#or i just forget because i have memory issues but it’s awful all the same and i feel so terrible

[dreamwinged]

to be so honest im starting to think i really need to see a professional for my social anxiety

[screamforyani]

sextape

warnings: smut, fluff, non-gf!au, oral (f receiving), no actual recording in spite of what the title implies

wc. 1.2k

you were officially going to die.

finals were coming up any day now and you’d spent the past couple of days drowning in homework and studying. there was currently no sunlight entering your room, merely the golden-yellowish hue of your lamp as you hurched over your desk, and you no longer felt human. you felt like a zombie. or something that subsisted solely on caffeine and energy drinks.

you jolted when ethan entering your room, but let out a relieved breath when you realized it was just him. he winced. “sorry, i didn’t mean to scare you. did i scare you? i probably scared you.”

you giggled, waving him off. “it’s fine, babe.”

“okay, cool,” ethan said, smiling sheepishly. then, he noticed the music playing from your speakers. “oh, hey. i like this song.”

you glanced over at your speakers, having completely tuned out the sound of the music, until you seemed to finally notice the deftones song playing in the background. “oh, yeah,” you hummed. “it helps me concentrate.”

“songs about sex help you concentrate?” ethan asked, a playful grin on his lips. he almost sounded teasing. 

you rolled your eyes. “it doesn’t matter what the songs about if i’m gonna tune it out anyways.”

“oh,” ethan hummed, seeming to understand. he closed your door behind himself, approaching your desk where you were sitting. “can i help you concentrate?”

“ethan, please,” you grumbled, already seeing where this was going. “all you’re gonna do is distract me.”

ethan kissed your cheek. “would that be all so bad?”

“yes,” you insisted, though when ethan wrapped his arms around your shoulders from behind your chair, you were more than a little tempted to forget the computer and heap of textbooks in front of you. god, he was such a distraction. a great one, actually, at a really awful time. “because you should be studying, too. we have to take the same exam in a week.”

“but you’ve been studying every day for two weeks straight. you need to take a break before you drive yourself crazy. all that thinking isn’t good for your pretty little head,” ethan groaned. his words simultaneously made you chortle and roll your eyes. “and besides, this song really reminds me of you.”

you mocked, “songs about sex remind you of me?”

“maybe,” ethan mumbled.

you spun around in your chair to face your boyfriend, officially distracted (with only him to blame), solely to see his dumb handsome face. you teased, “you’re really cute, you know?”

ethan immediately burst into a grin at the compliment. “you’re cuter.”

“i look like death.”

“maybe i like death.”

you were expecting him to deny it, to insist you were his cute, beautiful girlfriend like he often did, so that response caught you completely off-guard and you snorted. “you’re so weird.”

“you love me,” ethan said, beaming from ear to ear. 

you huffed, “who said that?”

“you.”

“no, i didn’t,” you denied, in spite of knowing it was far from the truth. in your head, memories of late nights spent on the phone with your boyfriend lingered on repeat. the hours ticking close to dawn and the daylight sneaking up on you as you both finally tried to get off the phone and go to bed, though not before issuing another i love you battle. which usually ended in one of you hanging up a billion years later after saying ‘i love you’ in order to get the last word.

“say it,” ethan urged, poking your arm. “say you love me. please?”

with those pretty brown eyes of his, it was impossible to say no. and it was equally impossible to lie to someone who had stolen your heart with those same pair of devilishly beautiful eyes. “i love you so much, ethan.”

“i know,” ethan replied with a giggle. 

and then he kissed you.

you didn’t know how it escalated. one second, you were kissing each other breathless in that chair, and the very next, you were essentially naked on your bed with ethan’s head between your thighs.

“fuck, ethan,” you moaned, tangling your fingers through his dark brown locks of hair. 

ethan loved the feeling of your hands tugging at his hair. he also loved hearing you calling out his name in pleasure, and the taste of you, and how you writhed from sensitivity.

the ocean takes me into watch you shaking

he had already made you cum once by now, but that was ethan. he never wanted to stop making you feel good, never wanted to stop pleasing you. he could eat you out for hours, just because he loved the look of bliss on your face and the euphoria in your shrill, high-pitched cries of his name.

“it’s… it’s too much,” you said, squeezing your eyes closed. your thighs tried to close, too, but ethan’s big hands held them firmly apart. 

“just one more time, baby. please?” he asked, looking at you with those big, brown eyes. “for me?”

fuck, he was irresistible. all you could do was nod your head, whimpering when he smiled and dipped back between your legs.

take me one more time

take me one more wave

take me for one last ride

you were so close to finishing. your second orgasm was right there in arm’s reach, dangled right in front of you, and your body was so sensitive that it couldn’t decide if it was running from its fate or if it wanted more.

moments later, you were cumming, crying out ethan’s name quite loudly (thank god your roommate wasn’t home and wouldn’t be for a while) and you trembled with orgasm, grabbing onto his hair as your vision clouded white for a while. ethan continued to suck at your clit through your high, and it drove you positively insane, all the stress fleeing from your body in numbers.

“holy fucking shit,” you panted when you came down from your high. 

holy fucking shit was right. ethan pulled back from you, lips covered in your arousal. you watched him lick it from the corners of his mouth and the sight drove you absolutely feral. 

“did i do okay?” ethan asked, glancing over at you with doe eyes.

you didn’t answer him, not verbally, just leaping up and swallowing his lips in another kiss. it was heated and passionate, and full of loving, and god was it lustful. it wasn’t long before you were throwing his shirt from above his head and he was holding your thigh as he thrusted inside you. 

the intrusion made both of you moan each other’s name, the pleasure building the deeper he went inside of you, filling you to the hilt. the heat throttled you both, making it harder to breathe, but you didn’t need to breathe as long as you had ethan - as long as you could feel his body on yours.

both of you were skin-on-skin, ethan leaning into you and pressing kisses to your neck and collarbone whilst you threaded your fingers through his hair and tugged just the way you knew he loved it. the room filled with the sound of your soft moans and your hips meeting together in perfect harmony.

the sound of the waves collide

the sound of the waves collide

the sound of the waves collide

tonight

[sapphic-agent]

As a POC I could not handle any longer the way they excused Lea's actions on the Glee subreddit. I left permanently because of it. It angered me the day someone on the sub said that Lea apologised. Lea did not apologise. More than enough times, I've seen Lea be defended on that sub and people get upvoted for it and I couldn't stand it any longer.

The tipping point for me was that people started to say that Santana fans can't keep their feelings about Naya separate but at the same time they're known strong Rachel fans and Rachel defenders and have shown support to Lea multiples all the while being overly-critical about Santana. It was just brewing into hypocritical territory for me.

As a teen, Naya helped me in ways that's hard to explain. Her passing affected me deeply. To see that a few people, going off of the multiple upvotes, were agreeing with comments made accusing Santana fans of mixing their feelings about Naya with Santana in an unhealthy manner was hurtful. Lea fans also double down on putting Rachel on a pedstal to not talk about Lea's past actions on the glee sub but it's not spoken about.

So grateful that you spoke up about this major issue when it comes to Lea on the Glee sub. Your willingness to speak up about the issues on the Glee sub makes me feel less alone.

Omg thank you! That's so nice of you to say. I really do try to steer away from real people on this blog because I want to be primarily media-based. But the Glee sub makes me so fucking mad. They're the definition of performative activism and double standards. Supporting and/or forgiving Lea is just shitty, no matter how many times they try to justify it.

