#i think its a decent enough time to actually post this

[crashpit]

[istoleludwigsbaumkuchen]

I have gotta figure out a way to smash my interests together but that's kinda difficult when it's fucking saw and the stupid 80s band that's cursed me for more than a year (read: devo.)

Uhhhh, I kinda think Lawrence might've (very casually) liked some of nutra, but like, that's all I got

[applestorms]

been reading through some of the author commentary from the patreon post archive for HS^2 stuff & writing notes on certain quotes from it and i think i've come up with (slightly) more distinct reasons for why the epilogues/homestuck^2 feel so off and/or frustrating to me. not gonna post the full thing + i'm only about halfway through reading it all, but here's a few points (warning this one gets kinda political):

It’s possible “Ultimate” Dirk’s presence was suppressing other splinters of himself from manifesting.

Wait, so... Ult. Dirk is just suppressing the other splinters? But I thought the entire point was that he subsumed all the other splinters to become one Ultimate Self? Weird, but I guess that plays more into the narrative powers side of things that they put a lot of emphasis on. That, or the creators don't have a very clear idea of what actually makes an Ultimate Self, which would. also work lmfao

Unlike the other victors of the game, Jane threw herself into the world the kids made together. She grew up preparing to take over a major company, and has the confidence to show for it.

Gonna get more into two ideas here in a bit related to this quote, the first being HS^2's Trump Era politics & the second being Jane more specifically. Here's the first connection:

I don’t know if you noticed, but everything is terrible right now. And I don’t mean just in Homestuck’s dumb fake earth. I mean in our dumb real earth. Our planet is burning and folks go to bed hungry just so twelve guys can have more money than Croesus could have ever dreamed of. The concept of “truth�� is at its most tenuous – political divisions involve contradictory interpretations of basic facts. I’ve been playing a lot of Death Stranding recently. Basically any media that you’re making in 2019 has to either address what’s going on around us or come off sanitized, sterilized, with its head in the sand. Kojima offers a simple power fantasy: Through Norman Reedus’s sweaty, urine-filled labor, the things that divide us can be banished. America can be unified again.

HS^2 is kind of agonizingly pessimistic when it comes to its (not at all subtle) political messaging, which I suppose you can in part attribute to a Trump-era leftist/liberal culture, but I personally also attribute to a specific flavor of white person existential pessimism. What frustrates me about HS^2's politics in particular though is just how much it talks down to the reader, acting like their (frankly, imo, pretty fuckin basic) reflections on the flaws of capitalism, gender constructs, and contemporary American politics are these revolutionary ideas that nobody other than them truly understands. It's really aggravating to read, honestly, and reminds me a lot of the perspective reflected on in this video by F.D Signifier about Bo Burnham's Inside & white performative liberalism, though in this context the creators are much more insufferable about it than Burnham ever was. (This is NOT to say every creator working on HS^2 was white or even ascribes/d to these kinds of politics, but that's one of the voices that I feel comes through the strongest.)

Edit: Re-watched that whole video and he really does get at the exact idea I'm thinking of. However, I would add that the thing that makes HS^2 feel especially insufferable to me is the fact that it doesn't feel like the authors are engaging in their politics as genuinely or personally as Burnham does. Where Burnham's look into these issues is self-reflective, the existential dread coming from the ways in which he himself plays a part in perpetuation of systems of oppression, I feel like HS^2's creators were unwilling to look at the ways in which they themselves might've benefited from the same kinds of privileges. It's just- it's egotistical, honestly! And it's a vibe that I get from a lot of heavily queer, young, white fandom spaces, which presume that because of their own experiences with queer and trans-based bigotry they understand everything and don't have to examine their own biases or any other nuances to their social position/the privileges they might personally have & continue to benefit from. I don't know- Homestuck was never going to be a good medium for examining the nuances of race and privilege, that was determined by the very first page or whenever Hussie decided non-canon races were a thing, but that doesn't make it any less agonizing to watch such a ham-fisted, pompous attempt at "social commentary." Ugh.

I guess I can understand the desire to get HS^2's politics to be more up to date and with it, again considering what the Trump-era American political landscape looked like (and what HS proper looked like, let's be real), but the way they approach this just makes the authors seem that much more immature to me. I hesitate to even call this political commentary, it's just pointing out that things are bad and then complaining about it. There's no hope here and it shows, and I personally have very little patience when it comes to that kind of perspective. I don't want to be too harsh to the creators or completely undermine the ways they might've faced structural social challenges (yes, trans people have it fucking bad right now! And there was absolutely some bigoted shit directed at the creators that was more reprehensible than anything here, I was there when this shit was coming out, I saw it all too (alongside the genuinely good criticism that they wrote off just as easily, but I digress)), but this shit is just bad, I'm sorry.

Privilege, safety, and inherited wealth do funny things to the brain. People justify to themselves why they have what they have. If you have enough for long enough, you start to convince yourself you deserve it. Jane won the game, lost very little, and as god of a new world decided to dominate its markets as a corporate mogul. Her conception of what was possible with her capability and god-like reason was shaded, limited by the world she grew up in. She is not a goddess of fantasy, a semi-mythical trickster creature like Jasprose, or a meta-aware marionette master like Dirk. She saw a new world and chose, simply, to replicate the power structures of the 21st-century America she was raised in. Boardrooms, power pantsuits, formality and professionalism.

(Longer quote here justifying the horror they did to Jane's character but let's add one more before I elaborate further)

But in the end, isn’t that what every story is? Trying to untie knots that you put in the rope yourself?

This quote is very telling and gets at my issue with the Jane quote from above, really one of my main issues with the all post-canon shit just in general: when the authors were creating a bunch of problems and inserting them into the story, something that is (typically) necessary for any kind of meaningful storytelling, they went about the process of introducing that conflict totally wrong.

In the original story of HS, problems for the characters primarily originated from Sburb, which acts as both the game they're playing and, as is demonstrated throughout Act 1, the world itself. Problems in the story thus often feel at least kind of true to life because they either originate directly from the game & its constructs (which the characters have no control over, parallel to how you can't usually control the world irl) or individuals responding to those circumstances w/ their own set of unique characteristics (Vriska being an active character and creating villains to become a hero but also Rose deciding she has to go through with a suicide mission in response to the game/Doc Scratch and Dave in turn responding to her actions, etc. etc.).

This is not necessarily true for all of the story or every single plot point/character arc, but I think it generally follows, and so for as meta as HS gets, it never really felt to me like you could see the hand of the author when it comes to how major plot elements are introduced, outside of a few very overt examples. Problems are able to crop up fairly naturally through characters responding in what they think to be natural/rational ways to their circumstances, but may or may not be due to the limitations on their understanding. The situation and environment of Sburb and the world of HS itself may be absurd and stupid and crazy and very obviously created by an author, but the characters typically feel consistent and true to themselves as people in how they respond to the absurdity and confusion of their world. It's one of the reasons why I think HS is so appealing as a coming of age story actually, since stepping into adulthood (or even just your teenage years) does often feel like entering a world that is crazy and cruel and unknowable with all of these malicious, far-away forces that know way more than you could ever possibly understand controlling every detail of the world around you and deciding your fate before you even get the chance to know it's coming. These are kids, they really don't have a lot of power even once they ascend to godhood in comparison to the forces they're dealing with, and the story & world reflects that.

The problem w/ HS^2 & the Epilogues is that the authors don't have the same game construct to work with, barely have a world at all to begin with actually, and so they instead twist pretty much every single character into the worst possible versions of themselves in order to try and recreate the same HS absurdity. But it just doesn't work, because there is no real explanation for why every character is suddenly at their lowest point and acting like a fucking idiot all the time other than "ooo adulthood makes everyone worse!" and vague gestures to capitalism and privilege (or what I would call structural ignorance, though I don't think they ever call it that), so the story just comes across as incredibly cruel and uncaring and unabashedly pessimistic in a way that's just miserable to read.

Yes, Jane grew up privileged, it makes sense that she would be sympathetic to capitalism and try to recreate the same social structures that fucked people up on the original Earth- but that is not nearly enough justification for why she has suddenly gone full fascist dictator endorsing troll eugenics and trying to murder people, and it doesn't even work well as social commentary cause it's so extreme right from the start that it couldn't possibly reflect real life issues or the development of actual fascist/bigoted ideas. Yes, Trump's ties to the alt-right are fucking terrifying and conservative politics in general in the U.S. nowadays are incredibly fucked, but there's still logical people and seemingly rational explanations being utilized to justify the bullshit that many people genuinely believe in and HS^2 fails to meaningfully reflect or comment on any of those, at least from what I can tell. Everyone is consistent with how they are terrible, I'll give them that, for Dirk and Jane and everyone else the flaws that are being emphasized are ones that are generally kind of consistent with canon, but I simply cannot get behind why they suddenly decided to be the worst possible versions of themselves other than that the authors realize they needed plot and decided that the best way to make Candy and Meat the Bad Timelines:tm: was to spontaneously make everyone as insufferable as possible.

I think a part of the problem is the time skip, honestly. And the fact that Earth C as a location itself is surprisingly underutilized when it comes to creating problems for the characters. The characters are gods ruling over a world where they can be dictator of the globe at the end of a single election. Without the game and the lack of distinct outside villains, there is nothing stopping them from having full agency over everything other than each other, so in order to create plot, instead of going through the effort to create a world or social structure they just made everyone worse and called it a day. It's like the epitome of white liberalism's inability to understand bad systems vs. bad individuals- there are no real systems here, nothing that actually functions past a name, so everyone is just fucking terrible.

(Honestly, I think the fact that there are no overt outside villains could've been a good way of transitioning to the fact that these characters aren't kids anymore- if Dirk and Jane didn't have to be transformed into fucking caricatures of themselves in order to do it. Really the problem is that so many of the characters that used to add interesting nuance to the social conflict are fucking dead now. RIP trolls.)

Since this is turning out to be the political astronaut ramble I guess I'll just keep going for a bit: one of the most meaningful insights a professor has ever given to me came is the idea that we "haven't earned our pessimism yet," as the younger generations, or haven't faced The Shit directly or long enough to justify having as little hope as we do. Many of us have looked at the problem and given up before even trying to solve it, and are, in fact, not really justified in making such a decision.

For me, there's an additional layer to that idea as well: one of the ideas that Beauvoir talks about in her feminist philosophy is that of agency, wherein social privilege allows for certain groups to decide which meaning-creating projects they want to or to not take on where others are not allowed to make the same choice. If you sit in any kind of position of social privilege, that historical role has continually been the one to not only benefit from the rules, but make them in the first place. This kind of pessimism is thus not just unearned, not just frustrating to listen to, but actively harmful to the creation of meaningful change. Who really benefits from inaction? From a lack of change to the status quo? And who are the privileged to make decisions about whether or not we're allowed to fight for this shit in the first place?

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

hey genloss is bad.

[a-simple-spiders-oc-dump]

the sillies

[kawaiianimeredhead]

.

[talkorsomething]

Too [insert adjective here] for guard ...................

Well, it's only half related.

We "hit a pothole", "had a slipup", whatever you want to call it — sunday. Aka: for the sake of my sanity we are not labeling it a relapse but good god does it feel as though I have invited the demons back in.

I know why, but I don't really know why. Because, I mean... I never have, to begin with. So: when I decided i was doing it sunday, i accepted it. "Let it happen", as someone would probably say to me. It's not...

I've been thinking about it for a while now. It's like anything - it comes and goes, a few times a year, and no matter what, I always ignore it.

Except, maybe there's something I'm not paying attention to? Or, ignoring, is the better word for it?

Of course it would be the one thing I have happening in my life.

November, I was burnt out for unrelated reasons. It was a lot to take in. That made sense. Now? ... why now?

There's not really any pressure on me. Yes, I have to do things, yes, it will be noticed if they're bad, but ...... it's not important. We don't spend time on it. I'm coming back next year, but it might be at the cost of ... all of this. I think it's progress. I haven't touched my guitar in any serious capacity in over a year. I think it's progress.

I don't take compliments well. I can't tell if that's why I don't get them, but I'm not being corrected much either. Only when I drift too far from what the work is supposed to be, only after weeks of it going, I can only assume, unnoticed. I keep getting stuck.

...push it back down.

