#or to ensure that we're actually learning for that matter

[melonpond]

computer science is genuinely so enjoyable except for, y'know, the horrors

[bitchimasnake-sss]

YOUR YUJI FIC WAS SO YUMMY 😳 I would love a part 2 if you’re ever up for writing it! 🥹

GUESS WHO'S BACK FROM THE FUCKING DEAD. ME. ME. I AM BACK AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH (im sorry i just missed writing). well, anyways, with me comes the power of horny <3

ps: this took me fucking four days to write and i don't even think it's good 😭😭 writers block is a bitch

🧸learning some lessons ft. yuuji itadori!

continuation of my previous fic "teaching some lessons", so, i suggest read that first to ensure you're fully immersed into the horny storyline. set-up: yuuji itadori. the quarterback, the guy you're giving "sex ed" lessons, and ofcourse, the brother of your childhood best friend sukuna. what could ever go wrong with this combination? nothing, i hope? warnings: contains nsfw concepts such as yuuji's first time, overstimulation, penetration, a bit of porn logic. and as always, sukuna, nobara and megumi are fucking menaces. stay blessed y'all, and minors DO NOT INTERACT I WILL FIND YOU AND HUNT YOUR ASSES. [ALSO A LITTLE BIT OF TOJI AND GOJO SLANDER IM SORRY] wc: 6.4k porn with A LOT of plot [like 70% plot im sorry]

"dude." megumi's usual nonchalant demeanor had faded in a matter of seconds. now, each of his drawled out words had a certain twinge of dread, "this is actually fucking insane."

"hm?" the pink-haired quarterback didn't even bother to dignify his best friend's statement with a proper answer. he was too busy rapidly pressing the controls, trying to get the shots right.

but megumi's hand had gone slack, the controller barely held limply in his palm. he turned to stare down the forementioned pink-headed idiot. he repeated himself, "yuuji."

"gumi—" yuuji hissed back, "we're losing, fucking focus."

"you just told me that you're fucking sukuna's best friend. her." megumi deadpanned, "the only thing i need to focus on is arranging your funeral."

yuuji hissed through his teeth as his player got shot right in the head and a definitive 'GAME OVER' flashed all across the tv screen. he sunk backwards into the comfortable couch at the fushiguro household. megumi shifted backwards too, slumping next to his best friend with a resigned sigh.

the house was eerily quiet, save for the sounds of the background score of the game playing in the background. yuuji knew tsumiki was out shopping with her friends, and gojo was out annoying the hell out of someone or the other (possibly, coach nanamin). who else was to be considered in the fushiguro household? toji fushiguro? he was an enigma. he came when he felt like and left just as soon. a model poster boy for giving people daddy issues, yuuji presumed.

"have i told you your couch is super nice?" yuuji asked as he stared at the overhead lighting before sweeping his gaze over the modern living room.

"multiple times."

the quarterback snorted, "you remember the time i got drunk—"

"—and tried to take the couch home. yes, i do. i also remember the time sukuna chased you with a knife cause you took his last pack of cheetos. imagine what he would do when you take his best friend."

yuuji pouted, giving megumi a side-eye he couldn't miss, "you're no fun."

"be for fucking real." the raved head sat up, turning towards yuuji at lightning speed. his eyes squinted in scrutiny, "you're the one making idle chit-chat as if sukuna isn't gonna kill you the moment he finds out what you and her have been up to."

"yeah but—" yuuji sighed, rubbing his palms against his face slowly, "is it really that big of a deal? i mean, it's just a few lessons here and there. it's not like she likes me or something—"

"—yeah, she probably won't. ever. considering she called you her little brother."

"oh, fuck off, gumi. that was when we were five."

"just pointing down the obvious."

"i knew i should have told nobara about the situation. she would have given much better advice."

"kugisaki would have laughed at you so hard, she would have cried." megumi got up, probably to get some more chips. as he left, he quipped over his shoulder, "you're catching feelings for someone who doesn't have that kind of interest in you, itadori. you will end up looking like an idiot at the end. and possibly dead."

well, maybe megumi fushiguro had a point. but that point was so goddamn hard to see with your thighs pressed on either sides of his face.

🧸lesson 04: maybe making girls cry is okay sometimes

"mhm- ngh oh my god. yuu." yuuji placed his tongue flat against your pulsating clit. you bucked into his face, pressing his mouth messily to your hot core as you showered him in breathless praises.

nobody was home. kuna was probably gonna be home later at night and so, you both had decided his room as the venue for your next 'lesson'.

you weren't even sure which numbered orgasm it was at this point. and you weren't sure if you even existed anymore outside of yuuji and his face and his tongue and yuuji.

red, hot need ran it's course through your body as the jock manhandled you. his calloused palms pulled your jerking hips downwards to steady them and then, pulled you hastily towards himself. yur jaw fell open, going slack at the torturous stimulation yuuji had the audacity to hum in approval when you momentarily went slack under him.

"yuuji, yuuji. yuu. pl-please please- stop. st-" tears pricked at your eyes as you called out his name in a futile attempt to get him to stop. your hands bunched at his sweaty locks, pushing and pulling to get his wicked tongue on your sensitive cunt to ease up.

but the jock was unforgiving.

his tongue dipped within you, your muscles contracting and spasming against his pretty face as his nose dug deeper against your clit. his tongue was fast, delving in and out of you methodically as you bucked and keened under his touches. the salty tears fell down your cheeks.

"yuu—" you mumbled in a weak voice and he finally looked up so as to assess the damage.

"hm?" his mouth finally parted from yours, messy and sticky.

and when yuuji looked up at you, he was sure this is the last sight he would see before he was condemned to hell for the rest of eternity. your eyes were watery, lips swollen and quivering. you could barely keep your vision straight before you clenched your eyes shut and tried to pry him off of yourself.

so fucking pretty that it made him ache. and that only pushed him to kiss inner thigh and lick a soft stripe up your gushing cunt, getting back to what he was previously doing.

"fuck fuck fuc— yuu, no. no more. p-plea— fuck." you stomach was full of something hot and molten, something jittery and unstable. something that sounded and tasted a lot like yuuji itadori.

the quarterback stayed on his knees, bringing his forefinger and thumb to pinch and rub your wet clit as your thighs shook, your eyes rolled backwards and your back arched. he grinned — a feral sight — as you finally came undone on his tongue again.

he finally pulled himself upwards, using his discarded tshirt to clean off his face. as he stood before you, all he could do was watch you awestruck.

you were heavenly.

your spent figure was slumped on his bed; t-shirt pushed up to expose your bruised tits and your legs pressed together as you tried to come back on mother earth. your eyes were still closed, cheeks wet from tears and yuuji had to stop himself from begging you to let him fuck you tonight.

but he abstained. of course not. that was insane. you would never let him go that far, would you? so, instead he chose to lie down next to you and pull you into his chest.

you nudged your cheek against his pecs, finding refuge in his warmth and he gladly let you, allowing a small smile on his face. his fingers came up to push back strands of hair from your sweaty forehead and then wipe away the salty tears that had made home against the plane of you cheeks. once he was sure you had caught your breath, he pressed a sweet kiss to your skin. finally, he mumbled, "sorry, did i go too far?"

you shook your head no, curling further into him with ease. and he let you. he shifted his position so as to allow your skin on his, so as to press his nose to your hair and smell that strawberry shampoo, so as to almost pretend for a second that you were his.

but you didn't let the show run for long. a few minutes later, as you felt the energy returning to your body, you attempted to get up.

the jock's eyebrows furrowed, he sat up with you, "something wrong? do you want something? water or—"

"—no, no." you turned to give him a weak smile, "i think i'm just gonna go shower before kuna is home and he finds me like this."

oh. ofcourse. how could he forget the ever-looming threat that was sukuna?

"can you walk?" he asked earnestly, offering you his tshirt so you could put it on, "i can walk you to the shower, if you want."

"i'll be okay, yuu." you poked your head through his shirt, trying to stand up. but your legs immediately wobbled and you lost balance, "—fuck. okay. i guess not."

yuuji offered you a smile, picking you up bridal style as you squealed at his action. a blush crept up your neck and face, "what are you doing?!"

"what? i think i should be responsible for the mess i create, shouldn't i?" he gave you a cheeky smile, the kind where the cut under his eye came alive and he grinned ear to ear. a boyish grin, perhaps. and you were fortunate enough to be on the recipient end of it.

you weren't sure what it was that you felt for yuuji, or what you didn't. all you knew that right now — as he carried you out of his room clad in a t-shirt that smelt like him — it was as if he was aware of the sudden jump your heart and wanted nothing more than to be the cause of your untimely death.

"you don't have to do this." you mumbled.

what did 'this' refer to, exactly? you weren't quite sure. was it the fact that he had entertained your drunken idea for such a long amount of time? or was if the fact that in the moments even when you weren't offering him something physical, he still looked at you as if you hung up stars in the night sky for him? maybe it was as simple as the fact that he was carrying you to run you a bath.

he stayed quiet and you repeated yourself louder, "really, yuuji, you don't have to."

"i want to." and that was all he said.

you felt his biceps tense under you as he shifted your weight on one arm and attempted to open the door with the other. he gave you a reassuring smile, and you nudged your face against his chest to hide your embarrassment at his simple answer.

once he finally was through, he walked into the lliving room, attempting to make his way to the bathroom down the hallway whe—

"YUUJI?!" a voice boomed from the door and both of you whipped your head to look at the man that stood there.

ever heard of divine intervention? yeah, this was whatever the fuck is the opposite to that. satanic intervention. cursed intervention, perhaps.

"ON—ONICHAN?!"

"CHOSO?!" you scrambled off of yuuji, hitting the ground with a muffled thud.

choso immediately looked away from his half-naked brother and the girl in his brother's t-shirt*.

(*yeah, okay, just try to understand the family dynamics for a second. choso [24] is the oldest and he has graduated uni and has a job now. sukuna and (yn) [21] are in their third year, and yuuji [20] is in his second. choso knows who (yn) is since you and kuna are childhood besties or whatever. so... yeah okay, back to the shitshow 👍🏻)

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" choso asked loudly, his eyes still averted from you both so as to not accidentally see your exposed form.

"WHY ARE YOU HERE?!" yuuji retorted as you hid behind his broad figure instinctively, trying to recover whatever ounce of modesty you had.

"I OBVIOUSLY HAD THE KEY TO MY OWN HOME?!"

"WELL, DON'T WALK IN UNANNOUNCED? DO YOU HAVE NO MANNERS?"

"yuuji."

"IM SORRY 'NICHAN!!"

and that is how choso found out about your little arrangement. and that is how you both decided to never have another rendezvous session at the itadori's.

🧸lesson 05: you got this, itadori!

"what the fuck?" megumi asked slowly, eyeing yuuji as the jock shoved some french fries down his mouth.

"YEAH, WHAT THE FUCK?!" nobara repeated, louder. to which, megumi gave her a side-eye, "we're in public, kugisaki."

yuuji took his time, sipping his coke before shrugging, "yeah, so, 'nichan found out."

nobara shook her head, "no. no. turn around 360—"

"—180. 360 makes a circle."

"die, megs. anyways, turn around and tell me that part of the story where you started—" the red-head shuddered, "—doing stuff with senpai. why?! how?! why?! how??"

yuuji took a bite from his burger before saying, "well, she offered."

"fuck that all. it's old news."

"for you. cause, apparently, i was left out of the loop—"

"—much sad. anyways, is choso okay with you and her? or is he gonna snitch you out to sukuna?"

"i mean, no. i don't think so, no." yuuji tried to steal a fry off of nobara's plate and she smacked his hand off, "ow kugisaki! whatever. he gave me a long lecture about how i should actually pursue her and officially ask her out if we wanna keep doing this. after that, for whatever unrelated reason, he cried about how quickly we grew up."

"virgin behavior." nobara stuck out a tongue, quickly reeling out of her disbelief over the fact that yuuji was getting some, "i mean, that's old-fashioned. you don't have to date her, you know?"

"but your brother's not wrong, is he?" megumi offered. "don't keep doing this just cause you want a way to get your dick wet."

"megs, it's not 1920. they are consensual adults and they can just fool around if they're on the same page."

"yeah but about that—" yuuji tried to sneak in a fry from megumi's plate now, "—i think i'm in love with her. and i am pretty sure the feelings are one-sided."

"huH?!"

"what?" the jock looked at the two dumbfounded, "i like her. she's pretty and smart and i think— i like her."

he didn't think he liked you. he knew that he was whole-heartedly, as stupidly as humanly possible, in love with you.

but he didn't bother mentioning the fact.

he didn't bother mentioning a plethora of things, in fact. first, that his heart had been offered to you at the ripe age of four when he first realized that sunlight got caught against your hair strands somewhat magically, and when you smiled, he smiled; and that when he cried, you kissed his imaginary wounds better even when sukuna made fun of him.

he didn't bother mentioning that when he asked you to marry him, there was only such a small part of him that was 'joking', the larger chunk of him would have exchanged his soul for some sort of forbidden alchemy to be with you.

he didn't bother mentioning that when he was thirteen, a slew of girls had asked to be his girlfriend, and he had turned down each one of them to sneak in his first kiss with you.

but all those years of pining just turned into a small ball of anxiety, ever-growing in his stomach. he knew you didn't feel the same. so, he didn't bother saying any of that. because, well, frankly, his situation seems just a tiny-teensy bit pathetic.

"i guess i just like her... just a bit." he repeated, more to himself than others.

"we heard the first time. and the second."

"DUDE" nobara's eyes widened, "she's sukuna's best friend."

"hey, what happened to the fact that we are consensual adults fooling around?"

"oh no, fuck that. i was humoring you." nobara shook her head, "sukuna's gonna murder you."

"yeah, i know." yuuji sighed, his playfulness replaced by something more mature, "i am not gonna ask her out. i think i'm gonna call this— whatever this is— off. i don't want her to lose her friendship with 'kuna, and she... well, she probably doesn't like me anyways."

megumi and nobara exchanged a sorry expression among themselves before looking back to yuuji. but the jock put on a smile, "ah it's fine, it was fun while it lasted." he leaned back in his seat, "wanna catch a movie after this? human earthworm is out."

so the quarterback had gone back home that day with a certain resolve. he would call this off.

he put on his lucky red sweatshirt, put on the cologne you had complimented once when he had gone for one of his lessons, and he put on his best fake smile. as he passed by sukuna in the living room, he guiltily looked away from him and walked out of the door as soon as possible.

"where ya going?" the tatted man asked, not looking up from his phone.

"nowhe—" he sighed, running a hand through his hair before he bent downwards to put on his shoes, "with gumi and nobara. we're going to the arcade."

"you've been hanging out with the fushiguro kid quite a lot nowadays. a lot of sleepovers."

yuuji's fingers halted, slowly fidgeting with the shoelaces before he threw sukuna a casual look, "he's my friend. and his dad is out of town so i go over. got an issue?"

"nah, do whatever." kuna met his eyes but then went back to his phone without saying much. a beat later, he continued, "well, let me know if you'd be home in time for dinner."

yuuji stood up, dusting off his clothes, "you're cooking today?"

"yeah, thought i'd invite her over. she likes that pasta i make."

at the mention of you, yuuji looked over sukuna once. a sharp sting suddenly erupted in his chest like someone had hit him. hard. and, so, without saying anything more, the younger itadori immediately left through the main door.

things must end.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

his fingers skimmed over the ringing bell in front of your apartment as his feet nervously shuffled around at the door. he knew you were on the other side, waiting for him. as the door swung open, he was face to face with your housemate.

"hey?" maki raised an eyebrow, a smug smile on her lips. she was dressed as if she was leaving to go somewhere, "she's in her room."

yuuji simply pursed his lips, nodded and moved past his senior. before walking into your room, he stalled in front of the door, threw his head back to catch maki about to leave, "kugisaki says hi, by the way."

and if yuuji didn't know any better, he would have assumed the glare maki gave was one well-intended to kill him.

he wasn't sure if the room was chilly or if the reason for goosebumps was something else, but nonetheless, he shut the door behind him and stepped into the room. as he came in view with the bed, he found you casually on your back, scrolling your phone.

"yuuji!" you smiled as you sat up, a familiar warmth spreading over your face at his presence. but he merely nodded, his lips drawn into a thin line.

"um," you fidgeted, standing up hastily and laughing to ease the awkwardness, "so, uh— did maki let you in?"

"yeah, she did."

"oh, well, she's going out, so we don't need to worry about her." you paused for a second before your expression fell and you tried again, "hey?"

but a same monotone expression fell across his face, "hey."

"um... is something wrong? in a bad mood or something?"

"not quite." yuuji rubbed the back of his neck, looking down at the cold, wooden floors, "i wanted to talk. to you, i mean."

you nodded, although he didn't look up at you to register your expression. he continued softly, "we should stop this."

"what?"

"i—" he looked up at you, quickly sneaking in a steadying breath, "i wanted to thank you for the 'lessons'. it's been fun and i learnt so much, really. but you don't have to do it anymo—"

"why?" you interrupted, "did someone find out?"

