#idk we can ballpark it LOL

[furyisms]

  PLOTTED STARTER !     ⤷ @primitiveside

The whole house was abuzz and bustling with whispers and chatter between the kids living there. There was a new guy, and that was a big deal. It’d been a long time since they had someone that was new, someone that seemed like he was going to stay for an extended period of time. Of course, so far he’d talked to absolutely no one, seemingly only appearing when there was food to be had, and disappearing promptly after.

But what was new guy’s story? That was what interested Alisa. There were always new people, but this particular new guy seemed… different. Usually, it was younger kids being brought in; some ran away after a few days, and a few stayed. Alisa was one of the few that had stayed; she wasn’t going to end up on the streets if she could help it. Not to mention she was a particularly… special case, in a sense.

After all—it wasn’t hard to determine that a child with clear biotic potential shouldn’t be given to the grandparents who protested and called them abominations openly and proudly.

While everyone seemed to have been avoiding Riddick, giving him a bit of a berth… Alisa was either too friendly, or too brave. With two plates in hand she approached him, setting one of the plates in front of him. A simple sandwich: ham, cheese, lettuce, pickles, butter, and a little mustard. Nothing out of the ordinary, really.

“Hey.” She managed a smile. “Alisa. You, uh—you can call me Liss, though. It was, uh… Richard, right?” She hoped that was the name they’d been told. God, her memory sometimes—it was such a mess on the worst of days.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 154 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 11

Aqua Hoshigan Status: (Still) white

man

This is one of those chapters where, technically speaking, I should probably be tearing it to bits (AND I DEFINITELY WILL) - it represents a pretty substantial break in or retcon to the series continuity as it's been presented to us thus far and the actions of certain characters in the lead up to this event don't quite make sense if they've had access to some of the information that's seemingly been in their hands for a while but… would you guys forgive me if I said I didn't really care LOL. As I've said before, I'm the sort of reader who can excuse a lot of raw Plot Bullshit so long as I feel like the hearts of the characters are intact and for all its fumbles, this is a chapter I think is unerringly dedicated to the hearts of its characters. I've made no secret of the fact that Ai is and always has been my main avenue of investment in Oshi no Ko as a series and in this chapter, we uncover the final secret in her heart in particular after having the entire series thus far dedicated to laying it bare to us.

We pick up exactly where we left off last chapter with the reveal that the HKAI breakup was indeed founded on Ai's pregnancy, as a lot of us had predicted.

This, uh, does not quite line up with previous events!

From what we'd previously been told, in terms of placement in the timeline, the death of Airi and her husband happened after the twins were born and sometime in the leadup to the Dome concert, which would put it in the ballpark of Ai's 18th to 20th birthday depending on how long it was in the works for. But based on how this flashback section is structured, it seems to place their deaths before Ai even knew she was pregnant, let alone giving birth. If it was just clashing with 15YL's retelling then I could dismiss that as an element of the movie's fictionalization that we've seen and Kamiki alludes to but this also clashes with where this event was placed temporally by Ichigo, when remembering a real life event. So… What gives!!!!

Like, at the end of the day, the exact placement of Uehara's death only matters inasmuch as it needs to be before Ai gets her new apartment, since the point Ichigo is really making is that Aqua is pinning his hopes on a dead man who was dead before he could have ever contributed to Ai's murder. But placing it that far back in the timeline - before the twins were even born! - just makes Aqua's willful ignorance in relation to it come off as a lot sillier and more difficult to swallow than if it happened closer to Ai's actual date of death.

I'm also a little disappointed that we really quickly breeze past Ai revealing she's pregnant - it's not the point of the scene overall and it would be weird to go really deep into her POV in the middle of a Kamiki flashback but one of my big issues with the Movie Arc was that it ripped past anything and everything to do with Ai's pregnancy, including how she herself felt about being pregnant. Like I said in my 145 review, skipping over the parts of it we've seen makes sense but I think there's still a bunch of really fascinating potential in exploring how Ai felt when she realized she was pregnant - how did she hide it for long enough that she was almost halfway through her pregnancy and getting fucking enormous before her first checkup? How did Ichigo and Miyako react when they first got the news? There's so much juicy character and relationship work you could mine out of that but the story fails to do so. We sort of get a crumb of this in the DVD but her feelings there are all centered on the pregnancy in relation to Hikaru and even then she breezes past it so fast it's clearly not meant to be the focus of any of what she's saying and idk. For a character whose entire hook is her struggles with motherhood, familial love and all the rest of it, that's a little disappointing.

THAT SAID!!! All that makes me sound like I didn't like what went on with Ai this chapter but I actually loved it. It's so painfully in line with everything we've been told and shown about her thus far in the manga and in this chapter, we see all her strengths, weaknesses and human contradictions laid bare in a way I find incredibly rewarding and compelling.

The HKAI breakup especially is just soooooo deliciously cringe inducing. It's an echo of the argument with Nino that 15YL portrays, where Ai's good intentions, avoidant tendencies and absolute absence of tact all snowball and end up ruining one of her most important relationships. Like… I can't believe I'm about to say this about a conversation in which Ai is one of the people talking, but she really is the reasonable one here! She's right to identify that their relationship is not working, that adding babies and marriage to the mix will only make things worse - her intentions, as they always are, are good and she's making her decisions with Kamiki in mind… her delivery is just absolutely dogshit!!! GIRL, PLEASE, YOUR WORDS!!!! USE YOUR WORDS!!!!!

For all my issues with Akasaka's writing lately, I think he portrays these kinds of two sided failures of communication so well, where you can see exactly where both characters are coming from and why they are failing to get their feelings across to each other. From an outsider's POV it's clear as day that Ai views herself and her children as the burden, one she doesn't want to put on Kamiki for the sake of a girl who doesn't even know if she can love him… but is it any wonder why Kamiki took it the way he did and why his guts were so utterly wrenched out as a result?

Kamiki's attempted proposal and Ai's immediate rejection of it are really interesting with the context of 45510 in particular. Extrapolating from her talk of marriage there, she brushed him off so quickly because she simply didn't believe he was serious… and yeah, he's pretty clearly not fully cognizant of the weight of what he's trying to propose, never mind that he's meeting "let's break up" with "LET'S GET MARRIED" lol.

Also interesting to extrapolate from both 45510 and other material surrounding Ai is that, at that point in her life, she simply didn't understand what the point of marriage was. On top of her being Literally Sixteen And A Child right now, Ai is said to have come from a deeply dysfunctional home where her mother engaged in a number of equally dysfunctional relationships, at least one of whom was with a man who was creeping on Ai even as he was working up to marry her mom. It's no wonder she doesn't really take the idea of marriage seriously, but it still hurts so see her reject Kamiki so bluntly - even more bluntly in the Japanese text somehow, simply chirping 無理! (Muri!) in response, i.e, not just "no way" but telling Kamiki to his face it's impossible.

Honestly this whole breakup scene is so darkly hilarious just in terms of how bad Ai is completely beefing it. Congrats babygirl that's the worst anyone's ever done it!!!

And we finally get the "I can't love you" drop after just shy of 25 chapters of buildup…….. And honestly, it feels a little hollow.

I talked about this a little before so forgive me for repeating myself but that line - or rather, Aqua and Ruby's implied misunderstanding of it - from Ai to Hikaru was given a huge amount of weight in the story when it was first introduced. It was implied to be the lynchpin in which everything else about the HKAI romance rested only for the story to go UH WELL ACTUALLY IT'S ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT AI FORGIVES HER KILLER which is like… fine, it just feels very jarring on a reread or when trying to sew together a plot thread like this. It especially feels strange because the emphasis is placed on them not getting it right or at least that Gotanda disagrees with their interpretation, only for the manga to whip back around and not only return this line to its previous heightened importantance but also to largely not line up with what was established about this line and its place in the narrative when it was first introduced. It's just more evidence that Akasaka's plans for the Movie Arc and its resolution changed in some way during serialisation because these inconsistencies are pretty glaring.

