#songs ever written. I think it’s just me being autistic actually

[laserlem0n]

been having thoughts since I’ve been showing people more tmbg. it’s kind of frustrating that there are these songs that mean so much to me and it seems that nobody else irl gets it. maybe you have to get past the slightly strange approach to lyrics (although I don’t find them strange), i don’t know… i’m tired of opening up about songs/albums that are really really important to me and getting responses of ‘those lyrics are really weird’ / ‘quirky’ / just generally not understanding that actually there’s more to it than just an average person’s surface-level reaction. i honestly don’t know. maybe it comes with time

[nightcolorz]

I don’t see anyone talk about this ever, and I thought I would make a post about it, bcus I think it’s one of my autism symptoms that I and other people notice the most, but I’ve never seen any other autistic people talk about experiencing this.

as someone with autism I often feel like I don’t experience/rarely experience/can not relate to the emotions of my peers. Even my autistic friends have emotional ranges that I don’t. For example, here are some emotions that I don’t feel regularly

-anger. I only feel anger when I am devastated or having an extreme meltdown, which are not common, thankfully. Otherwise, I only feel anger for trivial things, like fandom arguments. I am exclusively passionate about my special interests, so my strong emotions like anger are reserved for interactions concerning those. On a side note I also almost exclusively feel happiness when I’m engaging with a special interest. In my daily life, I don’t feel anger towards people, or feel anger when someone wrongs me. I only express anger outwardly when Im told that I’m experiencing smth I should be angry about. I don’t have angry outbursts. I think I had one angry outburst in the past two years. When others would feel angry, I feel upset, overwhelmed, or sad, and often cry or hurt myself stimming instead of experiencing rage. It’s not that I never experience anger, it’s just that it’s something I rarely feel, and have to force myself to feel, I don’t really know why.

-Empathy. I’m not sure if I’ve never actually experienced empathy, or if I have, and just can’t tell what it’s meant to feel like. Peoples emotions often severely overwhelm me, but I don’t know if that’s the same as empathy. But I know for a fact that I have never experienced empathy for fictional characters. I have never cried because of a movie or a show or a book or a song, and I’ve never felt sad because of smth I saw in any of these. I don’t know why people do. It’s not real, it’s made for my entertainment, so I can’t actually be sad about it. I thought everyone felt this way, and that crying during movies was something ppl made up as a comedy beat, or some strange metaphorical social curtesy, until I was 7 and my mom and sister both cried into my shoulder when we watched a movie where a dog died. I didn’t cry, and I didn’t know at all why they were crying, so it was rlly confusing for me lol. Now people always treat me like I’m rude or heartless for not getting upset when I watch something sad with them. I think they think I’m being tough for show or that I just don’t care about movies, but that’s not it.

The only thing I care about at all is fiction. It’s the only thing I ever think about. So honestly, I don’t know why I don’t feel those sad emotions because of it. When sad things happen in fiction it always makes me happy if it’s well written, because witnessing a rlly good story play out makes me happy, it’s the best. If sad things happen that are badly written, then I’m frustrated, but never sad. I don’t know why. This is a very rare thing on tumblr, everyone on here cries for there favorite characters, even tho they are usually autistic too. I feel rlly happy when bad things happen to my favorite characters, and happy when they die too, if it’s the satisfying conclusion for their story. It just has to be well written, bad writing makes me sad.

I often say that stories are sad or that it’s sad when x thing happens when I’m analyzing writing, because I know that’s the intended thing for the audience to feel, but I never feel it. When I say “x thing made me so sad!” I’m actually being hyperbolic, bcus what I actually felt was happy, and probably stimmed for hours bcus of it. For my tvc followers, for example, when I read Riccardo’s death in the vampire Armand, or read about Armand getting abused, I happy stimmed cuz I enjoyed it sm. I’m learning more and more now that this is not common, and when people say “this characters death made me sob” they aren’t joking 😭. It’s not because death or abuse in real life makes me happy tho, those make me sad. it’s bcus death and abuse in fiction isn’t real, and we’ll crafted stories make me happy. It’s confusing.

-Offense. This is similar to anger, but I have never felt offended before. Again, I only retaliate against someone saying offensive things to me if I’m told that I should. But I don’t know, I just don’t feel it. I can be aware of when someone says smth wrong to me, but I never feel a strong emotion about it. When someone says smth offensive I think “wow, thats a bad thing to say.” But I don’t feel upset or angry at all. I usually just feel uncomfortable or scared, because if someone is trying to hurt my feelings on purpose, that’s not a good sign. But if it’s by accident I don’t care at all. My feelings have never been truly hurt before. I can’t understand why people get upset when someone says something offensive to them that they meant nicely. It just doesn’t register in my brain. Words just don’t hurt me, I don’t know. The intent to hurt is what hurts me. The idea that someone would want to hurt me or hates me does make me sad.

The only thing that I would be upset about someone insulting is my art or writing. I actually care about those things, they feel more like a part of me than anything else someone could insult. Like when people are homophobic or transphobic or ableist to me or racist to me or say mean things about my appearance or my behavior, I just don’t care. I actually really secretly enjoy when people insult my behavior, because it’s very interesting to me that I’m a real person that people observe all the time, and I like to hear how people perceive me, regardless of if it’s good or bad. When people say I act weird or awkward or unfunny or embarrassing, I like it, because it gives me an insight into how I’m seen that I don’t usually get. Also, I can’t at all relate to when ppl are offended by vulgar things like language or sex. I have never been offended by these things, even as a young child, I would get in trouble for saying things like “vagina” and then I would not understand why references to body parts were inappropriate, even though I was taught that they were. I think this is bcus the fear of sex and vulgarity is a social rule that isn’t based in logic or tangible consequences, and as an autistic person I can’t understand social rules like that.

-Embarrassment or shame. I need to be told outright that I am being embarrassing for me to realize that I am, because I don’t have the social awareness to register shame as a risk to be conscious of. It’s really hard for me to control my impulse control and mask my autism in public because I don’t know what’s inappropriate and I also don’t know how to care about what people think of me. I don’t understand or care about people enough to consider them being put off by me as smth to be concerned about. When someone tells me I’m embarrassing, I usually stop, not because I feel embarrassed too, but bcus I don’t want to cause them discomfort or to be rude. People think that since I act weird and don’t get embarrassed in public that that means I have no anxiety, but that’s not true. I’m diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, I’m anxious everyday. What I fear is repercussions I can’t control, such as being hurt or harassed, which are more of a risk for me then they are for neurotypicals or high masking autistic people, because I can’t always control how I behave. But then again, my anxiety mostly manifests as always feeling deeply afraid and unhappy for no reason at all, and if there is a reason it is usually the fear of being physically uncomfortable (sensory issues) and fear of something in my routine changing or going unexpectedly wrong. I have memories of being embarrassed in the past, but they are very rare and very far away. Now, I don’t really understand the concept of the emotion. Again, maybe I do feel it, but I can’t tell.

These are the first few emotions that come to mind, but there are many other emotions that I can’t identify with or relate to. I know this is linked to my autism, but I don’t know why, because I’ve never seen anyone talk about it. Pls comment if u relate or know anything about this, because I rlly want to know!

[autisticlancemcclain]

thank u @zenstrike for the tag <333333333 i see ur mic and i'm elated about it

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

185! but i haven't updated in like a week and a half so we're probably closer to 190

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

556,104. i am very excited to watch it jump up when i finally finish my longfic teehee

3. what fandoms do you write for?

literally just voltron lol. well not counting baby me's wattpad lol. i started writing almost two years ago and just went ham basically. i've been intentionally avoiding things that i know i will get hyperfixated on bc i don't want to stop my writing obsession lol

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

ooooou i'm excited to check. i know it's changed quite a bit over time. i usually sort them by hits!

i will grind you to sand (beneath my louboutin heels) [voltron, 2573 words]: bamf lance fic where i give him a revolver and let him go ham basically

mr. snuggles [voltron, 1656 words]: one of my very earliest fics! lance, lover of weirdo animals, finds a demonic cat-sized spider and adopts it despite his friend's freakouts

he might not look like he gets bitches (but honey that dick was eleven inches) [voltron, 1136 words]: this one is so dorky lol but it's just secret relationship klance coming to light in the most embarrassing possible way

does anyone know where the love of god goes (when the waves turn the minutes to hours) [voltron, 4283]: a canon divergence au where lance is a seer and convinces the skeptics on his team of his abilities by ending the war

this is the part of me that you're never gonna ever get away) [voltron, 3262 words]: a lance & shiro hurt/comfort with a small autistic lance character study! i'm very proud of this one

5. do you respond to comments?

i definitely do on tumblr! it's one of the first things i do when i wake up actually. on ao3, though...i'm pretty sure i have about eight hundred unanswered comments sitting in my inbox 💀 it's an ongoing issue

6. what’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

i'm almost sure it's this post-game show lance leaving fic, because i got comments and asks for weeks begging me to write a happy ending lol. but this fic from the hana universe, from when keith is little and shiro is fighting for custody and they haven't figured things out yet. that one is sad. this dream pov adashi fic is also sad and has no happy ending bc, you know. shiro is in space and adam thinks he's dead and everything. my loneliest series is also still in progress and as such there is no happy ending. and this is my earliest angsty-ending fic with MCD

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

oh god pretty much everything i write has a happy ending?? if i’m being serious?? frankly i don’t do a lot of linear plot. i just write Scenes that are vaguely connected. BUT my h2o fic had a plot that ended happily, as did my cowboy fic, but truly i’m more of a slice of life kinda gal. all my active wips are plot-driven, though, and i plan for all of them to end happily.

8. do you get hate on fics?

oh god yeah. i get it on brown eyed lance, autistic lance, adhd keith, allura just in general (are you sensing a pattern), my refusal to use readmores, and lately just some demands for me to write differently/more?? most of it is just funny so i post it to goof on it lol, but some of it i just delete and pout about until i forget about it 💀

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

yes and it’s nasty and i will literally never ever post it. although i guess i’ve written some softer stuff that’s more allusion than anything, like in my loneliest series.

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

not anymore, but i did when i was a kid?? i think i wrote a pjo/hoo/divergent/the mortal instruments/homestuck/a bunch of other shit fic when i was 13. i’ve successfully blocked that era out of my mind tho so i’m not sure. i do a lot of insane aus, tho. i wrote a fic based off a country song written in the sixties. so.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

i’ve had people write continuations of my wips?? which i didn’t rly like. i just ignored it.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

someone has asked me about translating a fic before! haven’t heard anything since tho.

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have tried. i’m not very good at it. i have very Specific ideas about things and can be very controlling, so it’s honestly better that i don’t lol.

14. what’s your all-time favorite ship?

klance, easy. been in the trenches of this goddamn fandom since i was 13 years of age. it’s been a Journey.

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

god, the butterfly effect. i get people asking me to update all the time and i genuinely feel bad, because i have absolutely no ideas or plans for it. i might try to come up with an ending of some kind?? but i wrote that like two years ago, so i have changed a LOT about my writing since then.

16. what are your writing strengths?

dialogue and humour, i think. and sometimes writing lack of emotional communication (if that makes sense — i like to try and write around an emotion).

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

i over explain a lot. and i overuse dialog ur tags sometimes. i have a Very Specific scene playing out in my head and i want everyone else to see it like i’m seeing it, which is my downfall a lot. i’ve been trying to work on implicit stage directions.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

i think sometimes it’s necessary? it can be a good tool for humour, like with cussing that can’t be achieved in english. but while i understand and read several languages i have always always struggled to speak or write in them. it’s very frustrating so i often avoid the subject entirely lol.

19. first fandom you wrote for?

i’ve been writing fanfic in my head since before i knew what it was, but i started typing things at around 11 when i used to homestuck roleplay with my friends lol. messy messy times.

20. favorite fic you’ve ever written?

oh i am my own target audience. i have several.

i need a man (who’s patient and kind): keith-centric post canon (divergence) fic where lance takes him to his family and keith is good with kids and just keith being loved is the whole point. always.

what if i lose it all: an alternate universe where lance, as a baby, loses both his parents, and then is raised by his oldest siblings. in luis’ pov.

when does a ripple become a tidal wave (when does the reason become the flame): brogane fight & angst canon divergence post season 6; covering shiro’s guilt complex and keith’s unwavering loyalty

he’s into superstitions (black cats and voodoo dolls): halloween verse with witch lance and vampire keith! i have barely spoken about this au on here but rest assured i’m thinking about it all the fucking time

the applebee’s universe: modern au with young keith and lance learning how to love each other

ceilings (plaster): non-linear dream-like fic that’s just so trippy and strange i’m obsessed with it

if the sky comes falling down (for you) there’s nothing in this world i wouldn’t do: a keith character study about how the biggest bleeding heart in the universe loves

the hana universe: brogane-centric universe as their family starts rocky and grows

thank u again for the tag zen <33 open offer for anyone else who would like to hop on!!

[atowncalledher]

FUCK IT this is the autistic tgirl infodumping site I'm gonna talk about one of my favorite songs ever.