Telling me I'm doing good isn't telling me what I know I have to be getting wrong. I could take it, at the cost of... all of this. I'm anticipating, and I know it can come. This is not where I was when I started.

It's been said, I haven't been told, that not starting it means you're more of a burden, by making the other person have to do it first. I know that. I do. And still it doesn't help. I'm not drowning. It wasn't an accident, but it wasn't planned, either. I don't know you.

I don't know you.

I'm not a good person. I'm not a nice person. Every week I tell myself this is really it, and every week I come back, and ... what? Forget I ever said anything? Forget we're not friends?

Well, we're not, huh? Nobody is, with me. What you see I swear you misunderstand. You don't ask. If you do, well, I can't answer. We're at an impasse.

It's not even my fault we didn't make it. I shouldn't feel like this over nothing. I don't do anything. You will, correctly, not let me do anything, because potential doesn't matter if you can't back it up. If you won't back it up. I let things happen to me.

I don't even feel better. And, actually, ironically, i think i know what would let me feel better. If I can't be upset with anyone else, at least I can be with myself.

... but, well, not even that. Your heart in my hands, but I mean it diegetically. And metaphorically. I hate putting myself out there, I hate having to actually perform, and yet every time, no matter what, I do it. I'm fine. I only cared at the start, and even then not very.

I don't feel anything. Not a lot, anyways. I don't let it happen. I can't. I don't know what it'll mean if I start being honest with myself.

...

I've pulled myself out of this before. A few times, now. Different circumstances, but I've done it all the same. Seasonal depression notwithstanding.

I'm only here because I did things I was scared to. And still, I'm the same. No progress made. The only way out is to do it again but I feel like I can't. I can't.

Will someone just let me say that?

Will someone just fucking help for once?

[arolesbianism]

Mid patch but on the bright side new salmon run specials and on the brighter side kraken specifically I think we've found our new best survivability tool

[beatcroc]

you ever think about how gerome and fake pep are the only two guys who really only ever knew the tower as their home? i do

lots of fp text in this one so full un-ciphered script is going under cut below. [mostly just a bunch of headcanon nonsense about his whole Situation in the tower :p] [there is also a second bonus after because i am insufferable] anyway,

bonus:

hey! it's a series! fake peppino world tour: [noise] [noisette] [peppino] [gustavo] [gerome]<- u are here [noisette again]

gerome: i say there monstrosity! do you know the times? fp: …? gerome: haha! just an old joke, lad. gerome: but seriously, i never saw you around the tower much. what's your deal? fp: ... fp: 👈 ?? gerome: yes you! you never struck me as just some hired goon like the rest. fp: i… i don't really know. gerome: oh come now, you needn't be modest. fp: i'm not! i- [fp takes a seat] fp: they…. didn't tell me much. the…the lab. you know it? gerome: i'd pass though, now and again. fp: i was there for awhile, with lots of other copies gerome: oh, you knew the other clones? what were they like? fp: nutritious. gerome: ah. fp: they-the tall one- moved me to….「bruno's」 later. gerome: tall one… you mean pizzahead? fp: uh….right.「pizzahead」 …started changing it. kept changing it. i think i was waiting for something. waiting… to open? but he told me to keep-stay in there. to guard it. was there…longer than the labs but we never got to finish…. but i think we were close. But then「pep- pep: woah. never seen him this chatty gerome: just have to ask the right questions, i suppose pep: I mean, sure but-- wait, you can understand him??? gerome: it's only natural, after all, he is at least in part- part of the tower; made from its power and resources, and so connected with my brother...and to some extent, myself. his speech resonates with the old echoes through its chambers, and while i may not be as omniscient, it has no secrets that would fully elude me. pep: ...uh. ok, sure. what's he saying? fp: ..! fp: XXX! gerome: ah…. seems he's a bit embarrassed. pep: aw. er…look, it may not be my business, but whatever happened in the tower is behind us now, yeah? i know i sure try to forget it too fp: 😬 fp: ...😓👍 [fp turns back to gerome] fp: ............i wasn’t done gerome: he wasn't done. fp: yeah. then 「peppino」 came through. you probably know. hard to miss him. gerome: heh, I'll say. fp: We fought, I stayed…. didn't know anything else until 「pizzahead」grabbed me. fighting more on the roof... fp: You know the rest? you ran out with us... gerome: mhm fp: And… now we’re here. gerome: now we’re here… fp: ...that's all i had. so..... i still don't really know. sorry... gerome: ah, don't be. that's just how it goes, i guess. not much that can be done now... gerome: i suppose we both left some things behind in that tower. i certainly know it can be daunting to leave the fold of familiarity. gerome: but, for what it's worth...i think it’s for the better things worked out for us as they did. fp: yeah…

bonus! 2!!

[moviestarmartini]

yellow flowers. — jude bellingham x gf!reader

él sabía, ella sabía y se olvidaron de sus flores amarillas.

summary: how can your relationship recover from such a serious argument the night before?

wc: 975

warnings: angst, not that much dialogue, like three words in spanish, established long-term relationship.

A/N: WHAAAAT?? GIGI POSTING TWICE IN A DAY??? its more likely than you think! thank las flores amarillas hehe.

now playing... flores amarillas from floricienta

The fight was stupid, really. 

You both had to admit it was. Even then, that doesn’t take away the fact it snowballed into issues each of you held back for what seemed ages, and only ended up with Jude slamming the door on the way out of your apartment. 

After hours of crying, your own exhaustion from the ordeal lulled you to sleep. When you rose up in the morning, neither your mind nor your body prepared for the fact it was a Saturday. 

Nor the fact everyone and their mothers were receiving yellow flowers, something you’d always craved but were always just another bystander. 

If you listened to that song again you might just rip your hair off. 

You had a whole day planned with Jude after the game, he wanted to do something special, but the fact you couldn’t hold back your jealousy the night before was more than enough to dampen the idea, whatever it was. 

For a second, you tried to put things on the positive side. A self-care day. In theory it was wonderful, but the second you sat alone in the bubbly bathtub, you broke down in tears. 

You’d been together for years. You changed your whole life around him, learning German to go to school in the same country and planning your masters in Spanish. Maybe that was part of the reason he called you spineless; you adapted to other’s needs and perspectives easier. His words bounced around your head, each reminder taunting you more. 

To top it all off, Spotify seemed to have a vendetta against you, your daylist was insanely depressing. 

“Is this because he plays for Real Madrid?!” You spoke out into the world, growing frustrated with your situation. 

That did spark an idea in your brain; or more of a reminder. 

Jude had a game today. And you weren’t going to be there to watch him. That just made you jump out of the bath, get changed into decent clothes and leave the house for once to watch him at your best friend’s house upon her request, miserably so even when the team got their footing back up— knowing you should be in the stands cheering him on. But alas, you weren’t.

And you wondered if you would ever be again. 

The moment he fell clutching his shoulder, your heart stopped. Tears welled in your eyes but you avoided letting them escape, remembering the long hours of work and recovery, the utter joy you felt when he informed both you and the team he was comfortable playing without the big chunky brace again. All that, and it crumbled down right before your eyes, like your relationship. 

Still, you didn’t hesitate on reaching for your phone, not finding any elation on the team’s victory. 

[ I know you don’t want to see or hear from me ] 

[ But how’s your shoulder? I’m seriously concerned ] 

You knew he wasn’t going to reply right away, and when your companion found out who you’d texted, she ripped the phone out of your hands and put it away for the reminder of your evening laced with white wine and take out sushi. 

“Thank you for releasing me, master.” You joked by the time she gave you the mobile back, swallowing hard upon seeing Jude hadn’t replied. 

He hadn’t even read it. 

Now you were actually panicking, swallowing down the tears in the Uber and wishing the small elevator could go fast enough that you didn’t break down somewhere that wasn’t in the comfort of your home. 

You were overwhelmed enough that you didn’t even take into account your door was unlocked when you clearly left it locked, nor the warm light coming from the tiny space under the doorframe. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Were the first words you registered before your eyes caught the indoor prairie your boyfriend had installed in your living room in the shape of yellow daisies. 

Your eyes trailed the hundreds of petals before your eyes finally fell on him, scanning from his toes up to the apologetic expression he was carrying. Now it all made sense; your friend insisted on getting you out of the house for this. He didn’t reply because of this. 

Though your heart was running at a whopping speed of thirty miles per second, your feet took you painfully slow— cautiously— towards him. You were still marveled, carefully watching where your sneakers landed to avoid stepping on the beautiful work he’d planned for you. 

“Perdón,” Jude repeated, as if the words in Spanish meant so much more than the English language. He opened his mouth for what seemed to be a rant, but the way you squeezed the life out of him with a desperate hug left him speechless, followed by your hugs. 

“I thought you— you were going to dump me and I would have to move back home and— and I can’t imagine that because I love you so much and that’s why I was scared!” You babbled between hiccups, trying to calm yourself down before his gentle hands cupping your face did the job spectacularly. 

“I would be such a fuckin’ idiot to do that.” He couldn’t help but let out a laugh, not at you nor your claims, but at how ridiculous he had been. 

“Te perdono,” You sniffled, your bottom lip still puckered up ever so slightly. 

“But what’s all this?” You turned to look at the scene, something straight out of a Van Gogh painting. 

“You thought I forgot with the thousand TikToks you sent me on this day?” He leaned in to kiss your forehead before pulling you into another warm hug. 

“I also watch Gilmore Girls whenever you do. Whoops.” 

Your laugh echoed as you snuggled closer to him in your upright position, being extremely thankful the last sentence of the song wasn’t your reality.

A/N: if y'all seriously thought it wasn't going to have a happy ending you clearly don't know me well enough rip

[rivalcobalt]

Okay actually yknow what, I'm just gonna do this on here cause I've been agonizing over this for too long

Firstly to prove I'm not insane, and I guess to his credit, the author has mentioned ONS as an inspiration-slash-thing-with-similar-vibes on twitter (archived):

That said, I feel like this really undersells it. Like, you can argue about how much inspiration you can take from a work, and ONS itself takes insane amounts of shit from Devilman, but even still it feels very much like a different story, and not like... the entire first half of the book being largely what you'd get if you just ported the plot of S1 of ONS over into a YA novel with and then altered who the love interest was.

This is long enough already (talking like nearly 4 pages point form on google docs) so I'm just copying it over as is. I only read the book once, so honestly this may have even missed some things. I'd put more effort into this but honestly idk how many people are gonna see this anyways.

Tl;dr no fucking way did you just "watch this while editing"

The Flood || unnamed apocalypse virus

Man-made virus

Kills most of the human population (ons' explicitly kills off 90%, the Flood has killed near 9 billion (earth's population when it was released)/appears to be a comparable rate)

Intentionally caused by Angels cult/Hyakuya Sect + JIDA (revealed in manga/LNs only)

Angels cult || vampires:

Signaturely wear white robes/uniforms + capes

Ons vampires are associated with (fallen) angels

New Nazareth/Sanguinem (city for cult/vampires that protagonist escapes from)

Don't want any more of their kind made (Angels forcing Angel parents to drown their newborns, vampires noted to be generally opposed to making more vampires for unexplained reasons; iirc only progenitors are able to sire and they're supposed to get permission from the vampire council first)

Angels cult || Hyakuya Sect

Religious cult

Doing human (S)eraph experiments

Benji & Theo/Yuu & Mika are children of cult members who use them as test subjects

Causes virus on purpose (manga/LNs only)

Responsible for creating Graces/Horsemen of John (manga/LNs only)

Benji || Yuu:

Only successful version of the (S)eraph experiments

Not fully in control of powers yet/powers emerge over the course of the story

Child of Angels/Hyakuya Sect cult members

Brought to New Nazareth/Sanguinem under the age of 12 and lives there for 4-5 years before escaping

Grow up in New Nazareth/Sanguinem with Theo/Mika during those years

Important family member dies as they try to escape together

Son of cult members

Posesses (S)eraph abilities from being experimented on by cult

Joins ALC/JIDA in their front-line forces after escaping and being found by Nick/Guren

Seraph || seraphs (humans possessing seraph gene and have ability to turn into them)

Aim to wipe out humanity (but this can be controlled by protagonist with effort)

Very powerful

Created via human experimentation on children by the religious cult that caused the virus

Picture of Yuu in complete seraph form in ons tweet from author

Theo || Mika:

Curly/wavy blond hair and blue eyes

Protagonist's childhood best friend

In love with protagonist, debatably reciprocated

Child of Angels/Hyakuya Sect cult members

Grows up in New Nazareth/Sanguinem with protagonist, but didn't escape with them

Wants to get protagonist away from ALC/JIDA and live with them

Seen in whites of the vampires/Angels for the majority of the story

Remains affiliated with the vampires/Angels (Theo sides with Angels & Mika is turned)

Soldier for the Angels/vampires

Protagonist often recalls memories of being in the cult/vampire city together as children

Protagonist thinks of them as someone they'll never see again after escaping (Theo stayed with cult, Yuu thinks Mika is dead)

Mika is revealed to be the son of the first vampire, a fallen angel, meaning he's also an angel (manga only)

Other (S)eraph besides Benji/Yuu, but not a fully functional one (Theo injects himself with a failed version of Seraph, Mika's seraph gene is dormant)

Theo's angry outbursts may be based on Mika's anger (though who they lash out at is very different)

Theo's character differences from Mika are almost all traits commonly found in other characters also influenced by Ryou Asuka (betrays protagonist, parallel to protagonist due to similarities but on opposing sides of conflict) (not sure if author knew about Mika being heavily from Ryou or just subconsciously knew the archetype via consuming other anime/manga/JRPGs/etc or just a really funny coincidence)

Upon escaping New Nazareth/Sanginem, Benji's dad/Mika is killed

Nothing can be done to save them

Bleeding out as Benji/Yuu tries to save them as a specific similar imagery (plus I guess gaping hole wounds specifically mentioned (from being shot in the head/arm thrust through stomach respectively))

Specific memories of looking at a map together to plan their escape

Yuu/Benji is forced to keep running alone to the only way out (only bridge out of Acheson/only tunnel out of Sanguinem)

Cult is using human experiments to create humans with the seraph gene/martyrs to turn into Seraph

(S)eraphs aim to wipe out the rest of humanity

The name. Are you kidding me

Protagonist is the only fully successful experiment

Main character and childhood best friend are children of parents in cult

(In the end) main character and childhood best friend are both (S)eraph experiments

The way the Flood is killing Benji has similarities to Yuu in his incomplete seraph form

Dripping blood and black fluid (Yuu: from wings and left eye, right sclera filled with blood and left eye may have burst upon transforming, Benji: from wounds from Seraph decomposing him)

Spitting up black fluid

at a later incident, Yuu's seraph form is triggered by multiple organs rupturing. Benji's organs are liquefying inside him and coming up in chunks as part of the Seraph transformation

Theo's death after injecting himself with Dominion-12 focusing on his shot-through left eye looking like a black hole is similar to Yuu's left eye blacked out by anime gore censor circle in incomplete seraph form

Same type of post-apocalyptic setting: 

Plants beginning to cover over a wrecked city (only a few years after the virus broke out, so not super heavily overgrown yet)

Skyscrapers and concrete brutalist architecture specifically shown. Downtown core type of stuff

Graces || Horsemen of John

Created by Angels/Hyakuya Sect (result of Flood virus/called by 6th trumpet (seraph) of seraph experiments)

Beasts that kill humans, just to finish killing off the population

Can be called upon/created/controlled by (S)eraphs

Described as both horselike and spiderlike

Ribs protruding out of chest, fangs, mouths in unusual places, and I think wings (not sure about Graces on that one) are common traits

Picture of a Horseman included in author's tweet about ons

ALC || JIDA

Wear all black

Surviving humans outside of New Nazareth/Sanginem

Fight against Angels/vampires

Rescue Benji/Yuu after they escape New Nazareth/Sanguinem

Secretly aim to use Benji/Yuu's (S)eraph abilities for their own gain

The Watch || Shinoa Squad

ALC/JIDA Moon Demon Company front lines squad

Comprised of teenagers

Protagonist joins them after escaping New Nazareth/Sanguinem to fight back against the Angels/vampires

Cormack is debatably based on Kimizuki (red/pink hair, asshole personality, rare bits of kindness show through exterior (when Cormack prioritizes giving Benji his jacket to block smoke while ALC is on fire, but not nearly as nice of a guy under it all as Kimizuki)

Aisha is like… maybe bastardized Mitsuba if you just take her emotional outburst parts, but I might be reaching on that

Nick || Guren 

Leader of ALC & the Watch/Moon Demon Company (strongest section of front-line soldiers in JIDA)

Black hair & eyes (Guren's eyes are dark purple, but could be interpreted as stylized black)

Finds Benji/Yuu after their escape and brings them into their group

Nick is literally just Guren in personality if you age him down a few years and add autism and make him nicer under the exterior. Like even the way he talks and him being mentioned dramatically stomping his leg up on furniture during speeches 

Heading ALC/JIDA's intentions to use Benji/Yuu for their own gain

Dehumanizes protagonist yet also having a bit of affection towards them (more debatable for Guren, but he has some rare moments of being caring towards Yuu in a more older sibling/fatherly way)

Erin || Shinoa

Another leader within the ALC/JIDA (though Erin isn't a soldier/in the Watch)

Sympathetic towards Benji/Yuu, protests against Nick/Guren directly for how they treats them

Pastel pink/purple feminine aesthetic

Wears hair at least partly in braids

Benji & Theo's reunion in Reformation Faith Evangelical Church || Yuu & Mika's reunion on the battlefield in Shinjuku

Reunite at first major battle protagonist participates in, but not their first (iirc both only have one minor fight between joining ALC/JIDA squad and this one)

One approaches other from behind, other only realizes who they are a moment after turning around

On opposite sides as ALC/JIDA vs Angels/vampires

"[Name]? Is that you?"

Benji holds a knife to Theo's throat || Yuu stabs Mika through the chest

Theo/Mika went along to fight specifically to find Benji/Yuu

"Abandon everything and run away with me" || "I came here to follow you. I couldn't let the city take you alone. If it wants you, it has to take me too."

Theo/Mika wants to separate Benji/Yuu from the ALC/JIDA (but Mika has good reason, while Theo wants Benji to come back to the cult)

Forced to separate again at end of fight

Picture of Yuu stabbing Mika from this scene is also on ons tweet from author

In general, first half follows the escape from Sanguinem/New Nazareth leaving behind a dying family member who tried to escape with the protagonist but died to let them get away -> get found by JIDA/The Watch upon escape and rescued by Guren/Nick with the intention of using Yuu/Benji as a weapon against those he escaped from due to his nature as a human experiment -> join JIDA/The Watch, meet other members and the leader Guren/Nick -> do some missions with them -> reunite with previous friend-slash-love interest they had left behind (Mika/Theo) at first major battle as soldiers for opposing sides and are forced to part again progression, which isn't super unique but still very specific, and given everything else... yeah

This is by far not the first time an English work has copied a Japanese work and was praised for originality, but "gay trans YA novel rips off mediocre gay vampire shounen" has to be conceptually the funniest and yet there still seem to be 0 google results about it

[complete-clownery]

Hahaha okay rant about this amazing fanfic (you probably heard of this one already but still)

So whenever it comes to explaining and writing under my posts I just get lazy but I need to push through this cuz I need to talk

So the fanarts were made for the lmk fanfiction sunbreak, that a lot of you (probably mostly shadowpeach shippers) had read, and it is amazing, I read trough it as fast as my brain let me and as you can see it has pleasantly scratched my brain so much so that I even (attempted) to make fanart for it

Ngl if I wasn't a major pussy I would try to illustrate the whole thing or make covers for each chapter but Im unable to work on something more than 2 hours and I would want those to look good, but good looking art (if I don't mess up) takes 6 hours ughh--- annoying much---

Anyways I'm not good with literature but man is this fix a masterpiece *chefs kiss* its everything its amazing, I was unable to put it down once I started it

Okay i dont think I have the brain capacity to explain how much I worship the writer of this masterpiece @ladygreenfrisbee , so i'm just going to talk about the drawings a tad

So first picture with Red Son and MK its sort of like an au in the fic where the whole lbd plot is somehow nonexistent and after Macaque gets to his sisters domain they settle down and raise the kids together without much of an issue aside from assassinations keep happening and trying not to get in trouble with the heavens

Id like to think that Gongzhu still wouldn't let the court tailors to put any form of red or gold on MKs outfits and only allowed the yellow after when MK was old enough to declare that yellow was his favorite color, but even now she would insist on some form of purple and shadow motives to let others know who the mother is

We also got baby MK and toddler Red Son and sassy LIF and Mac

Third pic with the lion: I don't know what it was or why but I just love general Song so much--- he's a major dickhead but sgvshshsevkdididhr (actually I kinda love all the original characters in this one, from the generals to the old lady in the beginning of the book, (gosh I also wanna draw some scenes from those chapters I loved how Mac and she interacted hshsjsj))

so chapter 34 was probably my favorite so far I re read it about two more times cuz it was amazing to see Macaque being the schemer he is and try to piss of Song lol

Last picture: its a sketch/a wip or whatever (probably not going to finish it but im still putting it there cuz its somewhat decent looking)

Its the part where Wukong remembered of Macaque finally finding him and asking for him to come back to flower fruit mountain.

I tried to make Macaque look more unhinged on this one but since I didn't finish it I dont think its that noticable so fuck that but I also gave him a halo like the saints to symbolise his suffering and what not (thought it looked cool and fitting think whatever you want about it lol)

And that all ((((hollly mother))))

If you read this trough, thank you and congrats👏👏

[pedrospatch]

not a thing l part ii

Post Outbreak! Joel Miller x Female Reader

part i

summary: You fess up and tell Joel about how Ellie overheard the two of you during the private moment you two had in the woods; Ellie confronts Joel about you while you’re asleep in the truck.

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. IMPLIED AGED GAP (no specific age mentioned for reader, Joel is canon age) Joel is kind of an asshole, Ellie is a wiseass, mentions of Tess.

word count: 4.7k

a/n: decided to write a second part to the first Joel fic that i ever wrote! i am so, so stunned that one fic turned into more and that people actually want to read my stuff for Joel/TLOU. thank you all sm for everything and for interacting with me and my content. it means a ton!

“Think this might be a good time to stop?” Joel asked you, quietly.

You hummed, glancing back over at Ellie through the rearview mirror.

Even through the darkness inside the small cab of the pickup truck, it was almost too painfully obvious as to how fucking exhausted the girl was and how much this journey had already taken out of her after only just a few days on the road. Although she was on the smaller side and had an ample amount of space to stretch out her limbs, lay down, and get a decent night’s sleep in the backseat of the truck while you and Joel both took turns driving through the night, Ellie had expressed to you on more than one occasion that she’d rather stop to make temporary camp somewhere for a few hours and continue the drive in the morning once everyone had the chance to take a break. You honestly couldn’t blame her, not even if you tried—it was taking its toll on you too, a lot more than you let on to both Joel and especially to Ellie.

Being the adult, you kept your complaints to yourself, but the truth of the matter was that at the end of each day, you were also getting sick and tired, so damn sick and tired, of the ungodly amount of time that you were spending cooped up in the pickup, just sitting on your ass.

Sure, it may have been a little bit of extra work and it was keeping the three of you from reaching Wyoming as fast as Joel would have liked given the nature of the smartass, teenaged cargo you two had on your hands—but you also preferred to stop and make camp for the night.

After realizing that Joel was still waiting for a response, you nodded.

“Yeah, we should probably call it for the night,” You told him, glancing down at the map of the country in your hands. The three of you made it to the state of Indiana; Missouri was your next planned stop to find gas to siphon and refuel, and even though it was just a little less than six hours away, you figured an early morning wakeup call could have you all there by tomorrow afternoon. “Only problem about a state like Indiana is that it’s flat as fuck. There’s nothing but wide, open grassy fields around here.” You peered out of the window, then turned back to Joel, frowning. “Think we’ll find a safe enough spot?”

“We’re just gonna have to make do with what we got,” Joel stated as he carefully veered the vehicle off of the highway and to the left, onto the aforementioned grassy field. “You think about a mile out from the highway is decent enough? Mile and a half, maybe?”

“Let’s make it two,” You suggested. You neatly folded up the map and stuck it into the glove compartment in front of you. “I doubt we’ll run into anyone or anything out here in the middle of nowhere, but might be best not to risk being too close to the highway, just in case.”

