#i'm here to contribute

[sylvermoths]

Do it

[blorbosinmyheadcentral]

SECRET DATIIING (secret datiiiing)

[seventh-district]

Making Incorrect H:SR Quotes Until I Run Out of (hopefully) Original Ideas - Pt. 1 - Ratiorine Messages Edition

[Pt. 2] [Pt. 3] [Pt. 4] [Pt. 5] [Pt. 6]

[raycatzdraws]

Some grumpy guys

Extra doodles under the read more!

Everything is from January 2023.

I wanted to try drawing Hyrule a lil differently but I'm meh with how it turned out. He doesn't quite look himself imo but I want these out of my folders! The drawing of Hyrule in the water was largely inspired by this piece by @/mmmwafflesart, so please please please go show Waffles some love. Their art is just amazing.

Wind's bit was supposed to be set around the same time that Twi was still injured.

Hyrule: *pokes Wind who's laying on the floor* Wind: *cough cough sniffle* I'm sick you can't bully me. Hyrule: *poking fun* Sick as a dog? (haha funny pirate joke because Wind's a pirate) Wind: *huge sobby eyes* We can't make that joke anymore.

It doesn't work as well now that Twi's better, but at the time, it was definitely too soon to be making dog jokes LMAO (the fandom was worried!!!) And Wind's a pirate! How sad to not be able to make the pirate jokes auuUH a double whammy!

[theredqueenandthebloodwyrm]

Bout to start gnawing and biting motherfuckers on here, istg. Fuck you third party voters, fuck you "I didn't vote because that would taint me", fuck you holier-than-thou moral purity fuckers. Fuck anyone who voted for Trump.

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

I'm sorry but the irony of Nico calling Max unprofessional is sending me so bad like sir there's an entire garage full of people, who were literally in the trenches trying to survive the Brocedes fallout while just doing their jobs, who might have a few things to say about your (& Lewis') level of professionalism at that time 😭✋️

[zoe-oneesama]

i felt like giving a contribution to the memes of people who thought there would be a Chloe redemption arc, enjoy

I do be making that face everytime.

[steveseddie]

gold was the color of the leaves

steddie | rating: t | wc: 1,6k | cw: none | tags: steve pov, silly teenage boys, first kiss, fluff

for @steddie-spooktober day twenty two prompt “leaves”

read here on ao3

Steve wakes up when a leaf tickles his nose– or rather, when someone tickles his nose with a leaf. He scrunches it up, swatting the leaf away with his hand. 

He easily recognizes the snigger that follows so he’s not surprised to open his eyes and find Eddie leaning over him, one elbow propped up on the grass and a devilish grin stretching over his lips.  

Steve lifts his sunglasses to scowl at him. “Are you like, allergic to people relaxing?” He asks in a bitchy tone that only makes Eddie grin wider. 

“Deadly so, Stevie,” he says, long dark eyelashes fluttering as the hand that’s still holding the leaf rests against his forehead like he’s going to faint. “It was either annoying you or dying, and you don’t want me to die, do you?”

“I guess not,” Steve says with a long-suffering sigh, but either the fondness in his voice or the way his lips tick up prove that he doesn’t mean it because Eddie’s grin turns blinding, his dimples popping. Steve is glad he’s already lying down or his knees might’ve buckled at the sight and sent him rolling down the small hill they’re laying on.

“Besides,” Eddie says, tickling Steve’s cheek with the leaf, “you’re missing out on all the fun.”

“Napping is fun,” Steve points out, swatting Eddie’s hand away again. 

“Yeah, if you’re eighty!” Eddie snorts. “Are you an old man, Stevie?”

“Eddie, I’m younger than you,” Steve deadpans. 

“Maybe, but I have a young soul, Harrington–”

Steve smirks. “If by young you mean immature–”

Hand to his heart, Eddie gasps indignantly. “Hey!”