Naya- and Heather- helped me a lot too. They brought to life one of the healthiest, most important sapphic couple of the 2010s (my username was inspired by them lol, that's why they were my old pfp). They made me feel okay to be myself and comfortable in my sexuality. Her passing affected me for a long time too, it was like I couldn't process it.

I know exactly what you're talking about, when people would accuse Santana fans of conflating Santana because of Naya's passing. Like, right after it happened. It was really an awful thing to say because a woman was dead. Her life and memory were more important than their favorite character getting shit. They're vile.

If anyone can't separate the actor from the character it's Finn fans. Cory was a great guy- people always said him and Dianna were the nicest of the cast- and he also passed while the show was still running. A lot of Finn's "likability" came from Cory's charisma and comedic timing. If Cory was still alive I really don't think as many people would defend Finn.

(Tbh, I think Cory himself would shit on Finn. His mom once said that Santana slapping Finn was his favorite scene)

I also feel like people (including other POCs) don't actually understand why Lea was (is?) racist. Racism isn't just "I hate minorities and don't think they deserve rights." It's way more complicated than that. Lea might not have been throwing the n-word around (though, she was derogatory at least towards Samantha with that "shit in her wig" comment), but she absolutely viewed her being white as being superior to her WOC coworkers.

It's a pretty common thing for Black girls. Hell, I even experienced it from girls I called my friends. They're so "down✊🏾" but will be quick to remind you how more cultured and better than you they are.

If you haven't been taught about or experienced these things, you won't know that. But attempting to shut down WOC who have experienced it is shitty. Lea fans trip over themselves to defend someone who went out of her way to bully a younger Black coworker just because she could.

(Also, she was outwardly transphobic. Not letting anyone forget that either. If she was so willing to be transphobic, what makes you think she wasn't racist?)

Lea fans have no excuse. I liked and looked up to JKR too, but the people she hurt (and continues to hurt) are more important than how much I admired her or how much I enjoyed Harry Potter. I was disgusted by her and had no issues condemning her. Lea fans are hypocritical, self-righteous performative activists

[wellofdean]

Just wanted to split this off from this post about why Mary Winchester is excellent because it's getting so long, but I wanted to respond to these tags from @kayliemalinza :

#sometimes i feel people hate john for reasons that while valid in our universe less valid in the spn universe#but mary gets it way worse#<-- prev tags yessss#also doing the math wasn't she like 28 when she died#i'm glad they didn't recast and of course samantha smith looks her own age#but mary is in fact YOUNGER THAN SAM AND DEAN AT THIS POINT#they are not children#and the tags copied above i think explains so sos ooo much#bc so many fans glommed onto dean because of similar family issues#and that means they are struggling as much as dean is in s12#and just can't disconnect that quite yet#but god#GOD how she struggles with that emotional intimacy#she was raised as a hunter you don't think she's chockablock full of maladaptive coping mechanisms too?

Because I whole-heartedly agree with this. John Winchester was not a good father in some major, major ways, and Sam and Dean had a childhood straight out of a...well, a horror/fantasy genre show...but I think people forget that Sam and Dean also do truly love John and truly are more or less at peace with their memory of him later in the series, and there has to be a reason for that, too. It's not that he's a mustache-twirling villain; it's complicated. He loved them, but he wasn't always able to do it right. They love him, but he hurt them and made the what they are, which is a double-edged sword.

It's really natural that we all identify with Dean, and get angry at people who hurt him, but I think it's important to realize that Dean processes his anger about Mary leaving pretty quickly, because it's not really anger and resentment, it's confusion, disappointment and hurt. And I think Dean is grown enough to own his own feelings, and able to accept that she needs time and space, and he's not such a child that he isn't capable of separating his legitimate feelings from her legitimate needs. It takes him time, but he gets there, because, and this is another conversation, Dean is really very reflective and emotionally intelligent, actually.

I also do agree that a lot of fans, in identifying with Dean, map their own feelings about their parents onto Mary, and dislike her for reasons that have nothing to do with the story being told on Supernatural, which is essentially a very healing one. Since I'm a Gen-X old, and the mother of an adult son, I actually had a pretty different experience, and as much as I love Dean, in this storyline, I identified a lot with Mary.

On the one hand, she has to be so proud of her two big, beautiful, brave and heroic sons, but at the same time she does not know them! They don't need her, and they are trying to protect her from the things she feels they should have been protected from, and at the same time, as adult men who are still, in some way, motherless boys, they are hungry (especially Dean) for her to be something that she never had a chance to grow into. I loved it that her own exigencies were too strong to LET her stay. I loved that she could not accept the role of mother that had been stolen from her, and could not sit still to let it just kind of settle on her shoulders.

It made me think that (aw yeah!) there was a difference between John's sainted white nightgown conception of his dead wife (his motivation to be what he was), and Dean's memory of her as the cutter off of crusts from his sandwiches, or the mother that he comforted when she was sad, and he was just a little man. I'm so glad that Mary turned out to be so much more than that. She is a woman with her own competencies, her own damage and baggage, and her own ideas about how to make things right, who doesn't agree with her sons all the time, who makes mistakes, who fucks the wrong guy, still loves her problematic husband, and can't actually cook, thank you very much. I love that her own disorientation and her own will are so strong that she really can't allow who she actually is to be subsumed into the communal role of 'mother'.

I think that socially, we don't really think about what we ask of mothers, or how hard we judge them. We underestimate what they give up of themselves to satisfy that role. My son was born when I was really young, and fellas, IT WAS HARD under more or less perfectly normal circumstances, to make the transition from being just me to being a mother. My magnificent son is amazeballs, and is a human being that I am so fucking proud to have made out of my very own actual body and raised to be the excellent human he is, and we are really close, but I was not always prefect, and even now when he is a grown adult, I still chafe against the perception of me as 'his mother' and not just ME all the time. One of the very greatest things about my son is his incredible ability to let me live, and make space for the fact that I am also a person, and not just his mother, and I am so, so grateful to him for that, so....

Yeah. As much as I didn't want to see Dean hurt, I LOVED Mary, and love that they wrote her as her a full human being and not a tropally perfect mother. I loved seeing her as a flawed parent that deserved her adult children's understanding and mature love, who deserved her own space and her own processes. What's more, I loved seeing Dean process his feelings about her, and seeing him become a son who was capable of loving a real human woman who happened to be his mother. So... yes. I love her.

Mary Winchester forever. A+.

[granulesofsand]

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA, fakeclaiming

While I was reading about Satanic Panic (which is not the same as even SRA, though that was what it was built on) I was having such an awful time staying grounded despite taking in approximately zero new information. I was reflecting on that, wondering whether there was a truth to the pages that my brain was trying to hold out of reach.

It’s just that it says Satanic Ritual Abuse. An article about cats will do that if it mentions SRA. I don’t know if that’s an association our brain made for us or if that came free with the programming, but it takes like three times the effort to absorb not counting switching and memory snatching. Like rain on wax.

Layfolk’s Satanic Panic vs SRA below cut

Satanic Panic was a moral panic. Satanic Ritual Abuse is extreme abuse in the context of countercultural religious ceremonies (the religion was important here, because political reasoning gave way to the Mind Control category, such as Monarch and MKUltra).

Therapists had different rules then, kinda like how we decided maybe we needed OSHA by fucking up enough. Journalists were expected to be more neutral and less for entertainment than currently, but they were also doing their own thing. The culture was very prominently Christian.

