#literally i have looked at so many posts today and had something mean to say

[salemlunaa]

VOID STATE: LAZINESS IS A DISEASE, GET WELL SOON 🧸

get your ass up and get your dream life

*mild tough love because some of you need this*

so alot of people go on about how they procrastinate the void and shifting to their new reality because of fear. but alot of you do not want or care to admit that , you’re just too fucking lazy. And to that i say seriously?? You know that you can have ANYTHING, absolutely ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you dream of, with just a trip to the void state and yet you hold it off. “I’ll do it tonight” you say, even though the most groundbreaking thing you have done today was scrolling through your phone on this app and others (which is time that could have been spent tapping in). You torture yourself scrolling through tiktok and instagram, looking at others from afar with jealousy wishing you had their lives. You add posts into your favourites telling yourself “i’ll have that life someday”, “i’ll have that body soon”, “when i shift i’ll be as pretty as her” (when you could literally have all that and better RIGHT NOW) You insert yourself in different narratives, shows and groups you wish you were apart of, when you could literally shift to a reality where you are there.

you don’t have to look at them with jealousy

you dont have to get upset about your shitty life

you don’t have to imagine

you don’t have to want for anything

you don’t have to yearn, long, desire

it can be yours, if i’m honest you should be more excited about this, scripting anything you could ever possibly dream of, even the little details, and they could be YOURS. you should start being so much more excited about this, about your dream life, like seriously. And that excitement about having everything should motivate you to tap in. Instead your lazy ass has adopted a loser mentality, doing absolutely nothing all day telling yourself you’ll “try at night” and when you don’t get in you repeat the cycle. You abandon responsibilities telling yourself it doesn’t matter because “youre gonna shift anyways”, and you don’t even put in the actual effort. It’s a very dangerous cycle to go down and you can go from moving round that cycle once to doing it 30 times and before you know it you’ve spent a month in this rut.

you don’t have to wait until the night and you know that so don’t give me bullshit. Take those limiting beliefs away and do it at any time of day when you get the chance.

Do you know how lucky you are to even have the access to learn about this shit. There are probably so many people much more disciplined than you, that would do so much with this information, who don’t even have access to the internet or any outside resources to even reach this sort of information and you’re fucking wasting your days lurking on this app. doing what? And it’s sad because, this community is so small meaning you are here for a reason my love, all that shit you went through and didn’t deserve, you looked at it all and knew there was more out there for you, knew that you were deserving of more. And i’ll be dammed if your lazy ass ruins it for yourself.

You have overcomplicated the void so much to the point where you’re scared to “fail” and “let yourself down” so you put it off and say you’ll “do it later”. Now remember, you cannot fail the void, you cannot fail something that is inside you, something that IS you. What you fail to do is stand firm in the fact that you’re a god and can do anything, everything is easy for you so get off your ass and go shift.

i just HAD to 🤭 @smellofemale

you deserve everything, and you CAN, in fact, have it all. JUST DO IT 🥥💋

[danadaria]

Steddie Olympic AU where Eddie gets on his first Olympics for BMX freestyle, and it's so weird because he has been in competitions for many years but nothing like this, something so big and with so many rules.

His background was being a hyperkinetic kid who didn't really care about his life, and somehow being fearless and doing acrobatics became his career. Still, even then it wasn't so serious.

His thing were the X-games and open exhibitions, with fire, hard rock & metal, tattoos, and having RedBull as a sponsor.

Behind the adrenaline he and his friends are a bunch of clowns who just wanted to fly and have the bones of a child forever.

But now he's here: in the middle of a giant line in an ocean of other athletes, wearing a fucking blazer from Ralph Lauren and with the lamest jeans he had to wear in his entire life.

And everything is kinda awful, because he lost sight of friends (Gareth and Max, both skaters, but they train in the same place), and he just heard there's no McDonald's at the Olympics this year.

He doesn't even like McDonald's so much, but god, he grow up hearing about athletes eating hundreds of burgers and mcnuggets for free, and sue him, but his inner child was super excited about it.

"Are you ok, man?"

Eddie opens his mouth to give a snarky remark when he sees the most beautiful man in existence – GORGEOUS v-shape, honey eyes, pink pouty lips, and kissable moles– looking at him with concern.

"Yeah, yeah. Everything is okey-dokey" He says lamely.

The most beautiful man in existence snorts at him.

"Okey-dokey? What are you? Five?"

"Probably. I was sad because I found out today there's no free McDonald's this year. Now that I know I'm not sure if it is worth being here"

Eddie's future husband looks surprised for a second and laughs at him.

"Are you serious?"

"Of course. I read some people ate so many nuggets they left the Olympics cackling like a chicken: I wanted to be one of them!"

"Oh, yeah. I ate lots of them post-competition"

"See?!"

"Ok, I give you that. But this year there's going to be international cuisine and all that jazz"

"Knowing me, I'm going to get too overwhelmed with the options and I'll end with the saddest oatmeal every day."

"You have lots of food opinions for someone that's on a sports event"

"Well, is either that or thinking that my biggest rivals are a bunch of 15-year-olds from Brazil and Japan."

"Oh? What's your sport?"

"BMX freestyle"

"That's the race in the mountains?"

"That's literally BMX racing."

"Right." He looked ashamed.

Eddie needed to fix that look, now.

"And you? What's your poison?"

"Poison? You mean my sport?" Eddie nods at him encouragingly. "Gymnastics."

"I can see it." Eddie looks at him approvingly, "You have the arms of a gymnast, big boy."

The face of Eddie's future husband turns a beautiful shade of red. And Eddie is just a second away to ask for his name, and his number to change the course of his life, when he feels a hand on the jacket's collar.

"Here you are, loser. We need to go this way!"

And before Eddie can say anything, Max Mayfield (his new arch-nemesis) takes him away from the love of his life.

He says bye with a hand before being cruelly separated, disappearing into a sea of people.

"Do you want to be murdered before or after the opening ceremony, Red?"

"Oh, shut up loser."

____________________________________________________________

Steve is going back with his best friend to their apartment, feeling super frustrated. Somehow, 24 hours ago, he thought it would be a good idea to give his phone to his best friend for the inauguration night to avoid getting too excited and watching videos of the event until 4 am.

And now he was regretting ALL his life choices.

"You don't understand Robin, I met a super cute guy, but I couldn't get his name! I'm only going to search that and nothing else"

"Steve, you made me swear I wouldn't pass your phone on inauguration day, no matter the reason. You need to sleep"

"Easy for you to say. You didn't meet someone when you didn't have your phone!"

"I would understand better than anyone! I met the cutest girl competing at air riffle, aaaand I didn't have my phone either!"

"You gave her your presentation card, didn't you"

"Yes, sorry."

"See? Why didn't you make me buy some for me, too?"

They arrive at their floor. Steve knows they're a little obnoxious, but it was the first night and it's still early.

"Good night, neighbors! Isn't it too early in the event to be fighting?"

Steve looks up so fast, he probably hurt his neck a little bit. At the end of the hallway, sitting on the floor next to a very closed door, was Steve's meet-cute: All smiley, charming, and inviting.

"It's you!"

"Oh! Hi Mr. Gymnastics, and hi unknown lady."

"It's Robin Buckley," She says and goes straight to her apartment, "we probably going to see each other again, so good night".

And she closes the door firmly behind her.

"I didn't have. I mean. I don't have my phone to search for you."

The other boy looks at him, almost evaluating him, before giving Steve a big smile and offering his hand to stretch.

"Eddie Munson."

"Steve Harrington."

"So, would you-"

"There's a McDonald's near where I compete tomorrow. Would you like to go with me?"

Eddie stands up and walks until he's in front of Steve. He smiles.

"Would love it. After all, it was my childhood dream."

Steve smiles too.

[thatdeadaquarius]

sagau with the language barrier issue except... the creator is sick and tired of trying to ask for things so they do everything themself.

and it gives their followers mass anxiety bc they can't even ask what you're doing... bc they know they won't understand anything...

SUCH A GENIUS NARVI 10/10 GOOD WORK SORRY IM SUPER LATE BUT THIS IS *chefs kiss*

Like, that's literally how I feel like I first played Genshin LMAO

Also this has a cont. Part 2 at the bottom bc tumblr fucking hates me UPDATE I FIXED IT THANK FUCK

Paimon was like "and then we go to Mondstadt- ! NO, not Wolvendom, to Mondstadt! NOT THE THOUSAND WIND TEMPLE WITH ENEMIES OUT OF UR LEAGUE, ENTER MONDSTADT FOR THE FIRST TIME BEFORE U EXPLORE THE REST OF THE MAP!! >:("

SO MANY IDEAS YET SO LITTLE WRITING SKILL GUYS HELP-

Also warning this is ROUGH in terms of spelling and editing and im so sorry abt that! I have my art show today so you're welcome to come back if you want to see it a little more readable tomorrow lmao

Edit Update 4/6/23:

Revised and fixed all the bad spelling and grammar (hopefully) so make sure to give another read if you havent read the cleaned up version lol

I dont have a beta reader so its just me trying my best ok-

Everything was like kinda chaos tbh at first

WOW- MY FIRST 1,000+ NOTES POST??!?! U GUYS, WHAT ARE R YOU DOIN??!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!! IM GLAD U GUYS ENJOYED IT SM!! Also look out for more encoded stuff in the future since i mentioned wanting to continue stuff like this + ARG stuff :) <3

Edit 9/7/23: 2,000+ NOTES?? THANK YOU???

Like u wake up under the Irminsul, and u think ur hallucinating a goddamn gacha game for like a solid 5 minutes, or ur lucid dreaming, 

but once u actually took what felt like hours to process that u might actually be in fucking Genshin Impact-

Nahida came running from, somewhere?? Its kinda just very floaty dreamy in here so, unclear, she’s beaming with a giddy little smile (💘)

It’s… so much more than what her game model could manage.

I mean, you knew that, of course you did, but- to see the tiny goddess smiling in person, her cute chubby arms waving in the air, her cheeks all plump with baby fat from her excited smile, pretty green eyes that sparkle only in the way excited toddlers do-

It was just…wow. 🥺

You can’t help it, her sheer carefree excitement, exactly like a child but you know that she must be really overwhelmed with joy if shes letting herself act like that so blatantly, you feel ur muscles tug gently into a smile, you try to muffle it but ur happiness leaks out anyway

She's panting as she stumbles on short chubby legs to reach you.

After just staring at you with those big green clover eyes for a few seconds, she physically shakes her head to knock herself out of it,

Nahida places her hand over her heart, and bows elegantly, going back to looking at you with a small but bright smile, her voice is kind of quiet, muffled in a soft way, much like her game depiction,

“Hzozn! R'ev yvvm dzrgrmt gl nvvg blf! R wrwm'g gsrmp blf dlfow wvhxvmw fmgro R dzh zg ovzhg z uvd gslfhzmw bvzih low!” *

…Nahida begins to look a little concerned… her eyes get impossibly bigger.

…Oh no.

♧

Nahida had apparently quickly spread the news that you can’t understand them, but luckily it seems like all the characters still know you!

Alhaitham is pretty much a constant by your side, you knew he was vaguely studying linguistics in the akademiya… but that knowledge still didn’t prepare you to be intensely stared at with his diamond pupils for hours. 💀

Then he’d tap your shoulder or something, and you quickly picked up that he wanted you to just try and say something.

Then he would scribble for hours.

Turns out they can understand you about as much as you understand Teyvat language (s? You can’t even tell if there are multiple languages, that’s how unrecognizable this language is, damn)

The more extroverted or friendly people, like Venti, Yoimiya, Kazuha, Jean, Noelle, Amber, Xingqiu, Hu Tao, Zhongli, Ganyu, Barbara, Beidou, Collei, Ayaka, Gorou, Nilou

At least attempt to talk to you, and try very hard to watch what you gesture with your hands or body language

They're pretty much ready to play charades at all times for you lol

Interestingly enough, they only ever understood you when you typed in the chat (with other ppl)

But even then not immediately, 

Sumeru scholars basically had to make a whole new department (regardless of how much you play with others) to decipher your ancient language (to them) like those old clay tablets with cuneiform we’re still translating?

Like that, your words appear in elemental magic heavy places (so like that abyss lang. It’ll appear on walls or structures, so like Andrius’ stone colosseum? in Wolvendom gained some of your chat replies inscribed and glowing a rainbow of colors on the top edges of the walls)

Much like the abyss language you see throughout genshin, most Teyvat scholars (across nations/internationally) agreed your language is the oldest form of language known!

It’s like modern languages having roots in older ones, like English with Latin, greek, or German roots, or Sanskrit and the Prakrit for Hindi language today

…so of course no one really speaks the root languages anymore, because they’re so old, so those ancestors who spoke those languages would have little to no understanding of their modern counterparts…

◇

Occasionally if you turned your mic on for whatever reason there would be a gentle whisper on the winds in Mondstadt of your voice,

or your laugh in the waves washing ashore in Inazuma and Fontaine,

your startled noises or screams from battling bosses mixed with the landslides in the mountains of Liyue

So they know what you sound like, but that doesn’t mean they understood your language :/

Nahida had been hoping that you’re actual physical form being here would help improve the language barrier

But unfortunately, those things remained the same, but at least you were physically here to talk to now and give more content for the scholars to study rather than them having to make do with your snippets of language from chats

…so needless to say, it took you a long time to realize they viewed you as a god of sorts.

You kind of knew something was up when at least two allogenes were by your sides at all times, or eremites would replace them if they really couldn’t stick around

You figured they knew you weren’t nearly as combatant-ready as they were at all times, hell you obviously didn’t have a vision hanging off you somewhere, and you only really had a knife strapped to a belt, courtesy of the Thirty Corps

You are still kind of convinced that the people of Teyvat, or Sumeru at least, are just pretty polite (and in the allogenes case, very kind or friendly, even people like Alhaitham or Cyno, resting bitch faces they have, seem to soften a little when they’re walking around with you… maybe you’re just imagining it…)

And as much as you would love to wait until they understand you to do something more fun, as you can see the frustration on Tighnari’s face (and his ears try to flatten back hehe) as he looked like he was debating heatedly with some of the Sumeru sages who insist you stay in the city

…so why not go?

It’s not like they’re going to get it anytime soon, and it’s still too frustrating for yourself to charade things or draw things for them because you can’t even hear their guesses 💀

You can totally handle being like the traveler too, 

You still have access to your inventory afterall! Plus, lucky for you, you still find a pass for the Serenitea Pot in your little pocket dimension!

So now you have somewhere to sleep at night, and while most of your stuff went to the traveler’s pack, the things like Primogems

(which.. Okay now you really want primogems bc theyre so pretty and shiny irl)✨️

And other high-level things, or just objects of no use for the traveler (so basically all your hoarded level up stuff and infinite amount of weapons lol) came along with you

So you did have to wander the first week or so around the city and even commission the Adventurer’s Guild to grab you food supplies to cook with

Filling up, along with a few big waterskins, you’re off!

...and everyone collectively has a heart attack!

◇

When you show up in Ghandaraville essentially all “✨️💖☺️✨️” on Tighnari’s doorstep-

He chokes on the tea he’d been sipping on before he opened the door lol

He looks a little frazzled so you try to just gesture with “calm yourself small animal” energy with your hands

“Tivzgvhg Oliw! R'n- R- sld wrw blf-?! Mvevinrmw, xlnv rm, xlnv rm, ivhg! ...R mvvw gl hvmw z nroorlm ovggvih mld gl ylgs gsv vmgriv xrgb lu Hfnvif, gsv Zxgrmt Tizmw Hztv, zmw gsv Nzgiz nlhg orpvob…” he began out looking at you and talking and gesturing to his small dining table (the game sucks, his house looks great and has lots of cool rooms filled with interesting plants… oooo…so pretty...) 

But then he kinda just devolved into rambling, no need to understand, you can read the vibes and just know that's what he's doing lol

Collei eventually ducks in, and she looks a little panicked?

She’s quickly followed by Cyno, pushing past her to call out into the house,

His voice seems hard and stressed, looking at Tighnari, “Grtsmzir, szev blf hvvm gsv Tivzgvhg Oliw zmbdsviv, gsvb dviv hvvm xlnrmt gl Tszmwziezeroov ozhg-” 

Cyno stops and blinks.

Collei’s mouth is slightly dropped open, she also just, blinks.

You blink. 

Tighnari blinks tiredly, he looks like he’d rather be done for the day, you think.

The doctor sighs, and moves his head to nod towards the other dining seats.