"what? no."

"then?" you stepped towards him, your unyielding gaze trained on his face, "do you not... want to do it with me anymore?"

"no, ofcourse not." his eyes widened and he stepped forward in a desperate attempt to comfort you. his palms found purchase against your cheek, "no. that's not what i meant."

"what do you mean then?" you looked up at him, confused.

"i-" he looked at you softly, "i really can't ruin your friendship with sukuna anymore. we need to stop. it has gone for... for way too long, now, hasn't it?"

"—it's just been a few months."

"come on. we both know we need to stop." he confessed, and as his words left you hollow, so did his touch. he pulled away from you and stepped back a teensy bit to allow you some space. "it will be for the best."

you looked at him for a beat. and then one more. finally, "kiss me."

and the jock obliged without any hesitation. his lips were familiar against yours, his hands on your cheek, and his body weight pressing onto you and pushing you backwards into the bed.

the back of your knees hit the wooden frame and you stumbled backwards, falling onto the bed with a muffled thud. but yuuji didn't bother following you and caging you underneath him. instead, he stood at the edge, waiting.

"yuu?" you asked softly.

"are you sure about this?"

and you weren't sure if he was asking that question to you or himself. you weren't sure if his fingers were shaking from the betrayal or the need to hold you against him. but you nodded your head anyways, "yeah. if this is it. if this is the last time then indulge in my stupid ideas one last time." you paused, "please?"

he nodded before swiftly throwing off his hoodie off of his torso an onto the floor. bruises from a few days before laid tattered across his tan skin and his biceps flexed and moved as he slowly caged you under him.

"fuck," he breathed in slowly, taking in your low-lidded gaze, "you're so fuckin' pretty."

your fingers found solace in his pinkish locks and you pulled him closer — till your skin smelt like his perfume and his stuttered breath hit your lips, "yuuji."

"hm?" his eyes ran over your face, and the adoration in his eyes made you feel like he would set the world aflame if you so as even asked him to.

"fuck me."

his pupils widened, cheeks flushed and a breathless gasp got stuck in his throat. at his reaction, you pulled him downwards, kissing him softly before the tendrils of passing seemed to nip down on both of you. soon after, you were nothing more than messy kisses, clashing teeth and wrong decisions.

"fuuck— ha-harder." he moaned as your fingernails sunk into his scalp, pulling him harder against yourself.

your hands travelled downwards to his chest and you pushed him away only to turn him around and straddle his hips. your pelvis rolled over his, the delicious friction driving you delirious as you peered down at the man under you — kiss-bitten lips, tousled hair, flushed cheeks.

yuuji itadori looked at you as if you were his god.

and you played along. rolling your hips, tracing a finger from his jaw down to his pecs as your lips traced the path with soft kisses soon after.

his hips stuttered, trying to meet your shallow teases before he mumbled out a soft, "take off your clothes."

you smiled, putting on a show for him as you slipped out of your tshirt. leaving yourself exposed to his preying eyes, you slowly took off the bra.

"shit, look at you." he raised himself on his elbows, coming upwards to softly kiss your warm skin before slowly licking over your nipple as another hand fondled the other. your head was thrown back at the feeling of his warm mouth on you while his fingers softly tugged at the other.

soon after that, you found yourself rocking yourself on his long fingers as he sunk his teeth in your neck, getting off on the pretty sounds you made as you rut against him almost as desperately as he was. when he caught you sinking your teeth into your bottom lip, trying to stay quiet, he pulled your face towards his and kissed you senseless. when he pulled away, his hot breath fanned over your lips, "don't. let me hear, please."

and so senseless moans tumbled down your lips as you you came, still rutting against his hand.

when your breath stilled and you finally met his gaze, all you could was breath out an airy, "fuck me, please."

flushed face, hazy eyes, your mouth parted so prettily at the end of the sentence. who was itadori yuuji to deny you of anything?

"say that again."

🧸lesson 06: fuck it up, itadori!

"n-no protection? are you... sure?"

god, he was adorable.

you held back a laugh as you re-assured him a millionth time, "i'm on birth control, so, no. trust me."

"hm. hm." his breath was caught in his throat as if it were a jagged rock. your hands on his torso felt warm — too warm — as if they would char him and you blinked up at him so prettily as you laid atop those pillows.

"i- one second. i-" his voice was thick, hands slightly shaking as he tried to guide his erection into your slick cunt.

"yuu," you cooed and he looked at you in part hope, part confusion. a laugh escaped you at his expression, "you look like a kicked puppy."

"so-sorry, imjustnervous—" he mumbled, his eyes avoiding yours.

"yuu," you repeated, "this is your first time, right?"

he nodded so softly that it was entirely too easy to miss it. you held back an amused grin, "let me help, okay?"

shockwaves ran through his body as your soft hand slowly took ahold of his dick and ran the tip over your clit, gathering your wetness on the mushroom tip. you both held back a choked sigh as your hand continued the same up and down, up and down, up and down motion till you felt as if yuuji was going to cry just from the teasing.

"h-hey—"

"sorry, sorry. no more teasin', i promise." you replied cheekily, fingers finally guiding him to your sloppy hole. and as the tip finally pushed past the first ring of feeble resistance, a shuddering gasp left the man above you.

pushing in inch by inch, you gasped at the sinful stretch of him filling you. your walls spasmed slightly against him, hugging him so sinfully tight that he wondered if he would pass out just right now. but he couldn't. so he commanded himself to keep moving forward till he was all but buried within you.

"s-shit." his breath was heavy against the dip of your neck and you ran a soft hand through his hair, "you okay, yuu?"

"ye-yeah." he shook his head slowly, descending down on you to sink his teeth into your skin again as he started moving slowly.

"jus like that— yeah."

at first his thrusts were slow and shallow, as if he was just testing the waters. but as you found you keening into his touches and moaning as his tip rubbed against a certain spot, he grew sure of his actions.

his thrusts were now harder, a bit more precise and his tempo increased as you dug your heels on his back and tugged on his hair to keep him going.

"jesus" you gasped, back arching off slowly as his lower abs caught friction against your clit and his dick started ramming into your with a periodic rhythm. "fu-fuck is it your fuckin first time? for fucks sake, yuuji ngh—"

his breath was laboured, a thin layer of sweat adorning his forehead and nose, "im a quick learner, fuck— you're shi-shit, you're so fucking perfect."

lifting himself up slightly, his hand snaked in between your bodies and he found himself thumbing at your clit with ease.

"yuuji—" your voice pitched up as his circles grew in pressure. already overstimulated from his administrations on your poor cunt, you felt the pressure building inch by inch till it grabbed ahold of your body and shook you to your very core.

under him, you grabbed hastily at the sheets, at the pillow, at his hair, at anything to keep yourself on this plane of consciousness as he kept drawing messy figures on your clit and fucked into your cervix with reckless abandon.

and that unsteady, familiar feeling grew and grew and grew till it turned your body to jello and burst inwards, "f-fuck shit, ohmygod im cummin im cummin im cumm— FUCK YUUJI—"

his fingers pressed hastily against your lips but the cockiness in his voice practically dripped off of him and onto you, "shh, someone might hear, pretty."

his thrusts grew erratic, nudging him more and more towards a certain, familiar kind of high. his face found solace against your shuddering body as he cursed and spilled inside you.

"fuck." he cursed one last time as he breathed you in, just laying atop you having spent himself.

he slowly pulled himself upwards, pressing a chaste kiss to your nose, and you gave him a spent smile, the kind that had quickly became his favorite. he slowly pulled himself out, and caught the milky white gushing out of your cunt.

and with that, itadori yuuji lost all sanity.

next you knew, your face was being pressed into the mattress, your cunt being ravaged by his unforgiving dick ramming in and out easily.

"fuc-fuck, sogood so fuckin' good—"

his chest was against your back, his weight pressing down on your so deliciously and trapping you under him. you pressed your face harder into the mattress, screaming out muffled renditions of his name as he softly pinched your clit.

"i'm sorry, baby, im so fuckin' sorry" but he sounded anything but sorry as he whispered hotly in your ear, both his fingers and his dick doing everything in their power to turn you into nothing more than a woman maddened with his touch.

your fingers sunk into the sheets underneath, your death-grip growing even more deadlier as he fucked into you as a man depraved.

"this 'sthe last time," his words slurred as he left sloppy kisses down your neck, "promise, i promise."

but those promises were nothing more than candied words on his pretty lips, because now he had you on top of him, your back against his chest, his heels digging into your mattress dangerously as he fucked up into you.

"yuu— yuuJI pleaseplease ple— fucking fuc—" your voice grew in pitch, unresolved tears falling down your face as his hands fondled your tits, tugging and tweaking the nipples to his liking, and your own familiar fingers toyed with your clit.

how could he go on for so fucking long? jesus fucking christ.

"i play varsi- fuck varsity," he answered softly, "this is nothin' for me."

he pressed a soft kiss to your neck as his cock split you apart for the nth time and you fell apart on top of the man who claimed to love you more than he loved life and reason itself.

"don't." his voice grew desperate, a hand coming to hold yours over your overstimulated, abused clit, "i didn- say you could stop, did i? keep going. please. one more. fuck. please."

"yuuji stop—"

"—give me one more, please."

"pleasepleaseplease—" you sobbed, your body arching off of him as he brought you to another one orgasm. you eyes rolled back into your skull, a bit of drool dangerously on your bottom lip, and your body went slack so as to let him do as he pleased.

your cunt gushed on his dick, spraying you both in your juices he thrusted into one last time, spilling into your overfilled pussy all over again with a breathless string of pants and moans.

the quarterback collapsed backwards onto your bed with you on top of him. he reluctantly pushed the weight of your sweaty body off of him, and instinctively pressed another kiss to your head.

his hand came up to push back the sweaty hair strands that stuck to you like second skin, and to thumb at the furious blush on your cheeks. your eyes fluttered upwards at him, you barely managing a smile, "thankyou."

"for what?" he turned to his side, taking every feature of you in with a small smile. a beat passed him by in the serene room before he found his heart weighing heavily and lodging itself between his lungs.

"you're so pretty" he found himself mumbling, "i wish i- i wish i could..." but he caught himself before he could make a fool of himself and confess to a passed out girl. he bit the inside of his cheek. maybe it was better if he just left wordlessly. "nothing."

you were asleep. he knew that. but then why did you snuggle closer and whispered a soft, "i love you."

"—huH?!" any and all sanity left the jock at this point. his eyes as wide as saucers as he stared down your softly snoring form, "what did you just say?"

but you said nothing, still softly snoring in your goddamn sleep and yuuji felt like he was going insane. did you say it??? did he imagine it??? is this a punishment from the devil (sukuna) itself??? what was real anymore? was he real???

and hey what does a panicked twenty year old does when faced with the possible conundrum of his crush of fifteen years having feelings for him?? he runs.

yuuji itadori never had put on his clothes faster than he did right this moment. hastily putting one leg into the sweats and then another, he dashed to make his way to the door. before stepping out, he looked back at you one last time.

fuck itadori, are you dumb?! she doesn't love you like that. it's the post-sex hormones. his consciousness begged in the voice of megumi fushiguro, which was a bit concerning cause was the voice of reason in his head megumi fushiguro?!

but that was not the issue at hand right now. his voice of reason could be questioned another time. right now? running. yes, that was the plan.

the lock softly clicked and he stepped out into the living room before closing the door ever so slowly behind him.

"done fucking?"

and yuuji's blood ran cold.

he whipped around to peer at a certain, tatted delinquent who was sat on the couch in the living room, "brother?"

"brother? huh?" sukuna laughed, the sound so chilling that yuuji felt his blood freeze ad turn into cement, "bringing out the formalities?"

yuuji's tongue got stuck in his throat and sukuna stood up slowly, holding up his hands in mock surrender, "she wouldn't pick up my calls, and i had a spare key. sorry if i'm fuckin imposing."

"'kuna," yuuji's voice was quiet, "it's not what he looks like."

"hm, it is not?" he flashed the younger itadori an amused smile, "ofcourse it is not. what do you think i think you both did?"

"fu-fucked?" the jock swallowed hard.

"bingo."

"i didn't." yuuji didn't know if he was begging for forgiveness, and if yes, then what for? for betraying sukuna's trust or for feeling satisfied that his brother knew of his conquests?

"you didn't? from what i heard, she seemed a little too happy in there." and now sukuna stood mere inches apart, his hand balled into a neat fist.

"kun—" but yuuji's right cheek bore the fate of getting punched by sukuna.

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? MY BEST FUCKING FRIEND, YUUJI?"

the jock nursed his cheek, still reeling from the attack. but a certain flame came alive. he wasn't a fucking child. "YEAH, YOUR FUCKING BEST FRIEND."

sukuna looked at him in disbelief, "how fucking could you? she meaNS SHIT TO ME, YOU FUCKFACE."

"—SO DOES SHE TO ME."

the man stepped insanely closer, grabbing ahold of yuuji's hoodie's collar, "THEN WHY THE FUCK WERE YOU RUNNING AWAY FROM HER RIGHT NOW? HUH?"

the two boys heaved heavily, anger boiling hot through their veins. finally yuuji spat up, "she told me she loved me."

sukuna's grasp loosened, "what?"

"she fucking told me she loved me."

"and you're running?" sukuna looked at his brother with a strange look. disappointment, perhaps?

"i- it's a mistake. she doesn't." yuuji looked downwards, trying not to show his pain in his soft words, "and... i didn't want to fucking hurt you, asshole."

"so you're a coward?" the tatted man scoffed.

and yuuji pushed his brother back, "fuck you."

"no." sukuna's gaze hardened, "you fuck off, you stupid fucking dipshit. she told you she loves you, and you ran?"

"for fucks sake, sukuna" yuuji breathed in slowly, "i thought you'd be elated she probably doesn't."

"you fucked around with her for god knows how long, pretending i didn't know." sukuna stepped back, his words quieter.

"you knew?"

"i'm not dumb, of course i fucking knew." he paused, "and 'nichan told me."

"jesus fucking christ, 'nichan." yuuji looked down at the floors, "what now?"

"grow a pair, and actually ask her out."

"what?" the jock looked up, confused, "you- wait, you are saying i should ask her out?"

sukuna shrugged, "you've compromised her. you must follow through with the consequences."

"did you watch too much bridgerton? what the fuck is compromised??"

"i did, 'nichan made me watch it. pleasantly surprising, actually." and yuuji was immediately mentally slapped with the image of sukuna enjoying bridgerton.

"huh?" yuuji softly shook his head, "so... what? i like have your blessing or whatever to ask her out?"

the delinquent made a face of disgust, "i'm not a priest, what the fuck do you mean by blessing? yeah, just fucking ask her out."

"and what if she says no?"

"then i will remind you of your failure everyday in life."

yuuji looked at his brother awestruck, "thanks, kuna."

"don't. when you come back home, im gonna beat you to a pulp for fucking my best friend."

"i deserve it."

"fuck yeah, you do." the older itadori made his way to the main entrance, "go fix shit."

and as sukuna left through the door, itadori yuuji slipped back into your room, crawled back into bed with you, and held you close to his chest. softly, as a giddy smile overtook his features, he mumbled, "i love you too."

next morning you woke up next to a fully-clothed yuuji with a swollen right cheek.

"yuu?! why are you dressed?! and what the fuck happened to your cheek?!"

"i fell off your bed."

"what the actual fuck?!"

a/n: IM GENUINELY SO SORRY IF THIS SUCKS ASS, I GOT TOO MUCH INTO CHARACTER WRITING HELPPP!! i really hope it was atleast a fun read, and as i said it took me 4 days just to make it a bit coherent since i'm writing after so long. please forgive me and enjoy the meal. [sorry for any typos and such babes] tagging: @9rvm @jellibean2018 @peekawoocc @kingofthe-egirls @hugmevz [thankyou sm for sending in the request, i was already writing it here so i tagged you <3] misc.: divider by @plutism and header format by @si-eunnis plagiarism not authorized bitch.

[writingquestionsanswered]

I'm realizing the amount of research I have to do for this year's NaNoWriMo novel (which is a lot), so do you have any tips on doing efficient research for stories?

NaNoWriMo: Efficient Story Research

1 - Go General First

Let's say you're writing a story about a fictional astronaut in the 1960s. It can be tempting to just research everything about being an astronaut, being an astronaut in the 1960s, the 1960s in general, life in Houston, the history of Johnson Space Center, what Kennedy Space Center was like in the 60s, and so on... But there's going to be a lot of data there that never actually makes it into your story. So, a good place to start would be to read a short general overview of those things just so they're in your head. Then...