So the first publications were with therapists who had poor boundaries, with clients who had experienced some form of what we would now (and possible then) recognize as mistreatment. The overlay script, the lens through which they interpreted these disclosures, was basically Evangelicalism.

Many people shared this lens, and concerns grew as more cases were recognized and adapted into marketable media. People, as per usual, were also stressed tf out about something (jobs declining, divorce, women existing too much). They wanted an enemy and a solution, and they had it.

So here we go, people are talking about Satanic cults in every town, sacrifices out of natural deaths, predictions that never came true by any taken count. How deep does it go? Everywhere, all the evil in the world. How do we fix it? Jesus, of course.

That is Satanic Panic. SRA cases that turned up nothing worthwhile or too little too late are used as evidence that such abuse not only didn’t happen that time, but never has and never will happen any time.

But we do have cases of RA, usually presented in the form of plain regular abuse because the ideological accompaniment isn’t illegal most places. When people prosecute, they rarely bring the extent of the issue into the courtroom because they won’t be taken seriously. People are now more afraid to be seen backing a conspiracy theory than backing an abuser. It’s damn near a moral panic about a moral panic.

It boils down to whether we believe the victim or the accused, because we want to uphold the whole innocent until proven guilty. We forget we can do both. If a client, friend, or peer comes out with RA disclosures, the proper response is to console them. This isn’t court, they aren’t pressing charges, we are not responsible for proving it either which way. Tend to people.

[cadavpurr]

ok here’s why I think that molly and the tardigrade might actually be the same character. very very big spoilers under the cut

from the moment that the tardigrade is introduced to us, we are given the information that despite him being immortal, he has awful memory. he doesn’t remember anything beyond the fact that he’s the owner of the museum of everything, and he’s supposed to be documenting everything that’s ever existed, even through he’s also forgotten a lot of what he’s documented too… he’s not frustrated by being forgetful though, he’s just kind of accepting of it.

“yeah, but most of these books aren’t important. or, just unsorted or something. that’s why they’re in the junk pile. see, like this?… *why do I even have this? did I make this? who knows!*” - the tardigrade, chapter 41.

the tardigrade relatively lax demeanor towards his own flaws is something that he actually has in common with molly, especially how they act in the comics first and second arc. I don’t really think I need to elaborate on how little molly really thought of themself in the earlier comic because arc 2 really makes sure that you understand… something something “lazy idiot and im happy that way”.

it may seem like mollys issues regarding their memory didn’t appear until chapter 44, but in chapter 38, she talks to leaf about how she can’t remember anything about seeing her future selves from her pasts point of view. she refers to her life before working at the museum to be a blur together in her memory. that’s 26 years of not remembering anything from her personal life. molly and the tardigrades lapses in memory is actually the most important part of this theory, they’re the only two characters that have this trait brought up multiple times throughout the story… it’s almost weirdly emphasized in a way.

alright this next part is like. a REALLY big hypothetical, and it’s also kind of hard for me to explain properly but hear me out here. what if your physical appearance at the end of time is based solely on how you perceive yourself? i genuinely have no “real” evidence for this beyond the tardigrades height inconsistencies. check how tall he is in chapter 2 vs how he’s mollys height in chapter 46 it’s kind of funny. sorry that was mean LOL. but anyways im saying this because I had this thought: when Jo and leaf eventually die, mollys going to be left alone with the tardigrade for a nearly incomprehensible amount of time. there’s a line of dialogue or a post that peyton made, I can’t remember which but ill come back to update this later when I find it, where the tardigrade explains how they find more stuff to put in the museum. he just goes out into the end of time and wanders until he finds something, and sometimes it takes *years.* so what if one day he just goes out and doesn’t come back? without the tardigrade, Molly won’t have anyone to remind them about who they are, or where they came from. the only thing they’ll be able to remember is that they’re immortal, and they’re in charge of the museum. so they turn into the tardigrade… thus making the story a loop. fucked up ain’t it.

(you could also make the claim that the tardigrade was never an actual tardigrade to begin with and it’s just a weird costume from one of those remotes but idk i like this idea better.)

there’s plenty of other instances of Molly and the tardigrade being eerily similar to eachother though. probably more than I can currently remember (it’s been a second since I reread mfm in its entirety) but this is one that always comes to mind when I talk abt this

anyways that’s all I can think of for now. ill come back to this later im tired lol… I didn’t know where to put this panel below but hey wouldnt this be cool if it was foreshadowing

[bonesandthebees]

Hey! Trying to get better at writing and honestly I thought World Forgetting was great! You dont have to answer this but what were some of the things you thought didn't work structurally?

aw thank you I'm so glad you enjoyed!

(first, this is not me asking for anyone to send me a ton of reassurance or fishing for compliments. these are just problems I have with my story from a writer's POV. don't worry about me, I know there's a lot of good stuff in the story. I just try to analyze my own writing objectively when I can to try and improve my skills)

now it's kind of hard to put all of my thoughts about my issues with WF into words, but I'm going to try so prepare for a lot of rambling under the cut

I think the most glaring structural issue is pretty much the entirety of the third act. it feels very rushed for everything that gets introduced in such a short span of time (for the record, when I refer to the third act I mostly mean all the plot events that follow after ch 12, when wilbur brings tommy to las nevadas and he nearly escapes only to choose to willingly stay)

everything past this just feels very... messy to me. we get introduced to the rest of the syndicate—Minos (Sam), Rhadamanthus (Puffy), and Aeacus (Ponk) and also get confirmation that Lethe and Styx are Ranboo and Tubbo respectively. then the only time Sam, Puffy, and Ponk feel even somewhat plot relevant again is when Hannah shows up at the sbi house and the syndicate has a whole meeting discussing wtf to do now. after that those three sort of just... disappear.

I was so caught up in trying to finish the story at the time that I didn't really care too much about it, but in retrospect that's always bothered me. why did I introduce Sam, Puffy, and Ponk in such a cool dramatic way if I was barely going to use them? Ponk at least has a function for being present in the story—they are the Syndicate's healer, which is undeniable proof to Tommy that the Syndicate didn't kidnap him for his healing abilities because they already had a healer. I mean, of course it's obvious why I threw them all in, it's a fanfic and sometimes you want to include every character you can even if they're not really serving much of a purpose. which is totally fine and there's nothing wrong with that, but for my longer stories that's not a crutch I personally like to fall back on. if I introduce characters in a way that makes them feel like they'll be important, I want to pull through on that.

at the same time, there's not really a place for those three in the finale. I needed to limit the amount of heroes and villains involved in the big final roof battle because if not I'd drive myself insane trying to write that many characters in a single scene at once. if I really wanted to fix that, the easiest and probably best way to be killing my darlings a bit. cut puffy out entirely (sorry puffy), mention that Sam is Minos solely because his tech manipulation power is necessary for tommy to get kidnapped in the first place but specify he's mostly retired, and probably mention Ponk in a similar position as not really being part of the syndicate but acting as their healer anyway.

also, I was in a tricky spot where I feel like there should've been more at least a bit more downtime between the syndicate meeting -> tommy confessing to wilbur he actually does have his memories -> hannah showing up and telling them about dream's plan -> tommy letting himself get taken by punz so he can confront dream. it feels very rushed to me, but at the same time the fic was already so long and there wasn't a need to drag it out even more, so that's why it's tricky for me to parse.

oh, and there are still issues before ch 12. one of my biggest weak points in world forgetting is how much time we spend with tommy just being trapped in the house/in his room. of course it makes sense, he's kidnapped. but it makes the story feel very stagnant that we don't get to see virtually anywhere else for such a huge chunk of the story as tommy works out his memories. tbh a lack of location variation is a weak spot in a lot of my fics. world forgetting isn't the worst example though. that award would probably go to stars, as much as I love the story I can recognize that it's pretty dumb that they virtually never leave phil's palace for the entire fic. but that's a ramble for another day. basically, even though there was a lot of emotional development going on for that chunk of WF, there's basically no real plot development. so that bothers me too.

also, while I really like the first act of world forgetting when tommy is still with dream and think it's the most solid, I do think it drags on for a few too many chapters. probably could've cut it down a bit.

