#the ONE character who isn’t an outcast in some way

[booksandpaperss]

I have a feeling those Stranger Things character polls are gonna come down to Steve Vs Will at some point, so fyi if you guys think I’m being annoying abt it now?? think again bc I will actually commit crimes if Will Byers doesn’t beat Steve. Atrocities. I will spam my blog with the poll 20 times to make sure that one of the most well written complex queer characters on popular television who is a MAIN PROTAGONIST doesn’t lose to DiscountRedemptionArcTM funny straight guy that does not actually fit the definition of protagonist if I have to :)))))))))))

[deliciousangelfestival]

Nothing Has Changed - 8

Summary: Returning home for peace, you're faced with your tormentor, Bucky Barnes, who is now involved in your family's business.

Character: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader

Warning: Angst, Tragedy.

Nothing Has Changed - Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist || support: Ko-fi

Thank you to anyone who gave a like, reblog, and left a comment. It motivated me to write more. 💖💖💖

Bucky read the report you made. His expression was unreadable. He closed the book and said, “Thank you. I’m satisfied with your work.” He said it as if he finally got the answer he wanted. He added, “I’ve got all I need.”

His eyes looked at the ground as if he were deep in thought. Then he returned to his cheerful demeanor and looked at his watch. “Let’s go home, it’s already late. Tom has called many times because he can’t get through to you.”

After he said that, you quickly grabbed your phone and saw the notifications of 20 missed calls from your dad. You scratched your head, realizing this was the consequence of being too focused on work, forgetting to eat or sleep.

As you headed back to your car, Natasha blocked your way. “Stop what you’re doing.”

“Why?” you asked, crossing your arms. “Why should I listen to you?”

Natasha’s face hardened. “This isn’t your business.”

You couldn’t believe her audacity. Did her ears clog with earwax when Bucky told everyone he hired you? Of course, it was your business since you were hired as an auditor in this hotel. You ignored her, got into your car, and left.

Watching the sports car get farther away, Natasha clenched her fists. She felt terrible, especially knowing that you were more successful than her. The sports car, the designer clothes, and the expensive bag you carried—gosh, she hated it.

She felt her phone vibrate. She saw the caller ID and hesitated to answer. When she finally did, her voice trembled. “I think…” She took a deep breath and released it. ��Bucky has found out.”

👓

The next day, you woke up and went to Bronze Lodge again. This time, you were grateful that Natasha wasn't there. Such a great way to start your day.

As you headed to your office to continue your work, you heard someone call your name. You turned around and saw a man waving at you excitedly. He wore a blue shirt, light brown pants, and a tie. He came closer and pointed at himself with a happy smile. “Do you remember me?”

“Jake Jensen,” you nodded.

“I heard a rumor that you’re back. I thought it was a lie. Glad to see you, old friend. Do you want to grab lunch together later?” Jake asked.

You politely declined, “I’ll have to say no. I have to fix the lousy job of the previous auditor.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, the previous one didn’t work at all. Next time then,” Jake said before leaving.

You smiled awkwardly and quickly entered your office, closing the door behind you. You peeked through the blinds, making sure Jake was gone. With a sigh of relief, you sat down at your desk.

You declined his lunch invitation because you made boundaries after what he did to you.

You and Jake were friends in high school, but "friends" didn’t fit. He was more of a classmate with whom you shared some things in common—both of you were nerds and outcasts.

But the difference between you and him was that you didn’t mind being a loner. Jake, however, desperately wanted to join Bucky’s group, where the popular kids gathered. He thought there was a chance because a guy like Steve was in that group.

What makes Steve different is that he and Bucky are childhood friends. And Steve's mom used to be Bucky's nanny.

Jake tried so hard to be cool but always failed. You wanted to feel bad for him, but you couldn’t because of what he did that made Natasha and her group act like jerks toward you.

One day, when you entered the classroom, Natasha and her minions confronted you, accusing you of being a snitch. You didn’t understand what they were talking about until your teacher said, “I’m glad you saw what they did on the last exam. I’m surprised Natasha and her friends could give answers like that.”

Then it hit you. No wonder Natasha was mad at you; you were seated next to her. But you knew you didn’t tell your teacher about her cheating. You knew who the real snitch was.

It was Jake.

He sat at the back, where he could see everything. He was the one who told the teacher. He then told Natasha’s friend that you had informed the teacher, and her friend told Natasha. Jake did it so Natasha would feel like she owed him and invite him into the group. But she didn’t, and Jake’s plan was futile.

Since then, you have never trusted him. Even now.

🎩

You continued working until you heard a knock on the door. Thinking it must be Bucky, you called out, “Enter,” without even bothering to lift your head. But it wasn’t him.

“I see that you’re busy,” a voice said.

You looked up and were shocked to see the mayor of the town, Mayor Martin Reynolds, standing before you.

“Good morning, sir,” you greeted him, trying to mask your surprise.

“I won’t bother you for too long. I just want to tell you something,” Mayor Martin said.

“Yes?” you replied, feeling a sense of unease.

He rested his hand on your table, crumpling some of your papers in the process. The tension in the room grew as he leaned closer and said, “Stop what you’re doing and leave everything.” Then, without another word, he left.

You were stunned. What’s going on? Why were Natasha and the mayor of the town both telling you to stop?

Did both of them know about the money embezzlement?

🍽️

Because of what Mayor Martin said to you, you lost your focus. Bucky didn’t come to visit you either, so you decided to go home early after work.

You headed to a diner for dinner. It was crowded, and the only empty seat was at the counter. You ordered some food and waited.

A moment later, another customer sat beside you. It was Steve.

You ignored him and looked at your phone.

“I’ve talked to my dad, and I’ve sent an application to art school,” Steve said.

“Hmmm…” you replied noncommittally.

Steve continued, “I hope I can leave this town just like you. This town is too greedy.”

‘Greedy?’ That word caught your attention. You turned to him, surprising him slightly that you finally acknowledged him. “What do you mean by greedy?” you asked, curiosity piqued.

Steve was slightly surprised you wanted to talk to him; he answered, “This town’s full of greedy people. It’s all power and money. I need to get out.”

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[makingqueerhistory]

Queer Book Recommendations

Every once in a while I like sharing some queer book recommendations on here as I read a lot and I get requests to share some of the books I love, so here we go! 

Tell Me I'm Worthless: Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends Ila and Hannah. Since then, things have not been going well. Alice is living a haunted existence, selling videos of herself cleaning for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. She hasn’t spoken to Ila since they went into the House. She hasn’t seen Hannah either.

Our Wives Under The Sea: Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. 

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty: Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.

Silver Under Nightfall: Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.

