#i posted a similar video about this like over a year ago now dang

[synthshenanigans]

Two Wuv clip of the line un-reversed for those who didn't know or just wanna hear it

[botwstoriesandsuch]

hey Kip! I’m sending asks into different writer’s askboxes, inquiring about cool themes/development facts/stuff the author wants to share about their personal favorite work of their own. What’s yours? :)

Ok so this ask is old and when I first got it I was like “dang I don’t really have a lot to talk about, what should I talk about I could those revalink headcanons the Kip Cut that turned into a working fic uhh hmm maybe I’ll just make something new to talk about real quick” and then I did and now there is a 12+ chapter Revalink fic in my drafts and I’m gonna talk about that now, whoopsie doopsie [click "j" to skip]

aHEM, OK so allow me to break out the primary school white board because yeah, I have a lot of thoughts and the oxford comma has not yet made it’s home into my brain. oh and spoilers for paraphrase. for both all of Chapter one and future events in later chapters, but it’s really nothing you couldn’t surmise from the AO3 tags

so I really wanted to tell the story of Revali and Link learning and struggling to love again after the less-than-fortunate events of Botw, but I wanted a...how you say...fresher, approach on the subject? Like I know we always say that fanfic writers writing the same tropes and stories time and time again is good because we eat that shit up--but at the same time I had asian parenting as was told never to half ass anything ever, no matter what. So now I'm gay and extra and have depression maybe and oh would you look at that @motherhyrule has dropped a beautiful revalink prompt right into my lap

Great so now that we have, that, I shall take you on the step by step process on how to make a :sparkles: story. So step one is to spend at least five to eleven business days for your white board to dismantle your genre and themes and work them around your character arcs. Luckily I have prepared one ahead of time

s*breaks out those laser pointers that uni professors use* So let's start with defining genre. As define because I HATE you, fuck you. I want you to suffer and writhe on the ground, motherfucker. How dare you think that I would give you nothing but pure predictable fluff, fuck you and yours

is the set of expectations that your audience has when consuming a piece of media

And the great thing about fanfiction is that unlike movies or book where the genres are more vague like, "oh it's a noir mystery genre. so there's a crime, maybe a murder, and a detective and a criminal." or "oh it's a teen romance. so there's some white people and a morally questionable six-pack 18 year old love interest that will be painted as desirable for some reason" BUT with fanfiction HALF of the work out the window, because as soon as you see those #revalink #aro sidon #zelpha #revali is an idiot and #found family tags you already know what's up.

Now what's so great about genre and expectation? Well the fun thing about it is that

I will use it to fucking break you.

... ... ...

<3 For example! <3

In Chapter 1: Holes, you already expect there to be revalink, you already expect them to be soulmates with the soulmarks and there's angst and yadayada ya. Revali and Link have to match because thatttss what this is all about, this is about them! This is about cute, little soulmarks and romantic words!

But whoooopsie doopsie [disney channel laugh track plays] they DON'T match anymore! Link's got a different mark! The number one rule of this entire genre has been broken whoooooooooooooooops. *ba dum tiss*

You might notice with a lot of my writing that I do this a lot, this whole..."oop but there's one little thing that's different." TebaSaki sick fic? Ok cool, but what if Teba burns an irreplaceable relic of the Rito champion to fight a wizzrobe first to characterize why his dumbass clicks with Saki. Mipha deciding to persue Link? Ok what if she chases after a dragon to externalize this conflict as she pierces it's flesh for a scale. Link fighting a Lynel? Ok but what if it's actually a sidlink angst fic in disguise and it's also world building on how Link deals with the bloodmoon that erases all of his efforts which is sort of similar to how his existence was erased from Hyrule 100 years ago mwaahahaha! Ok now that I say this outloud I think I just have a pattern of using fight scenes to externalize character growth. I like fight scenes...anyways.

I think another great thing about the realm of fanfiction is that with the tagging system, I can basically use a chekhov's gun sort of deal, without doing any writing. You know I'm gonna use that gun marked "soulmates" but you don't know when I'm gonna shoot it, and you SURE as hell don't know how.

And huzzah! One of the main points of conflict both drives the tension between Revali and Link, solidifies the unique genre and setting of this world, while also creating a new mystery that will carry over for the next few chapters.

Is Revali right in that Link's rebirth makes him destined for someone new now? What will Link do with the information that his soulmark has changed? Why did it change? Did Revali's change as well? How does anything fucking work right now?

And sure, you might be able to tell where things will end with them, but you sure as fuck will not know how because I HATE you. Fuck you. I want you to suffer and writhe on the ground, motherfucker. How dare you think that I would give you nothing but pure predictable fluff. I am not your goddamn fairy godmother, I will do as I fucking please. You will suffer as you fucking deserve, fuck you and your little tiny--

/j

Oh! But you might have noticed on my little planning whiteboard thing that there was a little T-Chart! For Revali and Link! That's because the next important thing besides plot (and in a lot of cases, including this one, it's argued to be even MORE important than plot) is

~CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT~

[to the tune of that history of the world video on youtube]

So yes, it's a little T-Chart outlining their character views in relation to the themes. And the great thing about themes is that they're not something you can necessarily predict in the same way you can with the genre and plot.

But now see, I'm very lazy so I'm just gonna plagiarize @hyrule-kingdom-updates thingy [that you should read btw] because they said my point quite clear enough

Now I don't really need to care about those points about bond and relationships and being understood, because I'm dealing with already established canon characters. I'm not some NERD who dabbles with entire casts of ocs who even cares about ocs not me that's for sure ahaahahaahahahahahaahahahahahAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *cries in my orphaned WTTU fic* AHAHAHA*sobs*DONT FUCKING LOOK AT ME THAT WAY I SWEAR--

/j I love ocs

But the points I do wanna focus on is the idea that characters provide new perspectives on the theme, and that characters growth can be tracked based on their wants, lies, and needs.

So see, themes can be predicted the same as genre/plot because while you can have the same fanfic plots and tropes, theme will always vary!

Sometimes it's a journey of selfworth with Revali! Sometimes it's an exploration of trauma with Link. Sometimes it's about how you deal with the vulnerabilities of love with Mipha. Sometimes there's straight up NOOOO theme, and people just be fucking, and kissing, and baking, and having a good time. And that is totally fine too!

But I'm not a fucking coward.

I'm gonna weave in themes with my plot, because I fucking can.

I'm not a weakling like you.

Do you hear me, 2019 Kip? Do you hear me Demmers? Do you hear me Quill? I'm coming for your ass. You think you're so great, but I'm coming for you. Rest assured that your graves will be as deep as your sculptured pride--

Heeeere is that T-Chart again, plus more!

yyyyyYou might notice that Revali and Link are quite parallel, to paraphrase. Ayoooo, see what I did there? *dabs* I'm a genius. Anywho

They both start off the same way: 100 years ago they were in love and happy. Basically the equivalent of childish naivety. For the first time in their lives, life is whimsical and charming, and they make each other happy. In fact, it's almost a flaw with how they perceive this happiness. But don't worry! It doesn't last long!

You know what happens.

I think the chart is pretty self explanatory. Revali builds walls fast enough to give a republican a wet dream. Meanwhile Link makes every aromantic in the chat groan with his doubled down sentiments in the idea that his chances of being truly happy again are gone.

Now, I can't exactly describe the full on process of the inbetweens, and where Revali and Link are gonna go from here, because...you have to read it for yourself! Heehee...but something I did think was fun was how these character views on the themes are revealed. Because you'll notice that, I never give exposition. Ever.

Ok well, let me rephrase that. I never give exposition scenes. I will never give you a big LOTR fancy wizard scene explaining the ins and outs of a character's question or the world's magic or whatever. I'm a very impatient Kip, and I value efficiency. Nonono, it's all about multi tasking, baby!

Chapter 1: Holes is divided into three parts.

Post 100 Years - Medoh (Establishes Ghost Rev/Bonk Head Link's view)

100 Years Ago - Flight Range (Establishes old Revalink views)

Post 100 years - Mark (Develops Ghost Rev/Bonk Head Link's view in contrast to who they once were)

I think the way that you structure flashbacks is incredible vital, as it's a very quick way to characterize people without having them say stuff like "I used to be like you, until I took an arrow to the knee" or whatever.

And with the main structure of the chapters and the fic as a whole is focus on their characters, that means I can hide whatever other stuff I want in those scenes, becuase you're too busy absorbing the fun character stuff to realizing I'm giving you boring exposition. Like for example:

Post 100 Years - Medoh and Mark

Foreshadowing for the end of the fic

Set up connection to Medoh with Revali

Link has defeated Windblight

Link has been visiting Revali every night for the past few days

Link has already met Kass and presumably Teba

Link doesn't have the Mastersword

Revali's Gale is still an ability that needs master and practice on Link's end

And that's just some of the stuff.

And see, the only reason I can efficiently give all of this information regarding character, and even exposition, is because of the theme. The themes make everything relevant, and everything circles and encompasses one another, so there's absolutely no wasted space. I mean don't even get me started on how it's gonna be to characterize the other characters around this

I don't wanna talk about the other characters too much either because that's spoilers, but you can probably take a gandar based on my notes.

And oh my god this is just on the theme of the faults that come with "soulmates" and "true love" and all that, and how even magical destined relationships still require work and effort, and that no one thing or person solves all your problems. And that's not even TOUCHING the shit on trauma and scars. I didn't think it was even possible for me to talk about botw without touching on that, ha. Ah well, I've been talking for too long.

Revalink has a lot o' writing potential so das pretty cool yeah, I am excite

[demonslayedher]

I'm glad you reactivated the questions, here are some flowers for you: 💐 Seriously speaking I'm sorry that because of a question I asked you a few weeks ago you watched a series of videos of psychopaths 🥲It made me laugh at first but then I felt guilty 💔 it's all Muzan's fault for leaving us all with curiosity (imagine his parents' reaction once they realized there was something wrong with him even as a human)

Yay, flowers (which I shall kill with my black thumb)! And no, no, it’s fine, I had hoped it came off funny! I like listening to stuff like that while I draw anyway because I’m a nerd anyway and I found it very interesting.

Speaking of being a nerd, you have innocuously unlocked the following essay about Heian period nobility and wisteria flowers: There is nothing to state so in canon, but I find it highly reasonable to say Muzan might had been of the very powerful Fujiwara clan. Step inside my office, Anon.

Okay. So. The Heian period, simply put, was a time of cultural flourishing and beautiful pastimes, the origins of a lot of Japanese style aesthetics, and a romantic courtly like of romancing everybody else in the court. This is assuming, of course, that you were at the very, very, very, very top of society. Otherwise, the vast majority of people were poor and sick and starving and ew, in young Muzan’s world, we do not wish to associate with that. In the Heian court, Kyoto basically is the whole cultural world. Even though there were other cities that could rival Kyoto, the emperor was there, so it was essentially the cultural center of the country. The nobles who lived there got money from owning land in far-flung provinces, but actually having to live in those provinces? What a drag! Having to live away from Kyoto for work, even if it wasn’t an official banishment, often felt like a punishment to the nobles and their families who were used to the social scene at court. And, like affluent courts around the world throughout history, understanding all the intricacies of style and “Heian Rumors” was key to having social clout, and popularity was power. And yeah, nobles would be vicious to each other. While clan dynamics and history are complex and not something I’m getting into here (I don’t consider myself well-versed in it enough), the Fujiwara clan is a BIG DEAL.  Basically, in Heian times, children were typically raised in their mother’s home, thereby heavily influenced by their mother’s clan, so besides a young man’s parents, his in-laws also would had been hugely influential in his life, as they will have a long-felt influence on his progeny. The Emperors typically married Fujiwara daughters. This, in addition to other positions of influence of the Fujiwara clan members usually held with influence over the Emperor, means that politically, there was no messing with them. Now, just because I say Muzan might had been a Fujiwara clan member, I don’t necessarily mean a member of the main branch of the family. Often, due to inheritance management, different branches of various noble clans might be given different surnames. The Fujiwara clan does have different branches, some of which did go one to have close ties with the imperial family even after the fall of their power at the end of the Heian period and all the way through the Taisho, and some branches carry some impressive family legacies but otherwise live like normal or high-class common folk in modern-day. (I know one such Ojousama from a renamed Fujiwara branch; she’s a sweetheart and never brings it up herself but every time I hear other people say things about her family, I’m like, dang.) We can venture from Muzan’s likely expensive medical treatment, multiple marriages (meaning other clans sought to be connected with his family even by marrying their daughters to a sick man), and even preparation for cremation as a baby that he was of a very, very high status. 