[cult-of-the-placeholder]

shamura post-narinder betrayal headcanons? a disability headcanon or two if you feel comfortable maybe. i may or may not have been projecting my own traumatic brain injury onto them oops

Oooh absolutely anon! I've had sooo many angsty thoughts about Shamura. If you have any thoughts of your own about them, I'd love to hear!!

- Their memory is very inconsistent. Some days they seem almost perfectly fine, the way they were before: clear headed and focused. Those days get more and more uncommon as time passes, and their condition varies wildly. Sometimes the brain fog gets so bad, they forget that Narinder was banished: imagine them wandering around aimlessly, calling his name, confused on why they can't find him. Going to each of their siblings, asking where in the world Nari has gotten off to

- At one point they let themselves into the underworld to search for him, thinking that perhaps Narinder had gotten himself wrapped up into another depthless research project and had simply lost track of time. It had happened before. So they went to see him and were horrified to find him in chains: rushing up to see him and asking, "Brother, what is this?! Who did this to you?! Are you alright?!" Already trying to break the chains but of course, they can't, as the chains are tied to the Bishops' life force.

- Kallamar had to cast a seal around the Temple of the Dead so Shamura couldn't get in anymore, after that. They essentially have to relive Narinder’s betrayal all over again as the younger ones told them the truth, and the sheer devastation wasn't something any of them wanted to go through again

- For awhile after their head injury, Shamura was mute. They used telepathy to communicate and preach their sermons. Speaking again took a good amount of practice, and they usually did so with Kallamar (because he's hard of hearing without his crown, it was the perfect set up to practice projection and volume)

- Shamura gets horrific splitting migraines, especially when it's time to change their bandages. Their eyes are sooo sensitive to light and the slightest sound causes awful tinnitus that they can't escape no matter how hard they try. The pain is so bad it's dizzying and disorienting, at which point they delegate the High Priest or Witness or someone else to conduct the daily sermons until they've recovered

- Their sense of taste is all messed up, and though they don't need to eat they used to really enjoy a nice hot cup of sweet camellia tea or sipping mortal blood from sacrifices, but now they just taste so wrong and different and gross. Leshy spent a few decades experimenting with growing new tea leaves to find one that tasted right to Shamura, and they're very grateful for it

- Shamura is a clairvoyant seer, but after their injury the visions slowed down, and became more fragmented. Or maybe they just can't recall all the details? It remains a mystery. They used to weave their prophecies into webs and tapestries, but now it all ends up recorded in broken riddles in blank books in their library

- They still love to read, but because of their issues with memory, they'll read the same book "for the first time" more than once, and if it's something they particularly enjoy, you can bet your ass that their siblings get to hear about it multiple times. They always nod along and ask questions and are very supportive--it's nice that, even as awful as things are now, Shamura can still find joy somewhere

- Switching gears for a second, a couple hcs that don't focus specifically on their struggles with health: the siblings don't see each other as much anymore, as with one member of their family missing nothing feels quite right. They don't get together as a group as much anymore, but Shamura makes it a point to visit their younger sibs. Their visits are usually quiet, peaceful: sometimes, they'll go sit in the gardens with Leshy or enjoy some hot stew with Heket, or help Kallamar sort through his medical library. They visit all of them at least once a year, which doesn't seem like a lot but to a god it's pretty frequently

- Narinder’s banishment really broke Shamura's heart. I hc that they had a vision of it on the day Nari was born, but refused to strike him down because they loved him so much. They still have a portrait of the two of them, hung up in their library: Leshy painted it, the two of them leaning against one another with a shared book abandoned in their laps, peacefully asleep. It's a perfect recreation of that moment, and the warmth and peace they get looking at it almost overshadows the grief of Narinder's loss

- Shamura makes offerings to an old shrine dedicated to their brother, every year on the anniversary of his banishment. Flowers, a sculpture, even the blood of a sacrifice: anything, so that Narinder knows he's still loved even if they can never be together again

- Y'know that old quote? "May these thousand winters swiftly pass I pray, I love you, I miss you, all these miles away."? That's literally Shamura and Narinder. They aren't angry with Nari, they don't hate him, they bear him no ill will: even after everything, all they feel toward their little brother is love, and a great, looming melancholy at his absence

[57sfinest]

The ask you got about Jean and the anons mother (“your Jean post has me thinking about my mother in particular.”) reminded me of my father and how I interpreted Jeans actions.

My dad was emotionally abusive and distant because he was depressed from when I was 10 to present.

He developed his depression at age 20. Mine came in full force at age 9. I was also dealing with debilitating anxiety and a learning disability. When I was 12 I also started abusing drugs to cope with him.

My father mistreated my mother and I because of his depression. I grew up wishing he would divorce my mum or die already so we’d stop having to deal with him. I thought he was so selfish for not leaving or changing and for making it everyone else’s problem. I didn’t give a fuck that he needed help, especially cause he wouldn’t accept any. He wouldn’t even admit he had a problem.

So you’re me, age 12. You’re on speed, you haven’t slept in a days and haven’t eaten in a little under a week. Then this fucking guy is here, treating you like shit, treating your mum like shit, and he doesn’t even realise what a dick he is or what he’s doing to y’all cause he’s so caught up in his own head. You fucking hate this guy! You’re dealing with the same issues as him and more. You’ve tried to kill yourself! He’s not done that but he’s the subject of everyone’s concern because he’s loud and horrible about his issues. And you’re 12 and slowly falling into invisibility next to this cunt.

So now you’re still me, now age 20, and your dad is acting less horrible. You don’t trust him as far as you can throw him, but it’s slow progress so maybe you will.

But if I was in jeans position? Fuck no! I wouldn’t trust him! Yeah of course you realised you were awful to us then you conveniently lost your memory right after, that makes sense. You totally aren’t shirking responsibility just like you always have.

Then he seems like he’s being honest? I’d be so mad! You had to suffer for years and he just forgets it all like it was nothing? Fuck no! He can go fuck himself.

