#like it already was that but i’m putting the official stamp on it

[devilishdelights]

no real gf to snuggle. no fictional gf to snuggle because they don’t have a physical form. an absolutely revolting situation.

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

The Yandere Student Council 

You just needed to get your schedule officialized. Having gained special permissions to take a desired course you needed the student council’s collective stamps of approval to proceed. Normally all you would need to do was slip in the necessary documents. But something seems to keep happening to yours and it just works better for you to do it in person. Thus begins you’re journey of getting the obsessed student council’s approval.

The first one you go to is the one with the easiest access –the Secretary. Gill Hunter has an absolute poker face when his boyfriend isn’t around. So you’re pleasantly surprised when he’s actually willing to hear you out. Keeping his amber eyes on you he listens to your plea for his stamp, seemingly not reacting at all he promises to help you—for a price. You have to step in for him and his boyfriend from time to time. He says it's just a week as he demands you shadow him for the day. Calling to you in his monotone voice to join him in the student council lounge. Don’t bother bringing up you’re friends or your desire to eat your lunch alone. Even as the week comes to an end and you get your stamp he has you working closely with both him and his boyfriend very closely as an honorary assistant.

“Most if not all schedules go through me, you don’t want your schedule being messed up again. Do you?”

The next one is Gill’s beloved–the Historian. June Frimroar is a different kind of person you need to get a stamp from. Where Gill strings you along with his stone-cold face and hardly hidden intentions, June will do the exact opposite. With a smile that flirts with scheming and altruism, he’ll ask for the most innocent kind of help. Only to somehow become something far more intimate and demanding of you in the first place. How else would simply taking notes during student council meetings lead to you smushed in a locker with the historian and his boyfriend? Or how you’ll be forced to help undress June whose hands inexplicably might be sprained? He’s an enigma to loosely associate with trouble, easily put off by how kind he is to you and your friends as you start spending more time with him and the rest of the student council. Certainly, those rumors of him crippling classmates for fun are far from true, right?

“Don’t you trust me, (Y/n)? Just listen to me and I’m sure everything will work out…even if that blackmail situation with your friend is completely separate.”

Like clockwork, you fall into being the student council’s lackey suddenly trusted with helping the seemingly overwhelmed Treasurer. Min Su is an odd fellow who’s been dignified a living legend with his accounting possibilities; rumored to casually be hired by the government a couple of times. So it's odd that he suddenly must have you spending your club hours documenting receipts. He’s so apologetic and jumpy that you don’t feel right questioning him. So it's normal that he has a fierce blush on his face as you take the records from his hand. Or the little noises of excitement pleasure he seems to have when you lean over him to admire his speed as he’s calculating the books. He’s likely to forget that you needed to get his stamp until you off-handedly mention how you’re going to miss him when you get that stamp.

“Oh, you wanted that? I-I’m happy to give it to you, n-no problem! But you’ll still visit me right?”

At this point, your presence is much more normalized in the student council quarters, and naturally, the Sergeant of Arms or more well known as the student council’s hype man is happy to welcome you. Popular beyond belief Roman Ferris arguably has the largest fan and friend base in the entire council. Knowing everything about everyone he already knows what you’re asking for and he’s cheekily telling you he’s already prepared how you’re going to get it. If you thought Gill was forward then you’d be mistaken Roman straight-up demands every weekend that you come with him on a date. Movies, restaurants, ice cream, trips to the park, he’s doing it all with you. Demanding you dress up for these ‘definitely not dates’, hold his hand while you walk, and smile at him only him when you pose for the camera. It's odd how he knows your every like and dislike, always ordering for you and smiling ominously when you ask. But he’s definitely not giving you this stamp if you suddenly stop coming to his dates hangouts, even if he promised he would. It’d be bad if the whole student body considered you a harlot for playing with the golden boy’s feelings. So just smile while you eat your favorites and keep your mouth sealed about your suspicions.

“Don’t worry about it babe, I already know just how you like it! Don’t worry how I know~ You’re so cute when you're well-fed!”

Practically cemented to your unwritten obligation the Vice President is well aware of what you’re after. Spencer Lyle will wait until the end of the day mindlessly stamping your document as he scrambles through his hefty pile of paperwork. Bags under his eyes and his lids dropping dangerously you figure you’ll help him, already familiar with the kind of work he was doing anyway. He thanks you when you eventually wake him up and from then on something sinister a friendship is born. Suddenly he’s coming up to you in your classes, during lunches keeping you talking casually as he leads you to the student council room. You were going there anyway, right? He’s just the perfect friend for you. Great at warding off bullying fans or teachers that get a little too snippy, he becomes your go-to friend. Not too popular but well-respected feared by the student body; totally perfect for relying on him to be relatable. Completely complacent with letting him into your life and it feels so normal now that he rings your dorm bell for an early morning. You know him so well so it's natural he does the same.

“Hey, you ready to go cupcake? Bags under my eyes? Yeah, I was up all night protecting you doing council stuff, you know how I work.”

Last but certainly not least the Student Council President: Lucoa Grander the college’s prodigy cryptid. Known to be a living genius and prominent underground business personality it seems only natural that he gets such a powerful, prestigious position. He is such a celebrity you go to Spencer to deliver your schedule confirmation only to receive a disappointing answer. Apparently, the president’s only willing to stamp yours personally, and thus your witchhunt for the illusive president begins. Searching high and low, stringing on his fan base’s own timeline and the other council members’ accounts you try to find him. But after a while, you give up fully prepared to abandon your desired course to have the blue-haired pierced-up president mysteriously showing up. He greets you so casually, sitting next to you as he asks mundane questions. When you finally ask for his stamp he gives it to you…on a major condition. 

“We’ve been looking to widen our ranks and I’ve we’ve been keeping a close eye on you. And we’re thinking of making you an honorary member–it's a new position to diversify our team. You’ll get your stamp this way and we get you our beloved a new member that’s fair enough isn’t it?”

[medicshope]

Alright, I am gonna say this, while curly isn’t a good person, he isn’t a bad person either. He is morally gray, and did what was best for the whole of the group; not for one person. You have to take in consideration.

One, jimmy is the co-pilot. He can’t separate jimmy from everyone or kill him or whatever, curly needs jimmy to fly the ship. That control panel is massive, too big for one person. The ship is big too, you gotta think. So no, curly couldn’t have killed or separated him from the crew.

Even if you were to do that, and have someone else be co-pilot, you wouldn’t. Anya is..well, not suited for controls like that, she wouldn’t be able to memorize it. Daisuke would be overwhelmed by it all and let’s be honest, both of them are too incompetent to fly a ship. Swansea is a mechanic, not an engineer. No one would be able to fly it aside from jimmy and curly.

Also putting in a complaint is a pain in the ass and nearly impossible too. Pony express was kicking the bucket way before Anya told curly. He wouldn’t be able to put in a complaint or a notification because I wouldn’t be surprised if pony express already shut down and had no contact with the ship after that transaction. To the words of the official wrong organ post, and a teaser to put in a complaint is quote “ANY COMPLAINTS MUST BE MADE IN WRITING, SIGNED, AND STAMPED BY THE REPRESENTATIVE OFFICER OF A DESIGNATED PONY EXPRESS COURIER POINT NO LATER THAN THE END OF THE FIRST WEEKDAY OF SECOND WEEK IN ODD MONTHS AND NO LATER THAN THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD WEEKDAY OF THE FIRST WEEK ON EVEN MONTHS. HOLIDAY EXEMPTION RULES APPLIED.”

Even if he was able to put a complaint in somehow, even if pony express didn’t kick the bucket, what would most likely happen, is one…NOTHING! They are in space, there is no jail, no backup co-pilot, no abortion protocol on board, neither is there other ships because pony express was one of the last manned freighters. At most, he could be arrested after landing. But if curly would report it, jimmy would still crash the ship.

Even if the murder thing came into play, curly couldn’t and wouldn’t do it, again, stench, dead body, and the murder of a crew-mate could cause pony express to dock all of their pay. Daisuke wouldn’t be able to stomach it, and swansea didn’t really care what jimmy did. He only went after jimmy after daisuke was put to rest, not when he first heard about it. Anya was the only one with a valid reason to kill him, but her entire thing is that their worst actions don’t make them monsters.

Again back with curly, he is morally gray and thinks for the ship, not for people. Doing any action against jimmy would most likely dock pay from members above, so he tried to keep everything off records to keep everyone’s resumes, reports and backgrounds as clean as possible. He did try to fix things, but there’s only so much you can do.

(I’m drunk rn so this is probably bullshit.)

[kutner-elegist]

yooo i would love a cuddley fic involving Forced Bonding, like at a medical conference or a (mind) game set up by house or getting stuck in an elevator :3 if possible, post 5x05 because of the whole "cuddy almost drug-testing thirteen" thing, meaning thirteen is even more of a deer in headlights around cuddy than usual bc she knows she's on thin ice. i would love to see how cuddy handles someone who's so defiant but also skittish about authority ^^

I hope you like it :P

“You will receive a formal letter. I just wanted to let you know. I need to go now.”

“Thank you so—”

The monotone beep signaled the end of the call. No one hardly ever hung up like that on Dr. Lisa Cuddy, the dean of medicine at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. She was too elated to care. She was officially approved for adoption. She knew not to be too excited just yet. This only meant that her name was appended to the list of eligible parent hopefuls. When she would actually have a child to adopt was anyone’s guess. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but daydream. She pictured a baby with big eyes and chubby cheeks.

Her instinct, of course, was to make a plan, lists and all. It had already been developing in the back of her mind, despite her conscious resistance. Now that the prospect of motherhood was closer than ever, she finally allowed herself to put her pen on her legal pad. Car seat, crib, stroller, ….

“Dr. Cuddy?”

Her head jerked upward. Standing before her was Thirteen. Her angular face was more pallid than usual, making the redness around her eyes more conspicuous.

“I knocked, but …. If you’re busy, I can come back.”

“I’m not busy.” Cuddy pushed the legal pad aside and straightened her posture. “Can I help you?”

“House fired me anyway, so I just wanted to come by and apologize for earlier and thank you for everything else.”

“What? After that diatribe he gave me?”

“I guess he did that so he could fire me himself.” Thirteen’s voice cracked a little.

Cuddy’s eyes and lips had been startled wide open. Now they formed a faint but soft smile. “Why don’t you take a seat? We should discuss your severance benefits and other details of your departure.”

Thirteen sat down as she was told. She shifted in the chair, rubbing on the nightclub stamp with her thumb.

“You’ll receive two weeks’ pay, and you can keep your health insurance for four more weeks.”

“Thank you. That is more—”

“The hospital is under a security lockdown. All persons should stay where they are. Do not leave your position. The staff should await further instructions. The hospital is under a security lockdown. All persons should stay where they are. Do not leave your position. The staff should await further instructions.”

“What is going—” Cuddy was already reaching for the phone when it rang. The security team was calling.

“Dr. Cuddy, we have both code yellow and code gray. The police have been notified. Sorry for not calling you sooner. We had to respond to the situation first.”

David Ackerman, the chief of security, was an experienced, confident man. His calm tone eased Cuddy’s shock, but only a little. “What’s the situation?” she asked.

“A patient with a history of violence escaped the psychiatric wing after a physical altercation. The police told us to secure the premises and begin a search. We’re on it. I’ll call again if there’s any update. In the meantime, I suggest you lock your office.”

“Is that all? Is there anything I can do?”

“I’ll let you know if there is. Sit tight for now. I need to oversee the search.”

“Of course. Thank you, David.” She put down the receiver. She went and locked the door. She pulled the chair next to the one Thirteen was in to further secure the entrance for good measure. “There’s a … situation. It looks like we have to stay here for now,” she said as she returned to her seat.

Thirteen just nodded. The muffled noise from the other side of the door, the clinic patients asking why they can’t leave, the security personnel moving around, all only accentuated the uncomfortable silence inside the room. Cuddy stared at the phone, then she glanced over at Thirteen, and then back to the phone.

Cuddy tried not to panic because Thirteen was with her. If Thirteen was worried at all, she was hiding it very well. Even when the emergency announcement came on, she barely reacted other than stopping mid-sentence. She hasn’t even asked what was happening. Not that she could have told her now that she doesn’t work at the hospital anymore, but anyone else would have had questions.

Thirteen had always been an enigma. House never hired well-adjusted people, and well-adjusted people would never stay working for House, so anyone in his department was inevitably maladjusted, she knew that much. If anything, Thirteen caused the least problems until now.

She didn’t want Thirteen fired. She didn’t think House would fire Thirteen, either. She could have just told her to go home, but she made a point to bring in House and demand a drug test with the threat of suspension. She wasn’t cognizant of this before, but now she realized that she used Thirteen to reprimand House by proxy. That’s probably why House fired her. Now she felt a little guilty. It was always this way. She would play these games with House even though she would never beat House, and when she invariably lost, there were collateral damages she hadn’t even anticipated.

“Dr. Hadley,” Cuddy finally spoke. “I’m sure you’ve learned your lesson, so I can pretend this never happened if a prospective employer asks. You shouldn’t do drugs, but I also know that with any other boss, you could have just called in sick or taken a day off and nothing would have happened.”

“Thank you, and again, I’m sorry.” Thirteen smiled.

