have anything else to add to that

Does not have a 6 pack or hard pecs or anything like that. Im sorry, but it's just not something I can see, especially since I learned it's often obtained through malnutrion, dehydration, or like... steriods. Also, I love fat. I want a man with a bit of a belly and soft pecs.

Trains a lot; even if he usually isn't involved directly in a fight, that can quickly change. Plus, it helps him destress.

Gives incredible hugs. Idk what else to add. He just knows how to read people well enough to adjust to their hug preferences. Only gives em out to people he truly cares about, though.

Absolutely a terrifying force; you do not want to be his enemy. The ends often justify the means to him and that often leads to morally fucked up situations. I mean, he literally abducted a man's wife and child. He has no qualms about occasionally being the bad guy and doesn't lose much, if any, sleep over it.(This is pretty much canon, but I still wanted to add my own thoughts to it)

If you've got any of your own, please feel free to share em! And let me know if you want any more; I've also got relationship ones if anyone wants <3

[annoyinglandmagazine]

@tolkienfamilyweek Day 2: Siblings

You know what gets me about Celegorm and Curufin specifically? They are quite possibly two of the least redeemable characters in the Legendarium (saying a lot) and are equally fucked up but in fundamentally different ways. Curufin believing in his father absolutely even after everything and still being convinced in his righteousness and resenting others for standing in the way of what the sees them as morally entitled to whereas Celegorm just doesn’t think in terms of right or wrong anymore, he’s not trying to be ‘good’ he has a goal and he’ll take any path available to achieve it.

Purely selfish in both cases but Curufin has a god complex (or more like he puts Feanor on a pedestal and agrees with his god complex) and hates the Valar with a vitriol and has successfully bent himself over backwards to consider all his actions entirely justified. Whereas Celegorm genuinely doesn’t bother justifying himself at this point and has the ‘well we’re all doomed anyway so who the fuck cares anymore?’ attitude to future actions. He doesn’t hate the Valar for the same reasons some of the others do, he doesn’t distrust them or believe they’re evil, he feels his people were abandoned and resents it because he knows he was in the wrong but Morgoth is very clearly worse and haven’t they suffered enough yet?

Very different and terrible kinds of evil, but equally evil. Do they really understand each other’s moral compass (or lack of it)? Probably not, but they accept it anyway. They know that nothing they do will ever disgust or horrify the other because they’re both as bad as each other and there’s something freeing (if decidedly unhealthy) about that lack of judgement.

I am so obsessed with the dynamic of two mass murderers with no morals whatsoever never once contemplating stabbing each other in the back because they love each other just as much as any of the heroes love their family. Think about it, Curufin has his father’s name, his face, his skill set, and we know these are the things that Curufin would consider of utmost importance. There’s no way Curufin doesn’t think he should be on a throne, he was most probably out for Fingolfin’s and canonically out for Finrod’s. But he wasn’t out for Finrod’s throne to take himself, he wanted to place Celegorm on it.

He thinks insanely high of himself and thinks he’s worthy to be a king but he clearly believes Celegorm just as worthy and has trust that his brother would value his input and treat him as an equal, which doesn’t seem that far fetched because, even with all the clashes you’d think would come between two strong personalities like them, they ruled Himlad jointly for years with no power struggles. What’s more it seems like this was by choice, that instead of ruling their own realms, which you’d imagine proud people like them would want to do, they preferred to share Himlad in an equal partnership.

Curufin is so terrible even his own son, and presumably wife, can’t bear to be around him anymore but Celegorm? He’s never going to leave him, never, they are always going to back each other up and everyone else will suffer for it.

One of my favourite moments with them is when everything goes to hell, they’ve been banished, Finrod’s dead, Luthien escaped and then, to top it all of, they try to get revenge on one maiden and a mortal and not only get utterly trashed but Celegorm’s dog who he’s had since childhood and kept as a companion through everything up until this point finally changes sides with no warning whatsoever and chooses Luthien over him (on another note, what the hell Huan? You seriously haven’t had moral qualms before now? Even if this was the last straw for you could you not have picked a better moment than when Celegorm looked like the only person who was going to stop his brother being throttled to death?)

So Curufin’s almost died and Celegorm, after they got absolutely humiliated and have lost everything due mostly to the two people in front of him and he’s not known for his ability to control his anger, is ready to leave. After Curufin is released Celegorm takes him unto his horse and starts to ride off with him before Curufin initiates again and fires after them. Celegorm is the hunter among them, presumably he’s far better with his own bow and he definitely wants revenge, but he doesn’t shoot after them. He’s willing to give up his revenge for his brother’s safety and that’s more of a show of love for them than anything else could be.

All I’m saying is that if they didn’t get to die in each other’s arms and be together at the end they’d been rushing to side by side their whole story….

[chromalogue]

[Image description: A screenshot of a tweet from aschewholesin (@ aschewholesin that reads, “The idea that vengeance against evil makes you just as bad as the evil you’re taking up arms against feels very much like something the bad guys would make up and spread across popular culture to make sure we don’t shove their head in a guillotine, just saying.”  End image description.]

I think that conversation in fiction - usually a few lines exchanged between the hero and the villain, just before either the villain’s demise or a quick cut to the villain’s being led away by the authorities - is shorthand for a much longer conversation.  And I think it serves us well to make it longer again.  

I remember it from superhero stuff when I was a kid.  Sometimes the hero has a chance to kill the villain.  Sometimes it’s just a chance to, through inaction, let the villain die, like they’re hanging off a cliff, or something.  And the villain points out, “If you do this, you’re no better than me.”

What this means, in the context of eighties (mostly American) superheroes and villains is, “I am a very powerful person who has caused a great deal of harm and possibly death for reasons that I think are justified.  You are a very powerful person who has built an identity around saving people.  If you kill me, or through inaction allow me to die because of who I am, you will be giving me the death penalty for my crimes, something that I have had no qualms about doing to others myself, but which I know you believe to be the rightful role of the state.  If you take retributive justice into your own hands, then you are saying by your actions that you trust your own power and judgement more than those of the state, just as I do; and you are willing to use your powers - or not, as the case may be - to support your own moral vision of the world, untroubled by the checks and balances provided by state power, just as I do.  We’re in the heat of the moment and you are VERY angry, but you have built an identity around being better than me, and because I like my life, I am reminding you of the inconsistency in your moral reasoning.”  Except this is a mouthful when you’re dangling off a cliff. 

This kind of reasoning has been a fixture in pop culture since at least The Oresteia in ancient Greece, and for good reason; it moves the redress of harm from private revenge to public justice.  I have a lot of problems with the justice system in the Western world as we have it, but I think that generally this was a good idea. 

But a few things have happened in the past decades. One was 9/11, and the proliferation of the idea that investigating the motives of the people who do harm is itself a kind of moral weakness at best, or complicity at worst, and some villains just need to be punished.  Another was growing awareness that most of the Western justice system is profoundly broken, and more effective as a tool of oppression than an instrument of actual justice.  Yet another was growing awareness that the people who do the worst harm do so in part through the instrument of the state, and that what they do is not even a crime. Another was the rise of the kind of toxic positivity that asks people to leap straight to kneejerk forgiveness for harm without doing any of the processing.  And another was a polarized culture that rewards every party in a dispute for framing itself as the persecuted but steadfast underdog facing Big [Insert Perceived Hegemon Here], whether it’s actually true or not.

So it makes sense that "If you do this, you’ll be no better than me” hits differently now, even in stories set in worlds that are demonstrably not ours.  What, you’re gonna hand them over to a bunch of honest and virtuous officers of the law, to be dealt with by the fair machinery of the state, confident that justice will be done?  Most of the time, it’s just far more likely that the powers that be want the villain to return for the sequel.

However...

While I’ve seen my share of conservative commentators arguing for all sorts of equivalences between real-life institutionalized harm and protests against that harm (which I hasten to add are different from vengeance), I have never yet run into a narrative context where the person who says that line is facing anything less than death. 

And to be clear, while I have a huge problem with the death penalty, and the whole system of carceral justice, and believe they are both cruel and ineffective, I don’t have a big problem with narratives where someone kills the villain and calls it justice.  They’re satisfying.  Sometimes they’re screamingly funny.  They’re just stories.

BUT I also understand why storytellers try to find other ways of handling justice, too, and it’s not necessarily so that the powerful can avoid accountability, or to reinforce the machinery of the state.  It’s because people genuinely want to imagine a different way of doing things.  It depends on the story’s moral scheme, and the values the author wants to convey.  If you tell a story, for example, in which life is precious and everything is connected, and justice takes the form of the hero killing the villain, then you haven’t told a story in which all life is precious and everything is connected; you’ve told a story in which the preciousness of life and the connectedness of all things are conditional on good behaviour. 

And maybe that’s indeed the story you want to tell.  That’s cool. Maybe you think some people are truly too evil to be allowed to live, and like, I disagree, but I will still partake of your stories.  Maybe you’re working out some stuff.  Maybe telling this story with its bloody end is the only kind of justice you can ever expect for the things done to you, and I support your telling it.  Maybe you are telling the story of a villain so awful that despite your gentle nature you cannot imagine them being allowed to continue existing in a just world.  Maybe the exact scenario you’ve worked out is hilarious.  I get it.  I will still watch/read it, and probably get a visceral thrill at the death blow, if you’ve done your job right. 

But the stories I want, the stories that give me hope for a different kind of world, and tools to make it happen, are the stories where characters find other ways to manage justice, and hold people accountable for the harm they do, and build systems that have room for everyone.  And the answer to “Does everyone get to be part of this?  Even this person?  Even this person?” is always, “Yes, even them, and them, and them.  Even you.” It’s not capitulating to the forces of oppression; it’s trying to find something outside of them. 

[magnetarbeam]

Voices of the Force: Brainstorm Notes 8

I've decided the shared timeframe of Relic and Recovery is actually going to extend out to the end of 44 ABY. This allows Mercy Kill to take place before the operations start for the invasion of Hutt Space and the final liberation of the Hutts' former subjects. Because if there had been any military action of that scale going on at the time, it would have come up in that book.

Relatedly, I see opportunities to do stuff with Thaal. The thing is that at the time Luke found out about the Ones having existed, and in this verse it was then that he had the vision where he learned that they had been killed, Wynn and Gavin and Bwua'tu were there in the room. I think there's a point pretty soon after where the other people of that rank - which means Thaal, whoever replaces Jaxton as Chief of Starfighter Operations after he was busted for his participation in the Lecersen Conspiracy, whoever succeeds Gavin as Chief of Marine Operations after his promotion to Supreme Commander, and maybe also Maddeus - are briefed on what they know about that, for at least the sake of justifying a big enough fleet deployment to slag the crust of Abeloth's planet, but they probably think it'll improve any later occasions where this comes up if everyone of that rank can make informed decisions about it. The thing is, they don't know yet that Thaal and Maddeus are corrupt because Mercy Kill hasn't happened yet. So after it does happen, you have two people with a serious grudge against the Alliance and very few if any qualms about giving up information that isn't useful to their own ambitions, but might be a key puzzle piece for someone else later down the line.

Fairly early on in the Alliance invasion of Hutt Space is the point when it's brought to the forefront that Tendrando Arms has been selling to the private sector since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War, and that that has consequences. Namely, that GA surface forces start to encounter YVH droids in substantial numbers, and needless to say, they lose a lot of people.

In the Shattered Glass arc, which handles this invasion, a key subplot is going to be Wynn's crackdown on corporate corruption of the Alliance government, particularly those groups that are complicit in the Hutt slavery that has now been toppled by the failure of the Treaty of Vontor. I think at the end of the second book of that trilogy, the involved executives of various evil corporations are exposed as a result of some Wraith action, but many of them are able to flee Coruscant before their arrests, and someone springs Thaal from jail as they're leaving.

The idea I had before about the Alliance trying to develop a commando unit that can technologically threaten Force-users is actually really stupid. Instead of that, I've decided I'm having them try to train their own Force-users for specifically military purposes.

