#i screenshot post if i have something to say and hide op's name so no one else harasses them

[merp-blerp]

Just for any anti-gaylors/rude hetlors out there, it's easy to scroll away from things you don't agree with...

[accio-victuuri]

i have been doing cpn posts here and there about wyb’s alleged song list and here is another one. i’m just gonna name it wyb’s playlist cpn from now on. so the explanation is, some people know wyb’s personal qq music account so if you follow him you can see what he has been listening to. i am not really familiar with the app so idk how the settings work if he can hide some. no one is saying how they found out about the account, which makes sense for privacy. in a similar way that some fans know zz/wyb’s gaming account till now. feel free to not believe it cause i understand that things like this can be sus & people on the internet tend to lie.

for me personally tho, i love this cause i think music really speaks of what someone is feeling. and you have wyb who is not exactly big on social media so we rarely know anything. aside from his now extensive movie list, his playlist is something that is interesting too. not necessarily cpn-wise all the time.

this post will cover golden hour & some recent eason chan tracks added. 🎶🎵

The first one is GOLDEN HOUR which was used in ZZ’s vlog in Milan. It was a pretty popular song back then but it became more know because of ZZ’s post and even the singer reacted to it. Since then, it’s been a favorite among BXGs considering the meaning of it too.

This is what WYB’s playlist looked like on 3/28/23 People who follow said he hasn’t updated it for a week and then suddenly this track is added in. A piano version of Golden Hour. They say WYB usually adds relaxing music like piano tracks and some of nature, but not often. So it’s interesting how this one was added. At the time, they just don’t know the relevance. ( this screenshot was taken 00:38 3/29 but it has been this way since 3/28 )

and um hello to the rihanna songs! he is such a fanboy! as he should. and also kendrick! 👋🏼

then XZS posts the vlog with that BGM the next day.

dude, what are the chances. these vlogs are edited real time, we know that xzs team were working hard to feed content so the song must have been decided then and there. wyb listening to that the day before, next day it’s the BGM for ZZ’s vlog? i’m just thinking about ZZ sending it to him first to watch then WYB decided to add the song to his playlist. Or maybe they have already been lovin it and decided to use it on ZZ’s vlog.

so sweet!!!! 🥹🥹🥹🥹

the most recent one is this updated 2/13 ( the 3rd track i blurred sung by faye wong, i already talked about here ) :

The first one is this song ⬇️⬇️⬇️ which is about accompanying someone as a form of love. and isn’t that so them? it’s a known message that they both believe in, accompanying that person is a way of showing your love. screenshot 1 is from YT of a native speaker translating the title and that’s the one i’m going with.

also, sorry but i’m linking R1SE’s cover of the song cause it’s beautiful. 🫶🏼

AND THESE LINES! WYB is such a romantic! I cannot! It’s so him! Someone who will like and love this one thing and will stick to it till the end. 🥹

Accompanying you to turn loneliness into bravery

I lost again and again, I didn’t leave

Accompanying is the longest love confession

How long is the future

Stay with you until the story is finished

This is the second one, cloudy day. Which he was also allegedly listening to back in 3/2022 when he was filming and they haven’t seen each other for month.

What does the sky look like

What is love like

Several clouds forgot where to go on a cloudy day

Missing and loneliness

Blowed into the left ear

Maybe I can’t remember, but I can’t forget the time

That secret happiness

What to say to the cloudy day

From what i can gather, it’s about thinking of love and the good things even if it’s a cloudy day. Usually it must feel sad, but this person still chooses to see the good in it. Again, this is so WYB. He sees it and does not mope, he remembers the blue sky and white clouds instead.

Eason Chan is a famous singer that a lot of people listen to so i know that WYB is not the only person in China who probably has one of his songs on his playlist. Compared to Golden Hour which was unusual and the timing being sus. However for this, the fact that it’s added close to Valentines Day? Is this what he is feeling? So freakin in love! ♥️🥹

Anyway, I hope they had fun with the time they had together last CNY break ( allegedly ) and that their love endures & flourishes in the years to come! 🫶🏼

sources: one // two

[notemily]

actual guide for new tumblr users, from Twitter or otherwise

yeah so I decided to do one of these. I'm just someone who has been here since 2007 and wants to help people who are new to the site and have no idea what's happening. Twitter seems to be in its death throes as I write this, and while the posts about driving down the property values are funny, I'd like to actually try and help out.

many people have made posts that are like "get an icon and post something or else people will think you're a bot" so I'll just assume you've seen one of those already. I want to focus more on the things you need to know to acclimate to tumblr culture. so:

general tips:

like things if you want to like things. people will tell you liking doesn't do anything, that only reblogs do stuff, but that's not quite true. only reblogs will get the people who follow you to see it on their dashboard (circulating the post further through the tumblr ecosystem), but likes will let the OP know you liked it, let the person who reblogged it onto your dash know you liked it, and probably do something complicated involving the "based on your likes" algorithm but I really don't know how that works. also, the like will stick around, so if you see the post reblogged from someone else much later, your little heart will still be highlighted in red.

you can control a lot about what you see on your dashboard from the settings page! on desktop, go into settings - account and settings - dashboard to change things. most people turn off "best stuff first" and just use the chronological feed, but you do you, new user. I personally hate endless scroll, so I turned that off, but I love timestamps, so I turned those on. for bonus fun, go into settings - labs and there are extra tabs you can add to your dash.

but what about turning off anonymous asks? on desktop, this setting, weirdly, is in the "Edit appearance" page for your blog. you can also turn replies off there, allow only people you follow to message you, and hide your blog from search results. there are a lot of random settings in there, so make sure to take a look. (app results may vary.)

you might notice that one of the settings is for filtered tags and filtered post content. this is why it's important not to censor things here that might be triggering for some folks - because someone out there has "rape" filtered, and if you go around saying "r*pe," that's not going to be caught in their filter. also, at this time there are no word police who will come after you for saying "kill" or "die," so you don't need to use euphemisms like "unalive" on tumblr. you can also swear as much as you want.

blaze: tumblr blaze is a relatively new feature where you can pay actual money to have your post forced onto random people's dashboards. beware, if you use this for something people don't want to see, you will get mocked. if you use it to show everyone your cat, you're probably fine.

there are two basic uses for #tags: organizational (putting your post into a category, like tagging it with the name of the fandom it's relevant to) and editorial (adding extra commentary that you don't want to add in the post itself). a lot of people will use both, a lot of people will use neither. when people like your editorial tags enough, they'll copy or screenshot them and add them to the body of the post. this is known as "passing peer review" and is a compliment.

memes and inside jokes You Should Know:

do you love the colour of the sky? is an extremely long image post (showing all the colors a sky could possibly be) that takes a long time to scroll past, and back in the olden days (2012) it was ubiquitous on tumblr. these days you can shorten long posts automatically using your dashboard settings (see above), or use the "j" keyboard shortcut to go directly to the next post if you're on desktop, but we still remember it fondly and refer to it constantly because nothing dies here, especially not memes.

the color theory children's hospital post is another one of those things you'll see a million references to if you're on here for any length of time.

you cannot kill me in a way that matters is a post that you might have seen in screenshots elsewhere online, but it started here! other memes that originated on tumblr: spiders georg, me an intellectual, graphic design is my passion, etc.

blorbo from my shows is a phrase used to refer to your latest favorite character. it started as a joke, but tumblr has a way of taking jokes and making them a thing, so now it's a thing. see also poor little meow meow.

tumblr holidays: anything people on tumblr can make into a holiday or anniversary, we will. most of them you'll see as they happen, and they're often self-explanatory, but you should probably read up on November 5 2020 if you don't know about it already.

horse plinko: tumblr loves this one for some reason.

I like your shoelaces / thanks, I stole them from the president: this was supposedly the "secret code" to identify a tumblr user in real life. (you can buy shoelaces directly from tumblr now, but that's a recent development.)

then perish: speaking of the president, if you see Obama's eyes with a very orange tint, this is the meme it's referencing.

ball-shaving ads: ads from the personal grooming company Manscaped were/are(?) ubiquitous on tumblr, to the point that some have theorized that tumblr was deliberately saturating people's dash with the ads so that they'd be more likely to pay for ad-free browsing. and one of the ads for ad-free reads "shave off ads from your dashboard," so like, they might be onto something.

world heritage posts: there are various tumblrs that compile the best of tumblr, anything that's particularly iconic or has become a meme. there are even heritage post blogs for specific fandoms.

tumblr history:

there are three basic eras of tumblr history:

classic tumblr era 2007-2013: David Karp started tumblr in 2007, and it grew in popularity and weirdness for many years. porn was allowed: the original tumblr adult content policy read "sure, go nuts, show nuts, whatever."

Yahoo/Verizon era 2013-2019: Yahoo famously bought tumblr in 2013 for $1 billion. ads started showing up on tumblr in 2012, so this is also around when tumblr started to monetize. Yahoo was eventually bought by Verizon, and in December 2018, they announced they were banning porn, which sucked. everyone predicted the death of tumblr, but it limped on, with about a 30% decrease in traffic. (source for that statistic)

Automattic era 2019-present: in 2019, Automattic bought tumblr from Yahoo for like $3 million or something. Automattic owns WordPress, and they seem to understand tumblr's userbase better than the Yahoo folks did. they've recently instituted a more nuanced adult content policy, but because of Apple's strict policy for what gets included in the App Store, credit card processors refusing to process payments for porn, and other restrictions, tumblr can't go back to being the porn-allowed free-for-all it once was. see this post for a full explanation of why.

various April Fool's jokes have included Coppy (2015), Mishapocalypse (2013), and most recently, the button that makes crabs. expect April 1st to be extra chaotic on tumblr.

Tumbeasts - the tumblr version of the Twitter Fail Whale, designed by Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal. not sure if they're extinct now, or if the site just doesn't go down like it used to.

Dashcon - tumblr tried to have a convention once. it didn't go well. the photo with the sad ball pit is used as shorthand to reference the disaster that was Dashcon.

SuperWhoLock is a name for the fandom crossover between Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock, which were all juggernauts on tumblr at one time. the fandom supposedly "died off" after 2014, but see above re: nothing dies here.

female presenting nipples - when tumblr introduced the Porn Ban in 2018, they used this phrase in the community guidelines. they've since updated their nudity policy, but the phrase will live forever, because come on, tumblr is a website full of queer and/or trans folks. if you think you're getting away with a weasel phrase like "female presenting nipples" without being mocked all over the website, you're extremely wrong.

John Green: an author who used to be on tumblr, back when you could edit someone else's tumblr post when you reblogged it. his text posts were regularly edited to make it look like he had said things he didn't. someone edited one of his posts to be about how much he loves a certain sex act, which was probably not THE reason they removed the ability to edit others' posts, but like, it didn't help. John Green was eventually harassed so much he left tumblr. opinions are divided on whether this was hilarious or sad. (something I discovered while researching for this post: the author of the Your Fave Is Problematic tumblr [which was part of the wave of anti-John Green content] wrote a confessional New York Times article in 2021. pull quote: "I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who'd hurt me ever had.")

XKit: used to be THE browser extension for tumblr. it was made by "the xkit guy," who seems to have been harassed off the site in 2015. the extension was replaced by New XKit, which worked for a while. these days a lot of XKit's features have been either rendered obsolete by tumblr adding them to its settings, or broken by tumblr interface updates, and the new hotness is XKit Rewritten. want to block a specific post from ever appearing on your dash, see who your mutuals are, stop seeing notifications on one specific post (great feature for if you accidentally go viral)? install it and play around with the settings. there are accessibility features too!

...and now I've made it look like people regularly get harassed off tumblr. WELCOME, NEW USER, TO THE HELLSITE! but for real, part of why I put this post together was so if someone starts in on tumblr Discourse and mentions people who have been harassed off the site, you can nod wisely and go "ah, yes, I have heard tell of this." just to give you some kind of context for things.

anyway, I'm always happy to Explain The Joke, provided it's a joke that I get, so if you see something that looks like a tumblr in-joke and want context, my ask box is open. just don't ask me about Homestuck. I know nothing about Homestuck and at this point I'm not sure I want to.

in conclusion, new user: go forth, be weird, become a part of the culture. I hope this guide has helped!

[selfawarejester]

So, someone requested a fic where Blue Team rescues a Child!Reader from a war zone, but unfortunately Tumblr ate the ask. If you’re the one who requested it, please enjoy!

EDIT: found a screenshot! @simp-for-fictional-men-only, hope you like this!

Blue Team x Child!Reader (Halo)

It’s been a long “day”, even by Spartan standards.

Blue Team had been trying to repel Covenant forces on an Outer Colonies planet for over a week… but it hadn’t been enough. Command had called an evacuation, and after destroying a base to help the efforts, Blue Team had been ordered to help with final evacuation calls in the nearest town.

On the Pelican ride to town, there was a brief moment where they thought it was a waste of resources to send Spartans for an evacuation op, especially because the other Spartan teams were still doing the best they could to strike back at the Covenant; not necessarily to stop them anymore, just to hold them back long enough for the civilians to escape and maybe a little revenge. The events of the week, coupled with the guilt of their brothers and sisters still risking their lives, weighed on them heavily.

But at the end of the day, they’re glad they did: they found a group in the Rec center, a dozen people in the boroughs, twenty in an apartment complex — the Marines wouldn’t have been able to lift most of the wreckage that blocked them from escaping.

By the time they’d gotten to the outskirts of town, Blue Team had been left alone to sweep through the dead town. Chief considered just going to meet up with the Marines — surely, they could match the pace of the overloaded Troop Transports — and this area was just dilapidated factories and shady looking establishments that had long since been stampeded.

But a need to fulfil his task to completion stayed his hand… and thank god it did.

At first, it was just soft sniffles that sounded from the inside of the rundown factory. Chief and Kelly, who’d partnered up to search this side of the district, thought it was one of the many Jackals that had been posted in the previous sector wandering, or a Grunt that had been left behind after the Jackals had entertained themselves (in which case, they should probably put the thing out of its misery), so they go inside.

Chief goes first, moving carefully through the debris so as to not dislodge the wreckage, or disturb the corpses of the few soldiers and more civilians. He retrieves their dog tags, securing them in one of the compartments of the MJOLNIR, and Kelly follows, stepping where he does.

Slowly, the sound becomes louder and louder, wheezing and snotty sobbing. Definitely an injured Grunt, he thinks. It’s coming from under a slab of concrete propped up against a wall. Kelly flanks to the right, while Chief goes to the left. He signals that he’ll lift it on the count of three, and grips the edge of the slab. When the slab gets tossed aside, Kelly raises her shotgun, pointing directly at the small figure.

You shriek and bury your head in your knees, pulled up to your chest. You couldn’t believe that after all the gross, awful things you’d had to sit through, holed up in this corner, you were just going to die.

But when nothing happens for a solid five seconds, you chance a peek over your knees and gasp. S-117 and S-087 are emblazoned across the chests of the armored giants… Spartans.

Kelly and Chief exchange confused gazes, having no idea how to deal with children. The last ones they’d had any interaction with was the Castoffs on Netherop, but they were more feral gremlins than they had been children.

(Kelly and Fred still aren’t entirely sure that the whole incident wasn’t a heat-induced hallucination.)

John really doesn’t want to go through another episode like it, but on the other hand, it would be easier if you were pelting rocks at them.

Kelly, being the more personable of the two, kneels to your height (or as close as a Spartan could get) and softly calls. “You don’t have to be scared. We’re here to help.”

You knew that — they were Spartans! The greatest heroes Humanity ever possessed! You were just shocked that you were getting rescued by them.

“Y-you’re Spartans.” You whisper dumbly, but you couldn’t help it! How are you supposed to be cool when you grew up with Master Chief’s action figure on your nightstand. “Like Master Chief.”

You can’t see it, but John can sense Kelly’s smirk as she looks over at him and points. “Well, that’s the man himself.”

* Oh no. By the way your wet, moved eyes stare up at him, it seems you’re a fan.

OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!!! You hope your pterodactyl screeching wasn’t external.

“Whoa.” This couldn’t be real. You’d passed out from exhaustion, and were dreaming all of this. That could be the only possibility!

John knows that this is the part where he says something witty or inspiring… but he really doesn’t know what to say, so he just awkwardly clears his throat. “Are you hurt?”

You shake your head violently, a burning need to not disappoint your childhood hero, and clamber up to your feet… only to wince and lean against the wall, something sticky on your leg.

Now that you’re standing, he can see the dried blood around your ankle. “Hold still!” All the softness is gone from Kelly’s tone as she works on bandaging you up, but you don’t mind, appreciating how careful she’s being.

Co-ordinating with Linda, who informs him that there are patrols scouting the areas — probably only to get any survivors, and not to catch them, but they should still move — and Fred, who tells him that the convoy is flying off-planet via Pelicans in half an hour, John makes some quick calculations.

With the pace you’d set, hobbling alongside Kelly, whimpering every time you put your weight on your left foot, it would take them at least an hour. Too long.

“Whoa…” The sound comes unbidden from Fred when Kelly emerges, with you clutching at her hip, all bloody and dirty. A pang of sympathy strikes as he looks around and realizes all that you must have seen. He was well aware that normal children weren’t nearly as resilient as he and his siblings had been.

“….” He stays silent as you arrive in front of him, staring up at him with slight apprehension, heart racing as he tries to think of something to say — and for some reason, he lands on an awkward, weirdly Southern-sounding. “Hey champ!”

John and Kelly both shoot him weird looks, and he wants to dig a hole and die, when they hear it.

A small giggle falls from your lips, tiny hands covering your mouth as you try not to laugh. Fred sighs in relief, but his anxiety returns when Kelly’s joking voice comes over the comms saying “Well, I guess we know who’s taking care of them.”

Linda drops out of nowhere, and nearly scares you to death as you shriek and bump into John, holding his leg tightly. You don’t really notice how he freezes, confused again.

“…sorry.” She doesn’t sound sorry, you think with a pout and drop from Chief’s leg, careful of your own busted ankle.

“That’s Linda, that’s Fred and I’m Kelly. You can just call him Chief. What’s your name?”

“Y-Y/N.”

“Alright. We won’t be able to make it if you’re walking, so you need to get on one of our backs.” Chief tells you, straight to business. “Which one of us do you feel comfortable with?”

He’s really hoping you pick Kelly or Fred. It wouldn’t exactly be a burden, you’re much tinier than the full grown people he’s had to carry out of a war zone, and you’re handling it much better as well, even though you’re barely ten years old.

“Um…” You look shyly up at Fred. “If you don’t really mind…”

*Aw. That’s… actually kind of sweet. Fred beckons you over, and hoists you up between his shoulders, giving you the rundown on what to do if people start shooting, and to hold on tight when he tells you to.

*You’re much more considerate than the freaked out VIPs he’s had to extract. But he still feels you twitch every time the wind causes something to clatter, so he decides to strike up conversation.

“So how did you wind up there?” It’s not until afterwards that he realizes that, unlike soldiers, civilians aren’t comfortable discussing stuff like that. But you answer that it was your dad’s factory, explaining that it was Bring Your Kid To Work Day.

The Spartans, specifically Kelly, asked you questions about it, having never heard of it themselves. After all, military settings rarely allowed such breaches of protocol.

You only trailed off as you got to the part where he told you to hide, and Fred lets it be.

When you finally get to the convoy, a nurse hurriedly tries to pull you away from the Spartans to help out, apologizing for not doing it sooner when Fred tells her it’s fine and that you can stay. After all, Kelly had fixed you up well, and you seemed terrified at the prospect of being left alone.

All that was left to do was fly up to the ship in outer orbit, with the rest of the survivors. Since there were such few Pelicans, everyone had been crammed into them, military and civilians alike. You’d simply wandered onto the one they’d been on, sandwiched between Chief and Fred.

Chief watches you picking at your shorts, and suddenly remembers the chocolate bar Sgt. Johnson keeps giving him - “you’re not yourself when you’re hungry, Chief” He’d snicker and then leave, Chief just standing there, not understanding the reference - but hey, chocolate was chocolate.

“Here. You did well.” Your eyes go wide, and for a second he thinks you’re going to refuse, but then you snatch it out of his hand and snarf it down. This is how it must feel to watch him eat.

“You’re going to like it up there.” Fred chimes in when your gaze starts getting distant again. “Space is really cool.”

In a twist of fate, you find one of your best friends when you arrive on the ship. Their parents promise to take care of you, and thank the Spartans.

When they start directing the survivors to their quarters, you hug every Spartan, even Linda… or their legs, since you couldn’t reach anything else. (Thankfully, you telegraph it pretty well, so they don’t accidentally smack you or something.)

John just stiffens and then nods, Fred pats you on the head awkwardly and shuffles away (he was very shocked by the affection), Kelly laughs and claps you on the shoulder, and Linda just hums and pets you on the head like a dog, walking away afterwards.

You go on to be a Marine yourself, finding yourself on the Halo campaign, where Chief and Cortana save you once more. You’re surprised he still remembers you.

You leave a bar of the same brand he gave you at his shrine, giving a heartfelt eulogy and catching up momentarily with the other members of Blue Team before you all leave again.

You almost faint when he shows up at Requiem, though. Don’t feel bad, as Lasky fanboys behind Chief for the whole campaign.

Palmer corrals you and Lasky into a break room to make fun of your behavior after it’s all over.

