#its just me griping about my old posts

[littleeyesofpallas]

Not to be a weirdo and go all anime tiddy detective(again...) but I've been seeing my awkwardly salvaged Gigi/Senjumaru post getting notes, and among other issues i have with how that post wound up I do feel like I didn't actually articulate my characterization of Senjumaru's design very clearly.

Kubo's got certain sensibilities about his character design. Usually i get fixated on his love of dramatic "crazy face" and the fandom at large fixates on that one big breasted body type he knows the fans love, but he also has a pretty robust cast of modestly proportioned girls. That being said, he walks a line on that, and is very deliberate in making sure to always remind everyone that his small breasted characters do still have a noticeable chest. It's a little weird but it's pretty specific because you'd think it would be easy enough to let their silhouette flatten out for the sake of simplicity, or speed, or just because sometimes a camera angle won't naturally emphasize the bust, yet time and again he stays consistent on it in a way that predicates intent.

Also worth noting in the context of things here, Isane sort of implicitly binds on account of otherwise conflicting omake details vs her strict canon appearances. Unohana implicitly binds due to her traditional style of dress that fundamentally includes flattening out the chest silhouette. AND YET in the face of those facts they're still drawn to show distinct curvature to the chest line. Rukia, Hinamori, and Shino are all generally infantilized as a part of their design aesthetic, Rukia passing as a 15yo, Hinamori being demure and doll-like(ala her name), and Shino being part of an expressly younger generation than the heroes when she's introduced. They're still drawn with noticeable breasts: moreover there is every opportunity to just entirely lose their silhouettes to the featureless blackness of the shinigami uniform, and Kubo goes back in with the white ink anyway. SuiFeng and Hiyori actually both nearly dodge this by wearing clothes that do actually obscure their body shape, but then Kubo seemingly compensates for that modesty by giving Sui Feng her sideboob outfit when she throws off her haori(and its apparent attached sleeves?), and giving Hiyori almost out of place cleavage(well, that and almost constant midriff shots)

Point again being that these are characters with distinctly small breasts, for whom one should imagine no one would be up in arms about being drawn without some subtle bumps in theri chest line, and yet Kubo still does not miss the detail...

So with that intentionality in mind, the fact that he then went out of his way to... I don't want to call it "cleverly"... but eh... """cleverly""" avoid drawing attention to Giselle's chest by putting her in an oversized top, and even changing its design around the sleeves, and subsequently part of her silhouette(she was slightly curvier, and her outfit was less fluffy in her early appearances?), as her "reveal" chapter got closer, becomes a noticeably meaningful choice. In particular in proximity to the "reveal."

And you know who else he seemed to have taken similar care in how he drew? Shutara Senjumaru. And granted, as i prefaced this whole post with facetiousness, not as insulation but as disclaimer, this is a ridiculous angle of approach. it's a ridiculous premise. the evidence and logic underpinning every step of it is dumb, but in spite of any of that, Shurata's silhouette jumped out and grabbed me from her very first appearance. The line from her neck/shoulder down to her waist is unlike how he's drawn any other flat chested/small breasted shinigami. And that comes in conjunction with the rest of her aesthetic:

She is dressed like something between a Geisha: high class personal entertainer, a Tayu or Oiran: a high class prostitute, or a Kabuki actor who could likely be playing a character styled after or explicitly in the role of either.

Obviously her most striking feature is the bizarre headdress, which appears to be made of kanzashi[簪]: a rather broad category of hair accessories typical of geisha and oiran.

She appears to be wearing two exaugurated pins to create the shape of a crescent moon with what look like they would be the sort of hanging elements of a bira-bira kanzashi; meaning that each of those vertical bars hanging from the underside of the moon would be free to swing back and forth from a connecting link or chain(s).

The radiating golden bars from the top I assume would be a kind of hanagushi hair comb, again with obvious exaguration given its size.

And the under hanging radiance being something like miokuri.

It also gives off super distinct vibes of an art movement that I hate that I cannot for the life of pinpoint right now... I want to say it was Spanish colonial(???) that used to specifically carve halos in this style, not as a round solid disc, but as a series of geometric rays... I hate to say that the thing I always think of is how Death Note borrowed it for its pseudo religious imagery. (although I guess the French did it too a bit during the reign of King Louis the XIV, but i always associate it with the mexican art of catholic saints, but I'm not even sure if I'm thinking of the right thing.)

In any case those are motifs or themes that we never get to see explored. boo...

Shutara is however kind of unexpectedly underdressed for a super powered clothier. Her one exterior cloak thing is as bas I can tell not anything real, even ignoring its defiance of gravity. If she were an oiran you would expect more layers, and the distinctive thing i don't know the name for that they hold in front of them and conceals their hands... She does however have the unmistakable oiran raised shoes.

And finally her makeup is a little vague but with relative consistency she's been depicted as extremely pale, which strongly suggests white makeup, typical of unfortunately all three aesthetic culprits, thus not actually narrowing the reference down at all.

Taken then with her theme of clothes and costuming in proximity of theater, the power of clothes/costume and thus presentation and roleplay, Kubo's super distasteful conflation of Giselle's transgender identity as some kind of "disguise" or "deception," kabuki using onnagata --male actors specifically trained in female role performance and upheld and even coveted at times throughout history as an apex of femininity, even above and beyond that of ciswomen-- the fact that Senjumaru is just straight up a masculine name, etc...

Like i said in the other post about all this, which i'm reluctant to even link back to, without any further elaboration it's impossible to say what this actually means for shutara as a character, and any inworld logic that applies. I don't think she is supposed to be a literal actress, like she has some personal history of professional theater training and performance.

That feels like it should be obvious. But understand that while all of this was a pain in the ass to try and lay out explicitly, it's something that, knowing all these disparate factoids already, I didn't actually have to think about at all when I first saw Shutara. I just clocked her as a queer woman immediately. It felt super obvious.

But now for my due diligence.(i actually totally thought there woudl be more of it at first...) Because as confident as I am in my theory, even I can recognize that it is not without holes. For one, entirely outside this pattern is Liltotto, who is actually very consistently drawn without the otherwise ubiquitous indication of AFAB breasts I point out otherwise. And she is certainly given no particular trans coding the way I associate with Gigi and Shutara.

i was going somewhere with this and i forgot... i think i though there dbe a bigger string of tangents to go off and when there werent my brain just kinda fizzled out without drawing a conclusion...

[spock-adoodledoo]

oh my god i just finished the dark forest finally. 7/10 i suppose, i went through the first half or so of the book being really annoyed by luo ji but also enjoying the chapters where he shows up because unfortunately he was entertaining. still don't understand the imaginary girlfriend thing, it just feels like he needs someone to protect from the world which like ??? ok sure i guess, it just rubs me the wrong way personally. for the second half and especially the end i became luo ji's number one defender it's fine. for the rest, holy crap—the droplet, the microcosm of the universe on those runaway ships, the wallfacer project, luo ji drawing from rey diaz's plan, the attitude of the world towards him, the entire theory... wow

[arolesbianism]

Every now and then I get haunted by my past as a dr fan because someone mentions it or smth and lemme tell you the worst case scenario is if they bring up v3 in an even slightly positive light because nothing will make me start giving a shit abt dr again except for my burning hatred of that damn game, I just spent like 30 minutes ranting to myself about how much of a nothing character Kokichi is in the bathroom after showering just to vent it out because if I don't rant abt v3 every now and then I'll explode and kill someone

[mitsuyaya]

[ househusband’s gripe ] okkotsu yuuta

contains: 512 words. fluff, reader and yuuta are married

summary: Like all the things in this world, being a househusband has its pros and cons — and the biggest detriment in yuuta's case, is keeping you in his arms for a long time.

end note: cross posting 4/6 of my yuuta's bday bash from ao3. i just missed him sry 😔

jjk masterlist

Without any other complaints, Okkotsu Yuuta loves being a househusband.

It may be because of the simplicity of taking care of his spouse, the home he'll spend his eternity with the person he loves and his little bundles of joy, a product of his love and devotion for you. And possibly, because of how easy it is to dedicate his life, time and effort to something other than exorcising curses.

If the Okkotsu during his teenage years, one that was devoid of warmth and comfort, were to be asked – he would've never seen himself be a househusband, let alone be married to someone other than loneliness.

To be cladded with nothing but the responsibility of keeping the house stable, keeping the home the both of you would live in until your last breath, be filled with comfort, passion and serenity.

It's an unbelievable occurrence that he'll willingly do over and over again – because he knows, it's worth it. Serving you and the family he meticulously crafted is worth it.

Especially when at the end of the day, the house that was barren, that you can almost see a weed tumbling like in an old western movie, would be filled with noises he longs to hear after an exhausting day.

“Darling, I'm home! Did you miss me?”

It's your voice that'll fill the house, that'll fill the emptiness he felt the moment you stepped out of the house and bid him farewell.

But despite the contentment he feels, there's one thing he has a complaint on, there's one thing that makes him irritated — how his job as a househusband meant he can't keep you in his arms for too long.

Maki and the other's said that he's dramatic, complaining about how unfair it is for you to spend all day on your job: leaving first thing in the morning, that sometimes you two don't meet, and returning late in the evening, that oftentimes, he's already asleep.

Call him childish but honestly, he doesn't care. It's unfair, at least to him that is – all he wants is to be cuddled in your warmth or to cuddle you for as long as God would let you both. All he wants is for you to be in his line of sight all the time, to be only filled with your presence and nothing more.

Yuuta, your husband, wants time to stop the exact moment he had you in his arms. He wants it to stay that way, be interrupted by nothing and no one else. He wants to be drowned in your love and attention – it's what he deserves, it's what he needs, it's what he yearns for.

“Darling, why are you so quiet? Don't you want a hug hm?”

It is unfair, it is worth the complain,

but if it meant that it's him you'll be coming home to,

it's you he'll wait for at the front door,

it's him you'll praise for doing a good job,

it's you he'll wake up to —

“Welcome home, pretty. I miss you.”

then, he wouldn't mind, one bit.

[nathanbatemanfucker]

In Plain Sight: Family Dinner

summary: nathan meets your sisters— alternatively, you get grilled by your family (nathan joins in of course).

pairing: nathan bateman x f!reader

contents: this entire series is 18+, SIBLINGSSSSSS, talks of dating, bi!reader, teasing, food mention, mentions of caretaking/sick parent, kissing, nathan is so in love (so is reader)

wc: 1,465

an: back at it with these two again. i adore them. i love them. this is lowkey chaos. and nathan sort of fits in perfectly with her family’s chaos which i was expecting to struggle with a bit. thank you to @juneknight for always being there to listen and brainstorm, you’re too good to me!

in plain sight masterlist | tiana | planted | little hamlet

3 months post To Atomize

“If neither of you are ready he doesn’t have to come. But, he’s very excited to meet you.”