Part of why Kyp's illusory supernova works so well is that Thaal is commanding the defense of whatever system it is, and he's not only from Carida, he was on one of the last shuttles out when it was destroyed. So this seeming to happen again sets off his PTSD from it, and he starts acting so irrationally that the fleet retreats in poor order, and he makes no effort to evacuate any surface assets from the system, even though he had time to, so the slaves are still there when the GA fleet shows up to free them.

[rollofleaf]

30 questions for Dark Urge

Saw this and I wanna do it. Here’s the blorbo in question

1. What circumstances led to your Dark Urge becoming their Class/Subclass?

Grace chose to become a warlock of an archfey after mistakenly killing her lover. She chose to forget her former life out of regret as part of her pact.

2. Did your Dark Urge have any romantic and/ or sexual relationships prior to their illithid adventure? If yes, who was it with and what was it like? If no, how did they feel about being single?

She was in love with an elf named Lillianae. She was the only person she was gentle and kind with, and accidentally killing her was what made Grace try to reform herself.

3. What would your Dark Urge consider to be their greatest skill? Is this accurate?

Her greatest skill is definitely her charm. She’s an expert at manipulating and reading people.

4. What would your Dark Urge consider to be their greatest flaw? Is this accurate?

Grace would probably consider her urges to be her greatest flaw, but before the campaign she thought it was her lack of physical strength.

5. What opinion does your Dark Urge have about the Gods?

She doesn’t have a particularly strong opinion of them, though thanks to Gale and Shadowheart she’s starting to really dislike Mystra and Shar. She also strongly resents Bhaal for her existence.

6. How does your Dark Urge react to waking up with memory loss?

Mostly confusion, though she at least has the benefit of being told by her patron a few basic things she needs to know. She’s curious about her past but quickly decides it might be best not to look into it.

7. Did your Dark Urge recall any childhood memories? If yes, how do they feel about the revelations? If no, was it by choice or lack of options?

Her patron decided to share some childhood memories of her before Bhaal’s blood awakened, where she had loving adoptive parents and played with other kids. It comforted her and reminded her that she wasn’t always a monster and doesn’t have to be.

8. How does your Dark Urge feel about the wilderness?

She enjoys it a lot. Hunting gives her a more acceptable way to sate some of her murderous impulses, and with her bond to the archfey she feels at home in the wild.

9. How does your Dark Urge feel about the city?

With the vague familiarity of her past atrocities and the various problems in Baldur’s Gate, Grace is very uncomfortable in it. It makes her miss the wilderness.

10. What motivates your Dark Urge to either embrace or resist the tadpole?

The Urge and the influence it has over Grace makes her very wary of anything else that might influence her, so she resists the tadpole mostly on principle. Her patron’s insistence that she resist it also helps.

11. What motivates your Dark Urge to either embrace or resist the Urge?

While the details aren’t shared with her until very late, Grace quickly picks up that she chose to forget her former life and concludes that she must have regretted having the Urge. She also finds out that her Pact requires her patron to encourage her to resist it, further cementing that her past self wanted to resist it. That’s enough of a reason for her, and she also just doesn’t like how it affects her.

12. How does your Dark Urge feel about being a bhaalspawn?

She doesn’t like it and frequently wishes she were normal. She associates being a Bhaalspawn with the Urge.

13. How does your Dark Urge feel about killing?

She doesn’t regret it or mind it if the killing is justified in her mind. She doesn’t like killing without a purpose and hates that the Urge pushes her to that, but she has no qualms about killing people that attack her.

14. How good of a liar is your Dark Urge? How do they feel about lying?

She’s an excellent liar and has no issue with lying. Even with her companions, she tends to lie and go along with others to get on their good side, though this mask drops with time.

15. What is your Dark Urge's greatest fear?

Her greatest fear is definitely herself. Her inability to control the Urge terrifies her and she’s always afraid of loosing control and hurting someone she cares about.

16. What is your Dark Urge's greatest desire?

Her greatest desire is to take bloody revenge on Bhaal and his cult for inflicting her with the Urge. She isn’t really conscious of this and thinks her greatest desire is a peaceful life free of the Urge.

17. What is your Dark Urge's greatest regret?

She doesn’t have enough memories to have any major regrets, but she messed up and got a lot of druids and tieflings killed trying to force peace between them and feels awful about it.

18. How does your Dark Urge feel about love?

She’s scared of allowing herself to love (again) because she might hurt her lover by accident, but she’s also desperate for affection and badly wants to love someone.

19. Has your Dark Urge become particularly close to anyone romantically and/or platonically in their journey? If so, who, and what is the relationship like? If no, why not?

She ends up pretty close to all her companions, but platonically is besties with Astarion, the two being crime friends together, and Wyll due to them both being warlocks. Romantically, she ends up getting very close to Karlach. Karlach is sweet and loving, but also willing to restrain her when she looses control.

20. Is your Dark Urge open about their Urge or do they try to hide it? Why?

She’s open about it with her companions and others that she spends a lot of time with, mostly because she feels it’s necessary for their safety to be wary of her and her Urge. With random strangers, she’s very closed off about it.

21. What are 2-3 songs that your Dark Urge would relate to?

Grace is an angsty bitch that would relate to Evanescence unironically.

22. What first impression does your Dark Urge give off to strangers?

She acts like a sweet and innocent tiefling girl who’s always eager to help and a bit quirky. It’s not entirely a lie, her usual carefree attitude is mostly authentic.

23. How does your Dark Urge feel about what others think of them?

She cares a lot about what her friends think and is constantly afraid they’ll abandon her (because that’s what she would do). She couldn’t care less what others think of her.

24. Does your Dark Urge have a treasured item with them? If yes, what is it and why is it special? If no, how do they feel about item sentimentality in general?

She abandoned any treasured items when she gave up her memories, but she later finds a locket given to her by her lover and keeps it very close. She likes item sentimentality and is a bit sad that she can’t experience it for most of her journey.

25. How does your Dark Urge feel about Sceleritas Fel?

She doesn’t like him and his sycophantic behavior. She doesn’t like being encouraged to give in to the Urge and wishes he’d leave her alone.

26. How does your Dark Urge feel about Bhaal?

She resents him for her own existence. Her relationship with Bhaal is very much a rebellious teenage daughter trying to make her own identity as the opposite of Bhaal.

27. How does your Dark Urge feel about giving and receiving orders?

She hates being told what to do and will reject orders on principle from most people (her patron is an exception). She also isn’t particularly comfortable ordering orders around and prefers to trick or convince them to do what she wants.

28. How well does your Dark Urge function under pressure?

She’s very calm and collected under most pressure, but panics whenever the Urge takes over in her sleep and she wakes up.

29. What advice would you give to your Dark Urge?

I’d advise her that she can be better and resist the Urge and she should never think otherwise.

30. What are your Dark Urge's intentions/goals after the end of the game?

She’s undecided between settling down with Karlach and going on a crusade against Bhaal’s cult.

[one-strugling-bean]

Watched S2 Ep6 "True Bromance" and i have some thoughts:

(Beforehand, just wanna say this is all my opinion and speculation, okay? You're totally free to think I'm completely wrong about it)

So. Randy is a bit of a possessive friend, right?

During the first season we see a few episodes that demonstrate that, like episode 13 "The Secret Stache" and episode 19 "Nukid on the Block", where, in both cases, Randy gets jealous and really worked up over Howard hanging out with other people.

Possessive doesn't seem like the right word for it - it seems too harsh - but Randy definitely emanates that feeling of "Howard is my friend, over anyone else's" in both episodes (more obvious in NOTB), that shows a certain territoriality over Howard.

I'm not trying to villainize Randy or say he's a bad friend though, we all know that's completely wrong. And besides, Howard is pretty possessive of his buddy too, and although I can't think of a specific episode where that's the main focus right now, we do see jealous Howard almost every episode, whenever Randy has to leave him for the Nomicon (at least during the 1st season, not sure how the the 2nd will play out).

The thing is, Howard is supposed to be an asshole and petty and we see him throw fits and dramatise over Randy NNS-ing all the time. Those "fits" usually end with Howard causing trouble for himself and everyone around him and the Ninja having to save everyone; Howard somehow helps him and redeems himself in the process, and the ep closes with Howard learning his lesson. Then, next episode he pulls the same stunt again because the show's main focus isn't him and because without his antagonistic personality the show would lose half its plot and conflict. And so the cycle continues.

But Randy is the Ninja, the good guy, the hero protagonist. And while he's not completely innocent, as he has his fair share of stupid ideas too, there always seem to be certain lines he doesn't cross. At least not by himself - sometimes Howard or (unpurposely) the Nomicon influence him in pretty bad directions.

I guess that's why his behaviour in "True Bromance" (TB) surprises me so much. He locked three kids on the school's roof and framed Howard for it, for no discernable reason other than "they're not Howard's true bros so they shouldn't hang out". As if that justifies what he did.

And yes, again, I know Randy has done many questionable things up until now (I haven't watched any ep after TB btw), but usually, it's either Ninja-related business - and I'm not holding those against him, because c'mon, who decided that giving a 14-year-old kid Ninja powers was okay? - or he's being highly influenced by someone else (Howard).

But this time, in TB, none of those conditions applied. Honestly, I think Nomicon's warning of "The jealous dragon slays what he should protect" was some of the most obvious advice the book has ever offered Randy. And still, the guy, refusing to admit he's jealous, twists the advice, convincing himself that Howard's new friends are dangerous, just to ease his guilt and justify to his morals that it's okay to go after them. And it's not even like he doesn't know these people or they've shown any reason for suspicion, like with Franz Nukid. Randy knows Bucky and Dave and Pradeep - they're his classmates! And still, Randy has no qualms coming up with an overly complicated and a little cruel plan (cruel to Howard, since Randy frames the notes as having been from Howard) to "protect" the redhead from them.

That's a lot. Especially since like, Howard was super nice and not annoying about the whole deal? Usually, he'd rub Randy's obvious jealousy in his face, in every obnoxious way he could. That's "classic Howard". But he didn't do that this time. He was chill and invited Randy to hang out, despite also inviting his new friends. Which, by the way, is a pretty okay thing to do when you get new friends - hang out with them. He's not even mad at Randy, invites him to join them at lunch the next day despite Randy not having called him back the day before. When I was watching the episode, I even wondered if Howard wasn't being a little un-canon like.

And yes, of course, when Howard reassures Randy of their true broship, Randy immediately feels guilty over his actions and eventually he fixes everything, but still. Stay with me.

Like, look how far he was willing to go. And for how little. As I said, it's not like Howard abandoned him or left him in favour of new friends, he just found some company for when Randy's busy, which, looking at it from a logical point of view, is a good thing and makes sense. Howard hates being alone and often it's because he is left alone with his bad moods that he ends up causing trouble. But the redhead genuinely looked happy (without Randy) this time with his new friends - there was no ulterior motive there (and, important to note, those friends seemed happy about hanging out with him too).

If you look at it from any perspective, the arrangement that that episode provided should beneficiate both of them, even if it ruined them as the show's protagonists - Randy would have more freedom to do his Ninja business without always having to worry about Howard's tantrums and possibly putting him in danger, and Howard would possibly get more good influences, feel less lonely and be put in danger a whole lot less. None of this has to mean they gotta stop being besties and Howard seems to understand this. But Randy is so fixated on his jealousy and fear of losing Howard that he fails to see it.

They are both pretty co-dependent though, so even if Randy didn't act on it, I think it'd be impossible for him not to be jealous of Howard's new buds, and knowing Howard, I'm (kinda sadly) sure that he'd blow the friendships eventually - either he'd get tired of them not being Cunningham and all, or use them for something and since not everyone is as patient and forgiving as Randy, they'd get tired of him - and the bros would undoubtedly re-become NorrisvilleHigh most clingy duo.

(Maybe I'm wrong here though, who knows. I might just have too little faith in friendships that started in high school)

In any case, my point is that Randy is reaaaaaally dependent on their friendship. (and Howard too, although to a lesser extent). Look how far he was willing to go, how easily he threw away his morals, his ninja code, just to keep Howard to himself? This is looking like some yandere type stuff, I know, but I find it fun to analyze relationships like this.