And even if you don't read the rest of the post go listen the this song, it's insanely good. Then listen to the rest of their songs. Summer's Here (And I Don't Want To Die!) is very seasonally appropriate.

(tw discussion of death, terminal illness)

First off, IWALOID? One of my favorite vocaloid producers. They wrote seven absolute BANGERS then fucked off entirely. Icon behavior. What I really love about them is the way that they write lyrics; the word choice feels so genuine while taking very mundane things into a poetic context. I don't think that most other songwriters would go for both "Watching Spongebob on my own, 'cause I'd rather be alone" and "You and me with no spatial dichotomy" and have them both sound so genuine. The writing is some times flowery, but in a way that people that I know actually talk (I definitely do it too, I think it's a bit of the 'being a kid who read books more than I talked to other kids' kinda thing). BTW another vocaloid artist that does this really well is Ippo.tsk (my other favorite vocaloid artist lmao).

But none of this is about Starbearers, which honestly shifted my whole perspective on how songs can be written (I was like sixteen so like, it was prime time for my mind to be blown but still) and how song structures and lyrics can intertwine thematically to enhance the emotional impact of a song.

I also want to preface this by saying that while I know a decent bit about music theory and poetry, every time I try to dig into the academic side of things my eyes glaze over (I swear I've fubking TRIED I just can't do it) so this is all going described in the ways that I've taught myself to understand things, and so some of the language might not be super clear or whatever.

OK so Starbearers is about the relationship between two people, one of whom dies of an unspecified terminal illness. The song has three choruses that split it into three different sections, each essentially re-contextualizing the speaker's relationship with the other person.

The first verse is the speaker recalling a period of time pre-illness, focused on their naivety and the carefree way in which these two people spent their time. It is very grounded in a physical space with phrases like "The cool breeze in late July; A sense of wonder lingered in the air" and "Your house's wind chimes break the summer air; So gently to remind us that we were there". This section (I think very intentionally) strays away from making any sort of metaphorical statements (for reasons that I'll get to later) or lending any strong emotions to the scene. It's supposed to feel serene and calm to set up the emotional gut punch of the later ones, and the following chorus follows the vibe while introducing some disparaging language from the part of the speaker, such as them calling themselves "the Time wasters of life, not so useful..." who "Just keep living like our lives are here to stay; No thoughts of getting torn away". FORESHADOWING!!!

The second verse, much like the first, keeps the listener grounded in a physical space with "Sinister chill of waiting rooms", talking about doctor visits and treatments and stuff. While there are some neat parallel phrases, like taking "A sense of wonder lingered in the air" and changing it to "A sense of worry lingered in the air" it just follows the arc of steadily building tension until the next chorus...

Where the speaker has an emotional breakdown. The whole section is about them venting their rage and sorrow about the whole situation, and in response the lyrics get more and more metaphorical;" a hopeless cause of life", "drink the air", and "your sickness... rips my fucking heart out of my chest". I think that there two reasons for this. As humans, I think that when emotions feel bigger and more impactful than we have words to describe we turn to metaphor, which both helps us process the emotions and also help us describe what it feels like better to other people. The second is that when there is ONE thing that could break down someone's fragile emotional state when mentioned, people will dance around it to not say it directly. These are definitely things in English, idk if it works similarly in other languages or not. But the most important part of this section of the song, for the purposes of this analysis, is that it continues the building tension. The speaker is going through the stages of grief, and the musical and lyrical tension is building up and up to match the emotional intensity until the whole thing has to boil over.

And this is when the high-intensity instrumental accompaniment drops out and we're left with just vocals and a single relatively chill guitar track. I'm just going to copy paste the whole thing because it's basically the thesis of the whole track:

"Take some time to just reflect upon your feelings...

Then leave your feelings behind you in the dust"

"Even when I'm gone, I will always be with you."

"No use in cryin' now."

This is the only point in the song where the other party, the terminally ill person, has the speaking part. And this is what they choose to say. You gotta move on.

This flows right on into the third chorus, the very first lines of which pull the metaphorical ground out from under us. The other two thirds of the song keep themselves pretty well grounded, but this one immediately sends us right into space. Literally.

"We are the

Starbearers of life

Cling to moments that we shine, often brief

Your supernova sings to me"

Right up into space. By bringing us out of a grounded space and into the realm of metaphor, we get the impression of the speaker approaching life from a whole new perspective, with a whole new reverence. The song continues by bringing us back into the grounded space of the first verse, with "Cloudless summer nights" and a "cooling breeze" referencing the line "The cool breeze in late July" from the first verse. And then the line "And those chimes outside your door... Are still ringing in my ears" referencing "Your house's wind chimes break the summer air". The wind chimes fulfill the same purpose in both places "to remind us that we were there". They remind the speaker that life is best spent happily, with the people that you love. That's symbolism, baby.

But the thing that really gets me is how much the first two choruses are building up to the third one, and how the theme of the piece is reinforced by the musical structure underneath. If we take the first line from each chorus:

"We [are] the time wasters of life"

"[We are] a hopeless cause of life"

"We are the Starbearers of life"

These three together form a really powerful tricolon crescendo when we put them together. These are presented as three different lenses through which the speaker is seeing themselves and the other person in the poem, and musically they are all the same part of the chorus melody. Because they are all three describing the same subject, they are inherently the same and of equal importance. Wasting time is of the same importance as grief, and of moving forwards. They are all one and the same.

We are the Starbearers of life - we are the ones that make life worth living. It is internal and connected to all other people, who each make each other's lives worth living.

We are a hopeless cause of life - there is no greater purpose, there is nothing external to give us hope.

We are the time wasters of life - pretty self explanatory, I think. Wasting time is just another lens through which to view spending time.

But the We in each of these phrases is the same people. Each is simply another way to view the same thing.

We are wasting time, we are hopeless, and we are the stars in each other's lives.

It is the time that we waste together that gives light to each other's lives.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

One of my favorite things about this song is that it uses metaphor in such an intentional way. A lot of other songs that hit really hard emotionally for me layer on metaphors from the very first lines, like boygenius's Not Strong Enough or Pattern's Simple Folds (both of which can make me bawl my eyes out on a bad day). But Starbearers builds it slowly, pulling its punches right until the end, and I think that's part of why it hits so hard at the third chorus. It's an inspiring piece of songwriting and I strive to imitate just a fraction of its emotional impact in my own writing. It's one of my favorite pieces of music and I hope everyone else can appreciate it as much as I do.

[ultimaid]

Kirumi (obv) and/or kaito for the ask game?

hmhmhm…!!

(under the cut; this got quite long.)

kirumi

favorite thing about them: the utter dedication to making life easier for everybody around her. she acts out of love for others. she always tries to serve what she believes to be the greater good.

least favorite thing about them: sigh. this is a writing issue, but i desperately wish the game didn’t present so many interesting thing about her and then just… never address them. her sense of self-worth is utterly abysmal. she is desperate for love and connection and care. she feels like she needs to be perfect at everything she does or she’ll never be worthy of love. those are very interesting things! and the game never brings them up! even in her graduation event, it’s treated like a good and positive thing that she is choosing to carry on living in subservience to others. just… talk about these issues, please!

(yes, yes, i know about the love hotel event. i do not like the love hotel event and i hate that it’s the closest thing we have to an actual exploration of kirumi’s deep-seated fears and desires.)

favorite line: “no matter the situation, no matter what happens, i am here to serve everyone.”

brotp: i love most platonic kirumi content, but i especially love seeing her as friends with kaede, ryoma, kokichi, miu, and korekiyo.

otp: do i even need to say it? i will anyway. it’s amatojo. they are absolutely everything to me. i have written essays on why they work so well together. i have an ask about rantaro waiting in the inbox, so i’ll link the Big amatojo explanation i wrote when i answer that.

notp: this is going to seem petty, but i dislike seeing her romantically with anyone that’s not rantaro. ^^;; i have no problem with most of these ships conceptually, but i’m happy in my amatojo room. i have… a lot of kirumi ship tags blacklisted.

a random headcanon: i’ve seen kirumi as autistic ever since i first played v3. repetitive tasks like cleaning and fast-paced, involved tasks like cooking are incredible stims. she hates being idle and her maid work really helps with that. she also tends to speak in a monotone and has a somewhat dry sense of humor (though she does still laugh at rantaro’s sillier jokes).

i also think she does embroidery as a hobby in the rare event that she has free time! she likes to add little details to clothes, pillowcases, tablecloths, and things like that. she’s very particular about her aesthetic.

unpopular opinion: holding kirumi haters by their shoulders. kirumi is not boring nor is she a bad character. okay? i agree that her motive was stupid. i agree that the game does not write her very well most of the time. that does not make her a bad character nor does it make her boring, and even if you dislike her, please don’t tell her fans to their faces that she’s the worst part of the game.

a song i associate with them: i have a lot… but i’ll go with “rabbit heart (raise it up)” by florence + the machine.

favorite picture: so… i am not allowed to google kirumi images. i do, however, have some sprites saved to my phone, so i will send my favorite kirumi sprite. she is very happy to have fulfilled your request.

******

kaito

favorite thing about them: he is so, so full of love for the world and the universe. even when he’s being headstrong and stubborn, his priority is always making sure the people around him are safe and that they’re not worrying about him. kaito consistently puts everybody else’s needs in front of his own in a way that’s both endearing and frustrating—please let yourself be cared about, boy!

least favorite thing about them: sigh. i do not like his free time events with shuichi very much. i absolutely adore kaito, but his free time events are… just listening to him talk and not really engaging much or getting much from it. i think that’s an issue with nearly all of shuichi’s free time events, though. i love shuichi a lot, but he does not take a very active role in his free time events the same way kaede and hajime do.

favorite line: the classic “the impossible is possible! all you’ve gotta do is make it so!”

brotp: i like platonic saimota and akamota a lot! kaito will see a protagonist, say “is anyone gonna make best friends with that”, and not wait for an answer. i’ve also seen platonic content of him with tenko that i actually really like! i think they could have a funny sibling dynamic.

otp: sighs deeply. momoharu, my loves. i think about him and maki all the time. they’re so sweet together and good for each other. she keeps his head on straight and reminds him that he doesn’t have to carry the world on his shoulders while he helps her open up and become more confident and learn to love herself… augh. ;-;

notp: …okay. i am going to be crucified for this opinion, but… i really, really don’t like oumota. i understand why people like it and i don’t begrudge them that, but it is not my cup of tea in the slightest.

a random headcanon: i think being fluent in three languages has given kaito VERY eclectic taste in music. he likes to listen to just about any genre, but he has a special fondness for 80s new wave.

unpopular opinion: i genuinely cannot think of any off the top of my head. i suppose that’s a good thing.

a song i associate with them: “if i ever leave this world alive”, flogging molly.

favorite picture: hmm, i have a real fondness for this cg. his expression here is so funny.

(…the cg appears to have not uploaded properly. it’s the chapter 3 one where he’s hugging maki and screaming.)

[mothbagel]

For "send me series" meme

Portal

2001 ASO

ayy thank you! time for some epic color-coding skillz

[Portal]

Favorite character

It's a veryyyy close tie (between all of the portal characters) but I love the turrets. They're just lil guys

Second favorite character

AUG look I love them all but I'm gonna have to say GLaDOS because she was the main reason I wanted to get into portal (robots are cool I like robots) but also shes so cool and JUST AAAAAAAAAAAAA

Least favorite character

FUCK NONE OF THEM BUT IF I HAD TO CHOSE UH ADVENTURE CORE I GUESS

The character I’m most like

SPACE CORE SPACE CORE SPACE CORE

Favorite pairing

I haven't really gone down the rabbit hole of portal ships and I dont really ship characters outside of a few exceptions, but Ive always loved the relationship between -robot and their sad babygirl- so chelldos (is that what its called?) but not necessarily romantic (nothing against the romantic shippers, yall are great and romantic chelldos is also fun)

Least favorite pairing

No shade nothing against it, but I don't really ship wheatly/chell as a romantic ship BUT NOTHING AGAINST THOSE WHO DO

Favorite moment

Either cave johnsons combustible lemons, wheatly telling chell to kys or the entirety of test chamber 16 (I think) in portal, idk the turrets are just silly guys

Rating out of 10

ALRIGHTY SO I am really bad at platformers/platform adjacent games and they stress me out typically, so the actual gameplay is gonna be a 7/10 but the story/characters/voice acting all 10/10

-2001: A Space Odyssey-

Favorite character

HAL HAL IS AMAZING

Second favorite character

the concept of halman is so cool and I love it and also everyones designs for halman are just so amazing so im gonna say halman

Least favorite character

I REALLY DONT HAVE ONE UH IDK LETS SAY THE COMET WATER FLOYD DRANK LET MY MAN HAVE SOME REAL HYDRATION

The character I’m most like

HAL, I could go on and on about how amazingly autistic coded he is without the -I am a robot therefore I do not feel- but this post is already long enough

Favorite pairing

queer platonic halman and queer platonic crew (Bowman/Poole/HAL)

Least favorite pairing

Theres really not many ships in general and everything I can think of is a character outside of ASO being shipped with HAL so none

Favorite moment

GONNA BE DOIN A BOOK MOMENT AND A MOVIE MOMENT

the way the stargate scene is written is just so cool and it makes me so happy the way Clarke combines unrealism with space horror.

alrighty so one of my main interests is old vocal synths, so having HAL sing daisy bell (what is considered the first harmonized song said by a computer, the IBM 704/7094 part of the MUSIC-N series) was just so cool and we love it when the dying robot serenades his babygirl before death

Rating out of 10

10/10 by far one of my favorite things ever used to be the only thing I would ever make art of (but now its ASO and portal)

thank you for asking dude, this was really fun :D

If you've made it this far, remember, you will be baked, and there will be cake (/ref)

[ceramicdove]

[deep inhale] So these guys huh

Avataro Sentai Donbrothers (2022, currently ongoing), written by Toshiki Inoue (the man who put a gay sex scene in Rider Time: Kamen Rider Ryuki (2019)), is about a lot of things but basically there's this higher plane of existence called Ideon the stability of which heavily relies on human thoughts and feelings (despite the Nouto, its main inhabitants, being unable to understand said human feelings). When a human's desire goes out of control they become a monster called a Hitotsuki and that's bad for Ideon so they sent three people (read: Sonoi and his high school besties. Yeah they got high school there apparently) to the human world to do something about it (spoiler: they end up falling in love with humanity in their own ways and now the Council kinda has to execute them oops). Sonoi is their leader and while he genuinely values human life a lot he's also disgusted by human greed and desire and stuff. Enter Tarou Momoi.