Emma and Phillipa are sat on the couch as you stand— more like pace— in front of them. You shouldn’t be nervous, it’s not like this is the first time they’ve met someone you’ve been involved with. Nathan isn’t just somebody is he though? Asshole boss turned slightly less asshole boyfriend. The word feels weird in your mouth, not just because 6 months ago you were calling him Mr. Bateman, but because he seems like so much more than that.

All of his talk of being obsessed, about being consumed, well you feel the same way. You aren’t sure that the term boyfriend really compasses that. But, who would you be to shut that down— saying it doesn’t feel right, or strong enough— when Nathan had the most smug, giddy look on his face when he called you his girlfriend for the first time?

“Oh my god, don’t be a chicken, we’re ready,” Phillipa gripes, leaning back against the couch to more easily fish her phone out of her pocket.

“Hey, don’t call me a chicken.”

“You’ve been dating Mr. Bateman forever,” She says, scrolling on her phone. “It’s been on Twitter.”

“Its been 6 months. Call him Nathan, he's not some stuffy old man.” You say. Well— he’s not old at least. “And please don’t mention Twitter, I’m perceived enough these days.”

Emma pipes up finally, “Phil says that’s a hella long time.”

You narrow your eyes at the older girl who’s giving your younger sister a similar look. “Phil says hella, does she?”

“Emma you swore you wouldn’t tell!”

“I didn’t! I used it in a sentence!”

“Okay, okay— we don’t yell at each other.. You’re both sure?”

“Yes!” They say together with different levels of eagerness, though they’re both excited.

You regard them with wary eyes. Nathan’s excited. They’re excited. Your nerves are certainly there, but you are too.

“Alright but I need you both to be on your best behavior. Be the sweet girls I know you are. And no more cussing. Either of you.”

—

Nathan’s been uncharacteristically quiet but you know that he’s just gathering information, feeling things out. But, Phillipa takes that as nerves and being the rebellious teenager that she is, she wants to have some fun.

She mixes up the pasta in front of her, examines it as she nonchalantly asks, “Nathan, where do babies come from?”

Nathan bites back a nervous laugh. “Don’t they teach you that in sex ed? I mean scientifically speaking it’s a bore but—“

“Nathan,” You grit out in warning, your eyes meeting his.

He gets the message straight away, going in for a different method of attack. “I could make a baby with my bare hands. Program it to never cry or eat, to sleep its 16 hours.”

Emma perks up. “Like a babydoll? Mine is broken.”

“Emma, a new doll is on your Christmas list. It's not broken, you just want the new one,” Phillipa says, reaching for the red pepper flakes.

“I could build her one that's better than anything you could buy on the market. Those things crap out, they malfunction.”

Your brow furrows as you look over at Nathan, this is not where you expected this conversation to go, though you’re not ungrateful. “You’re going to build my sister a doll?”

“Oh, please? Please, please, Mr. Bateman!”

“I told you to call him Nathan, Em.”

Phillipa leans in, “Hey, what about me? Emma gets a doll what do I get.”

“Nathan isn't here to give you thinks, Phil, he was just here to meet you.”

“That depends on what you like Philippa. I can do anything,” Nathan proclaims, leaning back against his chair and crossing his arms.

“Nobody can do anything.”

“That was before you met me. Name it.”

“I’m gonna think of something super impossible.”

“I look forward to proving you wrong, Phil.”

Phil studies him for a moment, trying to decide if she’ll say what’s on her mind. “You’re cooler than anybody she’s ever dated.”

“Oh really?”

“Phil, please,” You plead, completely abandoning eating in turn for twirling your pasta anxiously.

Phillipa ignores completely ignores you, grinning at Nathan’s interest. “Yeah, the last guy she brought looked like Goofy and sounded like Mickey Mouse.”

“Mickey Mouse, huh? You into rats, sweetheart?”

“What about the lady with the curly hair? I liked her,” Emma says softly.

Nathan’s brows raise as he trains his gaze on you. “The lady?”

You pinch the bridge of your nose between your fingers. Your sisters and Nathan grilling you— together. This was simultaneously the best and the worst idea. They had to meet of course, what with you being pretty sure you want to spend the rest of your life with Nathan. But did they have to gang up on you like a well choreographed dance? Especially on the first go of it.

“We were friends. How do you even remember her, Em, you were a toddler?” You look at her with eyes that say back off but she’s 7, in her own world, having a great time.

Nathan’s building her a babydoll for gods sakes.

Emma grins, “She always gave me candies.”

“Wait a fuc—“ He stops himself, mindful of your sisters, repeating with just as much shock as before, “a lady?”

“Friends,” You emphasis again.

“I literally caught you two kissing,” Phil says, rolling her eyes.

“Philippa—“

Nathan throws his head back, laughing loudly, “Not much of an explanation for that, is there honey?”

“It never went anywhere— not that I owe to any of you to explain,” You give all of them narrowed eyes, your face feeling hotter than the surface of the sun.

“They were all nice at least,” Philippa muses, twirling some pasta around her fork.

“Like I would bring home somebody that would be mean to either of you.”

“Phillipa says people say Nathan’s a jackass,” Emma announces before stuffing more garlic bread in her mouth.

You fix Phillipa with an icy look, and she quickly looks away, suddenly very interested in the basket of garlic bread in front of her. “When I told you to spend more time with your sister, that really did not include teaching her swear words.”

“I like swear words!” Emma protests.

Nathan leans in, smiling wide, eyes glittering mischievously, “Emma, so do I.”

You lean closer to Nathan, whispering, “Honey, you’re not helping.”

“Right. Lips zipping,” He whispers back, straightening up.

You turn back to your sisters. “Less swear words, more dinner. Or are you finished?”

“I’m finished. Can we have the brownies Phillipa made?”

“Of course, little one. Phillipa? Nathan?”

Phil just gives you a nod, while Nathan says, “All good, sweetheart.”

Dessert is much more mellow, and afterwards Nathan offers to do the dishes for you so that you can make sure your sisters get to bed alright. Once you’ve said goodnight to them, you return to your room. You find Nathan there, fingers tracing the trinkets and family heirlooms that sit on your desk.

You shut the door quietly behind you, “I told you they were…”

“Like you?” Nathan suggests, his mouth sitting in that smug grin.

You scoff. “Nosy. I’m not nosy.”

“You’re pretty fucking nosy.”

“Am not.”

“I didn’t say I disliked it about you honey, don’t get your panties in a twist,” He reaches for you, crowding you against the wall near your bed.

“My panties are untwisted, Nathan,” You say matter of factly, unimpressed with him.

He grins, pressing a kiss to your cheek, your jaw, your neck. “Can I take them off then?”

“My sisters are down the hall, so is my mom,” You whisper, a little breathless and Nathan takes note of that.

“I thought you liked covering my mouth?” He asks, pulling away from your neck to wag his eyebrows at you. You stare up at him, eyes alight, mouth flat. He wants to kiss you until his brain melts out of his ears but digresses. “Alright, alright. I’ll behave.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bateman,” You say, your voice a little exasperated though there’s a smile pulling at your lips. You detangle yourself from him, starting towards the door. “I’ll get you some towels to shower and check on my mom.”

“You’ll let me know if she’s up for company?” Nathan watches you deflate, sorry that he even asked. But, he’s eager to meet the woman who raised you. He wants to ask questions and know more about the both of you.

“Yeah, I’ll let you know,” You murmur.

“If not, I’ll just write her a note. You know I’m good for it,” He murmurs, nodding head towards the note he’d written you that sits on your nightstand. “Come back here. Please.”

When you cross the room to him, he pulls in close, his mouth capturing yours in a kiss that makes you so dizzy you can’t remember that you were sad.

“What was that for?”

He raises a brow at you, “What, I can’t kiss my girlfriend whenever I want?”

“You and that word are really going strong?”

“You jealous?”

“Nathan, that would make a negative amount of sense, my love.”

He starts to kiss at your neck like before, using a little more teeth this time. “Oh that’s new. I like that. Say it again.”

“To the shower, Bateman.”

nathan taglist: @missdictatorme, @hon3yboy, @runa-falls, @campingwiththecharmings, @toracainz, @steven-grants-world, @clemdango04, @jdbxws, @crispysublimecupcake, @sub-aro, @faretheeoscar, @cupidysm, @whentheskyispinkandabitblue, @nova-ivy541, @sparkypantelones, @veritable-trash, @mangoslushcrush, @thhriller @tenderhornynihilist, @queerponcho, @redcake333

[ryin-silverfish]

LMK S5 Fix-it: the Four Divine Beasts

My feeling on LMK S5 has stayed pretty consistent after first watching the Chinese dub: "nice character moments, but what even is this worldbuilding?"

And personally, the Four Divine Beasts/Guardians/Symbols are the biggest symptom of S5's worldbuilding problem.

Namely, they feel more like plot devices that are just there to die and cough up the Color Stones, and as a result, 4/5 of the "Find the Color Stone" plotline felt like a worse version of S3 and the Samadhi Rings, but with even less flavor.

Now, I'm aware of the 11-minute episode constraint, as well as the pressure the studio change might have created that contributed to the overall feeling of rushed-ness.

However, my criticism here is about the writing and worldbuilding, not the animation quality——things that, in my humble and uneducated opinion, could have been done a lot better even if we were sticking to the "Find the McGuffins" plotline.

Thus, this post. As always: very lengthy, very Chinese-mythos inspired.

Four Guardians & Five Phases

A brief Google Search on the Four Symbols, aka Sixiang, will tell you this: the Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermillion Bird and Black Tortoise are divine beasts in Chinese mythology that watch over the four directions, each associated with a color and one of the Five Phases.

(An old post of mine briefly talked about their origins as personifications of four big constellations that occupy a quadrant of the sky each, and their relations to the 28 Lunar Mansions)

And S5 certainly paid homage to their elemental associations, however brief and surface-level it is.

The Vermillion Bird's ability to use fire and its flaming temple is the most notable example, but this screenshot of the seal that appeared at the temple entrances also shows five symbols:

From middle left, going in the clockwise direction, these appear to be the characters for Wood, Water, Fire, Earth and Metal in Oracle Bone/Bronze Script.

Which begs the question...why would you spend so much effort on the tiny visual details, yet not show most of their elemental association through the narrative itself?