I believe the opposite could happen too honestly - Howard getting jealous and creating a plan to keep Randy away from potential new friends - but not exactly for the same reasons as Randy.

(And this is where most of my speculation and personal headcanons start, so fair warning.)

Howard, despite being gross and self-centred, seems to be pretty okay with other people and his social skills often result in him getting his way when he shouldn't be able to - his reasons would petty jealousy over Randy having fun with someone who's not him. And although Randy shows the same, if not even better social skills, they usually only show up when Howard's around, or it's got something to do with the Ninja. Howard, his bud, his bro, his bestie, and lately the Ninja mask gives him the confidence to use those skills. But what about the years before the mask? What about before Howard? My guess is that Randy has always been a pretty shy kid, and Howard, (loud, obnoxious, extrovert Howard) being his friend kinda allows him to let loose a lot more and be more confident, but if his bud isn't around, he'll return to his shell. The ninja mask's power has also been helping with that, but he's still just a teenager, and insecurities appear

And when Randy sees Howard getting closer to other people, his only bro stepping a liiiitle farther away from the tight-knitted relationship they've built, those insecurities surface, and Randy immediately panics and tries to bring the redhead closer again, through any means necessary, because after all, Howard is social and can easily make other friends, he doesn't need Randy like Randy needs Howard. Randy can't make friends that easy, he's not that outgoing, if Howard left him, he'd be completely alone. And this might just be me, but I think anyone can understand how difficult and despairing being alone in high school can be.

After this episode, I started thinking more deeply about how the boys don't seem to have any friends at school besides each other. A few friendly acquaintances maybe, but not friends. So I wonder, has something like this happened before? As in, one of them makes a good friend, the other gets jealous and tries to break that friendship apart, and however that ends, it ends up resulting in the two of them becoming more and more isolated from all of their peers as school years go by?

That thing Bucky says near the end of the episode really got to me in terms of this topic; he said he didn't want to hang out with Howard anymore because he was "scared of getting between Randy and Howard."

And although I know that's mostly got to do with the stanking incident the casual bros went through, it still left me thinking.

You can say whatever you want about Howard and Randy's friendship, but you can't deny how much they need each other and the lengths they'll go for one another - always making sure that, no matter how much they fight and bicker and turn on each other, they will always have the other around, for better or for worse.

This episode just served to light up, even more, my love for these two, their friendship, and the show as a whole.

Am I thinking too much about this? Yeah definitely. Do I care? Yeah a little, but oh well :P Have a cute picture of them from the episode as thanks for reading til here:

If you have anything you'd like to add or refute, please do, I love to talk about these things and I don't know anyone who likes this show :,D

[watevermelon]

Expectations | Shirabu Kenjirou x Reader

✧ Summary: Having attended Shiratorizawa Academy from junior high, you were familiar with most of the students in your year. They were average, nothing special — until a certain vbc setter, from god knows whatever small town junior high he crawled out of, changed up your world. -> Tag: maybe language cause it’s shirabu; fluff and jealousy + slight angst

---xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx---

Shirabu Kenjirō was a living, breathing pillar of salt. And it was rightly so. He was the friend, the shoulder to cry on, and the person that everyone viewed as reliable. This was not entirely a bad thing, since he was viewed as much more dependable than others. And this idea was not limited to volleyball. But being placed in that category separated him from the very people who put him there. The girls viewed him as, at most, a friend. He was the king and leader of the friend zone.

It was the end of his second-year and he would soon be taking over as captain of the boys’ volleyball team. He justified lack of love life on the fact that he had bigger things to focus on. And after their crushing defeat, Shirabu reasoned that Shiratorizawa needed a focused captain to lead them to victory.

But the road to triumph was… rather lonely.

Shirabu had his team with him one-hundred percent and silently appreciated them for their confidence and own unfailing determination (he won't admit out loud!) But it seemed like he was surrounded by couples. His kouhai, Goshiki Tsutomu, found comfort in another first-year that was a regular on the women's volleyball team. 

Couples were disgusting.

Of course, majority of the members of the male volleyball were single. Ushijima was a super volleyball idiot and his focus seemed to never stray from the sport. But even with his cinnamon roll personality, the female base of Shiratorizawa seemed to flock to him. He was undoubtedly very handsome and tall. His grades were well above average and his fan club was incredibly prominent. Ushijima had all the makings of a great man and was noticed as such by a large pool of the student body. The difference was that Ushijima was willingly single.

Shirabu, deep in the non-explored depths of his heart, wanted to be noticed like his Senpai. When playing volleyball, Shirabu strived to be the type of setter that went by unnoticed and drew out the strength of his ace. And he knew the consequences of such. But still. He was the main setter on a highly prominent team and his skills are not hard to notice.

Maybe it was his rough personality? Pft. He would never change that for a person, no matter how special.

Shirabu was above average height and had amazing grades in a prestigious powerhouse. What wasn’t there to like? His sense of style was trendy and he was complimented on his clothes more than once. He as not too preppy like Goshiki and not too wild like Tendou. Was it his looks? His bangs were unusual, but they weren't as bad as coconut-head/bowl/Goshiki. Since entering adolescence, he failed to ever break-out and was blessed with marvelous clear skin. On more than one occasion, he would stare at the mirror and truly wonder just why.

Why was no one interested?

Enter you.

You attended Shiratorizawa in both middle and high school. Coming from a wealthy family, there was nothing standing in your way. You were fairly popular and had seen the multiple personalities flit through your advanced classes. And in your first-year came Shirabu, an outsider to Shiratorizawa from a lower-class middle school. After being in the system for three-years, you knew almost everyone and seeing a new face was refreshing.

From the very start, you wanted to bet to know him more. But he was incredibly reclusive and mysterious to the general student body. Nobody could answer your questions. Well. Nobody except a certain Salami and volleyball idiot. You shared an advanced statistics class with the two third-year volleyball players in your first year and from them you were able to peer more and more into the life of Shirabu Kenjirō.

“Why do you want to know, (F/N)-chan?” Tendou instigated, “You have a crush on him?”

“Please, Salami calm down.” He raised his hands and gasped, “Come on. There isn’t a single person in this school who I don’t know and suddenly nobody knows anything about him?”

“He is smart and adaptable.” Ushijima chimed in.

“And a little shit, that’s for sure.” Tendou stated. You rolled your eyes and returned your attention back to the statistics teacher. Sure, you wanted to learn more. But this class was hella hard and you still needed good grades. Eventually, you were able to gradually acquire more information and Kenjirō. You learned that he was the only player from the boys’ volleyball team to not get into Shiratorizawa with a sports scholarship. Instead, he got in on his own accord through the arduous exams and good grades.

The more you discovered, the more you liked him.

Shirabu had a work ethic that you hadn't seen in a while. Being in this particular school-system for so long ruined your perception of it. You perceived most of your classmates to have a truly pretentious or judgmental personality, but showing to be as sweet as honey to your face. Of course they wanted to be your friend, who wouldn't with your last name?

He hadn't.

Shirabu was straight-forward with a tongue laced with salt. Sign you the fuck up!

He had no qualms about talking back to you and you looked forward to your daily banter with an odd smile. It was strange. You could get any nice, sweet boy in the whole school. But what was the point if they didn't mean it? Shirabu was honest - a trait that should never be given up, even if it offended others. You would rather have someone give you genuine advice - even if it was mostly mean - rather than an empty friendship.

You had majority of the same classes together for the second year in a row. And you were the only person who would had the immediate desire to sit next to Shirabu as a partner. You silently viewed him as a friend, but there was always this barrier that you could never get over for your friendship to deepen. His time was always dedicated to volleyball. And you did not play any sports anymore.

You watched the volleyball team's crushing defeat to Karasuno and the heartbreak it caused to so many people, Shirabu included. The women's team was resorted to tears and you could not even look at the men for too long. Reon and Semi were so sweet and you wished you could protect them for all the bad in the world. You had never seen Shirabu cry before.

Shirabu... He seemed to only display emotion around his team. And this made sense since those were the people that he was closest too. The rare occasion you had seen his smile was when you had watched a game. They had an overwhelming victory against Johzenji High and you spotted the small grin on Shirabu after he scored the winning point. Your heart could barely take it. You only wished that he showed that side more to you...

He was friendly, but distant enough for you to want more. Shirabu was not cold to you and his harsh chitchat did not hold any true malice behind his words. But he never opened up to you. You wanted to learn more about him personally and if you wanted to, you would have to pry and almost force him to speak. He would give curt answers and then be done with the conversation. But, on more than one occasion, you would spot him typing away on his phone. It was no secret that the boys’ and girls’ volleyball team were fairly close and had a groupchat shared amongst them. You silently wondered if he was texting a girl from the team.

That thought had you instantly deflated and made you wondering if you ever had a chance with Shirabu. You were not one to be easily defeated, but with every brief conversation and blank expression he gave you, you considered giving up altogether. This happened around Valentine’s Day of your first-year. Shirabu was abnormally delighted and even smiled in the classroom at someone’s joke. You figured that sure, it was the day of love and he probably had something lined up for himself and his significant other – that was why he was so happy. And it hurt your heart. He smiled, but it was never because of you.

From there forward, you tended to avoid him to evade the imminent heartache every time you saw him. This was hard since you literally sat next to each other in most classes, but something entirely doable. You would leave the classroom immediately after class, show up right before it started, and not initiate conversation. It was always you that had previously opened up discussion, so when you had stopped there was little to none at all.

Shirabu caught up to your change and silently questioned it. On multiple occasions, you would catch him observing you from the corner of your eye and you silently hoped he would not question you outloud. Within a week, he was ready to corner you.

You were at your locker right after class, ready to pack-up and head over to photography club. He was silently bounding towards you and when you closed the locker he was standing right-there before your eyes.

“Did I do something to offend you?” He asked the moment your locker closed.

“No…” You stated haphazardly, clutching your backpack.

“You’re never his quiet or shy.” He noted, “Did something else happen?”

“I have to get to photography club…” Shirabu put his arm on the locker and blocked your exit. He was tall and there was no way you could out-run him, you were trapped.

“Don’t lie. We know it starts in twenty-minutes. You might be on the executive board, but you have a lot of time.” He sighed out, locking to the ceiling and then back to you. “Why are you ignoring me?”

“… Am I your friend, Shirabu?”

“Of course.” He did not hesitate to answer. “And it’s Kenjirō.”

“What?”

“Call me by my first name.”

“Oh.” You paused and let the name roll of your tongue, “Then you should call me by my first name too, Kenjirō-kun.” His eyes widened at the added suffix and a rosy dust covered his cheeks.

“Was that it?” He asked, “Come on, (F/N). That’s an immature reason to ignore me.”

“How was I supposed to know?” You questioned, “It never seems like you actually want to talk to me.”

“I’m talking to you now.”

“Outside of this!” You were beyond frustrated, “Ugh I’m fine now go away.” You lightly pushed his arm, but he did not budge.

“As if that would convince me.”

“You are so annoying.” You commented, “You never initiated conversation. I thought I was just bothering you.”

His gaze on you softened and you could not break the eye-contact, “You’re an idiot.” He teased and then ruffled your hair. That was the first time he had ever done physical-contact with you and you almost exploded then and there.

“I’m an idiot?” You repeated before walking away mid-sentence, “I’m hoping you treat your girlfriend better.”

He paused and let us hand drop down to grab your elbow before you go away. “Girlfriend? Where did this come up?”

“I thought…” Shit, you let that thought slip out-loud, “The men and women volleyball teams are close. And I’ve only ever seen you hang-out outside of class with them and those girls. I just assume...”

“You assumed wrong.” He quickly cut-off, “Ugh. What am I going to do with you?” He asked as he grabbed you into a hug. You returned the affection and you knew that a blush must have stained your face! And what was that question?

Shirabu continued, “So was that the real problem? You were jealous of my supposed ‘girlfriend?’” He laughed at his question and you were going to die from his smile. God it was so rare and you wished he graced you with it more!

“No! Don’t get too ahead of yourself!” You yelled back, but it was muffled against his chest. He leaned back to see your face and teased you for your embarrassed expression.

“You’re an idiot.” He laughed again.