◇

Sumeru foods are so much better looking in real life, and they’re so good too, your practically bloated by the end of dinner, 

As a thank you, bc u cant say it obv, you just gesture for Tighnari to stay sitting, and he gives you a raised eyebrow and a suspicious ear twitch

But stays still, and you reach out to finally hit the eight-pointed star hovering over his, and all playable characters chests at all times.

Like you suspected, it brings up a holographic character menu, but rather than his full model, it kind of hovers in front of Tighnari’s face, replacing his old 3D model self with framing the real thing for a portrait just in front of his face

The poor Denro user nearly jumps a foot out of his chair as he looks in shock at your screen, you do the same “chillll boy” gesture with your hands and press his shoulders for a second to remind him to not run off or panic

Cyno and Collei had done the dishes and put up leftovers, and are now standing behind Tighnari, watching with equally wide eyes,

“...Dszg ziv gsvb wlrmt gl blf?

Cyno’s voice is even deeper and quieter than usual, you feel goosebumps run up your spine

“Ziv blf tvggrmt yovhhvw, Nzhgvi Grtsmzir?!” Collei’s sweet voice is also hushed like she’s witnessing something sacred, Tighnari gently shakes his head negatively in response, his shoulders shrugging,

“Nzbyv? R uvvo... z orggov hgilmtvi, zmw nb Erhrlm rh zxgrmt fk zh dvoo…”

Though he’s replying, Tighnari’s eyes haven’t once left your ancient magic? technology device? hovering in front of him,

and as he crosses his arms and squints to try and look closer at everything floating in front of him, you can see the childlike gleam of awe in his green eyes, (so cute) in fact, now that you glance up and look, both Collei and Cyno have the same quietly excited and fascinated sparkle in their eyes too

With a displeased sneer, you chuck his old level one bow into the material grinding spots, hope he wasn’t attached to that…

Oh well, he’ll like the new one better, afterall, with no characters, all your best weapons and artifacts are ready to use!

With a small smile of reassurance, you finally finish gearing Tighnari up, tap a miniature version of that 8-point star in the corner like an “X” button, and it retreats like a classic TV set📺 turning off into his chest, he startles but then carefully stands

You decide to just start making decisions bc its worked out so far ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And grab his hand and haul him out into the forest, Collei letting out a surprised squeak, her and Cyno hurrying after

You reach the nearest clearing, and gesture at Tighnari like a bow and arrow firing, he gets it, and your glad he already trusts you, because he doesn’t take long to summon his bow

He takes aim at a smaller tree about two cars length away

You can feel them all holding their breathe, as Tighnari charges it with Dendro, the arrowhead glowing, (it looks so cool and badass irl god you feel envious even tho ur already here-)

The ranger lets it fly, it streaks neon green, whistling through the air, it hits the tree-

and it fucking explodes.

Vines and leaves and the trees roots all rapidly swell like theyre filled with water, like it literally got hit by a superhero with plant powers, which, not that far off actually.

The green floating Dendro seeds make a ring around the tree its so full of elemental energy-

You give a wild grin, you still got it, hell yeah. >:)

Your grin widens as you look over at Tighnari, Collei, and Cyno

Cyno has a smirk lighting up his face, eyes eager, Collei’s jaw has dropped and she’s just frozen staring as the tree finally settles from the burst of the dendro powered arrow

…Tighnari has lowered his bow, and his mouth is only slightly open, his ears perked straight up into the air, shaking with excitement? Happiness? Interest? You don’t know how peopl-animal-hybrid ears work,

and you STILL cant talk to any of them to ask what they thought, so looks will have to do >:/

Tighnari is the first to move, his head snapping over to look at you, the brightest, kinda feral tbh, smile taking over his face-

“Blf pmld, dv xzm'g fmwvihgzmw blf, zmw blf fh, bvg R xzm'g dzrg gl hvv dszg rm gsv dliow blf'iv tlrmt gl wl mvcg. Blf'iv znzarmt."

… and you just 🙂? Cool!

And give a thumbs up👍LMAO

☆

Bonus:

Alhaitham was literally running around Sumeru City trying to find you when you left, tho you did try and leave a translatable-in-3-to-5-business days-note, he didn’t have time to translate that because you were gone.

Or worse, lost in the city, and he would never forgive himself if he lost you, esp as Acting Grand Sage-

Kaveh got a letter a day and a half later from Tighnari letting them know you were having a sleepover in Ghandarvaville lol

Kaveh also had to hunt down Alhaitham to give him said news, then force his roommate to go sit or lay down for the rest of the day to recover lmao

(Haitham honestly kinda freaked Kaveh out bc he’s never seen him that... desperate, it was like seeing a statue emote lol)

♡

ARE YOU KIDDING WE ALMOST HIT LIMIT AGAIN?!

Bro has anyone else had this problem???

I literally had to switch from PC to mobile and copy and paste it there to get all my shit in and tumblr not throw a hissy fit???!!!

FUCKING TUMBLR- SUCK MY BIG FAT- 👹👹 UGH

ANYWAYYYY SO I FINALLY CAVED 

And started doing ciphers for when you dont get teyvat’s language! I meant to do something fun like this for awhile but I wasn’t sure if that would be kind of annoying, but if you’re interested in learning what they actually say (which the whole point of this is that dw it doesnt rlly matter lol) here’s a hint:

*hint = Atbash

:> good luck!

Wish me luck on my art exhibition today!! Then I’ll be homefreeeee 😭

Safe Travels,

💀♒

♡ the beloveds ♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist

[idkwhatever580]

Clean

Pairings: Natasha Romanoff x reader

Prompt: y/n is ten months clean!!!

Warnings: mentions of being clean but it’s very general

A/n: guys this is going up at exactly 11:06 my time because I am officially ten months self harm free at that time today!!!

Natasha walks in the room to see you making a TikTok and she stands there listening to the sound

It is the bridge for Taylor Swift’s song Clean

“Ten months sober I must admit, just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it. Ten months older I won’t give in, now that I’m clean I’m never gonna risk it!”

Nat smiles and says

“What’s that video for?”

You turn around with the brightest smile and say

“I’m ten months clean today!!!”

Nat keeps a straight face and you get sad when she turns out and walks away.

You think that she’d at least congratulate you. But she gave you nothing. Ten months is a big deal. It literally has felt like three years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is thirty minutes later and you’re still kind of bummed out that your own girlfriend, who is the queen of fighting for people to stay clean, didn’t even smile.

Suddenly she bursts into the room and you try to look away hiding your tears but her chirpy voice cuts through your sadness

“Detka look!”

You decide to refrain from looking and she softly steps towards you after setting something down and turns your head towards her.

Her eyes widen with worry when she sees your watery look and she immediately gets into protector mode

“Detka what happened? Did someone say something about the post? Did… don’t tell me something bad happened.”

You shake your head and wipe your tears and say

“No it was you!”

This clearly hit her hard and she says

“Wha- darling what do you mean?”

“You weren’t even happy that I am clean!”

She looks down into your eyes deeply and says

“Dorogoy, you are the most amazing thing that has happened to me. I am so so incredibly proud that you have achieved such a thing as this. Staying clean for this long means you can literally do anything.”

This makes you smile a bit.

“Now.. I don’t want you thinking I don’t care about you. I didn’t react when you originally told me because I immediately knew I had to go out and buy some things, with Tony’s card of course, to celebrate this achievement okay?”

You nod your head and perk up when she tells you she bought stuff for you. You love being spoiled by her. And she loves spoiling you.

She nods her head to the side to indicate that you should look over on the floor and you see a small slice of cake that looks like it would be perfect for two people and a little stuffy.

You look at her and say

“For me?”

She chuckles softly at your innocence and nods her head and you immediately run to grab it.

The little stuffy is an exact replica of your childhood stuffy but only a little smaller which makes you want to cry but you don’t because you’re too busy asking if you can have the cake.

“Can I eat the cake now?”

Nat laughs softly and says

“Of course. You can have it all”

You frown and shake your head and say

“No I wanna share it with you”

So you drag Natasha to the floor where the cake is sitting and you both eat it together laughing and sharing sneaky kisses with each other.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/n: I initially was going to keep it direct and talk about $h because that’s what I am clean of today but I decided that there are many things you can be clean/sober from and it should be general. I hope you liked it!!

Masterlist

Taglist

@ilovesnat @ihartnat @marvelnatasha12346 @moistblobfish @justarandomreaderxoxo @lovelyy-moonlight @symp4nat @ale-estrabao

Have a fluffy monster guy :)))

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The disrespect toward indigenous peoples is what popped put at me today in one of your posts. I wonder how long the English have been looking down on the Welsh. We're the Saxons like that or is it the Normans who really thought they were better than everyone else. Cause it seems like it goes back a long way.

Oh, both, just in different ways. The Normals were imperialist, the Saxons were more theft and landgrab.

Something that makes me want to start hurling knives is the INCREDIBLY COMMON English myth that the Anglo-Saxons were a sweet innocent indigenous British people who were conquered and bullied by those mean nasty Normans (and Vikings), and because the Normans came over via France, that means everything was actually THEIR fault, and the true English i.e. the Anglo-Saxons, were victims too :(

When I say it's incredibly common, by the way, I really mean it. Enormous numbers of modern day English people believe this. I've seen BBC programs about the Viking invasions that claimed without a trace of irony that the Vikings would take slaves from "the native Anglo-Saxons". I've literally had English people comment this shit on posts of mine about Celtophobia and Welsh history. Like I'm there describing how the last Prince of Wales was locked in a wooden cage in Bristol Castle at the age of eight and lived out the remainder of his life there until his fifties so the Welsh would know their place, and some snivelling English cunt will straight up write a message going "Teehee really it was the Normans not the English though and they conquered the poor Anglo-Saxons too, poor England uwu"

Anyway in the dying days of the Roman empire in Britain one of the leading reasons for Rome abandoning Britannia was the constant waves of Anglo-Saxon invaders. There were so many the east coast of Britain became known as the Saxon Shore. There were so many the Romans built a line of forts that were and are literally called Saxon Shore Forts. There were so many that an official, historically documented, paid governmental position in Roman Britain was the Count of the Saxon Shore, i.e. the guy responsible for keeping the bastards out.

Rome had banned native military, of course, so when they then withdrew and took the armies with them, the people left had no defences against the incoming waves of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. England fell pretty quickly, Angles in the north, Saxons in the south, Jutes primarily in the east, I believe. What stopped their westward expansion was the Brythonic Celtic nations living in modern day Wales. And this is the origin of the Welsh dragon - those separate kingdoms needed a banner that united them, and represented Not Saxon. An anti-Saxon force. They chose a red dragon.

This is also the origin of King Arthur. An anti-Saxon king of the Brythons, who would repel these Germanic invaders. (It was several centuries later that England realised they should probably steal the term 'British', because otherwise they were marking themselves as 'not native'.)

Anyway the saving grace of the Anglo-Saxons in the end was actually that they were whiny little bitches who gave up trying to fight in Wales with its difficult mountains and fought each other instead. The whole sorry tale of the Heptarchy is the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fighting like cats in a bag, while Saxon king Offa built a dyke along the Welsh border and went "WELL YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED OVER HERE" and every Welsh king went "...we literally didn't want to conquer you anyway, you spectacularly sad and stupid man"

Oh, and of course, there's the name 'Wales'. Given to us specifically by the Anglo-Saxons. And translated by centuries of English scholars, mostly very smugly, as 'foreigners'. A fun bit of early propaganda, look - foreigners in our own country that they tried and failed to steal.

All of which is a circuitous way of saying - yeah, it goes way back.

[thrillered]

'You Know I Mountain Dew It For Ya" | Spencer Agnewx F!Reader | Pt. 3: You blew up.

I hope you guys like this part! I struck inspiration.

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You chose to ignore your phone the next morning, putting on do not disturb and opting to put on a record while you got ready and popping in a CD on the way to work. You walked into the office, putting on a smile as you greeted people on your way to the kitchen to get a coffee.

 Normally you were one of the first people in the office, making a large pot of coffee so that it was hot and ready for your coworkers. Today, however, you didn’t have a morning meeting or shoot block so you didn’t have to come in until 11. It was a little ritual you had begun the year prior. On days where you didn’t have to be in early you would stay offline until absolutely needed. It was a welcome break from your constant social presence. 

Your morning had been so peaceful, little did you know that online, things were very different. Your song blew up on both tiktok and twitter. You had amassed more than 500,000 streams just the first night. 

You were walking to your desk, iced coffee in hand when someone grabbed it from your hand, placing it on the nearest surface. Before you could blink you were swinging around, being lifted by strong arms, in a suffocating hug, a squeal escaping your lips. You recognized who it was almost instantaneously, the familiar scent of amber and citrus embracing you.

“Well good morning to you too” You laughed to Spencer as he set you down. 

“Good morning? Just good? It’s a fantastic morning! Nay! A Stupendous morning!”

“Okay wow, this is some positivity,” You laughed, “What’s got you so bright eyed and bushy tailed?”

“Are you absolutely serious Y/N?” He raised his eyebrows so high you could imagine them flying right off his forehead. “Have you not looked at literally anything this morning?” 

“No, I never do on late mornings, you know that Spence.” 

“Oh my god, you’re ridiculous,” He began, pulling out his phone, “Look at this Y/N, this is insane.” 

You looked at his screen, becoming suddenly dizzy at the words in front of you. 567 thousand streams of Espresso. You stared, swallowing thickly before emitting a loud “What the fuck?!” 

“You’re also trending on twitter and tiktok!” Spencer continued, your mind still not believing the number you had read. “Dude, you might have been famous for smosh but.. Now you're just famous, like really famous.” 

It was like the most intense high of your life. You had never had a song blow up like this, god, you had never had a song do even a 10th as good as this. You were sitting on cloud nine, this is what nirvana must feel like you thought. 

Then your stomach sank. If there were maybe 100 comments about Spencer last night, there had to be thousands now�� 

You may have fucked up. On one hand your music career might take off like you’ve always dreamed! On the other hand you’re gonna have to discuss this with Spencer and that means confronting your own feelings which is not ideal.

“I need to use the bathroom.” You muttered before running off to the single bathroom, leaving Spencer more confused than he’s ever been, and that’s saying something.

 Shutting and locking the door behind you, you took a long deep breath. You leaned against the door and unlocked your phone, turning off the do not disturb to a bombardment of notifications. Friends, family, fans, everyone was texting, tagging, and tweeting you. You were overjoyed at the love your song was receiving. People were tagging you in the most loving reviews and giving the highest appreciation for the song. 

You were just scrolling, reading tweet after tweet in the “Espresso” and “Y/N from Smosh” Tag. you retweeted a post from a smosh fan account saying “I know Y/N from smosh. You know Y/N from Espresso… we are not the same”. You laughed before switching to tik tok and going through some of your notifications. You would never be able to see every video, there were just too many. You were totally engrossed, the real world fading away. Until a loud knock startled you out of your trance.

“Y/N I don’t know if you're having a crisis or what but I need to pee and you have a shoot.” Amanda’s voice yelled through the door. 

You unlocked and opened the door, seeing that half an hour had gone by. “I am so sorry Amanda, I don’t know how I spent so much time in there.” You laughed.

“You’re good honey,” She laughed, walking past you into the bathroom, “Oh and huge congrats on the song, that’s really cool, we’re all really proud of you.” 

You gave her a sweet smile before rushing to the sound stage. You were doing an episode of reddit stories with Shayne and Spencer, this week's theme was missing, it featured stories about missed connections, missed chances, and missed hints. 

“You okay?” Shayne asked as you walked into the set, heading over to get your mic. 

“Yeah of course, just got a little overwhelmed is all.” you smiled. 

“I can understand that, there’s a lot of attention on you right now, but it looks like a lot of love so that’s good,” He began, soothing your nerves, “Plus right now you get to hear about some idiots with your two favorite idiots.” he laughed. 

“Yeah, you're right, thank you Shayne.” You laughed with him.

“We’re all really proud of you though Y/N” Shayne finished, pulling you into a comforting hug. “Alright let’s get this shit going.” 

The stories were crazy, as always. Though, it was almost hard to focus on what Shayne was saying with Spencer so close. Your realization that you would have to confront your own feelings made it feel almost suffocating to be so close but so casual with him. You thought that if you got too close he would be able to feel your heartbeat or read your mind. You focused on channeling your professionalism and got through the video smoothly, you just hoped it didn’t look weird on camera. 

–

You kind of wanted to avoid Spencer. Your feelings were weird and they were strong, you weren’t sure what to do. Unfortunately you were supposed to be doing a livestream for the games channel at 3 pm and Spencer would, of course, be there. You and Courtney were supposed to play the Sims4. You were gonna be making your sim and dressing her before adding her to the smosh save. 