He looked over at you, nodding his head in agreement. “Two it is.”

“Aww, teamwork,” Ellie teased from the backseat. “How fucking cute.”

“It’d be real cute if you’d shut up,” Joel quipped. Once he pulled the truck about a couple of miles out onto the field, he came to a stop and then cut the engine. “We’re gonna take a breather for a few hours,” he said to Ellie over his shoulder. “But only for a few hours, and not a minute more. Come sunrise, we need to get movin’ again, understood?”

She saluted him. “Aye aye, Captain. Whatever you say.”

The second that you hopped out of the pickup, you started shivering. The chilly evening breeze nipped at any patch of exposed skin it could find. The days had been pretty decent, but at night, the temperatures would drop drastically—it couldn’t have been warmer than forty or so degrees. Instinctively, you reached into the top of your pack, pulling a second jacket you carried for yourself out of it. You handed it over to Ellie and instructed her, “Put this on. Cordyceps infection might not have taken you out, but hypothermia will.”

She took it from you, shooting you a tiny, grateful smile. “Thanks.”

Joel eyed the interaction, his lips pursed together in displeasure.

He didn’t want you and Ellie getting attached to one another, but he feared it was too late. The girl had taken an instant liking to you and you seemed to have taken a liking to her too. “Here.” He tossed Ellie her blue sleeping bag. “Go lay down on the other side of the truck.”

“I’m already so fucking itchy just thinking we have to sleep here.” Ellie wrinkled her nose down at the grass under her shoes. Lifting her head, she took a glance around before turning her attention to you. It was written all over her face, evident in the way she started to shuffle nervously from foot to foot; she was afraid. “I feel so exposed. Are we really going to be safe? There’s fucking nothing out here, not even a single tree. What if someone finds us while we’re all sleeping?”

Before you could reassure her, Joel stepped in.

“No one is goin’ to find us out here,” he grouched. “We’ll be safe. Now quit your complainin’ and go get settled for the night. And don’t even think of askin’ me for a fire in the middle of a goddamn field. Got it?”

Ellie rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, it’s fine. You know, I’m actually kinda starting to get used to freezing my fucking ass off anyway.”

You lifted a hand to your mouth, trying to hide your snort of laughter.

She was too fucking quick for her own good.

Joel glared at you. “What? You think she’s funny?”

“Actually, I think she’s fucking hilarious,” You shrugged, causing him to let out an exasperated sigh. “What? It’s true! She’s made me laugh more in the last week than I have in the last two fucking decades.”

Ellie beamed at you. “At least someone still has a sense of humor.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” he snapped, irritably. “Both of you.”

She leaned over towards you, muttering the question right under her breath, “Jesus, has he always been this fucking crabby?” She nudged your shoulder with hers. “You must have the patience of a fucking saint to be able to deal with this on the daily. I would have killed him by now and then offed myself too with that fucking attitude.”

He stepped towards her. “What’d you just say—”

“Ellie.” Although you tried your hardest to reprimand her, instead, you found yourself fighting back another laugh. “Come on, let’s go before he strangles us both.” Taking her arm, you started leading her around to the other side of the truck. Dropping her arm, you reached for your own sleeping bag from the bed of it and started rolling it out. Though you were still fighting back a fit of giggles, you found it in you to offer her some words of advice. “Ellie, I know Joel is not the easiest person to deal with, but you really have to stop giving him so much shit, kid. The man has enough gray hair as it is. Take it easy on him, will you?”

“But I need to keep myself entertained somehow,” she replied with a small, innocent shrug of her shoulders. She unrolled her own sleeping bag, laying it out right beside where you had laid out yours; you saw a pensive look cross her face and after a second, she moved it closer to yours, leaving about a one inch gap of space between the two. For as scared shitless as you had been to take someone like her under yours and Joel’s care, the mere fact that Ellie seemed to feel safer being so close to you must have meant you were doing something right.

“Jacket,” You reminded her.

“I know, I know.” Ellie tugged on the spare jacket that you’d given her just minutes ago, zipping it up to her chin. She yawned, crawling into her sleeping bag. Before rolling over onto her side, she stopped and a tiny, tired smirk tugged at her lips as she looked up at you. “Wait. You and Joel aren’t going to bone each other tonight, are you? Because I might actually have to suffocate myself in this thing if you do.”

You sighed heavily. “And here I thought you were actually going to do me the favor of never bringing it up ever again.”

“What can I say? Giving you shit is almost as fun as giving it to Joel.”

You nudged her lightly with the toe of you worn, brown leather boot, chuckling as you told her, “Go to sleep, you little jerk.”

“Remember. Protection.” Ellie yawned again, rolling over. “G’night.”

“Goodnight, Ellie.”

The minute that you heard her soft snores coming from inside of the bag and you were certain she was asleep, you made your way back to the other side of the truck where you found Joel busy loading up and checking his rifle. Thankfully, hadn’t seemed to have heard what Ellie had just said to you. “I’ll take watch tonight,” You offered, holding out your hands and beckoning for the weapon. You instantly noticed the all too familiar look of protest on his face. “Joel, you were the last one to drive today and you’re fucking exhausted. Just let me take watch.”

“The whole damn point of me drivin’ all the way out here was so we can all get some rest without worryin’ about anyone findin’ us,” Joel reminded you. “And besides, I wasn’t plannin’ on standin’ watch. I was just makin’ sure this was ready to go, in case of an emergency.”

You chuckled softly, shaking your head. “Joel, please. I know you like I know the back of my own goddamn hand and I already know that I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night and I’m going to find you standing watch, regardless of how safe you say we are in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.” You continued holding your hands out for the rifle. “Look, my arms are getting tired here. Can you just give me the fucking gun please?”

“You need sleep—”

“We can swap places in a couple hours,” You compromised. “Deal?”

Knowing that you could be just as stubborn as he was, Joel grumbled something incoherently under his breath before finally shoving it into your waiting hands.

“Thank you. Now, was that really so hard?”

Joel scoffed, shoving past you. He reached into the bed of the truck and grabbed his own sleeping bag. “You really need to stop talkin’ to the kid so much. She’s startin’ to rub off on you and I don’t like it.”

“Sweet dreams, Joel,” You replied, watching as he stalked around to the other side of the Chevy where Ellie was fast asleep.

An hour later, you found yourself leaning against the cab of the truck, the sound of chirping crickets your only companion. You held the rifle gently, but still firmly in your grasp, your index finger gingerly resting on the trigger. You tilted your head backwards, gazing up at the stars in the velvet night sky—you tried not to let your mind wander off very far, but you couldn’t help thinking of what Ellie had said to you earlier that morning back in the woods.

He’s a guy who doesn’t seem to give a shit about too many things or too many people. But I know he does give a shit about you. He cares about you.

She was wrong. She had to be wrong. She was fourteen, she was just a kid, after all. Besides, what the fuck could she possibly know about you and Joel, especially after only having been with the two of you for about a week?

Ellie was sorely mistaken.

Joel only kept you around for his benefit.

And the meaningless sex wasn’t the benefit you were referring to.

Joel had always been the brawn, but both you and Tess had been the brains of the operation. That’s how it had always been, at least for the better part of the last few years. You might have been on the younger side in comparison to your smuggling partners, but for some reason, Tess had seen something in you—what it had been, you never had the opportunity to find out, but it made her take a chance on you.

Against Joel’s wishes, she decided that she would take you under her wing; at eighteen years old, you’d been closer to being a child than an adult, but that only meant your mind was still pliable, and she could work with it. By the time you reached your twenties, it was apparent that Tess had all but molded you into a miniature clone of herself—she’d shown you how to think outside the box, taught you how to be persuasive, how to keep trades or deals from going south, and most importantly, what to do if they somehow did go south.

Now that she was gone, you were all that Joel had left. You were what he was stuck with. After Tess died, there was a part of you that had to wonder if Joel felt the wrong person had been infected and killed. It’s not that you thought that Joel would rather it was you who were dead but the reality was that if he’d been given the choice between having you or Tess at his side for this, you were certain it wouldn’t be you.

But he hadn’t gotten a choice. 

It was you he ended up with, and you were his only shot at getting to Tommy and getting Ellie to where she needed to be. He needed help, and now that Tess was no longer here, you were the next best thing.

That was it.

A rustling sound nearby pulled you out of your train of thought. You immediately lifted your head and pushed yourself away from the cab, readying your weapon. You took quiet, careful steps and then sharply turned the corner around the bed of the truck, aiming the rifle at the figure in front of you with your finger still on the trigger.

“Fuckin’ relax!” Joel hissed at you, holding his hands up. “It’s me!”

“Jesus Christ!” You exhaled a sharp breath, lowering the gun. You narrowed your eyes at him. “You scared the fucking shit out of me, Joel! I just about shot your head off of your shoulders!”

“Your aim ain’t all that good, darlin’,” Joel stated as he walked up to you, a slight hint of amusement in his Southern drawl. “You keepin’ watch or zonin’ out over here?”

You ignored his teasing remarks. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

Your heart squeezed tightly in your chest as Joel fell into step in front of you, an all too familiar lustful glimmer in his eyes.

“Couldn’t really sleep,” he stated with a shrug of his is shoulder. “Had somethin’ on my mind. But from the looks if it, I ain’t the only one lost in thought.” He peered down at you. “What were you thinkin’ about, anyhow?”

“Nothing,” You fibbed. “Just, uh, just how fucking cold it is.”

Joel reached for the rifle, taking it out of your hands. He leaned over and placed it in the bed of the truck behind you. “And you tell me that I’m a shitty liar?” he asked with a small scoff. “Let’s pretend that for a minute that I actually believe that’s what you were really thinkin’ about.” With every word that he spoke, his voice became lower, huskier. “If the cold is what’s on your mind, I know a couple different ways I can help get your mind off of it.”

“Joel—”

“C’mere.” He hooked his index fingers through two of the front belt loops of your blue jeans, yanking you forward until you came crashing against his chest. He dipped his head, his lips eagerly meeting an exposed patch of skin on your neck. As he kissed and nipped at the delicate flesh, he started to move his hands from the belt loops of your jeans over to the buttons instead.

“Joel, wait,” You mumbled weakly, cursing how your body just always seemed to melt right in his fucking hands. “Joel, stop.” You’d said it so softly into his failing right ear that he hadn’t heard you.

Joel’s mouth left your neck, finding your own mouth instead in a way that made every single nerve in your body light on fire. He started to walk you backwards until your back hit the bed of the pickup, a soft thud noise filling the air around you. He pinned you tightly between it and himself as he kissed you fiercely, hungrily. The physically intimate moments that you two shared over the years had always been relatively short due to never having the time nor the place, but maybe that’s why he kissed you the way that he did—with such urgency, with such desperation, as if his fucking life depended on it. Because it never lasted as long as he would have liked and he never knew when he would be able to get his hands on you again.

Breaking away from you slightly, Joel placed his hand on your hip, his index finger grazing the soft skin right above the waist of your jeans as he murmured breathlessly against your lips, “I want you. I gotta have you. Right fuckin’ now.”

It took just about every last ounce of strength that you had inside you to place both of your hands on his chest and gently push him back. “I don’t think we should do this, Joel. Not with Ellie being so close by.”

“She’s asleep.” He frowned, taking your hands off of his chest as he took several steps back from you looking dejected. “Unless you just don’t want—”

You were quick to stop him. “Of course I want you.” You swallowed, your throat having gone dry. “It’s just that—see, the thing is that—”

“Fuckin’ spit it out.”

So you do.

“Ellie knows, Joel.”

“What?” Even in the darkness, you could see the color draining from his face. “How?”

“Look, I really didn’t want to tell you about this. But last night in the woods when we were—” You trailed off, shifting your weight from one foot to the other almost anxiously.

“She saw us?”

“She heard us,” You corrected him. “She confronted me about it this morning before we left. I pretty much made her promise to keep her mouth shut because I didn’t want her saying anything to you about it. I didn’t want her giving you grief like she did to me.”

Joel ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “That little fucking shit—”

“It’s not her fault, Joel. And you know that. We shouldn’t have done it with her being so close by.”

You watched as he dropped his hand from his head, his jaw clenched.

“Joel, come on. Please don’t be mad about this.”