The phone rang again, and Cuddy snatched the receiver, thinking it was about the missing patient. “Hello?”

“Dr. Cuddy, this is Aaron White from DCF again. I know you just got approved and this is a little sudden, but there’s someone looking for an adoptive parent, and she’d like to meet with you.”

“Already? That is great!”

“Would you be available next Tuesday morning?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Wonderful. I will tell her and then get back to you.”

“Thank you so much.”

The social worker hung up on her again. Cuddy was overjoyed. She almost giggled putting down the receiver.

“Is the situation over?”

And Cuddy was pulled back into her current reality. “No, it’s something personal.”

“Oh, I see. It must be good news.”

“It is.” Cuddy almost left it at that, and Thirteen would have let her. Instead, she said, “I just got approved by the Department of Children and Families to be an adoptive parent.”

Thirteen’s smile got brighter. “Wow! Congratulations. You would be an amazing parent.”

“Thank you. I hope so.”

Thirteen was now the first person she told. Not her own mother or her sister. In fact, the thought of her mother finding out brought her dread. She didn’t tell her she applied, because she didn’t want her harsh judgement, especially if she was rejected. Now anxiety clouded over her joy.

“I’m also nervous,” she confessed.

“I think every parent is.”

“But it’s different. I’m single, I work a lot, I don’t even know what a good mother is supposed to be like.”

“You’ll figure it out, and the lucky kid will have a brilliant role model.”

Thirteen’s smile made her chest tighten. Not in a stressful way. It felt like a firm hug around her heart. “That means a lot.” She met Thirteen’s piercing eyes, and her gaze communicated so much more than anything words ever could. She didn’t quite comprehend it in a way she could explain, but she experienced the exchange. The conflicted existence of a wounded daughter. Cuddy considered whether she should ask, and if so, how.

“Code clear. Code clear.” The echoes of the PA system resounded over their heads.

The security department called again. “The patient has been located. He is unharmed, and so is everyone else. He is being transported back to his ward,” Ackerman reported over the phone.

“Thank you for your great work.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

Cuddy took away the chair blocking the entrance and unlocked the door. Thirteen got up, ready to make her exit.

“I wish you the best, Dr. Hadley.”

“I wish you the best, Dr. Cuddy. And for little Cuddy, too.”

They exchanged smiles. Thirteen took off, and Cuddy stayed in the doorway. When Thirteen turned a corner, she leaned to her side so she could keep looking. When Thirteen disappeared from her sight, Cuddy headed to the elevator. Serendipitously, House emerged from behind the steel doors.

“You will ask Thirteen to come back,” she demanded, blocking the way out of the elevator with her arm.

“I will. Not now, though. Later.”

She looked up in disbelief. That was way too easy.

“What, you thought I was actually going to fire her?”

“She thought she was actually fired.”

“I lie a lot.” House pushed away her arm with his cane and left.

Cuddy let out an exasperated sigh. She got in the elevator so she could go speak to the head psychiatrist.

[usmsgutterson]

Hi! Could I request Jesper X reader with prompt + I’m fine.” “No, you aren’t.”

Fine- J.F x gn! reader

Thank you so much for sending this in! I love a good Jesper request because he's so fun to write for, and I hope that this fic is one you enjoy.

fic type- hurt/comfort with a fluffy-ish ending

Warnings- the premise of this fic is that the reader feels off and there's talk of putting on an act to keep the other crows from worrying. Otherwise, there's a mention of alcohol consumption--refered to as drinking rather than a specific kind of alcohol--and this is unedited, we die like joost and his problems.

You’d been feeling off as of late. It was as simple as that. There was no underlying reason, no problem you had that needed solving but remained unsolved even still. 

You’d been sleeping fine, you weren’t more tired than was normal. There had been no fighting between you and anyone else in the crows or in the Dregs for a sense of generality. You’d just felt off, it was as simple as that.

After a point, you realized it was a combination of just feeling off and needing to get out of Ketterdam, to head into the countryside or take to the sea. You’d spent plenty of time travelling before you found yourself in Ketterdam, and you frequently missed it, but you’d missed it more in those weeks. 

You moved through the motions, though. You helped Kaz on heists, laughed with Jesper and Nina and thanked Wylan every time you’d meet with the other crows for breakfast and find that he’d already ordered you a tea. You listened to Inej and her tales of the saints, looked at the illustrations in the Istorii Sankt’ya she owned and pondered the truth in their tales yourself. You sparred with Matthias, took the punches he delivered and delivered a few of your own in turn. 

At night, you drank, you laughed, you grew flustered at Jespers flirtations and felt sheer love and contentment whenever he would wrap an arm around your shoulder and press a kiss to your cheek or a quick, easy peck to your lips.

You thought you’d done a good job of hiding it, of hiding the fact that you weren’t feeling as good as you normally were, but Jesper was the love of your life, and he saw right through you. 

“Are you all right, love?” Jesper had asked you one morning. You were the first of the seven of you to arrive at the Kooperom, and you’d grabbed the table by the windows. Jesper was sitting to your right, one arm draped around your waist while the other rested against the table, fingertips drumming idly against the wood. 

“I’m fine.” 

“No, you aren’t,” Jesper said, and damn it, he was right. Jesper had always been able to see right through you, to know when you were putting on an act to keep everyone else from worrying. You’d been dating for two years, but had been friends longer, and it seemed that the ability to tell when you were putting on an act was just innate, something he’d been able to do as long as he’d known you. Sometimes, it was something you resented. “You’re not fine, love. What’s wrong?” 

“Just a bit off,” you shrugged. “Dunno. I’ll be fine in a few weeks, I think. I've also been missing travelling lately. I need to get out of the city."

“We’ve got no heists for the next bit,” Jesper said. “I was going to book time off as it was so that I could pay Da a visit. You’re officially coming along. We’ll go when Inej leaves Ketterdam in three days. She’s been waiting on word of a crew of slavers that were rumored to be around Cofton, and I've talked about it with her before. She wouldn't mind if we hitched a ride on her boat, she mentioned that she'd appreciate the company.” 

“Your father wouldn’t--”

“Oh, please,” Jesper said, laughing. “He’s loved you since you met during the whole thing with the sugar silos. You’ve got the Colm Fahey stamp of approval, so don’t worry about it.” 

You grinned, rested your head against Jespers shoulder as he moved the hand that idly tapped against the table to yours, taking your hand and rubbing his thumb against yours instead. 

Inej and Kaz joined you, Wylan, Nina, and Matthias following not long after, and you felt contentment settling in as a conversation picked up and you gave Jespers hand a squeeze. 

You still felt off, you still craved to step off Ketterdam soil, but you had Jesper. You had the crows, people in your life who mattered, who reminded you that it would be okay in the end. 

[accirax]

Literature Girl Insane and the Color Connection Theory

(Spoilers for DRDT’s Literature Girl Insane MV, as well as through Chapter 2 Episode 11. Vague spoilers for Super Danganronpa 2 and New Danganronpa V3. Because the images in this post are mainly designed to showcase the colors presented in the MV, there will be no image IDs in this post.)

Wow! Literature Girl Insane is… so much!! There is literally so much to look at that I don’t know how we’re supposed to handle it!!!

I mean that all in a glowingly positive way, to be clear. The DRDT creator has granted us an exciting puzzle that may take months to fully solve/analyze (or maybe we’ll never finish it), with so many facets that there are still things that I haven’t seen much of anybody talking about.

Speaking of, I’d like to take a look at the colorization of some of the lyrics! As per my eye, there are 15 distinct colors that appear in the lyrics of the MV. I distinguish the lyrics as “the words that are outlined in black (or white, when the color is black),” so any of the colored text in the background, such as the literary passages, will not be included in my analysis.

An important piece of information that I’ll reference a lot is the official colors that have been assigned to the students. That being, the color that the first letter of each of their first names gains when the students enter the Class Trial.

Because Xander never attends a Class Trial, he has no confirmed color, unless I’m forgetting something. However, based on his bright hair, I would have to assume that the color of that letter would have been a fiery red. It’s even on the opposite side of Teruko on the color wheel.

David has two colors; one for his inspirational speaker persona (yellow) and one for his depressed theater kid persona (gray). I don’t think J’s color changes between being listed as J Rosales and J Moreno. Although I didn’t put it on the chart, MonoTV appears to have no color, with all of the letters in its name remaining white. Some of my personal assignments will go against these color choices, but I think it’s still important to keep in mind.

Since Tumblr doesn’t want to let me use as many colors as I want, I will put in an image of what each color looks like the first time it appears. I’m going to analyze each color in order of how many times it appears in the MV, from most to least. That means the first color is…

Red

are all just idiots (final verdict); Bye; whatever; Goodbye.; go mad; together; are all just idiots!; Bye; broken; go insane?; ignorant; God; go mad; great applause!!!; Aa; won’t change; original; you’ve killed so many; and disappear!; 1; medicine; [untranslated characters]; [untranslated characters]; [untranslated characters]; go mad; self delusion; isn’t it!?; ah,

(If you want time stamps and pictures of the characters, I wrote them down in the document Venus and I compiled together)

Red appears 28 times throughout the MV, and as you can tell, they’re very… edgy. It’s a very interesting color, given that there are multiple characters I think it could apply to.

The first option is Veronika. Her color is a bright red, and she’s no stranger to creepiness. Things like “go mad” and “you’ve killed so many” could definitely be words she’s spoken to her problematic faves like Arturo or David. The selection of “broken” could apply to her hidden quote: “once something is broken, it can never be pieced together in quite the same way again. The same goes for people.” If Veronika herself is something that is/was “broken,” going insane could apply to her as well. Some people have already called her delusional, which could fit right in with “self delusion.” With her chaotic attitude, I can also easily imagine her using the intense punctuation (!!! and !?) seen on some of the lines.

The biggest problem with this interpretation is that, frankly, I don’t think Veronika merits this level of importance in this MV. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t like Veronika, or don’t think she’s important– I love Veronika! I just don’t think she’s that important to David, who this MV is about. 

They could have more of a connection in the future, given that Veronika has started simping for his dark side, but thus far they’ve barely interacted at all. The most damning rebuttal is the cast list at the end.

Would the color that appears the most in the MV really go to a character that doesn’t even make the supporting cast list?

The main way that I can imagine that Veronika actually is red is if she is the mastermind. That would explain how she could claim such a prolific color in general, yet why she wouldn’t yet be listed as a Main Role– because David (presumably) wouldn’t know that she’s the mastermind. If David survives for a while alongside mastermind Veronika, it would also give more of a chance for their relationship to develop down the road.

Still, it would make more sense to me if red did belong to a listed character; even better if one of the main roles. Someone like…

Option two: Xander Matthews.

Xander is obviously a key player in this MV, and like I said, I would guess that his character color would be red. Even if it was, say, yellow (for his eyes) instead, I don’t really think anybody could complain if he showed up as red in the MV.

The focus on the word “bye” would also fit Xander. He’s dead now, and David has clearly been thinking about him, so he could constantly be saying “bye” to Xander after the rebel “and disappear!”-ed from life. Xander had to treat his eye in the infirmary, so “medicine” could make sense for his character. “You’ve killed so many” could be something that David could imagine Xander saying to him in his guilt-ridden spirals. Although, as far as is confirmed, David has never actually killed anybody, including in his secret. Venus adds that “You’ve killed so many” could be Xander speaking to himself, stewing in his survivor’s guilt about the death of his family. She also says that “go mad” sounds like something a British person would say. You never know what she’ll have to contribute /lh.

Speaking of things Xander could say, though… I have a hard time imagining that he would say some of these things. I’m sure Teruko would tell me that I’m naive to have any trust left in the guy, but some lines just seem out of character for him, to me? Like, calling everyone idiots and telling people to “go insane” feels very different from how he acted in Chapter 1. Maybe if Xander was reflecting on his own “going insane” after he stabbed Teruko, it could work?

The line that stood out to me the most for not fitting Xander was actually “won’t change,” though. Man’s the Ultimate Rebel. He’s all about inciting change in people. Whatever this thing is that won’t change– David’s attitude, the mastermind’s wickedness, the continuation of the killing game– would he really be chiming in to say that it’s immutable? But, if I don’t really think that it’s Xander or Veronika, then what red person could be left?

Ah, right… the classic copout option, #3, Mai Akasaki.

I say “copout” because, overall, we know very little about her personality. Therefore, it’s easy to put words like “idiot” and “insane” into her mouth because there can’t be too much of a counterargument. It does seem like a pretty big contrast to her characterization as Unnamed Student (assuming that’s her), but given this series’ penchant for moral bankruptcy, I wouldn’t be surprised if her nice exterior hides a more sinister slant.

However, there are some genuine points in Mai’s favor here. First is the red color– Mai’s hair is red, and Teruko even notes that Xander’s red hair reminded her of Mai’s. Thus, if I speculated that Xander’s color could be red, Mai’s could be too. She’s at least in the Supporting Cast, unlike Veronika. “Bye” and particularly “and disappear!” would also fit Mai well, given her absence in the killing game. “God” is also of particular note, as it’s the first word in Mai’s roman numeral quote, “God is dead.” Mai also seems to be worshiped like a god among those who remember her (Teruko potentially excluded), and the MV notes her as “someone dearly loved.”