Like, suppose you are a foreign audience that knows nothing about Chinese culture and legends, who have just finished watching S5, and I ask you "What elemental powers do each of the Four Symbols have?"

Apart from Vermillion Bird = Fire (the obvious one) and the Black Tortoise = maybe Earth (which is not mythos-accurate, btw), can you honestly answer it, based only on what the show has given you?

Which leads me to my biggest gripe: their random-as-hell placement.

Even the Samadhi Rings have a map, however vague it is, but with the Color Stones, the gang basically just wandered all over the place in the hope of eventually running into one of the divine beasts——and they did, somehow!

Like, I'm not asking the writers for an entire mini-arc that's just them piecing the clues together. But will it be too much to let SWK or Tang make an off-hand comment like this?

"Well, legends said that the Four Symbols watch over the four directions and their respective elements. So if we wanna find them, we just gotta go real far in these directions, toward places with the most of that... elemental stuff! Right?"

And that brings me to the actual fix-it part. The Vermillion Bird can stay where she is, but the placement of the other three should also logically follow their elemental associations.

Oh, and though there's limited space for their characterization, they should at least get some individual characterization apart from "wise ancient guardians".

Xuanwu, Black Tortoise of the North

The fact that Xuanwu, or rather, it's snake half, can transform into stone at will might lead you to believe that its element is Earth.

Well...no, not traditionally; the Black Tortoise and the North correspond to Water in the Five Phases system, and I'm gonna both stick to that and build my fix-it off this foundation.

Instead of cosplaying a stone statue in the middle of nowhere, Xuanwu is gonna be residing on one of the islands in the North Sea, where dark tides and huge snow storms rage endlessly under the sunless sky.

So Sandy, being the water travel specialist, is gonna head out there on his boat. Mei would go to her great x N granduncle, Ao Guang's place, to see if he has any clues on, well, this big blue dragon that's also of the East.

Pigsy and Tang would head west, classic JTTW style, towards the mythical Mt. Kunlun where Queen Mother of the West resides (based on one of Tang's books that said the White Tiger was her emissary), while SWK performs an all-round search everywhere on his somersault cloud.

Which leaves MK: his dilemma is not about some random divergence in the road, but which of his friends to follow. Like, what if he goes with one person, and something bad happen to the others in the meantime?

In the end, even though he reluctantly goes with Sandy, he is still constantly distracted by his worries about everyone else, which segments nicely into the meditation training of S5E3.

But since they are doing it on a boat, there can be an external storm to go with the internal storm, causing further distractions for MK and also forcing them to seek shelter on the nearest island.

An island that, strangely, seems to be coated in a thin layer of ice. It isn't just the earth that's frosted over: all the plants, a few unfortunate multi-headed (???) seabirds, and a snake have also turned into ice statues...

Wait, snake? How does a reptile survive this far out in the north?

They have a bigger concern, however. The ice is slowly but steadily spreading, over the beaches and the surrounding seawater, and if they don't finish the search soon, the ice might get too thick for the boat to break.

So MK dashed off to do a grid-by grid search, then circled back to the place with all the frozen statues...and found the snake missing.

Cue, peak paranoia moment, and going on a wild-goose chase for the missing snake that might or might not be an ice-wielding demon waiting to ambush them.

In fact, the snake almost seems to be taunting them, seeing how they run into several "frozen snake statues" that turned out to be made of actual, solid ice. Sandy keeps reminding him to stop and think, while MK finds it harder and harder to put the lessons to practice.

By following the trail of ice statues, however, they eventually arrived on a little island in the middle of a frozen lake, where the real snake——the one half of Xuanwu lay coiling around the Blue Color Stone.

Just when MK is about to dash out and grab it, the snake comes to life with a hiss, and they barely dodged the ice spikes rising up from underneath their feet.

"Begone, foul spawn of Hundun! Return to thy conniving master, ilk of the Floodbringer, before I freeze every single drop of thy tainted blood!" "Um, I-I think you've mistaken me for someone else? I'm the Monkie Kid, and I'm here to collect your Color Stone so I can save the world——" "Doth thee mistake me for a fool, too?" The snake bore its fangs, rising its head high up into the air. "I can feel the flames of dear Lingguang on you, murderer, ripped straight out of its rightful owner's chest! She would not have perished without a fight, nor shalt I!" "Enough, Zhiming."

The tiny island itself begins to shake, revealing the other half of Xuanwu, the Black Tortoise itself. The snake still manages to half-encast Sandy in ice, before the Black Tortoise traps it inside a ball of flowing water.

She briefly apologized for her twin's hostility——whereas the strain of keeping the world together affects her body in the form of visible cracks, her other half has not been in his right mind ever since the Vermillion Bird's fall, living in the distant past and rarely able to perceive the present.

(The whole conversation is punctuated by the snake's psychic screeches in the background, which alternates between accusing her of betrayal and stating she must have fallen victim to the "poisonous blood of the enemy".)

Which makes the upcoming trial even more necessary. No, it's not "mercy-kill her twin". Yet. MK needs to prove his ability to control his body and mind, that his psyche will not break like her other half here under the tremendous pressure.

Thus, the trial of meditation. And he needs to act fast, for she cannot hold the snake back for long, as made evident by the slowly creeping ice inside and outside his watery prison.

"If you are truly worthy, then vanquish your fears, and stand before us in your true form. Brandish Lingguang's stone, so that we may be released from our watch in the long night."

MK succeeded, like he did in canon, with a small difference: his mastery of the monkey form is required for, and enables the limited usage of the stone's power.

So, holding the Red Color Stone, he unleashes a wave of fiery light that melts away the ice on Sandy and finally brings the snake back to his senses...somewhat.

He only managed to say the Vermillion Bird's name in a wistful voice, exclaiming "How I missed thy warm flames!" before melting into a puddle of water.

The other half of Xuanwu soon followed after giving him the stone, disintegrating into a mass of snowflakes that is swept away by the wind, but not before dropping one last bit of foreshadowing:

"Trust not the Floodbringer's Emissary."

(Sidenote: I think it'll be neat if the Four Symbols refer to each other using their IRL Daoist titles. Vermillion Bird - Lingguang, Black Tortoise & Snake - Zhiming, Azure Dragon - Mengzhang, White Tiger - Jianbing)

Azure Dragon & White Tiger

...And I thought Xuanwu's placement was random.

No, seriously, why is there a random music festival that just happens to be Azure Dragon and White Tiger themed that just happens to be near the actual place the two divine beasts are at?

To stay within the show's time constraint, I will not be giving White Tiger his individually themed placement, and instead try to come up with something that is appropriate for the pair as a whole.

Since Azure Dragon's associated element is Wood, it makes sense for him to have plant powers. Namely, whereever the divine beast resides, floras and faunas will flourish, no matter how out of place with the local geography and climate.

Once Mei learned that from Ao Guang, theoretically, it becomes quite the easy find: the mythical oasis city in western China, one that shows up multiple times in historical travel records yet has never been found by archeologists.

And the reason will soon become clear, as Tang and Pigsy make the drive from one desert city to another on their way to Mt. Kunlun (joined by Mei after she returned from the Samadhi Fire side-arc).

Namely, it's like a magical version of the famous Peach Blossom Spring of Chinese literature: an entire city that has been glamored over by the power of the divine beasts, occupied by people whose way of life hasn't changed since the Tang dynasty.

But as the guardians' powers fade, so does the illusion that veils it from the outside world, and the elemental magic that sustains this paradise.

Instead of a music festival, the gang finally discover the city that, according to the locals, has appeared out of thin air a few days ago, while it is in the middle of an archaic ritual procession.

The atmosphere is a lot more solemn, and it isn't hard to see why. Not only has the illusion vanished, exposing them to a profoundly alien world, the foliage of the oasis are growing and dying in rapid succession, clogging the streets with fallen leaves and yellowed petals.

An opera play is going on atop a nearby stage. It sings of a teal-robed immortal who rescued the refugees of a long-forgotten war, who turned desert into fertile soil with the help of a mighty divine general, concealing their existence from the greed and malice of the outside world.

The people in the procession knelt down and pleaded to the immortal for aid, to not abandon them in their hour of need. And their prayers are, indeed, answered, just not by the divine beasts in person.

The 14 Lunar Mansions that belong to the Azure Dragon and White Tiger descended from the sky, summoned by their masters, though they seemed to have been given different orders.

Namely, the Azure Dragon 7 spread out to guard all the major city gates, letting no one enter or leave, while the White Tiger 7 are ordered to round up all the residents and start setting up a teleportation formation.

Soon afterwards, Nezha arrived in the midst of the chaos. He is just as clueless as to what was going on as the Monkie Kid gang, but the moment he caught sight of SWK and friends, he's after them in hot pursuit.

Meanwhile, Li Jing is not happy about the Lunar Mansions suddenly acting without his orders, and commanded them to stand down or be arrested for insubordination.

"With all due respect, Devaraja Li——" Before the Moon Fox Star could finish her sentence, another stellar beast stepped forth, his tiger tail swishing behind him. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

Results: most of the Azure Dragon 7 get sucked into his pagoda, but while they were fighting, the White Tiger 7's formation activated, teleporting the majority of the city residents to god knows where.

While shit was hitting the fan, Tang hurriedly teleported the gang away, right into the sanctuary of the divine beasts——an underground temple.

"It's over, Mengzhang. Now that the Harbinger is on our doorsteps, and your pet mortals are safe at the cost of our loyal warriors, will you finally rest easy?" "Not...yet. There are still...stragglers, left behind." "Stragglers you have doomed yourself! Their fate is sealed the moment you cast your mirage over their ancestors and create this little utopia, frozen in time." The cracks on the tiger's body widened. A thick layer of condensation began forming on the metal reliefs, as if the very walls of the temple were weeping. "I should have never agreed to stay and help." "Yet you...still did. And I'm so glad you are here."

Yep, in this fix-it, I decide to use the Azure Dragon & White Tiger for some thematic parallels, with them basically repeating Nvwa and the Pillar of Heaven on a smaller scale.

The former created a garden city in the middle of the desert, while the latter uses his power to provide the water source that sustains the city (because Metal births Water).

As the end approaches, however, they are faced with the problem of ensuring the city residents' safety, since, upon their death, the entire oasis will revert to a desert overnight.

The White Tiger feels like there's no point in trying anything, since their death means the Harbinger will fulfill his destiny soon and give the world a reboot.

But the Azure Dragon insists on channeling his power into the land until the very last possible moment, so that the people's last memories will be a mundane, peaceful one.