Tarou, the main character, is a human (not really actually but that's not relevant right now) guy who's 1) better than everyone at everything, 2) physically unable to lie (like, it straight up temporarily kills him), and 3) wants nothing more than to help people. Sonoi tells him he wishes more people were like him. Also he tells him he is hope to him. Also they talk about how beautiful the moon is. Also Tarou suggests going to eat out sometime (they do manage it but much later and everyone else is forced to watch their date). And more. You get the idea. This is all until Sonoi finds out Tarou is actually the guy he's been fighting for the last several episodes, upon which he (distraught) goes "actually nvm you are despair to me" and manages to kill him (because since Tarou can't lie he just casually asked him about his weak point earlier).

However Sonoi feels insanely bad about taking advantage of him so he helps bring Tarou back (tooootally so they can have a fair and just rematch). And then they do have a fair and just rematch and Sonoi dies but then Tarou ends up helping bring him back and because it was done using some of Tarou's power Sonoi has red eyes now and acts kinda like him. This is what he has to say on the matter: "We're alike, you and I. Like the sea and the sky! The two of them face each other, but can never commingle! But, even so… they share the same blue!" (homosexuality?) And then they rematch and he kills Tarou and then Tarou comes back and then Sonoi's back to normal and now they just kinda fight each other for fun regularly they're like if Romeo and Juliet were two gay autistic men I think. Here is their character song (it plays at the end of the ep where Sonoi dies). What did they mean by this I wonder

Absolutely horribly written ask but I am not an expert on them so sorry I probably got something wrong and/or missed something. I asked my friend who I think IS an expert on them about what I should absolutely mention were I to ever explain them to someone with zero prior Donbros knowledge and they just said this

Other fun Sonoi facts: once he decides to help Tarou with his delivery job (don't ask) and Tarou goes "don't worry about how he's dressed" to a customer and Sonoi is like "I'll have you know I'm considered a fashion leader in my world :/" and yeah it just kinda goes like that. I hope you could understand my vision because I could not put it into words

KIARA. [CRAWLS TO YOU WHILE COVERED IN BLOOD] I MADE IT. I made it. I'm here now.

Thank you so much for sending this to me. Starting off so early with the phrase "the man who put a gay sex scene in Rider Time: Kamen Rider Ryuki" is truly genius. There really is nothing else that gets you hooked quite like that.

JUST BASED ON THE BAREBONES CONCEPT, THIS ACTUALLY VAGUELY REMINDS ME OF A WEB COMIC/WEB NOVEL I CAME UP WITH AND STARTED MAPPING OUT CIRCA AGE 13-14? Similar dichotomy surrounding feelings and humanity (or lack thereof). I envy my younger self's ability to be passionate about an original project like that, because these days my ability to create & design original characters is truly, completely dead. Back to the relevant things, though. I'm truly sad I didn't find this earlier, because I feel it could have rewired my brain around that age. But I truly feel like this is a wonderful concept to explore.

THE PART ABOUT "PHYSICALLY UNABLE TO LIE (LIKE IT STRAIGHT UP TEMPORARILY KILLS HIM)" WAS SO FUNNY I'M SORRY. NO CLUE WHY OR HOW THAT HAPPENS TO HIM (feel free to explain if you want to) BUT...YEOWCH! Damn he's fucked. I am kind of already fond of him, though...you were right in your assumption, I do feel this is a set of characters I'd be likely to latch onto. Especially given the entire...Problem they have surrounding the murderfighting hope/despair thing. That is awesome and so beautiful to me.

Kiara. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the absolute gem that is the phrase "they're like if Romeo and Juliet were two gay autistic men I think". This means the world to me. I would pin this to my heart if I could. The world needs more Romeo and Juliet that are two gay autistic people. It's really necessary to the ecosystem, and also to...me!

I'm also listening to their song right now. IT'S GOOD? It's genuinely quite good. I really enjoy the jazziness and atmosphere of it all. "As paths cross/A certain sensation's felt/A connection/that can't be quantified/Whether to join hands/or clash/Only the moon knows/the outcome" Ahemmm ummmmmhmmm [BATS MY EYELASHES MEEKLY BEFORE RUNNING AWAY AND TRIPPING LIKE AN ANIME GIRL/NEWBORN BABY DEER] I wonder what that certain sensation is...! Oh my! Oh my...!

Your friend's input is also deeply valuable to me because likening two characters to elementary schoolers with crushes on each other also trying to kill each other is another good way to set a mousetrap for me. Elementary school gay autistic romeo and juliet murder is truly top 5 pairings any piece of media has ever come up with.

TAROU HAVING A DELIVERY JOB WAS A SLAP IN THE FACE. But I think I can understand your vision. I think I can. I may never know the full truth, but I can keep my heart open and absorb the psychic energies of these two little freakazoids.

Thank you so, so, so much for sharing this piece of information with me. I don't think I ever would've found out about them otherwise. Perhaps some day soon I'll be thinking back on them and I'll go on a little deep dive journey to learn more. Who knows?

And of course, thank you Toshiki Inoue for everything you contributed to our society. After Kamen Rider fucking and gay autistic Romeo & Juliet, the universe will never be the same. I hope his mind continues to produce...whatever is going on up there. God bless!

[totally-correct-shenanigans]

(the same psa as my little reason why applies here: it's late; i'm not medicated and very autistic; and my lines between canon and my fanon get blurry sometimes . incomprehensibility ahead!)

aha ! more musical rambling . i'm very full of brain about these songs so i hope you are ready for at least 3 of these , possibly more . i said i was going to go backwards from strangest to most sensical but arbitrary rules put in place by myself aren't real or legally binding so you get this, which makes the absolute most sense to me of everything ever:

rule #23 - birds of a feather ; fish in a birdcage

this is THE sly cooper song. (it also applies to fa.bian seac.aster and prince sid.on and also possibly ste.ven un.iverse because those four are all the same character in different fonts and i will DIE on that hill.)

now this song is quite a bit longer and as such the breakdown/analysis will be quite a bit longer. i would apologize, but this is the most sly cooper song to ever sly cooper song (/j, so i will not.

another preface before we really get into it 3 is my favorite of the three and i like the full found family of the cooper gang so that's certainly influencing this lol. just keep in mind that most parts that i'm like "this is about the cooper gang!" could probably JUST be about bentley and murray if you wanted! it's all up to interpretation <3

"She was born by the sea / Her father bounced her on his knee / While he shared past stories of grandeur"

okay so for the sake of lyrical clarity i'm not gonna change the pronouns BUT the she really should be he bc it's sly the 'she' is sly <3 literally sly says the words "it all started when i was just a kid, bouncing on my father's knee" like. (i should clarify i don't know fi that's the exact phrasing but i know he says that he was bouncing on his father's knee so that's what's important yknow.)

the past stories of grandeur are presumably a mix of connor's misadventures/whatever old wive's tales he told and the tales from the thievius raccoonus. i know sly techinically didn't inherit the book until he was 8 (and then he really didn't get to until he was 18) but i think it's said/shown that he had at least read some of it before then and just bc he didn't own it doesn't mean connor didn't tell him stories y'know.

"That would dance inside her head / Every night while tucked in bed / Same tales, different actor"

i think this is pretty self-explanatory lol . i suppose i don't remember it being said that sly always wanted to be a master thief like the rest of his family but i'm pretty sure it's implied and by the time we meet him he's dead-set on living up to his family's legacy so. i'm sure he had his fantasies about being a master thief !!

"There were costumes on the floor / She'd use a wooden stick and board / To vanquish the foes that were after / All them stuffed-up toys"

please imagine sly with a fake child-proof tiny version of the cooper cane beating up stuffed animals while connor watches proudly .

"All them stuffed-up toys / That were sticking 'round by choice / They were family, in this together"

(note: the "all them stuffed-up toys" line isn't sang twice it's just written twice because i couldn't decide on where i wanted it to go)

desperately trying to figure out what this line means even in a non-sly cooper context lol. why are the stuffed-up toys that were playing the role of foes sticking around by choice and being family in this together. or perhaps the foes are after all them stuffed-up toys that were sticking 'round by choice?

anyway. in a sly cooper context, please consider these two options:

either it's about sly's actual family e.i. connor and sly's scarcely spoken of mother (we get a cutoff family photo and sly saying "[the five] caught up with my parents" (parents plural) and that's about all we have of sly's mom lol). perhaps if my "the foes are after the stuffed-up toys" theory is correct, the foes could be the fiendish five, and the stuffed-up toys that were stickin' round by choice are sly's parents.

i read a really good fic once where connor told his wife that she could escape bc she wasn't technically a cooper and her response was "fuck that i'm staying." maybe that's the "sticking 'round by choice, they were family, in this together" thing. that's kind of sweet.

or option two it's a preface to the next line, and the ones that "were sticking 'round by choice" are bentley and murray. my gay heart of found family sings for this, but i think i prefer option one, because there's plenty of found family-ness to be had as the song continues and also the idea of sly's mom very willingly sticking around to defend her husband & her son makes me Feel Things .

"Well she grew like a tree / She sought out bonny company / Built the finest crew you could ask for"

note: bonny means attractive or beautiful

sly grew more like a twig than a tree but that's okay /j

presumably this bonny crew is bentley and murray, but if you'd like to place this in sly 3 it could also be the whole cooper gang! i imagine the extended cg were a little more "sought out" than bentley and murray were, but the brothers were the first two even if they weren't exactly sought out. it's important to keep your roots in mind ! either way i'm sure they were the finest crew sly could ask for, so.

"They were brave and sturdy lads / That reminded her of Dad / Back to back, birds of a feather"

okay this one makes me moreso think of the full CG because i cannot imagine just bentley and murray, esp. in sly 1 times, really reminding him of connor. though maybe in part they do bc it's implied in the comics* that sly didn't know connor had a team until mcsweeney contacted him so maybe bentley and murray remind sly of his father in ways that may or may not have actually applied to his father.

to be fair, i'm sure they'd have reminded sly of connor in some ways, even if they weren't like super major. this post is already so long that my post editor is lagging lol that's not related just funny to me.

again, either way the last line applies; be it with just bentley and murray or with the full gang, they are back-to-back, and they are birds of a feather :]

"(Ah di ah, hi di oh) / A voyage for the soul / Back to back, birds of a feather"

(notes: this is the chorus so i'm not gonna rewrite it every time lol. also i just went with the spotify lyrics for the ah di ah, hi di oh because i'm not sure how else one would spell that so . ah di ah hi di oh yknow)

my aforementioned sly 3-loving heart says that the voyage for the soul should be the one for the map, but really i think all 3 game's Voyages tm count, so ! take your pick. again, they're all back-to-back birds of a feather regardless.

"With a scaled-down graph / Her husband did the math / On a course to have the advantage"

two options ! we replace husband with brother and say it's bentley, because he absolutely would have a scaled-down graph and he's usually the one making courses so they can have the advantage. and doing math.

OR you can say it's carmelita during one of the times they're working together. i highly doubt she had a scaled-down graph during Krakarov, but she DID set a course so they could have the advantage... if you consider shooting lava slugs and deathray supports "setting a course," that is. and if you consider sly's cane The Advantage. which to be fair it kind of is so.

again, take your pick ! a very flexible tune we have today :]

"'Cause the British, they were smart / But they didn't have the heart / Of our strong, Irish companions"

okay this is the "swept in with the throng" of this one bc i do not have any like solid brain thoughts about this BUT this is yet another one that can apply to all three games but that i like applying to the third:

for thievius raccoonus, "the British" could be the Fiendish Five, in which the "strong, Irish companions" are bentley and murray

for band of thieves, "the British" could be the Klaww Gang, and the companions are once more Bentley and Murray

or for honor among thieves, the companions are of course the full Cooper Gang, but "the British" could be all of the miscellaneous sly 3 villains or it could be- if you stand at a distance and don't look directly at it- read as referring to the Klaww Gang and the Fiendish Five! looking back at my little reason why you should be able to tell that i have strong opinions about the dysfunctionality of the villain teams lol. anyway it's like the panda king and dimitri being like "yeah you guys were good at being evil but you all hated each other. and now we've got a team that's good at bieng good(?) AND love each other." y'know? y'know.