2 - Get Specific for the Needs of Your Story

Next, look at your plot outline or scene list and make notes about specific details you'll need to know about. For example, if you have a scene that takes place in Johnson Space Center, you may need to research the specific building where that scene takes place and get an idea of what it might have been like in the 1960s. Or, let's say you have a scene where your character is doing some sort of simulation to train ahead of the mission... you would need to research astronaut training in the 1960s to find out what kind of simulation they might be doing for training, or if you already know, you can research that specific simulation. But, you don't need to learn everything there is to know about astronaut training in the 1960s unless all of those things make an appearance in your story somehow.

3 - Placeholders Are Your Friends

Most important of all, just remember your first draft isn't your final draft... you don't need to have every single fact fleshed out before you start writing. If you're writing and you get to something that needs to be researched, put in a placeholder so you can research it later. You can literally type [placeholder] or you can just wing it, and correct whatever you come up with later on with something more factual. Either way, placeholders help ensure you don't spend a lot of time researching things you don't actually need to know about.

4 - Watch Out for Rabbit Holes

You're writing this story because the subject matter interests you, but interesting subject matter can lead us to fall down rabbit holes when we're researching. When that happens, it can be easy to justify it as research, but if you find yourself falling down one while researching, ask yourself, "Will any of this make an appearance in my story? Does it help me understand the subject matter more as a writer?" If not, back out of the rabbit hole immediately.

5 - Break It Up/Get Organized

It can really help to break your research down according to your story. Like, all the things you need to research for Act I, Act II, Act III... or maybe by character or setting. By breaking the research up into like parts in this way, it forces you to sift through it all more thoughtfully and makes you really think about what you actually need to know and spend time researching.

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[dazaiandhislovelybandages]

Comfort {Sebastian Michaelis}

A/n: So obviously I didn't write this now, it's actually part of one of my ✨️unfinished✨️books and it has nothing to do with Sebastian. But in honour of black butler season 4 announcement I thought I should post a little something. Obviously I know we know nothing about his past. Keep in mind that this takes place while Sebastian was still human. Anyways Enjoy

Pairings: Sebastian Michaelis x fem!reader

Warnings: gossiping, bad mouthing, hurt/comfort

“Good morning, my love.” Sebastian said and placed a soft kiss on your forehead. A kiss on his lips was what he received in return before diving in the breakfast you had so kindly prepared for him. “Have you eaten?” 

  “I ate on my way back here. I bought three croissants.”

  “I suppose you went to the bakery near your house?” You took a deep breath before answering. That was when Sebastian knew something was wrong. 

  “No, actually I went to the bakery near the church.” His eyes farrowed at the sound of that. 

  “The church is further from here than your house. Why?”

  When you didn’t meet his stare, he set the trait aside, at the black wooden nightstand and with his right hand, made you turn your head to face him. You still averted his gaze though. 

Sebastian could see the pain and anger in your eyes. He had to learn what had happened!

  “Love?” you didn’t respond. “(y/n) look at me.” He took your hand, gently pulling you close so that your face was at the same level with his. Still, you hesitated.

Sebastian let his eyes travel to Othelo, your cat, who was now trying to reach the food trait. 

  “People are scared of us, Sebastian.” You whispered when he wasn’t looking. 

  His heart sank at the words. He knew that it would get to this point someday, but hearing it from your own lips was still painful. 

  His family, even though they were rich and bearing a very important title, didn’t have a good reputation in the village. Whispers and gossip didn’t mean anything to him. He had gotten used to them after having to deal with them throughout his entire childhood. Sometimes he even wondered why your family even let you play with him as kids. 

  Of course the main route of the problem was that damned cemetery. His grandfather had built their estate behind the cemetery for an unknown reason to him. That was the reason why most of the villagers called him and his late parents ‘The Haunted Family’. It had followed Sebastian and his family for as long as he could remember. Despite the wealth and power that his family held, they were always considered outsiders in the village. They lived in isolation, away from the rest of the community, and few people dared to cross the threshold of their grand estate. 

  But even though their neighbours kept their distance, they couldn't avoid the gossip and malicious rumours that circulated throughout the village. Some claimed that the estate was built on top of ancient burial grounds, and that the spirits of the deceased walked the halls at night. Others whispered that the family was cursed, and that any visitors who stayed too long would be haunted by the ghosts of past residents. 

Sebastian knew that none of it was true. He had lived there since he was a baby and nothing scary had happened. It was pure superstition. 

  Still, he couldn't help but wonder why his grandfather had chosen to build the estate so close to the cemetery. It was a strange decision, and one that had only brought trouble to their family. Sebastian knew that he couldn't change the past, but he could ensure that the future was different. He would never allow anyone to treat his future wife the same way his family had been treated for generations. He would break the cycle of fear and superstition that had plagued the ‘Haunted Family’ for too long.

    “They don't trust us. They think we're... dangerous.”

He drew you closer, holding you in his arms. “Don't listen to them,” he whispered. “We are happy together and that is all that matters.”

You nodded, resting your head against his chest. You felt safe and protected in his arms, and that was all that mattered. Sebastian would always be there to protect and support you, and together you could face anything.

  But no matter his warm embrace, the anger was still there. No matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t get the image of the ladies in the bakery whispering about you out of your mind. You would never forget the way this mother with her little son crossed the street the moment they saw you walking next to them. 

You had a vague idea of what this was about but the truth was that you didn’t care. You were simply angry and a small voice inside you screamed to let those people know that you were everything they whispered about. Just to see what would happen if you proved them right. 

  A witch. 

  The cursed wife. 

  Yet you said nothing. You just kept on walking with your back straightened and a cold expression on your face. And when it was time for you to open the cemetery gate, you turned around, raising a brow at the small group of women who followed you. 

  There was a pause, as if you were weighing the wisdom of speaking. “They say the screams of the ones who died due to the disease can be heard at night.” You didn’t know why you had said that, it wasn’t true, but a small smirk made its way on your face the moment you saw the terrified expressions on their faces.

  “(Y/n)?” Sebastian’s voice snapped you back to reality. “You look quite pale, love.” 

  “Hold me a little longer, Sebastian… please.” You responded right away, not wanting your beloved husband to get a better look at the angry look in your eyes. “Sebastian…” You finally whispered and raised your head to look at him. He gently rubbed your back as he held you close. “I'm sorry,” you whispered. “It's just... the things they say about me, about us, Sebastian. I can't let it get to me, but it feels like it's eating me up inside.” 

Sebastian didn't speak, he just continued to hold you close, offering a silent comfort that only he could give. But you didn’t mind. 

  “Don’t apologise, love. You are the kindest person I know. The most beautiful woman I have ever met and the smartest one. You are not what they say you are, you will never be.”

  You leaned your head against his shoulder, feeling a sense of calmness wash over you. You took a deep breath, inhaling his familiar scent, and then you finally allowed herself to relax in his arms. 

  For a moment, you forgot about the rumours and the whispers. Instead, you focused on the warmth of his embrace, on the steady beat of his heart, and the comfort of his love.

  The sound of his heartbeat was all that mattered to you at the moment. And it was all you could hear until Othello began meowing. You and Sebastian broke your hug and looked at the small kitten who was desperately trying to get between you. 

  “What does he want now?” Sebastian sighed, trying to hide the adoration for the small kitten. 

  You chuckled and leaned over to pick up the small kitten. “I think he wants attention.” You said, as Othello purred contentedly in your arms. 

[grison-in-space]

I know we're past this point, but I'm beyond exhausted with ARA mentality making its way into the public consciousness. Flaco being championed as a symbol of freedom, Dodo promoting anthropomorphism, celebrities backing PETA, fucking TIKTOK. I work with sled dogs and I don't know how many people per week accuse us of abuse because dogs should be free and not "chained up" and why do we "make" the dogs work. No matter what you say, they just twist your words and take your frustration as admission. Sorry for the rant, but it's getting beyond annoying! How do we combat the misinformation when they take your information and say that you can't read an animals mind, even when the animal's behavior suggest its content?

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I'm right there with you! It frustrates me, too, especially because animal communication and signaling was a huge part of my doctoral work, so I have spent a lot of time thinking about how animals can encode and unpack information from signals and cues* to communicate and share information with one another.

What I will usually do if I run into someone like this is treat the comment that "you can't read an animal's mind" as pertaining to both of us. I sure can't read an animal's mind, and neither can you, friend! So how can animals communicate with us about what they want? How can we use evidence from the animal'l own behavior to indicate its preferences?

Well, when we give animals choices, what do they do? Matilda doesn't love harnesses for their own sake, but she knows that she doesn't come with me for the day if the harness isn't out. When she sees the harness, she approaches me and stares intently; if I don't pick it up and put it on her, she will sometimes move in front of my and block my path to the outside. Or take my mice. When we open the top of the cage for a behavior session for the mice in my lab (a noninvasive "game" that asks them to choose between one side or another in exchange for little squirts of watered down Ensure), it's common to see mice pop out of the cage and start racing around the rim, trying to climb onto a hand. Animals learn cues from us about what is going to happen next, and they behave accordingly. If they aren't enjoying a task, you can usually tell!

Okay, that's for small, easily understood time units. What about the big questions? Would a dog rather run free than run in harness with a human handler? Well, it's certainly hard to get an informed consent from an animal, because again, no language to communicate risks TO THEM. But you can also go, okay, what does freedom actually look like for free roaming wild animals? There's... an awful lot of bad deaths out there, it turns out.

Like, a lot.

Hey. You're a human who presumably prefers to live in society. If I told you that I had the offer of a lifetime for you, where you'd be released from all debts and obligations to human society and in exchange you could go live on a naked island by yourself in a hut with a bucket to drop waste in and no running water, and just enough food to keep you alive until you learned how to successfully forage for yourself, would you do it? Or would you keep your debts and your job in exchange for being able to rely on a society to prevent your neighbors from deciding to murder you for rations, construct safe and hygienic ways to handle drinking water and waste, and devise predictable and palatable things to eat? Would you like to be released into the world without a social group or any connections, or would you rather stay in a society even though you're not able to make any possible decision that might flicker into your head?

If they tell me "yeah I'd love that actually," ask why they're not doing it right now. Like, I'm assuming you work tourism in some capacity, Nonny; why are they shelling money out for this dogsled ride if their dream is to be free of Society? Living in a big collective group always entails some loss of freedoms (e.g. I cannot play big brass music at full volume at 10pm unless I want my housemates to riot), but the potential gains (increased comfort, lowered costs, rewarding long term relationships) outweighs those costs.

Which is why when my dogs do get out, they usually stay in earshot and return when they're bored with brief exploration or they hear our alarmed contact calls. If the great outdoors was that much better, do you really think so many domestic animals would come right back?

*Technically speaking, you can extract information from both signals and cues, but a signal is intended to transmit information to a receiver and a cue is a physiological byproduct of an individual's state. Think of it as the difference between a human making eye contact with you and then glaring versus seeing a human having a whole-ass meltdown directed at no one in particular on a park bench. This is a meaningful difference for animals, too: I did quite a bit of work on eavesdropping in the animal world, where messages intended for one kind of receiver can be detected, accessed, and unpacked by another, much less desirable party — like a competitor or a predator.

[numberonetrashwitch]

Since this is such a good question, i want to answer it in full. Obviously Spoiler for BG3 / Astarions Questline "The Pale Elf" Vampirism is a Curse

Despite the evidence you can find in the Szarr Manor, i don't think Vampirism is (just) a disease. It is infernal in nature and more akin to a curse, and one that whittles away your humanity - but in levels, the more "infected" you are, the more it turns you into a power-hungry monster. It's also something that Astarion will tell you early on (under the right conditions of course) We also see this in the Palace itself, once we find the remains of the Vampire that turned Cazador. You'll learn what that Vampire did to Cazador - and how it panned out. That is because once you'll turn your Spawn into Vampires, they automatically become your Enemy in the endless fight for control/power

Weakness (this includes mercy) will get you killed if you're a Vampire.

Abuse / Trauma is Cyclical, and a bitch

Astarion didn't just face 200 years of trauma, but as we know through various interactions, was mentally and physically tortured. We're talking about flaying, sensory deprevation, starvation, repeated verbal abuse. Now, victims of this kind of abuse always fault themselves for it, even if they rationally know it's not their fault. Especially if mental torture is involved, these words, bearing enough repetition, will convince you - regardless of your resolve.

That is a loss of control, victims of with often either get addicted to, or will try to avoid it at any cost neccessary. The first kind will often seek out the situation in which they have been abused and try to recreate (or exced) the risk involved, the second type - to which Astarion belongs in my opinion - seeks to gain control, even over trivial matters, as a way to ensure that their needs are met. Nobody has been nice to him in 200 years, and then came Tav... he doesn't understand why they are so kind to him, but it feels good to be seen as more than a toy, a prostitute, a monster, - all the things he sees himself as, still, even away from Cazador. If you break up with Astarion before freeing him, he'll actually say that he knew it wouldn't last simply because he has "nothing to offer Tav, except his burdens"

(snippet of exactly that, in german) Yes, Astarion presents himself as this self-obsessed, smug Guy but that is all a facade to hide how he actually feels; weak, pathetic, lonely, useless, at fault for his abuse.

He is utterly in "love" with Tav.

Remember, Tav is the first person to see Astarion as more than just an object but as a person, and, on top of that, a person deserving of love and affection, regardless of what he brought to the table.

This feels good. Now, again, with Vampires everything comes down to power, and he can't have Tav leave. In this mix of dark urges & new, relatively unexplored feelings his love for Tav turns into an Obsession; He will not let them leave.

I will refer to @morgana-ren who has this point flashed out way more, but in short - by turning Tav into Spawn Astarion essentially ensures that they can't be taken from him. Neither through (natural) death nor by her own will, should they find out that Astarion has in fact, turned into a monster.

paraphrased: "don't move too far away from me... but you wouldn't do that, right?"

If you break up with him after he ascended and bit you, he will laugh in your face and not allow you to leave. You're his, after all.

There you have it, an in-depth answer to this question.

[maybevillage]

my really really long rant about endwalker

i'm not kidding this is really long. spoilers ahead of course, like immediately upon entry. sorry i sound so angry the whole time

unfortunately for me and for anyone reading this, endwalker is one of those cases where i like/d so much of what happens that the many weak moments make me more critical of the whole than i would be if it was just wholly bad like stormblood, bc it's a waste of potential. a lot of the time the moments i liked would even be happening simultaneously with the things i find so problematic: cheap storytelling decisions, cheap moments that only serve as fanservice or for shock value that only detract from a characters’ pre-existing complexity, poorly done rehashing of elements from shadowbringers, a lot of hollow pseudo-intellectual arguments, rushed and underdeveloped writing in one instance and then meandering wastes of time immediately after….these issues are so consistent that rather than try to break up endwalker's story based on these things, i will just try to run thru the whole thing chronologically and hope i don't get too repetitive. that's why this isn't an essay with some pretense of structure. i'll do my best.

what's crazy to me is i thought endwalker was going to be my second favourite expansion. this was despite not caring about its original main conflict--i thought fandaniel just wasn't a compelling or even interesting villain. he comes out of nowhere. and he's also asahi so that association is hard to break away from bc i find asahi silly. and he suffers from the same writing issues zenos does, where nearly every cutscene with them did little to develop their characters further from the baseline, only reiterated what i already know bc they literally never say anything else: zenos wants to fight wol, he's bored with everything life could possibly offer, fandaniel will ensure zenos can fight wol through his towers bc he no longer plays to the tune of his unsundered masters... even though what fandaniel was promising to cause were the final days i just didn't really care. in the wake of shadowbringers the final days are like a pretty big deal, but something about reviving a catastrophe i had just finished wrapping up--i thought, naively--made bringing them back seem really thoughtless. i don't really need to see anymore final days...like how much more do i need to understand how bad it was? i mean i think shb did a pretty good job????? of making the final days seem pretty fucking bad. why not come up with something new because this is endwalker and not shadowbringers haha? the only fresh thing about this new uncooler final days was the motivation behind them. fandaniel wanting to bring about the final days bc he wants to die and thinks everything should die with him vs emet-selch's unwillingness to die no matter what bc the final days took everything from him and he needs to bring it all back. still, recontextualising the final days from a past event into a present issue ruins them to me. whatever, i thought, there's no way we're letting the final days happen so what does this matter anyways. there's no way.

so yeah post-shb into ew was starting to lose me plot-wise. not the end of the world (LOL?) though bc the atmosphere in the beginning was so subtle and fresh and rich like dew in the morning that i was willing to look past it. going to old sharlayan i liked a lot. i liked going there not as a more typical homecoming for your friends but to instead uncover the sharlayan forum's cryptic behaviour. this kind of intrigue was what i really wanted after the grandness of shadowbringers and i really do think endwalker gave me that for a while. i liked the opening scene on the ship a lot bc it felt exciting and uncertain and new, especially talking to hydaelyn. i liked how she had become such an unstable variable after originally being the most anchoring presence in the entire game: learning she's a primal, whether she's actually “good” after listening to emet-selch’s explanation of her origins and actions in shb, and the fact that her appeals to her champions have been fewer and fewer… i thought her meeting with you at the very beginning of endwalker was cool and foreboding. i also really liked the emet-selch narration btw, i thought that was a fun choice. who better to guide you into the final stages of your adventure than the person who left you with that final, most important task. i wish this had been the only callback to his character at all. 