Besides, they know very well that Fate and Destiny are no longer ironclad, when the very laws of reality are breaking down. How, then, can he be sure that the cycle will end and the world will be reforged as Nvwa intended, seeing that its premature beginning is already an outlier?

After a long argument, they had reached an uneasy compromise. Thus, the chaotic arrival of the Lunar Mansions and the hurried evacuation of the residents.

"You will understand, won't you, Harbinger?" The dragon looked into his eyes. "Even if you know it's selfish and futile, that you can't keep them safe forever, you are still going to give your all, just so their happy days will last a little longer..." "It is easy for Brother Jianbing to say, let go, face your end with honor. For Metal is the clashes of blades, the unforgiving axe of executioners." "I? This old fool just saw lives. Of men and women, children and elderly folks. And I cannot stand by and watch them wither."

MK nodded quietly, feeling Mei's worried, "are you not telling me something" glance on the back of his head. He reached out a hand, and the two divine beasts press their foreheads together.

The dragon faded away in a rain of falling leaves and petals, and when the Purple Color Stone hit the ground, nothing remains of the tiger but a thin layer of silvery, metallic sand on the floor.

Appendix: Inside the Pagoda

The fix-it is mostly over at this point, so the following is just me adding some additional worldbuilding and foreshadowing to MK's solution in E10, to make the whole "giving powers to everyone" thing a little less out of left field.

In the previous section, it was mentioned that a bunch of Lunar Mansions end up inside Li Jing's pagoda too. And when MK and friends run across them, they are in a pretty bad state.

Namely, the same cracks they see on the divine beasts are now appearing on the Lunar Mansions' bodies too.

"Isn't it obvious? Our masters are no more, so we now bear the brunt of the weight that was once on their shoulders..." "And are on our way of being crushed to a pancake." "Very tactful, aren't you?" The one-horned man sighed. "But yes. Lord Mengzhang is a stellar beast too——the greatest of all. He is a constellation, while we are merely the stars that make up the dragon's body, embued with a tiny fraction of his power." "And when the very sky of the East has fallen..." "How can the stars remain unscathed?"

After that, they basically exit the scene to fade away offscreen. But the information they revealed plants the seed of an idea in MK: specifically, that the Color Stones' power (and burden) can be shared between multiple individuals, like what happened at the end of E10.

Also, tiny fix: instead of MK learning the circlet spell outta nowhere, he's gonna tap into the power of the Color Stones during his fight with SWK, just like he did during Xuanwu's trial, to buy enough time to make his sacrifice.

[ride-thedragon]

I do think I hold the opinion more that Nettles was a child of Coryls instead of Daemon if she was, in fact, a dragon seed. I know people like to place her on Daemon because of their relationship, but to me, that never makes sense or holds water, so let me show the reason why I think its Corlys.

So.....

1. She's born on Driftmark.

Any other seed born on Driftmark is born to a Velayron. Even though Nettles still doesn't have the markers of a Velayron, it would make sense that she's sired by a Velayron from Driftmark.

2. She grieves Driftmark.

It's one of the better parts of her story rats tied to her empathy, but her identity is tied to Driftmark, I made this post before, but I'll just tag it for greater explanation.

3. She's tied romantically to a Targaryen.

Depending on who you believe it to be, the Velaryons of this era that live past the dance are tied to Targaryens romantically, especially if we should know about them. Also, all Coryls' kids are.

4. He defends her.

In the same breath, he defends Addam with in the book he defends Nettles. It's an undercooked part, but he even gets accosted for it later when it's brought back up that he defended the traitor dragonseeds.

So why doesn't he claim her?

1. She's a girl.

Realistically, she doesn't really benefit him. He'd marry her off or use her to add a dragon, but truly, he doesn't need to and she seems to be fine on her own.

2. He probably doesn't know or understand the relationship.

Yea, he probably doesn't know or understand the relationship they have.Daughter, granddaughter, distantseed, the man is old and at best could remember, at worst could be going of a hunch.

3. She doesn't look like him

He doesn't have to claim her if he doesn't want to. A white-haired, white man and the brown skinned, black haired girl don't share many traits.

4. She's older than the of Hull boys

That's not to say she has greater claim, but I do think it adds a sense of duty to her as his eldest child alive. It makes it easier to just claim the boys he has no doubt in.

But why?

Thematically, I do think it allows for small changes in the story. Sheepstealer is a Driftmakr dragon, and the dragon he's tied to (Cannibal) is tied to Corlys in the end. They have a very small but notable relationship. It makes her his second daughter and lets her live. Also, my biggest gripe with the Nettles and Daemon relationship is the fact that Daemon has a power of three things going on with his kids, so for me in order for Nettles to he his kid, he'd have to have another int he narrative by another woman, which he doesn't to our knowledge. I won't say it's 100% the right answer but certainly not one to dismiss.

[polysprachig]

Hello friend! I just came across your post about filling in old spaces in your polyglot journal via the bullet journal tag… could you say more about how you use your polyglot journal in general and what its intended purpose(s) is/are?

Thank you for the question, @northfaceho! ***(Read orange text for a short summarised version)

The purpose of my polyglot journal is to capture my process of learning languages, both for myself and to share with other people. It was prompted by a secret learning project I did in 2019 to make my other native language skills go from passive to active (and the subsequent desire to subtly strengthen my skills across my main 5 languages). This happened to coincide with my dissatisfaction with the general ‘Polyglot learns X# of Languages - Here’s How + Tips and Tricks’ kind of content you could—and can—find online. And the rich stock at the base of all my griping generally boiled down to one thing:

Fucking notecards.

No shade to anyone in specific—it was more a general trend I felt I noticed at the time—but the idea that someone who has acquired or is learning a football club worth of languages and who, moreover, is able to demonstrate their use of said languages across the 4 skills to various degrees of range and accuracy at their current stage of learning does so by *secret tip: using notecards* struck me as extremely… imprecise and decidedly non-tip-worthy. It’s not that I think these people were lying about using notecards to learn—not at all! The description was just focused on what I learn with not how I learn imho, and it begged the question: Well, what do you do with the notecards?

Because at the time, I only really used notecards in Old English, but not as flashcards for memorisation or playing vocabulary matching games, which I assume was used as shorthand in the content I kept seeing. No, once a year, I would take out some fresh notecards and write Beowulf verbatim from memory for the section I have memorised, then compare it to the orthography in the Howell D. Chickering dual-language translation. (I do something similar with Chaucer, but notecards are too small so I use a yellow legal pad instead. Still, the concept is the same.) And later, when I started learning Italian, I would prepare a notecard to keep on my desk during lessons which listed out the most common errors I knew I was going to make in that day’s class, based on my teacher’s recent feedback (usually incorrect pronunciation/word stress, Greek or French influence which isn’t correct, accidental uses of Latin, etc.).

And so I repurposed what I had hoped would be a travel journal into a polyglot journal and kicked it off with this statement of my intentions forgive the register:

This year, 2024, one of my main goals was to read the rest through, comment on my methods, mistakes, mindset, etc. etc., and fill in the gaps with scraps of loose studies and feedback from my teachers. Oh yeah, and start typing it all up to save my future self some time.

I’ll be posting a lot more from my polyglot journal in 2025, now that I’ve figured out how much time I can commit to it based on my schedule and the writing routine I’ve been testing out these last months. I want to make sharing it an adventure reflective of its many side quests and the actual time and input required to learn.

In essence, the journal reflects the planning, check-ins, learning notes, and process of my quarantine levelling up project and literary/poetic translation portfolio part 1, which are free to read here if anyone is interested:

The Merlin Project (Irish-English)—running with the question all my students asked in the pandemic, i.e. Can I learn a language from just watching TV? by writing borderline Merlin fanfiction

The tragic portion of my translation portfolio (English-German-French-Italian)—literary translations into English from Poliziano, Goethe, Voltaire and Kaiserin Elisabeth (Sisi); translations into German of Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

The journal is not without silly and serious one-off language escapades as well, which I occasionally ventured out into when taking a break from the more major projects.

Thanks for reading if you’ve made it to the end!

[bbobpul]

break my heart again 2 — njm

PAIRING. na jaemin x reader SUMMARY.how's jaemin gonna give back for all of y/n's efforts now that he finally can? it's been years—just how much has everything changed? GENRE. angst, fluff, she fell first 🤭 W/C. 3.5k NOTE. hello, part two is here! so sorry i couldn't make a taglist. i didn't have time to make one. nevertheless, i hope this fic make its way back to you. love u all and thankies sm !!!! also, my requests are open !!!

(⁠☉⁠｡⁠☉⁠)⁠!⁠→ my other works !!!!!! part one here!!

i find it hard to picture myself ever being as dedicated to something or someone again, just like how i dedicated my entire college life to na jaemin.

lately, i've been feeling like i forgot what it's like to actually have a dream. back then, na jaemin was my dream, he was my driving force. i would force myself to wake up so early in the morning just so i could see him (or his car) enter the gates of the university. i would go to school even though i am sick and feel a lot better when i get home because i saw na jaemin. but now two years after graduating, i still haven't found a decent job that i actually enjoy.

it's a common experience that many people go through, and i suppose i shouldn't complain about it. maybe i need to put in more effort and push myself harder. part of me wonders if having na jaemin back in my life would rekindle that same sense of dedication that i once had. but as i say these thoughts out loud, they sound absurd, even to myself. why would i wish for my first love to return just so i could find a decent job? why would i long for na jaemin to come back merely to feel that spark in my life again? it's puzzling why i'm even dwelling on thoughts of him and wondering if he holds the key to my happiness and success.

oh, to dream.

oh, for that old dedication to still burn within you.

if only you hadn't acted so dumb that day. could life have taken a different path? are you even happy now? if you hadn't let fear hold you back back then, if you'd actually been brave enough to listen and follow through, would you be happier today?

but no matter how much you keep bothering yourself with that memory, if people come up to you and ask if you feel bad about everything that happened that day, you'd say no. you don't feel bad at all.

deciding to let him go was one of the best things you did. he seemed happy when you left, and after that, you never heard anything about him. he's like a touchy subject in your group of friends, which can be tough sometimes since you share friends. but does it really matter now? him not being in your life probably means he's happier and more peaceful, right?

are you feeling peaceful? is being stuck in a 9-5 job that hardly brought you joy a happy situation? scratch that. did being in that job make you happy? clearly not, as you've just mustered the bravery to quit. and in doing so, you've never felt more joyful.

did you really make the right decision?

just as you were pondering your own question, your phone buzzed on the bedside table. you grabbed it and saw that the caller was renjun, your incredibly patient best friend.

