#or y'know maybe I'm way off base and he really doesn't care about them even a little

[blue-rose-soul]

"Great Alastor Altruist* died for his friends!"

This scene has been spinning in my brain since Thursday. Like a lot of other people, my first thought was that this was an indication that Alastor had grown to care for Charlie and her friends at the hotel. And it's not because of the words he says. Even if you're watching without subtitles and don't see the quotations around that phrase, it's pretty obvious that he's laughing at the very thought.

"Me? Alastor? Dying for them?"

"Ridiculous."

"Absurd!"

"Utterly laughable!"

No, what makes me think that there might be a kernel of truth there isn't the words by themselves. It's the look on his face as he says them.

This is the part where Alastor's angry snarl breaks and he begins to look genuinely afraid. He clutches his chest. He digs his fingers into his scalp, drags his hand down the side of his face. And that's a perfectly reasonable reaction to nearly dying! It's very human! But I think it's very telling that this expression doesn't settle on his face until he's talking about dying for someone else. Before this he looked more angry than anything, and he lapses back into anger up until he begins talking about trying to find a way out of his deal.

Now, don't get me wrong, I understand why anyone would think otherwise. The thing about Alastor is that, despite how blatant it is, his mask works. Like I stated earlier, I find myself searching every word, expression, and gesture from Alastor for double meaning. Ostensibly, there's no one here for Alastor to lie to**. No one he has to put up an act for. But his smile, which he's already fully admitted is faker than fake, remains firmly in place. I wonder if putting up an act is so second nature to him at this point he can't help but do it even when he's alone. Maybe he tries to fool himself as much as other people.

I believe that he has come to care, but I can't fully believe it. I won't be surprised to be wrong. But there are some scenes that just don't make sense to me if he really doesn't care at all.

His chat with Niffty the night before the extermination, for example. Niffty isn't really someone he needs to trick. He has power over her, whether it's because he owns her soul or because of her blind devotion to him. It's telling that while everyone else is hanging out together, sharing drinks at the bar, Alastor keeps his distance and positions himself above them. At this point, Alastor seems to care about them the way we, the audience, care about them; as entertainment. He's enjoying watching their story unfold up close, but that's all there is to it. He admits to Niffty that one could get accustomed to being with them. Not him though! He's above all that.

Then the battle happens. At first, Alastor's role in the battle didn't require him to assume too much risk. He was on crowd control, limiting the number of exorcists the rest of the hazbins have to deal with at once. And he slayed a not insubstantial number of angels in the process***. But then Adam broke through Alastor's shield and singled him out. It would have been reasonable for Alastor to put some distance between himself and the Lead Exorcist. Charlie did say it was his job to deal with Adam, but as I've already discussed, Alastor really had no hope of winning that fight alone. Maybe if he'd escaped right then and there, or fought Adam alongside Charlie things would have turned out differently. Granted, I don't think his pride would have allowed him to take either of those options.

Regardless, the end result is that Alastor did come very close to dying for a cause that wasn't his. Considering what Adam did to the hotel, Alastor's pretty damn lucky he's not in two pieces here.

Now, I don't think this means Alastor is immediately going to turn around and integrate int o the hazbin family. Immediately after this line where he mocks the idea of dying for Charlie's cause, he gets angry again, leans further into the Radio Demon persona and starts contemplating ways to escape his contract. I think, that like someone recoiling after accidentally touching a hot stove, Alastor's going to pull further away from them. One thing I am certain about is how Alastor feels about his leash; he hates it. He wants to be rid of it. He doesn't know how to do that yet, but he's working out a plan and having Charlie in his corner is part of that plan. Giving a genuine shit about her or the other hazbins is not part of that plan. It's another leash, not as literal as the one connecting him to his patron but just as binding.

Alastor realizing he might actually care about these people may just make him more dangerous to them than if he just didn't care at all.

-

(*The word 'altruist' here being used as a title, not a name. Like something you'd see in a newspaper headline, or on a headstone.)

(**There do seem to be some odd eye motifs in the environment, but at no point does Alastor give any indication he is aware of them or acknowledge their presence in anyway. And I highly doubt he would have said certain things if he believed his patron was actively watching him.)

(***Taking this opportunity to go off topic a bit to call the Vees out on their hypocrisy. For all their bluster about 'taking the fight to Heaven' and how 'pussy' the older Overlords supposedly are, I didn't see any of them on the battlefield. Alastor was. He fought as long and hard as he could. There was nothing cowardly about him living to fight another day.)

[krisdreaming]

Baby Fever

Pairing: Miya Atsumu x f!reader

WC: 1.2k

Summary: Osamu and his wife just had a baby. Now Atsumu sees them everywhere.

A/N: This kind of took a very different direction than I was originally planning and tbh, I kinda hate it now, but I spent over two hours writing it, so I'm gonna roll with it anyway. Maybe when I re-read it in the morning, I'll hate it less 😅

There's a term for it. Atsumu isn't sure what it is, but he knows that as soon as you're exposed to something new, you start noticing it around you more and more. That must be why, ever since Osamu's son was born, he's been seeing babies everywhere. They're at the grocery store. They're at the park. Suddenly, half of his teammates have been expanding their families like it's some kind of competition.

Suffice to say, Atsumu has seen more than his share of babies over the past few weeks. Sure, they're cute, or whatever. When a baby smiles at you, you can't help but smile back. When they grab onto your finger, you let them hold it for as long as they want. When they engage you in a staring contest across the grocery store aisle, you only put up a little bit of a fight before giving them the satisfaction of winning, flashing a sheepish smile at their mom or dad as you turn the corner.

The sight of the little monsters has started to trigger a strange twinge in Atsumu's middle, which he chalks up to the fact that he's an uncle now. There's a brand new member of his family, and he's really happy for Osamu and his wife. Seeing the babies everywhere reminds him of that. That's all it is.

See, the two of you had talked about this. You aren't ready for kids right now. He's in the prime of his volleyball career, and you love your job. You're both happy as just the two of you, spending your free time together doing the things you enjoy and getting a full eight hours of sleep each night. Having a baby would change everything. Your last discussion on the topic, right after Osamu and his wife had shared their pregnancy with the two of you, had ended on that exact note. He's pretty confident that's still how you feel. He's relatively confident that's still how he feels, too.

Of course, the longer it goes on, the harder it is to explain away. He watches Osamu doting on his son, snuggling him close and kissing his cheeks and smiling bigger than Atsumu's ever seen before. He knows his brother is tired, but he doesn't seem to care. He watches the way he looks at his wife, and the way both of them look at their son, and it softens something inside him. He sees you cradling your nephew close, cooing down at him with a soft smile, and his heart turns over in his chest.

Finally, one day, he comes to Osamu with a question.

"What's it like?" Osamu is wiping down the counter at Onigiri Miya, clearly trying to disguise his surprise and mild consternation at seeing his brother show up out of the blue, five minutes before closing time.

"What's what like?" He grunts, scrubbing at a ground-in glob of rice.

"Y'know," Atsumu gestures vaguely, "Being a dad."

"Ah," Osamu hums, grasping that quickly what this is all about. "It's incredible. I mean, don't get me wrong," He chuckles, "It ain't easy. It's way worse than whatever ya try to imagine based off a' everybody's helpful advice," He lifts his hands in air quotes. "But somehow, it's also worth it, in a way ya never could've imagined it would be. The way ya feel every time ya look at 'em - ya can't even put it into words."

Atsumu isn't sure how he's supposed to respond to that, so he just nods. Osamu smiles, looking him up and down with a too-critical eye. "Any special reason yer asking?"

"No," Atsumu says with a quick shake of his head, "Just curious, 's all."

Osamu nods, not saying another word, but the smirk on his face is more than enough to make Atsumu want to knock it clean off. Osamu's answer is exactly what he'd been afraid of.

It comes to a head one sunny Saturday afternoon when the two of you meet up with Osamu and his wife and son to visit a festival. The afternoon is starting to wind down when Osamu unceremoniously dumps the baby into Atsumu's arms. "Hey, mind watching him while we go to the bathroom quick?"

"Ah, sure," Atsumu says to his brother's already-retreating back. You poke at the baby's irresistibly pudgy cheeks, giggling along with him when your attentions illicit a bout of laughter.

"Oh my, what a sweetheart!" The elderly woman seems to appear out of nowhere, something Osamu is constantly describing but which Atsumu hasn't experienced until this moment. "Such a happy baby," She grins. "How old is he?" She looks expectantly at you, and after you gather your wits, you answer her.

The woman nods knowingly, as if she'd predicted as much. "Are you having a fun day with Mommy and Daddy?" She asks next in a goofy voice, completely oblivious to the way Atsumu chokes on the breath he'd just been inhaling and you shoot him a wide-eyed glance.

"Ah, well, actually-" You stammer out, at the same time Atsumu blurts, "We're not his parents."

"I see," She says good-naturedly, "Well even so, he looks very happy with you." With that, she goes on her merry way, and you and Atsumu share a bewildered look. Osamu and his wife return from the bathroom, and neither of you mentions the awkward encounter. It doesn't come up until later that evening, when the two of you are lying in bed.

"That was really somethin' today, huh?" Atsumu asks, trying to ignore the fact that his stomach is suddenly in knots.

"The old lady?" You chuckle weakly. "Yeah, 'Samu's right, they really don't have any shame, do they?"

"Yeah," Atsumu says, then takes a deep breath. "Do ya think, maybe, it's time to have that conversation again?"

You're silent for a few moments, and he can't quite place the emotions that cross your face. He doesn't have to explain which conversation he means.

"Maybe," You finally agree in a low voice. "Are you saying that your decision might be different this time?" It could be his imagination, but Atsumu almost thinks that you look hopeful.

"Maybe," He says carefully. "Would yours?"

"Maybe," You echo him, but there's a smile playing at the corners of your mouth.

"There would be a lot of changes," He says softly, fingertips tracing aimless shapes up and down your arm.

"Maybe we're ready for those changes," You murmur back, catching his hand in yours and letting him twine your fingers together.

He brings your hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the back of it. "As long as I've got you, I think I might be."

"Me too," You say, leaning in slightly to nudge the tip of your nose against his. When he kisses you, he hopes the pressure of his lips can convey even the things he can't put into words. He can't imagine living this life with anyone else.

[eluminium]

WILD LIFE IMPULSE MAKES ME SO WEIRDLY SAD GUYS ISTGGGGGG- MAYBE I'M JUST HIGH OFF OF MY OWN SUPPLY BUT MY GOD.

People treat him like he's somehow massively different from how he used to be, even some of his own allies. They think he's causing problems on purpose, they think he's intentionally being difficult and getting in the way of things. He's changed for the worse. But really, what HAS changed about Impulse in WL compared to earlier seasons? From what I've seen, it's only one thing.

He wants to win. He's made it known that he's aiming for that metaphorical crown. Outside of that one verbalized goal, Impulse has not changed in the slightest. He's still doing the things he's always done.

I mean, think about it. Is there anything Impulse has DONE (not said) that's especially mean, traitorish or troubling? The only thing I can think of is in this newest session (aka session 4) where he and Pearl do some minimal stealing from Joel and Gem, but this thievery is way after their reputations as troublemakers began! Really, the only thing you could argue before this is the cow situation in sessions 1-2, but come on. Accusing Gem and Joel of stealing their cows wasn't the biggest leap in the world, y'know? However, it is kind of unlike Impulse to lash out and accuse someone of something like that. He's usually pretty quiet about situations like this, instead choosing to stew in his frustrations and develop a grudge.

And I think that's what is making people uncomfortable in this season. Impulse speaking out. Impulse demanding things. Impulse making his wills and wants known. And it's something I find so tragic in all of this. People are uncomfortable and untrusting of Impulse because, for once in his god damn lives (many of them), he openly wants good things for himself. And they're not even unreasonable things! Of course, he wants to win, everybody wants to win! But because he never says what he wants normally, it's reminding people (especially allies) that he might have his own goals that could get in the way of their goals.

But, and this is probably the biggest tragedy of all, Impulse doesn't actually prioritize himself that much more than before. Yeah, he's louder than usual, but look at his actions. Anytime he's had to act on anything, he chooses to do more or less whats best for his team, instead of himself. He apologizes to Gem when instructed, he moves together with the rest of the 4Gs to the new base despite voicing how the old base was safer, he tries to clear the air with Ren despite the fact Ren killed him so they can have another ally against Grian (no gurantee the grudge won't come up again though, BUT FOR NOW).