“Dude, you and the kids spent the last hour gathering leaves in piles and jumping on them,” Steve says amusedly. He spent the better part of that hour watching them tackle each other between shrieks of laughter, thankful for his sunglasses and how they let him stare at Eddie as much as he wanted without getting caught.

Eddie shrugs. “Hm, you may have a point.”

When he moves, something in Eddie’s hair catches Steve’s eye. A leaf– proof that he’d spent an hour being tackled and rolling on the floor before he decided to annoy him.

Steve’s fingers itch to reach out and pluck that leaf from Eddie’s hair, smooth the curls down, grab a hold of them and drag Eddie down–

Steve shakes those thoughts out of his head, balling his hands into fists to keep them from reaching out. In the silence that follows, Steve becomes aware of the sudden lack of yells and laughter around them. “Where are the little shitheads?”

“Wheeler sent them to wash their hands so they can have a snack,” Eddie says, pointing at the water fountain where the boys are cleaning up and at Max and El, walking arm in arm towards Nancy and Robin at the picnic table. 

“Not you?” Steve asks, head falling back against the blanket he’s using to lay on the grass. 

Eddie shakes his head. “Nope, I told her she’s not the boss of me,” he pauses, “then ran away before she could hit me with her book.” 

Steve snorts out a chuckle.

“Besides, I don’t want a snack. I got one right here,” Eddie says with a playful wink that turns Steve’s cheeks bright red. 

He ignores the heat creeping on his face. “I swear, Munson, if you try to bite me again–” he says, thinking about last week when Eddie said he was hungry and promptly sunk his teeth on Steve’s arm.

It didn’t hurt that bad– he was wearing a thick sweater after all. What did hurt was biting his tongue as hard as he could to keep a moan from slipping past his lips from Eddie biting him.

Eddie sniggers. “I won’t bite you, I promise,” he says innocently before he leers at Steve, his face hovering merely inches from Steve’s face. “Only if you ask.”

Steve grits his teeth together. “Shut up,” he quips, shoving Eddie off of him until they’re both lying on their backs, their sides pressed together. 

They fall into comfortable silence which Steve breaks with a loud yawn. 

Eddie’s head lolls to the side, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “Tired, sweetheart?”

Steve’s stomach flips at the petname. He shrugs as casually as he can. “A little, I- uh, I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Nightmares?” Steve nods. Eddie grimaces apologetically, tugging some hair across his face. “Shit, I should’ve let you keep napping.”

Without giving it much thought, Steve curls his pinkie around Eddie’s. “No, it’s fine,” he says, waiting for Eddie to meet his gaze. When he does, his eyes are a little wide. Wistfully Steve wishes it’s because of their interlocked pinkies. “I don’t wanna miss out on all the fun just because I’m tired.”

Eddie's eyes sparkle and he props himself up on his elbow again, grinning at Steve. “Does that mean I can tackle you into a pile of leaves?”

“You forget I was a jock,” Steve says smugly. “I’d like to see you try.”

Eddie laughs, something between a snort and a giggle. He drops his head in Steve’s chest, making Steve’s heart stutter. 

From this angle, Steve spots another leaf trapped in the curls in the back of Eddie’s head, and this time he doesn’t stop himself from reaching for it. 

The moment Eddie feels Steve’s fingers in his hair, his head snaps up and Steve’s hand ends up cupping the back of Eddie’s neck. 

Their faces are close– so close that Steve can hear the way Eddie’s breath catches when he realizes the same thing.

“Eddie–” Steve starts, not sure if he’s going to apologize for touching his hair without permission or for the way his eyes keep darting down to Eddie’s lips in a way that he knows is fucking obvious. 

But before he can decide what to say, he hears Eddie make an impatient, needy noise in the back of his throat before he surges forward and presses his lips against Steve’s. 

He lets out a surprised yelp, thinking– holy shit, Eddie is kissing me!

The thought bounces against Steve’s skull like a ping-pong ball as he tries to get his brain working again. But before he can do that long enough to kiss Eddie back, he’s pulling away and out of Steve’s reach. Steve’s hand falls back to his side, empty except for the leaf that he plucked out of Eddie’s hair. 