Joel fixed his eyes on the ground and tightly shook his head. “Go get some sleep. I’ll take over watch.”

“But Joel—”

“Just drop it,” he said, rigidly, his gaze refusing to meet yours. “Go.”

Knowing better than to push it, you simply nodded. “Okay.”

The moment you crawled into your sleeping bag next to Ellie, you’d tried your absolute hardest to get some shut eye, but what happened with Joel had you much too worried, and rightly so. Still, you prayed for sleep to come, but it never did and the rest of the night dragged on for what felt like a fucking eternity.

Hours later, when sunrise finally came around, you got up to find Joel had already been packing up the pickup truck, getting it ready for the long drive ahead. The second he saw you approaching him, he simply told you to wake Ellie because the three of you needed to get a move on sooner rather than later. After that, he’d hardly said another word to you.

He couldn’t even fucking look at you.

Halfway to Missouri, during a quick pitstop, Ellie had noticed the odd tension in the air between you and Joel. She’d also noticed how tired you looked. She offered to trade places and sit in as Joel’s copilot for the rest of the day, at least until you reached Kansas City.

“I think he’d actually prefer you as his copilot,” You’d muttered to her in reply, hopping into the backseat. Between the motion of the truck, the soft country music playing from another tape Ellie found, and the open windows bringing in fresh, crisp air, you’d curled up into a little ball in the backseat and passed out within minutes.

Ellie glanced over her shoulder at you, making sure you were actually asleep before turning to Joel. “She told you, didn’t she?”

“Zip it,” Joel ordered. “Ain’t none of your business.”

Ellie hummed. “Well, seeing as I had the absolute delightful pleasure of having to hear the two of you go at it like a couple of cats the other night, I think it actually is kind of my business now.” She paused. She could physically feel the way he was wincing beside her, though what was causing him to be so uncomfortable was left to be determined. Ellie would imagine that it was getting caught in the act itself, but for some reason, she sensed there was a lot more to this mess than met the eye and she wanted to get to the bottom of it. “She told me that you guys aren’t a thing—”

“We’re not a thing. We’re nothin’ at all, alright?”

Ellie blew a raspberry. “Yeah, alright. I see you’re both sticking to that story. That you’re not a thing.” She raised her fingers in quotations.

“It ain’t a story, it’s the truth. We’re nothin’ more than just a couple of smuggling partners tryin’ to get you to where the you need to be.” He glanced at her briefly, then turned back towards the road. “And if you want to make it there unscathed, I suggest you shut your mouth and focus on that map in your hands instead stickin’ your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“I think I at least deserve an explanation after you two put me and my innocent little virgin ears through the wringer.”

“Ellie,” he warned.

It was almost kind of scary how she was already used him saying her name in that tone already. “You’ve been treating her shitty as fuck today, you know.”

Joel frowned. Even though he knew he didn��t need to defend himself to a fucking teenager, he found himself doing it anyway. “The hell are you talkin’ about? I haven’t said a single fuckin’ word to her today.”

“Exactly.” Ellie pointed her index finger at him. “It’s bothering her.”

“She’s a big girl, Ellie. If somethin’ is botherin’ her, then she can come and talk to me about it. She doesn’t need some kid helpin’ her out.”

“That’s the thing. She can’t talk to you about it.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Well, you’re not exactly the most approachable guy, dude.”

Joel gripped the steering wheel tightly. “Why the fuck do you care so much, anyway? You have other things to worry about. Like findin’ the fuckin’ Fireflies and helpin’ them create a vaccine that’s supposed to save the goddamn world.”

“Because,” Ellie said, refusing to allow him to change the subject, not when she felt like she was finally getting somewhere. “I like her. She’s a good person.”

Joel glanced up at the rearview mirror and looked at you as you slept soundly. He couldn’t deny that. Even in this shit world, even after the things you’d seen and all the people you’ve lost, you really were still a good person. You still hadn’t lost touch with your sense of humanity—that was one thing Tess never managed to change about you, the one thing that kept you from being identical to her, identical to Joel. You somehow hadn’t let this world turn you into stone, and maybe that is why you meshed well with them from the start. You brought this odd kind of balance that they hadn’t even known they needed.

That Joel didn’t know he needed.

“She likes you.” Ellie’s voice caused him to snap back to reality. “Lord fucking knows why.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, did I offend?” Ellie quirked an eyebrow, feeling a teeny smirk tug at the corners of her mouth. “Listen. All I’m saying is that she’s really young. And she’s really pretty. She’s nice, and smart as fuck, too. I bet she could probably have any guy that she fucking wants.” Her smirk only grew noticing how her words had gotten a rise out of Joel. Ellie could tell by the way his fingers had the steering wheel in a death grip, his knuckles ghost white. “And yet for some reason, she chooses to stick with you, you old fucker.”

“Listen here you little shit—”

She quickly held her hands up. “I’m just saying. She’s a good one, Joel.”

The words left his mouth before he could stop them. “I know she is.”

Bingo! Ellie thought to herself. Now we’re making progress.

“So, then why not treat her the way she deserves? Why just—what’s that saying? Hit it and quit it?”

Joel tossed a glare at her. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“I’m not wrong though. That’s what it is, isn’t it?” Ellie prompted.

“No!”

“But just a minute ago you said you two were nothing. So if you two are boning, but you’re nothing, that’s like a hit it and quit it, isn’t it? Or is it a fuck it and chuck it? Hump it and dump it?” She scratched her head, wracking her brain as she tried to figure it out. Beside her, Joel was about ready to implode. “Wait a minute, that can’t be right because you guys do it all the time. You’re not actually quitting it. So, it’s hooking up, right?”

“I swear to Christ I’m gonna make you fuckin’ walk to Wyoming if you don’t shut—how the fuck do you know all that? That what they teach you kids in FEDRA school?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Ellie grinned, crossing her arms over her chest. “Level with me, old man. Do you like her or not?”

Joel’s teeth were gritted together, his sights fixed on the road ahead.

“Or do you love her?” She practically sang.

“Ellie.” He said her name warningly once again, his eyes flickering to the rearview mirror. The last thing he needed was for you to wake up and hear this conversation; thankfully you were still out cold.

Ellie waved a hand at him. “Oh relax, the woman’s sleeping like a bear in hibernation. Now, answer the fucking question.”

Joel didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond.

He willed himself to open his mouth and say something—anything.

But he just couldn’t. He’d been stumped by a fucking fourteen year old who was too damn smart for her own good.

“Interesting,” Ellie mused after a minute of silence, curiously rubbing her chin. “How you can’t even deny it. Very, very, interesting.”

Before Joel could even think, the sound of you moving around in the backseat caused him to jump, the internal panic flooding him in one single wave. As soon as he was certain you were still fast asleep, he let out a breath of relief and turned to Ellie. “Now, you listen here—”

“Ah, ah, ah.” She held up her finger to her lips. “Let’s not wake Sleeping Beauty back there.” She dropped her hand down into her lap and glanced out the window, grinning to herself. “Besides, I have the answer I was looking for anyway.”

[vagabond-umlaut]

summer collapsed into fall

summary: gojo satoru has no favourite colour. he feels no need nor interest to have one, either. pairing: gojo satoru x reader [unspecified gender] tags: slight undertones of teacher-student relationship BUT there is NO ACTUAL romance between them; can this be called pining? idk; character study like fic of our sweetest satoru *cries* he deserves sm better; fluff but with a mild serving of angst; wc 0.8k notes: fic title inspired by a quote by oscar wilde; fic inspired by this lovely post i saw on pinterest; jjk isn't mine; loosely related to 'you make my heart flutter and fibrillate'; tumblr hates me using dividers hence the new fic format ^_^

satoru doesn't really have a favourite colour.

it's never quite crossed his mind. and even if it has, he has never seen it to be important enough to allow it be anything more than a passing thought, a meaningless thought---it is not like his life will be impeded should he not have a favourite colour, nor is anyone ever going to ask him what it is, so why bother?

but now, as you peer up at him expectantly, having already listed your top five favourite colours and why you love them so, satoru wishes he did bother back then.

he decides to feign confusion.

"what?"

"what what?" you shoot back, eager gaze not wavering one bit, "i just told you my favourite colours; aren't you gonna tell me yours? it's fine even if you have just one, sensei."

but is it fine if he has none?

throwing his watch a quick glance, he turns back to you. then exhales a quiet sigh, tired but the farthest from annoyed, when he sees you're still waiting for his reply... shutting the bus window beside, he turns to lean against it, shifting to face you properly.

and sighs, decidedly noisier this time, "this isn't the type of questions one asks their teacher, y'know? they are too casual, meant more for a friend than for a teacher."

"you got to be the last guy to lecture me about etiquette, sensei," you retort without missing a beat, huffing a quiet, amused laugh.

"and after the time i had to bring you to ieiri-san after you passed out from drinking a bit too much: i guess we're a bit more than a teacher and a student, aren't we, sensei?"

not really... no.

while satoru believes your first point to be a debatable topic, he does not think the two of you are anything but a teacher and a student, no matter how much help you extended to him or will in the future---it's not like he isn't grateful, though. he is; he really, really is---it's just his belief that few acts of kindness do not necessarily cause a friendship between people, and he intends to tell you this very clearly---

but finds he cannot. he simply cannot.

not when you say, still so eager but with an undercurrent so achingly soft that even the strongest wonders if he can handle its weight: "i'm not that bad a friend, y'know---you can ask others if you want; they'll tell you i'm a good friend, not the best but a decent one---"

"why don't you guess what's my favourite colour?"

rude, yes, horribly so. satoru knows, he knows this very, very well. but what can a man do but divert when he's being unsettled by words like the ones you addressed to him, by the tenor you employed for him---

although now that he observes you consider his suggestion, the man wonders if diversion was the right tactic or not.

he could have just lied and told you any random color. he could have chosen to be honest and told you he has no favourite colour like you and probably the rest of the world have.

but no, he doesn't.

satoru does not opt either of the above two painfully simple, painfully easy options. choosing instead to ask you to guess what his favourite colour is... satoru never really anticipates he'll end up being this much more unsettled, thanks to his decision of diversion:

if there was a subtext of a haunting softness in your manners before, the sorcerer reckons it is the text now, typed out in bold letters then underlined and highlighted in neon---you too shift to face him, even moving the bag kept in between to your lap and shifting a bit closer, but still a respectable distance away---only to punctuate your effort with a keen stare, much too gentle, at him.

it's scary, he thinks. yeah, undoubtedly scary. but somewhere in the back of his mind, something says it's also comforting.

many eyes look at satoru throughout the day. they gape, they gawk, they study the man and every small aspect of his person with many different kinds of reasons behind them. but before today, there has never been anyone who has regarded him with this much care, that too for a nonsensical cause like yours...

he wonders, just what are you seeing in him?

just who are you seeing in him?

"it's orange, isn't it?" you exclaim abruptly, leaning a touch forwards with a snap of your pointer and thumb. voice too loud. smile too big. eyes too bright, way too bright---

satoru takes not even one whole second to decide:

he now has one favourite colour.

[thankskenpenders]

Sonic Prime Season 3: Final episodes, final thoughts

Well, here we are. The final seven episodes of Sonic Prime are out on Netflix, concluding the story of Sonic's adventures in the Shatterverse. I've previously shared my thoughts on the first and second seasons, which I was pretty mixed on, but there were still glimmers of hope. The fluid animation, Shadow being fun in all his appearances, Nine being fairly interesting as a jaded alternate version of Tails, etc. There was enough to make me believe that after some highs and lows there was still the possibility that this show could end on a high note - or at least a decent note.

This did not happen.

Sonic Prime's final season sucks. The ending sucks, and the road to get there sucks. It's left me wondering what the point of all this even was. There are still moments I like that I'll try to highlight, and the animators and voice cast are still clearly giving it their all, but these efforts sadly don't outweigh the overwhelming mediocrity of the story. I would barely even recommend other Sonic fans who are on the fence go out of their way to finish it. I won't begrudge people who got more out of this show than I did, but I think overall I just really, really dislike Sonic Prime.

...The problem, of course, is that all other discussion of the show has been overshadowed by needlessly hostile arguments over its place in Sonic's canon. So we've gotta talk about that, too.

(This post will contain full spoilers for Sonic Prime.)