[waywardnerd67]

Starving Affection

Summary: It had been five years since (Y/N) had any physical contact with another person. When she starts talking with a man online who reads her fanfics, a battle of her  mind and body begins. When the time comes to meet him, she finds that there are still decent human beings in the world.  Characters: Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Sami (OFC), Plus Size!Reader Pairing: Jensen x Plus Size!Reader Warnings: Angst/Fluff/Smut/Body Image Distortion Word Count: 9256 A/N: Again, me working through my feels. Thank you for allowing me to do so.

My chest tightened. Jaw clenched until my teeth hurt. My body rigid and frozen as panic flowed through my veins. The overly friendly, new teacher had her arms outstretched towards me. If I had been a normal person, I would gladly hold my arms out as well embracing her kindness and affection.

I was not normal.

“Hey Katy!” My partner teacher and best friend, Sami, headed her off by stepping in front of me and taking the hit of affection.

There was a special place in Heaven for Sami and if not, I would fight God themselves to make it so. I could see Sami whispering to Katy and a nod of acknowledgement told me I would not have to worry about her advancements again.

“Sorry (Y/N), I didn’t know you weren’t a hugger. How about a high five?” Her sweet gesture had my trembling hand stretching out to her as she quickly slapped it with her own.

Only Sami could see my flinch from the physical touch of someone. Everyone else summed it up to my quirky personality and weird aversion to being touched. Thankfully our English department meeting was over and I could escape to the safe haven of my car. Sami was close behind me waving goodbye to everyone.

I bumped my shoulder to hers as she was the only one I had no problem with minor touching, “Thank you for taking that hug for me.”

She laughed, “You’re lucky I’m a friendly and huggy person. Hey, I meant to ask you before school today, but how is counseling going?”

I cringed, averting my gaze from her, “It’s… going fine.”

She stopped me with a tap on my shoulder, “The truth, please.”

I sighed as my shoulders slumped in defeat, “I stopped going,” I saw the incoming assault in her narrowing sky colored eyes.

“(Y/N)! You were making such good progress with this counselor. I was even able to give you a one arm hug.” The disappointment in her voice weighed my shoulders down even more.

I leaned against my car pulling on the sleeves of my hoodie, “I know, I know. She had me go to one of her support groups and everyone had to hug someone. I… I just couldn’t. I tried three or four times going to the group and I failed every time.”

My eyes fell to the ground, disgust filling my mind, “Yes, you really are as pathetic as you’re sounding.” My inner voice snarked.

I heard Sami sigh, “It’s okay. We can work through it together. We can keep doing everything you liked from her and work at your pace.”

Looking up, I forced my lips into a small smile to appease my only real life friend, “That sounds good. Thanks Sami for putting up with me.”

I made my way home to a small ranch style home that was off the beaten path. My grandparents had left it to me knowing I would love the seclusion of it. It was my Fortress of Solitude. The only living thing, other than Sami, to be able to snuggle with me was Charlie the cat. The copper Main Coon was sitting by the door awaiting my arrival.

My evenings were always the same. Check in with my mom for an hour on the phone. Make or order dinner, which tonight was ordering pizza for the leftovers tomorrow. Turning on my favorite TV show, Supernatural, on Netflix and working on one of my millions of fanfics.

“Yes, stay in complete denial by hiding in your fantasy worlds and falling in love with fictional characters. Loser.”

I pushed my inner thoughts to the very back of my mind and focused on my current series I was writing. Pulling up Tumblr, I looked in my notifications seeing someone binge reading my masterlist. My heart always swelled with joy whenever someone took the time to read my writings. This person was also leaving feedback as well.

“ChevyMan67: I love this version of Dean! You truly have captured his personality and sarcasm.”

“ChevyMan67: I can’t get enough of this series! Please tell me there is more to come. I need to know if Dean finally falls in love and gets his apple pie life.”

I read through every comment and looked at every GIF the reader posted. I hit follow on his blog then took a few screenshots from my activity page, pulling up a blank post adding the pictures.

“Thank you to @ChevyMan67 for binging my stories! Your feedback means everything to me!”

As soon as I posted it there was a notification of a reblog from him. He posted a GIF of Dean screaming with #Fangirling flashing underneath. My cheeks ached from the unusual tension of a genuine smile spreading across my face.

Online I could be anyone I wanted. I would virtual hug and blow kisses at my friends. I was able to be more like the woman I was. Social, happy, carefree, open to others. I could be the woman I desperately wanted to be but my mind would not allow.

“Stay guarded. Remember what happened when you trusted him? Trusted his family? Never again. You promised never again.”

My indeed guard held the line at the gate of my mind. She stood in full armor and shield ready to throw off anyone that even attempted to break through to the part of me that desired to be a whole person again. I shook my head with a firm nod and reaffirmed my promise to myself to never let anyone that close to me again.

As I was closing down her computer for the evening, a ding caught my attention as a message came from Tumblr. Opening the window, I saw a DM from my newest follower.

“Hey there, I just wanted to say thank you for following me. Apparently I’m a rarity on here for being male and a fan of Supernatural. I truly love all your writings and can’t wait to read more. Hopefully, we can get to know each other better and become friends. Anyway, I’ll leave you alone. Message me any time. Goodnight.”

I re-read the message several times before closing my computer. Sure I had people message me for small talk and a few close friends I had on there. This felt different. Something deep within me sparked and I did not know how to react. There was only one person I knew I could go to and her reaction was more frightening than the thought of responding to ChevyMan67. That night was the first of many restless nights for me.

A week later, I finally sat down and responded to him.

“Hey, I’m sorry it took me so long to respond. I’m… well, I’m not used to talking to guys here. I think it’s great that you’re on here and reading, BTW. I’m working on a few pieces right now, maybe you could beta for me if you have time. I hope we can be friends as well. Have a good weekend!”

I was nearly hyperventilating when I hit enter sending the message. I tried to work on my newest one shot story and ignore my anxious heart awaiting for the ding. It was not until I was in bed watching my favorite episode of Supernatural that my phone chimed.

“Tumblr: Message from ChevyMan67”

My finger hovered for a moment before opening the app. The message opened and I let out a air I had been holding in my chest.

“No worries. Everyone is busy and has their “real life” to attend too. I work odd hours and days all the time so I get it. I would LOVE to beta for you!!!! Reading your work before it’s posted online? HELL YEAH! I feel honored you asked and I’m fanboying hard right now. Crap… that sounded… I mean. Sorry lol. You can send your fics to ChevyMan67@gmail.com. Looking forward to hearing from you again.”

Over the next six months, Ross and I talked throughout our days getting to know one another. Three month into Tumblr messenger and dumb updates, he gave me his cell number to text one another. At times, I would have to catch myself from laughing while my students took a test. Everyone around me started to notice the small changes in me. Smiling more, talking more and one student commented on me wearing bright colors.

“You look good in yellow Miss (Y/L/N).”

However it was Sami who demanded to know all about the changes going on with me. We sat at our favorite restaurant, the first round of drinks being set in front of us. After the waiter took our order, Sami began her interrogation.

“Tell. Me. Everything. You’ve been keeping me at bay and I’ve respected your space, but you have seemingly blossomed in the last few months. Spill.”

I bit my lower lip as my phone sounded with an all to familiar chime. I went to grab my phone when Sami placed her hand over it, “Me first. Tumblr second.”

“It’s not Tumblr. Let me reply to him and then I will tell you everything.” I dared to look up to see my best friend’s face frozen in shock.

Her eyes wide and mouth gaping, “Him?!”

I nodded reading Ross’s message, “Hey I know you’re out with Sami and going to tell her about little ole me. I just wanted to make sure you were still thinking about what I asked last night. Can’t wait to hear from you soon. Not now though, have fun with Sami.”

I smiled, locking my phone and putting it in my purse looking back to my ridiculously happy friend, “His name is Ross.”

There was a loud, attention grabbing squeal from her as I shushed her, “Leave out no details…” she rested her perfect chin on her folded hands.

I told her all about Ross and how we began talking. I told her everything I knew about him and what he knew about me. Finally, as our food came out and drinks were refilled, I told her about what he had dropped on me the previous night.

“He asked me to meet him at the Supernatural Convention in Dallas next month. He already has the passes paid for and a few photo ops that we could share.” My heart raced at the thought of meeting Ross and meeting my favorite celebrities all at the same time.

Sami’s smile faded slightly, “Does he know about your struggles with being touched?”

I nodded, “It was one of the first personal things I told him. He’s still talking to me so I took that as a frightening good sign.”

“What are you feeling?” her point blank question shook me for a moment.

My fingers drummed against the table, “I’m nervous, scared, anxious…” I paused for a moment before looking up at her with a smile.

“I’m also excited, hopeful and curious.”

Sami held out her hands to me, palms up and I hesitantly placed my hands in hers. It was something we had been working on for the last couple of months. This was the first time I allowed her to squeeze my hands.

“You really like him.” She whispered smiling like a fool.

I felt my own smile mirroring hers, “Yes I do and that scares me shitless.”

The rest of the evening felt like the old days before my life fell apart. When I got home, I decided to test my luck. Pulling up Ross’s number, my thumb hovered over it until I smashed it hearing it ringing.

“Well hello, this is a surprise.” His velvety smooth voice sent shivers down my body, “Take a deep breath and know it’s okay if you hang up to just text me.”

“N-No, I’ll be okay.” I stammered as he let out a low chuckle.

I could hear him moving away from other voices around him, “I interrupted something…” Guilt and shame weighing my shoulders down.

“Not at all. They can wait, you calling me is an important moment. Not everyday, I get to speak to my favorite writer on the phone.” His compliments calmed my queasy stomach, “Could I be so hopeful that this phone call is working up to a good answer?”

I took a deep breath in and let out slowly, “Yes.” The word seems foregin to her as it left my lips.

“Yes I can be hopeful or yes to my question?” His jovial banter eased the tension in my shoulders.

“Yes.” I tried to sound a little more confident, my heart beating against my chest.

There was a moment of silence before loud cheering and yelling came through her speaker. His excitement was silenced by my own unfamiliar laughter. Suddenly I was hyper aware that he was no longer making any noises. Panic and fear swelling inside me.

A soft sigh came from him, “You have a beautiful laugh. I can’t wait to hear it again.”

My cheeks burned, “Thank you.”

Ross told me he would send all the details for our trip and that I was not to worry about money of any kind. Mentally, I began planning out how to save as much money as I could in the next four weeks. Thankfully, my savings was built up enough to take a small hit and not dip into her emergency fund. Over the next several weeks, I began to prepare for my first convention, first time meeting an online friend, first time traveling by myself, first time facing the unknown in five years.

The morning of my travel day, I went over to Sami’s house with Charlie. I was surprised to see her sister sitting there. She waved to me before taking Charlie’s crate.

“What’s going on?” I looked around seeing Sami’s suitcase packed by the door.

She smiled, “Your friend Ross, reached out to me.”

The color from my face drained for a moment, “H-He did… How?”

“He found me on your Instagram page. DM me asking me to join you on your trip. Stating and I quote, ‘I know you being there with (Y/N) will make her more comfortable. I want this weekend to go as comfortably as possible for her. I know it’s a big step and I want her to be taken care of.’”

She smiled softly as my vision blurred from tears slipping down my face, “Oh… wow.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty amazing (Y/N/N). If you were ever going to work on overcoming your touch aversion this would be the man to do it for.” Sami turned around to help her sister, leaving me to my own thoughts.

“Absolutely not! There is no way he is getting through my defenses. I have held strong for five years. Your heart and mind are safe within my holds.”

“Do you really think he’s going to want to touch you? Look at yourself. Lumpy. Chunky. Squishy. Dull (Y/C/H) hair. Boring (Y/C/E) eyes. Not even a decent pair of boobs or ass. You’re nothing special. Always remember that you’re nothing special.”

“(Y/N)? (Y/N) stop it.” Sami’s voice rang clear bringing me back to the present.

I nodded slowly, “Sorry. I zoned out.”

“Freaked out. We will work through it. Sara is gonna drive us to the airport and we have an hour to chat. Okay?”

It was in the moment that I noticed my best friend had absentmindedly placed her hand on my shoulder and I did not flinch. My eyes looked to her hand and back to her, “You’re touching my shoulder.”

“Crap, I’m so sor…” she started to say but my bright smile stopped her, “What?”

I placed my hand on top of hers, “I didn’t flinch or move or even notice you did it.”

Now her smile was matching mine and we had a moment of pure excitement jumping around each other. True to her word, we spent the hour on the plane doing some meditative exercises. I thanked every high power who would listen for my best friend getting her psychology degree.

There was a man waiting with our names on a piece of paper. He took our bags and drove us to a  hotel near where the convention was being held. Sami checked us in since there were so many people inside and my anxiety started to flare up.

Breathe in counting to six. Breathe out counting to six.

I repeated my breathing exercise until Sami returned her brow furrowed, “What is it?”

“I don’t know who Ross knows, but he must be connected in some way. We have a suite on the fourteenth floor.”

My jaw dropped slightly before I stood up bracing myself for the next hurdle of getting through the elevator ride. Luckily, there were only two other girls in the car and I could safely keep my distance from them.

“I heard that Jensen is staying at this hotel.” One mentioned as the other rolled her eyes.

“Yeah right. This is Dallas, I’m sure he’s probably staying with his family or something.”

The girls exit on the eighth floor and before the doors could close Sami and I were chuckling to ourselves. The chances of Jensen Ackles staying at this hotel would be astronomical. The car dinged for the top floor and opened to a small hallway. When we opened the door to our suite neither of us spoke.

Sami walked throughout the entire room before I could even move from the entryway, “This room is amazing! Check out the view we have (Y/N).”

“Hold on. Having a moment.” I breathed as Sami came to my side and I held my hand out, “I’m fine. Just need a moment to make sure this is real and not a dream.”

I watched as she walked over to the coffee table where there was a gift basket and she held up a small notecard, “Oh it’s real.”

“(Y/N) and Sami, I hope you love your room. Enjoy your night and order anything you want. The front desk knows it’s all on my tab. I’m hoping you both will join me for dinner tomorrow night after registration. Sadly, my job won’t let me leave before then. I look forward to meeting you both. -R PS: I highly recommend the spa and they have a large private jacuzzi just for you, (Y/N).”

Sami sighed, “I really hope he has a single brother, cousin, friend that is like him for me.”

I rolled my eyes walking over to the large windows looking out. Flashes of the last time I was in Dallas popping into my mind. I shivered as the one voice I hated yelled loudly in my ears. My hands covered them and I felt Sami tap my shoulder twice. For the first time, in several years, I reached out to her and gripped her arms.

“(Y/N) remember why we’re here. Remember talking with Ross on the phone. The tone of Ross’s voice. His laughter.” Her calm tone eased me out of the wretched memory.

She guided me over to the couch and went to get me a glass of water. I sipped it slowly before squeezing her hand, “Thank you.”

“You know, I can get used to you reaching out to me. Feels like the (Y/N) I knew coming back.” Sami squeezed my hand back before I let slip from her grasp.

She was right, the woman I once was before my ex was fighting her way to get out again. Still, my guard was up standing fortified at the gate.

That evening was a girls’ night of epic proportions. They went to the spa where (Y/N) sat in her private jacuzzi while Sami received the best massage of her life. Afterwards, we ordered our dinner from room service making moderate choices since neither of us were paying. When our food came there was a special dessert also with another note.

“A little birdy told me that your favorite dessert was French Silk pie. I wanted you to have a slice and some New York Style cheesecake for Sami. Have a wonderful night.”

Sami whistled, “Man, he has it bad for you.”

“Shut up.” I muttered lifting the dome to see a delicious slice of pie.

As they ate and talked, Sami took my phone taking pictures of them enjoying a very Sam and Dean style dinner. Sami having a Chef’s salad with honey mustard dressing. I took a picture of my dinner sending it to Ross with a text saying thank you.

“Dean would be proud! That bacon cheeseburger looks good. Enjoy!”

I smiled the entire time I ate my burger. Finishing out meals, Sami hooked up her laptop putting on Supernatural. I decided to try and work on some stories when a terrifying thought crossed my mind. I looked up to the screen as Dean began to talk. I closed my eyes listening carefully to his voice. The low tone and smoothness of it. It was the way he said the word writer that had my eyes snapping open and a gasp escaping my lips.

“What? What is it?” Sami sat up concerning filling her eyes.

Like pieces to a puzzle everything snapped into place. All the small details that would go unnoticed by someone who would never expect it. Sami tapped my shoulder and I turned to her with wide eyes.

“Ross… that’s Jensen’s middle name.” I mumbled reaching for my phone.

Sami stood up pausing the episode, “Okay… what are you getting at.”

“Listen.” I played for her the voicemail he had left a few days earlier, “Now play the episode.”

Sami’s eyes connected to her, “No way.”

“Ross is Jensen Ackles.”

That night my dreams were filled with my ex yelling at me. Fat shaming me. Calling me a loser. Calling me useless for not being able to bear children. His looming form made me coward into a ball on the floor. I woke up several times during the night, the final time close to six in the morning. Sami was peacefully sleeping on her side of the bed.

I picked up my phone going into the living area and dialing the all too familiar number. On the third ring she was going to hang up, but then his groggy voice pierced my ears.

“(Y/N), is everything alright?” All I could hear was Dean, which meant that it was truly Jensen on the other side.

“You tell me, Jensen.” I heard him sit up as I began to pace near the window.

A long sigh came from him, “I knew you would figure it out before meeting me.”

I scoffed, “Is this some kind of celebrity joke or prank? Pretend to be someone’s friend and embarrass them when they meet you.”

My guard was shaking her head muttering, “Told you so…”

“No, (Y/N) it’s nothing like that. Misha had read some of your stories and suggested I should read them. At first, I thought it would be weird because I’ve never read fanfiction before, but your writing… it drew me in.” His words came out all in one breath.

I froze, “M-Misha read my stories? Oh god…” My body burned from embarrassment.

“Honestly, there’s not a person on our crew that hasn’t read at least one of your stories. You’re talented and the way you write for the boys is amazing. Our own writer’s are impressed with your talent.”

I groaned slumping down to the floor, “This was all a mistake.” The last thing I heard before ending the call was rustling around as if Jensen was moving from his bed.

My phone slipped from my hand as tears streamed down my face. I closed my eyes allowing my inner voices to consume me. Dragging me down into the darkness.

“You fool! Here I stood guarding you from this and still you allowed someone in. You deserve what is coming to you!”

“You useless piece of nothing! You’re the biggest joke this world ever created. Fat, ugly, even your body can’t do the one basic thing god made it to do. You’re worthless. Sucking up air that could be used on someone contributing to the world. No matter what anyone says you will always be the biggest failure in this world. You. Are. Nothing.”

I felt someone tapping on my shoulder and I tightened myself into a ball, “Go away Sami.”

The tapping continued and I reached out grasping an unfamiliar hand. My eyes snapped open and were met with concerning, piercing olive eyes. The eyes I stared at for hours on my TV. The eyes I wrote about in hundreds of thousands of words online.

As soon as my eyes opened he withdrew his hand and my heart sank further into darkness, “I told you. He will never want to touch your disgusting body.” The snide voice of my inner self whispered.

“(Y/N), please hear me out. Please for five minutes just listen to my side.” He sat across from me leaving a foot of distance between us.

I nodded looking up as Sami gently touched his shoulder, “I will be just outside if you need me.”

He waited for the door to close to start talking. His large hands rubbing against his cotton covered thighs.

“I started reading your masterlist on Tumblr and couldn’t get enough of your stories. I didn’t know exactly how to work Tumblr so Misha showed me how. I noticed you don’t get a lot of notes and I wanted everyone to notice you. I started sharing your work with everyone after sending you that message.”

He paused for a moment as I fidget with the hem of my shirt, “Why did you message me?”

His smile was more radiant in person, “It’s just as I said. I loved your work and I wanted to be friends. However, the more I got to know you… the more I wanted to meet you in person. I knew that would be problematic.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” I scoffed looking down to my hands.

He inhaled a deep breath, “You connect with Dean Winchester the same way I do. To find someone like that is a once in a lifetime chance. I want someone who I can gush over Dean with because soon I won’t be hanging out with him as much and he’s the best imaginary friend I’ve ever had.”

Seeing Jensen open himself up to me was creating a battle of mind and body within me. He was just as nervous as I was to open up to someone else. Suddenly, I did not feel so alone in my isolation. My hand trembled as I reached over placing it atop of his.

“Dean Winchester saved my life and I don’t mean that figuratively. I was on the verge of leaping into darkness when I found him getting Sammy to find their dad. I found the strength to carry on because I knew that was what Dean would do. I found that being broken wasn’t a bad thing but something that could drive you to keep working. Dean helped me to feel again when I had become numb to the world around me.”

His eyes shined as I spoke trying to hold back his own tears, “I’m glad he could be there for you when you needed him the most.”

“Then you came into my life when I least expected it.” I whispered as I squeezed his hand.

My mind was screaming at me to get as far away from him as I possibly could. To call out to Sami to make him leave and move out of the state disappearing from the world. However, my body was urging me to jump into his arms. To open myself up to him as he had done with me. I felt like a spring coil ready to snap. My mind was holding my body back waiting for my consciousness to make a decision.

And she did.

I launched myself into his arms startling him as we crashed to the floor. His arms instinctively wrapped around me as mine encircled his neck. The door flew open as Sami came rushing in as Jensen’s laughter filled the room. I hugged him tighter to me as he tightened his grip around me.

“Oh my god… (Y/N), you’re hugging him.”

I did not need to open my eyes to know tears were slipping down my best friend’s cheeks. Her voice was thick with utter joy and amazement.