You and Courtney were sitting at the desk, chatting as you fixed your hair while waiting for the stream to start. Focused on your conversation with Court about how excited she was to show you the sim she had made of you, you hadn’t noticed the chat on the ‘stream starting soon’ screen. 

Everyone was talking about Espresso. Talking about how good it is, how it’s stuck in their heads, asking if there's gonna be a music video, asking for a comment on the ‘Spenspresso’ (as twitter so kindly named) allegations, etc. 

Soon enough Alex let you know your mics were being turned on and the stream was starting.

“Oh my goodness, are we live??” You asked, now glancing at the chat, turning immediately a deep shade of red. “Oh god” 

Courtney immediately realized what you were seeing and tried to change the subject of the chat by introducing the stream and talking about how you were gonna be put into the sims world. It did very little to stop the constant talk about your song. 

Spencer showed you a note from off camera, “You should just talk about it a little.” It read. You nodded before speaking. “Okay let’s address the elephant in the room… I’m wearing my hair differently” You joked, making the room laugh. “No actually, okay, thank you guys for all the love on Espresso, It’s actually so nutty how much you guys like it. However! I will be doing a live stream on my instagram to talk about it sometime today or tomorrow! So, hold your questions! Now let's sims!” You exclaimed.

That seemed to do the trick. The chat mostly switched to talking about the stream, and if the comment was about your music it was relevant to designing your character. 

Courtney did a really good job, the sim looked so much like you, almost unnervingly so. You guys had so much fun trying to style your sim, compromising with the chat by making your party outfit popstar inspired. You added your sim to the world, asking the chat what you should do.

“Spencer’s already with Shayne, they literally have a kid, Y/N can’t get with him, duh!” Courtney said, responding to a comment suggesting making you flirt with Spencer. 

A “Damn it!” could be heard off camera, Spencer nudging your foot with his own as he said it. You both joked about the ship of you two. Yet, you couldn’t help but blush and wish that he truly meant it though. His words didn’t go unnoticed by the chat either, opening a whole new can of worms.

The rest of the stream went by much smoother than you expected. You only realized you had promised an instagram live after the stream had ended. This meant you would have to say something about the Spenspresso conspiracies, and how they might not be conspiracies afterall. You would do it tomorrow, you decided. You already had a half day planned tomorrow for an appointment so it gave you time to do it anyway. 

You only had the stream left for the day so you went back to your desk once it ended, packing up your stuff in preparation to leave. 

“You heading out?” Spencer asked, walking over to you, his laptop tucked under his arm. 

“Yep, I’m done for the day.” You explained curtly, hoping to get out of a conversation and home before you word vomited a love confession. Hoping he was satisfied with your answer, you sidestepped him, throwing your bag over your shoulder before muttering a “See ya later Spencer” before swiftly walking to the exit, not stopping to say goodbye to anyone. Which was very unlike you. You were such a sociable person, you always said hello and goodbye to most of the office every day, it was something Spencer liked about you. He enjoyed your extroverted nature, it helped him to be more outgoing. 

He knew there was something wrong. You always give Spencer a hug goodbye, even if he was going to be meeting you at your house in 20 minutes. You barely spoke a word to him all day unless necessary. Not to mention you running away and shutting up in the bathroom this morning. He wondered if he did something to upset you but he couldn’t think of anything. You were together the night prior and were celebrating so he couldn’t imagine he did anything wrong. 

But he was determined to figure it out.

[rafyki]

Part two of the Goth! Nico/Surfer! Percy!! @neo-kid-funk liked it so much I couldn't not post another part so soon!! That's what your art does to me!! Pure inspiration!!!