Not just that, but like… it's hard to feel impacted by this line when we didn't even see it in the Movie Arc. In general, it's so fucking weird that so much about the main emotional resolutions going on right now revolve around Ruby's performance in the movie when most of the big emotional moments people are reacting to are happening entirely offscreen. This would already be bad even if it wasn't taking place in a manga like OnK with its increasingly frustrating habit of offscreening more and more bits of the story that are extremely important for the characters. Before this chapter I would've said that maybe we'd see some of it after the movie released but given that Kamiki's arc and the revenge play as a whole is pretty clearly wrapping here, what would even be the point of it?

Idk. It's just increasingly obvious (and just as frustrating) to me just how much of the Movie Arc was wasted time and how much of the setup that needed to happen to make what follows really land just… didn't. This chapter's resolution for Ai and Hikaru, both separately and as a couple, is still excellent, but it could have been a lot better if its foundations weren't so meager.

We also finally get concrete proof from the horse's mouth that Kamiki was the one who deliberately leaked Ai's address and……. honestly this is kind of a wet fart too lol. OnK has previously very strongly implied that "Kamiki is Ai's killer" was a red herring or that we should at least be slightly skeptical of Aqua's assertions and conclusions but… nope, he was right all along, I guess?? Alright………………………… I certainly don't believe his insistence that gosh he totes didn't think Ryosuke would go THAT far and I'm still wondering wtf the two of them were doing at the hospital the night the twins were born but like. Honestly at this point, I don't really think it matters and I care much more about emotional resolutions than I do granular plot details - and boy do we get one hell of an emotional resolution.

I haven't shouted her out yet because I was saving it for this section but fuck, man, Mengo's expression work told chapter is killer as usual but this final stretch of pages is just gutwrenching. Ai's gentle, rueful smile on the DVD contrasted with the look of shocked, dawning understanding on Kamiki's….. Jesus Christ.

And at last, we uncover the final secret hidden at the bottom of Ai's heart. The entire manga thus far has been a process of stripping away the viewer's willful ignorance with regards to Ai's humanity but the DVDs had been an oddly ominous mystery box floating around, containing some implied dark secret that would change the entire trajectory of Ai's character as we knew it… but of course, the person who tells us that is Ai herself, a girl who hates herself, thinks of herself as dirty and impure, irresponsible and incapable of love.

So is it really any surprise that her darkest secret, the thing she can only confess with her eyes shining with black stars is simply that she's a fallible human? That she was a lonely young girl, confused and hurt in her own ways and that she hurt someone she dearly cared for and wanted to take it back?

Is it a little convenient that she put all this in the DVD? Yes, absolutely, and I'll be the first to say that the DVDs existing at all are a pretty clear retcon in service of getting info onto Aqua's hands. But it's also perfectly in line with Ai's timid, avoidant methods of reaching out. It parallels both Viewpoint B and 45510 (moreso the latter) where she pours her heart out in words, waiting for others to read and understand her. In 45510 in particular, her leaving the blog post is an extremely clear and strong parallel to the DVD - love letters put into bottles and thrown to the ocean in desperate hope the person they're addressed to might find and understand them.

As Akane says, Ai is torn between secrecy and a desire to have her true self exposed, so she attempts to craft scenarios in which this must happen, even if her avoidance can only allow her to do so with indirect methods. With the blog and moreso the DVDs & their method of delivery, Ai attempts to create situations where the initiation confrontation and disclosure is out of her hands and she has no choice but to tell the truth.

Ai's entire speech here is just heartbreaking. If the start of the chapter didn't make it explicit enough, we see her here put her good intentions into words to better understand how they were misinterpreted.

This adds SUCH a fascinating additional layer to her death that has me gnashing my fucking teeth. One of the things I've talked about a lot in my Ai meta is that Ryosuke is essentially an agent or even an embodiment of the entertainment industry and the way it has exploited her - the misogyny, entitlement, purity culture and abuse that ruled her life went on to end it. With this additional detail, though, Ryosuke becomes an agent not just of the things that plagued Ai of B-Komachi, but Ai as a human, too. All her life, Ai is willfully misunderstood and mischaracterized by the people around her, assigned narratives and roles without her consent and punished for both living up to and failing to live up to them. Ai's death is the end result of a lifelong cascade of failure on the part of every system and individual that has had the opportunity and responsibility to care for her - and, as Aqua throws in his father's face, that includes Hikaru.

Hikaru's supposed understanding of Ai is not one based in empathy or love but projection and possessiveness - understanding in this context is ownership, exclusivity and frankly, arrogance. A claim to a piece of Ai that no one else knows. But as Aqua forces him to realize… Hikaru never understood Ai, even as she did her best to make herself understood. For all his arrogance of understanding Ai and the nature of their relationship, Kamiki is ultimately just the same as every other person who idolized and objectified her then discarded her when the image they'd created in their mind didn't match reality. Ai wasn't his pure and perfect soulbonded saviour - she was a lonely, broken kid like him, still struggling to understand love after a lifetime spent starved of it.

Once, Kamiki begged Ai to save him. And here, the bitter truth is laid out for all of us: the salvation Kamiki had wished for was waiting for him, reaching out with open arms and he not only desecrated it but irrevocably destroyed any path back towards it. In killing Ai, Hikaru Kamiki killed himself.

The imagery of this moment is so fucking gorgeous. The visual of Kamiki and Ai reaching out to each other, in mutual understanding at last but separated by time and death… the "what if" happy Hoshino family… Ai's words being framed as a 'love letter' that transcended time to reach Kamiki and Aqua's eyes blazing with white as tears pour down his face… Jesus fucking Christ Mengo I'm already dead!!!!!

Like I said up top, I make zero secret of the fact that I am primarily invested in Ai above everything else in the manga and the way her importance has been seemingly downplayed since the late 130s mark chapter wise has really bugged me. As such, this chapter was INSANELY cathartic for me. Not only do we get a really beautiful cap to Ai's post death arc (hopefully finally killing those dumbfuck Secretly Evil Ai theories for good) but it's done in a way that once again recenters her love and her wishes as the heart of everything. Even Aqua's revenge play is completely redefined in this context - no longer the childish, selfish and self destructive lashing out we've seen before but as a quest to both honor Ai and to punish the person arrogantly assuming ownership of her heart even as he so catastrophically misunderstands her.

This is a really fantastic end to Aqua's arc too… on paper, that is. I know for a fact that a certain genre of OnK readers are going to bitch and moan that Aqua didn't run his dad over with a 2003 Honda Civic but I really can't imagine Aqua's revenge quest going any other way unless OnK was intended to be a pure tragedy. Over and over, we have seen that Aqua's revenge is at odds with not just his happiness but with Ai's wish for him to live a full life with a bright future. It is self destructive, hurtful to the people around him and antithetical to any of them moving on and reclaiming what their futures. With the emphasis the story places on moving towards a happy future, in selfishly reclaiming your happiness even in the face of systems that seek to crush you and on honouring Ai's wishes and legacy, it would be flatly thematically incoherent for Aqua to choose killing.

The issue is not with this as Aqua's end point but with the path we've taken to get here. As was the issue with Ruby during the Movie Arc, we don't actually see any of the internal work that happened in service of this arc, just the big emotional end points of offscreen development. But it stings especially bad with Aqua when such a huge chunk of the last few arcs locked us out of his head, sharply contrasting the start of the story that lived and breathed his interiority - AND when this is more or less the capstone to his series long struggle to choose love or revenge. It's not that I dislike this as an emotional payoff for Aqua's revenge - this is more or less beat for beat what I'd expected - but that it lacks proper support from the rest of the story. In general, this chapter falls flatter than it should because all this heightened, dramatic emotion rests on arcs and setup that simply have not been shown to the reader, save for Ai.

Speaking of Ai, the info in the DVD here potentially represents a pretty major break in the continuity of Aqua's behaviour based on when we're told he had access to it but I'm willing to bite my tongue and see if that gets filled in, if only because this chapter review is already so fucking long. Let's just say that I Noticed and I sure hope Aka or his editors did too.