Being the sick son of a prominent family may have warped his personality in multiple ways: first, he was probably already used to a culture of popularity equated political power. We see in Muzan’s dealings with humans in the Taisho period that he can be exceedingly charming to get what he wants (a psychopath trait, haha), so he was probably pretty aware of the complex ways of socialites in the court. But, even being aware of that, it probably frustrated him to no end that he was too sick to take part in the social pastimes where he’d gain clout. It’s also possible that he was a bit of a bargain husband for his wives’ families who were seeking to a make ties with his family, as they must not had been politically useful enough to be married off to other powerful matches. This may be some of why he was so ruthless to them, for he never saw them as useful to him in the first place. This probably got a bit worse once he became a demon. Now to be lewd, but he probably got more vigorous in his pursuit of more powerful lovers, and knew how to slay the women’s hearts as he liked (you know, popular Heian pastime, everybody had lots of lovers, it was the norm, though political marriages and legitimate children were still important). That new sense of power probably went to his head. But, ultimately, he must had been limited in clout since he couldn’t take part in any daytime activities, thereby limiting his access to more powerful spheres of influence. His reputation from having grown up sickly must had followed him too. It’s anyone’s guess how much affection his parents had for him and how happy they were about his health at first, and if and when they might had noticed his changes. He was a full-fledged adult by the time he turned into a demon, so who knows how closely they even associated with him. They likely had healthier children who they devoted more care and attention to, and invested more family resources in while assuming Muzan would probably die young.

Who knows what the final straw was in Muzan leaving court? Was it frustration at not being able to walk in daylight that made him flee to the Kanto area in pursuit of the blue spider lily (from near where the doctor lived) long before Kanto became politically affluent? Or was it the rumors at court about how he didn’t age, and that he was eating people?

Of note, a lot of the early legends of demons in Japanese culture take place in the Heian period.

In his book “Japanese History of Demon Slayers,” retired Shizuoka University professor Tetsuo Owada capitalized on the success of Kimetsu no Yaiba to dive into a lot of ties between the series and what it may pay homage to throughout Japanese history and culture. While this was published last September and a handful of his theories have been disproven by the second fanbook published last February, and while I think a lot of his theories are stretching a little too far to make strong connections, it’s still deeply, deeply interesting stuff. He goes into some specific comparisons of demons, like Minamoto-no-Raiko and his posse of four big bad warriors taking on the Tsuchigumo (giant spider demon) terrorizing the mountains north of Kyoto harkening to the case of Rui’s family (and, ding ding ding, this was the primary focus of the official Kabuki/Kimetsu crossover last November), as well as takes little questions left in canon and dives into them a bit deeper. One such question is, why were wisteria lethal to demons? According to Prof. Owada’s research, there is no historical basis for this. Some of the talk online is that: 1. Wisteria are in fact poisonous, and consuming too much of them would cause vomiting and diarrhea (though I’ve also seen people make jam out of them because of the fragrance, so, like???) 2. Beans are thrown around at Setsubun to ward off demons (like so, Feat. Muzan and Kimetsu Beans), and wisteria are of the bean family 3. Wisteria like sunlight, so perhaps like Nichirin, they soak up some of the sun’s properties that are lethal to demons 4. In the language of flowers (Hanakotoba), wisteria symbolize kindness, welcomeness, refusing to leave someone’s side, being drunk with love, being straightforward and truthful, not losing the humanity in one’s heart, thereby containing a lot of meaning contrary to the conduct of demons Interesting, but some of its kind of a stretch. While still finding it a stretch to apply it to wisteria being poisonous to demons, Prof. Owada goes on to say that since ancient times, while the wisteria has some negative connotations of how it was sometimes written with characters meaning “doesn’t heal” (不治) and growing downward with smaller and smaller flowers like symbolize the slow downfall of a family line, it conversely also carries positive connotations of longevity and flourishing family due to the fact that its vines grow upward.

Now, you might picked up at some point that the Japanese word for wisteria is “fuji.” Not to be confused with Mt. Fuji (that’s written differently), it IS the same fuji as in “Fujiwara”: 藤.

Prof. Owada goes on to explore the association with the use of Wisteria crests in Kimetsu no Yaiba, especially on the houses of supporters of the Demon Slayer Corp. His recurring thesis is that the pandemic is partly responsible for Kimetsu no Yaiba’s popularity since demon legends have long since had origins in epidemics, and he supposes the Wisteria crest has a protective effect on the houses, similar to a talisman used in a lot of real life rituals for warding off illness and then often displays in or on the entries of houses to protect the family every year (I have one such item gifted to me, it stays by my doorway, along with a couple sticks of charcoal (but the culture of charcoal is a post for some other day)). The talisman is in reference to a god of Hindu/Chinese origins being treated with hospitality by the So clan, so although other families perished in disaster/disease, he promised to always protect the So clan descendants, so the talisman says “Descendants of the So Clan” so that any household may try to claim that divine protection. The gratitude-exchange of hospitality and protection and sure sounds familiar! Prof. Owada isn’t done yet. While the crest design used in Kimetsu no Yaiba isn’t an actual family crest in in real life, there are lots and lots and lots of family crests that use a wisteria design and have the character for “wisteria” in the name. Any time you hear “—tou”, like Satou, Saitou, or even Gotou, you can typically assume it’s 藤. It’s very common nowadays, but the first family to be granted the use of this name was the Fujiwara clan, when one of the pre-Heian and very powerful emperors granted their clan head this surname, which was a major honor, and it marked the start of the Fujiwara clan’s political dominance (there was already influence leading up to this, but meh, we like clear-cut stuff to simply centuries of history, don’t we?). Furthermore, although we often think of the Fujiwara clan for their influence at court, and we might think of the Minamoto clan for warrior heroes who fought demons, Prof. Owada concludes his argument of wisteria’s protective influence by pointed out a long list of Heian period Fujiwara warriors who also were the heroes of demon slaying legends, stating that their name has also long been tied with demon slayer culture. SO!!! Let me go on with my theory here. Muzan is from the same family line as Ubuyashiki. At some point (I assume after Muzan is long gone from Kyoto), the family is told while their children keep dying, and they accept their mission to bring an end to Kibutsuji Muzan and clear this curse on their family line. My thought is that their ancestor was a full blood sibling of Muzan, one whom was more invested in than sickly Muzan. While perhaps already an off-shoot of the Fujiwara Clan and thereby not entitled to the same sorts of inheritance, they probably maintained close ties with them. But, as it was already not direct by that time, the other Fujiwara clan branches were not affected by this curse. To further spare the clan the effects of this curse, this was probably when that sickly branch took the name Ubuyashiki. (And yes, I have things to say about this name and its possible mythological origins which I find a highly, highly interesting connection. Prof. Owada supposes it is tied with Izumo Taisha Grand Shrine and that is why there are nine pillars, but as much as I love Izumo Taisha and its giant pillars I base my argument in separate Shinto (but also Izumo!) mythology and accept that there are not always supposed to be nine Pillars specifically and Gotouge simply chose that number based on the number of strokes in the kanji for ‘Hashira’ (柱) BUT I DIGRESS). So, the Ubuyashiki Clan is it’s own thing, but is sort of like a cousin to the other Fujiwara branches and thereby continues to enjoy Fujiwara support throughout the Heian period, like some of the Fujiwara warriors going out there and slaying some of Muzan’s early demon experiments, and using their influence to bring in other warriors to the demon slaying cause (pet

theory: Genpei War warrior Kumagai Naozane was a member of the proto-Corp and using Kasugai-garasu was in practice since at least late Heian period). While the Ubuyashiki Clan probably already their own inherited land (and funds that came from it), throughout their history, their cousin clans might also have provided financial support to the Ubuyashiki Clan. But, they probably distanced themselves from the clan due to the curse and not wanting to be tainted. When you bring back in the wisteria associations this puts the contrary associations with a flourishing and dying family line in a new light. Furthermore, the “not healing” way of writing “fuji” also means a lot more in the context of Muzan’s, and later the Ubuyashiki clan’s illness.

[my-miraculous-headcanons]

Kim Possible AU

In which Marinette is in gymnastics, is childhood friends with Adrien, and somehow became an agent-for-hire when someone accidentally dialed her number to call for help instead of actual, professionally trained agents. That’s right, they called a preteen for help, didn’t have the time to call anyone else, and rolled with it.

Also Adrien is a total goofball with a hairless cat. He still has both his parents, who start out overprotective but gradually loosen the reigns when it becomes clear that his friend will keep him safe.

(The reason I put gymnastics and not cheerleading is because I’m pretty sure that’s an exclusively American thing? Besides, gymnastics kind of makes more sense, skillset-wise.)

Origins

     • Marinette took gymnastics since she was seven, mainly because her clumsiness had been turning into a bit of a problem. (Parents start to get worried when their child’s having genuine physical difficulty in not hurting themselves. They thought gymnastics would help her learn balance, and also allow her to burn off some of her natural childlike energy.) By the age of eleven, Marinette is the best in her class, and is thinking about entering competitions.

     • Adrien is Marinette’s childhood best friend. Along with gymnastics, Marinette also started taking ballet, which is where the two met. Adrien was taking ballet because both his parents had taken it, and also because he thought it would be fun. Since he’d been taking it longer than Marinette, he helped her out in class, and the two have been inseparable ever since.

     • Adrien helped Marinette build a website to help get her name out there when they were eleven. They took videos of her doing a couple moves, and added a contact number. Unfortunately, (or, rather fortunately, actually,) Marinette’s number is very similar to a number for a group of agents who do pretty dangerous, life-saving jobs. 

     • Marinette’s first call is from a man requesting for help at a rather big bank in Paris, not far from her house. Being eleven, she doesn’t really understand that this is probably something she should inform the police, rather than handle herself. So, she and Adrien (who she sneaks out of his house) rush over, and save the day themselves.

     • Adrien had videotaped the impressive gymnastics Marinette had pulled off in order to safely get through the security lasers and shut them off. After that video was posted, she started getting calls on a much more regular basis, all from people in need of help. It wasn’t the sort of attention she was looking for when making the website, but she can’t deny she doesn’t love her new job.

The Present

     • By the ages of 16, Marinette and Adrien have travelled all over the world, gaining favors from a bunch of grateful individuals, and are pretty dang famous. They aren’t necessarily given special privileges at school, but if things are urgent, then they’re allowed to leave and makeup missing work online. 

     • Adrien is still a model, still plays piano, still takes Chinese, and still does a lot of different sports. On his own, he’s actually pretty famous. However, in this world, it’s pretty much impossible for him to display the ‘perfect, gentlemanly son’ persona when most of the world has seen videos of him screaming at the top of his lungs, running around in his underwear because somehow his pants got pulled off again. Yeah, he’s a straight A student with the classic, rich people training, but he’s still an utter dork and everyone knows it.

     • Marinette, while still taking gymnastics, has lost interest in making it a life career when she already sort of does it already. She’s picked up other interests, one of them being fashion design when Adrien had introduced her to what goes on behind the scenes in his workplace. She’s good at designing stylish, yet very practical outfits, and made uniforms for herself and Adrien for their ‘side jobs’ as agents-for-hire. 

     • While Adrien isn’t necessarily incompetent, he’s more of the ‘do first, think later’ type of guy when it comes to their dynamic, which often leaves Marinette to do the planning and problem-solving. At this point, it’s kind of abundantly obvious that, while Adrien is academically more profound, Marinette is vastly more analytical, and probably has a ridiculously high IQ if they ever bothered to check. 

     • There isn’t a main villain. Papillion doesn’t exist because Gabriel is completely aware of what his son is doing, still has his darling wife, and has literally no reason to waste his money on illegal activities. He’s a big name in the fashion world, it’s not like he’s looking for world domination or something stupid like that.

     • (I’m sure you’re wondering why the fuck Gabriel Agreste would let his only son go off on dangerous adventures like that on a daily. Well, he didn’t at first, but over time Marinette proved to be a more effective bodyguard than Adrien’s actual bodyguard, so he became more chill. Also, Adrien’s the face of his company, and with all the brave and daring things he’s done alongside Marinette, his popularity ratings are through the roof. Son has fun, is well-taken care of, still performs exceptionally in all his extracurriculars, and does well by the family business? It’s a win-win on all sides.)

     • I would make Lila Shego, except Shego is an actually likeable villain who’s genuinely smart, badass, and fun to watch. So, idk who Shego is, definitely not any of the catty girl rivals Marinette has to put up with, but you can’t have a Kim Possible AU without Shego, so she’s definitely in there. 

     • Max is probably Wade. Honestly makes the most sense, but here’s a suggestion: Max and Kim are the ones who contact Marinette when she has a mission. Max is great with numbers, technology, etc, but Kim’s expertise in completely random shit like sports, terrain, and necessary gear needed for specific situations makes him a valuable asset to the team.

     • We all know who Chloé is going to be, I don’t even need to say it but I will anyways. Say hello to our Bonnie, everyone. She was probably in that ballet class with Marinette and Adrien too, years ago. 

     • While Tom Dupain is still a baker, in this AU Sabine Cheng went on to pursue her dream as a literal rocket scientist, and succeeded. So, Sabine is basically Dr. James Timothy Possible. 

     • Adrien has a hairless cat named Plagg. His father is allergic to fur, and Adrien’s allergic to feathers, so he was sort of limited to pets like fish or lizards, neither of which he really wanted. He found Plagg outside gorging himself on camembert by a dumpster. Having been previously a street cat, Plagg’s growth was stunted, so he stayed pretty small.

     • Luka is obviously Josh Mankey. Marinette and Luka date for a while, but eventually break up on mutual terms due to him not being able to handle some of the dangerous things that pop up in her life often. While he doesn’t panic when things go south, he’s not really physically equipped to protect himself... He’s a musician, not a fighter.