Those three aspects of God could be leading us to the conclusion that red represents Mai in this MV, and it’s that interpretation that I’ve decided to roll with. I promise I’ll pick up the pace for the next colors, okay?

Yellow

game; Bye; cat; is what you’re told; ambition; the falling slanted sun; Bye; “happiness”?; dead; make noise; The acclamation is; live; original; 2; Let’s do that! [translated]; shout; ah,; miserable

While Eden is the only holder of the color yellow as of Chapter 2 Episode 11, I think this color has to go to the man, the myth, the now-starless star himself, David Chiem. I mean, c’mon. It’s his MV. He has to have one of the most prominent colors.

But even beyond the yellow, there’s a lot that points to David here. Since I just mentioned the fading of the stars in David’s eyes, let’s start with “the falling slanted sun”. As the sun itself is a star, this line could represent both how the stars have fallen out of David’s eyes and how he, a star, is falling in the public’s perception. Given his determination to save his career, “ambition” certainly fits David’s character, and he “make[s] noise” every time he gives a speech, making people believe “what [they’re] told”. But despite his stage persona, he’s always felt “dead” and “miserable” on the inside.

Perhaps the most interesting line here is the “Let’s do that!”, which can be seen here.

(It’s the only line in Japanese we were able to translate ourselves T-T)

Even if it’s a “let’s do that!” instead of a “no, that’s wrong!”, which means that David is arguably only agreeing with himself, the protagonist imagery here is exceptionally clear. Not to mention, every canonical protagonist post-Makoto has been able to access consent points as well.

I’ve definitely seen people out there theorize that David may become Despair Time’s protagonist one day, and while I found the concept merely amusing at first, the more evidence piles up, the more I’m forced to believe it may be true. So, if David is represented by the color yellow, this could be further evidence/foreshadowing towards his future role. If so, I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that yellow has both “dead” and “live”. It seems like David’s alignments and beliefs are still up in the air.

Green

this guy →; Bye; a life full of much shame; make noise; this guy; anonymous; Bye!; substance of the arts; this guy; original; 4; make noise; clown

Similar to yellow, there are two primary candidates for the color of green. And while Hu has a better argument than Eden did on yellow due to being listed in the supporting cast, her greatest competitor, Teruko, is also in the supporting cast.

Did you know that green appears thirteen times throughout the MV? Of course it’s fucking Teruko.

There’s a good argument to be made that, with her tragic backstory, Teruko is one who’s lived “a life full of much shame.” Doubly so if you believe that she has the “the killing game is all your fault” secret, which I personally do. Because she’s moved around so much and doesn’t seem to have many attachments to people, you could say that she’s “anonymous” in a lot of her actions.

Teruko “make[s] noise” frequently in both Daily Life, when she refuses to avoid the subject of murder and thrusts knives at people, and Deadly Life, where she maniacally laughs her way through solving the entire trial for those idiots twice in a row. However, due to her over-the-top lack of trust in anybody, I could still believe that David would see her as a “clown”. A smart clown, but a clown nonetheless. (She also had her sillier moments as well, especially when Xander was alive.)

The line that makes the least sense to me is honestly “substance of the arts,” especially given that it’s part of Veronika’s roman numeral phrase. Teruko doesn’t seem particularly artistic to me. Maybe it’s just meant to imply that she’s a girl with a lot of substance? If “the arts” were theater, it could be saying that her life is very tragic and dramatic? And if Teruko is a substantial, dramatic character, maybe Veronika would appreciate that? I’m obviously reaching, but I still do believe that green represents Teruko here.

Cyan

dog; No Longer Human; game!; I; isn’t that; original; LET’S LAUGH; just like that; 3; cry; foolish; “kapukapu”

While it might seem like this color should belong to J, given that it’s quite similar to her character color, I actually believe that this color represents someone else. Namely, MonoTV.

MonoTV’s official character color is white, but its face is obviously a bright cyan. It even tells Teruko that its favorite color is blue in Chapter 2 Episode 3, so I don’t think that calling MonoTV cyan is a stretch at all.

The most obvious clue that MonoTV could be cyan is “dog,” which is pasted over “cat” (in yellow) at 0:37. The replacement of “cat” isn’t written in the original lyrics of the song, so the creator definitely intended for this to relate back to MonoTV. Why not give the mascot itself the line correcting the species? “No Longer Human” fits along with this creature angle as well.

“game!” is another obvious one, as MonoTV is the excitable host of this killing game. While “LET’S LAUGH” seems sweet out of context, in the killing game, it could seem much more heartless and robotic. The all-caps approach also makes it feel threatening. “cry” could also be a command to the students, like when MonoTV encourages them to create more drama in Chapter 1. I don’t remember a specific instance of MonoTV calling the students “foolish”, but it doesn’t seem out of character at all.

I couldn’t figure out exactly what a kapukapu was, unfortunately. It’s a reference to Yamanashi, a children’s book by Kenji Miyazawa, but they don’t actually describe what a kapukapu is in that book. When I googled “kapukapu,” it came up with a Sega character described as an antagonistic “orange cat creature with yellow eyes, a zigzag shaped tail, and big sharp fangs.” The creator definitely knows more Japanese than I do, but if they were similarly struggling on this one, they may have also googled kapukapu, seen “evil cat” and said, “yeah, that sounds enough like MonoTV.”

I should also probably talk about the “1”, “2”, “3”, and “4” portrayed at 2:43, which has shown up in the red, yellow, green, and cyan sections so far. These numbers representing Mai, David, Teruko, and MonoTV definitely feels plausible to me, especially if you throw in the wrinkle that David could become the protagonist. The qualification could be “mysterious characters with a darker side,” “characters related to the formation of the killing game,” or even “the most actively important characters at the end of the killing game.” This interpretation makes me more confident that these assignments are correct, although there’s obviously room for debate.

Pink

anonymous hopes,; heart; Rolling with laughter and turning into clowns; brainwashed; degraded copy; original; [untranslated character]; clown; painful

And now, onto a color for which I feel there’s basically no debate. If these text colors do correlate to characters, this color has to be Whit.

For starters, he’s the only character assigned the color pink, probably because it’s so prevalent in his design. I can imagine “Rolling with laughter and turning into clowns” paired with his XD laughing sprite, fitting how he’s the biggest canonical joke-teller in the cast. “heart” fits his Ultimate Matchmaker talent perfectly, while also representing how his empathic ways can make him the heart of a group. MonoTV literally mentions that he has “too many damn hearts on [him]” in Chapter 2 Episode 2. “painful”, meanwhile, can represent his secret, and how he represses the painful memories of loss regarding his loved ones.

The most concerning and confusing lines here are “brainwashed” and “degraded copy”. You could definitely pull these for mastermind Whit analysis, but since I’m not a strong believer in that theory (perhaps because I just desperately don’t want it to be true), I’ll go with another interpretation. Brainwashing could be something that Whit essentially does to himself, controlling his mental state and forcing himself to be happy. “degraded copy” could be how Whit feels about himself in regards to his mother. Although we don’t know too much about her, we know that he doesn’t relate to his dad, and he dyes his hair to be more similar to his mom. Since he idolizes her so fiercely, it’s possible he feels like he can never be as great as she was.

There’s always a lot to unpack with Whit “repression” Young, but… for the sake of post length, we’re moving on.

Gray

(after all); whoever else; (turbatus); XI.; whoever else; [untranslated character]; thing

Despite the fact that we’re running out of colors at a rapid pace, I actually think this one is David again. Specifically, clipless David, after his color turned to gray. C’mon, he’s the star of the show! He gets special privileges.

The gray character feels very depressed. It doesn’t seem to care about anything, using vague terms like “whoever else” and “thing,” as well as taking “turbatus,” AKA “troubled.” David has already claimed to have a family history of depression, and although he’s a liar, I don’t know if he was bs-ing that one. Based on his worldview as portrayed in Chapter 2 Episode 11, it’s not much of a leap to assume David feels this depressing gray way.

The inclusion of “XI.” is quite interesting, given that that’s Mai’s roman numeral, “God is dead.” In my mind, this further cements a potential relationship between Mai and David (and that Mai is red and David is yellow/gray). Just look at the colorization of the quote “XI. God is dead”!

That’s both of David’s colors on either side of Mai. Maybe, as the protagonist, David will be the one to take down Mai, the “God”?

If gray isn’t a second David, I would suggest that this could be Rose. While she isn’t particularly associated with the color gray, “(turbatus)” is part of her roman numeral quote, and she has plenty of troubles of her own. Based on her hidden quote, “In the end, the only thing I can do is watch my wretched life go on,” it would be reasonable to believe she is also depressed. “whoever else” and “thing” could refer to her absentmindedness, and how she tends to forget things that aren’t important to her (despite her photographic memory).

Orange

← that guy; shout; that guy; let’s play!; that guy; original

So it’s a little random, but my best guess is that orange is Ace? Mostly because he’s the only true orange color in the class trial– Min and Rose have sort of orangey colors as well, but to me, they don’t fit the lyrics super well. Not to say that Ace does, but there’s more of an argument there to be had.

“shout” is the most Ace-like lyric to me. Most of his (amazingly) voice acted lines are screaming in some way. He yells a lot, whether due to stress, excitement, or anger.  On that angry wavelength, “let’s play!”, though it sounds innocent, could be something bitterly yelled out at an opponent. Like, “oh, if you wanna play, let’s FUCKIN’ play, Nico/Levi/etc!!” Given that Ace identifies as a man, he would be a more classic “guy” choice than Min or Rose would be as well.

The repeated “that guy” puzzled me at first, but I did find a solution. The thing that was tripping me up was that the orange “that guy” is always paired with the green “this guy.” If Teruko is green, then why would David be putting Ace on the same level of importance as Teruko there? He and Ace have barely interacted!

But then I remembered that there’s one key place in which they did interact, and that was in the second class trial. Ace takes part in revealing David’s secret when he exposes the conversation David and Arei had in the relaxation room. And then Teruko agrees with him, saying that she’s always found David’s behavior suspicious. David could pair Teruko and Ace together in his mind as “this guy” and “that guy” as the main ones who exposed his secret. Whoever else was there doesn’t matter; they were the main ones at fault.

Plum

change!; like that; original; change!; a cup of poison

Purple time! This one is Charles, I’m pretty sure.

Charles has probably had the greatest positive character arc thus far (other than maybe Arei?), so him being “change!” is very fitting. He’s certainly urged Teruko to change for the better, and maybe he’ll do that for David in the future too. “like that” is part of “Do it like that / let’s live together!”, which could refer to Charles warming up to his classmates. Notably, that is part of VII., which is J’s roman numeral. J did possess Charles’ secret and tell him about it, but it’s not the strongest connection.

“a cup of poison”... does not bode the best for Charles’ survival! However, it could just be referring to his custom weapon being strychnine. Rose’s secret weapon is also poisonous in nature, but (spoilers for the post) I’m not sure she actually has a color in this MV. Thus, if the creator wanted to give one of their poison recipients the “cup of poison” line, Charles may have been their only option. It could also indicate that Charles’ strychnine is more important to the story than Rose’s turpentine (a concerning concept, given that the turpentine has already been involved in an attempted murder), but… who can say! (I am in denial)

Black

you; the track to the ideal country →; you; you

We’re running out of colors here, and it would be pretty weird if the second member of the main cast didn’t have one. That’s right, I’m saying that black refers to Xander, despite his red leanings. However, his color was never officially assigned, and his gloves are black.

David seems very fixated on Xander in this MV and its associated content. Thus, the triple repetition of “you” could indicate David repeatedly thinking about Xander throughout the days. Although, if Xander is the black text, Xander should probably be the one saying “you”. Perhaps instead, it’s about how Xander cares about and fixates on specific individuals, like how he noticed that Nico was alone at lunch and went to go talk to them. I’m giving the guy a glowing review, but it kinda seems like David is doing that too.

“the track to the ideal country →” also reminds me of Xander. As the Ultimate Rebel, he calls for country-wide reform. So, he could believe that he’s leading the way to the ideal country. Abstracted a bit, this could also relate to his motivations for attempting to kill Teruko. He may have believed that killing her was “the track” to save everyone and get them out of the killing game.

Although I wish I could give him a color with greater importance, this one makes a lot of sense to me. It is the first color that appears, for what it’s worth.

Dark Blue

cry; original; big

This one is… hard. I’m not super confident about it– “cry” and “big” do not give me a lot to work with. I’m going to give this one to J for the time being, mostly based off of a fringe theory I developed about “original”.

Yeah, “original”. That 8-color madhouse that I’ve been ignoring so far. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s possible that “original” itself is meant to apply to all of the characters featured in it– the word is generic enough that I believe it could apply to all of these characters.

However, I was trying to figure out if this could be hinting at a Chapter 6 trial composition. Eight people seems like way too many for Chapter 6, but if you say it includes Mai (red) and MonoTV (cyan), you only need six surviving students. While casts usually roll up to the endgame with 5 people (based on how SDR2 and v3 went), all you need is to skip a double victim case or have a blackened-less trial to get up to 6.

Under this theory, that would put Teruko, David, Charles, Whit, and Ace in the Chapter 6 trial. (Do I really believe this is true? Not really, but, man, what a dream.) I don’t know exactly how much the creator is paying attention to balancing their final cast, but I have to imagine they would notice that Teruko is the only girl listed there.