so a big part of why i like/d endwalker so much is all that atmosphere. and something i can't really put into words. it just felt cool and cohesive at the start. old sharlayan is one of my favourite locations now; i like that despite its rigidity and (to me farcical but w/e tangent) pursuit of rationality/knowledge, there's the quaint island charm and fresh winter sea and overgrown greenery and forest paths. i liked that the game enhanced the usual hubworld tour chore by having g’raha and krile follow you around to give you more personal anecdotes of the place, really gave it a more lived-in feeling, which really added to both them and the location. i also really liked all this charm and familiarity in tandem with the secret hostility of the place bc of the forum, having to sneak around and so on, sharlayan citizens not really recognising you somehow? but being very aware of a warrior of light threat to their way of life, even if i find that non-intervention way of life silly.

i also really liked labryinthos. it's a really creative place. i liked its uncanny false sky and controlled environment, and yet all the people scrambling about inside. and the music felt kind of magical like i had encountered another fairy area or something idk it all felt very whimsical. thavnair i really liked as well but i feel like my immediate impression of the place was kind of poisoned by the stereotypes, like the huge focus on trade and the first impression being undercutting foreign tourists but then i started to really enjoy the part where you run around with matsya and help him sell fish. i liked the mundanity and slow pace of that exercise bc it felt like a much more involved way of learning about thavnair and its current issues through conversations rather than the fetch quest slog, and this is one of the things i like a lot about the beginning of endwalker. the gameplay really improved i think bc they found more creative ways of having you interact with your surroundings, rather than having the usual running between npcs to fetch things for them or other chores. like rather than doing a string of quests and then being rewarded with development of the story, the gameplay simultaneously develops the story. like turning into frogs i thought was fun, testing nidhana’s aether lamp was fun, etc. it felt like they had better ideas about how to progress the in-between parts.

thavnair quickly started to upset me though bc it started to feel like the only relevance the location had was what they could give you for your military cause, that is, the scales. like alchemy is this place’s big highlight and its just the scales the scales the scales and the tower aughhhhhh!!!!!!! the tower!!!!!!!!!! i wish they had focused on something but i guess this is just to be expected with ffxiv...any interaction with a foreign ("foreign" as far as square enix eorzea is concerned) culture really boils down to how they might bolster your military efforts, the azim steppe for eg. so it felt like my concern for an individual (matsya) and the experience firsthand trying to help him with his day to day; the idea that every single person on earth is important and shouldn't be made to suffer, and helping that single person... was like overshadowed by something more focused on a “greater good", that is, the construction of the scales to defeat the towers to save the world ad infinitum. but if you played endwalker then you would know how this idea of only concerning oneself with a "greater good" and this diluting of the importance of an individual's life for the sake of this idealistic whole causes some problems for a certain someone..................so why didn't the game focus more on these themes? probably because at the end of the day it's a video game by square enix and you need a big boss to fight or something or bc this expansion is insanely unfocused i don't know. i feel like this concept about the importance of the small things that can add up to one life and how that one life is beautiful and important crops up with the significance of weeds despite its importance overall. i don't know if i think this is one of the main underlying themes of endwalker just poorly executed so as to not even be there or if i just wish it was one of its main themes. anyways i'm getting distracted, what i mean to say is thavnair gets dehumanised throughout the entire expansion in the most horrific ways possible so i guess this was just the start

moving on... i liked the part in garlemald a lot, which i didn't expect bc i don't expect this game to handle anything regarding imperialism well. i liked that the garlemald you finally experience, after it being one of your main enemies and this very proud nation, was just this dead quiet and ruined place. the quest where you follow that girl is another eg of how the gameplay was a bit more immersive, i think it helped me feel the loneliness and the danger of the place, that i could be a danger to this girl. that i really had to try if i wanted to help her. what i didn't like was alphinaud's and alisaie’s babying attitude towards the garleans? like ok yeah of course we’re gonna have patience and grace for GARLEMALD meanwhile lyse was losing her head at the ala mhigans whenever they disagreed with her. like sure arguing won't get anywhere but it felt like the twins were reckoning with children sometimes, it was so strange. but i did like that the game didn't shy away from making the garleans just unpleasant to be around at best, and an actual danger to you at worst. it's just better to me to make them harder to reconcile with so that there's no frustrating cheap shots at redemption but rather a good, sobering look at a society that's been totally and willingly misled. and i liked that alisaie's and alphinaud's attempts to help those garlean kids ended so badly, even though i'm not usually a fan of such cruel outcomes. it felt like we were seeing a garlemald not necessarily being punished for its actions more than we were seeing a place built on shitty ideals crumble bc of those ideals. i thought jullus was a good char and helped to carry that idea of disillusionment forward. i didn't care so much about sympathising with what he'd lost, but i did find it interesting how they contrast him with the legatus he's working under, who even while the place is in ruins is still more concerned with war than providing for the people relying on him. i don't think the part in garlemald is perfect by any means, like it doesn't do anything too brave, but ig it was a lot more subtle and complex in its storytelling than i expected. and it wasn't meaninglessly cruel. like i'm glad those shock collars put on the twins were only used to gauge jullus' emotional growth or something like him not wanting to activate them rather than them actually being fucking used which would have just made me close the game and not look back.

from here on is where i struggle to lock in for the rest of the story. starting with when zenos kidnaps you in the midst of the fighting at camp broken glass--i don't think i have ever been more immediately mentally locked out of a story. endwalker is darker than usual, trapping people in fleshy towers, two young girls lying dead on the ice, tentacles erupting out of tempered garlean soldiers... and so on. and while i don't personally like things that are overly dark or cruel, it's not that i think they're bad, just that with moments like that it's a lot better imo that a point is being made or they add something to the story, and that it doesn't feel soullessly random or disrespectful. unfortunately this stops being the case for the rest of the expansion..... like something about the weird eldritch feeling of fandaniel pulling you out of your body and putting you in a random soldier's was throwing me off immensely. it felt like i was playing a different game, like so disconcerting i found it distracting, because why would he not just do this to screw you over more often? i didn't understand them having access to such an unrestrained power. at the same time it was also just too wacky to really take seriously despite the apparent gravity of what was happening. zenos inside of my bunny girl's body??? i don't even understand why they did it? to piss you off?? the duty where you play as the imperial soldier was interesting i guess but i couldn’t understand what the meaning behind being made to struggle through that experience was... like didn't we just spend all that time sympathising with the garleans and wrap that section up already? why do i now need to sympathise with/experience firsthand what its like to be a garlean footsoldier? and it annoyed me because these parts felt emotionally rich, like stumbling across those garleans fighting that machine and trying to do your best to help them; dragging yourself across the ground to get to your friends before something bad happens to them, and running towards them before zenos hurts them while in your body--i thought all of that could've been really poignant if not for the actual situation being so silly?? they could have just kept some of those ideas, wol dragging themselves across the ground for eg--the extent to which they're willing to stop harm from reaching their friends (which reminds me of what vrtra says to you about the importance of protecting your friends the first time you meet him. but that was such a one-off moment that goes nowhere... i just wish ew would pick something, anything, to be a poignant message about love on planet earth if they want nihilism to be the main villain, and just stick to it)--and do something that felt a lot more relevant to the established story thus far? just felt totally pointless

what makes this worse is this ridiculous part is iirc right after fandaniel reveals that the entity tempering all of the garleans is varis reanimated as an ancient oh-so-important primal...?? like here's (what i thought was going to be) an actually important point in the story being sidelined for a moment that just goes absolutely nowhere. they certainly made it seem important for a moment, and i think this would've rounded off what was being said about garlemald well; the garleans are so taken in by the farce of their homeland that they think varis is calling them to reclaim their country over the radio, but all along what's actually causing their nation to fall apart is this monstrous version of their late emperor. the irony would've been interesting but they just do nothing with it... (i think desecrating a dead person's corpse by turning it into a monster is really weird btw, even weirder that they do it for no reason. whatever ew is weird.) i thought, considering that this plotline was being established from before endwalker started, that anima was going to take some time. not so. ffxiv would rather have you and zenos enact tropes from a disney channel movie. you merk that guy at the end of the tower of babil and from then on every important plot point the expansion could possibly have moves at fucking mach 567472838758745745

because why all of a sudden are you getting beamed up to the moon? and fighting ZODIARK? i was so confused when asahi i mean fandaniel was punching shit into that fuckgin allagan computer like fandaniel what the fuck are you talking about... i couldn't process anything that happened here. like i'll willingly put aside boring practicalities like why anyone can breathe on the moon, but not so much how fast this all happened and how out of nowhere--is this the reason fandaniel is also amon btw? so that he can use their allagan computers to do this? bc i honestly can’t find any other reason why him being amon is relevant when they revealed that in the tower of zot...like i dont get why that's important

and it doesn't get better after this is the sad thing to me. it doesn't pick itself back up. it is just extremely unfocused right until the endwalker. i was willing to move past getting rid of zodiark so quickly because it's not that i hold standard storytelling rules so dearly in my heart that i need the biggest final boss of the entire series to get a bit more gravitas. it actually ended up being a pretty interesting decision--dispatching the largest villain at the heart of the game being the catalyst for the biggest catastrophe you've ever heard of. like i like that wol gets played. but the entire mare lamentorum section that follows is disrespectful. this expansion suffers from some extreme tonal dissonance, bc how does wol learn that the final days are now upon them and then proceed to spend their time leisurely touring the moon rabbit facility to tell them that the clothes they’ve made for humans to wear isn’t fashionable? why on god's green earth does that matter at this current juncture? this part is one of the worst story-writing sinkholes in the expansion to me, bc why are the discrepancies between what the loporrits know of humanity vs what humanity is actually like something the story chooses to grapple with? we're building an ark to save humanity, and instead of approaching this in a contemplative or emotional way, the point of conflict they choose is logistics? in the expansion about nihilism? at best this conflict was overly realistic..... mostly it's just boring, and at worst the FINAL DAYS are now upon us, so why am i taste-testing carrots? how could the sharlayans, the most focused group of people on the entire planet, have been collaborating with the loporrits for decades and not even have one of the most basic aspects of staying alive squared away? i’m supposed to not only believe that nobody knew after all that time the lopporits think people only eat carrots, but also waste time on fixing this? whyyyyy would they even devote any time to this at all when there are so many more complicated and interesting ideas that they let flounder bc they rush through them at breakneck pace constantly? we just fucking killed zodiark! is this why they stick urianger up there to do all the fixing actually? to save time offscreen? maybe that's why they chose this asinine chunk of the story to start processing his character? though why they would choose to add more to a plate they can barely balance i don't know. i don’t even feel like getting into what they did with urianger bc it will just piss me off. i think only my love for rabbits and how i will never ever not find urianger precious were stopping me from putting a hex on square enix

the following section of the story is easily the worst part to me in the entire game. like i would rather replay stormblood multiple times in a row than ever sit through the final days coming to thavnair ever again. i've already said bringing back the final days would just be bad; a disservice to the time spent on it in shadowbringers. what more is there to say on that front? nothing. and the way ew utilises the final days tells me that the answer is nothing. it just wanted to unleash the violence of that event on the non-white area and spends an insane amount of time doing it. i can think of no other time in this game where there is so much wanton death and destruction for no useful storytelling reason other than to relish in the cheap shock of witnessing violence, violence they are unwilling to inflict on its white areas, because even in garlemald you only see the aftermath of what happens rather than being in the midst of it. it was actually making me feel fatigued. it was just so much of the same thing over and over with no real meaning to any of it. and that's not to say that meaning justifies suffering, but this is a game.....with a story... first and foremost? there needs to be some kind of reason to move the story forward? but nothing new or inspired is being said, just "the final days are really bad"

i’m actually not even sure where to begin so i’ll start with a glaring issue: i hate that people turn into abominations. people “randomly” turning into monsters just feels too unwieldy--how could there be any sense whatsoever that that situation is controllable? even learning that it's caused by feelings of despair is shit because emotions are so vague, how could there be any worthwhile attempt to control your emotions, let alone while watching your loved ones turn into/be eaten by monsters? this entire part felt so wildly out of hand/unpredictable to me that every single moment onward that wasn't more or less focused on maintaining this extremealy volatile situation felt like an unforgivable lack of priorities. it was extremely distracting to have it hovering over everything; everything else felt absolutely inconsequential in comparison. bc what the fuck do you mean people are randomly turning into monsters?? also the stakes were already really high just knowing the final days were coming, so raising them that much higher felt unnecessary to the point of it being hard to believe. and then bc you know there's no way any character important to wol is going to turn into a monster, subjecting commonfolk npcs to this just feels absurdly cruel, and also just made it obvious how much of a cheap scare it all was, bc it can't have any real narrative importance as a result of only happening to random npcs. it was all so blatantly fake-deep. there was no meaning behind them originally being people except for the useless horror of it--the scions still referred to them as monsters to be put down rather than as the people they used to be, just like any other monster in this game. dynamis was more of a retroactive explanation for why people turned into monsters, rather than people turning into monsters bolstering any understanding of dynamis. in shb the sin eaters had some method to them that made them more believable. you fight them throughout the story rather than them just being dropped on you midway through, they helped provide a picture of what kind of world the first was, they were emotional diving boards for characters like alisaie to develop personal goals and so on and so forth... the horror of the sin eaters had a narrative purpose. in endwalker it feels like they didn’t know what to do but wanted to replicate parts of shadowbringers, but didn't know why those parts worked so well bc they're too obsessed with trying to shock their audience. this part just sucked beyond description.

and it just continues to get worse. how can you be the one writing the parametres of a situation and you create something that's literally unmanageable, so that when its only manageable bc you need it to be, it's just so obviously shit writing? my sister described endwalker's writing as really contrived, like when they need something to happen (and that thing is often a really bad idea) they just shove it in there at the cost of keeping their characters in character, or having their story threads--both the interesting ones and the stupid ones--fall totally flat. she says they shortcut the writing. and it's true. for eg, the characters literally don't feel like themselves at times, or get utilised in really moronic ways. like when wol just watches the satrap die, another cheap scare btw he literally gets grabbed an eaten in a way my sis (i was ranting to her a lot about this game ok) described as straight from attack on titan. just gets grabbed and eaten. and this happens to him for such asinine reasons: 1. so that this random asf plot point of vrtra revealing himself as the true satrap can bear fruit. for some fucking reason. i struggle to understand why this is important at all but i guess it's yet another little sideplot that ew just can't seem to resist adding to its already towering plate at the plot buffet, like whatever is going on with urianger and moenbryda's parents/the loporrits, or zenos who now spends most of his time offscreen, or the twins and their father, etc, bc ew likes to waste time 2. so that g'raha (???????????????????????) out of fucking nowhere can have a big boy moment and direct the scions and the people of thavnair in their time of need. what on earth was that scene supposed to be? fanservice? a reminder that g'raha was a leader back in the first? which blows my mind bc mere moments before he had a scene i really enjoyed despite the circumstances, where after a man witnesses his son get turned into a beast and then stepped on by another beast because endwalker is literally jacking itself off to suffering and expects me to be doing the same... g’raha goes up to this man and stops him from panicking and turning into a monster himself. while i don't think any of this should be happening, i thought it was a nice take on his character to have a more sensitive moment in such a harrowing situation. i don't know, have a character demonstrate some emotional skills instead of the usual fighting ones. ofc all of this i thought mere moments before disaster. why was any of this necessary? literally why not just have the satrap, i don't know, take charge of his country when he's needed most, even if he's only been a figurehead the whole time? why let him go out so horribly when he obvious loves his people with his whole heart just so that vrtra can step in without any sort of conflict? i don't understand the focus on vrtra at all

and it actually just keeps getting worse.. the following part where you have to find matsya's friends at palaka's stand was awful. the friends have a newborn baby, so it's obvious that only that baby is surviving bc ew is convinced you don't know how harsh the world is yet. that must be why this part is so long? i'm repeating myself but so many other things that shouldn't be rushed get rushed, only for ew to devote a lot of time to sections like this where nothing changes or develops except for compounding how bad it all feels. i think it was at this point actually, that i realised endwalker actually had some underlying point it was trying to make. it would've been impossible not to realise bc of how heavy-handed it is. i'm not even going to try and paraphrase bc it was so random the way it was introduced i thought i had missed some lines of dialogue or something when it happened:

the suddenness of this felt like when a writer forsakes trying to show what a story is about and instead opts to speak to their audience directly through poorly disguised self-inserts. like i know things are bad right now guys, but the preaching tone of this is jarring. like maybe if you spent some time trying to develop your themes you wouldn't have to be doing this endwalker. i know you need your final villain to literally parrot these ideas for the rest of the game, but if this was supposed to be such a core point of the story why wait all the way until now to just beat me over the head with it? was watching a child be crushed underfoot supposed to make elderly man of palaka using the phrase "at journey's end" seem profound?