Disintegrate/Dissociate: In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Arielle Twist unravels the complexities of human relationships after death and metamorphosis. In these spare yet powerful poems, she explores, with both rage and tenderness, the parameters of grief, trauma, displacement, and identity. Weaving together a past made murky by uncertainty and a present which exists in multitudes, Arielle Twist poetically navigates through what it means to be an Indigenous trans woman, discovering the possibilities of a hopeful future and a transcendent, beautiful path to regaining softness. 

The Perks of Loving a Wallflower: As a master of disguise, Thomasina Wynchester can be a polite young lady—or a bawdy old man. She’ll do whatever it takes to solve the cases her family takes on. But when Tommy’s beautiful new client turns out to be the highborn lady she’s secretly smitten with, more than her mission is at stake . . . 

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror: Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world. 

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture: Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong. The notion that everyone wants sex–and that we all have to have it–is false. It’s intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that’s not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack: lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity.

[qirongshusband]

SFW Headcanons for what Jujutsu High Student!R would buy or make everyone for Christmas. Was thinking R would be like the 12th son of some rich family that gets hidden away at Jujutsu High 'cause they think he's too weird (and therefore a perfect fit at the school :P), and he wants to thank them for being his "better family".

⸝⸝ ꒰ HC’s 🌑ㆍ₊⊹

Note ~ 🫶 Sorry I took long with this one.

MENTIONS — SFW,

Yuuji, Nobara, and Megumi.

Yuuji isn’t that much of a complicated person, he probably wouldn’t want much but you know he’s a little bit of a nerd when it comes to comics, manga and anime. Christmas was soon and you wanted to get him something special, a gift of appreciation! You wanted to at least get him something he likes, something nice, and you thought getting him a figure of his favorite character from a show he watched would be perfect! — you bought him the gift and handed it to him on Christmas, you expressed your thanks and how grateful you were for him and his presence, for being a younger sibling that you’ve never had before, he was happy by the gift but more about your words, his friendship meant a lot to him and you..he gave you a tight hug as he thanked and told you how he would always be there for you.

Nobara..oh dear. You knew she was an expensive gal especially since she basically went shopping anytime she could..you would occasionally join her on a shopping spree which she LOVED since you always knew the best places to go to! You thanked about maybe getting her some expensive perfumes since she loved nice scented things, so you thought Dior perfume would be good enough for her, of course the cost of the gift wasn’t a problem at all. — once you got it you gave it to her, you could tell she instantly loved it by the way her eyes lit up and she smiled, she clapped her hands together and thanked you for the gift and how she knew it was expensive you told her it wasn’t an issue at all and you just wanted to get her something to appreciate how she treated you as a friend and somewhat like family than some outcast or annoyance. Nobara gave you a tight hug as she said how much she loved you as friend and you meant a lot to her, gifts aside she was grateful for you.

Megumi wasn’t much of a materialistic person, you were unsure on what to get him. You thought back on what he would like but nothing came up..but then something..clicked! You were going to take him out to eat to an expensive restaurant of course the treat was on you, he wasn’t really a fan of Materialistic things. But you knew he liked food so you didn’t see a problem with taking him out to eat! — as you took him out you talked to him, telling him thank you for everything and for listening to your troubles as well as for being there for you whenever you needed it. He was like a missing part of you that you felt like you needed, you appreciated him so much and his company, you loved him like a brother, he was a really nice guy. Megumi doesn’t really smiled but he smiled right when you started speaking, responding with how he doesn’t mind and he’s glad it’s impacting you in a positive way.

Satoru, Suguru, and Shoko.

You knew Satoru didn’t really need anything considering he basically had a lot of things but still felt like you needed to get him something. Probably a new outfit? Most likely something expensive too knowing Satoru’s taste in clothing.. — you got him a really nice outfit, a casual but expensive one. You tried giving it to him but he was out on a mission, you wrote a note leaving it in the bag with the rest of his clothes telling him how great he was doing even though he took on a shit ton of missions, and that you wanted to thank him for being a great friend, on how funny and unserious he was, you appreciated when he was at times when you told him certain things going on in your life he actually gave great advice and was a good listener.

Shoko was also a simple girl who loved to hang out with you and catch up on her smoke break with you, she would talk with you about her day and other things as well, you liked her company you found her funny and caring. She offered you a hit but you declined since you didn’t smoke, you weren’t trying to get into that and she understood of course so she wouldn’t smoke that much around you. Shoko liked doing her makeup and making herself look pretty, so of course you knew what to get her. — you got her an expensive kit of makeup that had many lipsticks, shadows, powders, etc, you gave it to her the next time you guys hung out which was on Christmas, she told you that you didn’t need to buy her such an expensive gift, you explained to her why you did what you did, why you bought her all of the stuff you did. She was one of the people who genuinely sat there and listened to you and how you wish you weren’t hidden away at Jujutsu High and how you liked her and her time with her. You appreciated the hang outs and long talks you guys would have, she gladly accepted the gift and even offered to do your makeup as a silly little joke.

Suguru’s favorite food was Zaru Soba, you guys usually went to go get some occasionally but haven’t really been hanging out much since he’s been busy with a lot of things. You felt bad for him that one of you great friends were being drained and tired out by missions so around Christmas time you had a plan to take him out to get some Zaru Soba. — As you took him out you had a long talk with him about how he took on too many missions by himself and how he was tiring himself, you were worried about him. Suguru ranted to you about his missions and such explaining how tiring it was to be a sorcerer, you told him just to relax and enjoy the day with you since this was the least you could do, you wanted to relieve some of his stress and it worked! He thanked you for the day out with him and the food, you told him not to worry about it and that you would always help out someone you viewed as family to you, you explained you were thankful for him and just wanted him to be okay.

Kento Nanami

Nanami was a simple man, he didn’t really seem like the type to ask for anything but knowing how he always wanted to be on time to things and was an organized man you planned on getting him an expensive watch, when he was free he would usually hang out with you and give you lots of advice and tips on things you talked about or just stuff in general. You felt like he deserved something for how he treated you, he was a nice man and a great tip giver. — you got him a Patek Philipee Nautilus. It was an extremely expensive watch but also was a good one, it matches his uniform when he goes out to work and his other outfits, at first he tried to refuse the gift but you insisted for him to keep it, as for thanks of his time and helpful advice, for helping you with things you couldn’t get done by yourself.

Yuki

Yuki is an out going girl! She usually picks you up with her motorcycle when you two make plans to hang out, you wanted to get her a new one in replace for her current one. You felt like she should have a more flashier and newer one than the one she has now. She would always try to get your type to see if she could find you anyone to be with she felt bad that you’ve never dated anyone before..you could care less for dating so she eventually gave up but still hung out with you, she would tell you all about what she’s been up too and other things in general. — you got her a brand new motorcycle at first she was surprised you got her something so.. expensive? She told you she appreciated it a lot and she’d be sure to take care of it giving you a big hug, you loved how caring she was especially when you would give her stuff she would be very grateful and appreciative.