And of course, he does what he always does. Works as hard as he can to make sure his team is as safe and armed as possible. I mean, he builds a creeper farm TWICE, he goes mining for diamonds and says out loud that he wants to get enough so ALL of them could have full diamond armour, he builds a chicken farm for them to have a reliable food source! He's still Impulse, doing what Impulse does best. Pearl even CALLS HIM OUT on this near the end of session 4, saying: "So Impulse, where's the chaos bone? Where is it? You've been too tame today, what's going on?". And Impulse rationalizes by pointing out he lost 3 lives last session and isn't willing to start something he can't finish and how he's "gearing up because this is the calm before the storm!"...and then instantly giving himself another grindy task to do next time in the form of going to the Nether to get resources.

Because he's just doing what he always does, falling back into the same team-pleasing behaviours. Because what he wants most isn't actually winning, despite what he tells himself. He wants someone to want him, to care about him. And the best way he knows how to make people care about him is to show how useful he can be to them. It also doubles as insurence, because if he cannot be wanted, the resources will make sure he will be needed. And if he cannot be needed...he'll let his team use him until there's nothing left of him, until there's no more purposes for him to have. Not because he wants that, in fact he'll usually say the opposite, but because it's the only thing he knows. Work, work, work and keep going because if he just puts in enough honest effort he can get anything he wants, right?

And this loops back to people being overly suspicious of him this season. Because people-pleasing, resource gathering, mild-mannered Impulse is the Impulse people are used too, and the Impulse that is the most useful to them. You can really see this almost subconcious mindset in the gossiping between Scott and Gem in session 4. They talk about how Impulse has a weird tone of voice this season, how he's causing problems, and how they miss the "kind and trustworthy" Impulse from Secret Life. But he's not that different, and he hasn't actually done anything major. Except for expressing his wants more than usual, especially his want to win. But that's already enough of a change in his behaviour to be a problem. Scott and Gem are longing for the Impulse who's an extremely useful and dedicated asset who will grind his ass off for the good of his team without anyone even asking, making sure they got everything they need to survive, but at the same time he doesn't get in the way. He doesn't cause any sort of problems, justified or not, and he doesn't have any wants of his own that could clash with their wants. This "new" Impulse who expresses his goals openly is a possible threat they have to account for, even if he's still mostly the same old reliable Impulse.

And in a depressing way, this makes sense, doesn't it? Imagine, in this death game of betrayal and opprotunism and paranoia, you have a person who gladly gets you everything you needed. Armour, weapons, potions, food, tools, farms, everything! Without even having to be pushed at all! In fact, he's all the more happy to get you something if you ask! And he barely asks for anything in return in comparison. You can more or less pay him in a job well done, and he'll be satisfied. He's easy to mold, easy to incorprate into your goals and wants. Isn't that so nice? So reliable? You have 99 problems but at least this isn't one! Now you have something safe to cling onto in all this chaos.

...Now imagine if that ally suddenly started talking about what HE wants. He starts making demands, standing up for himself, and letting his anger come out. No matter how small these moments are, it's gonna throw you for a loop! Why would he act like this when he never has before? Why would he suddenly start having goals that aren't yours? Why is he confronting you about something you didn't even do instead of grumbling in a corner for a bit? Now he might be a problem, his goals could directly clash with yours. Actually, the fact he's doing this at all means he's up to something. I mean, the motivation has to come from somewhere! Now you hear it in his tone, in his speech patterns, in every moment he doesn't completely roll over for you, and even in the moments he does! He could be a threat now, and you don't like that. You miss the old version of your ally. He's broken now, he needs to be fixed. Keep working with him so he'll revert back to who he used to be, back to when he was quiet. Jokingly call it therapy while you're at it.

IT MAKES SENSE. AND IT SADDENS ME SO MUCH. ESPECIALLY WHEN IMPULSE ISN'T EVEN GAINING ANYTHING FROM THIS BECAUSE HE'S ACTUALLY NOT WORKING FOR HIMSELF AT ALL. HE'S BEEN LABELED A PROBLEM BECAUSE HIS PERSONAL GROWTH, HIM FINALLY TRYING TO PUT HIMSELF FIRST FOR ONCE, IS A THREAT TO HIS ENEMIES...AND HIS ALLIES.

Of course he isn't fully innocent in anything, nobody is, but it's just so sad how all of these factors, factors where no one really is in the wrong, work together to create a situation where Impulse has a reputation looming over his head that he can't even take advantage of. And it's in the season where he wants to win, too...WILD LIFE IMPULSE MY SPECIALIST LITTLE GUY....

[eva-of-the-sea]

Y'all ever notice that Fujiko receives a disproportionate amount of hate in the fandom? I'm sure it's something we've all seen, especially if you're a fan of her, but I don't really see it discussed.

I'm bringing it up now because for the past couple of months, I keep running into new fans that are very vocal about disliking her. And while I understand that everyone has their preferences, the reasons they give for why they hate her bother me the most:

"She's a bitch, she's so awful to the poor guys and especially to Lupin."

"She's a slut. She's constantly using her body to get what she wants."

"She betrays the gang so much it's annoying how she always does the same thing."

"It's the writers' fault for making her so unlikable."

While I partially understand one of these points, some of these other ones confuse me.

Fujiko is a character that looks out for herself. She goes into every heist with the thought of "what can I get out of this?" And despite this, she's been shown many times to care about all of the gang. Yes, even in part 2 where folks usually base their hatred of her off of. This is because she is a multifaceted character that isn't just driven by a single motivation.

"But Jigen and Goemon hate her!"

Do they? Because while they do get mad at her shenanigans, we also see them going out of their way to protect her and comfort her. Hell, Fujigoe is a common canon occurrence! Do you really think Goemon would be dating her if he didn't like her? Or that Jigen would be pushing her out of the way of bullets or shielding her with his body if he didn't care about her? Being mad or annoyed with someone's actions aren't the same as hatred. No one ever points out how they get mad at Lupin, and I'd argue that happens more often!

And on the point of her being a slut...where? I'm genuinely confused with this one. Fujiko does use her beauty and charms both to manipulate rich men into giving her treasure and to get out of dangerous situations. That's kind of the point of her being a femme fatale. But how often does she sleep with the people she manipulates? Most instances I can think of, she knocks them out when she gets that far. In fact, I would argue she doesn't seem to be that interested in having sex at all. Do they count her flirting as being slutty? If so, c'mon. And even if she did sleep with her targets, why would this be a bad thing? Are women characters not allowed to have sex? And again, how come Lupin doesn't get the third degree for HIS sluttiness. In fact, I see people joke about it and celebrate it if anything.

On the point of her betraying gang, yeah it is very one-note and does get old. You know what else is very one-note? Literally the actions of every other character in the show. I don't see people complaining about Zenigata chasing the gang getting old. Or about Lupin flirting with every woman he sees. Or about Jigen and Goemon using the same weapons in the same way to get out of every situation. Y'know, maybe this is just a repetitive show! And tbh, the writing lately has been shaken up. The modern series doesn't really have Fujiko betray the gang much anymore. She's either off doing her own thing or she's working with the gang as a member of the team. A lot of people complain about parts 4-6, but I think this is one of the elements it does right.

And finally, on the note of "poor Lupin", I think this one pisses me off the most lol. The fuck y'all mean "poor Lupin"?? I think fans either forget or don't realize that Lupin is a pretty smart guy. He knows Fujiko is most likely going to betray him if he does something for her, the bastard LIKES IT. This is foreplay for both of them. In case you haven't noticed yet, both of them are kind of freaks lol. There's a reason that most of the time, Jigen and Goemon are mad at HIM. Lupin is not a poor sweet baby that needs protection from Fujiko. He specifically loves the chase, the constant push and pull of their relationship. She's an exciting challenge for him, he's a stable home for her.

While I agree that Fujiko has not always been written great in the past, and I'm sure a lot of that was due to misogyny, I think fans need to reevaluate why they criticize her more harshly than the rest of the gang. There's a lot of things she's done that the fandom deems unforgivable, yet the boys have done some of the same stuff without so much as a slap on the wrist. Lupin constantly puts them all in unnecessary danger. Jigen has made some really unsavory comments about women. Goemon has betrayed the gang more than once. And I don't see nearly enough discussion about how Lupin really used to push himself on Fujiko, to the point of it being uncomfortable sometimes. Like damn I'd sell his ass out too😬.

I think it all boils down to Fujiko being a woman. And as a woman, she has to work harder to please the fans. If she's too nice, then she doesn't really have a personality or a reason for anyone to like her. If she's too selfish, she's a mean bitch and everyone should hate her. What if people saw her as a character first? Because no she's not a good person, but neither are the rest of the gang. Their morals are all on a sliding scale of what works best for the plot. But damn she's a great character. She stands out on her own and really makes you remember her. She's so much more than "the girl" character, and I'm so grateful for that. I hope more fans come to this conclusion too.

[chococrepes-art]

Hello everybody, today I will be talking about something forbidden, which is gender, specifically algebralien gender

That's right, this is the algebralien gender theory!!

Well, it's not really a theory, but in a way it is a theory, you'll see what I mean

So, as we saw in the subscriber specials, algebraliens tend to call each other everything if we are to generalize, she/him/they and I mean that when talking about just a single individual, some have been called both she and him, or him and they, but Nine specifically is a great example because Nine has been called she/him/they by their algebralien friends alone, but something interesting happened when Nine interacted with an object, or objects in general (in the bfdi mouth video) instead of being called by all of the pronounces randomly the way the other algebraliens call Nine, the objects only called Nine a she.

In one of the actual episodes, Four says that he doesn't have gender where he comes from in response to Leafy trying to explain to Four that Pencil likes to exclude people from things such as her alliance or her gender

Now all of this made me come to a conclusion that I was already having an intuition about being the case, and that is that algebraliens don't have gender and therefore don't care what pronounces are being used on them since, well, they are aliens after all. However since objects are like the humans of the bfdi universe (and the davidians/island eaters/stickmans as well obviously but they don't really talk the way the objects do) they are used to gender the way we humans are and so they will be trying to pull the gender from the void when there is none because they are used to calling people only one thing for consistency or because they give them a certain vibe or whatever, but since Four, X and Two are algebraliens and they don't care what they are called because they are a different alien species that sees the world differently, and if you don't care what pronounces are used on you, then you are not going to correct anybody about it, obviously, which probably means that they are used to being called anything back home, but since they are interacting with the objects they might find it weird that the objects tend to only call them or eachother one thing, but they would probably also know and understand that that's how the objects are as a society and species and "do what the locals do" respecting what pronounces objects use on eachother, while they themselves couldn't care less what pronounces you use on them.

Like personally I think that algebraliens would be the type of aliens that are androgynous as a species like either hermaphrodites or asexually reproductive (idk how algebraliens would reproduce, idk how objects would reproduce either, and I don't think we'll ever know and maybe that's for the better tbh lmao) since y'know they are aliens, while the objects being the equivalent of humans in the bfdi world definitely seem to be more binary, I know some objects that might be trans, but to this day I don't know a single object that uses they/them/is nonbinary (sad honestly, press f to pay respects for all the nonbinary people out there waiting for an object that uses they/them to be revealed)(edit: nvm someone reminded me there are actually nonbinary objects, I just forgot lol)

Also I'm saying this because gender is a philosophical concept that was originally based off of biological sex but because gender is philosophical and not physical like biological sex it became completely unrelated to what biological sex an individual has over time, so if aliens were to biologically be hermaphrodites or asexually reproductive then their society and species as a whole would be viewing gender very differently compared to binary species/societies so their Ideas of gender would evolve very differently from them or maybe not even evolve or exist at all.

But basically if I was to shorten what I said here I would say that you can't miss-gender an algebralien because they don't have any gender to begin with....

.... Or do they?