The show's out of ideas but they've gotta stretch that shit out to hit the 23 episode mark somehow

Season 2 ended with the big twist that Nine decided to betray Sonic and Shadow, taking the Paradox Prism for himself so that he could go turn the empty world of the Grim into his own little paradise, since he doesn't believe he'll fit anywhere else. Nine has made himself the true big bad of the show.

The main impact this has is that now, instead of fighting endless identical Eggforcer bots and members of the Chaos Council over and over, the good guys and the Chaos Council have to fight endless Chaos Sonic-style robots sent by Nine while he goes "grrrrr I need Sonic's energy to stabilize the Paradox Prism." This continues for six whole episodes until the series finale, when the show decides it's time for Sonic and Nine to quickly make amends, fix everything, and send Sonic and Shadow home.

That's pretty much the whole season.

I cannot emphasize enough just how much of this final season is just fight after fight after fight against Nine's bots, and how fucking boring that gets. The season feels like one long, drawn out final battle that did not need to be nearly this long, but Nine had his big heel turn 2/3 of the way through the show and we've gotta fill up the rest of the time somehow. The novelty of the bots being based off of Sonic's friends (including the Chocobo-sized Birdie from the jungle world) really wears off quickly when they're just used as generic, silent mooks that the good guys have to fight by the dozen like it's the climax of an MCU movie. The first episode of the season with Sonic and Shadow fighting the new bots is pretty good, especially because Sonic and Shadow's dynamic is one of the few redeeming aspects of this show's writing, but after that it just gets boring. Three full episodes in a row are spent showing all the characters fighting robots in an empty wasteland while Nine scowls next to a big beam of energy. I found myself missing the in-your-face attitude of Chaos Sonic so much. He truly was one of the best parts of this show.

While the cast is busy fighting all these robots for what feels like an eternity, various things of varying levels of interest happen. There's a halfhearted attempt to have some kind of rivalry between Shadow and the main Grim Sonic throughout the final battle, but it completely falls flat because Grim Sonic has no personality whatsoever. It's like Shadow beefing with an above-average Egg Pawn. (Actually, no, that would be funny.) There's also a death fakeout with the two other versions of Tails, where they make a makeshift bomb and throw it a little too close to themselves on the battlefield and seem to get vaporized. If they had actually died there they would have had the funniest, most pointless deaths in the entire franchise.

I also realized at one point that they were trying to do the Avengers girl power fight thing with the three versions of Amy fighting a bunch of Rouge bots. This was very funny to me. Actually, so much of this is just following the tired MCU formula to the letter. Fighting over a macguffin, two armies just kind of running at each other and clashing in a big empty field, constant one-liner quips instead of actual jokes, the need to take out key targets to make the whole enemy army disappear, a villain who has a point but has to randomly hurt people so that there's an excuse for the heroes to fight him. When combined with how shit the multiverse stuff is, this whole show really is just Man of Action tackling some of the most played out storytelling tropes in modern pop culture in the most bland way possible. What a bunch of hacks.

By far, the one truly fun thing that happens in this protracted final battle is when a giant robot based on Big appears. It doesn't have arms or legs, but it can swing itself around to use its tail like a giant mace, and it can also shoot Froggy-shaped missiles out of its mouth. I wish the rest of the show was even half as fun as this. Again, Sonic Prime has just enough good moments to make you mad that the rest of the show isn't better.

The thing is, all this repetitive (but well-animated) action and the thin excuse plot would be totally serviceable if I just gave a shit about the characters involved. But I don't. I don't care what happens to the pirate version of Amy who goes "arrr." I don't care about what happens to Hipster Eggman. And unfortunately, by the end, I didn't really care about Nine, either.

Nine as a villain

It's hard to criticize the story here without it coming off as a broad condemnation of the tropes at play. The thing is, I like many stories that try to do similar things. I love clashes between heroes and villains that are really just fantastical exaggerations of more personal conflicts. I love stories where a tragic, sympathetic villain lashes out at the world as an expression of the pain they feel, and a compassionate hero just has to get through to them. I eat that shit right up. Undertale is my favorite game ever made. Shit, I love other Sonic stories that do these exact things. And Sonic having to fight an alternate timeline version of Tails also has so much potential for drama!

So I can very easily imagine a version of the show where all this works for me. That just isn't the version we got.

Like I said last time, Nine's motivation is just too sympathetic and understandable for his sudden turn to supervillainy to make any sense. He just wanted to start over somewhere where he can be happy after a childhood filled with bullying and loneliness. Nine betraying Sonic and stealing the Paradox Prism to go make his own world? That tracks! Especially since we don't even know if Nine will still exist if Sonic goes through with his plan to restore his original world! But trying to kill everyone in New Yolk City by tilting the world 90 degrees, intentionally targeting the civilian population because it'll get to Sonic? Nope! Sorry, that's a bridge too far. I don't buy it. He's jaded and antisocial, but he doesn't strike me as cruel. Writing in an excuse about him needing Sonic's energy to fix the Prism does not make this make more sense.

This was really just one of those conflicts where it felt like everyone should stop and talk it out. Instead we got six episodes of fighting before one of Sonic's many, MANY attempts at reasoning with Nine throughout the season finally works. This isn't me pulling some Cinema Sins bullshit where I complain about characters in a work of fiction not always behaving rationally - the real problem is that it's just so damn repetitive waiting for this conflict to resolve. This could have been wrapped up in two or three episodes and instead it takes seven.

A brief aside about that weird Dorkly-ass Sonic Advance 3 flashback scene hacked together with mismatched sprites where Gemerl happens to be present, presumably just because he's a part of the sprite for the Sunset Hill boss, and seeing him briefly makes me remember the extended cast from the games and how much I wish they had just made a cartoon about them instead of a bunch of stock characters wearing the skin of Sonic's friends, but then Gemerl just explodes with the boss machine at the end while Eggman is shown to get away so I guess Gemerl just dies in this flashback

Yeah that sure happened huh

The ending

Despite having a final battle that felt like an eternity, Sonic Prime is a show that just kind of... ends. And that ending is weird and haphazard.

The understanding I had was that Sonic's normal world had "shattered" when the Paradox Prism was destroyed, and from those remnants these new worlds were created. This is why they use terms like "Shatterverse" and "Shatterspaces" and why there's shattered glass/crystal/whatever imagery everywhere. This is a broken, fragmented version of the real universe. Right? Right?? Isn't that the entire premise of the show? And therefore, if the universe has been shattered, then fixing it means putting all the shattered pieces back together. Which I would assume means that the Shatterspaces cease to exist.

So, in the ending... Sonic's world seems to just exist as another Shatterspace. Restoring the Paradox Prism doesn't seem to combine the worlds or anything, it just fixes the broken portal to Sonic's world that exists alongside all the others. So... what exactly was the point of all the shattered glass symbolism?

Things only get more confusing as the ending progresses. Shadow brings Sonic through the portal before the draining of Sonic's whatever energy makes him disappear, and they're transported back in time to right before Sonic broke the Paradox Prism. Only Sonic seems to remember what happened (Shadow might remember, but he doesn't say anything), and with the Paradox Prism never shattered, it's unclear if the Shatterspaces exist now.

I'm not particularly hung up on the time loop ending. It's very much in line with all sorts of classic morality tales like A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life, where the flawed protagonist goes through some kind of magical experience and then returns home with a new appreciation for the people in their life. It's always been pretty obvious that was the type of story they were telling. I'm more bothered by the fact that there's no time whatsoever spent on whether or not the other worlds and the characters in them continue to exist. Sonic seems to act like the worlds will go on without him before he leaves, but it's not like we get an ending scene that shows how the other worlds are doing, so they really truly might as well not exist anymore. Sonic just wraps up the adventure from the first episode when he gets home, and before he can explain what happened from his perspective he's interrupted by a mysterious energy wave from off-screen and it's off to the next adventure.

(Despite this odd cliffhanger ending, the show is extremely over and not coming back. I have to imagine this is just a "the adventures never end" type ending and not a hint that more shit is going on with the Paradox Prism.)

This ending is also a terrible resolution to Nine's whole arc, despite him being the driving force of so much of the show. The way I see it, there are are three possible fates for him:

The Shatterspaces continue existing, and things go as Sonic expects them to go. Nine is allowed to make the Grim into his own little utopia, and everyone else leaves him alone instead of punishing him for all the trouble he caused. Instead of finding love and acceptance so he can heal from a lifetime of bullying and loneliness, Nine is allowed to run away, isolating himself from every other living being in the multiverse, and live alone as the god of an empty world with only his own creations as company. Sonic was his only friend, and he's gone forever now.

The Shatterspaces continue existing, but because of the time travel ending, most of the events of the show never happened. Sonic never helped defeat the Chaos Council, so they still control New Yolk City. Nine is back to living in this dystopian city with no friends. He never met Sonic.

The Shatterspaces have been erased. After fighting so hard for his right to exist as his own person and not just a "wrong" version of Tails, when the timeline is altered, he just... stops existing. Along with almost every other character in the show.

Do I even need to explain why these are all unsatisfying?

Misc. thoughts

I skimmed over this, but a lot of the final season is just spent seeing Sonic's friends bicker with the Chaos Council and then Sonic has to beg them to get along to save the universe. It gets old.

We also never really got an explanation for why the Chaos Council exists. They can't have come from other Shatterspaces because there ARE no other Shatterspaces. If the original Eggman was just split into five guys or time travel was involved or whatever, it never comes up. I can live with this, but it seems like an odd omission for a children's show that's constantly bogged down in technobabble explaining the mechanics of its extremely small and finite multiverse.

I have no idea where Shadow was for the first part of the final battle. I figured Nine must have captured him off-screen after Sonic first left the Grim, but Shadow was just... hanging around until his cue in the script, I guess?

Sonic saying "help a brother up" to Shadow was funny

Hipster Eggman pointing to one of the few nameless extras who tagged along for the final battle and going "Who are you? Seriously, does anyone know who this is?" was the only funny thing he did in the entire show

Mangy Tails randomly pressing buttons on the Chaos Council's generator like a curious animal and managing to improve its output was cute

Rusty Rose randomly realizes that the Birdie in her chest actually isn't being used as a power source, and that the Chaos Council was just... using that to manipulate her, somehow? I don't really know how that works but whatever

The Sonic Advance 3 flashback uses the actual boss music from the game, but they can't use the real Sunset Hill theme because they didn't wanna pay Masato Nakamura for using the Green Hill motif, I guess

To my fellow fans of bad games: did you know that Man of Action wrote the story for the bizarre Square Enix game The Quiet Man? The one where the lengthy FMV cutscenes play out with muffled audio and no subtitles because the protagonist is deaf, so you can't tell what's going on? And you had to do a New Game+ playthrough to actually hear the audio and understand what's going on? The worst-reviewed game of 2018? That one? I only learned that recently and it blew me away

So yeah, that's the end of the show. I didn't like it, and I don't think I liked the show much as a whole. I am far from alone in this sentiment, but the reasons why people dislike the show... those vary a bit.

The canon conundrum

More than anything else, it seems like most other discourse surrounding this show has been consumed by one talking point:

How can this be canon? Why is it canon?

I want to state very clearly up front that I, too, am a person who's noticed and complained about the inconsistencies with the games in Sonic Prime. Some of the characters are a bit off - or, you know, completely unrecognizable when discussing the writing of some of the AU counterparts. I think it's lame to say Sonic and friends all live in Green Hill and act like that's the entirety of their world. That sort of thing. But if Sega says it's canon to everything else? Sure. Fine. There's weirder shit in the canon.

Really, most of this can be explained away pretty easily. The show was written at a time when Sega was still figuring shit out and there were looser restrictions. Why does Sonic act a little more immature? Probably just because Prime is aiming for a slightly younger audience than the games or the IDW comics. (And also it's, y'know, written by Man of Action, who people have accused of only knowing how to write one kind of protagonist for years.) Why do Sonic and friends live in Green Hill? Because that's the most recognizable location from the games, and the game world doesn't get enough screentime to justify modeling multiple different environments, so they just focus on Green Hill. Why is this considered canon to the games? Because this is the first Sonic cartoon that outright references events from the games as things that have happened to Sonic in the past.

