#just saying shit at this point... retrospective i guess....

[hauntingblue]

Pausing my op marathon so I can watch the movies and other shows while the current arc keeps going 🫡🫡

[littlejuicebox]

Astarion talks in his sleep.

Pairing: Astarion x GN!Reader/Tav (Shadowheart is our lovely supporting role though.) Summary/Setting: 6 months post BG3, "good/spawn" Astarion ending, all fluff Rating/Warnings: PG / Very mild if any game spoilers but nothing related to major content or scenes Word Count: 900+ Notes: Inspired by this post here!

-----

Astarion talks in his sleep. It’s something you’ve never mentioned to him, because it’s mostly when he’s having a nightmare about Cazador or some other horrid trauma from his past. You'd quickly determined it not worth bringing up, for fear of embarrassing him. Plus, if you were being honest, part of you found it rather endearing... especially the lighter drabble that would escape his lips. Delighted giggles, little purrs... it could be overwhelmingly adorable, on occasion.

In fact, the first time you ever heard him say he loved you was in his sleep. Then you'd waited weeks… anxiously, impatiently, unbearably for the revelation to come out while he was awake, under his own terms.

But tonight, the talking and tossing isn't cute. The vampire writhing in bed disturbs you, and your eyes flutter open, catching the smallest glimpse of daylight between the thick, tightly drawn curtains and shuttered windows of your bedchamber. You'd just fallen asleep, and you'd be lying if you said you weren't the slightest bit annoyed.

You idly try to figure out the date. Adjusting your schedule to the night life was… difficult; you often lost track of dates nowadays. But somehow you manage to remember that it's been nearly six months since you all saved Baldur's Gate; six months since Astarion had been returned to a creature of the shadows. Six months you've been in the house provided by the city as you two adjust to whatever normalcy you are able to conjure up and figure out your next steps. You were a strong proponent for the Underdark; Astarion was not quite sold.

At first you think the silver-haired elf's tossing and turning is a night terror… it’s been nearly two weeks since the last one. He’s overdue. You ready yourself to pop out of bed and grab your calming herbs to steep a quick sleeping draught. But then you hear him, soft and garbled, laced with thick strings of sleep.

“Will you marry me?”

You turn to stare stupidly at the elf, eyes piercing through the blackness of your room; his face is obscured, you cannot tell if he’s awake. “…what did you say?”

Silence. A long, unbearable stretch of silence where your heart is pounding into your throat, practically rattling around your chest cavity at the sudden shock. And then he’s snoring again, and you’re left with your brow furrowed and robe half pulled onto your shoulder. Well, so much for your sleep.

You meander down the hall to the kitchen, where Shadowheart has several jars and plants strewn across the table. She’s practically taken over the kitchen since Gale left, not that you particularly mind, since she’s also taken over the cooking.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep right now?” She asks, spotting you out of the corner of her eye, not lifting her focus from the mortar and pestle in her hand.

“You won’t believe what Astarion just said in his sleep.” You murmur in dazed response, walking over to the cabinets and rummaging through the contents. You grab an old kettle and fill it with water, turning to look at the cleric.

“Gods, what was it? I’m quite thankful to be out of the camp... his night terrors woke all of us up at one point or another. It's no wonder you’re struggling with the schedule adjustment.”

“He said, ‘Will you marry me?’” You respond, almost giggling at how silly that sounds in retrospect, as you place the kettle on the stove.

Shadowheart pauses. One, two, three beats of silence. “Shit… well, I guess the cat is out of the bag now.” She murmurs with a shrug, before returning to grinding her herbs.

“Wh-what?!”

“Oh, come off, don’t be daft! You had to expect it would be coming sooner or later. Gods, your love is almost sickening… it was sickening, having to hear it all the time... once again, so thankful for the separation of these walls.”

You are frozen, your hand still holding onto the kettle as you appraise your friend. Shadowheart is right. You knew a proposal would come sooner or later… you just figured it would be much later. Astarion was still struggling; more often than not you woke to him in tears or in the throes of a sleeping fit. Countless calming elixirs and teas had been drawn up by you and Shadowheart in the last six months. Truly, you hadn’t thought he was thinking that deeply about it... you hadn't been, if at all. Gods, you two still didn't even know where you were headed after leaving this city-supplied house... the lease was up in a few weeks' time.

“I guess… well, I suppose I didn’t think he was ready.” You sigh, lighting the stove and sitting across the table, watching the cleric as she works.

“Oh, trust me, he’s ready. And he's certain. Perhaps not about anything else... but definitely about this. He's been writing to Gale for weeks trying to source a particular ring." Shadowheart responds, now pouring the contents of her grinder into pouches. "Just promise you'll act like it's a surprise when the time comes... he's been talking about it for a while. He's put a lot of thought into things."

"When will it be?"

Shadowheart laughs, the edges of her eyes crinkling as she flicks her gaze toward the ceiling. She’s now cinching the sachets and sorting them all into a nearby basket. "Now that I'm not telling you. I've already given away too much."

You try for a few more minutes to pry the information from your friend, but she remains tight-lipped. You even threaten her with detect thoughts, though you both know you'd never go through with it. Finally, a whistle from the kettle beckons you back to the stovetop, and the conversation is halted as you ready your tea and aim to go back to bed. You might not know when your love is going to pop the question, but you do know that when the time comes, your answer will be a resounding yes.

Click here for Part 2

[journeyman-tier-fibercraft]

Oh my god... it's Wednesday... and I've done work this week.

Been chugging along with the scarf for my mom (tumblr post link) and with Cardigan S (Pattern | Yarn | Thread). Which is being weeirrddd again.

Cardigan S was allegedly written by designer company DKNY. and I guess being designer means they don't have to test knit their patterns. I already pointed out the odd "p5, p1" bit when I was charting up the lace/cable patterns but it does Not end there.

As a matter of personal taste, Why does every single cable face the same way? In the original pattern, every single cable is a back twist cable. But every single pattern piece is mirrored from the middle?? Why would you not have One cable being back twist and the Other being front twist. Which is exactly what I did. (Granted it would probably look better to have the back twist second and the front twist first...)

For the sleeve increases, it says "increase every 4 rows (so many times), increase every 6 rows (so many times)" and I was completely unsure if those two instructions were supposed to be simultaneous or not. In retrospect they probably weren't... but I knit them as tho they were and what I have done flairs way too much. Ugh I guess I will be reknitting this sleeve. All of that could've been avoid with just adding "then" before the 6 rows increase :,) (admittedly i was doing the set up for this part with a migraine but in my defense I didn't know until After that i had a migraine jdsljkdasdf)

Finally the last thing. The thing that bothered me most. Is why the fuck is the cabled not centered between the two lace patterns. There's two purl stitches between the zigzag lace and the cable. and *four* between the purl and the 4 stitch lace center. Why. Why not make it 3 purl stitches between each. The official picture of this pattern doesn't look odd but every project has this weird cable issue. Who did this to me. (I did by not swatching properly)

Despite the 4 paragraphs of complaining I'm having so much fun with this pattern. I would feel a little bad ripping apart a pattern if were made by like, a random individual who just like to knit. But this is a Vogue published pattern written by DKNY. I expect their shit to actually be test knitted.

[rafferty3207]

not to be impatient or ungrateful but too good to be true part 3 when 😩

its funny you say that today of all days bestie

Too Good to Be True (part three)

warning: fem!reader, passing mention of creepy dude, angst (but only at the beginning dw), then tooth rotting fluff

A/N: I hope you like this ending! in my mind this is done but not over - I will definitely be doing drabbles of this pair in future, but for now I hope you enjoy!

____

part one | part two

“Oi, prick, are you even paying attention?” Roy barks at Jamie, who is sitting staring at his phone.

“Er, yeah, coach, it’s just -just-”

“Just what? Spit it out?”

“How do ya access your voicemails?”

“Jamie. What the fuck are you talking about?”

He holds up the screen to Roy’s face.

You have a new voicemail.

“Jamie, I wouldn’t worry about it, it's probably some berk trying to sell you organic viagra or something. Now please can we get back to the football?”

“I just need to check Coach. To make sure of…something, but I’ve never listened to a voicemail before.”

“Christ you find new ways to make me feel old Jamie.” But before he can make another comment, Roy notices the sad look in Jamie’s eyes. He hasn’t been his usual irritating self this morning, no sassy quips or anything, and he looks like he’s barely slept. “Who are you expecting a voicemail from?”

Jamie looks up at him with those puppy dog eyes. “Oh for fuck’s sake, it’s that girl isn’t it? What did you do now, you silly twat?” 

“I didn’t do anything. I mean I kissed her -”

“Oh my god, that Simone Biles bollocks was about her wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but it's an inside joke-”

“Hand me the phone.”

“Er, I dunno-”

“Just give it, Jamie.” Jamie reluctantly passes it over. “You dial a three digit number, which will access your number. You’re on the same network as me so-” Roy types the digits and hands it back. “But once you’re done, you’re doing 50 press ups for wasting my fucking time.” Roy goes into another room.

Jamie raises the phone to his ear tentatively. Of course, it’s you.

___

The gallery session had been, in polite terms, a complete shit show. You were late because you couldn’t figure out how to get into the building, then you couldn't find some of the papers with your plan on them, and therefore you spent several hours using what little you have of your phone battery to try and improvise a plan from your memories. You’re finally done, but by this point it’s almost midnight.

“This is your first exhibition, isn’t it?” Simon, the gallery owner looks at you hunched over, shoving the papers back in the bag.

“Yeah, how did you guess? Don’t answer that, that was sarcasm.” You say, continuing to scramble. “So what’s happening PR wise? Are we sending press releases, inviting reviewers, that sort of thing?”

Simon scoffs. 

“What? I get it I'm a nobody, but what about the big Emin retrospective you’ve got coming up in October? I’ve seen posters for that everywhere.”

“That’s pretty much all her team. Besides, when you’re Emin you don’t need the PR really. Of course, we’ll do our best and we’ve got it on our website and social media of course, but our comms person resigned so at the moment we’re a rather limited team. This is such a short period, it’s an interim show. It’s why we could offer it, but you knew that right?”

“Mhmm, yeah, of course.” You say, biting your lip. You don’t know what you expected, instead wearily picking up your bag.

“Right, I best head off, but I’ll see you in two days!” You power walk off while your voice can still sound fake cheerful. Now how do I go back from here? You wonder, pulling your phone out.

Of course, it dies at that very moment.

“Shit!”

___

You eventually manage to navigate home, although the walk takes three times as long especially after one man seems to walk right behind you for ages until you get to the high street and the tube stops running mid way through, so you have to persuade a nice older woman to look up the bus route on her phone. As you walk into your house and flop onto the couch, you remember.

Jamie.

Fuck. You hoped he didn’t take your note the wrong way. You plug your phone in and sit huddled until the screen turns back on.

11 missed calls. 13 messages.

hey Simone xoxo

out at drinks at the moment but I’ll be back asap xoxo

theres a cocktail i think you’d like here  xoxo

on my way home now! xoxo

where are you xoxo

u alright

u ok???

Where are you??

Just let me know ur home safe (or dont if u dont want to)

Im not asking to be creepy sorry if it came off like that

Im sorry if i scared you off

i shouldn’t have kissed you

Lets just forget it happened

Sorry again

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Let’s just forget it happened. You felt sick to your stomach. You picked up the phone with incredibly shaky hands and pressed the dial button.

_____

“Er, hey Jamie, it’s me. Sorry to leave you a voicemail, it feels old school doesn’t it? I don’t even know how to listen to my own voicemails, not sure why I’m sending you one. Well I do, I’ve rung a few times and you’re not picking up and everytime I try and say what I want in a text it comes off wrong - ugh, sorry I’m rambling. Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t reply, my phone has been dead the whole way home and I had to try and find my way back and the tube is shit and buses are shit and all I wanted was for you to come and pick me up in that ugly orange car of yours but I couldn’t. So that’s that. Did you get my note? I completely forgot but I had the exhibition planning session today and everything that could possibly go wrong did and it’s been a fucking nightmare and to be honest Jamie, I don’t know why I’m doing it anymore. I thought this was my one chance to finally become a big shot artist but it turns out I have to market it basically all by myself and I have no time and know barely anyone so let’s be honest, no one is going to come and it will all be forgotten about and I will prove once again I am the failure my father thinks I am.”

Jamie hears a shuddering intake of breath.

“Sorry, I’m rambling again. I’m sorry Jamie. I really did mean to wait for you. I’ve still got your shirt and everything. It’s just, I’m so stressed and I need to finish these paintings but also why should I finish these paintings but also I want them to be perfect and - and - and I don’t want to do this over voicemail but I don’t want to forget about us but also I have so much work to do and I’m so fucked -”

Jamie listens to you choke down a sob, before sniffing.

“I have to go, but call me back or something. Or maybe I could see you at the exhibit? You’ll probably be the only one attending. Goodbye, Jamie. Sorry again.”