"y/n," he said, his tone becoming unusually serious. "what's up?" you asked. "do you need money?" "yeah?" "here's the deal: our college is putting together a documentary film, and they've chosen your department. but guess what? your old classmates are bombarding me with messages because it looks like you're ignoring them all. frankly, i can't believe you even answered my call," he griped. "wait, hold on. what film? and why would they pick me? are they searching for someone with a post-college life so sad that it belongs in a documentary?" "well, you were practically a legend back in college, so… and apparently, the director specifically wants you, which leads to… well, another issue…" "what's the problem now?" "it's going to be directed by jaemin."

and just like that, you ended the call. but a few seconds later, renjun's call came in again.

"i'm not going to do it." "you stubborn brat." "why him?" "i have no idea!" "why is he even directing? wasn't he studying architecture or something?" "i don't know, y/n. i haven't heard a single thing about him since your graduation." "what do you mean?" "that's not important now, y/n. you're in need of money, right? seize the opportunity. do it for the cash." “so will you do it or will you do it?” “for the cash.”

...

"y/n, you've moved on, haven't you? what's done is done. i'm pretty sure jaemin has forgotten all about it. this chance is coming your way, so just accept it." "i guess i will."

you're drawn in by the idea of making some extra money and the possibility of catching the eye of potential agents or employers. right now, you're at a crossroads, thinking about how this documentary could be a stepping stone to more job opportunities down the line. this situation is different from what usually drives you – this time, it's not about others, it's about focusing on your own goals and aspirations.

you're deliberately avoiding dwelling on your past. just as renjun mentioned, you've moved beyond it. what's done is done. right now, your focus is firmly on the present and the potential that lies ahead in the future.

what's in the past is behind us, including whatever existed between jaemin and you.

from renjun

tomorrow at lunchtime, they'll be going over the schedules and discussing what to film. if you want, you can chat with the director now. his number is 0825 813 2000.

in response, you simply replied with a "okay."

the night before the lunch meeting, a jumble of emotions has you in its grip. the idea of reconnecting with jaemin, who used to be your best friend and is now someone distant, fills you with a sense of awkwardness. you tell yourself that this is about working together and the chance to grow professionally.

after taking a deep breath, you decide to shoot jaemin a text. your fingers hesitate as you type, and the uncertainty you're feeling seems to seep into your message. you finally press send, and your text reads, "hey, it's y/n. heard we're meeting tomorrow for the documentary. just wanted to check in before that."

in almost no time, your phone buzzes with a response: "hey y/n, good to hear from you. yeah, looking forward to our meeting. let's catch up and chat about the project."

the conversation is polite, but beneath the surface, there's an unspoken layer of complexity. you can feel the hesitation in your exchange, a silent recognition of the shared history that's now a distant memory. as you talk about the meeting and the documentary, the easy flow you once had is noticeably absent.

as the texts go back and forth, a sense of tension seems to hang in the air. it's as though the years of friendship you once had are casting a shadow over your conversation. the effortless connection you once shared now requires effort, and both of you can sense the change.

as the conversation wraps up with a simple "see you tomorrow," you're left with a mix of excitement and anxiety. the idea of seeing jaemin again, especially in a professional context, stirs up a range of emotions. this situation is a stark reminder of just how much things have changed – and maybe how some things can't go back to the way they were.

you believed the conversation had concluded, only for your phone to ring once more, bearing yet another message from him. as you read the words on the screen, "i missed you, y/n," a rush of emotions floods over you.

"what's going on with him?" you mutter to yourself, your eyebrows knitting together in confusion. your gaze remains fixed on the message for a moment, your attention drawn to the three blinking dots in the corner – a sign that he's in the process of typing a response. several more seconds tick by, the dots eventually vanishing, and in response, you shut your phone off. you make an attempt to settle into bed and get some rest, but truth be told, it's hard to claim you managed to sleep soundly that night. an undercurrent of thoughts and emotions keeps your mind restless.

the day of lunch lunch finally arrived. you sat across from jaemin, his words forming a distant hum as your thoughts remained clouded and preoccupied. the lingering impact of his recent message kept you in a state of unease, making it difficult to fully engage in the conversation he was leading.

then, something inside you snapped, and you found yourself abruptly interrupting him with a question that had been gnawing at you, "why me?"

he looked at you, his gaze steady, and his response was quick, "why not you?"

your frustration simmered as his words hit you. he was choosing to be cryptic, and it was only adding to your confusion. pushing past your exasperation, you pressed on, "listen, i know we didn't part on the best terms, but why come back now and act like everything's fine? i mean, sure, it's better than hostility, but why choose me? i'm the one who's no longer part of your life."

his expression remained neutral, void of any emotions as he replied, "that's not true."

you raised an eyebrow, challenging him to elaborate. "what's not true?"

"that you have nothing to do with my life, y/n," he stated firmly.

the weight of his words settled heavily between you two, the gravity of the situation growing more apparent. the lunch table had transformed into an arena for confronting unresolved issues.

you scoffed, unable to hold back your disbelief. "jaemin, i made one mistake, and now you're trying to imply that my actions shaped your entire life?"

his eyes held yours, unwavering. "y/n, it's not just about that one mistake. everything that followed, everything that shaped who i am today… it's all connected to you."

your mind reeled, trying to grasp the enormity of what he was suggesting. the complexities of your shared history seemed to crash over you, leaving you grappling with a whirlwind of emotions and a tangled web of unspoken feelings.

the weight of his words left you momentarily speechless, and in an attempt to shift away from the intensity, you sought to change the subject. "where are the other producers? why is it just you here?"

"y/n…" he began, his tone suggesting he wanted to continue the previous conversation.

however, you opted to sidestep the discussion entirely. you pretended as if the profound exchange hadn't just occurred. "i notice you're taking on the role of a director now. quite the career shift, huh?" you inquired, masking your internal turmoil with a casual demeanor. you acted as if there hadn't been a two-year gap in your connection, as though things between you were perfectly ordinary.

he met your gaze, a faint hint of something unreadable in his eyes. "i pursued another dream when i felt i'd lost the chance for my first one."

"your first dream… not architecture, then?" you prodded, curious about the direction he had taken.

he shook his head, a soft chuckle escaping him, leaving you puzzled yet again. "no, not architecture. well, i suppose that just wasn't meant for me back then, but maybe it is now."

the cryptic nature of his response only added to the layers of confusion and intrigue that surrounded him. there was something about the way he spoke that hinted at deeper currents beneath the surface, emotions and experiences that he hadn't fully revealed. you found yourself torn between the desire to push for answers and the instinct to allow him his privacy. the lunch meeting had transformed into a stage for untangling not just the complexities of the documentary but also the intricate web of emotions and history between you and jaemin.

leaving the restaurant, a whirlwind of unanswered questions dances in your mind. yet, for now, you choose to tuck those thoughts away, focusing instead on the looming filming date just a few days away – next saturday.

in the span of time between that lunch and the upcoming shoot, jaemin proves consistent in his attempts to bridge the gap between you two. he regularly reaches out, updating you about his day and proposing get-togethers, which you consistently decline.

the days pass, marked by a series of messages and missed opportunities. despite the undeniable tension, there's an undeniable persistence on jaemin's part, a determined effort to reconnect and reestablish a sense of familiarity. however, your apprehensions and the memories of your past dynamics hold you back, keeping you from embracing his overtures.

as the countdown to the filming day continues, you find yourself in a delicate dance – balancing the unresolved history between you and the prospects of the future. the lines between your personal and professional lives are blurred, and the documentary project becomes a backdrop against which the intricacies of your relationship with jaemin play out.

you find yourself constantly pondering what his intentions could be. his actions leave you wondering, and you can't help but question what he's aiming for. in your perspective, you're merely a negative aspect of his life – a streak of misfortune. you would have expected him to have learned from the past, but his determination remains unshakeable.

as you contemplate these thoughts, your phone lights up once more, bearing yet another message from him. his name on the screen triggers a whirlwind of emotions – a mixture of uncertainty, annoyance, and a hint of curiosity. opening the message, you brace yourself for whatever he might convey this time. the consistency in his attempts at communication only serves to deepen the intricate web of emotions you hold for him, leaving you caught between your shared history and the unpredictability of the present.

"the offer's still there, y/n. :)" "jaemin, let's be real. just because i'm on board with your documentary idea doesn't mean we're suddenly best buds again. a lot has changed." "i want to reconnect, though." "actually, scratch that. i want to get to know you all over again." "jaemin, i appreciate the effort, but let's keep things professional, okay?" “i’m sorry, y/n. goodnight.”

after your straightforward message, his responses ceased. a silence settled in, stretching on until saturday – the day you were set to see him again. the anticipation and uncertainty had been building, and now the moment was finally at hand.

you stepped into the studio and immediately noticed that you and jaemin were the only ones present. your confusion must have been evident on your face, prompting him to address the situation promptly.

"um, the team thought having fewer people in the room would create a more personal atmosphere," he began, his voice carrying a hint of unease. "and, well, they decided to keep me here, you know, being the director and all, and also because we have a history…"

his words trailed off, and there was a subtle vulnerability in his tone. it was as if he was acknowledging the intricacies of your past connection, while simultaneously recognizing the complexities it introduced into your current dynamic. the studio, usually a place of creativity and collaboration, had transformed into a space laden with the weight of your shared history.

"it's okay," you responded, your words carrying a touch of reassurance. as your reply registered, a faint smile tugged at the corners of his lips – a detail you couldn't help but notice. after all, it was that very smile that had ignited four years of your life, a smile that held memories and emotions you had both shared.

"um, i'll just ask you a few questions, and then you're free to go," he stated, his voice carrying a hint of nervousness that didn't escape your notice. this new facet of his demeanor felt unfamiliar to you, a departure from the confident jaemin you had known.

you found yourself disliking this uneasiness, and a thought occurred to you – maybe it was time to rekindle something within him. as he began asking you questions, you decided to respond in a way that would evoke a certain familiarity between you two. it was a subtle attempt to bridge the gap, to draw out the person you once knew.

you had believed that his silence was what you wanted. you had convinced yourself that distancing yourself from him would protect you from the past mistakes. but now, facing the reality of the situation, you realized that perhaps a certain selfishness was ingrained within you. maybe, just maybe, you yearned to erase the distance, to defy your own rationalizations.

in this moment, you found yourself yearning to rekindle what had been lost, to bring back a connection that once meant so much. the conflicting emotions within you painted a complex picture of your desires – a battle between self-preservation and the longing for something more.

however, as you locked eyes with him and saw the lack of any discernible emotion in his gaze, a haunting wave of fear resurfaced within you. in that moment, it was as if time rewound, taking you back to the day of your graduation when your heart and spirit had felt shattered. the memory of that painful experience rushed back, accompanied by the doubts and uncertainties that had plagued you.

if you were to truly confront your own feelings, you'd admit that what you witnessed that night had left you questioning your own worth. the events had stirred up doubts about whether you had ever been deserving of taking risks for, whether you had ever been someone worth fighting for.