“Does this hug mean that you don’t hate me?” His question caught me off guard.

Jensen’s hands kept me in place as he sat up swinging my legs across his. My arms are still around his neck not wanting to lose the connection. Now that my body was against his, it flooded with the strange feeling of desire. Sami joined them on the floor sitting cross legged in front of them.

“I don’t think I could ever hate you. Though I’m still upset you lied to me.” I rested my head on my arm and against the side of his neck.

Feeling him sigh and seeing Sami grinning, I knew this was a big moment for all of us. We sat on the floor for another hour talking before Jensen had to go back to his room to get ready for the day. Neither of us wanted to let go of the other. He hugged me one last time before walking out of the suite. When I turned around I was immediately engulfed into another hug.

“I’m so proud of you!” Sami squealed.

“Thanks, I think…” My sentence drifted and she pulled away from me.

I walked back toward the bed and flopped face first onto it. I felt her crawl up on the bed beside me knowing me well enough to give me space.

“Talk it out, (Y/N). What are you feeling?”

My cheeks burned from the first feeling to pop into my head, “I feel warm, anxious, happy...” I paused gathering the courage to say the last word, “desire.”

“I’m sorry, what was that last one?” Sami eagerly asked.

I sat up, “Desire.” Saying the very word felt weird.

She began to clap and raised her hands in the air, “Praise the lord!”

“Don’t get all weird about it. I don’t know what any of this means. My body is tingling…”

Sami interrupted, “I bet it does…”

“Shut up, mostly not in that way. I don’t know how to act around other people anymore. What is too much touching? What is too little? What does a hug mean? I have too many questions and all the answers just walked out the door.”

I looked over as my phone chimed seeing a message from Ross, “I guess I need to change that now.” I murmured as I pulled up his message.

“First, thank you for trusting me with a hug. It means the world to me. I wanted to know if you wanted to have an early lunch with me? We could eat in my room or restaurant or your room with Sami. Whatever you are most comfortable with. Let me know.”

I held my phone up for Sami to read and she jumped off the bed, “You can have our room. I will go entertain myself by the pool.”

I texted him back that he could come to my room as Sami began tossing clothes out on the bed, “What are you doing?”

“Finding you the perfect outfit. Now go shower so I can play dress up with you.” She clapped her hands excitedly as I groaned loudly.

Looking in the mirror again, I pulled at the shirt clingy to every soft, round surface of my waist. I pushed my stomach watching as it bounced back into place like jello. Turning to the side, I sucked as many rolls as I could inward, holding my breath. The air rushed from my lips as a knock came from the door. Making my way towards it, I grabbed my zip-up hoodie slipping my arms in it quickly.

“Hi.” The word came out more breathlessly than I wanted.

My inner voice whispering, “Yeah fatty, let him know that walking across the room makes you lose your breath.”

“Hey there, I hope you don’t mind that I went ahead and grabbed lunch for us.” Jensen held up a paper bag from a local sandwich spot.

As he walked in, I took a moment to truly admire him. He looked like a male model in his tight dark jeans, black boots, dark olive Henley and sunglasses resting on top of his unruly, sandy brown hair. His smooth voice caught my attention.

“You could take a picture and it would last longer.” He chuckled sitting down on the couch and laying out their lunch.

I sat on the opposite side of him as far away as I could. Even though my body desperately wanted to be closer to him, I kept my distance not pushing my mental capacity. He glanced over a hint of disappointment in his eyes seeing me so far away.

Jensen slid a sandwich towards me, “I remember you telling me that you love ham and swiss with tomato.”

“Thank you.” I unwrapped the sandwich and grabbed a bag of chips.

We ate in silence as a strange tension built between us. My stomach churning to the point I could no longer eat. I would look over to him out of the corner of my eye to find his eyes drifting over me. I wrapped my hoodie around me instinctively trying to hide the imperfections.

“There’s no hoodie big enough to hide your ugliness.” The familiar voice whispered.

I shook my head when I heard music playing, looking back to Jensen. He smiled sheepishly as he set his phone on the table.

“I thought maybe some background noise would help,” He stood up clearing the food from the table then stood in front of me with his hand out, “Trust me?”

His eyes were shining from the afternoon rays of sun coming from the window and his lips were spread in a gentle smile. I exhaled slowly allowing all the tension to leave my body and placed my hand in his. He pulled me up from the couch taking my hands and placing them behind his neck. His large hands slid down my sides to my hips and I flinched.

“You do know that you’re beautiful, right?” He whispered swaying my body with the music.

I shook my head, “I’m really not. Ordinary at best.”

Jensen lifted my chin, piercing (Y/C/E) meeting , “You are far from ordinary, (Y/N).”

“You’re just being kind.” I looked away as he slowly turned us in a circle.

The music continued but Jensen stopped moving, “I have so many questions but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or have you running to the hills.”

“Questions for me? Surely, you have better things to do with your time other than sitting inside with me. Don’t you have fans to entertain?” I smirked.

He chuckled, “Lucky for you, I happen to have the day off. I normally spend the day with my family. However this year they all ditched me.”

I mockingly acted shocked, “Oh no! You poor thing.”

His eyes narrowed in on me before laughing, “My mom and dad are somewhere in Spain enjoying their anniversary gift. My sister decided a girls trip with her best friends was better than hanging with me for the day. My brother is always busy with his family. You’re stuck with me.”

“I guess there’s worse ways to spend my day. Okay, ask away but I’m not promising I’ll answer them all.”

Jensen led me back to the couch, but kept ahold of my hand as we sat back down. He laced his long fingers with mine. His thumb brushing over my knuckle. I settled back against the couch once again wrapping my hoodie around me.

“What were you thinking when I put my hands on your hips earlier?”

I bit my lower lip, “I was mortified that you were touching my squish rolls of skin. I was thinking you must be disgusted by it.”

“Wow…” He squeezed my hand, “Whoever he was he really did a number on you. If I ask his name and address would you be against me and Jared beating the crap out of him?”

A genuine burst of laughter echoed in the room, “He’s really not worth it. Plus, he is much happier with his life now and that’s all that matters. He deserves to be happy.”

I was surprised to see Jensen face scrunched up in anger, “But you don’t?” He leaned in slightly, his features softening.

“No, I don’t.” The words came out without even a second thought and seeing Jensen recoil from them as if they had slapped him in the face twisted my heart.

His tongue darted out over his lips and the electrical energy between us sparked wildly, “You’re wrong. You deserve all the happiness in the world. Any man who told you otherwise is no man at all.”

He was leaning in closer, his eyes never leaving mine. My heart pounding in my ears and my body urging me to meet him in the middle. His forehead pressed against mine and his nose caressed mine.

“I’m going to kiss you.” he whispered.

“I don’t think I remember how to kiss back.” The pathetic confession was followed by a wayward tear slipping down my cheek.

His soft, full lips pressed gently against mine. My mind searched for the file within the long abandoned cabinets for how to kiss someone. He pulled away for a split second only to return his lips to mine. I found my lips pushing against his out of basic instinct. Our lips melded together for a moment before I felt him smile against mine.

His hands cupping my face, “I think it will all come back to you easier than you may think.”

I took in a deep breath letting it out in a short burst, “I think you believe in me too much for only meeting me a few hours ago.”

Jensen was still holding my face as he leaned back, “Other than Jared and Mish, I have never felt closer to anyone, but you.”

“You have your work cut out for you then,” I pointed to my head, “because it’s a nightmarish mess up in here.”

He leaned in kissing me once again, “You are worth every second of being with you because you’re stunning, smart, talented, caring and most of all you’re beautiful inside and out.”

I stared up at him speechless as my inner guard laid down her shield, “I like this one.”

“No… no one has ever said that about me. I-I don’t know what to say or how to react.” I stammered, unable to comprehend what he said.

He smiled widely, “Get used to that feeling because I’m preparing for you to feel that way a lot. Now, I don’t want to test your boundaries too much so I think we should hang out here and watch a movie.”

Jensen moved to the end of the couch resting his arm along the back of it and propping his feet on the table. For the first time in forever, there were no inner voices to keep me from doing what I desperately wanted. I moved over next to him resting my back into his side and stretching my legs out to the other end of the couch. His arm draped over the front of my chest and his fingertips brushed against my side.

This time there was no flinching and I smiled at the small victory.

The rest of the weekend was like a dream. Seeing the convention backstage, meeting all the rest of the other actors on the show and most of all Jensen’s constant touch comforted me throughout it all. Sami beaming with pride as I pushed myself to be in the crowd for the concert on Saturday. When Sunday came, I found myself riddled with sadness knowing I would have to leave this magical weekend behind.

Sami had decided to go back to the hotel while I waited for Jensen to finish his autographs. I had noticed Clif, the boys’ friend and bodyguard, staying close by me. When the last fan left the autograph room, he motioned for me to follow him. Entering the room, I found Jensen with his head down on his table while Jared and Misha were fooling around at theirs.

Walking up, I slid my hands over his shoulders and began rubbing the knots out of them. A small groan escaping his lips sent a wave of desire over my body. I moved my hands down his back eagerly wanting to hear him again.

“Hey, if you’re giving free massages away I’ll take one!” Jared called out.

Jensen’s head snapped up, “Don’t even think about it Padalecki. Her hands are too precious for your sweaty self.”

I chuckled as he stood up letting my hands drift down his back. I knew he was fit but his body was firm and lean in all the right spots. As he moved away I found my fingers stretching out to touch him again. All weekend I had found myself craving his touch. My mind was obsessively thinking about his hand in mine or my arms around his waist or his hands gripping my hips. My cheeks felt like they were on fire and I heard him chuckle.

“You okay? You kind of spaced out for a moment.”

I nodded smiling, “I’m great. Just thinking was all.”

“Well come on, you and I can grab something to eat then hang out in my room.” His arm slipped around my shoulders and instantly I relaxed into his embrace.

Dinner was unexpectedly crashed by Jared and Misha tagging along. We found a twenty-four hours diner near the hotel that was nearly empty and we all spent a few hours talking, laughing. I could not help the sadness creeping over me as the minutes passed by. Minutes I was losing to have Jensen to myself. As if he read my mind he excused us to head back to the hotel.

We walked in silence, hand in hand. Stepping into the elevator, he pulled me into his side and I wrapped my arms around his waist. His room was on the opposite end of the same hall as mine. Stepping inside, the door clicking shut as we stood across from one another. It was like a shotgun going off as Jensen closed the distance between us. His hands sliding down my body as his mouth crashed to mine.

As suddenly as it happened, it was over.

“I’m sorry… shit. (Y/N) I’m really sorry.” His pleads confused me for a moment.

Breathing heavily as he stepped back further from me I blurted out, “W-Why are you apologizing? D-Did I do something wrong?”

His dark forest eyes snapped up, “You do something… you didn’t do anything but be you, (Y/N). I just couldn’t stop myself. This weekend has been the best one in my life. Being around you, holding your hand, kissing you has rejuvenated me. I just want more of you, all of you. Simple looks you give, the way you hold yourself and the moment you open yourself up to reach out to me. I just found myself unable to hold back anymore. I know…”

This time it was me who closed the distance between us. My lips crashing into his. My hands running up his broad chest and into his soft hair. The soft moan escaping my lips as we parted.

“I want you to have me…” I whispered in between breaths, “I’m nervous with a bunch of what ifs running in my head.”

“Do you trust me?” The corner of his lip curling upward.

“Yes.”

Jensen took my hand leading me into the bedroom of his suite. He gently picked me up and sat me on the bed. He knelt in front of me, slipping my shoes from my feet then pulling my socks off. His thumbs pressing into the bottom of my feet as I began to giggle.

“Oh… now that is an amazing sound. I must hear that again.” He smirked, tickling my feet.

I fell back in a fit of giggles as Jensen’s laughter joined mine. I leaned up on my elbows looking down at Jensen resting his chin on my knee. He lifted his brows asking permission and I nodded. His hands drifted over my calves, up to my knees and over my thighs.

“You have incredible legs. I found myself staring at them as you would walk in front of me with Sami. Wondering how they would feel beneath my hands.” He gently squeezed them near my hips.

His knee pressed into the mattress between my legs as his firm body hovered over mine. My fingers brushed against the hem of his shirt pushing it up and hesitantly touching his stomach. Jensen sucked in a quick breath as his hands paused on his hips. I focused on the feeling of his smooth, warm skin beneath my fingertips. His flat stomach is surprisingly soft.  

I grasped the end of his shirt pulling it towards his head as he pulled back allowing it over his head. Taking it from my hands, he tossed it on the floor. I took in every inch of his skin from his muscles flexing to the freckles decorating it.

“You beautiful, you know that?” I did not think he heard me until I saw the smug smirk on his face.

He leaned down kissing me, “Stealing my lines, sweetheart.”

His hands went back to my hips as his lips left a trail of kisses down my neck, “You think that your softness is revolting, but I find it inviting.”

I froze as his hand pushed up into my shirt touching my stomach. I squirmed as he pushed my shirt up just under my bra. My hands threading through his hair as his lips pressed small kisses against my stomach.

“Jensen…” The tension in my tone caught his attention.

His eyes filled with worry, “Too much?”

I took a few deep breaths and shook my head, “I’m fine, promise.”

“See there you go, being brave and pushing yourself. You have no idea how sexy that is.” He murmured against my skin.

As Jensen’s mouth neared the waistband of my jeans, I tugged his hair motioning for him to come back up to her. He smiled randomly kissing spots along my body. His lips finally met mine as I slid my arms around him. His tongue swiped across my bottom lip as they parted for him. His gentleness and care to make me comfortable broke down the last existing wall of defense.

Their kiss deepened. My body burned with a need to feel Jensen’s skin against mine and to be close to him in every way physically possible. Foreign pressure began to simmer deep within me and I lifted my hips pressing them against his thigh.

He pulled away his eyes blown with passion searching mine for an answer to a silent question.

“Please… take away everything he did. I want to feel whole again.” I pleaded just above a whisper.

His lips were on mine again as he gently lifted me up further onto his bed. Sitting up, I pulled my shirt over my head holding it in front of me for a brief moment. His eyes watching my every move as I tossed it over the side. He reached behind me with one hand unclasping my bra in one swift movement.

I kissed his collarbone as he leaned in to do so, “Show off.”

He chuckled before leaning back and allowing me at my pace to unveiling my bare chest to him. I slid the straps down my arms holding it in place before playfully tossing it at him chuckling. Joking had always been my way of dealing with uncomfortable moments. When I looked up his eyes were drifting down my bare upper body.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” He smirked as I rolled my eyes at him, “Seriously, (Y/N)... you’re absolutely stunning.”

He ran his hand down my chest, between my breasts and down to my jeans. He undid the button and slowly drew down the zipper. Hooking his fingers with a belt loops dragging my jeans down my legs. I shivered as the cool air hit my skin. Jensen tossed them off to the side then began to place gentle, open mouth kisses up my leg.

My breaths were coming out in small little puffs the further up my leg he got. His mouth hovered over her cotton cover mound inching closer to it. My teeth dug into my lip desperately wanting him to press them against me. Instead he kept his path up my body stopping at my breasts. He cupped the side of one running his thumb over my nipple.

A long sigh escaping my lips from just the slightest touch from him, “O-Oh… Jensen…” His mouth had gently suckled my other nipple, the pressure turning to an ache between my legs.

“You have no idea hearing my name from your lips does to me.” He softly said before circling my nipple with his tongue.

Feeling bold, I slid my hand down between us running it along the hard bulge being restrained by denim. Jensen sucked in a sharp breath dropping his head between my breasts, “Shit…”

“I believe I have some kind of an idea.” I smiled as he grinded himself against my palm.

He stood up at the edge of the bed, his intense stare making me tremble with anticipation. Leaning forward, his fingers hooked the sides of her cotton panties and pulled them down until they were on the floor.

“Exquisite, flawless, perfect.”

“As are you.” I sat up until I was sitting on the edge in front of him.

My hands trembled as I unbuttoned his jeans and carefully unzipped them. Jensen let out a soft hiss as I brushed against his length. His hands cupped my face pulling my lips to his urgently kissing me. I pushed his jeans and boxers down as far as I could before he pushed me back onto the mattress. His hand drifting down my body until his fingers pressed against my folds.

“Jensen, please…” I begged needing to feel any kind of relief from the pressure pulsating from between my legs, “Ohhh… god.”

Jensen began to rub lazy circles against my clit. My hips grinding against his hand as his lips pressed just below my ear, “Are you okay?”

His question sober me from the drunken stupor of desire and I placed my hand over his pushing down further, “More than okay.”

Jensen pushed one long finger deep inside me with a hiss, “Fuck pretty girl, your so tight.” He slowly pushed a second finger inside.

My head pressed against the mattress, my back arching as he pumped his thick fingers in me, “More, oh please Jensen, I need more.”

His pace picked up and I looked up to his face. His eyes wide and dark watching me come undone as his thumb rubbed harshly against my throbbing clit, “Jensen!” I cried out overwhelming pleasure wrecked through my body.

Breathing heavily, my body shaking slightly as he pulled his fingers from me, “Now that was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

A slow grin spread across my face as I pulled his mouth to mine. He positioned himself between my legs pulling away slightly, his lips grazing against mine.  

“Are you sure? We can stop if you want.” Jensen’s tone was tense as I felt his length resting against my folds.

I kissed him, “I need you. All of you.”

He braced himself up with one arm as his hand slipped between us. Jensen ran the swollen head along my slickness before nudging it against my entrance. The room filled with groans and heavy breaths as Jensen slowly sheathed himself within me. There was a singe of pain as I stretched taking him his thick length but quickly was replaced with immense pleasure as he thrusted gently into me.

“So. Tight.” He panted against my cheek.

I wrapped my arms and legs around him digging my heels into him. Each stroke pushing me further to the edge. Feeling every muscle straining along his back and arms. His head buried in the crook of my neck grunting almost painfully. I knew then he was holding back.

I pressed my lips to his ear, “Jensen, I won’t break. You’re making me feel incredible, but I want you to let go. Show me how I make you feel.”

A low growl rumbled from his chest as he nipped at my neck and his hips snapped against me. The echoes of our skin meeting, loving praises and the headboard against the wall filled the room. I started to meet each thrust of his, the coil within me ready to snap. His hands were gripping my shoulders holding me against his burning body. I clung to him scraping my nails against his back making him growl again.

“Shit Jensen, I’m so close. Just a little more, oh god please!” I beg as he thrusted into me feverishly small grunts coming from him, “Yes, yes, oh… Jensen!”

My whole body was shaking as an intense wave of euphoria covered me. Pulsating around him, he abandoned all control chasing his own release.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He gritted his teeth as his body went rigid before slamming into me his length twitching deep within me, “Holy shit…”

Jensen rode out his release, his arms shaking to the point he could not hold himself up anymore. I groaned as he pulled out leaving me empty. He rolled onto his back breathing heavily as I curled into his side burying my head into his chest.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” His concern only made me cling to him more.

I shook my head, “No, I’m just overwhelmed. Too many feelings at once.”

“Talk it out. Tell me what you’re feeling.” Jensen wrapped his arms around me holding me close.

I took a deep breath, “I’m feeling exhilaration, bliss, pleasure. Right now, I’m feeling empty and it’s almost like I can’t breath. I feel scared by how much I need to feel your touch.”

His fingers were drawing small circles against my bare back, “If that’s your way of asking for round two, you’re going to have to wait for a little bit. I haven’t come like that since I was a teenager.”

There was a brief moment of silence before I started to laugh. My body shaking from the laughter pouring from my lips. I kissed his chest, “Thank you.”

“You never need to thank me. It’s my honor to make you laugh. Bring your pleasure. Praise you for your beautifulness. More importantly, always holding you close to me.”

I entwined my legs with his as he pulled the sheet over our naked bodies. Just when I thought he was about to fall asleep, I slipped my hand over his soft member then pressed my lips just under his chin.

“Round two?”

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[beardofkamenev]

hi why are u like waging an internet smear campaign against my friends lol it wld be uhhh cool if u stopped doing that. i genuinely dont understand what any of this is about but it all seems to have got very out of hand and nasty so if u could like chill thatd be nice

Hi, thanks for coming off anon. I’m not being sarcastic, I appreciate that you’ve put your name to this. Since you don’t understand the issue, I’m willing to explain further via DM if you wish. That is, if you’re actually open to what I have to say and aren’t just here to blindly defend your friends.

Firstly, I didn’t even know Tom existed until someone sent me their vague. I can’t “smear” or “cancel” Tom because I don’t know anything about their views other than that one post. I don’t ‘vague’ and I certainly don’t hide behind anon. If I have an issue with someone, I will confront them directly and that’s what I did. Tom was clearly misled because none of this has anything to do with Henry VII. The rest of ‘us’ have no interest in him. The issue is and has always been racism, from historians and in the ‘fandom’. We are not “friends”. But we all share the opinion that Olivia’s — and especially Taylor and Haley’s — behaviour towards others lately has been unacceptable.

To your first point: I have not been the one continuing the drama. Until now, the last I ever addressed it was 18 February (really, 14 February). You can check for yourself. But as Olivia’s friend, you’d have seen that she continued to make accusations about ‘us’ since then. I knew about them, but did not respond. A separate issue recently began, involving a black classicist calling Lucy Worsley “racist” for using the n-word. Taylor and Olivia (among others) ‘vagued’ @juliacaesaris​ about it, saying OP “dismissed a woman’s credentials” because of their tag that she was an “art historian, not a historian”. Clearly, that was NOT the issue. When OP found out about your friends’ vagues, they confronted them with the screenshots (as you can see). That caused Olivia to bring up the February issue again with the same accusations about ‘us’. That is what finally prompted me to make my recent post about her. Olivia said she refused to read it (as is her right) because it is “beneath her”, but she nevertheless concluded that it was “full of lies” and has since made substantive claims about its contents... but she has not read it. 