Since then, your friendship with Kenjirō was gradually improving. But it seemed that there was this silent barrier that you could not overcome. You could talk about your problems, but not about his. And since then, he had not initiated any physical contact. If you ever brushed hands or simply leaned against him, he should shift away and pretend it never happened! Did you really make any progress?

Finals were coming up and that was giving you one last chance to spend time with Shirabu before the end of the schoolyear. Sure, you could always ask your father and he had the power to put you two in the same class again next year - But! Did you want to waste your last year together pinning after him?

Your study group was comprised of yourself, Shirabu, Kawanishi, and two people from his class. Kawanishi was in Class 5, which was also advanced, but he was so damn lazy! You saw his potential and only wished that he tried harder and quit fucking around.

The three other members of the group were missing that night and the two of you were left alone to grovel over English. Your English was better than Shirabu’s but the opposite could be said about history. You paired each other well and aided the other's faults.

You commented on this once jokingly, saying, "You complete me!" He simply rolled his eyes and brushed it off before continuing to study.

Damn. This boy cannot take a hint.

You attempted to show the boy your advances. But it seemed Shirabu would shut you down at every try, almost like he knew what you were doing and was firmly against it. A part of you considered backing down. He had made his intentions clear for two straight-years, maybe you should not waste another year on someone who obviously does not want your attention?

That thought last for a second before you waved it off. There was no one else you were even remotely interested in. If he said no, that’s fine. But you were probably not going to peruse anyone else.

Both you and Shirabu were spacing out from over-reading the textbook and happened to make eye contact. "What's on your mind?" You asked.

"Things you cannot understand."

"You really think that low of me?"

"No. I'm going to be the captain of the volleyball team in a few weeks."

"Wow."

"There's no way your pampered ass would get it."

"You think about my ass?" You teased, but he pretended to ignore the question. You spent enough time with him to notice the minute narrowing of his eyes and the slight curve in the corner of his left lip.

Damn, this boy had you bad.

"I'm sure you'll do fine, Kenjirō." You comforted, "You're very smart and reliable. I believe that your training won't betray you."

"Reliable..." He murmured. "That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"What do you mean?"

He scoffed at your question, "Exactly. You won't understand."

"Then explain it to me!" You exclaimed.

"Why should I?" He seemed just as inflamed.

"Because I care about you! You big, dumb, idiot!"

Shirabu paused before fully looking at you, surprise evident. "Well, everyone expects this idiot to be reliable and lead the team. But..."

"But...?"

"That's all that people expect from me. To be the smart one. To live to everyone's expectations and shoulder the border of living up to the name ''powerhouse.'" He was getting more agitated and louder with each word.

"Woah, calm down."

"I can't calm down! In a few weeks, I'll lose the ace that I've admired for years and majority of our regular team! How am I supposed to fill in their shoes when we're losing one of the top 3 spikers in the country?"

You had no shame in grabbing his chin and turning his full attention to you. "Listen here you idiot. Don't interrupt me! I said don't! I stopped sports, but I know this is something entirely inevitable. Your senpai's are moving onto the next phase of their lives, but it's not something you can stop or change. You have to accept the future and make the most out of it and I know you will. Shiratorizawa is not the only school with graduation. Your rivals and others will lose their precious third-years and its then will you be able to analyze them and attack. But you need to calm the fuck down."

Shirabu was hanging onto every word. Nodding at some parts and fully taking in what you were trying to convey. At the end of your speech, he pushed your hands away from his face with a slight rosy dust on his cheeks. No woman, outside of his mother, had ever done that to him before.

"You're a real pain, (F/N)." he started, "But thanks. I needed that."

"No problem, I just want you to know that I can be here for you." You extended your hand to cover his own on the desk.

His eyes latched onto your hand before he averted his gaze and attempted to pull his hand away. You kept a tight enough grip to keep it in place, but not enough to hurt. "Must you touch me so much?"

"You are such a tsundere, oh my god." You commented, "Of course, I had to like you."

He stilled and looked directly into your eyes, as if that would confirm your previous statement. "Are you really that surprised?" You asked. "You're really handsome and you have the type of personality that I find most attractive."

"Tsundere?" He joked.

"No. You're honest." You admitted, "You're not like the rest of them, who only see dollar signs when they see me. You've roasted my ass multiple times in class and I wouldn't have it any other way. You say the truth and don't sugar-coat your words for anyone."

"I like you." You simply stated. You watched the words seem to finally reach something in his mind and at this point he seemed to panic. He pulled his hand away and you did not hide your outward hurt. Shirabu made a lame excuse and quickly packed up his stuff to leave.

You never felt more sad and alone.

XXXXX

Shirabu was freaking the fuck out. He wanted someone to notice him and it had to be you??? You were beautiful and nearly perfect in every way. Your beauty went beyond the physical level and you were blessed with intelligence and an even greater family tree.

None of this mattered to him before. You were his friend and classmate and probably the one person in class who did not endlessly irritate him. How could you possibly have feelings for him? He didn't deserve you, not a bit. He had an endless list of faults, including his knowingly sarcastic personality, and you were the friendliest person in school! No way. You could be happier with literally anyone else.

He could not deny all your positive traits, even though he made an effort to ridicule you. You were an overall amazing person and he could not deny his latent crush on you. But he had squashed it since your friendship was mostly comprised of friendly banter. You could never have feelings for him, he previously thought. So he would rather treasure your friendship and watch you from the sideline.

However, Shirabu had to admit that it was a dick move of him just to leave you there after your confession. He was usually the type to speak his mind and your feelings must have blinded his brain. He set-out to clear the air and admit why.

In class the next day, you were nowhere to be found and refused to respond to calls and texts. Seeing you so affected, Shirabu could not help but feel like a huge ass. He owed you big-time, but he had to start somewhere: an apology. Shirabu had to clear the air and make it known that he appreciated your affections, even if he had to deny them. He was not above annoying you and did such continually.

Knocking on your dorm room, he showed up right at your front door.

Shirabu heard movement inside, but not closer to the door. He called your phone again and heard the ringtone go off from within, just for you to mute it. He knocked about eleven more times before you opened the door.

"What do you want?!" You asked as you swung the door open with full force.

"To clear the misunderstanding, (F/N)."

"God, you are so annoying. Did you know that?"

"You are too. Now hear me out, you crazy."

"Excuse me?!"

"Please." You sighed and moved aside for him to enter and he did such. He uncharacteristically took your hand and guided you to sit-down on your bed.

He paused, as if to fully think about his words, before sitting next to you. "You need someone who has time for you."

"What?"

"I'll be the captain soon and I do not want to disappoint anyone. I'll be busy and unable to be the proper boyfriend."

"Is that your only complaint to this relationship?"

"No."

"What else?"

"You deserve someone who can make you happy."

You gave a small laughed and asked, "Who says you don't already make me happy?"

He stared at your for a moment before asking, "What?"

"I don't want someone who you think will make me happier with kind words or bullshit. I want someone honest." You candidly admitted, "And we are friends already. I know you're dedicated to volleyball and I don't want that to change. I already know how you are and that’s why I like you more than anyone else. You alone can make me happy. For someone smart, why is this so hard for you to understand?"

He sputtered, unable to give a cohesive reply and for once you saw be great Shirabu struggle over his usually articulate words.

"Wait." You realized that he had multiple complaints about this relationship before you interrupted him. "Just be straight with me. Do you have feelings for me?"

It was at this moment that Shirabu had the clearest view of you. You were in the closest proximity than ever before, sharing a seat on your bed! He could gaze clearly into your eyes and sense the distress and vulnerability from your previous words. He stretched the silence and you took that as a rejection. He immediately rectified the situation by grabbing your hand and placing a light kiss at the top.

"I never thought you were interested in me." He admitted, "I thought I was deep in the friend zone. So I would have rather kept your friendship than risked ruining it."

"You're an idiot." You smiled grabbing his wrist to pull him closer. He obliged and allowed you to place a light kiss on his cheek.

"Now will you be my boyfriend or will I have to convince you?" You whispered in his ear to tease him and could literally see the shiver go down his back as he stiffened.

When you pulled away, his eyes were half-lidded and you silently wondered if his dominant attitude translated romantically.

You didn't have to wonder long since he returned the favor and went even further, nibbling your ear lightly before placing butterfly kisses around your neck. "Maybe you'll have to convince me."

You laughed before wrapping your arms around his neck, quickly taking command and enveloping his lips against your's. However, you did not have it for long and the setter was quick to flip the positions and hover over you. He gave one his rare smiles and you felt one breaking out across you'rs, stretching from ear to ear. Shirabu, who was in no rush, descended back down to your silky lips - noses bumping and hands fisting into each other's hair. His grip was firm, but not tight enough to hurt. You moaned, unintentionally, and he took that as an invitation to lick the entrance to your cavern. You parted your lips quickly, eager to feel his tongue against yours. The rest of the day went by ignored, the two of you enveloped in each other's affection with not a single care in the world.

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

Hello as someone who was considering picking up Nevernight I would love to read a post describing all the reasons one might justifiably hate those books! Thanks in advance :))

Okay, the very first thing I want to say is that I really love Nevernight. It has excellent dark grey characters, found family through the roof, a lot of people choosing love (of all kinds) in situations where that's really, really dangerous, getting burned for it, and then choosing to do it again because it's fucking worth it. The main character is on a single-minded revenge quest, and they do a very good job making it so you don't just understand her, you share in her rage, and it takes you with her on the rollercoaster of emotions she experiences as she has to decide what she's willing to risk or sacrifice for that quest. The world building is fascinating, the larger scope of the plot is revealed slowly and organically and is absolutely fascinating once it's all revealed. And, in spite of the grim tone, and the narration straight up telling us that there will not be a happy ending, the ending is deeply satisfying and is very respectful of the characters themselves and we the audience who have come to love them.

I know I'm beating around the bush, but I do really like these books, and I want you to have the good stuff to consider as well, not just the bad.

First, there are some things that are just going to be a matter of personal taste. The setting of the books is a grimdark crapsack of a world where the average stranger is as likely to harm you as help you. The book has no qualms about depicting the ever-present threats of torture, murder, animal cruelty, rape (although only the threat is ever on page), nationalism, racism, class exploitation, and, to a lesser degree, homophobia. It often approaches the ubiquity of these things with gallows humor, and whether that lands is going to vary from person to person, though it does also give these things the gravity and horror they deserve, where appropriate.

Second, there’s a good bit of explicit sex in these books, and as its main characters are teenagers, some people are going to be uncomfortable with that. It isn’t something that bothers me personally - teenagers do have sex, none of the sex scenes are too terribly written (although I’ve certainly read better), and the emotions of the characters involved are always foregrounded, which means that they do work for the story beyond being titillating. Again, gonna come down to a matter of personal taste.

The bigger problems come from the author’s own privilege and blindspots. It’s not that white, male, presumably cishet authors can’t write stuff that rings true to female, queer, or non-white experiences, but in a lot of cases, their unexamined biases get in the way a bit, and I think that happens here. The main character, and most of the main cast, are women, but there are a fair number of moments where their dialogue or actions don’t ring true to my own experiences of womanhood. There’s a particular speech in the first book that feels very “male author soapboxing about feminism through the mouth of a female character,” in a way that I found pretty jarring, and there are smaller moments throughout the series that just knock me out of the fiction for a bit. There’s also some uncomfortable treatment of black characters - some of the word choice used to describe black characters is a little uncomfortable, a larger proportion of black main and secondary characters die by the end than nonblack ones, and there’s the common fantasy problem of having all black people in the setting belong to a monoculture that is both distinctly different from that of the main setting and not very well-developed.

I also want to touch a moment on how the book handles queerness, because it’s a little strange. The writing makes it clear that there is some level of societal prejudice against queer people, but it doesn’t really explore that, and it doesn’t even come up incidentally in the general nastiness that the characters navigate throughout the story. It’s just sorta implied to be there, and it strikes me as lazy worldbuilding. The general integration of queerness throughout the world just seems a little lackluster, although that might just be me griping that there are more straight people than feels strictly necessary.