That was the deciding factor that swayed me into calling this J over Arturo, as both of their colors are blue. I can see J as a survivor much more easily than I can Arturo, and she would be a second girl (or third, if you count Mai) in the trial. I’m definitely not super convinced, though, so take dark blue with a grain of salt.

Light Blue

cry; cry; idk!!!

So, this is… bleak. This person is not having a great time. Based on color, I’m saying this one is Nico. (That’s also why I didn’t mention them as a non-male blue person on dark blue).

While Nico is definitely less of a crybaby than people might have assumed based on their first appearance, it’s still true that they have multiple sprites with tears in their eyes. “idk!!!” could reference how they struggle to communicate with others, and never know what’s considered “polite” to say. “idk!!!” is also part of Nico’s roman numeral, connecting it to them again.

You could also read “cry, cry, idk!!!” as a timeline of what Nico has done so far in the story. They were anxious, got bullied, and cried a lot, until something in them snapped. What are they gonna do after they snap? Idk!!! Kill Ace, maybe? Either of these options, along with Nico’s official color, are enough to convince me that they could be light blue.

Soft Blue

You’re called an; the world

Hang on, isn’t there another blue non-man you haven’t mentioned yet? You’re right. It’s because I think soft blue is Arei.

Even without her class trial color, Arei is a character covered in blue from head to toe,  so she would definitely fit one of the blue options. “You’re called an” reminds me of her for multiple reasons. One, she’s a bully who gives people mean nicknames, so it could be her calling someone else something cruel. Two, many aspects of her personality were derived from her sisters bullying her, so you could say that she’s defined by what she was called as a child. Classic cycle of violence type stuff.

“the world” is a little iffier, but there’s definitely still an argument to be made. In her rant to David and Teruko, Arei makes clear that she believes the world is an inherently cruel place, and that she’s only one piece of that meanness. If she ponders the state of the world frequently, “the world” could be related to her character. (She’s also my world, so–)

Mint

“Idiot”, pointless

Another character who is not having an excellent time! Well, if this alternative green isn’t Teruko, it’s probably Hu, as she’s the other character assigned green. That would also mean that we’ve cleared every character in the cast list, other than the mysterious M__ N____i(___).

While this is not my opinion, I think David currently sees Hu as a “pointless” “idiot”; another person in the long line of manipulable people that he was destined to control. He literally calls her a “fucking idiot” at 18:30 of Chapter 2 Episode 11. It’s also possible that this is how Hu is feeling about herself right now– she says in that same episode that “If no one relies on [her], then [she] won’t be useful anymore.” Since she wasn’t able to prevent Nico from attempting murder or see through David’s lies, she could believe her existence here is pointless.

Kind of an L, but I think this makes sense.

Orchid

doubt; shout

…um.

So, in the assigned colors, the only people with purple-ish pink-ish colors are Charles and Whit, but they’ve already been assigned colors– purple and pink, no less. The next closest person to being purple is Levi, so I guess I’m giving this to him?

It’s not like “doubt” and “shout” are terrible for him. He definitely has moments of doubt when it comes to understanding Arei’s mind games, or when apologizing to Ace. Speaking of Ace, “shout” could refer to the moment in Trial 1 where Levi snapped and threatened to strangle Ace.

I also don’t know if it has any significance that these two words rhyme. Probably not, just because I don’t really see how this would point us to any character, but it’s something worth mentioning.

We’re almost at the end!

Periwinkle

world

Part of the reason why I disliked giving Levi the orchid quotes was because his color fits this periwinkle color much better, but I digress.

For starters, let me say that I’m pretty sure this is its own color, but it could be that my eyes are deceiving me from staring at this MV for too long, and this is actually part of purple. In that case, Charles is also my world, so we good. (The other color assignments are subjected to my opinions as well. I tried screenshotting everything and bringing it into Photoshop, but it was coming up with different hexcodes for colors that were clearly meant to be the same thing, so I gave up and went with subjectivity. If you think something is assigned wrong, let me know!)

As I just mentioned in the orchid section, there aren’t really any more pink or purple characters left in the cast, which leaves us with a problem. Based on the answers I landed on for all of the other colors, I found myself left with Min, Eden, Arturo, Rose, and Veronika. I sort of associate Min and Rose with purple based on the colors of their outfits, but officially, they’re both sort of brownish.

That’s why… I actually think this might be a character we haven’t met yet. Namely, Diana Chiem (should she actually exist), the woman in the video/the hand holding the acceptance letter, the class’ teacher that Min mentions, or M__ N____i(___). Or, some combination of these people, should any of them actually be depicting the same person.

Periwinkle is the last color to appear, which could correlate to how this character will take a while to appear in the story. Their one and only quote being “world” matches how this person is currently in the outside world, not the killing game. They could also be a connection David has to the outside world.

I’m aware this is even more of a copout than calling Mai red, but I honestly believe in this more than any of the other students.

And with that, we’re finally done! I’m always a sucker for matching things to other things, so this was a lot of fun. I might have more to say on this MV in the future, or I might not, but either way, it’s been an honor to piece this thing together with you guys.

[ccieatchildren]

TW: Branding Iron

Whumpee squeezed her eyes shut, already regretting her decision as she felt the heat from the prod warm her skin. Maybe her hand wasn’t the best candidate for the guild mark. Sure, joining them was like a dream come true, and the idea of proudly marking her as a member seemed cool at first, but now, when actually faced with the burning hot iron centimeters from her hand, she felt less inclined. God, it’s going to hurt so much isn’t it. She couldn’t do this. Whumpee snatched her hand away from on the table, cradling it to her chest.

“It’s okay sweetie, I promise it only hurts for a minute.”

Whumpee cracked her eyes open to stare at the person, the beauty, in front of her, the one who held her fate. She smiled at her. “I was scared too when I first got my mark,” the woman pulled up the left side of her dress, showing off her thigh. There, marked in white, was the guild’s emblem. “It hurt, but we have a few nice healing wizards to help subdue some of the pain and make sure it heals correctly.”

She dropped her skirt back down before coaxing Whumpee to put her hand back on the table. “We’ve all gone through it, and no one regrets it, I promise it will be okay.” 

Whumpee hesitated, looking into the woman’s eyes, only to find kindness and warmth. She was sure then that the woman wouldn’t do anything to willingly make her experience worse.

“… Okay… Thanks.”

She clapped her hands together and turned behind her to grab a tray filled with various different colored powders. “Now, what color would you like?”

The young mage stared at the plethora of shades in front of her, mulling over her choice while trying to ignore the way the temperature seemed to increase around her. 

“Pink.”

“Good choice! It’ll look so pretty on your skin, I just know it!”

Whumpee nodded absentmindedly, the fear crawling up her throat once again despite the woman’s reassurances. 

She watched as the barmaid cleaned and disinfected her skin, slathering a thick gel over the surface in preparation. Powder was dusted thoroughly onto the back of her right hand, the color reminding her of her favorite eraser. Whumpee let the reminder of her writing cloud her thoughts, focussing on what the plot of the next chapter of her novel would be rather than the imminent pain in front of her.

“Okay, ready!” She patted Whumpee’s shoulder, “It’ll be fine”

“Now, I’m going to stamp it in three… two… one-”

A short scream escaped her. All she could feel was searing hot pain on her hand, and her instincts tried to pull it away from whatever was hurting her, but another arm kept it in place. She could faintly smell the scent of her own burning skin, her body dry heaving in response.

It hurts so much, make it stop!

However, before she could start full-on sobbing, a warmth spread throughout her whole body, centering on her hand. The pain ebbed away, leaving only a numb tingly feeling in its wake. Her fear and agony replaced with bubbly elation. 

The stamp was taken away from her skin, and the woman across from her brushed off the remaining pink powder, leaving only the, now prominent, pink guild mark.

“There! Now you’re an official member of the guild!”

The barmaid brushed off the few remaining tears on her cheeks, “see it was only for a few short moments. You’re feeling all better already!” She pushed a strawberry milkshake towards her, when she had the time to make it, Whumpee wasn’t sure. “Here, on the house, for being such a good sport and as a welcome to the guild!”

She looked down at the mark, a permanent reminder of her new family. One that would have her back always, one that wouldn’t abandon her this time. Whumpee couldn’t help the smile that spread on her face and her squeal.

“Thank you!”

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

17 and 29 for the fanfic writer ask 💖

17. What’s something you’ve learned about while doing research for a fic?

Well, quite a few things actually. I research a lot of expensive booze because I have some wealthy fuckers I write quite a bit, but also in the process, I've learned how cognac is brewed and the difference between cognac and brandy (similar reason to champagne and sparkling wine), the differences between whiskey, scotch, and bourbon, and pairings of vodka with caviar (and the differences between types of caviar).

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.)

From the aforementioned "All American Barbecue" (where AvX meets the Wicker Man), and a little warning, it's a bit long:

Tony reached over into the stack of mail that Clint had brought in about an hour earlier and rummaged around until he found one in particular.  “Speaking of the X-Men, this came addressed to you.  Don’t know who sent it...just that it’s from Utopia.”  He shook it as if he could hear something rattling, which he couldn’t, then he handed it up into Steve’s waiting hand. 

“Doesn’t look official,” Steve commented, glad that he could focus on something other than his goofy singing that was still playing on the laptop and the big screen.  He tore open the envelope and tugged out a letter that had been typed, and inside it was a picture of a redhead in her mid-to-late teens. 

“It’s not even in e-mail.  Who the hell sends letters like that anymore?” Tony groused, his nose wrinkled over his goatee, which he scratched three fingers through before flopping back against the couch.  “Even Erik’s gotten with the technological age...and he’s in your geriatric group.” 

Steve arched a perfect blond eyebrow at his teammate and responded to the jab with only a sneer.  Then he dropped his eyes to the letter. 

Captain Rogers,

Things are so different here on Utopia than they were in Westchester, and I’m not entirely sure where to begin in telling you about my concerns.  The worst of which involves the young woman in the photo I’ve sent with this letter.  You see, this girl, Hope, has gone missing.  No one has seen her in weeks, and she’s not quite old enough to leave the island by herself, even though everyone knows she’s been receiving piloting lessons since she became of age.  None of the island’s jets have left, however.  All are accounted for.  Everything is accounted for, actually, except the girl herself. 

This is most distressing, Captain Rogers.  Hope is a sweet girl and very responsible.  She wouldn’t have just up and disappeared on her own, so I suspect that something has gone terribly wrong.  I hope you can and are willing to come here to get to the bottom of this yourself.  I hesitate to say that this is so extreme that it requires the whole of the Avengers, but you are a respected figure here, and at the very least, if you were to show up yourself, I have no doubt that this matter would be straightened out right away. 

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen of Utopia

“So what do the good citizens of mutant-world want, Steve?  Don’t tell me.  Logan’s hosting a bake-sale and wants you to put in an appearance so he can jack up the prices of his beer-cakes,” Tony quipped.  Already, he’d moved on from watching Steve humiliate himself in the elevator to searching the internet for a donut shop that would deliver. 

Steve snorted.  “No.  Nothing so amusing this time.  It seems as if the mutants are having trouble policing their...well, trouble.  I didn’t think they could make things work on that island without problems. Then again, look at them.  They’re hedonistic...so many of them always were, but since they’ve stopped pretending to live in normal society, they’ve just gotten worse.” 

Tony looked up at Steve with a ‘what the fuck’ look stamped on his features.  He squirmed on the couch until his ass was firmly in a ‘ready to listen to Steve go on a tirade’ position.  He typed something on his laptop and just waited.  And waited.  And when he glanced up at Steve again, he could see the Boy Scout’s nostrils flaring as if he already pictured some grave injustice being done on that island across country.  Other than the mutants who still made their home in the city or wherever they did, most of them were well-out of the way and not worth worrying about.  Even Erik wasn’t causing problems anymore.  Why was Steve so bothered? 

Because he was Steve. 

“So, I take it you’re going out there to check it out?  Need back-up?” Tony asked.  His tone said he didn’t want to go.  “I mean, after all, you’re not exactly used to such rampant hedonism.”  Tony rolled his eyes.  He was more hedonistic than most of the mutants on Utopia combined – save one or two, but Steve had become so accustomed to his antics that he’d reduced his comments about Tony’s lifestyle down to dirty looks or grunts of annoyance. 

“The person who wrote didn’t think it was a big enough deal yet to involve all of the Avengers, so I’ll probably go by myself,” Steve replied and scanned over the letter again before folding it up and returning it to the envelope. 

Tony scoffed.  “You?  Alone on Utopia?  Where all that...mutant debauchery goes on?  I just can’t picture it.” 

Steve rolled his eyes.  Again.  It made him more determined to prove to his teammate that taking a trip out to Utopia by himself wouldn’t be a problem.  “Are you volunteering to go, Tony?”

“No.  Not really.  As much as I would love to see my old girlfriend...”

“Which one?” Steve snarked.

Tony just kept talking.  “...I don’t think that would yield the results I’d want, especially since she’s ‘happily’ involved with Summers.”  It was his turn to roll his eyes. 

Steve walked around the back of the couch to go to his bedroom to change.  “Alright then.  I’m heading out in an hour, and I’ll see you when I get back.” 

Watching Steve’s back become more distant in the hall, Tony called out, “What?  Don’t I even get a kiss goodbye?” 

