#idk what would happen in the main plot lol

[jegulily-stuff]

Throwing my hat into the ring for a Stardust Au (Jegulily obviously):

I like Lily as Tristan but I have an idea for Lily in Victoria's position.

So she's a scientist, she studies physics and astrophysics and the rest of their small town doesnt take her particularly seriously. James wants to marry her but she's worried about losing her independence and letting society win, so she wont agree or admit to him or even herself that she likes him.

She sees 'a star fall' but she doesn't think thats how stars work and when James next professes he'd do anything to prove his love to her she sends him on a false quest to fetch it so she can have some time to work without getting distracted by him him annoying her.

A fortnight later he meets her at the wall with a cute boy who knows an awful lot about astronomy. James asks if she'd like to move to the other side of the wall and join his polycule (+magical kingdom apparently). She's like fine i guess you win, but im bringing my whole laboratory.

[hanzajesthanza]

pro tip: give into working on that fic you wanted to work on again, because nearly as soon as you start outlining it, you will run into such plot conundrums that you can't solve, that you will want to drop it just as quick as you picked it up, and will go back to being productive and doing actual work

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I'm kind of sad that we didn't get the Buffy the Vampire Slayer leprechaun episode that the writers almost accidentally wrote. (Like, I guess Joss Whedon one time joked about wanting a leprechaun episode and the writers legit thought he was serious about it. And they were working on it, researching leprechaun myths and everything, and then he had to tell them that he'd been kidding.)

The closest thing we get to leprechaun in the Buffyverse is probably in the tie-in book (that's actually a "choose your own adventure book") "Colony." Where there seems to be something similar to a leprechaun, that Buffy keeps calling a leprechaun/comparing to a leprechaun. But it's not a leprechaun, because I guess leprechauns don't exist in the Buffyverse (part of me wonders if that was an inside joke about that aforementioned thing, but I have no idea. Probably not?) At least according to this tie-in novel.

[bicth-and-in-that-order]

Rambling thoughts of various Yuri manga I’ve read

1. Kase-San and Yamada (Morning Glories sequel series) by Hiromi Takashima

notice how Kase’s name is first, which is representative of her being the main one to cause problems in their relationship

If you asked me what my favorite yuri manga was like 2-3 years ago, I’d say Morning Glories and Kase San everytime. Every avid yuri fan has either read or watched Morning Glories because, at the time in 2010, it was groundbreaking, and I stand by the fact that the original series still holds up to this day. It was cute, sweet, wholesome and only had a few obligatory “we love each other but we’re giRLs😳😳😳” moments. Most of all it wasn’t a pseudo-incest-straight-male-porn-pandering-garbage-fest—also known as “Citrus”. Was it cliche at times? Yes, but they all are lol. Did they add to the dumb ass “blonde femme and dark hair masc” trope? Also yes. But it was adorable and it was my first ever yuri so it holds a special place in my heart.

And it SEEMED like it was only going to get better in Kase San and Yamada, the sequel. The girls would be heading to college and the story could theoretically focus on more mature topics while they navigate their new relationship. Keyword: theoretically. Unfortunately, instead of exploring interesting relationship dynamics and storylines, the plot of each story arc boils down to: Kase is insecure because a man breathed next to Yamada or Kase is being completely insensitive to Yamada’s feelings…again…—> ✨miscommunication drama ✨—>big over dramatic apology scene—>boring makeup sex or other romantic gesture.

Literally that’s how every single plotline goes. Kase is so goddamn dumb and insensitive to Yamada’s feelings and Yamada’s a complete doormat who can only stay mad for 0.2 seconds before getting pussy whipped like a spineless ass bitch. And for all that Yamada sacrifices for Kase; her hometown, her dreams, her apartment, what does she get in return from Kase? Oh that’s right; bare minimum romantic gestures and a neglectful partner who can’t even call her “girlfriend” in front of others:

Like I thought we were over this shit. It’s been THREE years of them together, a whole anime production, and god knows how many irl years and we’re going back to “we love each other but we’re giRLs😳😳😳” WHY???

And then Kase later goes onto bet her entire three year relationship over the ugly bitch in the next panel, so now I’m questioning whether or not Kase even loves Yamada with the amount of bullshit she’s put her through. Which COULD be an interesting plot point, but Kase never gets any consequences for her actions and the creator genuinely thinks this is romantic and full of tension so I’m 10000% positive that this arc, just like all the others, will end with some makeup sex and we’ll be right back to step 1. Sigh.

2. Tamen De Gushi by Tan Jiu

Tamen De Gushi’s problems are interesting but it’s NOT because of the Chinese government💀

So today’s dark haired masc and blonde femme of the day are Sun Jing and Qiu Tong, respectively. Their personalities aren’t anything to write home about, if you read ANY high school yuri romance, then you know exactly what happens in this story beat for beat. But, BUT, however derivative it is, I find their dynamic very endearing and down to earth. Idk maybe it’s just the translation, but other yuri stories often have this very inauthentic “anime” vibe to it. Which is to say the characters act very cutesy, overly dramatic, and have this stilted, caricature-esque acting of how the creator thinks teenage girls are supposed act.

However, I’m happy to report that Tamen De Gushi is a breath of fresh air in this regard. The characters and interactions they have are grounded and feel organic, which makes them feel like real people, not aliens pretending to be human. This really elevates the humor in turn, oh did I mention that Tamen De Gushi is super funny? Because Tamen De Gushi is super funny, here’s one of my favorite panels and it’s all because of Sun Jing’s goofy ahh expression:

Like go girl give us nothing

If you’re wondering why I haven’t spoke much about the actual romantic relationship between the girls, that’s because there isn’t one💀 Which, okay, that’s not a fair assessment, they have a ton of romantic tension and they flirt a lot. It’s certainly building to a great romantic relationship, but it can’t quite get there due to legal/political reasons sadly. 😔

Edit: I received new information in regards to what happened to Tamen De Gushi. While I reached my limit for posting pictures, I want to point out that the Chinese government had nothing to do with Tamen De Gushi getting censored, rather it was a dispute between the author and the publishing company. The prior information I received was false and I prob should’ve looked it up more so sorrrry. The fact still remains though that after their big lesbian kiss towards the middle of the story and maybe a few other moments, that’s just kind of it. You’re stuck waiting for something to develop, but nothing really happens. The comic very quickly becomes a collection of slice of life segments and cute pictures that imply a relationship between the girls, but not really ;) ;).  Now things are just kind of left in purgatory for the foreseeable future and, well, that’s Tamen De Gushi y’all.

Compared to Kase San and Yamada, the characters were much better, which is not saying much, but without an actual romantic storyline, there’s just not a lot for me to comment on to be honest. It’s really pretty though, look at this art :

3. Beauty and the Beast Girl by Neji

my personal favorite and the BEST yuri I ever read

So next on the list is Beauty and the Beast Girl (I’m going to abbreviate to BatBG from here on) , which I already spoiled my feelings on the matter so this will basically be me gushing about this story for several paragraphs straight, enjoy.

Contrary to what the title suggests, it really has nothing to do with Beauty and the Beast’s story except in name. The main girls are Lily Blind, who is actually fucking blind 💀 and Heath the monster girl. Already I’m happy because instead of blonde femme and dark hair butch, it’s blonde femme and of-course-you-have-purple-hair-and-pronouns masc. Lol, all jokes aside, Lily, unlike her blonde femme counterparts is quite assertive and voices her opinions all the time. In fact, she’s the one who pushes Heath to be more open and communicate with her rather than the other way around. This is, in part, due to the story BatBG is trying to tell. I say BatBG is in name only to Beauty and the Beast because Lily isn’t trying to find the “beauty” within Heath or learning to love a beast or whatever, she’s fine just the way she is and her love for Heath is unconditional. Plus the only thing beastly about Heath is her appearance…which I’ll harp on later, but her behavior is in no way different from a regular human except in very rare, specific moments.

At its heart, BatBG is a story about forgiveness (the creator literally says as much) , but it’s also about the cycle of violence that results from being outcasted and deprived of love. BatBG is set in a world of humans and monsters, where the monsters are outcasted and either have to stay away from human society like Heath or assimilate themselves by hiding away their monster like traits, which is a really queer narrative on top of an already queer story. I don’t want to go into too much spoilers, but sometime before the beginning of the story, Heath in-directly hurts Lily before they ever meet. However, it’s not about Lily needing to forgive Heath, or trying to get over the pain she inflicted upon her, rather its Heath learning to forgive herself and in effect, learning to love herself as much as Lily loves her.

Another big aspect of BatBG is disabilities, Lily Blind is in fact Blind lol and while there are times she struggles with her blindness, she never views her disability as something she needs to be ashamed of and never, ever, blames Heath for it or holds it against her unlike what many, many, many, many other stories end up doing. Her blindness isn’t treated like a super power either, it’s a legitimate disability. She just accepts that it’s a part of her and goes onto say that if not for her blindness, she would’ve never met the love of her life, which I found to be an incredibly profound thing to say.