[elyvorg]

Kieran Part 1: It’s All About Strength

I’m a longtime Pokémon fan who happily plays through every mainline game, but I’ve never been more than mildly fond of the occasional character here and there, because Pokémon isn’t much for deep and nuanced character writing. Then I played The Teal Mask DLC and came out of it with many, many Feelings and Thoughts about Kieran – enough so that it warrants a full, juicy analysis about all of his subtleties and issues. I never expected I’d write one of these character analysis rambles of mine on a Pokémon character of all things, but here we are. Colour me surprised and impressed.

For anyone reading this in the future: this was written before The Indigo Disk came out and therefore only talks about the events of The Teal Mask. Assuming The Indigo Disk doesn’t completely drop the ball on the best character-writing job that mainline Pokémon has ever done (please; please don’t), there will probably be a Part 2 to this analysis coming in a few months. (Aaaaand here it is! But you should read this one first, of course.)

(I’ll be referring to the player character as “you” here for ease of wording, but rest assured, this doesn’t mean I’m accusing you the reader of any of the questionable ways the player character treats Kieran. I was also very annoyed at being forced to lie to him, believe me.)

His weakness, and your strength

Kieran is a kid gripped with a crushing sense of inferiority and weakness. We don’t see all of where this came from, although we get a pretty good idea of part of it – his sister. So many times when Kieran tries to protest against things and assert himself, Carmine snaps back at him for doing so. Over time, that kind of thing would have made him feel like he’s wrong for trying to stand up for himself, leading to him letting people walk all over him. I don’t want to give Carmine’s behaviour all of the blame for Kieran’s issues, though, because there’s bound to be more to it than that. I expect some of it also came from him being bullied and outcast during his time at Blueberry Academy – I hope The Indigo Disk gives us glimpses into what Kieran’s life there was like before all this.

As a result of feeling so weak and inferior, Kieran admires and idolises people he sees as strong. This becomes clear early on with how much he looks up to you just for being able to beat his sister, someone else he also sees as strong. Apparently, he couldn’t stop raving about how cool you were and how he wanted to battle you all evening back at home.

He doesn’t want you to know that, though, based on his protest when Carmine comes out and tells you so. Kieran's probably rather embarrassed for you to hear how much he idolises you, after all. He also seems to think his request for a battle would be annoying and a bother – he says “You don’t mind?” in surprise when you accept, even though asking people for battles is supposed to be just what trainers do. Why would a strong trainer like you want to waste your time battling someone weak like him?

Kieran’s comment in the battle if you land a super effective move is also very telling: “Oof, ehehe… I guess I got a lot of weaknesses…” He tries to play it off as light-hearted, but, hm, that sure is A Way for a rival character to comment on you knowing about type matchups. And he most certainly does not seem to agree with his sister when she says he’s almost as strong as her.

(Fun fact: the game actually lets you lose the first battle with each sibling while still continuing the story. If you lose to Kieran in that first battle, he assumes you were holding back against him, as if that’s the only reason he’d ever be able to beat anyone. Perhaps he’s experienced people holding back against him out of pity before – maybe Carmine used to?)

He's flustered when Carmine partners him up with you, too, even though you’re the only option that he has at least a vague rapport with now – he’s still assuming someone cool like you wouldn’t want to waste any more of your time on him than you have to. Kieran worries he’ll “get in your way” if he sticks with you, so he hangs back and stays well out of your way instead. It’s a cute way for the game to justify him not actually following you around in the gameplay even though he’s supposed to be following you according to the plot, but it also just makes perfect sense for Kieran’s character. This is a kid who constantly tries to take up as little space as possible because he’s convinced that nobody wants him around. And it’s important that he seems to feel especially this way towards the people he looks up to (with the exception of Carmine, because she’s family and he spends most of his time with her already).

Then there’s the scene where he meets Koraidon/Miraidon. At first, I assumed it was there to introduce Kieran to our lizardbike friend because they’d be relevant later somehow. But they’re not! So the only reason this scene exists at all is for the purpose of illustrating to Kieran that, in his words, “you’re special”. You are A Protagonist, capable of befriending super special, rare, strong Pokémon with ease. (Just like a certain other special legendary Pokémon you’ll be meeting soon, how about that.)

Admiring the ogre

So, as you begin the trip to visit the signboards about Kitakami’s legend, Kieran starts to open up about how much he likes the ogre. Perhaps he feels safe telling you, because you’re an outsider and won’t frown upon him for it like the locals are prone to do. He probably gets that from them a lot and has learned not to bring up the ogre in town – another thing that makes him feel left out.

Even so, Kieran starts from the angle of “it’s so strong and cool because it won one-on-three”, since that’s a more acceptable reason to like the ogre that doesn’t question the validity of the legend, and is less personal to his issues. If you agree with him that the ogre sounds cool before he’s explained why he thinks so, he responds with “I knew you’d get it!” – you, who’s also really strong and cool, would obviously recognise that same strength in the ogre right away, right?

If you’re sceptical at first instead, he stresses that “it was all alone!” and still managed to hold its own – the more personal side of the reason he likes the ogre coming out just a little. By the second signboard, Kieran’s gotten a bit more comfortable with you, enough to start touching on that more deliberately. He mentions that it’s shunned, and that he likes its strength because he admires that and wishes he could be that strong himself.

Then he invites you to see the ogre’s den, something completely unrelated to the purpose of the school trip, because he trusts you enough to feel sure that you’ll get what he’s trying to illustrate about the ogre there. He points out that it seems like a lonely, miserable place to live, and that he’d happily let the ogre stay at his house if it wanted. He’s not quite explicitly saying so, but Kieran clearly empathises with the ogre because he relates to that kind of loneliness. Though he doesn’t want to outright say that the legend is wrong and the ogre isn’t actually the bad guy – maybe he’s got backlash from the villagers before for suggesting it –  he's got to believe that to be the case.

(I’ve seen one or two people suggest that Kieran fawning over the supposed bad guy in the legend is an early hint to his potential for darkness, but I really don’t think that’s it. There’s plenty of reason for Kieran to relate to and see the sympathetic side of the ogre in the story due to his own status as a social outcast, without it needing to be a case of “he just likes bad guys because he’s Edgy”.)

Later, at the festival, Kieran has a quiet chuckle to himself when Carmine’s talking about the Loyal Three being heroes, and says it’s funny that she doesn’t know anything about the ogre. Then he conspicuously changes the subject when she implies that it’s just that he likes edgy bad guys, because that’s not it – but at least now he has someone who does get it. Carmine mentions later that she feels Kieran is trying to one-up her about the ogre, and maybe this is true. Perhaps this is one small way in which he can privately feel superior to his sister, because he’s more right than her, or than anyone in the village, about the ogre’s true nature. And while that’s more due to luck and a large helping of projecting his own issues onto it than out of any genuine inside knowledge of the truth, Kieran is the one person who understands the ogre best.