And finally… Oh, hey there, Ruby! Aren't you an interesting little snarl to this chapter. Or maybe "snarl" isn't quite right, but her presence here is potentially interesting either way. I'm not quite sure how to read both her expression and her presence - the expression on her face looks VERY displeased and it looks to me like she's outside the room, so is she maybe eavesdropping and not happy with what she hears? Or is she in on Aqua's talk with Kamiki here and just struggling with her emotions with regards to it all? I'm quiety hoping it's the latter, because it would confirm that Ruby DID recognize her dad in 147 and Akasaka wasn't expecting me to believe he was hitting her with the stupid stick quite that hard lol.

In either case, I'm actually excited to see what Ruby takes away from this. In the ways that AQRB has echoed the HKAI dynamic, Ruby has always been in Kamiki's shoes - the one desperate to be saved, clinging to her oshi and relying on him as her sole bastion of light in the world. So what will she think now after being faced with the logical endpoint of this wished-for codependence? When she sees how destructive and self destructive it can potentially be? Just as she saw Ai reflected in herself, will Ruby see her father in her own reflection - and if so, what will she do about it?

Break next week! So we'll be sitting pretty for two weeks to find out. Not that I actually mind this time because with a chapter like this on top of season 2 of the anime coming back today, a week without a break might have actually killed me… please, akamengo, i'm just a little guy!!!!

[daistea]

i have a very unsubstantiated suspicion that mithrun was young, around 80s, when he got drafted to the canaries

1. we know pattadol is that age and that's legal age, implying that they take anyone who reaches the age of majority - possibly even younger given that pattadol is a middle child and still wondered why she was the one chosen out of the three. she never mentions her younger sister being too young or anything. but I think we can still take 80 as a ballpark estimate

2. going with 80 as an estimate, I think it's interesting that the three guards with canon ages from mithrun's generation of the draft are all so close to being the same age (mithrun, milsiril, flamela). we know elves have a pretty low birth rate and very long lifespans. what's the chance that three from the same draft happened to be the same age, unless they all reached the age requirement around the same time and got sent off? (side note: flamela wasn't drafted, she joined willingly but she seems to be from that generation since she replaced milsiril as vice captain. if her twin sister died very young and she joined as soon as she could, she probably had to wait for age eligibility as well)

3. the pre dungeon shenanigans with mithrun and milsiril? so NOT 30 year old behavior. that is high school mean girl clique bullshit. either they were young when all of that happened or they never grew up properly from the stress of getting sent away young

i don't know if i'm being subconsciously influenced by how the military works where I live, which is that mandatory service starts the year you turn 18 (or 19 depending on what type of school you go to), but in my brain they all join up fairly young

I think for Pattadol at least, it’s implied that her parents sent her instead of her older or younger sister just to get rid of her LOL

If Mithrun joined around 80, then became a dungeon lord around 140-ish, that would mean he’d have been a canary for 60 years. Time moves differently for elves so I mean 60 years in the canaries may only feel like a decade or two to him?? And even then like a decade prob isn’t a large amount of time for elves either.

I want to agree because why wouldn’t the canaries draft Mithrun right as he turned 18? Why would they wait until he was older? He didn’t join willingly. However….

Pattadol’s thing implies that it wasn’t a ‘this noble family’s child is 80 now lol!! Time For War’ but rather a ‘hey send us one of your kids, we don’t care which one’ kinda situation

The manga mentions that he had to join in his brother’s place, and most of the nobility are presented by their families as a show of loyalty. Sooo his parents were all ‘let’s send the bastard child instead lol’

But he also was sent instead because his brother was so frail. It’s a mix of those two factors i believe. Both his parents being dicks and his brother being too weak.

ANYWAY it makes sense for him to be drafted/volunteered right as he turned 80. So it’s completely possible! But it’s also hard for me to imagine him being in the canaries for so long before becoming a dungeon lord…. If he’d been a canary for that long wouldn’t he know what a demon is and the dangers of becoming a dungeon lord? Or was he just too far gone and too arrogant and too overcome with emotion to care at the time?

Idk 🤷‍♀️

Love u patty, queen of coping

[potluckofmybrain]

Hi tumblr directioners,

So idk if anyone will see this but I want to share my personal experience as a directioner in the wake of losing Liam Payne.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a die-hard fan the whole time the band was together, but I was IN IT my freshman and sophomore years of high school.

It was 2011-2013, I was a teenage girl going through some tough stuff at home. And by “some stuff” I meant my dad was dying of brain cancer, and we moved to a new state where I didn’t know anyone. My dad passed away end of summer before my freshman year. I missed the first 2 weeks of school, got unenrolled, had to re-enroll, then got put on the counselor’s list of people to keep an eye on.

Of course I was depressed and antisocial and anxiety ridden starting at a new school. I moved from VA to TX and the culture shock was real I can’t lie. Then I heard some girls in my freshman English class talking about one direction. I had heard of the band but never really gave them any attention.

I remember going home that day and memorizing all the words to the Up All Night album in my living room. I remember making lyric art with the *skinny* crayola markers, and dedicating every tumblr post to 1D so that I could make friends and not feel like such an outsider. I remember having a common interest with other girls that made us feel like a community.

Then twitter got big and the #bring1Dtome challenge happened iykyk. (It was a really big deal okay) we stayed up all night and competed in a series of challenges with other directioners across the country. Long story short #bring1DtoDallas won the contest.

The only way to get into the private album signing before the concert (a prize of the contest and one directions first American performance) was to buy an album from the Barnes and Noble store in the mall. If you were the first 150? (Idk the number) of people in line then you’d be given a free poster and a WRIST BAND to get into the concert at the then named, Dr Pepper Ballpark, along with your collectors edition album.

So, naturally me and my 3 new (and only) friends piled into my 17 yr old older sister’s hand-me-down Yukon XL and slept at the mall the night before. (Duh). We blasted Up All Night songs with other directioners until after midnight and didn’t sleep at all because we were soooo excited.

Then morning came, people started lining up at 3am, news crews were there, mall security was there it was a big thing, this was at the Stonebriar mall in Frisco Tx for any of my older fans who know what I’m talking about.

So the doors aren’t going to open until 7am, mall opens at like 6am (don’t quote me on these times I’m guesstimating). 5:30 rolls around and we take a lap to assess if we can even get a spot in line… for those of you who don’t know— stonebriar is a two floor mall and the Barnes and noble has two entrances one on each floor, it’s one of the first stores near the parking garage entrance.

5:45am-The line is wrapped around the side of the mall at the bottom level. My friends and I start to lose hope of getting these wrist bands.

5:57am- our spot in line is shit my older sister realizes we’re disappointed and she says she “didn’t sleep in the car for no reason. You’re getting those wrist bands, follow me”.

5:59am: My friends and I haul ass to the second floor entrance and my sister says “when they open the door walk in, go down the escalator, sit in line and act like you were there the whole time.” And we did.

We got our wristbands and albums. We were on the news (in the background of someone else’s interview lol) and we started the countdown for the concert.

Let me add some additional context. I was a 14 year old girl who’s dad just died, who lived with a depressed mom, an unmedicated schizophrenic oldest sister who had just had a baby (so my niece, who was born 3 days before my dad died), a bipolar 17yr old older sister who had anger issues, and two younger siblings in elementary school that i’m trying to shelter. The living environment wasn’t great to say the least, cops were called multiple times (by me). No charges were pressed.

My dad was diagnosed with stage 3 brain cancer when I was starting 8th grade, it was aggressive, treatments were expensive, our house in VA was foreclosed, my mom moved us to TX bc she had distant family there and available family grave plots, his cancer progressed and he passed away in August 2011.

We moved to TX in May 2011 at the end of my 8th grade year. Beginning of Summer before freshman year my mom moved my dad into hospice care. We would go to visit every other day and take turns feeding him and telling stories and it was heavy and sad. He passed away 2 days before school started.