Jamie’s heart was breaking, but not in the way he expected. You were so strong for him but all the while there you were, clearly dealing with your own shit and struggling and he hadn’t even noticed. He hated the idea that he had made things worse.

Now, he knew what he had to do.

___

It is the opening night of the exhibit and you are adjusting your hair for the fiftieth time. The gallery had extended their publicity to a small private view with a few glasses of wine and bottles of beer, but that was it. So you had spent the last three days painting almost non-stop, sending the invitations to everyone you know and barely sleeping. You just hoped your makeup would cover the dark circles under your eyes. You had worn your favourite dress and done your hair especially so you would at least feel like the real deal, but that was quickly waning. 

It had been fifteen minutes and not one single person had showed up. The one event staff was already looking at you as if to ask whether they could go home early. You started to look at your phone while downing the glass of wine in your hand. Still not a word from Jamie. You hadn’t heard from him since you sent the voicemail and you felt embarrassed just thinking about it. It seemed like you were going to need more wine.

But then, a man enters. He is wiry, with a blazer and a glorious grey and black shoulder length mane. He is holding a notebook and looking around keenly. You have no fucking idea who he is.

“Can I help you?”

“Ah yes, I’m Trent Crimm.”

“Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

“I’m here for the exhibit Everything In Its Right Place.” You nod, dumbstruck. “Ah, great, don’t mind me.”

You watch him as he looks at each painting before scribbling in his notepad. That was strange.

After him walks in one of the most beautiful women you have seen, followed by a small man wearing glasses.

“Hello, welcome to the Private View!” You say a little bit too loudly, and you worry that the wine may have gone to your head. The woman leans over to you and of course she smells beautiful too. “Hello, I’m Rebecca. Is it alright if some of my friends come in too?”

“Absolutely, the more the merrier!”

A couple more glamorous women file in, as well as some fancy looking older gentlemen in suits. Behind them is a colourful blond haired woman with an Essex accent and a very fluffy jacket, talking about how her PR firm which is on the hunt for new talent. You made a mental note to talk to her later, and as you do she looks over at you and winks, which makes you feel flustered. 

The events staff comes over.

“Are they on the guest list?”

“Oh yeah.” You keenly nod, hoping they are not paid enough to grass you up.

And then walks in a very familiar moustachioed man.

“Why, you must be the modern Louise Bourgeois our Jamie has been speaking so highly of.” You don’t expect the honeyed Southern twang and you find yourself blushing. He’s more handsome than the small picture by Jamie’s bed gave away.

“I wish! Although Jamie knew who Louise Bourgeois was?”

“I mean, I think he is more of a Georgia O’Keefe guy. But I love old Lou Lou. Art is a guarantee-”

“Of sanity. Very impressive -?”

“Theodore Lasso, at your service ma’am. Although my friends call me Ted.”

“Are we friends?”

“I sure hope to be. Jamie will not stop going on about how great you are, so I thought I best see it in person myself.” He offers a hand and you feel yourself go even redder.

“Well, it is lovely to make your acquaintance, Ted.” 

You see Trent’s head has whipped around this point and he is striding towards Ted.

“Ted you’re going to love these paintings -” Trend hooks his arm in Teds and Ted waves you a goodbye as he is quickly dragged off. 

You see all of Jamie’s teammates file in after Ted, including Roy who gives you a little nod. They have all brought people with them, including some women who you swear might be famous models, and before long the room is densely packed. You can’t believe it. You even have a few people come up to you to ask for interviews, and once the Trent man has sufficiently shown Ted around the room several times over, he asks if you want to be profiled for one of the big papers.

“I’ve always liked highlighting promising new talent in any field, and I feel you’d be a great match.” He smiles at you and you feel your stomach start to fizz. The one waiter who has been frantically pouring drinks for the last half hour runs over to you.

“A couple of people want to buy the paintings, are they for sale?”

“All the ones without red dots are, yeah.”

“How much do they cost?”

“How much are they willing to pay?” The waiter runs off and comes back, handing a long list of offers. Your eyes boggle at the amount.

“Fuck me.”

“Someone said they wanted to snap you up before Satchel did or something?”

“I assume they mean Saatchi.” The waiter shrugs. “Call Simon, he’ll help with the sales.

“I don’t think he’ll pick-”

“Send him a picture of the offers. He’ll definitely pick up.”

The waiter hurries off and you stare at the piece of paper. You can’t believe all this is happening. But you still check your phone.

Are you coming?

No reply.

“Ted? I don’t suppose you heard anything from Jamie did you?”

He smiles and taps his nose.

“I’m afraid I was sworn to secrecy.”

You get back to your wine. That would be a weird response if he had told Ted he never wanted to see you again. But the whole day was starting to feel very weird. You decided to pop out for some fresh air.  However, as you walk outside you see a very familiar orange car parked outside. In the driver's seat is Jamie in a suit, holding flowers, staring at his phone.

“You know, I didn't order an Uber.”

Jamie jumps.

“Jesus woman, you nearly scared the living daylights out of me!”

“I could say the same of you. Can I come in?”

He gestures to the seat next to him. You walk around and slide into the car. 

“You look stunning.” Jamie says, looking over you and you suddenly feel very naked in this dress.

“Thanks. It’s certainly an improvement from when you usually pick me up.” You fiddle with your hem. “So can you tell me why you’re sitting outside my exhibit instead of going inside? You’re the only person here who is actually on the guest list.”

He looks back down at the flowers.

“I dunno. I guess I was worried you might not want to see me after, y'know" He nods his head towards you. The kiss. Before you can reply, he starts talking again. "That’s why I got everyone else here first.”

“This was all you?”

He looks out the front of the window.

“I mean the boys wanted to come anyway, but I spoke to Rebecca and Ted and Keeley. It was Ted’s idea to invite Trent, because he knows lots of people at papers, and Keeley knows people through her firm and Rebecca knows loads of rich guys because I dunno, she’s rich and fit -”

You reach over and gently touch his arm.

“Thank you Jamie, this means a lot - ”

“Any time. I just want you to be happy, you know?” You grip his arm a little tighter.

 “But you didn’t have to do any of this. I would have been happy if you were the only person who showed up.” Jamie finally looks at you. You just stare at each other for a moment, saying nothing. At this point you reach over and tenderly place your lips on his. He doesn't resist, immediately putting his hand on the side of your neck. Your hands start wandering down his torso before he pulls away suddenly.

“I don't want you thinking I'm trying to buy you or something. Me and Roy watched Pretty Woman the other week but I swear-"

"I know Jamie. Besides, you haven't even bought a painting yet." You try to laugh him off but he holds you firm.

"I just want you to remember you earned this. You are really, really talented, it's just - it's just everyone needs help sometimes"

You are suddenly struck silent for a moment, your eyes watering.

"Ah fuck, I didn't want to make you cry again!"

You sniff. "This is good crying though, I swear! I just never realised you were so wise."

"Oi you cheeky mare, I'm trying to be nice!" You both laugh, before he reaches over and threads his fingers between yours. "I think I’m in love with you, you know?"

He looks up at you, uncertain. Your stomach is fizzing, but in a way that makes you feel like you could fly. You smile.

"I know. The thing is, I'm in love with you too, Jamie Tartt." You stare at each other, before your lips crash into each other, your hands crawling all over your torsos and necks, your breathing becoming more ragged before Jamie pulls away again.

"Now come on you, this is your big night, remember. We better get inside before we have to go right here in the back like a pair of teenagers."

You place a hand on his thigh. "I mean, that sounds good to me."

""You are gonna be the death of me, I swear." He opens the car door. 

"Actually, to be fair there is one painting I think you should see."

The two of you stroll into the gallery holding hands.

"Fucking finally." Roy exclaims, before patting Jamie on the shoulder. "Now don't fuck it up Jamie, I like this one." You and Roy share a smile. You felt like you had something to thank him for, but you weren’t sure what.

"I see you met Jamie." You turn around to see a small old woman in colourful clothing.

“Sylvia? What are you doing here, I thought you weren’t back for another week?”

Sylvia gestures to a handsome older gentleman in the corner “Of course I had to see your exhibit darling! Now don’t worry darling, I’m staying with one of my good friends.” She winks before leaning in conspiratorially. “You’ll have the flat all to yourself.”

“Sylvia!” You swat her arm.

“What? Your mother told me you were going through a dry spell. I’m just so glad you and Jamie finally got to meet.”

Your mouth is agape. You said that months and months ago -

“Jamie darling, it's so nice to see you again!” Sylvia airkisses Jamie, before swanning off. You lean into the crook of Jamie's shoulder. You’d say you hate how natural it feels, but you fucking love it.

“Do you think Sylvia set this whole thing up? Between you and me?”

“Well, she did keep telling me she knew the perfect woman for me, with a fantastic arse-”

“Jamie!” You poke his cheek. “Although speaking of fantastic arse, let me show you my painting!” You drag him over to the biggest painting in the room. It is rich and vibrant and while somewhat abstract, almost definitely a nude. “What do you think?”

“I think it will be perfect in my living room. Well, almost perfect.”

“Almost? What else could be more perfect than this?” You gesture to the bum cheeks.

Jamie rolls his head as if mulling it over.

“You?”

You roll your eyes. “Oh my god Jamie Tartt, where did you pick up such a naff line? You’re lucky you are very handsome.” You reach up to kiss him, your fingers brushing his neck and jaw. and he leans to whisper in your ear. 

“You know, now you’re gonna be a famous artist now, someone may actually try to kidnap you. You might need some form of security.”

“True. Do you know anyone?”

“No.” You laugh. “But I do know an excellent driver. And he does know a lot of excellent private spots.”

“How soon can he start?”

“How about right now?” You take his hand in yours.

“Sounds perfect to me.”

---

Ah hope you all enjoyed this two silly billys in love! Pls send me requests of any headcanons/drabbles you'd be interested in seeing that I can bash out while working on this new juicy Roy Kent fic!!

@thebookwormlife @taytaylala12 @eugene-emt-roe @skewcherries @okkkkkkkksure @beingalive1 @gothicwidowsworld @atjamesbbarnes @e-mmygrey

[applestorms]

i was just gonna leave this as a comment, but my response started spiraling sooooo. guess i'm makin' this a full on post lol =3=" uhh anyways, responding to @skyborneveggie's tags on this post:

#really good analysis #always here for high-functioning depression light takes #i want to add; while Light is better at reading & manipulating people in the moment he also tends to overlook some things in the long run #because of his superiority complex #like his father volunteering for the eyes in matsuda's place #and matsuda in the ending. As much as i like to think of matsuda as wholesome- #-i do think if light played his cards right he could have manipulated him over to kira's side #but he didn't because he didn't think matsuda was important in the grand scheme of things

very good points!! about matsuda in particular— it’s interesting in retrospect how consistently he’s set up as a side character, particularly with how he is almost always immediately pushed off to the side despite that. like, alongside soichiro, he’s really the first member of the JTF we see pre-lind l. tailor (in the anime, anyway. in the manga it’s a bit more ambiguous, though matsuda definitely shows up to mention KIRA bringing the crime rate down in ch.3, still quite early).

he’s always the one counterpoint within the group, playing devil's advocate in a way with how he brings up the pro-KIRA side of things, yet as you say light underestimates him So consistently that he even ends up evolving into a full on joke/shakespearean fool character by yotsuba, which is really what makes his actions in the end so incredibly significant.

i distinctly remember reading that section where aizawa & mogi are getting more deeply involved with near and, in the case of aizawa in particular, are starting to genuinely consider the possibility that light might be KIRA, and just getting sooooooo so SO goddamn suspicious of what matsuda was doing. this was in part because i already had some spoilers about the ending, specifically about matsuda shooting him, but goddamn do his actions start looking suspicious when you begin taking him seriously as a threat. like, while aizawa is starting to live through his own psychological horror novel come to life, realizing that the innocent kid & strong leader he's been taking care of & following all this time might actually have been the fucking serial murderer they've been after for literal Years, here's what matsuda is up to in the background:

(light's face here. fuckin freak LMFAO)

(this one is particularly notable to me as it shows that even aizawa underestimates him— it's not just light, it's the whole damn team. even ryuk joined in earlier.)