Now that I’ve gotten this far, I suppose I can add a bit of a disclaimer. So BatBG is waaaaay more explicit about the physical affection between the girls than in any of the previous stories I talked about. Heath and Lily are constantly kissing on, hugging, and almost always flirting with each other, and make no mistake, these girls do be fucking. The sex scenes are never perverted or gross, but genuinely super sweet and romantic, which makes it way hotter imo (huh imagine that🤔). And aside from being hot, it also serves a purpose! Lily’s pretty damn horny underneath all her nice girl antics and while it’s not a major part of her character, it does give a slight edge to her personality and, most importantly, balances out the dynamic between Heath and Lily. It would’ve been very easy to fall into that boring trope where Heath is aggressively horny and Lily is the submissive blind girl, but by making Lily be the one to initiate the sexual encounters, it not only compliments Heath’s more reserved nature, but breaks the stereotype that people with disabilities are pure precious being who couldn’t possibly have sex, which is ableist af btw. Many people think the existence of any sex scenes at all is superfluous, but in BatBG, it truly elevates the story, the characters, and the romance in ways that wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying without it.

Now, with as much praise I gave BatBG, there is one criticism I have, but it’s a quibble really, and it can be explained in a single image:

There is a dissonance between the story and the art, the story says: “Heath is a big, ugly scary monster”

The art says:

And like yes, it can be argued that Heath is simply regurgitating the things bigoted people have said to her, but at no point in the story is this ever challenged or brought up in any meaningful way. Lily is blind so she doesn’t know what the hell she looks like and the other characters aren’t any help either. It’s not a big deal or anything, it just would’ve elevated the story if Heath was actually kinda ugly/more monstrous and not incredibly beautiful because right now it’s giving skinny girl who calls herself fat all the time, and it’s like, babe, who tf are you fooling? 😭

Other than that, BatBG is incredibly profound despite its premise being so deceptively simple and I love it to pieces so …yeah! READ IT.

4. Superwomen in Love! Honey Trap and Rapid Rabbit by sometime

Well, at least there are no blondes

So imma just abbreviate to SiL btw

Alright, let’s get started. The premise is that a villainess falls for the super hero girl and then that plotline is dropped in about 16 pages. I’m not even joking, the villainess falls for the hero, loses her job as a villain and then joins the hero all in one chapter. The REAL plot is actually about a council of evil alien-humans who want to destroy humanity because of generic super villain reason #434: the leader of the aliens is sad and misunderstood :( I’m not even going to lie, I had 0 interest in “X” (the generic ass name of the main villain) and her band of useless lesbians. They did literally nothing in the story except be a nuisance and contribute to X’s incel breakdown at the end. Their inclusion actively made SiL worse because the story has this weird tonal problem where in one breath the villains are portrayed as complete jokes and then you turn the page and now they’re shooting children like girl what💀 And these useless lesbians hog sooooo much of SiL that desperately needed to be given to Honey trap and Hayate to develop their relationship.

When the story DOES actually focus on Honey Trap and Hayate, it’s pretty good, even cute at times, there just wasn’t enough time given to them to flesh their relationship out. As it stands, Honey Trap and Hayate don’t have much of a dynamic, or personality for that matter. Honey Trap’s main gimmick is that she’s extremely horny for Hayate and delulu:

Aside from that, she’s a great value version of Heath, but even a watered down character is better than, like, nothing. All I really know about Hayate is that she’s nice, heroic, likes wearing tacky clothes and ….that’s it. She loves Honey Trap because…………they fought together a few times so why not🤷‍♀️ I’d say at least that’s better than Tamen De Gushi, but actually it’s not because these grown ass women don’t even kiss , all we get is a love confession and their gremlin love child and that’s supposed to be satisfying I guess.

And the worst part is that SiL has the audacity to pretend the romance was something that it clearly wasn’t:

Girl…yall were “””enemies””” for 10 panels.

Now, it’s stated they have been rivals for a while, but I guess Honey Trap forgot all of that because the moment she sees Hayate’s face, my good sis is pussy whipped for life. And that’s in spite of apparently being the evilest one out of the evil group because Honey Trap has no grudge or baggage toward Hayate. She immediately turns good with no issues and Hayate is only distrustful of Honey Trap for 1 or 2 speech bubbles and then she’s not. Anything else that happened was off screen, which means it didn’t happen. Ironically, the very next entry on this list will do a MUCH better job at an ex-villain love story, but for SiL, there’s just not much going on.

Another reading of this story is to call it a “parody” but…no, it isn’t. SiL isn’t a comedy, yes there are comedic moments that poke fun of the genre, but the rest of the story genuinely wants you to take it seriously. Except it can’t. X and her league of dimwits are boring as piss and they oscillate between Saturday morning cartoon villains and child murderers seemingly on a whim. So I can neither be endeared to them nor take them as a serious threat. Honey Trap and Hayate are there, but I lament on all the potential lost from what could’ve been an amazing relationship.

5. Yamujiburo/Kianamaiart’s Hanamusa webcomic

This one is kind of cheating, but I also don’t care let me talk about hot MILFs💀

So the final entry on this list is a webcomic series by one of my fave artist: kianamaiart! And it’s right here on tumblr so check it out!

I stumbled upon this webcomic a few weeks ago, fell in love and now I want to talk about it. This yuri pair thankfully has no blonde femme in sight and instead features two popular Pokémon characters: Jessie from Team Rocket and Delia Ketchum, Ash Ketchum’s mom. What I love about this ship and the world Kiana creates around them is that it’s a very unconventional pairing. There’s just not many romances where a single mom falls in love with an ex gang member and the best part is, Delia being a mom is a big part of her character and she doesn’t ignore Ash in favor of her new relationship with Jessie. She has time for both and doesn’t prioritize one over the other, which many ppl fail to do even irl so good on you Delia!

Now, as for the romance it self, Jessie and Delia are a unique pair. Jessie’s overconfident, brash, drama queen personality doesn’t automatically put her in the “dominant” role and Delia’s sweet, motherly personality doesn’t automatically put her in the “submissive” role. Their dynamic in the webcomic actually plays out in the reverse, Jessie is the one who gets easily flustered and Delia’s…intense, to say the least:

(But Tbf if Delia looked at me like that I’d be at her beck and call too💀)

This subversion of these tropes creates a fun dynamic for the couple and it’s super adorable to see how their energies bounce off each other in each new situation Kiana puts them in. I also love how both Jessie and Delia inspire each other to live out their dreams and they become better versions of themselves by being together.

And one last thing, I don’t have any smart commentary to go along with this, I just really like this drawing of Jessie:

no thoughts, head empty

Final Thoughts

Soooo yeah, that’s the end of my dissertation on yuri comics. I know I ended up dragging a lot of popular yuri, but it wasn’t my intention to make you guys hate any of things I talked about. These were just my thoughts as an avid yuri fan, so let me know your thoughts as well, especially if you read any of the yuri I talked about. And even though I’m super picky about the type of yuri I read, I’d still love to hear any recommendations. Who knows, it might dethrone the undefeated champ that is Beauty and the Beast Girl.

[orengejoshi]

Love you art. My favorite thing is definitely your coloring. Flug does give t boy swag. Hope to see more of your drawing soon. Out of curiosity what do you hope for season 2?

Thank youu🥺💜

I know what you meant but just the entire term "T boy swag" reminded me of my fav rapper who just goes by "T" and since I wanted to do that for a while anyway (his songtexts would resonate with Flug so much) I used this as an excuse to redraw one of his album covers, so I love that, I'm gonna steal that heheh

(relatively unrelated for everyone except me lol but I always throw in some art when replying to asks)

umm yeah so... we're not even done with the first season, so idk. from S1-B I predict more of what we've had so far; more or less episodic comedy, slowly easing us into a connected plot. 6th episode already kinda introduced that.

it's gonna be one of those cartoons like TOH who start off silly and episodic in the first season and develop into a melodramatic serialized show from 2nd season onwards.

this is going to be an unpopular opinion but I actually do not 100% vibe with that, I prefer episodic cartoons like SpongeBob or South Park without overarching plot; comedy over drama. but it was always obvious that Villainous is gonna have a fuck ton of lore so I'm not disappointed.

my criticism rn is that I feel it's already way too many characters I'm sorry. it's getting pretty convoluted. I'm just not a fan of that but again pretty subjective. I can't bring myself to care for absolutely any character that we haven't seen animated yet. it's been too long for me to throw too many new characters in the mix, I've been nonstop hyperfixated since 7 years so I'm skeptical about changes.

as for the plot, I have no idea. we're in so early that I can't even imagine where this is gonna go.

for the end I wish that no ship with the main 3 becomes canon. it's just going to create fandom wars, just leave it open

I just want to see Flug happy...