One direction was the only thing I had to escape and bring any sense of joy in such a heartbreaking time. They brought me so much comfort, they brought me friends, they brought me a sense of being a normal teenage girl who’s dad didn’t have cancer, who’s sisters weren’t attacking each other, and who’s mom wasn’t threatening to 0ff herself.

So anyways, we got albums signed before the concert. it was very quick not like a meet and greet, they were all sitting in a row at a table, we walked through in a line and spoke to them all I was so excited I forgot to record on my camera, everyone was sweating bc it was 105 degrees outside, best day ever!! they were even cuter in person.

I just want to thank every Directioner who ever made me feel less alone as a struggling 14 year old. And I want to say that if you’re grieving Liam or one direction you’re not alone, I’m there with you. They were my safe space and loving them was…is a personality trait.

Anyways I stored those albums in a closet my junior year, then went through a house fire where everything got smoke damaged. We moved like 6 times that year. It was rough.

idk why I haven’t cleaned the albums but that’s what it is, and it’s a sobering reminder of the fact that I was going through so much but these boys were always there for me. I’ll clean them soon.

I’ll never be a boy-band obsessed teenager again, and I’m thankful to those boys for giving me happy memories during that time of my life.

If you read all that thank you and I love you 💓

[castlebyersafterdark]

Or waking him up with a hand already on his cock, or mouth around him.

Ok this is something ive vaguely wondered about for a long time and never known how to broach cos im sure most people will say it's Just Fantasy. i see this somno idea presented in extreme ways and more casual, like this one you mentioned. im curious about it because my initial reaction on seeing this hc was - is this based on people's real experiences, or fantasies alone, or just hcs for the boys/fictional characters? or all? because issues of consent become a bit grey here. maybe im just thinking of women's experiences and how women's discomfort can be minimized in pop culture. perhaps its different in your experience, as a gay man or in gay culture.

i kind of get icky when i see people throwing the need for constant blatant verbal consent around because post-weinstein we've lost a lot of the sexiness and complicity of non-verbal communication and consent in sex. but my brain always thinks of those cases where the guy doesnt think its even possible to rape a girl if theyre married or in a relationship. so anything goes, and yes and no blur. ofc mike and will are in a loving relationship, but what happens if one of them wakes up and feels a bit weird about it, totally not in the mood or just had a totally different sleep experience and is thrown for a loop because the other has a mouth around them? would they always be able to recover and just say no and separate (physically) and be fine? im not sure.

idk its such a tricky one. maybe with byler theyve had conversations before where they're like its always ok to wake me up with a bj lol

This is a good one and I wondered if the question would ever come up because I know it's a controversial sex act / kink! Definitely onto something with some of it being in the realm of fantasy - but it is realistic for a lot of people as well. I'll offer my own perspective under the cut at the end like I usually do when I get too embarrassingly tmi/personal haha. But it's hard to explain this particular one without a real life perspective.

The consent aspect is a big part and one that's incredibly important in real life - but I'll personally admit when it comes to fanfic or just a simple HC post, there are certain aspects of fictional sex lives I just choose to gloss over and/or leave out. Because it is a bit of a fantasy world and a lot of assumptions are made. (Do yall know how many asks I get requesting details and preferences on the intricacies of anal sex prep? Yall. Suspension of disbelief. There's so many advice and sexual health articles out there to read up on if you're so curious, it's... implied. No offense to the curious mind, I appreciate the genuine approach, but I ain't including all that in a fic hahaha. ANYWAY)

i kind of get icky when i see people throwing the need for constant blatant verbal consent around because post-weinstein we've lost a lot of the sexiness and complicity of non-verbal communication and consent in sex.

I know exactly what you mean. And I don't know what goes on in most people's real sex lives, but in fanfic world, there can sometimes be a sort of "over-correction" when it comes to the way dialogue and consent is written. You just... gotta make it sound natural. So much reads like a sex ed pamphlet. There's a way to add consent and communication into the flow rather than a pause to deliver a PSA. Easier said that done, I know. It's important, but we don't have to treat what is fantasy and playing around with creativity as a manual for education every time. Real life... isn't A,B,C dialogue choices. Hard to explain, you know??? This isn't covering all the extreme kink explorations and all - which I don't really write so I'm not diving into that. There's an entirely different world out there regarding bdsm but it's not my world so I have little to offer in terms of conversation. As well as the cnc kink which is a whole other ballpark. Valid, but not the topic I'm including with this. This is more of a "light" version.

Gosh. Ok. Here is personal insight which kind of informs how I approach the topic of something like consent and especially a somno style sex act in realistic practice:

It definitely is very personality based - communication, trust, sex drive, what both partners are into. Goes along with the idea of "natural flow of conversation and sex" and really knowing your partner. So. We both know we're very comfortable with each other's bodies and in a well established relationship - we know each other's moods. This isn't something that's happening every day! Or even every week! An occasional indulgence. It's intimate, sharing a bed with someone long term. If you or your partner goes to bed exhausted or a bit upset or off-kilter from the day, feeling sick or just in an odd mood - obviously life just goes about normally. There are times though, when let's say... the night ended after a lot of sex, just a really intimate time and drifting off to sleep from a really passionate session and you know. Continuing in the next morning isn't hmm. Out of the ordinary. The vibes linger from falling asleep into waking again. It's hard to describe - sometimes blatantly spoken in the heat of passion when it's so good and you're still feeling greedy even before it's over ("I'd love to wake up to you fucking me") or something crazy. Or, you just know you'd both go another round before bed if you weren't so tired, so you pass out but whoever wakes up first may just get a head start and continue.

It's... a lot of just knowing your partner. Feeling comfortable to know if you wake up and oh, that's happening and you're not into it? You can just say "babe, I kinda want to just go back to sleep" and you know they'll ease off and let you be. Or, you wake up to a nice surprise and it's a shock at first, but you then relax and let it happen, or vice versa doing something to them. More often it's one of those instances more where you both wake up, very in the stirring strings of half awake, half asleep, and one partner is a little more awake and has the idea. And the half asleep one is like, oh? Sure! I'm just gonna drift though, you have fun. Go to town. It can be like that, too. This all feels very normal and within the flow of an established couple with a pretty active sex life. Just in my opinion.

I've read a lot of sex forums and kink forums because I'm curious about a lot of things! And sex is interesting to me beyond just titillation (using that one for another anon who adores the word haha), sometimes it's just fascinating research. I've read a lot of instances specifically with women, some are actually really into the practice and find it really hot to wake up to their partner either going down on them or starting to fuck them, when they're still sleeping. After conversations about it - there's the consent talk. Now, proceed. They'll wear a specific hair tie or bracelet when they go to sleep, signalling that they're looking for this sex act to happen if so desired. That's the communication, that's the greenlight. No bracelet - no touchy. I don't really practice anything like that because it's not like this is something we do often. It's an offhand comment, it's reading the vibe, it's the half asleep fumblings on a morning lie-in when one partner wakes up with the urge. So, all in all - there are different forms of communications rather than just sitting down the edge of the bed and turning to each other and blatantly spelling out every detail and shaking hands at the end before engaging with the session.

I know there are relationships that are very how do I say it - lifestyle kinksters? Where the master/sub (I don't like the other S word to be honest) have an agreement for whatever period of time is decided upon - where there's a "free use" understanding. They've consented to the initiation of sex whenever. Often including while asleep or half-asleep. But that's also an agreed upon form of consent where it's not long form discussed previous to each encounter. That's lifestyle kink, though. Not most people. Realistically, it's more... trust and understanding of who you're sharing your bed with. Are they into it? Can you tell when they won't be? There's no real rule book.