I am not white. I am Filipina. The majority of us on ‘this side’ are not white. They are mostly black and Latino. We’ve said this many times. This may surprise you, as Olivia has repeatedly claimed that we are are all white. We are not, and frankly, I think our opinions on racism should count for something. Olivia has recently made new claims about my post that I’ll clear up now. Regarding her claim that I’ve somehow tried to lecture her (a Welsh person) on being Welsh, the only thing I said in my post was:

She [Taylor] then claimed we called her “anti-Welsh” (another fucking lie) to make it seem like a bunch of cRaZy blacks and browns were attacking poor, innocent white her (with Olivia coming to the rescue, of course).

That refers to a different issue in January (about Taylor and Haley, not Olivia), which I’ve also addressed in my post. You can read it and decide for yourself if I actually presumed to lecture Olivia on being Welsh. There is a pattern here and you probably won’t like to hear what I’ll say next, but I’ll say it anyway: Olivia has made many, extreme accusations about us, but has not given any evidence for them. We, at least, have given some kind of evidence to support our accusations against her, and Taylor and Haley. That alone should raise red flags.

Now, if you want to question me (genuinely and in good faith), I’ll be happy to answer all your questions in the DMs. Tom can do so as well, as I don’t have personal feelings against them (though the vague was beyond stupid). But whatever you choose, that should be your decision to make, not Olivia’s, and if she’s even remotely interested in putting an end to this, she will let you hear me out.

28/03/2021: I’ve since been informed by juliacaesaris that they don’t actually identify as black (though they have some close black ancestry), and they’ve also corrected that in the notes. That being said, I don’t think you have to be black or any other minority to take issue with racism or be an ally.

[tordcallout]

callout for @nyadmin

this callout is best read on desktop.

this callout contains: racefaking, blackfacing/brownfacing, pedophilia, incest, grooming, systemfaking, antisemitism, nazism, cult jokes, and more.

his current url is nyadmin. his twitter is adminpowers. his discord is ROMY O NO#6477. click here for a list of past names. click here for a list of his past urls. his other blogs are: amblyopic, racefakery, todayphobe, exadmin, askmychampion, and supercrushhighschool.

tords past callouts: one, two, three.

the rest of the callout is under the cut.

racefaking:

tord claims his mom is white and native and that his father is half black and half white. people who have known tord irl in the past say that his dad is not half black and those who’ve known him online say tord has never mentioned it before or joined in when they discussed issues related to being black. he also refuses to ask his dad for any photos of his grandmother who he says is black.

in the past tord has tried to claim that he doesn’t benefit from white passing privilege despite being extremely pale.

photos of his parents found on facebook show that neither his mom or dad have anything resembling ethnic features. his mom’s hair is dyed blond but regardless they both have basic white features:

below is proof that the woman shown is tords mom:

tords own blood related brother, felix, claims he doesn’t know where tord is getting their black heritage from:

below is a screenshot of an anon on mikas blog asking if tord has ever said the n word in front of him:

on 8/23/18, tord made this post. in the post he says this:

if it isn’t clear, he basically just said that he is white.

there’s also this screenshot from an older blog of his:

and if that wasn’t enough proof that tord’s racefaking he has also done both blackface and brownface. however, before we get to that here’s some more:

tord wondering if he could participate in the black men smiling tag and blackout.

now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. tords blackface and brownface.

the first image is the brownface, the second is blackface.

on the left tord has obviously edited his skin to appear darker. in his blackface cosplay he claimed he wasn’t actually painted black and that the snapchat filters were making him darker. this is clearly a lie considering nearly all snapchat filters lighten your skin and this filter is no exception:

here is the filter applied to a white person, and as you can see, her skin is smoothed out but it is no where near dark the way tord appears in his selfie.

adding onto this, if you look closely at tords selfie you can tell the outside of his lips have a very pale ring around it. this is obviously because he didnt do very well coloring in his skin. you can also tell there is a grainy texture on tords skin but not anywhere else in this image, more evidence the image was edited.

more info on the blackface cosplay selfie can be read here and here.

you must either be on desktop or reading this post through a chrome browser to view this part, apologies. in these posts tord has a conversation with someone named frost about his callouts and being mixed. please keep in mind that the conversation in that link took place on may 7th of 2018. meaning, that in the past tord agreed to stop claiming to be mixed black and native but then threw that all out the window and began to reclaim it again.

grooming, incest, and pedophilia:

i was very hesitant to include this however, many people have said they feel the same way about this so it felt important enough to have its own part. multiple people believe that the relationship between tord and his brother felix is extremely inappropriate. the way he interacts with his brother is really something he needs to re-evaluate.

this isn’t meant to be about kin drama or anything of the sort, i’m only stating this because of the way tord and felix take kin so seriously. he and felix often match kins which isn’t an issue in itself, however, the only kins they typically match are those of which have a canon romantic relationship; and if not canon tord will still tag felix in ship art of their kins, as seen here. 

when you visit the op of that post, you will see that it is tagged as both “shipsworld” and “tordedd”. the art is very obviously ship art anyways.

tord is obviously one of his main ids, so to tag your own sibling in ship art of your main id with one of theirs seems incredibly off. not to mention the very large age gap between tord and felix in the first place.

this isn’t a recent thing of theirs either, they’ve been doing this for years now. couples they’ve kinmatched have been: greg and rose from steven universe, eliza and alexander from hamilton, and penny and billy from dr. horribles sing a-long blog. along with tord and edd from eddsworld and romeo/admin and jesse from minecraft story mode who are not canonly dating. there are most likely even more than those listed above.

there aren’t screenshots of them both being kin with these characters, but the hamilton one isn’t hard to believe considering tords main id used to be alexander hamilton from the hamilton musical.

to add onto this, felix apparently had a set of ocs and a persona oc at one point. his oc skit, was to represent himself, and his oc aiko, was implied to be skits romantic interest.

here is a photo of skit, as you can see skit represents felix. you can also clearly see that aiko is labeled as skits “enemy and crush”, confirming that these two characters are supposed to have a sort of romantic relationship.

now here is a photo of aiko. as you can see from the relationship box, it is 100% that skit and aiko are supposed to be in a romantic relationship or something similar to that.

now the reason this i’m telling you all of this is because of on tords old deviantart, he has a folder of art of his kins. in that folder you could find images of skit and aiko along with one of aiko on her own, implying that tord kins her.

to make things even weirder, the photos added to this folder of skit and aiko are incredibly romantic in nature, hugs with hearts around them and a photo where the two of them are basically kissing with a heart above the two. the folder also includes more romantic tordedd art as well.

back to their matching kins however, as stated before, tord and felix kinmatch jesse and romeo/admin from minecraft story mode. i know little to nothing about this game, however, i do know that tord ships these two characters together. felix kins jesse and tord kins romeo. 

UPDATE: i have been informed that the ages previously listed here were a mcsm fans headcanon ages for the characters and that they do not have canonical ages. however, it does prove that there are fans that would see the ship as a pedophilic one due to hcs of romeo being 30+ and jesse being >20.

now, here is a disgusting screenshot of tord saying he’s going to show his brother porn. i’m sure this was meant to be taken as a joke but i find it highly disturbing due to the fact that at the time of this screenshot being taken felix would only be 12 years old and tord would’ve been 16 years old.

i am in no way trying to say tord is a full on pedophile, not am i accusing him of having romantic or sexual feelings for his brother, however, i am saying the way he interacts with his brother is not okay and that he needs to learn how to separate friend interaction from sibling interaction.

cult jokes:

tord previously had a cult joke in his about: “mixed but i drank the racefaker koolaid”. when told about this, he refused to remove the joke and tried to hide it under the guise of the phrase being “aave” (his explaination was that black people like to drink koolaid). he was messaged by someone on his blog @/racefakery who asked for him to remove the joke from his about, as it is incredibly insensitive to joke about something like that where everyone can see.

in the conversation, tord doesn’t take the person who messaged him seriously at all and says “i don’t see why i should care?” about cult victims. i don’t think i have to explain how horrible and insensitive that is to say.

the joke continued to stay in his about for nearly a month after this conversation. on top of that, tord never apologized nor admitted that cult jokes are just as serious as jokes as any other traumatizing kind of event.

UPDATE: after doing a little digging, i found an older blog of his. in the links of this blog there is this: “thanks for reading and welcome to the lonely hearts cult” at the end of his links. so there’s another cult joke made by tord.

nazism:

tord has had multiple accounts of him being antisemetic, however, for this we are going to focus on the fact that tord is kin with habit and kinned eridan.

archive of this page.

habit from everymanhybrid is a canonical nazi. this was displayed on tords “alters” blog. now even if were going to pretend tord is a system here, unless tord is comfortable with antisemitism there is no reason for his “alter” to kin a nazi. all alters share similarities with their hosts, this mainly includes moral standpoints, saying tords “alter” is okay with kinning a nazi but not tord is the same as saying you can have one alter be a terf but the host isn’t. it isn’t simply isn’t possible. anyways, here’s evidence of habit being a nazi:

the person he claimed to have possessed was josef mengele. i don’t want to repeat the things he did but you can google it if you’d really like to know of it.

on top of habit being a nazi, here is a list of his “hobbies” & crimes he’s commit:

as for eridan, his main goal from what i’ve been told was to “wipe out the landwellers”, as he is a “seadweller”. his whole character is a metaphot for nazism, eridan being hitler and the “landwellers” being jewish people. if you want more info on this it can be found here. not sure why you would though.

tord was also briefly friends with ethan, a known nazi & rapist, for a while. there’s a lot of screenshots and information on that. you can read it on this google doc.

systemfaking:

this one isn’t going to take very long to explain because of how blatantly obvious it is but tord is systemfaking. from what i and quite a few others can tell, one of the biggest implications is that tords “alters” would reblog one anothers posts and talk to each other via the posts. there a many reasons this makes no sense:

if his alters are conscious enough to have their own blogs and set up themes similar to tords, why do they need to reblog one another’s posts to communicate? at that point, they should be able to speak via headspace.

these posts of his alters interacting with each other are made just seconds apart from each other, it is literally impossible for anyone to shift this fast, the average shifting time is 5-15 minutes. however, these posts aren’t even made a full minute apart from one another.

this is a post where tords “alters” habit and cora are interacting on a post.

if you look into the source code of these two posts you will find that they were made literally not even a full two minutes apart from one another. the original was posted at 8:10:46 and coras was posted at 8:11:10. like i already stated, this isn’t possible in systems.

tord and his “alter” gem do this again. gems first reblog of this post was at 17:51:49. and their second reblog of the post was at  17:53:48. under 5 minutes apart from one another, meaning tords reblog must’ve been around 17:52. but it just isn’t possible either way.

you may think that this is all that tord has done, but it really isn’t. despite all the information in this callout there is still a lot here that isn’t shown. this was thrown together as a sort of “birthday gift” for tord. i hope you appreciate your gift, tord.

[toooldforfandom-liveblogs]

RWBY V07E03 - Ace Operatives

I think this episode is going to be about two things: new outfits and a mission with the ace ops. I really want to find out how well RWBY is going to handle having 5 new characters around plus everyone else so let's do this!

Huh, I'd have thought they'd change their outfits before a mission since Ironwood wanted them to upgrade. Wouldn't it make sense to have the better equipment before going on a mission?

Interesting that Qrow is not on the list of Active Huntsmen (congrats everyone else, you're official huntsmen and huntresses now!) Oscar is also absent but I guess he's being held back because he's Ozpin.

How long of a timeskip was this?

Ooh, now it all makes sense. I was a bit confused about the timeline but mission briefing -> upgrades -> first shot of ships flying around fits more than what I was thinking.

Ooh, a promise for even more enhancements!

I don't remember anything too different about Jaune's new outfit that would make him look so forlorn. But I guess any kind of change makes him move further and further away from the Jaune that Pyrrha knew.

The closest Blake has ever been to making a :3 face.

Are they going to talk about Ruby's decision?

I can imagine Pietro holding his face wondering why Blake and Yang requested so many zippers.

It's interesting how Blake almost reads like a completely different character while with Weiss she's still just Weiss but cooler. The difference that a haircut makes.

Or maybe they changed her facial features a bit?

I'm feeling weirdly proud of Jaune having a proper landing strategy. More than the hair and the "complete" armor, I think that's the most noticeable sign of how much he has grown.

Qrow went from pirate to... fancy pirate.

This is the weirdest thing to geek about but I love that Weiss's aura meter is slightly lower than the rest. She used her summons!

I was going to write a bad joke about them being "totally straight and _just_ friends" but screw that, they are gay and cute and I love them.

Weiss is very blush-y this season but I can't tell if it's because of the cold or if it's just more noticeable because she's the one with the lightest skin.

So, which kingdom uses kilograms and which one uses pounds?

Ruby finally realizing that wearing a skirt in the frozen tundra probably isn't be the best of ideas.

Yay, they are addressing it.

I'm glad they are actually talking about it. Did they wait to be outside of Atlas on purpose or is it just a coincidence?

I still can't tell what the show is trying to say about Ozpin. "Honesty is always the best policy" would have worked during the first seasons but the Fall of Beacon changed things enough that being irresponsible with what and how you say things would be naive.

I just can't decide if the show is going to prove Ruby right and Ironwood will turn out to be hiding his worst tendencies from them or wrong, with Ironwood feeling betrayed and maybe causing him to go off the deep end.

Proving her right would redeem Ozpin. Proving her wrong would maybe cause Ozpin to reappear after finally realizing his way of doing things only made things worse.

The way the show is framing the situation, with Ruby clearly feeling uncomfortable, avoiding the question, Yang being worried about it (even though she has always been Ruby's unconditional support), the fact that Ruby is a "honest soul" and this goes against that, makes me think it's going towards the "Ruby is making a mistake" side but who knows. Maybe I'm underestimating the show by thinking there's only two clear choices and it'll do something unexpected and more realistic.

Interesting that Qrow's bad luck manifested in him instead of on Clover. Is Clover's semblance that good of a counter to Qrow's?

I always knew Ren wasn't to be trusted. Only someone evil would make Nora sad. Forget about Watts and Tyrian, I'd watch out for Ren in the future.

I think this the dumbest Jaune has ever been.

Her ears moved! Having someone with super hearing in your team seems like a great idea.

Oh. I thought she heard the Geist. Has she been here before in a White Fang mission?

Nope, not that. Was this explosion where Ilia's parents died?

The use of depth of field during a battle solves all my issues with the way they handle having too many fighters in the same shot. It's just blurry enough to hide the simpler animation the fighters in the background have but clear enough to know who's fighting.

So, what's the name of this ship?

Whenever there's someone "new" that's acting cool I wonder if they are just being set up as awesome to be defeated later on to show how powerful the enemy is. CFVY's introduction in Volume 2 and later defeat in V3 was almost 99% that so I'm hoping this is not a repeat.

I'd have thought that dividing her body to go past obstacles was clue enough for Ruby to maybe start thinking that "go fast" wasn't exactly what her semblance does.

I can't believe they relegated the best part of the episode to the background of a scene.

I commented before (maybe on the Discord?) that I thought Tyrian was trying to stir up the population of Mantle instead of specifically trying to sabotage Hill and I think this supports that idea. It's just the best way to make the population of Mantle feel threatened since it looks like Atlas is trying to silence the opposition by killing journalists and vocal "civilian" supporters, causing even more civil unrest.

It may even improve Hill's chances of winning the election as a response.

I think this was a necessary episode but I'm not a big fan of it. By now it's probably no secret that I can take or leave the fight scenes and the second half's focus in showing off the upgrades and how cool the Ace Ops are made my eyes glaze over a bit. It did have some strong character moments though!

And the outfits are finally here! The more I look at them, the more I like them. It may be just in my head but I feel the character themselves look slightly different too. Blake's head is slightly less... Blake-y (she always looked weird in screenshots in the past) for example. Weiss looks similar but her expressions are more animated. Maybe I'm just imagining things. But the outfits are great in movement and a straight up upgrade for everyone except for maaaybe Jaune's hair which I still can't get used to.

Jaune's growth being so clearly shown in his landing was great, and his armor finally looking "complete" makes it even more obvious that this is not the Jaune that cheated his way in to Beacon. Or rather, he still is but he is so much more.

Blake and Yang's moment was incredibly cute. LOL at anyone who still thinks that they are just totally platonic and straight friends who awkwardly flirt with each other. (I just remembered that a comment about a haircut was one of the biggest clues about what was really going on between two characters in another show I don't want to spoil by accident.)

Weiss is carrying around a lot of guilt which I'm sure will come up later in the season. But, as Marrow said, every human is complicit in the oppression of the faunus, and while Weiss was close to the one of the main direct sources, it's not like she could have solved anything on her own.

Aaand, that's the first half. The second half is mostly the fight which, while it wasn't very interesting for me, it was very well animated and it did do a great job showing not only how cool the Ace Ops are, but also their personality. Pretty notable considering it's a team of five in an episode with eight other characters running around with their own little moments.

Qrow's reaction to Clover is intriguing. There's no way to tell what he's really thinking, the emotions shown across his face are just subtle enough that they could support any theory. Does he resent Clover's "luck"?

In any case the fact that they are _so_ cool and friendly makes me suspect something bad is going to happen. Because nothing good lasts.

Most of the pieces in the OP have already appeared, the only one left is Robyn Hill. Is the fourth episode going to be her premiere? I can't wait. Until next time!

Note from the future: While reading this again before posting I realize it sounds maybe too negative. The dangers of liveblogging while tired instead of waiting a couple of days like I did with Gravity Falls. * sigh *

[knightofbalance-13]

http://xenodweeb.tumblr.com/post/177174184562/misterblank42-hey-so-lets-talk-about-this-this

You people make me sick.

Hey so lets talk about this. This is a work in progress of the Adam VS Yang fight that Shane said was cut. So I’ve had this since May I found this on accident in a comment section on YouTube. I was going to some of you here but when I was still deciding weather or not I should RTX came and when the Adam short came out someone, since the link was out in the wild, had the audacity to not only post it on the RWBY reddit (y'know Roosterteeth territory) but also didn’t at least try to hide the name of the person who posted it on they’re dropbox since it was supposed to be a private thing. I had to go warn the individual to take it down since I didn’t want RT breathing down their neck. So if you were there and wondered why the link stopped working after an hour there’s your answer and now it’s back on the reddit and made it’s way here though it got overshadowed by the Adam short.

Anyways back to the vid I contacted the person who put the dropbox on the comment section I found and they showed me a chatlog they had with the person who gave them the link. That person got it from a discord from someone who claimed to be a friend of Monty. That friend also said some other things.

1. Monty came up with the maidens. He pitched it and Miles liked it.

2. Monty wasn’t an assertive person and because of this Miles and Kerry meddled in some of his scenes and changed the overall plot causing Monty to want leave RT.

3. Sheena was supposed to be Winter.

Speaking of Sheena here’s an old AMA I found that she did a couple of weeks after Monty died.

https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/2x6ac1/i_am_sheena_duquette_oum_ask_me_anything/?utm_source=BD&utm_medium=Search&utm_name=Bing&utm_content=PSR1

Notice how she seemed so excited to cosplay as Winter and  she details how she helped Monty with RWBY. 

Also the person who gave the chatlog also showed me a conversation because he actually DM’d Shane about this and to his surprise Shane responded and he refused to look at it. Shane’s reasoning being that something felt off  and he isn’t “Eager to cause any kind of  trouble over anything RT related"  

So now with all of this there is a question in that “What does this say about the letter now?” like this exist even if Shane doesn’t want to confirm its validity. (Which if he did would make RT less than pleased) So if anyone has questions or anything of the sort let me know.

EDIT: So this is a detail about the fight that was pointed out by @kaedeichinose   The song used is a song called “Session” by linkin park. I went back to the letter and read the section where Shane talks about the fight.

Wanna know what’s missing in the original post here?

PROOF.

All of this is copy pasted from the original post. There is no alterations or modifications from me, this is what you get.  And yet, there is next to NO links, no screenshots, no names and the OP has even admitted to convincing someone to delete evidence complete with a built in excuse to weasel out of any issues. So there is NO way to validate what they are saying. For all we know, he made the video in the link and made up the rest of it just to start shit. Considering this si from the same guy who uses Glassdoor reviews, reviews that can be FABRICATED mind you while all of them being from ANONYOMOUS EMPLOYEES, this is very much likely.

ESPECIALLY the shit involving Monty and Shane.

“Monty wasn’t an assertive person”

I call bullshit on this using the Penny fight scene and the Raven fight scene. BOTH are things that Miles and Kerry noted on not wanting and yet BOTH are canon. If Monty was not assertive, HOW did these things get into canon against the wishes of his co-writers? Not to mention the numerous times we’ve seen people telling that man to take a break and the fact that Shane’s letter NEVER MENTIONED THIS.

“because of this Miles and Kerry meddled in some of his scenes and changed the overall plot causing Monty to want leave RT.“

A. If Miles and Kerry were THIS bad, WHY did Monty approached them for help? Obviously Miles nor Kerry are experienced writers so it couldn’t be for their expertise. So what else does that leave us aside from ‘they’re nice’?