"They can write shoddy laws / And try to buy her off"

this is the REAL swept in with the throng but something something interpol and cops and sly being seduced by or seducing carmelita and neyla and eventually giving up his thieving life for the former something something "buying him off" something something

"But they'll never own what we have here / A solidarity, within familiar seas / 'Cause we are one in a thousand"

back at it again with the found family <3 i think this one's mostly self-explanatory; the cooper gang is superior bc they're not just a team of thieves, they're a family, hence the "solidarity within familiar seas."

"She defended her name / As the cannon-shots and flames / Tried to deter what she is after"

glancing back at thievius raccoonus where sly is literally defending his name and getting said thievius raccoonus back while the five are constantly trying to kill him. the "cannon-shots and flames" specifically reminds me of clockwerk which tbf he really did try and deter sly so.

however, throughout all three games sly is defending his name and dealing with "cannon-shots and flames" (literal (looking at you Dead Men Tell No Tales) or otherwise) so once more the flexibility comes in lol.

"And although she lost her love / She's never giving up / To these tyrant dirty ol' bastards"

gotta admit i'm not entirely sure what to make of the "although she lost her love" in this context but sly 4's angry ex plotline (derogatory) comes to mind. or maybe it's just about him not being able to be w/ her throughout the trilogy bc they're on separate sides of the law, who's to say.

anyway sly never gives up to tyrant dirty old bastards and in fact frequently makes tyrant dirty old bastards give up instead. once more reminds me specifically of thievius raccoonus but i'm not 100% sure why. something about the spite and the spark that only cocky sly 1 sly has, maybe

"We would charge as a pack / You could never hold us back / We are fierce and grew with each battle"

and back to the sly-3-ness :] they don't really "charge as a pack" until the big heist at the end but they do charge as a pack so i think it still counts. and they really aren't held back, with the exception of sly's near-death experience- and even then they DO still get into the vault so really i just don't think they can be held back. and they are certainly fierce !

and they literally grow with each battle in sly 3. like that's the whole reason you fight half the battles, so the crew can grow. now that i'm thinking about it i think Dr. M is the only one you don't fight to grow the crew and that's hilarious. and fitting !

"'Cause it's etched inside our veins / The hardships that we've gained / We've become a myth unraveled"

i wanna say bentley getting chomped is a prime example of their hardships being "etched inside [their] veins" and i'm sure the others (sly included) have a lot of scars after all their misadventures.

also there's no way the cooper gang isn't like a legend in the criminal underworld, all things considered. i don't think you take down not one, but two prime contenders in said criminal underworld and not be considered a legend, hence the becoming a myth thing.

i have a fic wip that's literally just about the B team learning that the brothers are in fact not the untouchable legends they'd heard of. that's only vaguely related but it feels close enough, considering they've "become a myth unraveled." if you want like an actual Thing for them being unraveled, just consider the unraveling the disbanding of the crew post-heist, which leads into the next part fairly well i think.

"In those final days / In the castle she had claimed / She drew the sword that had brought her / Through countless victories that she survived to see / In the tales of her own grandeur"

the castle is actually carmelita's apartment /j

presumably "the sword" is really the cooper cane, all things considered. i think the full-circle-ness of this is really sweet in a sly context; several times, sly mentions living up to his father and his family's legacy, and now he can say he's got a "tale of [his] own grandeur" and has officially made his father proud :]

*i think it's in the first one; sly says that his dad would have been able to pull the heist alone, which therefore implies that he thinks his dad did do it alone. it's 4:20 am (nice) and the incomprehensibility is TRULY starting to sink in so i'm not sure this makes any sense to anyone else but it makes sense to me i swear.

if you read all of that, two things:

one! you're my hero and i love you. /p

two! are you OKAY. /j

[survey--s]

611.

What does your town’s name begin with?  An M.

What number house do you live at?  Yeah, I'm not putting my house number on here, lol.

Are you a seafood fan?  It depends what time - I love clams, prawns, crab and lobster but I'm not a huge fan of mussels or oysters.

Do you prefer dark, brown or white chocolate?  Milk chocolate is my favourite closely followed by dark.

Give me a random word in another language. Tell me what it means.  Schokolade means chocolate in German.

Can you cook Thai food? Not without a recipe.

Do you get easter eggs at easter?  I normally buy myself one, yeah, but I don't really get given Easter eggs anymore as an adult.

How long does it roughly take you to do the weekly or bi weekly shopping?  I get an online shop once a week and it takes me about 15-20 minutes to put it all together and order it.

Who taught you the most valuable lesson in life and what was that lesson?  I honestly don't know. I can't think of one particular lesson that stands out to me more than any other.

Which city would you like to visit- Rome, Tunis, London, Madrid or Paris?  Madrid or Tunis as I've already visited the others several times over.

Would you rather visit Australia, Germany, Croatia or Jamaica?  Croatia. I have no real interest in visiting Jamaica and I've been to the others already.

Have you got perfect vision?  No, my eyesight is about -9 in both eyes -_-

What colour bedspread or blanket is on your bed now?  I just changed the sheets this morning actually - currently they're white sheets with pink & purple butterflies on them.

What colour is the door to your house?  Silver metal with privacy glass.

Would you prefer a pet rat, mouse, snake, lizard or spider?  A lizard or a snake maybe. Though I looked after some lizards recently and they ate live insects which freaked me out slightly, hahah. They were pretty cool animals though.

What song(s) do you put on repeat often?  At the moment it's Cinderella Snapped by Jax or Savage Daughter by Ekaterina someone or other. I can't spell her surname and I'm not even going to try lol. I believe she's Ukranian.

 How many letters long is your last name? Six. <–Same! <--- me too!

Can you play the violin? If not, would you like to?  No and no, not really, but I remember being jealous of my friends who took violin lessons when I was younger lol.

Can you keep a pokerface and not show your emotions easily? No - my emotions are written ALL over my face.

Are you a good liar (tell the truth this time)? Sometimes. It depends on the situation.

Are you wearing shoes, just socks or nothing on your feet?  I have bare feet at the moment.

What word or phrase is disgusting in your opinion and you hate hearing it?  I can't stand the worst moist.

Do you like the smell of a barbecue or bonfire?  Ooh, I absolutely love it. It reminds me of summer.

Do you prefer to write etc, ecetera or something else?  etc.

Do you think rainbows are pretty or overrated?  I love a rainbow.

Are your lips chapped?  Nope.

Have you ever fallen into a hole or crevice whilst hiking?  Not a major one, no.

Ever been quad biking? Was it any good? No, I've never been. I would if I was given the opportunity though.

What is different about you than others you hang out with?  I'm autistic.

Are you more skeptical or gullible?  Skeptical.

How often do you drink sodas or fizzy drinks?  Everyday.

How many cups of tea or coffee do you have a day?  Normally two cups of coffee and occasionally an iced coffee too.

Has anyone ever called you apathetic or unemotional?  Yes, and I certainly can be in some situations.

Favourite crisp/chip flavour?  Salt and vinegar, cheese, paprika.

Do you put salt and vinegar on your fries?  Yes, always. Especially if they're proper "chippy chips".

What accent is the sexiest?  Irish, Scottish, Australian.

Do you currently live in the same country you were born in?  Yes.

What’s your current mood?  Relaxed. Also surprised at how quickly my time off is going lol.

Do you struggle to articulate your thoughts and feelings?  Not on here, no, but I do struggle with it in real life sometimes.

A romantic meal, a trip to a theme park or go to a concert?  Theme park.

Prefer being in control in a team environment, helping out or taking orders?  I would just rather not be in a team environment lol.

Do you like carrot cake?  Yep, it's one of my favourites lol.

Don’t you hate it when people say ‘I don’t mean to be rude but…’? Especially considering 98% of the time they ARE trying to be rude?  No, because I say it all the time lol. I just think people are away too easy to take offence these days. I know that's an unpopular opinion though.

Would you say yes to a drink from a friend of a friend?  Yeah, if my friend was also there.

How good is your memory? Annoyingly good. I wish I found it easier to forget thing sometimes.

On a scale of 1-10 how was this survey? Did you enjoy it?  It was actually pretty good as there were a few decent and original questions - I'd say a seven.

[theholidayslingerlikebadperfume]

the fact that would've could've should've and bigger than the whole sky both sound somewhat like dear john and somewhat like style is really heartbreaking idk if it was on purpose but it makes them sadder

I was fully prepared to laugh at how ridiculous this was but I actually played style and wcs back to back and I'm really uncomfortable by how right you are, anon.

The end of WCS ends with the same guitar note style opens up with, and like she definitely does the same background singing in both songs. I dont know if she did it on purpose, I'm not taylor so I can't say but it feels like she did.

It actually breaks my heart whenever I think about style because I'm actually convinced it is about her ED, just like I think bad blood is about her ED too (or rather how her ED made her distrust everyone and ruin her friendship with katy) and I just hate it so much because it's such a beautifully written song on the surface about a rocky and anxiety fueled relationship (I honestly don't think haylor was pr but I do think it was mostly anxiety and ED fueled... in fact, the way she writes about Harry, it feels exactly like the way I used one of my old flames as a way to feed my ED desire to feel beautiful) and that writing just really adds to the depth of the ED themes of style because like, I don't ever think haylor was a good couple and although they weren't pr, i do think that taylor was kind of chasing like... heartthrob in a sense? Like okay, so

When I was closeted, the type of man that I went after very, very much played into like heteronormative standards of attraction and what white people thought was attractive. Like, not just the race of the person but more like their entire aura and like the way they behaved. I'm not saying I wasn't attracted to non-white people, I'm saying that even the non-white people I was attracted to were like very heteronormative looking.

It played into my desire to feel conventionally attractive and there is a huge thing about queer women not being real women, and I was shamed for my sexuality before I even knew I was bisexual because of this stereotype of queer women being desperate for love that they turn gay when men don't give them what they truly desire.

So, like, not to project myself onto taylor, but the way that she wrote about men reminds me of this same desire I had to market myself as a good woman. Like, the miss American documentary, it's flowery in language and its from a white perspective but I don't think that means it's any less nuanced, right? Like her talking about her desire to be a good woman is really asute of her.

Like, for a white woman, that is the standard of femininity that we aspire to teach our daughters to emulate. We want to been seen as good, and taylor constantly rails against this desire, especially since 1989.

People forget just how outspoken she was for the time, like I was reading her vogue kaylor interview and she was talking a lot about women's role in society. This was in 2014, before she was really seen as a "feminist."

Like, the difference between the social perception of taylor that I remember and me reading these articles is so cognitively dissonant for me. Like, yes, she is a white feminist but like she's really not as white of a feminist as we claim she is as a fandom.

I've been reading a lot of her interviews from 2014-2016 recently and it's crazy how aware she was of the social dynamics and how well she pushed back against those dynamics in a way that she didn't receive flack for being a radical feminist.

Like, she very much was tired of the good girl image that she used to want to portray and I think that we have to keep in mind, taylor has told us this was her belief system. It feels very autistic to me, honestly, but that could just be my autism speaking for my own desire to be a good woman since it's something that all white women are taught to desire, not just autistics.

But I digress, like, taylor doesn't ever say anything controversial during this time but she still tries to make her opinion known while not trying to rock the boat. So like all of this combined, to me, 1989 feels more like an exploration of gender roles than anything else.

Yes, there is romance on the album but it's not an album about finding love. It's about finding yourself outside of the expectation put on women, especially white women during this time, to find love or to make "a man stay."

So yeah, I can definitely see how style is connected to wcs especially and I really appreciate you bringing this to my attention because WOW big brain take anon.

[voparwave69]

when you get this, list 5 songs you like to listen to, publish. then, send this ask to the last 10 people in your notifs (positivity is cool!!)