So when it comes it fiction - I think the idea is kind of implied it's a bit like what I've personally described? Even if not really detailed in the written prose. Not that consent isn't interesting or important - but at least my writing and the writing I like to read - I'm not looking for hyper-realism or education. And there's also great worth in reading/writing some stuff that's more controversial or not perfected romance - I just don't really dive into that myself. I'm very sappy romance and idealistic, to be honest. Just what I'm good at and prefer. ☺️😘

[3416]

All of your Mitch rants and raves are spot on, and it's very comforting to see another person who is just SO tired of all these narratives. Please indulge my two-cents for a moment:

Mitch has said he wants to stay in Toronto. The deal for him to waive his NMC at this point would have to be like...the best deal in all NHL history. He isn't some single, 19-year-old kid anymore who is just starting out; he's firmly established in his career in Toronto, and has his entire family/wife/friends there.

While I do think his next contract ask will be in the ballpark of what Auston and Willy are making (as it should be, he's worth the same amount, imo), I also don't think Mitch is super unreasonable. If the Leafs came back to him and said "we really want you to stay, but we can only give you $10m, I really feel like Mitch would take it, as long as it's a decent length and all the details are reasonable, etc.

All the discourse about his last contract was very much his father's influence, which he won't be dealing with this time around. He was also dealing with Babcock as a coach, so of course he wanted to get his money's worth!

I don't think he would settle for a super lowball offer if he knew he could make substantially more on another team, but he's also not a diva who won't get out of bed for less than $10000 a day, y'know?

Sorry for ranting in your inbox, lol.

no, i'm happy to have people to talk with about it!! feels like no matter how much i say, i never get tired bc i'm just soooo tired of the fanbase's narratives getting in the way of actual facts and of fans inability to sort through what media personalities are pitching as an OPTION and what's like. actually happening behind the scenes right at this moment. like no legitimate insiders are giving actual information, and if anything, i think this go around might be more tight lipped BECAUSE of what happened last time. auston and willy extensions were kept pretty under wraps tbh, the leafs know discretion.

i mean. i'm gonna be real, but 10 million would be lowballing him and he SHOULD get between willy and auston and that's not even a real problem imo. if 2 million makes or breaks a team with the cap space free from the jt deal, they're being very unserious and brad's bad at his job. they're the ones who set the precedent this time around with willy by giving into everything. it's legit not my job or any of our jobs to cap manage despite how much we all love to pretend we could build a perfect team, but he's probably not going to take a considerable discount and i don't see why people think he should, lol. HE'S had career years too over the course of this last contract, ones that surpassed someone who is now getting paid more than him. i'm obviously not mitch, so idk what he'd do in that scenario, but i can say it's HIGHLY unlikely he's taking any pay cut in his prime (literally no hockey players do). i really don't think he should be expected to despite this insane fanbase's reaction to his salary and i'm sure the leafs aren't going to approach him like that tbh. it'd be weird business. they might try to get him for a willy number which would honestly be a discount for him, so lol. i think it's less to do with being a diva and more knowing how much you're worth and your comparables in the league (and on your team) and the team you're with knowing what's fair. and that's why i think people are wrong about the leafs mindset in general. i don't think they WANT to get rid of him, lol. i think they're going to look at the market (as they do every year and have done every year since the core was assembled bc it's their JOB to do that) and see what's there, but the options are even more limited now with the nmc. i don't see it a given that the team will be like. oop we can't afford you now. i think they'll pay him and he'll get a raise, lol.

my best guess is EITHER mitch signs a longterm deal with full nmc at 12-12.5 OR he takes slightly closer to willy's deal for a shorter term to try to maximize his earnings and match what auston's doing in that way. i don't know his mindset about it all and wanting security in toronto over all or wanting to maximize the money, but we will SEE. i just hope everything is more lowkey this time around for my own sanity 😭😭😭😭 bc it's already out of control WITHOUT the team and mitch even talking yet.

[winemom-culture]

Two Tuesdays ago I went to my boss’s office and asked to talk about pay again, since it’s been more than the 30 days she initially gave me to ease into my new role. She said sure, put a meeting on her calendar for the following Tuesday and we’d talk. I thought that was kinda bizarre but I heard her on a call after I left the office that day and figured she just had another meeting.

So I scheduled the meeting, and last week went in there at our time again and the whole thing was literally all of five minutes. I asked her for something that I knew was unrealistically high, hoping to settle at something more reasonable in the middle as I’ve heard one should in these convos. With my crazy request I did also let her know I’d be willing to take on more work, more stores- whatever they needed. My workload has been pretty manageable. She said she didn’t have stores to give me right away, but she might be able to tag me into special projects of hers for some struggling stores. In terms of pay, said she thinks she could get me there but not right off the bat, that she wouldn’t want to put me on the “high end of the pay scale” right away bc then there’s no room for growth. Fine, that’s expected. But then she said she would email me a new formal written offer with something in the middle after looking into where I am right now. Didn’t ballpark a figure face to face, or tell me when exactly to expect that.

I went through the rest of last week and didn’t hear anything. Which I kinnnnda figured, but I hoped would be different. We have a huge campaign going on rn so she’s busy, plus there are a lot of levels above her in terms of the CFO and HR she has to go through. My parents have told me to calm down and that she’s probably just gotta get approval from her boss before she offers me anything. Which is in line with what she said that day.

But idk, the sale ends in two days and if I go through another week without hearing, or getting a “still working on it” nudge at the very least, I literally don’t know what to do at this point. Like groveling on my knees three times for what I’m pretty certain will be a <$3k raise almost feels worse than going without lol.

I hate how much it’s making me start to think about looking around. I love this job otherwise, it gives me a lot of flexibility and I’m trying to keep that perspective, like I am definitely making a decent wage for the amount of work I do and free time I honestly get on the clock. I want to be stable here, and I didn’t want to go job shopping again until I can just say “I’m done with a degree, and have 2 years of experience.” But I’m just worried I’m getting the runaround.

[yannysif]

hello hello, it’s me again! (this is cherookue’s main lol) and i had a question!!

what are your boundaries for asks? such as, are we allowed to discuss nsfw topics, interact with the characters directly, etc? or would you prefer if asks only discussed the game and lore?

Hello Eden! (is it ok if I call you that) Thank you for your interest in the game, it means a lot!

Hmm my boundaries for asks... that's a tough one for me to articulate since all of this is very new to me - I can't say what I might not be uncomfortable with/good at until I give it a shot at least, so right now I'd say I'd welcome pretty much any kind of ask!

To go a bit more in detail, at the moment I would probably prefer asks about characters rather than for them in-character; I think I need to take more time to be more in-tune with them before I can try it myself - it looks fun when others do it! And naturally, asks about game and lore are more than welcome.

As for nsfw... full disclosure, I'm an ace creator and I'm personally not sure if I can do that aspect justice just yet asdfhgjkl. I'm fine working with suggestive content, but full-on nsfw is a different ballpark.

That's not to say I avoid it completely; I know plenty of ace creators who make amazing nsfw content, but I've always mostly looked into it for it's intimacy aspect, rather than the act itself, if you get my point? So, I haven't personally dabbled into that part yet, and I figured it's time to do some actual research on this end of things 😭

Honestly the 18+ tag is mainly for the suggestive and horror aspects, and to keep it open for the possibility I might add nsfw to it, since it's generally very popular in the yan community? But again, atm I have no clue if I'd be any good at it haha... as a hint, I guess I could say I like those fics where the authors write nsfw like it's poetry? Not exactly so but, it really brings out the kind of intimacy I enjoy, and there's a good chance when I try to write something, it will probably try to emulate that feeling as well.

In terms of asks, I could probably answer some general stuff, but nothing too explicit just yet? But at the same time, anyone is free to send in the asks anyways, I could probably set it aside as points for research regardless!

If anything makes me truly uncomfortable I'll make sure to tell you all, but I generally have a good...tolerance? For such things (idk what's the word to use here lol)

Sorry for rambling on, thank you for the ask!