(and of course, my absolute favorite example. the contrast between their expressions alone here is absolutely golden all on its own, but matsuda's heartfelt "don't worry, light!! i'll never betray you!!!" in comparison to THIS only makes it all the more juicy:

like, light doesn't even bother responding to him until he's got a goddamn bullet in his hand. he just sits there confident in the expectation that matsuda will lick his soles like a dog. jesus fucking christ.)

anyways, as i was saying: he's mostly just doing a bunch of dumb shit, making silly jokes in the background, fucking around with ryuk and being written off as an idiot by most characters, especially light but again also aizawa and ryuk. AND YET. he is Always hanging around over light's shoulder, lurking somewhere behind him in almost ever panel he shows up in, perfectly innocent to the point where it's can almost be more off-putting than if he were outwardly, actively questionable. like, this panel in particular, and i mean goddamn, just look at it again:

it hits So Hard in retrospect, not just because matusda is the one to shoot light in the end, possibly being his cause of death had ryuk not stepped in when he did, but also because it's true. as incredibly fucking suspicious as this panel may seem if you are armed with the knowledge that matsuda does, eventually, end up being the one to shoot light, it's equally easy to write it off as normal dumbass matsuda behavior because that is Exactly What It Is. and you would be right!! matsuda is trusting of light to a fault— when he eventually breaks, it is Not due to his own betrayal. it's the evidence of light's. and not just of his manipulation of the task force, for years and years and years on end— it's soichiro's death specifically that finally makes matsuda lose his faith in him.

the idea that light could've manipulated matsuda over to KIRA's side had he just tried a little harder is fascinating, but i think i can also understand why he didn't exert any more effort— it was kinda unnecessary. for basically the entire story, from the moment matsuda is formally introduced, to the minute light breaks and admits he's actually KIRA, matsuda is one particularly dedicated conversation away from being a full-on KIRA supporter— or so light believes, anyway. and he's probably not that far off.

really, i'm of the opinion that it's matsuda's existence as this KIRA-sympathetic figure in the task force in the first place that causes light to believe so strongly that he could eventually convert the entire JTF over to the side of KIRA— possibly even saving all of them their lives in the process. like, as i've said before, for all that light monologues about how he's Definitely Going To Kill The Task Force, Don't Worry, I Can And Will Do It When I Have To, he. never actually does it. instead, light goes through all the trouble of keeping the JTF strung along behind him for more than half a decade following L's death, holding on to all of these strings of his former life even when they are almost undoubtedly more of a pain than they're worth. unable to kill his father, unable to kill misa, unable to kill matsuda— even when he directly tries to.

i forget which post this was on, but i believe someone pointed out before that potentially a major part of light's grief following soichiro's death comes from the fact that he springs a shock on him at the last minute before passing: soichiro never stopped suspecting his son. when he sees light's lifespan above his head his first thought is to be relieved, because the question he's held at the back of his mind for Years has finally been undoubtedly assuaged. light is desperate to believe up until the end that he can make the world truly and genuinely pro-KIRA; his final actions in the moments of clarity before he starts begging at ryuk's feet for his life involve an enthusiastic speech as he makes one final bid at converting the JTF and SPK to join him and believe in his vision of Justice.

and yet. he never quite gets mastuda.

never bothered? or never could? perhaps a bit of both, but it's a fascinating character progression nonetheless, and easily one of the most interesting arcs in the series. poor, poor mastuda, indeed.

sidenote: this is a somewhat half baked thought, but i can't help but make a somewhat minor connection between light's treatment of matsuda and his treatment of misa, as well as his relationship with takada. like, let's think through the list of his main (human) supporters throughout the series, the ones who end up taking on the title of KIRA themselves: in the first half, misa, in the second, takada & mikami. if we add matsuda to this list, we get two mirroring pairs: misa & matsuda for the front half of the series, takada & mikami for the latter.

light's treatment of each of these pairs is quite different, despite the fact that they all essentially fulfill the same purpose to him: misa & mikami act as KIRA's eyes, killing those light is unable/unwilling to himself, while takada & matsuda fill the role of KIRA's spokesperson, albeit to very different audiences. thus each half of each pair executes a different side of KIRA's ideology: misa & mikami the practical side, becoming killers themselves, and takada & matsuda the persuasive side, pointing out the positive influences KIRA's actions have had on the population to The People and the rest of the task force respectively.

it's not quite as simple as i've laid out here, of course— tadaka eventually ends up killing before she dies at light's hand herself, misa lives as light's partner until she loses her memories and never quite recovers, mikami becomes quite static, just playing at a killer for Appearances, until his actions eventually end up accidentally betraying light and leading to his downfall. yet it still seems notable to me that despite light treating takada & mikami noticeably better for the majority of the time that he's working with them, those two are the ones who eventually end up dead, betrayed and betrayer respectively. yet, in the case of misa & matsuda... for all that light degrades them and treats them like shit, those two are the ones that get to live on past him while remaining stubbornly loyal until the end, until light's own actions twist back and smack him in the head.

i think perhaps part of the reason why light never ends up converting matsuda is not just his own ego blowing Shit outta proportion and assuming that matsuda will either very easily convert/is too much of a dumb liability to even bother with, but also light's own discomfort with having followers at all. like, it really takes him that full time skip to get fully on board with the idea that people will Submit to KIRA, despite the fact that he logically must know how necessary that is. light wants the recognition and love and commitment of other people, but he doesn't necessarily want the responsibility of their own stupid actions— a sentiment perhaps reflected in how easily he kills criminals, seeing their "evil" as something to be Purged, an annoyance just as much as a liability for the happiness of the Good, Pure People of the world.

as i've outlined before, misa is the main person who's enthusiastic submission consistently gets on light's nerves and icks him the fuck out, but i can't help but wonder if this same reaction applies at least in part to his distaste of matsuda. it's easier to get away from matsuda at least, considering he doesn't have to play the Good, Heterosexual Boyfriend around him, but that doesn't mean it isn't still somewhat present either. this also gets interesting if you start considering lawlight dynamics during yotsuba as well, and L's similar (if somewhat more overt, even) dislike of matsuda during that era BUT. that'll perhaps have to wait until another essay lolol =3=

[xenosagaepisodeone]

it's so funny that this documentary exists. a retrospective on a band that has existed for nearly 30 years that is as tepid as said band's creative output. This is all clearly marketing for I guess younger post-covid nickelback fans who weren't old enough to participate in making fun of nickelback when it was the in thing, but ultimately the documentary has nothing to say because there isnt anything to say. a representative from their label accidentally alludes to this: for a time, nickelback's uncontroversial commercial sound was the only thing keeping the lights on at the studio, and the money they made went on to support the metal artists under the same label (take from that what you will). the beats the doc takes us through are the following: "were small town guys who aggressively marketed and got big because we were in spider-man" "we had some health problems, but we're fine now" "we were a meme and it kind of hurt our feelings, but were fine now" "we had some lows where things were difficult for us creatively, but were fine now". there's even a dramatic point where one band member talks about nervously going back to make amends with a bandmate they had to kick out and....it goes completely fine. No talk of struggles with sex or drugs or family, even! A largely safe, frictionless career, which is probably why this film struggles to escape the confines of it's blatant marketing framing. nickelback was monoculture without a brand in the 2000s (at least Here In Canada). This is How You Remind Me was smattered all over the radio for years (the documentary mentioned at one point nickelback would be played on the radio once ever 3 minutes in the US) but what was nickelback as a band? the exact same as seether or creed or 3 doors down...did I mention that their current drummer is actually the former drummer of 3 doors down? the film is painfully aware that part of the reason why it was so easy to take potshots at nickelback was because of this interchangeable identity but refuses to contend with it. as ryan reynolds proclaims at the beginning and towards the end of the film "it's time to admit nickelback is actually awesome", because if they sound good, what else do they need to really be, right?

if taylor swift is monoculture as horror then nickelback is monoculture as existential horror, specifically. at one point in the doc, chad kroeger says that he doesn't know what he is without nickelback, that the band is more or less his identity, and that all he would be without it is "the guy who makes jokes". this could easily be played up to give some semblance of heart, but I don't think it's necessarily dishonest. at a point, kroeger talks to his brother about how they can't rely on doing covers as often as they do. at his concert he wears band shirts for other bands (not a weird thing on its own btw just in this one context). Hes aware of being "nirvana-lite" and its likely the inspiration behind his infamous ramen hair/beard look. his mom says that being the face of the band is what repels him from getting married or having kids like his brother (do i mention that this doc barely gives a shit about the other members). they mention his brief marriage to fellow canadian export avril lavigne, who is the only person he or his wikipedia article ever reference romantically, and I can't help but wonder if there was some motivation to be a canadian musician power couple behind it all. the documentary predictably makes a big deal about the fact he's from canada, and with the lack of well, Self that is present here I can only assume that "canadian" was meant to fill the slot where "identity" was meant to be.

none of this is even me being mean. I like buttrock. when their songs from the aughts come on the radio, I go "mm...alright" and let it play like i do with old eminem or evanescence. my mom is a nickelback superfan (self professed #1 fan, even) and the copy of All The Right Reasons I bought for her birthday when I was 12 is probably one of the few non-burned cds she still has. and when I ask her what she likes so much about them beyond the passable rock angle, she goes "chad kroeger is so cute n_n"

[dalesramblingsblog]

I don't know if it's just me, and maybe it's just my asexuality showing, but I generally find the way a lot of guys talk about porn and porn addiction (setting aside the debate over what even classifies as "porn addiction," and no I don't want to read the latest evangelical Christian think tank-funded "research" paper on the subject) to be... so very strange.

Like don't get me wrong, do some men have unhealthy relationships with porn? Yes. But some of you guys, I dunno man. I've seen guys say, with their full chest, shit along the lines of "Yeah I saw 0.01 pixels from a porn video and I spontaneously lost all capacity for empathy and the ability to see women as human beings."

And I'm gonna be real with you, I don't think that's normal, but I'm also... not sure that that's entirely the porn? Like if your ability to conceive of other human beings as human beings is *that* fragile, I think there's something else going on as well.

It's weird because I mean, I was a teenage boy. Quite recently too. I grew up in the 2010s. So to a certain extent... I get it, I guess? And again I think in retrospect at least part of this was my asexuality affecting my thought processes without me realising it, and simply not experiencing sexual attraction in the way most people do (i.e. at all, really).

But this idea that the slightest exposure to pornography will totally and utterly obliterate your ability to be normal about women just never really made sense to me.

To a certain extent I think it's just that I had countless close female friendships to begin with, so I just... continued to be normal with them, even on the off-chance that I developed an unrequited crush or whatever.

And of course, in a rather bleakly hilarious post-script, in catching up with friends from high school years later I've been told "Wait I thought you were gay?", which I guess was the going gossip about me. Which is amusingly indicative, I think; the fact that the only *possible* reason a boy could have for not being aggressively horny around girls 24/7 is that he's gay.

(Then again my overdramatic, slightly exaggerated persona probably didn't exactly do much to cut against the stereotypical "gay" image that these folks no doubt had. But fuck you that's just my personality, I can't help it if you're a presumptuous ass.)

It's not even that I take objection to being assumed to be gay - though, y'know, speculating on people's sexualities is kinda weird, particularly if you're gonna treat it as some "answer" to the mystery of "why isn't he perpetually, obnoxiously sexual around women" - but it's all just so revealing of the extent to which "being a man" is defined by "having nothing to do with women, unless you're horny about them, and never ever on a screen because that's just devious women conspiring to lower men's testosterone and keep them in the friendzone (because ofc women are wholly to blame for any ickiness in porn and sex work, makes perfect sense) and by the way could I have another helping of Catholic guilt talking points."

And like, yeah, no shit you're miserable, my guy, if that's how you define yourself.

[popculturebuffet]

Big City Greens The Movie: Spacecation Review! (Gwendolyn Zapp Retrospective Part 2 of 2): The most Stellar Animated Film of the Year

Hello all you happy people! Last month I took a look at every episode of big city greens starring Gwendolyn Zapp, an unstable tech billionare seemingly immune to consequences with a lot of power and no moral compass. Obviously.. a LOT changed in that month and i'm just. i'm fine. I'm fine look how fine I am

I'M FINE... but if you need a breather, check out the review

So naturally the main reason to do this... was to get to the movie, somethign Kev's wanted me to cover since it came out and something I was glad to. I love this movie, and a second watch only strengthened my love of it. Spacecation will probably be my faviorite animated film of the year, and while it's a light year to compete in, it still more than earns it.

Spacecation was announced simply as big city greens the movie in 2022, directed by series director Anna O'Brien. The Houghtons naturally wrote the film and were admirably cautious: they knew two key things: The first was that the story had to be big enough to justify the film existing. If they could tell the story in the show proper, why do it. They had the greenlight for a film but wisely realized a film adaptation HAS to have a good reason to exist. The second was not to over escalate as their keenly aware as a show goes on it has to keep esclating to keep attention and going too far could break the world they painstakingly set up.

Thankfully they had an ace up their sleeve that made going as far as they needed easy: Gwendolyn Zapp. As I pointed out last time, Gwendolyn gives the series a free pass to do weird shit: she keeps things grounded enough as her inventions: robots, space monster crops, tweaking someone's personality via a big ole gun in cyber space.. all things scientists probably HAVE attempted or are actively working on, simply upped to pure super science for funsies. Hell her having a space program was there from day one: she tried to launch the Kludge into space for her mars project and squashed happens entirely thanks to her mars colony. Thanks to her previous episodes she knew the greens and unlike chip the history wasn't as dense and complicated; She's a weird dangerous billionare the greens deliver to frequently because she pays good and who has limitless resources. That's all you need to set up and as someone who went into the film not having seen her other apperances the film does a perfect job sliding in you. She gave them everything they needed for the film and was deranged enough that having her go full big bad was easy.