     • Listen, y’all can fight me, Marinette’s longest relationship before finally getting together with Adrien is going to be with Kagami. Kagami handles the dangerous things that go on in Marinette’s life perfectly well, and they date for several months. Eventually, they do break up, but still remain good friends. (This is the period in which Adrien realises he’s jealous of Kagami, and has feelings for Marinette.)

Get Together

     • For those of you who haven’t watched Kim Possible, (and honestly what the hell are you even doing with your life if you haven’t,) Kim and Ron get together at a school dance (prom, but I don’t think prom exists in France,) and share a slow dance with each other. Uhhh so basically think Despair Bear, except Adrien and Marinette are wearing fancy clothes, just got together, and share a kiss in the end.

     • Marinette had recently broken up with Kagami before the dance, and is a little upset over not having a date when she already made herself a dress. Adrien is dealing with his realisation that he likes Marinette romantically, but keeps quiet about it and gives her a shoulder to cry on because she’s hurt, and he’s not going to take advantage of that. He suggests they go to the dance together as friends.

     • Kagami is there, and Adrien confronts her as to why she had broken up with the most amazing girl in Paris. She tells him that she came to the conclusion that, though she loved Marinette with all her heart, Marinette clearly had someone else as her #1. Kagami was sick of having to compete for that position when the other person didn’t even need to try. Adrien is left baffled by this.

     • Marinette overhears this as she’s walking over to ask Adrien for a dance. Kagami looked past Adrien’s shoulder, directly into Marinette’s eyes, and smiled knowingly. Then she walked away, sipping at her drink. 

     • Adrien turns around, pretty green eyes latching onto hers, and Marinette immediately understands what Kagami had meant. A slow song comes on, and she asks him to dance. Things fall in place from there.

     • (Of course, after they’ve kissed and become a couple, some dumb villain is going to inevitably crash the party and try to kill Marinette, as usual, but they deal with it like they always do.)

Alright that’s the end! This was an almost completed draft of mine I had, and since I’ve been lacking on content recently, I thought I’d quickly polish this up a bit and post it. I also have some other completed things I could polish up on, but eh, don’t feel like it right now. Enjoy!

(And maybe tell me how you’d imagine your favourite KP episode would go with Marinette and Adrien as the protagonists instead!)

[golgoterror]

JAKE BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!

Allow me to preface this by saying a few things:

First and foremost, school hates me. I have a huge quantum mechanics test this week and the exam next week, not to mention a big atmospheric physics assignment due this week as well. So, I will be doing that between bits of crying over the man, the myth, the legend, Joke England.

Second and secmost, I know I don’t post a lot ooc here. Well, ok, I don’t post a lot on here anyway due to the aforementioned school situation, but most of my posts are ic. This is a special occasional, so I’m showing you all a bit of myself, the pseudo-man, the pseudo-myth, the pseudo-legend, Pi. 

I’m writing this at 17:49 November 30th. I’m cheating a bit. I should be programming right now. Fuck it, Jake of English too important.

By golly gosh, proper grammar! I know. Again, special occasion.

I haven’t even written this and it’s going to be long as fuck. You’ve been warned.

Jake means. The fucking world to me. No, actually, the whole fucking universe. When I read Homestuck a little over a year ago for the second time (I read it when I was about 13 or 14 when it was really big but dropped it when I was about 16 (I’m 21 now)), I was in a bad place. My relationship was tanking, my family had just basically disowned me, I was coming out as trans, school was kicking my ass, my depression was real bad... Basically, everything kinda sucked. And I felt really alone. So, I decided to live a little and, even though I was about to head into exams, I decided to revisit Homestuck, having been reminded of it via a YouTube video.

At first, I just found it entertaining. I liked John. Rufioh, too. But none of the characters really stuck out to me, y’know? I didn’t dislike them per se, but I didn’t love them either. And then... And then Jake Pistol happened.

GT: Ok then! Im halfassing it! GT: Look. See? Only a bisected bottom is present! Where is the other half you ask? GT: Why... it is nowhere to be found. I didnt use it!  (x)

These lines. These three lines... Not to be dramatic, but I read that and IMMEDIATELY felt the urge to die for this man. And just, everything. The way he talked especially. Now, see, I tend to use antiquated and what some may describe as quaint modes of speech, which naturally made me gravitate towards the guy, but aside from that, he was so dip dang silly. I love me some silly boys. And he’s so dorky. I just fell head over heels for him instantly. And, as it kept going, I wanted to RP him. Even when he pulled that shit on Jane’s birthday, which probably says quite a lot about me and my caliber, but oh well.

Not to mention, the way he dresses. I love bowties. I have a huge collection of them and I wear one damn near everyday. And being jammed into a love-triangle is something I can relate to rather well. (Hope that’s not tootin my own horn or anything! Because it sucks shit.) I guess I just saw myself in the guy a lot. Which I think is natural -- latching on to characters who you see yourself in. 

But, above all, I guess that just showed that I’m not as weird as I always felt I was. Even if he’s not real, he is a rather well-liked character who dressed and talked in a similar fashion (haha get it?) to me. And that just helped reassure me that I don’t stick out like a sore thumb as much as I feel I do! Which I’m ever thankful for.

So, and this may come as a complete and utter shocker to most of you, so you may want to sit down for this: I made a Jake English RP blog. [The audience gasps in pure, unadulterated astonishment!] And I was super duper nervous. I thought my Jake would be just terrible and no one would want to write with me. I kept telling myself, if this ship doesn’t sail, I’ll make a John. Which seems silly now! I can’t believe how well this blog took off! 352 followers and counting, not to mention countless RP groups I’ve gotten myself into on ye ol Discord and how many RPs I’ve got going on on this here blog and a few other social medias. I still can’t believe how much has happened! How many people have said they like my portrayal! It’s all so much and makes me rather emotional (also not a shocker to anyone who knows me OOC). 

But, above all, I met my lovely boyfriend. My old relationship ended shortly after I made this blog. Turns out, love was waiting for me just around the corner. And I couldn’t be happier. 

Several cosplays, RPs, and new friends later, I’m still writing this nerd. And I couldn’t have asked for anything more. So, thank you! Thank you for interacting with my blog and making me happy! And thank you to the man, the myth, the -- aw shit, I already used this saying -- Lake English! Jake Irish! Jake Spanish! Jacques l’Anglais! Jake Aнглийский! Oh, you know who.

Happy birthday, you lovable oaf! Wish your grandmother-daughter a happy one from me as well.

[midzelink]

Twilight Princess w/o Text Boxes: A Dream Made Possible w/ Emulation

Okay.  So.

Over the past couple months of running this blog, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about emulating Twilight Princesss in Dolphin, and the other day I finally bit the bullet and booted up the game for the first time.  I had fun finally playing around with the emulator’s free look feature, and I decided now was as good a time as any to finally learn how to make GIFs the proper way--with Photoshop--so I messed around with the program a bit and ended up making this GIF, which I posted yesterday.  It’s not great, but I’ve seen worse, so eh, whatever, right?  At least I’m learning.

Anyway, @therealflurrin sees this GIF and it kicks of a conversation between us about emulation: how it works, what free look is, and what the potential for these kinds of tools are: GIF-making, edits, stills...general hilarity, y’know, basic stuff.

They ask me if I have any idea how to disable the UI of the game.  No, I say; I do a quick cursory Google, and something like that would require texture dumping, editing, and reloading, and that sounds like a heckuva lot of work, doesn’t it?  I’ll just stick to what I know how to do.

And then they say something else:

my DREAM is to capture all the TP cutscenes without the text overlays for AMV purposes......someday

And I'm like, ah.

Ah, shit.

I dunno about the rest of you, but back in the day, when I would stay up until 3 AM watching Midlink AMVs during a sleepover on my friends’ computers (because Hylia knows I didn’t have one, and what the f**k is a smart phone, it’s only 2007), I used to daydream about this exact thing.  I watched a whole ton of (mostly shitty) AMVs, and most of them either completely disregarded any scenes with dialogue, zoomed to somewhat hide their presence, or used the cutscenes with text anyway, and their quality suffered for it regardless--but that was over 10 years ago, long before emulation was so readily accessible (and long before I would discover it), and as time passed, I quickly forgot about this little dream...

...until @therealflurrin reminded me of it.

How hard could it possibly be?

I can’t currently find the forum post I found that instructed another user on how to remove the UI of another (non-Zelda) game in Dolphin, but I can more than summarize the process myself after the day I had yesterday.  Essentially, each aspect of the game’s UI is a texture in the game’s files; you can’t delete textures, but you can replace them using Dolphin’s built-in texture loading feature.  In order to do what I had set out to, I had to:

Navigate to the graphics setting in Dolphin and turn on the “dump textures” feature, which could create viewable .png files of every single texture loaded into the game upon boot and direct them into a single folder.

Boot the game, ensuring that the elements of the UI I wanted to eliminate were clearly visible.

Find the textures responsible for these elements in the dump folder, making note of their file names.

Create and duplicate a 1x1 transparent .png file, renaming each duplication to match each of the various textures I want to replace from the previous step.

Place each of these “textures” into a folder that matches the name of the folder created by the dumping process, moving that folder into Dolphin’s custom textures directory, and again navigating to the graphics settings and checking “load custom textures.”

Doesn’t sound too difficult, right?

...Right.

Some textures were easy, of course.  Getting rid of the text itself was as simple as finding the very few textures that had the letters of the alphabet on them and replacing them, but more than a couple of them were vague stills of nonsense, and combing through hundreds of these textures to find the right ones when I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for...

Well, it was quite the headache, and at some point I ended up saying “f**k it!” and just started replacing anything and everything that looked vaguely suspicious.

For instance, after eliminating the actual text from the boxes, there still remained the matter of the “glow effect” behind the text--upon inspection without the obstruction of this text, just a glowing circle.  I just skimmed through the dump folder that resulted from me booting up the game for just a few seconds and I counted more than thirteen textures that fit that exact bill (plus several others that looked like they maybe could have also been the culprit, somehow), and I just kept on rebooting and replacing, rebooting and replacing until those stupid circles were gone.  (Not the best method in the world, I know, but we learn from our mistakes.)  I spent ages looking for the surely-it-must-be-a-long-black-rectangle-texture responsible for the backdrop, was unable to find it, and replaced a metric shit-ton of unimportant-looking textures until it, too, was somehow gone--and after a lot of trial and error, I finally got the result I was hoping for.

In doing so, however, I had eliminated a heckuva lot of textures that didn’t need replacing, and the entire thing left a bit of a...foul taste in my mouth.

So, like the perfectionist I am, I moved all of the work I had already completed to another location...and began again.

This time, I replaced textures one by one, rebooting the game each time to ensure that it was the correct one.  That “long black rectangle” I was looking for ended up being a tall, transparent image merely 8 pixels wide.  Those glowing circles ended up being the dang circle that I suspected least, go figure.  Regardless, slowly but surely, I was able to replicate my previous success.

Now, my custom texture folder looks a little something like this:

And the in-game result has transformed this:

Into this:

(As you can see, I’ve replaced many other elements of the UI outside of text boxes, and I put them into their own sub-folders for organization’s sake.)

It was a lot of work, but as far as ten-year-old me would be concerned, I have created a means in which to achieve my once impossible dream:

Twilight Princess cutscenes without text boxes.

What does any of this mean?

Effectively, I’ve created a “texture pack” of a sorts that removes most of the game’s UI elements, including the text boxes that have obstructed so many of the game’s better moments.  It’s still far from completely finished, but as of now, it serves its primary function flawlessly, and all that’s left of my childhood dream is one eensy, teensy thing:

Recording, baby!

That is to say, video recording of all the game’s cutscenes with this texture pack in effect, so that kind of footage is available and out there--otherwise, all of this work I’ve done will have been for naught, yeah?  Fortunately, I’m not just an idiot with an emulator and Photoshop; I’m an idiot with an emulator, Photoshop, and OBS Studio, ready and capable to do all of the hard work of capturing these moments for me.

And now, all that I have to do...is play the game.

So, what happens next?

I’m not going to put an estimate on how long this kind of thing is going to take; I have a life outside of this blog and outside of replaying a game I’ve played more than a few times, but over the next few weeks I’m going to be playing through Twilight Princess on Dolphin with the intention to:

Find and capture each of the game’s cutscenes without UI interference, and upload them (probably onto Google Drive) for use by the general public.

Create save states throughout my playthrough and upload them as well, so any person with a good PC, Dolphin, and a North American Twilight Princess .iso can jump into the game at any point they’d like.

Find and tweak any remaining elements of the game’s UI that I can find to make the experience as clean as possible...and perhaps upload this “texture pack” for general use if I am able to do so.

...But mostly the first thing, yeah?  I may keep everyone updated on my progress, if anyone particularly cares, but I also may just keep quiet about it and then dump all of these files at once.  Who knows!  We’ll just have to wait and see.

TL;DR

There’s a whole lot of potential with this kind of thing, and even if it’s a decade too late and no one is really making Twilight Princess AMVs anymore, this is something I’m so stupidly passionate about that I intend to see it through regardless.  I mean, Twilight Princess just happened to be the game that I chose!  If it’s possible with this game, then it must surely be possible with others, and maybe this can inspire other similar "HUD-less” projects from others.  But, even if it doesn’t, I’ll be okay with that.

In the end, if I can make even just one person happy with this little project of mine, that will be more than enough.