And B. Once again, I looked through Shane’s letter. he NEVER mentions this nor Monty wanting to leave RT. Despite Shane being a bit out of his mind at the time of the letter: I believe HIM before I’d believe YOU. And if he never mentioned it then I’d just suspect you’re lying.

‘Shane responded and he refused to look at it. Shane’s reasoning being that something felt off  and he isn’t “Eager to cause any kind of  trouble over anything RT related"  So now with all of this there is a question in that “What does this say about the letter now?” like this exist even if Shane doesn’t want to confirm its validity.’

WHY would Shane respond to some rando who messaged him about something he hasn’t spoken about in THREE YEARS, especially to denounce his own letter? That doesn’t make ANY sense.

So this whole post is just a case of ‘it happened because I say so!’ without so much as the BARE MINNUM of evidence or proof. This is just stirring up an old issue to get people to fling shit again.

As evidence by the reblog here.

This is why it disgusts me that the only true gotcha non-fans can come up with to dismiss/belittle thinking about it deeply than “show bad” is just “It remixed assets and that’s still bad in a generation where a game made of unchanged assets can get popular enough to help bring a game genre to the mainstream.”

There’s far worse things RT has done than just “Despite being enough of a hit to appear in an anime fighting game made by one of the more well known fighting game devs, they somehow managed to steal assets from Bethany Esda for the very first trailer the show had,” Especially when those posts had shit that read like a 4chan post and took Monty’s words out of context to demonize him for remixing pre-made assets.

And yet you’ll push that shit in regards to RT, Xenodweeb.

And not like this post reads like anything better. Wanna know what OP reminds me of? That Kiwi Farms post that said Sheena killed Monty for insurance money. Should we just believe THEM because they said it, regardless of human empathy and emotion Xenodweeb?

Or are you no better than they are?

RT is pulling some Konami grade shit with Monty’s show and those people are supporting callout posts that also treated Monty like scum to dismiss looking into it and discovering RT’s ACTUAL bullshit and I’m still so fucking bitter about that.

No, you’re bitter that you can’t fling shit and accuse people of bullshit without reprocussions. I also happen to know that you don’t give a FUCK about people’s lives considering what I’ve heard. Why?

THAT is why HBomb’s RWBY video is so much more important than the milquetoast garbage RWBY critical youtubers so far have been and have given us. Unlike those people, who are cool with associating with reactionary scumbags like Chris Ray Gun or talk like reactionaries themselves, HBomb has actually made some strong hard left criticism towards both media and reactionary types.

Because you’re fucking PSYCHO. You see the death of a man before his time and the depression and sadness of another man as EXCUSES to push your own political agenda.

Well, not like the rest of you are any better considering Sokumo bitches about how RWBY doesn’t portray groups like BLM as innocent angels (despite the WF not BEING like BLM intentionally) and Dudeblade bitches about RWBY not being sexist.

Just goes to show how fucked up you are Xenodweeb since THEY never had the AUDACITY to use Monty for this.

I trust HBomb can, if not kickstart the discourse so it’s not dogshit anymore, at least give us something decent to use to show people how bad RT actually is.

Heh, wanna know what the funny thing is?

https://twitter.com/Hbomberguy/status/985266613707595778

Your precious Hbomb would actually DEFEND RT.

And let me guess Xenodweeb, he’s wrong now and he must burn for his sins?

Because that’s ALL you people think about.

Not the consequences of your actions, not whether or not you’re doing what is right, not who you are hurting with this shit, not even if this shit is correct:

Just whether or not you get what you want.

You’re all sick.

P.S. Stop calling everyone who disagrees with you an alt account of me.

[xtremedespair3d]

HajiKo Anime: Fall 2020

Where was Summer at? We needed to have a line-up as lit as this one, but alas, this cold line-up was pretty refreshing!

Okay, I probably shouldn’t come up with these ridiculous puntastic introductions just for filler and for the sake of using the “Keep reading” tab because these posts are always lengthy, but there’s nothing else I can say, I can’t just simply put the “Keep reading” tab and that’s it!

Also, there were some details on my anticipated shows and I completely forgot about them so I’m going to write them down here because I’m not even gonna bother go editing my previous post and add the things I forgot to say and tell everyone about it, nobody reads my posts anyway.

MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Before I start this review, I want to say something and it’s probably not for the faint of heart depending on your prefered way of watching anime and mine may not be the absolute best if you’re a “purist,” but it’s very important. On October 1st, as soon as I published my previous Summer 2020 review the day prior and as soon as the Fall season began, HorribleSubs, the anime subs torrent site I’ve been using for a long time, has closed.

Torrenting anime is kind of a gray area for me to say this, but I’m not a shallow anime review site, so who cares? This is my personal blog and might as well say this. I’ve been torrenting anime for quite a few years now, and my go-to anime site to watch the latest shows ripped straight from big-shots like Crunchyroll, Funimation and HIDIVE, is HorribleSubs. I’ve been using random websites before but I moved to torrent anime because the torrent library site Nyaa offers a huge variety of high quality torrent anime, there are so many websites to watch anime illegally and they’re not even that good, the biggest one being KissAnime but on mid-2020, it appears that KissAnime has been closed, a lot of people who used the service are sad, meanwhile I’m laughing my ass off at them since I mainly torrent anime.

Ever wondered how I usually watch anime that aren’t licensed by Funimation, Sentai, etc.? Torrent, that’s why.

The closure of HorribleSubs is quite shocking considering I’ve been using the site for a while, but there’s other sites like Erai-Raws, although not as good as HorribleSubs as they can be very late, but they still get the job done. Sometimes I browse on Nyaa to look for any other sub groups that have the newly released anime I want to watch, but sometimes they can bring pretty awful quality.

I had briefly used Erai-Raws for a while, which was my alternative whenever HorribleSubs was slow, but even Erai-Raws can be very slow at times, so I switched to SubsPlease which at first I had seen torrents from them uploaded on Nyaa and they’re probably the first group to upload torrents of this season’s anime I watched, so I switched to SubsPlease and I gotta say, I’m really really impressed with SubsPlease, they truly are the best website, they really live up on being the better HorribleSubs and Erai-Raws.

Let me give you a quick rundown on why SubsPlease is absolutely better than HorribleSubs and Erai-Raws:

They have a schedule tab on the left page and they waste no time on uploading new seasonal anime, which they are rips from Crunchyroll and Funimation (I don’t know if they rip stuff from HIDIVE too and who knows if they’ll rip Netflix stuff too but we’ll see).

Although on November 19th, for some reason SubsPlease took so damn long on having the latest Guraburu episode, it only took a few hours, but seriously, I do not condone the tardiness and I hope they don’t make this same screw-up or be worse in the future. And then on November 27th, they also took too long with an episode of Assault Lily Bouquet, I don’t watch that series but the tardiness, come on...

The website automatically detects my timezone, even after the daylight saving time, which is really amazing.

And most importantly:

Dark theme! Well, Erai-Raws’ website is dark by default and there’s nothing wrong with it, but since I treat SubsPlease more like a successor of HorribleSubs, having a dark theme on their website is something HorribleSubs always lacked. Dark theme is the future! Not just it’s easier for my eyes, but dark theme is just cool.

I should also point out that on December 9th, Crunchyroll was actually bought by Funimation, this may or may not sound like a win-win situation, it sounds impressive and guess the tables have turned considering their previous team-up which didn’t last long and now they’re back, but I don’t have high hopes for this move overall, just as long as they don’t go too extreme with piracy DMCAs and worst-case-scenario nuking Nyaa or any subs sites like SubsPlease and Erai, I’m okay with it.

Anyways, enough talk with all the anime torrenting, but still, let’s press F to pay respect to HorribleSubs. HorribleSubs closing with the first episode of Higurashi (They were still uploading episodes of ongoing series for a little bit but we don’t count those) sounds like they definitely ended with a bang.

One more thing before I talk about my review for this Fall 2020 season as well as talking about my line-up for Winter 2021, let’s talk about my birthday. So, how was it? It was great, it’s always better when you happen to have friends who make lovely pictures for you, even if it’s usually a day early or some may not always deliver screenshots (Because most of my friends are Japanese and a Filipino who make Custom Order Maid 3D2 content) but at least I get something.

As for the actual day, well, it was alright, it started off quite stressful with reuploading my birthday picture with numerous fixes over and over and played some Among Us with friends, and then I did have fun just going out with my family and have lunch, so that was something.

But to be brutally honest, most of my fun was already taken away the day prior with all of my Japanese and Filipino friends sending me their COM3D2 pictures to me, that’s a big problem, their timezone is like way ahead of me and they lived on October 4th, so everyone pretty much celebrates my birthday so early and as much as I like it, it starts to lose the fun for what I’m supposed to be on my actual birthday.

My birthday should officially be October 5th in their timezones so I would tell everyone in my actual day that it is my birthday, and I should stop having this habit of telling everyone it’s my birthday, I say it’s pretentions but at the very moment I end up doing so anyways.

Actually, the most fun I would have had in my birthday was if Venom: Let There be Carnage hadn’t been delayed if only COVID didn’t exist, that seriously should have been the main thing that would have made my birthday but without it, my birthday has become shallow overall. But whatever, at least I did have a pretty good lunch, only to make my stomach hurt for a week.

So for the future of my birthday, I probably should stay quiet in telling Japanese people about my birthday being in October 4th in their timezone, at least some who don’t know, I’ll start going crazy about my birthday in my actual day. I really hope there’s something really exciting in my birthday and beyond, too bad there’s no movies to watch next year (Although I could wait to see Dune in my birthday since it comes out in October 1st, so it’s kinda close--And my birthday in 2021 is in Monday, lovely...).

Also, we do not talk about the day Travis Touchdown was announced in Super Smash Ultimate as a Mii fighter, the timing, which happened a day before my birthday, and the choice of making him a Mii fighter are the worst thing they’ve ever done and now I’ve 100% lost care for Smash, if I had any care to begin with, I’ll NEVER forgive you, Sakurai! 😡

That is until October 28th that the Switch ports of the first two No More Heroes games have been released! Aah, what a relief! I might have NMH3 next year, but having the first two games on Switch now is an absolute win and the most important thing right now! (SOMEONE GIVE ME A SWITCH!) Actually, now it seems like NMH1 and 2 will be coming out to PC as well, I GUESS I WON’T NEED A SWITCH AT THE MOMENT, THEN!

After I publish this post, please look forward to my New Year post in the next few days as well.

ANYWAYS, let’s start with the reviews!

Fall 2020 Review

(Higher resolution)

Akudama Drive: Call me biased since I’m a Danganronpa fan, but THIS! THIS IS IT! THE ANIME THAT SAVES 2020! THE ONE OF MANY TOOKYO GAMES PROJECT THAT HAS FIRST SOLD ME FINALLY RELEASED AND IT’S ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING I WANTED!

Ahem, sorry about that, but it’s true, I ABSOLUTELY loved this series.

It’s got really great characters and their designs are great, it’s got kick ass opening and ending themes (Although the OP theme is the most important highlight), the animation is very aesthetically pleasing too, and then... AT LAST WE GET TO SEE A PREVIEW OF THE DANGANRONPA COLLAB ART AND IT’S BEAUTIFUL! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY MY #1 AOTS!!! THEN ON DECEMBER 1ST, THE FULL ART IS SHOWN!!!

Another thing I like about the series are the titles of the episodes which they’re all movie titles, especially the episodes “Mission Impossible” and “The Shining,” especially The Shining because it definitely lives up to its name and goes all out with the most obvious references anyone would know.

As much as I love Akudama Drive, I have some complaints!

First off, in terms of the universe, I kinda wish the characters didn’t go by codenames and it would be nicer if they had real names or have them revealed at some point (Which they didn’t, sadly), this makes me feel like watching Goblin Slayer all over again. I mean, there are some things where I’m okay with the characters just having codenames for varying reasons (Hiding their identities or remain mysterious), but this one kind of doesn’t work a bit.

Another which I may take back is the lack of fan arts, somewhere like episode 4 or something, I thought I wouldn’t see fan art of Akudama Drive which I thought nobody watches the series, but one random person miraculously saved my life by giving this one fan art, not only it’s a good fan art, IT’S A CROSSOVER FAN ART WITH DANGANRONPA, ABSOLTUELY PREDATING THE REVEAL OF THE ACTUAL CROSSOVER ART!

Then I searched through Twitter and Pixiv and there’s quite a lot of decent fan arts! (Especially on Pixiv since it usually has god awful fan art, but not all the Akudama Drive fan arts were all that bad, not perfect, but it was something). Searching for Akudama Drive fan arts on Twitter would be extremely hard, especially when there can be way better fan art but without the Japanese hashtag, but even so, I can still find plenty of good fan arts with the hashtag. If anyone has more good Akudama Drive fan arts, please give them to me.

Well, these are nitpicks that are rather meaningless, the real complaint I have is the heavy censorship on any violent moment, like, the most hardcore bloody scenes or something. This is something I’m never going to understand with Japanese censorship, like, I’m okay with the censorship in porn, but the gore is something that hits close to home for me since I’ve always liked blood and gore but it just feels like whatever people like doing with violent video games, anime and manga, it just feels very limited. Not to mention there’s some weird inconsistency in some Japanese media that some can show gore uncensored and others censored, I’m so confused.

I also wish the ending was a little more satisfactory, even though I’m sad about all the Akudama dying, something about the ending is a little left to be desired and raises a lot of questions.

The healing factor kids are save now, but it came at the cost of our Akudama bros’ lives. 😭

By the way, there’s a manga adaptation that came out when the anime was supposed to come out back in July, it’s monthly and I would absolutely read it legit in this site called Renta and the chapters are quite cheap to rent or buy, which is really nice. I would like to read it but I’d like to buy the full volumes of it whenever they’re gonna come out.

Anyways, after the series ends, I hope we get to see new info in the Kazutaka Kodaka projects with Rui Komatsuzaki character designs soon, and I really hope Kodaka would make more original anime like Akudama Drive (As long as the characters are designed by Rui Komatsuzaki, I can’t look at anything Kodaka without Komatsuzaki character designs, no matter the concept).

Oh, by the way, even Osomatsu-san season 3 promoted Akudama Drive! (I mean, they’re both made by Pierrot, but to see something like this is just uncanny)

Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni - Gou: First of all, the title is actually not “New,” the true title is actually ��Gou,” which supposedly this is a brand new entry, this is interesting, the secrecy behind the series and how it was marketed certainly makes for a really great series, but since I’ve never experienced Higurashi in my life, I feel left out. I mean supposedly because from what I hear this isn’t even a remake but rather a new entry, but whatever site I heard that from is probably an unreliable nobody source that I know of, so I’m not entirely sure on that one.

Second of all, before I go into details on my impressions with the series, as someone who never grew up with the original anime nor the visual novels, there’s something I forgot to address in the previous post, Higurashi Gou is animated by Passione, which they impressed me with High School DxD Hero and Citrus. Although sometimes the character designs does throw me off a little, and I saw a comment on Nyaa within the HorribleSubs upload of the episode that the art style reminded of the commentor to Monogatari, which it does look Monogatari-ish and I can’t unsee that now.

Now for my impressions, since I pretty much know the nature of the Higurashi series, I didn’t have that much of high expectations, so there’s not much to say about it. Although even if I’m familiar with the messed up nature, I wasn’t really familiar with the characters and the story, so I guess this is my one way to go with it. As of late, YouTube has randomly been recommending me comparison videos of some moments from the series so far and I’m usually biased towards newer stuff that look cleaner, so I’m definitely take the 2020 side (Which leads me to believe this IS a remake of an adaptation or something).

One thing that did disappoint me, however, is that the Eiko Shimamiya opening theme from the original series was only used once at the end of the first episode, I was kinda sad this isn’t used for the rest of the series, but it was kind of expected to make new theme songs.

If I have the time and desire to do so, I wish I would watch the original Higurashi series and maybe rewatch Gou for like a side-to-side comparison visually and perhaps narratively as well. (And what about the VNs? Eh, I’ll probably never get the mental capacity and time to do so, sorry.)

D4DJ First Mix: Since this is already a new franchise beginning, I thought I would give this an A (just like other Sanzigen titles this year but for varying reasons), but as of the writing of this episode after episode 5 premiered, this series immediately went from A to S! This is my #2 Sanzigen anime of the year, #1 being of course Bandori season 3.

One thing I’d like to point out is that the background characters throughout the series are entirely CG! Looks like Sanzigen has finally delivered God’s work for once! Except there are times when MINOR characters, like the owners of Cafe Vynil and even the Happy Around girls when they were kids are still hand drawn. I don’t know why but I just realized I constantly talk about how much hand drawn characters I have to point out in literally everything Sanzigen makes, so apologies about that.

When I started watching the first episode, I literally got familiar vibes to that of Argonavis with the main character (or in this case, multiple main characters being Happy Around) going to a live concert, but it’s a little different. Instead of the main character being motivated to becoming a musician and go to the concert he went when he was a kid, instead the main character (Being Rinku) went to this concert and remembers WOW WAR TONIGHT, Maho, however, does have the desire of going to the same concert Rinku went when she was a kid.

That kinda sounds more like Argonavis but with more accessibility and well, something that appeals more to audiences because I’m still baffled that out of every Sanzigen title that came out this year, no company, and I mean, NO COMPANY, has officially licensed Argonavis at all! Leaving the series mainly being fansubbed. I think it may be for the better that Argonavis isn’t officially licensed because not everyone would like the series because not everyone is fond of the concept of a male equivalent of Bandori (If it works for Idolmaster, it wouldn’t for Bandori IMO).

Hopefully they’ll make just as many seasons and movies like Bandori if this is going to be Bushiroad’s next big franchise.

Osomatsu-san season 3: After 5 long years, Osomatsu-san continues to deliver some really good laughs and being bizarre.

Wait, it’s been 5 years, why hasn’t Osomatsu-san season 3 addressed a 5th anniversary of sorts? 5 years is an important milestone!

Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter season 2: Sure, Osomatsu-san season 3 is definitely the better comedy of the season (Which forgot to mention it would top Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter season 2 along with Uzaki-chan), but that doesn’t mean Healing Chapter season 2 wouldn’t give me a lot of laughs (Which I think it gives me more laughs than Osomatsu-san sometimes).

They definitely improved this season with a lot of things, new characters, extended runtime which they really listened, and G11 now speaks. The first season will always be iconic, but I definitely think this season is beyond better.

However, as much as I loved this season, that is until I watched episode 12 where right before watching it, I just realized we had come this far until the very end of the season, time went flying so fast I felt like this season ended way too soon. Even if the season had a longer runtime for episodes, but for some reason it kinda feels like it didn’t do anything to me. I was pretty confused with M16′s character throughout that episode as well.

Then there was this teaser with 6P62 in episode 8. Was this supposed to mean something or did they just randomly threw this scene out of nowhere?

This finale doesn’t ruin the season overall, like I said, it improves the first season and I had plenty of laughs, but I need to process this. Once I watch the Japanese, I’ll probably get a better impression of it, and yes, the Japanese dub is indeed happening. It is coming in Spring 2021 as well, I wish it would come out in January 2021, like how the first season in Chinese dub started in late July 2019 and then the Japanese dub came out in my birthday, October 4th, I actually saw this coming but I guess the Spring 2021 release is fine, I suppose.

Despite the somewhat weak ending, I repeat, I still think this is absolutely better than the first season.

With the trend of wasting new characters in comedy shows, I absolutely award Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter season 2 as the one new comedy season that absolutely did not waste new characters like DEFY and Sangvis Ferri! 🏆

Surprisingly there was no surprise Madness Chapter season 2 or anything, which it’s for the best and I guess that’s just to show how that series wasn’t as popular as Healing Chapter, even though it’s supposed to be like an adaptation of the game’s 4koma, but the animation is so cheap and people prefer the more wholesome series like Healing Chapter, which is probably why it’s so popular.

(Although I kinda wish they picked Architect from the villain roster, I like Architect more than pretty much every Sangvis character. Although I guess Hunter, Executioner and Scarecrow are like the most popular characters or they’re important to the story? I don’t know, I just like Architect because she’s cuter)

Hoping for season 3 if the Healing Chapter series continues to grow popular and hopefully the 6P62 teaser can be paid off.

Burn the Witch: I’m still surprised how this adaptation came out shortly after the manga serialization was launched, which means it was on the work for some time, did Tite Kubo give the animators his drafts or early copies of the three chapters of the manga serialization early before it come out or something?!

Anyways, it was quite a great adaptation, I liked it, the animation was clean, I like the performances, etc. Although I do wish they should have adapted the one-shot instead since it’s pretty much the prologue of the story, although one-shots usually aren’t what the actual stories supposed to be, it’s kind of like a prototype of sorts, but this wasn’t a prototype at all, but oh well.

Golden Kamuy season 3: Around November 1st, I randomly read through all my previous Tumblr posts and even talking things out about my retrospective thoughts in stuff I reviewed (Some hold up, some don’t), with the first two seasons of Golden Kamuy, I gave it a B- overall because I was kinda spoiled with some of the hate around it and gratuitously CG animals, but retroactively, it’s still a very good series, the action, the worldbuilding, the characters and especially the bizarre humor are the best part.

Although to be honest, I like the storyline from the first two seasons better, but I’m glad things have turned out well in the end this season.

Munou na Nana: For a show that came out on my birthday, I guess this was alright overall, when I watched the first episode, I was quite surprised with the twist and that’s pretty much what the entire series is. Still, I wasn’t highly impressed, but it was alright at best. Like, I think it was best worth watching the premiere on my birthday, otherwise I wouldn’t be committed on watching the entire series because I usually drop anime that don’t convince me on my birthday.