See here is where I'm going to enter with you the very theoretical land of hypothetical/possible algebraliens and aliens in general (to help us understand the algebraliens better)

Ok so since gender is philosophical: that means that if somebody resonates with a gender and/or feels like they are that gender and/or logically thinks that they are that gender (because of their way of being for example) then they could become that gender or realize that they are that gender, meaning that nobody is truly safe from gender, there are just creatures out there that are safer from havening any gender then others, meaning that even if at home gender isn't really a concept for an algebralien they could still learn and find out about gender from some aliens and then like it and become that gender, even if physically they aren't the biological sex associated with that gender, since again, among other things gender is also very philosophical, so since it's possible but just incredibly unlikely for an alien to get like that that would mean that there could be algebraliens that are like that out there as well, but again this is possible, but just incredibly unlikely, but still possible to happen.

However I really really doubt this happened to anybody we know in bfdi since nobody talked or seemed to care about it at all

Four didn't know about gender and it doesn't seem like he cares or learned anything

X also seems to not know or care

Two is called they/them most likely because they are confusing the contestants with their voice and personality enough so that even the contestant's subconscious trying to pull the gender out of the void can't tell what Two really is (y'know, because Two is an alien and isn't just a man or just a woman)

And I don't remember if anyone called One any pronounces but One also seems like the type of person to not care about gender, she probably thinks that gender is foolish since it's a concept the objects that are pawns in her game have

And we don't know about Three yet but I also highly doubt that Three would have any gender as well.

So again I think the objects are the ones that started to call the algebraliens different things after getting used to them (Four has even been called "it" in the first ep of bfb because the contestants weren't yet entirely sure what Four could possibly be) I don't think the algebraliens ever told the objects what to call them, because again, we didn't get to see that (and it wasn't implied either), and it's more likely that again, the algebraliens didn't care enough to tell the objects they can be called whatever and instead let the objects call them what the objects prefer to call them, since for the algebraliens there would be no point in arguing or talking about this because they are ok with whatever.

Edit: also I wanted to mention that for species that are hermaphrodites or reproduce asexually in general being a girl or a boy would be the equivalent of us humans being nonbinary or agender or something, like alien LGBTQ+

Edit again: also also I just realized that the algebraliens would be in a way more gender-fluid rather than non-binary (in a way) since instead of only using they/them they also use she/her and he/him, so at least when it comes to what they call eachother and what pronounces they use they'd be more gender-fluid rather then non-binary (in a way). But biologically they're probably more non-binary (androgynous hermaphrodites), since I really doubt algebraliens work in a similar way to clownfish to be able to say that biologically they'd be more ... sex-fluid? or y'know trans. But literally they're a-gender or genderless because they literally do not have the concept of gender where they come from/in their society and they don't seem to care for it either beyond respecting what other people want to be called.

[1moreff-creator]

DROS CH2 Part 4 First Impressions

Looking at the Tumblr post for this part is funny because-

In addition to the Daily Life Trigger Warnings, the Deadly Life Trigger Warnings are also now available.

Well isn't that ominous! Let's just get ready for sadness, yeah?

CWs: Daily Life & Deadly Life

"Harper: Where’s Noah? Is he okay…?

Monoquin: Mr. Walker is fine." Alright he's not dead we're safe.

"Jeff: It is what it is. ‘Sides, isn’t it kinda unfair to the people who’ve already died if we stop it now?

Vivi: Isn’t it more unfair to give up on them…?

Robert: We’ve gotta come to a conclusion sooner or later, right? Otherwise, the game’s gonna make the decision for us…" The tensions are rising! Cool!

{Holy shit this is the most egregious case of my color coding being screwed I've ever seen xD. Three blue characters in a row??? Pain}

"Paris: But, like, did we ever sign up for the rules in the first place…?" Does this count as anti-mm? I feel like it's just on the border between lining up and not making sense, you know?

"It’s broken by the sound of footsteps as Davis runs out of the Movie Theater." Pour one out for my guy T_T

"Aidan: …Goddamn it.

Aidan runs after him." Is this a rare instance of Aidan... giving a shit?!?! Wild. This has to be a ship at this point yeah?

"Kennedy: Does it really matter [who the corpse is]? Someone’s dead who matters to him. What does it change if we know who?" I'm kinda surprised it's Kennedy of all people who's saying this. Mx. Conspiracy Theorist always struck me as the type to ask all the questions, regardless if the answers are immediately and obviously important or not. Maybe there's some personal reason she wants to protect Davis from speculation on this? Who knows.

"Jeff: Are we sure about Aidan’s theory that there are blanks in there? Not like I can come up with anyone who’d be in there for me, but it’s possible they got creative.

If Jeff’s saying that, then the likely truth is…" Alright! Another case of Ellis and me thinking the exact same thing. If Aidan's theory is completely correct and there aren't any shenanigans like "Cass and Antonia aren't part of the five blanks so there's more people who don't have a loved one to put in danger" or "Mark secretly has a loved one they'll remember when the corpse drops", then Ellis really does have someone!

"Ellis: …Kennedy. Any leads…?" Wow we've really hit rock fucking bottom with this one huh? Also what happened to "I'm just gonna coast off my luck and survive all the way to the end without caring about anyone", Ellis? Are you undergoing character development against your will? xD

In all seriousness, I'm guessing the angle is that Ellis just figured out she's not one of the blanks because of what Jeff said, so she's worried her loved one's gonna die. Even if they're lucky, if no one dies then the wheel will have no chance but to land on Ellis eventually, so. Then again, it's also possible that Ellis is just gradually growing into a more proactive "end the killing game" attitude based on the revelations he had at the end of the first trial. Who knows!

"Kennedy: …Give me the day to think. I’ll figure something out." Well that doesn't sound like a death flag in the slightest! Do we think if Kennedy dies Vivi will try to revive them, fucking up the investigation in the process by destroying evidence? I could see that happening.

"Why are the two people we’re supposed to rely on most the Conspiracy Theorist and the Mad Doctor?" Accept the Mad Duo supremacy!!! Especially because both of them are waving death flags the size of a mountain right now!!!

"Maybe part of me wanted a less vague reaction so that I could make sure Davis wasn’t just pretending, as a mastermind or traitor type. That’s kinda messed up, right?" Wow we are really diving into the Conspiracy Theorist rabbit hole huh? Not that Ellis didn't always have thoughts like this, because she did, but y'know.

[Robert FTE] Let's go!!!

"Robert: It’s sort of comforting to just… have a normal breakfast, even with everything going on.

Ellis: I can see why that’d appeal to you.

Robert: Oh, right. You’re not bothered by all of this, right…?

Ellis: Nope. Not at all." Yeah... this makes sense.

"Barring this whole mess, it’s probably cancer or old age for Robert." Fair observation. Does this mean Robert's safe, because dying in a killing game isn't "normal"? Then again, being in a killing game isn't exactly "normal", Tragedy notwithstanding, and Robert's talent didn't save him from that, so.

"Robert: I think it’s normal to be scared in a situation like this. I mean, here I am, surrounded by talented strangers who are being told to kill me, and there isn’t a way to get out unless I kill one of them…? That’s… terrifying, isn’t it?

Ellis: I… guess?

It’s hard to imagine how terrifying it is for all of these people who are actually going to die. What can I say…?" Well I guess we haven't exactly moved past this mentality yet lol.

"Ellis: If you need someone to hold you through the night, I’m always here." Never lets one go, you know this by now xp

"Robert: Well… what do you do when things normally get weird?

Ellis: Roll with it, baby.

Robert: Okay… I guess I can try…!" Let's go Robert, roll with those punches!!!

"...Robert announces that he’s “got to skedaddle"..." The fact Robert's always saying shit like this is honestly super charming xD

"I head back to my room, too, passing the time alone before hoping to find some others. Alive. Preferably. Although, I guess dead would speed up my exit ticket." This mentality is already twisting in on itself, I think it may not make it past this chapter chat.

"Taylor and Paris spot me as they’re chatting in the Lower Common Room. They’re wearing swimsuits.

Paris: Hey babe! You should, like, totally join us today!

FINALLY! Now this is what I’ve been waiting for." Lmao. I, for one, have also been awaiting Paris-Taylor content, so I'm with you on this one, Ellis. Even if it's for different reasons xD

"...it’s a nice, sunny day." You know, I hadn't thought about it, but the fact the air isn't post-apocalyptic level bad could imply this really isn't too far from the start of the Tragedy, right? Could be a fake sky, maybe. Or the bad air didn't fully spread to the US, or it's actually far after Junko's death and the air's actually cleared, hm... Too many possibilities, I say.

"Taylor: Well, we were going to do a bit of a photo shoot, too, but mostly just relaxing!" So this is the scene of the chapter announcement! I figured it was, but this makes it even clearer. Neat!

"Ellis: I’m sure I’ll enjoy seeing you work on your tan, too.

I raise my eyebrows at her.

Paris: Take as much of a look as you want~" Never lets one go, and Paris sure doesn't mind ;)

"Paris: How’s your day been, babes?

Ellis: Normal.

Taylor: Were you talking with Robert…?" Pfft-! Taylor immediately reaching that conclusion is genuinely hilarious what the hell xD

"Paris: Oh, duh! Did he say anything interesting?" Also Gossip behavior, ya' love to see it.

"Jeff: I’ve just been hanging by the Pool, as usual. It’s nice here; you see anyone who leaves the Hotel, and most people drop by for a quick word.

Paris: Wow, for real? I guess going through the Fountains means people all pass the same places…" This... sounds like a trial point. Maybe not for this trial necessarily, but for some trial in the future maybe.

"Jeff: Damn, you guys have been doing this too? Kinda wild that we never ran into each other out there.

Ellis: I was just thinking the same thing. I know I’d remember your faces around~

Taylor: I guess you all just missed each other…?" The oddity of no one but Noah and Harper knowing each other from before the killing game has been mentioned in the past, I think, so the fact it's coming up again is interesting. Maybe the killing game specifically picked people who'd never run into one another, just missing that Noah and Harper did? Or maybe it really is just coincidence.

"Ellis: You can find me everywhere, except at your guys’ sides, apparently. Worry not, for we can change that.

Taylor: Oh, thanks…

Paris: Now that we know each other, we’ll obviously be besties for life~" You know, maybe I was sketched out for nothing. Paris seems to be a pretty genuine friend for now. I'm not ruling out that she has sinister intentions with Taylor, but I'm more prepared to be proven wrong on that now. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this line, btw, this was just a gradual thought that fully materialized at this point :v

"It’ll be kinda hard once you’re all dead, but, maybe we can remain besties in death, too." Yeah that's also what I was thinking lol.

"I really underestimated how much hanging out at the Pool with some cool people– WITHOUT anyone judgily interrupting– would put a pep back in my step. Take that, Davis!

…Man, now I’ve made myself feel like the asshole." Lol. Lmao, even.

"Would Robert and Kennedy’s uniquely individual weird vibes ruin the pool party?

Harper definitely wouldn’t. Harper is chill." xD

"Kennedy: I’m getting closer. I’ll let you all know tomorrow." Kennedy put down the fucking death flag-

"Kennedy: It’s not going to be something we can act on before the next reveal, even if we do figure out the details. So for now, we’re using today as planning and tomorrow as time for action.

Robert: So… there’ll be another death tomorrow, then…?

Kennedy: Seems that way.

Isn’t she… worried?" Yeah, I wonder who their "loved one" would be if they're not really all that desperate to end it that quickly. The fact there is a plan is curious, though, I wonder if she'll live to tell it.

"Kennedy: I’ll do it tonight. By tomorrow, there’ll be a solution." I told you to put down the flag, Kennedy!!!

"Harper: I’m terribly sorry, I wasn’t focused on this conversation… What were you all saying?" Wow, ve is... not doing well. Still worried about Noah, I imagine.

"Harper: Apologies for sounding like a broken record, but… I’m still quite worried about Noah. How long has he been alone in his room now…? Two days?

Ellis: Wait, he hasn’t come out? I thought he was feeling better!

Harper: I’ve seen room service delivered to his room a few times, but no actual activity from him." Yeah... at least he isn't dead yet! ...Unless someone else is ordering room service to his room. Is that possible? Is this something I have to be worried about? I fear.

"Robert: Well… everyone here is really special, right? They’re rich for this, or they’re famous for that, and it seems like nothing can affect them. So, if you’re actually feeling things that are bigger than you’re used to, it could feel… daunting, I guess, to think about trying to explain it. It feels like no one’s gonna understand you.

Kennedy: Noah’s an Ultimate, too. He’s not different.