[casimania]

Confused person seeking help :T

Ok, I'm writing a more coherent post than the one from last day. I'm not sure what I'm gonna talk about has to do with dysphoria, but if you have it reading this could be uncomfortable maybe? It's the same post as yesterday but with a good talk and night of sleep on it.

This is a sort of shout out. If this sounds familiar to anyone feel tre to hit me up, I'm kinda stewing in my own thoughts and not coming to any conclusions. But someone was kind enough to lend me a hand yesterday and it made me feel better so I'm trying to organize my feelings a little better. So there are a few different tags so maybe this gets a little exposure, it's time I try to reach out a little.

For all intents and purposes right now I'm a cis woman, I don't have any problem with being referred as one and I don't have any particular issues with my breasts or genitals. What's bothering me are my secondary characteristics (boobs excluded obv).

I'd love, at first glance, to look exactly like a man (but with my regular top and bottom stuff), I think I mentioned Adam Goldberg yesterday? So yeah not a very masc woman or even androgynous, wanna go full "for all internet and purposes I look like man, unless we're being intimate.

I'm starting to be more and more really jealous of other guys my age. Even my younger brother is basically done with puberty and just needs to finish growing into his body and I'm super envious. We look similar enough I'm constantly wonder "If only I was born differently how close to that I could look?".

But I don't have that feeling of being born or trapped in the "wrong" body trans people seem to often describe? I don't particularly feel like I'm actually a man or even feel like I want to be one, or that being a woman is somewhat wrong for me. And I don't feel like my body doesn't match my gender? I don't know if it makes sense?? I don't feel Iike there's anything to match. Like, the disconnect a lot of people describe. The one I have now IS my body (like, it's never felt like a cage or not belonging to me), it's just one that I don't really like the look and feel of, but the changes I want to obtain are a little harder than "cut or dye your hair, become thinner of buffer, get a tatoo..." but easier than say, wanting to be taller (wish I also would like, but at least that is a thing that I know it's not possible and made peace with that).

I feel like my experience matches a lot to that of GNC women, but for a lot of them it seems to be tied a lot to their gender and womanhood and femininity in general (like their attachment or detachment from it). But for me it's purely on a physical level? Womanhood, masculinity, femininity, being nonbinary... They are very abstract things for me, they aren't big issues I think often about. I could go on all my life being a woman, being extremely feminine or masculine based on how I feel on that day (I think I would be even more ok with being a little more feminine if I could look more like a guy, it just feels better in my head?)... But while looking like a man. That's the main thing for me. Dressing and behaving more masc haven't helped me at all unfortunately. The feeling is not totally wrong body as much as "body that needs some improvements". But if someone pointed a gun at my head and told me to choose I would be like woman, no gender and then man if I really had to choose? But it’s something I’m in no rush to deal with as it’s not giving me issues. But also... if I got told I had to legally change all my stuff to say I’m a man to be able to take testosterone... I would in a heartbeat, it doesn’t sound like a sacrifice. Maybe that means something? I don’t know if my feelings on this would change if I could look like I want, maybe even my gender feelings would change! Rn all I’m focused is on my body and nothing else, all brainpower and feelings are employed over there.

I can't seem to figure out what this all makes me? I know no one can answer this for me but I kinda wonder if there are other people that feel like this? I looked at the personal stories of trans men, nonbinary people and gnc women but I haven't found anything that matches how I feel (altough seeing videos of people changing once they go on T make me mad envious, all the changes showed and talked about made me yearn so much)? Does this sound familiar to anyone? I feel very lost at the moment and kinda weird? Like, I don't want to make light of this. Dysphoria as trans people who have it describe it seem like a very different thing. And even being trans while not being dysphoric feels different. Like it almost sounds like a cosmetic thing like I describe it compared to the trans people's experiences I read about. But it does make me feel bad because I don't make enough of the right hormones to look like I like to see myself as when I close my eyes. I can look at myself without self loathing in the mirror but in my head I'm like, "second cooler puberty when??" But then it's "oh no, I'm actually done with that and had the uncool one, dang it".

I haven't mentioned my voice also, but while some years ago I was more attached to it, now I also feel envious of deeper voices too and despise listening to my recorded voice. It feels way higher than I hear it irl and it makes me want to never talk again because it's terrible.

This is probably something I’ll have to bring to a gender therapist or something like that in the future. But as it isn’t available to me atm finding people like me would also be nice.

[vicehectic]

Vongola Vigilantes (1/?)

Based on this post I made a while ago, or you know, just this:

“...instead of Class 1-A and the Vongola 10th gen being the same age, the Vongola are a long established vigilante group that’s a pain in police’s and villain’s sides (most heroes either have neutral opinions or quietly agree with the Vongola) while Izuku loves them and is their number one fanboy.”

Parts 1 / 2 / 3 / ?

Also on AO3

A good portion of the city is flooded. Electricity is out, communication is down, and a chuck of the population is missing.

That's the context of the video Izuku is watching. He knows it like the back of his hand and keeps the memory close to his heart, but Izuku is easily a thousand of the million views that the video has racked up.

It's not even a good video, especially in this day and age. It's grainy and horrible and it's at 360p, but it still has millions of views. The video is also years old but views still increase by the hundreds every day.

A voice is heard behind the camera as soon as it starts.

“The tsunami hit yesterday,” it's a female voice, exhausted, tired and without hope as she pans her device across the wreckage of the city she can see from the hole through a wall, “It came without warning, without even an earthquake. The other people who survived in the building think it's a villain's quirk,” there’s a long pause, “Some good heroes are if they can't even stop this long scale attack,” she says cynically.

The voice sighs and the video is shaking, “We were lucky enough to live on the upper floors of the building, but the building is leaning, and it won't be long until it tips, with all of us in it. I can feel it and the kids have stopped believing me. Kids are smart nowadays,” there's an empty laugh that follows.

The video jerks suddenly and the voice is suddenly full of disdain, “Those dang heroes! Where are they? We're in this collapsing building either waiting to starve or tip over. Heroes are never there when we need them,” she says with contempt.

There’s a long moment where all the audio is just strong wind hitting the mic and the video just shows the wreckage of a building across from it.

Then there's a yell, “Hello, is anyone EXTREMELY there?!” it's a loud voice with a mechanical quality to it, but it is ear catching and unique, especially when the voice emphasizes the word “extremely”.

The video immediately jerks as the female voice yells, “Yes! Yes! Over here! Please! There are families trapped over here! Please help us!”

There's a moment of just nothing, until a man suddenly appears through the destroyed wall of the building. He's wearing an out of place black business suit with a yellow dress shirt and a black skinny tie. He has a strange white mask that covers his face and because of the quality, Izuku can't quite make it out, but Izuku has already committed that mask to memory from more clear pictures and videos. There's a pale yellow sun painted with watercolors at the left chin, while on the right side of the forehead, there's a black outline of an open clam with two rifle bullets crossed within it. The man's white hair is slicked back, and there isn't a hair out of place. There are formal shoes to match his attire on his feet, but there's a sparkling yellow fire like substance coming out the bottom that allows him to fly into the building easily.

The man approaches the woman behind the camera slow enough to show he means no harm, but fast enough to show his urgency. As he comes closer it's easy to make out a gold object with a bright yellow gem wrapped around the upper left arm of the man over his suit.

“Ma’am,” the man says, “Please lead me to the others, we need to get you all to extreme safety,” while the voice is completely serious, there's a strange quality to how he puts slight emphasis on the word “extreme” again.

The video jumps up immediately, “Of course!” the woman says and they both start to move, rubble is all the video shows for a while but there is still audio.

“How many people are extremely with you ma'am?”

There's a grunt, “Three dozen?” the woman asks rather than answers, “At least.”

There's silence for a couple of moments before the man is saying something, and it's not Japanese. But luckily subtitles appear on screen, translating the Italian words the man says, “I'm going to need some help around here Alaude.”

Alaude has a note next to it, noting that it's a name and not some sort of unknown word.

The video cuts to a different view, where the woman has her video focused right on the man who had called out to her, “Excuse me,” she asks, “But what are we waiting for?”

The man looks directly at her and the voice is suddenly very cheerful and bright, “Extreme reinforcements! Before they arrive, can I ask if anyone is injured?”

There's a murmuring in the crowd that is presumably behind the woman but a man steps into frame holding a child in his arms, “My little boy, Kaidoh, he got hit by some debris.”

The man in the mask immediately rushes forward pulling something out of his pocket, “Sir, if you allow me, I could heal your son before his injury gets extremely worse. Is that okay with you?”

The father of the child stares at the masked man, “Is that a scalpel?” he asks, scandalized.

The masked man immediately jabs the scalpel against his hand but it's completely unscathed, “It won't cut through anything. It's just an extreme tool I use to channel my powers.”

The father stares for a second before nodding, laying the child in his lap. The masked man immediately moves forward and the scalpel in his hand lights up in sparkling yellow energy. The man gently brushes the scalpel against the wound on the child's head and the wound stitches back together in seconds.

There's awed gasps that can be heard, but it only lasts for a second when a newer voice says, “Knuckle.”

The video turns in a flash and it takes a second for the video to focus on a man wearing a similar suit to the man referred to as “Knuckle”. He also wears a black suit and tie but has a dark purple dress shirt instead. He has a similarly blurry white mask but Izuku has also committed that to memory. The white mask is similar to Knuckle’s with the same clam and bullet combination on his right forehead, but on his left chin is the same watercolor painting of purple clouds. The man's hair is an inconspicuous normal black and he steps closer to the group surrounding Knuckle without even glancing at them.

“Is this all of them?” the man's voice is also mechanical, altered in some way, but it's also very cold and lacks emotion at its base.

Knuckle nods enthusiastically, “Let's get going while we can, while the building extremely remains intact.”

The new man turns away from the group and heads for a wall. The man lifts his left hand and there's a rather large silver bracelet around his wrist with a purple gem that lights up in a sparkling purple energy, similar to the yellow energy that Knuckle has, and then strikes the wall. The walls goes down immediately, screams of terror filling the mic of the camera the woman has.

“Alaude!” Knuckle scolds with a disapproving tone, “That's not extreme at all!”

Alaude barely glances back, “It's here, get them on it.”

The woman behind the video rushes forward with a gasp and in seconds, she's at the edge of the building, pointing the camera towards a floating slab of earth, “Oh my god,” she whispers out of disbelief. She turns the camera towards the masked men, both who had joined her at the edge, “Who are you people?”

Alaude is the one who turns to answer her, “Vongola.”

The video ends as soon as the word leaves Alaude's mouth.

Izuku’s mouse clicks on the close button of the tab, closing the video titled “First Appearance of the Vigilante Wonders: The Vongola.”

“They're so cool!” Izuku whispers to himself as he clicks on another video.

“-They call themselves the Vongola. Now, with us today we have a vigilante expert from Tokyo University to talk with us, Professor Tadashi Hito. Tadashi-sensei, could you tell us about we know so far about the Vongola?”

“Well they suddenly appeared during the aftermath of a villain's quirk, rescuing civilians using their quirk. They seem to be a group eight people who suddenly decided to assist the civilians in the city to rescue them. As it is, in the laws of Japan, quirk usage in public areas by those who are not licensed to do so is a crime. For these individuals to appear out of their good will to help civilians could be considered heroic, but it's illegal for them to take such action. And seeing how those individuals decided to disguise their appearances and voices, they knew what they were doing could be punishable by law.”

“Vongola, that's what they're calling themselves. That means ‘clam’ in Italian, and it's a rather strange title for themselves-”

“From eye witness reports we have been able to identify the codenames they called each other. Giotto, G, Asari, Daemon, Spade, Romeo, Knuckle and Alaude-”

“The vigilantes who call themselves The Vongola have appeared again, stopping a hostage situation in a local bank-”

“The Vongola Vigilantes have been leaving a clam mark on the victims they take out-”

“-we don't have any leads on them at the moment but we are doing our best-”

“The Vongola? I think they're great. Petty crime has dropped-”

“-what they're doing is punishable by law. They may think they're helping but they're just needlessly breaking laws. We have heroes and laws for a reason-”

“-gola have been spotted in broad daylight! They seem to be the individuals code-named Asari and G-”

“-the police gave chase but in the end vigilante Romeo and Spade disappeared-”

“-in his testimony that Vigilante Daemon from the Vongola saved the young hero's life-”

“I would say the leader has to be Giotto, he's hardly ever spotted, but he's without a doubt doing things in the background-”

“-definitely seen heroes working with some guys of the Vongola. But they always seem to escape by the time police-”

“It has been ten years since The Vongola emerged from the shadows of a flooding incident, and not once have they been identified nor caught. They've been saving civilians all over Japan from simple petty crimes to large-scale villains’ crimes. What we know about the vigilantes is scarce, and for what we know, they could be our co-workers, our next door neighbors, or a regular customer at some restaurant you always go to. There's not much we can do for them, but we can thank them for the service they've given Japan. I can't imagine what would have happened if I hadn't been saved by Knuckle and Alaude all those years ago from that collapsing building. I wouldn't have been able to see my children grow up to be who they are today. So, for that, I am eternally grateful.”

Yeah I did a thing. Idk if I’ll continue this or not? Feedback is appreciated though!

EDIT! I continued the thing! Read here!