I'll always just hope to get as much information about Flug as possible

definitely hope they explore Miss Heed's character too, as long as she doesn't end up with Flug l'm interested in her. I would like to see her getting worse (maybe switching sides?) before finally healing and learning to love herself

I want to know more about Goldheart and consequently about Flug's past

I wish for Demencia to snap out of her brainwash some day and learn about her past. I need Flug and Demencia to become real good friends and escape together with 505. I do NOT want them to become heroes but in order to find true happiness and peace they'll have to leave this place imo

but I think most of that is WAY in the future, this won't all happen in the 2nd season. but idk how long this series is gonna be, I doubt the crew even knows, so ye!

[aihoshiino]

chapter 166 thoughts

As of chapter 166, Oshi no Ko has finished a roughly four-and-a-half year run started back in 2020. While there's some speculation about an epilogue or some extra content in volume 16 when it drops, this is where the main story ends. And you know what that means!!!

OSHI NO KO HAS OFFICIALLY ENDED WITHOUT ADDRESSING OR ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT RUBY KISSED HER BROTHER IN CHAPTER 143

please understand that this is FUCKING BOGUS

I'll probably do a longer post on this subject specifically, but my main critique of 143 when the chapter dropped was that while I liked the individual beats in it and I was really glad to see Akasaka finally addressing this tension bubbling underneath Aqua and Ruby's relationship, the immediate swerve away from showing us the aftermath of that kiss felt to me like an admission that the story was going to needlessly draw this out even more. Now that the story has ended and we can see that moment had literally no impact on the plot or even the character dynamics, I'd like to revise that statement - it feels like an admission of compromise. It feels like crumbs thrown to AquRuby fans to tempt them to keep reading and to stir up the waters of the ship wars, so people would keep reading and stay invested in the manga right to the very end. But most of all, it feels deeply disrespectful to both Aqua and Ruby as characters. Rather than exploring their feelings and giving both of them interiority and complexity in relation to incest or even just fucking acknowledging that the kiss had happened and letting their dynamic evolve, the series just memory holes the entire event and asks that you do too. Rather than letting Ruby have any development whatsoever as pertains to that relationship or, god forbid, let a female character move on romantically from the male lead, the series ends with her feelings so up in the air that I literally could not tell you what she thinks of Aqua by the time he dies.

ANYWAY… FINAL CHAPTER. BREATHES OUT VERY HARD.

I really can't believe it's taken us until the final chapter to actually deal with Ruby's grief over Aqua lol. We got a snippet of it last chapter but it was so brief that it really just felt like a tease. I also just think it's kind of bizarre that we're spending this little time on Ruby having feelings about Aqua's death to the extent that I have no idea how or when she found out about it.

It's also kind of hard to feel particularly strongly about Ruby's grief when the chapter doesn't really bother to explore it all that much. It's just a montage of Ruby quite literally Screaming, Crying and Throwing Up while Akane dispassionately narrates it all. The art also doesn't really help in terms of connecting with the emotions at play - I usually really like Mengo's expression work and the way she depicts extreme emotions but this all just felt like of… I don't know how else to put it. Goofy??? Is that an insane thing to say about Ruby grieving her brother???

Idk, something about both the panelling and just the extreme on-the-noseness of Ruby, again, literally Screaming, Crying Throwing Up while she's wearing a Burning cosplay Just In Case You, The Audience, Didn't Get It only for her to abruptly be done crying with no exploration or insight as to what's going on in her head that allows her to move forward.

Honestly, this is kind of the issue with everyone in the cast. The resolution is just sort of "Aqua died and we were sad about it but then we stopped being sad". I know what the story is trying to go for here - it's trying to express that even when you're in pain, life goes on and so you have to find a way to go on with it. But the result is that we spend all this time oogling at their pain without spending equivalent or even meaningful time on their recovery process.

It feels both excessive and undercooked at the same time and I'm left with the same icky, voyeuristic feeling I got from Aqua's funeral last chapter. This should be the point in the story at which we empathize with Ruby the most, but she remains a frustratingly distant figure right to the final pages. Part of this is an unfortunate consequence of Akane's narration directing these final chapters meaning that we're hearing about Ruby from an outsider's perspective and thus don't really see what's going on in her head… but if I can be frank, this has been an issue of Aka's with Ruby in particular basically nonstop since chapter 123.

As others & myself have noted, despite the absolutely catastrophic downward spiral Ruby is in at that point, Aqua revealing himself as Gorou basically flips it all off like a switch. There's some mild lipservice paid to the idea that Ruby is just using her dependency on Gorou to prop herself up and it's pointed out that the issues that contributed to her breakdown haven't actually been resolved - but none of these issues are ever even acknowledged again, let alone resolved. So, functionally, that reveal does fix all Ruby's problems in the space of a single chapter and the result is, again, that we spend multiple chapters gourging on depictions of Ruby's absolute rock bottom only for her to ping back to normal like a lightswitch. As such, the depictions of her pain feel less like explorations of Ruby's interiority and more like voyeuristic oogling at Ruby's misery and trauma and the effect is that the resolution to it all is both unsatisfying and a little gross. The result is that it feels like Akasaka is just indulgently mining the imagery of cute girls suffering because it causes simple thoughts neuron activation but doesn't respect these girls enough as characters to build them back up.

It doesn't help that this is basically the in-universe excuse for Ruby's career further skyrocketing. Instead of Ruby becoming a star on her own merits as the story keeps insisting she was supposed to, she's artificially buoyed by the public's morbid fascination with her tragedy. If I was feeling charitable towards the story right now, I would say this is an avenue of intentional critique but… well, I don't feel super charitable about the story right now lol

I WILL say that the one part of this chapter I did just uncomplicatedly like was the beat of Mem trying to suspend activities (presumably in the wake of her grief for Aqua) only for Kana to basically immediately explode into her room and help her get back on her feet. It's a beat that would've been much more effective if we'd, you know, seen it, but I otherwise enjoyed it and I thought it was sweet.

But. pbbbbtttt. I guess I can't talk around it any longer… let's get into the Dome concert.

To start things off on the immediately worst note possible, Akane describes Ruby performing at the Dome as being 'everyone's dream', including Aqua's. I'm reminded once again of the strange turn the story took in insisting that um, actually, performing at the Dome was totes Ai's dream all along (even though she literally didn't give a shit even a week before she was due to perform there herself) so Ruby performing there is fulfilling that dream for her!!! and I can't help but wonder if this abrupt shift in focus is an attempt to make readers forget what Ai's actual dream was - to see her beloved children grow up happy and healthy. Hell, it wasn't even really Aqua's dream, until the story suddenly had to try and convince us that his entire purpose for existence was to kill himself so Ruby could be an idol for slightly longer than she would've otherwise. The only people whose dreams she's textually fulfilling are Ichigo and Miyako and Ruby herself, but…

Honestly, is this really Ruby's dream anymore?

Who is Hoshino Ruby? What does she want? Why does she want it? These should be the very least of what we can concretely say about not only a protagonist but a character who has become a central figure of the entire story as Ruby has, but with the way Oshi no Ko has warped and distorted her, I find myself increasingly unsure of what the story wants her to be or how I should answer those questions.What does Ruby feel about Aqua? Was she still in love with him? Had she moved on, romantically? Was she still waiting for a response to her confession? Did she finally realize it was probably kind of shitty to respond to her brother going "lowkey wanna kms" by sticking her tongue down his throat? I Guess We'll Never Know.

This extends to whatever the fuck Ruby's relationship with idols and being an idol is. Almost the entirety of Ruby's time in the story has been spent reiterating over and over that Ruby cannot just be an idol who imitates Ai and that to truly shine, she needs to step out of her mom's shadow and shine in her own way. Ruby even literally tells Kana in no uncertain terms in 137 - "I'll be a star in my own way. I won't be like Mama."

While this has always been the text of the story, as I've pointed out before, the actual art with which Ruby's idolhood depicts her basically just as Ai 2.0. It relies so heavily on mining the imagery of Ai's charisma and personality as an idol and using them as the measure of Ruby's success as an idol that Ruby essentially has no visual or conceptual identity of her own as an idol. She's just Ai, But Arbitrarily Better, For Reasons The Narrative Fails To Actually Establish But Hopes That You Just Accept Anyway. This was always kind of annoying, but now that friction seems to have been resolved by… just making her Ai 2.0, But Arbitrarily Better (etc, etc) in the text as well. The fact that we're given no further insight as to Ruby's feelings and continue to just have Akane Explain Ruby's Character Arc to the camera also doesn't help.

All this combines to make the Dome concert and the final few pages feel exceptionally cold in a way I really don't think was intended by Akasaka. Yes, that splash page was nice and flashy but… I just felt nothing. I have no idea if or why Ruby cares about this. And even though the Dome concert has been hyped up through the entire story as the peak of Ruby's achievements as an idol, I feel no sense of accomplishment in her finally being there - not just because her journey to it was basically sneezed at us across two panels, but because it just feels hollow as a victory lap for Ruby. Again, she feels so distant and abstracted as a character that I can't bring myself to feel very strongly about her good or bad.