So with the setup easy, the film got underway, though they doubled the crew size to do it, a smart move as i've seen shows suffer due to the film adaptation. Looking at you regular show. So doubling the crew so they could facilitate both while keeping quality up was the right call. I also applaud disney for making this possible. It's a very low bar to say "you need more people to do two projects" but given how they've been this year, it's a miracle they cleared it. As far as I can tell production was smooth as butter, with the film coming out on time earlier this year, with the plot being kept under wraps for most of it's runtime.

As for where the series fits in the timeline of the series the houghtons have left it vauge for now, since they likely had no idea when the film would be finished or even once it was when it'd come out, and kept it purposfully detatched not just for that, but to welcome new viewers. My best guess is sometime in early season 3, one of two possible options they gave and the one that fits the most with the series: Nancy, the kids mom comes to babysit but makes no mention of whose watching her place, and the greens farm from their front yard. Mid season 3 the greens buy their farm back and spend the rest of the season, along with Remy and eventually Alice, in smalton, their old home. Eventually it's clear the Greens miss big city, so they move back with alice, while Nancy stays behind to run the farm, having found peace there. So Spacecation fits better with Nancy still in big city and the greens still using the family farm. The fact Gwendolyn Zapp's absent after delivernator early in season 3 also makes this easy and while she's one of many reacting to the greens going away, she's also very weird and probably woudln't think nothing of the time she left them in space to die and with buisness booming and way more crops to sell than before, not to mentoin the extra money from the cafe, there would be no reason to keep selling to her after she tried to leave them to die in space. SO TLDR: it fits better in season 3 just before they buy the farm back .

With that I can finally dive into the film itself under the cut!

The Views are Cinematic

So before we dive into the meat of the film let's talk about the potatoes. Spacecation looks gorgeous and you can tell while Disney didn't pour all it's money into this like it should've it still gave the crew a healthy budget and it shows: the film uses wider angels and sweeping shots , stuff that would be expensive to pull off in the series proper and is saved for the bigger moments, but here they can do pretty often, with a shocking amount of action scenes. The settings look gorgeous from the spacious sci fi halls of big tech, to the relaistic yet gorgeous spacecraft, all the way to a desolate farming astroid with a gorgeous farm tucked in, with the void of space looking as vast, terrifying and wonderous as it should. The film makes fantastic use of color doing a trick I love where a character is lit all in one color for contrast. The story is bigger and the film makes you feel it just like the Simpsons or Bobs Burgers movies on what had to be a fraction of those films generous budgets. It's one thing to make a movie but Spacecation understands out to make something cinematic and it's a shame it dosen't seem Disney ever considered this for theaters. I thought i might of over the months since it came out built up this film looking this good in my head but no.. it really looks that sharp, looking like a regular episode in for smaller scenes but really punching it up when needed. It dosen't have the shading of a theatrical relase but damn if it isn't staged perfectly with some really dynamic visuals.

All this visual razzle dazzle would mean nothing though if there weren't meat on the bones... thankfully this film is juicy as heck and boy do i regret this metaphor let's just move on to the films center.

Those Things I Said

Spacecation, as fresh as it feels, is as good as it is by relying on some familiar formulas. The first is one other film adaptations like Kim Possible: So the Drama, The Proud Family Movie, The Simpsons Movie and The Bobs Burgers Movie have done: Take the series core conflict, one they've done a billion times, and take it to it's logical conclusion. See what happens when you bend it so far it breaks and what the characters do. For Kim it's having the villian plot of the week not only be bigger but largely succeed, pushing kim to her breaking point. For the simpsons movie it was taking Homer's habbit of screwing up and having to fix it, and inflating it with him fucking up so bad the whole town wants to kill him and the rest of his family, and fixing it involves stopping the us goverment from bombing springfield from existance. Bobs Burgers takes the restraunts normal precarious position and has it in genuine threat of closing, with usual saving grace Mr Fishoder accused of murder with the kids usual shenanigans now being "solve a friggin murder". It's a simple trick and while not every show does it, and good for that I like some diversity, It works really well for escalating a sitcom like this, rooting the big flashy set pieces in the heart of the show.

That leads to our second and the piece they choose to go with, cricket and bill arguing over something. This was VERY common in the first two seasons. Out of 116 segments, 22 involve this, a good 20 percent of the show at that point. It's easy to see fans getting tired of neither green really learning the lesson to not be a reckless meanace or a wild child. And tha'ts JUST the circket bill stuff there's more episodes of cricket's stubborness causing issues.

However to their credit, the crew eased up on it after this: Season 3 only has three of these and the last one to date is bill omniously warning cricket about having a usual instead of a serious conflict. Rather than go to this well forevermore, hello simpsons and your marriage crisis episodes please stop it love jake, they made a concious decision to end them.. and to have the movie serve as the final pin. Cricket won't stop being reckless and bill won't sotp being overprotective, but it was wise to just have the two grow past fighting every five episodes and do new stuff. Maybe bill bores his family, feels hurt they don't like the same things and becomes the crow.

Given the simpsons has done 76 Homer and Marge marriage Crisis Episodes (Thank you The Real Jims for counting all those in his video on the subject), it's nice to see a show decide to just end a theme like this in style.

The final major toss up between these two begins simply enough before setting controls for outer space: it's time for a GREEN FAMILY VACATION, and i'll get to the songs later but that one is a fucking bop and has been in my head for a good chunk of the review process. The Greens have saved up enough to take a break and go on a vacation, with Nancy watching the pets and also getting a gloriously gay b-plot with gloria i'll get to later.

For once Cricket is thinking ahead, and actually made a pamphlet, a nice little handrawn thing of suggestions and freeze framing it.. what suggestions they are. Going ot mexico, breakfast land, volcanos.. it's great. None of it is plausible, but you can tell he put his heart into the thing.

That pamphlet is the secret suace that makes the terrible thigns he does as the film goes on work: Cricket actually did come up with ideas, was excited and wanted to go on a fun exciting adventure with the family. He likes adventure and Bill damn well knows that.

And instead of that Bill.. offers the same trip as last year. And look Bill has some good intetions: he knew everyone enjoyed it, wanted to keep everyone safe which is hard to do on a vacation, he meant some well.. but ther'es some selfishness here that does a lot of the heavy lifting towards making this a both sides issue when one of the sides is "tricking your family into space". Bill later calls Cricket out for being selfish.. but Bill has the same stubborness and selfishness. As his ex wife will later point out int he movie, part of the reason they butt head sso much.. is that Cricket and Bill are a lot more alike than they seem. THeir diffrent enough in their wants for this to be an issue, but their both stubborna nd tend to make decisions based on what THEY want without considering what someone else wants.

And bill.. didn't think about cricket or alice. Bill accuses Cricket of steamrolling people and he's not wrong.. but Bill often does the same. Bill knew Cricket would be outvoted and filed off his concerns and wants as "stupid ideas". He likely barely read the pamphlet instead of maybe sitting down with his son and finding a middle ground between a ten year old's fantasy and "repeating a trip we already took without telling him ahead of time. " Given how Cricket is , Bill SHOULD have seen the backlash and some Zany scheme coming. This isn't like the goofy movie where max tricks a very naive goofy (if for understandable reasons Goofy goes with once they actually talk). Bill knows his son does this kind of thing.

Now while i'm being hard on bill make no mistake: Cricket screws up. Cricket is a brat and while he's right ot be angry, he too fucks up royally. Now wanting a vacation in space when Gwendolyn asks the greens to go into space, that's fair. He sees a giant hotel she started, a fun adventure with his family, and he's ten so he dosen't see the ten dozen red flags or learn from the fact Gwendolyn's stuff tends to be dangerous. He assumes this will just be some fun space adventure and not what space travel is:

So his wanting it.. is understandable.. but the actions he takes to get what he wants are horrible, even by "he's a children standards". While I do thinka LOT of fans were too hard on cricket/didn't give bill enough flak for his own part as bill is a grown man, Cricket still hits a new low here. He lies to Gwendolyn, agreeing to do the mission if they can stay at her fancy space hotel after, and then lies to his family to get them on the rocket. The only reason they don't turn around is Gwendolyn Zapp is a heartless monster who blackmails them into it and also dosen't realize contracts signed by ten year olds wont' hold up in court no matter how much money you have.

Yet you still don't hate him entirely as while he fucks up royally.. his goals aren't entirley selfish. Yes he wants a good vacation for himself. Yes he hated bill's idea and resented him for shooting down his ideas, the latter being entirely resonable given Bill didn't bother discussing it with anyone or thinking that "just because these ideas are insane dosen't mean my son isn't taking them dead seriously". But he WANTS his family go have a good vacation: Tilly looses her Journal and Gramma looses her leg in the entry process, so while his getting them replacements could just be him trying to butter them up.. it comes off more as he realized he screwed up a little and space isn't AS fun as he thought and rather than give up, he wants to MAKE it fun. He finds genine replacements in a recorder and a robot leg that both love and it's clear he cares. He does want his dad to enjoy it.. but it's not for the "win" of proving his dad wrong.. he just geninely wants his dad to have a fun trip in space. It's what makes cricket works: sometims he's just a selfish little goblin.. and other times he's a well meaning and destructive little goblin. This shenanigan is a mix of the two: he did want a cool vacation for himself, didnt' think it through and put everyone in danger, but he dosen't just run off to do space stuff with everyone mad at him. He wants them to enjoy it too. The bulk of the first half is Cricket trying to help bill have fun. We see in "Chill Bill" Bill rarely loosens up with Cricket not having seen how bill gets on lakes (Chill as fuck for the record). It's the films heart: these two DO care about each other they just aren't good about actually carring what the other wants to the letter. Both are so used to ignoring the other and doing what they want it's easy to forget they love each other.

In Cricket's way though is Colleen Voyd, played amazingly by Renee Elyse Goldsberry of Hamilton Fame. Voyd is hopelessly devoted to Gwendolyn, a stickler for the rules and a bit of a pain in the ass. A lot of it is understandable: Space is dangerous, she wants the greens to live, and she wants the mission to succeed for her god empreror genius mommy. But Cricket hates her for not wanting any fun, and understandably: not for not wanting fun on a deadly mission but for treating a child like an astronaut who knew what he was getting into. Maam this is a children, he's not going to get your trying to keep him safe.

Granted how he works around her.. is fucked. It's probably the worst thing Cricket's ever done. Instead of trying to talk with her, reason with her, or figure something out, not options that might've worked but he could certainly try, he decides to instead lock her in the cryo chambers of the ship. It's better than Gramma's plan of we kill her.. and while it's a joke that she said "we kill her" i've seen alice in enough episodes to know she probably did entirely think "let's do a murder" as her first solution and backed off because her grandson dosen't have the taste for it yet. They trick her in there with Tilly noticing and being talked into it.

Cricket TRIES to get bill to accept it with a jaunty musical number, but it clashes with who bill is: Tilly goes with the flow, Alice and Cricket are naturally reckless but bill while a kind man, a good farmer and a solid father... is a naturally awkward easily startled man. Space was going to be his own personal hell. I can relate. I love sci fi but I know the actual experince of going into space, while life changing would also be deeply terrifying at the point it's at. It's a point the movie makes and something that helpfully grounds it: whiel the tech is a touch ahead of what we have, the risks of space travel and the time and energy it takes are all there.

Still Bill does slowly warm up, and a close call with a trashteroid field helps close the gap. I do love the trashteroid field as it's set up as a one off joke: Gwendolyn off handily mentions their just shooting garbage into space futurama style if in smalle rquantities... leading to a giant field of trash our heroes have to navigate with. IT gets the old standard of "navegating astroeids" in there but spruces it up with the fresh visuals of all this rubbish. The Trashteroid sequence is awesome and a joy to watch and the 3d animation in this film is top notch. Cricket has bill drive.. and he does so with style, saving thie rlives.. if damaging the ship.

Bill is actually warming up, and it's nice to see. Bob Joules does a great job as bill but it's really nice to see him just.. relax. Be happy. But it also creates a ticking time bomb as you KNOW any second Cricket's lies will come unraveled and it's only a matter of when. I"m usually not a fan of liar revealed plots but it can work and this one feels more like the goofy movie: I.e. you get why the characters doing the bad thing so you don't hate them completely, and the lie is much simplier: Max was doing the trip as usual, and Cricket simply says Coleen got sick. The lie isnt' for perosnal glory or anything but for simple human reasons. Dosen't make the lie okay, but it dosen't make you resent the character for getting deeper and deeper down the lie hole.