Parts 1 / 2 / 3 / ?

Also on AO3

[dykemelon]

OKAY here’s what happened

about 2 weeks ago I got back on my tinder bullshit

about a week ago I matched with an enby named Dayne

We spent like an entire day straight (Sunday) talking, getting to know each other. They seemed very shy and excited and kind of unable to talk about themselves, but very kind and empathetic and interesting.

We made a date for Tuesday to go to the beach and drink wine & eat triscuits. They live about 45 minutes away from me so we agreed to meet in the middle.

We spend a big chunk of Monday talking too. Notably, we bond over a mutual love of... fruit! Fruit is obviously a big deal for me right now, and they apparently spent the summer working on a farm (!?) so they’re really fond of agriculture like that! I immediately develop a crush on them when they say “what can I say? I’m a fruit who likes fruit”, like as opposed to a man who likes men or a woman who likes women.

The date goes really well. We complain about the dysfunctional queer communities we’ve been in, talk about our backgrounds and future plans, and go swimming in the ocean. We kiss a bunch in the ocean (!!) and then more back on land huddling under the towel for warmth. We watch the sunset together.

It’s kind of ridiculous how well we click with each other. We have similar modes of communication, similar ways of expressing affection, similar stims and tics, similar perspectives on the nature of intimacy and queer relationships, etc etc. it’s a lot. We basically go looking for the bottom of each other’s boundaries with respect to intimacy and we don’t find it. We are both very enriched by this.

At the end of the date before going home we make out in the back of my car for like 2 hours.

We decide that we’re pretty much dating now. (!!) We decide that there’s value in taking it slow past this point, something that we are both clearly bad at. This is going to be sort of enforced by that they’re going on a trip for a week starting Thursday. We decide on “fruitfriend” as our preferred gender neutral term for romantic partner.

We start to settle into some normal talking patterns on Tuesday evening and Wednesday.

However we also decide after much deliberation that it was a good idea for me to impulsively drive to their place Wednesday night so we could see each other again before their trip. I arrive at about 10:30pm and leave much later at 4am. Very few clothes were involved.

We’re kind of confused about why this is happening but we’re really not complaining!

Here are some facts about my new fruitfriend:

Rlly rlly cute

Like dang

Very Jewish. It seems like pretty much their entire life is informed by this

Leo sun Virgo moon Virgo rising

Just finished their undergrad (Jewish studies) last year and is living with their dad until they can find a job and move away

Vegan

Bad at video games apparently

A self-identified dumbass, but they seem pretty witty and insightful to me!

The farm thing is very real and very wild, they spent the whole summer living in a gay Jewish farming community

They can drive!

They’re pretty comfortable with polyamory. They have a boyfriend (?) still in college (this is in Milwaukee), and part of their trip is to visit him

They really REALLY like my Fruit Reviews, and gave me some fruit to review from their trees

I am so very gay

tl;dr I’m dating a cute fruit now

posts about them will be tagged #flf, for fruit-loving-fruit of course

[biomeberry]

My Equator (Patton’s Guide to Fatherhood #1)

Fandom: Thomas Sanders 

Pairings: Logan/Patton as a married couple, but this fic is family fluff so it’s not the focus :3

Summary: After getting their first son, Roman. Patton and Logan decide to adopt again. Virgil just wants to write poetry. Oh, and maybe have a family, that'd be nice. 

Read it on AO3

Everyone is tagged at the end! If you want me to tag you in future stuff, I’ll put a link to the post at the end! 

Patton stares out the window, watching the scenery fade from the familiar suburbs to dull cityscape. Logan squints as the sun hits his face, muttering something about safety, and even quieter, about the moron that just cut him off. Their son, eleven year old Roman, sprawls across the back seat, singing a Broadway song for the umpteenth time. Logan’s eyes flit up to the mirror to study him. “You've been going since this morning. Make sure you stay hydrated.” It's not aggressive so much as it's concerned parenting, so Roman just shrugs. “You said the best way to memorize is repetition.” “Well, don't let your audition get in the way of studying. Did you finish your assignment?” Roman stutters for a second. “Aw, come on! You teach that class! Give me a break.” Patton smiles before intervening. “Alright now. Honey, I'm sure Roman will finish it just fine. And Roman, listen to your father. He’s sometimes right,” “I’m always right!” “And you’ll feel better after you do the assignment. Besides, I'll give you a Patton the back just for the effort!” Both Husband and son groan, momentarily united in their hatred for Patton’s puns. He sometimes jokes that the best part about finally being a father was the opportunity for dad jokes. “Alright, here it is.” St. Joan’s Orphanage. The very place they'd adopted Roman several years ago. Logan slips out of the car, going to the trunk to grab a water. Patton grips his door handle, preparing to get out himself, when Roman suddenly speaks. “Dad?” “Yeah, Pumpkin?” Roman rolls his eyes at the nickname, but his voice is much softer than usual, his boisterous energy seeming to have drained. It's enough for Patton to let go of the door and turn around to face him. “When I get a sibling, you're not going to forget about me,right? I mean obviously,” He flashes a lopsided grin. “I'm unforgettable! But, well…” he trails off and Patton rushes to reassure him, every ounce of paternal instinct kicking in at once. “Of course not kiddo!” He hesitates for a moment. “You want a sibling, don't you?” Roman nods. “Yeah. I just…” His voice is barely above a whisper. “Nobody cared about me for a long time. And...well I don't want to lose you or Pop.” Patton steels himself. I'm not going to cry, that'll embarrass him. Instead he reaches out and gives the boy’s hand a firm squeeze. “Roman Sanders, you are my son and I love you. Nothing is ever going to change that.” Dang it, his voice cracked. Well, hiding emotions has never been his strong point. “I know.” Roman tries to be casual, but there’s a small smile spreading across his face. Patton smiles as well, part relief and part reveling in the knowledge that he's getting good at reading Roman, despite the preteen drama that comes with it. Speaking of which, the now cheerful boy leaps out of the car in an impressively graceful sashay. “Now, let's see who shall be worthy of becoming my knight!” He bounds up the familiar steps, juuust beating Logan to the door. Patton snorts, knowing the mildly competitive nature of both his loved ones. He heads inside himself, making a game of slipping in before the door shuts. It's an automatic door, but entertaining nonetheless. He lets out a sigh as the stifling heat of Florida is replaced with cool, artificial air. St. Joan's defies most orphanage stereotypes. There's no gloomy manor halls or cruel headmistress. Roman has mentioned on multiple occasions that it had been a good place. “But I did sing Hard Knock Life whenever I could.” “Mr. Sanders!” Patton looks up to see the receptionist, their face sporting a huge grin as Roman bounces around them, talking a mile a minute. “Heya Tayln! Long time no see!” He gives them a brief hug. “So I was told you were thinking of adopting again?” Logan nods while Patton beams. “Yup!” “Well, all the kids here are great, as I'm sure you know.” They smile at Roman. “Most of them are playing outside right now, so why don't you go out, see if there's anyone you really connect with? You can talk with one of the adoption agents in about an hour.” Patton places his hand in Logan’s, not missing the way his mouth twitches into a barely-suppressed smile. “That sounds great!” Roman leads them out of the foyer and through the halls until they reach the playground. He then runs off to greet a couple old friends. “I'm going to go this way, if that's alright.” Logan gestures to a group of girls constructing something in the sandpit. “Their structure has potential.” Patton laughs, kissing his husbands cheek. “Yeah, yeah okay. Go become the world's greatest sandbox architect.” Logan rolls his eyes and heads that way. Sometimes he and Roman are so similar it's shocking that they aren't biologically related. All the children look decently happy, which puts Patton at ease. Sad children were the actual worst thing! No one that young deserves to be unhappy. His eyes seem to follow his train of thought. They settle on a stubby willow tree resting on the outskirts of the yard. More accurately, they settle on the figure of a boy hunkered down beneath it, scribbling in a spiral notebook. Without thinking, he heads over to the tree. “Hey there.” The boy startles, apparently not having heard Patton’s approach. He doesn't look up, however. “Hi.” He continues to write (draw?) in the beat-up notebook. After a moment, Patton sits down next to him. Despite the temptation, he doesn't let himself look over the kid’s shoulder. He'd probably find it invasive. “Boy, it's nice and shady over here!” The boy’s eyes dart sideways and regard him with an “are you serious” expression. “Uh, yeah? I guess so.” The sit for another awkward moment. Patton hums the tune Roman has now forced into his brain. “Any reason in particular you aren't playing?” The boy sighs, finally looking up. “I don't want to. I'd rather write. Besides,” he looks back down. “They all think I'm weird anyway.” Patton can feel his heart break a little. “I don't think you're weird.” A snort. “Yeah, well you're an adult and you feel bad for me.” He goes back to writing. “What exactly are you writing, kiddo?” He shrugs. “Poetry, mostly.” He doesn't volunteer anything else. “Oh, my husband loves poetry!” The boy seems genuinely surprised by this. Patton guesses most people around him felt the same way about poetry as they did about him. “Really?” “Yup! Hey, why don't I drag him over here? I bet he'd love to hear what you think.” The other looks suddenly very nervous. “I mean yeah, okay, if you want. But I don't want to bother him, since you're obviously here to adopt.” “Aw, it's not a bother at at all! I bet he’ll think you're a really neat kid, uh,--” he stops, realizing he has no idea what the boy’s name is. “Virgil.” He says quietly. “Some people call me Verge.” He bites his lip awkwardly. “I'm Patton.” He smiles reassuringly. “Let me go get Logan, that's my husband’s name.” He dashes off, grabbing Logan quickly. He feels almost afraid that Virgil will disappear by the time he gets back. But when they return, he's still slumped at the base of the willow, spiral notebook now closed on his lap as he fidgets with his hoodie strings. “Logan, this is Virgil! Virgil, Logan.” “Hi?” “Virgil, like the Roman poet, I presume?” Virgil shrugs. “I guess.” “Speaking of which, Patton tells me you write poetry?” He nods, cautiously. “Yeah, mostly gothic stuff, but I did a couple sonnets for fun. Oh,” he grins a little. “I also have like seven pages of limericks.” Logan smiles back. Two seconds later, they've launched into an epic discussion of well, epics. Patton follows along as best as he can, throwing in an occasional “wow!” or “gosh golly!” But mostly, he leans against the cool, hopefully insect-free bark of the willow and listens. Eventually, he sneaks out to get Roman. The two boys study each other, and for a moment he worries that Roman will get all snarky and then everything will be a mess. But then, Roman cautiously asks if Virgil likes dragons and just like that, they're off on a conversation about mythical beasts and video games. They find out that Virgil is ten, his poetry is in fact impressive, especially for his age, and that he and Logan combined can absolutely roast Patton and Roman with three to four lines of poetry. Eventually, Tayln calls for the Sanders family to return inside to talk. “Bye Verge!” Roman stands up reluctantly. “Later, Princey.” He bids goodbye to Logan as well. “Hey Patton?” He gives a small, sad smile. “Thanks for talking to me. Whichever kid you adopt will be really lucky.” Patton doesn't know what to say, so he just hugs him. Virgil tenses in surprise, but quickly relaxes. “We’re going to be really lucky to have that kid.” He brushes the hair out of Virgil’s eyes. “At least, if he wants to be a member of our family.” Virgil makes a tiny gasping sound then squeezes Patton tighter. “Yeah, I think he'd like that a lot.”

Patton stares out the window, watching the landscape roll away once again. The amount of excited energy in the car makes the air feel like static. As they pull up to St. Joan's, a small figure leaps up from the stairs, lugging a suitcase and a notebook on the verge (heheh) of falling apart. Roman rolls down the window, sticking his entire torso out of it and causing Patton and Logan to exchange concerned looks over the safety of their child. “Hey little bro!” They step out of the car and all pile into a hug around the newest member of their family. He squirms, muttering about being unable to breathe and blushing furiously. All the same, he returns the hug. “All the paperwork has been finalized, which means we're ready to go.” Logan informs them. Roman demonstrates a feat of strength by attempting to Judo flip Virgil’s suitcase into the trunk. Admirably, he succeeds, but not without several additional scratches to their newly washed car. “Come on, get in!” Roman tugs on Virgil’s sleeve, all but dragging him to the door. Patton giggles. “Well, if you were going to change your mind it's too late, Roman has already moved on to the kidnapping phase of our plan.” Virgil snickers, but meets Patton’s eyes seriously all the same. “I wouldn't. Change my mind I mean.” Patton ruffles his hair. “I know. Oh! Before I forget…” He grabs a bag from the trunk. “This is for you. A welcome home gift.” He pulls out a brand new, leather notebook. Virgil’s eyes go wide. “No way! For me.” “Yup! It's all yours!” Virgil dives in for a second hug. “Thank you,” He looks up at Patton and smiles. “Dad.”