I think the perfect encapsulation of this are the final four pages of the story. Ruby's words here are very clearly intended to be a callback to Ai's words to Gorou in chapter one but as @all-of-her-light pointed out in our initial discussions of the chapter, Ruby very much does not have an equivalent to Ai's conclusion that she nevertheless wants and values the opportunity to find personal happiness and fulfillment outside of being an idol. Are we supposed to believe that simply being an idol is all that Ruby needs to achieve a similar degree of happiness and fulfillment? Is there no more to her than that?

I've seen a lot of people interpret this ending as exceptionally bleak and, as usual, gleefully predicting Ruby's immanent suicide because her beloved oniichansensei isn't around but this is indulging in, if you'll allow me to be frank, some pretty transparently ship-motivated flanderization. Despite what certain sections of the fandom would like to believe, Aqua and Ruby's lives, past and current, have never revolved around each other to the exclusion of every other relationship in their life. Ruby has a massive support network of people who love and care for her and actively want her to get back on her feet. I can one hundred percent believe that she does not need Aqua in her life to be happy and content.

The issue is that we don't see enough of Ruby to understand that ourselves. Again, she has become such a distant figure with so little insight into what she's thinking and why that this ending is basically a Rorschach test in which you can interpret basically whatever the hell you want or assume because we have so little canon basis to support or debunk our assumptions.

and yes. don't think i didn't see them. it IS both grimly hilarious and weirdly tonally appropriate for this ending that ruby has a bunch of oshi goods of ai and aqua including their fucking autographs set up to say goodbye to every day.

AND…… WE'RE DONE!!! THAT'S OSHI NO KO, BABY!!!! well, technically, there's going to be a 20 page extra chapter in volume 16 but I don't see it being big or substantive enough to meaningfully change my feelings about the ending so… I guess we're leaving it here. Damn. Feels crazy to be done with it.

I'll probably do a bigger post down the line about my thoughts on the ending as a whole but in terms of just How This Chapter Made Me feel, I guess the word is just… meh! It's definitely not an ending I like and I think the execution is sloppy and rushed but I also just don't really have the energy to feel angry about it. Maybe that's sad in its own way but tbh… I still really love Oshi no Ko! I still find it engaging and I find the characters I enjoy rewarding to talk about. I like the artistry of the anime adaptation. I don't blame anybody else for being so turned off by this ending that they're done with the series but for me, I like what I like about OnK too much that this ending could retroactively ruin it for me. Whatever else happens with the OnK franchise, whatever directions the anime and live-action take, this will always be the series that gave me Ai and the Hoshino family and. look at me. look at what she's done to my brain. could I really ask for anything more than that?

That being said, I'm definitely not done with discussing the series! I have fics to write (including a VERY exciting large scale project lined up with some friends), my Ai analysis post to finish and I also want to do a re-read of the series and finish my anime rewatch. I'll be here to discuss Oshi no Ko as long as I have things to say about it and as long as you guys will have me! Despite how the series ended, I've had a genuinely wonderful experience in the fandom and I really don't want to let go of the little community we've built together just because the series is done. I'm Ai's fan for all eternity!!!

[campbell-rose]

Alastor Redesign

Omg there’s like over 70 people following me – guys I'm o///O flattered and flabbergasted. 

Anyway, onto today’s main event, Alastor. I hate Alastor’s og design, I hate his twig waist and his shoulder pads and the way you can’t see his antlers next to his ears, and his bow tie ugh viv please and his HAIR what even is that??? Not even mentioning that nothing about his design is really like a focal point. There’s no one thing that’s particularly interesting. At least before this he had that cathedral window looking cross on his undershirt that I found interesting. Nothing about his says he’s from the 1930’s other than dialogue. 

I wanted him to be in greyscale because that’s the coolest aesthetic, and colored photos weren’t a thing until way after the 30s. Recently I saw jjk, and Jogo’s teeth threw me because at some points I thought he was just straight up toothless. But then when I started this design, that colored tooth look spoke to me. Initially his teeth were yellow to look gross like he never brushes them, but then I was like ‘ayo wait, he’s literally a cannibal’, thus his vibrant red teeth to really pop against his greyscale. Initially his undershirt was white, but I feel like that was too much contrast and white is typically innocence, so by instead having a deep red it shows he’s just straight up bloodthirsty underneath his formal appearance. I also considered it being black, but then he looked like a pastor, and I wasn’t too much of a fan of it. The idea of the red on his design is that it leads your eye down his design to take it all in, with his face being the focus. I gave him glasses because I like the way it obscures his eyes a bit and I imagine they do the anime thing where they glow and hide his eyes. I liked Viv’s idea of sinners having marks where they died, and I slicked his hair back to show it off very prominently. His antlers are larger, I gave him cute lil deer ears. Also, under his suit he is lowkey buff. I feel like a serial killer should at least look physically capable of taking someone down not whatever the fuck viv’s nasty twig men can do. Like, in that comic with the cute sheep girl, when Alastor goes demon mode his body looks so snappable I just wanna like grab his waist in my hands and break it like a twig. I also tried to keep his design simple as if this were for animation, I know pinstripes are complicated and so are antlers but other than that I tried to keep his design basic. 

If I were to rewrite him based solely on the pilot, I honestly wouldn’t change a thing. Alastor is a decent character, his voice actor gives him life, the radio filter is cool, and nothing he did made me want to break my screen (ANGELDUST). The only thing I'd change would be his position in hell. Like, viv’s hell is so wack and I hate it, she’s got the princes, then the goetia and the overlords and then sinners and blah blah, it’s a lot to keep track of, not even mentioning the rings and circles thing. I think Alastor should have had dealings with hell as a human, maybe he routinely did sacrifices or something, and he made a deal with the archdemon Alastor and when he died like... uuhhhhhhh. Maybe through connections he’s gained more power? Idk, I just know I hate the idea of his dying and then having like the bestest most powerful demon powers despite not being hellborn. It’s got this mary sue stench. I’ll figure it out, maybe, who knows. 

I’m not gonna start rewriting since there’s nothing to go off of and alter yet, so that’s gonna have to wait until the show actually drops before anything concrete happens lol. 

Also the sheep girl is a sinner that reoccurs in the show now so sorry I don’t make the rules, you can’t give me a cute sheep girl and try to take her away, I’m gonna redesign her and shove her into the plot as someone looking for redemption at the hotel

[quinton-reviews]

Hi Quinton!! I have been a HUGE fan of your stuff since a friend sent me the Tobuscus Fallen Titans (I used to watch him back in high school and was like "huh, wonder what happened to him after those allegations") and I gotta say, it is REALLY FUNNY every time my fiancé and I watch the iCarly videos again, because when you cover Gibby's stunt double breaking his ribs, you cut to a clip of The Official Podcast. I used to play D&D with one of the main dudes from the podcast, so when he talks during that clip I do a goddamn double take literally every time.

Anyways, I remember an original Patreon stretch goal being a Fallen Titans on Homestuck! I was really big into Homestuck in my early 20s, and was wondering if that's still on the table at some point? If not that's fine, I understand plans change! I just love Fallen Titans lol, the Fred episode and the Neil Cicierega unFallen Titans are some of my favorite videos of yours!

That's a real funny story!

So here's the rundown on the Homestuck video. When I first started making long videos, they were actually inspired by the relationship I had with other YouTubers at the time. I used to watch, like, H3H3 and Filthy Frank, etc; and I'd always see people obsessed with the versions of creators from the past. Like, "Oh 2015 H3 was the best" and "Oh 2012 Frank was peak." So I had this idea that it would be crazy if H3 posted, like, a video he spent a decade on and you got a new video with 2015 H3 10 years on. (I don't watch H3 anymore ironically)

So the original idea for the "long video" format was that it would be cool if, throughout a long, analysis/review/recap video, you kept noticing someone get older. Maybe my months, maybe by years. That's why I always like to get a haircut when I start one of these videos. If you scrub through and you see my hair get longer and messier as it goes on I think that adds something magical you can't fake.

So... My pitch to the Homestuck video was that it would be funny to work on it just once per year. To record one segment, say "That's it for 12 months", and then come back around to it. And when I was making the iCarly and Victorious videos I actually recorded a few minutes of the video! I think it was two segments in total. But then I had a bunch of personal stuff happen and my work drive has been much lower, so any "back burner" video hasn't gotten much attention since then.

Now that the iCarly mini-series is done with, I want to focus on some short one-off videos I can make before April. But once that's done with, I would REALLY love to start work on a few more long-term projects which will take months or years to finish. I think returning to work on the Homestuck video, to at least get the first 20-30 minutes done, would be a great idea this summer.

Now, if you want to know my pitch for that video, here it is. The video is not a recap of the creative history of the franchise. I do not get into drama, community hell, lawsuits, or other YouTubers. My idea is this: you always hear about Homestuck as an outsider but you never hear about the actual content. Most franchises on Earth I know something about, even and especially if I've never been interested in them. I can tell you a bunch of facts about wrestling and MLP and the Fast and the Furious simply through cultural osmosis and having friends who are into those things.