Or, at least, he understands it best… for the most part. Because there is one very key way in which Kieran is actually thoroughly wrong about what Ogerpon is truly like.

Misunderstanding the ogre

This begins to be apparent at the second signboard, when Kieran’s gushing about the ogre’s coolness and says “it didn’t even care when everyone shunned it”. From meeting Ogerpon later, we know that this is patently not true about her – she’s terrified of humans because of how they see her, so really she hates being shunned! But Kieran doesn’t imagine that to be the case about her, even though he empathises with her presumed loneliness and is basically projecting his own onto her. He sees the ogre as somebody who is shunned and alone, like he is, but who, unlike him, is strong enough to not let it get to them. Someone in the same bad situation as him, but with strength that he only wishes he could have to deal with it.

In that same conversation at the second signboard, Kieran then goes on to talk about how his sister always does everything for him, and he’d like to become stronger and more independent and reliable. And, “then, just maybe… I could be that ogre’s friend.” As if he doesn’t think he’d deserve to be Ogerpon’s friend unless he was already strong, just like she is.

He mentions a couple of times that he comes to the Dreaded Den a lot but has never once seen the ogre, which might seem a little strange at first. Obviously Ogerpon kept well hidden from him because she’s scared of humans – but, did Kieran never try to call out to her? To tell her that he’s not afraid of her, that he admires her strength and she must be lonely and hey, maybe they could be friends? If he had, then surely over time, Ogerpon would have grown to trust him and shown herself – so apparently, Kieran never did try to call out to her in an attempt to befriend her. Because he felt he wasn’t worthy of her friendship, not when he’s so weak, so inferior to someone as strong and cool as her. (A lot like how he wouldn’t have had the courage to tell you how much he admired you, if his sister hadn’t blurted it out for him.)

While you’re visiting the den with him, Kieran assumes that “a powerful ogre like that would only show up if it heard some kinda battle”, leading to him challenging you again. Since he admires the ogre for its strength, he’s assuming that the ogre also values strength just as much if not more than he does, which really isn’t necessarily true about Ogerpon!

During the battle, Kieran says he’ll “put up a good fight” this time. Which is to say, he still feels so thoroughly outclassed by you that he isn’t remotely expecting or even trying to win – he just wants to at least not go down quite as pitifully as last time, not when he’s potentially being watched by his idol the ogre. And when he loses (the game requires you to win this and all future battles against him), he laments how he’s ever going to be able to beat you, and then he muses, “If the ogre saw that battle, I’m sure it’d be thinking, ‘That kid’s got some real strength…’” He is assuming that Ogerpon would like you, far more than she’d ever like him, because of how strong you are. This is very important.

(As it happens, Ogerpon was secretly watching that battle, but as for whether she’s actually thinking what Kieran imagines she is about your strength – who knows?)

Friendship! Or is it…?

By the end of the den visit, Kieran has just enough confidence to invite you to the Festival of Masks, and to his own house to get ready to go together, which there’s no way he’d have been able to do at the start of the day. He’s so surprised but thrilled to hear that you consider yourself his friend – based on that and his grandparents’ reactions, you’re likely the first friend he’s ever made, which would not be surprising. It’s lovely watching this shy but sweet kid actually smiling and feeling comfortable around you and happy to have someone he can call a friend for the first time ever. And GHHHH it is so painful in hindsight knowing where things are headed.

Even with you calling yourself his friend, though, Kieran still feels inferior to you. He dejectedly offers to give you his mask for the festival when you find yourself without one, even though it’s the ogre mask, his favourite, his thing – because he instinctively feels that if anyone should be the one who gets left out, it should be him, like always, and not you.

The whole time, Kieran’s bound to be feeling thoroughly insecure about this new friendship. The idea that he’s actually made a friend, and not least someone as cool as you, likely feels far too good to be true, more than he deserves, and I suspect he might be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. When he mentions to Carmine that you’re coming to the festival with him, her response is vaguely evasive, and Kieran responds to that in a very prickly, defensive way. It reads to me like he thinks Carmine is jealous of him befriending you before her, and that he’s afraid she might try to take you away from him as a result. Whether that’s actually true or not isn’t really the point (I think Carmine might indeed be a little jealous, but she would not do something that deliberately malicious) – what matters is that Kieran believes this may be the case and is liable to view all further interactions with you and Carmine in that light.

Then, at the festival, Carmine pressures Kieran into playing Ogre Oustin’ even though he doesn’t really want to. She’s probably doing this in an attempt to encourage him to have fun, but since he doesn’t find it fun (because he doesn't like this game where he's pretend-killing the ogre!), it’d be easy for him to feel like she only did it because she wanted him out of the way so she could hang out with you. And it’s while Kieran’s doing that that you and Carmine meet Ogerpon without him. Of course, that’s nothing but pure unlucky bad timing – Carmine had no idea Ogerpon was about to show up – but from Kieran’s point of view, with his obvious history of being maliciously left out of things by others, it’s easy for him to feel like there was some deliberate element to it.

At first he doesn’t know it has anything to do with Ogerpon, though. But still, when he gets back from Ogre Oustin’ and asks what you two were up to, Carmine abruptly shuts you up before you can speak and is blatantly hiding something – which Kieran takes to mean that you were laughing at him behind his back. That’s something else he must get a lot, for him to be automatically assuming it’s happening here. Really not so far off from his fear that his sister’s going to try and take you away from him, either.

Carmine’s lie isn’t done out of any malice – she is genuinely trying to protect her brother from feeling bad over being left out of meeting Ogerpon – but she sure is doing so in a way that’s going to make him feel even worse over being left out on purpose once he realises the truth. Carmine does care about her brother in theory, but this girl has zero social brain cells. And we the player are forced to play along with the lie whether we want to or not, which awkwardly turns our player-insert character into a very specific kind of character who would do so. I guess they either also have zero social brain cells, or they’re kind of a doormat who’s swayed by a forceful personality like Carmine’s. This part is frustrating, but I have to accept it because of the delightful things it does to Kieran’s arc, which really is the important part here.

Learning of the lie

The next morning, it seems like Kieran’s largely managed to brush off the weird bit last night where you and his sister were maybe laughing at him behind his back, because he greets you with a smile, ready to go see the last signboard. And then Carmine… forcefully demands that he finds somewhere else to be, because you’ve got business with her. Kieran protests that it’s not fair that you’ve been spending all your time with her lately – score two for his fear that she’s trying to take you away from him – and when she snaps back at his protest like always, he runs off.