I probably won't do the chain thing but I'll totally list 5 songs but I'm gonna add my own twist to it and show 5 songs I have especially good memories with :o) my followers should totally do the same with it and get down with the sharing of our best memories, and most importantly, this is a no judgment zone with either the song or the memory, this is about sharing good times only 💯

my first dance with my boyfriend was to this and it was out under a full moon in a swamp and I was BLITZED, we also listened to it together after he helped me finally put a stop to my grandmother and her husband's evil bullshit, this is like, basically his song that he chose to devote to me :o)🐅🐅 he is also an INCREDIBLE dancer and was somehow busting it down with crazy ass moves just to this doo wop song. It was like he was hearing rhythms i couldn't, I could just feel them in his body

Another really good memory song with my boyfriend, he's helped me to fight huge battles against people I never thought i could stop several times now, and this was another "Ive got you" song he'd play for me when the peace came. He's also a drummer, drums are sacred in Hinduism, and when he says "now I'm walking again to the beat of the drum, and I'm counting the steps to the door of your heart" he always squeezes my hand. He's autistic and often is nonverbal, so he likes to communicate through songs and hand squeezing at certain lines :o)

This is my boyfriends favorite song, and a lot of the lyrics are "hand squeeze" lyrics for him, where he lets music and touch carry how he feels to me when his mouth can't. He did an absolutely beautiful dance to this for me, I just watched him. Hes so much like a peacock. Shiva is known as the Lord of Dance, and to be honest, it felt like Shiva himself was serenading me. His name is Rudra, which is the name of Shivas counterpart basically, so to say Shiva was serenading me is actually pretty fitting :o)🦚

Fucking goofy ass change in tone I know, but I have good ass memories with this song too‼When I first started becoming religious, it was easier for me to not get overwhelmed by all these huge beautiful changes if I involved humor in it too. And the whole universe was expanding before me far beyond what my previously atheist self ever thought it could, much less would. I was finally aware of miracles being fucking real and being all around me in every direction. And I was like, oh my god like the Fucking Magnets song hahahaha. I started listening to this as a joke but I'd be so happy listening to it that it became a song I legitimately and unironically love. I went to a fireworks show where the fireworks were reflecting off the heavy fog, making the entire sky turn into rainbows with every BOOM, and the best thing is firework colors are the same colors as shooting stars, so it was like I was in a fucking portal to the most magical meteor shower ever recorded. I was high as FUCK too and actually dissociated from joy which I didny know was possible. Then I went home still all blissed out and smoked another blunt while listening to this. And I saw a goddamn UFO‼‼‼ I always say that day was like I literally went up to stoner heaven :o)

And the final one, my boyfriend always says this song was written so perfectly about me, down to every word. It's a big hand squeezing song :o) I swear he acts like im a goddess and it can baffle the fuck out of me. But my god yall don't know how much I love this man. I think we are one being, dancing through space dust only we know is there. 🌺💃🏻🕺🏿🌺 I love my Ru Ru for eternity, and I know we'll always find each other, until the very end of the next universe itself 🐅🐅

[finsterhund]

one of many entries into the “yes, video games ARE art” list to me is this little indie RPG maker game called “To The Moon” for being probably the first blatant time in my life where I was exposed to a piece of media that very on the nose conveyed the message of “trying to cure a neurodivergence/PTSD/etc isn’t “a cure” it’s killing part of the person" or whatever. And that is very important message to me with my lifelong childhood PTSD

Okay so basically, I can’t remember if I ever fully played the game myself or if I just watched other people play it but the premise can be basically summed up as “this organization wants to make it so that an old guy gets to experience his lifelong wish of going to the moon, before he dies” and they need to literally manipulate his life’s memories in order to accomplish this. As the game progresses it becomes apparent that the only way to achieve this goal so that he can experience his lifelong dream is by completely wiping the memories of the person he loved more than anything else in the universe. Which, coincidentally, this bond is the only reason why he wanted to go to the moon so bad in the first place. These people, in an effort to give him what he wanted more than anything would have had to literally eradicate the whole reason he wanted it in the first place.

It’s a very sad tear-jerker story and I remember fucking bawling for hours after completion. The game also includes a song written specifically for it and that song for years and years now long after memories of the game itself have faded is still firmly cemented in my “you are the only living piece of a sacred bond that was broken by death” playlist. (don’t ask questions you aren’t prepared for the answers to)

But like, that exact concept is exactly why you can’t “cure” trauma disorders and why “curing” being neurodivergent doesn’t work, and will never work. Because you are cutting out massive parts of what makes you, you. In order to cure CPTSD in particular in this way you would have to eliminate possibly the entirety of your identity forming memories, lived experiences, etc. And any insistence of “curing” something like autism or ADHD would be killing whole processes in the brain responsible for how you and everything you are was formed. When people argue that they want a “cure” for autism instead of a series of adaptive treatments to help autistic people live in our society in ways that are less stressful to us and develop strategies for dealing with things that make having autism so difficult it is actually campaigning for eugenics. You want to kill the autism within your “perfect child that’s been ruined by it” but deep down that “perfect child” doesn’t exist. So many of the “help” that shitty “charities” like autism speaks do to autistic children are just psychological (or even physical) abuse designed solely to beat the autism out of them and force them to submit and hide that they’re different. Because groups like autism speaks don’t want to help neurodivergent people, they want to get rid of us. They exist for the benefit of other people, not us.

For sure there’s other media out there that have conveyed this message probably better or with more tact, but To The Moon hit it so bluntly and on the nose that I keep thinking back on that years later. Pretty sure if I played the game again it’d kill me psychologically.

[lostinthought1006]

Ah!! A fellow boniji fan on tumblr! Yipee!! 🎉🎉🎉

I don't rb posts often but this time it's gonna be super long and rambly...

First of all, you were the one who wrote "my dream is (to be) yours"?!! OMG NO WAY! I loved that fic!! It's actually one of my fave boniji fics that's been imprinted on my mind after I read it, and ever since anticipated the next chapter to come (don't sweat it tho \^o^/) it's actually my first time knowing abt the hanahaki disease trope, such an interesting concept. I don't mind the corniness of the fic, I think it's charming and kinda lowkey want a bit of angst in the upcoming chapters :3c

For the other fics, we have the same picks too! "Just Enough to be Enough" is a heartwarming one, "Midnight and Daydreams" & "A Sellout Night" are such cute fics! "Bubblegum Detergent" is a funny one and I liked how the writer incorporates pics into the fic! "A Kiss is Not a Cure" however.....man it BROKE me! Like it also fucked me up so bad that I'm kinda traumatized to read it again lol. I really like how it's written tho like how the story is panned out through each memento BUUUT the hurt/no comfort-angst is really too much for me >.< (that's saying smth cuz I love angst too)

Anyways... for the song recs, I checked out the album of Bocchi's VA and I really like the songs. "STEP&CLAP" became one of my fave! It's SUUUPER CUTE and bubbly and I can totally see Bocchi & Nijika dancing to this or maybe Bocchi singing this to Nijika cuz when I translated the lyrics, the line: "it's a miracle that we met" and the rest of the song just scream BoNiji! It made me so giddy I cried tears of joy a bit xD

Also love あやめ色の夏に / 透明人間 & ツギハギ which kinda reaching but it also remind me of boniji esp with tsugihagi's lyrics making me think of Bocchi's thoughts abt the first uncertain years with Nijika when they did end up in a relationship. I could ramble more abt that scenario but I don't think it'll be coherent 😅😅 Also!! don't you think Ayame no Iro kinda sounds like Aoi Haru to Nishi no Sora (one of Kessoku Band's new song)? I just think it's nice :))

Onto HC 1!! I really like the idea of Seika wanting to be a big sis figure to Bocchi/is the no. 1 boniji supporter. I like to think the closer Bocchi & Nijika become, the less tsuntsuntsun~dere Seika becomes lol and is willing to open/lighten up/support them. Also from her advice of "I'm watching over you" to Bocchi turns into "Watch over/take care of my sis/each other" eventually when BoNiji starts to date <3

HC 2! Gosh the inferiority complex thing makes me think of that arc(?) in the manga where the anime ended, when Bocchi was revealed as "guitar hero" by Poison Yami and the Band esp Nijika thinks they're not good enough when it comes to skills compare to her?!! Aughhh. And their first meeting?! It's so dear to me, like they're fated to meet (soulmates if you will) and the symbolism! Not only did Nijika brought light but also brought color into Bocchi's monotone life (Nijika's name meaning rainbow and all xD)

HC 3! OUGH! the passing down Nijika's ribbon to Bocchi actually reminds me of a Madoka Magica AU! (tho it's inevitable to associate my OTP with the yuri gods lol) With Bocchi wearing the ribbon on her hair and being the only one who remembers Nijika...OR!! vice versa where Nijika wears Bocchi's cubes and I'd like to visualize with that scene in the last ep of PMMM, Futari (being Madoka's lil bro) is drawing Bocchi (Madoka) on the sand, sees Nijika wearing the cubes and goes: "Bocchi-chan! Bocchi-chan!"; N: "Yep, it looks just like her..." 😭😭😭 *explodes*

HC 3 cont'd! I'm kinda curious to know what's the rash thing Nijika's gonna do if Bocchi's the one who passed away... 👀💦

HC 4! Hell yeah! Trans Bocchi valid!! I also hc boniji to be lesbians (kinda obvious) and in the the ace spectrum. Also autistic Bocchi!! (◔‿◔) 🎉🎉🎉

HC 5! Another convo? Like in ep8? You know what, me too! And if we're lucky (for a possible BTR S2), maybe the anime could make an original scene like a callback to ep8... (reaching, but here's to hoping 👀🤞🙌) Also!! You know that manga chapter where after watching Sideros perform as the winners of the Mikakunin riot, Bocchi & Nijika started to cry(my bbys!!) bc despite their efforts to win they're still heavy-hearted that they lost. I wanted so bad for them to hug and comfort each other like aughhh!!! My girls, it's ok it's ok, you did good, you can hug it out, console one another!!! Like those two really need to hug each other but both manga & anime are holding back on their closeness and uh *cough*rather push the bo/kita propaganda*cough* I'm kinda bitter that the anime cut out an entire chapter with this scene

And pretty much cut out the scene at the last episode where Nijika is talking to the staff that sells Bocchi her new guitar, and was then given the title of "Angel of ShimoKitazawa" *curses! I hate that they removed that *sigh* well at least we got Bocchi sniffing Nijika's hair & the vending machine original scene in the anime but I'm still bummed out 😤😑

HC 6! BoNiji living together! Kessoku band sharehouse would be so chaotic and hell for Nijika tho, reminds me of that manga chapter where Ryo & Kita crashed at Nijika's room and they've become so bothersome while she's studying that she got pissed and kicked them out lmao. Bocchi would literally be the only one Nijika prefer to stay while she's studying cuz she'll just be quiet doing her own thing, and when on her free time maybe they'll cuddle/play games/do some acoustic jamming/maybe cook together...all that mushy domestic couple stuff :>

HC 7! Touchy BoNiji! The thought of them being cuddly alone together esp like offstage after every concert, Bocchi would nuzzle up to Nijika to recharge her social battery while Nijika plays with Bocchi's hair <- This scenario was actually inspired from a boniji doujin "I've always wanted to meet you" by Orikuchi Hirata I read on Mangadex. IT'S MY FAVE! and it gave me a lot of emotions! I wanna know what u think abt it if you (already) read it! ^^

HC 8-10! I kinda ran out of words to express my thoughts BUT I really like these HCs too!! Emotionally supportive & perceptive boniji *chef's kiss* The "guitar hero" reveal scene *legendary* BoNiji picking up each other's personality *wonderful* Bocchi & Nijika really does complement each other 🥰💗💛

HC 11! AWEEEE!! Nijika doodling Bocchi is sooo cute!! Actually wouldn't it be interesting that the chibi versions of Kessoku Band at the EDs are actually Nijika's doodles?? Achhkkk I'm dying of cuteness!!

Hoooboy!! This also got long... and btw op I think it's obvious to say that I'm the asker o/ hiii! Really sorry my supposed reply is super late and got super rambly 😅 I wanna ramble more but I'm kinda conscious barging in ur dms out of nowhere and idk how to initiate a convo ><💦

I also want to draw and post boniji stuff too (on my side blog which I kinda abandoned due to a never-ending art block) like a bunch of prompts and comic ideas that I wanna draw someday but so far I've only written them down and haven't sketched anything yet ಥ‿ಥ however I do have boniji amv/edit ideas (I'm a mediocre editor tho and I only have BTR eps in a crunchyass quality xd). I currently have a draft of a boniji x hana no tou (lycoreco ed) and I'm working on an ambitious self indulgent STEP&CLAP edit after listening to it on loop

Also thank u too for answering my ask! I'm reaaally glad I found someone on tumblr that shares the same boniji brainrot as me. Kinda disheartening tho that the boniji tag on tumblr is so very few the moment I started to brainrot abt them just last month... I'm like starved for content so I went to twt for fanart (tho it's nice to see the abundance of it. I still have to navigate through it cuz you can't really avoid weird stuff some jp artists sometimes makes)

This reply is also messy that I think I would overload tumblr's tags if I did end up putting it there (which I intended to do the first time but I reconsider and put it in an rb) and took me hours to write everything here lol I was hyperfocused sm that I forgot to eat (๑•﹏•) (I hope it's readable too...?)

Lastly, the Kessoku relationships chart...holy shit?!! It actually adds up my HP cuz how accurate it is?! like it's literally how I see their relationships!!