"hey, good morning, y/n."

"morning, director."

"how's today treating you?"

"pretty good, thanks."

"hmm, and what's life been like after college?"

"…"

"take your time."

"at first, i felt okay. my friends were all getting closer to their dreams, and i was genuinely happy for them. especially…"

"especially who?"

"especially the person i left behind."

"…"

"i was content being happy for someone else. then another year went by, and i wasn't feeling so great anymore."

"do you really think they're happy?"

"hmm?"

"the person you left behind."

"yeah. and my other friends seem happy too. they've got jobs they love, they're with people they care about, and i only had… renjun *laughs* … but sometimes, i can't help but feel like i'm the one who got left behind, you know? even though i was the one who walked away."

"let's talk about your person."

"oh *laughs* he's not my person."

pausing for a moment, you glanced at jaemin behind the camera. the question lingered in your mind: what was he trying to do? his actions and intentions remained a puzzle.

his expression grew serious, his gaze fixed intently on you. it was as if he had something to convey, something he was holding back.

"the last time i actually saw him was in an instagram post. he was with some girl. it happened on my graduation day. i waited the whole day, hoping he'd appear in the midst of the crowd. when he didn't, i held onto the possibility of seeing him by the gates. but that didn't happen either. my last hope was maybe he'd send me a single message, but by the end of the day, nothing came. then i went on instagram and saw a photo – a warning, i guess. a warning that i should just stop hoping. that… happened a few weeks later, i think. or maybe it was just a few days after our argument, the one where he told me he couldn't love… yeah."

you met his gaze and once again, his face was serious. his eyes were furrowed and his mouth was slightly open. a few moments passed, and he let out a shaky breath. screw it, you thought, it's out there now and i don't care anymore.

your silent exchange was interrupted as he shifted the camera away. confusion clouded your thoughts as you watched him move. he turned back to you, his expression still serious, and then he grabbed a chair from the nearby table. he sat down with his back facing you.

the room felt charged with unspoken emotions, leaving you to question his intentions and actions. it was as if he was peeling away layers, searching for something beneath the surface.

"did you know that…" he began, his voice breaking the silence. "she was his sister?"

"i never told you about her, that's on me," he admitted with a chuckle. "that was her last day, y/n. so i decided to spend the entire day with her. i'm sorry."

you were taken aback. "i'm sorry–"

"it's okay, y/n."

"i know i left you with so many questions that night, but let me tell you… every effort you made, every cookie you baked, i cherished all of it. i loved you. i'm sorry if my actions made you doubt yourself."

another pause filled the air.

"i left when you left."

"you were my dream. architecture wasn't really my passion, you know? i was struggling a lot, but luckily, you were there with me. i decided to chase after what i truly loved when you left, because i realized if i wanted you back in my life, it should be when i'm at my best, right? i wasn't lying when i said i couldn't love. i didn't want to love you when i was broken. i wanted to be the best version of myself for you. i thought that if i wanted you to be with the best person, then that should be me. so i became that person, a director, and then i planned all of this." his eyes finally met yours.

"i was always looking at you."

tears welled up in your eyes, and he seemed to notice. he took a step towards you and enveloped you in his arms.

"i'm sorry for not holding onto you back then, baby. but i promise, i won't let go of you now," he whispered.

"i'm sorry for leaving, jaemin," you sobbed.

"shh, you did what you thought was right."

"do you want to have lunch with me now?" he asked.

a mixture of emotions flooded your heart, and with a nod, you replied, "yes, jaemin."

[selfundiagnosed]

update uhh they scrubbed the super awesome pro lgbt wink wink nudge nudge social media accounts for Kum & Go because all Kum & Go’s are being replaced by Mavericks. theyre Utah based and very concerned about the sexual connotations of the name “Kum & Go” so by next year be prepared to say goodbye to beautiful Kum & Go. the purity panic is murdering an actual absolute legend. All of my hard work i spent growing the Kum & Go tiktok account from 0 to almost 200k like no trace of it. i have no car and have had to quit my irl job because of it & was considering doing remote work through social media marketing again and i would only be able to cite my experience with Kum & Go but they silently wiped all my videos off the account. im so like. even if not to work a job it would be cool to have all that work still up. Like fuck idk dude. that was kind of my hope for 2024. i cant rlly work without a car so i was like if i get mentally better i can go back to doing that and it would be a lot easier than having go figure out something else. which like we cant all have our ideal worlds but the bus doesnt come anywhere near where i live so it just sucks. i know how this website feels about corporate accounts but fuck. Kum & Go was. It was fucking awesome lmfao i was genuinely proud to be a corporate account if the corporation was Kum & Go. they were so focused on being in on the joke of their name and did so much help to the community in recent years like hiring associates who just came out of prison. people with records. People with weird hair colors and visible tattoos and piercings. associates had amazing benefits. & like our social media department worked with a gay man who streamed on twitch to sell a shirt that said Kum & Gay rights like in the purity panic i thoroughly do believe like it was impactful and meaningful. did lots of fundraising for LGBT organizations like locally Iowa Safe Schools and their annual GSA event for lgbt iowa teenagers in GSAs. now the company is being killed! and ik its a corporation a company & intrinsically flawed because of that, i had my own personal gripes with this aspect. But like fuck. I remembering being on tumblr sneakily as a 12 year old and seeing the tumblr heritage posts of ppl discovering kum & go… like i knew i wanted to do a Denny’s tumblr-esque thing around this tjme too so when i had to opportunity to work on their tiktok account and build it up from scratch it felt like the universe handed me the opportunity on a silver platter. im just like fuck this fucking sucks. heres the article idk if i can get a link without a paywall though :/ anyway. RIP to a legend. go find the nearest one and buy the epic kum merch while you still can this year guys :/

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

ive been a fan of ATLA since it came out, and I think I stopped reading fic for it once Korra came out. So (luckily?), I escaped Embers, but im curious to know what is its influence in fanon. Do you know any examples off the top of your head?

Whoa, that's impressive that you managed to skip it if you've been a fan that long. It started in 2009.

And yeah, I do. Admittedly I do not read ATLA fic often these days, so I'm probably behind on current trends. But if you know what you're looking at it's pretty obvious that lots of Zuko-focused fic is influenced by Embers. Granted, oftentimes the writer may not realize they were influenced by Embers--they may have been inspired by a fic that was inspired by a fic that was inspired by Embers. The fic is 14 years old, and the rabbithole runs deep.

So the effects Embers has had, off the top of my head:

The Wani. Zuko's ship does not have a canonical name, but so many writers have used Vathara's name for it that people are surprised when they learn it's not canon. Even I'm guilty of this one, it's such deeply-entrenched fanon that I figured I might as well use it in a throwaway line (tho I'm seriously considering going in and editing it out of the one fic I mentioned it in).

Dragon!Zuko. If Zuko or Fire Nation people are turning into dragons, that idea probably came from Embers; I don't recall ever seeing that trope in ATLA fic before Embers made it a thing.

Certain Aang-critical readings of canon. There are multiple ways people criticize Aang (fans have complained about him not killing Ozai since the finale aired, and shippers have their own gripes), but there are certain arguments that either originated with Embers or were popularized by it. The concept of "Aang told Zuko he'd come with him if he left the SWT alone, then Aang escaped, therefore he broke his word and lied and he's lucky Zuko is such a good person that he didn't turn around and burn the village to the ground because he totally would've been within his rights to do so" is an Embers original. Then there's the "Aang has totally killed people and is therefore a hypocrite and/or idiot who doesn't realize he kills people" criticism, which may have existed before Embers brought it up, but Embers definitely popularized it. (Canonically Aang has done things that would definitely result in people dying, but also canonically we never saw the bodies so the narrative didn't confirm or even acknowledge it, therefore there's plenty of room to interpret Aang's kill count and still be canon-compliant. I'll admit this is a pedantic argument if everyone else admits that some fans are overeager to give Aang a kill count and call him an idiotic mass murderer, especially when they point at the Siege of the North, where the only people he would've killed were enemy combatants). And apparently now there are stories where Zuko is very knowledgeable about Air Nomad culture and teaches Aang about it, or preaches to him about patience or maturity or morality--I reblogged a post about this recently. That entire mentality definitely came from Embers.

Hyper-competent Zuko. This is not solely Embers's doing, but let me explain. Zuko is the fandom's favorite, we love him, he ticks off a lot of boxes people love to see in a character. It is perfectly normal for a fandom to heap all sorts of awesomeness on their fave, and in fanon they become a super-competent badass who puts up with so much and fights so hard despite the odds, they are knowledgeable and intelligent and strategic, they are confident and compassionate and have iron-clad morals. (am I still describing Zuko or Obi-Wan Kenobi? lol) So this version of Zuko probably would've become a thing eventually; Embers was just the starting point. But things have to start somewhere, and in this case, it started with Embers showing off just how to make Zuko a hyper-competent badass. And Zuko is indeed a badass, but canon gave no indication that he'd actually be good at, like, politics, aside from the narrative implying it by saying he was the best person to become Fire Lord. There are takes on Zuko where he's politically astute, spiritually attuned, brilliantly strategic, extremely knowledgeable about all sorts of random things--none of which have much basis in canon, but they aren't necessarily contradicted by canon either. And again, this is just regular fandom behavior--but in the ATLA fandom these takes were sparked by Embers basically laying the foundation and creating the template for how to write Zuko.

Well-researched fic. Like the previous point, this is not solely Embers's doing. Researching stuff for fanfic has been a thing since forever. But Embers was huge, and Vathara talked a lot about the things she knew and the books she'd read, and people were very impressed and praised her for it, and it inspired them to do and show their own research for their fics, too. Unlike the other things on this list, this actually isn't something that annoys me--even I was inspired by this aspect of Embers, in conjunction with the racebending movement and cultural misappropriation criticism, to make research an important part of my own fic. I'd looked up information for my writing before, but Embers really showed how research could make a fic incredible. And frankly, I'm glad for it, because looking up stuff for my fics has proven to be a fun and rewarding pastime, and I love sharing my research with my own readers (tho I really hope my own author's notes aren't as condescending as Vathara's). Now, granted, given some of the opinions in her author's notes and things she's said elsewhere, I consider all of Vathara's information and reading recommendations to be suspect. But I'm glad it's inspired other people to do lots of great research and share it.