“You uh– you had this in your hair,” Steve says dumbly, holding up the leaf. 

Eddie’s eyes dart to the leaf and his expression falls as he realizes that is why Steve’s hand ended up in his hair, not because Steve was making some kind of move.

“Shit,” he mutters, his doe-like gaze darting from the leaf to Steve’s mouth. That he just kissed. “Shit, fuck– I– shit.”

He scrambles to his feet, and in his haste, ends up stumbling and falling back on his ass– only to roll down the small hill. 

“Eddie!” 

Steve jumps to his feet and runs after him, careful not to trip and follow Eddie down the hill the same way.

He makes it to the bottom right after Eddie and his eyes dart over his starfished body, checking for injuries. 

“Christ, dude. Are you okay?”

Eddie groans, covering his face with his hands. “Did the fall kill me? Please say yes.”

Steve suppresses a snort. “I mean. It’s barely even a hill, so I don’t think that’s possible. You might end up with a bruise or two though.”

“Oh, you mean apart from the bruise to my ego?” 

“What?”

“You know,” Eddie gestures between himself and Steve with one hand, “because I kissed you and you didn’t want me to.” 

Steve puts his hands on his hips. “Who says I didn’t want you to?”

Eddie’s hands fall from his face, revealing his wide eyes and slack jaw. “You did?” He asks, voice going high-pitched.

“Yeah,” Steve says, a lopsided grin stretching over his lips. He knocks his Nike against Eddie’s leg. “I did, you just took me by surprise, s’all.”

Eddie lets out a tiny, startled, “Oh.”

Steve smirks. “Yeah so how about you get up so I can check you don’t have any cuts or bruises before I kiss you. Properly this time.”

Eddie squeaks and scrambles to his feet with as much grace as when he tumbled down the hill. Steve finds his eagerness fucking endearing. 

There are even more leaves trapped in Eddie’s curls now, and with an amused shake of his head, Steve plucks them out of his hair before checking for any bruises. 

Then, as promised, he leans in and kisses Eddie. The second kiss is also short and chaste and over too soon, but it’s good and Steve has to remind himself they’re in public in order to gather enough willpower to pull back. 

When he does, his brain is a little hazy and he completely misses the way Eddie’s expression shifts from dopey to mischievous so it catches him by surprise when Eddie tackles him into a pile of leaves, laughing maniacally. 

“Ha! Got ya!” Eddie whoops, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, hovering over Steve who wants nothing more than to kiss the stupid smug smile off his face. 

But he can hear the kids laughing at him and cheering for Eddie in the distance and there’s no way he can get away with kissing him even if Eddie’s hair falls like a curtain around them, offering a little cover.

So he grabs a handful of leaves and shoves them into Eddie’s grinning mouth instead.

He’ll save the kiss for later.

[thedaythatwas]

on nagito komaeda and love

I just think it’s sort of funny that for a character whose (arguably) most well-recognized CG is this: 

komaeda’s narrative so heavily centers love. and I don’t just say this because I’ve had komahina brainrot for years (though this is true!!). even if you don’t care about komahina, it’s tough to deny komaeda is a walking tragedy in large part because of the role that love plays in his life. his characterization is driven by the way his luck has denied him love, and how he seeks it out regardless. in that sense, I think that without understanding komahina as at least one-sided, you miss out on one of the juiciest, most miserable pieces of komaeda’s character development.

tldr; a love-centered reading of komaeda makes sense, recognizing komahina as “a thing” in DR2 (whether you ship it or not) is pretty important to understanding how komaeda operates, and I’ll try to prove it right here under this page break!!