At first I thought Rena from Higurashi and Nana would be a cute but deadly waifu combo, which they still are but I prefer Rena over Nana because I’m not pretty sure about her as a character before, she’s quite smart but I definitely wouldn’t cross paths with her ever, she at least had some hilarious faces throughout the series too. That is until the last few episodes is where I’m starting to like Nana now?

There’s another thing I liked about the series is that how earlier episodes were character focused, like dedicated to Nana’s victims before Nana kills them, later episodes have become more serialized or something.

Probably the worst thing I can come up with (And I seriously wish anyone else, especially anime journalist sites, the journalists themselves or normies would say this), is that Munou na Nana is basically Among Us the anime. Kyoya always sus’d Nana, and Nana was the Impostor all along. Pink is hella sus. (Yeah, this is stupid, moving on) But then, the final episode came out and... it ended... in quite a shocking fashion, and this is probably the best episode in the series.

If there’s one thing I have to complaint about this series, is that the official Funimation subtitles can be cringey and don’t make sense with what the characters actually say sometimes, what the hell were the official subbers thinking? I wouldn’t rewatch the series but I’m sure fansubbers would do a much better job with the writing in the Blu-Ray rips.

But then, the final episode came out and... it ended... in quite a shocking fashion, and in my opinion this is probably the best episode in the series, although even if I liked the episode very much now after watching it, there are some things I was pretty confused by, but whatever. Now this episode for sure makes me think about the series in retrospect, probably not the best anime to come out in my birthday, the first most of it was decent but this episode delivered quite a punch!

First the series started in a shocking fashion which I had no expectations for the series at the time, now the series ended in a shocking fashion. Who would have thought?

Danmachi season 3: Throughout the middle of the season, I thought this would be my least favorite storyline of the series ever, but I think it turned out pretty good in the end, I usually like beginnings than climaxes. I kinda felt similarly with Golden Kamuy as mentioned above, but both have solid climaxes.

Call me crazy, but I feel like Danmachi doesn’t feel as relevant as it used to be back when the first season came out and it was quite memed a lot, particularly with Hestia’s boob ribbon and the tooth brushing from the opening or something, those were the good old days.

Although I do admire how we’ve come this far with quite a lot of Danmachi anime over the last 5 years, from the first season in 2015, the Sword Oratoria spin-off in 2017, last year’s season 2 and now season 3. There’s this two year pattern but season 3 this year feels different.

Toji no Miko Tomishibi: On November 1st (Día de los Muertos), before watching the latest episode of Munou na Nana (or Talentless Nana as I called the series in the previous post), I knew I was definitely gonna forget about the first part of the OVA, so I watched the first part of the OVA after watching Munou na Nana and I guess it was okay, not really great but not bad either, but there was one thing I immediately noticed is that the character designs in the OVA look completely different than the TV series.

Before (TV series):

After (OVA):

The OVA character designs look a lot less like Yoshinori Shizuma’s art style like the TV series replicated. That is probably because the OVA was made by a different studio than the TV series. The TV series was made by Studio Gokumi and the OVA was made by Project No.9.

But even if they’re both made by different studios, part of the visuals kind of look similar in a way or something? I also noticed the Aradama aren’t CG in the OVA like in the TV series.

I was happy to see Kanami and Hiyori in the OVAs too, I always liked them better than pretty much everyone else, especially the characters from the mobile game which are the main stars here who are my least favorites, so I guess there are some characters I like in a series I’m otherwise lukewarm with.

The second part, however... It didn’t do much service to me, as the animation has gotten really horrible, the writing was terrible (And no, I’m talking about the subs, I’m talking about actual writing), and even if this served as the finale of the OVA, the pacing felt way fast for it being the last half of the OVA.

I’m not sure I should hope for more Toji no Miko anime in the future, I really hope this should be the last and never hear about Toji no Miko again.

Guraburu: This is probably the blandest Cygames adaptation yet. I mean, sure, you could say that it’s nowhere near bad (Same with Princess Connect Re:Dive), but for some reason this series wasn’t really that funny for me, definitely the worst comedy of the season when we have great ones like Osomatsu-san and Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter. I think the Guranburu 4koma work best when they’re just still images, making an anime out of this just doesn’t work.

Then there’s the animation, I’m very conflicted with it. On one hand, it tries to replicate the art style of the 4koma very well, but when it comes to the motion, it just looks very cheap, almost as if it was animated on Flash, it’s kind of like Queen Bee tier animation. Even gacha 4koma adaptations like FGO’s Manga de Wakaru is does absolute justice to the art, it's hilarious and it's very pleasing to look at.

The subtitles writing can also be a little weird as well, though probably not as god awful as Munou na Nana can get, right? (No wonder people say dubs are usually better written, but I couldn’t care less about dubs in general)

As for the comedy, sometimes it was funny, but I wasn’t really impressed, I don’t think this is a case of “comedy is subjective” (or might be), if the animation were better, I would have laughed along with the jokes.

If you want better examples of anime adaptations based on gacha games’ 4koma, just watch FGO’s Manga de Wakaru instead, like I previously mentioned, and then the upcoming Azur Lane Bisoku Zenshin (If you’re one of those people who hate Azur Lane: The Animation which I hope you’re not).

This was me throughout the series...

(Although this and Lyria’s “See? You just said something nonsensical.” are the only good moments I liked which these make for good reaction images from a series I find otherwise bland.)

I just realized I haven’t put any anime I didn’t like or hated in D or E, so this might as well be the first and ONLY anime of 2020 being D tier! Congratulations! We’ve finally found a bad anime of the year that’s D or E-tier worthy for once! I’m impressed, most of the anime I watched this year aren’t really all god awful compared to last year, all the anime I watched, even the ones that let me down and downright disliked weren’t all god awful, so this year turned out quite a blessing in disguise with my anime experience for an otherwise terrible year for literally everything.

Honorable mentions

Attack on Titan: The Final Season: As of the publishing of this post, we’re literally four episodes into the season and I’d hardly call this as an AOTS in  2020, as the tier on my TierMaker image suggests, this gonna be more like the Best Anime of 2021, there’s no way after four episodes, this season should immediately be AOTY material, or who knows.

There’s one thing I forgot to mention in the previous post and that is the surprising studio change from Studio WIT to MAPPA, at first when I saw the poster of the season, I was very skeptical and confused as to why did they change studios from WIT to MAPPA, before I even noticed the trailer was actually there when this was announced, I was very skeptical, then I saw the trailer and I thought I was impressed, it seemed on par with what WIT did, but upon watching the actual first episode in fullscreen this time, I think it looks alright but it’s got some good parts so far like the rotoscope animation. Some of the character designs look a bit different too, but I don’t know if it’s just me. I just hope it’s not a repeat of One Punch Man season 2 where JC Staff did a horrible job and ended up being my #2 worst AOTY 2019 just for the animation quality alone. That’s not to say I’m shitting on MAPPA just yet, let’s wait until the very end so I can get a better judge of what’s the animation to come.

And then in episode 2, there were flashbacks from the previous seasons with the WIT animation. I think I’ve come at a point where I really started to get fed up with this trend. It’s not just lazy copy and pasting scenes from previous seasons, but it’s just really heartbreaking seeing those clips of the previous seasons done by better studios compared to the actual season we’re watching done by another studio.

The OP and ED are absolute bangers too. As for the OP, it’s still not Linked Horizon but it sounds good, and I love how it has now being parodied to death with footage from World War and even one of 2020. The ED is pretty good too and that one’s actually released in full first, sometimes I listen either the OP or the ED quite a lot Oh, and I found out the band that did the OP made... This. Uh... Okay... (Before you complaint, I don’t think it’s a bad song, but the backstory behind it just makes me feel uncomfortable. Oh and they did the ED theme for season 2 which I didn’t even know and forgot about the song)

The most shocking part is, from what I heard, this season is going to be 16 episodes long. I mean, it sounds a little better than 13 episodes like season 2, but is that even going to be enough considering the manga is nearly about to end? It should end pretty soon but the final season of the anime is ending in March and who knows if by that time the manga would have ended and who knows if MAPPA will be able to catch up by adapting this season with JUST 16 episodes, or they would probably end up making movies that cover the manga’s finale, I DON’T KNOW!

So far MAPPA’s animation has been okay for me, it can be a bit of hit or miss but they’re doing an alright job, but of course, WIT will always be the best, althugh sometimes even seasons 2 and 3 can get a little stale, but WIT will always be better. They pretty much worked hard into the series and lately they’ve been working in a lot of projects, so it must have been very difficult if they were able to work on AoT The Final Season and everything else all at once. Thank you WIT.

Fire Force season 2: After two seasons, Fire Foce is one of the best and worst works David Production has ever done. My thoughts into the story and stuff goes the same if I were to read the manga, I like the story, the worldbuilding, etc. But my biggest criticism in the anime’s part is the animation, sometimes even in the second season can still be a bit slow and poorly paced, but at least it’s not as dreadful as the first season, but even so, there’s still some great sakuga moments.

With that being said about the animation, I hope this doesn’t affect David Productions in the future, such as the upcoming second seasons of Cells at Work and potentially the JoJo Stone Ocean anime. (And whatever else David Production makes but honestly I don’t give a shit)

Hmmm, I feel like I’m missing something, oh yeah, what about the Dragon’s Dogma anime? Well, I wasn’t interested on wanting to watch it. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear it would be shitty, even from hardcore Dragon’s Dogma players.

Arknights Holy Knight Light: This was quite the most surprising thing ever to come out of the 1st anniversary livestreams from the Japanese and English Arknights YouTube channels, the first time I started watching it, I couldn’t help but fanboy out of this with what was happening, this OVA is worth rewatching a billion times as a New Year movie!

Since I don’t have time or not planning to add this into my actual tier lists, might as well say that this is definitely S tier!

(This last honorable mentionis more like a last minute addition since I had planned to publish this post this Sunday, the 27th, which you’re probably reading now. This was written on the 26th.)

Anyways, let’s get into the most anticipated releases of Winter 2021!

Anticipated anime of Winter 2021

Note that I’m not talking about my anticipated anime of 2021 overall, as I’ll be discussing that in the next post which is my New Year 2020 review, so for now, let’s talk about the Winter 2021 releases!

Azur Lane Bisoku Zenshin - January 11th: Over the course of this 2020 after the finale episodes came out, I became extremely bummed out and spoiled on the fact that a lot of people (Especially the Western Azur Lane community) absolutely HATE Azur Lane: The Animation. I mean, sure, the animation kinda got bad at times but that doesn’t make it automatically trash, and neither should the story (Which I think the animation is more troublesome than the story).

I of course had always known Azur Lane The Animation might be hated, at least from the Western community, from the day it was first broadcast, I’ve seen nothing but praise from the Japanese community, and it was going that way for the entire series, that’s what I always relied on and it has beared with me until I started talking to the official Discord server about it and it was quite a shitstorm.

I could go on and on with ranting about why Azur Lane The Animation isn’t garbage for billions of times, over and over, from the many references from the game to fan service at its absolute best. especially that they actually featured official Azur Lane nudity in the Blu-Rays, and speaking of the Blu-Rays, they offered very cool costumes. You might say having exclusive costumes in the Blu-Rays would scream ALTA being a cash grab, shut up, it’s not, people of course religiously buy the Blu-Rays for whatever purpose. Shit animation my ass! Shit characterization my ass! Shit story my ass! Identity crisis my ass! Fuck everyone whoever talks shit about Azur Lane The Animation and even if I were to forget about it for a while, I’m bound to come across someone who’s gonna be like “Azur Lane has an anime too but it’s shit,” and I’m gonna yell at their asses off!

After making animated trailers, not only for Azur Lane but even Arknights too, this is the first major TV series release from Yostar’s new animation studio, Yostar Pictures, but they won’t operate alone, so they’re collaboration with another studio known as CANDY BOX. which seems to be a relatively new studio, but this isn’t the first time Yostar Pictures is collaborating with another studio, they also work with Madhouse for some trailers, including trailer for the third anniversary as well as the Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation collab trailer. YOSTAR PICTURES COLLABORATING WITH MADHOUSE, HOW COOL IS THAT?! THAT’S A DREAM TEAM FROM STUDIOS I LIKE!

Imagine if Azur Lane The Animation would get a second season (Dear god, please do. I loved this season more than anything, fuck what people say) that is animated in the same style as these trailers, the series could recover and it would be redeemed for the Western community (I may jinx this one out since I said the same thing with the very first animated commercial made by Sunrise, and then ALTAS was animated by Bibury Animation Studio, I’m not really disappointed, though).

What if an Arknights series from Yostar Pictures x Madhouse too? That would be amazing and they even teased about it. Actually, around this Christmas when the first anniversary livestreams were happening, they actually released an OVA which is sort of New Year-themed at the end BUT IT’S SO COOL, I’M GOING TO BE REWATCHING THIS A BILLION TIMES!

Anyways, I’m sorry for going off topic with Azur Lane The Animation instead of what I was supposed to be talking about, Bisoku Zenshin.

It’s been like 2 years since I started following the series, mainly on the Japanese Azur Lane Twitter account and I can’t remember what were the first chapters even like, the only things I remember is this one chapter where Takao actually having animal ears. 2 years later, the English Azur Lane Twitter account is finally catching up with English translations of the 4koma, but the problem is that it’s 2 years and so many chapters behind from JP, going from the first chapter, it may or may not help me remember what were the first chapters like and hopefully they’ll be adapted in the series, I probably should pay attention.

Although from what I’ve seen in the trailers and the character reveals which so far they revealed Formidable, Baltimore, Spee, etc, I’m not really sure if this series is going to actually adapt the 4koma from the very beginning, well, I don’t remember what were the first chapters like, so hopefully once I start seeing the series and try to find the first few chapters, this can be a faithful adaptation. Although, honestly, I wouldn’t mind if this were an original story using the same foundation, I just want to watch more Azur Lane anime with whatever stories they can come up with.

Cells at Work! season 2 and Cells at Work! BLACK - January 9th: What’s better than having a second season of Cells at Work and have an adaptation of the spin-off, Cells at Work BLACK? HAVE BOTH OF THEM AIRED BACK-TO-BACK IN ONE HOUR! That is such a perfect way to celebrate the series with a new season and spin-off! It kinda reminds me of the good old days when I used to watch Danganronpa 3 Hope and Despair Arcs almost simultaneously, just with two days apart, but with Cells at Work and BLACK, we’re getting ONE HOUR!

As previously mentioned in Fire Force season 2, I really hope David Production can keep their shit together with the animation in future shows, most specifically Cells at Work season 2. I’m not animation expert but I’m sure it’ll be pretty much the exact same team of animators who did the first season, so I really hope the series won’t have a very deteriorating tone and direction like Fire Force suffered so badly in the first season last year.

With Cells at Work BLACK, if you haven’t guessed from the title, this is a darker spin-off of the vanilla Cells at Work series. The vanilla series is already violent but it keeps a light spirited tone, BLACK, however, is downright edgy. We’re having quite the Ying and Yang of two series. I’m surprised that David Production isn’t doing BLACK like the vanilla series, although I think it’s for the better because they’ve been working on other stuff like JoJo and Fire Force, and with this different studio doing BLACK, I’m impressed with how the visuals look so far.

And female White Blood Cell is cute.

Quintessential Quintuplets season 2 - January 7th: I’m surprised how long it has been for season 2 to come out, at first I thought it would come out this Winter 2020 but nothing came out of it and I was already thinking it would have been delayed, then a few months later we finally got some info but the most surprising thing is that they actually changed studios to Bibury Animation Studio.

Given that this is Bibury Animation Studio, the same one that did Azur Lane The Animation, like I previously mentioned in Azur Lane Bisoku Zenshin, PLEASE GIVE BIBURY A CHANCE! THEY DID NOTHING WRONG!

When I looked at the visuals and looking at the character trailers, it actually looks quite promising, the first season wasn’t visually the best, so this has potential.

Project Scard: Scar on the Praeter - January 8th: Actually, this 2021, GoHands is going to release two TV series, this first one being an original anime series, and the second one which was supposed to be for April being Tokyo Babylon, an adaptation of CLAMP’s manga series of the same name. Tokyo Babylon was delayed until further notice because apparently costume designs were referenced without permission, that is such an outlandish reason. Besides, what kind of costume references? And permission from who or what? So vague. I could have gotten two GoHands shows in two seasons in a row!

Anyway, let’s first talk about Project Scard which that’s what it’s gonna come out first. I’m happy to see that GoHands is doing more original series, but there’s a problem: This one is apparently not related to Hand Shakers at all!

And no, this is not a case of misleading marketing with the trailers tricking me this could still be secretly a sequel of Hand Shakers like W’z did (Although I don’t think I payed attention to the W’z trailers at all until I started watching the series), I definitely see this series entirely standalone for once based on the characters and the setting, which I’m very disappointed that this isn’t a threequel to Hand Shakers. Everyone hated Hand Shakers and W’z was GoHands’ EXTREMELY worst selling anime, I really loved the series and I liked their stories, the world had so much potential!

Anyways, I may be sad this isn’t a new Hand Shakers entry, I should at least enjoy this series for what it is, not everyone’s going to like this one for sure since the animation is more akin to Hand Shakers, which would turn many people off.

With what I said about Bibury Animation Studio with Quintuplets S2, people should also give GoHands a chance! THEY DID NOTHING WRONG!!!

I’m honestly feeling more excited about Tokyo Bablyon than this, but we’ll get into more details in the New Year post.

Bungou Stray Dogs Wan! - January 12th: There may not be a new season of the main series as of late, but an adaptation of a chibi spin-off is quite surprising, since I really like Bungou Stray Dogs, I’m of course watching this!

(Now that I think about it, I don’t really think Bungou Stray Dogs a huge part of my life... 🤔)

Promised Neverland season 2 - January 7th: With the manga now ended a few months ago, should we expect future seasons so they would adapt the finale?

Beastars season 2 - January 5th: I always victimize Beastars when criticizing Sanzigen’s syndrome of having hand drawn background characters (Even D4DJ was so close on breaking the syndrome, it has CG background characters but there’s still some minor characters that are still hand drawn, the most baffling part is the main characters when they were kids), but that aside, it doesn’t really affect the story or anything, just ranting.

Yuru Camp season 2 - January 7th: I literally forgot the spin-off series, Heya Camp, existed, and since that one was a short series, I feel like it wasn’t enough, so it’s finally time for season 2 to come out!

I also forgot about the movie, so maybe once season 2 ends, there might be some info on it?

Re:Zero season 2 second cour - January 6th: It hasn’t been long but it still feels weird having to wait a while for the next part of the season, at least it’s not in production that would take forever like Magia Record.

Dr. Stone: Stone Wars - January 14th: A few months ago, I randomly watched a couple of episodes of Dr. Stone, but on the night of December 6th, I have decided to start binging the first season, then I finished it and... WHY DID I SLEEP ON IT IN 2019?! THIS IS GREAT! I was already impressed by the 3 episodes I randomly watched at some point, but after watching the series fully, I couldn’t be more impressed than ever, it’s making me feel like the time I binged Shield Hero and I was just as amazed (which lead to the disappointment of Isekai Quartet 2 wasting the Shield Hero characters hard).

That is it for my Fall 2020 review as well as my anticipated anime of 2021!

Final thoughts on 2020 in anime

I want to give my final thoughts on this overall year in anime: As previously mentioned, I was absolutely impressed that there was almost not a single anime I didn’t like that I would consider D or E, even for a year that has done me more harm than good, this year has delivered quite a lot of good anime, even if some of them disappointed me. BUT! Want to know what are my top anime of the year? You’ll have to find out in the New Year post to see what are my contenders!

Check out my Carrd.

[butterflyinthewell]

Let’s clear up this hooey with “orlandomakeup” right here, right now.

* * * TW: Mentions of violence, attempted murder, rape culture, abuse, a suicide attempt, alcohol (spiked drink) and severe bullying. * * *

This post was typed with a calm mind. It’s not an angry retaliation. I want to set the facts straight on this issue. I have no desire for anyone to send hate to orlandomakeup or boycott them-- I only encourage a boycott of anything that supports Autism Speaks.

This person is not keen on keeping facts straight. They’re projecting their own behavior onto me. I’m merely laying out the facts and letting the rest of the chips fall where they may.

(Note: I made some minor edits and corrections because I was interrupted several times while trying to type this and it posted to my blog instead of drafts for some reason. It should all be correct now as of 1:35pm PST on August 5, 2017.)

First off, it sounds like orlandomakeup is a caregiver and not autistic themselves. The artist is not the problem, it’s the person promoting their art. I think the artist is unaware that Autism Speaks is harmful, but orlandomakeup seems to conveniently leave off any means of contacting the artist who painted the artwork.

Anyway, here’s the facts of what happened.

My reblog of the post in question. Orlandomakeup deleted the original, so you won’t find it on their page unless they reposted it from scratch.  http://butterflyinthewell.tumblr.com/post/163797108223/orlandomakeup-buy-a-painting-and-support-autism

They responded via the post comment system. It’s on the post, but I’ll put the text of it here, too: (images of the art left off to prevent the screenshot from getting huge, you can see them if you click the link I shared above.)

Their text on the post: 

“Buy a painting and support autism. 10% of sale will be donated to Autism Speaks. Painting created through the eyes of autism.