anyways then you go and try to save matsya’s friend (the mother bc the father has now died, of course). this leads us to another forced decision that doesn’t make any sense: alisaie and alphinaud fail to kill a single abomination--just the one solitary abomination that was stalking the poor woman--so that we can see it fling her into the water and her corpse dangling on the surface. in what fucking world do alisaie and alphinaud, who have single-handedly dispatched numerous abominations prior to reaching this point, fail to kill just one of them between the two of them in a way reminiscent of a cartoon, one being knocked into the other and them both falling over? how is that fucking possible? and then to somehow make things worse, because that's still possible, despite the fact that wol spends this entire segment in palaka’s stand being told by alisaie and alphinaud not to leave matsya alone because he can’t fend for himself, the twins suggest sending him back on his own to deliver the baby to palaka's stand? why??????????????????????????????

this is what i mean when i say the characters get used in the most bullshit ways for the most bullshit reasons. it's like the game needs as much suffering as possible to happen so that it can make a worthwhile point on this later on (spoiler: it doesn't) so it pulls shit like this. why would the twins, who we just watched try to spoonfeed the garleans cereleum straight from the tank, leave matsya on his own if not solely bc the story needs the doomerism of the Resolute Citizen to ring true? and this is also what i mean when i say the scions try to manage a disaster that is just not manageable, bc they for some reason believe that bc they've taken care of the abominations they saw in the area, that means the area is safe enough for matsya to go back on his own? like are we just suddenly pretending the nature of these creatures doesn't imply that anyone can turn into one at any moment? everyone is ALWAYS in danger? we're just going to mill around while matsya weathers the most potent fear of his life running back to the village on his own, with the baby of his friends who just died moments before, while we all know that extremely negative emotions cause people to turn into the monsters? why are we doing this after we just went to so much trouble keeping people safe (or failing to, really)? forget turning into monsters for a sec, why are we even letting him experience such painful emotions at all? anyways the fucking baby starts turning into a monster because this is endwalker.. but i will say that matsya running and chanting that little piece up there about how life is suffering to try and convince me it's true calm himself down was one of the cutscenes i liked the most from this entire part, maybe endwalker in general. it was another one of those emotionally poignant and well-executed moments that just suffers from how much i wish it was happening under totally different circumstances. i don't even remember why one of us doesn’t go with him, like i don't remember what we were busy doing bc it was that unimportant--no wait, i remember! we were waiting for matsya to reach the total end of his rope so that when all things seem lost, when those monsters obviously show up on his path back to the village out of nowhere like they've been doing the past painstaking quest after quest of this entire part, estinien and vrtra can get this really cool moment of jumping into save him! it all makes so much sense now. i've never seen estinien do anything really cool before like diving down from the sky with his lance, so i understand how this was a really important moment that the game needed to make happen. also how vrtra really needs to prove to the people he can be a good satrap bc ahewann just died and all. yeah, i totally get it. perfect. just great. 

what is the message behind despair turning you into a monster? we're about to get into it with meteion and try to convince her she's wrong--come out championing the idea that suffering is just one of the many aspects of life we need to accept, and yet we're going to preface that with a part where to feel despair is bad? you get punished if you do it? honestly?

whatever. elpis...we go here because we need to learn about the elpis flower. i'm thinking we're definitely just going to ask the watcher, right? like the guy on the moon who told us the name of the flower in the first place? and time is of the fucking essence here, so surely we just go back to the watcher and ask him what we need to know and come back? wrong. we're going back to the first. to talk to elidibus. i thought we killed elidibus? does nobody truly die in this game except for my favourite character? so wol gets sent back to the first, and there's this upbeat tonally dissonant little section where you catch up with some old friends like beq lugg and those kids you helped back in shb bc now is just the perfect time for pleasantries and remembering how good shadowbringers was. ew trying to relive shadowbringers was already something i was feeling out in thavnair fighting leagues of "terminus" creatures and not "forgiven" ones, and watching the carefully constructed horror and gravity of the final days get reduced to an average apocalyptic shitshow. so i can't say i appreciated this part. also people are indiscriminately turning into monsters. i can't help but have that hang over everything constantly until the end of the expansion.

anyways we go to the crystal tower and drag out elidibus even though i personally prefer when characters have their final moments and are properly laid to rest. like i hate to not only beat a dead horse but also reanimate said horse and then drag its corpse around. well fuck what i want. so elidibus willingly does this favour for us i guess and sends us to the past somehow with some useless warnings about how we won't be able to interact with our surroundings or change the past. i say useless because the former is just untrue, i'm not sure why he bothered to say it. the moment we step foot on elpis you get a nice gift of aether from emet-selch that renders you tangible and now you can proceed to live love laugh with him and hythlodaeus on elpis even though people are indiscriminately dying back home. and the latter warning, well. i don't know, that just seemed obvious. i'm kind of just a hater.

time to be positive again for a short moment, if you can believe it? emet-selch is one of my favourite characters. i enjoyed this new light cast on him...for a short while. i like his relationship with hythlodaeus and i really like hythlodaeus; i’m really fond of the faceless simulacrum version of him you meet in shb and i'm really fond of him now. learning about the unsundered world in person rather than through hearsay was interesting, and although i can't lie and say i don't think this all kind of felt like a huge tangent despite the important aspects of the plot that come out of it, i still like it. i guess it feels this way because a lot of big plot points have already been established, like the ark on the moon and the sharlayans' involvement and the final days, so this was all kind of too big to me to be coming this late into the story. it doesn't feel all that relevant to prior parts of the expansion either except for hermes, who has been poorly developed throughout, so okay, i get it. it's time to give one of the main villains some depth (i want you to guess if this is successful or not). hermes has a lot of qualities i really like. has a child, secretly nurturing a potent sadness, thinks differently from the world around him because at his core he’s too deeply empathetic…. even though i was still largely aware of the insanity happening back at home which i'm going to keep repeating, i still enjoyed elpis At The Start. the exposition of this part was easily better than its resolution. it was taking the time to develop hermes’ character so that you could see if the game was written well anyhow how he became the fandaniel of the present. i really liked his relationship with meteion too. it's getting hard to talk about what i like without simultaneously talking about what i don't like so i'm going back to criticising now, positivity over, sorry....

personally, i’d have been totally fine without any more development to emet-selch’s character. i think it was nice to see a fresh perspective on him and all, really rounds out who he is from what you know and what he talks about in shadowbringers. and i actually like a lot of the things he said throughout, not all of it, but a good amount of it was fun and sorely needed whenever hermes was being annoying, which was often. but there was a lot of times wehere i thought, i don't really need to be hanging out with emet-selch right now? i don't need my wol and emet-selch to be friends? considering who he is....? .............and what's going on back home? how many more moments showing how endearingly prickly he is do i need to see? like sure, i can enjoy this emet-selch fest in isolation of what's going on because me love emet-selch like it's not like i think these moments are bad or anything but i don't know, don't we have other things to be doing? i'm not diametrically opposed to fanservice, i like when things are kept fresh and lighthearted. but. well you know by now. about the people turning into monsters. i guess i just both enjoyed this part and wished it happened under different circumstances or in a different way or something, or maybe not at all, bc as things progress his character just gets more and more diluted.

i actually really liked meteion. i will say i’m really tired of non-human, overly childish girl children creature characters who become villains, because i think there's this concept where…idk how to say it? i wish i could find something that talks about this more... it's like the dehumanisation involved when non-binary characters or non-white characters are often not human (not that these things are done in the same way). but i feel like women or females ig are often the ones chosen to be non-human in this particular way...? like, when emotional labour is involved. or when it needs to be some taboo evil entity. it's like a guy and his part-animal female second lead or part-alien love interest or female-voiced ai system or android or abandoned girl he finds/rescues. it's kind of like the born sexy yesterday trope but without the blatant sexuality (i don't want to go on a tangent). quite often this weird quirky alien and playful girl child is a harbinger of destruction. take drakengard, for example, or fire emblem engage, or cc from code geass iirc, or veronica from fire emblem heroes.. there's apparently something about childishness and girlishness and innocence and corrupting that innocence or being fooled by that innocence that seems to incite fear of the unknown enough in people for villainous children to be a trope in general regardless of gender, but it was just something i was thinking about in regards to meteion's character, especially when she becomes evil. and this blurry line between her as a "being" with a consciousness and free well as GIVEN to her by hermes, and her as a "tool" to be used by him as well, doesn't really get addressed in any meaningful way at all. like sure, she doesn't need to eat but she can still enjoy candy apples and flowers, and can empathise bc often of her own volition she wants to cheer hermes up, but actually her ability to empathise is programmed; so let's send send her, this highly empathetic being (with consciousness and free will and tastes and personality) into the cold expanse of space for as long as it takes for hermes to find his answer, that's totally fine. why did he make it a girl? why couldn't they address the fact that the loneliest bastard in this entire game made himself a child? like i'm not saying there needs to be clear-cut definitions on what meteion is or why she or hermes take certain actions, but it feels like a lot of things regarding their characters are really complex and implied to be really deep, and then just don't go anywhere or are completely ignored or unexplained? and because these things are so present yet passed over, it leaves me genuinely confused about most of what happens on elpis and how these two specifically reach any of the conclusions they do once things start going south

like i thought what she and hermes were going to add to the story was going to be a lot more interesting and complex than what it turned out to be.....a banal mantra on the "mercy" of nihilism. i can barely reconcile what bothers hermes in the first place with what meteion concludes from her sisters' expeditions, like they almost feel irrelevant to each other. he's upset over man's lording over who deserves to live and the callousness of making and unmaking life. he feels sadder about the coming death of his friend than the average ancient, and doesn't want to accept meaningless platitudes about dying for the good of the star. ok, i agree with that. so he wants to know what meaning there is to life, if it can be so easily judged and discarded...? okay. so his answer is to....secretly create creatures without any of the rigourous testing they usually go through to prevent them from being dangerous, and then send them on a potentially dangerous and traumatising mission to answer his vague philosophical questions? like.......? so when she reports back traumatised and tells him every single society out there is suffering (which i just find so unbelievable btw), then the answer to his question must be that suffering is the meaning of life--which she figures bc she's an entelechy so i imagine she's highly susceptible to her emotional surroundings, and because his pseudo-intellectual question is so poorly framed (something only emet-selch points out in a throwaway line btw). and this alone spurs him on to allowing meteion to unmake their entire society in the most violent way conceivable? you literally tell him that the final days are coming as a result of his actions, but he's fine with it because he'd rather that than enact some policy changes at his workplace, or talking to someone? everyone seemed to listen and respect his decision when he suggested helping that creature learn to fly instead of just killing it, i'm sure he could've talked it out? isn't he in charge of the place? this entire section was so hard for me to follow bc i kept thinking something more complex was making everyone behave the way they were, when it was actually just totally senseless.

as an aside, i hate how they chose to make the way meteion reports information so cooly technological btw, it felt not only anachronistic but corny. i’m sure there's a better way to have her impartially report things without making her sound like she's reporting weather conditions on some distant planet in star trek. anyways, when you frantically search for meteion after she receives her transmission was another part that took up a lot of time for no reason. it just made everything feel so dire when i could barely understand why any of what was going on was such a big deal. and i’ll never be one to say that any bureau of anything should “detain” anyone, but why hermes was so frantic to prevent meteion from being brought to the convocation i just don't know. like he goes on the run with her so that he can hear the end of her report? is that really it? i just find it hypocritical that he doesn't want her to be sent to the convocation where they'll limit her free will or fucking whatever but he's totally fine with ordering the meteia into space? why am i being made to guess what the convocation is going to do to meteion when hermes is making it seem like such a big deal?? what fucking sense does that make? what on earth was he afraid of? their judgment? the convocation members deciding whether meteion is good for the star or not? could they not have just reasoned this out? aren’t they a "highly advanced" and "reasonable" society? like okay he sees through the veil of his utopian home but i just did not get a sense of how much it was bothering him at all, like i cannot stress enough how him going turbo feels like an insane jump from what his problems seemingly were. why did nobody stop to think this through or communicate to each other? is it because of the bullshit time paradox this game has trapped us in so that nothing we do will amount to anything anyways so we might as well make the most confused villain of all time be responsible for the biggest event in this game's history?

but it annoys me because meteion and hermes felt like such a waste of potential, maybe the biggest waste to me in the entire expansion. i was really intrigued by their wholesome relationship at the start, knowing that hermes was a main villain. and that he can't find connection or meaning in an otherwise "perfect" society, so he has to create it for himself and try to find it elsewhere, as far as the reaches of outer space... he wants to make what's hurting him stop hurting him. i like that he approaches such human desires with meteion despite her non-humanness, and that she can return those feelings to him. he wants to signify meteion’s return with a flower because they both like flowers… like those things we can’t put into words but share with others, moments, emotions, connections……..but nope. nihilism beam. it feels like the worst sort of retroactive writing ever. they didn't even think too hard about dynamis--this hugely important thing, except nobody has ever heard of it, aside from nidhana back at home? while members of the highest office in the most advanced society earth has ever had are left squinting.

and the entire section after you fight hermes just pissed me off. we kicked his ass so that we could stop him from inciting meteion any further, and yet we just let him hear her out anyways? he's yelling at you during the entire dungeon that he just wants the time to hear her out, we're chasing after him so that we can stop him from doing that, and then we just let him hear her out anyways? and then even when we do that she doesn’t even say anything different? she just goes right back to reporting on different worlds and how self-destructive they are and That's All She Really Proceeds To Say For The Rest Of The Expansion But Fucking Who Cares Anymore. so we let her repeat herself. this sends her into a spiral, because she's an entelechy who just got hit by a high frequency nihilism beam, but subjecting her to all that despair is only ever addressed by one of the scions in a throwaway line near the very end of the story in ultima thule... and then hermes...captures venat, emet-selch and hythlodaeus??? he captures two of the strongest characters in the game? did we not just kick hermes’ ass??? what is going on?

emet-selch: that's bullshit, and you know it's bullshit

hermes: *says more bullshit*

i really think hermes might be one of the worst villains in the game. it's a shame bc i think he's such an interesting character. i'm not sure why he started behaving like such an incel when he was right to be troubled by the things he was? why did they even bother have wol relate to him over experiencing sadness from loss if that just went totally nowhere? why does he behave so hypocritically? being saddened by loss leads to him setting the stage for the final days? him hating man's jurisdiction over other lives leads to him wiping emet-selch's and hythlodaeus' memories, and subjecting the entire planet to the worst test ever? he's not even morally grey or anything! just annoying! i saw someone say that it's even worse that he wants the ancients to prove that their life is meaningful to them, bc it's true, they do??? like isn't that what venat interrupts them from doing in the answers cutscene, calling back for that lost life? isn't that what you learn in shadowbringers? didn't an entire half of their population sacrifice themselves so that the other half could live? what the fuck else did they need to prove?