Robert: Still. There’s a big difference between your talent being a passion, or a career, and your talent just being… you." Interesting points brought up by Robert!

"Kennedy: What, think Noah doesn’t believe he’s good at parties?

Robert: I think that that’s nowhere near as useful in this situation as believing you’re good at theorizing or particularly lucky.

Ellis: Partying is always a useful skill.

Robert: Even when your mom dies?" Dude, Robert's going off this Part, goddamn!

"Normies aren’t supposed to clap back like that!!!" Yeah right?! xD

"Robert: …Aren’t you his friend?

Harper: What?

Ve tilts ver head.

Harper: Of course.

Robert: Then… be there for him, as his friend. As long as he knows you’re still there… he’ll talk to you if he wants to. And if he doesn’t, give him space. That’s all." I'll repeat the sentiment, Robert's been wilding this Part.

"Then again, believing in the power of Kennedy doesn’t really seem that much better [than believing in the power of friendship]." Yeah lmao.

"As I try to fall asleep, I can’t help but think of how Davis is doing. He was at dinner, unlike Noah, even if he was pretty quiet and reserved. Did Aidan say something to him? Did he say anything to Vivi?" Good questions, though at least it's good to know Davis is alive. Noah's still worrying me.

"In my usual seat, I wait for the drama to unfold, Kennedy’s or otherwise.

Before the lights dim, Kennedy seemingly sets out to prove it’ll be the former." Well, they're alive... for now.

"Kennedy: No! It means… the only thing I can think of to give us leverage is if we could make the gamerunners break a rule without breaking one ourselves." Ah, the Kyoko theorem! We know from canon this theory has legs. Why did this idea have to wait until morning, though? Gave me a heart attack for no reason, now that Kennedy's officially lowered the death flag :p

"The visual disappears. The lights raise. Is that… it? Did we get somebody with no loved one today?" Someone dead? Davis, Noah? Grace spoke, so not them. Everyone else should be in the room for the motive to happen. Gotta be Noah, right?

"Monoquin: Rest assured, Mx. Young, you’ve seen all there is for today. Mr. Walker is still alive in his room.

Davis: Then, what does it mean?

Aidan: It means I’m right.

Aidan looks triumphant." False alarm, we're chilling yet. Also I like Aidan feeling proud of the one theory he came up with, lol.

"Monoquin: The roulette wheel today landed on Ms. Hall’s placement." :O My jaw is honestly on the floor. There are extra blanks! I think? If Antonia and Cass don't count as blank, then we can have Ellis, Jeff, Aidan, Mark, Paris as the five blanks. Not gonna lie, though, the idea of Paris being a blank did cross my mind, but there were better candidates so :p

"Paris: …Oh, what a relief! They must’ve realized that I love all my followers equally, so they couldn’t choose just one that would wound me most~

Ellis: Hey, that’s my line!" Yeah they do not know how to bs their way out of this one, huh?

"Paris: …Or, y’know, my bestie Tay is right here with me! It wouldn’t be right to axe another contestant like that, so they must’ve been at a loss of what to do with me. 

Taylor: Really…?

Aidan: That still means you don’t care about anyone back home.

Paris gasps, offended.

Paris: I totally care about everyone back home!" Man she is, uh, struggling here, huh? Bit of a knock on the Paris!MM theory, maybe? But then, this Part was also a knock on Davis!MM (maybe? I guess the fact we don't know who his person is yet could be seen as suspicious), so I'm kinda running out of my top mm candidates :v

Oh yeah by the way this is another point of suspicion on her relationship with Taylor. If she doesn't care about anyone outside, how could she care about Taylor? That might be why she's fumbling trying to come up with reasons for her not to have a person. Idk, kinda sus.

"Paris: You’re both so right. We’ve been letting this whole motive thing get in the way of our routines! We should totally all go eat breakfast like normal and just enjoy the gift that today is! 

Shouldn’t she be, like… happier about this?

…Or sadder?

If there’s really nobody that it would distress her to lose, maybe she has no reason to care in the first place. What does that say about Paris, though? Whether someone came up for me or not, if it were my name that was spun, I feel like I would have a bigger reaction than this." Yeah, even with her kinda throwing a bunch of excuses, I feel they lean more to covering her ass rather than lying to herself to cope. Strange.

"Davis: It’s… sort of nice, to feel like things are a little closer to normal again.

Grace: Oh, yes, definitely normal." I concur with Grace- Davis your person died yesterday what do you mean "closer to normal" what.

"Kennedy: It means that we have to make today count! I’m off to figure out how to end this game. If anyone’s joining in, come now!

Mark: …Yeah, okay.

Kennedy: You’re in, Mark?

Mark: Why not? If it could actually work, it’d easily be worth it.

Kennedy: Then, we’re off!" Theory Trio!!!!

"Would I look sexy playing croquet?

Stupid question, I always look sexy. So, that’s a maybe." Yo why's he so funny for?

"Soon, I wind up by the Villas, where I’m surprised by some noises from inside one of them. Is that… crying?" Oh, oh... this is gonna be depressing chat!

"But, I guess there’s some possibility that somebody found a dead body and is crying all alone in there, and in that case, I should probably check it out to get things moving." Another example of Ellis thinking exactly like me. I was worried about the exact same thing lmao.

"Ellis: HOLY SHIT, IS THAT A GUN???" HUH???????? What do you mean???? Oh my god was Vanessa about to attempt suicide?! Surely not, right?! Was she going to murder someone?! What the fuck is happening?! I'm assuming she got it from the Costumer Service Desk but WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

"Vanessa: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t do it, I can’t do it anyways, please don’t be mad…" Vanessa are we good?!?!

"I hastily pick up the gun, and– aah, how do you put the safety on these things?! I’ve never held a gun before! I hold it behind my back, so that if it does go off somehow, hopefully it won’t hit either of us." Jesus fucking Christ.

"Vanessa: Toni… I thought a lot about what she said. That all you had to do was kill someone… but, but that’s a lot! It’s really scary, and really hard…" Okay, okay. Somehow this feels easier to deal with than a suicide attempt. Not that this is ideal necessarily, but you know. At least she's already regretting having the idea.

"Ellis: Uh, I mean, yeah… I wouldn’t… wanna do that… but you like, actually got a GUN for this?! Don’t you know how suspicious this is gonna be if we actually do have a Class Trial?

Vanessa: I-I…

She turns her face away. 

Vanessa: I wasn’t… thinking about that part…" Oh, Ness...

"Vanessa: Maybe it didn’t matter that much." Nevermind there's the suicidal thoughts.

"Vanessa: …Breakfast this morning was really nice. I wanted to… to protect it… 

Ellis: How was killing somebody supposed to help that?

Vanessa: Because the motive would be gone! People… people wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore after that, right?" Ness... I feel so bad for her... this is genuinely hurting a lot (in a good way) T_T

"Vanessa: I never said I’d be at the breakfast…" Vanessa...

"A loud thud interrupts us. It sounds like it’s from somewhere next door.

Vanessa: Wh-what was that…?

Ellis: Shit can not be going down out there when I’m holding a gun…!" Okay that made me laugh- this absolutely is the worst time to be holding a gun, because we know damn well shit's going down. The Deadly Life warnings are up, after all.

"I sigh, then slide the gun under this Villa’s couch." Oh, this is a horrible idea...

"Where we find Aidan, shoving the lifeless body of Robert Smith, the Ultimate Normie into a closet." HUH???????? ROBERT?????? Holy shit that came straight outta nowhere what?! What do you mean??? I was expecting quite literally anyone but him the hell???

"Aidan: Oh, great." Oh yeah also he's here xD This is quite a funny situation to find you in, Aidan. Good to know you're not the killer, though, given the whole "too obvious" clause and all.

"Ding, Dong, Bing, Bong!" Oh yeah also that. Although I've been wrong on this before, that should clear Aidan, Ellis and Vanessa, since the BDA rule excludes the killer in the count of three. I can't immediately think of any way to trick it here like Antonia did, but then, we really don't know shit about this murder yet, so.

"Vanessa: Why do you have a body?!" It's a valid question, I think.

"Ellis: Noah… Nice to… see you…?

Noah: …Yeah…" I'm gonna be real, Noah, I am shocked you are alive, but I'm also very glad!

[INVESTIGATION - START!] And the crowd goes wild!!!

-

Wow, what a fucking chapter! I'm still reeling from everything that happened, genuinely very exciting stuff here! From the reveal that Paris is a blank, the mysterious Davis person, Vanessa having a gun, and ROBERT??? He certainly stole the spotlight this chapter, what a guy he is! Or, was, I guess. What can I even say? I'm shooketh.

But while we're all mourning the most normalest guy ever, we also need to pull out our bingo cards, and play the prediction game! As you may know, there are four prediction boards I'm aware of in Tumblr dot com; mine, accirax's, Jonas', and bronze-ocs'!

(In case it's hard to see, mine is top left, accirax's is top right, Jonas' is bottom left, bronze-ocs is bottom right)

I’d put down Robert as the CH1 killer because I figured the whole “normal” shtick would be hard to make work for very long, and having the “normal” one being the first killer would drive the point home that anyone can kill, no matter what. Evidently I was wrong on the latter part, but maybe I wasn’t too far off with that first idea. Robert did have plenty of very interesting and compelling interactions in regards to his normality, though, so it’s not like he couldn’t have made it further while still being an engaging character. Alas, we won’t get the chance to see that. In any case, regardless of the reasons, Robert being the CH2 victim instead gives me 1 chapter point and 2 role points. Combined with the 7 I already had, I now have 10 points! 

Now, back at the end of CH1, there was a three way tie between me, bronze and Jonas. And now… there’s still a three way tie between the same people :v Jonas predicted Robert as the CH3 killer, giving them 3 points as well. The tie with bronze is even more ridiculous, because they also predicted Robert as the CH1 killer. And for those keeping score, yes, this is the third guess in a row where both bronze and I guessed the exact same thing. Our boards aren’t exactly the same, so we’ll differ eventually, but it is surprising that so far we’ve predicted the same thing for all the dead people xp In any case, all three of us now have 10 points each.

Finally, accirax actually had the best guess this time around! She also guessed a CH3 death, but as a victim, meaning she only received 1 chapter point. Alas, she started this chapter with 13 points, so she now has 14, and is still in last place. However, the distance has closed!

Is this the start of the accirax comeback? Will the tie break at the end of this chapter, or will it continue? Or is it possible that we achieve the legendary four way tie? Find out more… in a few weeks!

Anyways, silly prediction boards aside, really enjoyed this part! Cannot wait to see the investigation next week, so I can do some murder theorizing. In any case, thanks for reading! See ya’!

[wonderful-magician]

What if

I wanted to rant about Electra

And did

Okay a lot of this ranting is just made up nonsense! ( Obv based off the musical itself ) I'm rewriting the musical to my tastes and would like to actually discuss the characters more than the musical is able too. This is more like a TV show set-up to be honest.

Okay main point I want to get out of the way. Electra is an antagonist. But he SUCKS at being a antagonist- for rusty. I genuinely don't remember any times he actually addresses rusty that's like actually important. He's really just a driving force against greaseball. He seems way more upset about diesel than steam. Though to be fair, he seems so confident in himself I doubt he's worried about some kid who's just kinda there.

Because Electra just appears. Unlike rusty and greaseball who are established to know each other. Electra literally just APPEARS. He's not part of the nationals. He wasn't even originally entered into the race. He just appears. And is here now. And he just wants to show off and beat the previous champion. Why would he acknowledge the steam engine who has no chance???

He doesn't even do anything outwardly malicious. I mean he listens to Red Caboose's plan and doesn't really mind that they cheat. And uhm. I guess he goes with pearl but she consented and willingly did that so it's not .. the worst. And he sometimes electrocutes people. But really most of the musical he just stands next to rusty and greaseball fighting while like " :/ " or just flirting with the components or something I don't know.