All of that being the case, though, it wasn’t a deal breaker for me. To me it rang more of a well-intentioned, good-faith effort by someone who still has some growing to do than anything deliberately exploitative or pejorative. I really liked the core of the story, and I really liked the characters. I liked following a messy, complicated queer woman through an unflinchingly dark story. I liked a lot of elements about the book that I could sit here listing until I went blue in the face. But it’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, and some of the things that were mildly unpleasant but tolerable for me are going to be much more serious for other people.

If you’re still unsure about the book, I’d recommend heading over to Google Play and reading the free sample, containing the book’s first couple chapters. The first couple chapters are a pretty representative sample of the book’s flaws, and if you want to read more after finishing them, you will probably enjoy Nevernight.

Thanks for the ask, and I hope that helps!

[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (3/3)

Ladies and gentlemen, we've arrived at our final destination.

Again before we start, we have our obligatory disclaimers. I do not own the game or its characters, nor do I claim to know the true history and likely fate of this game. I am entitled to the thoughts and opinions written within this post. Feel free to agree or disagree with the points being made.

This post also remains untagged from the main foofan tag. Only my followers will see this.

We are in the third and final stretch, and the checkpoint is past the cut.

Community

So... here we are, fellow Master Attendants.

As consumers of this piece of entertainment media, we are free to enjoy it however we wish. Appreciating what is there, creating something new from what exists, playing the game by the meta or however you want to play it (within your means and at your own risk of course). There's no one true and absolute way to experience the game.

However, just as you can enjoy something, doesn't mean you can't also point out flaws or shortcomings of the media in question. As an active veteran player, I've already pointed out the many gameplay design flaws  already. And I'd be pretty dumb to say that Food Fantasy's writing is perfect. Hell, it has a lot of holes from a worldbuilding consistency standpoint. 

And what of things from the community side? Yes, there will be times you'd see content you consider cringe, or something in fanon you don't agree with. Or there happens to be fan theories and fangirling posts you don't like the take of because of X or Y.

And that's fine. If we all happen to play the same way, like the same thing, agree on the same thing and produce the same thing, well, this would be one helluva boring community, wouldn't it?

But what if someone decides the way you're playing the game is wrong and harasses you over it? What happens if someone decides that their interpretation of the game's flavor text and lore is more important than what anyone else thought about it? What happens if someone decides that they're absolutely right, and you and everyone else who disagrees deserves to be bullied out of the fandom?

As much as I want to say we aren't part of the problem why the game is deteriorating, we are unfortunately, part of the reason why the game is as such even if most of the blame is directed towards Funtoy and Elex themselves.

⦁ Whale Authority. Whales will always be part of a gacha game's ecosystem. Without them, the game won't be able to maintain its upkeep costs, moreso  for one that services global regions instead of just one. But when a game decides to cater its decisions of what features should be prioritized and when it should be launched around only its most elite paying players' voices  -even if that influence has since tapered off-, you know there is something wrong with the publisher's management team and priorities.

⦁ Interguild drama. While I did not personally follow any of this, this has certainly been the peak of in-game tension back in the day. Poaching good players from both competitive and smaller guilds, guild mergers that often ended up making the annexed guild/s the equivalent of UK colonized India or Australia, suck-ups chummying up to guild leaders to keep a spot in an active, high ranking guild (for bragging rights!) despite never contributing much to overall damage, and just general dislike of certain players' attitudes. Actions like this have disillusioned many players about their playing experience and the reason why many eventually just lost the motivation to log into FooFan.

⦁ Cheaters. You know very well about the Hacker-teme I've mentioned before, but that was in context of Elex being incompetent with dealing with them. Here, I would like  to point out the players who are desperate to dominate  the playing field for whatever reason to the point that they would resort to cheating the ranks with forceful modifications of the APK. Whether it is to rank high in catacombs weekly, get a top spot in daily disaster damage, or weasel their way into the competitive whale ranks of a major ranking event, these are the people who have no qualms messing with the code to give themselves an easier time with the game. And if they're caught? Some pretend that they've made a mistake, some quickly sell the account to escape the blame, some others just scamper away into the dark and hide in the lower ranks where they can't be found. Others simply don't care and keep cheating until Elex decides to finally ban them... if Elex ever decides their rebates score isn't worth saving the account.

⦁ Ship wars. Ah yes, a staple of drama in any fandom. There doesn't need much explanation to this as we've all had our fair share of running into a battleground in whatever fandom we visit. Someone ships BB52 wholeheartedly? Nope, problematic 'age gaps'. Someone likes Napoleon with Pastel? Someone's bound to misinterpret their bios in order to justify that Napoleon was being abusive. Spaghetti and Borscht? Borscht is minor coded, ship her with Vodka instead. Whiskey and Pizza or Cassata? Cancelled! And I've never heard of the Foe Yay trope or pretend I don't know about it! Rarepairs? Disgusting! No fanon in my canon playground! Turkey and Eggnog? Gasp! How dare you, you pedo-shipper-even-though-you-never-said-you-shipped-them-romantically-but-that-isn't-my-point!

⦁ Character Obsession: Bias. On one hand, you love a character so much. Relate to a character so much. You have thus pulled this character into the folds of your bosom and coo at them like a mother dove and get so minutely triggered if someone so much as makes one disagreeable or joking comment about the character that you fly into an overreactive ballistic rage that would make a Canadian goose honk in fear. You don't care what they are in canon. You don't care about the possibility of mistranslation. What matters is the fanon space you carved out for them to exist in and that's all that matters. The problem with this is when this obsession takes over common sense and social etiquette and it steps into harassment territory. You begin to think: I'm the only one who 'understands' the character. I'm the only one who wishes better for the character, everyone else is out to defame them! Oh wait, you like them too? Do you like them the way *I* like them? No? Maybe if you're my 'friend', I'd let it slide. But to everyone else? No one else has the right to like them as much as I do. No one! Never mind that they're completely fictional- No one hurts my bias because in turn, they're hurting *me*!

⦁ Character Obsession: Anti. On the other hand, you hate a character so much. This character just makes you see so much red. Their smug little smirk just makes your blood boil. Their fictional backstory makes you recoil in disgust. You hate that someone else loves a character you hate so much.  You cannot *believe* that someone could be so daringly stupid to like a problematic character. They must be problematic too then. They must be hiding real life secrets that are problematic! Yes, yes. That's right. That person's a supporter of abuse. That person's into pedophilia. That person is into military lolita fashion that Japan started the trend of but clearly Japan was part of the Axis Powers! And that... that person... that person... is a roleplayer and a yaoi fangirl properly interacting with minors and adults. How dare they...!

⦁ Fan Translations.  Normally it wouldn't be a problem that a group or two or several are translating pieces of the game's lore ahead of the official. But with Elex's very delayed translations and extreme allergic reactions to translating Food Soul bios, people have become dependent on fan-translation groups to get their fix. The problem herein lies... is when the translators get drunk off the power that they are one of a handful in a small community who can magically transcribe the oriental moonrunes into English. The problem starts when the translator starts to have an inclination. The problem starts when the translator loses their professional detachment and start adding in details here and there into the fan translated product that ultimately changes the meaning and direction of the entire story. The problem is also escalated when that translator's embellished product is touted as the truth by their followers. If there was an upcoming character whose backstory is connected to a character they hated (either because of someone or they just don't like the character) and you were hoping to read the fan translation? How would you know that what you get isn't something doctored to the point it's basically fanfiction?

⦁ Social Justice Vigilantism. Sometimes someone does not have a character obsession or need it to be annoying. Sometimes, someone just wants to ring the alarm over something they find 'problematic' in order to police and sanitize the enjoyment of the media for 'everyone'. They no longer really take enjoyment out of a new Food Soul design being leaked, they no longer read the lore just to enjoy what it has to offer. Instead, they nitpick bits and pieces of the design and point it out repeatedly as a reason why the whole thing is bad. They point out bits of the story and inject their interpretations of it without really comprehending what they've read in full and react badly to it. What's worse is that they have no qualms publicly posting their reactions and eagerly and hungrily await those likes and echoes of agreement that they were right.

⦁ Circles of Influence. Everyone has a group they eventually gravitate to in a fandom. It comes with its own pros and cons. Sometimes you join a group because someone you admire is in there, sometimes you join a group because you just want to mingle and see more content. All valid reasons. Arguments can't be avoided in a group, it has to happen... But you have to take care. You have to take care to feel the change in the air of the group. When someone starts pushing people to agree with them. When your most admired people start to feel overly sensitive about certain characters or issues. When you start to feel obligated to spy on other groups outside of this one for 'nonbelievers', 'traitors' and 'heretics' who do not think the way this group does, and that bringing back bits and pieces of gossip as offerings would somehow make you more favored in the eyes of the inner clique or remain inside it. There is a gripping sense of annoyance when that person comes in to complain but you can't do anything about it but nod and agree. There is a pervading sense of fear and apprehension of overstepping an invisible boundary. There is fear that you might be next on the chopping block, after witnessing one of the others being ganged up on and thrown out without a second thought, their name spat upon like they're worth less than dirt. And so reluctant you are to give up what you have with them that when they push you to do something you are reluctant to do, all in the name of 'harmony and justice'... You do it. Even though it would mean offering yourself up to the mob with no salvation, and the stark realization that... [they] never cared about you as a friend.

And we've come to the end of this analysis trilogy. The writing got a little bit strange in this post, but honestly this is the best way I could put it. I'm aware things can and will be more complicated than the bullet points I've written but I'm just one person and I tried very hard to keep details of all the drama that happened in this fandom as vague as possible. Of course, that wouldn't work if you know what I am talking about.

The community is quiet now for the most part, the game is somewhere between limbo and the living plane. Things could be better for us, but I don't really count on it.

I wish I could leave a bit of a moral warning or something. But rather than do that, I just hope this was an entertaining read into one individual's eyes into Food Fantasy and everything that makes it up.

[phoebosacerales]

The 6th house in Astrology

I thought I'd just share this excerpt from "The Plague", which feels like a whole lesson on the 6th house, while also being very relevant in these times of covid-19. It says a lot more than I could ever try to say and explain about the joy of Mars.

"The word 'plague' had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the doctor's uncertainty and surprise, since, with very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townsfolk. Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid', that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions.

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Indeed, even after Dr. Rieux had admitted in his friend's company that a handful of persons, scattered about the town, had without warning died of plague, the danger still remained fantastically unreal. For the simple reason that, when a man is a doctor, he comes to have his own ideas of physical suffering, and to acquire somewhat more imagination than the average. Looking from his window at the town, outwardly quite unchanged, the doctor felt little more than a faint qualm for the future, a vague unease.

He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination. The doctor remembered the plague at Constantinople that, according to Procopius, caused ten thousand deaths in a single day. Ten thousand dead made about five times the audience in a biggish cinema. Yes, that was how it should be done. You should collect the people at the exits of five picture-houses, you should lead them to a city square and make them die in heaps if you wanted to get a clear notion of what it means. Then at least you could add some familiar faces to the anonymous mass. But naturally that was impossible to put into practice; moreover, what man knows ten thousand faces? In any case the figures of those old historians, like Procopius, weren't to be relied on; that was common knowledge. Seventy years ago, at Canton, forty thousand rats died of plague before the disease spread to the inhabitants. But, again, in the Canton epidemic there was no reliable way of counting up the rats. A very rough estimate was all that could be made, with, obviously, a wide margin for error.

'Let's see,' the doctor murmured to himself, "supposing the length of a rat to be ten inches, forty thousand rats placed end to end would make a line of...'

He pulled himself up sharply. He was letting his imagination play pranks, the last thing wanted just now. A few cases, he told himself, don't make an epidemic; they merely call for serious precautions. He must fix his mind, first of all, on the observed facts: stupor and extreme prostration, buboes, intense thirst, delirium, dark blotches on the body, internal dilatation, and, in conclusion... In conclusion, some words came back to the doctor's mind; aptly enough, the concluding sentence of the description of the symptoms given in his medical handbook: 'The pulse becomes fluttering, dicrotic, and intermittent, and death ensues as the result of the slightest movement.' Yes, in conclusion, the patient's life hung on a thread, and three people out of four (he remembered the exact figures) were too impatient not to make the very slight movement that snapped the thread.