Thanks for the asks!

Fanfic Ask Meme.

[mental-mona]

The problems with JVP, Part 1

By Elizabeth Wolf on Facebook

Since I’m already pissing people off, I guess it’s a good time to post about Jewish Voice for Peace. I’ll put links in the comments.

Part 1

Like a very different organization, Moms for Liberty, the name is deceptive. You do not have to be a mom to start a chapter of Moms for Liberty, and you don’t have to be Jewish to start a chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. Moms for Liberty is about a very specific interpretation of liberty that many would disagree with, and Jewish Voice for Peace promotes a very specific type of peace that you could easily mistake for its opposite.

This is why you see JVFP having Hanukkah events that are not actually during Hanukkah, lighting the candles incorrectly, fundraising on Shabbat (when many Jews do not handle money), and saying things that are theologically inaccurate about Judaism. People who know very little about Judaism can start a chapter, join a chapter, or run social media for a chapter, and then say they speak for Jews. This is how you end up with a Lebanese gentile being admin for their Facebook page. This is how you end up with an openly antisemitic Muslim making social media posts under their account, starting with the phrase, “As a Jew.” This is how you end up with temple denial and misrepresentations of the Torah floating around, apparently given the stamp of approval by a group of Jews.

“But JVFP has a rabbinic oversight board,” you might say. “Surely they are making sure the individual chapters are not out of line.” Well, I have no idea what that board is doing, but it’s not providing oversight to individual chapters. For example, it is easy to find people from JVFP saying that Israel is a white European colonial project, and for this reason, the Mizrahi community and Ethiopian Jews have explicitly spoken against them. The JVFP web site, however, clearly acknowledges that over half of the Israeli population is not white. JVFP social media accounts tolerate the verbal abuse of Jews and even targets members of mainstream Judaism with harassment, so that you’ll have a Black Jew being called a bloodthirsty white colonizer by non-Jews, ostensibly in the name of both Judaism and peace. I’ve seen Black Jews call this out and tag rabbis from the oversight board on this kind of activity and get no reply.

I’ll add to this that almost all the rabbis on this board are Reconstructionist rabbis, with a couple of Reform rabbis. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, I guess a good comparison would be a group claiming to speak for Christians but only having Seventh Day Adventists on its board, plus a couple of Congregationalists. I am absolutely not criticizing these denominations (I belong to one!) but rather saying that it’s disingenuous to claim you represent Jews in general when you’ve excluded most major branches of Judaism and only barely included another, preferring to have numerous student rabbis from one denomination instead of somebody with ordination from any of the others. This is especially so since a prized value in Judaism is the ability to hold space for multiple opinions or perspectives on a topic (“two Jews, three opinions”) and using these disagreements as learning opportunities.

There is definitely not oversight happening around things pretty much all Jews do agree on, though. For example, JVFP chapters stating that there never was a temple in Jerusalem, or that Passover is only about metaphorical liberation, or that tisha b’av should stop being observed. You can look up where the student rabbis are currently enrolled and see the official positions of these institutions and observe for yourself that what JVFP is saying does not line up. What is the oversight board actually doing? I’m not sure.

The official Recon position is that there was a temple and its destruction is still noted.

https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/jewish.../tisha-bav/

JVFP officially acknowledging the demographic makeup of Israel.

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/.../JVP-Jews-of-the...

A statement from JIMENA:

A whoops:

[lavenderjewels]

JJK chapter 246 thoughts below

Because the official chapter’s translations last week were disappointing in a couple of ways, I read the fan translation. Keeping all my thoughts here until the official one drops!

I loved this chapter a lot! :’)

MEGUMI.

I have been SO confident that yuuji is trying to save megumi since he was taken over that I am unbelievably satisfied, especially after seeing way too many posts that megumi is 100% dead or has no chance. I’ve been slightly bitter at seeing so many theories about Gojo coming back that don’t make sense when it would be a crime if he came back but not Megumi (or Nobara). The only question is whether or not Yuuji will actually be able to save Megumi or if either will die in the process—for my own sake, I’m believing in the power of friendship. Also, I wish there were date/time stamps for the flashbacks, since it’s hard to remember when in the time skip it is.

And LOVE that Yuuji was the one that came up with that plan. Nothing will ever be easy and there’s no way this plan can go right without more death, but that little sliver of hope is fantastic. I can always rely on Yuuji being the “humanity” of the team. Thinking back to when Hana and him off-handedly wondered if Gojo forgot about Megumi during the fight. It’s nice having two people who are invested in saving Megumi when the situation is dire.

Did Choso getting punched x2 straight through the chest and stomach worry me? Yes, but he’s not dead and Yuuji didn’t look devastated, so I’m taking this as a positive that he’s out of the fight for now. If he wasn’t a half curse and it wasn’t so casual, I’d be concerned. Sukuna does NOT like either of the siblings since he’s met both. Very sweet that Yuuji caught him the second Sukuna threw him aside.

The color page (which looks incredible) is fueling my belief that Maki is with Yuuta as help with Kenjaku. That, or the current team is the first round of fighters and they’ll need her soul sword for something last-minute sukuna related, but I just wouldn’t be surprised if the jujutsu high second years stuck together.

Higuuuuuuuurumaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa <3

I love him. “Sukuna found himself completely enthralled—“ same

No really, I’ve adored his character since chapter 159 released and I’m so happy that one of my favorite characters is getting all this. I already have other posts lined up for when the official chapter drops, but I love him.

His conversation with Yuuji was dark, but I love these quiet moments of insight. Such a good chapter for all these tiny character moments with interesting implications.

Despite my disappointment at the trial ending so soon, I like this fight and I think Sukuna does too (for Higuruma). The end pages about Higuruma’s quick learning and adaption to sorcery is exactly what I wanted to see!

(Continuing) Higuruma is essentially a tired lawyer new to sorcery and is not nearly as overpoweringly strong as Gojo, yet the manga states he rivals Gojo in raw talent and adaptability. Realistically, he doesn’t and can’t have that overpowered strength to the degree of Gojo, but I love how that doesn’t diminish the skills he does have and shows how valuable these characters can be (and it’s not JUST talent, but how their mindset around life and sorcery too). They don’t have to be overpowered to have a profound impact and be smart in their fighting.

(Continuing) I remember seeing comments after Gojo died that there was no use because there can’t be a way for the protagonists to defeat Sukuna without a deus ex machina, plot armor, etc. But I hoped the story would lean into the characters’ strengths and have them work together to find a smart way with combined effort to take down Sukuna, rather than Gojo be the magical solution to killing Sukuna and Kenjaku. So this chapter worked in a lot of ways for me.

(Continuing) It’s the same reason why Yuuji turning his role put on him (by others and himself) as a cage/tool into something significant in this fight is very compelling. At a surface level, these characters are much weaker than Sukuna, but I think they genuinely have a chance. Plus, it’s more entertaining to have a team fight in jjk and, despite still heavily incorporating the power system, I find this fight to already be more emotional and investing than the Gojo Sukuna one. Not to be overly negative on that last fight (there’s good moments in it and the fighting itself is fun), but this is what I wanted from JJK!

More people will die at some point. Better not be Choso (Yuki died for him so that had better not go to waste immediately), but could honestly be anyone. I do think there’s going to be a moment where things do end up going right for the protagonist team, but that could be a long time from now. Kusakabe being surprised at himself for his willingness to die to protect Higuruma was??? Adorable??? A duo I never considered, but I need them to survive (unlikely) and interact more now that I’m thinking of how well they’d get along.

Another long review of a jjk chapter, but had a great time with this one! At this point, I mention it weekly, but Sukuna in his original form is beautiful every time I see him and im very happy to have him in that form for this fight.

[journalsouppe]

hi! i just found your blog recently so apologies if you've already answered this, but (if you remember) how did you get into journalling?

Hi no worries! I don’t think I’ve answered this before!

The short answer is that back in 2021 I realized I had a super unique opportunity to record all my experiences becoming a Zelda fan for the first time as I had not consumed anything Zelda my entire life. I got a small pack of pens and washi tape and a themed journal and a Zelda sticker book and just had so much fun that I’ve expanded! I now have all types of stickers, post it notes, stamps, washi, etc that I’ve collected over the years as well as starting a new journal for all video games I play! It’s been a great outlet for me to not only write but understand design choices and practice freehand lettering, and to support all my favorite artists who sell stickers. It’s been such a fulfilling hobby I genuinely recommend it to anyone who’s interested.

The long answer is below as well as tips to get started! (Sorry it got pretty long fdslijf)

So part of it was that for a long time I’ve always wanted to get into journaling but nothing would stick: I tried daily aesthetic bullet journaling but got burnt out, I tried journaling things retaliated to exercise but it wasn’t as creative as I wanted it to be, etc. I even used to rewrite all my notes in college to make them look nicer and more legible (and to also review all the notes we took in class) but that was just homework and not stress relieving.

Then back in 2021, I was going through a some major life events during my senior year of college and had to step back from doing a lot of things I normally would, especially social things. So I ended up getting back into video games which is smth I hadn’t had the time to do since…. Junior year of high school I think (With animal crossing being the exception bc of course). I always wanted to get into Ocarina of Time so I played that and Majora’s mask (more specifically I watched someone play them ^^;) and realized I had the golden opportunity to record my experience getting into the Zelda community and games as an adult since I had never consumed anything Zelda previously. I believe I started journaling when I was almost done playing (I did actually play this time) breath of the wild so my first true live reaction spread was a link between worlds. And it was so fun writing down all my commentary, I felt like my own personal let’s play YouTube channel where I could look back at all my reactions and thoughts to games.

I wanted the journal to be special so I got myself a new pack of pens, a journal that’s themed to Zelda (it ended up being a shitty journal fdkshlfd but I still love it), an “official” sticker activity book based on all the official art from the 3d Zelda games, and some cool tone washi tape that had gold accents (aka green blue and purple designed tape). And I just fell in love with journaling. I discovered zines around that time so I ended up collecting more and more stickers and stationary to put in my journals and then I wanted to play more games than just Zelda so I got another journal to continue writing there! I even have new journals in the future specifically themed to final fantasy and castlevania to start when I finish Zelda. I also decided I love journaling so much that I plan to open up a shop to sell journaling stickers and eventually book bind my own journals. It’s still a work in progress but that’s just how much I fell in love with my own style of journaling.

It wasn’t until I played the great ace attorney (DGS) where I really appreciated these spreads as I was losing my shit through live reaction entries. I talked about that spread online and my first dgs mutual ever encouraged me to post it… and I had fun doing that so I made this side blog and kept posting. I’m shocked at how many people like my spreads! I prioritize them being for me first but I will do extra things to make them nicer for yall such as not getting sloppy with my hand writing, taking nice photos, and typing up all my words so that they’re more accessible to read. It’s been such a fun journey I can’t recommend getting into journaling enough. You don’t have to even post them online like I do.

If you’re ever interested in journaling, my advice is to do what YOU want to journal. You don’t need to start out with buying super fancy materials or anything, I got a couple of materials since i knew that I wanted to invest in this journal but you can use any pen or sharpie you have at home and just write. You could even draw images instead of using stickers or use highlighters and markers you’ve collected overtime from school to add that pop of color by highlighting words that speak out to you. If you have a printer, you could even print out images (not fanart!!) from the games you play, my oracle of seasons and oracle of ages spreads have printed and hand cut out paper of the sprites from the game.

Don’t watch any aesthetic ‘here’s my daily bullet journal spread’ videos, you’ll get intimidated and if you try it you’ll be burnt out. Journal at your own pace, I dedicate a day once a month to set up like 4 spreads so that whenever I play games I can just jot down my thoughts and keep my journal just next to me when I play. I also don’t force myself to play games all the time so it’s nice having this nice pace to journal when I want.

Find a topic you’re interested in, and just write about it! Could be games, movies, bugs, theme parks, shoelaces, literally anything. Anything that’s a YouTube video can be transformed into journal spread. Find a journal that you have at home or if you want to splurge a little find one that speaks to you in a store! My only advice is that you want the journal to have thicker paper so that none of your materials bleed (make a test page at the back to make sure what bleed and what doesn’t before you start!) and to have strong binding. My Zelda journal has thin paper and a glue binding and omfg I’m stressed about her exploding.

I don’t want this to get crazy long but you’re more than welcome to dm me or my main blog PumpkinSouppe if you have any more questions too! Or feel free to send more anons here I don’t mind! The world of journaling is such a great place where you decide how the world is structured and how you want to live in it, so don’t feel pressured to do something that you know will exhaust or drain you. Tysm for the ask!! ^_^ sorry this got so long fhdljsf

[cadybear420]

Cadybear's Reviews- High School Story: Class Act

First of all, I should mention… this series is actually the reason I wasn’t going to include stories where my last playthrough of them was 2-3 years ago. I’ve been having a lot to say about HSS:CA for a long time, but as more time’s been going by, my memory of the playthrough diminishes more and more. As much as I want to go on and on about how disappointing this series was, I worried it might not be a good look to do so when my statements about its events could very well be uninformed. 

But I would still like to discuss how I currently feel about the story, based off of what I do remember from it, plus what I’m picking up from screenshots posted by others. I’ve been writing braindumps about this trilogy for quite a long time. If and when I do eventually get around to replaying this (as with all the other stories that I haven’t touched in forever), it will certainly get a re-review, and we’ll see how well this one’s claims hold up. Will they all still stand? Will there be things I’ll change my mind on? Will there be new things I have to say? Who the fuck knows. 