This time it's Percy's turn to be a huge loser with a huge crush lmao

Part one, if you haven't read it~

~~~

Percy threw himself on his beach towel, trying his best not to spill his precious drink even in his excitement.

“Annabeth, he smiled at me!”

His friend looked up from the huge book she was reading, a skeptic but fond look in her eyes.

“Percy, he works in retail, smiling at customers is literally his job”.

Percy groaned, took a sip of his drink - not alcoholic, but maybe it could make him forget his huge absurd crush on a boy he didn't even know.

The prettiest boy you've ever met though, his brain usefully supplied. What did it even matter that they didn't really know each other and that they had exchanged perhaps a total of twenty words to each other? Nothing, not when said boy had the prettiest features Percy had ever seen, the most enchanting eyes, the deepest and most beautiful voice, and the most charming shade of pink coloring his nose and cheeks. And, finally today Percy could add to the list that he even had the softest and cutest honest smile ever - because Percy could tell the difference between a “customers smile” and an honest one, and the way Nico had smiled today? It couldn't have been anything but honest, and it had made warmth bloom into Percy's stomach, made his heart grow ten sizes.

“No, Annabeth”, he said, at the cost of sounding like a petulant little child. “He smiled for real! He even laughed a little!”

“Did he?”

“I'm telling you he did!”

She seemed to consider it for a long moment. Percy waited with as much patience as he could muster for her opinion. He could always count on Annabeth being horribly and unapologetically honest with him; he could definitely trust her to be the one to offer him a cruel but needed reality check to bring him back to earth.

She had been the main witness of Percy’s fall into the hopeless (or maybe not so hopeless?) rabbit hole that was his crush for the kiosk boy, had been listening to him ranting on and on about him for probably almost a month now, and had been dragged on the beach way too many times against her will for Percy to ignore her valid as always opinion.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean he likes you, Seaweed-brain, you know that, right?”, she said, and Percy knew, but his heart fell anyway. “Still”, she added, and Percy couldn’t help but perk up at the tone of her voice. He knew that tone - it was the tone she used when she was about to say something optimistic even against her better judgment. 

“I guess it is weird for him to smile like that at customers - at least, I’ve never seen him do it - and we do spend a whole lot of time on this beach and at the kiosk”.

She said the last part with just a tiny little bit of annoyance - but Percy knew her well enough to know that she would forgive him eventually.

“I need your support, Annabeth, you know that!”

“You could take Grover with you next time”.

“I did once, remember? He was even more nervous than me”, Percy said. “Not exactly the best wingman”.

Annabeth rolled her eyes at him. “It’s not like you’re doing much but staring at him and daydream anyway”.

Well, that was a low blow, but true.

“That’s not true”, he still said, just for the sake of it. It earned a raised eyebrow and the most skeptical expression he had ever seen on his friend’s face.

“Percy”, she said, slowly as if she was talking to a kid. “Showing off your surfing skills and hoping he’ll find you so incredibly hot he’ll fall on your knees for you is not doing something about this”.

Ouch. Alright, maybe Annabeth’s reality checks were a little too honest and harsh sometimes.

“You can’t know it won’t work”, Percy said.

She was right, of course - she always was, and Percy hated and adored her for it. 

He sighed, setting aside his drink and looking at the kiosk, his eyes finding Nico right away with practiced experience. He was serving someone, and Percy’s first thought was I wonder if he’s smiling like that at them too - which was stupid, and he knew that too, but knowing it didn’t really change anything. Percy was perfectly aware of how ridiculous he was being, but despite what Annabeth might have said about it, knowledge wasn’t always all that mattered.

He sighed, forcing himself to look away.

“What do you think I should do?”

“Well, you really only have two options”, Annabeth said.

It wasn’t exactly hard to guess what she was referring to.

“Either giving up or finding the courage of asking him out?”.

“Precisely”.

“Ugh”, Percy groaned. “You’re not much more helpful than Grover, you know?”

Annabeth laughed. “You know I’m right, Seaweed-brain”.

“I hate you”.

“Hating me won’t make you date the boy of your dreams”.

The boy of your dreams - oh, he really was, wasn’t he? Percy didn’t even know when exactly he had started to be unable to think about Nico, to want nothing more than to talk to him and get to know him for real; things had degenerated pretty fast - one moment Nico was just the cute goth boy working at the beach, and then the next he was Percy’s newest obsession.

It was weird - Nico wasn’t exactly his type; he seemed to be all dark and sharp edges, cloaked in black like he was constantly trying to hide in the shadows even under the bright sun. He looked like the kind of person that kept everyone at arm's length, and it only made Percy want to get closer and closer.

He realized his eyes had turned to him again, following his every move. He was talking to his friends, his words accompanied by wide hand gestures - Percy had noticed this habit of his before; it was adorable, really. Percy wanted to talk to him and see it from up close.

“He’s so pretty Annabeth, I’m gonna die”.

That was probably the thousandth time Annabeth had heard him saying that, so the roll of her eyes was definitely justified.

“Then go talk to him and ask him out”.

Percy groaned. She made it sound so easy.

He got up, took his surfing board again. “Maybe”, he said. “But first I’m going to see if my plan of being too hot to resist is gonna work”.

“You’re ridiculous”.

“Thanks, I didn’t know that”.

Annabeth rolled her eyes again and went back to her book. Who even preferred reading a book on a beach instead of going into the water? Percy would never understand that.

He walked towards the water with his mind still fixed on the same thought. He wondered if Nico liked the ocean - maybe they could enjoy it together, maybe Percy could teach him how to surf.

Maybe. If he could actually find the courage of asking him out.

[meimi-haneoka]

Clear Card Trivia 3 ~ Sakura's journey of growth and self-understanding throughout Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card

Hello and welcome back to my "Clear Card Trivia" series, a collection of informative posts where I delve into certain aspects of the story of Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card! ✨

The topic I will talk about today has been on my "to-do list" for long time. It's something I felt the need to talk about, and I won't hide the reason why: the desire to fully eviscerate this topic grew particularly after reading around certain criticism of Clear Card Arc. But also after listening to CLAMP's Twitter Spaces, particularly the ones towards the end of the story.

It's something that, setting aside my obvious love for the new characters, will always make me think that Clear Card Arc has been a very welcome addition to the series.

This post will delve into Sakura's growth throughout Clear Card Arc.

Sakura grew up considerably during the story, and had a character development that sadly not many people truly realized.

I'm not talking about an evolution of the character design which, despite changing and evolving throughout the story (as it's expected for a long-running serialization), kept depicting Sakura consistently with quite young looks...no, I'm talking about her mental growth, in relation to her self-knowledge and her relationship with her magic powers.

A journey that might almost feel "frustrating", because it is full of "up and downs", and Sakura sometimes seems to be taking one step forward and two back. Aside from the obvious practical reasons (the plot had to develop several other storylines simultaneously), it very much reflects the realistic growth of a pre-teen, which is never a straight line but is made of improvements and relapses.

Along the journey, I couldn't really avoid mentioning some bits of the development of Sakura's relationship with Syaoran, which will get its own deep and detailed post another day.

There's also an extra about the significance of the Clear Cards in the story, at the end.

I have to be honest, the post is very long, but I tried to insert visual elements to make it easier on the eye. If you're curious to know how the hell I found so much to talk about for this specific topic, follow me under the cut and dive into Sakura's journey throughout Clear Card (it's also a good way to review the story)! ✨

A Disconnected Beginning

Clear Card Arc starts in a very "festive" and happy way: everything is peaceful, a new exciting chapter of Sakura's educational life is starting with the beginning of middle school, Syaoran is back to Tomoeda, this time to stay forever with his beloved girl...everything seems so perfect. And precisely in chapter 1, before everything takes an unexpected turn, we have this scene here, which I consider the "true" beginning of everything:

Sakura says "I haven't been using this lately...well, that's for the better".

At the beginning of Clear Card Arc, Sakura seems to be feeling disconnected from her natural gift.

Despite she had to go on a quest to collect all the Clow Cards, which later she gave a new life to by changing them into Sakura Cards, we have to remember that Sakura was born with magic powers. They weren't bestowed on her by Kero-chan, nor by the contract with the Clow Book: she always had magic in her blood, and it apparently "woke up" on that fateful day she found the Clow Book in the library of her father.

At the beginning of this arc, Sakura seems to think that the purpose, the meaning of this natural gift which is literally part of herself, has been fulfilled by transforming all the Cards, and splitting Eriol's power as he had requested. Her words here seem to be suggesting a general idea of "if I have to use this key (therefore, my magic powers), it means something troublesome is happening, so it's better if I'm not using it because it means everything is okay".

And although we can't really deny that what happened afterwards is far from being able to be considered "peaceful", this scene here always left a bad taste in my mouth because there's almost a negative vibe attached to the idea of her magic, transpiring from Sakura's words. It's almost as if she's politely rejecting it.

Precisely after she places her Star Key in her jewelry box, probably hoping to never have to use it again, she has her first premonitory dream of the events that will shake her life afterwards. Almost as if her powers were trying to tell her "no my dear, this is you and you'd better come to terms with it as soon as possible".

Then, as we all know, the Cards turn blank. Sakura produces a new key while having another dream and a quest to fight and "secure" some strange phenomena happening around her begins, leaving her in a state of increasing confusion.

This is the beginning of the part of the story that I quite literally call "Sakura loses sight of herself".

At this very early stage of the story, she still doesn't know that she started losing control over her increasing magical power, and it is definitely not a coincidence that all of this began when she thought of shutting her main magic tool away in a box, hoping to ignore it forever. For plot reasons, this also happens simultaneously to Syaoran taking the spirits of the Sakura Cards away from her (because in the beginning, you had to be tricked into thinking he was up to something shady and was the real mastermind behind all the incidents).

Syaoran expected for Sakura to lose control over her powers, as his mother predicted a general period of trouble for her that could lead her to unhappiness, albeit without any clear indication of what could happen: Syaoran came to Japan knowing something was bound to happen to his girl and her powers, and that something was going to lead her to grief, but he had no idea about all the rest. So his uncertain and reckless approach, which ended up in some cases worsening the situation, is also somewhat understandable. He was acting like a worried, overprotective boyfriend at his wit's end.

The strange events, which Sakura materializes into a new set of Cards, surely leave her distraught and confused, not to mention the situation with the Sakura Cards and Eriol's missing replies, but I feel that what really destabilizes her core are the constant dreams she gets, sometimes even in the middle of her waking hours, making her faint on the spot wherever she is.

Premonitory dreams are a part of her natural gift that she began to express ever since the OG manga, but she never seemed to really understand them or take them seriously.

This time around, she keeps seeing this cloaked figure and this terrifying dragon, no one speaks a word despite her relentless questions and the cloaked figure seems to be wanting to take her newly made key away (Lilie!!! what were you trying to do!! *facepalm* she probably tried to pull her closer so she could talk to her), so it's just normal that all of that leaves her increasingly stressed and anxious, even though initially you never see her openly and verbally stating that, due to her overall positive nature ("I'll manage it, somehow" is part of her "everything will be alright" invincible spell, and this is indeed what she keeps telling herself in the beginning of the arc, even though in some occasions it turned out to be a double-edged sword, as sometimes it looked more like sweeping her fears under the carpet, to me).

"Something Is Not Right"

Dream after dream, Card after Card, Sakura begins to have these general feelings of discomfort and of "something is not right, here", as she openly states to Syaoran in this scene of volume 4, chapter 14. There's something about this situation that is pricking her sixth sense, and makes her uneasy, but she can't quite put her finger on it yet. All she can do is to keep "fighting" these phenomena happening around her, hoping to find out more along the way. She reiterates the same feeling of uneasiness at the end of chapter 15, after what I consider one of the most concerning side-effects of her poor control over her powers: Sakura seems almost "in trance" while she leads her guardians to the exit of the maze, and acts in a very uncharacteristic, cold way by shoving her bag in front of Yue to make him hold it for her. It's almost as if her magical sixth sense worked too strongly and warped her personality in that moment: an effect that has been mentioned several times in relation to powerful magicians like Clow, Eriol and later Kaito too, so it's not farfetched at all to attribute this one-off occurrence to her loss of control over her strong powers, which ended up affecting her personality too. Luckily, it didn't happen again in the rest of the story and the capture of this Card was completely changed in the anime (a wise decision imho, since the JP fandom is particularly fussy about the integrity of Sakura's character, and she needed to stay "Sakura" in order to do what she did at the end).

At the culmination of a "mini arc" (the visit to great-grandpa Masaki) characterized by uncontrolled visions of Nadeshiko, another frightening dream (one that ended up dragging even Akiho in, due to the synchronization) and Sakura for the first time ever confronting Syaoran about the things he's been hiding from her, we reach the following scene of volume 5, chapter 23.

"I Wish I Had A Mirror"

I always considered this scene extremely important, because for the first time Sakura spells out clearly the inner turmoil that's been gnawing at her soul ever since this ordeal with the new Cards started.

"The truth is...I'm the worst at understanding myself. And that is probably causing lots of concern to everyone." "I wish I had a mirror. A mirror that could reflect the real me. Then, I would probably understand how to not make everyone worry"

Here, Sakura clearly spells out the frustration of knowing, feeling in her bones that there's something wrong with her, something that she's not understanding about herself, and that something is causing problems, but most importantly, is causing her loved ones to worry about her. Let's not forget that not only Syaoran, but also Yukito, Touya, Fujitaka, Tomoyo, Eriol & his family have all been watching her situation in apprehension, each of them making decisions and moving discretely in a direction they felt was right (and admittedly, not all instances were so).

Sakura can somehow feel all of that, she can feel that it's related to something she still hasn't realized about herself. This tends to be forgotten because it happens in a relatively early part of the plot, but notice how this is the same problem Kaito suffers from. A quite stunted ability to understand oneself. Sakura and Kaito definitely have lots in common, when it comes to this specific part of themselves. Keep this in mind, because it'll be relevant later.

And then, the situation worsens.

Sakura's dreams start to terrify her, because they begin to show Syaoran's face under the cloak of the mysterious figure who's scaring her in her dreams. An apparent truth she cannot accept, she won't accept, even though she's still unsure about what exactly these dreams she's having are. Despite her boyfriend has been acting shady for long time, she decides to trust him and wait for him to talk to her about all the stuff he's holding inside, instead of putting him through the wringer. This also means, though, that Sakura will keep all her fears to herself, eventually bottling up.

Furthermore, Kaito starts to rewind time to fix a situation without a way out (in chapter 28, Akiho was on the verge of going berserk completely and unleash the artifact), creating an additional sense of confusion when Sakura can feel that her finger is numb due to strain, but she can't understand why (she had fought Kaito's time magic unconsciously). Whenever Kaito will rewind time, even later on, Sakura's magical sixth sense will try to wake her consciousness up more and more, giving her these vibes of "deja vu" or making her act in an apparently inexplicable way.

In the first part of Clear Card, Sakura sometimes literally looks like a soul wandering about in confusion, dragged by the events.

I wish to point out that this is not a flaw in the characterization, it is a precise design by CLAMP. Sakura IS, in this part of the story, confused and lost, overwhelmed by the events. She has no idea how to approach this matter other than "treating the symptoms" as they come. This happens because she's still, surprisingly, quite reluctant to embrace a fundamental part of herself: her innate magic power, which expresses itself mainly through her intuition. But we'll gradually get there.

Around chapter 30, before the big realization, Sakura's situation reached a point where:

- her Sakura Cards unexpectedly became blank; - almost everyday (sometimes multiple times a day) there's a new incident that she secures into new transparent Cards; - she constantly sees ominous dreams (in scattered order) with a cloaked figure acting in a questionable way and a scary dragon, and at some point she starts seeing her boyfriend under that cloak; - her boyfriend acts shady, Eriol doesn't reply to her messages; - there's a general feeling of "something is not right" with her magic and some stuff starts to not make sense to her (because Kaito rewinds time)

It is at this point that Sakura finally moves one (giant) step forward and connects all the "puzzle pieces" she collected (particularly, how much more "obvious" the creation of a Card became) and understands that she's been the one causing subconsciously each and every single incident that lead to the creation of a new transparent Card.

"I'm Angry At Myself"

And with Syaoran finally coming clean with her (because at that point he had no reason to keep things hidden anymore, as the thing he was trying to delay ultimately happened - and believe me, I'm sure he partly felt relieved to not need to lie anymore, as that took quite a toll on him too), Sakura can at last give an explanation to at least a part of the things that are happening. And she finally realizes that the doubt that was tormenting her was true: she DID, in fact, not understand something very important about herself, she didn't realize that it was her own power going out of control and that all the incidents that happened bore "her magic signature", so to speak. She failed to "tune in" with her magic.

For the first time ever, Sakura expresses anger at herself.

She will direct that anger (to a lesser extent) to Syaoran too, but I'll tackle that in a separate post.

This is a moment of deep reflection and regrets for Sakura: the poor understanding of herself, the poor "communication" between her heart and her magic powers brought to a situation where her most beloved person was putting himself in danger in order to protect her, while trying to not make things escalate. This is a very sensitive, beautiful and important moment, steeped in conflicting and complex feelings (and remember, Sakura is just a pre-teen. It is normal for a pre-teen like her to not understand herself, but there's just one tiny detail: she's not a common pre-teen, due to her natural gift, and she needs to take that into account). Eventually Sakura calms down, and after creating Rewind, her resolute face while hugging tightly Syaoran suggests that from now on she'll face this matter from another, more courageous and determined perspective.

Or at least, these were her good intentions. Because unfortunately, insecurities are hard to eradicate and in the central part of the story it's shocking to realize how far longer Sakura will insist in shutting away her emotions and refusing to listen to her heart (and intuition) fully.

"It's Just My Imagination"

Part of Sakura's anxiety might have been sedated with the revelation that the Clear Cards are produced by the girl herself, but unfortunately the true core of her problems was not solved at all and will only surface more clearly in the next 20 chapters.

Sakura actively starts having "premonitory bad feelings" when she sees Akiho in volume 7 chapter 34, a bad feeling that she does check with Syaoran, but quickly dismisses as "well, it's just my imagination". This will basically be one of the major problems preventing her from reaching the complete control of her magic. Sakura, knowing her magic potential, should've given way more credit to her sixth sense, but her anxiety, her insecurity and her crippled connection to her innate gift still pushes her to dismiss these "signs" as nothing really important or true. Timely as hell, a few hours later something bad will indeed happen to Akiho, where she completely loses consciousness for the first time and the clan/Association actively starts to absorb Sakura's power through the artifact implanted in Akiho. All of this was caused by the high concentration of magic that "triggered" Akiho's artifact (and here I have to sarcastically "applaud" Kaito, just like Syaoran he's another one who does stuff before thinking through, ultimately worsening the problem).