[graysongraysoff]

uh anyway.

in like the last couple weeks or so we found out that my step-mom has like pretty late-stage cancer and her health has been declining rapidly ever since.

which is so stupid because i’m like who the fuck are her doctors. how the fuck did we not catch this until she was literally having trouble with motor skills and speaking. she literally works for a medical care consortium like it’s not like she’s been skipping checkups and shit.

my dad’s been with her for like?? roughly ten years?? maybe a year or two less than that??? i don’t know exactly but somewhere in that ballpark. and they only just got married two years ago. and they make each other so happy.

and i’m just like. furious, tbh. like this is so fucking stupid. it’s so fucking stupid. there is no reason for shit like this to be happening in the year of our lord 2023. it’s stupid and pointless and tragic.

and it’s also easter right which comes with its own Baggage because every year my mom tries to guilt me into coming home because “it’s the most important holiday in the catholic faith” and every year i weasel my way out of it because i fucking hate easter and always have it’s my least favorite holiday but this year i feel so shitty about it like way shittier than i usually do because like.

idk i should have just gone home.

i should have gone home to appease my mom and to see my sisters and i should have gone home so i can see my dad and my step-mom and like be with them while all of this bullshit is happening. like i feel like such a douchebag for just sitting here with nothing to do when it’s a beautiful day outside and my mom is alone on a holiday that’s so important to her because my sisters are being with my dad and my step-mom and i’m just. out here doing nothing.

god and then there’s the added layer of like. my mom lost both of her parents to cancer, right? my nana died when i was 14 and my papa died when i was in college. and among the many things she resents my dad for (some of which is justified, some of which is not, all of which is very human) one of them is that he still has both of his parents. another is that when he remarried he like “changed” for my step-mom in ways that he wouldn’t for my mom, and they have this like seemingly perfect little relationship while my mom can’t seem to stop getting entangled with stalkers and narcissists who ruin her life. so it’s like. she tells me and my sisters that she doesn’t want us to feel like we can’t talk to her about what’s going on with my step-mom, but fucking obviously i’m not going to do that, holy shit. like i don’t honestly know how my mom feels about it and i don’t fucking want to know, because all it will do is make everything more complicated than it already fucking is.

she gets so fucking jealous whenever we do anything with my dad and not with her. she says she doesn’t but she demonstrably does. and even though like. i’m sure most of her would understand if i went home just to see my dad and my step-mom while all of this is going on (clearly she understood why my sisters spent easter with them and not with her) but i also know there would be a part of her that was bitter and resentful and i know there’s nothing i can do about that and i can’t sit here and be worried about what other people may or may not feel because i have no control over that and i can’t make it my problem but that’s so much easier said than done when it’s your fucking catholic martyr of a mother.

and also i just started my period so all of this is like. dialed up to 11 right now, lol.

so anyway yeah uh that’s where i’m at right now lmao in case you were curious. thanks for reading this if you did btw i just. really wanted someone other than my family to like. know what was going on. idk. you know how it is.

anyway time to go back to blogging about anime like nothing happened.

[golbrocklovely]

oh yeah, btw i got my merch from snc's new launch.

i only got a tshirt bc…. those prices were surprisingly high and also bc i didn't really like most of the designs if i'm honest. i didn't hate any, but some were definitely better than others lol

now, to answer the main question: is it better than fanjoy? i'm gonna go with a soft "i guess" as my answer.

first off, the sizing is true to size, if not maybe a smidge bigger. i got a 3x just in case a 2x, which is my size, wouldn't fit. and it's big on me. but not huge. it's a bit tight in the arms tho, which honestly no one really gets right so i'm not gonna fault them too much for that. the sleeves go down to elbows tho, and i don't like that. it's definitely like a mens/unisex fit, which i'm fine with for the most part. also, not at all tight in the chest region, and i'm a D cup so that's pretty good.

it's also extremely soft. like surprisingly soft.

slight downsides: it's a really light shirt. like i can almost see thru it. and it's a black shirt so…. idk how i feel about that. on me, you can't see thru it. but it's a thin shirt. as someone that runs hot 90% of the time, this will be a great shirt to wear all year round bc i'm literally always sweating.

quality wise - i would say it is similar to fanjoy in a way. i don't think i've ever gotten a shirt from fanjoy that was this soft tho. but quality, they're kinda in the same ballpark.

but the thing with fanjoy was that their quality was hit or miss. sometimes i would get the heaviest and nicest shirts from them. like i can name two that i own, one of colby's and one of kevin's, that are really good. but they are the outliers in the rest of the fanjoy merch that i own. i mean i've gotten shirts from them that barely fit me even tho they are my size. also, they rarely ever had anything above a 2x, so snc are already beating them by having 3x as an option.

comparing this new merch to the shittiest of fanjoy merch, it's definitely significantly better.

i think we will have to see how snc's merch holds up. if it lasts longer and stays this quality, it will be better in the long run comaparatively to fanjoy. obviously, i don't know about snc's sweatshirts/pants/beanies since i didn't get those, but i have hope that this merch will be nicer than fanjoy's.

i mean, the designs are already better. the prices aren't, but based on the pop-up i got when i went on the sight after the launch, they might plan to do sales and whatnot. so, it might be best to wait until then to get merch if the price is a bit much for you.

the shirt itself was $32, and shipping was $12.95. it came in 12 days from before the initial launch. but they didn't start shipping anything until the day or launch, give or take, so it actually came in about a week (based on my emails).

if you got the new merch, let me know ! i'd love to hear what you got and what you think about it :)

(btw i got the dare xplr tshirt, forgot to mention that lol)

TLDR: the new merch is slightly better than fanjoy's. positives: fits true to size if not bigger, the designs are better, really soft. negatives: arms are a bit tight, price, shirt is thin. but i have faith that their merch line, in the long run, will be better overall.

[narastories]

Ghost Story thoughts

“Butters cleared his throat. “We could ask—” “No,” Murphy and I said at the same time, and continued speaking over each other. “The day I ask for that bastard’s help will be the day I—” “—told you before, over and over, that just because he’s reasonable doesn’t mean he’s—” “—a murderer and a drug dealer and a pimp, and just because Chicago’s corrupt government can’t put him away doesn’t mean—” “—you were smarter than that,” Murphy finished. Butters lifted his hands mildly. “Okay, okay. I was on board at no. No going to Marcone for help.” He paused and looked around the room as if he’d never seen it before. “Because that would be . . . unprecedented.”

Okay first of all this is the funniest scene in the book so far and I’ve laughed out loud listening to this. Pure comedy. *chef’s kiss*

But second: can someone please explain to me why we (by that I mean Harry) are still hung up on the “Marcone is The Worst TM” stance? I mean sure he is guilty of all listed accusations, but... he’s what I would call a “season 1 villain”. He’s a Peter Hale. He’s a Lea. At book 13 Harry should really get over himself lol After what kind of people he did go for help and worked together with. Surely Marcone isn’t even in the same ballpark of unpleasantness as Lara or Mab or idk a dozen other players. And I’m with Butters on this one it’s not like it would be unprecedented even.

Anyway, I think it’s funny how allergic Harry is to the guy.