But announcing early on that Prime would be canon certainly let fans' imaginations wander. It was one of the few things we knew about the show before it premiered. People wondered if characters from the games and comics who had never made any appearances in Sonic cartoons might get their time in the spotlight. We wondered if it would tie into the lore or any existing storylines in interesting ways, like the IDW comics do. But above all else, we hoped that its canon status would mean that Sonic Prime would finally be the Sonic cartoon that was faithful to the source material with no catches. We've literally never seen the actual world of the games brought to life in a TV show. Sonic X came the closest, but that still took its liberties. And so hype built for this Canon Sonic Cartoon.

And then it actually came out, and after a brief intro in Green Hill based loosely on the games, it spent most of its running time focusing on things like "what if there was a version of Eggman who was a bratty teen who just wanted to play video games?" The disappointment among fans is understandable. I am disappointed. Look at how much I've bitched about this aggressively mid cartoon.

Some fans, however, came up with an elaborate theory about the series. You see, when asked about the show's place in the game timeline during a live Q&A, Ian Flynn (who only served as a consultant on Sonic Prime and did not write any of it) said this:

"I cannot answer because I know the answer, and you haven't finished watching the show yet."

A couple days later, when answering another question about Prime's place in the timeline and also about a writing discrepancy, he said this:

"As to where it fits on the timeline, I can't speak to it because that would spoil the show to a degree. So you're just gonna have to wait 'til it's done. Towards the other point, I don't know how much I can say, so it's probably better that I not comment. That's a really dissatisfying answer, I know, I'm sorry, but my hands are kinda tied on that one."

I feel the need to quote Ian directly here, because these very basic statements about how he can't talk about behind the scenes shit or anything from unreleased episodes was GREATLY misinterpreted by the fandom. People clung onto Ian's claim that we had to keep watching like a life preserver. Some took it as Ian saying that the ending would explain everything. Finally, we'd have a definitive answer for every little discrepancy and the apparent differences in worldbuilding. An explanation for why Sega and the producers repeatedly insist this show HAS to be canon.

And to these fans, the only explanation that made any sense... would be if the ending of Sonic Prime pulled a Flashpoint.

As this theory explained, the Sonic we were following in Sonic Prime wasn't the Sonic we know from the games and the IDW comics, and likewise the world he comes from isn't really the game world. This is a different Sonic who fights a different Eggman in a world that's literally just Green Hill. It was a hint that something was off all along! But in the end of the series, this Sonic would sacrifice himself to merge all of the Shatter Spaces together and form a brand new world, and that would be the more visually diverse world of the games and comics. According to this theory, Sonic Prime was canon because it was a new origin story for the entire franchise.

I want you to really stop and think about how asinine of an origin story this would be. Really drink this in. The idea that there was another, slightly different version of Sonic who went on a kinda shitty multiverse adventure and then sacrificed himself to create the real Sonic that we've known since 1991. People convinced themselves this made more sense than the simple explanation that a different team of writers got some stuff wrong and Sega didn't make them change it. Interviews where producers talked about drawing on Sonic's "mythology" (ie: they reference the games in the show) were taken very literally - they must be saying that Prime's story is mythological in nature, and that this show would be integral to the games' mythology. Why bother making a show that's canon if it's not going to be crucial to that canon, after all?

The final episodes dropped, and none of this happened. Because of course it didn't. It was all Sherlock fandom-level copium. But fans were left confused by the lack of a grand reveal of where Sonic Prime fits in the timeline, believing they had been promised this, and they turned to Ian for an explanation. Ian's answer:

It doesn't matter, b/c Prime wipes itself out. It's sometime after Advance 3*, but otherwise, it's moot. I didn't want to sour anyone's expectations or investment by spoiling how Prime resolves, that's all. If you enjoyed it, awesome. Savor it. If you didn't, then you can safely ignore it. Simple as that.

* About a trillion people have um, actually'd Ian to point out Orbot and Cubot briefly appear in the show, but if we're really being pedantic here we don't actually know how long before Colors Eggman built Orbot and Cubot, so it wouldn't be fully accurate to say a story featuring Orbot and Cubot couldn't be set before Colors. Either way, a story set anywhere around Colors, or at any point later than that, could still be described as "sometime after Advance 3." Advance 3 is just the most recent game that has specific in-game events referenced in the show. Yes I can feel myself morphing into the nerd emoji before your very eyes

Anyway, this is the latest reason Ian is getting death threats on Twitter. This time it's over a show he barely even had any input on!

I'll cut to the chase. It is truly wild to me that people are getting this heated over canonical inconsistencies in a series as historically inconsistent as Sonic, to the point that they think threatening Ian is justified. The aesthetics of the entire world Sonic inhabits change every other game. Sonic Chronicles may no longer be canon due to the Penders lawsuits, but it was canon at one point, and it took huge liberties with Sonic's world, moving Green Hill off of South Island and reinterpreting Station Square as a tiny outpost in a snowy alpine forest region. Characters' personalities change from writer to writer and based on what Sega wants at the time, with some being WILDLY different across different games. One game Sonic will be stoic and cool, the next he thinks "Baldy McNosehair" is the funniest thing ever. Sega's STILL trying to figure out what Amy's personality is supposed to be. We still don't have the explanation for how the two seemingly contradictory backstories for Blaze can fit together. There have been multiple huge, sweeping retcons, and retcons to those retcons. Sonic Forces claims that Classic Sonic is from an entirely different universe than Modern Sonic, and the plot only makes any sense if that's true - otherwise, Modern Sonic would have already known Eggman was going to beat him and take over the world when he did, because his younger self had already lived through that war. All of that makes no sense in the newly reunified timeline, but Forces is very much still canon.

For fuck's sake, we're talking about the series where Eggman blew up half the moon and then it looked completely normal in every other game after, explained away as "the moon just rotated so we can't see the destroyed side from Earth." This has never, ever, ever been a franchise where everything lines up perfectly with no issues. It's not that serious.

The real core problem with Prime isn't that things don't line up 100% with our current understanding of canon, or that Sonic's characterization means this can't be the real Sonic, or anything like that. The problem, as I've been saying this whole time, is that the story is bad. None of these discrepancies would truly matter if the story was better. They'd just be nitpicks. The fact that Sonic and friends live in Green Hill would be the farthest thing from my mind if the drama was more engaging, if the villains were better, if the jokes were actually funny, if more of the alternate universe counterparts of Sonic's friends had more than one generic character trait each, if the multiverse was more creative and varied, if the final seven episodes of this show didn't devolve into the third act of an MCU movie and then just arbitrarily end, if Nine's character arc actually had a satisfying conclusion instead of ending with either isolation or nonexistence. Maybe we'd be seeing people talk about more than just whether or not it should be considered canon if the writing was any good.

"Canon" is not real, and it sure as hell isn't worth sending people death threats over. It's a storytelling tool. Real human beings decide what does and doesn't go into that canon, or how much they do or don't want to draw on past stories, when creating a new story. Serving that canon is secondary to creating a story where the emotional truth resonates with the audience. And Sonic Prime failed to do that. That is its true failing.

And finally, to close out...

Since people will ask, here are my current ranking of the Sonic TV shows, now that Prime is finished.

Sonic Boom

Sonic SatAM

Sonic X

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic Prime

Sonic Underground

Yes, I'd say Boom is my favorite. It's far from my ideal Sonic cartoon, but it gets a lot of points for being as funny as it is. But the top four are all shows I'd say I like, more or less. They all have their pros and cons.

So now, uh... I guess let's hope the live action Knuckles show coming to Paramount+ is better than the underwhelming synopsis of "Knuckles helps deputy sheriff Wade train in the ways of the echidna warrior" would imply? Maybe we'll get lucky?

[hoshigray]

My Professor's Final Spring Praise ༄ K. Nanami

"Before my summer break officially started, I had to finish my last in-person exam with Professor Nanami. It was so tough, but I made it through! I was the last to leave, so I thanked the professor and shared some final words before heading to my dorm to finish packing up. However, how do a few gratitude and praise exchanges end up with me on his desk and him between my legs?"

A/n: Yessirrrrrr!! First work of my very first series!! I'm very nervous about this as this is the first time committing to writing consecutively for a specific theme, but I got faith in myself!! Also, it's Nanami and my birthday!!!ヾ( ˃ᴗ˂ )◞ • *✰ So as soon as this is posted, I'm signing off and enjoying my day with my hubby Kento~ (sike I'm not, just gonna hang with friends, lol). But anyways, I hope y'all enjoy this piece, and thank you so very much for 1k followers~~~!!! Not my best work, but it's a decent start for the series! >:D (will proofread l8r tmrw)

Series m. list!! This entry has been updated along w/ its contents.

Cw: professor! Nanami x fem! reader - explicit content so minors DNI - taboo (consensual sex b/w a professor & undergrad) - age difference (the reader is at least in their 20s; Nanami approaching early 30s) - fingering (fem! receiving) - cunnilingus - semi-missionary position (reader lies on their back on a table while Nanami stands) - public sex/sex in a university classroom - unprotected sex (PSA: wrap it up, or get the fuck up) - pining if you squint - praise - pet names (baby, darling, love, sweet pea) - clitoral play (licking and sucking) - kissing/makeout sessions.

Wc: 3.4k

Dear Diary...it's been a long while since I had to come to you as an outlet for my thoughts. But something happened today that caused my mind to go rampant, and I need to rely on you again...

Today is supposed to be the best day of the year. You just finished taking your last in-person exam, you were able to finish packing up all your stuff, and you're now ready to kiss this campus goodbye until the upcoming fall season.

You could not wait to start your summer plans. Not only will you work in the internship you've been hoping to get into since last semester, but you'll finally have ample time to hang with your best friends ever — Yuuji, Megumi, and Nobara!

The summer break has been the end goal for the four of you, and now that your finals are finally over, there's no stopping you from enjoying the season to the best you can!

However, as much as you say you're excited, it doesn't correlate to your actual feelings at this point in time. Something happened that altered your entire perception of what the future was supposed to be.

Something so out of the ordinary that you don't know how to properly feel or think about the situation.

Something so out of the ordinary that you turn to a diary to let your thoughts out, alone in your shared dorm room when all the other roommates have left earlier in the week.

Something so completely out of the ordinary that it sends chills down your spine just reminiscing the moment before sitting at this exact desk writing about what transpired earlier.

It all started when I went to my last in-person exam with Yuuji, where everyone else was waiting for the professor...

You and Yuuji had the same Biology class to take care of one of your science credits, and the exam was to take place on the last day of finals week. Although you've been told it's not supposed to be a difficult test — it's a bunch of multiple questions, short answers, and one essay — the exam period starts from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Three hours of endless testing was enough to put you, Yuuji, and all the other classmates in shambles, embracing guaranteed failures and having no idea how to study.

Luckily, a true saint descended from above to bless you and your peers with a professor who knows what he's doing and is patient enough to lead you to the right path. Your professor, Kento Nanami, was relatively young enough to connect with his fellow students but held a well-mannered and stern cadence that gained the respect and admiration of those around him. He was able to steer you guys into a secure approach to your studying: taking in questions, making study guides for quizzes and midterms, and highlighting significant areas from the textbook throughout the semester that will be shown on today's exam.

So through all the diligent preparation and practical labs you've attended, you feel way more confident with the material than at the start of the semester. Can't say the same for Yuuji, who's more nervous than you (with his three unexcused absences and constantly coming to you for help). But as long as y'all are suffering together, that's all that matters.

The only problem is that the exam is sectioned into three parts — sixty multiple-choice questions that are one point each, ten short answer questions that are also one point each, one mix-and-match portion, and the essay is ten whole points by itself (twenty if you can answer five bonus questions afterward). So, off the bat, everyone understands why three hours are given to complete the exam. But Professor Nanami said, "You all should be fine because it doesn't necessarily have to take you all three hours to complete. So if you finish early, you can get outta here." Say less.

So once you entered the usual classroom with Yuuji, you followed through and sat distant from each other at the same table. The professor came on time as always, instructing the class on where to get the exam on the class website, giving the password to unlock it, and wishing you luck.

The only sounds in the space were people clicking their keyboards, sighs, and groans, and people packing up to leave after submitting their exams before thanking their professor for a great semester. Soon the number of students would thin out, leaving just you and Yuuji still completing your exam.