Also, was this you're referring to abt Nijika cosplaying? If so, they're both rocking that outfit!

hiiii :3 I noticed ur one (of a few) ppl who ships boniji on tumblr, and I wanna know if you know any accounts/artists who ships them so I could follow them to satiate my boniji fixation >.< Also, some bocchi x nijika questions I wanna personally ask: what songs do you recommend that reminds you of them? Also, what are some boniji fanfics you recommend/like? I probably already read most of their fics but I wanna know what others like. Lastly, ur personal boniji headcanons if you don't mind sharing... 👉👈

I only ask blogs rarely cuz I'm shy so no need to answer immediately...

I'm just brainrotting over boniji so much! im so normal about them (◔‿◔)

AWAWAWA i love boniji like so much like too much like its become my main personality trait!

but youre right!!! it feels like boniji fans are mostly japan natives and there dont seem to be many english speaking boniji fans! ohhh i wish there was more of a following! imagine a boniji zine in the west! i would pay money to get involved with that

im kind of embarrassed about shoving my ships in ppls faces all the time and this might get long and its just me like rambling about my OTP so like .. gona put it under a read more lol. seriously this post is like almost 2k words long thats longer than my average fanfic chapter

i hate to be a shill but im going to be a shill for my fic recommendations:

ive been working on a lowkey corny boniji hanahaki fic on AO3 and some other oneshots, so maybe you would be willing to check my own stuff out?? (if u want .-. im really amateur with this stuff despite being an art student lol) its been on hiatus for like half a year but im just adhd af and keep restarting. im still working on it frequently tho and im secretly hoping to start updating on a consistent basis soon. but i also liked fics like "Midnight and Daydreams" and "Bubblegum Detergent" and "A Sellout Night" and "Just Enough to be Enough" and "A Kiss is Not A Cure". MANNN i remember that last one fucked me up bad when it was posted. it was only the second ever dedicated boniji fic and like I LOVE angst but with how small the sample size of fics was at the time it was like AUFHAUIJKADGF. all those fics are super super good though! i also love the third one, i love the trans bocchi HC personally

umm as far songs songs tho, i guess the ones i associate with boniji most are:

"veil" by keina suda, i remember drafting some animatic for an angsty AU of Hitori living on post-Kessoku

"STEP&CLAP" by yoshino aoyama (aka yoppi aka bocchis VA <3), i think yoppi making the song speaks for itself but its a rly cute song and i love thinking of Hitori and Nijika like tap dancing to it?? check out the rest of yoppi's debut album too!! her voice is so pretty and i was so happy finding out that there are 11 songs with her voice, instead of the 1 from the anime

idk why but i also think of them a lot when listening to PMMM's ost by yuki kaijuri, like "desiderium" and "not yet" and "mada dame yo"? these r kinda a stretch though but idk!!

i also like compiling music that reminds me of them into spotify playlists, if youd like some inspiration for your own! this one and also this angstier one

i have a lot of boniji headcanons but i feel like its hard for me to like list them all in one spot because they usually come to me with context during relevant conversations?? but ill list whatever i can think of!:

this ones not necessarily boniji but i was thinking about it like an hour ago, but i really like the idea of Seika being a huge boniji supporter. like in the source material she already finds Bocchi really cute, so I get the impression she would really like to be an older sister figure for Bocchi (and probably gets jealous of Kikuri for holding that spot in Bocchi's life lol), and so Nijika being a potential love interest for Bocchi would make Seika double down hard on supporting boniji. she'd probably be the one who brings Bocchi up to Nijika more than Nijika would bring her up to Seika?? i also like to imagine that for Seika she has a similar complex to Yoyoko. but instead of "Bocchi is stealing my spot as Hiroi's younger sister figure," it would be "Kikuri is stealing my spot as Bocchi's older sister figure" LOL . if that makes any sense at all

this ones actually taken from a japanese twitter user, but they moved on from boniji after the anime ended. but they had some headcanons that REALLY stuck with me. my favorite was the idea that Bocchi and Nijika both have inferiority complexes with one another. iirc their (translated) words were along the lines of "Bocchi thinks of Nijika as a pure, comforting light in her life, one that could be muddied if Bocchi got involved with her. On the other hand, Nijika thinks of Bocchi as a reliable hero who outshines an ordinary girl like her." i just REALLY like it. it also reminds me of this conversation that Yoppi and Suzushiro had on the BTR podcast, about Bocchi and Nijika's first meeting! like nijika literally brought light into Bocchi's life awdsfsgdhgfjh

actually that same user above also made a tweet that is the reason why i associate Keina Suda's "veil" with boniji! they made a tweet about an AU idea, where, in the event that Nijika would ever pass away, Seika would give Bocchi her ribbon, which Hitori would wear from that point onwards as she continues to play music to honor Nijika's memory. they also suggested that in the opposite event of Hitori passing away, Nijika would possibly do something very rash out of despair but thats dark hahaha!!!!

i kinda think this goes without saying and i think its actually a fairly common HC for BTR characters in general, but I can definitely see Bocchi being trans

I like to imagine that shortly after Volume 2, Bocchi and Nijika would probably have another conversation

eventually, i'm sure if Bocchi and Nijika pursued a relationship that they'd eventually move in together (or like into the same room? if Kessoku Band had a sharehouse?), and since both Bocchi and Nijika tend to be minimalistic with their room decor, their shared room would again become filled with a ton of Ryo's clothes and items and instruments, like how Nijika's room at Seika's apartment is

i think they'd both end up being really touchy with each other, especially when nervous? Bocchi kind of already does this when she's in new places (eg bringing Kita to Shimokitazawa, or going to FOLT for the first time and being dragged by Nijika), but I think it would grow to them finding comfort with each other?

idk if this is necessarily a HC but i really like how Bocchi and Nijika emotionally support each other, even in source. Nijika is shown to have a really good read on Bocchi (to the point of Bocchi worrying that Nijika is actually a psychic), knowing Bocchi's common thought processes, and picking up from Bocchi's mother during her first visit to Kanazawa that karaage chicken can bring Bocchi out of her anxiety attacks, and seems to be the only character who actually comments on Bocchi's growth as an individual and actively tries to facilitate it; but she also doesn't lovebomb Bocchi with praise, striking what seems to be a good balance for pushing Bocchi but also being a reliable confidant for her too.

one of my favorite details from the anime that i really feel doesnt get talked about as often as it should is when Nijika finally notices that Bocchi is guitarhero! she definitely wasn't the first to notice (Seika noticed first, but it seemed like Seika only knew about guitarhero via Nijika. When she notices that Bocchi's playing sounds familiar, her thought process immediately goes towards wondering why Nijika isn't noticing, and then she just tells them to get back to work) but she was the first one that Bocchi admits it too. but my favorite part is how Bocchi says that she wanted to change and grow as a person before telling them the truth, and she says that she especially wanted to grow before Nijika in particular found out! its just really cute, i love how Bocchi was worried about disappointing Nijika. and i like how, after some growth, Bocchi's dream turns from "becoming popular" to "making Kessoku Band the best band it can be" which is like almost basically the same as Nijika's dream! and so it's really nice when Bocchi doubles down on that goal by not remotely entertaining the idea of leaving Kessoku Band, even when goaded by promises of popularity.

last headcanon! because i ran out of thoughts and just came up with this on the spot. but i also like the idea that as the years go on, Bocchi and Nijika in particular may kind of become more similar in personality. i mean, they'd definitely still be distinctly them, but i like to think that Bocchi would eventually start picking up more optimistic habits and stop grimacing all the time, while Nijika would eventually become a little more lax and not reflexively try to dismiss her own negative feelings via looking at the silver lining. i thought of that when Nijika kinda dismisses her family dynamics with her mother's passing and her father's neglect after Kessoku's first real performance, as well as Nijika seeming to admit after inhaling Bocchi Dust(?) during her and Kita's Kanazawa visit that some of her optimism is performative

ok another one Nijika seems to have her art skills commented on sometimes so i like to imagine she has doodles of Bocchi in her sketchbook (alongside everyone else but mostly Bocchi). like think of like Miles Morales drawing a ton of Gwen Stacy like that kinda deal but with Nijika drawing Bocchi. and like Bocchi finds the sketchbook and Nijika freaks out and Bocchi actually doesnt look bc she doesnt want to do something wrong. but then Ryo or Kita take it and look instead and then show Bocchi and Bocchi melts into a flustered puddle

wowwow this got long! sorry! i really mean it when im like OBSESSED with these two like i think ive thought about them on a daily basis ever since the episode aired where Nijika bought Bocchi a cola. isnt that cute, too!? she picked up on Bocchi's favorite soda so quickly! and her buying a box of energy drinks for Bocchi despite not understanding why at all! girlfriend behavior

i really really want to make more boniji content, i'd like to be more active in posting my fics and drabbles and drawings, someday soon. right now most of my boniji content is just illegible sketches in my sketchbook lol

also thank u so much for like sending this ask im like BEGGING internally all the time to be given the chance to talk about them! i dont think theyre like a rarepair or anything, especially with them seeming to be like the second most popular BTR ship in japan, but i do think that not many people talk to them in the english side of the fandom! theyre super super cute and have really good chemistry.

this entire post is probably like a total carwreck i hope its even readable

ill also use this post as an excuse to post my own HCs for a Kessoku Band's relations chart. it's a bonus for reading this far. i'm sorry for draining 22 HP from you with this brain dump

[deng-yi-deng]

CDramas I watched 2022 edition

I thought this would be my shortest cdrama list ever (+ 1 kdrama) because the year started out so slow, but it picked up dramatically towards the end. Still, this year was more about excellent English language shows (OFMD, WWDITS, Sandman) and dropping dramas when they did not spark joy, which was often.

Surprise shoutout to NRTA for doing one (and only one) thing I agree with - trying to cut down on the overall number of episodes per drama. I do think this is improving overall quality, forcing dramas to tighten up writing and pacing.

I had zero interest in watching this year's hits (Love like the Galaxy or Love Between Fairy and Devil) because of petty personal preferences so here's my 'best of the rest'. Fave of the year goes to Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty, the surprisingly well-done costume-buddy cop-mystery-dramedy that I didn't know I needed. Honorable mention to New Life Begins (adorable) and Side Story of Fox Volant for favorite wuxia.

If you want to read a very thorough review of Strange Tales, check out the top review on my drama list (for once I agree with mdl ?!).

*Indicates that the drama was dropped - not an indication of lack of quality, just that I didn't finish

Luoyang

Bad and Crazy (kdrama)

Sword Snow Stride*

The Wind Blows from Longxi*

Heroes*

A Dream of Splendor*

The Side Story of Fox Volant

Light Chaser Rescue

Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty

New Life Begins

see below the cut for my insightful complaining biased reviews

Luoyang (风起洛阳 ) (2021) 2.5/5🌶

I finished this in 2022 so it's on the 2022 list :)

Fun fact: WYB's character is not the main character despite the 217,876 gifs you may have seen. I had high hopes for this one as the novel it was adapted from was written by the same author of Longest Day in Chang'an which I liked. TL;DR version: it does not come even close to Chang'an in terms of the level of screenwriting, directing, art direction, or production. Acting is also weaker on average, but some actors weren't given much to work with.

Huang Xuan is very good, as are many of the actors in minor roles (Old Carrot!!) - I may try to check out some of his other dramas, and would LOVE to see him work with LYX but alas probably never gonna happen. (they're both dancers! and can act! and are handsome! haha, that makes me sound so shallow.) WYB looks like a block of wood through the majority of the drama. Even if (like me) you interpret him as being autistic, it doesn't work. Song Yi's character might win for worst writing for a female character ever! Which is really saying something in cdrama world. Literally the most epic fail of the Bechdel test - she can't even mourn her father for a minute before refocusing all her attention on Erlang-bae. The romance - for either couple - was completely unnecessary to the thriller plot. Erlang and Liu Ran are on my NOTP list for sheer gag-inducing pointlessness. Huang Xuan and Song Qian tried to have a little chemistry but the sparks failed to ignite (see plot) and...sorry Victoria, after seeing you in Broker and then this...not impressed.

Sets & costumes were supposedly expensive (though the ghetto/Unwelcome Well set looked as fake as an old Shaw Bros set) I think most of the $ was spent on hiring lots of extras which - good to get people employed but ? Action scenes - well, you may have already read about them. If not, go ahead and do that I won't pile on. Pacing was brisk but the plot holes. Oh lord. The plot holes. Ending has a completely unnecessary twist (of the knife). Like Chang'an it got progressively weaker after the big mid-way shocker and ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Bad and Crazy (kdrama) 4/5 🌶

This was one of the more entertaining things I watched this year - actually looked forward to a new ep each week. Good acting, lots of action, satisfying ending. I was a little uncomfortable with how they characterized mental illness, but once I gave up and told myself (10 times before each ep.) that it's just a drama, was able to enjoy it.

*Sword Snow Stride (雪中悍刀行) 2/5 🌶

I wanted to like this SO MUCH. Finally some wuxia! With actors I like! The plot is ok, the characters are fun and interesting. Lots of really good actors, many familiar faces. There was humor! And some original ideas but... it was s o o o o s l o w. I lost interest during each episode (sometimes falling asleep) and had to force myself to watch the next one - there was just no momentum episode to episode. I gave up around ep 20. Fight scenes could've been better, which for wuxia is kinda important ya know? (I won't even comment on the cgi since others have already done that - it's not great). I really can't emphasize enough how much I wanted to like this. It's like all the ingredients were there for an amazingly satisfying dish but it was served lukewarm and watered down? I'm also getting a little tired of Zhang Ruoyun playing an all-knowing smartass.