I can't tell you the plot of Homestuck, who the characters are, what the themes are, nothing. I've known a lot of people who were into Homestuck but nothing about the series!

So I thought it would thus be funny to make a video about a bunch of people who know nothing about the series starting from the beginning and giving their reactions, even if it's been years since it all started. I call this part of the video the "Homestuck Book Club." So the next step is me picking out the members (who all have to have no history with it) and making sort of a podcast setup. We'd then read and record every six months or so, IDK.

This is why the video has been stuck in production hell! Everyone who wants to work on it and messages me about it already knows the franchise. I don't want spoilers, I don't want people writing for the video who get it already. I want to capture the "what the fuck is this" energy of three dudes just getting in the middle of it.

Also, I think that I really like the theme of the video capturing our lives as they go by, capturing us aging and changing. If you came back from the future and told me this video comes out in five years, I'd say great. If you told me it comes out in ten years, I'd say awesome. Until then, the latest edit will always be on Patreon, even if you have to dig a little.

[i2ycat]

— the ‘us’ theory

pairing sunoo x fem!reader synopsis after years of no contact, a sudden rekindling in your relationship with sunoo makes sparks soar higher than they’ve ever gone. it’s hard not to see just how much you missed being around your old best friend again genre slight angst, fluff, childhood best friends to lovers, college au word count 4.3k (was only supposed to be arnd 600, idk what happened LOL) warnings wrote this on 1% brain cells so please excuse if it seems like the plot is underdeveloped and pacing is weird, i know nothing ab mortal kombat, semi-proofread main masterlist

reblogs and comments are very much appreciated!

You’ve known Sunoo since forever. From the moment you took your first baby step to the moment you got absolutely hammered by another girl in your grade, Sunoo had been right by your side, from kindergarten all the way to primary school.

It was weird not to see your brooding self beside the beaming boy, seeing as you guys never separated from each other for even a second. It made your parents think the both of you had separation anxiety, always throwing tantrums whenever the other wasn’t around.

But that was only until primary school.

By the time secondary school rolled around, you naturally started to drift apart. Being in the year above him, he stuck to his own group of friends, while you had yours. You had easily accepted the course that your relationship with Sunoo was headed off to, wanting to fit in with the rest of your ‘ew juniors’-minded clique so badly, because who hung out with juniors anyways?

It didn’t help that, not soon after, your father was stationed to a different department of the company on the other side of the world. You felt sad leaving everything you knew behind, all the familiar places, but you were also 13 and ready to be anywhere but the place you had been confined to. It felt exhilarating to finally leave everything behind — not that you had much to begin with. It’s always been just your mother, your father, and you.

Sunoo was out of the conversation by the time you turned 16. He became just someone you’d remember in passing; your parents bringing him up every now and then, but you never dwelled on the thought of him for too long.

By the time you were 19, you could barely remember what he even looked like, given that you'd only seen up until his pre-puberty phase: toothy grins, chubby cheeks, and all.

So imagine your shock when a taller, more mature shell of a man presents himself in front of you, claiming to be the Kim Sunoo you’ve already forgotten all about.

“Don’t you remember me? I’m Kim Sunoo!”

You met him by complete chance.

The last time you heard of Sunoo was when your mom broke the news on a random Sunday night that the Kim family would be permanently moving to Japan, and that was three years ago.

“Cmon, I’ve known you for, like, 13 years.” He clicks his tongue.

“Yeah, I guessed. I’m just shocked to see you here.”

“What? Is seeing a young man shopping for groceries so hard to believe?” He jokes, taking a pack of ramen noodles from the shelf and placing it carefully into his cart.

“It’s not that.” You chuckle. “I thought you moved to Japan?”

“Well, I can’t really be leeching off my parents forever.”

He’s got more wit to him than you remember.

“Right,” You quickly reply, unconsciously walking the rest of the noodles and pasta aisle at the same pace that he is.

“Wow, even after all these years, you’re still the same old Y/n I used to know.” He smiles at you, the apples of his cheeks tinting a light pink under the blindingly white LED lights overhead. It suddenly brought you back to times of playing together in the playground after school, the summer rays rendering the both of you sweaty messes while your mothers talked about adult gossip somewhere in the distance. The simpler times, when fitting into social circles barely even mattered yet.

“Am I supposed to be offended?” As you arrive closer to the snack aisle, you start to grab at items not scribbled on your sad excuse of a grocery list. You should really stop doing that; you mentally chide yourself.

“Maybe. Depends on how you take it.” He shrugs. “Doritos?” You shake your head.

Silence starts to permeate the air between the both of you, save for some random Nirvana tune playing faintly in the background. It wasn’t awkward per se, but it wasn’t entirely comfortable either; rather, it sat right in the middle.

You’ve known Sunoo for 13 whole years of your younger adolescent days, but right now, it feels like you’ve just met him for the first time. Technically you are, after a few years that is, but maybe it was just you and your ineptitude for social interactions. Chae was right, you really should socialize with people more.

A beat or two passes by, “Are you free tomorrow by any chance?” Sunoo turns to you, bright eyes boring into yours.

“Why?”

“I just moved here like a week ago, and I have absolutely no friends.” He pouts, “Mind giving an old friend company on his own birthday?”

“It’s your birthday?” You stop in your tracks.

“Tomorrow, yeah.”

“Okay. Just send me the address.” You take out your phone to hand him, “You’re not just about to lure and kill me right?”

“Now why would I do that?” He lifts his eyebrows at you as he keys in his phone number, naming himself ‘no.1 childhood best friend’ in the process.

“You can never be too sure nowadays.”

“Yeah, as if I would kill my only friend in this entire city.” He retorts, fingers brushing yours ever-so-slightly as he hands you back your phone.

—

Seeing the bare-bones state that Sunoo’s box apartment was in made you feel for him. You’d already spent your early teens adjusting to the chaos that New York was, and you’ve acclimated to it by now, with the help of your parents, of course, but Sunoo, on the other hand? He came completely alone, with a singular suitcase in tow. It ignited a sense of protectiveness towards him. The same way it was when you were younger.

Sunoo was always one of the more smaller and younger children in the kindergarten, but that only made him more loved by the teachers and other caretakers. Memories resurfaced of how everyone would coo whenever Sunoo showed his signature smile, silently wishing they had a kid as endearing as Sunoo. They’d bring extra just for him, and Sunoo, being the sweet kid he was, basked in all of it blissfully.

The rest of the older kids didn’t like how Sunoo hogged all the adult’s attention, so they would constantly pick at him during play time, behind the knowledge of the teachers. Since you were a year older and much taller than Sunoo then, you always felt the instinctive need to step in and protect him from all of it, even getting sucker punched in the face for him one time. You chuckle at the distinct memory of Sunoo crying in the sidelines whilst you laid on the mat, a comically large bandage plastered on your cheek.

“What’s so funny?” Sunoo sticks his head out from the cupboard, eyeing your figure on the couch.

“I’m laughing at the fact that you at least have a couch.” You pat the space next to you.

“Hey, you can’t judge. I just moved here, and I don’t know where anything is anymore.” He says this as he pours room-temperature orange juice into plastic cups. “Happy birthday to me.” He sighs, handing you one.

“This is actually really sad.” You take a single sip out of the clear cup before setting it down on the arm of Sunoo’s sofa that was more like a loveseat if anything. “And I’m not just talking about the orange juice.”

“At least I’m not alone!”

“Why’d you move here anyway? I’m sure there’s better places than big ole overpriced New York.” You bring up a leg to get comfortable, and Sunoo does the same, his knee lightly grazing yours in the process.

“You wouldn’t wanna hear it.” He sighs.

“No, tell me!”

“It’s stupid.”

“I won’t judge. Pinky promise.” You bring your pinky rings towards his, locking them.

“I actually moved here for you.” He says it so softly that you thought you had misheard.

“Sorry, I think I misheard.”

“Nah, I think you heard correctly.” He bends down to grab a forkful of noodles, the one he bought yesterday, and moans gleefully at the bundles of flavour exploding in his mouth, “Woah. I think this might be my new favourite ramen.”

“Wait, you’re not being serious, are you?” Sunoo shakes his head at you, his cheeks blowing up as noodles enter his mouth, strand by strand. “Are you stupid?” You completely drop the smile you had been sporting just a minute ago, beyond baffled by Sunoo’s lack of critical thinking.

“Gosh, Sunoo! What would you have done if I hadn’t run into you last night? What if I already moved to a different state? A different country even?!”

“My mom is still in contact with yours, so I’m pretty sure I would’ve ended up at your front door anyway." He nonchalantly answers, shrugging his shoulders the way he always does.

You’ve completely forgotten how Sunoo was always the free spirit in your dynamic, doing anything and everything he wanted without ever thinking about the after. He always downplayed the severity of the consequences, only thinking about the moment and living in it blissfully.