Yuuji finished at the two-hour mark, releasing an extended sigh of relief before hurriedly stuffing his laptop in his backpack. He goes down to thank and bear hug the professor. And you giggle at the expression of Nanami's dismay because he would've sufficed with a simple handshake like the other students. But that's what makes Yuuji an anomaly to the mass, being exceptionally himself no matter where or who he's with. The salmon-haired boy walks up and wishes you luck, going to his dorm to pack the last of his things and promising to pick you up when you're done.

And then it was just you and him: the professor standing at the podium in front of the classroom, reading a book while you finish the last bonus questions before submitting it on the class site. You sigh heavily, and a massive wave of relief washes over you. You did it. You handled all your exams. You're finally free!

"Finished?" You look for where the voice comes from. The professor looks up from his book at your figure.

You place your laptop in your bag and stand up from your seat. It took you twenty more minutes just to finish compared to Yuuji. "Yup! It wasn't so bad like you said, but I had more trouble with the bonus questions than everything else." You stretch your arms and legs.

Nanami chuckles at your feedback. "I see. I did say the bonus questions would be more lab-based. Good thing those who couldn't make it to some of the labs got to see me so I could help them or assign them with the other students who missed."

"You mean like Yuuji?" You walk up to the podium to be in front of your professor. "Because the poor guy couldn't make it to some of the labs because of club activities."

"Yes, Itadori is one of those students." Nanami smiles at the mention of the salmon-haired other. "He's undoubtedly a hard-working student, asking questions and enjoying the lectures. But that's for when he is in the class."

You chuckle as the subtle shade at your friend. "He does try, though! All the times we've studied together since this exam shows that he wanted to put his whole heart into this class. Not to mention that you're secretly his favorite teacher~." You mention the last part hoping it sparks something in the professor, and you're glad to see that the older man releases a wee chortle at the tiny piece of information.

"Hmm, well, I appreciate his enthusiasm and that he was deeply interested in the class. However," your professor closes his book and walks to the side of the podium, erasing an imaginary barrier between the two of you. "You also play a huge part in his engagement. He's lucky to have a friend like you."

Your brows trench, but a smile creeps past your conscious. "What makes you say that?"

"You've been a particular student in my class. Not only are you an easy grader, but you capture the material so well that Itadori trusts you enough to help him when I'm not available to do so. Anytime you ask me a question, it's always outside the textbook or linked to something you looked into outside the lectures."

The smile on your face grows large, and you look away to shield it from his vision. "Thank you, Professor Nanami."

"I won't be surprised if I check the grades later and see that you got an excellent grade." He removes his glasses and places them on the podium with his book. "I'd also suggest you consider minoring in this field if you'd like. And did you sign up for that scholarship I mentioned to you around two weeks ago?"

"Yes, I filled it out last week."

"Good." He moves a hand to place on your shoulder, and the action takes you aback because it's the first time he's ever touched you. "I expect great things from you, Y/n. I'm sure whatever you want to do in this life, you'll do just fine."

You bashfully nod at his kind words. And you extend your hand up to him to signify a ready handshake. "Thank you, professor. And thank you so much for all your help this semester."

The hand that was on your shoulder grabs hold of your hand. But what happens next was far from what you expected.

Nanami lifts your hand with his and faintly sets his lips on the back of your knuckles.

And this is the provenance of what sets everything in motion.

What he did to your hand didn't just surprise you, but also surprised him. Nanami froze with your hand still in his, not daring to move as you have yet moved an inch.

Why did I do that? It's the biggest question that runs through his mind at this time. One moment he was praising you for being one of his best students, then he busses his lips onto your hand the next. But why?

Nanami knew he was done for. Unable to look into your eyes, he can only tighten his hold on your hand. This was so not part of his routine. Today was supposed to be like any other exam day. He only came here to see his students for one last time before the start of summer break. He only came here to see his final class and have them take the exam before heading home. So why?

Perhaps it was the feelings of spring blinding him like a child. Or maybe his emotions got the better of him. But today was the last day of the semester he'd see his favorite pupil — you. Until now, the professor has done a phenomenal job maintaining an appropriate relationship between teacher and student, keeping a respectable distance while tending to his scholars.

And yet, he still would catch himself sneaking a selfish glance at you following through with his lectures, his heart swooning when you use your lovely voice to ask a question, or going blind when you flash a smile that rivals the sun's beam.

It's never right to have favorites; however, you clearly were the one that caught his attention the most.

Yet, also, this type of relationship is not the best for Nanami or you. You are a student, and he is your teacher. This could damage the reputation of both of you. It's the least favorable outcome between the two of you...

...So why haven't you snatched your hand away from mine yet?

Your hands tighten back with his, and the man finally chooses to look at you.

You're eyes bore into him, looking at him as if he's the only thing meant to have your concentration. Your breathing descends to a slower pace, but the rhythm of your heart beats the more you look at the man before you. "Professor Nanami..." you said his name in a whisper, and God, did it feel so wrong to do such a thing. As if your mouth would be thrown into a pit of flames for even calling to him with an indescribable connotation. Your mind is now fueled with a deep emotion rooted within, rooted with a scary longing.

"Y/n..." It felt even more wrong to have your name hushed in his voice, so hot to the ears that they could melt any second. Even so, a part of you wishes he would repeat it in the same tone again. Expressing the exact feeling of wanting something, wanting you.

Observant brown eyes lock in with your eyes. Faces move forward with hesitance. Eyes close. Noses begin to brush their skins against each other. And pairs of lips seal an unfortunate yet desirable event that cannot be revoked.

It takes a few minutes for you two to melt into each other from the makeout session. It takes a few minutes to block the glass windows with portable whiteboards to block the view from the outside. And it takes a few minutes for you to be a disheveled mess with your back on a table with Nanami between your legs, fingering your throbbing vulva and licking your slick and sensitive clitoris.

"Hoooh...Mmmm, Professor Nanami, your tongue. I-It feels too good—Nnnmph!!"

Nanami flicks his tongue on your sensitive, the cause for you to cry out. "Y/n, I told you. It's just the two of us, so call me by my name."

No, you mustn't. That's taking things too far. But, "K-Kentooo," that name is too tempting to not have seeped through your moans. "Your tongue and fingersss, they're too much!"

His middle and forefinger pull and push inside your gushy walls, prompting more of your sweet cries to fill the blonde man's eardrums. "Is that so? Too much for you? Think you're gonna cum?"

You nod desperately with each question, your cunt clenching around his digits as if you were to snatch them off. But that would be impossible when he's playing with your pussy like a toy. Sweat starts to form on your forehead, your orgasm inching in closer and closer by the second.

And Nanami notices, resulting in him coming to your aid for release. His tongue goes back to lapping around clit, kissing and sucking on the bud while the tempo of his fingers increases.

Your climax hits you hard, having your body twitch and quiver as the inner walls of your slit contract around the digits scraping your velvety texture. You grab tufts of his blond hair, messing up its neat shape. But neither of you cares, too engulfed with each other to worry about the details. Tears form at the end of your eyes as you experience your high, and you try to steady your breathing when your professor withdrawals himself from you.

"Good job, sweet pea. Made a mess on my fingers." He praises you while undoing his tie and unbuttoning his dress shirt, revealing his well-defined torso for your eyes to see. But the real prize is when he unzips his pants and pulls down his briefs, his erect cock out in the open for you to marvel at.

But before you could look at it with all its glory, the tip of his dick presses up against your cunt, sliding it up and down to warm you up before entry. The feeling of his shaft grinding on your folds and clit is enough to have chills travel down your spine.

"Alright, love, I'm gonna go slow for you, okay?" His chocolate brown eyes examine your face to give him a response. You nibble on your lip and brace yourself after confirming your cooperation. "If you want me to stop, let me know. So, take some breaths for me."

And with that, the blonde pushes his cock into you with every exhale you take, the twinge of pain making it difficult to focus. Yet you still pull through because you want this so fucking much. There's no turning back now. And when the tip of his cock finally nestles inside your vagina, a choked shriek departs from your lips.

Slowly, Nanami pushes himself into you, every inch of his cock venturing further into your welcoming, throbbing chasm. He brushes up against your sweet spots causing you to jerk up. Nanami coaxes you through it. "It's okay, darling. You're taking me so well."

Tears come streaming down when the base of his cock kisses your folds, your union now solidified. The blonde gives you a moment to get acclimated with his girth inside before he gradually instructs a patient pace of the hips.

"Mmmm, Kento. 'S so good..." You mewl into the air, your face feeling hot and sweaty. The slow rhythm of his ruts is tantalizing, but it feels so good having his length scrape your insides. "Pleaseee, go fasteeer—"

"Want it faster? Nnmmm, damn, I'll go faster, baby." When the moment is right, his thrusts quicken the cadence, provoking more blissful whimpers to fill the silent room.

Your hands find purchase on his back, your legs wrapping around his waist to cage him close to you. And Nanami takes the notion as a signal for him to dial up the speed, thrusting so deep into your pussy with an erratic tempo. Pelvis smacking hard on your slit and tender clit that it has you seeing stars.

"Hmmm, Ahh—Ahhhh! Ohhhh, fucking shit!" The harsh ruts to your lower half keep your ground to the table beneath you, sweat sticking your clothes to your back. The sounds of skin slapping each other are on par with your pornographic noises, having you feel indecent and shameful. But it's too late now.

"Hmmph! Oh, fuck," husky groans exit from Nanami, the man putting his forehead on yours. "You feel so good and tight around me, love. So close to—Ahhhh!! Shit, so close to cumming.."

You swallow the spit that secretes your mouth. "Haaaah, Kentoooo—" your eyes are shut to wholly focus on the commotion beneath you. Your sexes smacking each other, forcing you to clench around him with every thrust of the hips. "I'm about to—Nnnaaahh!! Oh, Jesus, I'm gonna cummm!"

He kisses your forehead. "You want to cum, sweet pea?"

"Yesssss, please, please, pleaseee!!" Begging for your release is all you can do as your mind turns into mush, the familiar sensation crawling back to haunt you.

He hushes your cries with his lips on yours, the final kiss filled with scorching passion while Nanami pistons a few thrusts plunging to your vulva.

Your orgasm washes over you again, and you moan blissfully into the blonde's mouth. Your gushy walls flutter around his member for the last time, coating it with your essence. And Nanami had to be quick not to sink too deep into the feeling, or else he'd spill his release into you. He removed himself from your lips and body, ejaculating his load onto your bare stomach, and you gasped at the contact of his fluids spilling on your exposed skin.

You look up to survey the man before you, and you're met with an image you never thought you'd see. Blonde hair that was once slicked neatly now had messy strands that framed his face beautifully. Sweat covered his sculpted physique, and hooded brown eyes examined your body under him.

Letting the silence calm the both of you down from your aftershocks, Nanami glances at your face and smiles. He brings a hand to cup your cheek, brushing off tears that painted your face.

"Glad to have you this semester. Have a good summer, darling."

⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊✩₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

BAM! BAM!! BAM!!!

An abrupt sound has you stop writing on the entry, bringing you back to the present time.

It sounded like it came from the front door, so you stuff your diary into your bag and exit the room to find out who's causing all the ruckus. When you open the door, the first thing that enters your line of vision is pink hair.

Your friend, Yuuji Itadori.

"Yo!" He greets you. "Ready to go? I called up your phone like four times."

"Oh, you did? Sorry, I must've forgotten to put it back on vibrate after the exam." You move out of the way for Yuuji to enter your dorm, closing the door behind him. "My stuff is in my room. I got two suitcases, a duffel bag, and my backpack."

"Alright then, let's hurry and get out of here! Think we can take the freeway since it's late at night, and traffic should be gone by now."

Yuuji grabs your two suitcases and heads outside to put them inside the trunk of his car. You walk around to check and see if anything is missing or misplaced before heading to your room and grabbing the other bags.

Yet before you leave the space entirely, you grab your diary again and write your final thoughts.

...I don't know what possessed me to let what happened happen. But, at the same time, I don't hate it for happening? I don't know...it was probably the feelings of spring taking over me or the relief that I finished all my exams.

But one thing is for sure; if I wasn't the last person to leave that classroom, none of that would've happened. I wouldn't have experienced that new side of Professor Nanami.

And as long as this keeps between me and him, then I'm kinda glad that it happened.