Once trapped in Akiho's artifact, thanks to her power Sakura can see the most horrifying glimpse of Akiho's past, when she was turned into a magic artifact, by living it on her own skin. And even though Kaito is forced to rewind time once again to save the situation, erasing these memories from Sakura's head, her heart (which is tightly connected to her magical sixth sense - I'd daresay her heart is straight up the source of her magic) DOES REMEMBER, pushing Sakura to act in an apparently irrational way, crying and hugging Akiho tight in empathy. Sakura is particularly shaken by this feeling, still in pain even hours later, but once again she doesn't understand where it comes from. However, she does express with Syaoran an intention to talk to him about it once she's able to put it into words, and in the meantime do her best with all the rest. At least, there's an intention to understand better this part of herself, but it's still soon to see actual results.

Aaand CLAMP really seem to be wanting to test Sakura in this arc, because at this point of the plot, they add the electrocution spell. 😅 No one seems to understand who caused it (it's not Sakura, nor Kaito, but now we know it was none other than Yelan!!) and Sakura's anxiety increases once again. The fact only Syaoran gets affected by it inevitably reignites the doubts in her mind, unwittingly reminded of that terrifying dream of Cloaked Syaoran she keeps seeing...but she stubbornly keeps telling herself "no, it's not like that, it's just a dream". It's undeniable that this situation where she cannot understand her foretelling dreams yet, and the way they show her scattered hints because her power is out of control, has surely contributed to Sakura's insecurity when it comes to trust her own intuition.

Her power is so out of control at this point, that even when Kaito shrinks her and throws her in a hole carved into a tree (landing in a "world" created with magic where he hopes she'll create the right Card) her dreams take over again (it's apparent by the "shaaan" sound and how everything turns suddenly pitch black, a common background of her dreams), showing her Akiho in the dress she was wearing when she was turned into an artifact and, inevitably, Sakura's biggest fear, "Cloaked Syaoran". Pay attention because these visions she's getting here thanks to her power match what will happen later on: what the talking flowers tell her here will turn out to be the beginning of the lyrics of the main theme of the "Alice in Clockland" play. This vision of Cloaked Syaoran seemingly "about to do something" to Akiho horrifies Sakura to the point of screaming in terror and creating one of the most unsettling Cards, "Break". It is after this very scary moment that Sakura starts to wonder very specifically for what purpose she is creating all these Cards. The purpose is actually more than one, but she definitely posed herself THE RIGHT question, as this brings her one step closer to the core of the problem and eventually embracing her own magic abilities.

Then, between chapters 43 and 45 we finally start to see some changes in Sakura: surprisingly, she begins to listen more to her sixth sense, first catching Yukito red-handed while activating a newly acquired magic, and then wondering about a strange painful feeling in her chest when her father tells her that lately she and Akiho became even more similar. We were all lead to believe that this was the foreshadowing of Akiho taking her place (cause everything in the plot at this point deceivingly hints at Kaito wanting to switch them), but she actually was getting foreshadowings of the "rewritten world", where Sakura would genuinely feel wrecked to know that someone important to Akiho was missing, precisely when Akiho would've become part of her family as her twin. In fact, in chapter 45, before falling completely asleep, she hears again the ominous "you won't be able to come back" (the Association's threat to Kaito), wondering WHO wouldn't be able to come back - somehow, Sakura knows that it's not directed at her.

"Just Tell me Honestly How You Feel"

And then, we reach another moment that I consider pivotal for Sakura's growth during this Clear Card Arc. The moment when she's on the verge of breaking down and finally lets all her feelings out.

Her anxiety over the dream with the Cloaked Figure reached the highest peak, so much that she finally manifests a Card, Mirage, that challenges her precisely with that appearance. While Sakura battles that Card (which at the moment she still believes it's an actual person), she seems resoluted to get to the bottom of this story, and to pull down that hood to know the truth. You can really feel that she's so done with all this psychological torture. The fact the real Syaoran appears right at that moment and she finds out the person she saw was just a Card is partly a relief for her, but also throws Sakura again in despair because who the hell is that person in the dream, then??

Syaoran, as the good and attentive boyfriend he is, can just feel that Sakura is stressing over something, so he brings her to his home to help her calming down. And to her umpteenth attempt at sweeping her negative emotions under the carpet, beating around the bush commenting over the tea with a fake smile, he cuts immediately her bullshit and just tells her : "You don't need to force yourself. Just tell me how you feel right now". When she hears that she's allowed to speak out her emotions with honesty, Sakura wears on her face one of the most heartbreaking expressions of the entire manga. She's literally about to break down in tears of exhaustion, as you can see it above. ☝️ Listening to her, gradually, Syaoran encourages Sakura to get out all that's been torturing her lately, particularly about the dream with the Cloaked Figure. It is a very difficult moment for her, because she has to relive the dream, and expose in front of him all the fears and doubts that were trying to tamper with her trust in him. Courageously, she goes through with it, even though her denial ("it's just a dream!") is so strong that she ends up creating another Card: "Dreaming". Sakura at first seems relieved to see the Card, in the hope that everything she saw was indeed a mere messed up dream and nothing else (see? she's again self-sabotaging her relationship with her magic) but Syaoran with his frankness is quick to bring her feet on the ground: the kanji on the Card show "yumemi", and the word can also indicate a "foretelling dream".

Although Sakura seems disheartened at first, her next dream with the Cloaked Figure is much more relaxed, so much that even the dragon doesn't particularly scare her anymore: our girl's intuition makes her correctly feel a sense of loneliness in this dream, which she attributes to the hooded figure, not realizing that it was more likely coming from the dragon itself (aka, Kaito). After all, in chapter 72, Lilie will confirm that her presence ended up distracting her from the one "character" she should've paid all of her attention to. Her intuition, despite being misattributed, ended up having a positive effect through the synchronization with Akiho: the girl will wake up with the same feeling of discomfort of her friend, and as if guided by hitsuzen, she will head to the garden where she'll find a sickly Kaito staring at the moon - most likely feeling the loneliness Sakura perceived in her dream. I like to think that in this scene of chapter 48, Sakura subconsciously helped Akiho comforting Kaito, by waking her up with the unresting feeling, precisely when Kaito needed it the most. Still not completely embraced her magical sixth sense yet, but a significant improvement.

The road between chapter 48 and chapter 52 is paved with lots of struggles, as the Mirror Sakura Card gets stolen by Kaito, Sakura runs the risk of being absorbed into Akiho's artifact again, she meets Momo for the first time and she's even given a hint about Kaito's plan (or what Momo thought was his plan, as he had benignly lied to her about that), but almost all of that gets rewound and erased when Kaito intervenes. Moreover, despite not remembering anything consciously, Sakura is left with a sense of unhappiness when she looks at her home, a remnant of her brief journey in the world of Momo's book which straight up threw her into despair, showing her what her life would be if everyone forgot about her. She also finds once again a Card produced out of nowhere, "Time": I'm convinced she produced this Card because her conscience was awake while Momo and Kaito talked in stopped time, and their conversation triggered her sixth sense to produce Time as a result. Needless to say, all of this worsens her state of mind once again, which leads to the other pivotal, and finally resolutive, scene of chapter 52.

Never Avert Your Eyes From Your Heart

We finally get to what I consider THE scene, the one that will definitively shake Sakura from her deadlock, from the anxiety that stunted her connection with her innate gift and her deepest emotions. And the one who helps her overcoming all her fears is, of course, the love of her life - with a honorable mention for none other than his mother Yelan!!

Chapter 52 got a very, very special place in my heart, because it's basically one giant parallel between SyaoSaku and YunaAki. The two pairings experience similar situations, but the response from one side of each pairing is quite different. Let's remind you for a moment of the part earlier in this post when I told you that Kaito and Sakura, for most of Clear Card, surprisingly have one thing in common: they don't seem to understand themselves well enough, and both have a tendency to look away from feelings that cause unrest to their hearts - anxiety for Sakura, love for Kaito.

Syaoran, always attentive and observant towards his girlfriend, notices immediately that Sakura is suffering, as soon as he sees her at school. Despite being unable to touch her to comfort her, he offers all of himself to support and listen to her concerns. Sakura is visibly and pleasantly surprised of how the boy could read behind her mask, that usual contrived smile with which she tries to dissimulate her emotions and not make him worry. A bad habit she's consolidated lately, but that Syaoran is gently determined to dismantle. After opening up with him (and this is where Sakura differs from Kaito - by having an established relationship made of love and trust with Syaoran, Sakura lowers her walls with him), she falls once again into the usual trap of "but maybe it's just my imagination" and I love to see how Syaoran is her anchor to the ground, making her see the concreteness of this situation: he straight up tells her "you produced a Card out of it, it cannot be 'just your imagination'. " And then, like a precious family gift, he passes on to her the priceless words of wisdom of his mother Yelan, an advice that not only Sakura, but also the other "lost soul" of the other paralleling pairing should listen to:

"People with magical power should never ignore the turmoil and stirring in their hearts, the so-called 'intuition'. And it’s not limited to people with magical powers. People should never avert their eyes from the changes in their heart."

This is a turning point for Sakura. These words seem to positively "break" something inside of her, showing her the correct path to follow. CLAMP beautifully portray this process of "embracing and assimilating" the words she's just heard, by making her place her hand over her heart. I love when they do that (they used the same visual when Akiho heard Kaito's true name, and 'wrote it' on the most important page of the book of her life). Sakura is truly grateful for the words Syaoran relayed to her, precisely what she needed to get out of her impasse with her feelings and magic. She knows she can always count on the support of her soulmate even in the darkest moments, and she's thankful for having him in her life.

From this moment onwards, Sakura will experience several instances where her magical premonitory senses give her signals through the "stirring" of her heart. Contrarily to before, she starts to actively take them seriously, listening, without dismissing them as the delirium of an anxious little girl. This allows her to activate the Siege Card in the fraction of a second, successfully shielding herself from Kaito's time magic, making her the first person ever who achieved that. This also leads her to effectively remember that she saw Kaito using magic, even when time was rewound by him, and contact immediately Syaoran to talk about it, planning how to move from that moment onwards. A little relapse on her bad habit is immediately dispelled by Syaoran, and our girl even goes as far as saying "there's something inside Akiho", even though she's not sure exactly why she's feeling that way. But it's an intuition she's having and she decides to not dismiss it anymore, with everyone trusting and supporting her in that direction. By listening more and better to what her heart tells her, Sakura also decides to not confront Akiho about Kaito and his magic, because she's well aware of the feelings Akiho got for Kaito and she doesn't want to potentially disrupt their relationship. So, she decides to wait for her friend to talk about it first.

Thanks to this better understanding of her own intuition, she also says in chapter 57 that she wants to meet the guardian of the book "Alice in Clockland" once more, despite not remembering if and when she's met her before. This also ultimately leads her to accept the role of Alice in the upcoming play scripted by her friend Naoko, because her sixth sense tells her that it's inevitable for her to do so. It's important to emphasize how the other characters support and encourage her to listen to her innate gift, at this point, without trampling over her self-determination like they did before.

It is a moment of big growth and character development for everyone.

The Ultimate Growth: Finding a Meaning and a Purpose

What happens afterwards is history: the fateful "Alice in Clockland" play unfolds, and Kaito completes his plan to push Sakura to create the Card he needs, exchanging his magic artifact (the watch) with Akiho's one (the book), in addition to activating the forbidden magic to rewrite the memories of everyone, to fit Akiho as part of Sakura's family.

Sakura's intuition will be crucial to wake her true self up while in Clockland, succeeding in beating Kaito's magic multiple times, till Syaoran comes in and gives the "final blow", cutting off the spell definitively.

And even when everything seems lost because Kaito successfully activated the fobidden magic, changing their memories and erasing himself from their existence, Sakura's magic and sixth sense keep making her say things she either already said or heard before in the "unrewritten world". Not only that, but even after meeting Lilie in a dream and forgetting her face (due to the strong influence of the forbidden spell), bit and pieces of that conversation keep coming back to her, and she listens dutifully to every single one of these "feelings". Kaito might have overridden part of their memories (only the ones concerning him, Akiho and the events connected to the creation of the Cards), but the experience, feelings and personal growth of each character were left untouched, that's why the chemistry between Sakura and Syaoran is the same as before the play started, but also Sakura's personal relationship with her magic is far better than before (an information that might have seemed random and unimportant is that now Sakura summons Mirror even just to chat, an indication of her completely changed perspective on her magic).

Now that Sakura finally embraced her magical power, all that's left for her is to find a true purpose for it.

A question echoes in my mind, "What am I creating these Cards for?". Sakura poses herself this question halfway through the story, and she finds the answer to it precisely at the end of the journey.

Her powerful magic intuition, combined with her immense empathy, leads her to realize that somebody is missing from their reality, and that person is the one Akiho loves. At this point Sakura is unstoppable: she wants to listen to the voice in her heart that's screaming "Go and help them!! Give the true happiness back to Akiho!", and everyone can only follow her lead as she assertively puts into practice what her heart is telling her to do.

Sakura in this final part of the story shines brighter than ever. She's more assertive and self-confident than ever. All of this is because there's something she strongly wants to do with her innate gift, as Eriol unequivocally says in chapter 75: her power grows exponentially again, but this time it's not out of her control - it is Sakura herself who's voluntarily boosting it, thanks to her strong wish. And that allows her to control it and use it exactly as she wants.

In chapter 79 her growth reaches the highest peak, by handling the resolution of Akiho and Kaito's personal problems in an admirable way (she steps aside for a moment to give Akiho all the agency she needed), but also finding herself in front of an uncomfortable dilemma, which leads her to an unavoidable reality: Sakura quickly understands that she cannot be on everyone's side and there are lines to be drawn at some point. She can't be a pure and oblivious girl forever. She needs to grow up. There are choices to be made, especially when dealing with real evil people.

And Sakura choses to go on with the people she loves, even if that means she has to "stain" her "moral record" a little bit.

Empowered by this strong wish to fix the situation, she literally gives life to a miracle, protecting her dear friend and her beloved from the grasp of their abusers, simultanously giving everyone their true memories back. The effort exerts her greatly, but what she achieved is by far the most important thing she's ever done with her magic power till now: she helped two dear people lost in a life-and-death situation. Her magical growth went along with her personal, mental one.

This is also the reason why the accusations of "the other magicians should've trained her" end up being in vain: Sakura's problem with her powers was mainly on a personal level, not on a technical one. This was a journey she had to mainly walk by herself, finding the right balance and confidence in her abilities, deep down in her heart.

No one could've done that for her.

Merely training the practical aspect of it would've just worsened the situation, because Sakura wouldn't have been truly "in it" with her heart and mind. She needed to go through this process of growth, before reaching this stage of self-awareness in relation to her magic powers. I truly feel this is the reason why CLAMP made certain choices inside this story. Again, as I always say, a good part of Cardcaptor Sakura does revolve around magic, but the main focus and linchpin of this story is and always will be the main character's heart, her growth and the interpersonal relationships with her loved ones.

This makes Clear Card Arc, in my opinion, a worthy sequel and a full-fledged part of the Cardcaptor Sakura series. I think those who decide to skip it or read it with a superficial approach miss a journey of tremendous growth for our beloved protagonist.

So much for those who kept saying "This is not Sakura's story".

How can all that ☝️ NOT be Sakura's story?

I'll let you judge. 😊

Extra: The Significance of the Clear Cards

I want to digress for a moment about a thorny topic: the significance of the Clear Cards in this story.

Sakura isn't always completely passive towards the events happening around her, but wonders several times during the story why all those Cards are manifesting like that. While the first and easiest answer is of course "because her powers are going out of control" (and this is something Momo herself questions Sakura about in chapter 50), it becomes apparent at some point that the more the story goes on, the more the Cards that are created by her are particularly relevant and connected to the events that will happen in the final part of the story.

I know this is a sore spot for many who complain about not understanding the purpose of the Clear cards. It's because people tend to compare this set of Cards with the ones Sakura captured previously. That's not the right way to look at them, because their origin and purpose are different and change throughout the story. Forget about the Sakura Cards, even though so many of these "Clear Cards" (which are never called so, not even once, in the story itself, but just "new cards" or "transparent cards") might look so similar in purpose to the previous ones.

First of all, the Clear Cards are an outlet for Sakura to vent in a healthy way her power in excess. Power that if kept inside, untapped and confined in her body, might have unpredictable harmful effects on her (<- probably the grief Yelan foresaw). God bless the Clear Cards for existing and allowing Sakura to vent out these bouts of uncontrolled power in a relatively safe way.

The Cards that Sakura produces in the beginning are sometimes reminiscing of the Sakura Cards, because her power manifests itself basing on Sakura's experiences, feelings, thoughts and wishes. The Sakura Cards are an important part of her life (before Syaoran took them, she literally acted like their "mom", keeping them alive with her power) so it's only normal that the first base for some of these new Cards would be a magic tool that she already knows. In this sense, it becomes easier to understand why many of the "captures" seem so easy, way too easy compared to what a reader would expect from a sequel: the goal of the capture here isn't to make her power and experience in capturing cards grow. She already had 2 arcs to do all of that. The capture of the Cards in this third arc becomes something new and unexpected: a "damage control" of a regrettable situation with Sakura's powers, while she learns to dominate them and enter into harmony with her supernatural abilities. The growth Sakura needs here is mainly a mental one. Performing her magical power aimlessly without having a true connection with it and a true understanding will only exacerbate the problem. This is the reason why, despite having a "capture" element, Clear Card derails from the previous arcs in the purpose of the capture. It's a pity that an element that should've brought freshness to the plot was in many cases received as an actual flaw.