And that's all I can think of, off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more, but I haven't read Embers in years, and I don't read much ATLA fic in general these days, so if there's more I'm unaware. If anyone else can think of anything, please do chime in!

[good-beans]

You talked a little while ago about why you don't think Shidou would make a good father to Amane (agreed) and proposed the idea of Mahiru adopting Amane. That's cute but I want to tell you about my post-MILGRAM headcanon:

Amane joins the Kajiyamas

Not Fuuta specifically adopting her, but like him taking her back to his family's house. I'm sure they'd have a spare room

I think people don't think about Fuuta's homelife much, or if they do they take Fuuta's one interrogation question where he calls his dad an old fogey and assume its like, abusive

And don't get me wrong, I don't think the Kajiyama household are perfect. Fuuta' beautician sister surely hasn't helped when it comes to Fuuta's body image issues and I'm betting they're all a bunch of tsunderes too embarrassed to say they love each other

But in a series where most of the abused characters are still convinced their abuser loved them/acted out of love. Seeing a guy not be afraid to call his dad a loser is almost a green flag

I think it'd be good for Amane to not necessarily be adopted as the lone child to a single parent but get to be introduced to a very different style of family unit from her own One where its normal to express different opinions or disagreements or even have arguments and not have it be the end of the world

Amane already has a snarky side to her, I bet it'd flourish in a brash household like the Kajiyama's (or at least how I imagine them to be)

OOHHH wait I love that so much! >:O

I agree -- I never interpreted Fuuta's family as abusive or harmful, just not super close and struggling a bit after his mother left. (And yeah, all as openly emotional as him😭) They seem stable and very capable to taking in a extra, very well-behaved child. Assuming Fuuta is the way he is because of them, that atmosphere of being very honest and forward would work well for her. They say things as they are, little by little pointing out the harmful parts of her worldview. Like you said, none of them make excuses about harmful behavior stemming from love, so she'd get a really healthy dose of truth in that area. She never feels coddled or treated like a baby. They care for her while treating her very maturely.

I absolutely love how well she and Fuuta get along, with that snarky side to her that you mentioned. It would allow her to fit in well in the new household, getting the sense of belonging she'll lose after leaving the cult. Also, seeing how Fuuta and his sister let things slip and aren't perfect sons/daughters, she'll be able to relax about earning a parent's love through perfect behavior. She'll probably stay exactly the same, but her stress about it will fade <3

I doubt Fuuta's father can ever replace the hole she'll have from her own father, but the addition of an older sister will be huge. Amane will never get the feeling her mother is being replaced, but the woman will still fill the gap of the older, same-gender role model she needs. Her beautician job may throw Amane at first (being an indulgence in vanity), but it isn't as in-your-face as other careers. I think she could definitely ease Amane into accepting it, and over time, accepting her own personal "indulgence."

Plus, her moving in would also be really good for Fuuta! I think he'd recognize there's a ton of fun things she missed out on, and that heroic side of him outweighs the part that cringes: he gripes and groans about going to "kid places," but he's always the one to announce "I can't believe you've never been to __, we're going right now!!" This allows him to touch grass leave the house and experience his own life to the fullest. He's able to channel his desire to help society into a healthier outlet. Also, seeing her studying habits and plans for the future might even inspire him to do the same. (might.) He becomes the stereotypical good big brother, though of course he denies it viciously...

I have recently been going insane over their friendship so I'm completely taken with this idea OUGH thank you for telling me ;-----;

[strawberry-jan]

I had thought that my days of writing long fandom effort-posts were behind me but then I finished Gaiden and welp, here I am. I ugly sobbed at the ending and then spent the next several hours ugly sobbing in textual form at friends. I have some thoughts; I am going to put a few spoiler-heavy ones (read: a lot of them) under the cut after this brief (read: lengthy) spoiler-free introduction.

Y6 and Y7 left me feeling like the writers should’ve just retired Kiryu from the series after Y5, even if it meant leaving him lying there in the snow and never following up on whether he’d actually made it back to Haruka or was just dreaming. I have complained at length about nearly every aspect of Y6, but since it’s directly relevant to my feelings about Gaiden, let me state my gripe with the ending specifically: it was an absolutely bizarre move to position that game’s ending (1) after Y5 and (2) within a game that hits the player over the head repeatedly with the message that setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm is a mistake that hurts not only you but also those around you.

Kiryu walks down the sunny path away from Morning Glory at the end of Y6, and everything about the framing suggests that even though it’s bittersweet, it ultimately tends toward sweet: the old generation has made way for the new, Yuta is there to look after Haruka in Kiryu’s place (don't get me started on this), and his family is safe for good. The problem with this is that it’s a shit resolution considering the game’s themes and also a devastating ending specifically for Kiryu. We’ve just come off the heels of Y5, where it’s more obvious than ever that you hardly need to scratch Kiryu's default-frowny surface to find a warm, caring man who badly needs to be with the people he loves. Exiling himself to Nagasugai made him unspeakably unhappy; what he wants, and what everyone in his family wants, is to be together, and this is something that Y6 harps on initially and then forgets in its ending. Walking away from Morning Glory forever is condemning himself to a lingering death and neither Y6 nor Y7 acknowledges this meaningfully. (Y7, in fact, is infuriating about this; Kiryu’s cameo there felt so cheap and unnecessary that I, one of the man’s biggest fans, was irritated at seeing him there.) It would have been kinder to just kill him outright at the end of Y6.

In that context, Gaiden feels like an apology that also tells you, gently, that we're at the end of an era - for real this time.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Still Thinks Sunglasses Are a Proper Disguise is a roughly 25-hour outing (depending on how much time you sink into mahjong and whether you can get over your embarrassment long enough to close your blinds and watch the painfully awkward live-action hostess videos) in which the writers spend most of the run-time reassuring you, “Yes, actually, we do understand this character and the ramifications of his decision.” There are so many points in the story where it comes up that his family is the one thing that Kiryu wants and the one thing he can’t have. He’s explicit about his desire; you can go so far as to ask a wish-granting vagrant in a silly substory full of Dragon Ball (and also ball) jokes to give him his happy, peaceful life back, because even when Kiryu’s up to his balls in testicular puns, that’s what’s on his mind. There’s no façade that he puts up; the game simply acknowledges this want and goes, “Yes, that was the lesson you learned and discarded; sorry that you can’t act on it anymore, but that window closed in 2016 when you decided to die instead of taking the briefcase full of cash.”

So. This is sad enough. But what really broke me about the ending – and what I know really broke a lot of other people – was the fact that it’s so devastatingly clear that even if Kiryu were to have taken the Omi’s terrible offer to do away with Hanawa and get himself back to Okinawa, it wouldn’t have mattered. I think the writers were very deliberate about having everyone refer to the “kids in Okinawa” (yes, also in Japanese) when they make threats toward Kiryu’s family or talk about his desire to see them again. Kiryu thinks of them as his kids, but when he looks at the recording on Hanawa’s tablet, he sees adults with adult jobs and adult lives of their own. They love him, but their world has moved on without him, and there are no “kids in Okinawa” to return to; all this time, Kiryu has been clinging to a vision of his peaceful life with his kids that doesn’t exist and, in fact, cannot exist anymore. The series has always taken place (barring the spinoffs) roughly in the present moment with real time passing between entries, and I’ve never felt it so painfully acutely as I did in that moment when Kiryu realizes that Haruto can write.

And this is all of a piece, I think, with the speech he gives earlier in the game about wanting to do right by Kazama, Nishiki, and Yumi – more idealized visions of people he once knew and still loves. Hell, even though I’m disappointed not to get the fanservice that would’ve been Kiryu talking to Daigo, Majima, and Saejima at length, none of those members of the old guard have interacted with him since he left the hospital and went to jail at the start of Y6. It’s not just his kids who have moved on: Daigo is doing things for himself without sneaking back into Suzuki Taichi’s life to beg him for advice, and though Majima does roll his eye at Kiryu and tell him to stick around for a bit after the brawl (and the little knife-throw made me go hohohoh because I'm shameless and will take whatever scraps the studio deigns to give me), he and Saejima are bickering and joking around with each other like an old married couple. They’ve moved on, too, and Kiryu’s world is ghosts all the way down.

It's not all miserable, of course. I do genuinely love that Kiryu’s kids are happy, and although Kiryu sobs that he needed them more than they needed him, that seems more like a function of his chronically low self-esteem than anything based in reality. You can tell that the Morning Glory kids regarded him as a positive force in their lives and that they still do as adults – Taichi, for instance, says that he decided to be a firefighter because he wanted to protect people like Kiryu did. Kiryu’s family looked up to him but, crucially, without falling into the cycle that Kiryu did when he looked up to his own father figure. And it really warms my heart that clearly Haruka has been telling Haruto about her dad, such that the kid knows enough about oji-san to draw a picture of him with the rest of his family. I think a lot of other media’s writers would have chosen to make the Morning Glory kids bitter about Kiryu’s absence, to have them resent their dad for repeatedly disappearing on them. Maybe they did in fact feel upset with him for a while, but the video presents them all as happy and hopeful that maybe someday their not-dead dad will come back to have a drink with them – and I do hope that Y8 allows this to happen in some way. It wouldn’t be a return to his old life, but it would be something.

Anyway: I’d feel weird about talking at such great length about all of this without talking about the Big Dissolution Brawl and everything around it. It's all connected, after all. Just as Kiryu comes to the painful acknowledgement that his little world has moved on, so too does he have to beat it into Shishido’s skull that the organization that he’s still clinging to is a thing of the past. It’s not just that anti-Yakuza laws are making it more difficult for them to function and that the police and politicians have found ways to use them as scapegoats and pawns. It’s also that everyone who’s been in the business long enough understands that even the best men among them are still bastards and their organizations aren’t worth saving. Tsuruno – probably my favourite new character – is a fiercely loyal man who’s known for taking guys like Shishido under his wing; he also has no compunctions about plotting to murder Hanawa, threatening Kiryu’s family as a manipulation tactic, threatening Kiryu himself with a red-hot branding iron, and using Kiryu as an accessory to murder. Notable cool dude Watase made use of the Kijin Clan because their assassination services were necessary for him to get ahead, and he and Tsuruno readily discard Nishitani III the second he becomes a liability – gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, after all. (I am not going into anything else about whatever the writers thought they were doing with Nishitani. I think there was something to do there with the game's interest in names and legacy but then, in classic RGG Studio fashion, they forgot to elaborate on it in any meaningful way.) For the first time since the late 80s, Kiryu is even forced to explicitly consider Kazama’s faults – albeit only briefly, and only in a substory.