*The Wind Blows from Longxi (风起陇西) 2/5 🌶

Acting: fine. Music: too loud in spots. Sets/styling: good. I didn't mind the dark palette, it seemed appropriate for 3 Kingdoms spy drama. The problem? I found myself wandering away to get snacks or looking at my phone too often, then having to go back and see if I missed a crucial bit of dialog. There was no momentum, nothing felt like it was at stake - which for a slice of life drama might be ok, but this was a spy/political thriller! Chen Kun and Bai Yu were ok (but just). I've heard the dialog is disconcertingly modern in spots, which is not a problem when you're using eng subs. The big red flag for me was the guy at the end who explains what just happened. Like. No. If you have to do that to your film/drama you have FAILED storytelling 101. I should be able to enjoy the story knowing only the basics of history (which I do) and then you fill in the exciting bits. Dropped this mostly because the ending was spoiled for me around ep 16 by a mutual who reblogged a gifset that gave away the identity of the double agent and had NO TAGS AT ALL much less a 'spoiler' tag. And this was before it wrapped for non-VIPs. Uncool. SO UNCOOL. TAG YOUR POSTS PEOPLE.

*Heroes 说英雄谁是英雄 3.5/5🌶

Another wuxia! Maybe...please...maybe? Pros: Baron Chen doing the most dramatic cape flipping, blood coughing, suffering stoically performance ever. And he wasn't wearing a wig - it was. his. own. hair. Just inject that sh!t directly into my veins. Good pacing, decent acting and characters (at least for the guys). Trope-y but it's the tropes I like, so yay!

Cons: fight scenes were of the comic-book pose/quick-cut type rather than actual fight choreography. Which is what you get when you cast actors and not martial artists so yeah, but man, it really makes me want to just watch some old HK movies. And surprise, surprise: tissue paper thin female characters particularly Wen Rou (and her costumes - ugh just no to the western-style ruffles.)

Though I was eating this with a spoon for the first 24ish episodes, I ended up dropping it (probably not forever) because it turned into a smorgasbord of angst and I wasn't in the mood. So if you are looking for angst with a side of suffering, then that would be a pro, I guess?

*A Dream of Splendor 梦华录 3.5+/5🌶

What? Well written female characters? In a female-centric historical drama? For me? Aw, you shouldn't have - no, actually you should have, and you should do it again!

Dropped this because I had English language shows to watch (hello Sandman) and it sort of lost steam for me - somehow the way it's shot made it a bit more of a slice of life than plot-driven drama? and NGL I was also tired of reading my tv, but I will try to finish someday.

Pros: production, costumes, pacing all pretty good. Aforementioned prettiness. The plot revolves around the women supporting each other, with the romance being sort of second? kind of? which I love, but also the FL & ML have great chemistry.

Cons: both the FL and ML are a little toooo perfect - too pretty, too smart, too accomplished (the ML was the #3 scholar, passing the test when he was young yet also is a master at wushu and swords? ah, ok) but this is a minor quibble since this is a cdrama.

Fun fact: was watching this and Heroes at the same time and Sun Zujun is in both and plays...a rich, hot, sexual predator in both. Um, hope you don't get typecast my dude. (his acting is pretty good so best of luck to him.)

The Side Story of Fox Volant 飞狐外传 4/5 🌶

Yay! More wuxia this year! please let this be the one....

The first few episodes are movie-quality: sets, action, art direction, sound, acting are all fabulous. Towards the middle it settles down into more typical cdrama territory. Based on a Jin Yong novel, it's what you would expect, and I think has been adapted before. Since I haven't read the novel or seen other adaptations I can't compare, so perhaps this wasn't as well received because it diverged from the novel?

Unlike the other wuxia this year, did not suffer from bad writing for the female characters! Full of tropes, but everyone was pretty well written - despite immediately loving Miao Renfeng, I also loved the 'bad guy' (who's character name I always forget, so will be referred to only as Peter Ho - he did a great job of making a bad dude sympathetic.) Qin Junjie was giving me Chen Kun vibes all over the place - I may try to watch Listening Snow Tower just for him.

Not really sure why this didn't do better. I assume because it's yet another Jin Yong adaptation, and the competition (LLTG and CJL) were more appealing to a (female) audience.

Pros: good acting, great actors, solid wuxia story with a strong start and well done (if tragic) finish

Cons: weak middle - pacing and overall quality dipped a lot. like they put the B team on all the middle eps for cinematography, editing and direction

Light Chaser Rescue 追光者 3.5/5 🌶

Finally a Luo Yunxi drama I can watch, though I'll admit if he weren't in it, no way I'd be watching. Though some of the marketing makes it look like a cp drama, it is in fact an ensemble cast, with the focus being on the diverse people that make up volunteer rescue squads. It's very politically safe and tbh was not surprised they chose to air it during the party congress.

Surprisingly for the moralistic/didactic theme, all the couples were really cute and well done, so if you want romance, there is some. The effects and sets were realistic, and everyone's tragic backstory was tragic. You may need tissues for this one if you're a crier. It wasn't without some super cringe moments (spoiler: the little orphan would be doubly scarred for life by their attempts to help him 'heal') but in general was ok.

Wu Qian (Janice Wu) was really good - I'd only seen her in two things when she was much younger, and she really is a mature talented actress. I'll say it - even better than Xixi, who did pretty good but still can improve, especially in shouty scenes where his emotion looks a little forced. (see, see, how I can critique my fave?)

Pros: Luo Yunxi and Wu Qian

Cons: not enough of the cute dog, didactic and moralizing, weak plot that is barely credible half of the time, often felt more like a bunch of 'how to survive x disaster' instructional videos strung together rather than a coherent drama due to choppy editing

Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty 4.5/5 唐朝诡事录

Please cdrama gods consider blessing a season 2 of this because it was so much fun! Even though Su Wuming is a disciple of Dectective Di, I think I liked this even more than the Detective Di movies I've seen (!) because as much as I love Su Wuming, the genius detective trope is a little played out for me, and giving him a great foil in Lu Lingfeng made the whole thing more enjoyable.

The writing for and acting of the two leads was so enjoyable to watch. They had great buddy cop chemistry that really elevated the whole drama. Female characters were pretty well written and realized, and some of the villains were downright enjoyable (creepy ghost guy, you looked like you had so much fun!) Production values were fairly high across the board - sets, visuals, costumes, sound, for what could have been a very cheap drama. Everything seems to have been done with care and attention to detail. Though the plots are a little silly sometimes I didn't mind because they were entertaining. Also tw to people like me who are sn*ke phobic - uh there are lots of scenes you will need to skip in the second mystery.

The drama starts at the end (!) which was an interesting way to wrap the whole thing up, but also an odd choice because they ended up basically reusing most of the first ep for the final episode? In between there are several loosely strung together 'supernatural mysteries' that our guys find themselves solving in different places all across the country. Each mystery is only slightly more difficult to solve than your typical Scooby Doo plot, and similarly any supernatural element is soundly debunked by the end.

Pros: writing, acting, chemistry between leads, production values, almost no romance (a pro for me)

Cons: easy 'mysteries', almost no romance (a con for many people it seems)

New Life Begins 卿卿日常 4/5

I hadn't planned on watching this, but I like Bai Jingting ok and needed something to watch after Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty and this looked cute. Spoiler: it is pretty darn cute.

If you're looking for an angsty palace/harem type drama this won't be it. Instead, they use the conceit of 9 vassal states sending a bride for the princes of the Xin kingdom to explore the different ways a society can treat women. It's a very very girl power drama. As such the female characters are pretty well done and acted, but the male characters aren't reduced to being caricatures - all have reasonable personal failings.

Is it realistic, even for a costume drama? I don't care. Sometimes a work of fiction is to show you how things could or should be - in this case the jerks get their comeuppance and the ladies get to succeed. Sure, sometimes the girl power message is a lil' too heavy handed but I'll take it for the overall message and the humor.

Just realized I rated this higher than Dream of Splendor and I should justify myself - Dream of Splendor is overall a better drama, but this was more tightly paced and because it had a larger ensemble there was more going on to keep my interest. That and the fact that this had humor pushed it up a little notch for me.

Pros: cute, mostly light and funny, well paced, decent plot

Cons: I didn't really feel any of the cps (I came closest to shipping Li Wei and Yuan Ying) but YMMV

[1863-project]

Hello! Ever since I found your Submas primer I've been really really enjoying your posts about trains, the Submas boys, and other info posts. Particularly I love the post about how the two are autistic; I learned so much from that and I want to hear more about it. I have a friend who is autistic and that post made me feel like I understood autism better than I did. I would love to hear more about being autistic and how that could affect the Submas.

Hi, anon! If it helps, I have a whole separate blog where I do my autism advocacy work (although I don't update it as much as I should), and the Autistic Gaming Initiative's website can be found here if you're curious about what my all-autistic streaming team does! We're all happy to answer questions, etc.

This is the Submas autism post in question, which I wrote because I've never seen myself more in fictional characters in my nearly-33 years on this earth. They both have traits I do - I often joke if you combined them into one person, you'd have me. I'm actually not sure which of them I'm more similar to, because it fluctuates - but in general, I have Emmet's bluntness and intensity, and Ingo's lack of volume control and overbearing sense of responsibility. I can't put into words how much I appreciate them for existing, because although it never outright says they're autistic, they're still the most natural-feeling portrayal of autistic characters I've ever seen because they're just written as they are, not to "be autistic" if that makes sense. Basically, they weren't written to be "autistic characters." They were just written to be Ingo and Emmet. The fact that they happen to be the best-ever use of the "autistic people are good with trains" trope on the planet is likely a coincidence, but I'll take it.

Since I'm similar to both of them, I can speak from experience as to things that have arisen in my life due to being autistic:

I've been told I was too direct, provided too much information (oversharing), or came off as unintentionally rude

I've been told I was too loud (still get this one, I work in a library, whoops)

I've been told to stop talking about my interests because nobody cares

I've been told I have to make eye contact to make people think I'm listening to them (I get around this by looking at people's noses)

I've struggled to make friends because I was "weird" and "different" compared to the other kids I went to school with (I wasn't diagnosed until I was 20, in 2009)

I didn't dress like other people because of sensory issues (I still dress differently today, but now it's because I have my own personal sense of style and money to afford it)

When I was an infant, I started crying at some parent-child event because they did a group song. My mom overheard a parent go, "What's wrong with that baby?" and was ready to throw hands but my dad stopped her. I spent my entire childhood overloaded by rounds of Happy Birthday.

I have the world's most oversensitive nervous system. Many, many friends have found this out and found it amusing. (It’s affectionate and I don’t mind, don’t worry.)

I will be in physical pain if someone talks from behind me at a specific angle.

When I’m good at something, I’m verrrry good at it. This includes my ability to build IKEA furniture by myself, as well as how I’m able to instantly drive nearly anything (including steam locomotives now).

I retain information extremely well if I’m interested in the subject at hand, and I can find said information very effectively. I still remember things I learned about paleontology and astronomy from when I was 3-4 years old, and this ability has made me a great archivist and historian because that requires me to know a lot about history and be a good researcher.

I experience emotions extremely intensely, and this is overwhelming for both me and others. Even my happiness can overwhelm other people. (You know how Emmet gets about battling? It’s like that.)

I occasionally experience meltdowns or shutdowns under stress or if I’m having a sensory overload. Here’s a great comic on the subject!

I often found myself feeling “alien” when I was younger because I didn’t understand the intricacies and rules of human social interaction and society, and oftentimes when I learned those rules I thought they were ridiculous.

You may have noticed there’s a higher percentage trans and nonbinary autistic people than average, and in general a lot of us are gender non-conforming. Collectively we just decided gender and gender roles were stupid and I think that’s really cool of us. Although I’m a cisgender woman, I didn’t conform to my middle class suburb’s strict idea of femininity, so I grew up thinking I was bad at being a girl.

I’m good at work that requires repetition and focus. It’s what makes me a really good archivist. I don’t have to interact with people when I’m archiving, and I can do the drudgery neurotypicals get bored doing.

Because of intense childhood bullying by my male peers, I actually have never dated. I’m about to turn 33 and although I don’t need a partner or anything, it would be nice to at least properly try dating. The trauma makes it difficult for me to even initiate talking to men, though.

As you can see, that’s a big mix of positive and negative experiences. Ultimately, getting my diagnosis when I was 20 years old turned out to be an affirming experience and introduced me to the self-advocacy community, which I’m now actively involved in through blogging and AGI. That’s not to downplay my struggles, though. I have good days and bad days, and I’ve met some people who were accepting and understanding and others who were not accommodating in any way. Sometimes the things I have trouble with get in the way at work, like my issues with prioritizing tasks (they all seem equally important in my mind), but sometimes my work is actually enhanced by me being autistic. My adult friend group is mostly made up of fellow neurodiverse people, and I prefer it that way because we understand each other better. There’s a lot more supports than there were when I was younger, so it’s definitely easier to be autistic now than it was when I was growing up, but we still have a long way to go in the disability rights fight, so we need to stick together!