White snowflake on cobalt blue background. Acrylic paint. Small amount of blue glitter for added sparkle. Feeling of calm, winter, peace, tranquility, contentment. 16"x20" canvas.

#autism #autistic #abstractart #artforautism #aspergerssyndrome #autismspectrumdisorders #highfunctiningautism #autismspeaks #autisticartist #autismawareness #autismsupport #photooftheday #potd #abstractart #aspergers #lifewithautism #artforaspergers

(Ebay link left off to avoid it getting clicks.)”

My reblog text:  

“Don’t buy this art. The money goes to a charity that harms autistic people. I wish the OP would support ASAN instead at autisticadvocacy.org because that charity really helps autistic people without trying to silence or erase us.”

And their comment

“The artist is autistic, and Autism Speaks has never harmed her. You speak of bullying yet you bully. The artist has been bullied everyday of her life due to autism. She has even been held by gun and knife, shot and stabbed at, and beaten until left nearly for dead. Your hate exemplifies why people are bullies towards those of us with autism.”

They’re calling me a bully because I reblogged the linked post above and told people not to buy “this art” because it’s supporting Autism Speaks and said I wished the artist would support ASAN instead. ASAN (Autistic Self-Advocacy Network) is a charity run by autistic people that actually helps autistic people and not parents / caregivers / anybody except the actually autistic people. 

They equated my behavior to being bullied-- to being shot, stabbed, beaten, etc. Just...what? I was bullied in nearly the same way for being autistic, same as the artist. I was never shot at (thank God), but for all 4 years of high school I was threatened with rape and murder, survived a murder attempt, narrowly escaped a rape situation by refusing a drink spiked with vodka that would’ve intoxicated me to a blackout, I endured public humiliation on an almost daily basis and attempted suicide once because none of the authority figures who were supposed to protect me did shit to stop the bullying...

...and orlandomakeup is equating my saying “don’t buy this art because it supports Autism Speaks” to THAT?

Wow, talk about trivializing bullying. Just wow.

At no point do I say “ewww, don’t by this artist’s art ever!” or “eew, this art is ugly!” or “the artist sucks!”

All I did was point out that buying that art will support Autism Speaks, a charity that harms autistic people. 

Orlandomakeup is defending Autism Speaks on the grounds that “it never hurt them (the autistic artist)”.

Again, I need to remind people that defending a person or organization as “good” because “it / they didn’t hurt me / this person!” is like saying someone who abuses their spouse is a good person because they distribute food at a homeless shelter. That person may help the poor, but they still go home and beat the shit out of their spouse and they are NOT a good person.

Likewise, Autism Speaks is not a good organization. Just because (general) you saw it do good doesn’t mean it is good. It still stigmatizes and demonizes autism and their claim of “acceptance” is “accept that your child has an autism diagnosis, but don’t accept their autism.” Autism Speaks changed “cure” to “solution”. All they did was change a word, not their rhetoric. Autism Speaks is harmful to autistic people the same way PETA is harmful to animals. They care about profit, not lives.

So, I still ask-- where is the bullying behavior this orlandomakeup person claims I’m engaging in? Nowhere. Orlandomakeup, reblogged stuff about bullying and made one long callout post that doesn’t directly name me even though it’s very obviously about me. Keep in mind they did this after they blocked me, and I only found out because someone who follows me saw their post. I figured it would look at it out of curiosity. I plan to let this whole thing go after this point, but I want to clear the facts up before they get all muddled and twisted their through distorted view. 

Here is a link to their callout post. http://chicglamgeek.com/post/163823401339/fifty-shades-of-bullies  (DO NOT SEND HATE!!!)

ETA: Forgot a link due to constant interruptions while writing this post. Here’s their “bully” tag where they again attack me without naming me.  http://chicglamgeek.com/search/bullying  I didn’t bother screencapping. If they delete stuff, it just proves they’re trying to hide that they’re projecting their behavior onto me.

I also have a screenshot of their big post. Linked due to size. http://imgur.com/a/Dr4zG

The text of the post is in the description area below the image so that those who are blind or have trouble processing screenshots can read the post, too. I’ll add the text under the cut of this post just in case imgur farts.

They claim I’m showing “disdain” of the art when that’s not even close to what I was doing, but orlandomakeup won’t see any other POV except their own. I fully endorse buying the autistic artist’s art (because it’s beautiful art!), just don’t buy the art that supports Autism Speaks. 

If someone knows how to contact the autistic artist to tell them about A$, please do.

There. Those are the facts of the situation. I’m now washing my hands of it. Orlandomakeup can continue calling me a bully if they want. I wanted my side of the issue out there in case they continue trying to convince people that I bullied them. 

I did not bully orlandomakeup or the autistic artist. I am not saying orlandomakeup is a bad person.

Unfortunately, orlandomakeup is misrepresenting everything I said and is projecting their own behavior onto me. They could have blocked me and carried on, but they chose to write that long and obvious post and may be talking trash about me in private. (I have no way to know, nor do I care. I know who I am and what I represent.) 

Again, I say this is not posted in anger. I posted my side to ensure the facts are straight. From here on out orlandomakeup can say whatever they want about me, but I know I’m telling the truth to the best of my ability.

Please do not harass them or send hate. That solves nothing. 

If you feel an urge to send them something mean, do yourself a favor and close the tab instead, okay?

Text below. Bolding is their references to me.  Btw, I’m amused that they think I’m a Millennial. I’m not a Millennial. I was born in 1980. I just turned 37 (as of July 29, 2017).

There are two basic types of bullies.

1. Those who have full understanding of their actions and seek power and control.

2. Those who lack the intellectual capacity to understand their behavior.

The latter is the most dangerous, because there is no reasoning with them. They disparage and harass with the belief that they are doing no wrong. All bullies are shallow, insecure, and need numbers. They have no strength of their own. They are weak.

Millennials are exceedingly becoming the bullies about which they speak. They bully as a platform for drama and attention. They lack the intelligence to acknowledge their faults and how to conduct themselves. They lack professionalism and decency. Millennials suffer from narcissism. They think their lives and stories are more compelling, because they want attention. However, there are bullies well into their late ages that also have these characteristics.

These bullies can be found at any age and are not confined to school. They are coworkers, neighbors, strangers, and, more dangerously, online. Bullies intend to harass even if the are not intelligent to know they are bullying. At any age, they have the ability to know they should not perpetuate negativity, but some still claim they do not understand how their actions are harmful. While this may seem contrary, consider that when you address their behavior with them, they insist they are “not bad” people, ask their friends to insist they are nice, even say they are Christian. Your addressing their behavior puts them on notice that they are harmful. At this point, they become aware that they are engaging in this behavior but are defensive to avoid admitting they are wrong. Introverts and intelligent people admit when they are wrong, because they are more concerned with data and facts than feelings. They have no incentive to lie. They do not rely upon external validation. Extroverts do. This is not to say that all extroverts lack intellectual capacity, only that they are more motivated to be bullies.

Here are some examples of bullying that were unprovoked and occurred in situations where the person being harassed did not know the bully and/or was not interacting with the bully:

1. I like how you match your lipstick to your sweater. On second thought, I don’t. It’s ugly. You’re a bitch.

2. You need to pray to be normal.

3. Jesus can make you not be Asian.

4. We don’t want, you know, the black people in our neighborhood.

5. You’re not celibate. Look at you. You look like a model.

6. Don’t buy this art.

7. You need to smile.

Why are these words harmful? One of the “rules” of Christianity is to do unto others as you would have done unto you. If you cannot say something nice, do not say it at all. These examples ignore cultural and biological differences. They are punitive.

1. Introverts do not need compliments. In fact, they sometimes find compliments offensive. This “compliment” was a way to seek attention. The person did not receive attention, so he had intent to harm to assuage his feelings of insecurity.

2, 3, & 7. While there is a normal distribution, statistically speaking, people are not normal. There are cultural and physiological differences, which may seem “odd,” but those differences do not warrant being forced beliefs of the insecure. If you do not smile, shake hands, laugh at jokes, or make eye contact, you are not abnormal. You handle / process emotion differently.

3 & 4. Racist and ethnocentrist.

5. There is no look of celibacy. If one prefers to preserve his/her temple, then others should not assume their inability to keep their legs shut afflicts everyone.

6. Demanding that others boycott art defames the artist, nothing else. That statement alone shows disdain for the artist and/or the art. If one feels financial contribution to the artist is repulsive, or one feels the contribution would benefit one to the detriment of others (i.e. Boycotting people who shop at Hobby Lobby* as opposed to boycotting Hobby Lobby itself), then one should make the distinction. There is a difference between harassment and social awareness. Using the Hobby Lobby example, a person who shops at Hobby Lobby may not be aware of the practices of the establishment. Demanding people avoid the individual is harmful, seeks to exclude, and seeks to harass the individual rather than the establishment. Demanding the person avoid Hobby Lobby is completely different. A mature minded, intelligent person knows the difference. A bully who lacks intellectual capacity does not make the distinction.

The best way to handle someone who disparages you and claims they did nothing wrong is to ignore him/her. S/he will have friends to join in the disparage fest, because s/he is insecure and has to belittle everyone and everything that is secure. S/he needs power and control to compensate for the lack of power and control s/he feels with his/her life. S/he is unreasonable, immature, unprofessional, and lacks mental capabilities to examine his/her actions. This type of person always has to be right and will never understand his/her shortcomings. Additionally, these people are not intelligent enough to understand that constant communications from them and/or others on their behalves are harassment. It is no different than painting the n- word or the word “slut” on someone’s locker or home. It is no different than walking by someone bound, throwing rocks at them.

The best last word is the one left unsaid. This does not make one weak. It makes one mature and intelligent enough to understand the other person is deficient. In other words, thou shall not give pearl to the swine. Do not waste your energy on people who are unwilling to accept and admit their faults, those who are incapable of higher thought processing.

* This in no way suggests anyone boycott Hobby Lobby. People have their own reasons for shopping or not shopping there.

[mobilenamic]

Test-driven infrastructure development with Ansible & Molecule

So you´re doing Infrastructure-as-Code? Sure. But have you ever heard of test-driven development (TDD)? It´s that dev team thing, right? Hell no! It should be equally important to infrastructure coding.

What about TDD in Infrastructure-as-Code?

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) has really become one of those buzzwords lately. And the reason is: it´s just really cool to describe your whole infrastructure with code. Versioned by Git. Abstracted from the gory details by Ansible & Co. And last but most importantly: extracted from those head monopolies! There are so many reasons to do IaC. But if you´re a software engineer by heart like me, there´s maybe a gut instinct telling you: there´s something missing in this game. What about the principles of modern software engineering?

We all learned hard lessons until most of us agreed on the undeniable benefits of Test-driven development (TDD) and Continuous Integration & Delivery (CI/CD). But didn´t we somehow forget about them? Moving over to those new shiny DevOps tools, we keep saying: “Let´s do infrastructure as code!” leaving methodologies like TDD & CI/CD to the “software development” teams. We´re now ops right?! No way! That should be the whole point of Infrastructure-as-Code. We´re software developers although the job posting says “DevOps”. We just develop infrastructure.

If you’ve already developed some infrastructure and left this code untouched for a month or two… and then got your hands on it again trying to execute it and just see it failing on things you never saw before – just a thousand libraries, APIs and version upgrades since the last code execution – and everything just stopped working (note:code that is not automatically and constantly executed and tested will eventually rot sooner or later!), this should be enough reason to bring Test-driven Development and Continuous Integration into the world of infrastructure coding.

Testing frameworks for Ansible

Maybe you´re already describing your infrastrucure with Ansible like me. I really love this tool. The learning curve isn´t steep and once you´re in it, you´re as fast writing Ansible playbooks as if you would type the bash commands directly. Sometimes even faster because of the higher abstraction. Additionally you have automated your infrastructure setup right from the start without any big expense. Everything is just transparent for the whole team and versioned inside your Git repository. No matter which OS you use or have to use, it works both for Linux or Windows.

Now choosing a testing framework for Ansible hasn´t been that easy in the past. There is a custom Ansible provisioner available for Test Kitchen respectively KitchenCI and there are quite some good blog posts about these around. But I always kept in mind that KitchenCI focusses on Chef and Ansible is somehow a tolerated rival.

But for me Molecule seems to be the perfect fit for Ansible – since it´s focussed on Ansible directly and generated some buzz already inside the community over the last years. But then this year’s September 26th came and now there are even more reasons to choose Molecule: From that day forward, Ansible has treated Molecule as a first class citizen. The GitHub repository was therefore also moved into the Ansible organization (github.com/ansible/molecule) and the whole process is backed by Red Hat (IBM). It seems to be a great time to look into Molecule for testing infrastructure code written with Ansible.

TDD for Ansible with Molecule

Molecule is kind of an umbrella framework aiding in the development and testing of Ansible roles. To quote the docs,

[using Molecule] results in consistently developed roles that are well-written, easily understood and maintained.

Therefore Molecule introduces a consecutive list of steps that run one by one. Three of these steps stand out from the rest: create, converge and verify. Why is that? Because a best practice in writing tests also implies three steps (originally lent from Behavior-driven Development (BDD)). Just give them other names and you should be quite familiar with them: Given, When and Then.

Molecule will spin up one or more infrastructure providers in its create phase. When the testing infrastructure is ready, it will execute your Ansible playbooks onto it in the converge phase. And finally Molecule will verify that the desired state was achieved with assertions in the verify phase:

logo sources: Molecule logo, Vagrant logo, VirtualBox logo, Ansible logo, Docker logo, AWS EC2 logo, GCP logo, Testinfra logo, pytest logo

Molecule supports a wide range of infrastructure providers & platforms – be it bare-metal, virtual, cloud or containers. Because it leverages the power of Ansible to connect and maintain testing infrastructure, Molecule can test everything that Ansible is able to use. Test-driven infrastructure development with Molecule is therefore absolutely cloud-ready, since the supported plattforms contain Azure, Amazon EC2 (AWS EC2) and Google Compute Engine (GCE).

Molecule also supports different verifiers: right now these are Goss, InSpec and Testinfra. The latter is the default verifier where you can write Unittest with a Python DSL. It is built on top of the Python test framework pytest.

Enough talk. Let´s get our hands dirty! As I always strive to get you successfully up and running in topics I write about, every piece of code or configuration will be available inside this article’s corresponding GitHub repository: molecule-ansible-docker-vagrant.

Install the tools: Ansible, Vagrant, Molecule & Testinfra

If you use google, be aware of links to the deprecated Molecule version 1.x. Many posts about Molecule bump you into old 1.x links of the documentation! So always keep an eye onto the URL. There should be a latest somewhere in it – like in this one here: molecule.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

As we start our Molecule journey, we should be sure to have a tool installed for each important phase of Molecule. That being said, we start with Vagrant as infrastructure provider together with VirtualBox in the create respectively Given phase. The Ansible installation for the When step is also a must. Assuming we use MacOS and the homebrew package manager, we need to do the following:

brew install ansible brew cask install virtualbox brew cask install vagrant

The third step verify or Then is backed by Testinfra, which will be automatically installed with the Molecule installation. This time please don´t use homebrew on your Mac because this will provide you with the 1.x version of Molecule and also misses many dependend packages like ansible-lint, testinfra, flake8 and others. We´d better use the python package manager pip to install Molecule:

brew install python pip install molecule pip install python-vagrant

As we use Vagrant as infrastructure provider for Molecule, we also need to install the python-vagrant pip package which is done after the molecule installation. All these steps should be comprehensible on other operating systems – just use the package manager of your choice.

A suitable use case

There are possibly billions of potential use cases for developing Ansible playbooks and roles. For this article I chose the installation of Docker on Ubuntu. You may say that this is a bad choice. But I picked it for several reasons.

First I more or less accidentally stumbled upon Molecule. This summer I wanted to learn how to set up a Kubernetes cluster. And according to many colleagues and blog posts, the best way to dive really deep into this topic is to go through Kubernetes – the hard way by Kelsey Hightower. With some codecentric colleagues, we started out to re-implement the whole project using the principles of Infrastructure-as-Code and Ansible. You can observe the current status of our efforts here: kubernetes-the-ansible-way. But as I already outlined – what I was missing all the time was Test-driven Development. And I don´t want to write about this project before it isn´t covered by at least some test cases. One of the building blocks of kubernetes-the-hard-way as well as of kubernetes-the-ansible-way is the installation of Docker on Ubuntu.

The second advantage of this use case will become visible soon, as when we leave our simple hello world example. We´ll cover this soon, I promise.

Ansible role project structure with Molecule

For now we simply start with the initialization of a new Ansible role powered by Molecule. Therefore we simply need to fire up a command like this inside our console:

molecule init role --driver-name vagrant --role-name docker --verifier-name testinfra

It will result in the following project structure – ready to write our new Ansible role for installing Docker. The screenshot hides some directories that are also generated like defaults, handlers, meta & vars. But we don´t really need them for this simple example here. Keep them ready for more complex use cases:

The crucial directories inside our role named docker are tasks and molecule/default/tests. The first will contain our Ansible role we want to develop – the “implementation” in TDD speech. The latter directory will be our starting point inside the TDD cycle where we will write our infrastructure test cases with the help of Testinfra. As you may notice, I also renamed the test case according to our use case into test_docker.py.

Configure Molecule with the molecule.yml

Before we can actually start writing our test cases, we should enable Molecule to play nicely with our infrastructure setup – in this case Vagrant. Therefore we need to configure Molecule with the help of its molecule.yml. Let´s take a look at the molecule.yml of the example projects repository:

scenario: name: default driver: name: vagrant provider: name: virtualbox platforms: - name: vagrant-ubuntu box: ubuntu/bionic64 memory: 512 cpus: 1 provider_raw_config_args: - "customize [ 'modifyvm', :id, '--uartmode1', 'disconnected' ]" provisioner: name: ansible lint: enabled: false lint: enabled: false verifier: name: testinfra env: PYTHONWARNINGS: "ignore:.*U.*mode is deprecated:DeprecationWarning" lint: name: flake8 options: v: 1

You may notice that there are some changes compared to the generated file. First we want to use a more up-to-date Ubuntu Vagrant Box ubuntu/bionic64. Therefore we also need to add the special provider_raw_config_args configuration to the platforms key. Without this configuration, Molecule isn´t able to spin up “standard” Vagrant Ubuntu boxes like ubuntu/bionic64 or ubuntu/xenial64. This is a workaround until molecule/issues/1556 gets fixed (PR already submitted).

If you ever need to debug the infrastructure provider configuration in Molecule and you´re using a localhost provider like Vagrant or Docker, you should take a look at directories like /var/folders/5p/l1cc1kqd69n_qxrftgln7xdm0000gn/T/molecule/docker/default/. Molecule generates all the necessary files into these folders – like the Vagrantfile including logs and error files. Leaving out the provider_raw_config_args configuration we could see the following error in vagrant-ubuntu-docker.err: Stderr: VBoxManage: error: RawFile#0 failed to create the raw output file ....

The next change compared to the generated molecule.yml could be found in the testinfra configuration block.

verifier: name: testinfra env: PYTHONWARNINGS: "ignore:.*U.*mode is deprecated:DeprecationWarning"

If we didn´t configure the PYTHONWARNINGS environment variable, we would end up with a bloated test output like this:

Since these deprecation warnings are based on reports of third-party libraries we use, they are completely out of our control. Luckily, pytest has a configuration property for us, which we could also express as environment variable. Environment variables that should be passed to pytest can be added under the env: keyword in the verifier section. Now with these deprecation warnings ignored, the test output will look much better.

Fine-tuning the Molecule configuration

But we can fine-tune this even more. If the test case runs green, you may notice that there´s no hint what tests were executed. That´s rather a pity since we want to see our whole test suite executed! That was the whole point why we even started to use a testing framework like Molecule with Testinfra.

Fortunately, there´s a way to get those tests shown inside the test output. pytest could be invoked with additional properties by Testinfra. And pytest has many options we can experiment with. To configure a more verbose output for our tests in Molecule, we need to add the following to the verifier section of our molecule.yml:

options: # show which tests where executed in test output v: 1

Running tests with Testinfra and Molecule will now result in a much more informative test execution output:

Now we should have everything in place to fire up our first create phase with Molecule! To check whether our infrastructure configuration works, we need to execute molecule create. If everything went fine, the log output should look something like this:

We now successfully created this articles Molecule setup which is outlined in the following diagram:

logo sources: Molecule logo, Vagrant logo, VirtualBox logo, Ansible logo, Docker logo, Testinfra logo, pytest logo, Ubuntu logo

You can also double check inside the VirtualBox GUI – a machine should be running now. We could destroy the machine with molecule destroy, but we want to write and execute a test case in the next section. So we leave it in the created state.

Writing infrastructure tests with Testinfra

So what´s this Testinfra thingy? The docs know:

With Testinfra you can write unit tests in Python to test actual state of your servers configured by management tools like Salt, Ansible, Puppet, Chef and so on.

Testinfra happens to be the Python-style equivalent to Serverspec which again is based on the Ruby BDD framework RSpec. If you´re curious what´s possible, check out some Testinfra code examples: testinfra quick-start, ansible-role-prometheus and ansible-role-docker.