“DAAAAAAD” Roman’s shriek comes from down the hall. “Verge stole my sword!” “You were trying to hit me with it!” Comes Virgil’s slightly less shrieky response. Logan lets out a long sigh from his position next to Patton on the couch. “And I'd almost started reading, imagine that.” There's a loud crash from down the hall, followed by scuffling. Logan groans again. “I'll go see.” “Thanks, Love!” Patton calls after him. A moment later there's another crash. “Nicola Tesla!” He gets up, mildly concerned, and heads to Roman’s room. What he finds is Roman, predictably, being held at sword point by his brother, slightly less predictably. Logan is on the floor, appearing to have tripped over some complicated booby trap rigged by Roman. All three of them look guiltily at Patton as he steps in. He takes a moment to fix his “disappointed dad” look on each one of them before his allows himself to crack a smile. Then, he swoops in and wraps his arms around Virgil. “Run, Prince Roman! I'll save you from the rogue knight!” Roman grins and dashes out. “Heyy, no fair!” Virgil complains. “Stop him!” Logan complies, grabbing at one of Roman’s ankles. In retaliation, Roman grabs the ends of Patton’s sweater, and his grip on Virgil sends them both tumbling to the ground. They all end up in a pile on a bean bag, out of breath and giggling. For a reason he can't quite explain, Patton feels emotion welling up. He looks from his husband to his two sons. It's taken a while to build this family, more twists and turns than anyone could have predicted. It was a whole lot of arguments and complications and heart ache. But it was also wonderful, and beautiful. Above all else, it was a family. And that was all Patton could ever ask for.

And there you have it. Tagging the lovely @nyifmet @phantom-opera and @funsizedgremlin ! If you’d like to be tagged in my future fics like or reblog this post over here Thanks for reading, as always, I hope it made you smile!

[becky-helene]

a wild rambling long post appears

Is it weird that I’m excited for Mass Effect Andromeda….even though I’ve never played any of the Mass Effect games?

Or, is me thinking it’s weird the truly weird thing?

I haven’t played the ME games for the same reason I haven’t played DAO or DA2 in a very long while: PS4 player, and attempting to play DAO on PC a little while ago showed me that, other than Sims, I’m a console player through and through. I just didn’t enjoy Origins as I did playing it when I was on my PS3. And even the fact of that’s the only way I can play previous games wasn’t enough to make me power through my console>pc feelings.

It would’ve been great if I had had this thought of “let’s try Mass Effect!” back when my PS3 was still in the land of the living, but alas, one cannot go back in time. Dang.

And unfortunately, playstation hasn’t joined Xbox in the whole backwards compatibility for some games, ME included, thing. Dang again.

I’ve played DAI over and over again. I’m on my 23rd/24th Inquisitor (according to the save files, its 23, but Dragon Age Keep has me at 24, so I may have accidentally deleted an Inquisitor from the save files….oops. Here’s hoping if/when [it had better be *when*, Bioware] we have DA4, it’s like DAI where you import from the keep, and not dao->DA2 where it went via a save file. Or if DA4 has option for either way to import previous game).

And, mind you, that’s 23/24 *just* on PS4 (since late August/early September-ish 2015). Throw in all the PS3 game saves I lost in the “great PS3 meltdown of July 2015 which happened while I had let my ps plus subscription lapse so oh yay no online storage and therefore resetting PS3 to give it a, albeit short, life extension led to losing alllll my saves, and yes I know it’s been a year and a half but I’m still upset about it okay!”, the total bumps up to close to, if not over, 40.

I’m not bored with the game, since clearly I still enjoy it enough to keep on making new games, but it’s at the point where I’ve done all that can be done (barring some exceptions…of the Qunari alliance, and Cullen staying on lyrium indefinitely variety…..because NOPE. They were nope before Trespasser, and even bigger nope after hearing what happens in or after Trespasser if those choices had been made. Never have done them, and never will do them. Nope). I’ve romanced everyone at least once, played all the races, different personality types (though, not all. Even in a game I can’t be completely mean and ruthless, as my whopping 1 time playing a redHawke in DA2 showed me), Mages, Templars, different Divines, all that. It’s all revisiting it at this point.

Which, again, is still enjoyable. But now I’m wanting that feeling I had in the first few handful of playthroughs where everything was a new experience.

I’ve thought about getting into like Skyrim or something to have something “new” to play, but I’m on the fence. Given my history with video games (long story short….I know, too late….before DAI I felt like I ~couldn’t~ play any video game beyond Sims or fighting games. I’d try, have difficulty doing even simple things, get frustrated, give up, and convince myself I was just too stupid for Rpg/action/adventure/etc type video games. Playing DAI, and going back and playing Origins and DA2 pulled me out of that mentality), I’m just worried I’ll revert to that old thinking the second I get frustrated. Then again, dragon age has built up my video game confidence somewhat that maybe I wouldn’t…I don’t know. Skyrim remains a possibility for the future, I guess.

I know Mass Effect =\= Dragon Age, but meh, both are Bioware, and I keep hearing how Andromeda is going to have some similar things from Inquisition (like crafting! Yes! Oh how I’ve become a crafting addict. I feel like, other than parts it plays if doing Before The Dawn, the only reason I go to Emprise De Leon is for the plentiful tier 3 crafting items gathered or dropped by like Snowfleurs or Red Templars lol. Hell, most of the time I only play The Descent past the opening just to get the barrel with the dragon crafting stuff lol. I think I’ve played all of descent maybe 3 or 4 times, done half of it a few more…..and a lot of just getting to setting up camp so as to get the goods lol) and all that, so….yeah I’m excited for that. Replaying DAI….without replaying it lol.

I guess I’m overthinking and wondering, do I have the “right” to be excited and feeling like omg I have to get it day one.

I’ve had sort of similar thoughts about dragon age in the past. I got into it through Inquisition, and even that was months after it’d been out, then went back and played the previous two games about two months into dragon age obsession. I felt like I was tardy to the party, not to mention not having “earned my stripes” of like waiting and excitedly anticipating the next game in the serious gobbling up the slightest crumb of news.

Trespasser was the great equalizer, since then yeah I was right there freaking out over the trailer release right along with other folks, and now the speculating and waiting and GOD DAMNIT BIOWARE WHEN ARE YOU AT THE VERY LEAST GOING TO CONFIRM THERE WILL BE A DA4 has done the rest of the balancing out differences between newer fans and those who’ve been around for years. So, that’s lessened my feelings of “do I have a right to be excited/love it to this extent?” Because the answer is yes, yes I do.

It’s different with ME because, in not playing it, the excitement is without the proper context. It’s like when I was playing DAI before I went back and played the other two. “Oh okay Hero of Ferelden, Champion of Kirkwall, Alistair, Archdemon, Anders blowing up the chantry etc etc…..those are important things…..oh yeah totally know that…..cuz I read it on the wiki….ahem…..”

So when I read/hear people talking about Andromeda in possible similarities/differences/general comparison to the previous games, I’m just like “….yay?…..is that….is that good?” To myself. I’m more excited for it on the basis of “new game! New rpg! New Bioware game!” than others who are “new Mass Effect!!” excited.

Ah well, at least there’s being excited for Injustice 2 as well. Played and loved first Injustice, so my feelings of “oooomg that trailer why isn’t it may yet!” has a lot less “yeah, but have I ~earned~ the right to be excited?” mixed in it.

My only “hmm, I may have messed up” feelings there are from chastising myself for not sticking with the Injustice comics and only reading the first 2-3 ‘years’ of it, lol.

[michaelfallcon]

Sarah Gill Of Mama Mocha’s: The Sprudge Interview

The Barista Championship Qualifiers in Nashville in January was characterized by cool, collected baristas delivering academic routines and meaningful conversations (revisit all the action on Sprudge Live here and here). But in an afternoon of weighty work, a barista named Sarah Gill—owner of Mama Mocha’s in Auburn, Alabama—stepped up to the stage and delivered a perfomance full of life and self.

“Most people call me Mama Mocha,” she started, then delivered a performance so full of infectious laughter and Southern charm that the crowd erupted into delighted cheers every time she addressed them. When the lid to her ice cream popped off and unexpectedly hit a judge, she turned to make a joke out of it with the crowd, encouraging everyone (including the judge) to laugh about it with her. If you missed her performance, you really owe it to yourself to go back and watch—it’s available here. (Start at 6:44:19 for Gill.

Gill ended up officially disqualified from the competition due to time, but did so with such grace, humor, and charm that she walked away a deserving crowd favorite. There is no “People’s Choice” honorarium in the USBC circuit; perhaps there should be.

I caught up Sarah Gill by phone a week later to talk about all things Southern, being a mama and entrepreneur, and what competing in Nashville meant to her.

This interview has been condensed for clarity.

Introduce us to your work as Mama Mocha.

I’m a mama to one rambunctious son. Our family is the most important thing, and that means doing business the old fashioned way. He comes with me to work, and someday he’ll help out in the shop. I started Mama Mocha’s Coffee Emporium about 10 years ago. We were born in a tiny 11 ft x 16 ft room in the back of Newsroom, a used book store where all the baristas went to hang out in Auburn, Alabama. The store was doing a tiny espresso bar with pour-overs, no batch brewing at all. Everyone was like, “What is this?” It was very new for people then.

When I bought the bar and started Mama Mocha’s, I wanted to do it without the trendiness, which I think has been to my benefit. I was able to make my own flavor, my own style of how I roast and brew. We aren’t the million-dollar white box that is trendy other places. Where I am it’s a bunch of thrift store velvet couches with classic darker roasts in mismatched cups. Our location in Opelika has a covered front porch and a bodega where people walk up. It’s the South: We still love biscuits and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but we’re drinking specialty coffee.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Gill.

How did you get into coffee in Alabama? How did you get into roasting?

I was working at a Starbucks, and they wanted to make me a GM at 19. But I saw the hard lines on all of the managers faces around me, saw my future in that, and thought, “Hell no.” So I moved to Auburn and started working in independent coffee. In 2009, I went to the SCAA conference and realized, “Oh, I can open a roasting company.”

I learned roasting all my dang self. Auburn was very much an island. I didn’t have anywhere to go to learn coffee. I talked to people in Atlanta, I went to SCAA conferences, I read everything I could online, I got books. When I bought a tiny three kilo roaster, I didn’t know anything about anything. I roasted 14 hours a day over and over again until I liked what I was making. It was hard, but I didn’t have any choice but to make it work. It was bootstrapping times 10.

What is it like running an independent specialty shop in a small town?

Today, we have a full roastery in the Lebanon Art District of Opelika, Alabama. Opelika doesn’t allow corporations in; there’s only small businesses, families supporting families. So we bootstrapped again and opened in an old warehouse there, where the streets are rough and it’s just gritty enough to be cool. My husband (Taylor Gill, but everyone calls him Papa Mocha) did all the construction to make it work for us. Now there’s a bodega in the front, and a sensory lab in the back where we cup all our coffee. We use language that mimics the Sensory Lexicon. Our baristas are all career baristas, they’re the shining light of Mama Mocha’s.

We’re not in a giant metropolis. I’m happy in my small community, roasting for shops close enough to personally deliver to. We love supporting local, and supporting women-owned businesses. I am all about community over competition and supporting other cafes in my neighborhood. I feel sad that I have to say this, but we’re a safe space. I’m a cisgendered straight married white woman, but I’m progressive and an LGBTQ ally. I’m a Christian but Mama Mocha’s is not a Christian company. Christianity and coffee are real close in the South, but one of our only rules is no proselytization in the cafe. I want anyone to come in and not feel like there’s an agenda against them.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Gill.

How did competing in Nashville feel to you?

The other people in this competition are totally unlike me, a different breed of barista. They are like mixologists and I’m not doing that. When I was training, it was on a $1,000 espresso machine and a KitchenAid burr grinder. When I got there, I thought I was going to be nervous, but it was really easy to hold my head up high because I’ve already built my legacy. I’m not trying to prove myself. Even though it was the most glorious display of crash and burn I’ve ever done [Gill went more than a minute over time and didn’t finish her signature beverage] it felt awesome to tell my story and let go of the point system.

As soon as I let go, I could feel the audience’s sense of relief. It was an energy shift that erupted into laughter and cheers. They knew I didn’t give a shit, that I wasn’t restricted by the same scripts and cadence that’s been done in the past. I wasn’t trying to make a mockery of the point system and everything US Coffee Champs has built—but there’s more to being a barista than just those parameters. The process was so good for me. Developing the routine got me back to my roots, it developed a fire behind me that I haven’t had for a while. I left Nashville with such a great feeling of accomplishment.

Talk us through the signature beverage you made.

I was originally going to do a play on the beverage-that-shall-not-be-named, a dark brown sugar quad latte over tapioca pearls, but was told I couldn’t because it had to be drinkable. I watched videos of people smoking stuff and adding two grams of God-knows-what and thought, “This is so extra.” I wanted to honor what Mama Mocha’s coffee style and come up with a compromise between what I know and love as Southern coffee culture and what I saw in the videos, so I came up with something similar to a classic espresso affogato.

But I can’t make ice cream! My ice cream would be awful. I love Häagen-Dazs, so I used their vanilla. I muddled it because when you just pour espresso over ice cream it doesn’t drink well. So it was essentially a hand-muddled espresso milkshake. Monin makes this dope line of concentrated flavors, so I added their basil concentrate, as well as a wreath of rosemary around the bottom of the glass for extra olfactory herbal play. I smoked the glasses using a pecan log. On stage in Nashville I was behind, so I cut this out, but the drink was supposed to include smoking satsuma peels with the log, then I was going to rim the glass with the peel and use dragonfruit as an accoutrement to mimic the juiciness of the espresso. I call it The Bougie Bouquet, and it’s delicious.