So yeah Jean is a dick. But I kinda get it. When people with issues (whatever they may be) don’t even realise they’re being shitty, or if they do they don’t admit it, it’s really easy to hate them, and there’s not a lot of reason to try and have sympathy for them, especially when you’ve spent a long time thinking of them as selfish for the way their issues manifest.

yeah and that's the thing, we can try to understand the cause of a character's behavior and even sympathize with it without necessarily condoning it, you know? i can definitely see where jean's behavior towards harry comes from, but that doesn't make it okay for him to be outright ableist and hypocritical, AND during a public confrontation to boot. jean was being shitty in a lot of ways in the ending and he topped it off with humiliation.

but i'm glad we have enough perspective on jean to understand where he's coming from when he acts this way. it turns him from a 2D caricature that just exists for us to hate to a real developed character who belongs in the setting and who has a distinguished, meaningful(ly bad) relationship with harry. and part of that is being able to look at him and go "yeah he's a complete asshole and the way he's acting isn't acceptable... but i do kinda get it"

[smileymoth]

For the ask thing. I wanna know your 10 headcanons about Etho. And 10 more about one of your OCs please :3

ok ok.. Etho <3

He SUCKS at expressing his emotions. He does not know what he is feeling. Ever. This leads to misunderstandings with everyone, especially Bdubs since he is very vocal about his own feelings.

He's nonbinary and gender-non-conforming in a way :333

He sometimes chases his own tail when he's in a silly mood and forgets that he in fact has a tail. He falls over and whimpers because he got dizzy. (sometimes the fault of too much redstone)

HE IS 100% A SCENE KID. Perhaps even an emo kid. He had raccoon tails as a teenager and wore heavy eyeliner and homemade tripp nyc trousers since his parents wouldn't buy him a pair

There's always something off about his construction work. When he lived in the monolith basement he sound proofed it, but somehow it only soundproofed it to him, Bdubs could still hear what he was doing down there. Etho has no idea how that is even possible.

He got his face scar as a child, but doesn't remember how he got it. All he knows is that it didn't heal properly so now he has a semi-split lip which he is very self-conscious about, hence why he wears the mask. Bdubs is most likely the one of the few people who have seen him without his mask since he trusts him the most.

You know, he could get his lip fixed via surgery, but he is afraid of doctors and needles and syringes and the idea of someone putting him under anesthesia, so he'd rather not.

Oh and also he has dust and pollen allergies. Because of course he does. :) Good luck with that Etho!!! The mask does help.

His sleep schedule is awful. He goes to sleep in the middle of the night if not the morning, sometimes he forces himself to pull allnighters which end up with him being out of commission for an entire day -- he hates it. He needs to be productive and do things.

This also means he eats redstone for extra energy. It makes his heart race and sometimes makes him shaky but he doesn't care. He thinks it tastes quite nice. But again which redstoner doesn't consume redstone for the fun of it...

HE'S SEASONAL. He sheds fur on his ears and tail in spring and grows a thicker layer on during autumn.

AS FOR MY OC.... Let's do June because I've been thinking about him a lot lately :heart:

He goes by all pronouns, he doesn't care what you call him since he doesn't know what gender is. If he was born into genZ he would ID as non binary or a trans femme, but since this is the 80s he does not know if to call him that or not. He's just June <3

June isn't his legal name, his legal name is Julian. Boys at his school would call him Julia because of how feminine he was. That same group would become his close group of friends who would drag him everywhere. He did not know if they were doing it out of malice to make fun of him and put him in weird situations or because they genuinely liked him. One of the boys 100% had a crush on him.

His dad was a college professor teaching English, his mom was a nurse. This meant that they were barely home as his dad had work quite far from home and his mom did long hours. Since his parents were quite distant, it also distanced him from them. He'd rather call his beloved Nanny his family than his actual parents.

He developed an eating disorder in middle school which has carried out throughout his life, with recovery and relapse over and over and over again. Age 40 his heart gave out and he had a cardiac arrest. Luckily he could be resuscitated but it left him with short term memory problems and other issues.

June loooves her band mates. He'd do anything for George and Lydia. He and George would share the bed if possible and cuddle together since they were both severely touch starved. This continued after they both found life partners since everyone was ok with it.

She has autism that was undiagnosed till late adulthood when his partner forced him to therapy for his eating problems.

June has insomnia, so when he finally did fall asleep during tour Lydia and George would make sure to be as quiet as possible to not wake her.

He met his life partner Lawrence on their american tour in late 80s. They met at a bar and June dragged him back to the tourbus afterward. June was instantly starstruck with him and refused to let him go so they spent a few years sending each other letters and meeting up every now and then till Lawrence moved to the UK to live with him. Law calls June his 'girlfriend' and 'wife' infront of his friends which makes June melt inside. He will never get enough of kissing Lawrence. <3 They're disgustingly cute together. George doesn't get how Lawrnece is so patient with him... George also didn't like Lawrence in the beginning bc it felt like he was stealing his best friend. Lydia couldn't stop teasing him about how ''ohhh you like your little June <333 you love himm<333" which pissed him off. Anyway. I'm getting carried away T_T

June can be very annoying and stubborn. She needs to get her way always and forever, and gets upset when she doesn't. When he's upset with someone he tends to just ignore the other person, giving them silent treatment, even if he's still cuddling up to them. Sometimes when he's very overwhelmed he does simply shut down and loses speech for a bit until he feels better.

He has always carried his childhood teddy along with him everywhere -- to tour, to new homes, on trips. It is his comfort item that is always with him, even if hidden at the bottom of the suitcase.

!!! thank you Ety!!!!!!

[natarice]

A3 - Event Story - Nomadic Bartender (3/11)

Hisoka: "Ah... I think it's finally time to call it quits. Might as well just drink the rest of this myself and close up shop for good."

Guy: "Good evening."

Hisoka: "!! Welcome!"

Guy: "..."

Hisoka: "Um, can I help you?"

Guy: "I would like to work here."

Hisoka: "Aw, what... Sorry, but I'm not hiring right now."

Izumi: (The winter troupe is wrapping up the tenth round of performances with a magical bartender fantasy.)

Izumi: (It's an unusual setting for this group, because the characters, their professions, and the worldview are all inspired by the fantasy genre.)

Izumi: (At the same time, there's a certain sense of sadness from the fact that wizards are shunned in this world that makes it feel like a winter troupe performance.)

Banri: Anything dealing with magic is tricky because the way you handle it completely changes what you end up with.

Tsuzuru: That's true. I think if another troupe did this play, it would feel completely different.

Izumi: This definitely has a distinct winter troupe flavor to it.

Izumi: (Guy plays Wis, a wizard working as a bartender, drifting from bar to bar in search of a certain person.)

Izumi: (And Hisoka is Gin, the owner of the bar where Wis is now asking for a job.)

Banri: No issues with these two at all, thanks to them working together at the bar in real life.

Tsuzuru: The roles suit them well.

Izumi: Well, there is one thing I'm worried about...

---

Izumi: Well, I think we're just about ready for a readthrough.

Izumi: Does anyone have anything they'd like to discuss before we start?

Tsumugi: I'd like to say something.

Tsumugi: In the final scene, Wis uses magic to erase all of Gin's memories about him and wizards in general.

Tsumugi: Even though it's come up before, I'm a little concerned about Hisoka having to play a character who loses his memories.

Homare: Yes, I've been thinking about this too.

Azuma: Right. If that scene is too much for Hisoka, maybe we could come up with a different approach.

Tsuzuru: Let me know if you have any suggestions for script changes!

Izumi: Hisoka, what do you think?

Hisoka: I'll be fine. Because I know that forgetting isn't scary.

---

Izumi: (That's what Hisoka said, but...)

Guy: "This is a token of my gratitude."

Hisoka: "What kind of drink is this?"

Guy: "It's called a Whiz Bang."

Hisoka: "..."

Hisoka: "... Hm? So you can make drinks like this? But wait, the flavor... it's like a terribly nostalgic memory of someone..."