this part was pissing me off even more because i never even wanted hythlodaeus or emet-selch to learn about where wol came from or about the final days coming in the first place. i thought that was an awful writing decision. telling them just felt weirdly cruel to me considering elidibus explicitly told you there was nothing you could do to change it. maybe this is just my opinion, but why would anybody want to know that their planet is going to go up in flames and there is nothing they can do to stop it? telling venat i was like sure, she becomes hydaeyln so this makes a little more sense to me, but the other two…….? this is around when i was getting tired of the emet-selch cameo, because i don't really care to know what he thinks of his future self? i couldn't really understand what the point of any of that was? so it annoyed me even further that it amounts to nothing anyways when they get their minds conveniently erased. it felt like a fucking joke. why did we revive these characters, develop them, and then just treat them like tools...? like now that we're done using their powers and creation magicks--i thought, naively--we just toss them aside? like ohhhhh noooooo now they won't remember all the fun we had on elpis this is so sad......but at least before he got his memories wiped emet-selch, even though he definitely totally doesn't believe a fucking word i say, renews his shb vows to wol and leaves the future in my hands again? yeah, i totally wanted to hear him say that a second time. forget how deeply affecting and important a moment that was at the end of shadowbringers. i really needed to see him do that one more time in this shittier, more contrived context. that's really what i needed from endwalker. also i've been on reddit reading what people have to say about endwalker out of curiosity (ppl make a lot of good points that i haven't) and someone pointed out that moments before all this happens venat literally pulls memories from the aether around you so that we can watch hermes send the meteia to space. what on earth is stopping anyone from doing that for hermes, hythlodaeus, and emet-selch? but whatever, i already know the writing doesn't care how silly it is anymore. two of the strongest ancients get bound by a weakened hermes, only break out after the story conveniently needed meteion to start flying into space, and then venats lets her escape somehow even though doing so essentially dooms their entire planet. ok

so we’re back home and we have to go immediately help the thavnarians who are being punished for not being white again. the sharlayans were going to bring them to the teleporter to the moon in garlemald to start getting them on the moon, but oops, the final days have come to garlemald, so now we can't use the teleporter, so if you're thavnarian your life sucks. who saw that coming? absolute waste of time. so then we have to get rid of more beasts because we need to waste even more time doing something we already spent an agonising amount of time doing in thavnair. and then immediately after this we need to......wrap up yet another asinine plot thread endwalker is so obssesed with adding to it's already convoluted story: fourchenault excommunicating his children...? it seemed really important when he did this in post-shb, but materially nothing for alphinaud or alisaie really changed, everyone still gets into sharlayan no problem. ultimately i just didn’t really know why they chose to pursue this mini-plot at all because how many more pushes does alphinaud (i'm saying alphinaud bc he does not share that spotlight with alisaie lmfao) need to become resolute in his goals? he already does this throughout the series? they ruined arenvald's legs in post-shb so that alphinaud could become more resolute in his goals, why keep dedicating time to this? just keep juggling endwalker, just keep juggling. anyways we’re in garlemald, we calm the final days for now, zenos shows up out of nowhere to remind us he’s still in the game. and to be fair to him that was one of the most interesting cutscenes he’s had the whole time, and, get this--they have him randomly answer hermes' question? about the meaning of life? while talking to jullus? like jullus gets mad at him for not giving a fuck about causing what happened to garlemald, and zenos responds by saying: "ask any creature of this star and those above for answers, and they will tell you what suits their fancy. and they would be right to do so. what meaning there is to be found in the petty vicissitudes of your existence must be gleaned by you and you alone." like......? he just provides the answer right there in a conversation with jullus? did this expansion have any interest at all in putting any of its different parts in conversation with each other, or are we supposed to just try and build a good story like a puzzle, where the pieces, albeit interesting, don't actually fit together? weren't zenos and fandaniel working together at the beginning of the expansion? he should have just posed this question to zenos because the answer was apparently right fucking there, with the flattest character in the entire game, this whole time? whatever, i still liked this scene. alisaie putting a curse on zenos was very cool of her. so we're back in garlemald and....….tonal dissonance! puddingway shows up. cute scene where g’raha’s ears perk up also bc he's the one who hears the loporrits coming. just in case you forgot about g’raha, which is an oxymoron. and then maybe the second worst segment of endwalker...........we go back to labryinthos. 

now i love labryinthos. i thought it was interesting we only collected one aetheryte the first time we were there, and i was hoping the place would be as intriguing to me as it first was when we got back. admittedly learning that the sharlayans' secrecy only amounted to contributing to the moon project was kind of a let down, but i thought maybe there was still more to it. i mean, an ark to the moon? the abandonment of one's home planet? it's not like the ideas aren't there. let's go back to elpis for a second. one of the moments that really stood out to me during that part was a throwaway line that emet-selch says to wol after hermes starts freaking it:

he's right. i don't think hermes found society so truly beyond help that he couldn't turn to any one of his peers for help before devising such a reckless plan. but i'm not trying to rehash my issues with hermes, more that i think an interesting parallel could have been made, possibly, with the ark flying to the moon as currenlty the most viable solution to the final days problem? challenging this notion of just throwing it all away as a last resort? especially because it's so obvious to me that by the end of this expansion nobody is actually going into space to start a new life out there; trying to sort out living accomodations and acquaint the lopporits properly with earth is just a waste of time. so why not pose the underlying question of the entire expansion, about what makes life meaningful, to the last bastion of hope in the entire universe--the sole planet amongst millions of dead stars that still believes in itself? would it not just be free real estate to try and connect this story's multiple parts together by ...connecting this story's multiple parts together? the scions say repeatedly how much they'd prefer to protect their planet rather than leave it, and everyone on earth vouches for you because they don't want to leave, either. could they not have made a connection in some way between that ark and the meteia's voyage to outer space? could the writing not have turned around and asked the actual inhabtants of the planet of that we've helped and saved and laughed with and broken bread with or whatever the fuck what they think about the meaning of life, now that they have to leave that life behind? i guess fucking not??? i guess endwalker would rather only highlight civilians when they're being turned into abominations to drive home the same points about life = suffering constantly, and not the points about how despite the suffering life needs to be lived? because they don't actually seem to care about challenging meteion's nihilism when that can just be lazily solved by beating her up at the end. hermes could have been learning to love the world he was on, the smaller things that make it beautiful. because that's what he does, he creates this creature that is built to understand him, and it does and it shares these small joys with him. but nope, time to waste time doing fetch quests in labryinthos. find every single researcher who is obviously losing their mind with stress in labryinthos and give them their government-assigned lopporit while this hectic music with only one minute's worth of loop value plays in the background. go and deliver these papers with alisaie and alphinaud bc if you do a former friend of their father’s will tell them that their father actually loves them duh that’s why he disrespects them publicly every chance he gets. go follow one of the lopporits around while they sample fruits so that they can learn to make food other than carrots. go and watch urianger reconcile with moenbryda's parents even though she died all the way back in a realm reborn. fuck you. also everyone is still just a bad day away from turning into an abomination. just in case you forgot.

that shit where asahi shows up to take fandaniel away for the final time might be top three most bizarre scenes in all of final fantasy fourteen btw. i almost didn't want to mention it, but i need it on record how silly i thought that was. we are in the final stages of this expansion and it still can't stop wasting time. did we see ardbert's thoughts on elidibus using his body? no. but asahi was who they chose to get upset about this? ok.

i liked the trial against mother. you might have noticed i've had very little to say on venat this whole time. that might just have to be its own post or something if nobody is sick of me by now. but anything to do with working together with your friends to overcome a trial is good.

that's what i liked about ultima thule. at the same time, this is where the game finally just loses me forever. i think, somehow, even despite all the things i didn't like, the way the story is told i still enjoyed, even if what it was saying was often. bad. there's still a lot of moments i really liked despite it all. but after ultima thule i was just done. we get on the ark. great. i like that things don't go as planned because meteion intercepts our ship. but now meteion is finally here, which means it's finally time for me to reckon with the pseudo-intellectual nihilism she's been touting every chance she gets. it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief that every single society out in space wanted oblivion, but if that's what endwalker wants me to believe for the sake of its story making sense (oxymoron) then fine. ok. but that's all that's ever said. "life is suffering" "life is suffering" "the final days are really bad"

just the same pseudo-intellectual browbeating about how living just leads to constant strife and the most beautiful thing to do is to just end it all for everyone ever again. like sure, empath hears death cry repeatedly--i can see how meteion could change so permanently. i think that's fine. i doubt that's why she's so repetitive. i genuinely just 't think there's nothing anyone really had to say on this. and the thing is, we've heard this argument before? the idea that humanity is imperfect so they don't deserve to live? it will all amount to nothing, so why let it continue to exist? these are major points of conflict from shadowbringers because it's what emet-selch was always saying. the difference is that emet-selch is just an easily more interesting and fleshed out character whose arguments are largely more complicated, even if they're just as morally wrong. like it's extremely easy for me to answer whatever meteion is saying with a resounding no. and while i feel that emet-selch can also be easily disagreed with on what he believes, bc i do disagree--he at least introduces ideas that complicate the story and his own character. he challenges the scions on their hatred of primals--their god is a primal. he offers visions of a world where nobody has to struggle ever again, where strife doesn't exist, and so on and so forth. while that doesn’t justify his actions, nor do i think they should, i think he at least gives the characters something to think about. he throws their own actions back at them. why would the scions not want a world without suffering? when emet-selch asks alphinaud if he believes half of the sundered world would give up half of their number to save the other half, alphinaud is unable to answer because he knows that the answer is no. i don't think humanity should be tested, let alone with such an insane standard, but i at least think that the questions being asked in shadowbringers were interesting. there's a point to them. with meteion, all she basically says to the scions is that she’s going to fucking kill everyone they know and love in the worst way possible. nothing to chew on that wouldn't better be solved by just getting rid of the threat. i don't know why they even bother arguing with her ever. she doesn't even feel like a character to me in that last section of the game. and they keep trying to have her seem all scary by having her get really close to the screen or move around without warning which is all very silly to me. i at least did like how much of a threat she was, and the way thancred vanished, and then everyone finds themselves in that dark area in front of the ship wondering where he is while the ultima thule music plays for the first time, distantly and quietly. i actually really liked that part. i thought it was really moving. i wish it had stayed that way.

the first area of ultima thule was the best part imo. i liked the immense darkness and quiet and lack of wind and the foul air and  yet, green grass. i liked the strange horror of being the only person at first who could really see the dragons, and then learning that estinien can see them too. i liked how that was the segue for his sacrifice. having those "final" moments with a specific scion each time until that climactic moment that pushes the group forward i really liked. i liked that thancred was no longer with them but still with them, a presence over them keeping them safe from harm. i found that very touching. but i was actually really confused while going through ultima thule becuase of how they visually shows what happens, like while the swirling vortex each scion would stand in was cool, and then standing to face off against that dark bird, i think what those things actually represented i just did not really understand what was actually being done or going on. i think that might be because dynamis suffers a bit from being just too nebulous or underdeveloped. i don't mind how abstract of a concept it is, i mean aether is used to do all sorts of never-explained things all the time.. it's more like... if ultima thule is going to be a place ruled by emotions, with laws different from what the scions are used to, it's hard for me to see how they were able to really draw any conclusions about where they were or what to do. it actually kind of reminded me of the logic of jojo's bizarre adventure where an attack only overrules another attack not becuase of some fundamental power scale the reader understands, but bc of what araki feels like contriving to get the story moving the way he wants. and that's fine because it's jojo. but this is ffxiv, so in my mind ultima thule should have either remained abstract and they don't try to explain the rules of the place so much, or they should’ve just made what was going on less abstract if they were going to try to logic the place out

what i mean is: the scene where estinien argues with that dragon so that he can overcome its despair is really cool. i liked that he turned into a cool wind. i liked that your friends sacrificed themselves for the sake of their home, that the power of their hopes for wol to overcome this final challenge was the only way they could move forward in such a stagnant place, as well as the only way they could be protected by meteion's violence. but after estinien does it--and he admits that he doesn't know how, just that it was the right thing to do--it feels like the writing immediately tries to specify what's going on so that there's some easy way forward the scions just have to follow the rulebook for, so that they can get to meteion. when urianger takes wol and g'raha aside i was actually just so lost. i don't know what it was i wasn't getting. i still don't. like to kind of say that there’s always one "individual" in these fake worlds who is despairing more than the others that can be located if they just identify a certain set of behaviours... this kind of just waters down what the scions are doing and the magic of being at the universe's end or w/e to me. we use language because of our inability otherwise to really express the depth of emotions and sensations that exist in this world, not the other way around--trying to box in something so complex through things like processes and so on...so to try and narrow down this part kind of rung a bit hollow to me. it was somehow both overexplained and underexplained at the same time. this might seem kind of nitpicky but i guess it was just hard for me to enjoy ultima thule when i was genuinely confused almost the whole way throughout. and bc the ea and the omicrons were so goddamn annoying. trying to do this slapdash learning about their societies at the very end of the game was just like...? okay? why bother, all they really care about is dying anyways. and then that final dungeon, ew's final attempt at replicating the wins of shadowbringers (the amaurot dungeon) with meteion's voice over. like who cares now meteion, you are somehow still just repeating yourself. endwalker is almost at it's end girl, i get it. everyone wants to die.

where i actually started to get annoyed though was where y'shtola says in no uncertain terms not to use the retcon crystal hydaelyn gave you to call their spirits back. y'shtola, you shouldn't have bothered, because you know wol is going to do absolutely that. why even have her say it? there is no sense of risk whatsoever because that crystal is involved. i still liked the sacrificing, but maybe they should have framed it in a way where it wasn't obvious that the scions were going to be totally fine. ew literally didn't seem ballsy enough to kill all of the scions, and i don't think it should've either. but then it just makes this all very wishy-washy. and even worse was when wol used it to summon HYTHLODAEUS AND EMET-SELCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY!!!!!!!! WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?????????????? i was so annoyed. i'm still annoyed. back when their memories got wiped hythlodaeus was like oh yeah by the way emet did you know that in the aetherial sea you can get your memories back haha? and i was like okay cool so when they die they can get their memories back, whatever, still don't think me and emet-selch should've been live love laughing on elpis. i didn’t actually think this game would be so juvenile as to let you get to meet them once more with their memories fully intact. i don't know why ew has to dot every i and cross every t and sign off every single bit of intrigue with the biggest fucking full stop The End ever where emet-selch is concerned, holy fuck man. i hated this decision so much. your friends SACRIFICE THEMSELVES so that WOL can face meteion. they believe that at the very end of everything, hydaelyn believes that at the very end of everything, WOL is the one who can defeat meteion. they all put so much faith in you. and the first thing you do is summon emet-selch and hythlodaeus because what? because you just can't fucking help yourself? just shit all over the importance of carrying your friends’ beliefs in you. christ i hated that. i loved seeing the elpis flowers grow all over that fake sun. why couldn't that have been wol who grew them, wol's turn to use dynamis to overcome meteion's despair, flowers that represent the hopes every single person on earth has placed in them to see their star to safety? why? emet-selch there for what? to set in stone his position as the Tsundere once and for all? is that it? to have him renew his vows to wol for the millionth time just in case you forgot that he wants you to take up the mantle of their future? i wish they would go back to never making emet-selch palatable and less hostile to the warrior of light, it feels like such a disservice to the character he was in shadowbringers and to just their characters in general like i do not want to be canon friends with emet-selch! it's not necessary! it's fucking emet-selch! what's even worse is that for some reason while the flowers are growing, emet-selch is just point blank explaining what's going on. he literally says something like, "these flowers are the hopes of everyone meteion you're washed. by the way, if you didn't catch that, wol. you can summon your friends back now." immersion gone. any sense of playing a game that actually gives a fuck gone. so we call our friends back, only to send them away again with the teleporter because meteion is just too strong for us. to be fair i liked that decision, but why fake me out a second time having me think yes, finally wol is going to face meteion ON HER OWN. and then have ZENOS show up? i actually just stopped playing and went to bed. genuinelly just fuck me. who fucking cares anymore.

and then after you finally get meteion to stop being emo and she offers to reconcile with you by sending you safely back to your friends it's like, actually i can't even accept this meteoin. because i have to go fight zenos now. and then it's crazy to me that after you kick zenos' ass for like the millionth time, we're literally on the edge of the world so i'm finally expecting him to say something worth listening to, he opens his mouth and says "you know, wol, this whole time... i've been so bored... and the only thing that gives me joy is fighting you...” like. stuck record. the writers dragged him all the way out here to be a stuck fucking record

i like endwalker btw. kind of. like i know nobody who reads this is going to believe me but i really do. if it had just, well. i don't even know. there's too much wrong with it. it wastes too much time and just doesn't seem to be able to let go. how is it possible that an expansion can make me tired of callbacks to haurchefant being important to wol? i've never felt that before. like how many more flashbacks to his grave does one need to have to know that when wol is fighting for their world they're fighting for their friends too. but this game just cannot let things go. it NEEDS to make that joke about alphinaud gathering firewood four more times. it makes anything i appreciated the second or maybe even the third time just upset me. they can't let anything go, they have to wave it in front of me like it's a dog treat and i'm a dog. a fucking dog with blonde hair and blue eyes

[acourtofthought]

“But the examples we're given of a bond immediately snapping haven't had happy endings.”

You get it!

This will always be the problem with Elucien. Every other couple has gotten to know each other or fallen in love first, and then the mating bond snapped/was revealed later on. By doing so, the mating bond isn’t forced or seen in a negative light, because at that point, it’s happily welcomed by the couple. It’s authentic.

Yet a mating bond snapping first without the couple getting to know each other does not allow for those same positive connotations. It’s akin to a non consensual arranged marriage.

There can never truly be choice, because a higher-power has willed it before the character (such as Elain) even knew the other person existed (Lucien). For example, if Elain decides to pursue Lucien, how can we ever be sure that she would do that if the mating bond wasn’t present? How can we ever be sure that Elain truly loves Lucien, or if it’s just the pulling and tugging of the mating bond pushing them together? We know that’s not the case for all other mated couples, but only because we saw their friendship and passion and pining and love for one another before the mating bond came into play.

There is also a grave threat tied up in all of this - that Elain rejecting Lucien would send him mad and doom him to a life of insanity. Elain is a kind enough person, and likely wouldn’t want that for him. So is she only willing to seek out Lucien because she feels there’s no other option? It’s messy.

SJM might have a pattern of writing mated couples. But she herself was the one who wrote Elain as being cold to Lucien. She herself wrote that not all mated couples are a good fit, and that the bond can be rejected (concepts she barely touched on in CC and TOG).

And there’s one pattern SJM writes even more… and that’s ensuring that her FMCs have the freedom to choose, and to reject destiny and fate, if they so desire.

Ahhhh..but here is the thing.

SJM does write a certain pattern and that pattern is not just about love interests.

If it was only about love, Chaol and Celaena would have ended up together. They had love, did they not?

Or Feyre would have ended up with Tamlin. She was going to marry him after all.