But he doesn’t run off that far, because he stays close enough to listen in on the conversation. The discussion of Ogerpon’s story goes on for long enough – and takes long enough to get to the important part – that Kieran pretty much has to have stayed to eavesdrop on purpose, which is a little sketchy of him. Still, I can’t blame him all that much, what with his background of being mistreated, and the way Carmine’s behaviour gives him ample reason to be afraid there’s something going on here – of course he’d have wanted to know for sure. Perhaps he was even trying to hope that listening in would prove that you’re not actually hiding something bad from him and he was just being paranoid.

Except that actually, it turns out the truth is so much worse than Kieran had feared. Never mind just laughing at him – you and Carmine met the ogre without him and then hid it from him as if he didn’t even deserve to know. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it then turns out that he was right all along about the ogre being a good guy, and his own grandpa didn’t even think it was worth telling him that, and now you’re still just going to keep lying to him about it all and leaving him in the dark.

(Really, I have to side-eye their grandpa a lot more than Carmine here, because he’s a grown dang adult and has so much less excuse. He says he’ll tell Kieran the truth “when the time is right”, but what does that even mean? The “right time” would be right now! Heck, it should have been the moment he realised that Kieran had already intuited the truth!)

And all this being lied to and shunned and left out of things (like always) stings even more for Kieran because it’s coming from someone he’d thought was his friend. He’d actually dared to hope that someone – and not just anyone, someone really cool and strong – actually wanted to be friends with him? Of course that was too good to be true. Why would someone as cool and strong as you have ever wanted to befriend a weak loser like him, anyway? (After all, cool strong people only ever want to be friends with other cool strong people; that’s how it works, right?)

Probing about the lie

The correct thing for Kieran to do with this situation would have been to simply come right out and confront you about the lie. But of course he doesn’t have the courage to do that. He’s far too used to being shot down whenever he tries to assert and stand up for himself (no thanks to Carmine). And since he only learned about this because he was eavesdropping, it’s easy for him to imagine having that turned against him, and the whole situation being treated like he’s the one in the wrong for doing that.

Still, it seems like Kieran might want to at least indirectly give you the opportunity to tell him the truth. He heads off to the village shop to act like he was there the whole time, and then casually asks you what you were talking about back there. He’s maybe trying to hope that you don’t really want to lie to him and only got swept up into doing so by his sister’s forcefulness, and that you’ll tell him everything now that she’s not here, because, you said you were his friend, right? Later on, too, at the third signboard, the way Kieran brings up that his family is descended from the mask maker feels suspiciously relevant, as if he only thought to do so because he overheard the story and is trying to give you a chance to go, “Hey, speaking of that mask maker, actually…”

But no. It sure seems like you’re very deliberately choosing to keep him in the dark. As such, he’s bound to be feeling extra small and awkward at the signboard, just wanting to “get this over with” and be done spending time with you, because you clearly don’t want to waste any more of your time with him than you have to, right? The awkwardness of the third signboard photo, with Kieran obviously not wanting to be there, and your character’s very strained thumbs-up, is heartbreaking in comparison to how cute and happy the first two were.

During the conversation there, Kieran mentions the ogre being alone and treated like an outcast in a way that is very clearly also talking about how you and Carmine are treating him right now. The game pointedly lingers on his response to your comment, regardless of which dialogue option you choose. If you agree that that sounds awful, he says, “You think so too, huh?” – you think that it’s bad to treat someone that way, and yet, you sure are treating him that way anyway. If you instead mutter an awkward apology, Kieran asks, “For what?” This could read like he’s calling you out for not being able to admit to what you should be apologising for, but actually, I’m not sure that’s it. It could also be him genuinely asking that, because he doesn’t realise you need to apologise for anything. Hold this thought, I’ll go into it more in a bit.

It's because he’s weak

The other thing that happens at the third signboard is Kieran challenging you to another battle. He doesn’t really explain why, but I suspect he’s hoping that if he wins and proves his strength to you, you might just tell him the truth, or at least it’ll give him the courage to confront you about your lie. This is the first battle in which he says he wants to win and is actively trying and hoping to do so, rather than just accepting his loss before he’s even started. His optimism is pretty fragile, though, as he laments “it wasn’t supposed to go like this” if you hit him super-effectively, and “why does it have to be like this?” when he’s down to his last Pokémon.

But of course, he loses, just like he must secretly have been expecting to all along (how could he ever beat someone as strong as you?). And so he concludes, “it’s all ‘cause I’m too weak” – not just losing the battle, but everything. Why he’s always left out and shunned by everyone, why you lied to him and went behind his back about something you knew was important to him – it’s because he’s weak. He was battling you to try and prove that he’s stronger, strong enough to deserve better than that… but of course he isn’t.

A particularly important little subtlety is that he mutters “That’s why I…” – because it would have been easy to expect this line to say “you” instead. That you lied to him and shunned him because he’s weak, that it’s your fault for choosing to treat someone weak like this. But Kieran isn’t framing it that way. He’s thinking of it as his fault, simply for being weak, and that’s why he will always inevitably be treated like crap by everyone around him. As if that’s nobody else’s fault for choosing to do that, but simply the natural way of things when someone’s weak. As if he deserves this for being weak.

(So: what are you sorry for? You shouldn’t be sorry for anything; it’s his fault, isn’t it? Someone as strong and perfect as you could never be conflicted or in the wrong.)

By the end of this signboard visit, Kieran’s leaving on his own, saying that he’s got to get stronger with his Pokémon. All of this is happening because he’s weak, so he needs to be stronger – and apparently, that means “strength in Pokémon battling”. In reality, even if he did become the best battler out there, that wouldn’t necessarily make him any better at standing up for himself in social situations or being independent and reliable in other ways, but he’s very much conflating the different kinds of strength. This probably has a lot to do with his schooling at Blueberry Academy, which teaches Pokémon battling, leaving him overly focused on battling strength as the only kind of strength that matters. Perhaps he was picked on at school because he wasn’t very good at the battling classes, which wouldn’t have helped. I hope we see some glimpses of this in The Indigo Disk.

And on the topic of Kieran fixating on getting stronger at Pokémon battling: his Furret is never seen in his team again after this point. It was one of the first two Pokémon he used against you, so it’s presumably one of his closest Pokémon partners, which makes it heartbreaking that he ditches it from his team because, clearly, it’s too weak. Even worse, he’s inflicting being left out and shunned on someone else – someone he probably cared about – precisely because it’s weak. That’s just what happens to people who are weak, right? Guh. Poor Furret.

Outburst at Loyalty Plaza

Kieran most likely spends the next 24 hours alternating between fervently training as hard as he can, and stewing in his feelings of loneliness and rejection and betrayal. His grandpa mentions that he spent that night in his room after not even eating dinner, which, yeah, when he’s sharing a house with two of the people who are lying to him, not surprising. Oof. And more than just pain and betrayal, he’s got to be feeling so much anger, anger which he’s never been able to truly express, because every time he tries to stand up for himself he always gets shot down – but that only makes the suppressed anger worse.