Part 1: Komaeda’s Love Life (or, his life without love)

I think it’s safe to assume that if you clicked here, you know about komaeda’s absurdly miserable, tumultuous childhood, but I’ll do a quick recap just in case! meteor kills his parents on a plane, he inherits a ton of money. he’s kidnapped by a serial killer, he finds a winning lottery ticket in the garbage bag he’s thrown out in. he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer and dementia, he gets into hope’s peak.

in his free time events, komaeda *explicitly* frames his luck cycle as something that takes away the people he loves. it only “takes action” against him after his relatives have died (for the sake of this essay, let’s assume that komaeda loved his parents, or would have at least been hurt by their passing). by way of other close connections… well, his wording here implies that by the time of his diagnosis, he didn’t really have anybody in his life. 

either komaeda didn’t allow himself to get close to anyone after the meteor incident, or he did, and they were taken away by his luck. at some point during his childhood, komaeda learned he should view himself as a death sentence.

so, how does this loss of love shape the komaeda we know? I’ll talk about this in terms of four of his defining (and connected!) traits in DR2 canon – the ones that really make his actions make sense: his self-loathing, his hope-seeking, his learned helplessness, and his certainty that his existence poses a threat to those around him. komaeda’s experience with loss makes him view himself as a source of death, which in turn fuels these tenets of his character. ultimately, his loss and the complexes that arise from it give him good incentive to push people away.

his self-loathing

komaeda hates himself. he views himself as worthless outside of his potential to serve as a “stepping stone” for the hope of the ultimates. he claims that this is driven by his beliefs around talent, which are in turn linked to the way his worldview rests on viewing hope as “absolute good.” the talentless (himself included) are only good for advancing the hope of the talented. still, his self-loathing is a bit more personal than that. take what he says and dig just below the surface, and it’s a clean cut trauma response all the way down. which leads us directly to…

his hope-seeking

komaeda is willing to do literally anything to serve hope. on the island, this (in short) means dying. this is where I prod at komaeda’s reasoning a bit more: komaeda’s willingness to act the way he does in canon also stems from his belief that his dying would be a net good for the world. his existence kills the people around him. his illness will kill him anyway. he has less than no value, and hope is invaluable. to go out for the sake of hope would give his wretched life purpose; it’s his dream come true.

and it’s no mystery why komaeda cares so much about hope: again, it’s a coping mechanism! komaeda’s belief that all bad luck is a necessary precursor for good luck and that hope will always triumph over despair is (as he himself says!) the only reason he’s managed to stay alive. I’ll say it again because I really can’t emphasize it enough – komaeda thinks that just by existing, he kills the people he loves. ouch!

learned helplessness / his existence as a threat

komaeda has, essentially, learned to submit to his luck cycle. all bad luck is good luck in the end – isn’t that amazing?! almost paradoxically, he’s hyper-vigilant about the negative impact his luck has on those around him. this is a tricky one. I make sense of it this way: komaeda’s perception of how much his luck impacts the people close to him isn’t inflated, like, at all. the supernatural way the world bends around komaeda to screw him over really does pose a danger to himself and others, and he takes measures to minimize that danger. his stated acceptance of his luck cycle is… well, again, he’s coping. 

if komaeda really thought that all bad luck is ultimately good luck, he wouldn’t try to protect his classmates from his bad luck. but, as we see in island mode, he does!

but really, who could blame komaeda for lying to himself? I’ll restate the facts. komaeda thinks that luck is absolute power. he says that he’s powerless against it. his luck has taken his family, and it’s left him with nothing but money that he doesn’t want. he’s certain he’s a curse, and there’s no end to that in sight: so long as komaeda exists, he’ll keep on losing – murdering – everything he loves. 

in the face of all of that despair, what can you do but abandon your self-esteem and pray for something good to come out of all of it? how else could somebody possibly survive carrying that burden, truly believing that load will never be lightened?

tldr; komaeda thinks his existence is a threat, and a big chunk of his personality is a frankensteined way of surviving the pain that comes with that. still, we should question how much of his worldview komaeda has really internalized without inner conflict. 

Part 2: Enter Hajime Hinata

we get some answers on that front when we see that despite the clear and obvious danger it poses, nagito komaeda still finds himself falling hard for hajime hinata. that’s really, really loud.