The doctor was still looking out of the window. Beyond it lay the tranquil radiance of a cool spring sky; inside the room a word was echoing still, the word 'plague'. A word that conjured up in the doctor's mind not only what science chose to put into it, but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping with that gray and yellow town under his eyes, from which were rising the sounds of mild activity characteristic of the hour; a drone rather than a bustling, the noises of a happy town, in short, if it's possible to be at once so dull and happy. A tranquillity so casual and thoughtless seemed almost effortlessly to give the lie to those old pictures of the plague: Athens, a charnel-house reeking to heaven and deserted even by the birds; Chinese towns cluttered up with victims silent in their agony; the convicts at Marseille piling rotting corpses into pits; the building of the Great Wall in Provence to fend off the furious plague-wind; the damp, putrefying pallets stuck to the mud floor at the Constantinople lazar-house, where the patients were hauled up from their beds with hooks; the carnival of masked doctors at the Black Death; men and women copulating in the cemeteries of Milan; cartloads of dead bodies rumbling through London's ghoul-haunted darkness, nights and days filled always, everywhere, with the eternal cry of human pain. No, all those horrors were not near enough as yet even to ruffle the equanimity of that spring afternoon. The clang of an unseen streetcar came through the window, briskly refuting cruelty and pain. Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world. And, gazing in the direction of the bay, Dr. Rieux called to mind the plague-fires of which Lucretius tells, which the Athenians kindled on the seashore. The dead were brought there after nightfall, but there was not room enough, and the living fought one another with torches for a space where to lay those who had been dear to them; for they had rather engage in bloody conflicts than abandon their dead to the waves. A picture rose before him of the red glow of the pyres mirrored on a wine-dark, slumbrous sea, battling torches whirling sparks across the darkness, and thick, fetid smoke rising toward the watchful sky. Yes, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility....

But these extravagant forebodings dwindled in the light of reason. True, the word 'plague had been uttered; true, at this very moment one or two victims were being seized and laid low by the disease. Still, that could stop, or be stopped. It was only a matter of lucidly recognizing what had to be recognized; of dispelling extraneous shadows and doing what needed to be done. Then the plague would come to an end, because it was unthinkable, or, rather, because one thought of it on misleading lines. If, as was most likely, it died out, all would be well. If not, one would know it anyhow for what it was and what steps should be taken for coping with and finally overcoming it.

The doctor opened the window, and at once the noises of the town grew louder.

The brief, intermittent sibilance of a machine-saw came from a near-by workshop.

Rieux pulled himself together. There lay certitude; there, in the daily round.

All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done."

"The Plague", by Albert Camus.

[mithliya]

Okay, so I want to be clear when I say again that white women in the suffragette movement said/did racist things, just as white women in feminists movements today say/do racist things,. Even white anti-racist activists will, at least on occasion, say and do racist things simply by growing up in a white supremacist society. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m disputing that reality. I only mean to illustrate some of the nuance (and why that matters today).

I sent those quotes in an effort to illustrate how the women’s suffrage movement was intertwined with universal suffrage, both white women and black men campaigned for each other’s right to vote. The women’s suffrage organizations grew directly from the basis of abolitionist movements. The initial suffrage (and wider women’s rights) movement was indistinguishable from the civil rights movement. When the 14th/15th amendment was proposed splits in the civil rights movement deepened — both white women and black women (and presumably some black men) campaigned against any amendment that didn’t include women. Similarly, black man and both white and black women favored the 15th amendment even without including women (of any race), who argued that women could wait. Ultimately the latter group saw their wish, and the division resulted in two separate organizations that continued to campaign for women’s suffrage.

The quotes you screen-shotted are undeniably terrible and exemplify the racism within the movements. To be nuanced however, they also span a wide range of individuals — from actual slave owners to women who said something racist but also directly participated in anti-racist activism.

To illustrate (from the quotes you provided):

Rebecca Latimer Felton - terrible human, slave owner, all out white supremacist

Carrie Chapman Catt - she later said “our task will not be fulfilled until the women of the whole world have been rescued from those discriminations and injustices which in every land are visited upon them in law and custom”, lobbied against the word “white” being added to the 19th amendment, and lobbied congress/used her presidency of the League of Women Voters to advocate for people of color and Jews

Elizabeth Cady Stanton - she also founded the Women's Loyal National League that led the largest abolitionist petition drive at the time, organized the American Equal Rights Association a suffrage organization that explicitly supported universal suffrage. The organization split when (mostly) the black men in the organization supported the 15th amendment without advocating for it to be extended to women. (She definitely said racist things around this time, similarly Frederick Douglass, who was both her friend and one of her main critiques at the time, said many sexist things.) The split was later merged back into one organization that she headed.

Anna Howard Shaw - I know very little about her. She definitely said many racist things, but she did champion universal suffrage and campaigned to end racial violence (arguing that universal suffrage would end lynchings). Still, she also failed to condemn racist actions by her peers.

Same as (1)

Belle Kearney - terrible human, slave owner, all out white supremacist

Frances Willard - confusing mix of actively recruiting and working with black women and also promoting racists myth that white women were in danger of black men that facilitated lynchings (due to her “temperance reform”). Also appeared to be more laissez-faire when president of the WCTU since she let conservative states hold on to conservative and/or moderate positions regarding reform for both women’s rights and racial justice.

Same as (1)

As for why it matters today:

No, women definitely won’t have the right to vote revoked for discussing racism in past movements. But there’s a difference between discussing racism, and perpetuating misinformation. One of the main ways the American government disrupted activist movements throughout history was to sow dissension in their ranks. (And the American government/military taught many of these techniques to foreign countries.) An excellent example of this is the COINTELPRO operation, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Their goal was to divide and conquer - a movement can’t make progress if it’s busy fighting itself - and poison the public’s opinions of the movements, so as to dissuade new members from joining. (At this point, I want to reassure you that while this may sound like a conspiracy theory, it is very much proven and it/other programs did much harm to domestic and foreign reform movements.)

The myth that the suffragette movement was specifically racist, rather than operating in concert with and emerging from, anti-racist activism contributes to this divide and conquer method of disrupting activism. If you (general you) can convince women of color that the “original feminist movement” (ignoring the ahistorical nature of such the label itself) actively campaigned against them, then it’s much easier to dissuade them from considering feminist activism or to divide activist movements. (And, if it were true, it would be entirely justified!)

Of course, that’s not to say that feminists shouldn’t criticize (or disavow, to the extent possible) white supremacists like Felton or Kearney, or that we shouldn’t discuss and reform the racist sentiments in past and current movements. (In fact, I believe, and expect you do as well, that doing so is not only permissible but necessary, because to deny the racism that did exist in past/current movements would alienate women of color just as much as the idea that the feminism-of-old was solely for white women, and would in fact be an expression of racism in and of itself.)

I hope this clarifies what I’ve been trying to convey.

im surprised about the claim that white women and black men campaigned for each other's right to vote. i was under the impression that the civil rights movement was largely focused on black men and often outright excluded black women having a say, so i don't really know why they would support other women (such as white women) having a say when i heard they didn't support that for black women, who were always black men's biggest supporters.

i do get your point, to a degree-- and i think we agree overall but simply word things differently. i don't think that the women's suffrage movement was Bad and i don't think the white suffragettes back then were like, all evil and more racist than the avg white person in their society. i would say overall, those women were quite forward thinking and progressive for their time. i don't doubt that a significant portion of women were far worse than that, and even opposed women's rights (bc of the society they grew up in where this was a controversial thing). my only argument is that pretending they weren't also racist and had traits worthy of criticism (such as their racism) is innaccurate. a lot of prominent suffragettes were quite racist, and that's not to say that their feminist beliefs lead to that or that women's rights is interwined with racism, but just to point out that even those women who fought for the right to vote for women were not particularly good allies to poc but most specifically black people, and more importantly, black women. i also wanted to point out that being anti-slavery and campaigning against it, did not mean they were generally anti-racism or fighting against racism overall. they were fighting against the worst and most extreme forms of racism in their time, but they were all still racist in their own right. i'd like to reemphasise what i initially shared that you disagree with (+ my tags, and my previous comment on it so as to be fully transparent), which is not that different from what you're saying imo:

now i'm not trying to argue the origin of the movement, what it rose out of, how it relates to racism or anything else; my qualms are with the claim that the suffragettes were not racist. maybe back then, they were closer to allies to black people than most, however they were still quite racist. similarly, since you brought up white allies, white allies today may be the best we have and the best in our time, but they are also still often quite racist themselves.

my main and only point is that these women were still racist, and this is not to discount the women's suffrage movement, i just think that when we deny that aspect of the past then what we're doing is alienating woc. i've noticed a general trend of white women on here saying that white women were targetted by the KKK for example, fixation on stuff that is targeted at white women like 'karen' and placed on equal grounds with calling black women 'laquisha' to berate them, arguments that white women dont have racial privilege, etc and while i don't think the people making such arguments are necessarily coming from a bad place, many woc seeing this will end up feeling like the movement is geared towards white women and does not properly consider & include woc. that's why i take issue with the claim that xyz white female historical figure wasnt racist bc she was pro-slavery abolition, like, sure that must've been really progressive for its time but at the same time it doesn't change that the same woman did work w white supremacists and white supremacy was used as an argument to support white women's suffrage. it probably worked as a strategy and helped pave the way for other women, but its good to acknowledge these issues and criticise them esp since they remain relevant today when people are still indirectly debating how much woc should be considered in feminism.

[sgtpaine]

The Left’s Revolution Dominates Every American Height, And They Don’t Know Why We Aren’t Cheering

Herein lies a glimpse into just what kind of knuckle-draggers the left thinks we are. They think patriotism means we’ll do whatever they say whenever they say it.

By

Christopher Bedford

AUGUST 10, 2021

“Rooting against Olympians, scoffing at Capitol police, broaching civil war — meet today’s conservative movement.”

That’s the opening of an article last week at Vox.com. You’ve probably heard of Vox. Their self-proclaimed, self-aggrandizing purpose is to “explain the news.” But when Vox’s condescending reporters start talking about conservatives, Christians, guns, or really anyone outside of a few coastal cities, they have a habit of sounding like Jane Goodall observing apes.

So, what’s their qualm now? Let’s let them explain it in their own words:

[There is a] rising tendency in the conservative movement to reject America itself. In this thinking, the country is so corrupted that it is no longer a source of pride or even worthy of respect. … Queer female soccer stars demanding equal pay, Black basketball players kneeling to protest police brutality, the world’s best gymnast prioritizing her mental health over upholding the traditional ideal of the “tough” athlete — this is all a manifestation of the ascendancy of liberal cultural values in public life. And an America where these values permeate national symbols, like the Olympic team, is an America where those symbols are worthy of scorn.

Worthy of scorn; imagine that. Underperforming and overpaid people who for a living play a game no one watches want to be paid the same as people who are better players and earn more viewers.

Rich athletes publicly spitting on their country, their flag, and the men and women who have died for it, so they can push left-wing lies.

An enormously talented athlete quitting on the brink of competition, and saying the problem was she wanted to compete only for herself, not for her coaches, her teammates, or her country.

These are indeed “all a manifestation of the ascendancy of liberal cultural values in public life.” They’re the fruits of a spoiled, privileged, narcissistic, and self-obsessed revolution that began in the late 1950s and has been fighting its way to power ever since. They have it now, and it isn’t simply confined to our sacred soccer ball kickers.

Sports is just the latest, but look at its sponsors: You can be a subpar professional athlete, but if you spit on the flag you get a lucrative Nike contract.

Remember that Nike ad, “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything”? It featured Colin Kaepernick. The only problem is, he didn’t sacrifice anything — he discovered he could be paid a lot more playing the American public than he could playing football as a backup quarterback.

Now, thanks to his fake bravery, he gets to decide if the first flag of the United States is permissible. He says it isn’t, because America wasn’t perfect 245 years ago — and Nike sanctifies that decision with a lucrative payout.