Shishido himself wants to be the final boss of a previous game as if there's some kind of throne left to contend for (and his final fight is actually pretty reminiscent of the brawl with Aizawa, a high point in the series). And, at Kiryu’s insistence, he’s allowed to get out his blustering final speech about it – but he shouts about refusing to allow the old guard to dismantle the structure he’s ascended while everyone around him who actually matters is standing there, like, “Dude, the Tojo and Omi are over; read the room.” We're playing through the epilogue to Kiryu's saga, and we're seeing everything that drove that saga's conflicts being tied up or taken apart as needed. The kids will be alright no matter what happens to Kiryu, and while we already saw the Tojo Clan bite it in Y7 after its long decline over the course of the series, we're finally seeing that from the perspective of the guy who prolonged things by shoving Daigo into the chairman's seat and coming back to Kamurocho once a year or so for a Millennium Tower punch-out. Kiryu even acknowledges that, like Shishido, he loves this shit - "You hear someone out there's stronger... And soon your only thought is how to defeat them," he tells the man. But he goes on to say that that dream is meaningless in the face of other people's daily struggles. Again, it's time for everyone to move on. It's time for you as the player to move on, and you're being given one last real-time shirt-rip brawl against a man who won't accept that the era is over in order to underscore the point that it's over.

I’m not entirely sure how to finish this already too long post. There's a lot I haven't even touched on. I will say that I love Hanawa and Akame and Tsuruno. I love going back to Sotenbori. I love yet another game in which I can slam through the koi-koi and mahjong completion lists. I love all the callbacks and the sequence in the castle where you fight not-Kiryu and they've given him Gun and Sword like some kind of budget Sakamoto Ryoma. I love playing dress-up with my big burly guy. I love everything about the big boys’ night out in Chapter 4. I love that immediately after being tortured by Daidoji agents Kiryu can wander into the next room over to ask for a turn on their Sega Master System. I love how funny this game is when it's not socking me repeatedly in the gut. More than anything, I love that even though Kiryu’s enduring the world’s most drawn-out death sentence he’s still Kiryu and he’ll still snark at people and get really into little cars and involve himself in people's problems at the drop of a hat. I wish that I’d gotten to see Kiryu getting tripe with the old Tojo guard at the end of the game, but that’s what fic is for. I will not be writing that fic any time soon because I’m still way too deep in my feelings about this game to write anything cheerful about it. As I said, Gaiden feels like an apology, and while it made me cry harder than a video game has ever made me cry before, I’m so happy to have received it.

[cy-cyborg]

Hot take (maybe) but Korra should have stayed in a wheelchair in season 4.

Now that I'm done with the original Avatar, I'm rewatching Korra too and this was my biggest gripe with season 3 and 4. I'm not up to that point in the show yet but it always bugged me.

I don't usually like the whole "I'm in a wheelchair now, oh I'm so sad" thing but I could have excused it had she actually stayed in the chair because grief is real, especially for people who's identities centre on their body and what they can do like Korra, but the fact they got her out of the chair just makes it another "woe is me" story until she "gets better". The last episode of season 3 drills it in so hard too, "who will protect the world while the avatar is in a wheelchair?" As if the last show didn't have a 12 year old non-bender in a wheelchair activly involved in the fight with the fire nation and an even younger blind girl taking down airships with (mostly) just her bare hands who went on to found your whole police system. You're telling me none of the people of this world could fathom how the most powerful bender in the world could do her job just because she has to sit now?

It makes sense that Korra herself might not make that connection right away, and be unsure of her ability to do it, especially when facing off against a villain like Kuvera, but I do honestly think the whole plot of her mentally recovering from what Zaheer did to her would have been more impactful if it had left her disabled permanently. The origonal show had its issues with oversimplifying/supercripping disabled characters but at least it was creative with its depictions and went against the disability tropes of its time. TLoK had a few opertunities to show some genuinly nuanced and depictions of disability, but every time it just went for the safe old stereotypes.

Don't get me wrong, I really like TLoK, I'd go as far as to say I enjoy it as much as the origonal show, but it really dropped the ball on the disability front. Probably going to write some longer posts about korra too eventually lol

[kooki914]

Which part of the Undertale/Deltarune fandom do you just hate?

Part of me doesn't want to spread hate in an already divisive community, and a different part of me loves complaining. So, readmore added for the sake of a "warning" aka if you don't want to read my entitled whining just scroll past this.

TL;DR: petty bullshit that's hardly even relevant anymore.

I kinda see the Undertale and Deltarune fandoms as two separate entities at this point. From the original Undertale fandom, what it was all the way back when the game first came out and before Deltarune was a thing, god I hated the moral policing. "You can't do this" or "you have to do that" and the fact that something as small as Drawing A Character In A Dress caused an artist to nearly get chased off of tumblr? Fucking insanity. And the constant character assassinations? What they did to Asgore? What they did to SANS? If I ever get started talking about all my gripes with that old fandom I'd never stop.

For the Deltarune fandom though, at least what it is now, god I hate the hype. I'm not subscribed to the newsletters because I hate the general culture around waiting with baited breath for new breadcrumbs, as that just manifests as Dread for me rather than positivity. Like if I start thinking too hard about Deltarune's potential release dates I start biting people's heads off. (No offense Salt lmao) It sucks because even when I DO get somewhat excited (like I did with the latest newsletter) it's immediately followed by the fandom running everything from the newsletter down into the ground, which... on the one hand is understandable because we're all starved for UT/DR content but on the OTHER hand it really feels like we all need a new hobby, like collectively. I'm happy for you if this brings YOU joy but personally I'm a little tired of seeing the 1000th artist interpretation of yet another scene that's literally best conveyed through text.

Also if I can be EXTRA petty, I dislike a lot of "making my own tenna" or "my own deltaswap" things rattling around in the fandom right now. This is entirely Being A Whiny Little Baby™ syndrome from me because I do the EXACT same shit, I just don't have anything good enough to post don't follow fandom trends when it comes to that sort of thing. You know that meme about two wolves inside a person? One of my wolves is like "cringe is dead and this is a harmless creative activity that gets people together and talking about things they love therefore its Good™" and the other wolf is like snarling and barking like "but it doesn't appeal to MEEEE" Like if I see one more TVhead Tenna I'm actually blacklisting his tag. If I see one more deltaswap that entirely misses the mark on what I like in role-swaps I'm gonna start killing.

So, yeah, I guess I just hate things that feel like they're outside of my control/don't appeal to my extremely hipster contrarian tastes. Aka petty bullshit no one cares about go figure

[wc-confessions]

Longtail is my favorite character. I love his character arc, how he acts as a narrative foil to Firestar, and how he starts out as a jerkass but grows to have a backbone, shows himself to be a loyal warrior with a heart of gold where it counts, rejects Tigerstar when lines in the sand have been crossed despite how much he once looked up to him, and eventually grows to be very loyal to Firestar. I wish people talked more about the scene where he saves Fire when Tiger tries to drown him even though they’re not at all on friendly terms yet. Also his mentor-apprentice relationship with Swiftpaw tears me apart but I live for all the fan content that shows their bond and how much regret he has to live with after Swiftpaw’s death.

To this day I have so many gripes with what happened to my boy post-TPB.

If there is a non-death equivalent of TV Tropes’ “Too Cool To Live,” Longtail is basically that. He had to be written out because if he weren’t forcibly removed from the action, then he would be the obvious choice to become deputy during Greystripe’s absence in TNP (and arguably should have been chosen over Greystripe in the first place; I do like Grey but he was not particularly loyal nor responsible in his youth). Longtail was still relatively young, healthy and fit, loyal, experienced, passionate. You cannot convince me that he wasn’t dealt a career-ending injury solely because the plot demanded Brambeclaw become deputy by the end of TNP.

I don’t think Longstar would have ever been realistic to expect because he’s not a central enough character and not related to Fire/Tiger, and because he would have been fairly old for a clan cat by the time of Firestar’s death, but maybe he could have held out as deputy till the end of TNP or even early PO3 and been given a cooler and more memorable death than what he got. But more on that later.

We all know how badly this series shafts its disabled characters. Maybe this is trivial to some, but I really hate the retcon about his blindness. When his vision started failing of natural causes, it was still frustrating for the reasons above but it at least seemed like he made a voluntary choice to retire early. He maintained a degree of agency, and he made his own decision under the circumstances rather than having it taken from him by the narrative. Having him get blinded by a rabbit of all things just feels like a cheap shot to move the plot along. If he were going to have a freak accident, at least make it less stupid than an experienced warrior getting his eyes scratched out by a prey animal.

Not that any of them are handled *well* by any means, but we have roughly this same character arc with so many other characters who are given more depth in coming to terms with a permanent disability or disfigurement and having it alter the course of their lives (Cinderpelt, Brightheart, later on Briarlight…) that we didn’t need this one to happen to prove any kind of point or to say something too much different than any of those other instances.

The silver lining of Longtail’s injury is that it allows us to see more of his friendship with Mousefur than we would have gotten if either of them had died younger, and/or if they had faded to being background characters in the ever-growing ThunderClan roster. I really adore their dynamic. I headcanon them as aroace besties (iirc though this is basically canon for at least Mousefur). I find it so lovely and refreshing that a m/f pair of characters, and ones who are mostly very likable at that, can have a platonic relationship with so much care for each other without it eventually going down the marriage-and-children path that most m/f relationships eventually do in this series.

However.

Longtail’s death, and Mousefur’s role in it, are possibly even more frustrating and narratively awful than even the accident that caused his blindness.

Having him go out in such a cheap and easily preventable way felt like such a fucking slap in the face to these beloved characters who have been around from the very beginning of the series. Longtail had his whole life redefined and turned upside down by one random, frustrating freak accident involving prey and he ultimately lost his life to another one. Mousefur’s character was mishandled so grossly here, and a cat who is usually pretty sensible and grounded lost her best friend because she couldn’t let one (1) mouse go in a moment of what I have to assume is senility.

I am at least glad the two got a proper send-off in the Great Battle, with them getting to reunite on-screen and his spirit guiding her to Starclan after she fell in battle. It doesn’t quite make up for everything else given that Longtail had so much unused potential while alive, but it all would have been so, so much more upsetting if they weren’t given at least that much to close their chapters.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk about Longtail. He is so dear to my heart and deserved so much better than most of what he got.

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