Now with that out of the way, let’s do this shit.

Welcome to the thirteenth official Cadybear's Reviews post! Today I'll be talking about High School Story: Class Act, which I have ranked on the "Bronze Tier" at 5 stars out of a possible 10. My last and only playthrough of this series was back in April-June 2021.

To put it briefly… this one is such a mixed bag. A kind of disappointing mixed bag. 

Initially, I did fairly enjoy this series. I found the stories alright and the characters interesting, and I was happy to see more of the beloved OG characters even if it was just on the side. It wasn’t as amazing as OG was (no shit), but I still found it decent enough. 

But at the same time, something was always just a bit off about all of it. It took me a while to realize this. I couldn’t quite place my finger on why (or when I think I fully realized this), but eventually… it hit me. 

It had nothing to do with HSS. 

I know, it seems unfair to judge this trilogy in comparison to OG HSS rather than on its own merits, but like… why even bother making it HSS then? If it wanted to be its own thing so bad, then it should have just been made as its own thing. And that’s kind of the main problem with HSS:CA– looking back on it, it entirely feels like it was written as a new different franchise and then had “HSS” stamped onto it to make it seem more appealing to fans of the original iterations. Seriously, you could replace everything HSS that appears in CA with something completely new, and nothing important about it would change. 

I’m noticing that that’s kind of a phenomenon we see when it comes to sub-par spinoffs and installments of a (highly beloved and respected) franchise, such as PPG 2016 and HBO’s Velma. A fairly common critique I’ve seen about both of those infamously hated iterations is that you could easily make them as original shows and you’d lose nothing important about them, and frankly they’d have been much less hated if they were original franchises rather than installments of an already existing beloved franchise. 

HSS:CA is nowhere near as abhorrent as either of those, don’t get me wrong. But regardless of how much of a desecration of the original franchise you consider it to be, it’s the exact same case here. Most of the stuff in HSS:CA either lacks relevance to and/or is a major downgrade from OG HSS. And while these aspects would still keep the series from being in the higher tiers if it was an original series, they’d be far more forgivable or negligible in that case. 

I’ll be honest. HSS:CA is a cute, chill, vanilla slice-of-life high school series at best. And so if it was its own brand new thing? I’d probably rank it in the Silver Tier– which is why there’s a spot that says “HSS:CA (if you pretend it’s not a HSS spinoff)”. But the fact that it’s meant to be a continuation of the HSS franchise kind of gives it some higher standards to hold it to, and it’s hard not to judge it by that. 

And in my opinion? It doesn’t hold a candle to those standards. It’s merely a shadow of its parent iterations, and even that’s an overstatement because a shadow at least has some basic connection to its source object. 

It’s very difficult to go into this one without bursting into a 9 page long essay. To keep this review organized at least, let’s go by each of my 6 points for why OG HSS was great, and see how CA holds in those points as well. It’s gonna be a long one, but I do want to put my opinions into perspective. 

First, the MC. 

They’re not terrible by any means– in a vacuum, they’re an okay MC to play as. I don’t mind playing as an unpopular kid, and their adorakble moments and the Aunt Wendy storyline are pretty cute. 

But again, this is a HSS spinoff. With that in context, CA MC is just so much more stiff than our old MC, and so it’s hard not to feel like they’re a downgrade. A fair amount of people have said that CA MC is better because they’re “more imperfect and realistic to actual teenagers” or “actually have a personality”, but it doesn’t hold much ground in my opinion. As I’ve said probably ad nauseam by this point, OG MC not having a distinct personality worked in their favor because it made them a lot more wildcard in how you could play their character– and that actually does include making them more “imperfect” to some degree. 

I can make my OG MC genuinely mess up in certain areas if I want to, and it can affect certain outcomes for them. If I wanna have my MC be kind of crappy at their extracurricular and make Berry lose the big sports games, or have them be a jerk to the Hearst kids and lose their tryouts spot even if they’re actually good at tryouts themselves, I can have that! And even when you do get all the more successful outcomes for them, they can still feel pretty down-to-earth– they’re just a student who happens to become popular and good at unifying the school, rather than some OP messiah God who’s the great savior of the school and everyone worships the very ground they walk on. Is that still unrealistic? Sure. But who gives a crap? Realistic ≠ better. 

(Also, if you think the OG MC was unrealistically talented and successful… well, not only is that on you as the player, but keep in mind that the MC of HSS Prime was a teenager who founded an entire brand new high school, and the whole game exists entirely around that. I’m pretty sure most people aren’t coming to HSS for complete high school realism. A lot of us already experienced complete high school realism when we went to high school IRL, and it probably sucked for most of us.)

With HSS:CA MC however, we don’t get nearly as many choices to personalize the character or affect the story with this one like we do with OG’s, and the options/outcomes that do exist are few and far between. If you replayed the story with a new name and appearance for MC and all different choices, chances are they’d probably still feel the exact same as the previous version of your MC with the exception of your LI choice. 

And it’s funny– despite that this MC is pushed as the more awkward and flawed of the two, I don’t really recall any parts where we can have them genuinely screw up and face consequences. The most we get is probably the theatre productions in the first and third books, and some options in Book 2 that allow us to keep Rory/Twin’s election standings lower… but that’s about it. None of them really have the same impact or significance as the outcomes you can get with OG. 

This lack of agency with MC’s character can get especially frustrating at certain times, such as how much they agonize over getting their first kiss with Rory in Book 1, or how they’re so passive with assholes like Clint and Natalie and Trevor and Amber. At least moments where they tried to force OG MC into a certain behavior or trait– like wanting to win prom crown, or wanting to matchmake Scott and Julia– were kept very minimal and didn’t push out or upstage their respective choices systems. 

To add insult to injury, the OG MC is still around– but purely as a NPC background character. Which, in my opinion, fundamentally does not work for a flexible blank-slate MC like the OG MC. All it does is create the exact problem that OG HSS was trying to avoid when they wrote off Prime MC as having graduated. To make such a flexible MC that relies on how the player builds their character, into non-playable where they’re just a singular set version outside of their appearance and LI and the player has zero control over them? Especially when the new MC we get is so much more rigid and choice-less? It was very jarring and overall didn’t work, especially not in something like HSS. In fact, I’d even argue that there wasn’t any real justification for switching the MC and cast this time around… but I’ll save that for a later section. 

Second, the new supporting characters.

When it comes to the new main friend group, I actually find them pretty alright. Ajay and Skye are great characters and their storylines are the strongest aspects about this trilogy, and I found the romance route with Ajay to be pretty cute (yes, I am a bit of an Ajay apologist despite my heavy criticism towards the series). Rory isn’t really much more than being “nice and attractive” and is annoyingly forced in Book 1, but other than that, they’re decent. Twin is enjoyable enough, and I did like their subplot with Amber in Book 1. Erin isn’t much more than a nice kid either, but she’s very pleasant and I would have liked her as a LI option for MC. And one thing about this group that I actually consider better than OG’s friend group is that we got a lot more opportunities to spend time just hanging out with them or the LIs.

And the family members of these characters like Ajay’s family, Skye’s family, and Aunt Wendy are interesting too, by virtue of the storylines they’re in. Another thing I do like a bit better than OG is that we get to actually meet all of the LIs’ families and know a bit more about their personal lives. OG’s LIs had great characterization and growth, but I do wish we got to see more of their family lives too. Heck, we never once even meet Caleb’s and Michael’s parents! 

But when it comes to the rest of the in-school community, however? It’s nowhere near as vibrant and grand and interesting as it was in OG. I get that other characters outside of the new MC’s circle of friends are going to be less important because they’re not unifying the school like OG MC was, but everyone outside of the new main friend group is either boring and forgettable and/or an unpleasant one-note dickhead, even the returning OG characters. It wouldn’t be so bad since, obviously, not all characters are going to be pleasant or fleshed out… except for the fact that they’re constantly wanting us to interact with these characters and see them as our friends. 

Like I said in my OG HSS review, I felt like I had actual reasons to care about characters like Julian, Mia, Myra, Frank, Jade, Payton, Kieran, Cameron, etc. They had range and actual purposes in the story, one way or another. Though they obviously weren’t as fleshed out as our LIs and they did have their worse moments, they did feel like actual characters and their presence didn’t bring down the story. They were all characters I could root for. 

On the other hand, I don’t feel any reason to care about Clint, Natalie, Trevor, not even characters like Aiden and Michael. Well, outside of the fact that they’re from the OG trilogy and I’d rather be seeing what they’re up to– but that’s the extent of their appeal in this trilogy. None of them have really done much, if anything, to earn our new MC’s friendship or our interest as players, and all their interactions with MC really do is take up space in the story. 

Even the antagonists were pretty lacking, aside from Skye’s parents. Despite that we get a few more that are less on-the-nose as antagonists than the OG antags tended to be, most of them were incredibly half-baked and felt more like cheap plot devices rather than like actual characters. 

Third, the lack of any activity system. 

Regardless of your opinion on CA, you can tell there was a lot less effort put into it compared to that of OG. This mainly shows with the lack of different route options and potential outcomes for MC like I mentioned before– and most notably of all, is the complete removal of any extracurricular choice system. Those choices were a key feature that made OG so memorable and immersive, allowing variance in our storyline, experience, and even our potential romance paths. CA throws that away entirely for God knows what reason… and unfortunately, there aren’t really a lot of other impactful choice systems in this trilogy that can really make up for it. 

I get they were probably trying to make CA a bit different from OG, but being able to “choose your clique/group/activity” has always been a huge staple of HSS, ever since Prime. Imagine if PB got rid of the nerve score system when making ILB in order to make it “more different” from ILITW. I don’t think anyone would like that. It guts the series of one of the franchise’s biggest defining features and basically cheapens the story as an interactive VN. 

What ILB actually did, of course, is that they changed up the nerve score system a bit: more consequential events spread throughout the story than just the fate trials in one of the last chapters, accounting for a group nerve score, having the characters’ scores start at zero and have to be increased. But it is still a *nerve score system*. I bring this up because CA could have done something similar. I get defaulting our MC to do theatre; that was expected from the “Class Act” part of the title. But in that case, why not adapt the “choose your activity” system to intra-theatre activities?

For example: a bifurcation of theatre jobs, where we can choose between being an actor, director, or techie/set designer (kind of like the MC options in HWU). You could maybe have different ways to customize the production and affect how it turns out based on your activity. And you’d have opportunities for extra interactions/moments with all of the LIs– Rory if you choose to be an actor, Ajay if you choose to be a director, Skye if you choose to be a techie/set designer (in Book 3, anyways). 

Or if not that, then perhaps we could have a choice in the acting parts in the plays. Seriously, I feel so baited by that one scene where we could choose to say which part in the first play we wanted the most. Like, they make this big deal about how MC wants to be the prince/princess so they can get their first kiss with Rory, but really I imagined my MC as someone who would much rather be the witch (and didn’t crush on Rory either way). 

Fourth, the stories. 

Credit where credit is due, the subplots about some of the characters’ personal lives are pretty damn solid and probably one of the few things about the series that actually feels well-executed and fitting to HSS. I’d say the series is at its best when it’s focusing on stuff that doesn’t have to do with in-school drama. Which checks out, because most of the stuff that does take place in the school is lukewarm at best, and… kind of mean-spirited at worst, actually. 

There’s nothing wrong with stories about more vanilla and mundane situations, but here it just guts the heart of HSS. Berry High in CA is not “the high school you’d want to go to” like it was in OG… which is kind of funny when you remember the HSS:CA teaser at the end of OG Book 3, where CA MC can tell Rory that they’re “so so so excited” to go to high school because “you guys have scandals and rivalries and food fights”. I can only imagine how disappointed they must have actually been when they started high school (I mean, that’s what this trilogy is, frankly), especially considering some of the bullshit they’re put through while they’re there. 

No, seriously. I use the term “mean-spirited” to describe some of CA’s in-school conflicts because a lot of the stuff that happens to our new MC is more needlessly cruel than what happens to OG MC. Book 1’s storyline with MC being instantly accused of sabotage and ostracized by the theatre kids for days(?) on end is by far the worst offender, and Book 2’s storyline with MC being pulled in two directions by Twin and Rory with their election campaigns isn’t much better. Book 3 isn’t nearly as bad, but the useless one-note bully hivemind that is the Statton kids do still bring it down. 

And the worst part is, I don’t feel like the characters “get anything” out of it. The characters in OG would often go through a series of pretty awful events too, such as the football game against Statton or literally everything that happened with Isa. But they’d always be able to pick themselves back up and some characters would even grow from these events, so it never felt in bad spirit. Even if you get some of the “lesser” outcomes such as losing the sports games or failing the spirit stick heist, the character development everyone has gone through still holds up. They didn’t succeed, but they tried their best and still got something good out of it, and they can still enjoy their homecoming dance. 

In CA, it feels less about the characters overcoming their obstacles and a lot more like “drama and conflict for the sake of drama that we’re gonna throw at the MC, okay now it’s over with, moving on”. Like, why did MC need to suffer through being ostracized by 95% of the theatre kids or getting pulled between Rory’s and Twin’s campaigns? MC getting to kiss Rory in the play and getting the Greenhouse Ex Machina built to merge Twin and Rory’s campaigns and overtake Lorenzo’s campaign, aren’t nearly enough to amend the unnecessary crap they had to deal with throughout those respective stories.