They don’t mind; Nike may still be headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, but at heart they’re a Chinese company. That’s the People’s Republic of China: a godless slave state that uses forced labor to manufacture products and criminalizes dissent. That’s a country Nike respects, or at least one it cares about offending. Guess what: We don’t like that.

They’re far from alone. Silicon Valley was once a symbol of American enterprise: Young men working in their garages to harness technology and revolutionize our lives. Now Silicon Valley symbolizes the most powerful private companies the world has ever known — and they use that power to crush dissent, censor presidents and critics, and push left-wing propaganda. Turns out, when they do that we don’t like them.

We can go on. Blackrock sends its urchins to buy up affordable homes in growing cities to transform a society of homeowners into a society of servile tenants.

Mastercard and IBM build international databases for tracking humans so they can bar them from travel and commercial activity if they don’t take an experimental vaccine. Or, in MasterCard’s case, maybe they’ll ban you if they just dislike your politics.

Bank of America refuses to make loans to American gun manufacturers out of principle while making a $1 billion gift to Black Lives Matter, a racist, anti-American, anti-family, grifty riot squad responsible for dead police, murdered innocents, and burned-out cities. Huh — turns out we don’t like any of that either.

How about the Pentagon? Conservatives used to respect it because it won wars and embodied the finest of American values while doing so. But now the Pentagon loses wars, throws away lives, and wastes trillions of dollars while trashing those fine American values.

The military used to be a strict meritocracy. Now, they cut standards in the name of diversity. They used to demand that every soldier be fit and ready for war. Now, they slash the requirements for our troops’ physical performance and brag about maternity flight suits.

They teach weak and disgusting left-wing racism in their academies, they target Christians, they insult the middle-America conservatives who do most of the fighting and an overwhelming share of the dying in our armed forces. While our enemies run ads touting the manly virtues necessary to a warrior life, our generals run ads about having two moms. It’s not very intimidating. And hey, we don’t like it.

Ladies and gentlemen, we could all go on with example after example, but the point is this: The left got their revolution, the one they spent decades screaming and agitating for. They got their ideologues into the halls of power — not just the university halls, not just the halls of Congress, but all of them: Business, media, military, sports.

If there is an institution in your life and it’s not a good church, chances are that institution has implemented one policy after another pledging itself to the dogmas of the left. Now, the left is shocked — shocked — that we don’t like it one bit.

There was an America that we loved. It was an America of religious liberty and freedom of speech, and equality before the law. An America that loved what is beautiful rather than what is warped and ugly. An America that loved its founders and loved its children. An America that knew that whatever prosperity it possessed, it owed it all to the Almighty, and that it had a solemn duty to Him in return.

That was the America we loved. An America that hundreds of thousands of young men proved they loved more than life itself. We still love that America, and we’re not just going to cheer and applaud their active desecration of it.

Herein lies a great little glimpse into just what kind of knuckle-draggers the left thinks we are. They think patriotism means we’ll do whatever they say whenever they say it. “Drink your can of beer, sit on the couch, and cheer for sports. You like sports, don’t you, you ape? Come on, watch them on your 60-inch Chinese TV you bought at Walmart.”

“Buy our cheap, foreign products, do it now. You like free enterprise, don’t you? What’s more free than your boys and girls in the Navy guarding Chinese ships shipping Chinese products from Chinese companies to run-down American towns that were once industrial hubs?”

“You like cheap things, don’t you? I thought Republicans loved sports and business!”

“When Gen. Mark Milley says jump, you say how high. When he says you’re racist and you are showing white rage, nod along. When he says standards are overblown, and that diversity is our new strength, salute. Come on, don’t you support our troops?”

They don’t get it. They don’t get that we don’t honor and salute empty institutions and buildings! We don’t just bow down before the local magistrate’s hat on a stick.

They don’t get that a church is not just some building that can be made into a nightclub, it’s where we worship God — and it’s from his presence that it derives its meaning.

They don’t get that people watch sports for athletic excellence, good old American entertainment, and the thrill of cheering for the guys fighting for your team. No one watches sports to be condescended to, regardless of what uniform the athlete has on.

They don’t get that we respect the flag and the Americans who’ve fought and died for it and will again, but that doesn’t mean we stand and salute the Pentagon and all the foolish politicians in the brass.

They also don’t get that we’re not all 100 percent serious and miserable all of the time, like a couple of CNN anchors we could name; we still have a sense of humor. So yes, when a woman with an ugly heart says ugly things about America and then flops in a big soccer tournament, we’re going to chuckle about it. Maybe even laugh out loud. Maybe we will have that cold beer.

We’re Americans; we don’t resent success in sports, business, or military service. But as Helen Andrews of The American Conservative recently wrote, conservatives don’t resent the left’s success — we resent the ways they actively harm us. And we’ll never accept the rotten version of America they tell us we’re supposed to love.

America is worth saving. If you live in a major coastal city, leave it whenever you can and see that America. It can sometimes be hard to find — the left has warped it viciously. Today this country kills its children in the womb, celebrates decadence, and glorifies decay, but if Vox is onto anything it’s this: We are onto them. And we’re not buying it. And America lives on in our hearts.

There are a lot of problems in this country. We’re experiencing a secular elite trying to justify their existence in any way they can. Things are going to get worse before they get better, because they want things to and it makes them feel good.

But there’s no God at the end of this tunnel. Just as with drugs or money or sex, no amount of Black Lives Matter,  climate change activism, and yard signs can fill the hole they’re feeling. The good news is, it won’t work; the bad news is, our experiment is delicate and badly damaged.

The work — going to school board meetings, running for local office, speaking up in our towns and our cities and our states — is hard work. We’re going to lose friends along the way, but we will lose this country forever if we don’t, so there’s really no choice at all, is there.

Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, the vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at the National Journalism Center, and the author of The Art of the Donald. Follow him on

Twitter

.

[oikawas-fav-alien]

Distance | Shirabu Kenjiro x Reader

✧ Summary: Having attended Shiratorizawa Academy from junior high, you were familiar with most of the students in your year. They were average, nothing special — until a certain vbc setter, from god knows whatever small town junior high he crawled out of, changed up your world.

-> warnings: none — maybe language cause it’s shirabu; fluff and slight angst :)

Shirabu Kenjirō was a living, breathing pillar of salt. And it was rightly so. He was the friend, the shoulder to cry on, and the person that everyone viewed as reliable. This was not entirely a bad thing, since he was viewed as much more dependable than others. And this idea was not limited to volleyball. But being placed in that category separated him from the very people who put him there. The girls viewed him as, at most, a friend. He was the king and leader of the friend zone.

It was the end of his second-year and he would soon be taking over as captain of the boys’ volleyball team. He justified lack of love life on the fact that he had bigger things to focus on. And after their crushing defeat, Shirabu reasoned that Shiratorizawa needed a focused captain to lead them to victory.

But the road to triumph was… rather lonely.

Shirabu had his team with him one-hundred percent and silently appreciated them for their confidence and own unfailing determination (he won't admit out loud!) But it seemed like he was surrounded by couples. His kouhai, Goshiki Tsutomu, found comfort in another first-year that was a regular on the women's volleyball team. And another female on the team seemed to be interested with the middle-blocker of Karasuno!1

Couples were disgusting.

Of course, majority of the members of the male volleyball were single. Ushijima was a super volleyball idiot and his focus seemed to never stray from the sport. But even with his cinnamon roll personality, the female base of Shiratorizawa seemed to flock to him. He was undoubtedly very handsome and tall. His grades were well above average and his fan club was incredibly prominent. Ushijima had all the makings of a great man and was noticed as such by a large pool of the student body. The difference was that Ushijima was willingly single.

Shirabu, deep in the non-explored depths of his heart, wanted to be noticed like his Senpai. When playing volleyball, Shirabu strived to be the type of setter that went by unnoticed and drew out the strength of his ace. And he knew the consequences of such. But still. He was the main setter on a highly prominent team and his skills are not hard to notice.

Maybe it was his rough personality? Pft. He would never change that for a person, no matter how special.

Shirabu was above average height and had amazing grades in a prestigious powerhouse. What wasn’t there to like? His sense of style was trendy and he was complimented on his clothes more than once. He as not too preppy like Goshiki and not too wild like Tendou. Was it his looks? His bangs were unusual, but they weren't as bad as coconut-head/bowl/Goshiki. Since entering adolescence, he failed to ever break-out and was blessed with marvelous clear skin. On more than one occasion, he would stare at the mirror and truly wonder just why.

Why was no one interested?

Enter you.

You attended Shiratorizawa in both middle and high school. Coming from a wealthy family, there was nothing standing in your way. You were fairly popular and had seen the multiple personalities flit through your advanced classes. And in your first-year came Shirabu, an outsider to Shiratorizawa from a lower-class middle school. After being in the system for three-years, you knew almost everyone and seeing a new face was refreshing.

From the very start, you wanted to bet to know him more. But he was incredibly reclusive and mysterious to the general student body. Nobody could answer your questions. Well. Nobody except a certain Salami and volleyball idiot. You shared an advanced statistics class with the two third-year volleyball players in your first year and from them you were able to peer more and more into the life of Shirabu Kenjirō.

“Why do you want to know, (F/N)-chan?” Tendou instigated, “You have a crush on him?”

“Please, Salami calm down.” He raised his hands and gasped, “Come on. There isn’t a single person in this school who I don’t know and suddenly nobody knows anything about him?”

“He is smart and adaptable.” Ushijima chimed in.

“And a little shit, that’s for sure.” Tendou stated. You rolled your eyes and returned your attention back to the statistics teacher. Sure, you wanted to learn more. But this class was hella hard and you still needed good grades. Eventually, you were able to gradually acquire more information and Kenjirō. You learned that he was the only player from the boys’ volleyball team to not get into Shiratorizawa with a sports scholarship. Instead, he got in on his own accord through the arduous exams and good grades.

The more you discovered, the more you liked him.

Shirabu had a work ethic that you hadn't seen in a while. Being in this particular school-system for so long ruined your perception of it. You perceived most of your classmates to have a truly pretentious or judgmental personality, but showing to be as sweet as honey to your face. Of course they wanted to be your friend, who wouldn't with your last name?

He hadn't.

Shirabu was straight-forward with a tongue laced with salt. Sign you the fuck up!

He had no qualms about talking back to you and you looked forward to your daily banter with an odd smile. It was strange. You could get any nice, sweet boy in the whole school. But what was the point if they didn't mean it? Shirabu was honest - a trait that should never be given up, even if it offended others. You would rather have someone give you genuine advice - even if it was mostly mean - rather than an empty friendship.

You had majority of the same classes together for the second year in a row. And you were the only person who would had the immediate desire to sit next to Shirabu as a partner. You silently viewed him as a friend, but there was always this barrier that you could never get over for your friendship to deepen. His time was always dedicated to volleyball. And you did not play any sports anymore.

You watched the volleyball team's crushing defeat to Karasuno and the heartbreak it caused to so many people, Shirabu included. The women's team was resorted to tears and you could not even look at the men for too long. Reon and Semi were so sweet and you wished you could protect them for all the bad in the world. You had never seen Shirabu cry before.

Shirabu... He seemed to only display emotion around his team. And this made sense since those were the people that he was closest too. The rare occasion you had seen his smile was when you had watched a game. They had an overwhelming victory against Johzenji High and you spotted the small grin on Shirabu after he scored the winning point. Your heart could barely take it. You only wished that he showed that side more to you...

He was friendly, but distant enough for you to want more. Shirabu was not cold to you and his harsh chitchat did not hold any true malice behind his words. But he never opened up to you. You wanted to learn more about him personally and if you wanted to, you would have to pry and almost force him to speak. He would give curt answers and then be done with the conversation. But, on more than one occasion, you would spot him typing away on his phone. It was no secret that the boys’ and girls’ volleyball team were fairly close and had a groupchat shared amongst them. You silently wondered if he was texting a girl from the team.

That thought had you instantly deflated and made you wondering if you ever had a chance with Shirabu. You were not one to be easily defeated, but with every brief conversation and blank expression he gave you, you considered giving up altogether. This happened around Valentine’s Day of your first-year. Shirabu was abnormally delighted and even smiled in the classroom at someone’s joke. You figured that sure, it was the day of love and he probably had something lined up for himself and his significant other – that was why he was so happy. And it hurt your heart. He smiled, but it was never because of you.