Sara Frinak cheering on Gill.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank?

Sara Frinak, who manages Brewers Cup, was one of the starting baristas at Newsroom. She grew up in Auburn, she was a roaster and manager for me for a long time, and now she works for Ally, one of my importers. She was the one who came to me and said, “Mama, you need to be a competitor.” She encouraged me to go to preliminaries, and then she came and helped me piece together a routine and play mad scientist.

And of course I have to thank my sweet husband Papa Gill, my entire staff who are the heart beat of Mama Mocha’s, my mom and dad who always have my back, and God.

Valorie Clark (@TheValorieClark) is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. Read more Valorie Clark on Sprudge.

All photos by Charlie Burt for the Sprudge Media Network unless otherwise noted.

The post Sarah Gill Of Mama Mocha’s: The Sprudge Interview appeared first on Sprudge.

Sarah Gill Of Mama Mocha’s: The Sprudge Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

[epchapman89]

Sarah Gill Of Mama Mocha’s: The Sprudge Interview

The Barista Championship Qualifiers in Nashville in January was characterized by cool, collected baristas delivering academic routines and meaningful conversations (revisit all the action on Sprudge Live here and here). But in an afternoon of weighty work, a barista named Sarah Gill—owner of Mama Mocha’s in Auburn, Alabama—stepped up to the stage and delivered a perfomance full of life and self.

“Most people call me Mama Mocha,” she started, then delivered a performance so full of infectious laughter and Southern charm that the crowd erupted into delighted cheers every time she addressed them. When the lid to her ice cream popped off and unexpectedly hit a judge, she turned to make a joke out of it with the crowd, encouraging everyone (including the judge) to laugh about it with her. If you missed her performance, you really owe it to yourself to go back and watch—it’s available here. (Start at 6:44:19 for Gill.

Gill ended up officially disqualified from the competition due to time, but did so with such grace, humor, and charm that she walked away a deserving crowd favorite. There is no “People’s Choice” honorarium in the USBC circuit; perhaps there should be.

I caught up Sarah Gill by phone a week later to talk about all things Southern, being a mama and entrepreneur, and what competing in Nashville meant to her.

This interview has been condensed for clarity.

Introduce us to your work as Mama Mocha.

I’m a mama to one rambunctious son. Our family is the most important thing, and that means doing business the old fashioned way. He comes with me to work, and someday he’ll help out in the shop. I started Mama Mocha’s Coffee Emporium about 10 years ago. We were born in a tiny 11 ft x 16 ft room in the back of Newsroom, a used book store where all the baristas went to hang out in Auburn, Alabama. The store was doing a tiny espresso bar with pour-overs, no batch brewing at all. Everyone was like, “What is this?” It was very new for people then.

When I bought the bar and started Mama Mocha’s, I wanted to do it without the trendiness, which I think has been to my benefit. I was able to make my own flavor, my own style of how I roast and brew. We aren’t the million-dollar white box that is trendy other places. Where I am it’s a bunch of thrift store velvet couches with classic darker roasts in mismatched cups. Our location in Opelika has a covered front porch and a bodega where people walk up. It’s the South: We still love biscuits and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but we’re drinking specialty coffee.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Gill.

How did you get into coffee in Alabama? How did you get into roasting?

I was working at a Starbucks, and they wanted to make me a GM at 19. But I saw the hard lines on all of the managers faces around me, saw my future in that, and thought, “Hell no.” So I moved to Auburn and started working in independent coffee. In 2009, I went to the SCAA conference and realized, “Oh, I can open a roasting company.”

I learned roasting all my dang self. Auburn was very much an island. I didn’t have anywhere to go to learn coffee. I talked to people in Atlanta, I went to SCAA conferences, I read everything I could online, I got books. When I bought a tiny three kilo roaster, I didn’t know anything about anything. I roasted 14 hours a day over and over again until I liked what I was making. It was hard, but I didn’t have any choice but to make it work. It was bootstrapping times 10.

What is it like running an independent specialty shop in a small town?

Today, we have a full roastery in the Lebanon Art District of Opelika, Alabama. Opelika doesn’t allow corporations in; there’s only small businesses, families supporting families. So we bootstrapped again and opened in an old warehouse there, where the streets are rough and it’s just gritty enough to be cool. My husband (Taylor Gill, but everyone calls him Papa Mocha) did all the construction to make it work for us. Now there’s a bodega in the front, and a sensory lab in the back where we cup all our coffee. We use language that mimics the Sensory Lexicon. Our baristas are all career baristas, they’re the shining light of Mama Mocha’s.

We’re not in a giant metropolis. I’m happy in my small community, roasting for shops close enough to personally deliver to. We love supporting local, and supporting women-owned businesses. I am all about community over competition and supporting other cafes in my neighborhood. I feel sad that I have to say this, but we’re a safe space. I’m a cisgendered straight married white woman, but I’m progressive and an LGBTQ ally. I’m a Christian but Mama Mocha’s is not a Christian company. Christianity and coffee are real close in the South, but one of our only rules is no proselytization in the cafe. I want anyone to come in and not feel like there’s an agenda against them.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Gill.

How did competing in Nashville feel to you?

The other people in this competition are totally unlike me, a different breed of barista. They are like mixologists and I’m not doing that. When I was training, it was on a $1,000 espresso machine and a KitchenAid burr grinder. When I got there, I thought I was going to be nervous, but it was really easy to hold my head up high because I’ve already built my legacy. I’m not trying to prove myself. Even though it was the most glorious display of crash and burn I’ve ever done [Gill went more than a minute over time and didn’t finish her signature beverage] it felt awesome to tell my story and let go of the point system.

As soon as I let go, I could feel the audience’s sense of relief. It was an energy shift that erupted into laughter and cheers. They knew I didn’t give a shit, that I wasn’t restricted by the same scripts and cadence that’s been done in the past. I wasn’t trying to make a mockery of the point system and everything US Coffee Champs has built—but there’s more to being a barista than just those parameters. The process was so good for me. Developing the routine got me back to my roots, it developed a fire behind me that I haven’t had for a while. I left Nashville with such a great feeling of accomplishment.

Talk us through the signature beverage you made.

I was originally going to do a play on the beverage-that-shall-not-be-named, a dark brown sugar quad latte over tapioca pearls, but was told I couldn’t because it had to be drinkable. I watched videos of people smoking stuff and adding two grams of God-knows-what and thought, “This is so extra.” I wanted to honor what Mama Mocha’s coffee style and come up with a compromise between what I know and love as Southern coffee culture and what I saw in the videos, so I came up with something similar to a classic espresso affogato.

But I can’t make ice cream! My ice cream would be awful. I love Häagen-Dazs, so I used their vanilla. I muddled it because when you just pour espresso over ice cream it doesn’t drink well. So it was essentially a hand-muddled espresso milkshake. Monin makes this dope line of concentrated flavors, so I added their basil concentrate, as well as a wreath of rosemary around the bottom of the glass for extra olfactory herbal play. I smoked the glasses using a pecan log. On stage in Nashville I was behind, so I cut this out, but the drink was supposed to include smoking satsuma peels with the log, then I was going to rim the glass with the peel and use dragonfruit as an accoutrement to mimic the juiciness of the espresso. I call it The Bougie Bouquet, and it’s delicious.

Sara Frinak cheering on Gill.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank?

Sara Frinak, who manages Brewers Cup, was one of the starting baristas at Newsroom. She grew up in Auburn, she was a roaster and manager for me for a long time, and now she works for Ally, one of my importers. She was the one who came to me and said, “Mama, you need to be a competitor.” She encouraged me to go to preliminaries, and then she came and helped me piece together a routine and play mad scientist.

And of course I have to thank my sweet husband Papa Gill, my entire staff who are the heart beat of Mama Mocha’s, my mom and dad who always have my back, and God.

Valorie Clark (@TheValorieClark) is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. Read more Valorie Clark on Sprudge.

All photos by Charlie Burt for the Sprudge Media Network unless otherwise noted.

The post Sarah Gill Of Mama Mocha’s: The Sprudge Interview appeared first on Sprudge.

seen 1st on http://sprudge.com

[mrwilliamcharley]

Sarah Gill Of Mama Mocha’s: The Sprudge Interview

The Barista Championship Qualifiers in Nashville in January was characterized by cool, collected baristas delivering academic routines and meaningful conversations (revisit all the action on Sprudge Live here and here). But in an afternoon of weighty work, a barista named Sarah Gill—owner of Mama Mocha’s in Auburn, Alabama—stepped up to the stage and delivered a perfomance full of life and self.

“Most people call me Mama Mocha,” she started, then delivered a performance so full of infectious laughter and Southern charm that the crowd erupted into delighted cheers every time she addressed them. When the lid to her ice cream popped off and unexpectedly hit a judge, she turned to make a joke out of it with the crowd, encouraging everyone (including the judge) to laugh about it with her. If you missed her performance, you really owe it to yourself to go back and watch—it’s available here. (Start at 6:44:19 for Gill.

Gill ended up officially disqualified from the competition due to time, but did so with such grace, humor, and charm that she walked away a deserving crowd favorite. There is no “People’s Choice” honorarium in the USBC circuit; perhaps there should be.

I caught up Sarah Gill by phone a week later to talk about all things Southern, being a mama and entrepreneur, and what competing in Nashville meant to her.

This interview has been condensed for clarity.

Introduce us to your work as Mama Mocha.

I’m a mama to one rambunctious son. Our family is the most important thing, and that means doing business the old fashioned way. He comes with me to work, and someday he’ll help out in the shop. I started Mama Mocha’s Coffee Emporium about 10 years ago. We were born in a tiny 11 ft x 16 ft room in the back of Newsroom, a used book store where all the baristas went to hang out in Auburn, Alabama. The store was doing a tiny espresso bar with pour-overs, no batch brewing at all. Everyone was like, “What is this?” It was very new for people then.

When I bought the bar and started Mama Mocha’s, I wanted to do it without the trendiness, which I think has been to my benefit. I was able to make my own flavor, my own style of how I roast and brew. We aren’t the million-dollar white box that is trendy other places. Where I am it’s a bunch of thrift store velvet couches with classic darker roasts in mismatched cups. Our location in Opelika has a covered front porch and a bodega where people walk up. It’s the South: We still love biscuits and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but we’re drinking specialty coffee.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Gill.

How did you get into coffee in Alabama? How did you get into roasting?

I was working at a Starbucks, and they wanted to make me a GM at 19. But I saw the hard lines on all of the managers faces around me, saw my future in that, and thought, “Hell no.” So I moved to Auburn and started working in independent coffee. In 2009, I went to the SCAA conference and realized, “Oh, I can open a roasting company.”

I learned roasting all my dang self. Auburn was very much an island. I didn’t have anywhere to go to learn coffee. I talked to people in Atlanta, I went to SCAA conferences, I read everything I could online, I got books. When I bought a tiny three kilo roaster, I didn’t know anything about anything. I roasted 14 hours a day over and over again until I liked what I was making. It was hard, but I didn’t have any choice but to make it work. It was bootstrapping times 10.

What is it like running an independent specialty shop in a small town?

Today, we have a full roastery in the Lebanon Art District of Opelika, Alabama. Opelika doesn’t allow corporations in; there’s only small businesses, families supporting families. So we bootstrapped again and opened in an old warehouse there, where the streets are rough and it’s just gritty enough to be cool. My husband (Taylor Gill, but everyone calls him Papa Mocha) did all the construction to make it work for us. Now there’s a bodega in the front, and a sensory lab in the back where we cup all our coffee. We use language that mimics the Sensory Lexicon. Our baristas are all career baristas, they’re the shining light of Mama Mocha’s.

We’re not in a giant metropolis. I’m happy in my small community, roasting for shops close enough to personally deliver to. We love supporting local, and supporting women-owned businesses. I am all about community over competition and supporting other cafes in my neighborhood. I feel sad that I have to say this, but we’re a safe space. I’m a cisgendered straight married white woman, but I’m progressive and an LGBTQ ally. I’m a Christian but Mama Mocha’s is not a Christian company. Christianity and coffee are real close in the South, but one of our only rules is no proselytization in the cafe. I want anyone to come in and not feel like there’s an agenda against them.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Gill.

How did competing in Nashville feel to you?

The other people in this competition are totally unlike me, a different breed of barista. They are like mixologists and I’m not doing that. When I was training, it was on a $1,000 espresso machine and a KitchenAid burr grinder. When I got there, I thought I was going to be nervous, but it was really easy to hold my head up high because I’ve already built my legacy. I’m not trying to prove myself. Even though it was the most glorious display of crash and burn I’ve ever done [Gill went more than a minute over time and didn’t finish her signature beverage] it felt awesome to tell my story and let go of the point system.

As soon as I let go, I could feel the audience’s sense of relief. It was an energy shift that erupted into laughter and cheers. They knew I didn’t give a shit, that I wasn’t restricted by the same scripts and cadence that’s been done in the past. I wasn’t trying to make a mockery of the point system and everything US Coffee Champs has built—but there’s more to being a barista than just those parameters. The process was so good for me. Developing the routine got me back to my roots, it developed a fire behind me that I haven’t had for a while. I left Nashville with such a great feeling of accomplishment.

