#respectfully also i cannot write this fic. i have never been to japan and i think it would take me eight years to google enough

[crossbackpoke-check]

56 and any Yamo pairing! 🫶

i just wheezed so hard when i saw what the song was i almost snorted coffee out of my nose i am so sorry for this one

#56 - kyoto phoebe bridgers + yamo

the story of how this song ended up on my wrapped is too long so it’s going in the tags but. let me set the scene for you.

2026 NHL GLOBAL SERIES™️ JAPAN - Presented by YPPI

November 13 & 14, 2026: Dallas Stars, Montreal Canadiens, Seattle Kraken, Vancouver Canucks

Saitama Super Arena, Saitama, Japan

It’s a pitiful excuse of a consolation prize for not being able to go to the Olympics, but Kailer’s not going to look a vacation horse in the mouth. The arena’s cool. It’s huge. The people are cool. There’s so many more of them than he thought there’d be with jerseys that have his name on the back, and a lot more that have the familiar orange and blue. He takes a picture of the fifth Oilers Yamamoto jersey he signs—this one’s the good Reverse Retro—and texts it to Connor, says,

no one here has even heard of mcjesus

and gets a moon face emoji in response. Leon’s influence. Kailer’s still never really deciphered what that one means, and he doesn’t think Connor knows either.

They don’t have a lot of time off between games, but Kailer’s trying to be a good tourist. His dad had been so happy when Kailer had told him about the series that Kailer’d had to stop him from trying to book a flight a year in advance, and his mom’s been just as bad, sending him every article she sees about Best New Spot in Tokyo! Cool Restaurant! Have You Seen This Japanese Cat Café? that she scrolls across on Facebook since June. Suzy’s in the same boat, so they’ve been crossing off their compiled travel-guide list together, looping in as many guys as they can. Everyone’s been pretty game. All the teams are crammed into close quarters at the same hotel, which means everyone wants to spend as much time as possible outside of it, and it helps that Kailer’s gotten pretty close with all the other guys that the NHL picked up as Global Series figureheads. Robo’s memes? Absolutely fire. The groupchat loves them.

For every item he crosses off the list, Kailer takes a picture and keeps it tucked in his phone notes. It’s like speed-running a scavenger hunt—they’re only here for four days—but he’s doing a pretty good job. His favorite so far has been all the gardens. They’re stunning, trees shining bright red and yellow, and every vendor has been selling maple candies, maple cakes, and even fried maple, though the official maple festival doesn’t start until next week. The second garden he visits, he does it on his own after practice, buying two cakes from a cart near the gate and walking until he loses the bustle outside. It’s easy to get lost in the winding pathways, heading deeper into the quiet, and there’s dozens of benches underneath the burnished leaves where young couples are tucked away on dates, or old friends are laughing and catching up. In some of the little clearings, there’s small shrines where people leave offerings, a prayer for good luck or good fortune.

Kailer stops at one without any people and sets the second maple cake on top of it, then sits and scrolls through all the texts that he’s missed. His mom gets replied to with a picture of him outside the garden gate, grinning and surrounded by other travelers. He sends his brother a picture of a trashy graphic I Love Japan t-shirt with the threat that he’ll buy one for him, and Kailer’s dad gets a picture of the meticulously arranged and cut bonsai that are across from the bench where he’s sitting. The Seattle groupchat gets a recycled meme from Robo, and he gets two thumbs up and an “LMAO” before he can even exit the thread. Finally, Kailer takes a picture of the half-eaten maple cake in his hand, holding it next to a fallen maple leaf on the bench, and gets halfway through typing another message before he thinks better of it.

(On the plane over, Drieds was reading them a story about how when they first introduced the high-speed railway, people were afraid to use it because they thought it would be too fast for their souls to keep up.

“Bro, if that were true, you just left your soul in the middle of the Pacific,” Ebs had laughed. “Planes are faster than trains.”

“Are they?” Matty asked. “Isn’t the train in Japan the fastest in the world?”

Drieds couldn’t make it through the rest of the story over the sound of everyone ripping Matty to shreds, so Kailer didn’t get to ask whether or not they found out anything about planes. Kailer’s not worried about his soul, but the logic makes a strange kind of sense; after all, he traveled 429 miles in five and a half hours once, and that was a little too fast for his heart to keep up.)

Fuck it. Kailer’s been trying to write a response for the past ten days, and he’s sick of swiping in and out of the message, staring at the keyboard so long he starts to see swirls in his vision.

Kailer drafts the text again and sends it, no context, no caption. A text travels faster than a high-speed train or a jet. Maybe it’ll pick his heart back up on the way.

[einfalls-los]

On the topic of queerbaiting in SK8

Coming out of the latest episode of sk8 I've already seen a lot of people call it queerbaiting. And while I understand the disappointment, I respectfully disagree.

Listen, I understand we all would have liked to see renga and / or matchablossom become explicit canon in the series. And I do agree that the fanservice did feel a little more intense than in a lot of other series. Hell, I myself have stated in a previous rant after episode 9 that it feels like the series has crossed a line. However - we have not been promised anything.

The writers alwas said this was a series about skating and friendship. Friendship was always the focal point of this series next to skating. They didn't trick us, they have never ever promised us any canon pairings. I feel like Japan in general has a very complicated role when it comes to queerbaiting and should not be put on the same page as western shows but even apart from that.

Looking at Renga - they are probably the closest to canon apart from Tadashi/Adam (but we're ignoring them for this post). With that implicit confession from Langa to his mom, Reki blushing at the compliments and all their unfinished sentences. But while they're not explicitly canon, they're also not explicitly non-canon. The show ends with them skating against each other, doing what they love together with a person they love. That has been made absolutely clear by the narrative, they love each other. Not necessarily in the clear romantic / sexual way a shipper wants to see but at least in some way. And they're teenagers, they got time and neither of them ends up in another romantic relationship that diminishes theirs. They're each other's number one at this point in time, their relationship is at the core of the narrative.

And matchablossom - as much as I love them, have they ever shown to be any more than friends? They are obviously and despite all their bickering friends and close ones at that. But other than that? I have seen people argue how pointless all their scenes full of tension and the heartfelt ones are but I don't think so. Their relationship to each other is very important even if it does not lead to a romantic conclusion. It's part of their characters, part of their arc.

Going back to what I said, that it felt like a line has been crossed. At that moment it felt like that to me. Because I was emotional and it's what I wanted it to be. But looking back at it? Yeah, it was intense and with the lense of someone looking for that stuff it's definitely there but especially between Kaoru and Kojiro there is nothing that really implies in canon that they have romantic feelings for each other. I headcanon it as such but I do recognize this is my reading of the situation and not necessarily what the writers intended.

I get the disappointment. I would love more queer rep in anime outside from bl and gl and I would have especially loved to see matchablossom become canon. But being completely honest with myself, that is nothing the show ever promised to me or anybody. And that doesn't mean we cannot enjoy the fandom that comes with the show, write fic, draw fanart and exchange headcanons about the pairings we love. But the show itself never promised us anything and I think it's unfair to judge it based on a promise it never gave.