And sure, some of those events are technically more “realistic” to the average high school experience, but again, that doesn’t make them better written. Need I bring up Prime’s MC again? Realism means fuck all to me if the conflicts are cheap, especially in HSS.

What’s funny about the “realistic” aspect though, is that despite OG being the seemingly more “corny cheesy Disney Channel high school” of the two trilogies, the teenage characters and their conflicts/drama in that one actually felt more natural and believable. There was actual tension building, and context for why characters acted irrational. I didn’t always like what happened, but it was more understandable why band and cheer would start rooting against basketball, or why Jade/Cameron/Kieran would believe MC was the one to sabotage them, or even why the characters would break out into a food fight. Again, the story gives me actual reason to care about these characters. 

A lot of the events in CA felt a lot more lazy to me in comparison, like the only reason the characters act out is because “Har har, teenagers be irrational and messy!”. Which they often tend to be, sure… but characters like Clint and Natalie have no other traits in Book 1 besides being clingy Rory simps, Trevor has no other traits than just being a dickhead, the Statton kids have no other traits in Book 3 than being pretentious assnads. That's all they really have to go by, and it makes the conflicts feel painfully one-dimensional. 

Sometimes an event will just straight up contradict the themes established in OG. Like how a lot of the same characters that were present during Isa’s reign of manipulative behaviors and even participated in taking her down, are also weirdly quick to reject CA MC’s discovery that Lorenzo’s kitten stunt was a sham. I have a lot of problems with Book 2’s main plot, but this is easily the biggest one. There’s teenagers being irrational and messy, and then there’s this 5-year-old hivemind behavior. And I… just couldn’t with that. 

Finally, and probably the most glaring issue of HSS:CA’s lack of relevance to HSS, it does not bridge well with its past source material at all. 

The returning Prime characters may have had smaller roles and their utilizations in OG weren’t all perfect, but overall, they felt very in-their-element and more like an actual part of the story. Their cameos were much more organic, like they were fellow students along with the new characters, and some of them even felt like more mature versions from how they were in Prime. They only really stand out as “the older characters” by being the soon-to-graduate senior class. All of which makes sense because, like I mentioned in my OG HSS review, it’s sort of meant to be “passing down the torch to unify Berry” to the new MC and cast. And that’s about it, it doesn’t need to shove it in your face that these are the characters from the original 2013 mobile game that you may or may not have played before. 

The returning OG characters, on the other hand, are all non-characters, and their cameos only serve as nostalgia bait. I mean, I think they were kind of doomed from the start when they made the OG MC non-playable, but they could have at least tried with the other characters, no? Even in Book 3 where they join the CA gang in the musical and London trip, which should have been leagues more epic than whatever the fuck we actually got. They were just there for the sake of being there, doing nothing more than just tagging along with the CA gang– hell, Maria even straight up admits that when she says she and the other characters are only joining the musical production so they could join MC and Aiden on the London trip.

I’ll admit, those premium scenes where you could spend time with the OG characters were kind of fun. But notice how OG didn’t need obligatory special premium scenes in order to make the Prime characters relevant? Sure, there were some scenes that involved certain Prime characters, but… they had a lot more personality than just “Spend time with the Prime characters!”. The Prime characters’ cameos were more than just “Hey hey look look it’s the characters from Prime!”. 

This kind of makes CA problematic both for returning OG fans and for new fans who haven’t yet played OG, when you really think about it. OG can integrate the Prime characters well but actually stand on its own two feet at the same time, whereas people who play CA before OG are probably going to be like (Patrick Star voice) “Who are you people!?!?” every time they try to push these diamond scenes. 

(And yes, I know I said continuing the OG HSS after the first three books doesn’t have the problem of needing to appeal to new fans. But by virtue of making the continuation a spinoff with a new MC, they kind of did bring that problem onto themselves. No one’s going to be playing the TRH trilogy before they play the TRR trilogy. No one’s going to be playing the two “The Sophomore” books before they play the first four “The Freshman” books, they’re clearly continuations of the previous books involving the same MC and their storyline, just with different titles. HSS:CA clearly has a different MC from the OG one, so there are going to be (and have been) people who play HSS:CA first. Had they made these books a continuation of OG MC’s storyline, this wouldn’t even be an issue.)

And while I did enjoy the new main cast well enough… let’s face it. There wasn’t really any purpose for switching the MCs and casts this time around. Sure, they contrast in that OG MC is more popular and unifies the school while CA MC is more unpopular and sticks with just their theatre family, but that’s not much to go by. The Prime-to-OG switch worked because the Prime writers knew that a Choices iteration of HSS needed to be welcoming both to older fans from Prime AND to newer fans from Choices, given Choices is a completely separate app from the Prime game. It’d be difficult to continue the focus on the Prime MC and their friends without requiring players to have played Prime first, which would be very problematic considering Prime has no in-game features for replaying certain stories or quests.

HSS:CA on the other hand is a more direct continuation of OG HSS, existing on the same app (which does allow you to replay stories or chapters) and taking place the following school year at Berry after the OG HSS timeline. If the spinoff was maybe a few years after the first trilogy, when the OG characters have graduated; or if it was taking place in a different location like Hearst High, then that’d make more sense. Instead, it’s just the next year at Berry High, but this time the focus is on a theatre freshman at Berry and their friends, whose stories pretty much happen in a complete vacuum from everything else that’s happened in HSS canon. It feels very much like PB switched casts with HSS:CA for the same reason that Rick and Morty did Interdimensional Cable II: “We pretty much nailed it the first time”.  

What really puts the nail in the coffin is that the finale was terribly inconclusive and soulless, and did not work as a sendoff to the franchise. Seriously, it’s ID-1-standalone-ending levels of bad and I don’t think that’s talked about enough. And even ID 1’s standalone ending at least had some emotional stakes to it. There’s no emotion in the scenes where you talk to the OG characters– in fact the writers seemed to care so little about the OG characters in this ending (and the trilogy as a whole) that they initially forgot that OG MC, Emma, Caleb, and Michael are actually a year below Aiden and Maria and not in the same grade. 

And as a whole, it just ends on such a weird note– “Yay I finished my first year of high school, what’s next for me” to “And now your time at Berry must come to an end” is such a whiplash that I’m pretty sure it broke my fucking neck. I think rushed book endings like this and ATV’s ending walked so that the rushed endings of 2022-2023 Choices books could run. 

There’s only one major plus of HSS that carried over well to HSS:CA, and that was the lack of smut scenes. Which is kind of expected, honestly. (Though I will say, the writing for CA was, arguably, noticeably more horny this time around… is that just me?)

Of course, CA isn’t without its other redeeming factors, which I have mentioned across each of these points. But the fact that it has these redeeming factors, these ideas that were good in concept but terrible in execution, just makes it all the more tragic as a series and it’s part of why I’m so hard on it. 

See, had CA just been among the ranks of something like PPG 2016 or HBO’s Velma– a straight-up bad trilogy that butchered all the characters and everything about HSS and had no redeeming qualities and was ultimately a stain on the HSS franchise– I’d just have to go “Jesus H. Christ this sucks” and pretend it doesn’t exist.

But in actuality, it has ideas that I would enjoy to see explored as part of the world of HSS– I do genuinely like exploring Berry’s theatre department, and the idea of the OG and CA gangs going to London together. And there is some really good potential for interactions between the two groups, like Emma helping Ajay deal with his parents’ divorce, or the OG gang taking Skye under their wing as Brian’s younger sister. But it ultimately failed to handle those well and just ended up leaving me feeling empty inside. So it’s this weird tug-of-war between “I like you” and “I don’t like you”. 

So I definitely wouldn’t consider CA to be awful, as it does have its share of redeeming qualities. But the thing is, those redeeming qualities are part of why the series left me feeling empty and disappointed, because we could have had something much greater for the HSS franchise. But this trilogy, as it is, probably would have been much better off as a completely new and separate franchise.

[alyjojo]

August 👨🏽‍🏫 2023 Monthly - Sagittarius

Whole of your energy: 4 Cups rev

Everyone is pulling the Carrot card this month already, usually when that happens it’s something going on that affects everyone. This month is Venus retrograding in Leo, and your reading isn’t regarding love so much as your money 💯 Your Oracle card of Confidence along with 9 Wands has “Eye of the Tiger” and a Rocky theme as my background brain noise in your reading, and it’s cute, it applies. Carrot is telling you not to give up, and so is 9 Wands 🧡 You’re afraid of missing an opportunity to shine, probably in regards to your career, or even school, classes, training, a document of some kind you’re waiting on, or waiting to sign and make official. You just want things to work out for the best.

What’s going on in August:

The High Priestess:

You are keeping mum about what’s going on in your world, because things aren’t official yet. You’re quietly working on something you’ve been dreaming up for some time now, and I also get people around you celebrating good news, so it’s like you’re stepping back and letting them have their moment. Your news isn’t newsworthy yet anyway, it’s more like a welcome distraction to celebrate others and take any questions off of you & what you’ve got going on. You’re secretly hoping it’s going to work out, whatever it is, and that the opportunity presented to you has real potential, money, rewards, bonuses, perks. You aren’t sure something is made of sand or dreams yet, but you have high hopes for it.

Knight of Wands:

Whatever you’re planning is definitely a “level up” from where you’ve been, and I get work for most of the Sags I’m reading for. Knight of Wands is quietly & secretly becoming a King of Wands, a lot of you are going for higher level positions in your company or different companies, or that is the ultimate goal you’re working towards. You’re tired of feeling like a small fish in a big pond, it’s BIGGER fish time, but you’re also being secretive about it…in case it doesn’t work out, no one is let down or even knows but you. What others think means a lot to you in this instance, and your Oracle of Confidence shows this could be a challenge for you, thinking you’re good enough, smart enough, have enough experience, etc. I’m getting you 100% do, are, have, and you deserve this.

6 Wands:

Victory! Success! Promotion! The Sun follows this, you can’t get better cards for what you’re trying to achieve. King of Cups could be someone you have a good relationship with that’s helping you get where you need to be, some manager in the company that values your contributions and gives your resume the stamp of approval, or puts in a great word for you. This could also be someone close, a friend of yours, that’s celebrating a happy occasion and you’re just having the best time mid-month with friends and the people around you. Good news & recognition are attached to this success.

The Sun:

Another card of success and promotion, and a lot of positive attention, you will be the star of the show in many ways this month! 9 Cups shows a wish or dream coming true, that same dream you’ve been quietly working on and worrying over for some time, everything is turning out exactly as you hoped it would ☀️

9 Swords:

Still you worry! This seems to be regarding a past situation you’re afraid will play out like it did once before. You have questions like, will you regret this change? Will you have enough money? Is it all changing too fast? Am I missing anything? What if this isn’t right? And your oracles & the entire reading show this being a very positive month for you, you only need to persevere through your own anxiety, believe in yourself, and focus on having the most successful outcome you’re dreaming of. The only negative energy here is you beating yourself up and worrying about it. If you’ve experienced rejection in the past, let it go, I get that this time is not that time and then is not now, have faith in yourself, the quality of whatever it is you’re doing, and Spirit 🧡

Signs you may be dealing with:

Cancer, Sagittarius, Leo, Gemini, Scorpio & Virgo

Oracles: ✨

79 Success

Enjoying your life and the unfolding of your creative abilities as much as possible is real success.

77 Confidence

Know and feel this affirmation, beyond a doubt: “I AM all that I need to get what I want.”

We enter into August as:

Pink From Pinkton 💗

“I am more than I think I am.”

Pink shows us the process of self-awareness. Are you trying to recapture a past moment that no longer fits? You may have outgrown something, and while it can be a challenge to admit it, being fully who you are is much more glorious than trying to fit yourself into the past. If you are presently upset or struggling with a difficult situation, it may be because you are trying to make something work when it simply can’t. You may be seeking to keep something far less than what you deserve. With self-awareness and discovery comes a new obligation, using your new knowledge. New ideas, projects & opportunities can only come if you stop blocking them.

What is to be learned in August:

The Carrot Colored Cloak 🥕:

“Don’t quit before the miracle!”

You are being told that changing your direction at this time is not wise. We never know where our miracles lie in the path, often just beyond the boundary of our faith. You may not see it, but it lies ahead. When we do the work that is chosen for us, we are serving a higher order, and if we stop we upset the balance of our lives. Stick with it and have blind faith, an exciting change is coming. You must press on in the direction of your vision, what you’re working for will come to fruition.