The other ticking time bomb is the farm bots, Gwendolyn's original farmers who are also funny robots..and thanks to a coding error have gone rogue. Naturally Gwendolyn didn't remotely warn them of this and sends the greens into danger without any prepreation. We do get one last nice bit of vacation as the greens see the space hotel, their reward for the mission Cricket got for them, and them farming which is neat. I love the zero gravity farm, it's rotating collumns, and just how happy bil is... before the robots try to plant them.

One super runaway later, our heroes find the ship is broken and everything else breaks down as their ships engine is clogged. So Tilly breaks out Colleen and Bill finds out what Cricket done did and of course dosen't take it well, not being suprised as of course his son did the reckless selfish thing while Cricket clearly feels ashamed, but is too prideful to actually apologize.

Not helping is Colleen chooses the mission over their lives, more on that later, so our heroes have to do a few awesome action set pieces and strap a rocket to the kludge. Cricket ends up driving for a bit and ... does actually find a way to reach the dome they do, a ramp jump he has carefully thought out for a change. But then they both screw up: Bill jerks the controls away and he and Cricket fight over them. Both Greens can't give an inch when it matters: Cricket is pissed his dad won't trust him the one time he needs it and refuses to accept WHY that is given he just spent several hours lying to the man, while BIll can't accept cricket isn't ALWAYS wrong and they can't really play it safe right now as there IS no safe surrounded by killer robots.

The truth is.. they BOTH fuck up and cause them to crash into the dome and while they can shut down the power, it's caused the asteroid to go off course.. it's heading for earth and specifically big city. They have to cut the right wire or else humanities doomed and Cricket once again screws up and cuts the communciation.

It's what makes this next scene work, the scene the whole film hinges on: The fight between Cricket and Bill that's been bubbling all movie, all series. And it begins with Cricket asking one simple question "Why did you pull the wheel away from me?" Like any family argument.. it begins with something you really shoudln't be asking... yet feels like a fair question. Bill tries to table it and it's fair to: Their trying to save the world, this isn't the time for it.. but the problem is WHOSE saying that: Bill has shut down cricket again and again, constantly telling him his ideas are bad and he should feel bad. So instead of taking it as "We really can't fight right now" Cricket understandably explodes at the worst possible time, pissed his dad helped cause this.

Bill rather than be the adult in the room, decides to fight back, pointing out Cricket's why their here in the first place the two sniping back and forth: Bill points out Cricket's ideas are dangerous, Cricket fires back if he weren't so "boring" he'd like them. Alice tries to stop bill and I love her "That's enough" It's not her usual anger.. but the anger of a mother knowing her child is going too far with his own kid and needs to back up.. but not able to stop him.

Both reach the point where they say things they can't take back: Bill says "All your ideas are bad! I'm sorry I don't like bad ideas!" and Cricket.. takes this as confrimation of what he's all belivied, something that makes everything, his actions, his lies, his mistakes... understandable. Not good or something he shouldn't make up for or have to apologize for, but understandable. It's the key to making what Cricket did work: that he isn't just doing this for himself, or his family.. but to prove something to himself: That his dad likes him. That he can have ONE idea his dad actually likes. As his response to all this is "I get it now.. when you say you dont' like my dieas.. what your really saying is you don't like me. Well that's fine because I don't like YOU"

Chris Houghton's delivery is painful and perfect: the quiet pain at first, the bitterness, the doubling down.. it's all so harsh yet understandable: Bill constantly says Cricket is wrong.. how else is the kid supposed to take it? He didn't mean harm by it.. but you can see why Cricket ended up in such an extreme. You can only be told your wrong so many times before you internalize it. Believe me, i've been there.

So everything explodes.. literally to add to the emotoinal blow up and Cricket is left adrift. We then get the best song of the movie, those things I said. It's the only one i'm commenting on ahead of getting to the songs later as it's a centerpiece of the film showing how much both green men regret what they've done. IT's also why I don't get the dogpiling on Cricket: He fucked up bad, the film dosen't let him off for that, and dosen't try to make bill AS culpable, simply.. culpable. Which he is. The boy spends a whole song singing about how badly he screwed up, how he regrets telling his dad he dosen't like him, and how he got everyone he loves seemingly killed. Cricket is left utterly broken, realizing that no the risk wasn't worth it this time and that as much as his dad hurt him hurting him back dosen't fix it. It's a painfully real thing about this kind of argument getting out what you feel... dosen't always exactly fix things and sometimes those wounds don't heal. Same with Bill who realizes by being so hard on cricket always, it pushed him this far.

Thankfully there IS an adult in the room.. or rather Gramma's leg who can help. Nancy. So quickly covering this subplot: Nancy naturally saw something was up seeing on the news that her family went into space, but couldn't get a straight answer out of Gwendolyn and gets escorted off the premises. Thankfully Nancy has a not so straight ally in Gloria. Gloria and Nancy's subplot this film can best be described as

As while they INTEND for Gloria to see Nancy as a second mom, having said as much before it instead comes off as Gloria crushing heavily on a cool older woman but having not realized she's bi yet. While Gloria being awkward as fuck is buisness as usual for the series the way she is ... not straight. It's just not. I say this as a bi diasaster myself who would act the same way around keith david despite, like Gloria, knowing nothing could happen. The man is happily married and a few decades older than me. I get it. But there's no harm in looking long as your repspectful.

This subplot also works because it pairs up two characters who haven't gotten a subplot togehter; Nancy and Gloria have shared a scene or two, but haven't actually interacted before this and McLoven-Covey and Akana have great chemistry, Nancy trying to focus on the job and Gloria being at her most awkward, which says a lot. They sneak in, get captured, hear a villian monologue and Gloria ultimately proves herself getting them free to help save the day and serve as mission control.

Admittedly the subplot is loosely tied to the main plot but it IS essential on two fronts: the first is showing off Zapp's callousness and giving her someone to monologue to, complete with villain song. It helps explains why she's doing this and also lets us see her decide to fuck off to mars instead of save the world. While we get that info later in the main plot too, it works better with us KNOWING she did this. The second is getting in contact with Cricket. It makes more sense having Nancy, who Cricket hasn't hurt and is you know, his parent, give him the peptalk over his family.

IN this case Cricket is ready to give up, figuring he'll just do something worse. And while he's not wrong to feel bad about what he did, Nancy even gives an oof when talking to him, Nancy recognizes her family needs her boy to do his best. That yes he screws up a lot, and he and his father are both stubborn.. but they both want whats best for the family. And right now what's best is saving the world, in this case using the tractor beam from the space hotel that was set up earlier but I didn't mention.

Thankfully the rest of the family finds Cricket, Cricket finds bill but I like that while they both clearly feel bad and all's forgiven.. both aren't quite back yet. While Cricket rushes out to fix the tractor beam himself when it proves not strong enough to redirect the farming asteroid, getting some of his reckless but creative mojo back.... he can't lift it and gives up. It's.. heartining seeing Cricket this down on himself. You understand why, he fucked up real good, but it's still not pledsant. Ther'es no joy in the win. And Bill sees that and admits he too isn't perfect: he plays it too safe, the vacation was indeed toos afe and while Cricket scares him sometimes... he admits the boys heart is in the right place: most of his shenanigans are about getting the most out of something for those he loves.

They often backfire horribly and not ALL of them are selfless (not that he says that), but it's that heart that drive sthe chaos. The boy mostly means well and makes life.. intresting and he can do this. Hell bill knows it. It's a seen that's heartwarming as hell and adorabl, affring both greens may of fucked up.. but they love each other still always willa nd wha'ts said in the heat of things isn't always true. B Oth sides screwed up.. but both can make it better.

Cricket flips the switches btu gets caught in a stream of trash the beams pulling in. So BILL shows his own development; Cricket realized he screwed up and felt genine remorse, now bill in addition to that, also jumps out and helps his son, the two saving the day.

The duo end the film on good terms blasting off into the sunset, or the equilvent to have a space vacation with Bill learning his lesson and asking Cricket if he has any ideas. So we end on an adorable montage of them having some space fun while waiting for a rescue craft. It's a pitch perfect end to a near perfect end to the series longest standing plot. It's a lesson in empathy: that sometimes your both wrong even if one person is more wrong, and that if we listen to each others heart, we'll find we're never too far apart, and maybe love is the reason why for the first time ever their seeing theings eye to eye.

The Fall of the House of Zapp

So i'd like to start this section with one of the great philosophers of our time..

I used to wanna get the chance to show the world I'm smart (ha) Isn't that dumb? I should've focused mostly on the heart 'Cause I seen smarter people trample life like it's an art So bein' smart ain't what it used to be, that's fuckin' dark EL-P, (As Part of Run the Jewels), A Few Words for the Firing Squad

This.. really sums up Gwendolyn Zapp and the people she's meant to be a parody of: Stupid Rich Kids who get more money and power than they know what to do with, get frozen at 20, surrounded with people either unable to call them out or unable to see their deranged, and who do what THEY think is best for the future and not what people might actually need. It's something that's only become clearer since my last post, as I watched a few episodes of the amazing podcast behidn the bastards on tech billionares: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and human dumpster fire Elon Musk among others. It's not the podcasts only focus you can also hear how Napoleon Bonaparte III got drunkenly caught while doing an insurrection then shot a man in the face for reasons known only to him, Scott Addams wanted to name Dogbert Dildog, and how fashion monster Peter Nygaard responded to his neightbors understandable requests by super imposing said neighbors face over shots of the twin towers falling.

But it put into persepctive that the bulk of tech billionares are spoiled manchildren (and in one case womanchildren), who grew up with extra advantages and daddy's money, either the dad was a good parent or not, and never bothered to learn empathy or the consequences of their actions before becoming rich. Learning all this helps deep Gwendolyn Zapp as a character: She's primarily a wacky joke machines... but like all these billionares her money is built on a mixture of entitlement, never being told no, and being stuck with sychophants and true beliviers who will gladly care out her bidding no matter how questionable or awful it is, only stepping in if their going to get sued. Zapp SEEMED like she was a wacky exageration and while she was.. it's only by the tinest margin.

So really like any real life tech billionare, it isn't that far a drop from "kooky eccentric" to "Mad Scientest who will make the world pay". Gwendolyn almost ended the world ONCE already on the show and tried to rewrite childrend's brains. Having her be the antagonist was a perfect fit and serves as a perfect capper to her character.

This appearnce really boils down everything about her perfectly to the point that, as I mentioned, I had not seen any of her eps.. and still got the character's whole deal easily. She's an egotist entirely out of touch with reality, if she was ever in touch with it who wants big bountiful advances for humanity, but in a showy way that gets her all the credit. From day one she pointed out how she could solve so many issues but instead makes robo pants.

In this case she's farming in space, which isn't a terrible idea: At it's best it provides more sustainable food for people who need it, at worst it's a backup plan on the high chance humanity fucks up the planet too bad to be livable. But her reasons aren't alturisim or making the future better.. she just wants to prove her kindergarten teacher wrong.

Yeah she's that petty. As we find out in her decent villian song mid film.. that's the whole reason why Zapp is doing this. The whole reason why farm veggies in space. And the saddest part is.. her teacher wasn't even mean to her. She just chuckled about how cute the idea a six year old presented her was. It's the kind of horrifying thing that can indeed happen in real life when you piss off a billonare with tons of money and thin skin. I mean Elon Musk brought Twitter because he had beef with his daughterand wants to buy Hasbro because the head of creatvie for DND dosen't give a shit what he thinks, while Steve Jobs called the mother of his daughter a whore and denied being his daughter Lisa's father for decades to the point of having the people working on the Apple Lisa come up with an acronym so he could deny naming it after her. I wish I made either of these things up.

Billionaires are petty husks of human beings. What I thought was an exaggerated wacky kidnapping plot.. is something terrifyingly possible. I"m not saying these guys HAVE kidnapped their old teachers to gloat to them, but the fact they COULD'VE and easily buried it is alarming.

So in just a few short months Zapp's plotline has gone from "wacky but fun" to "deeply disturbing.. and still a little fun". I mean Cheri Oteri is a delight in this role and while this could easily be the end, I wouldn't mind seeing her again in season 5. It's a clear throughline in the tech industry that the tech persons ego matters more than money, common sense or lives, and this plot illuminates that hauntingly well. Gwendolyn Zapp is trying to prove a point to someone who was never really against her and dammed if it costs lives.

And it's a horrifying mantra she's indocirnated into her employees, as we see with her biggest Loyalist and one of the films leads Coleen Voyd, played to perfection by Renee Elise Goldsberry. If Zapp is a reflection of how dangerous and unstable tech mobles are taken to comical degrees, Voyd shows how scary unblinking loyalty to these kinds of techbros can be, that just because someone CAN change the world dosen't mean their doing it for the right reason.