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Oh god so, since ive been watching and reading black butler a lot again Ive obviously also been thinking a lot abt it and it made me unlock this memory qnd have this kinda harrowing realization

For context, I was pretty active on Wattpad at the time, specifically the german side, specifically the german minecraft youtuber side, although I was slowly getting into fully fictional ships at that point as well. One day, one of the people I followed made this "book" or whatever that was like, a roleplay ? Idk the way it worked was that you would 'apply' by just making your character under the comments of one chapter and then go to the comment section of the next chapter where the creator had a comment that was like "RP starts here" and then you replied to that and thats where the rp took place. There wasnt really any direction to this whole thing lmao it was called like "Wattpadtown" or smth and the "premise" was literally just "a bunch of people who got some weird bullshit goin on hanging out in this wacky town" and the entire roleplay was basicalld just one extended shitpost, I really wish I could find it and read through some of it because it was WILD

We ended up being like 8 "main" people in this roleplay (rip to all the other people who applied lmao there were a lot surprisingly enough) and I actually became somewhat close friends w/ the person who started it although we never took it out of the wattpad comments section, at me most we would pm eachother so we've unfortunately lost contact lol. One thing to note about all 8 of us was that we were all pretty big billdip shippers. This is important bc the reason I got into Black Butler because of billdip basically lmao

Like, idk if these were that popular in other fandoms, but there were a lot of these Ask or Dare book for Billdip were you would ask your favorite characters/ships questions or tell them dares or whatever and then someone would write the weirdest most poorly written bullshit around it and its really funny I hope they still make those. But yknow, just having two guys interact in your ask or dare book is kinda boring so you'd get a lot of crossovers with other pairings, popular ones were like Willdip, Mawill, Tomco I remember a german one that had the bluehaired guy x the redhaired guy from Assassination Classroom that was fun. And obviously they would do Sebaciel, like, those two ships are soooooooo in the same ballpark its insane. Anyway, so Im reading this one ask or dare book, mostly for the billdip stuff but Sebastian n Ciel are also there and in one of the chapters they get this dare: "everyone, watch the corset scene from the anime" I remember this very vividly. These ask or dare books could get very meta btw. So they do that ig, and we get their reactions idk how Bill n Dipper reacted but Ciel is all flustered and Sebastian is all flirty or whatever bc the characterization in these books is the bane of my existence. Whatever, the important part is, Im kind of intrigued now bc I was coming out of that in that phase where anything gay seemed like, Scandalous and Exciting(tm) because I was starting to get used to it by that point bc I read a lot of gay fanfic HOWEVER media that had like, canon gay shit in it still seemed Scandolous and Exciting(tm) because yknow, i didnt know a lot of that and its also just different consuming fan content vs Actual Media(tm) yknow. So I watched it and I enjoyed it and I got to The Corset Scene and.. I was not disappointed thats for sure

So thats my story, lets get back to the roleplay stuff. Me and those 8 people would often talk (still in the wattpad comment section) about like, other stuff and one evening the creator wrote like "Heyy can anyone recommend an anime to me, I just binged attack on titan again but now Im sad again because my fave Marco died and like, yeah I have this theory that hes still alive as a titan but still :'( need something to cheer me up" idk why I remember this so vividly now because Ive only watched a single episode of aot so this is borderline incomprehensible to me to this day but whatever. I know she liked billdip and since I liked billdip and then I watched black butler and really liked it I jumped on the chance to tell her to watch it. ALSO I knew that she looooved pretty anime guys and Sebastian is a very pretty and very anime guy so I knew she would adore it. So then she tells me that shes gonna go find and watch it and Im like "YESSSSSSS pls tell me what you think"

Less than 10 minutes later she writes me back like "okayyyyy Im loving it so far (and Sebastian is reaaaallly cute xD) I just have one question tho: why do they have british accents" and I didnt really think anything of it I was just kinda like "Yeah it takes place in 19th century england ig" but I just came to a weirdly upsetting realization; she was definitely not watching it in japanese but also, they dont do accents in the german dub which means......... Ciel and Sebastian have british accents in the english dub.

[kittlesandbugs]

Au where Ortega sees the taboos in the Sidestep days

I'm ballparking that taboo was auto corrected from tattoos lol.

Obviously this needs to happen post-eavesdropping on the re-genes are terrifying convo for maximum angst.

I imagine it would happen with Riley getting injured or suit breached somehow, maybe getting knocked unconscious.

Hopefully someone has half a brain and gets her covered up/hidden somewhere safe until she wakes up and then there's the is this why you've been cagey lately? (the convo was recent, they remember), why didn't you say anything sooner? Is this why you're so terrified of the media and won't go to hospitals? HAVE YOU BEEN TREATING YOUR INJURIES???

Lots of crying and apologies on both ends, more understanding/sympathy from Chen, lots of we gotta keep this off any reports, hopefully no one else saw it.

MAYBE SOME IDIOTS WILL ADMIT FEELINGS FINALLY NOW THAT SHIT'S IN THE OPEN AND SHE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE AFRAID OF BEING EXPOSED TO RIC ANYMORE. Maybe there's eventually some sweet sweet body worship sex and he sees all her self-treated scars and extent of her tattoos because I'm a sucker for that and he loves her no matter that she's a re-gene.

Maybe Chen and Ricardo don't accept that she was dead after HB but I can't see that ending well at all, this may end up turning tragic fast... But maybe they keep better eyes on her going up the stairs. Things like this can change perspectives and priorities. Idk lol.

[mejomonster]

The dreamer in the spring boudoir. Ok so I looked up the upcoming drama adaptation.

Based on writing exerpts I've seen alone I quite enjoy the writing style and tone and Weight and the drama does Not look that way. For just simple starters it looks like cheaper usual costume drama rather than say Marvelous Women (that gives me a realism feel) or Song of Youth (which I haven't seen but gives sort of a grounded visual vibe) or Secret of The Three Kingdoms (which feels like it's going for stylish while also aiming to get the audience to sink into the realism vibe). Costumes alone it looks more like Jun Jiu Ling, or Twisted Fate of Love (which almost felt comedy). Which like... OK costume wise this show is aesthetically not matching the vibe I'm reading at all ToT (wheress a Song of Youth, Goodbye My Princess, Secret of the Three Kingdoms, or Marvelous Women type more serious costume design would idk click for me better?)

But also like. For what it's worth, nice lead cast decisions? Not in the sense they look anything like I picture because they sure Do Not lol

But because I would LOVE to SEE peng xiao ran play a Ji Man type character. I love protagonists like ji man, I love women who prioritize themselves and may even seem selfish in such a cutthroat story, and it's SUCH a different role than I'm used to seeing her in. I usually see her play the naive innocent romantically inclined heart eyes good girl. Ji Man would be a huge departure from her usual character type, and I know she Can act, so it would be cool to see if she could do justice to such a character (that is assuming the script does not entirely butcher the story/change the characterizations drastically). I'd love to see peng xiao ran play a cold woman who could care less for the lead, who's happy to support the other wives getting attention so she gets a break, who's trying to support herself and figure out how to survive and get home. EVEN if the script tried to make ji Man more "sweet helpful to others" and change character traits, we might still be looking at a type like the protagonist in Jade Palace Lock Heart which i could live with.

Ding Yuxi is the other lead. Big mixed opinion cause he also looks NOTHING like I pictured. But... he had some acting potential At Least in Romance of Tiger and Rose, so he has potential to do well with a character (depending on if he works well with the other actors/gives it his all). And his acting potential for shitty trash man he was basically Spoofing in Romance of Tiger and Rose. So not surprised he got cast for that Type. (The prince in Goodbye My Princess was kind of that type though I'd argue interpersonally much nicer... maybe thats why peng xiao ran was cast? People like her dynamic with Trash Men and figured she could sell that story to an audience? She's not who I'd pick but it is what it is). Now I'm just picturing Mickey He as Trash Man... oh...

Comparing it too suckier-but-similar-to jade palace lock heart potentially sounds kind of apt tbh. The costumes in jade palace lock heart were definitely aiming more for realistic vibes rather than general costume drama vibes. And if the characters get "made nicer/kinder" I think a best case scenario is they end up similar to jade palace lock heart types... worse cases just being "story becomes uneatchable."

Anyway ding yuxi showed some acting skill potential pretty decently in Romance of Tiger and Rose, and has dabbled in this type of character role before, so assuming his acting has improved it could be interesting to watch. Worst case he does a shallow job but at least in the ballpark (huang youming could do the role of Trash Man... so could Mickey He but hes cast in older roles now... so could Zhu Zixiao... oh my god Liu Xueyi could do Phenomenal I'd eat up him doing such a Fucked Up role he plays people you want to kill so phenomenally and he's still hot enough you Want to watch his scenes even tho you hate his characters guts.... not that I know who would Look most like Trash Man's character)

Meanwhile I was picturing like... idk a more plain actress/less usually typecast as innocent sweetheart actress as ji man. But again, IF peng xiao ran could do this kind of character I'd be really impressed as its diffetent for her, and it would be fun to see her do it if she does it well.