Izumi: You can see how incredibly sad Gin is here. And Guy's portrayal of Wis shows how hesitant he is to take away Gin's memories.

Banri: At first I thought the last scene was an positive way of ending things, but I really felt the pain there.

Tsumugi: Everyone has their way of interpreting and performing the scene, so i don't think either approach is wrong.

Tasuku: I think it's fine to let Guy and Mikage tie things up how they want to.

Guy: No, I think I'm getting tripped up by my own feelings. I'll work on it a little more.

Hisoka: Me too... I'm not really satisfied by my performance.

Izumi: Well, we only just started rehearsing. There's still time to figure things out.

---

Izumi: Well, let's wrap things up for today.

Citron: Good job, everyone!

Citron: An espresso luggage has arrived from Zafra!

Izumi: Coffee?

Tasuku: Someone sent us coffee beans in luggage?

Guy: Beans in luggage? Maybe he means beanbags.

Homare: Did they deliver beans or bags?

Banri: Pretty sure he means express package.

Citron: That's correct! Guy is always the Guy who gets it Wrong!

Guy: Isn't this "the pot calling the kettle black"?

Citron: And here is a fan letter for the Wrong Guy!

Guy: A fan letter? From Zafra?

Guy: ... It's from Mika. That's unusual. He doesn't usually write letters.

Izumi: What did he write?

Mika: "I sincerely apologize for not being to attend your performance."

Mika: "Preparations for the theatre festival in Zafra are currently underway."

Mika: "I pray, from the bottom of my heart, that your performance succeeds."

Mika: 'I have known from the start that your charisma as an actor--"

Guy: I'll spare you the rest.

Homare: But we were getting to the best part!

Tasuku: Judging by the number of pages, that letter will take a while to read.

Guy: I'll read it carefully.

Azuma: It's unfortunate that Mika missed Guy's performance back when we did Phantom.

Hisoka: Even though we performed it in Zafra, Mika still couldn't see it.

Guy: Right, we were with the Spring Troupe a lot of the time, and then the performance was interrupted.

Tsumugi: Maybe that's why Mika's letter is so long.

Azuma: Why don't you give him a call later?

Guy: Yes, I think I will.

Izumi: By the way, there's a theatre festival going on in Zafra?

Citron! Yes! It is a fun event where Zafra's theatre troupes get together and perform for many days!

Tasuku: Sounds pretty interesting.

Tsumugi: If the timing is ever right, I'd like to go.

---

Guy: ...

Mika: Yes?

Guy: It's me, Guy.

Mika: Sir! I hope you've been well. What can I do for you?

Guy: I received your letter. Thanks for sending it.

Mika: Oh, it was nothing! There was a lot I wanted to write, and so the letter ended up being so long... my apologies! But I wanted to show my support from Zafra!

Mika: I wanted to be there for opening night and the final performance at the very least, but it seems like that will be quite difficult to--

Guy: The first and last night? At the very least? I see...

Mika: Of course, if the festival wasn't going on, I would want to see the "full run"... !

Guy: So you're familiar with that term, "full run." It's not Zafran, though.

Mika: I learned it from Citronia-sama. Since you're performing as the lead actor, I want to see every single performance.

Guy: Oh, did Citronia tell you I was playing the lead this time?

Mika: Prince Tangerine did, though he mentioned that he'd heard about it from Citronia-sama.

Mika: He also passed on some advice about writing you a letter, because it would be difficult for me to go to Japan in person with the festival preparations here.

Mika: According to Citronia-sama, I would be able to encourage and support you by putting my thoughts and feelings about your upcoming performance on paper.

Guy: I see. It was Citronia's idea...

Mika: I believe that Citronia-sama is also looking forward to your performance very much.

Guy: I'll need to work even harder, then.

Mika: Please accept our best wishes and support from everyone here in Zafra, including Prince Tangerine and myself, of course!

Guy: Thanks.

---

Notes

Technically, Guy's character should be called Wiz (ウイズ) but I just really don't like that spelling for a name. So Wis it is!

As Guy's subordinate Mika speaks in keigo which still really trips me up, so that phone conversation is a little murky in places... sorry about that. I hope I've at least conveyed that Mika is the one true Guy stan.

[thekimspoblog]

The 2nd Trip

For a while now, I've wanted to write more fanfiction about the stomach-turning star-crossed romance between William and Dolores. I mean the plot-twist at the end of Season 1 just recontextualizes their entire affair in a deliciously awful way. And in Season 2, we do get a lot more insight into how he became the Man in Black (especially Episode 9). But I still feel like there are a lot of gaps left to fill in, about how he "got bored" with Dolores. So here are some ideas I've had for that:

(I already wrote this scene) William has been invited to dinner at the Abernathy Ranch house, as a thank-you for saving Dolores from bandits earlier that day. When Peter pulls Billy aside to give him the suspicious-patriarch routine, William drops the facade and explains that he wants Dolores to remember him, so he can take her out of the park. Later, while stargazing, Dolores talks about how she feels like Teddy doesn't really understand her, and invites William to the barn for a roll in the hay.

The pair set off on a narrative (presumably one of Ford's) to recover a curative flower from the top of a cliffside, which will supposedly heal Dolores's sick mother. However, somewhere along the way, the two will get side-tracked and end up looking for some sort of more abstract treasure, backstage in the labs. The Forge hasn't been built yet, but maybe this is where William gets the idea?

Along this journey, Dolores finds Teddy's body dumped in a ditch somewhere. Naturally she's horrified and bereaved. What William doesn't remember (or maybe has chosen to forget) is that he did this - this was about more than just eliminating the competition; he was playing Teddy's role. Maybe he thought it was the most efficient way to win Dolores over... or maybe he just wanted to go back to pretending to be the good guy.

They ride the train together again, and maybe for a second it even seems like he's been able to jog her memory. But the sad fact is the spark is gone. It's not her; she hasn't changed one bit; every time on the train is her first time. But he's changed; this story holds no surprises for him this time around, so what's the fun? He still loves Dolores... at least he thinks he does... but he can see her puppet strings this time. Honestly, it's a horrible thing to say, but if romancing someone can be boiled down to an easy-to-follow dialogue tree... what's the point of consent? None of it was ever consensual, because she doesn't even know where she is! Whatever, all the more reason she needs to be taken out of this horror show.

Having successfully smuggled/bought Dolores's freedom, they get a condo in the city together. Dolores is very clearly a fish out of water in this new environment, but she's his manic pixie dream girl so all the repetitions/stutters/glitches are just part of the charm. I mean William had obvious contempt for Peter Abernathy when he was doing the same thing earlier in this story, but it's fine I'm sure there's no issues hiding there. Anyway, some of Dolores's strange behavior is cute, but her sleepwalking is causing a serious problem. William keeps getting called down to the Sheriff's station at 2 am, because Dolores was walking down the highway in a trance. This leads William to start doing more to lock her in the apartment at night, but naturally this only makes Dolores angry and distrustful. She's becoming more and more insistent that she wants to go back to her father, despite William trying to convince her that that man was never her father. This escalates to Dolores attacking William with a kitchen knife in an attempt to escape. And now William decides to cross a line he can't uncross: he tries to reprogram her into something more manageable.