The correct thing to do would have been for Kieran to confront everyone calmly about the lie as soon as he became aware of it. But because he couldn’t just do that, his resentment festered inside of him with no real outlet, until finally it becomes unbearable and explodes out of him and he has to do something to express it, no matter how questionable. So he steals the Teal Mask and runs off with it.

I don’t think Kieran actually has much of an idea of what he’s going to do with the mask. The one logical thing would have been to give it back to Ogerpon himself, but that can’t be his intent, because he doesn’t go anywhere near her den with it. And I highly doubt he’s planning to break it or anything like that, since he’d never do something that’d hurt Ogerpon. Really, I think he just wants you and Carmine to notice and acknowledge what he’s going through and what you’ve done to him – and if he steals the mask, you’re going to have to confront him to get it back.

He heads to Loyalty Plaza in particular because he’s conflating his own situation with Ogerpon’s. In amongst his pain and anger at the way he’s being treated, he’d have also been feeling a lot of anger at the injustice of how Ogerpon was and is treated, because he was right all along that she was never the bad guy, but she’s shunned undeservedly while the “Loyal” Three are lauded as heroes. Even though this outburst from Kieran is really all about his own situation, he makes it about Ogerpon first, because that’s easier for him to openly be angry about. He only brings up his own treatment as a comparison to how Ogerpon is treated like an outcast, as if the only way he can frame it as wrong in his head is by comparing it to something that’s definitely wrong. (After all, he deserves to be shunned because he’s weak – but Ogerpon didn’t deserve any of it, because she’s so much stronger!)

During Kieran’s outburst, Carmine blurts out an apology on realising that she’s hurt him – but Kieran basically just ignores it and continues to vent. Which tells us something interesting: that Kieran never did this out of any attempt to get you and Carmine to apologise for lying to him. If he’d wanted that, he’d have reacted in some way when Carmine did just that. So I think, in keeping with Kieran’s belief that all this is his fault for being weak, he doesn’t actually think you two need to apologise for anything. He’s lashing out because he’s angry and in pain and doesn’t know how else to deal with it, but he’s not consciously thinking that you and Carmine are in the wrong.

He’s also still holding onto the idea that you and Carmine were just laughing at him behind his back, which is of course not true, but when Carmine tries to say that, Kieran snaps back that she’s a liar. Given that she undeniably has lied to him about one very important thing, of course Kieran would find it easy to believe that she could be lying to him about anything and he can’t trust any reassurance she gives him. This poor kid must have such a history of being mistreated and patronised by others to jump to assuming things like this.

Lashing out with a battle

Then Kieran challenges you to another battle, promising to give back the mask if you win. Since there’s no way he is truly expecting to be able to beat you, this means that he never really intended to keep the mask forever. But he also doesn’t just want to seem like some weak pushover who’ll roll over and give in as soon as he’s confronted, so he at least wants to make you fight him for it. And based on his line at the beginning of the battle – “I know this isn’t right, but… I can’t just hand over the mask to you!” – he doesn’t want to just give up one of Ogerpon’s possessions so easily to someone who treated him like an outcast the same way those villagers back then treated Ogerpon.

Really, I think the battle – and the notably forceful way he asks for it, unlike the previous times – just comes a lot from Kieran’s anger, and his need to externalise it somehow. He even insists that he needs this battle, if you’re hesitant about accepting the challenge. There’s probably a part of him that wants to lash out with physical violence, maybe punch you or something, but he knows that’s wrong and that it’d look pathetically impotent of him anyway even if he tried. Happily, this world has a socially-accepted form of violence-by-proxy instead, so Pokémon battle it is!

As for the battle itself, Kieran’s switched up his team some more, removing Furret as previously mentioned, and adding two new members instead of just one like the previous times – but the Cramorant he uses here doesn’t stick around either. This is less sad to me than Furret, though, because he wouldn’t have been very close to it. Cramorant may even have been taken onto the team with the condition of “I’m trying out new team members to see who’s strong enough”, at which point ditching it is less of a betrayal and more of it simply failing a job interview.

(Meanwhile, the other newcomer, Gligar, clearly impressed Kieran a lot with its strength, as it becomes his ace for the final fight. Fitting that his ace there is not a long-time partner, but one obtained only after he began to fixate on getting stronger.)

He’s also more openly determined to win (despite his suppressed conviction that he could never beat you), and remains more optimistic than before even when things aren’t going so well for him. In fact, this is the only battle in which Kieran has lines for hitting you with a super effective move or a critical hit. That said, he’s still a little insecure, based on an optional line: “I need to get this right… I’m gonna make sure to give the right commands!” which tells us that he feels like his losses are his fault for making mistakes and choosing the wrong moves, rather than blaming his Pokémon for not being strong enough. He also has an absolutely great comment in this battle if you land a critical hit, which I have to highlight: “What can’t you do? You’re like the hero in a story…” It’s purely luck, but despite that, he’s seeing you as this impossibly perfect hero that he could never ever measure up to, and this delights me.

Losing the battle just seems to make Kieran’s frustration at his own inferiority even worse, to the point that he does indulge in some physical violence, towards the shrine. Which is as pathetic as he must have been expecting, and should in theory have been harmless enough. (Of course, it appears that this is what somehow resurrects the Lousy Three, but there is no way Kieran expected or wanted that to happen, so he can’t be blamed for that.) Then he gives the mask back, just as he promised he would, and (ignoring another attempt by Carmine to apologise – again, this was never about that to him) he runs off back home.

So I find it really hard to condemn Kieran for… any of his actions here? Sure, he stole the mask, but he didn’t do anything bad with it and gave it back just fine (and must have always been intending to). All he was doing was lashing out – unhealthily, but basically harmlessly – over the really very callous way you and Carmine had been treating him. And if he hadn’t done this, you two would probably never have told him the truth about Ogerpon, and he’d have remained out of the loop and never met her at all! That would have been awful!

And yet: making you and Carmine bring him into the loop about Ogerpon and getting the chance to meet her is also not something Kieran was aiming for here. Just before leaving in a sulk, he says, “Say hi to the ogre for me” – which means that he never expected to get to meet it himself. He is still, even by the end of this confrontation, labouring under the belief that you and Carmine don’t want him there with Ogerpon and that he doesn’t deserve to meet her at all.

Apologies, and a lack thereof

After you rescue Ogerpon from being bullied by the resurrected Lousy Three, Carmine shows up with Kieran in tow. Apparently she found him moping around at home and dragged him here to apologise to you about his stunt with the mask. Which, yes, does warrant an apology – but what really frustrates me about this part is that Carmine doesn’t apologise for what you and she did wrong. Sure, she blurted out a couple of cut-off apologies back at Loyalty Plaza, but those never had the intended effect when Kieran was in no emotional state to accept them. Here and now, he’s calmed down enough that he would be able to take on board an apology… but Carmine doesn’t give one. It’s possible that she already apologised at home before bringing him here, but if she’d done that, then she really ought to have got you to also apologise for lying to him, and she doesn’t – so I can only assume that didn’t happen. And you the player can choose to apologise to Kieran here anyway, but since it’s optional, it’s not given nearly the attention it deserves.