I hope this answers your question, anon! If you’ve got more, feel free to ask me - I’m more than happy to help with things like this!

[doctorbunny]

MILGRAM theory time: Haruka!

This isn't going to go super in depth (famous last words) but there's a few heavily debated parts of Haruka's MV I want to share my findings/thoughts on because I think this is my new special interest and during my quest to get best boy's song to 1 million views I have been looking over his first MV with a fine tooth comb so to speak.

Disclaimer: As the Jackalope said in the "This is the MILGRAM" trailer, we don't necessarily know everyone's crime from just the first video, its possible that a lot of things will be re-contextualized in the second MV, however I am not psychic or bilingual and thus will only be working with content released before August 20th 2021 and translated into English (which could cause some language/cultural details to be lost on me as translation is not a 1 to 1 process).

TW for discussions of ableism, child abuse, murder and animal death. Also this is really long so sorry to all the people that follow me for non-MILGRAM stuff

Firstly, I want to start on the topic of Haruka as a person. He is disabled. He does not have 'the mind of a child' (although he is 17, making him legally a minor in both North America and Japan). He is not just 'child-like'. And he is not mentally ill (well he might be, in the sense that many disabilities like Haruka's have strong comorbidities [where a person has two or more conditions but neither directly causes the other] with anxiety, depression and PTSD, but usually when I see people talk about him 'struggling with mental illness' they go on to refer to aspects of his disability). Sometimes on tumblr, people like myself, will see canonical traits written into a character and identify them as being traits associated with our disabilities/mental illness and headcanon them as such. Sometimes this even involves saying things like "It's basically canon!" Although we understand that these characters were probably not the result of a writer intending to write a disabled person. When I say that Haruka is being written as a person with a neurodevelopmental disability, I mean the writer intended to write a disabled character and wrote them in a way that they wanted the audience to pick up on. As an autistic person (which is one of many neurodevelopmental disorders and also something I probably didn't have to specify because who else would be writing an essay about a series they got into a few days ago at 11 o'clock at night) I really like how Haruka has been written so far. There's definitely some parts of him that have been exaggerated so abled normies can pick up on his disability (namely how his MV 's main motif is really child-like drawings) but the writers also included a lot of smaller details I appreciate like how it is noted he avoids eye contact when talking to other people and is depicted as nervously pulling at his sleeves in official artwork, or how he says he finds his prison uniform (which has tight straps) 'relaxing' and when he gets nervous/tense, he will dig his fingernails into the palm of his hands. (These last two potential being examples of 'self stimulation' [aka stimming] where a person seeks out specific sensory stimuli in order to help regulate their nervous system/emotions, in this case the tight uniform creates a comforting, secure feeling [you may have heard about some people preferring to sleep under weighted blankets for this reason] and digging nails into his palms sounds uncomfortable/painful but is done in an attempt to deal with a greater sensory discomfort caused by the situation/environment) I also appreciate the depth he is written with, he struggles to communicate verbally but in his MV and interactions with other inmates is shown to have insecurities, opinions and a consistent thought process (this is all basic character stuff but unfortunately not always present in disabled characters)

Also I want to add that (in terms of what we've been shown so far) Haruka did not kill anyone because of his disability/mental illness. Disabled people are not inherently more innocent than abled people. But there is no disability/mental illness where a symptom is that you kill people and real people have to live with the stigma when you speak carelessly and suggest things like "Haruka is the kind of mentally ill person who kills people as a cry for help" 🧂 (or at the very least real people have to read BS like that and cringe). TL;DR Haruka is less child-like and more onion-like (as in, he has layers) 🧅🧅🧅

Now is the actual theory stuff, oops:

Every prisoner in MILGRAM is supposed to have committed murder in some way, obviously considering Yuno just had an abortion (which i personally do not consider an act of murder) whilst Mu literally stabbed someone to death, this definition is stretched a bit. But it is not agreed upon yet who Haruka killed/how many people he killed or why he killed.

In his MV he is shown to have chased after his dog into a forest, seen something off-screen, then beaten something into a messy pulp with a rock. Some people think the dog is a red herring and that Haruka actually killed his mother/the girl from the fireworks show/his brother. I do not agree.

First: I believe Haruka when he says he doesn't have a brother. The MV literally starts by Haruka looking in the mirror and then switching between the him now

and a really similar looking younger child who just so happened to be a key feature of his memories (I don't have the vocabulary to explain it but its like cinematic parallels that establish this is the same person at different points of their life)

Its not impossible that this is Haruka's secret younger brother, but i think its unlikely. I saw someone saying they had to be different people because Haruka looks less happy than the child but like, most 17 year olds are less visibly happy than when they were 7 (or however old the child is meant to be). Life happens.

So when Haruka is shown pushing the child around and eventually strangling him, this isn't meant to be literal (homicide or suicide), but a representation of how conflicted Haruka feels about his younger self, who may have committed the murder (if you've ever been kept awake cringing at memories of something you said in the past and wishing you could go slap some sense into your former self, this is like that but 10 times more self loathing). The lyric "I am always repeating yesterday," implies he might think about this specific past event a lot.

Moving on, its pretty well accepted that Haruka's parents were abusive in some way and Haruka internalised a lot of it: he constantly apologises, he says in his interrogation questions that his one wish come true is that "[he] want[s] to be loved" and describes in his MV how when he couldn't find the words he was looking for ("you're unfair") one of his parents "would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”". He seems to know its unfair but also still says he 'loves' his family, possibly mistakenly believing it is his fault, but also showing an awareness of his situation (and how his parents might behave).

Now, the MV is stylised in a way that makes certain details unclear, but there is one clear detail showing that Haruka's dog was killed

This is the first close up of Haruka and the dog. Haruka's mother is just out of frame supervising, but they look pretty happy. Notice how the puppy has a silvery chain for a collar. Somehow, this dog gets out of the house but only Haruka is shown chasing after it (whether his mother was searching elsewhere or didn't bother following her disabled son into the forest is unclear). Either way, young Haruka is now in the forest, unsupervised.

By the time he finds the dog, there is already blood, suggesting it was initally attacked by something else.

is this a sigh of relief from a boy whose finally found his beloved pet or a jealous weakling glad that nature took its course and he is finally free of that meddling mutt stealing all his mummy's attention? /j

I think this shock at the discovery that 'there is blood on his hands' could imply that rather than literally getting the blood from his dog, Haruka has seen his already injured dog and realises that if the dog got out because of him (he is previously shown to be aware his parents seem to blame him for everything) then he is the reason his dog is injured/dying and will be blamed for it. (this scene plays over the lyrics "It’s fine, though it’s really not It’s really fine, though I don’t really think so When I tried to understand it, You’ll make that disappointed face again" suggesting he is trying to avoid making his parents disappointed and letting the family pet escape into danger is something that could make them very disappointed)

now we get into rock murder (this is present-day Haruka implying that this is either: not how the scene really played out; the writers really wanting the audience to know that this was Haruka's doing and not someone else's; or this turns into a separate incident that happened much later [although note that the red sky and blue moon is the same as when young Haruka first appears at the start])

b the corpse is beyond mangled now, but its clearly the dog because the silver chain collar is still there, to the right of the body. (circled in red for your convenience :3)

My hypothesis is: Haruka didn't set out to kill his dog, but upon finding it injured (we don't know the severity aside from bleeding and also it not being able to run away from Haruka kneeling down above it w/ a big rock so it could range from treatable with a lot of vet help to already on death's door, TBH I don't think Haruka would know the difference) He knew he'd be blamed for this; made into a villain who let the poor puppy come to harm. He panicked and killed the dog out of some idea that it would make him the victim here (since he'd be found crying over a dog corpse, which might make a parent go comfort him rather than getting angry about what could've happened to the dog). This is over the lyrics: "I cried, I screamed I wanted to be a pitied and loved weakling I was in denial, I was in denial I just had to make sure I’ve become a victim, I’ve become a victim" (there's another theory that he was also jealous of the dog, which could work here too, since this is not some calculated plot; rather its a rash decision) This ties in with his Japanese song title (translated as Weakness) which is a play on a phrase sort of like "The strong eat, the weak do not" to become "The weak are eaten by society" or "The weak eat each other to survive" [once again I am reminding everyone this is based on second hand information from the youtube comments section (from users mitchki and Alphaistic) because I do not speak Japanese] This second meaning (The weak eat each other to survive) makes sense under the reading that Haruka killed his dog in order to 'survive' making his parents disappointed for the dog escaping.

Miscellaneous points:

We don't know where Haruka's necklace came from yet, it must be a gift since the most expensive thing he's ever bought was cotton candy. The younger child in the video isn't wearing it and neither is his mother or the girl in the purple dress.

Haruka's home seems quite big, at the start we can see a large flower garden outside the window and there's a forest in walking distance. This might suggest his family is quite wealthy

Haruka probably did go to school at some point as homeschooling is not a legally accepted as an alternative to public schools in Japan. (However it is estimated that up to 5000 families homeschool, this is uncommon) A lot (about 62%) of Japanese schools apparently have a 'special needs' classes and there are about 505 schools focused on educating intellectually disabled students (although I do not know which sort Haruka would've needed as whilst intellectual and development disabilities can be comorbid they aren't the same). Now, if children aged 7-14 don't go to school, their parents receive a fine, but its possible that if Haruka's parents are wealthy, they just paid it to avoid sending him to school. (This might imply they wanted to hide him or were generally ashamed of him in some way) However high school education (for students over 14) is not legally required and its likely that even if Haruka went to elementary/middle school, he hasn't been around people his own age in at least 3 years. As he seems quite lonely and glad that the other prisoners give him attention.

I don't think Haruka's parents are divorced and if they are, its not his father who left. Haruka mentions in the 30 questions that he thinks he disappointed his father. But still includes him as part of his family ("My father and mother and me"). A theory I've seen is that his father was disappointed by his son being disabled and left. but developmental disabilities (especially in non verbal and semi verbal children like Haruka) can be diagnosed before the age of 3, so I feel it is unlikely that Haruka would bring up his father if he left that early in Haruka's life

All MILGRAM prisoners have covered one of DECO*27's older vocaloid songs (DECO*27 is a well known producer who composes the music for MILGRAM) Haruka covered 'Two Breaths Walking' (https://youtu.be/puXLfVWrz2Q) which is about a boy's first relationship and how his mother's jealousy set him up for failure as the relationship becomes toxic (specifically it has some very funny out of context lines like "Whose breasts are you sucking on now?") so yeah, mommy issues: the song (Also: some people say in the song, the boy kills the girl at the end, but this isn't literal, TBW is the first of a trilogy of songs about the same relationship, it is followed by Android girl then Two Breaths Walking: Reloaded and the story resolves with the couple reuniting as adults and getting in the relationship again, although its not necessarily as abusive as before, its still implied to be codependant ending on the line 'We should live like oxygen tanks, sucking breathe from the words each of us exhale, until our last breathe')

In all seriousness, the scene where younger Haruka is walking through the city with his mother but it keeps repeating until older Haruka pulls the younger one away might indicate an attempt to focus the happier memories of his parents (since this is also over the lyrics "Why is it breaking? Tell me why? Please don’t change If I tried and couldn’t say it, You would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”" which depict a worse scene) I think both his parents are still physically present but have become far more emotionally distant, not giving him as much attention, which exacerbates his loneliness from not having any friends his own age to talk to

And if one of his parents did leave? I think its likely his mother since she is shown disappearing out of his reach after the dog-incident (inferring she got angry/disappointed in Haruka anyway) This could also be where he got his necklace from: Its something his mother used to wear (although this is 100% a guess) and that's why its shown to be important to him

This one is just me, but i didn't realise until a rewatch that when Haruka is watching the younger him and the girl running together, the background has fireworks. Haruka mentions fireworks being a key memory to him so I wonder if this was one of the first/last times he got to make a friend...

On three separate occasions in the interrogation, Haruka mentions not liking animals. Despite this, he is depicted as sleeping with a rabbit plush and on his birthday art (I'd include that too but tumblr only allows 10 pictures per post, so here's a link) he is standing next to a giant blueberry and strawberry cake with two bunny themed biscuits at the side. Through my experiences of seeing Japanese fandom art on pixiv, sometimes rabbits are used to insinuate a character is cute and timid in fanart.

Meaningless details: Haruka sleeps with his necklace on; he sleeps on a bed and not a futon; at first I thought he woke up holding his plush's hand but his hand is merely next to the toy; and considering the state of the pillow and blanket, I wonder if he moves a lot in his sleep or if the is just because in this case he seems to be waking up from a nightmare about the dog incident...

Final note: I've spent so many hours writing this I don't remember if i was building up to any big finale or not but I hope you enjoyed reading this! Feel free to add on in the comments/reblogs.