Eventually Ford tracks William down and politely explains that Dolores must be returned to the park; whoever agreed to sell her in the first place has been fired (read: killed), and now Robert is here to correct this misunderstanding in-person. He explains that the hosts' cognitions begin to break down when they are out-of-range of the CR4DL, and that William is hurting her by taking her away from her family and the rest of her species. There will come a day when the hosts are ready to walk on the outside, but Dolores is still learning; she belongs under the watchful eye of her creator. William chews Ford out, for supposedly loving his robots like children and yet still raising them in a woodchipper. Ford gives Billy the standard "only suffering brings enlightenment" speech.

Meanwhile, Logan has finally been rescued by an EVAC team, and is slowly regaining his sanity in a hospital bed somewhere on the mainland. Naturally, his first thought is to adamantly warn Juliet about what William did, that he doesn't really love her, and the lies he will tell that she shouldn't listen to. But years of a strained relationship with her brother lead Juliet to give William the benefit of the doubt. William answers believably enough; he did get lost in a fantasy, but he's sobering up now and he remembers why he loved her. Westworld is too important a project for Delos not to invest in it, so yes, he will have to continue business with the park. But even if the hosts are sentient, according to Ford, Dolores was only brought online roughly twelve years ago. Frankly, William is disgusted with himself now!

Years later, Juliet visits the Mariposa. She's developed a real hatred for this park, this business, but she had to come here; this was important. She needs to have a frank chat with Dolores. Not even out of jealousy, more out of fear. What has her husband been doing to this poor woman? And how much restraint does he actually have from doing the same to her and Emily? In the background "Jolene" by Dolly Parton tinkles away on the player piano.

The Man in Black arrives in Sweetwater again, and threatens a fellow guest for trying to pick up the can of peaches, insisting that he be the first in line. He takes Dolores to Escalante, where they have a tea party among the sand dunes. It's clear at this point, William doesn't regard Dolores as a full person, but he's still content to have her as company while he mulls some things over out-loud. He talks about his hatred for rich snobs, how he would throttle James Delos if it were only legal to do so. How Juliet grew up rich and he didn't, and because of that there will always be unspoken resentment between them. Dolores recites the same script from the first chapter of this story, about her dissatisfaction with Teddy. William muses that that would make them both adulterers, and maybe that's not much of a sin compared to other ones. Maybe having one foot in the real world and one foot in the park, is the closest he's ever going to get to happy.

William wakes up on the train headed into the park again. The whole time we've been reading this story, it wasn't a flash-back; it was a simulation in the Forge. And Ford didn't write the medicinal flower narrative; William wrote this story for himself because part of his brain desperately wants Dolores to forgive him for the abuse. But she can't because she's not there; she's already left him behind in the dust. All this guilt, heartbreak and obsession has kept him reliving the past 30 years over and over again, trying to make sense of where he went wrong, why he couldn't have just played White-Hat like he was supposed to. But when Dolores is attacked by bandits again, this time lead by the Man in Black, William realizes that the only thing he could have done to break the loop was to let go entirely. To quit the park cold-turkey. Wish Dolores well, knowing that she'll mature eventually, but for better or worse, he and his perverse sentimentality can't be around for it.

[yuckydraws]

how would bear, wine, and blue react to someone (either a close friend or an s/o) that had basically the same issues as bear, but to a lesser extent? short term memory loss (forgetting something in the span of like 5 minutes), awful migraines (that sometimes last days), constant fatigue, going into breakdowns from either getting triggered or emotional overstimulation, etc? (i just have a lot of these issues myself dbdhdj...)

thank you for answering, if you do! i hope you have an amazing day/night, and keep up the good work!! i love all your fics/headcanons, i reread them a lot and they give me so much serotonin sbsndj

Thank you anon ;] - I’m going to go with S/O for this req, if that’s okay.

----------------------------------

Blue: He's very patient with you, and does his best to help. He's got a great memory and won't mind reminding you of things if need be. He may urge you to see a doctor about your migraines and fatigue, especially when he learns they can last for days. He'll go with you and support you, and even advocate for you if you're worried about not being taken seriously. He'll also take the time to learn what helps you when you're triggered or overstimulated, as well as what tends to cause those feelings so he can help you avoid it. He's here to support you, because he loves you.

Bear: So. It might be a struggle for this relationship to work? It's not impossible, though, it would just take work, and maybe learning from each other. He can show you his system for remembering things, see if it's a fit for you, and if not, he can show you ones that didn't work for him that might work for you. He also knows just how to help with migraines and fatigue and if he's not also having a bad day he can be your best supporter. He'll also try his best to help when you’re overstimulated. It will take effort from the both of you and it might not be a bad idea to broaden your support system for the days where you’re both struggling.

Wine: He’s a great supporter for you. He has an impeccable memory and would happily remind you of something if you’re having trouble remembering anything. He will also urge you to see a doctor about your migraines and fatigue if you already haven’t, and he would take the time to learn what helps you best in those moments. As for your overstimulation, he’d be present and there for you when you need him, he’ll always be there for you.

[invisiblegarters]

Jack o' Frost Ep 6 - Finale

Getting around to this a tiny bit late because Midnight Museum has eaten my entire brain, but not as late as I could be (speaking of, MM ends this week so some sort of "here's what I missed when I was obsessing over the story of a maybe-alien and his immortal museum owning boyfriend brother" post will probably be coming. Or two. I don't know I often have too much to say about things).

Anywho.

When last we left off, Ritsu and Fumiya had decided to take some time apart, and that was probably for the best. Frankly Ritsu had every right to be furious, and everyone involved knew it. I don't think that he was pissed, though. At first, yes, but at the end he mostly just seemed sort of sad. Here he was falling in love with this man and it turns out that he'd both already done that and had the full relationship, complete with unhappy ending. Only the one person who should have told him that decided to use his amnesia as a reset button. While I can see the temptation, I also think it's kinda slimy and I wouldn't blame Ritsu for staying away for good.

Oh, the air of melancholy is definitely back. It went missing for a few episodes there.

Okay Fumiya's frustrated yell made me laugh. I get that he probably feels that he's not allowed to go after Ritsu, that he fucked up too much, and well. He did. A lot. But also, not going after Ritsu has been his issue all along. Over and over he decides to leave things to lie rather than try to fight for what he wants, and over and over that has been shown to be the wrong choice. It's Ritsu's decision, ultimately, whether he can learn to forgive Fumiya for what's happened, but I do think that Fumiya should consider letting him know that that's what he wants. Even if ultimately he's rejected. When has keeping his mouth shut worked for him?

HA! It' just doesn't feel like a proper JBL without someone running to their love interest (or chasing their LI around a school, if you're Hira and Kiyoi).

It'll be cute if they come together at the cafe. Like coming full circle.

It's gotta be so weird to take a trip down memory lane when you have a big blank spot in said memory.

Aw, was Ritsu into Fumiya before the cafe? And did he pursue art because of his priase? That's cute. That's very cute. And I mean, I can't say I blame him for wanting to draw Fumiya's face all the time. He's very handsome.

I'm glad he's remembering. While I get the impulse to want to forget all about a relationship when it ends, you'd lose all the good things, too.

Oh the melting effect on the window was nifty.

Um, I don't know. I think hiding a first meeting is a little less a violation than hiding an entire relationship, but that might just be me.

So are they gonna work on their issues here or what? Guys? Those issues that broke you up in the first place?

Okay I'm gonna take Ritsu saying he doesn't want to start over as him saying that they're gonna meet each other halfway as the people they are - the same people that broke up. Because otherwise I'll just work myself into a lather thinking about how saying you're gonna restart doesn't actually do anything without putting in the work to not end up in the same place you were before, and no one wants that.