[kindahoping4forever]

Idk why but I’ve been thinking about the cup ashton is holding and your tags about it and this is just my opinion but I think it’s a smol version of his drink cause like…idk it’s so squat and I’m picturing it in my hands and it would be small but not as small looking as it is I’m his hand but…why am I fixated on this? He looks so damn good like how??? And for what??? His legs? His bicep?? SO MUCH TO UNPACK

ALSO. His tattoo on his upper arm at first I thought it was a woman surrounded by suns (now they look like stones?) but now it likes like a version of ashton with an eye at the center of his head and sun rays behind him??? I. Need. To. Know. Okay I think I’m done but probably not because he came in swinging. Love you have a good day😌💕

Yeah I agree it's definitely a smaller cup but still it fits in his entire hand like 👁️👄👁️

I think we're never gonna know for sure what the tatt is unless he decides to finally talk about it sometime 😅 I feel like you're definitely in the right ballpark though: I think we all can agree it's a person (lol), the visible third eye makes a lot of sense and I've seen many suggest the person is surrounded by either (or a combo of) auras, chakras and/or planets.

[ccsthemovie2]

(I think it's a word over 500, but:)

"Speaking of Tsukishiro, how's he doing?", Eriol asks. Frying pan to fire to volcano.

"He's good," Touya says quickly, before Sakura can say anything. Yukito is not even in the ballpark of "good". Yesterday he called Touya and begged him to bike over and said it was important and when Touya showed up he was asleep, and stayed fast asleep right through to the next morning. He keeps trying to make appointments with doctors, and then falling asleep before he can call, or, when Touya calls for him, before he can make it out the door. Privately, Touya isn't sure how much good a doctor can do for him, but anything has to be better than this, right?

"Really? I'm glad to hear it." Ugh, how much has Sakura told him. Not that she doesn't have a right to talk to her friends, but, come on, would it kill her to least keep it between her and Tomoyo and the funny looking cat.

He's good, that's an obvious lie. Ruby has said Yukito could barely stand upright at school. Every inch of Touya Kinomoto is packed full of magic. Sooner or later, Eriol figures, either Sakura will be powerful enough to sustain him, or Yue will have to get over himself and just eat already. Touya can't actually do anything with his magic, so it's not like Yue, even weak as he is, will have to face much of a struggle to take it. (Aside from competition with Ruby, of course. There's something to that, right, articles and studies about animals being healthier if they need a bit of careful planning to get their food? Yes, so this works out nicely.)

Or maybe- oh, that's probably it. Yue's on to him, isn't he? He's just being stubborn as usual, figuring sooner or later Clow will appear via Eriol and save him. He can imagine how surprised, overjoyed, grateful Yue would be, if Eriol showed up and saved his life. He can imagine Yue's head resting on his neck as clearly as if he had kept Yue well-fed with magic a thousand times in his lifetime. It would be nice, in the short run, but it wouldn't be right, no. Clow is dead, and Yue needs to learn to live with that. If he knows what's good for him, he will take responsibility for his own life, and if he doesn't...

Ahh, well, maybe it's Clow's old sentimentality, maybe Eriol is just warming up to Sakura's moon guardian all on his own, but he can't bring himself around to the idea of letting Yue just die. He'd save him, if it came down to it. But, he tells himself sternly, only as an absolute last resort. He's just worrying because he misses Yue and wants to get to know him better all at once in that past-and-future way- it's worth a visit, soon. Yes, a nice little visit, and Yue will never even have to know it happened. Just to check in.

(sorry the formatting got weird when i copypasted lol!)

hiiii thanks for the ask!!!

if we talk about this convo we need to back up and talk about how it got here. this should give you some idea of how badly this needs to be under a cut for length lol.

so it all starts with the bit about how someone falling and being caught is something that happens a lot in ccs. how with eriol, it's purposeful, and with fujitaka (and i misremembered it but since found out she fell *on* him and not *caught* by him, which lolol i hope he broke a bone, but also its fine the fic's already marked canon divergent, or maybe the story gets misremembered, whatever, in any case), it's an echo of clowriol's intentional artificial-trustbuild-dangersaves but without the magic or purpose to back it up (just like fujitaka himself!), but it's a situation he quickly makes favorable to him, because it may be a blank slate but it's made of the same material.

this whole convo was part of one of the very first chunks written, but everything was going to go in a very different direction at first. (there's a lot of Cut Content from this fic, some that i just didn't like, some that wasn't connectable with the rest of the fic after it took the shape it took but might pop up somewhere else one day idk). in this particular bit i cut the later half of the conversation because i really didn't like what i'd written, but then even though the direction of the story changed the conversation was still going so it had to bounce somewhere else, so it bounced to yukito. here we are answering your ask 2 paragraphs in!

yukito, iirc in the anime, did catch her from a fall, (in the manga, which made way more sense for why she had to change her clothes and rest so much, he saved her from drowning, again iirc because who can trust a memory) and at a point where eriol still has some investment in making yuekito/sakura (ewwwww) happen, he's going to try and draw on that symbolism to nudge her in that direction, right?

so all this said, SPEAKING of yuekito. how are they doing.

bad, obviously. touya's freaking out. i imagine that part of what's stopping yukito from seeing a doctor is yue, though- he knows it wont help, and i dont think yukito has, like, person insides that will stand up to medical tests, and yue would pick up on yukito like, not wanting to be outed to the doctor as a magic construct because he, like, doesnt actually have a real heart that pulses, just a repeating heartbeat sound. doesn't for real have blood etc to test, just records of blood type (for personality reasons).

and also touya's a very like keep-ur-problems-not-everybodys-business type so hes like imagining sakura venting her fears to this weirdo and getting pissed off. but that didnt actually happen, eriol knew all on his own lolol. touya you have to say something nice should happen to sakura to make up for wrongly suspecting her now

and this bit on eriol's end is all wrong information and inaccurate conclusions and i was really worried ppl would take it at face value but i hope nobody did. in ccs we get moments where eriol wants sakura to take power, or to learn that power can be taken- his final battle with her, for example, where the answer to his light and dark puzzle is to use kero and yue's power, except that's not something she would ever Want to do or would even Occur to her to try. the power is gifted to her by kero and yue (and syaoran!) because they love her.

same concept, here- the answer to the 'yue is dying' puzzle is to eat touya's power, and he can't imagine the real reason why he won't just do that, and when he thinks about it too long it goes right to his ego- yue looovvvvesss clow, and by extension me. he wants meeeeeee to save him. he wants to neck kissy MY magic soo sooooo bad. but yue isn't considering any of that at all. he's thinking about yukito and what touya means to yukito and why that would make yukito hesitate to reach out, and that no way in hell will he just ambush his other self's crush down a dark alley and take his magic, even to save both their lives. he's a lot more selfless than clow and eriol ever realize. maybe- this is just a half formed thought right now, i dont know if im like certain about it, but- maybe they feel his devotion to clow was a form of selfishness, that he Wanted Love as a thing he could hold and own, whereas pretty much everybody else who meets him goes like YOU SELFLESS MAN YOU CANT JUST DIE FOR PPL YOU CARE ABOUT YOU GOTTA TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF TOOOO

and there’s also that bit of teacherliness intrinsic to the three of them again: im doing this to teach him a lesson. im letting ruby do her thing without telling her what’s going on to help and encourage yue, etc.

anyway, that (in terms of fic weaving itself into canon) solidifies his decision to do uhmmmm a thing that creeps me out real bad in the anime (knocking yue out to have a moment with him, and oh, ding, there's another 'you fell but i caught you' moment!). eriol loves this manner of hanging out with people, you see it later in this fic, even:

It's important to say what's in your heart to the people you want to say it to, even if you have to make sure the other person never hears it. It's important for your own emotional freedom.

he loves to spend time with people exclusively on his terms, to the point where the other party never even knew he was there, because he knocked them out, or because he was just staring creepily at the outside of sakura's house while she did homework, etc etc etc.

tldr: it's all connected, aaaaaaaaa