From there forward, you tended to avoid him to evade the imminent heartache every time you saw him. This was hard since you literally sat next to each other in most classes, but something entirely doable. You would leave the classroom immediately after class, show up right before it started, and not initiate conversation. It was always you that had previously opened up discussion, so when you had stopped there was little to none at all.

Shirabu caught up to your change and silently questioned it. On multiple occasions, you would catch him observing you from the corner of your eye and you silently hoped he would not question you outloud. Within a week, he was ready to corner you.

You were at your locker right after class, ready to pack-up and head over to photography club. He was silently bounding towards you and when you closed the locker he was standing right-there before your eyes.

“Did I do something to offend you?” He asked the moment your locker closed.

“No…” You stated haphazardly, clutching your backpack.

“You’re never his quiet or shy.” He noted, “Did something else happen?”

“I have to get to photography club…” Shirabu put his arm on the locker and blocked your exit. He was tall and there was no way you could out-run him, you were trapped.

“Don’t lie. We know it starts in twenty-minutes. You might be on the executive board, but you have a lot of time.” He sighed out, locking to the ceiling and then back to you. “Why are you ignoring me?”

“… Am I your friend, Shirabu?”

“Of course.” He did not hesitate to answer. “And it’s Kenjirō.”

“What?”

“Call me by my first name.”

“Oh.” You paused and let the name roll of your tongue, “Then you should call me by my first name too, Kenjirō-kun.” His eyes widened at the added suffix and a rosy dust covered his cheeks.

“Was that it?” He asked, “Come on, (F/N). That’s an immature reason to ignore me.”

“How was I supposed to know?” You questioned, “It never seems like you actually want to talk to me.”

“I’m talking to you now.”

“Outside of this!” You were beyond frustrated, “Ugh I’m fine now go away.” You lightly pushed his arm, but he did not budge.

“As if that would convince me.”

“You are so annoying.” You commented, “You never initiated conversation. I thought I was just bothering you.”

His gaze on you softened and you could not break the eye-contact, “You’re an idiot.” He teased and then ruffled your hair. That was the first time he had ever done physical-contact with you and you almost exploded then and there.

“I’m an idiot?” You repeated before walking away mid-sentence, “I’m hoping you treat your girlfriend better.”

He paused and let us hand drop down to grab your elbow before you go away. “Girlfriend? Where did this come up?”

“I thought…” Shit, you let that thought slip out-loud, “The men and women volleyball teams are close. And I’ve only ever seen you hang-out outside of class with them and those girls. I just assume...”

“You assumed wrong.” He quickly cut-off, “Ugh. What am I going to do with you?” He asked as he grabbed you into a hug. You returned the affection and you knew that a blush must have stained your face! And what was that question?

Shirabu continued, “So was that the real problem? You were jealous of my supposed ‘girlfriend?’” He laughed at his question and you were going to die from his smile. God it was so rare and you wished he graced you with it more!

“No! Don’t get too ahead of yourself!” You yelled back, but it was muffled against his chest. He leaned back to see your face and teased you for your embarrassed expression.

“You’re an idiot.” He laughed again.

Since then, your friendship with Kenjirō was gradually improving. But it seemed that there was this silent barrier that you could not overcome. You could talk about your problems, but not about his. And since then, he had not initiated any physical contact. If you ever brushed hands or simply leaned against him, he should shift away and pretend it never happened! Did you really make any progress?

Finals were coming up and that was giving you one last chance to spend time with Shirabu before the end of the schoolyear. Sure, you could always ask your father and he had the power to put you two in the same class again next year - But! Did you want to waste your last year together pinning after him?

Your study group was comprised of yourself, Shirabu, Kawanishi, and two people from his class. Kawanishi was in Class 5, which was also advanced, but he was so damn lazy! You saw his potential and only wished that he tried harder and quit fucking around.

The three other members of the group were missing that night and the two of you were left alone to grovel over English. Your English was better than Shirabu’s but the opposite could be said about history. You paired each other well and aided the other's faults.

You commented on this once jokingly, saying, "You complete me!" He simply rolled his eyes and brushed it off before continuing to study.

Damn. This boy cannot take a hint.

You attempted to show the boy your advances. But it seemed Shirabu would shut you down at every try, almost like he knew what you were doing and was firmly against it. A part of you considered backing down. He had made his intentions clear for two straight-years, maybe you should not waste another year on someone who obviously does not want your attention?

That thought last for a second before you waved it off. There was no one else you were even remotely interested in. If he said no, that’s fine. But you were probably not going to peruse anyone else.

Both you and Shirabu were spacing out from over-reading the textbook and happened to make eye contact. "What's on your mind?" You asked.

"Things you cannot understand."

"You really think that low of me?"

"No. I'm going to be the captain of the volleyball team in a few weeks."

"Wow."

"There's no way your pampered ass would get it."

"You think about my ass?" You teased, but he pretended to ignore the question. You spent enough time with him to notice the minute narrowing of his eyes and the slight curve in the corner of his left lip.

Damn, this boy had you bad.

"I'm sure you'll do fine, Kenjirō." You comforted, "You're very smart and reliable. I believe that your training won't betray you."

"Reliable..." He murmured. "That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"What do you mean?"

He scoffed at your question, "Exactly. You won't understand."

"Then explain it to me!" You exclaimed.

"Why should I?" He seemed just as inflamed.

"Because I care about you! You big, dumb, idiot!"

Shirabu paused before fully looking at you, surprise evident. "Well, everyone expects this idiot to be reliable and lead the team. But..."

"But...?"

"That's all that people expect from me. To be the smart one. To live to everyone's expectations and shoulder the border of living up to the name ''powerhouse.'" He was getting more agitated and louder with each word.

"Woah, calm down."

"I can't calm down! In a few weeks, I'll lose the ace that I've admired for years and majority of our regular team! How am I supposed to fill in their shoes when we're losing one of the top 3 spikers in the country?"

You had no shame in grabbing his chin and turning his full attention to you. "Listen here you idiot. Don't interrupt me! I said don't! I stopped sports, but I know this is something entirely inevitable. Your senpai's are moving onto the next phase of their lives, but it's not something you can stop or change. You have to accept the future and make the most out of it and I know you will. Shiratorizawa is not the only school with graduation. Your rivals and others will lose their precious third-years and its then will you be able to analyze them and attack. But you need to calm the fuck down."

Shirabu was hanging onto every word. Nodding at some parts and fully taking in what you were trying to convey. At the end of your speech, he pushed your hands away from his face with a slight rosy dust on his cheeks. No woman, outside of his mother, had ever done that to him before.

"You're a real pain, (F/N)." he started, "But thanks. I needed that."

"No problem, I just want you to know that I can be here for you." You extended your hand to cover his own on the desk.

His eyes latched onto your hand before he averted his gaze and attempted to pull his hand away. You kept a tight enough grip to keep it in place, but not enough to hurt. "Must you touch me so much?"

"You are such a tsundere, oh my god." You commented, "Of course, I had to like you."

He stilled and looked directly into your eyes, as if that would confirm your previous statement. "Are you really that surprised?" You asked. "You're really handsome and you have the type of personality that I find most attractive."

"Tsundere?" He joked.

"No. You're honest." You admitted, "You're not like the rest of them, who only see dollar signs when they see me. You've roasted my ass multiple times in class and I wouldn't have it any other way. You say the truth and don't sugar-coat your words for anyone."

"I like you." You simply stated. You watched the words seem to finally reach something in his mind and at this point he seemed to panic. He pulled his hand away and you did not hide your outward hurt. Shirabu made a lame excuse and quickly packed up his stuff to leave.

You never felt more sad and alone.

XXXXX

Shirabu was freaking the fuck out. He wanted someone to notice him and it had to be you??? You were beautiful and nearly perfect in every way. Your beauty went beyond the physical level and you were blessed with intelligence and an even greater family tree.

None of this mattered to him before. You were his friend and classmate and probably the one person in class who did not endlessly irritate him. How could you possibly have feelings for him? He didn't deserve you, not a bit. He had an endless list of faults, including his knowingly sarcastic personality, and you were the friendliest person in school! No way. You could be happier with literally anyone else.

He could not deny all your positive traits, even though he made an effort to ridicule you. You were an overall amazing person and he could not deny his latent crush on you. But he had squashed it since your friendship was mostly comprised of friendly banter. You could never have feelings for him, he previously thought. So he would rather treasure your friendship and watch you from the sideline.

However, Shirabu had to admit that it was a dick move of him just to leave you there after your confession. He was usually the type to speak his mind and your feelings must have blinded his brain. He set-out to clear the air and admit why.

In class the next day, you were nowhere to be found and refused to respond to calls and texts. Seeing you so affected, Shirabu could not help but feel like a huge ass. He owed you big-time, but he had to start somewhere: an apology. Shirabu had to clear the air and make it known that he appreciated your affections, even if he had to deny them. He was not above annoying you and did such continually.

Knocking on your dorm room, he showed up right at your front door.

Shirabu heard movement inside, but not closer to the door. He called your phone again and heard the ringtone go off from within, just for you to mute it. He knocked about eleven more times before you opened the door.

"What do you want?!" You asked as you swung the door open with full force.

"To clear the misunderstanding, (F/N)."

"God, you are so annoying. Did you know that?"

"You are too. Now hear me out, you crazy."

"Excuse me?!"

"Please." You sighed and moved aside for him to enter and he did such. He uncharacteristically took your hand and guided you to sit-down on your bed.

He paused, as if to fully think about his words, before sitting next to you. "You need someone who has time for you."

"What?"

"I'll be the captain soon and I do not want to disappoint anyone. I'll be busy and unable to be the proper boyfriend."

"Is that your only complaint to this relationship?"

"No."

"What else?"

"You deserve someone who can make you happy."

You gave a small laughed and asked, "Who says you don't already make me happy?"

He stared at your for a moment before asking, "What?"

"I don't want someone who you think will make me happier with kind words or bullshit. I want someone honest." You candidly admitted, "And we are friends already. I know you're dedicated to volleyball and I don't want that to change. I already know how you are and that’s why I like you more than anyone else. You alone can make me happy. For someone smart, why is this so hard for you to understand?"

He sputtered, unable to give a cohesive reply and for once you saw be great Shirabu struggle over his usually articulate words.

"Wait." You realized that he had multiple complaints about this relationship before you interrupted him. "Just be straight with me. Do you have feelings for me?"

It was at this moment that Shirabu had the clearest view of you. You were in the closest proximity than ever before, sharing a seat on your bed! He could gaze clearly into your eyes and sense the distress and vulnerability from your previous words. He stretched the silence and you took that as a rejection. He immediately rectified the situation by grabbing your hand and placing a light kiss at the top.

"I never thought you were interested in me." He admitted, "I thought I was deep in the friend zone. So I would have rather kept your friendship than risked ruining it."

"You're an idiot." You smiled grabbing his wrist to pull him closer. He obliged and allowed you to place a light kiss on his cheek.

"Now will you be my boyfriend or will I have to convince you?" You whispered in his ear to tease him and could literally see the shiver go down his back as he stiffened.

When you pulled away, his eyes were half-lidded and you silently wondered if his dominant attitude translated romantically.

You didn't have to wonder long since he returned the favor and went even further, nibbling your ear lightly before placing butterfly kisses around your neck. "Maybe you'll have to convince me."

You laughed before wrapping your arms around his neck, quickly taking command and enveloping his lips against your's. However, you did not have it for long and the setter was quick to flip the positions and hover over you. He gave one his rare smiles and you felt one breaking out across you'rs, stretching from ear to ear. Shirabu, who was in no rush, descended back down to your silky lips - noses bumping and hands fisting into each other's hair. His grip was firm, but not tight enough to hurt. You moaned, unintentionally, and he took that as an invitation to lick the entrance to your cavern. You parted your lips quickly, eager to feel his tongue against yours. The rest of the day went by ignored, the two of you enveloped in each other's affection with not a single care in the world.