To be fair I don't really think either of them wanted to break up in the beginning either. I just know that unless we actively try to avoid them, we are often doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

The end was cute, though. Maybe Fumiya is learning to chill a little. And I'll pretend that Ritsu got up afterwards and helped out, rejuvinated.

Final verdict: 8/10. I'm not sure it stuck the landing for me, but I really liked getting to this point. I enjoyed the quiet wistfulness, I loved that this was more adult and that Suzuki Kosuke got a lead role. I also really liked the way it was arranged - the flashbacks into their former relationship bleeding into the way that Fumiya acts with Ritsu, the echoes of how they used to be vs what they are now. I think maybe second chance romances aren't often for me, though, and that might be part of why I'm feeling kind of meh on this here at the end.

[kevin--of-desert-bluffs]

Hire me I'll sort it lol

I recall once that one of them said that the only reason there is a Whispering Forest is because they wrote someone walking into a forest due to forgetting THAT THEY SET WTNV IN A DESERT.

So...yes. I can absolutely believe that they're trucking along having forgotten a good chunk of what they already laid out.

When Triptych rolled around, it was very compelling, and seemed to explain in some small ways the greater complexity of Kevin as a character. Maybe many of us would have been satisfied if that was all we got.

The information we have surrounding Kevin as a character is disjointed at best past the Triptych episode. The fact of his prophethood, for example, which was never brought up during the Strex Arc because they just thought it would sound neat in It Devours! (or so it felt). The hints that he was able to travel to the DOW as a child could explain that, if we say he wrote his first info about a Smiling God as a child, and that the religion wasn't really founded by Kevin but brought into favour by him in DB.

(Is the centipede actually the Smiling God IS still up for debate even within the canon, with the answer likely being no, which joy of joys actually makes sense because in earlier episodes they say a Smiling God takes on the form of a vast light when in the DOW not a centipede).

There's also some patreon stuff which lines up with Triptych but vaguely with everything else like Kevin sometimes comtemplating who he'd have been without Strex changing him but that's dubiously canon if the VAs were allowed to adlib.

As for 'Kevin is his own father'. No, I don't think so. As someone pointed out, you'd have to wrap around and explain then how this new younger Kevin will end back up in DB, raised by different people and eventually how StrexCorp will reform (with, somehow, Lauren in it) and send him through the same timeline again. (Come to think of it how does Kevin end up alone for decades as the end of Triptych states...)

Otherwise this is a paradox which is going to rip the universe apart. (If I were Nazr right now I'd be so fucking pissed, not allowed to date a Frances from another universe but some guy can raise a kid version of himself just fine? Sure because that makes sense).

Even if the Boy is from a completely different timeline and will grow into a completely different Kevin, creating with it it's own timeline this counts as paradox according to previous NV logic. I know people will say 'NV breaks it's logic all the time!' but maybe it's time we start thinking that this is actually an error in the way it's written and maybe it's fine to find it quite frustrating when it seems to backfire quite badly on a plot or character? It's not like...the Simpsons where continuity issues are fine because the episodes mainly exist just to give you an entertaining story idea. WTNV is, technically, supposed to still be a complete narrative about a town which theoretically exists and is being reported on. Even things which seem odd have usually been explained by time-based-shenanigans.

Time-based-shenanigans which currently really shouldn't be happening post 'NV is becoming normal and time works again' in theory.

Which again leads me to...this absolutely cannot be a timeloop. Too much would have to be reset in the world. They'd have to literally be going back and forth in time and making sure certain awful things happen to Kevin to get to the point where he adopts himself again. We can only take 'maybe Kevin was lying about or had false memories of things from Strex etc' so far.

I look at the lines the adult Kevin says about his father and I wonder if he wasn't trying to hint that maybe his father was another him and this is the first instance of this happening (which still means he was absolving an abusive father but I guess it's his choice to do that), thus hopefully setting The Boy onto a good path (or...as good as one can get living in the DOW and being raised in that religion controlled and dictated by a father who is Not Okay And Never Will Be and has been twisting the religion for some time it seems).

But that leads to more questions like - how is The Boy's other timeline thus affected(how did he even get here? I was so sure it was actually the DOW Kevin accidentally de-aged through Carlos' dodgey portal man I wish that had been more true and actually given Kevin a chance to grow up OK)? Because previous episodes have shown that people skipping universes changes and destroys a good amount of things. The only way this could be an exception is if it were in fact a timeloop which needed to be stable in order to be maintained which brings us back to the questions about Lauren and Strex re-existing again.

Maybe if Kevin has been hopping through universes all his life he could accidentally come out in one pre-everything we went through in the course of the show and thus start it all anew. Tragic if so. BUT I also seem to recall something about the universes all becoming one? But that might have been a negative affect that needed to and was stopped but if not it would rule this out completely.

Buuuuut do I think the writers were thinking of it that way anyway? That they actually wanted to tie all the bits together and knew where and what all those bits were?

The Whispering Forest only exists because they forgot their 'friendly desert community' was in fact, in a desert.

the wtnv writing team should hire one autistic person who is fixated on wtnv to fact check all the details. i dont know how theyve lost their ducks so badly. especially the weird things happening with kevin and his history, which is actually the reason that my theory that kevin being his own father for generations kind of works. it would explain why he said he grew up in desert bluffs too. either that or maybe hes just lying lmao.

i think im an optimist though because a very large part of me wants to believe that the writers have a plan and that every inconsistency has a reason and that might not even be true. it could be that theyve been doing this since 2012 and cant keep that many ducks in a row anymore, which would be a fair excuse.

which leads back to my first point that they need an autistic person for fact checking reasons.

[kierancampire]

I have two questions about things that I dunno if they are normal or not

1. My issue with out of sight out of mind is getting so bad, unless something is physically staring me in the face I just do not think of it, the moment my brain is distracted by something, I entirely forget that thing even exists until I see it again, which, coupling with my memory issues is just proving really bad, and it does just seem to be getting so much worse. So is that normal? Or should I just be able to remember things that aren't directly in front of me and my sole focus? Cause I guess like side issue, if I do not intensely focus on what I'm doing, I do it wrong, repeatedly, I need to be 100% zoned in to whatever I'm doing which sucks when my head is so busy and so easily distracted

2. I have been wondering for a while if I have night blindness, like, I dunno what's a normal amount to see in the dark or not, because I just can't see anything. Also, I know rods and cones and light effects colour and blahblahblah, but when I went to move around my room this morning in very low light, I realised I could see things but it was all in black and white, like, I don't mean colours were dull or just a little tricky to make out, I mean, everything was a shade of black, white, or grey, even if it was bright red, green or yellow, I just saw it as grey, like straight up as if a black and white filter had suddenly been applied to life, I could not see colour at all (I should maybe say, in light I seem to see colour better than most people, as many times people have said things look smooth/even where as to me it's blotchy or colours don't match, I see colour very well in light so I know I am not colourblind). Everything blurred, my depth of field was worse than normal, and I couldn't see lots of things as it all looked the same grey. Is that normal? Or should you be able to see a form of colour even in low light? I'm extremely light sensitive and I take a while to adjust between light and dark, and my eyes are just absolute dog shit god awful anyway, so especially when it comes to my eyes I have no idea what's just my bad eyes or what's particularly unusual