Or Graysen would have loved Elain regardless of her being turned fae.

There's all sorts of love that happens for the FMC but the only thing that truly matters is a love that also helps her further her destiny, to achieve greatness.

How can she achieve greatness when Az never once offered to show her how to handle TT and did not offer to help her reacquaint herself with her powers?

How can she achieve greatness when Az doesn't give her credit for the bravery she's already shown?

How can she achieve greatness when he said she shouldn't be exposed to the trove?

Az wants Elain to be as Tamlin wanted Feyre to be and we all know how that turned out.

Also, love did not really come first for the other characters. They felt a tug to their mates the entire time but weren't sure why that was. It upset Feyre so much to learn of it that she disappeared on Rhys for days. It actually takes away a characters agency more to not know about their bond because they think that their interest is coming from an organic place when it was in fact fate pulling them together all along and they were a puppet on a string in some ways.

Of course there was also choice but I think you're silly if you believe those relationships were 100% authentic. In the end, they had love and a bond but let's not fool ourselves by claiming the bond wasn't calling the shots at times, that it wasn't the bond driving their desire to be near the other person. At least Elain and Lucien knew up front about their bond and if love comes after they'll know that they had a choice. Where after the bond snapped, they went on to do their own thing, we witnessed their agency when Elain considered a fling with someone else and then they chose to be together after it all.

With Feyre, she fell for Rhys then found out about the bond, never knowing until then why it was always him. At that point, after she believed she was in love, that is when she had to question whether she was really in love or whether the bond made her feel that way.

And did Nesta happily accept her bond when she found out about it? If memory serves she got into a big fight with Cassian over it causing her to call in their bargain, requesting he go away which is what led to the events of her being forced into the Rite.

It's a lot worse to fall for someone and then wonder if your feelings are real or driven by the mating bond over having your eyes wide open every step of the way.

P.S. It's really pathetic that this is supposed to be your ships month yet you're spending time sending hate anons on a post that was tagged Pro Elucien, Elucien and Pro Lucien Vanserra.

Though I guess when you can't celebrate a mating bond for your couple during any of the 31 days, I understand why you'd be so jealous of Elain and Lucien's.

[felixdawriter]

What it's like to hear my friends who are demons talk on a podcast and how the science works out for that

We've been doing the Bad Occult Podcast for two episodes and it's already making me think in ways I never have before. It's showing me things I didn't know were possible.

So, for the podcast episodes, Shadow and I do them live. Right now Shadow observes while I channel a demon or two. This is part of the science, part of the experiment. We want live observations, consistent live observations, because how do you "measure" demonic or even just spiritual activity? You document it, and you document it consistently in a way that allows you to compare observations across time and across demons.

But there's also a component of the science on the demons' end. In this scenario, they are the subjects of an experiment. How does one gain a demon's consent to experiment on them? Mages experiment on demons all the time--sometimes rituals are actually called "experiments" in occult practice, and have been for years. We're not the first people to experiment on demons, by far. But it's not our goal to experiment ON demons, it's our goal to experiment WITH demons. ALONGSIDE.

WITH CONSENT.

Now, demons are almost always summoned under duress. The very concept of "summoning" implies that the entity will show up on the spot when called, no matter what. So how can we be sure that demons who show up for the experiment are truly willing? What if they're participating just because they can't help it on some level? How would we be able to tell?

Well... what if that's the point? What if the point is that it's very hard to tell whether the participants in the experiment are truly willing, and thus constant check-ins are required to ensure consent is really happening? What if we're looking at a complex, deep situation where it's truly hard to tell why an individual is participating in reality in the way that they are? I don't know why demons show up when commanded, but it sure seems like they have to and it's not a choice they're making. So are they showing up for the podcast out of obligation, or enjoyment? Are they here because they want to play the game or because they have to?

And you know, I constantly think about this? I constantly think "is this spirit under duress in any way? Is there lingering hypnosis from some other practitioner? Is there some obligation or unpaid debt, some invisible wire that's making them move? How can I tell? How would I possibly be able to tell?"

Consistent, repeated observations.

I've listened to Rob on two different podcast episodes, Mantis on one, and already I have so much to observe and learn from. And not in a cold, detached way. I've been listening with empathy. I pick up on the stress in a demon's voice, the anger, the concern. I pick up on the fact that some topics are actually uncomfortable for them. I pick up on the fact that everything that happened to them before these recordings did not always go okay for them. That they've ended up in bad situations. That they feel risk and terror just as much as we humans do, which must mean there are real stakes for them somewhere. That they don't always talk to each other, and they discover things they didn't know before when they do talk to each other, which might mean that on some other level, they're often kept apart.

Observation is the only way to further understanding.

I understand that we are subjects in their own experiments, and I feel that this arrangement we have would not be fair otherwise.

The experimentation continues.

I look forward to the next episode.

[colorisbyshe]

How can you justify voting in this election?

Quite easily.

I do not vote while worrying about myself. By that I mean, I'm not voting to ensure I'm a good person. I am not that self centered. If this election is a stain on my soul, so fucking be it. It's not about me. If I'm a lesser person for what I have done to survive, the same way we're all lesser people for not doing EVERY SINGLE THING WE CAN EVERY SINGLE DAY to help other people, so be it.

I see this election as a form of survival. I am voting to keep as many people alive as possible. You when you're on a plane and they say put on your mask before you put on your child's or anyone else that can't? Same energy. More people survive when more people can put on their masks. Mutual aid, direct action, civil disobedience, things more extreme can all be easier and more effective with the right electorate.

I don't see voting as a cure all. I think of voting as a small, small step in a much larger plan. Voting is... a day, max. Voting is a couple hours of research into ALL of the candidates and measures on the ballot (spread out over an entire election cycle) and, depending on where you are, either a couple minutes or a couple hours in line. It could be a couple minutes filling in and dropping off a ballot. It does not get in the way of spending the rest of the year/term doing more directly impactful things.

Actual activists, who are on the streets and have dedicated their lives to good work, have encouraged people to vote. No one posts about it here but like... actual activists have been saying "It's horrible that these are our choices and yet we still must choose." Like... I don't really presume to know better than the people who have actually gone up to Kamala and begged her to change her ways.

Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other forms of violence and disenfranchisement against potential voters are all proof that voting does matter, even when it doesn't feel like it.

I recognize "not enough of a difference between candidates" isn't the same as "no difference." The difference is thousands upon thousands of lives, tbh. But, if nothing else, you should be concerned about the fate of the supreme court right now.

Voting is not about what feels good. It's about what keeps things from getting even worse. That's it.

The conversation, the election, is going to happen whether or not your voice is involved. Why would you concede your spot on the table to someone you view as less moral than yourself? Why would you let someone else speak up over you while you stay mum?

And, again, voting today or any other day does not take any meaningful time or effort away from doing more impactful work. There's literally nothing to lose by voting today besides your self-obsessed sense of integrity.

Integrity doesn't' save lives, doesn't feed people, don't affect the supreme court, doesn't impact debt or the healthcare system. It's not going with these people to the grave or to the hospital or to school. Integrity isn't going to keep climate change at bay.

I'm also too cognizant of actual reality and not tumblr world to think a Trump presidency would be identical to a Kamala presidency. Like... I'm sorry, I do think Kamala is a terrible choice, I do think Biden has been a terrible president, and yet I do know it can be worse.

Most people I voted for aren't as different as they should be from their competitors. That weighs heavily on me. It agonizes me that we do not have good choices.

But we (speaking broadly, obviously I have noted some people ARE disenfranchised) still do have choices and there are still differences. And those differences include whether or not some people eat, whether some people get medical treatment, whether or not some people die.

Who the fuck am I to say let them die so I can feel good about myself and say I "taught the democrats a lesson" by not voting them (which is not a thing that has EVER worked, btw, democrats do not learn from you trying to rub their nose on the mess they made)

I'm not interested in feeling good about myself at anyone else's expense.

If you can't do it, no judgment. I do recognize how horrific this entire situation is. I'm just not built like that. Like if you really, really can't do it, so be it. If Kamala loses, it's her fault for being so fucking awful.

But... idk man. If even one additional person lives under her that would've died under Trump, I can't turn away from them. Personally.

[bellaaldamas]

Thinking about Baldur again. I feel like almost everyone forgot that he's also part Vanir. Ever thought about that maybe Freya taught baby!Baldur some Vanir magic before? I HC that she also taught him how to tame animals as his friends. Idk how he was able to tame Dagsetr (his pet dragon) but I feel like this is a case that he learnt it from his mother (in his own style of course. I feel like he likes the ones who are aggressive/brutal).

It's even more sad if Baldur stopped using his Vanir heritage altogether because it reminds him too much of his mother after he disowned her. 🥺

This is the most interesting, as well as the most tragic, aspect of Baldur's character. I'll even go as far as admitting I identify with said aspect because - not to delve into personal matters (which I am trying my absolute best to never do when analyzing media because it leads to projection and inevitable bias) - I had been alienated from my own Greek heritage for a long while because of the actions of my Greek father towards my mother's side of the family. Down to not being allowed to listen to Greek music in my apartment. I only gained that opportunity when I was left entirely alone in the world.

With Baldur, it is notable that he, in many respects, parallels as well as anti-parallels Thrud.

Both are the product of their environment and upbringing and both were subjected to stereotypes and misinformation about the other part of their heritage (Vanir in Baldur's case and Giant in Thrud's case). Both conformed to the distorted view of the situation and conflict between Aesir against Vanir and Giants and to Odin's narrative(s) in particular.

Except the difference is that while Baldur's actions cannot be excused he, unlike Thrud, actually had valid reasons to feel and react the way he did. The methods he chose to go about it are toxic and, ultimately, more immoral than Freya's one - however terrible - act of suppressing his feelings committed out of good reasons and in order to protect him. Which furthered a self fulfilling prophesy and Baldur's unhealthy determination to please and gain approval from his father, Odin - as noted by Freya herself in GowR (when she mentioned to Kratos that her son, much like Atreus, aspired to do everything and anything to make his dad proud; that's another reason why she wanted to do right by Atreus after failing her own son). By removing Baldur's agency Freya turned herself into the ultimate antagonist in Baldur's story and, in Baldur's view, validated all the propaganda Odin had been spreading about her.

On the other hand, Thrud had a similar experience with being a product of her environment and Odin's propaganda, except she was a pampered child living her best life. By the point she was a teenager (current GowR timeline) her mother Sif had already taken steps to ensure she won't become another victim of Odin's manipulation (the way Sif's step-sons Magni and Modi did - and it must have taken a lot of strength and wisdom for Sif to feel so strongly about their demise when she was not their biological mother but still considered them "her boys"; she could have easily dismissed their deaths the same way Thrud did - "we're better off without him [Modi], Loki" - but she took it personally and recognized Odin for the manipulator he was).

Sif did not want Thrud to be the Valkyrie for virtually the same reasons Freya removed Baldur's ability to feel. Except Sif still gave Thrud the degree of freedom Baldur never had and ultimately agreed that Thrud should pursue her own goals and make her own choices, without Odin. It was only when Thrud DID get what she wanted, when Sif literally, directly gave her a blessing to become a Valkyrie but without Odin in the equation, did Thrud show interest in learning up on her and her late father's Giant heritage.

Thrud, unlike Baldur, never had to fight for her agency - it was done for her, by Atreus, Kratos and, ultimately Sif herself.

Thrud never reconsidered Odin's toxic mindset when she got what she wanted - an approval from her mother - and never recognized why her statements about Freya being Odin's "treacherous ex wife" were completely misplaced. The only reason Lunda mentioned Thrud looking up to Freya was because of what Freya could have done for Thud - namely, help the latter with her Valkyrie training.

Thrud started out being self centered and, in GowR, remained self centered from start to finish. That's exactly why she should get more development in the upcoming installments and have her distorted view be challenged. Unlike Baldur, she adhered to those view not out of hopelessness (or because she literally had no other way) but because it was convenient - it was conformism, not desperation. The development is possible and can be executed well, provided that the writers acknowledge those issues.

Baldur, on the other hand, let despair consume him completely, to the point where there was nothing else left. That's precisely why, of all the characters who met their demise in the series, Baldur is the only one who would have a real potential if brought back.

He would get to rebuild his life completely on his own, now that Odin is gone and Freya has acknowledged her mistakes. There is no injustice he has to fight anymore - only the aftereffects of it. And this would prompt him to realize he is now completely by himself and has emotional freedom he has been deprived of entirely in his life. What he does with said freedom would determine his fate and direction of his life.

This is exactly why, if Gow(R) series goes a psychology centered route, Baldur is the one who should come back. It would not be so much about the conflict between him vs Freya, Kratos, Atreus and the rest of the characters as it would be about him learning - for the first time - to be his own person.

If Baldur chooses to get reacquainted with his Vanir heritage it should be his choice and his alone. It would make a way for an excellent development for both him and Freya.

[marshmallowprotection]

In Saeran’s AE he got more fans because he got kind of famous due to what happened (like that phone call with Yoosung’s friend)

And to be honest I’m sure that there will be fans that actually like him in a romantically way since he’s really attractive and most of the people online may only care about his appearance and not his story

How will Saeran react if his MC got a bit jealous and upset reading something those fans who like him in a romantically way wrote online? (Maybe something like such as those fans calling Saeran as their “husband/boyfriend”)

GE Saeran loves you without a doubt. You are the only one for him and he will continue to love you more tomorrow than he does today. That's his promise to you, after all. Every year, his promise to love you will always be born anew.

Rationally, you don't have anything to be worried about. He doesn't have eyes for anyone else. Even if there are people in this world who like the way he looks, they don't know anything about him. There is no way he would leave you for someone else. They have created an image of him in their heads and they run along with whatever fantasy that is.

He can understand where people are coming from when it comes to that, but those fantasies will never be anything more than just that. 

Listen, he won't put any value into what people are saying about him or his brother online. He understands that his fate will forever be entwined in history, but what other people think of him doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that you think highly of him and that's all he could ever want. Your opinion is really the only one that matters to him. He is learning how to think better of himself everyday, but it's nice to know that your opinion will always be supportive. 

Yoosung mentions what people are saying about him sometimes, and he doesn’t know how to react. He just sees himself as some guy who survived something traumatic, and it doesn't make sense why people would want to talk about him as if he were no different than the kind of celebrity Zen is. 

But, if it is genuinely bothering you to see people talk about him in that manner, the first thing he would tell you to do is block anything that could pop up about him online. If you need him or his brother to take care of that for you, he can, because he doesn't want you to be going about your day and see something that ruins it for you.

He understands he won't be able to block out everything about him, but if he can do anything to make sure you don't feel uncomfortable, he will do so. He can't stop what other people say about him but he can make sure you are in a position that doesn't leave you susceptible to that kind of commentary.

Sometimes, you have to make sure you go out of your way to ensure you don't see things that make you uncomfortable. You truly have to cultivate an experience that makes you happy. You can't let things that make you uncomfortable exist in your space if you have a bit of control over what you see.

You can't stop everything, but you have the power to make sure you don't scroll through thread after thread of people saying what they wish your lover would do to them. He can understand that you have a natural curiosity about what other people are saying, he's guilty of it now and again as well, but that doesn't mean you need to scroll endlessly into your own doom.

He would gently set your phone down, cup your cheeks in his hands, and murmur, "My love. I will always love you the most out of anyone in this world, and nothing will ever change that. People are going to say whatever they want about me. I can't stop that, but if it makes you feel better, I will make sure to give you that much more love when we're in public so nobody will misunderstand our relationship. I don't want anyone to think that you're not the love of my life because you are, and you always will be."

[jaythelay]

If you're scared of another Dump presidency, allow me to share some comfort:

He won't get the chance Only if you vote.

Before running off, listen, when I say that, I don't mean:

"Write on the paper of comfort and put in box hoping for the best"

Deadass every poll has R's flopping. Polls are Severely R sided since they're primarily the only ones to do them.

With that in mind, we aren't safe simply by keeping Dump out. We got states and the house and all the other bullshit. If you vote local, you further ensure Dump's cronies don't give him another chance.

This Only Happens if you Vote.

Without the vote, sure, he may still lose, but with your vote? It's a guarantee.

If you've been wanting that push that has a small chance of reforming R's, or keeping them out of power, this is it. There will never be another chance.

Stick with me on this, for one Dump. It's fucking dump and he's a threat. Despite this he's energized normal people into politics, the fact is though, we're never getting someone as embarrassing, and stupid, as Dump is, ever again. And we're never getting a candidate like Harris/Walz ever again. Not in our lifetimes.

This landslide could only happen because Dems swapped Genocide Joe with Kamala/Walz, and because Dump is himself and running. This will never, ever, happen again.

There will never be an opportunity like this again. Ever. Dump is not running again, the GOP won't allow it. And without him, and if he loses bigly, the GOP's reputation hits the shitter for the broader public. That all that grandstanding was laughably incorrect.