Of course this doesn't change the fact he's an asshole. He's apathetic and very naive honestly. He only cares about himself, and has tantrums like an actual toddler. He doesn't even ask out the pretty girls himself he has his accountant/security guy do that lmao. He's obviously not a guy used to doing anything himself. Or used to losing. And is just generally annoying to anybody who meets him. But he's probably the *most* redeemable of the three antags. In of which. Idk I feel like just having him live at the Apollo-Victoria for a few years or something would help just get him out of his stupid attitude hfhdbdb

A little bit indulgent perhaps. But i feel like in a episodic setting Electra would probably lose some of his apathetic tendencies. Not all of them- he's a computer. And he'll always be self centered and care a lot less about others feelings than most. But I could truly see him befriending Rusty, pearl, maybe even Dinah. Though I don't know if he'd ever get along with greaseball... Give it like 20 years... Maybe more... A lot of time.

But I truly think with the right circumstances he could just be??? A confident guy who is a bit inconsiderate?? Probably still whiny because you can't take the diva out of Electra but y'know what I mean.

Even MORE indulgent. I want a Dustin and Electra friendship SO BAD YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. These two are like. Opposites. But in the way that I just feel like they would help each other SO MUCH RAAAH. Electra is confident but struggles with empathy?? Dustin is overly empathetic and very insecure?? THEY COULD HELP EACH OTHER SO MUCH AAAA. Ok ok I need to stop with that.

But essentially I just think that Electra is this young guy. Like really young. He's one of the ( potentially, the youngest ) youngest people in the cast. Only a few years in service and he's already got a horrific ego. Just because he is TRULY good at racing. Can't take that from him. Even if he's very late. Like. Really late to the entry. But I just think he's this young guy who kinda threw himself into the wrong situation. Probably not realizing that messing with Caboose is a horrible idea. And that he was unknowingly racing against gods favorite so. oops.

Ok anyway I should shut up now ok I like Electra he's cool but he's a horrible antagonist but I love him and this probably is really hard to read (⁠＾⁠∇⁠＾⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠♪

Oh also why does nobody ever use his hypnotism powers. He has those. Are- are we going to ignore that-?? Ok...

[itslouisan]

Special for mootie: my headcannons on @imaginary-grandpa Prime!!

(btw mootie take my opinion as a grain of sand in a dessert cause it's just silly things I thought when rereading the blog jvj- btw like this is one of my fav asks in Tumblr and just wanted to y'know..talk about it and give my mootie support cause they create amazing stuff)

-based on this ask I hc that Prime curious to what Morty enjoyed started watching Morty's cartoons and even present Morty some that he watched as a kid, maybe gifted comics too (clearly he was talking aboUT Ben 10 so I imagine the Ben 10 comics as some gifts) I also imagine the 2 watching some 2000's CN shows like courage the coward dog (Morty would be TERRIFIED and cling to Prime's arm while he is just vibing eating popcorn) or Codename: Kids Next Door and just make stuff together based on the shows, it became a habit for Prime to gift these to Morty (sometimes even summer IF he feels in the mood)

based on this one I think Summer and Prime have this complicated dynamic, clearly Summer cares for Morty and is protecting her lil brother WHO CLEARLY IS NAIVE (which hey as a easily kidnapable kid, relatable) I imagine in the first weeks or months Summer would be SO ON GUARD and just silently judge Prime and give him looks that she'll jump on him and bite him.

OK this will sound stupid but THIS made me think, hey based on "Tales from the citadel" (rewatched this weekend with my dad and it's A FAV of mine) we know there's variants to universes so there could be a Prime dimension A, B, C etc; what if, Prime just killed the other Primes to a level or just let them fuck off cause y'know, whatever he doesn't care, and in exchange, he goes to this reality that C-137 didn't found due to being an obscure timeline and WAY in the past, this way he'll have a safe reality just like his original in every sense but without wife guy knowing and thinking there's only one Prime dimension, now abandoned. OR I'm just overthinking and the whole ask is BEFORE canon Rick and Morty, literally years before C-137 reached Prime dimension and what we are seeing is an alternate reality he CHOSE to come early to get his leftover shit-- well i'm probably just overthinking but eh, it's fun to imagine shit

I'm focusing more on the image here but my note is: I like to imagine Prime comes over either in the morning when Beth is out and Jerry is well, being jerry, and since morty is really young prob he doesn't go to school yet and wouldn't need to go to a daycare due to jerry being there + Summer, but I think he could come late into the night when Jerry and Beth are asleep and just sound proof the garage, the kids stay up all night with Prime and sleep in the morning/noon. As for the image, I already commented this on a reblog but, Prime actually looks happy in those pictures, which makes me wonder if something happenned between him and diane in the first place on the past, BUT idk if i'm JUST overthinking (look i'm autistic with a hyperfocus, I look for detail onto the tiniest shit ever) but in the one with only him and diane his smile looks a bit unnerving, maybe forced? Anyway clearly Prime got angry when talking of being replaced, or when we bring up Diane, so I'm just guessing he didn't kill her JUST to kill her, something else had to happen.

*cough* I need to actually see this happening in the blog *cough* but it kinda makes me think if Prime even thinks he is toxic in any way cause well, clearly he feels something for these kids and family, remembers stuff with Diane and Beth and doesn't just fuck off, perhaps, just like C-137 he would consider this "irrational"? idk I just like to think Prime every single night after coming back to his place alone runs a hand in his hair and thinks wtf is wrong with him to want to come over again

idk, silly but he made the costumes, Summer helped, he is into crafts but would never admit

just to finish this, SUMMER BULLIES HIM AND JOKES HE IS LIKE A CAT JUST TO GET HIM MAD. IDC, SHE MADE IT ON PURPOSE AND GETS WHAT I'M SAYING.

[thotsforvillainrights]

Heyyyy

How are you?

Gonna ask for some delicious Tomoyasu fic.

Maybe reader feels like their relationship doesn’t have the same spark that it used to and they talk about it to him. Tomo seems like he doesn’t care, but he realized it eventually. So, he plans to a romantic day together where he reminds them how much he loves them and he want to continue loving them. (You can throw in some smut there)

I pretty much based this on my feelings for him. I don’t necessarily got tired of him, but it’s not the same as before. You get what I mean?

Anyway, that’s all.

Rest up and take care

(I feel so much better these days. Trying to get back into the flow of things! Thank you for asking! *I'm going to sprinkle some smut in here but it's just hints. Call it a cop-out and I apologize but for some reason I've been not feeling up to smut when thinking of my return. )

(sidenote: yeah I get how you feel. I've had anime loves come and go. Sometimes they tend to take a corner in your mind while you give way to the next obsession. Kinda a little the same with me and Overhaul. We'll call it a little cool-off point)

~Bringing back a Spark~

headcanon|scenario|imagine|match-up|drabble

The weekly weather forecast plays softly on the bedroom TV. The digital assistant sitting on the Dresser stand next to the television flashed the time change from 9:59 to 10:00 p.m. Tomoyasu sat with his back against the wall, supported by cushions of the pillows. He was listening passively to the news while scrolling on the large tablet in his hands. You peek over and watch him searching for simple work shirts amongst other plain things. For a second you begin to wonder what's happened between the two of you here lately.

For the past 3 months it seems things have become rather mundane. Sure there was nothing wrong with the domestic of course. You both settled down in each other and there was something so very comforting about that. However, sometimes it's not the best when you stand back and compare. You'd went from late nights out sneaking to makeout in the alleys behind F.G.I to this…sitting in the bedroom some distance between each other with the evening news playing. What happened, you began to wonder, to the sneaking into the movies without tickets, watching stupid youtube videos on his work computer when you visit his office, fucking on the kitchen counter like animals, racing each other down the dirt path at the local park just to see who could reach the pastry truck first? Was this all you've become now?

Just some boring couple watching news, going to work, coming home, and going to sleep with a kiss on the cheek and missionary sex once every 2 weeks???

You grimaced at the thought of it.

"Tomo?" He hears your voice quietly interrupt his train of thought. He clicks 'order' on his app and locks the Tablet before placing it on his bedside table. He doesn't answer verbally but instead turns to look at you and lifts an eyebrow. For a moment you hesitate, unsure of voicing your emotions and laying it out in the open. Finally you take a deep breath and speak up. "Tomo, have we become…I don't know…a little tame lately?" He tilts his head at your question, his loose bun flopping to the side as well. "Tame? What exactly are you talking about here Y/N?"

Your name…no nickname…come to think of it, you don't remember the last time he's called you a nickname nor complimented you.

"Tame…like we're more boring now? I mean we don't really do things like makeout or go on exciting trips anymore." You explain some of the things that have been bothering you and he huffs in return. "We're not teenagers y'know. We don't need to 'sneak out' if that's what you're referring to. Besides, you know I can't take any trips right now. There's too much that needs to be done at work. It's late Y/N…go to sleep and stop worrying over pointless things." You feel tears begin to prick in your eyes at his words. "Tomoyasu, I think we've lost our spark is what I'm trying to say…"

"Spark? Don't be foolish. There's no such thing as a spark in a relationship. There's only love. You love me and I love you of course. No need for anything else. Now again, go to sleep Y/N. You'll stress yourself out if not. Goodnight." He pecks your forehead (as expected) and rolls over to go to sleep. While he rests on one side of the bed, you cry on the other with nothing more to comfort you than the damp pillow case.

The next morning you wake up and he's already up and gone for work you assume. You trudge around the house with a large frown and puffy eyes. You figured this was the next step right? Not even getting to say goodbye or having breakfast together anymore. You sip down a small glass of water and start to get ready for work. Meanwhile he's already at his desk spiraling from an earlier conversation with Chitose herself. He still remembers it like it had happened a few seconds ago. There was a bitter taste on his tongue, and it was likely the first and only time he'd ever find himself getting put in his place by the woman.

'If you don't get your act together then you'll end up just like you were before Y/N had come into your life…alone. Just because someone has grown comfy with you for several months to a few years doesn't mean they won't leave. If I were Y/N, with the way you act, I would've been long gone by now. Heed my words Tomoyasu and get it together before it's too late.'

Her words echo in his head. He finally takes a breath and watches the clock on the wall tick away. He's hardly finished any work for today and finds himself clocking out much earlier rather than later. His digging through the corridors of his messy mind trying to find the right words to say…the right thing to do. When he finally settles he finds himself hoping deeply that it's truly not too late. When you finally arrive home you park your car and see him standing near the door with a single flower in his hand, your favorite to be exact. This was something he hadn't done since the first date. Come to think of it…was he wearing that same stupid grey bowtie he wore on your first date along with that suit you haven't seen in ages? You squint in confusion and get out of the car before approaching him. "Uhhh…what are you wearing?" You chuckle, forgetting how upset you were earlier. "I'm wearing something dashing for our date, yes?" He jokes with a straight face. Although you see the corner of his lips turning upward into a small smile you pretend with him anyway. "Yeah? And were will be eating then? Some of the shabby ramen from the run down spot on the other side of town?" You tease him as he leads you into the house and then kitchen.

"Actually..." He moves to the side and you gasp when you see the spread on the table. You turn to him and start laughing a bit. "Okay now how the hell did you manage this??" He shrugs and looks over at the setting. "Turns out that old spot hasn't been shut down yet...despite the fact that I'm sure by now they've certainly failed an inspection or two. Anyhow, that's beside the point." He pulls out the chair for you to have a seat and you happily comply. Everything is different yes, but still somehow the same. And you realize just how much you'd come to miss eating crappy take-out with him after a long day of work. You missed hearing him complain about training the new hires at feel good inc. You missed him even sliding a hand along the table and onto the top of your hand.

Missed the soft looks he's giving to you now, a small glint of something more in his eyes. That same old look indicating just how far tonight was about to go.

"My apologies...you know I'm not any good at it but...I'm sorry. I suppose I'd grown too comfortable with you. I forget sometimes this relationship can use a little something more and despite these things being small to me at first, I'd likely be unhappy if I had to never experience them again...likewise if I had to lose you as well. Y/N, I care deeply for you and I want to show you that more and more. If I ever slip up again then you've got my permission to destroy me by your own hand." He apologized sincerely, his hand now rubbing small circles into yours. "No need to tell me because I was going to destroy you anyway for making me feel bad lately." You laughed and he shook his head slightly. You continued, your own mischievous intent now glaring in your eyes.