Coleen Voyd has fully bought the hype: She sees Zapp as a visonary who can do no wrong, the mission as paramount and follows her Zappstronaut rules to the letter even when their kinda draconian when implied to literal children. She WORSHIPS Gwendolyn, and can't fathom her or the rules ever being wrong, following them to a fault. While Cricket defintely shouldn't of thrown her in cryo, that was horrible.. Voyd wasn't a good leader, not getting that her crew, while volunteering for this mission far as she knew, is still civllians with no formal training. Just belting a cool song at them isn't going to make them listen to you and while Cricket shouldn't of mutinied, someone was gonna at some point when your only command is "OBEY THE WORDS GOD EMPRESS ZAPP HAS DECREED PEONS".

Voyd shows the dangers of letting someone do whatever they want because it's "for the greater good"

A lot of tech bro worship, especailly in cases like Elon in the House, the horrifying Cory in the House sequel 50 percent of the country apparently asked for, comes from "Well they donate or they do this or that". I turned a blind eye to bill gates for a long time not relaizing he was bullying people who actually knew what they were doing to do the dangerous shit he wanted to do. IT's why Narcissism and Charity can't coexist. You can't genuinely build a better world if you think your the only one who can. Other people have good ideas. You are not the only person in the world whose opinon matters and if your the kind of person who clearly thinks your thinks that, your going to do some TERRIBLE shit and people will do terrible shit in your name. It's this cult bullshit that got us the president elect we have. I wanted to stay out of politics for this one but it's impossible to given how close to home this hits: the idea that you can put all your faith and good intentions.. in a person who geninely dosen't care if you live or die and whose idea of a good future is built on a mountain of corpses.

Am I getting just a tad dark about a children's cartoon character? Eh maybe, but I like how this is told:Through comedy. It's a lesson kids NEED to know: that just because someone's smart or charasmtic does not make them a good person. The comedy makes it almost easy to forget that Gwendolyn Zapp when given the choice between her vanity project and 5 human lives.. chooses the vanity project. It's what most egomanical billionares would do given the choice. It's what constantly fluffing someone's ego up and buying into their madness gets you: stranded in space. Colleen willingly sends the vegtables and not the greens and herself home because that's the mission. And the Green's don't even know the reason WHY Zapp discarded them. It's a pitch perfect metaphor for tha tdisconnect: the innocent people who get thrown away don't CHOOSE this, they don't sign on for some glorious purpose.. they just want to get buy. As much as cricket fucked up he did NOT sign on to fight for his life and Zapp hid all this from them till it was too late.

Thankfully both parties get a compupance in a way they deserve. For Colleen Voyd.. it's redemption. She did fuck up royally, put her faith in the wrong person and like cricket and bill at first doubles down, refuses to accept she was wrong or betrayed everyone present. After all as far as she knows she put her faith in the right person. Gwendolyn will save them and the earth and smite their enemies.

Instead.. she gets let down. Gwendolyn decides "fuck earth" when the asteroid threat is apparently and peaces out ot mars in a giant face ship leaving everyone to die. If there was any doubt she was a bad person remotely left... this removes it. She may of seemed personable but Gwendolyn Zapp.. was a monster, a selfish narcisit who flees.

Colleen .. dosen't take it well, taking a few minutes in real time and about an hour to despair. It's only when the greens try to break into the controls to the tractor beam she spouts off her rules.. then breaks them. It's a good lesson: Just because someone you trusted with your heart and soul betrays you dosen't mean you should give up, and just because your hero lets you down dosne't mean you can't be a hero yourself. Collenn shapes up and finds a better path for herself: She wasn't a terrible person, just bound too rigidly to rules set out by someone anyone else could see was terrible because they didn't worship her. And her exit from the movie is the heroes exit she deserves: She heads off to fix things, Tilly gives her Cookie, the weird blob she's been carrying around all film who disney isn't merchandising to hell and back because they dumb, and the two get to work cleaning up the trash and making a better future the hard way... the right way.

As for Gwendolyn... everything comes crashing down carmically. She has to watch her space hotel get burnt up (The greens saved everybody so don't worry), then returns oblivous as usual.. to an angry populus that threw the free space produce she gave them at her It may only be thanks to the power of fictoin, but Gwendolyn Zapp finally lost the one thing she needed to.. not the millions of dollars, sadly even in fiction you can't take those away, but the public's respect and willingness to tolerate her crap. There won't be another Colleen Voyd, thank god and Gwendolyn Zapp will slowly collapse into the dustbin of history... or probably show up for an epilogue in season 5. Save the date!

The Movie The Musical One of the first things about this movie that was announced that it'll be a MUSICAL ... which was a shock as Big City greens has done a musical episode and maybe two or three numbers over four seasons. Still it was a fun idea and works well. IT reminds me of the goofy movie where it is technically a musical, but there's some gaps between the numbers. In fact Rules Rap was added entirley because there was about half an hour between Green Family Vacation and Space is Fun.

Green Family Vacation gets us off to a great start, a fun number where everyone gets a solo with Cricket's really hammering in why he ends up doing the shit he does. It has great coregraphy complete with some lala land style dancing on top of cars and a great cameo from officer keyes. It's jaunty, gets stuck in your head, it's everything an opening number should be and more.

Rules Rap... should really be called Zappstronaut Rules as Colleen says it enough times with an excellent belt. It's really well done though. Renee has bars for days and shows it off, going rapid fire as hell. It's the chorus I feel lets these ones down as while operatic, it feels out of tone with the rapid pace of the rest of hte rap and how dauntless the rules feel, stacked on one after another on top of our heroes. Still a banger. It really gets colleens cultish warship of gwendoln and sticklership, as well as how dangerous things are, all out nice and fast and making it a musical number was a genius move.

Space is Fun is okay. Visually it's fantastic, really showing off the ship and space itself and Bill's terror beautifully. But content wise i'ts just ... cricket going on about how fun space is. It's not really substantive.

Gwendolyn's Lament: Is decent. Cheri Oteri belts it out, I just wish they'd leand on her vocals more instead of having her talk thorugh a chunk of it, as she CAN belt it. Still having Gwendlon do a full on jazz number to gorgeous color contrast visuals was never not going to be fun.

Stuff I Said is a masterpiece, getting into Cricket and Billl's regret beautifully with Chris Houghton being a suprisingly effective singer. Bob Joules.. .isn't the best but has enough emotoin. And that's the song's strength: the emotion of it, takin ga slow second to let the weight of the shitty things they've done wash over Cricket and Bill. It sells both's changes as both realize they ding dang blorped up and need to fix it. It's a masterful song.

Green Family Vacation Reprise is great as the first one and a fun note to end on. Not much more to say, I aboslutely love them driving on saturn and the solar color washed credits.

Overall the music is decent. Only Green Family Vacation and Stuff I Said Really stick out to me. None of it's horrible or detracts from the movie, but it's still notably weaker than the well crafted story, deftly timed comedy, wonderful character beats or gorgeous visuals. I'ts not terrible, but it's not really memorable. Most musicals have me rushing to spotify to add my faviorites. This one.. I honestly didn't realize was even on spotify till recently. It's not terrible but in a film this good, it's noticably average.

Odds and Ends:

I didn't really talk about Tilly and Gramma in the main portions as their off to the side in their own weird fitting adventures: Tilly gets an alien, Alice gets a super leg and plots murder. Their good solid subplots but both are the side dishes to bill and cricket's main course. They contribute more than enough great jokes and to the plot, with Cookie, Tilly's alien, having the abillity to break glass they come in contact with and gramma's new leg allowing her to kick ass because she can't chew bubblegum with those dentures. Both characters are fantastic, there simply isn't anything to dig into with their arcs is all.

Supporting cast wise the film keeps it delebriately light: the only characters outside of Gwendolyn to show up are officer keys, who cameos in the opening number and has two great gags later first remarking what a good day this is seconds before news of the asteroid hits.. and then being proven right later when the apocalypse being cancelled leads to free hot dogs.

Otherwise the only returnees are chris and terry, the gay couple next door who annoy Gloria for a second with the whole foam gag, and Remy's parents.

I bring up Remy's parents for two reasons: to tackle Remy's small roll in the plot and to point out something weird. For some reason Remy's guard, manny and closest friend outside of Cricket Vasquez... is not in the film. The remmingtons are, with Remy going to the space hotel and proving critical to the climax.. but weirdly his bodyguard.. dosen't come along on vacation. And you'd say "Well it's vacaton of course he dosen't" but we're talking three very rich people in a very dangerous environment and a man who needs to see his therapist when Remy goes to a birthday party alone. IT's very weird he's absent.

Now his absence COULD be explained by his voice actor: Vasquez is voiced by everyone's faviorite character actor Danny Trejo. He's done a ton of voice acting on top of that.. which makes his absence questionable for two reasons: 1) while Danny is PROBABLY getting paid a decent wage, and I only say probably because Disney has been confirmed to be the worst and if they overwork pixar and do homophobic shit they probably aren't above underpaying a voice acting and regular acting legend, it's defintely not enough to break the budget and even if they coudln't 2) the remingtons are silent. Also the fact they paid andy daily for three lines tells me they can pay another guest actor for the same. It's a weird absence.

Remy himself is barely in the movie but I appricate finding space for him so the whole main cast gets featured. And Zeno Robinson does make good use of the time, mostly setting up the tractor beam

And getting to conga everyone to saftey in a hilaroius sequence towards the end. He's just kinda there, but it feels right having him there you know. It's the same reason it feels very wrong not having Vasquez around when the rest of Remy's family is there.

Almost forgot the cowboy resembling Sam Elliot. This is just a fun gag having him narrate the greens.. only to turn out to be doing it in story too as some weirdo they have to shoo away. It's a good nod to the big lebowski, a great weird little gag and a fun way to introduce the cast to new viewers.

Spaceclusion

If it wasn't clear already I love this movie. It's tightly animated, nicely takes a stock conflict for the show and blows it the fuck up, it's gorgeous to look at and it's so very funny. It's the movie this show deserved and proof the show has deserved to last this long. While I wish more shows got treated this well by disney, fuck them and their homophobia, I am glad at least one got to shoot for the stars and didn't miss. This movie is fantastic and well worth watching. If you love the show, you'll adore this, if you haven't seen it, it's a great introduction. This film deserves more eyes on it especially in a year full of so much misery from disney it's nice to see them release something this good with no abuse behind it. Thanks for reading and i'm pullin for you, we're all in this together

[possiblylando]

Chainsaw Man 132 'Early' Analysis

Well I guess we know what Yoshida meant by protecting denji. Back to the start.

I wonder if they do this because they genuinely like Nayuta or because she's using her control devil powers on them? Both are equally possible. Also it didn't click with me last chapter but Nayuta is the only kid wearing a dress shirt. Meaning Denji is definitely the one making her wear it. I can imagine him saying something cheesy like "You have to dress for success!". So- This chapter has a lot of interesting world building around it. Obvious stuff in retrospect and alot of new information to process.

Ignoring the fact they're pointing guns at literal 12 year old children, Who the fuck are these guys? Are they really with Yoshida's group? How the fuck do they have access to this equipment? They must have some sort of connection to the government itself to be able to get riot gear like this. They have to be with Yoshida because he says he's also protecting them.

It makes sense in retrospect but hadn't dawned on me until now. Of course a primal devil coming to earth would effect the entire fucking place and not just a singular city. I do wonder what Falling's automatic effect actually is, If it's just everything begin to fall or if it like- Falls towards her?

Iseumi is back.

Very true to life. The world is currently in the act of being destroyed and instead of anyone giving a shit the people who actually want to stop it are mocked. What the fuck is the point of going to college if you're going to be killed soon after by a giant fucking space demon? Right so Iseumi and Fami are working together. Shows that Fami doesn't care about individual humans she's clearly just using Iseumi expecting him to die at some point.

So now my question is- Who does this hand belong to? It could possible be chainfraud man if he isn't dead after getting trounced in hell by falling. This could also be the last horseman. Last week I talked about the horsemen wanting to save humanity in their own twisted ways. So it's possible that Fami and the final horseman have teamed up. God.

There's a very specific group of chainsaw man fans reading this chapter who are losing their shit. Fujimoto HAS to know about that ship by now. This is just ridiculous.

What do I even fucking say about this?? ?????????? ????????? ???????? ??????? Fuckin- Ya know what Thats all for this one. This ending leaves me so fucking dumbfounded I have nothing else to say. WHY DID HE SAY THIS?

[gayofthefae]

Mike liking El romantically when they dated but totally loving being her friend once they were talking again after their breakup. But just wanting to keep in her life so whatever way she wants to do that he accepts (because he isn't gonna risk losing her by asking for anything different).