You will never get another chance like this ever, ever again. No third party will come, sorry Jill Stein fucking sucks and yes I was gonna vote for her originally.

Every R is gonna vote. Dems don't vote nearly as often primarly because of voter suppression. Polls are meaningless for the most part but carry a weight to them. Just vote, and you make the R voting block look smaller and smaller.

Biden was unforgiveable with Palestine. Kamala's working with a system that's actively participating in a Genocide, give her a break, Biden and co did this. She's working with that she's got, and definitively, it has been better than Biden's fucked up lies and murders. No she couldn't do shit as VP let's be honest with the situation.

Your best bet is getting a minority person in, not an old white guy who believes black people are super predators, if you want better for Palestine, I get it. Oh believe me, I can actually say Genocide Bad No Matter Who, unlike most dems, but at the end of it, Kamala, on paper, is the best bet. Nothing else will work.

Third party would only work if Biden was still in. Without him there's not much point tbh, most moved back to dems, for Kamala. Jill Stein fucking. sucks. So much. It's just voting Dump Lite. She's a R anyways.

Just vote dem. Straight up, if you're scared of a second Dump, vote. That straight up ensures he loses. Without, it's alot more vague everywhere else. We need a crushing defeat sure, but Simply Voting is more than most people. Even most dems. Vote. It really is as simple as this, with the vote, it's ensured, without, it's vague.

On top of this, I still bet he loses by 9mil votes given his trajectory in both elections plummeting.

Let's reach 10mil. 11mil. Let's make it so the rest of the world gets scared to try a Dump there. Because all he was, was a lesson to normal people, what tyranny, idiocy, and cruelty, truly is. Once you go Dem/normal, you never go R nor back. Learning is fundamental, and it's why leftism is growing and republicanism still relies on lies and propaganda. It's why there's a rise in male youths for R support, they can only get the most sheltered, lonely of groups to believe in them. Take that ability to believe away. Watch as they start growing up later in life.

Vote. That ensures he loses. It's vague otherwise.

[lu-is-not-ok]

Hey hey hello can I ask.

What is your specific theories when it comes to "Hong Lu is Lin Daiyu," "Hong Lu, Don Quixote, & Outis are using fake names," and "Our Yi Sang isn't the same Yi Sang?" I saw those on the bingo sheet and I'm super curious as to what they mean.

Ok so. I'm gonna go in order from the ones I'm most confident in to the ones that I think are the most crackhead. Ok? Ok.

Under a Read More cause I get wordy. Like, Really fucking wordy and rambly.

Our Yi Sang isn't the same Yi Sang.

So, here's what we know.

According to Leviathan, Yi Sang is the main researcher behind the technology that allows access to Mirror Worlds. Faust also remarks that he used to be more talkative before he joined Limbus Company.

According to promotional material, as well as just everything he says, Mirrors and Mirror Worlds are an important theme for his character. While I haven't touched Crow's Eye View or any of the real Yi Sang's works yet, I have seen notable quotes from it that seem to hold up those themes as well.

With the recently released info on Canto IV not only being about Yi Sang, but also being longer than the three previous Cantos combined, something tells me we're going to be properly delving into Mirror Worlds and how they tie back to both Yi Sang's backstory and the main plot as a whole.

Okay, so that's all nice and all, but that doesn't answer what the fuck I mean with the Bingo space, right? I'm getting there.

Let's go back to when we first learn about Mirror Worlds in regards to the main plot, the Tutorial. Faust explains that using Mirror World identities can cause one's memories to be replaced with those of their other identities, but explicitly says that there's no danger of one's true identity being actually affected. The Sinners aren't Ships of Theseus, according to her.

Now, you could say that that's just a way to explain away how the cutscenes are unchanged despite using different identities in combat, and to that I say, Have you played any other Project Moon game? The moment they decide to give lore to why game mechanics work the way they do is the moment that lore becomes a significant part of the plot. It happened every time they had to explain why the characters you're controlling go back to life, I doubt they wouldn't do that again for something as major as the effect of Mirror Worlds on a person's identity.

With all of that said. My theory is that Yi Sang is this Ship of Theseus. He was likely the first one to properly access Mirror Worlds, which also likely means the procedures that are now in place to ensure the Sinners' safety weren't there just yet. Who is to say that Yi Sang, who is now a Sinner working for Limbus Company, and Yi Sang, the researcher who worked with Mirror Worlds, could even be considered the same person?

I don't think the exact specifics of what happened matter for this theory. Whether it's an identity swap or identity fusion or some other shit. What matters is that something happened while Yi Sang was researching Mirror Worlds, which left him with his very self and identity changed, possibly irreparably.

After all, don't you think it's interesting that Yi Sang is the only Sinner whose talksprite doesn't have his ID Card or a nameplate anywhere on his uniform? Just food for thought.

...Holy shit that got long, I promise I won't have THAT much to say on the other two you asked about SDFGHJHGF

Hong Lu, Don Quixote, and Outis are using fake names

So this is less so a concrete theory, and more just an observation I made.

All the other Sinners are directly named after their inspirations' real names. The exceptions are Yi Sang, who is named after the author; Hong Lu, who is named after the book itself/the jade the novel's protagonist used to be; Don Quixote, who is named after an alias her inspiration used; and Outis, who is named after a false nickname her inspiration used.

We're going to focus on the latter three. The fact that they're not directly named after the characters they're meant to be inspired by while still alluding to them in different ways is suspicious, especially if you consider the kinds of people they're all shown to be.

Outis is probably the most obvious example here, she's constantly acting shady, boot-licking Dante while disrespecting her fellow Sinners, and generally being quiet about the details of her past outside of making remarks about being part of a military. Even her intro states that her past is classified and that she's extremely cunning.

Don Quixote doesn't seem to be malicious in her deceit like Outis is, but something is still up with her. Her intro compares her to an actor, and her particulars say she has "Delusions of Grandeur". Not only that, but we also see her completely drop her usual personality when called out on not being genuine by the Mariachis, as well as when Vergilius threatens her with a Deal they apparently Made.

Hong Lu is... interesting. I could make a whole seperate analysis about him, but to try to keep it shorter for once, I'll note that his suspicious behavior is much more subtle. While most of the time he acts clueless and overly honest (which, let's be real, he probably genuinely is most of the time), there are also a notable amount of situations where he lies, deflects, or otherwise dodges subjects or questions when they inconvenience him. Something is definitely up with him, he's just better at hiding it.

This all culminates in a shared design feature of these three on their talksprites, that none of the other Sinners seem to have. Instead of having their ID Cards attached to their uniform, like everyone else does, they have small metal nameplates on the lapels of their jackets.

This is notable as it's something shared Only between these three characters. The other Sinners all have an ID Card attached to a visible spot on their uniform, while Yi Sang, a character who fits neither of the naming schemes since he's named after an author, has neither an ID Card or a nameplate.

Again, not necessarily a concrete theory. Just some observations that could lead to a revelation later on in the plot.

Hong Lu is Lin Daiyu

Ok this one is probably the least supported out of any of these, and the one I believe in the least.

It's like, generally accepted that Hong Lu is supposed to be based on Jia Baoyu from Dream of the Red Chamber, right? Here's the thing, I think that is still the case, but, however.

There are a few things about Hong Lu that point less in his inspiration being Baoyu, and more of it being Lin Daiyu, Baoyu's fated love interest. Not all of it, mind you, but at least some.

One, Hong Lu's eyes. Daiyu's name means blue-black jade, which Hong Lu's eyes seem to subtly, but probably deliverately referencing.

Two, Hong Lu's personality. While none of the Sinners are exactly the same as their inspirations, you can still point where some of their traits come from.

Using Rodya as an example (as Crime and Punishment is the only of the relevant books I had Fully read), her overwhelming self-confidence is very likely a reference to how book Rodion believed himself to be above man. While there are some differences (Rodya's motives are a bit more selfless compared to Rodion's, for example), the base idea of their characters is the same.

Why is this important? Well, while I haven't finished reading Dream of the Red Chamber yet, I am slowly making my way through it. And while there are some ways in which Hong Lu resembles Baoyu, there are also quite a few that things that set them apart to the point it's hard to believe Hong Lu is based only on him.

Here's the thing about Baoyu: he's a trouble maker. He throws tantrums, is highly emotional, and gets borderline treated as a sort of black sheep of his family, especially by his Father (which I will come back to).

Compare that to Hong Lu, who seems to avoid causing trouble (most of the arguments he causes seem to be completely on accident), is stoically smiling all the time to the point it can be almost unnerving, and some of his dialogue seems to imply that his family was at least decently fond of him, if not more (his comment about being "a gem of a child" in his Liu uptie story comes to mind).

Then compare that to Daiyu, who seems to be unanimously loved by her current household, tends to keep her emotions to herself, and tries to stay out of trouble while still making remarks here and there when she notices something off. (An example that comes to my mind is when someone in the family decides to gift all the girls in the Jia household some flower decorations, and Daiyu remarks how she was the last one to be given one and thus was left with leftovers.)

I don't know about you, but that sounds closer to what Hong Lu seems to be like, at least to me.

Three, remember how I mentioned Baoyu's Father? Yeah. Let's talk about that.

Hong Lu mentions his Father in one of his main menu Chatter lines, expressing excitement over being able to introduce his new friends to him.

Why is this relevant? Becuase Baoyu is terrified of his Father, it's a pretty major point that his Father is the Main person in his family that considers Baoyu a disappointment and a disgrace. And it's not something that develops later on in the novel, I'm on Chapter 10 out of 120 and it has been a prevalent thing for a few chapters now.

There are two ways I can see this being resolved. Either Hong Lu is majorly lying to himself (which honestly might not be out of the question), or Hong Lu isn't based entirely on Baoyu, but is inspired by a mix of Baoyu and Daiyu.

That was. An extremely wordy and rambly way of saying that I think Hong Lu is based on two characters instead of one. Uh. Oops.

[666writingcafe]

Barbatos' Birthday Surprise (Part Three)

"Hello, MC." Barbatos is standing over the kitchen sink, scrubbing away at a metal mixing bowl. "You just missed Luke. He's on his way back to Purgatory Hall if you wanted to see him."

"Diavolo told me he was learning a new recipe from you," I reply as I hoist myself up on one of the nearby counters. From what I've been told, I'm the only person he doesn't scold for doing that sort of thing.

"It's a rather old pastry recipe I discovered as I was tidying up. I don't remember where it came from, but the instructions were fairly easy for him to follow, and it turned out decent."

"Did he make them too sweet?" Barbatos playfully sighs.

"Even after all this time, he still is a bit heavy-handed." He rinses the mixing bowl and sets it in a dish drainer before drying his hands with a dish towel and turning to face me. His eyes briefly glance at the envelope in my hands. "Is that something I need to deliver to the Young Master?"

"Actually, it's for you," I answer, extending the envelope out to him so that he can take it.

"Is this a professional matter or a personal one?" I smile at him mischievously.

"Just take a look inside." Arching an eyebrow with an amused look, he glances inside the envelope and pulls out the concert tickets. He appears to freeze once he sees the name on the ticket, and he doesn't say anything for a rather long moment.

"Breathe," I tell him, sensing that he's been stunned into silence.

"Please tell me you didn't spend all your Grimm on these." His voice is soft, almost a whisper.

"I didn't. I won them. One of the radio stations had a contest, and I figured we could go to the concert together. I've really enjoyed listening to Devildom metal with you."

"MC..." He trails off as he sets the envelope and tickets down and takes a deep breath. "Severa isn't just any metal band. For one, they're arguably the most popular one in the Devildom at the moment, but there's a lot more to them than just their commercial success." He briefly pauses again. "Do you have to be anywhere anytime soon?"

"I don't believe so. Why?"

~~~

"The first thing you need to know about Severa is that the members are writers first and musicians second." We're currently in the castle's music room. I'm sitting on the couch, looking at the thick stack of vinyls sitting on the coffee table, while Barbatos stands in front of me like he's a professor. "Their entire discography is one continuous story, and each record represents a chapter of that story."

"What chapter are they currently on?"

"Thirty-four," Barbatos answers. "They plan on ending this particular story after forty chapters, but they want to continue writing afterwards. They're just not sure whether their next story will take place in the same literary universe or if they want to create something entirely different."

"Kind of like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard."

"From my understanding, theirs is either accidental or a product of fan speculation. Severa's worldbuilding is intentional, and each of the members put a lot of time and care into ensuring that everything they create helps progress the story along. Unlike your human world band, they're not releasing these albums in quick succession, even by Devildom standards. Some of the records have a few hundred years separating them." That is an incredibly long time between albums. However, if that time is devoted to making something cohesive, then it's time well spent. I'm sure they wouldn't want to drive fans away by releasing a rushed record.

"Is it safe to assume that each tour only covers the current chapter that they're on?" I ask. "Like, for this particular tour, they wouldn't go back to the first chapter and recount everything that happened, right?"

"For the most part, you are correct. The first few songs on their setlists are from earlier records so that newer fans can follow along without becoming completely confused, but the rest of the concert is devoted to the current chapter from beginning to end."

"How long have you been listening to Severa's story?"

"From the very beginning." He picks up the record on top and sits down next to me on the couch. "This is their EP Lake Despair. The four songs on here introduce the four main characters of this story: Thiren, Baziel, Cassandra, and Renette. Thiren is a demon, Baziel an angel, Renette an immortal sorceress, and Cassandra an ordinary human. Thiren, Baziel, and Renette have known each other for thousands of years, and they work together to ensure harmony between the three realms.

"One day, the three of them are hanging out in a human world cafe when a fiery ball crashes into a nearby building and causes it to explode. This building happens to be where Cassandra works, and she was just returning from her lunch break when the explosion occurred. Then, a tall, cloaked figure comes out of thin air and starts attacking Cassandra with magic. Of course, the other three help defend Cassandra from these attacks, and the cloaked figure eventually backs off and vanishes, but not before warning Cassandra that she will pay for her crimes."

"What crimes?"

"That's what they're trying to figure out. Cassandra doesn't have a criminal record in any of the three realms, nor does she remember doing anything to provoke someone to that degree." Barbatos pauses. "These albums explore that mystery, and in order to avoid spoiling the story for you, I think it's best that you hear it for yourself. Of course, I will be more than happy to answer any questions you have along the way."

"You're wanting to start now, aren't you?" Barbatos nods his head. "If that's the case, then I need to let Lucifer know that I'll be sleeping over here for a bit. I have a feeling this is going to take a while, and I don't want him to worry."

"Completely understandable. And practical. While he knows of the lore, he wouldn't be able to explain it very well."

[unnervinglyferal]

Im back after being busy for fuck knows how long doing stuff.

Im glad to see the new baby is doing fine!! I remember Stinkbug everytime the baby my mother is babysitting comes over. I get the good ol baby fever and gotta remind myself that neither Di or I are prepared for that sort of thing the way we wish it to work out. Gotta keep myself on birth control.

Speaking of all matters reproductive and hormonal, some days ago I had to take care of Di because once again I've discovered that you can get yourself the symptoms of a light brain concussion by fucking (and/or cumming) too hard when youre fatigued. My poor boyfriend laid there with a migraine after vomiting. Had me worried out of my mind but once we had a nap, took a painkiller, ate some pasta, drank some water and got some fresh air, he was a bit better.

His knees still hurt tho. And my back in unbearable. Remember my thing about doing questionable stuff in the shower?? Yeah, didnt learn the first time. Little miss broken shins went and actually screwed someone on the shower this time. Or rather, I got screwed in a shower and my back fucking haaaaated it.

Also completely unrelated but I think I had forgotten to tell you Di had his own "reverse Feral", as in, far (brazilian but lives in Dutchland) foreign internet best friend that goes on his own main character misadventures, and asks him advice instead of giving it. His name is Upbeat and he also has that dry, aware, deadpan, silly and likeble vibe, although he probably also thinks he's terrible, ugly and unlikeable although you guys are not. I think you guys would get along. And he also is into dominant fat girls.

I know I should tell you to not do that again, but the two of you actually managing to fuck each other to death or at least injury is actually kind of impressive. But do not do that again.

Also yeah I can't tell you enough, do not have a baby yet. I'm not even being a hypocrite about it, we too would be so fucking fucked if it weren't for the finnish welfare/healthcare/social service systems. The finnish system works to ensure that nobody ends up homeless unless they specifically go out of their way to do so, not because they care but because that's cheaper for the state than having a homeless problem. My medications and disability support come through welfare, the old family matriarch is on state pension, maternity care and child support come from the system. With the famous "baby box" thing you can choose between the baby goods or a specific sum of money, and we're applying for the money this time because Stinkbug's newborn clothes are still perfectly good.

Needing the baby support funds for grocery money, and having our second child wearing hand-me-downs from the day she's born (we still don't know the sex but I'm hoping for another girl) is about as rough as life in Finland gets, if you don't go out of your way to fuck your life up. We couldn't do this anywhere else.

Also don't fuck your lover to death. And don't fuck in the shower, that's not good for you.