Just a few days prior to your drift apart, Sunoo had dragged you out of your 6th grade classroom just before recess ended and towards the outdoor basketball court. A little mat had been planted on the grass, with what you could recognise as Sunoo’s lunch box set neatly on top.

He had asked you to skip class with him, a kind of celebration on the last day of school. Thanks to him, you were absolutely horrified to come home that day, while him, on the other hand, was not the slightest bit concerned.

“Why? Just why? We haven’t talked for, what, 6 years? And suddenly you move 13 hours away from home to be in the same city that I am?” You were fuming, and for a reason you weren’t too sure about yourself.

Maybe it was the knowledge that he had been thinking about you even after your drift apart, while you were not. Maybe it was the guilt of being the one to instigate the drift in the first place, but he still made his way towards you.

“I’m not too sure either.” He places the chopsticks on the makeshift coffee table. “But at least you’re here, and I’m not alone on my birthday.” He offers you a cheeky grin, one that reaches his eyes, and it almost instantly gives you whiplash.

“You’re driving me crazy here, Sunoo.”

“You said you wouldn’t judge and… it’s still my birthday, ya’know.” He pouts, cocking his head to the side in an attempt to soothe your bubbling anger with his biggest weapon — his face. “Can you stop being your practical self for just a second?” His tone was light, and his eyes were pleading.

He probably still remembered your weakness for pretty faces, and was taking advantage of that at the most convenient of times.

Damn Sunoo and damn pretty privilege.

—

After Sunoo’s semi-successful birthday party—his words, not yours—he’s been sticking to you like glue. He practically lives in your apartment with how much time he spends there. Even when you’re out for classes or errands, he'll take it upon himself to make himself feel at home. You practically spent every second of every day with him, just like it used to be when you were younger.

Your mother was overly ecstatic to find out that you had rekindled your friendship with Sunoo — almost so ecstatic in fact that it alarmed you just a tad bit, scared that she might try to set you up with her best friend’s only son.

She had even suggested that the both of you live together to save costs, she says. You weren’t entirely sold on that fact, seeing as you still wanted your semblance of privacy and freedom in your own home, but with the rising rent prices these days, it wasn’t really a choice now, was it?

“My mother says we should move in together.” You say this over a plate of scrambled eggs, one that Sunoo had so graciously offered to cook.

“I’m sorry?” Sunoo chokes on his cup of black tea.

“I mean, our dynamic is pretty good. You finish things that I don’t. I say it’s a pretty good match.”

Over the course of the last few months that you’ve been on-off living with Sunoo, you learned that he has a habit of picking up things that you’ve left aside to be forgotten. One instance of this was when you found your incomplete knitting project in Sunoo’s more nimble hands, working away while on his spot on your couch.

He explained that seeing things unfinished was a big pet peeve of his, and it usually works in your favour anyway.

“Yeah, but what about my apartment?”

“You say that as if you don’t basically already live here.” You pick up a piece of egg with your fork to bring it to your mouth.

“I guess, yeah, but..." His words trail off. “Never mind.”

“But what, Sun?”

“Nothing.” He shakes his head, taking a big gulp of his tea before setting the cup back down onto your wooden table, the one Sunoo had picked alongside some other furniture pieces that now scattered your flat.

“You better give up that act now because you know how stubborn I can get.” You peg the fork at him in a faux effort to assert intimidation. Not that you could be any more intimidating with your furrowed eyebrows and grim expression.

“It’s just...”

“Just?”

Sunoo ultimately sighs, picking up his plate to bring to the sink and turning his back towards you. “I would love to live together, really." He starts off. “But what if you bring other guys over? I don’t think I could handle that.”

“That’s it? You’re flattering me by even thinking I can pull guys.” You laugh as you make your way towards Sunoo with an empty plate in your hands. “Sun, there’s nothing to worry about, but I’ll make sure to let you know beforehand if I ever do.”

“That’s not what I was implying.” Sunoo keeps his voice low and whisper-like, almost like he doesn’t want you to hear, but you do anyway.

“Okay, then what do you mean?”

“I’m saying that I think I like you.” He takes a deep breath, finding it hard to formulate words from his thoughts. “I... I just... When we were 13, when we started drifting apart, I felt so lost and confused. I didn’t want to be like those movie cliches, losing my best friend because of high school or whatever.” He doesn’t look up from the dishes in front of him; instead, he focuses on mindlessly scrubbing the mug.

“I followed you here because, even after six long years, you were still my number one. I missed your presence. I always wondered when you would contact me again, but that never happened. I guess I was also too scared to talk to you first, so that’s that.” He continues. “I don’t want to burden you with my feelings any more than they already are, and if we officially, actually lived together, I don’t think my heart could handle all that.”

To say you were speechless was an understatement. You stared at him long enough to see dots, and yet you couldn’t think of anything to say.

Sunoo liked you. The little boy from kindergarten that you promised to protect liked you. Your best friend up until you were 13 liked you?

“Sun...” You start off but can never seem to find a proper end to your sentence.

“You don’t have to answer me right now. Or, as a matter of fact, you don’t even have to accept it. I just thought you should know since you proposed we live together.” He washes the foam away, setting the clean dishes on the drying rack. “I’ll take my leave now.” He smiles at you, and by the time the door closes behind him, you’re still standing frozen.

You don’t know what to do with this information. Yeah, Sunoo was cute, and you had a soft spot for him, but that doesn’t mean you like him. He grew up well, but that doesn’t mean you no longer saw him as the boy you needed to protect from the world. It was all a clash of thoughts, really.

—

A week had gone by since you texted Sunoo back, saying that you needed space to think. But you weren’t really using the time to think at all; you were actually doing quite well at doing the exact opposite.

“Chae, come on! That’s cheating!” You yell, aggressively pressing away at the console for your Omni-Man to dodge Kung Lao’s wrath.

“No, you just suck.” Chae sticks her tongue out at you. And after a few moments of tense silence, “Aaaand, K.O!” She cheers in your face while you pan at the bold K.O. letterings on the screen in admission of defeat.

“I’ll beat you next time.”

“Oh baby, there won’t be a next time until you sort out whatever it is you’re worrying about first.” She takes the console from your hands and sets it back in its original place under the divider of her TV set. “Now, talk to me.” She says this as she takes a seat beside you.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Yeah, sure, as if you're coming here at 1 a.m. on a Wednesday night, even when you have classes tomorrow, is because of nothing.”

“I just couldn’t sleep. That’s all.”

“I’m going to go bald from all the stress you’re giving me.” She tugs harshly at her shoulder-length hair. “See this?!”

Your laugh echoes in Chaewon’s humble apartment, which overlooks the entirety of New York with the perfect view — one that her life as a social media influencer is able to afford. At times like these, you felt like you were her sugar baby, leeching off her big-time success like the broke college student you are.

“You’re being overly dramatic.”

"Yeah, and sometimes I wish you were more like me. Give me the damn drama!” She drapes herself all over you, head resting on your bare legs.

“Okay, fine!”

“Good.” She finally grins, taking a bag of popcorn from the table and tossing it into her mouth one by one, occasionally offering one to you.

“You remember Sunoo?”

“The one you cried about when you first met me?”

“I wasn’t crying!”

“Yeah, sure you weren’t.” She grimaces at you.

“Okay, but that was when I was 14, so it doesn’t count.”

“Whatever, whatever. Just continue!” Chaewon switches her position to comfortably sit face-to-face with you, her eyes wide and full of anticipation.

“A few months ago, I met him at the supermarket, the one you tell me to never go to.”

“What?! And you’re only telling me this now?!” Her voice was piercing, and it made your ears almost bleed onto her velvet-carpeted floor. Judging from her reaction, she was probably more concerned about the fact that you went to the only supermarket in the city she told you not to ever step foot into, rather than not having told her about your meeting with Sunoo there.

“Just let me finish, yeah?” Chaewon quips out a small apology before you continue, “And after that, we started hanging out here and there, ya'know, the whole old childhood friends shebang. It was great, honestly. He’s great company, and as you said, I was socialising with other people!”

“But?”

“How’d you know there’s a ‘but’?”

“There is always a ‘but’, my dear Y/n.”

You clear your throat. “He confessed to me just a week ago, after I had proposed to live together, ya'know, to save on costs.”

“You, what now?”

“Not everyone is as rich as you are, Chae; we grass-rooted people need to save money somehow.”

“You know that’s not what I meant!”

“Ugh, it’s stupid, I know! But my mother suggested it, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea!’” At this point, the bag of popcorn lays haphazardly on the floor, forgotten as you contemplate all your decisions with Chaewon clinging onto your side, koala style.

“Do you like him back?”

“I haven’t really thought about it before then.” You honestly say, “He has always just been ‘the younger boy who needs protecting’ to me.”

“He’s his own grown person now, Y/n.” She reminds you.

“I know. I just think he’s cute, is all.”

“How about this? You give him a chance to try and swoon you over; if it doesn’t work out, then you guys can pretend as if nothing ever happened!” She claps her hands together, as if she had just won a Nobel Prize for solving global warming. “You’re killing two birds with one stone!”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying is supposed to work.”