Mike realizing the day that they move that he has feelings for Will (and in retrospect it makes total sense now why he was so defensive about how "normal" it is to feel torn whenever Will and El were in the same room) and obviously not telling El anything not even that he has feelings for a vague someone else because he's scared of losing her and if she lives across the country she could just choose to not write back and he'd never hear from her again. And on top of that he thinks he can get over it, fix it. So in doing so maybe he avoids calling Will or maybe he doesn't but when he doesn't keep in touch with him, he doesn't write. Because that's for El. And he can't equate anything else he does for El to Will because he can't treat them the same if Will is his FRIEND. And he's trying to see Will as just his friend.

Then he sees them again. And he isn't over Will. So he tries to ignore him (but he can't, and he notices Will is ignoring him too. Which kinda hurts). But then a bunch of shit goes down and he fights with Will and Will does still care but he's calling him out and he just CAN'T deal with this too right now; just doesn't want to think about it. So he shuts him down, grasping at straws desperately to just stop talking about this. And he can't say I love you to El even though he totally does, because he knows she wants him to say it romantically and that feels like a lie. And that kind of lie isn't a line he's willing to cross until he means it. Can make himself mean it. So he's trying and he knows deep down that he can't say it but now that she's gone part of him wishes he just had anyways so that he'd be with her now and be able to help her and protect her. Because all of this was to avoid losing her and he could anyway. And he would do anything not to lose her. Even tell that lie.

And Will is saying it's hard to tell people hard truths when you don't know they'll see you the same and isn't that the truth. And Will is giving him this beautiful painting and telling him how much El loves him and was broken without him. And that's it. He'll just have to commit to it. Because he can't leave her like that. He'll just lie and eventually it'll become the truth and it'll be like it was never a lie in the first place. Fake it til you make it. And then she NEEDS it. She needs it to survive. And Will is encouraging him and it hurts and it's a little hard to say the first time but then he just says it because he knows it's what she needs to hear and he doesn't want to lie but he doesn't want to lose her ABOVE that. So he tells a bunch of technical truths like: me not saying it has nothing to do with you, you're amazing, my life is better because you came into it, I couldn't tell you the truth because I'm scared of losing you.

And now he's where he was. Fake it til you make it, I guess. And Will doesn't love him back, he never even considered he would (okay maybe for the split second after he said "what about us?" but that was wishful thinking). That would be stupid, false hope. So he and Will are best friends again. And he and El are dating. And he's just gonna continue his life the way it was and hope that at some point his feelings for Will go away and everything works itself out. Because it isn't ideal but where he's at isn't BAD. He can work with this. He loves both of them and both of them are still in his life. He's not gonna do anything to fuck that up.

Tldr:

Mike liked being friends with El in season 3. Mike realized the day Will and El moved that he had feelings for Will and wanted to be friends with El and didn't tell El even vaguely about it because he didn't want to lose her. He didn't want to say I love you because he knew she would think it was romantic and that felt like a lie, but he ended up prioritizing not losing her over not telling that lie and tried to tell it as truthfully as possible. And now he's back where he started: no even consideration of Will possibly reciprocating, trying to fake it til he makes it with El and hoping it all works itself out, and not daring change a thing because he doesn't want to lose either of them.

...until he finds out he has a shot. And his mind comes crashing down. Because what do you do when you want one person so bad but having them means you could lose someone else? What do you do when you could lose one person by changing and lose the other by not changing at all? (pssst: he isn't gonna lose either. Because they both want him as much as they need him and would stay long-term no matter what his choice so he just needs to follow his heart, he's allowed)

[griancraft]

Ok as per my last post. This is Long and very much about my feelings so uh don’t read it if you don’t want to. Also I’m aware I sound genujneky crazy for half of this I’m just really really mentally ill in ways I don’t talk about here at all and now I am sharing them and it’s. A little scary but oh well. The system stuff is the stuff I’m most concerned about right now to be honest bc it effects my day to day and if anyone has any kind words or thoughts on what to do I’ll be happy to listen

Please read my previous post if you’re mad /gen I don’t think I say anything bad here but I have really bad morality ocd so like uhm I am scared to post this!!! Prev post

Also I’m very sorry that the prose is terrible to read and my spelling is shit I have dyspraxia which is a coordination thing and it’s worse rn

The maybe I was boring album came on yesterday while I was cleaning and I had to stop what I was doing and turn it off halfway through because I just couldn’t stop hearing an admission. I wasn’t even sad I was just. So done with it. I still am just kinda like. God I hope Shelby is doing ok with all this being public now. I’m glad she was able to heal like she said and I’m glad she made the video dude.

I almost got his lyrics tattooed if that’s testament to how much I loved his early music. It’s not connecting in my brain that this music that’s been apart of my life for like 4 years and helped me through so much was made by an abuser.

But like, in retrospect you can see it. I can’t bear to delete ycgma off my mp3 player bc I related to his songs so much as an abused lonely teenager but I also can’t bare to listen to it. I learned the fall on my guitar as my final exam and I used to repeat his lyrics to myself to cope with abuse and I wish I could still love these songs. I dressed like his dsmp character bc I thought it made me look cool. Which is lame as fuck to admit now lol

Originally I was planning on pirating them and I like, can’t especially after that manipulative ass statement. How much was an act? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m a bad person because I still kinda do want to listen to that music again. I still want to feel that safe but I know I won’t feel that way anymore.

with dsmp stuff I think I’m going to be still able to look back fondly on it generally and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. The community was what made it and the community is what I loved, and i still do. I don’t think I’m going to reblog art of him specifically but if he’s in it I might. Idk. My policy on dream fanart is if he’s not alone in the art and it’s dsmp or mcc related I reblog so I guess I’ll continue that here. Im sorry if that sounds callous I just. Am not prepared to talk about this so I’m going back and forth

And like. We also have a wilbur factive/fictive and we have for years now and nobody in our system knows how to feel about that. He formed to fill the role of a big brother (I was being heavily emotionally neglected at that point and needed someone to be there for me) and protector from my parents abuse. Obviously, he is entirely separate from his source now bc alters change a lot for me but how we picture him is still wilbur. he’s literally just some guy now but grappling with that connection is fucked up dude it’s weird. He’ll probably further distance himself but it still fucking sucks and I don’t know how to communicate the cognitive dissonance we had to push through bc our brain struggled at first to make sense of how this person who we liked so much that he became the template for a Protector to shield us from the emotional neglect and abuse, essentially, is a terrible person. I’m sorry I know people who aren’t systems, and some who are ngl, will find this fuckibg nuts and I get that but we’re a very very internal person like I just. Kinda am with us as a system a lot and nobody else. It feels like my safe space that I’ve created in my head has been marred. Also. uhm. Our alters speak in distinct voices so it’s bad bad for me rn and we are trying to fix it. I know I know fictives and factives arenttheir source but that doesn’t change that it makes me feel gross. I’m rambling rn I’m sorry. Support Shelby.

[blackjackkent]

So. Circus combat!

We have four enemy combatants - our clown friend, plus the two dangerous animal handlers and the blink dog, whose name is Bitey Buddy and is probably about to live up to it.

I have a feeling the displacer beast might have been joining too if Hector hadn't busted the lock on its cage earlier.

Karlach immediately rages and oneshots one of the handlers, because she is MAD pissed about her boyfriend being put on display and treated like that by Absolutist thugs at what was supposed to be a fun time, and, uh...

I guess we could have guessed that, in retrospect. >.<

There are a bunch of cowering civilians hanging around. One of them comments, "I always knew I'd die at a circus," which really makes me wonder WHY THE HELL SHE IS HERE. XD

Interestingly, because they're doppelgangers, they aren't counted as humanoid, which means Hold Person doesn't work (my standard go-to crowd-control in a big fight). Hold Monster, presumably, would but only Gale has that and he is not here.

I had Jaheira turn into a saber-tooth tiger though which was badass.

Shoutout to this random bugbear named Fyodor who decided to join in the fight on our side! He missed every single attack he made during the fight but I respect him for trying.

Karlach then got the kill on the second handler as well, in a way that feels like it must be a glitch. She used Pommel Strike after missing her second attack, and despite it saying it does 1d4 damage and a potential stun, it instead knocked off all 14 of the handler's remaining hit points and killed him.

Go figure.

At this point Dribbles killed a fucking civilian with his first attack, so now Hector is PISSED. He and the others all just gathered around Dribbles and beat the everloving shit out of him.

Get his ass.

"A doppelganger," Shadowheart comments thoughtfully after the fight is over. "At least we didn't kill a real clown in front of an audience."

The lead doppelganger is carrying this note on him:

The He in question, I assume, is Bhaal, and this was all orchestrated by Orin. The Tribunal is curious though. Not sure what that's referring to.

Hector is REALLY unsettled by this whole experience. In the course of this day he has had sharp reminders of Karlach's determination to die free, as well as the fact that literally anyone he talks to going forward could potentially be a shapeshifter in disguise. All that on top of the fact that he just feels incredibly overwhelmed by the whole circus experience, even the "normal" parts.

I think there's a bit more to explore in this area and we'll finish looking around tomorrow, but for now, Hector needs a long rest in a big way.

[sburbian-sage]

so! got one of those classic underwater lands. I had stuff on-hand for it, it's become a bit of a habit to get myself later into the entry chain so i can alchemize protective equipment, but it was still very much a THING when someone hopped over to my Land while I was putting my oxygen tanks on my back. any tips for this sort of thing if it happens again? i've since told everyone else to have a way to breathe underwater if they come here, but i guess i've just got to tell everyone before my Entry to not visit until i give the all-clear, in future sessions. in retrospect making sure im ready for any given situation i can prepare for before entry is probably causing all the batshit lands i keep getting. having easy movement in a three dimensional space is useful, though.

Land Hazards are a bit interesting in that the game will always "just so happen" to negate said hazard for the owner of the Land, at least initially. For example, some Lands are soaked in toxic gas, but "coincidentally" such Lands will only be given to a Doom player (who can breathe that shit naturally) or to someone who already has a gas mask in their possession. Of course, from that point on the player is responsible for getting a proper oxygen supply, or avoiding stuff like "super-toxins" which Doom players arbitrarily cannot breathe (it's just a bullshit railroad so they can have a Land Quest) or stuff like water vortexes and learning how to actually swim. Meaning that even if you didn't make a habit of always being prepared, you would have still entered the game clutching a scuba tank through some contrived series of events. Not that it's a useless habit of course. Better safe than sorry.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The other players are in fact not immune to Land Hazards. I would say "yes indeed, warn them not to enter your Land before you actually enter"... Except, I think that guy just might be stupid? Even if we assume your Land was not underwater, which really can't be predicted, your Land does not *exist* until Entry. It takes at least the second Gate to enter another Player's Land, which means this guy was speedrunning his head off, and almost literally lost his head, if not to the water then to getting teleporting into ass-end nowhere The Medium, and then getting fragged into paste when an entire planet manifests at his current location. Assuming the Gate would even work.

Rule of thumb, only start traveling to other Lands once everyone's confirmed to have entered. Not only do you avoid situations like the above, you also make sure that you aren't off getting hassled by Consorts while someone is screaming their head off asking for their Server Player to pretty please deploy the Alchemiter so they can stop dying. Do this even if shit goes sideways and it takes one of the players half of the Session to even enter their Land. It's just unprofessional otherwise.