In the beginning, as Sakura's power is completely out of her control, some Cards might look completely random too - they don't look based on Cards, thoughts or wishes (like Appear, Reflect, Action, etc.). But pay attention, because the more the story goes on, the more the Cards begin to become particularly specific to something that shook Sakura's heart in that moment, or referencing events/feelings that will become pivotal to the events Sakura will experience later. Especially regarding Kaito's plan. Many of the later Cards Sakura produces are a direct reflection of the feelings and wishes that Kaito infused in the activation of the forbidden magic, with the creation of "the story for Akiho", the one he wanted to absolutely have a happy ending for. Cards like Repair, Promise, Choice, Kindness, True and False, Synchronization, Rewind....many of them didn't even get to express their magical abilities in a "conventional way" (everyone expected to see Sakura literally activating them like she does with all the others), but it's just because at that point the Cards Sakura is producing are born following her premonitory intuition: thanks to the hints/speeches that those Cards give her in Clockland, Sakura little by little regains consciousness of her true self (it's a pity that many English readers will never realize all the times Sakura was about to "wake up" in Clockland, because the translation didn't respect the change in fonts of the JP text). Sakura wasn't supposed to "use" them in a conventional way (how do you "use" Kindness? You force people to be "kind"? 🤨 and what about Choice??), she was supposed to listen to them and let them guide her towards the truth. This is also the reason why all of these Cards bear the face of her loved ones. Think of them as tarots. Which is, incidentally, another use of the original Clow/Sakura Cards. I am basically sure of this interpretation because the kanji of some of those Cards I mentioned above are brought up during the climax: particularly when Akiho talks to Kaito in chapter 78, she uses two specific verbs, referring to Kindness (慈愛 - a kind of gentle and tender love) when she describes the love and support her family gives her in this rewritten world, and to Choice (選択) when she questions Kaito about his choice to disappear completely from her life. So to summarize, the last Cards Sakura produced "accidentally" weren't accidental at all, but were actually specifically produced by her power in reference to Kaito's plan, to help her finding the way out to a dire situation. This represents a very important indicator in the plot: at that stage of the story, Sakura started to listen more and more to her intuition and her sixth sense, finally quitting her bad habit of downplaying it ("maybe it's just me") but actually giving it credit and taking it seriously, trusting her instinct to lead her in the right direction. And this was, of course, all thanks to the speech Syaoran gave her back in chapter 52. It is also the case of the Rewind Card, which Sakura will ultimately understand the purpose of on her own, at the very end of the series. That's the moment where everything will become clear and make sense to her: "This Card, too...I created it precisely for this moment". The Clear Cards ultimately became the embodiment of her foretelling powers. Which then led to the birth of the first two consciously created Cards, Blank & Remind, which will become so important in the climax.

If we ever get a new arc in the next years, we'll certainly deal with a more mature Sakura, who's more in sync with her magical powers 🩷.

[h0bg0blin-meat]

What hindu gods/deities are lgbt (I'm sorry if this is rude or ignorant I just wish to learn as I've heard some are)

Dw it's neither rude nor ignorant. Now before I start I do wanna say that almost all the queerness we see in Hindu mythology is highly subtextual most of the time, which is like pretty obvious cuz these were the ancient times. So this might lead to a varied number of interpretations, and I can only offer the same. But most of them are pretty convincingly queer, so let's get into it cuz why tf not. (This is gonna be a loooooong post so buckle up)

Vishnu

This fella is probably the most pan-coded deity in the entire pantheon. Extremely comfortable with both his masculine and feminine side, Vishnu can sometimes be considered one of the peak genderfluid icons out there. His avatar, Krishna, despite being referred to as the Parampurush (in other words the manliest man in the entire universe), his physical appearance (which is what is considered to be a very feminine body for a man today, i.e., slender and soft) breaks the stereotype of what masculine man should look like. There are paintings of him and Radha where I've stared for like a hot minute trying to figure out which one is Radha (mostly in grayscale cuz otherwise their complexions are a dead giveaway) and yet, he slays it like a badass.

Then we also have Mohini, the goddess of beauty probably the best seductress out there, and the only female avatar of Vishnu. Through her having a union (yk what they mean by that) with Shiva (AHEM subtext amirit), Vishnu gave birth to Ayyappa, and wouldja look at dat he has two dads, which was actually prophesized. Mohini in one of the versions of Mahabharata (not the original one) ALSO slept with Iravan (Arjun's son) the night before he was gonna offer himself as a sacrifice for the Kurukshetra war. Reason was that Iravan had a wish to get married and spend the night with his wife before dying, and wishing his wife would mourn for him after his death. So Krishna felt bad for him, turned himself into Mohini and married him. The next day she held her husband's body and mourned for him like any wife would. We can also go back to the time where he sported (make of that word what you will) with Arjuni (female version of Arjun) as well as the female version of Narad (for a year in the latter's case).

In short, we can see how chill Krishna is with his fluidity with sexuality and gender, so much so that it's hard to put a label on him sometimes, which is fine. But yes interpreting him as queer wouldn't necessarily be a preposterous claim after all.

Shiva

Tbh Shiva is also pretty queer-coded, given his union with Mohini (and yes he specifically ASKED Vishnu to turn into her and hence he KNEW it was his best friend after all), and him turning into a woman to join Krishna's leela that one time, which also denotes that he's pretty confident in his gender fluidity as well, to some extent. He also has a sort of female avatar, who's actually very underrated. I think it's called Shivani. Also no one can deny the tension between Shiva and Vishnu let's be real here. They even have a ship name- Harihar, PLUS that "Vishnu is in the heart of Shiva and Shiva is in the heart of Vishnu" line. Btw this was a joke, but now you know why they're one of the popular ships of Hindu mythology. I personally have very neutral stance to the kind of bond they share, whether you call it platonic or something else.

(Note that I personally do not consider Ardhanarishwar and Vaikunthakamalaja as any genderfluid thingy because I just see them as literal fusions of the two couples, but yes many consider these two fused versions of Parvati-Shiva and Lakshmi-Narayan respectively to be gender-nonconforming, or non-binary of some sort.)

Lakshmi

Why did I add her here? Because I have a feeling she might be bi, given the fact that her husband is also technically her wife, considering we take Mohini into account, who I'm pretty sure she loves just as much as she loves Vishnu. But again, that's just my take on it.

Agni

Now he's one of the more popular queer-coded Hindu gods, specifically known for his implied poly-esque relationship with his wife Svaha and Soma (the wind god). Now many sites on Google have claimed Soma to be his husband, but I am yet to find a scriptural evidence for that claim, so I suggest you to take their words with a grain of salt. But what IS true is that these two guys do share a pretty profound bond. There was also this one instance where Soma went to a mountain and Agni followed him. Then both of them at the top of that mountain, 'became one' (what does that mean? not sure but it sure as hell sounded romantic. anyways). Also Soma is considered the "seed" and Agni the "progenitor" hence releasing the "seed". Now again what does that mean? Idk but that's sus as hell for sure.

Plus, Agni is also very well-known to be the (oral) receptor of Shiva's (and sometimes Soma's but not sure about the second one) semen, which he then flung into Ganga cuz it was too hot to bear for him, and that's how Kartikeya/Murugan/Skanda (Shiva and Parvati's son and a God of war) was born. So yeah.

Mitra-Varuna

These two.... are another pair of popular queer-coded Hindu deities. They're almost always summoned and worshipped together, and you can say they have canonically.... well had a union, and good news is none of them became a woman for the deed. Their union is recorded in the Shatapatha Brahmana 2.4.4.19, where Mitra is said to have "implanted his seed in Varuna" (hmmm nothing homosexual going on here) during the waning moon. Many people consider this a metaphor for the cyclic nature of celestial phenomena so it's upto you to interpret it however you want.

Now they also give off that sunshine x grumpy vibe, with Mitra being the god of friendship, sun, daylight, dawn and stuff while Varuna is the god of the waters, moon, nighttime, dusk etc. Plus, the latter has anger issues but he has a bubbly Mitra (pun intended) to calm him down for dat :D.

They are also known for siring two sages, Agastya and Vasistha after they accidentally released and mixed their semen into a pot as a result of getting enchanted by Urvashi (one of the apsaras or celestial nymphs).

Budh and Ila

Budh is technically an AMAB non-binary (or intersex) deity (and technically the planet Mercury) born to Chandra (who's also synonymous to Soma most of the time) and Tara, to put it simply, and got cursed to be neither male nor female because Chandra had an affair with someone else's wife -_- (Tara was the wife of Brihaspati, or Jupiter, who was also the guru of the gods).

Ila is another genderfluid deity. Some versions of the myth says they were born a woman, some say they were born a man called Sudyumna, while some say they were born a woman, but since their parents wanted a son, Mitra-Varuna (who they preyed to) changed their gender and Sudyumna was born (but then there was some issue with the rituals, which led to the duo to turn him back to a woman, which is when they took the name of Ila. Ik, too much gendershifting going on, bear with me). Anyhoo they got this genderfluidity from Shiva's spell and every month they'd change sex from Sudyumna to Ila and back to Sudyumna and so on. Budh got enchanted by Ila and married her, and bore the Pururavas with her.

Later on, some versions say Ila permanently turned into a man with Parvati's boon. But personally interpreting, Budh was technically still married to Sudyumna so..... idk what happened to them afterwards tho. I hope they were still spouses...

[imweirdimjazzy]

Questions of Hell

Pairing: Alastor x GN!Reader

Description: after tiring a day, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for the radio demon chasing you with questions spending the night, right?

Warnings: mentions of drugs and that’s about it (alastor is prick btw)

Word count: 2104

A/N: hello! This is kinda my first time posting here in tumblr so bear with me on my first post here. Also this isn’t proofread so there could be couple of mistakes here and there so I’m sorry about that. No use of Y/n. But please enjoy it! Btw this fic can be taken as romantic or platonic either could work. Enjoy! :)

For most of my human life I thought death would be simple and morbid. Once life expectancy reaches its limit for how much it can go, the body starts to get tired and the brain will shut, just as the body decomposes.

And just like that you would be dead.

I never tried hard to question the afterlife since it had gave me a headache if I had think too hard about it but I do admit I had a few times where I did think about it too hard.

I just didn’t expect to wind up as a goddamn sinner in a literal pot of hell.

I can admit I wasn’t exactly the most holiest person. I fucked up. Quite a lot of times. And I suppose that life is all about whether you be rewarded to get into heaven or thrown down to hell for punishment.

And for that I now have to deal with the princess of hell and her friends in the Hazbin Hotel.

Charlie was energetic to know that I was another guest at the hotel ready to redeem sinners and probably grab the chance to get to heaven. Seems quite ridiculous once the opportunity was handed to me. Honestly I stayed because I knew nowhere else would let me stay without paying or doing something to repay back.

Yet I got to meet some of the most interesting people. Starting with Angel Dust who was porn star himself and only seems to make it his whole personality but he sure knew how to make a party start going. He also makes anything—and I mean ANYTHING to be dirty.

Vaggie who seems to be strict on everyone and trying her best for all of us to actually have good morals. Sure, we didn’t care but we all understood she wanted for the best of us. Sir Pentious was there to spy on them because of the Vees but then accidentally liked the idea of staying and making a better change of himself.

And there was Nifty who has a certain quirk driven into her personality that was unlike everyone else but she was almost a kid just needed to be protected. Just try not to get stabbed by her. Husk who seems to tell everyone to fuck off even though he’s bartender and you’re sitting at the bar specifically wanting a drink. He acted he hated everyone, but he never really did. He just hated someone who seems to fake who they actually are.

And I’m guessing that’s why he isn’t particularly fond of Alastor.

Alastor is a unique demon. To say in a short sweet way to not say any bad word on his name. Yet it’s hard to say he’s quite a mystery to all of us. Charlie might own the hotel but Alastor is faculty manager of the hotel. He’s always looming somewhere in here and always there with an eye to watch us.

I have to admit I even avoid him. His presence was kind I never had bump into, I rather make it stay that way.

My legs had grown numb and heavier as I kept walking back to the hotel. I was exhausted from Charlie’s shenanigans today. Trying to encourage other sinners out there to come to the hotel and save themselves from the extermination. Failed horribly since how many either attempt to kill us, offer sex, or offer straight up cocaine.

I gave up and had left Charlie with the others to keep going. It was getting late either way and they were planning to go into club.

Didn’t want to get myself into too much trouble anymore either way.

Pushing the doors to let myself in the hotel—I had let out an exhale that I had held all day. My body was slumped and all I could think was my comfy bed.

“My, my, you look quite a mess dear!”

The radio voice had made me slightly jump out of my skin.

To the right of me I could see Alastor sitting on a couch in the lobby. One hand with whiskey in a glass cup and the other with a book. His legs crossed with one leg on top bouncing to the sound of jazz playing background.

“Alastor?”

“Didn’t expect a fellow like me up around this hour, but I couldn’t resist such a great novel here wouldn’t you say?”

He made that little hum that sparked a few radio statics in his voice.

“Look, if you’re here to mock or annoy me today I make sure those antlers of yours are gonna be long gone before you know it.”

Alastor laughed and got up with swift movement with his cane. That smile was almost stitched to his face every glance I took of him. I expect there won’t be a day where I don’t see that venom smile of his.

His hands clasped in front of him as he eyed me down. “Now why would I do that? I merely checking up on is all.”

He said it with such a smirk in his voice.

“Sure, whatever, do what you want I guess,” I grumbled under my breath.

Attempting to head upstairs, Alastor tried to get in my way as he kept reappearing in front of me in every corner I try to go.

“What the—“

“Ah, ah, ah. Where do you think you’re going?” A playful tone was layered into his voice. Letting out chuckle as his antlers move just for a second.

He knew it was getting on my nerves.

“To my room. Is there something that you want?”

I was a bit hesitant when I first spoke, especially since Alastor was a type of demon who never necessarily wants nothing out of someone except manipulation.

He makes that same hum again, letting out a sing-song voice. “Well, I’m bored and I’m in the mood of doing something.”

“Okay—kill someone or some deer.”

I tried again walking away but he reappears again in front of me on the steps of the stairs. Keeping his eyes on me as he leaned on the handrail of the stairs. I could tell from his eyes that my annoyance was kicking the roof by now.

“Not really in the mood for that kind of fun tonight dear. I was actually hoping to maybe play some sorts of game with you.”

“A game?” I questioned.

“Yes! Just any sort of ordinary game. A game where I can ask questions about you and you have to answer them.”

I blinked at him for a moment and then narrow my eyes.

“So you’re interrogating me.”

“No, nonsense! Now, come on, sit on the couch and make yourself comfortable.”

Alastor nudge me downstairs and I follow him. I had no choice and I rather didn’t wanna push any limits with radio demon exactly. He wasn’t the type to be messing around.

Suspicion was written all over my face as I sat down.

Alastor offers whiskey in a glass with a smile. “Whiskey, dear?”

“Um—-no, no thank you.”

He sets the glass on the side table along with the book. Peering to my side I notice the book was the classic Dracula book.

Alastor sat on the other end of the couch. A leg propped on the other. Resting his chin on his hand on the arm rest.

“Now, I’ll start of the with an easy question to start off soft,” stated Alastor. “Do I annoy you?”

“Yes. Next question.”

His smirk grew wide yet his eyes narrowed down on me. Letting out a laugh that sounded for sure forced but as well annoyed.

“Okay, let me ask an easier question. What is your favorite color?”

“Oh well um—maroon. Maroon is my favorite color.”

Alastor hummed to himself. “Quite an unique answer. Didn’t take you as the type to like color such as maroon.”

“Red or maroon. I just like good color of red. Next question.”

Alastor tapped his fingers along the arm rest as he thought of another question to ask.

“What’s your favorite time of day?

Looking back at him with a tilted head I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Alastor rolled his eyes jokingly and chuckled, seeming slightly amused of me. “I mean exactly what I said. What is your favorite time of day? Mornings? Afternoons? Nights?”

He lists off with this condescending tone, as if he spoke to me as a child.

“Watch your tone, and watch your ears, deer,” I hissed. But since you’re so damn curious. It’s night. And sometimes late afternoons. Not as much anymore though. I love them more in human life.”

“Human life you say?”

Alastor watches me as I adjust the black turtleneck I wore.

“Next question please.”

Alastor didn’t say anything but made a louder hum as he thought. Still overbearing me with annoyance of course.

“I’m running out of quite a lot of questions here but I suppose I should’ve asked this first, how are you liking this hotel so far?”

The tone switches and audibly notices it. Turning into this nonchalant tone. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be curious or crack me under pressure with his eyes seeming to only stare at me.

With a sharp inhale I spoke direct.

“Annoying as fuck. I never was too fond of the idea of redeeming since it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that sinners here can even get the chance to go up to heaven with the rest of angels.”

He kept silent with his smile but I kept continuing.

“I didn’t think it would work. And I still have mixed feelings about it but…I do have to admit I kinda like the friends I made here.”

His eyebrow raised and he tilted his head almsot intrigued of what I had said. “I see. And these friends you’ve made here..”

His smile twisted into a smirk as he leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees.

“Any particular ones you admire the most?”

It was a question that had me actually thinking this time around and I knew it was a way for Alastor to get to me, and I didn’t want him too.

“Well, each person has their own unique thing to admire.”

He tweaks his head to the side and only narrows his eyes. Still with smile.

“Charlie can be a lot and maybe too hyper, but she’s willing to give people a chance. Vaggie pushes everyone and is harsh but does it for us to get better.. Sir Pentious is someone willing to give up villainous tendencies. Angel is…well Angel but he is a friend that is loyal and would do anything to back up friend.

Husker and Nifty are the same as well. All of them have everything to admire about.”

Alastor listened intently on how I spoke each of the hotel residents living here

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

He sat back once again, his legs still crossed and his hands back in his lap. Alastor chuckled again, looking at me for a moment.

“And what about me? Is there anything you admire about me?”

I scoffed and smirk a little.

“A bit full of yourself are you?”

His eye twitched a little and seemed ready to respond, but I quickly added on.

“You always stay in control. Even if you aren’t or you’re not wanting to, you always are. You piece of shit who certainly earn a spot living here. I’ll give you that, but even I can admit that you’re intelligent in what you do. Even how manic and evil it can be.”

Alastor chuckled again. He was quite amused by my words. That wasn’t what he was expecting, but he was satisfied by it. He leaned forward a bit again, resting his arms on his legs. His elbows on his knees once again as he stared right into your eyes with his permanent smirk.

“How observant you are my dear. I thought you’d think of me as a annoying bastard”

“No, I also think that too.”

A smile spread on my lips as genuine the pit of fire in hell and before another word had slipped out of Alastors mouth, a rush of familiar friends came through the door.

“I need fucking a drink what the hell was that!?” Angel's voice rang through the hotel and same with others.

I laughed and got distracted by them as soon they called for me but Alastor sat on the couch there observing the others.

Asking himself many questions of himself now.

For how much this sinner might’ve made him rethink his plan.

[konniesreality]

Shifting Tips!

Hey loves! Back with another post since I’ve been on hiatus for a bit! So today I’m gonna give you shifting tips! Why it’s easy, how to make it easier and stuff like that. Y’all just love to over complicate things and it’s getting on my NERVES! Let’s go ✨💜

1. Don’t over complicate it

Oh gosh, the number one thing y’all struggle with. Shifting isn’t hard unless you make it hard. That literally applies with anything in life, honestly. Shifting is literally the easiest thing ever, and because you guys say it’s hard for you, and it’s not working, it’s not going to work. Haven’t you ever thought of that? Come on! So the mindset that I have about shifting and what mindset you should have about shifting is - it’s okay if I don’t shift. I have plenty of nights where I can do it. It’s easy and fun. Look at shifting like a fun little sport, like you’re going to basketball practice. And you want to become better at it, but you have fun with it! See what I mean?

2. Find what works for you

This is an important one. So many people have said this before but some of y’all choose to ignore it. Find what works for you! Oh my goodness, stop asking people what method they used, what subliminal they used, what their routine was, yadayadayada! It’s okay to be curious and ask questions, but you’re literally trying to do something that someone else did. And you’re your OWN PERSON. You’re not THEM. For example, I’ve always had success with the Julia method. I used to do the raven method because other people did it. I hate that method, but I did attempt to use it because I thought it was the exact method for me. I use brown noise instead of subliminals because it works for me. You don’t need subliminals, you don’t need to lay on your back, do what works for you.

3. Don’t listen to everything you see on Tiktok