Since Kieran never gets a proper apology while he’s in a state to listen, it means he never actually ends up internalising the fact that you were in the wrong to lie to him and he didn’t deserve to be treated that way. Which would have been a really, really important thing for him to realise! As it is, he continues to quietly assume that all of this is his fault for being weak, with nobody to tell him that this way of thinking is flawed.

It's frustrating, but I do kind of get it, from Carmine at least, because she’s also a pretty flawed person. Her deal seems to be that she’s only able to be emotionally sincere in uncontrolled outbursts when she’s worked up, and when she’s calm she covers up her true feelings with bossiness and vanity. Which makes her not at all capable of apologising to Kieran when he’s in a calm enough state to be capable of registering it. These siblings’ issues do not mesh well. Still, here’s hoping that Carmine’s able to self-reflect enough to acknowledge her partial responsibility for Kieran’s suffering by the end of The Indigo Disk.

She does seem to realise her mistake here enough to make a point of trying to include Kieran in their Ogerpon adventures from here on out, at least. But it’s too little too late in terms of how Kieran views things. He seems to have assumed that Carmine dragged him here only to apologise, and not to properly meet Ogerpon or be involved in helping her out, because he expresses surprise when Carmine casually includes him as part of the Mask Retrieval Squad. He was expecting to be shunned and left out as always – what do you mean, she wants him there?

Meeting Ogerpon

The only interaction Kieran was expecting to have with Ogerpon here was giving the fixed-up mask back to her, because he wanted to be the one to do so – but she shies away from him when he offers it. Carmine comments that she’s probably scared of new people, and this is likely the truth, but Kieran’s silent response suggests that he’s not necessarily agreeing with that assessment. Remember, from earlier: Kieran is convinced that Ogerpon values strength. And he’s so used to being shunned by others, especially strong people, because he’s weak. It would be very, very easy for him to come to the irrational conclusion that the reason Ogerpon refuses him is because of his weakness, even though his sister’s suggesting something else.

Despite Kieran’s key misconceptions about Ogerpon’s values, he does continue to understand her better than most people in certain ways. When you try to head into town with her, Kieran’s the one to point out that she’s probably afraid to go in because of the way she’s been treated by the townspeople. He also comments that she’ll feel safe going to retrieve the masks from the Three as long as she’s with you. He empathises with that insecurity and social anxiety enough that, seeing it from Ogerpon in person, he can instinctively see that’s the case about her too.

And yet… seeing Ogerpon’s fear, and understanding that she’s scared of being shunned just like him (which he previously said the ogre didn’t care at all about!), doesn’t actually change the part of Kieran that is also irrationally convinced that she only cares about strength. There’s no moment in which he seems to be re-evaluating Ogerpon or realising anything new about her upon seeing her being afraid. The part where she’s shy and afraid, and the part where she’s strong and cool and therefore values strength in others, manage to be separate enough in his mind that he never actually cross-references them to realise that one of these surely can’t be as true as he thinks it is. So his false conviction that things are about strength to Ogerpon still remains, unchallenged.

Staying behind

Then, even though Carmine is making an active point of trying to include him, Kieran… chooses not to come with you on the mission to retrieve the masks. This is despite the fact that this’d be his best chance to spend time with Ogerpon and hopefully get her to warm up to him, which you’d think would be his priority when he’s quietly hoping to maybe have the chance to become her partner.

But even though it would be a logical choice for Kieran to come with them, it makes perfect sense to me why he doesn’t. As far as he sees things, you and Carmine are way stronger than him and already have the fights against the Three covered – he’d be nothing but a useless third wheel hanging back, only there out of Carmine’s pity for him and not because he’s needed. And in terms of Ogerpon, Kieran is the kid who visited her den countless times but never had the courage to call out to her and ask to be friends. Of course he knows he wouldn’t have the confidence to actually try and get closer to Ogerpon, especially not when she’s already got someone she likes (someone who’s strong while he’s weak, which is clearly what matters to her, right). He knows he’ll just spend the whole time watching Ogerpon obviously like you way more than him while not being able to do a thing about it, and it’ll just make him feel even more jealous and left out.

(Trust me, as someone with social anxiety who spent a lot of my childhood being low-key outcasted by my so-called friend groups, I get it. When you’ve lived like that, integrating yourself with new people can feel downright impossible, no matter how much you may want it.)

So Kieran doesn’t come on the mission – but it’s not like he just uselessly sulks around, either. He spends the time doing something else to help Ogerpon, something neither you nor Carmine seemingly thought needed to be done: telling the town the truth that she was never a bad guy. Because of course Kieran understands best just how hard it is for Ogerpon to be shunned and outcast by everyone, and of course he has some Strong Feelings that people deserve to be told the truth, hmm I wonder where that might have come from. This task is really difficult and scary for him, too, because he hates talking to people – but he does it anyway, for Ogerpon’s sake! What a brave lad!

(I’ve seen people side-eye the fact that the villagers accept the truth and turn around their view of Ogerpon so easily, but honestly it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I get the mask maker way back when being persecuted because the villagers of the time saw Ogerpon kill the Three and made assumptions, but, like, it’s been generations. All of the witnesses who had that emotional gut reaction to the fight are long dead. Most of the people alive today didn’t even truly believe the story of the ogre was real until the Loyal Three showed up – they just thought it was a fun folktale that gives their village some unique culture. So for them to be told “hey, the ogre is real, but also the story’s backwards and the ogre’s actually the good guy”… so what? I was always sceptical of Grandpa’s conviction that the truth must never be told to the village (because… people will get angry that they were lied to? So therefore you should just keep lying to them so they never find out they have something to be angry about? Yes, great tactic, it worked so well on Kieran). Kieran basically just went and proved that there really was nothing to be worried about all along and the people should have been told the truth ages ago.)

His final chance to be strong

So now we reach the end, where Ogerpon makes it clear that she wants to stay with you, and… and even though he must have seen this coming, Kieran can’t accept it happening without trying to fight against it.

This isn’t even really about Kieran wanting Ogerpon’s friendship in and of itself. It’s more about what the concept of being partners with Ogerpon means to him. This whole time, he’s been obsessed with the ogre, and yet only letting himself imagine that maybe one day when he’s stronger, he could be its friend. He’s fixated on the idea of befriending Ogerpon as something that will mean he’s strong and no longer alone and everything is good now. Obviously this is extremely irrational and not necessarily true nor the sole way to fix his problems, but that’s how things are in Kieran’s head.