"I think I'll settle for destroying you after all...so perhaps you should call out of work tomorrow, hmmm?" He doesn't catch on at first until he realized last second what you were leaning into. Thankful he wasn't heading in the opposite direction, he stood up and quickly complied. From that night on, while you rested peacefully on his chest (and he was regaining his breath) he'd made a solitary promise to keep things the way they should be and to always show you just how much you meant to him.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

Yes, Sebastian's romance and story line are very limited!! He was supposed to be base game with a lot more content but if you look into Mark Darrah's DA2 commentary and interviews/press videos from someone I'll mention in a second, you can tell why they had to cut a character heavily and other content too, and make Sebastian into a DLC. The game was rushed by EA, which I believe, but it is interesting to know that the way BioWare worked is that they'd work on multiple games and release them very close to one another (and this was even before EA). A DLC was also being worked on at the same time as the base game (MoTA), probably because they were fans of her and because she asked them to be in the game.

It really does feel like Sebastian is missing content. He doesn't become a full companion until Act 2, and in Act 1 he has such a good introduction.

Like, I think that's the thing: I like Sebastian as a concept. I think him being so brainwashed involved in the chantry, and that he comes from Starkhaven royalty, makes him interesting when thrown into the mix of our other companions... but then I actually have him in my party while playing and I'm like, "........oh yeah, I don't like you very much."

He can be funny sometimes, and insightful. Like I don't hate him, I just... tend to forget he exists until it's time to do his quests. Then I remember, "Oh right, shit, I was going to use you more...."

And his romance? Listen, I so badly want to understand the appeal because I know there are Sebastian romancers out there that swear by him and I can't tell if it's built on a foundation of headcanon or what. Seriously, if any of you are die hard Sebastian romancers, enlighten me on what makes him appealing to you. I'm genuinely curious.

Like, is it the prince thing? Is it the accent? Is it the religious trauma?

When it comes to DA romances, I can look at them all and understand why they'd be someone's favorite, y'know? Even if I wouldn't ever romance them myself. I get it, I see the appeal for other people... Except Sebastian. I just end up thinking why choose him when the other four exist? Unless you're doing a pro-templar pro-chantry run? Really, that's the only time where I think Sebastian is the perfect option.

I don't even think it's the lack of content compared to the others in DA2, though that is unfortunate. I think it's just... him. We don't vibe. Maybe it's the wee bit of religious trauma in me, or maybe it's because I usually romance Anders so in the end, Sebastian is always like, "Kill Anders or I'll bring an army down on Kirkwall >:[" and I'm like, "I hear you, but also piss off." Maybe I'm just salty about that.

Also, I don't like him and Bethany as a ship. I know she likes him, he's very handsome and he can say pretty things to her... but unlike with Carver and Merrill where I'm like, "Hey, you two should kiss," I'm actually spraying Sebastian with water and going, "Get away from her, get a job!"

I'm just saying, I don't care that he's a handsome prince, I think Bethany deserves better.

I don't know. If I were to do a tier list with all companions from all four games, Sebastian would probably end up in D tier for me... I forget about him, I don't like what I've seen of his romance, and he's just... not for me.

[batsplat]

a silly one: top 5 or 10 naruto ships or dynamics whatever you prefer

ooh excellent ask. it's actually quite tough to make a selection! I do enjoy a lot of canon dynamics that I wouldn't like... necessarily seek out in fandom, but then the stuff I interact with in fandom, what I read fic for and so on, is SO broad and so eclectic that it becomes a struggle to narrow it down. I think I've skewed more towards canon dynamics/relationships I enjoy... there's no fandom I read as broadly for as naruto, including a lot of gen fic - and a lot of it is very team-based stuff, which I'm mostly going to leave out. also, proper niche things that exist only in my head like 'the rin/konan manifesto'. anyway. here goes

10. gaara x naruto: gaara was a top three character of mine when I was a kid (along with temari and itachi). he's very appealing to the edgelord seven year old and I did have his sand gourd as a bag, plus his arc was one of my favourite bits of the manga. his powers are cool as shit, that bit in the forest where he brutally murders the other team and temari goes 'bye bye' is excellent - and then of course there's his main character beat: how naruto can relate to him due to the monster trapped inside. naruto is very big on establishing parallels between its main characters and the various villains, which is all very shounen-y and kinda cliche but, well, it's fun. gaara is still the best execution of that trope, partly because he comes early enough that the central theme of 'isn't it lucky that naruto had friends!!!!' hasn't been done to death. the visual of naruto gradually being surrounded by loved ones while gaara stays alone does work... gaara was just a good character, genuinely creepy and functioning as this primal, unthinking evil, that is gradually revealed to be tragic and alone. the execution of the arc isn't perfect and naruto's power of love bit is already pushing it here, but the whole thing is more or less dramatically satisfying. now, as is so often the case, the whole thing does fall apart after this... gaara just becomes a complete non-entity where we have to assume he does all his character development off-screen, but when he comes back he's basically completely reformed and non-bloodthirsty. now, the problem with having a character whose only character trait is being bloodthirsty, you kinda need to be careful when you're taking away their one thing. don't accidentally make them boring! (it also doesn't canonically really fly to me - gaara isn't insane when we meet him because he has an attitude problem, he's insane because he literally cannot fall asleep and has a deranged monster whispering into his thoughts 24/7. like the attitude shift is a good start, but surely it'll take a bit more work than that.) the inclusion of this relationship on this list really is just about that initial arc and the promise therein, how well they bounced off each other to start with... (you'll find this is a bit of a running theme on this list actually.) I don't really ship them, don't really ship gaara with anyone except maybe rock lee and as far as I'm concerned it's naruto/sasuke 4 lyfe, but y'know. they're good foils. wish gaara had been struggling a little more with the 'not murdering people' thing when they next met. they could've been friends but in an interesting way idk

9. shikamaru/temari: to some extent I do feel like I've aged out of enjoying this relationship in its canon form. I loved it as a kid, in large part because temari was the one token strong woman and it actually felt like this relationship was being conducted on like... even footing. growing up, I have gone off shikamaru in the sense that... well, idk, I think he can be written well and there's plenty of good elements to the character, it's just that he is also a specific flavour of wish fulfilment that threatens to appeal to some of the most annoying types of guy imaginable. it doesn't help that temari slips into irrelevance from shippuden onwards and eventually really is just shikamaru's wife, which. awful! still, they did have strong banter. there's a world in which shikamaru is actually forced to grow up and mature a little more, rather than being treated by the narrative as the super smart moral authority badass cool guy who is right all the time. what I really want from this dynamic is the politics of it all... when we're introduced to these characters, we have these two strategists who are already embroiled in sensitive political situations. while shikamaru mostly still gets to be a kid and is only loosely aware of his father's work, temari is playing a central role in attempting a coup of another village. shikamaru's father is jounin commander and clan leader of one of konoha's more influential clans, roles he is expected to inherit - but he balks at the responsibility and kind of wants everyone to leave him alone. temari's father is the kazekage, her brother is the jinchuriki who she's terrified will murder her every time he loses his temper... she's outwardly far more accepting of her duties, but you can't imagine that's an easy situation, right. there's a lot about their lives that feel very prescribed, from the supportive role they play to the jinchuriki to the lineage-based teams they were assigned to. idk, I feel like the basic potential of a romance between the pair of them is that it gives them the opportunity to... go against all that, to actually make their own choice for once because they've fallen in love with a smart arsehole. I'm also kinda interested in the logistics of inter-village romance, because you have to assume that's not been a common thing but it's barely commented on once it starts cropping up within naruto's generation. especially when it's two figures of shikamaru and temari's stature! I just want a bunch of fun political dramas between these two that aren't painfully heteronormative and lets temari level a forest or two, is that too much to ask for

8. sasori/deidara: look, I could have included any number of akatsuki combinations here. I think they're all fantastic, I enjoy them in canon, I have read a lot of fic for them. I think I read more itachi/deidara fic than sasori/deidara, but that's also just kinda dependent on where the fandom has gone with these characters. this is the gold standard akatsuki teammate pairing: memorable, charming, bonkers. like, they're artists, but they have this fundamental philosophical divide because one is in love with things being temporary and the other with things being eternal... which is expressed by having one blow everything up and the other making himself into a puppet to live forever... that's cinema right there. this dynamic immediately bangs in canon because they just have such easy antagonistic chemistry. they really are both the type of guy who would drive you absolutely insane with their stupid fucking art debates. they're just such vivid characters with such distinctive voices and worldviews... you kinda want to play around with them, right, like they're just fun!! I love them!! obviously also great for au's, like they are annoying grad students they just are... idk I luv them, both platonically and as a ship. how do they work out romantically.... well, probably they don't, unless in a heavily au scenario. they're also kinda on the opposite ends of the... idk what to call it, libido spectrum shall we say, where deidara has got this whole tongue situation and sasori is frozen in this arrested, sterile youth. you kinda need to get weird and freaky with these characters, right, and try to figure out how they would navigate their respective situations. but see, isn't that something that just gets the imagination going! one's a small waif puppet lurking inside a big hulking puppet, the other's got tongues in his hands, doesn't that just stimulate the creative mind. if sasori fell in love with deidara, he would want to make him into a puppet... limitless potential

7. sasuke x itachi: now, listen, this one's a bit of a mess. both of their characterisations become increasingly messy as the series goes on, which given how much of their characters are about each other becomes a kind of downward spiral into incoherency. I'm still not entirely sure what the series' moral stance on itachi's actions is supposed to be - which, look, I'm not saying you need to have a moral stance on everything, but you should try to have SOME kind of coherent framing of the whole ordeal that goes beyond 'wow, that sure sucked for everyone involved'. all this means you can kinda go one of two ways with this dynamic: either you ignore the shippuden twist, or you don't ignore it and let itachi have his 'reasonable motivations' for the uchiha massacre. I do tend to accept this twist... it does give a good explanation for why itachi left sasuke alive beyond 'he wanted to steal his eyes'. my stance on the whole thing is that itachi's heart might generally be in the right place, but he made a truly awful choice and the narrative will never be able to convince me otherwise. if you go from there, you do have a very compelling set-up for that sibling relationship. sasuke is the only person in the world who itachi loves unconditionally; he's protective of his baby brother in a way he simply will never be of anyone else. whereas sasuke has always been defined by itachi, first existing entirely in his shadow and then dedicating his entire life to killing him... itachi is devoted to sasuke and sasuke cannot escape itachi. that's good stuff! classic older sibling/younger sibling dynamic... it's just a dynamic that's so foundational to both of them that even in fics that aren't about that relationship specifically, it's basically unavoidably THERE. the canon is a mess, but the emotional truths that underlie it work

6. minato/kushina: from a storytelling standpoint, I hate naruto being minato's son. naruto's parentage reveal kills his underdog credentials dead in the water and it's very... well he was always gonna be an ultra special boy, wasn't he. like it does kinda destroy the character. unfortunately, I can't ignore his parentage because I do simply love them. yes, this is another relationship that suffers from that thing where all the writing of women is kinda awful. I don't mind their meet cute being kushina's damsel in distress moment when she's being kidnapped - but given how little screen time they have, kushina's badass status ends up being very much an informed trait. let's just take it as read that every woman in this series is done dirty. in any case, the appeal of minato is that he is fundamentally a wife guy. he is kushina's number one fan and wants to live his life being kushina's number one fan. he's also not from a super powerful clan, which I really like; he ends up embodying the democratic ideal that naruto was supposed to. he's also really big on the whole 'gentle smile, kills so so many people' thing, which is always fun imo. kushina gets introduced as this feral naruto-esque girl - and with that sort of thing there's always a massive danger of the girl being like... feminised beyond recognition and concurrently being reduced to housewife status. now there is a little bit of that with kushina, but in my head there really doesn't have to be. in a way, they're really too bland and boring for me to love them as much as I do... they're sweet, though, and I adore team minato. plus, I'm always a sucker for a tragic heterosexual arc