Shifting TikTok both has good information and bad information and so many misconceptions. Shifting TikTokers I recommend you watch are Liz (I forgot her @) @starkortmall777, and @shiftingwithreya. They have good information and amazing motivation! But yeah, don’t believe everything you see on TikTok. I seen this one girl say that she scripted she had clear skin, and when she shifted her skin was transparent. …🧍🏾‍♀️girl what? That’s not true and won’t happen. You can script anything you want, and your subconscious will KNOW. YOU DONT NEED TO REPROGRAM YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS, YOU DONT NEED TO DRINK WATER AND FLY TO MARS AND ASK AN ALIEN FOR A MAGIC POTION!

So yeah loves, find what works for you, have fun with it and don’t over complicate it. Shifting is apart of our life. This also applies to everything in life. If you make something hard, it will be hard. Just tell yourself you got this! It’s a fun thing I get to do and not many people know about about! YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE! I love you guys! 💗

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

03/20/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Rhys; Samba BTS; Con; YouWear50Well; AdoptOurCrew; RhysRadness; FanSpotlights; Articles; LoveNotes; DailyDarby/Tonight's Taika

== Rhys Darby ==

Rhys Darby turns 50 today (the 21st, so technically tomorrow for those of us in the US)!! He graced us with some new Selfie's in Aotearoa!

== Samba Schutte BTS ==

Good Calypso Samba put a lot of videos up today. I made posts for them, so I'll link them here. Literally only 1 picture and 14 videos. The man is a lunatic and I love it.

Video 1: Dream Sequence BTS!

Video 2: "Any other burning questions?"

Video 3: Samba & Madeleine & Vico BTS!

Video 4: Leslie & Nat BTS

Video 5: Zheng Plank Scene Takes

Video 6: Explosion Explanation - Earplugs In!

Video 7: Zheng Planking Stede BTS

Video 8: Samba on the Zipline BTS

Video 9: Revenge Crew Running on the Beach

Video 10: Canons BTS: "Let's try doing away with the pull line, cause I think that's just going to be a fucking disaster"

Video 11: Canon Fire: No sound

Video 12: What Explosions Felt Like

Video 13: "That's How The Pros Do It"

Video 14: More Canon Fire / Plank Walking Stede BTS

= Con O'Neill =

Con's show, Happy Valey haws been nominated for a BAFTA! Bafta TV Awards 2024: The List of Nominations

== You Wear 50 Well ==

Rhys Darby's 50th! There were so many well wishes going around for our lovely captain's birthday! Several crewmates were kind enough to allow me to add their dedications to our captain to the recap tonight! @wanderingnomad @lucybluetiful @PaulineKnip @ourflagmeansfanfiction @eros_the_artist @kaddele

= Tumblr Highlights! =

Our tumblr crewmates had lots of dedications as well!

= @brainfugk =

= @bizarrelittlemew =

= @kiwistede =

= @snejpowa =

= @stjernegaupe =

== Adopt Our Crew ==

The votes are in! Anton vs Louise was darn close! Now it's the final round! Stede Vs Anton! looks like Stede's in the lead!

== Fan Spotlight ==

Our darling crewmate @iamadequate1's #MaxMadness replacement is down to the final round! We're down to Our Flag Means Death vs Coyote Vs Acme!

= Cast Cards =

Thank you our dear @melvisik for tonight's new cast card! Christopher Corbin, while only in the show for a very small amount of time, he made a huge impact! "I'm no prostitute, mate!"

== Articles ==

Coyote vs ACME Interview

= Love Notes =

Hey lovelies! Today's been amazing! Definitely been a lot of engagement and we're getting to celebrate our lovely captain! Soooo many people signed the 50th birthday Kudoboard that ended tonight ( and the Taika Kudoboard that ended yesterday). So many crewmates stepped out of their comfort zone and put themselves out there, and I just want to say how proud of you I am. I know it's hard to put yourself out there in case you can get hurt, but you still did it for the good of something / someone you love, and you should be proud of that! I hope you're getting some joy out of these days. I know it can be a bit of a double edged sword because we miss Stede and Ed and the whole Revenge crew so much. It's reminding a lot of folks of the gravy basket. Just a gentle reminder that things aren't over. Even if we're not fighting full force right now-- it's not over. It'll never be over. So many people are behind us, and so many other shows have gotten renewed later, sometimes years laters. I know you've heard it all before, but this isn't the end. If you feel up for it, take these days that are for celebrating, and even if you do it just with yourself, do something to celebrate the things and people you love. If you're feeling alone and have discord, feel free to join us on the #RhysDarbyFaction server tomorrow. We'll be doing a lot of group stuff to try and keep some of the love going. If you're not-- reach out to any of your crew. We're here, and we care and we want you all to be okay. Remember to lean on each other, you're all such kind, resilient, and wonderful people and kindness is what keeps this world moving in the right direction. Our crewmate @ourflagmeansfanfiction made a lovely picture that felt appropriate for tonight. You are strong, and beautiful, and we're all gonna get through this together. Night crew <3

= Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika =

Tonight's theme is microphones!

Daily Darby Courtesy of @celluloidbroomcloset Tonight's Taika Courtesy of @agaywithcoffee

[moons-of-dewclan]

I was curious how to get your clan really set off? I recently (LIKE EARLIER TODAY JFJSJFJ) started my own clangen blog but idk if it's worthy of Tumblr😭

How can I improve my art and improve my process? You're one of my BIGGEST inspirations ngl you're literally him (or her or they I'm so sorry I never caught your pronouns) but I was just curious on how to be better? If you wanna look, don't. It's like, rlly bad so.... save your eyes. Have a lovely nighttt <33

HELLOOOOO I'M NOT 100% SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY SET OFF I'M SORRY :{ if you mean to get people reading it, i think it's vastly just luck also appealing to an audience by accident i posted my art online for 10 years (i started posting in 2010 as a wee ka- told you i'm an adult haahahueu) before anyone showed consistent interest and i valued those two or so commenters who occasionally had something to say about my stuff, so much LAKSNLKD. that entire decade i got between 2 and 30 favourites for every piece i posted- usually between 2 and 10- until around 2021 when a making a comic aANNND joining a wolf ARPG group exposed me to many kindred art-enjoyers that wanted to keep up with my goofy stories then for some reason, i posted Dewclan's first page on tumblr and it got way more engagement than any other piece of art i've ever posted SO LAKSDNLKDAS WE CANNOT PREDICT THESE THINGS.. at least i can't if you're looking for engagement, pLS AIM FOR ENGAGEMENT THAT FEELS MEANINGFUL over anything else IN MY OPINION, and it's just my opinion- part of being 'better' is, first and foremost, being able to enjoy your art alone. and then being excited with what you choose to share! even if you don't care about your quality of art, care about the story. if you don't care about the story, care about the process and just having fun. but you have to have fun in doing it, and do it for your own eyes primarily. like if you were alone in a room and creating only for yourself! because, until you happen to find others who like what you're liking, you are then when someone is interested and you get to share that excitement, even that ooone comment on something you care about is OOGHHH SUCH A NICE FEELIN. enter communities, comment on other artists' work, try to make friends! but make sure to remember, if you create with the hopes others will like it, without liking it yourself, you're going to be really broken down if someone doesn't like it FOR you :{ loving your own art is tough work but it's integral to your longterm relationship with drawing ON IMPROVING.. for me, nothing is more integral to improving than finding a way to practice that suits you (looking at live figures doesn't help me at all. i don't know why. it's insane), and having fun doing it. i can't grasp anatomy unless i break it down with shapes. SHAPES ARE EVERYTHING. study the shapes of what you want to draw. break em down by tracing simple shapes over your subject. see if the leg is the same length as the head from muzzle to neck and lock that info in. STUFF LIKE THAT on the technical side of things, it can be super helpful to dedicate half an hour or so to drawing a day- eventually it becomes a habit and you just default to 'oh i think i wanna draw' when you've got nothing else to do. more drawing, more improvement!

HONESTLY THO another important thing is not putting yourself down. i know it's a hard habit to break (i struggle with it outside of art myself!), but it doesn't do you any favours. the more you rag on yourself, the more it'll manifest as something that actually damages your art, AND your relationship with it. let it be fun- don't sabotage yourself! you can be critical of your work and still kind! little tip here, improving can take a while, but experimenting with styles can make an INSTANT shift in how you perceive your stuff. ALSOOO EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT BRUSHES FOR SKETCHING AND LINING. I PROOMISE. PLS DO IT. IT'S LIKE A MAGIC TRICK. i cannNNNOT sketch with a hard brush. everything looks horrible. marker brush tho?? so smooth. full of character. lovely. binary brush sketches? suddenly i'm Anime. pencil brush?? i digidevolve back into baby ka who loved to crosshatch and do semi realism. airbrush??? i explode into atoms actually

i find for a lot of people, they don't need to improve or be 'better' at art, they need to learn to enjoy what they're capable of doing now, and improvement is a byproduct. from what i've seen through the years, unless you work to curb it the negative view of your art will stick with you no matter what 'skill level' you get to bc the calls' comin from inside the house, yknow what i mean 3: it can be a long process to learn to accept your art, and sometimes you just plain grow out of it over time! but in the meantime it can't hurt to make efforts to fight your d e m o n s

I'M SORRY I WROTE SO MUCH IK YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS ALL IT ISN'T JUST TO YOU, ODESSY-CLAN BLOG RUNNER, IT'S AIMED AT ANYONE WITH ARTSY SELF DOUBTS. i hope i phrased everything kindly bc i meant it all kindly 3: i hate to see an artist doubt their work, but THERE IS NO SHAME IN IT. i want to encourage loving it regardless of any flaws tho, even though it takes time!

[genericpuff]

The Kiss Bet Episode 172 - Hot Pot and Venting About How I Want My 70 Cents Back

Okay, look, this isn't a post I was expecting to make today but it's something that just happened and I have to fucking talk about, so let me preface this with some context.

I had to buy coins recently and because I switched to using my iPad for reading comics on, I got a "new reader" type deal from Webtoons for a coin bundle that got me like 100 coins for $5; because technically it was a 'new account' as Webtoons operates their in-game currency model on apps, not on actual emails (meaning if you use the app on an Android phone and then switch to an Apple iOS device, they're technically two separate accounts which you sync the reading data between via the account info linked via the email, therefore they have two separate coin wallets).

So with more coins than I knew what to do with, I decided to start FastPassing The Kiss Bet again, which I had recently stopped FP'ing around the S3 mark, as it's recently devolved back into the "will they won't they" trope, but instead of between Sara-Lin and Joe, it's between Sara-Lin and Joe's younger brother (the "true endgame") Oliver.

Now I don't mind the ship in essence. Joe was definitely not gonna be endgame, it was always gonna be Oliver, anyone who's read any amount of romance before - especially high school romances - knows how this shit tends to go, and The Kiss Bet isn't exactly trying to be groundbreaking or subversive in any way, it knows exactly what it's about and what it's trying to accomplish.

But it's almost become a little too good at this. Because in playing the "will they won't they" game for so long with a character that we know is endgame, it's basically been weeks and weeks and weeks of-

That said, after I caught up on the recent FP episodes, it seemed like stuff was finally moving a little bit. We were finally meeting Oliver's mom and his stepdad who he has a fractured relationship with, Joe was finally getting with his true endgame girl, Vicky (who's totally not an exact genderbent version of Joe lmao) and Sara-Lin was finally realizing she had feelings for Oliver.

And then the newest episode came out, Episode 172 - Hot Pot and Venting.

CAUTION: FASTPASS SPOILERS FOR THE KISS BET OFFICIALLY BEGIN HERE!

Already I was a little petty over the title like "lmao ok clunky title but whatever". I swept it off as not a genuine criticism, just me being a nitpicking asshole over what's essentially Fluff: The Comic.

The episode cost 7 coins, which is about roughly 70 cents, albeit closer to a dollar for Canadian readers (here's something they don't tell you about Canada - our Monopoly game currency is just as fucked as it looks) and that's where I'm gonna get into my second disclaimer that I need to be perfectly clear about (and it'll be what we get more into later on in this post).

I understand the principle of paying for art. I understand fully that many of these webtoons are being produced on tight deadlines by creators who often can only afford 1-2 assistants, if any at all. I understand and fully agree that creators deserve to be paid for their skills, time, and efforts, not just as creators working on the hellsite that is Webtoons, but as artists in general who deserve to make a living the same as anyone else. Anyone who follows my stuff here knows I'm an artist myself so I would never debate the ethical necessity of paying artists for their work.

However.

I can say that, and also agree with the people who have stated in discussion circles such as on /r/webtoons that a lot of the comics that have started charging 7 coins have been suspiciously delivering less comic since. And it's not even so much in the literal panel count, the liquid volume of these comics have remained the same, but the calorie count has dropped significantly. Food metaphors aside, what I mean is that despite many of these comics maintaining their 40-60 minimum panel count requirement, they have in fact reduced the actual amount of content that happens in them, and The Kiss Bet's newest episode is a stark example of what I mean.

I am going to start by posting only post three panels - three panels that literally sum up the entirety of Episode 172 and what it chooses to spend its time on.

That is it. That is literally all that's established in this episode. I'd tell you to go read it yourself, but honestly, this is genuinely one of those rare times I can honestly say that a 40+ panel episode is not worth 70 cents and you'd be better off, and that's saying a LOT when these episodes are only priced at the cost of a gumball. At least Lore Olympus has entertainment in how bad it is most of the time, Episode 172 of The Kiss Bet is just nothing. You will literally get more substance and flavor from an actual gumball.

Literally every other panel in this episode is either repeating the same dialogue (Sara-Lin saying the same thing multiple different times to express how Oliver is holding her hand or how his stepdad is a dick) and then Sara-Lin and Oliver staring at each other. Over. And over. Again.

I am not joking. I did not cut anything out in that sequence. That is where the episode ends. Complete nothingburger, seemingly cut off right as it was just getting started like Cait Corrain's career.

Out of the entire episode, there were 45 panels. So I can safely assume Ingrid's minimum panel requirement is at least 40 per episode, that's me assuming the best that she didn't exactly meet her panel minimum at 45 panels on the dot.

Out of those 45 panels, there were:

Two actual unique backgrounds that weren't gradients or just a single piece of furniture

4 separate panels of Sara-Lin freaking out over Oliver holding her hand and wondering if he even noticed

10 panels of Sara-Lin staring at Oliver either dumbfounded or asking him to repeat himself (or apologizing over nothing)

5 panels of the characters saying nothing

11 panels of Sara-Lin repeating information in different ways that could have been accomplished in half that time

Two separate occasions of Oliver getting Sara's attention from off-panel, literally formatted the exact same way both times (and both followed by reaction panels of Sara-Lin staring at him dumbfounded)

Way too many panels of Sara-Lin blushing in response to Oliver being an asshole tbh like literally this guy's a douchebag, Joe may have been the "out of her league" love interest but at least he was nice and didn't treat Sara-Lin like someone who just bought a Husky as a "starter pet" ???

Again, I don't usually like being a dick about the coin costs, and I definitely don't like being a hypocrite in telling people they should pay artists for their work while simultaneously posting their paywalled content like this, but I think there does come a point where it feels more irresponsible for people to not be aware of what they're about to pay for and how little they're going to be getting. This episode is literally one of the best - and worst - examples of how far the romance genre has fallen on the platform - when it's not being overtaken and oversaturated by problematic series that romanticize abuse and sexual assault, it's being dragged to death with the most boring executions of tropes that everyone has seen before and is only exciting for anyone who's never read a book or watched a romance movie, period.

And here's the thing where I do approach a bit more "hot take" territory, but every time I see this argument come up about episodes not being worth the coin cost, I see others who rightfully argue that 70 cents isn't that much to pay for what you're getting - weekly episodes of work that are usually always delivered on time, with more panels than you would ever typically see in a free to read comic.

But here's where I take issue with that argument, as much as the principle of it is sound, it misses the overall point: readers are paying for entertainment first and foremost, so can anyone who's actually paying for regular refills on their app currency step away from this and truly call it "entertainment"? Nothing was gained. The comic had 45 panels to say something, anything, and managed to not even squeak out so much of a word. Even the silent moments have no substance, they just reiterate information that we already know.

Do we really need another panel of Sara-Lin blushing at Oliver? We've known for weeks now that she has a crush on him. Do we really need another panel of Oliver getting Sara-Lin's attention? What is this actually showing of their chemistry? What is being shown here that hasn't been shown numerous times - with and without dialogue - for weeks now? What does the comic have to show for itself after four seasons?

Another point of the "it's just 70 cents, don't be an asshole" argument that people seem to miss is it's not 70 cents. It's $1. Because if you want to buy a single episode of the Kiss Bet, you can't just pay for the individual episode in isolation, you have to pay for the coins first, and $1 is the absolute bare minimum you have to pay to get 10 coins, which will only pay for one episode of a 7 coin series - of which there are many now, basically any series that's 40 panels or more will cost 7 coins and, shocker, those are the series that WT will tend to promote most, you'll rarely see the 5 coins series in the banner ads, and that's not even getting into how there are more and more series cropping up that have 5+ episodes behind FP rather than the traditional three.

So if you're someone who's (almost definitely) keeping up with more than one series? You can't just pay the $1, you have to pay at least $5 for 50 coins, and that will NOT go far anymore or cut as evenly as it used to when just about every series is now 7 coins. Webtoons knows fully well what kind of game they're playing by making the new coin cost an uneven number while still offering increments of 5/10 in their coin bundles. They undoubtedly want you to be left with an uneven number so that you'll be easily lured into buying more coins so you don't 'waste' the uneven amount you have left that isn't enough to buy the episodes for the series you want to read. Obviously this is more speculation and not fact, but it's a common business model and with the series that have adopted the 7 coin count model (rather than starting off with 7 coins outright) such as The Kiss Bet and Lore Olympus, it's becoming abundantly clear that either the creators or the platform itself is encouraging these series to meet their panel minimums with as little content as possible in order to get more money out of readers who are barely even being drip fed actual entertainment and narrative progression, let alone spoon fed.

And then there's the waiting. The goddamn waiting. So many of these series guilty of siphoning their content off through a hose that they're deliberately standing on are designed intentionally with the most egregious cliffhangers in mind to keep their audience hooked so they'll undoubtedly FP next week. Do you know what that amount of waiting does to a comic? To its readers? First off, it artificially extends the actual pacing of the comic to make it feel longer than it is, when in reality, many of these plotlines are happening in a vacuum of very short bursts of time. Case in point, Lore Olympus is commonly confused for having a plotline that takes place over the course of months, when actually when laid end to end in order of cause and effect, many of its subplots - including the romance of Hades and Persephone - takes place over the course of days. This over-inflates the plotline's actual depth and, even worse so, it makes it harder for readers to keep up with information that's being delivered, as it often takes weeks for that information to actually go anywhere - so by the time it does, many readers have straight up forgotten about it.

It's absolutely not okay that so many of these kinds of series are normalizing literal slow burning for an audience who's paying to be entertained. It's not a "slow burn". It's just slow, and deliberately so. It's absolutely NOT FUN to follow a comic that does not go anywhere week after week. It's frustrating. And before long, it starts to feel like gambler's fallacy, where readers have to essentially gaslight themselves into paying into it more and more convinced that it has to pay off eventually, based on a promise that was never actually made, only assumed in good faith. And readers should not have to fill in the bulk of the content that isn't happening with their own imaginations, which is something that happens a LOT in these series that spend so much time on the characters just staring at each other and saying nothing. It's not 'plot' to just draw characters blushing and have your audience fill in the rest of it entirely on their own. This is certainly a technique in writing, but in the case of The Kiss Bet and other comics like it, it's much less of a valid technique and more just flat out manipulating your audience into falling so hard into the sunk cost fallacy trap that they don't notice they're being robbed blind by the plot that hasn't actually happened - and they've been paying for that financial and emotional robbery out of their own pockets and brains every step of the way.