Talk us through the signature beverage you made.

I was originally going to do a play on the beverage-that-shall-not-be-named, a dark brown sugar quad latte over tapioca pearls, but was told I couldn’t because it had to be drinkable. I watched videos of people smoking stuff and adding two grams of God-knows-what and thought, “This is so extra.” I wanted to honor what Mama Mocha’s coffee style and come up with a compromise between what I know and love as Southern coffee culture and what I saw in the videos, so I came up with something similar to a classic espresso affogato.

But I can’t make ice cream! My ice cream would be awful. I love Häagen-Dazs, so I used their vanilla. I muddled it because when you just pour espresso over ice cream it doesn’t drink well. So it was essentially a hand-muddled espresso milkshake. Monin makes this dope line of concentrated flavors, so I added their basil concentrate, as well as a wreath of rosemary around the bottom of the glass for extra olfactory herbal play. I smoked the glasses using a pecan log. On stage in Nashville I was behind, so I cut this out, but the drink was supposed to include smoking satsuma peels with the log, then I was going to rim the glass with the peel and use dragonfruit as an accoutrement to mimic the juiciness of the espresso. I call it The Bougie Bouquet, and it’s delicious.

Sara Frinak cheering on Gill.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank?

Sara Frinak, who manages Brewers Cup, was one of the starting baristas at Newsroom. She grew up in Auburn, she was a roaster and manager for me for a long time, and now she works for Ally, one of my importers. She was the one who came to me and said, “Mama, you need to be a competitor.” She encouraged me to go to preliminaries, and then she came and helped me piece together a routine and play mad scientist.

And of course I have to thank my sweet husband Papa Gill, my entire staff who are the heart beat of Mama Mocha’s, my mom and dad who always have my back, and God.

Valorie Clark (@TheValorieClark) is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. Read more Valorie Clark on Sprudge.

All photos by Charlie Burt for the Sprudge Media Network unless otherwise noted.

The post Sarah Gill Of Mama Mocha’s: The Sprudge Interview appeared first on Sprudge.

from Sprudge http://bit.ly/2sWj335

[restate30201]

Cynthia Nixon, NY Governor?! Her Real Estate Story Will Shock You Even More

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for IFP

Cynthia Nixon‘s run for governor has New Yorkers in a tizzy! And for good reason: In the “Sex and the City” star’s much-buzzed-about Twitter video announcing her candidacy, she bills herself as a “lifelong New Yorker.” “New York is my home,” she says. “I’ve never lived anywhere else … [and] our leaders are letting us down.”

How this political smackdown between Nixon and incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo will go is anyone’s guess at this point. But in the meantime, we got curious about this “lifelong New Yorker’s” real estate story. What’s that like?

Currently, Nixon reportedly owns a four-bedroom co-op on Bleecker Street with her wife, purchased in 2012 for $3.25 million. In 2016, she also bought a two-bedroom apartment in the East Village for $1.49 million, then put some friends on the lease as co-owners (which certainly suggests she’s a generous soul).

I love New York, and today I’m announcing my candidacy for governor. Join us: https://t.co/9DwsxWW8xX pic.twitter.com/kYTvx6GZiD

— Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) March 19, 2018

But Nixon’s adventures in New York real estate go back much further than that. We unearthed an obscure foodie site called The New Potato, which interviewed Nixon in 2017 and asked her a surprisingly revealing question: What’s the worst advice she’s ever received?

“The worst advice I’ve ever received was from an accountant, when I was a young woman,” she said. “When I was about 25, I wanted to buy my first apartment. My accountant said I couldn’t afford it, and he tried to scare me out of it. It was a two-bedroom on 86th and West End, and it was selling for, like, $250,000. I ignored him.”

The aspiring actress bought the place—and this early foothold likely helped her become that “lifelong New Yorker” she is today (that, and an HBO hit show, of course).

But is Nixon trying to say something important about real estate to the rest of us, too?

What Cynthia Nixon’s real estate story is trying to tell us

As a New Yorker since 1995—and a homeowner who purchased a Brooklyn co-op in 2002—I constantly hear renters say, “I shoulda/woulda/coulda bought a place in New York long ago.” Now, however, they say they can’t afford to buy; prices are just too dang high. They missed the home-buying train, and it’s not worth even trying to catch up.

But are they wrong?

Dolly Lenz, who’s been a top real estate agent in New York for the past 30 years, encounters this question almost daily from her clients.

“They say, ‘I could rent for $6,000 a month, or buy for $8,000. What should I do?'” she says. “But even now, I tell most buyers the opposite of what Nixon’s accountant said: You can’t afford to not buy in New York.”

Yes, home prices are high. “But odds are, they’re just going to get higher,” Lenz points out. “So as long as you plan to stay put for at least five years, it’s a winning proposition.”

Currently, Lenz’s 27-year-old daughter, Jenny, is apartment shopping.

“Even she asks, ‘Mom, should I really buy or should I rent?'” Lenz says. “I tell her the best thing is to get in the game. If you’re not in the game, you can’t win. Generally the ones who buy look back and say, ‘Wow, I’m so happy I did that.'”

Lenz also thinks buying a home makes sense, particularly for young people, for a totally different reason from real estate appreciation.

“It’s forced savings,” Lenz says. Rather than paying rent, which goes down the drain, mortgage payments help homeowners gain wealth over time.

Lenz, in fact, bought her first apartment in New York’s Murray Hill when she was 18.

“It was a 250-square-foot studio with a window facing a brick wall,” she recalls. “I paid $53,000 for it. I don’t still own it, but today, it’s probably worth $900,000.”

She bought seven more places by the time she was 22. Yes, seven.

How to buy a home when you ‘can’t afford it’

So what’s the secret to buying in New York? No, it’s not a time machine back to 1991. It is to downsize your present-day ideals.

“If you say, ‘I only want to live in the West Village,’ you won’t have a lot of choices,” Lenz points out. “If you can’t afford Manhattan, look in Brooklyn. If you can’t afford in Brooklyn, look in Queens. If you can’t afford a one-bedroom, get a studio.”

Or a roommate—which is what New York real estate agent Louise Phillips Forbes did back in the day when she was told, similar to Nixon, that she couldn’t afford to purchase her first apartment on the Upper West Side.

“It is worthwhile to ‘beg, borrow, or steal’ to own a home,” Forbes says.

“If the area you live in is too expensive, go farther out to see what you can get, or consider another geographic location altogether—perhaps a place you like visiting or envision moving to someday,” says Florida real estate agent Cara Ameer. “Try to find the hidden gems, and lock into what you can afford—perhaps that’s something that you can rent out and at least cover most of your costs while it appreciates.”

And this real estate lesson may be true not only for New Yorkers, but also anyone who’s given up on their home-buying dreams.

“I let a good one get away in a very high-appreciating area myself,” Ameer admits. “Here I was, stupidly showing this property, when I should have been considering buying it for me and my husband. Flash-forward five years later, and this property has just about doubled in value.”

The post Cynthia Nixon, NY Governor?! Her Real Estate Story Will Shock You Even More appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2HMGYr2

[winsirius]

Oh my!!!! I am so late!!!! It’s been few months since my last music/music video review.

I am so bad.

This post gets delayed again and again, along with the other song “Jamashinaide HERE WE GO”. I promise to post the latter soon.

So!

Without further a do, I will now share to you my review of the 2nd Song in the latest single of Morning Musume。’17.

  I will be very honest with you, I almost couldn’t listen to this song. Why? Well, this is Kudo Haruka’s graduation song. It was hard. And as a fan of the 10th generation of the group, I know this is a special song to them. I may not be a huge fan of Duu, she is still part of the 10th gen, so she is still precious.

Song:

Wow. I didn’t expect Morning Musume。’17 would sing a house music type of song. Dang! This was a splendid surprise. The song is upbeat and simple. It sounds so tropical and easy to listen. It’s refreshing, I really really like it. But at the same time you can hear a hint of melancholy in the music. It’s not only melancholy I’m hearing, I can also hear happiness and full of hope in the voices of the members. The way they sing the song, its full of mix emotions. Well, it is understandable, one of their prominent member will be leaving. Oh my…I can already forsee the performance of this song on Duu’s graduation, It’s going to be a crying fest. Damn. I think I might cry too.

Everyone sounded really good in the song. The division of lines was not that bad. Most of it are sang by groups, which made the song soothing in the ears. In this song, it features Akane, Reina, & Maria some simple singing parts in the 2nd verse. I think the reason for giving them lines, was the fact that these 3 are the current youngsters and babies of the group, like how Duu was the youngest few years ago. Nice nice. I also really really liked how the 2nd chorus was done, I am after all a 10th generation fan. One by one the 10th generation members sing along with Duu, uuuuwwwwaaaaaaa Love it.

Lyrics:

The lyrics….makes me cry.

It’s full of hope, fear, desire, happiness, & more…those emotions, mixed up together… uuuwwwwaaaaaa. This is really good. This might be the best graduation song I have ever heard (well, I don’t consider Endless Sky as Riho’s graduation song…lol).

Oohoohooh, the good thing about this song lyrics is that its not only for Duu’s graduation, the song can resonate well to all the youngsters out there. It’s about us, knowing more about life, the struggles, the achievements…we make mistakes, we desire stuff, we have dreams…after all, we are young anyway. 🙂

This song is like a yell song for the youth and about youth. 😉

Music Video:

Out of all the music videos released in this 64th single (Jama Shinaide Here We Go! / Dokyuu no Go Sign / Wakaindashi!), I watched this music video last. Cuz I know how special this music video was. It even had a ‘complete version’ in the limited edition release of the single, where it features some clips before and after the music video. It was that special. Duu was that special.

At the start of the music video, we see Duu crying. The hell!! Uuuuwwwwaaaaa… It’s already a sad and heatbreaking MV for me. This is hard. How can I continue watching this MV when at the start I already saw a crying Duu. T_T

The next sequence shows the members, in white dress with a white background as their back drop, dances to the beat of the song. First glance to the dance, I already knew I’m not a fan of it. Sorry.

Why am I not a fan? Well for me, it doesn’t look cool, it looks more like an interpretative dance, which I am not a fan of.

It is indeed limitless…

Duu starts the song by singing the first line of the chorus solo. Wooohh!! Nice nice.

…unless you reached the outmost atmosphere and went to space. Ha.ha.ha.

It was followed by Akane, Reina and Maria, joining Duu in singing the chorus. Good for the 3 of you, you got some good spotlight. XD

Then the bus scenes. So heartwarming. I can’t stop smiling. All of them looks so good and cute. Oooohohohoh

And then I saw this big smile. I can feel the Daiishi Feeling.

I’m smiling too, Ayumi ❤ ❤

Now, in the verse parts…

It seems the 9th generation members, Mizuki & Erina was with Chii-chan, the only 14th generation member. Funny, she also happens to have a similar face with the ex-center and graduated 9th generation member, Riho. XD

My baby Chii-chan in the middle. ooohohohohoh

SO CUTE ❤ ❤ ❤

Next, were Kaede, Sakura, Miki & Haa-chin.

I did my best, but I guess my best wasn’t good enough. Sakura looks ugly in my screencaps. ToT

No matter how much I screencap, Sakura looks weird in the pics. I am deeply sorry for this. I didn’t do this on purpose.

DUU!!

EVERYONE!! MAADUU MOMENT!!

Oh my!! Am I seeing a new ship here?!??!!?

13th generation: Kaede & Reina

And Behold….

The 10th generation members moment in the 2nd chorus. ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

Masaki >>Ayumi >> Haruna >>>> DUU

Oh my…

This moment was really beautiful. So beautiful to a point I didn’t even notice my tears were falling while I was still smiling looking at the scene. Damn. This hitting me harder than I thought.

The music video continues with various cuts of the dance part (members in white dress with a white background), which I have no plans in screencapping. Lol.

At least I need to let you guys see this one.

             D                                                                         O

So Cute ❤

  It’s already dawn.

It’s time.

Uuuwwwwaaa the effects made this shot looks like a memory in once’s mind. Nice.

Now we get to see Duu being spoiled by everyone…

Bruh…I’m not crying….at all. T_T

I can’t….control…my tears…Lol.

Uuuwwaaaa…This MV was the best Morning Musume graduation MV I had ever seen. This is more than I asked for. I got MaaDuu moments, I got group moments, IshiDuu & FukuDuu too, and most especially, the 10th gen moments. Too precious I can’t.

I loved how this MV was edited. The effects added more color and depth to the scenes in the MV. I am still not a fan of the dance part, and I am kinda happy they didn’t went full force dance only type of MV. Yeeeee. I am also glad to see Chii-chan blending well in the group. As much as I like that she got the member color White, I still want her to inherit the member color Orange from Duu. But if not, oh well.

Overall, the MV was really moving. I did know I would be affected by this, but I didn’t know it would be that much. From the song up to the MV, everything was well done. Kudos to the staff & management handling Morning Musume, you did well this time.

Oh my…such a long post.

Please don’t mind me spazzing all over a simple song and music video. I can’t helped it XD

Ooohohohoho.

Please do check out the MV.

Thanks for reading.

That is all.

Music Feature: Wakaindashi! (You’re Young Anyway) – Morning Musume。’17 Oh my!!!! I am so late!!!! It's been few months since my last music/music video review.