"Oh, who gives a fuck? YOLO.”

—

Chaewon’s advice to just yolo the fuck out of everything sticks to you more than you’d like to admit. It echoes in your mind when you’re taking the subway all the way to Sunoo’s apartment, echoes even louder as you stand in front of his door, and echoes almost deafeningly as you knock twice on it.

In about half a heartbeat, Sunoo opens his door with an urgency you could barely register in your haze of emotions. You felt bad after having practically ghosted him for a week straight after his confession, and even worse now that you could tell he was losing sleep over it. His hair was tousled into a mess that made it seem as if he had just gotten out of bed, even if it was already 3 p.m.

“Hey.” You greet, your lips pursed into a tight smile.

“Hey.” He greets her back.

“Can I come in? Or, is it a bad time? I’m not really too sure why I came in the first place.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come in.” He steps aside to make space for you to enter his home.

The last time you’ve been here was the night after you first met him — the day of his birthday. It’s less barren than you remembered, with pops of colour in random corners that somehow represented his sporadic personality perfectly.

“I see you finally did some decorating.”

“I mean, it’s already been more than a few months since I’ve moved here; it’d be weird if I didn’t.” His voice is groggy and still laced with sleep, but you don’t comment on it, instead sucking in a deep breath.

“I wanted to, um, get back to you.” You play with your fingers, picking at the skin. “And, uh, give you an answer. Well, it’s not really an answer, but you get what I mean.”

“Yeah.”

The both of you still stood just beyond his doorway; the faint playing of the TV in the background didn’t help to ease your racing heart. In your two years of being a young adult, you hadn’t found the opportunity to really sit down and find love, given that school had always been your top priority. So when you find yourself in such situations—not that you ever do—you're rendered a blubbering mess.

You’ve practiced this many times before with Chaewon, but it feels even more nerve-wracking now that the man in all his drowsy glory is standing right in front of you.

“We can try.” You start off. “I mean it as in, you can try courting me or whatever, and if it doesn’t work out, we can pretend as if nothing ever happened.” His lack of reply gives you time to really take a good look at Sunoo, now that the weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You’ve said what you wanted to say.

At an arm's-length distance, Sunoo is the textbook definition of attractive. He’s a head taller than you, has broad shoulders, and has a pretty face. His lips were full, his nose was tall, and his eyes were a golden brown colour. What was not to like about him? You just had to accept that he was no longer the Kim Sunoo from kindergarten. He was no longer the same young Sunoo who constantly needed your help.

“Really? You’d let me court you?” His face is bright with hope, and you nod to it wordlessly. “As in, you’d let me take you out on dates and stuff?”

You can’t help the chuckle that lets out, especially endeared by his enthusiasm. “Yes, Sun.”

—

BONUS!

It has been exactly a year since Sunoo had courted and officially asked you out. It wasn’t hard to fall for him because you already had an inkling that you had unresolved feelings for him anyway. The moving in part went as smoothly as it could, save for the slight mishap with Sunoo’s landlord, but with the help of your mother, everything was resolved soon after.

Sunoo lays peacefully on the sofa, soaking in the sunshine that filters through the blinds. He was practically in heaven right now.

“Kim Sunoo!” Your voice reverberates throughout the entirety of your shared apartment.

“Uh-oh, not the government name.” Sunoo looks up from his phone to see you standing in the hallway, hand tucked under your arms, with an expression that reminded him slightly of the French bulldog he’d seen on his morning walk. “Yes, baby?”

“Don’t ‘baby’ me! You let Luna sleep on the bed after she had her walk?!”

“Oh.”

“Oh!” You mimic him.

“I’m sorry, baby. She looked so sad sleeping on the floor by herself, so I just invited her to the bed.”

“Yeah, now her paw prints are all over the white sheets! Couldn’t you have at least cleaned her before you decided to do that?” As if Luna had heard her parents arguing from inside the room, she waddles out, footsteps padding down on the wooden floor, making it her mission to soothe her parents with just her existence alone.

Luna barks, grabbing both of your attention. You immediately lean down to pick Luna up, cooing at her before glaring at Sunoo, “You better wash the sheets.”

Sunoo stares at the both of you, dumbfounded. He thought he saw Luna smirking at him, so he blinked once and then twice, only for you and your baby to disappear as you walked towards the bathroom, your voice echoing as you continued to baby-talk to Luna.

Even with your overbearing practicality and new spoiled baby to take care of, he’d never regret asking his mom about you that one fateful night.

© i2ycat 2024 idk why the first half got me thinking i was gonna write a murder mystery fic HELPP. i swear it’s just romance 😞 also this is straight dogwater, i’m so sorry idk what i was writing…

[ittydoor]

YEASSS ty for finding this g

Wtf was all this ab 😭 I actually do not know the context at all what is the origin of this image? do we have any theory’s on the various blacked out text? Why is laur here

Why is my boy here when he is in the king of being not utilized by Jesson

What do u imply bravuras

APHBLR HELBB

Yo am I experiencing mandala effect was there not this but on an actual whiteboard or smth with a random circle that said laurance w a question mark??? Am I wrong am I loosing it??

[fallenclan]

okay so my crazy list of who I think the fourth cat could be and the likelihood (or at least my opinion of their likelihood) that they are the fourth cat:

-ryepaw, 2/10: she's honeysong's apprentice, ambitious, and fascinated by prophecies, so a lot of people have been thinking that it'll be her. however, I believe she's a red herring. she's had very little plot relevance currently and her traits can just as easily be interpreted as basic interests instead of plot points. idk I just don't see it happening.

-flamefall, 7.5/10: okay you guys have to hear me out. a lot of people are very suspicious of flamefall, but I think there's a very good chance he does a heel-face turn here. the three little pigs edit shows that ravenstar's three most trusted followers are levi, sleepydawn, and patchback. notably, flamefall is absent from this group despite being ravenstar's first apprentice AND the cat who reminded cherrystar of the omen that made ravenstar deputy in the first place. flamefall is also stated to be a highly insecure cat who cares a lot about what ravenstar thinks of him. but perhaps now that he's been supplanted as ravenstar's main lackey, he's starting to realize that he doesn't need ravenstar's approval, and as a result, he's noticing the shady things that ravenstar has made him do... I think that even if he isn't the fourth cat, he's going to pull an ivypool and act as a spy for the Eldritch Horrors Gang (TM).

-littleleaf, 6/10: this one is mainly for the spicy drama, because holy shit imagine. however, littleleaf himself has no reason to be suspicious of ravenstar currently, so it depends on how the plot shakes out.

-cloudtuft, 5/10: this one is a 50/50 because it depends on how the pondcloud situation shakes out imo. like littleleaf, cloudtuft currently has no reason to be suspicious of ravenstar, but if ravenstar were to find out about pondcloud, he would certainly punish pondshine in revenge, which would definetely push cloudtuft over the edge.

-mistlefrost, 3/10: the only cat in fallenclan so far who has actively spoken out against ravenstar, earning himself a scar on the neck as a "reward". I think he has too little plot relevance to actually be the fourth cat, but I do think he would be one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Eldritch Horrors Gang.

-canarywish, 9/10: out of all of the cats in the clan, I think canarywish is the most likely to be the fourth cat. she's ravenstar's niece and his second apprentice, which would make the drama extra delicious. but aside from that, she's probably the biggest example within the clan of a living cat that was personally traumatized by ravenstar. she tried so hard to help that loner, and ravenstar did nothing about it. she's clearly still traumatized by the event as seen by her expression when she was made a warrior. she loves her uncle, but she definitely knows what he's capable of. I think she would be more than willing to join the Eldritch Horrors Gang to help save the clan from her uncle... and perhaps save her uncle from himself...

thanks for coming to my ted talk guys LOL

-🦝

EXCELLENT analysis... all i can say is that its entirely possible some of this might happen :) more than one thing even

[beetleviolet]

My feelings about Tales of the TMNT!

Lmk ur thoughts, especially if you disagree! I would love to hear about it! I, personally, have A LOT of thoughts. Starting with:

I kinda hate the premise.

No, no LISTEN

I LOVE the idea of a series with these characters! I love them and their dynamic, plus with the animation style and cool writing from the movie I was really looking forward to the new series!

I was picturing what I feel like a lot of people were: a story about the tmnt balancing their hero stuff with school, something we haven't really seen before! This also will give them a chance to develop as individuals, something that was touched on in the movie. Awesome! Sounds great!

I hear you cry, 'Wait, so you don't like the series because school isn't a main plot point?' NO

I DONT LIKE THE SERIES BECAUSE NONE OF IT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING!!!!

I understand 1 DnD episode. I understand a filler episode that is discounted from cannon later. What I DONT understand is entire 6 EPISODE ARCS that CANNONICALLY DONT EXIST!!!!

Inventing characters that apparently don't exist in cannon?? And more important to me, spending entire episodes on a specific turtles development, before finding out that IT DIDNT HAPPEN!