5. hashirama/madara: these two were in love with each other. obviously they were. there's three separate ships on this list that basically function as 'tragic backstories'; this series has a lot of strong tragic backstories. perhaps that's partly because those stories are already for the most part 'finished' by the time they are narrated to the audience, which means we're generally spared any of what this series considers character development. I'm pretty sure I've already posted on this blog before about my dislike for the entire uchiha curse situation and there's definitely quite a lot of annoying things about madara's character too, but luckily most of them don't impact the backstory too much. I love how sweet and innocent they are when they meet, how they're just immediately enamoured with each other, how fate and circumstance conspires to turn them against each other, how they eventually flip the script and irrevocably change the world with their idealism... I just love the kind of rivalry that produces a pair of giant gay ass statues guarding a waterfall. now, as stated above, I don't like the idea that madara ends up fucking it because there's something cursed about his blood. this kind of determinism manages to be both boring and kinda troubling if you think about the implications for more than two seconds. it also sets up naruto and sasuke breaking the cycle, without any indication of why those two specifically manage to break it - sasuke is fundamentally not in a place where he would be closer to breaking it than mr teenage political revolutionary madara. sasuke was accidentally radicalised, my man madara was already there from day one! this story works the best imo if you've got two fundamentally well-intentioned idealistic blokes who have also been traumatised by war and have never entirely been able to let go of the war in their minds... just gradually letting the peace they built slip away. fewer bloodline curses, more generational trauma. I understand bloodline curses can be metaphors for generational trauma, but it's really not here. it just doesn't work. I don't really read a lot for this ship because it's one of those where I have a very specific idea of how I think this dynamic works and the fic out there I've read doesn't quite meet me where I am. but I do love the backstory, do love the dynamic, do love the vibes. plus, cool power match-up

4. sand siblings: my kids!! they show up to konoha, they bully a bunch of the homegrown brats, then they start murdering children in the forest. love a good sibling dynamic and this one has such a fun and unique flavour... beleaguered eldest child temari, snarky and mean and confident but also way out of her league, annoying middle child kankuro who plays at being cocky while also having to reckon with his fundamental lack of power, and lonely youngest child gaara, who initially barely seems to see the other two as siblings at all. obviously, the real meat of this dynamic is that temari and kankuro are absolutely terrified of gaara, who despite his age functions as the de facto leader of their team. it feels quite rare in-universe to have teams that consist of siblings, with a bit of separation between the hierarchical military command structure and actual blood family that actually feels like quite a good idea. suna clearly don't believe in that shit and instead have decided to force these three into what just feels like a horrendous situation for everyone... it's essentially an extension of their childhood household - where temari and kankuro were taught to treat gaara with mistrust and contempt before eventually learning to fear him, while gaara is given little reason to expect any kind of familial affection from his older brother and sister. good and gritty abusive family dynamic... obviously none of these three kids are really to blame with how fucked up that relationship has become, but also all three have understandable reasons to be wary. their early canon dynamic is so interesting, where they're like... kinda comfortable around each other, are mostly quite distanced and professional when interacting amongst themselves and let more of their personalities show to outsiders than each other... kankuro and temari forming a little bit of a united front in containing gaara, but mostly they're just united in their fear of their baby brother... it's compelling! I am compelled! now, I've already given the sparknotes of my issues with gaara and temari's later development and the same broadly holds true of kankuro, plus their relationship in general. they just basically all seem quite fine with each other after naruto's done his talk no jutsu thing. the whole 'gaara becoming kazekage' thing was always a bit weird to me... even in the military dictatorship universe, gaara does not have the prerequisites for that to be a good idea in the slightest. if anything, it does kinda feel like temari should have gotten that job - and I'm not too fussed with her getting it, I actually like her mirroring shikamaru in taking more of a supportive role that allows her to have a little more freedom, but maybe kankuro...? idk, I know it's supposed to be meaningful and emotional because, oh, look at how they've accepted the jinchuriki, but this is the bit of the magic ninja manga that just completely breaks my suspension of disbelief. just ends up falling kinda flat to me. it also ended up unnecessarily preempting naruto's whole thing? weird weird choice, still don't like it, basically I like nothing about the sand siblings writing from shippuden onwards. do love them, though! long live dysfunctional siblings

3. naruto/sasuke: the thing about this pairing is that, look, they are basically canon. naruto is extremely down bad for sasuke and in turn he seems to be the only person sasuke still somewhat gives a shit about. that man certainly doesn't give a shit about sakura... I have read and enjoyed ot3 fic for team 7, I don't inherently think sakura/sasuke is an awful ship or anything, but the way canon does it is just. well. no. anyhow, it's kind of hard to give a concise summary on my take for this pairing in a way I've been doing for the other items of this list, because doing so would basically amount to 'summarise the plot of naruto'. it's the central dynamic of the entire series... their conflict, the different paths they end up taking, whether they can find their way back to each other or not. I've already complained about the actual execution of this arc before, but man are they conceptually compelling. it's sasuke throwing himself in front of haku's needles to save naruto, it's naruto throwing himself in front of a massive snake to save sasuke, it's them taunting and challenging each other throughout those early arcs... the rooftop fight as a furious, terrified sasuke tries to understand how he could have allowed naruto to catch him... the valley of the end, when naruto reaches out and points out all the similarities between them - and sasuke rebuffs him, telling naruto he understands nothing of loss... again, the whack morality of this series does limit the effectiveness of the storytelling because, not to get all edgelord 'sasuke was right' here, but low key... sasuke was right much of the time. he also never actually sunk low enough... the series' stance is that his dedication to his quest of vengeance was basically fine, but the issue was that he didn't go about it with the power of friendship. which, sure, but... idk man. the series kinda lost me when it tried to portray the uchiha massacre as some sort of noble deed. it really lost me with all the curse of hatred stuff. the series never sold me on why these two specifically manage to break the cycle, which is kinda impressive given how much naruto goes on about sasuke over the course of the series. but mooning over an uchiha boy is not enough! this list features multiple instances of a character mooning over an uchiha boy. where I'm at with this pairing is that I passively enjoy it when I'm actually engaging with the source material, don't necessarily seek out fic for them even though obviously it's just... there in a lot of stuff, but do very much conceptually enjoy them. I think it's cool that naruto's gay love changed the ninja world. that's very valid of him

2. kakashi/obito: the impact that finding out kakashi's backstory had on eight year old me needs to be studied. it was one of my absolute absolute favourite bits of the manga to read, just like half a volume that tells this little tragedy of team minato where you have so much of the story still missing but it's sad and horrible because it's kakashi!!! the immediate intrigue of having this naruto-esque uchiha who wasn't in the usual mould of prodigy, but instead only tapped into his potential at the moment of his tragic death. the way he changed kakashi's entire outlook on life!! he saved kakashi multiple times over in his moment of 'death'... idk it just tells you so much about kakashi so quickly and it does all feel like a logical explanation for why the character is Like That, so congrats there. and then, the reveal - well, I was always going to be up for that. tobi is just an inherently funny character, just continuously makes you go 'what is your deal' and 'why are you like this'. he's so whack that he really lends himself to just like... being kinda obsessed with kakashi, stalking him around and all that. really solidifies how basically the only bits of shippuden worth engaging with are the super akatsuki-focused ones. and then the reveal!! the tragedy of it all!! look, I'm always going to raise an eyebrow on a ship that relies on the death of a woman for the emotional whump, and I change my mind a lot about how to tackle the rin problem (I do love her, but mainly just the version of her that exists in my head - canon does not give us A Lot) (and in general I am very up for team minato content). all that being said.... I'm gonna be real, I love that backstory too. I don't think it's executed all that well, obito's emotional arc is a bit of a mess, but the twelve year old boy in my heart finds the scene where obito comes across rin being killed by kakashi and murders everyone there minus kakashi so extremely sick. and the fight between kakashi and obito is clearly the best thing that happens in that entire endless bloody ninja war. doubles down on the pathos with the sad music and all that shit, and it actually kinda works for me. I think kakashi should get to redeem his childhood rival turned deranged enemy and live happily ever after with him, as a treat

1. sakura/ino: in many ways not really the type of dynamic I usually go for, given the animosity between them is... y'know, not that serious and also a bit of a non-issue post time skip. like with many things in this world, I have this version of the story that exists in my head where their rivalry remains like... a major part of the story throughout. anyway they mean the world to me... this imbalance between them, ino with the clan heritage and the popular cool girl vibes protecting the shy little common brat with the big forehead... I like that they had a stupid argument over a boy and made it into this insane competition about who will be the best ninja. I like their chunin exam fight!! in-universe it's kinda mid-on-mid girl-on-girl, but in the version of this series that exists in my head and allows the women to actually be equally powerful to the blokes... idk isn't there something insanely romantic about them matching each other perfectly, about their mental tussle, how sakura overcomes the combat advantage ino holds due to her upper class status through sakura's sheer force of will/derangement... basically I think they should get to challenge each other and maybe also attempt to kill each other? my ideal sakura arc is one that really leans into her normie status and gives her some girl power wish fulfilment in spite of it. you can have her fully rebel against the status quo and have her sympathise with sasuke, you can have her go the tobirama-esque hardliner route, the prejudiced genius who will do anything to defend her village and reform it in line with her standards, or you can have her go the more academic route where she does a bunch of weird medical experiments idk. (the three genders: madara, tobirama, or orochimaru.) or, well, that's how EYE saw her development going - I just think there's space for something a lot more substantive than 'what if tsunade, but without all the genetic advantages and political power'. idk! with ino, my god... she's already linked to the interrogation department... they made her the obligatory girl medic when she should be working with the torture people... to me conceptually ino should always end up working in opposition to sakura whatever route you want to send her down. and you need to include as much mind fuckery as possible, because it's fundamentally fun and valid to have a ship where your two characters can do deranged things to each other in their brains. anyway, look, obviously all of this is straying pretty far away from the canon dynamic. sakura has that female main character thing of not being particularly well characterised and easy to project onto, which means you can kinda do whatever with her - and obviously I have now kinda been doing whatever with her for many years. I do think they're neat. I stand by them being neat

[no-psi-nan]

I probably didn't phrase that the best way cuz it was a spur-of-the-moment post lol so that's my bad! I'm looking for conversations, basically anything that can build a friendship.

The distinction I'm making here is that "verbal" means "using words". Saiki talks verbally with his family and the Psychickers all the time, he just doesn't use his mouth for it.

And usually when people mean "nonverbal" in real life, it's unintentional or perhaps a choice made to conserve spoons, but Saiki specifically chooses not to speak in order to create distance from other people.

If Saiki had used nonverbal gestures to participate in a conversation, then I'd count that (ex. if he'd participated in the fairy tale conversation by pointing at a book or openly agreeing with someone's take).

However, iirc he only uses nonverbal communication for practical things like agreeing or disagreeing with plans being made.

But just agreeing to cake or trying to stop really inconvenient vacation plans doesn't lead to the kind of friendship/relationship-building conversation I was looking for.

At least with conveying Makoto's message Teruhashi had a chance to learn something about Saiki based on how he said it, y'know? And the Canada project would've been a good opportunity for them to work together and get to know each other - except they were apparently just reading books in the library and we don't know if they ever actually did the rest of the project. If they'd comforted each other or worked together directly on the island, that could've been an opportunity. 🤔 But it's heavily implied that they didn't.

And yeah, Saiki doesn't talk with most of the cast that we see but he does hang out way more with Kaido and Nendo, for example, and we know he's hanging out off-screen on the regular with them. He's probably not participating in conversations with them either tbh but maybe he occasionally agrees or disagrees openly with them. 🤷🏾 It's implied that we pretty much see all of his interactions with Teruhashi though, so it's unlikely any relationship-building is happening off-screen.

The Psychickers get to have verbal communication with him, and even though a lot of it is practical conversation, they're quickly picking up what Saiki is actually like and Saiki ends up learning stuff from them that he experiments with (misattribution of arousal, trying to use Aiura's powers for the volcano, etc). It's a give and take that deepens their relationship, to where Saiki allows Toritsuka to drape himself all over him and eventually trusts him to take care of his friend group and to do the right thing, and to where he learns to work seamlessly with Aiura and even agrees to hang out privately with her, and to where he's openly petty to Akechi 😂

I'm just wondering like... Did Teruhashi ever get the chance to get to know Saiki even the slightest bit before throwing away her career to follow him to Medicare College lol? Have they really only ever had two conversations, one about her brother and one about Saiki jumping out of the window to avoid her??

It just seems so bizarre that Teruhashi was set up as a really interesting character but then kinda locked into an obsession with a guy she doesn't know anything about and has barely spoken to even though she's been forcing him into situations for literally 6 years in a row... And then she's just left like that. She never questions it, she never reaches a tipping point with her dedication to perfection, she never wonders if maybe her life shouldn't revolve around men lol.

BUT tbh I only really care about 3.5 Saiki characters so I could have missed a conversation, which is why I opened it up to the crowd to see if there was anything deeper that I missed.