I’ll preface this part by saying that you don’t need to actively ship komahina to understand what I’m trying to get at here. this said, I’ll be recapping an argument you’ve almost definitely seen before: komahina is definitely “a thing” – at the very least as a one-sided thing. to this, I’ll add the (perhaps bold?) claim that without recognizing that much as true, you’re missing out on a big part of what makes komaeda so interesting.

komaeda’s FTEs make it abundantly clear that komaeda has feelings for hinata. apart from his famed failed love confession, the fact that komaeda is willing to allow hinata to get close enough to learn about his views on hope and luck is telling. 

(the smoking gun here hinges on trusting that komaeda was telling the truth during the time you spent with him; in so many words, that he only lied about lying. so, for the sake of argument, let’s assume this is true! there’s good proof for it, anyway.)

if you read his final FTE as komaeda flashing his soul to hinata and making a decision at the very last second to retreat, turning to old coping mechanisms to protect hinata from his luck, it’s sort of a komahina bombshell. that capitulation spells out for us that komaeda understands sharing his life experiences with hinata to be one of the most intimate things he could possibly do.

he recognizes the exact moment he lets hinata get too close – when his life story is finally told – and he does what he’s learned he needs to do to get them both out of that situation safely: he tries to make hinata hate him, and tells himself (and hinata!) that he did it for the sake of hope.

(and yet, komaeda let hinata approach him every FTE, knowing damn well that they were both playing with fire… very interesting.)

now, let’s say you don’t consider the FTEs to be integral to canon. I mean, you can really easily miss out on all of komaeda’s content if you choose not to hang out with him in chapter 1! so, for the skeptic, in the unskippable main story, komaeda tells hinata this:

komaeda cares about hinata despite everything. and I really, truly mean despite everything. at this point in the story, the fact that he still cares about hinata calls into question basically every single one of his core beliefs. he’s read his final dead room prize – not only does hinata not have a talent, we can presume that komaeda also knows hinata became ultimate despair along with the rest of them. 

hinata has continually sought out komaeda’s company, even though komaeda knows himself to be worthless at best, lethal at worst. komaeda was willing to let him get closer, even though he knows how dangerous that is for hinata. he can’t help but let hinata try to know him. 

isn’t he awful? to want what he knows he can’t have, even though that wanting has never done anything but cause pain? he’s really the lowest of the low, to love someone who destroyed the world, who makes him question the views that will allow him to do the only good thing he’s ever been able to do for it: to die for hope. 

and yet, it’s a nod to how incredibly capable of love komaeda is that he’s still willing to reach out for it, no matter how many times it’s burned him in the past, and how much it hurts him in the present to want it. he understands more than anyone that his feelings can only result in disaster. reading komaeda as someone who can’t help but go on loving anyway makes his story hurt so much worse. 

but, you miss a whole lot of that without an eye for komahina. seeing hinata as the eye of komaeda’s emotional hurricane (and keeping tabs on their connection accordingly) allows us to glimpse past the cracks in komaeda’s front. we see that komaeda’s worldview is less stable than he presents it as – hinata is where komaeda’s coping mechanisms, for better or worse, run up against a wall. that tends to be uncomfortable for a guy who’s just barely coping in the first place. then again, growth is supposed to be uncomfortable, isn’t it?

Part 3: The Future He Chooses

so, all of this considered, I think one of the most interesting ways you can flesh komaeda out post-canon is by asking how he’d find himself willing to accept love. whether that love is from hinata or the ultimates, whether it’s platonic or romantic, love is the thing that komaeda wants AND fears in equal measure more than anything. it’s the source of his self-loathing and his obsession with hope. it’s the reason he’s lived the way that he has for so long – lonely, and afraid of being anything but.

getting into a relationship wouldn’t solve komaeda’s problems for him, and that’s a good thing. it would force him to confront old ones, and probably create dozens of new issues for him, too. writing him through that makes for great character study!

hinata (or anyone else, for that matter) can’t love komaeda into loving himself, but he can give him a shoulder to cry on while he works through 22 years of fear and sorts through the wreckage of a worldview that’s long since stopped serving him. I don’t think his progress would be linear. but, I think that he could do it. komaeda learning to accept care is what his healing looks like. 