Again, I do not care about the coin cost in and of itself, seventy cents IS still an incredibly cheap price for weekly updates of a series that has to put out so many panels each week. But as a reader and a customer, I should not be leaving these updates with less information than what I started with. And I'm someone who's incredibly old school by webcomic standards, there are comics that I follow that have updated 1-2 pages a week for over a decade that manage to do more with their limited pages than Lore Olympus and The Kiss Bet manage to do after entire hiatuses filled with pre-production time.

Why does this page of Alfie manage to move both the intrinsic plot of the titular character as well as the external plot that's going on around her in one page made up of 5 panels better than what The Kiss Bet can do in 45?

Why does this page of Tamberlane manage to convey more information about the world's lore and the people in it in a way that's emotionally driven and clearly affecting the characters without outright info-dumping than what Lore Olympus has managed to spit out onto its plate since S3 started over a year ago?

How does Tales from Alderwood manage to be more entertaining and convey more meaningful storytelling through its characters in a single page consisting of zero dialogue than what The Kiss Bet can convey in its silent panels of staring, blushing, and repetitive stuttering?

Why are the creators who are relying entirely on their own efforts, resources, and ability to generate income through community interaction and support putting out better work with less panels and on slower schedules for FREE than what we're seeing from professional creators on a professional publishing platform who are being paid to do this as their job?

There's this saying in the tattooing industry: good work isn't cheap and cheap work isn't good.

At this point, 70 cents is not a 'bargain' as many people like to argue in defense of the creators. And while I do want to have good faith in the creators who don't pull this shit, the creators who clearly go above and beyond to do what they do in the pursuit of storytelling and polishing their craft to be the best piece of work that it can be - the comics that are worth paying 70 cents and beyond for - are not the comics that Webtoons is promoting to people. The creators of the works that genuinely deserve more than 70 cents per update are being left to fend for themselves without support from the platform, while those that aren't worth the price of even a flavorless gumball are consistently winning the Wonka Golden Ticket lottery.

The cost of 70 cents is relative. For some works it's a genuine bargain. For others like the The Kiss Bet and Lore Olympus, 70 cents is not a "bargain", it's not a "good deal", it's exactly the value of what you're paying for - cheap work that isn't good.

[harrysmimi]

Handsome

Synopsis: One where Harry harbours a little concert crush on someone

Ps. I dreamt this :)

More of my work

YN was very excited to go see Harry finally!

She have been saving for it for ages that she did not hesitate to go just a tiny bit over budget when buying the pit tickets. Her friend was coming too with her. She has been his fan since his first solo album came out and have been wanting to go see him since his very first tour.

Camping out from the sunrise, being exhausted was worth it if she got to see the person who literally kept her sane during her most difficult of times. In fact even save her at some extent.

She was the typical fangirl. But didn't had any of his merch or his vinyls because she couldn't afford it. That doesn't make her any less of a fan. She spent a little too much on the tickets so she had to stick to her closet to pick out an outfit.

She didn't care. Literally. About what she wore. She wore a gown she'd sewn from a bedsheet for an Instagram reel (she just had a public account where she posted a video of her making that dress and it sort of blew up, got about ten thousand likes). It had big puffy sleeves with green leaves printed on the fabric. She didn't know where she'd wear the dress anyway so she pulled it out today.

Though she didn't felt like it, YN did put in some efforts in how she looked, according to her she might bump into a handsome guy or a very pretty girl tonight. People meet at concerts, it wasn't something unusual but rare. She has been single since she last went to prom which was ages ago and her friends have been bugging her to go out so they all can go on a couples only vacation. She is just going to take her Emotional Support cat with, he is only male and a pussy in her life who's not disappointed her yet. It would at least put an end to what her friends have to say when she doesn't find someone at the concert to go on a date with the very next day.

She woke up an hour early to make a sign for Harry. Not a big paper, just a two by two feet thick craft paper. It is big enough for him to read without blocking anyone's view. She was planning to head first so she can stand at the barricade. She doesn't care if she gets crushed. She just wants to have a nice time with her celebrity crush and her best friend.

Oh, and she did picked up a single rose to throw it towards him. Or at least attempt to.

She kept it close to her so no one can steal her idea as she saw many fans making their signs outside. It wasn't very creative, what she wrote but it was her idea. Soon she was let in and luckily her sleep deprivation was rewarded that she got to stand near the barricade.

She stood there, jammed to the pre show set lists and the opening act, waiting patiently for the person she has been dreaming to see for so long. She even made good friends with one of the security guard standing in front of her by the stage. Her heart started racing the moment the love band stepped up on the stage, it would calm down eventually but start pounding again in anticipation of he could pop up anytime on the stage.

He did eventually came up, with his brown guitar as he kick started his show with Golden. He took her breath away, quite literally as he worked and did his job.

An absolute angel, Harry appeared to her. Dressed in a all jean outfit, a vest and his usual pants with his initials on the back pockets in red sparkles. She found it adorable. Though for the longest the initials and three cherries on the back of his vest was only what she saw.

An hour left. Harry was already dreading to go down the stage. He was having a good time, prancing and jumping and running around the stage like a toddler, singing his songs with double sexual meanings to them. That was an ironic combo he liked to call when he'd see his fans talk about him using those exact same words.

He walked around. Care free. Up until someone caught his eyes. Though she blended in with crying and freaking out fans. She had a small sign with her which she held over the barricade. He found that very sweet of her as she wasn't blocking anyone's attention. But what her sign said was even sweeter and melted his head.

Sunshine, you look so very handsome tonight!!! - it said with a yellow iPhone esque smily emoji drawn on the the end. And there was a red rose in her hand.

He felt blood rushing upto his face, warming his cheeks as he read her sign, again, as he sang through Daydreaming. The nickname got him.

YN almost peed her pants seeing that he saw her sign and smiled at her. He was red like a tomato, how pale he was didn't helped to conceal it either in bright artificial lights around him. From then he kept going back to where she was stood, checking in on time to time, her sign was still on it's place. She wasn't filming but she made sure her friend was. At one point she even doubted he was even looking at her and expressed her concern tk her friend.

"He's looking at you idiot," she said, "he's not cross eyed!"

YN liked to believe that in that moment because everything felt like a waking dream to her. She was dreaming with her eyes wide open in all her consciousness, in all her senses. Though she still doubts it's one of those dreams which feels awfully real that when you wake up you feel like it literally happened to you seconds ago.

Harry couldn't help himself but look at the girl with the sign. He'd said it before that he can tell how he feels about someone with just looking in their eyes and he saw how sweet she was through her eyes. Or at least he liked to think so, because she is also so very gorgeous and easy on eyes to look at, like holding onto am Amethyst crystal or places slices of fresh cucumber on your eyes, or getting the perfect amount of sleep at night time.

Is he over exaggeration? Absolutely he doesn't not care!

Before the encore, he stopped to read a few signs. Talk to a couple of people before he went ahead and read her sign out loud because it was just that sweet of a gesture anyone has ever done for him. And he just wanted to talk to her.

"Sunshine, you look so very handsome tonight," Harry read, "why thank you, darling, so do you!" He was flattered all over again, he saw her eyes sparkle as tears brim up in her pretty eyes. She was surprised!

"What is your name?" He asked, crouching down to get closer so he can get her name right, even took off one of his ear piece.

"YN!" She said as loud as she could.

Harry heard it, "YN?" He asked to make sure and she nodded. "Yes, got it right!" He celebrated making the crowd erupt in screams. "Are you from around here YN?" She nodded in no to answer him, "where are you from?"

"India, but I'm here to study." She said, not loud enough but he could read her lips.

"You're here to study? What are you studying, YN?" Harry asked.

The more he kept saying her name the more it made her go crazy inside, and not to mention cry happy tears. Harry knew that so he didn't pointed it out.

"Business?" He said, "that's amazing, best of luck with the rest of your course. Are you having a good time tonight, YN?"

"Yes!" She exclaimed.

"Thank you so much for coming to the show tonight." He stood up because he's got a show to do, "whenever you go back home, give my love to the fans in India. Thank you for bringing such a sweet sign."

"I got you this!" She forwarded the red rose to him holding it at the very tip so it could reach him, standing on her tippy toes as she leaned forward.

"Oh that's for me?" He asked, he didn't hear what she said as he's put his earpiece back on, "thank you." He took it, smelled it.

He went on to introduce the next song, and YN stood there in shock, letting her brain process what the just happened. Just for him to hit her in the face by singing Medicine after two songs. Well, he didn't hit her but it was like a punch in her face. But he still kept going back to where she was stood, not even being subtle about it. The girls around her started to give her side eyes seeing that.

She was looking for the rose she gave him. She thought he threw it away at some other fan like he usually does, but instead she found it hung on the belt hook of his pants.

"He's got a crush on you!" Her friend yelled when he looked at her for the millionth time there.

"Stop it." She mumbled to her friend, feeling suddenly threatened when more people around her started to look at her and even film those little interactions. Being in the fandom YN has closely seen how scary his fans can get, even though he was just looking at her, it made her feel scared somewhere in her heart.

It was best to brush it off and move on and enjoy the rest of the show.

"Do you like know him?" A girl standing next to YN's best friend asked once Harry had ran off stage and everyone was leaving as well.

"Like personally? No," YN answered confusedly and earned a weirded out look from the girl as she walked away.

"Well, she was a bitch." YN's friend commented making her laugh. "See your bedsheet dress caught his eye, now when are you two getting married?" She hooked her arm around YN's as they walked out.

"Next week." YN smiled with a faux-blush and they both ended up in a fit of laugh. "Did you get all the pictures of us?"

"Oh yes!" Her friend nodded. They looked through the pictures both of them took together today, going though the memories they miss already. "Oh my god, I'm going through my post concert depression. How do you feel?"

They both were in a can back to their flat, "I feel like I'm dreaming. I might miss all of this in the morning."

"Did you gals went to Harry Styles concert today?" Their cab driver asked. It was a lady who seemed to be in her mid 40s, she was super sweet and they talked throughout the ride back home, to YN and her friend's surprised she liked his music too.

It was when YN reached that it hit to her that everything happened tonight was real!

She really talked to the guy she has been crushing over for past six-seven years. That made all the sleep disappear from her system even though she. She stayed up going through the videos her friend sent, giggling to herself like a little idiot.

She is idiot for him and she takes all the pride in that.

Tag list:

@vrittivsanghavi @buckymydarlingangel @sweetwritingfanficfriend lemme know if you want to added to the tag list

[justthoughts1310]

Boruto is a Gay Manga! Is that so hard to admit???

So, today I emailed one of the most prominent YouTube Naruto/Boruto commentators an email with the subject line: "Boruto is Gay Manga! Is that so hard to admit?" Now, I admitted in my email that my subject line is clickbait, and I didn't go into intensive well-supported detail. However, I did say, "Why do you keep ignoring Mitsuki's (queer) feelings for Boruto?" The interesting thing about this content creator, and many other individuals, is that he wants Boruto x Sarada to be endgame. However, he doesn't want this because he likes the pairing. He wants this because he actually wanted Naruto x Sasuke to happen, and this is the next closet thing.

Which is crazy right? It's crazy that so many people wanted Naruto x Sasuke to be together. However, I'm sure Kishimoto knows that these same men would swear off Naruto forever, if the main character was revealed to be queer.

So, then you end up with Boruto x Sarada, where Sarada is not Boruto's equal. No, in a patriarchal society she is not Boruto's equal, she is instead the BALL for which men choose to play with and measure their own masculinity. Don't believe me? Sarada is the last Uchiha, and in the first chapter, she (an Uchiha) had to be rescued by a no name male ninja that we literally never hear about again.

Sarada's anime design looks like this pre-time skip:

And this post-time skip:

I want to take the time to remind all of you that this is a character design of a 12 year old girl and a 16 year old girl. Both of which are under age, any sexualization of the two is pedaphillic in nature.

Men's sexualization of children goes into their rampant and obsessive need for control at all costs, but I digress.

You know who thinks this character design is awesome and doesn't question anything about it, despite the fact that both outfits are completely impractical for an active duty shinobi? Men.

You know who thinks this character design is disgusting and a complete miss? Women.

Someone who should have been positioned as an equal to the main character in Boruto has become nothing more than an object of men's perverted fantasies both heteronormatively and homoerotically. What do I mean by homoerotically? Remember, the real reason that people want Boruto and Sarada to be end game is not because they think these two have a ton of chemistry. Sarada is a level 10,000 nag that could bring her mother to shame, and men hate being nagged.

The real reason men want Boruto x Sarada to happen is because their pairing is the realization of Naruto x Sasuke.

I, also, need you to realize that a large part of Sarada's character development is the fact that she has a crush on Boruto. In contrast, as far as we know so far, Boruto has a crush on nobody.

Which highlights this underlying ideal that many women have realized for a long time. Men DON'T like women. I don't care where you go in the world. An overwhelming number of men don't like women. I'm not even convinced that many men enjoy having sex with women, because let me tell you something... Having sex with the only goal being to climax is the least enjoyable sex that anyone can experience. Orgasming becomes boring after a while. Try to enjoy the ride.

Yet, climaxing is often the sole frame through which men see sex and sexual completion, while completing discarding the pleasure of women. How do I know, because only 50-70% of women have orgasmed from heterosexual encounters. I imagine that number is 100% for men who have orgasmed while having sex with a woman at some point (probably most points) in their lives.

Men are taught from a very early age and are socially conditioned to NOT like women. Even within the Naruto series this is evident. I mean think about it, the woman that Naruto had the most chemistry with (and probably should have ended up with) was a flat-chested nag who didn't appreciate Naruto until he became strong. It's giving incel, red-pill mindset.

Now, who was that woman? Sakura.

Who was she based on? Kishimoto's wife.

Shocking right? Many of you may have had no idea that Sakura is based on Kishimoto's wife. Now, do I think Kishimoto secretly hates his wife? No, but that's irrelevant.

Yes, Sakura is based on Kishimoto's wife, and Kishimoto wrote a female character that men HATE!!! Sakura is undeniably the most hated character in all of Naruto (male or female). I wouldn't be surprised if she is the most hated female character in all of anime.

Sakura is, also, the strongest woman in the entire show (next to Kaguya) and yet, she always needs to be saved. She is stopped and under minded constantly by the most miniscule thing, and then she needs to be saved by Naruto, Sasuke or Kakashi like clock work. Why, because they need their hero moment, and women are but an object. Women are the ball, and the enemy is the opposing team.

Here's the thing: You all need to understand that according to the light novels, under Naruto and Sasuke, Sakura is the most powerful shinobi (male or female) in the entire Naruto Universe (pre-Boruto). However, you wouldn't know that from watching the anime or reading the manga.

Then who is the most beloved female character in Naruto, the one that Naruto ends up marrying and having two super powerful children with? The woman who has large breasts, always cheers for Naruto despite him not knowing she exists, always needs to be saved, and largely keeps her mouth shut: Hinata.

When you really think about it, the entire Naruto series is about Naruto (a loser) chasing after Sasuke who hates him, but what does Sasuke represent? Sasuke represents the pinnacle of athleticism, skill, sexiness, cleverness, fame, and aloofness that a man could ever dream of having. When Naruto chases after Sasuke, he's chasing the idea of masculinity itself. In Naruto's adulthood, he has a more emotionally intimate relationship with Sasuke then he does with any woman: Hinata or Sakura. Naruto surrounds himself with men. He's always around men: Shikamaru, Konohamaru, Sai, and Kakashi. He solely asks for the opinions of men when it comes to major decisions that effect the fact of the entire Leaf Village and World.

The whole Naruto series is a celebration of men at the expense of women. These men have hard-ons for each other.

Now, some might say that it's not sexual, but it is! How do we know that, because Kishimoto created Boruto x Sarada to be endgame. He is approaching the fulfillment of a homoerotic relationship in a societally correct way, when the truth is that he (and all men) want to skip the middle man and have Naruto and Sasuke be together. Yet, at the same time, none of these men want to be gay and be giant fans of something that is gay. Why, because being a fan of something gay makes straight men feel gay, and a man is not supposed to be gay in a patriarchal society.

I watched a whole video where a straight man talked about watching a gay male anime, and it made him wonder for a second if he was gay, simply because he thought it was a good show. Once again, I digress. In a patriarchal society, a man is supposed to gain the respect and admiration of other men all while subjecting, conquering and controlling women. Once again, to reiterate, women are the ball. Women have no thoughts, feelings, autonomy, or rights? Women are not human. After all, why would a ball represent anything other than being a tool of the sport used for the purpose of scoring points?

The Naruto series is a mirror reflection of society, and how men value men, men want men, men desire men, and (straight) men don't give a damn about women. Of course, some do, but many men don't. Women are nothing more than trophies to be shown off and touted around.

All that matters is the male gaze. We see this all the time. Do you know who likes 6 ft tall men, with 6 pack abs, 6 pairs of shoes, who make 6 figures? The giga-Chads if you will. I'm going to give you a hint: It's not women.

Men lust over this stuff, men get hard over this stuff, they salivate over this stuff, and obsessive over creating the perfect male body either for themselves, someone else, or a fictional character. I need you all to realize that ALL of those Marvel action shots of Chris Evan's and Robert Downey Jr's bulging muscles, and Chris Hemsworth's nakedness are shots written for men by men.

Have you ever stopped to think what kind of men women drop their panties over?

They are men like Pete Davidson, Dylan O'Brien, Timothee Chalamet, Tom Holland, and Harry Styles (sorry that I only listed white men). This men stand in direct contrast to everything men say that women want.

Look, this post is going long, so I will say summarize with these two points:

Naruto has always been gay, so of course Boruto is going to be gay. Even if Boruto ends up with Sarada, it will still probably be a gay series. The series idolizing, romanticizes and sexualizes the idea of all things masculine from the male perspective.

I think it would actually be the most beautiful ending if Boruto x Mitsuki becomes romantic endgame, because at least Kishimoto will be honest with himself about what his motivations really are. He wants to live in a world in which he can be in an emotionally intimate, vulnerable, and transparent relationship with a man that he admires who admires him in exchange. I think that's what most men actually want (whether that involves sex or not), but men don't ask for that because, well: No Homo. So, instead, we have a male loneliness and despair epidemic.

Now, you make ask justhoughts1310, is it wrong for men to like each other?

Of course not! I am a woman who loves women, values women, admires women, and thinks women are so amazing and beautiful. I am blown away by all that women are.

A large part of the Barbie movie, was the admiration of the amazingness of women despite all odds and obstacles. What I have a problem with is men denying their true desires and motivations, and in turn treating women as a prop in the games that they play to win over the approval of other men. Basically, men. If you want to have a dick measuring contest, leave all of us women and the rest of the world out of it.