Does that make sense at all? Wrote half of this while on the phone and I'm off to dinner lol

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

Writing Amy Pond & A Different "Doctorification"

I'm not gonna lie- I appreciate the arc that the show had going for Amy when they weren't actively messing it up/contradicting it/writing borderline unwatchable episodes (y'know, the whole losing faith in the Doctor/growing up/choosing a life outside of the TARDIS thing), but I am having so much fun teasing out Amy's characterization in this fic series. This characterization of her that is highly based in how she acts specifically in The Eleventh Hour/Beast Below/Vincent and the Doctor, this sort of kindness with an edge, the girl who can figure things out because of her empathy and her ability to think outside the box.

We always think about Doctorification in sort of "dark" terms in this fandom, especially when it comes to the example of Clara. Like, these characters who find themselves becoming these more dangerous, ruthless version of themselves, like with Martha and Clara and Davros' whole "Children of Time" speech in Journey's End. (And I do like Clara's corruption/obsession/ruthlessness/mutual-codependence-until-it-destroys-them arc, trust me, even if I find it a little weak in places- it fascinates me.)

But what I am finding when writing Amy is that she's getting this sort of "Doctorification" arc. There is something buried in her backstory that has always struck me as desperately lonely (outside of the one-episode Mel reveal), this kid who was considered "mad" or just a "troublemaker" by everyone she knew and yet instead of letting that make her resentful to the world, it just made her kind. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?)

And the character arc I'm writing for her is about her learning how to use her kindness/empathy to save the day, especially when it comes to her developing relationship with the TARDIS and how she connects with it on a level really only seen with the Doctor. She's already "flown" the TARDIS twice in this series (though it was nearly entirely the TARDIS who did the flying itself) and was the one to figure out that Idris was the TARDIS, because of the connection she's made with the TARDIS itself over the years, this sort of love and understanding that passes between each other due to being mutual "thieves"/"mad"/lonely/having care/love for the Doctor.

It's about how she can pick locks, which I know is a detail only mentioned in the Beast Below but I think that it points not just to the fact that Amy clearly got into trouble as a kid, but that she is clever in a way that the show didn't always let her be. She can think outside the box.

And I think it's these three things: loneliness, kindness/empathy, and cleverness/thinking-outside-the-box that I think are allowing Amy to sort of get her "Doctorification" arc in the middle of her other arcs involving her relationship to River and her romantic relationship with the Doctor/Rory.

And I really hope I can pull off something cool with it in the middle of balancing the Doctor's arc (especially as he becomes Thirteen), Bill's story, River's story (and the associated Clara story), and Rory's arc as well. It's a bit harder to juggle it all when they're not all pointing in the exact same direction (as they were with the Master arc) but I'm doing my best to pull it off. There might be slightly longer gaps between updates (maybe three days instead of two) at times, but right now it's really shaping up. I've just got to maneuver all the pieces into place.

For now, we have a reunion fic to get to and maybe some proper flying lessons for Amy and River- they've earned it by now, don't you think?

[mirror-to-the-past]

Battling Vanitas for the first time as Ventus. Other assorted BBS thoughts below.

Alright, based off the intro sequence with Ventus' messed up heart where Ventus connected his heart with someone else's, the fact that Vanitas is established as an alter-ego of Ventus' (if we can believe Xehanort at all, which, after finishing the Terra route where he manipulates and manslaughters his whole way through, eh), the fact that Sora's VA also voiced Vanitas (I didn't recognize his voice at all! I'm impressed!)- to which I first debated inwardly if it was plot-relevant or coincidental, but now... noticing how Ventus and Vanitas both do the "See ya!" Sora would always do after fire spells... I can't help but think the casting was deliberate in some way. Maybe Ventus connects with Sora's heart in the intro, which would influence older Sora to do his little "See ya!" as well when he does fire spells, and would also explain why on earth Roxas looks like Ventus- something that has been bugging me the entire time. If that happens in the past though... the ramifications of what that would mean on his identity, Sora fusing his "new heart" (that "I'm a new heart line" is particularly one that's stuck with me in regards to this theory) as stated in the intro with Ventus' from such a young age... I don't know, I just find it interesting. How much of Sora would be Sora, and how much of Sora would be Ventus? I definitely see the similarities between them, but hm... if the story decides to go in that direction, I wouldn't be too surprised, given how much it likes exploring messy and enmeshed identity. I'd additionally feel more sad for Roxas as a character, because damn not even your face is yours, bestie.

P.S. I'm very impressed with how Roxas'/Ventus' VA so effectively and immediately demonstrated two very different personalities with the same voice, yet different tones.

P.P.S. I have to get it out of my system: The Destiny Islands section that took me off-guard during Terra's story has been haunting my brain. I figured we might see younger Sora and Riku at some point in the story, given their brief appearance at the end of the intro movie, but I had admittedly kind of forgotten about them until that scene. And WOW, Riku emitted more light than multiple Princesses of Heart?? You're kidding me, right? Was this only not noticable when he was older because he was shrouded in the darkness of teenage angst, has he lost this quality, or some other reason? I was wondering if it was just a childlike innocence thing, but Terra didn't really even seem to care or particularly notice Sora, so alright. The silver-haired kiddo is quickly ascending into Chosen One status, as per the narrative (I'll need to verify with tiny Kairi's heart, to be sure. This is a threat, SE. If I don't see a tiny Kairi happy and healthy in Radiant Garden before its destruction, I'll go bonkers). That was sort of touched upon in KH1 with Riku being the "rightful wielder" of the Keyblade- but I now question how much of that was influenced by Terra sort of anointing him spontaneously, and how much of that was Riku just being some wonder kid from the get-go. It would definitely explain his long-standing desire to go to other worlds and... apparently just a strong intuition at their existence from a very young age, outside of just childlike imagination (and he doesn't seem particularly whimsical as a child, moreso a very solemn one that I could imagine being reluctant to play around other kids at group times- y'know, the articulate but shy types where you have to help them warm up to others. It's really highlighting how unnatural and forced Riku's KH1 tough-guy act was, seeing him as he is in the present, and as a small child. It seems that innately, while doing some competitive talk on occasion, Riku's much more gentle and thoughtful in demeanor than he'd like to let on, sometimes.). I'm also very intrigued by little Riku's knowledge of 'some kid' that left the Islands before. How did he come across that information, I wonder? And the fact that Terra caught a glimpse of Xehanort and older Riku in what seemed like a brief prophetic instinct for some reason in that moment makes me assume that Xehanort was a Destiny Islands' native himself, then, which would, of course, make him that 'kid' that little Riku mentioned. Although it was established in KH1 that Xehanort saw himself in Riku's desire towards freedom, it's really becoming interesting just how linked the two seem to be. Xehanort's unwillingness to fully relinquish his hold upon Riku as a vessel or person of influence might run deeper than simply "muaha, I am evil villain."

And I couldn't help but clutch my heart at the "to protect the things that matter, y'know, like my friends!" On top of him letting Sora win the race across the dock. He really was such a sweetheart to Sora, from the very beginning. It's such a shame that Riku ended up isolating himself so much from him with age; you can clearly see Riku thought the world of him from day one. I don't mean to sound too much like a doting grandmother- but what a sweet kid. He should probably know better than to take Keyblades from strangers, though. (I laughed at how Sora seemed to notice Terra and just go "ooo-kay, moving on." At least some kids know stranger-danger, lol!) I wonder if either of them remember Terra, present day? Probably not, haha.

Okay, that's nearly everything out of my system so far. I've not gotten too invested in the overall story so far, admittedly. I mainly attribute this to most of the dialogue feeling pretty clunky. I know I've poked fun at occasional cheesy lines across the games, but Birth By Sleep especially seems... eh. I'm also spoiled after jumping here directly after finishing 358/2 Days, which had some lovely dialogue, in my honest opinion. Gameplay is awesome, though! I've decided to try to explore different combat styles with each character to really get the full effect. Physical/Earth centric stuff is what I decided for Terra, of course, and I'm trying more status-affecting and Thunder/Wind stuff for Ventus. Hehe, I like theming them. (⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)

Oh, but they're all going to have Break Time, of course. I found that during Terra's run, and I must see what the others do. My new favorite skill, lol.

Anyway... back to getting my butt beaten by Vanitas in all of his mysterious totally-not-linked-to-Sora glory... at least I've got Mickey Mouse now (Oh, and don't get me started how he wields the key Sora used for duel wielding in KH2, as opposed to the one he's had in the other games).

EDIT: HOLD THE FUCKIN PHONE, I *KNOW* I JUST HEARD AN EDGIFIED MOTIF OF SORA'S THEME IN VANITAS' COMBAT THEME JUST NOW.

[bomsploder]

❝ Oh it's got everything to do with me! But that's fine, we'll pretend you don't care, ❞ Jinx teased. His question about them knowing each other hadn't been responded to, but it didn't take a genius to realize there was something between them. The Hound had to have some sort of reason for being here. Maybe it was just to obtain a favor, but in any case, the Hound was here for him.

A useful tool, if anything. Jinx didn't even really care if they did know each other. That would just be funny and some dumb coincidence, not really anything noteworthy. He was so at ease about it, but then again, he'd been around basically strangers for most of his life.

His face wrinkled in slight annoyance. ❝ I'm no kid. Might be younger than you, but that doesn't make me a kid. I've got experience! ❞ Jinx patted his side. ❝ Especially with guns. They don't let kids have guns, y'know. ❞

❝ Probably one of the bars, ❞ he guessed, based on the fact he'd been watching her for a while. ❝ The brothel's got the cheap booze and Sevika likes the finer stuff, so she goes to this one bar... I could probably show you. It'd make things easier for you, too. Sevika's got a lot of people on her tail, and she knows how to throw them off. ❞

He shrugged, tapping at his chin. ❝ So you want Silco to know that the Hound did it? He might send me after you. ❞ Jinx giggled at the thought, covering his mouth with a hand. ❝ That might be fun... But well, what's your signature? Do you have a common way you kill people? The original Hound, he used his fists... He'd beat people to death. ❞

[onsunnyside]

I sent my ask too quickly last time feel free to ignore the unfinished one lmao

But based off the nonnie who asked if Stevie and Bambi had watched porn yet.

Imagine if you will

Bambi:

Steve and her have finally settled into a routine, she feels safe with him and him only, he has her laid out in his lap, her back against his chest. Her legs locked over his knees spread out, that way she can't close em even if she tries.

His laptop is open in front of them both, his lips by her neck- a hand palming her tits the other presses between her legs. It's the fourth time shes cum and her words won't even come out of her brain nonetheless her mouth and Steve is just like

"is Bambi to delicate for this? C'mon baby, thought you said you wanted what they're doing?"

"you shoulda told me you couldn't handle it- I can stop right now if you'd like"

And his hand slowly starts to drift off. But Bambi in her whiny state just grabs his wrist encouraging him to stay. To which of course he continues to teaser her for.

Stevie:

So he's more aquatinted to the world as we all know it and has done some research for himself I imagine. Maybe with technological help at first but I'm sure he got the grip of it eventually.

I think the idea of toys would just make him feral. Say the reader already had some if her own of he encouraged her to get some.

He has her splayed out on her back in bed, his tablet is by her head and as much as he loves her looking at him he makes her keep her head turned to the side watching some faceless girl and guy, Stevie doesn't really care about them he's more focused on what's going on downstairs.

He's copying everything from the video like some rehearsed choreography he's gone over a million times, and no matter how much you shake he just won't stop.

"more sunshine please, I don't want hurt. Never want hurt but want more too."

"Can handle yes? Can be my sunny. My full sunny?"

Bucky:

Now Tarzan Bucky is the odd man out here, we don't know much about him. But he's big. And I imagine him being most confused my the subject of porn at first, like why would they film how they're getting warm or making babies y'know? But I figured he's be the best able to have a one on one communication about his sexual curiosity- he seems the most blunt to me. So him and reader would probably have a very open dialogue discovering porn with him and what their both willing to try vs what their limits are.

I also think buck would be the best at using systems, like the traffic light system or etc.

He could end up being as much of a penetration fan as the reader in my mind. Like he'd be totally on board to get fucked I think.

….I’m in love bestie, this is so😌😵‍💫