(well. and physically recovering from cancer and dementia. but that’s neither here nor there!)

a post-canon komaeda learning to love narrative is also in line with the themes of DR2. hinata leads the survivors out of the neo world program because he makes the decision to choose his own future, creating a new version of “hope” for himself and his classmates. likewise, komaeda can make the decision to save himself. that is, if he trusts himself enough to actually touch and hold the thing that he’s never been able to stop reaching out for, anyway.

after all, hinata is lucky too. (and if it turns out he isn’t… y'all like angst fics, right?)

(shoutout to @cynopter for looking this over and confirming that I'm not spouting nonsense <33 thank you for reading my thesis of the week <33)

[johnnyy-guitarr]

hi i hope you all like these wretched things i crafted with my own two hands

[krussyarts]

Miku? Heul leise.

[offdensen]

Don't you wanna die for something worth dying for? Do you have any idea how long I've waited for this? Longer than you think.

[darkdragon768]

Do you like the color of your dimension?

Which one?

[penguin-stars]

Something I initially really liked about Cale's character is how he suddenly became the "trash" of the count's family and he seemingly takes it as an asshole permit.

No manners, rude? Well duh, He's the local trash.

And then, hundreds of chapters later it hit me:

This guy really never changed the way he acted, he says so himself and it's why Choi Han was able to easily recognize him in Choi Jung Soo's memories.

Which begs the question: What sort of internal narrative did he have going on as Kim Rok Soo to "justify" his behavior?

Baby Rok Soo was at the bottom of the social ladder, an orphan, poor and his uncle was an alcoholic and a gambling addict to boot

How many times do you think he heard things like "What can you expect from someone without parents?", or "Just what you would expect from someone who wasn't raised properly"

"Someone of your kind"

And then he became a Team Leader

How many things did he do or didn't do under the pretense of being "Cold-blooded"

It also doesn't help that he's unable to process praise or kindness directed at him.

[windcarvedlyre]

I've been following @druidposting's DR2 playthrough on discord and we just had a really good discussion about DR's Closing Arguments. Specifically the way the murderer is depicted as grey and featureless, which until now I found a bit annoying.

In Danganronpa it's repeatedly the case that we don't have the full picture until the talking actually stops- which always goes beyond the end of the trial. We generally vote first and come to understand what the murderer's actual motive was, sometimes filling in important pieces of the timeline in the process, afterwards.

But none of that matters for the killing game because characters' emotions aren't directly relevant to who was the 'blackened'- the only thing that matters to Monokuma- so it comes out afterwards and does nothing to change their execution. It doesn't matter how sympathetic they are (basically everyone) or whether other people share responsibility for the situation (eg. Hanamura, Pekoyama, Momota) or whether they intended to murder at all (Nanami). They objectively pulled the trigger and nothing else matters. Nothing about them as a person matters.

The Closing Argument mechanic might illustrate that problem- literally. They're a dramatic, conclusive summary of the entire case... constructed before the vote even happens, before we know if we're actually right, and they're missing something really important:

The actual perpetrator.

We quite literally don't even begin to see the real person behind the crime, any real exploration of their mental state, anything besides the cold, hard facts of the murder that are necessary to convict them, until the comic finishes and the protagonist makes their final accusation- replacing the grey figure with their real appearance in a shot that's often intensely emotional.

And these comics lack crucial parts of the case's timeline and sometimes important parts of the very scenes they depict that we only find out about afterwards. And those are what we know; characters may die with some pieces of the truth and prevent us from ever learning them. These aren't objective depictions of the murder, they're the protagonist's subjective attempt to connect the facts they have. A join-the-dots portrait of someone with missing dots and no colour.