[asleepinawell]

i'm in some sort of Mood about finishing the kh series (for a given value of finished) since I've been playing it since kh1 on ps2 a million years ago but instead of dealing with that i'm going to write my mini retrospective of the titles based on my replay

rest below the line

kh1

story - 7/10. it wasn't the most interesting but it was the first and laid the groundwork for the series. maleficent had a lot of screentime which is always a big plus. love her evil ass. it's also the start of the 'kairi never gets to do anything ever and gets kidnapped every time she tries' persisting problem in the whole series

gameplay - 6/10. feels a bit clunky now in comparison to some of the newer ones. it was harder than some later ones, but mostly because of wonky control issues and not great boss fights. but it's very playable and fun still. mushrooms do a little dance and shake their butt at you. i will never not feel nostalgic about traverse town music. THANK GOD YOU CAN SKIP THE PRE FIGHT CUTSCENES ON RETRIES NOW OH MY GOD YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE ONE BEFORE THE DARK RIKU FIGHT WAS LIKE TEN MINUTES AND BACK IN THE DAY YOU HAD TO REWATCH IT EVERY TIME AAHHHHJHHH *i am tranquilized and removed from the room*

re: chain of memories

story - 8/10. i love the focus on the organization 13 internal drama. bitches are running around bad mouthing and killing each other. larxene is a constant joy. marluxia is pretty and goes swish swish and makes flowers. axel was an instant fave. zexion is a shitty twink and i do so love shitty twinks. there was some disney stuff too i guess

gameplay - 2/10. the first time i played it my brother was crashing at my apartment and watching me play and got very into making cool deck combos. so i had him do that for me and i did the combat and the fun sibling shenanigans got me through it. this time i quit after thirty minutes and watched the cutscenes on youtube. it's just so repetitive and meh

358/2 days

story - 7/10. that's too many soras! put some back! story was a bit slow at times but i did enjoy seeing the daily life of the organization and axel/saïx handling their divorce so so well. needed more demyx

gameplay - it's packaged as a movie now so i did not replay the game and can't fairly rate it. i remember it being not the best combat but not terrible for a ds game

kh2

story - 8/10. it would get higher but the fact the beginning is incomprehensible if you haven't played com and 358 loses it some points....i had not played com when i got kh2 and boy howdy. it made more sense on the replay of course and yeah it's a good story. obsessed with how maleficent remains one of the main recurring characters in this series and just Does Shit from time to time because why not. god forbid women do anything etc. also the gay divorce continues to go terribly. saïx is handling this so well i say as he goes into berserk mode again. needed more riku screentime tho

gameplay - 9/10. huge upgrade from previous titles. it was very fun and fluid. the form shifts were a great addition. there were a lot of options but it didn't feel overwhelming or like it disrupted combat. my only real complaint was it felt a bit too on rails at some parts... like cutscene, battle, walk three steps repeat. oh and i hated the gummi missions but i am a gummi hater in general. oh also antiform was amazing. sora can turn into a feral creature... as a treat

birth by sleep

story - 10/10. fuck i love birth by sleep. aqua my beloved daughter who is the most terrifying keyblade master ever. terra my troubled son who got fucked over by shitty adults on an hourly basis. ven the thousand year old little kid who has never caught a break once. also hey it's xehanort and he also has ex husband drama. only note is that aqua should get to say fuck

gameplay - 10/10. the command deck was right up my alley and command forms were the best form gameplay they've done. i loved how all three kids had a unique style and abilities. i loved melding cards and gems to make new cards. i enjoyed playing monopoly. i thought it was the best game in the series when i first played it and that remains true

re:coded

story - 6/10. it was okay? it was largely a rehash but did add a few things. my friend and i kept saying welcome back alvis whenever data riku used a computer so that was fun

gameplay - this was also presented as a movie in the bundle so i won't score it. i don't even remember how it was from way back when i played it

dream drop distance

story- 9/10. the games that switch between multiple perspectives seem to be my favorites and i think it's partly that it makes the story more interesting. the time traveling norts were a bit wtf but that's just an inescapable part of the series. inspired me to get twewy which i will be playing next. MEOW WOW!!!!!

gameplay - 9/10. flowmotion was really neat and fit the style well. i loved the pokemon aspect so much you have no idea. i was a little sad you couldn't meld command cards but it would have been Too Much with all the other stuff going on. a few fights near the end had some really dumb mechanics (the type where when you look up a guide it just says good luck) but there were also some excellent ones. i do think it lost a little something in the port because the stylus on 3ds was important. however there is nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing meow wow hit xehanort with giant bouncy orbs so I'm willing to forgive it a lot

union x/back cover/dark road

story - 9/10. i was shocked how much i enjoyed the story of these. i got very invested and i was only watching the cutscenes, not playing. really interesting world building and the master of masters was an instant fave. one of the only kh titles that passes (barely) the bechdel somehow. also could be retitled as kh: dead kids, because boy did a lot of kids die! extra points for maleficent managing to set major events in motion twice and being very eh whatever about it. love her for that. and the backstory of the xehanort/eraqus divorce, of course. i love a good divorce

gameplay - didn't play this one, just watched ELEVEN HOURS of cutscenes. no longer available which is hilarious considering how much important lore is in it that is referenced in kh3. hopefully they make it into a single player offline game someday with better gameplay

fragmentary passage

story - 8/10. very short but filled in some gaps. i love aqua so i was predisposed to love this one

gameplay - 8/10. it felt like a rough draft for kh3 and that meant it didn't have all the annoying extra crap kh3 added in and played pretty smoothly. i liked the little puzzles. it was a unique game and i enjoyed it more than i expected

kh3

story - 6/10. the fact i had to sit through entire disney movies worth of cutscenes brings the score way down. we did not need to see 3 musical numbers in frozen. if i wanted that I'd watch the movie. i just wanted to play the damn game. the majority of the game is sora got benched and has to get his groove back which was very disappointing for the climatic finale to the series. once i got into the end game though it was much better (i would rate the later game stuff way above a 6 which just makes my frustration with earlier stuff worse). re:mind added in the bits i felt were missing and i came away satisfied overall with the wrap up. axel/saïx had divorce arc three and then got back together finally 🏳️‍🌈����🎉. xehanort/eraqus also got back together as they fucked off to be gay in the afterlife. finally we are free of the norts (OR ARE WE???) and the master and the foretellers are slated to come back next from the looks of things. maleficent continues to hang out in the wings waiting for opportunities to #girlboss and I'm excited too see what cataclysmic events she sets off next

so that's it. i did watch the brief melody of a memory scenes but there wasn't too much new there. i may watch the cs from the missing link beta at some point. otherwise it's back to my life long journey of waiting for the next title to drop

gameplay - 5/10. ugh. i bought the game when it came out but between the full length disney movies and the over saturated gameplay gimmicks i didn't get far. this time i powered through and by the end i was enjoying it for the most part because I'd figured out what things to ignore and how to avoid them. attractions were the worst addition to gameplay ever. everything was too flashy. way too many instances of being locked in a "cool" transition animation instead of actually doing combat which broke up the flow of things. i missed the command deck and how much it let you customize your play style. i didn't like the keys being locked to command forms as much as the bbs forms since it meant if you had a keyblade with better stats but hated the special on it you were kinda fucked. this became less of a problem as the game went but was still annoying. overall felt like a step back from the others. they tried to do too much. oh also why were there ten thousand instances of having to learn new controls for some new mini game in every area??? just let me hit things i am begging you. it really felt like they went for cool spectacles over satisfying gameplay

general notes on all of them: i enjoyed the story much more this time due to being able to play them in order. the fact they all released on different platforms originally made the complicated story even more confusing since i couldn't afford to buy a new system every time a new one came out. i really hope they veer away from that practice in the future but i kinda doubt it especially since they've got another mobile game lined up already. while the disney stories were fun early on it felt like the story outgrew them (except for the characters who were in the main story as well like mickey and maleficent) and they were kinda a drag by 3. i doubt they can move away from those since they're the whole gimmick of the series but it would be better imo. deeply worried they'll start bringing in newer disney acquisitions.

one of my biggest complaints about the series has always been how few female characters there are and how little many of them are used. it got slightly better later in the series but overall was still not great, especially for kairi. i kept wondering if they added stuff for her in re:mind due to complaints about this.... the dlc felt like an apology for several things tbh. aqua was great but she shouldn't be the only one and even she got upstaged in kh3 when she's supposed to be the third most powerful keyblade master. weirdly enough maleficent was probably the best written female character. really wild how much she wove into the plot and affected events so much without even trying to (especially in union x). she should fire pete though (i think she should hire demyx)

I'd like to see them let you play as characters other than sora more often since that was always really neat (he's had a billion games to himself now). I'd love a kairi and aqua game but i can imagine square and disney both clutching their pearls over female protagonists

something i noticed was that playing them when i was older i liked sora much better. when i started the series as a teenager i found him annoying. as an adult i have more sympathy and tolerance for teenaged boys who are Going Through It. growth or something

[loumauve]

sometimes I forget that it is in fact not normal to have sudden social anxiety spikes after only two days spent inside, away from other people.

(the kind that make it near impossible to even just step in front of the door and walk downstairs to check the letterbox, much less leave for long enough to get groceries)

rest of a long thing under the cut bc I don't want to bother anybody with my introspection. but I wanted it to be there in case someone else struggles with this. idk. helps to not feel entirely alone in dealing with this shit

and paid time off is a curse sometimes, because it leads to weeks not going outside, which then starts the entire cycle I've been working on disrupting all over again. and I know that the only solution is actually going outside even if it's just for a bit, but fuck if it isn't the hardest thing in the world sometimes.

and it's so at odds with how people know me, generally, folks at work, friends for the most part, because I've gotten real good at pushing through and just doing the things that my body tells me are dangerous, but then I stay at home for three days and I just.. fall apart.

it's not as bad as it used to be, I'm better at at least taking out the trash if I need to, and if I can work myself up to it even ordering food instead of going without meals if things get too bad, but it takes so much energy to do any of those small, everyday things that I should just be able to do. idk

I never really went to therapy for it even if it's the mental-illness shit I've dealt with for the longest time. they diagnosed me when I was 14 and by then I had probably 14 years of ingrained, bad habits built up. and they recommended group therapy which in retrospect probably could have helped a lot, but to me (teen bullied by other teens who felt unsafe around pretty much anyone, even at home) it sounded like hell so I refused to go.

I can still remember my mum telling me that I would instead have to work on dealing with it myself, finding strategies to live with it, I guess. we would play silly games like labyrinth before I'd have to go to school, but I'd just cry through it all and then oftentimes circle back home when I knew everyone would be out. suffice to say I did find ways to push myself to do the things that felt like walking into fire, and it worked enough to a point where it just felt like holding my hand over a candle flame for a little too long. bearable if painful. and I guess I'm still stuck there.

trauma therapy helped me process some things and put others in perspective, enough to at least move on (never forgive or forget though, that I'll leave to the people with bigger hearts) and we worked through some of the hangups, but overall not much has changed nor do I think it would given more time and therapy.

like my grandmother I struggle to make myself do things that I know I should sometimes. (and the Innerer Schweinehund is too strong) at least if I don't technically need to do those things to survive. instead I'll eat plain rice for weeks on end. or candy from two years ago, or drink coffee and eat nothing for a week. which, I know, is disordered eating which in and of itself would probably benefit from more therapy, but I guess as long as my body can deal with it it's good enough as is.

[scourgefrontiers]

i think a lot about how much ive grown and changed as a person, not the least of which being how i went from a super heavy kinnie to someone who hardly kins at all

my journey with kinning was like...idk. it started with learning about what otherkin was, and i realized that damn i have a super strong connection with demons for some reason, and i genuinely wished i was an actual demon. this was in 2013 ish. that was my first time calling myself a kinnie

then my first experience with fictionkin specifically was with...unfortunately, prussia from hetalia lol. that was my first fictionkin. then shit got out of control from there bc then i proceeded to keep tacking on fictional characters onto my identity until they BECAME my identity.

i became a kinnie at a very interesting and formative part of my life--the mid-teen years. and honestly? i dont think it was the healthiest thing for my growth. b/c my identity sort of became...nonexistent for a while? i based my whole self around fictional characters. i didnt want to be myself because i didnt know who "myself" was. and unfortunately this lasted into my...well, mid-20s. im 26 now and it took me until i was ABOUT 24 to actually find my real core identity outside of fictional characters to the point of where i was proud and happy to know myself and call myself just...dan. thats me! im not dan plus fu, kidou, raditz, etc....im just dan. and thats enough!

so for me, being a kinnie was a result of not knowing who i was and using fictional characters to sort of fill in that hole in my identity. i wanted to be them b/c i didnt know who myself was, or maybe i didnt like who i was either and wanted to replace myself with them. i loved fu and lots of other ppl did, so i wanted to be him so i could be loved like that. i wanted to be funny like him. i wanted to be strong like raditz. i wanted to be smart and athletic like kidou. i wanted to be cool like dan phantom. i wanted to be anything but the real me and that hampered my growth as a person for a very, very long time

it took me a long while to reach the point im at right now--where im confident in my identity and dont need to use fictional characters as a crutch. and im not necessarily saying being fictionkin is inherently bad--it can be fun or even used to cope with situations such as trauma, i understand that--but when it came to me and my own situation, i excused it as being a "spiritual" thing and sort of clung to the idea that i was "soul-connected" to fictional characters who existed in another universe at the same time as me...which in retrospect was kind of a reach lol. but like. idk. it ended up not being spiritual at all even though i convinced myself it was. it was due to identity issues and, to an extent, actual real delusions--i genuinely thought that i HAD to uncover and piece together my "canon" lives to the point of obsession. it was super unhealthy for me and brought me so much unnecessary stress, everyone around me could see it too.

so uh. what am i tryna conclude here. i guess like. be careful? if youre a fictionkinnie, especially a young one, please take the time to do some introspection. is it just for fun? is it a lighthearted thing? or are you so intensely deep into it that its a huge part of your identity to the point of where you lost your actual self? to the point of having breakdowns over doubles? can you function in life without the kin part?

for the record, i still consider myself generally otherkin--i do still heavily identify with demons and have dreams of being a demon and all that good kin stuff. but its not who i am. i have a list of fictional characters i kin still--hidden and not advertised anymore--but its at the back of my mind now and is more of a casual "oh yeah im raditz haha" kind of thing if that makes sense? its not affecting my life as much as it did anymore and im happy about that

i hope nobody takes this personally lol. im just basically airing my thoughts about my own kin journey out and sharing my experience and thoughts abt the thing as a whole. end text post