Orange may be a lucky color 🧡

[the-firebird69]

Tracy Chapman - Fast Car - 12/4/1988 - Oakland Coliseum Arena (Official)

So he went back in time a little bit and he's like why is she a black girl talking about Tommy F. And there might be this disturbance where they're fighting each other and that might be cause though by the car company and it's going to heat it up we really need this. Max wanted we wanted to. But you see what it is they're blaming these guys even Lilly is not really black and it kind of in has them go look for it it kinda makes them wanna see it and this guy trump goes nuts and we waste a lot of them we're saying they're making isolated facility and we're gonna have to do it that way nothing else will work and he wants this for the future of friendship and a tie to his heritage and to people who have been beat up real bad because they're afraid if we come up they're gonna get hammered. And he's had a remote factory somewhere tied to a few of these guys and get them cars for Africa and here and it would probably work especially if the pseudo empire was involved too. And I agree this is a way to do it and Africa will want it and we have our own forests and we do things that are big too but this is a really big idea and we'd have to get a lot of them involved in the stamping process isn't that hard and Shaquille O'neal wants to be involved and wants us to manage it and we agree that's a good idea and his design is intense and he heard it and read about it and said this is probably a perfect car and it's getting closer to one and nobody will ever make it like that and we need to go ahead and get it going and he says wow that's what he's thinking is that the frame is already in it and it's like this repair kit and he says I wonder how that works and we know how to do it and you cut.... and we know how to do it and you cut along the frame in the middle and there's a piece that you put on and it actually welds on so he wants to go ahead and do these things and says it's an intense idea and that the car would be really famous real quick and tons of factories would pop up and they would have sales out to Ying Yang. And it'd be really inexpensive other cars take tons of labor this card will not take that much effort and having the metal dashboard is a plus. Go ahead and do this and right now

Gu Oya

I want this this is a major feather in my cap and the things fast i've seen the particular chorus even the Chevy's fast and it's kind of a cheat it's like a combo between somewhat of a lotus look and a mustang and it's deceptive. And I know what he's saying it's gonna be a different car and a French name and we've done that with France. And he's involved and she is and BG can get involved in these president. And he wants to help so we're gonna try and get this together and he wants to get it together too and he's wondering there's like a middle area but it's still probably a mess and it's hard to do out there and we know your people can come out and get the stamping going mac has the stamping but he probably won't want to do it but he'll want the car but it'll be in Africa and that's a great place to start. What do I think about the song she's singing about Billy's car we think escaping up north but it's very cryptic and kinda odd and she's very intense meaning more intense as us kicking her out she sees it as hope because it probably brings hope to people the Max wanted though and say they wanted to export to the USA and to make it there but it's an American company and it's going to come to America and they say this we noticed that too and then they would go over there to try and take it over to that over here that is. And that would happen later no right away but it starts popping up here and it comes out as an American company and those are not there too and we need that. Say they need a chill but boy they're in the way if you're not in the way then who is. Usually these guys infighting. So I'm gonna look at this but he's got the designs and he probably can get them to be G.

shaq

Sits around is not my company at all and I can't get in and it's kind of a way to do things and it's sitter on. I like the company the car is fast and I get it it's similar and it'll be inexpensive quick to make very reliable and I could use it on electrics day and night it would be so damn fast with electric and so cheap. Make both there's no way you can't you can export them without the motor to the USA and that's a way to start it here and he wants to. Well I'm gonna look at this. What he says is if I had a design of his that he made directly almost it's like she's making it it would be intense and he can help her and it shows up in character and I think that we can get that to roll.

bg

We want all of this to happen it's his design his company and his people and himself and his wife that physically designed them and it's like the other two and we're looking for that so he says what do I do now i'm staring at my computer talking to people every day about it this is new the topic but everything is always stalled out wait a minute trump has to come pee on your head hold on a minute we've got a bunch of **** who won't let it happen. And they're massively unreal unreali.... And they're massively unreal unrealistic and unreasonable we'll probably have to get rid of all of them for anything to happen. It's something to think about so we might wanna focus on so we have to do this kind of thing test it if it doesn't go they're gone.

amcs

These guys have to ride and we're not doing our job and what's happening is we're getting wiped out already they're gonna do some more testing and if we don't do anything we're all gonna be gone because of Trump and his **** **** **** face and stupid ****.

bg

Olympus

[witch-hazels-musings]

greetings, hazel! may i have a pull of the lovers, the star and the tower for kaeya please? thank you in advance, and have a nice day :) —★

The Star (celestial), The Lovers (true love), The Tower (catastrophe) :: Kaeya x gn reader | neutral fate

warnings: sfw, angst (jealousy) -> comfort alcohol mention, drunk behavior mention (kaeya), flirting and touching, jealousy themes 

“You both have been flirting all night long. Is it finally official?” Lisa hummed over the edge of her cup. She couldn’t stop staring at the state of your ‘tavern buddy’ as he stumbled into a bar stool to ask Charles for more drinks. 

“It’s not like that ...” You explained with a wave of your hand and a shy turn of your head. Kaeya was so distracting. Even when you knew exactly where he was, you always found yourself looking at him but you’d lie about the reason why. “That’s just how we communicate.” The liquid in your cup passed over your tongue and you swallowed it as if you were trying to digest the uncomfortable fact you just shared. 

“If that’s what you want to believe, cutie.” She giggled but pressed no further. She didn’t have too, you were already anxiously aware of your feelings showing all over. The position of your body as you leaned into him when he sat beside you, the way your smile lifted over and over again when he spoke. The attachment you had for him even when he was in the other room, nervous fingers tapping away until he came back. She didn’t need to hear you speak was so painfully obvious. 

“Look, see, he’s already flirting with someone else. I’m just -- I mean it’s just what he --” You couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t admit what you dreaded to believe but there was no mistaking what you saw. Kaeya was in fact flirting with someone. His hand cupping their waist, body leaning far to close, mouth lifting into a smirk and nose dangerously close to their skin. You hated it, hated this, and the building jealousy was bound to be catastrophic. 

“y/n?” Lisa called for you but all you could see was Kaeya’s face looking at another. She reached for your balled fist but all you could feel was the constricting pain in your chest. Kaeya glanced your way and all you could do was run toward the door. 

--

“Here you are.” A panting Kaeya wheezed, hands on his knees as he caught his breath. “An exhausting game of cat and mouse this turned out to be.” He huffed and quickly tried to compose himself. 

You tried to think of what to say but your throat was blocked up with bitterness so you turned to look at the night sky. How you wished the moon would trade places with you or fall and crush the annoying man at your side. 

“You know,” He began, tugging on his shirt to put himself back in order. “If you wanted to have a midnight run, you could have asked.” 

“Go away.” 

“No why would I want to do that?” 

“Kaeya, go AWAY.” You shot a glare at him. It was a stark contrast to the fake collectedness you had moments ago. He must not have noticed your stamping foot, the tightness of your jaw, or the way you held yourself as tightly as you could. Of course Kaeya wouldn’t notice, he never really noticed you at all. 

“W-Is there some secret you have, hmm? You can tell me?” Kaeya tried to play it off, to push through the strangeness of your outburst and imagine it didn’t happen which only pissed you off more. 

“Archons, just leave me alone already!” You stormed passed him and when he tried to grab your wrist to keep you there you shook him off. “Don’t - please don’t.” You choked on the words only to notice the shift in his expression. Was he finally catching on or was this a pity move you didn’t want. 

“y/n, what happened?” He stepped forward and you stepped back. “y/n, stop -” Another step and you backed up further. “Stop!” He lunged and you reacted only to find yourself falling off the ledge and toward the grassy surroundings of the city. 

There was a horrible scraping sound, the wind was knocked from your lungs and you held onto whatever you could not knowing it was Kaeya. When you opened your eyes you saw his tense face grimacing as he dug his sword into the side of the stone walls. Ice leaked from the metal and drove themselves into the cracks of the foundation like spider webs. It slowed your descent but not enough to stop the painful landing you both found. 

You coughed and forced yourself off Kaeya who had released his grip on the now lodged sword all so he could turn onto his back and take the brunt of the fall. “What - what were you thinking!?” 

“I should be saying that -- ouch -- about you.” He groaned and tried to sit up but grimaced again. With a heavy plop he laid flush in the grass and you realized just how hard his breathing was. 

“Are you hurt?” 

“Tell you in a minute, doll. After I can move my body.” 

“Kaeya, I’m so sorry.” 

“You’re kind of dangerous to be around, you know that.” He coughed but somehow still held that devilish tone and smartass smirk. 

“It’s your fault. I only get into trouble around you.” 

“Now, now, that’s just not true.” His hand found your arm, fingers naturally wrapping around it and causing you to shiver. You felt terrible, embarrassed at yourself, and if you weren’t worried about his condition you would have ran away never to show your face again. 

Reluctantly, you slipped free of his touch so you could sit on the grass beside him. Arms wrapped around your legs but eyes locked on him just in case. The light of the moon reflected off his skin and you felt the stab in your heart all over again. One sided loves hurt more than anything you’d ever felt; so why did you stay?

“How is it you’re still so dashing even when you’re hurt.” 

“Good genes I guess.” He laughed and turned to look at you. “Did you get hurt?” Kaeya asked as his hand lifted to brush something off your face. It felt so good to be touched by him, instinctually you leaned in when you knew it was a mistake. 

“I’m alright, just a few bruises.” 

“I can kiss them better.” 

The flirt in him just wouldn’t turn off. It was like a natural state at this point, one you’d learned to accept and reflect back as easy as it was to love him. “Only if you kiss me on the lips first.” You teased, nose scrunched and eyes closed as you shook your face at him. 

“Is that a promise?” You opened your eyes only to see him lift himself off the grass and lean close enough to you that you could smell his cologne. It was like the earth after freshly fallen rain, slightly crystalized and sweet like frozen fruit. His lips were so close to yours. This had to be another joke but your heart begged it not to be true. You froze, uncertain if you should play along or push him away but there was no stopping the fluttering of your eyes as he drew dangerously close to you. 

“... Kae ... if this is a jok-” 

“It’s not a joke.” He lifted your chin and you gripped onto the damp grass. “Would you prefer if it was?” Shaking your head, you gazed at him but as soon as his lips touched yours the color of blue disappeared and your entire body floated through the stars. 

Fate Made Event (May8-31) | Anthology

[overwatch-does-stuff]

Hello I’m not sure if this is the kind of request you mean… but I love seeing your dad content about soldier it warms my heart. Is there anything you think of with him and Tracer as Father Daughter?

I love your writings… sorry if this isn’t the right requests.

It still pleases me to see that my Dad76 post is still getting reblogs and notes after all this time. I want everyone to know that I'm still super soft for Dad76 even with my recent hot take of him being an excellent antagonist lol. I'd be thrilled to write some headcanons for you!!

Of all the Overwatch youngins' back in the glory days, Lena was 100% Morrison's kid. Everyone knew it, including her (but except him. . .)

This primarily comes from the fact that Morrison handled the Slipstream incident personally after it happened.

He authorized the project, and didn't think much of giving it the stamp of approval. So much paperwork crossed his desk, and he's not a science man, so he tended to always approve of official projects like that, even the controversial ones (such as Project Echo).

What he did not catch was the probability of success, written in small print and much smaller than it shouldn't been. What he did not catch was the name and age of the proposed test pilot.

What he did not catch haunted him for the better portion of five years.

After the accident, after what he considered his mistake, he took the reins in giving pretty much unlimited funding to Winston's research to bring her back, even though all the signs at the time pointed to her never coming back or being stable ever again.

It's difficult for Lena to remember, but the second time she reappeared in Winston's prototype stabilization chamber, Morrison was there. She was sobbing. Winston was hesitant to let anyone into the chamber, fearing that her condition might transfer. . . but Morrison stepped in anyway, and gave her a hug before she disappeared from his arms.

(Ana gave him a stern talking-to afterwards. She agreed with him in principal but having Overwatch's lead strike commander disappear from time disassociation nonsense would not have been a good thing.)

After that, he mostly kept his distance. He greenlit even more funding for Winston to develop the chronal accelerator, even though Overwatch was already suffering from some funding issues. He said it was an obligation. He was right, but it was also so much more.

And when Lena received the accelerator, and all was said and done, Morrison personally informed her that it was her choice to stay with Overwatch if she wanted to, that she'd be given a full pension and benefits if she decided to return to civilian life. He was baffled when she said saluted him and expressed her resolution to become an agent.

(Would she have stayed if it was anyone other than Morrison? She's not sure, but he was certainly a big factor. To put it simply, he cared, and perhaps she was projecting a bit of her late father into his stern but gentle demeanor.)

Since her first mission during the London Uprising, the two only grew closer. When Morrison needed the perspective of an agent on the ground when it came to making new policies, he'd always come to her.

He also liked to check up on her welfare on occasion. This usually meant stopping by her quarters for a quick chat, and sometimes staying for a cup of tea.

(He doesn't like her tea- she brews it long, hot, and bitter, unlike Ana's usual blends, but he still drinks it. It's a great energy boost, at least.)

Lena took him to his first Pride parade since before the Omnic Crisis when she spotted the little pride flag hanging in his office during pride month. He was reluctant to go, worried about being recognized and mobbed in the crowd, so she created a genius foolproof disguise for him out of a hat, sunglasses, and leather pants. Slap on some makeup, and he was practically unrecognizable. . . and very fabulous.

He had so much fun during Pride that for the next week, Ana and Gabe were confused about his sudden lift in self-esteem.

Pride became a yearly tradition for Lena and Morrison until Overwatch fell apart.

(Which means that he has met Emily! He 100% approves, lol)

Random headcanon, but Morrison always gave her shoulder pats as a greeting.

And when Soldier 76 reaches his hand out to her shoulder, five years after Morrison was proclaimed dead, Lena pulls away, with a mixture of hurt and confusion written all over her face.