Even characters' expressions may not match how they truly feel, with the grey placeholder potentially looking way more confident and sinister than they were in reality. Pasting Falter's commentary here since they put it well.

For obvious reasons this could especially be a problem for characters that die before the trial- the ones we never get a post-vote testimony from. DR1 chapter 4 really highlighted that in the way Asahina's huge misinterpretation of Oogami's feelings took up a lot of the post-trial discussion, only for Monokuma to reveal Oogami's real suicide note and recontextualise everything.

It might really be a problem for how Komaeda's depicted in DR2 chapter 5. While he isn't greyed out, we get panel after panel where he's either level-headed or maniacally evil, and even the depictions of his self-torture and death don't humanise him:

But we know that his real feelings were more complicated than that. We have his actual corpse to compare the last page to.

He died afraid.

If we approach the comic as Hinata's mental image of him instead of reality, he died without anyone truly understanding him. He was alarming, very hard to relate to, actively fought against people doing so, ensured even the killer didn't watch him die, and the survivors couldn't begin to understand his motive until a chapter later. The Closing Argument reflects that.

Early in DR1 Togami calls out the rest of his class for judging others by their own standards. However, he, too, is doing this, maybe more so than many other characters; his inability to view other people through anything but the cold, brutal logic of the killing game bites him in the ass in chapter 4. In DR2 chapter 2 voting without a good understanding of Pekoyama's motive or Kuzuryuu's involvement nearly got everyone killed. Komaeda's a walking embodiment of the problems with flattening people into caricatures and not empathising with them, suffered from people doing that back to him, and his case- the Closing Argument for which turned everyone else into grey placeholders- was impossible to solve with objective facts. It was only survivable because the survivors cooperated and one person tried to analyse things the way he would.

The games have always been a critique of the justice system and Japanese society and push us to care about others as individuals, not reduce them to- and judge their right to exist by- something they've done or their net impact on society. There are always consequences when someone neglects to do that, and the above might be yet another way the games explore that theme.

[looseinthecatroom]

Right. Let's get this REAL clear here, yeah? For as much as I hate diving into the clusterfuck of bad takes surrounding Nandermo, I gotta say something real loud and clear;

There is NO universe, none at ALL where I give a flying kaleidoscopic fuck if Nandor and Guillermo ""go cannon"". Or get together in some sort of idealized monogamous soulmates situationship. None.

What I DON'T like is how throughout the entire show run, the IDEA of Guillermo and Nandor as a couple was never explored. (other then as a joke once or twice)

PLEASE feel more then free, feel OBLIGATED (if you want them to be platonic) to bring up IN TEXT that they simply aren't interested in each other in that way. There are ten thousand ways to do it!

My kingdom for in the next episode (there is some weird... last episode thing still right?) it's mentioned that they got together for like a week before they both decided that just wasn't what they wanted. Or that they used to fuck when Guillermo was new to the vamily but it low key sucked.

My hand in marriage for a mention of Guillermo having, or specifically not having for whatever reason, a crush on his super cool idealized REAL VAMPIRE boss man when they met, but getting over it the longer they spent together.

My heart for ANY acknowledgement that these are two queer men deeply interwoven in each others lives in a show where the entire rest of the cast is constantly hitting on each other and having chill low key background sex on the reg, and if they are platonic (completely fucking fair) acknowledging in any way in text the idea that they could not be platonic if they wanted, but that they do not want that.

I DO NOT care about ~""shipping""~. There is a history far older then the medium of censoring, or even just being really fucking weird about, queerness, vs the decade or so of increased visibility we've just had. And all I need is simply to see the possibility actually acknowledged and then discarded in text if that's what the writers prefer. I need to see... actual explicit character development and acknowledgement of who these two are, what they mean to each other and why. Not this string along shit (with a side of making fun of the fans, because THAT doesn't clearly shoot any claim to good intentions/ignorance in the foot and lay out what kind of people are in charge) unless you ARE planning to pay off the "will they won't they" tension. (INCLUDING with a "they won't and here's why"!!)