And the worst part is.. im not sure? Its wildly unclear how much of these arcs are true, if anything is true, if these are just embellished stories or what. Its wildly confusing and discouraging when all this is happening but JK ITS NOT REAL LOL.

Like none of this is wildly outlandish either? I found the plot pretty realistic to tmnt (I have problems with bishops character, but that's a rant for another post) and super enjoyable! I loved it! Which makes me even more mad because IT APARENTLY NEVER HAPPENED??? I THINK???

The first was out of Leo's comic book, but it was unclear whether this happened and he was just writing it down, or if the whole thing was his writing (which like. It would make sense if Bishop was written by a 15 year old bc of the inconsistencies in her development- AH IM GETTING OFF TRACK AGAIN). For Raphs story (which i liked so much better) it was ABUNDENTLY clear he was pulling the tale out of his ass.

This kind of thing, for one random filler episode, would be fun! Raph telling a super action packed adventure, or Leo's comic book story would be cool!

But. Idk. I love these characters. Why do all of this cool stuff for them when none of it is real?

Anyway, if you disagree please let me know! I would LOVE to hear about it!!!

[newapocalyptia]

I gotta be honest, I feel like you can’t really kill Sal because he’s kind of the glue of the whole thing? He’s the catalyst for a lot of plot it seems, and if it wasn’t for him, a lot of the characters wouldn’t have met each other (probably?), had their kids, and idk I know you keep saying he’s a bad guy but I really like him. He has redeeming qualities *to me* lol. (I totally understand it’s your universe and you’re of course deciding what happens in the end! If this was a Real TV Show™️ though I would definitely be the one on AO3 woobifying Sal in my fanfics. I just love a morally ambiguous/‘evil’ character and everyone else is so nice lol)

oh, I have no intentions whatsoever of killing Sal! jokes from the time traveling bits about his future demise aside, he’s a load-bearing asshole— you’re right, he’s almost as much of a plot catalyst as the apocalypses are. The core of the narrative is Marian’s irresponsible loyalty to her scumbag brother, they’re essentially the two main characters.

I love my little bastard conman, and his nihilistic fuckboy bestie lmao

[shakespearean-dream]

TW!!! — blood, scarring and mild body horror ahead 🥲

benny’s turn!

before i start i wanna clarify i hesitated a bit on posting this because lovely mutual @vor-leser just posted his benny interpretation (go look at it and follow him btw), and idk if we like mind melded or smth but our human benny’s are super similar LOL. i damn near scrapped the whole thing out of fear someone would get mad at me but i Would Not be able to start over and get this done ever so this is as good as we’re gonna get. 😭 my apologies niko love u /p

this has been like a full 7 days in the making 😭😭 the art block that i felt coming on while doing ellen and ted hit me like an optimus prime sized semi truck this week along with a depressive episode so i definitely appreciate that happening and i am not upset about it at all! /s i’m totally good so don’t worry or anything /gen, mental health is just weird and i also wanted to explain the gap in my posts 😔

i do not know how to feel about this drawing if i’m so fr with you; i’m proud of myself for AM-ified benny cause i think i got the slowly rotting from the inside out primal freak energy down pretty good, but on the other hand this feels kinda empty?? i usually have a lot more commentary squished in here but i think my brain’s a little fried 🤦‍♂️ i love drawing me some beautiful buff men though so drawing normal ben was familiar territory. however his wack ass haircut i gave him is his punishment for being a PRICK!!! go sit in the corner and think about ur actions benjamin.

like ted n the rest of the sillies i’m not straying too far from canon with his personality, he’s an ass and a murderer and a hella smart dickhead who desperately needs to be punished by the universe (thank you for that one AM). hot take i did not like his “redemption arc” in his game scenario and i don’t think with how he was throughout the entirety of his life (and also throughout the game, main example his inner dialogue) he would actually go out of his way to help the kid because he means it??? n prove he changed to the guys he killed cause he means it??? i dunno maybe AM torturing him made him have a main character “omg i’ve been in the wrong this whole time!!1” moment like the game suggests i’m just not buying it 💀 i’m sure it’s just cause bennys scenario couldn’t be too long and they couldn’t fully flesh him out which i won’t fault the game makers for. i’m a steven universe fan, i know what time constrictions can do to a plot and redemption arc 😭 looking at you white diamond…

his wife n kids are up top and they’re kinda neat to me— i was considering the hc that part of the reason manya (his canon wife) left him is because she realized she was a lesbian which would be funny as fuck considering benny’s also One Of Them Queers 😭. i think during the brief times he was home and able to parent his daughters they got really scared and tired of him, one because he’s just a very threatening powerful and overbearing man, but also because i feel like he would’ve been on their ASS about everything. grades, extracurriculars, friends, wardrobe, this guy was micromanaging his family to an annoying extreme (ofc because of his perfectionist complex). he probably loved manya and the kids in his own weird way, but it was more contractual to him than any real personal relationship. maybe he inherited that from his own parents?? i doubt he ever talked to them after he moved out.

that’s about the end of my thoughts on this fucker. 🥲 funny storyyyy i just remembered i have laundry to finish so im gonna go do that, lord help me. thank you for reading all this if you did!!!!! we’re over halfway through so who do yall want next? wanna save AM or nimdok for last? i’ll see u guys later :]]]

[euthymiya]

acting like you’re some woke person just because you advocate for middle aged women to be lifeless on the internet is not the flex you think it is 💀

You seem rather passionate about this so I’m going to indulge your ask to let you know three things:

Writing is a hobby that gets better with age, life experience, and practice. The best pieces of writing objectively come from older people and I’m not talking about fanfiction. I mean books and literature. I’m serious—go look at some of the most well known pieces of literature and then search up the ages of their authors during the years they were published. You’ll find the older writers tend to bust out bangers and this principle is very much applicable to fics too by default. Also writing fanfic is not “lifeless” lol. Some of you act like writing fanfic is juvenile compared to a novel and it’s rly not that different from writing an original piece of fiction. Sure, sometimes fanfic can be a little less on the conventional side in terms of technique. But genuinely the concept of putting characters into situations to create a plot is literally the main thing on both sides here and if you think writing fanfic is silly, it makes 0 sense to hold creative writing to some pedestal. Some fanfic writers demonstrate AMAZING original world building skills especially if they write au’s that diverge from canon and I think you are out of your mind if you think this hobby is not oftentimes an impressive one rather than “lifeless”

Being 30+ doesn’t automatically mean you must/do have a family and kids but I’ll still indulge that point and say you can easily balance a work and personal life while also having a hobby. I know middle aged men who dedicate more time to hobbies like hunting and fishing than middle aged women do with writing. One actually requires you to leave your house and family behind and the other you can do from the comfort of your home and tend to your family should you need to. I think the nature of your opinion only stems from a misogynistic view on aging women but that’s another can of worms

People don’t stop consuming and enjoying things as soon as they hit their third decade of living. If that’s your viewpoint on life, you’re going to set yourself up for a very miserable time once you hit 30. If you’re already 30+ then you’re a hypocrite by default by even being here in the first place lol. Also, life is literally so fucking silly okay? You wake up, work, pay taxes, and try to get by with what is usually an underpaid paycheck. Just fucking enjoy your life and let others enjoy theirs okay? If a 30 year old likes anime, then that is literally so god damn harmless I cannot stress enough how unimportant that is. There are 30 year olds out there doing heinous things in their free time and you choose to be bothered by someone who happens to produce an assortment of words from time to time. Please reevaluate your priorities

All things aside I cannot convince you that being 30+ and enjoying fandom and fanfic is not weird unless you really just realize that it’s not weird. Idk how old you are but I assume you’re younger than 30 because no 30 year old would be on fandom tumblr and then bash others for it. But regardless, just because you think something is weird doesn’t mean it’s bad. It is literally the most harmless thing I do not understand why you would care so much, just move on???? When you think someone dresses weird in real life do you go point it out to them??? No you think it to yourself and move tf on—and if you would voice it to them then you are literally a rude individual. Plain and simple. Rude and disrespectful and I would suggest you again, reevaluate. And it’s the same principle here. You just move on. If you seriously cannot be convinced that this is normal and just absolutely are dead set on believing that 30+ year olds who enjoy fandom are weird, fine. But just keep it to yourself it is the bare minimum you can do to be a decent person I cannot stress this enough to you

And one more thing. The people who are writing the mangas and animes you enjoy so much are middle aged. Older than 30/40. Grown people who might even have families and kids. Creativity has no age limit it is just a small joy that people indulge in at any age and it’s a very nice thing when they share it for others to enjoy, as well. Please just enjoy someone’s art and live a little. I promise you will be much happier and peaceful if you just read a good fic without worrying about the age of whoever produced it. I guarantee you a lot of the BEST fics you’ll read will come from the older writers they are literally doing you a favor if you happen to enjoy reading fanfic. Why bite the hand that feeds you?

[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!!!!