Nice! So we should start to write our test first, right?! If we go through our use case, we can identify at least three steps necessary to achieve the goal of installing Docker on Ubuntu:

The Docker package should be successfully installed

The Docker daemon should be able to pull images from the Docker Hub

Docker should be able to successfully run containers

We should assert on these necessary steps inside our testcase. Now let´s take a look at the example project´s testcase docker/molecule/tests/test_docker.py to see how this can be implemented with Testinfra:

import os import testinfra.utils.ansible_runner testinfra_hosts = testinfra.utils.ansible_runner.AnsibleRunner( os.environ['MOLECULE_INVENTORY_FILE']).get_hosts('all') def test_is_docker_installed(host): package_docker = host.package('docker-ce') assert package_docker.is_installed def test_run_hello_world_container_successfully(host): hello_world_ran = host.run("docker run hello-world") assert 'Hello from Docker!' in hello_world_ran.stdout

Testinfra is a plugin to the pytest test engine. It provides a pytest fixture named host. In order to be able to use the host fixture we only need to declare it as an argument of our test functions. The host fixture provides the Testinfra Modules that are quite powerful in terms of testing infrastructure state. For example, we can assert if files are in a certain state, whether a service is running or if certain sockets are in use. In our example, we want to know whether the package docker-ce was installed successfully. Therefore we use the Package module with host.package('docker-ce') and assert on its is_installed function.

Verifying if Docker is able to successfully run containers and thus pull images is slightly more complicated. But luckily there is the hello-world Docker image. If we were able to execute it successfully, we can verify the following according to the image documentation: the Docker daemon pulled the image hello-world from the Docker Hub, created a new container from that image and ran the executable inside. This comes in really handy because this would completely validate the final two verification steps (2. & 3.)!

To run the Docker hello-world container, we leverage the host fixtures run function (you have to scroll down in the host fixtures documentation – it´s a bit hidden). With host.run("docker run hello-world") we are able to run the hello-world Docker container. A successful execution should print Hello from Docker! into the console – at least as a part of the output. The run function will provide the console output inside the stdout variable. To assert if the output string contains our desired message, all we have to do is implement in the last part of our test case:

assert 'Hello from Docker!' in hello_world_ran.stdout

If you want to comprehend the whole process, simply add the Testinfra code to your generated molecule/default/tests/test_default.py. Now we should have everything put together to run our test case with molecule verify. It should fail:

This is huge! Now the next part is to implement our Ansible role and to turn the test green!

Implementing our Ansible role

Following the well-known cycle in Test-driven Development, we now may implement our Ansible role. The easiest way to do this is to check the documentation about the Ubuntu Docker installation. Our role should implement all the necessary steps inside tasks/main.yml, which is the default location for Ansible role implementations. This article´s example project gives an answer on how to do that inside the docker/tasks/main.yml:

- name: add Docker apt key apt_key: url: https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg id: 9DC858229FC7DD38854AE2D88D81803C0EBFCD88 state: present ignore_errors: true become: true - name: add docker apt repo apt_repository: repo: "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu stable" update_cache: yes become: true - name: install Docker apt package apt: pkg: docker-ce state: latest update_cache: yes become: true - name: add vagrant user to docker group. user: name: vagrant groups: docker append: yes become: true

According to the docs, these steps should contain everything needed to run Docker successfully because after the installation of the docker-ce package the Docker daemon starts automatically.

But we don´t need to trust any paperwork any more. We´ve got our test case. Now it´s time to remember the three main phases of Molecule. We already successfully created our infrastructure within the Given step with the help of molecule create. Right after implementing the above playbook into tasks/main.yml, we need to execute the When phase. This can be achieved by running molecule converge which should look like this:

Run our test again!

Now that our Ansible role was successfully executed onto our test infrastructure, we can move on to Molecule´s third main phase: the Then or verify step. Therefore just run molecule verify:

As mentioned earlier, Molecule executes a consecutive list of steps. There´s also a way to run all those steps one by one. The command molecule test will run everything from (pre-)destroy to create to converge to verify. I prepared an asciinema cast to show the full execution in action:

You´ll love test-driven infrastructure development!

Throughout the writing of this article, it became clear to me that Test-driven Development should definitely not be treated as something that is exclusively reserved to the development teams. I´ve already written lots of Ansible playbooks and always strived to insert small verify or smoke test steps. But that wasn´t what I was looking for. It was also something I thought I had put down a long time ago thinking about software development. The advantages of writing tests for your software or infrastructure apply equally to both. Using Molecule for the development of your Ansible roles brings in a lot more safety in terms of third-party libary or component updates. And as in software tests, maybe you´ll find implementations that you´ve never got to know without a test case! Furthermore, real refactoring is only possible if you have a reasonable test coverage.

We certainly haven´t gone into a few aspects of test-driven infrastructure development with Molecule and Ansible yet. A follow-up blog post should for sure discuss how we can automatically run Molecule tests after a commit/push into our GitHub repository with cloud CI tools like TravisCI. Therefore, we need to change our infrastructure provider and start using Docker(-in-Docker) with Molecule. And there are lots of other topics. Maybe we´ll see a Kubernetes cluster set up by Ansible that is tested by Molecule some day… Stay tuned!

Der Beitrag Test-driven infrastructure development with Ansible & Molecule erschien zuerst auf codecentric AG Blog.

Test-driven infrastructure development with Ansible & Molecule published first on https://medium.com/@TheTruthSpy

[iyarpage]

Test-driven infrastructure development with Ansible & Molecule

So you´re doing Infrastructure-as-Code? Sure. But have you ever heard of test-driven development (TDD)? It´s that dev team thing, right? Hell no! It should be equally important to infrastructure coding.

What about TDD in Infrastructure-as-Code?

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) has really become one of those buzzwords lately. And the reason is: it´s just really cool to describe your whole infrastructure with code. Versioned by Git. Abstracted from the gory details by Ansible & Co. And last but most importantly: extracted from those head monopolies! There are so many reasons to do IaC. But if you´re a software engineer by heart like me, there´s maybe a gut instinct telling you: there´s something missing in this game. What about the principles of modern software engineering?

We all learned hard lessons until most of us agreed on the undeniable benefits of Test-driven development (TDD) and Continuous Integration & Delivery (CI/CD). But didn´t we somehow forget about them? Moving over to those new shiny DevOps tools, we keep saying: “Let´s do infrastructure as code!” leaving methodologies like TDD & CI/CD to the “software development” teams. We´re now ops right?! No way! That should be the whole point of Infrastructure-as-Code. We´re software developers although the job posting says “DevOps”. We just develop infrastructure.

If you’ve already developed some infrastructure and left this code untouched for a month or two… and then got your hands on it again trying to execute it and just see it failing on things you never saw before – just a thousand libraries, APIs and version upgrades since the last code execution – and everything just stopped working (note:code that is not automatically and constantly executed and tested will eventually rot sooner or later!), this should be enough reason to bring Test-driven Development and Continuous Integration into the world of infrastructure coding.

Testing frameworks for Ansible

Maybe you´re already describing your infrastrucure with Ansible like me. I really love this tool. The learning curve isn´t steep and once you´re in it, you´re as fast writing Ansible playbooks as if you would type the bash commands directly. Sometimes even faster because of the higher abstraction. Additionally you have automated your infrastructure setup right from the start without any big expense. Everything is just transparent for the whole team and versioned inside your Git repository. No matter which OS you use or have to use, it works both for Linux or Windows.

Now choosing a testing framework for Ansible hasn´t been that easy in the past. There is a custom Ansible provisioner available for Test Kitchen respectively KitchenCI and there are quite some good blog posts about these around. But I always kept in mind that KitchenCI focusses on Chef and Ansible is somehow a tolerated rival.

But for me Molecule seems to be the perfect fit for Ansible – since it´s focussed on Ansible directly and generated some buzz already inside the community over the last years. But then this year’s September 26th came and now there are even more reasons to choose Molecule: From that day forward, Ansible has treated Molecule as a first class citizen. The GitHub repository was therefore also moved into the Ansible organization (github.com/ansible/molecule) and the whole process is backed by Red Hat (IBM). It seems to be a great time to look into Molecule for testing infrastructure code written with Ansible.

TDD for Ansible with Molecule

Molecule is kind of an umbrella framework aiding in the development and testing of Ansible roles. To quote the docs,

[using Molecule] results in consistently developed roles that are well-written, easily understood and maintained.

Therefore Molecule introduces a consecutive list of steps that run one by one. Three of these steps stand out from the rest: create, converge and verify. Why is that? Because a best practice in writing tests also implies three steps (originally lent from Behavior-driven Development (BDD)). Just give them other names and you should be quite familiar with them: Given, When and Then.

Molecule will spin up one or more infrastructure providers in its create phase. When the testing infrastructure is ready, it will execute your Ansible playbooks onto it in the converge phase. And finally Molecule will verify that the desired state was achieved with assertions in the verify phase:

logo sources: Molecule logo, Vagrant logo, VirtualBox logo, Ansible logo, Docker logo, AWS EC2 logo, GCP logo, Testinfra logo, pytest logo

Molecule supports a wide range of infrastructure providers & platforms – be it bare-metal, virtual, cloud or containers. Because it leverages the power of Ansible to connect and maintain testing infrastructure, Molecule can test everything that Ansible is able to use. Test-driven infrastructure development with Molecule is therefore absolutely cloud-ready, since the supported plattforms contain Azure, Amazon EC2 (AWS EC2) and Google Compute Engine (GCE).

Molecule also supports different verifiers: right now these are Goss, InSpec and Testinfra. The latter is the default verifier where you can write Unittest with a Python DSL. It is built on top of the Python test framework pytest.

Enough talk. Let´s get our hands dirty! As I always strive to get you successfully up and running in topics I write about, every piece of code or configuration will be available inside this article’s corresponding GitHub repository: molecule-ansible-docker-vagrant.

Install the tools: Ansible, Vagrant, Molecule & Testinfra

If you use google, be aware of links to the deprecated Molecule version 1.x. Many posts about Molecule bump you into old 1.x links of the documentation! So always keep an eye onto the URL. There should be a latest somewhere in it – like in this one here: molecule.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

As we start our Molecule journey, we should be sure to have a tool installed for each important phase of Molecule. That being said, we start with Vagrant as infrastructure provider together with VirtualBox in the create respectively Given phase. The Ansible installation for the When step is also a must. Assuming we use MacOS and the homebrew package manager, we need to do the following:

brew install ansible brew cask install virtualbox brew cask install vagrant

The third step verify or Then is backed by Testinfra, which will be automatically installed with the Molecule installation. This time please don´t use homebrew on your Mac because this will provide you with the 1.x version of Molecule and also misses many dependend packages like ansible-lint, testinfra, flake8 and others. We´d better use the python package manager pip to install Molecule:

brew install python pip install molecule pip install python-vagrant

As we use Vagrant as infrastructure provider for Molecule, we also need to install the python-vagrant pip package which is done after the molecule installation. All these steps should be comprehensible on other operating systems – just use the package manager of your choice.

A suitable use case

There are possibly billions of potential use cases for developing Ansible playbooks and roles. For this article I chose the installation of Docker on Ubuntu. You may say that this is a bad choice. But I picked it for several reasons.

First I more or less accidentally stumbled upon Molecule. This summer I wanted to learn how to set up a Kubernetes cluster. And according to many colleagues and blog posts, the best way to dive really deep into this topic is to go through Kubernetes – the hard way by Kelsey Hightower. With some codecentric colleagues, we started out to re-implement the whole project using the principles of Infrastructure-as-Code and Ansible. You can observe the current status of our efforts here: kubernetes-the-ansible-way. But as I already outlined – what I was missing all the time was Test-driven Development. And I don´t want to write about this project before it isn´t covered by at least some test cases. One of the building blocks of kubernetes-the-hard-way as well as of kubernetes-the-ansible-way is the installation of Docker on Ubuntu.

The second advantage of this use case will become visible soon, as when we leave our simple hello world example. We´ll cover this soon, I promise.

Ansible role project structure with Molecule

For now we simply start with the initialization of a new Ansible role powered by Molecule. Therefore we simply need to fire up a command like this inside our console:

molecule init role --driver-name vagrant --role-name docker --verifier-name testinfra

It will result in the following project structure – ready to write our new Ansible role for installing Docker. The screenshot hides some directories that are also generated like defaults, handlers, meta & vars. But we don´t really need them for this simple example here. Keep them ready for more complex use cases:

The crucial directories inside our role named docker are tasks and molecule/default/tests. The first will contain our Ansible role we want to develop – the “implementation” in TDD speech. The latter directory will be our starting point inside the TDD cycle where we will write our infrastructure test cases with the help of Testinfra. As you may notice, I also renamed the test case according to our use case into test_docker.py.

Configure Molecule with the molecule.yml

Before we can actually start writing our test cases, we should enable Molecule to play nicely with our infrastructure setup – in this case Vagrant. Therefore we need to configure Molecule with the help of its molecule.yml. Let´s take a look at the molecule.yml of the example projects repository:

scenario: name: default driver: name: vagrant provider: name: virtualbox platforms: - name: vagrant-ubuntu box: ubuntu/bionic64 memory: 512 cpus: 1 provider_raw_config_args: - "customize [ 'modifyvm', :id, '--uartmode1', 'disconnected' ]" provisioner: name: ansible lint: enabled: false lint: enabled: false verifier: name: testinfra env: PYTHONWARNINGS: "ignore:.*U.*mode is deprecated:DeprecationWarning" lint: name: flake8 options: v: 1

You may notice that there are some changes compared to the generated file. First we want to use a more up-to-date Ubuntu Vagrant Box ubuntu/bionic64. Therefore we also need to add the special provider_raw_config_args configuration to the platforms key. Without this configuration, Molecule isn´t able to spin up “standard” Vagrant Ubuntu boxes like ubuntu/bionic64 or ubuntu/xenial64. This is a workaround until molecule/issues/1556 gets fixed (PR already submitted).

If you ever need to debug the infrastructure provider configuration in Molecule and you´re using a localhost provider like Vagrant or Docker, you should take a look at directories like /var/folders/5p/l1cc1kqd69n_qxrftgln7xdm0000gn/T/molecule/docker/default/. Molecule generates all the necessary files into these folders – like the Vagrantfile including logs and error files. Leaving out the provider_raw_config_args configuration we could see the following error in vagrant-ubuntu-docker.err: Stderr: VBoxManage: error: RawFile#0 failed to create the raw output file ....

The next change compared to the generated molecule.yml could be found in the testinfra configuration block.

verifier: name: testinfra env: PYTHONWARNINGS: "ignore:.*U.*mode is deprecated:DeprecationWarning"

If we didn´t configure the PYTHONWARNINGS environment variable, we would end up with a bloated test output like this:

Since these deprecation warnings are based on reports of third-party libraries we use, they are completely out of our control. Luckily, pytest has a configuration property for us, which we could also express as environment variable. Environment variables that should be passed to pytest can be added under the env: keyword in the verifier section. Now with these deprecation warnings ignored, the test output will look much better.

Fine-tuning the Molecule configuration

But we can fine-tune this even more. If the test case runs green, you may notice that there´s no hint what tests were executed. That´s rather a pity since we want to see our whole test suite executed! That was the whole point why we even started to use a testing framework like Molecule with Testinfra.

Fortunately, there´s a way to get those tests shown inside the test output. pytest could be invoked with additional properties by Testinfra. And pytest has many options we can experiment with. To configure a more verbose output for our tests in Molecule, we need to add the following to the verifier section of our molecule.yml:

options: # show which tests where executed in test output v: 1

Running tests with Testinfra and Molecule will now result in a much more informative test execution output:

Now we should have everything in place to fire up our first create phase with Molecule! To check whether our infrastructure configuration works, we need to execute molecule create. If everything went fine, the log output should look something like this:

We now successfully created this articles Molecule setup which is outlined in the following diagram:

logo sources: Molecule logo, Vagrant logo, VirtualBox logo, Ansible logo, Docker logo, Testinfra logo, pytest logo, Ubuntu logo

You can also double check inside the VirtualBox GUI – a machine should be running now. We could destroy the machine with molecule destroy, but we want to write and execute a test case in the next section. So we leave it in the created state.

Writing infrastructure tests with Testinfra

So what´s this Testinfra thingy? The docs know:

With Testinfra you can write unit tests in Python to test actual state of your servers configured by management tools like Salt, Ansible, Puppet, Chef and so on.

Testinfra happens to be the Python-style equivalent to Serverspec which again is based on the Ruby BDD framework RSpec. If you´re curious what´s possible, check out some Testinfra code examples: testinfra quick-start, ansible-role-prometheus and ansible-role-docker.

Nice! So we should start to write our test first, right?! If we go through our use case, we can identify at least three steps necessary to achieve the goal of installing Docker on Ubuntu:

The Docker package should be successfully installed

The Docker daemon should be able to pull images from the Docker Hub

Docker should be able to successfully run containers

We should assert on these necessary steps inside our testcase. Now let´s take a look at the example project´s testcase docker/molecule/tests/test_docker.py to see how this can be implemented with Testinfra:

import os import testinfra.utils.ansible_runner testinfra_hosts = testinfra.utils.ansible_runner.AnsibleRunner( os.environ['MOLECULE_INVENTORY_FILE']).get_hosts('all') def test_is_docker_installed(host): package_docker = host.package('docker-ce') assert package_docker.is_installed def test_run_hello_world_container_successfully(host): hello_world_ran = host.run("docker run hello-world") assert 'Hello from Docker!' in hello_world_ran.stdout

Testinfra is a plugin to the pytest test engine. It provides a pytest fixture named host. In order to be able to use the host fixture we only need to declare it as an argument of our test functions. The host fixture provides the Testinfra Modules that are quite powerful in terms of testing infrastructure state. For example, we can assert if files are in a certain state, whether a service is running or if certain sockets are in use. In our example, we want to know whether the package docker-ce was installed successfully. Therefore we use the Package module with host.package('docker-ce') and assert on its is_installed function.

Verifying if Docker is able to successfully run containers and thus pull images is slightly more complicated. But luckily there is the hello-world Docker image. If we were able to execute it successfully, we can verify the following according to the image documentation: the Docker daemon pulled the image hello-world from the Docker Hub, created a new container from that image and ran the executable inside. This comes in really handy because this would completely validate the final two verification steps (2. & 3.)!

To run the Docker hello-world container, we leverage the host fixtures run function (you have to scroll down in the host fixtures documentation – it´s a bit hidden). With host.run("docker run hello-world") we are able to run the hello-world Docker container. A successful execution should print Hello from Docker! into the console – at least as a part of the output. The run function will provide the console output inside the stdout variable. To assert if the output string contains our desired message, all we have to do is implement in the last part of our test case:

assert 'Hello from Docker!' in hello_world_ran.stdout

If you want to comprehend the whole process, simply add the Testinfra code to your generated molecule/default/tests/test_default.py. Now we should have everything put together to run our test case with molecule verify. It should fail:

This is huge! Now the next part is to implement our Ansible role and to turn the test green!

Implementing our Ansible role

Following the well-known cycle in Test-driven Development, we now may implement our Ansible role. The easiest way to do this is to check the documentation about the Ubuntu Docker installation. Our role should implement all the necessary steps inside tasks/main.yml, which is the default location for Ansible role implementations. This article´s example project gives an answer on how to do that inside the docker/tasks/main.yml:

- name: add Docker apt key apt_key: url: https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg id: 9DC858229FC7DD38854AE2D88D81803C0EBFCD88 state: present ignore_errors: true become: true - name: add docker apt repo apt_repository: repo: "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu stable" update_cache: yes become: true - name: install Docker apt package apt: pkg: docker-ce state: latest update_cache: yes become: true - name: add vagrant user to docker group. user: name: vagrant groups: docker append: yes become: true

According to the docs, these steps should contain everything needed to run Docker successfully because after the installation of the docker-ce package the Docker daemon starts automatically.

But we don´t need to trust any paperwork any more. We´ve got our test case. Now it´s time to remember the three main phases of Molecule. We already successfully created our infrastructure within the Given step with the help of molecule create. Right after implementing the above playbook into tasks/main.yml, we need to execute the When phase. This can be achieved by running molecule converge which should look like this:

Run our test again!

Now that our Ansible role was successfully executed onto our test infrastructure, we can move on to Molecule´s third main phase: the Then or verify step. Therefore just run molecule verify:

As mentioned earlier, Molecule executes a consecutive list of steps. There´s also a way to run all those steps one by one. The command molecule test will run everything from (pre-)destroy to create to converge to verify. I prepared an asciinema cast to show the full execution in action:

You´ll love test-driven infrastructure development!

Throughout the writing of this article, it became clear to me that Test-driven Development should definitely not be treated as something that is exclusively reserved to the development teams. I´ve already written lots of Ansible playbooks and always strived to insert small verify or smoke test steps. But that wasn´t what I was looking for. It was also something I thought I had put down a long time ago thinking about software development. The advantages of writing tests for your software or infrastructure apply equally to both. Using Molecule for the development of your Ansible roles brings in a lot more safety in terms of third-party libary or component updates. And as in software tests, maybe you´ll find implementations that you´ve never got to know without a test case! Furthermore, real refactoring is only possible if you have a reasonable test coverage.

We certainly haven´t gone into a few aspects of test-driven infrastructure development with Molecule and Ansible yet. A follow-up blog post should for sure discuss how we can automatically run Molecule tests after a commit/push into our GitHub repository with cloud CI tools like TravisCI. Therefore, we need to change our infrastructure provider and start using Docker(-in-Docker) with Molecule. And there are lots of other topics. Maybe we´ll see a Kubernetes cluster set up by Ansible that is tested by Molecule some day… Stay tuned!

Der Beitrag Test-driven infrastructure development with Ansible & Molecule erschien zuerst auf codecentric AG Blog.

Test-driven infrastructure development with Ansible & Molecule published first on https://medium.com/@koresol