And so, with recent events making him feel even more weak and outcast than ever, you being effortlessly strong and cool enough to befriend Ogerpon on top of everything else feels to Kieran like it’s about to take away his one chance to turn things around, forever. Of course he can’t just let that happen without at least trying to have things his way. He says right at the beginning of the battle: “I know you’re probably a better trainer for Ogerpon, but I… I…” – and he can’t even voice the end of that sentence. He can’t put into words why he feels like he needs to become Ogerpon’s partner even though he knows he's being selfish and she’d be better off with you, because it’s not based in any conscious logic and is all just one big subconscious irrational mess of his issues and inferiority complex.

I’ve seen a lot of people condemn Kieran for this part, saying that he’s ignoring Ogerpon’s wishes because he’s planning to force her to join him whether she wants to or not if he wins. However, I firmly disagree that Kieran has any such thing in mind here. Remember, he’s still labouring under the misconception that what Ogerpon cares about most is strength. He thinks she likes you so much because you’re so strong (remember the previous time he battled you in front of the den, where he commented that the ogre must be thinking how strong you are if it’d seen that?), and that she refused the mask from him that one time because he’s weak. So Kieran has convinced himself that if he can prove himself to be stronger than you, by defeating you in a battle while Ogerpon’s watching, then she’ll naturally choose him to be her trainer over you. Right?

When Carmine says that he has to consider Ogerpon’s feelings, Kieran’s simply silent for a moment before saying “…I want to battle anyway.” He’s not denying that Ogerpon’s choice is what matters – he just believes, or is at least trying to believe, that her choice will be determined by this battle. And of course he doesn’t say anything like “Ogerpon will choose me if I’m stronger than you”, because – well, perhaps because a lot of this is also subconscious enough that he can’t articulate it, but even if any of it was conscious, he knows it’d sound stupid. Especially the part where he’d be talking like it’s possible for him to beat you, because deep down, he still completely convinced that’s impossible.

Plus, nowhere in this does Kieran bring up the fact that he told the village the truth about Ogerpon as a point in his favour for why she might choose him – which supports that it’s not about any kind of friendly gestures to him and he’s convinced she’ll make her decision entirely based on strength. (And it also proves that he did that out of a genuine desire to help Ogerpon, without any ulterior motives of trying to get her to like him!)

Just before the battle, he says: “Whoever wins gets to be Ogerpon’s partner… So don’t… don’t you dare hold back!” – making a point of demanding you don’t hold back, even though you might think he’d want any advantage he can get towards supposedly winning Ogerpon’s favour. But this makes perfect sense when you realise what this is about to Kieran. He believes that Ogerpon will choose (and deserves to choose) whichever of you is the strongest, and this battle won’t actually prove that if he only wins because you were holding back against him.

Kieran also thanks you for not holding back when you land your first super effective hit, which I enjoy. He’s so used to being patronised and seen as weak and pathetic, so he’s actually glad that you’re taking him seriously and viewing him as a legitimate opponent.

And, hey, he is! His team is pretty stacked: a full six Pokémon with solid movesets, and even strategic held items (at least in the postgame version). Assuming you’re not over-levelled, it’s quite a challenging fight, as it should be. Kieran is trying so, so hard to be strong enough, because this poor kid has convinced himself that all of his problems and pain are due to him being weak, and he is so desperate to fix that by proving himself even stronger than you, strong enough to win Ogerpon’s favour.

When he loses, he just crumples, and it’s heartbreaking. Kieran had so much more riding on this battle than just befriending Ogerpon – this was what felt like his one and only chance to stamp out the part of him that feels crushingly inferior and like he deserves to be treated like dirt. Guhhh.

And of course the first thing out of his mouth is, “Figures.” His inferiority complex runs so deep that, no matter how hard he’d trained and how genuinely really good his team had grown, he never truly believed that he ever had a chance at beating someone as cool and strong as you. He was just desperately trying to convince himself that he at least had a shot, because he couldn’t bear to give up without trying.

I really wish you could tell Kieran how good he was in this battle! It truly is impressive how much better he’s grown at battling since the first one, in such a short space of time, too. Just because he’s not quite as strong as you doesn’t mean he’s weak, not by a long shot. But nobody tells him any such thing, so Kieran continues to view things in that irrationally all-or-nothing way. He lost, so he's weak, end of.

Then he has to stand there and watch you battle Ogerpon in order to catch her. Before all of this happened, Kieran would have been so stoked to see his hero the ogre showing off just how cool and strong she is – and hey, her powers really are pretty awesome to behold! But here, despite the amazing spectacle in front of him, Kieran just looks supremely awkward. Like he doesn’t feel like he deserves to be here. Like he doesn’t even have the right to get to see Ogerpon’s full strength in all its glory. You’re the only one who’s strong enough to have earned this.

He does make one possible comment during the battle, if you land a critical hit on Ogerpon: “You really are good… I’m no match.” Which is a bit excessive, considering that really anyone is capable of critting Ogerpon if they get lucky – but apparently Kieran’s thoughts during this battle are still incredibly hung up on just how strong you are and how he’ll never be able to measure up to you. This goes to show that his issues at this point have shifted to be more about you than about Ogerpon. Which tracks, since his admiration for the ogre was never quite about Ogerpon herself and was more about what her strength represented to him – and now you’ve come along and given him an even bigger example of impossibly cool strength, in a much more painful way.

Once you’ve captured Ogerpon, Kieran manages to awkwardly congratulate you on it – hey, he’s doing his best not to be a sore loser! – laments once again why he can’t be like you, and then runs off. No doubt he’s feeling a huge heap of uncontainable painful emotions that he does not want to show in front of you or Carmine and needs to go let out in private. This kid is Not Okay.

So, in summary: Kieran comes out of all this with the message that all of his pain and suffering and loneliness is his fault because he’s still too weak, and he will only ever be strong enough to put all that behind him once he’s stronger than you. And to do that, he needs to get so, so much stronger, almost impossibly so, no matter what he has to do to achieve it. I’m sure this will be Just Fine leading into The Indigo Disk. (: (: (:

And one last thing: the game doesn’t let this happen, but if Kieran had won that final battle against you, I believe things might actually have turned out better. Because let’s face it, Ogerpon would probably still have chosen to go with you anyway, and if she had, Kieran would have been forced to face the fact that it was never actually about strength to her. It wouldn’t even be that hard for him to understand that, given that he’d already noticed the indications that she was scared of being shunned by the townspeople and that she liked you because you made her feel safe. This would help Kieran recontextualise things a little and stop focusing so unhealthily on gaining more battling strength as the One Thing that will solve all his problems. He still wouldn’t exactly be suddenly fixed and happy, but… things wouldn’t be quite so bad, at least. Alas, you are Too Protagonist to lose and let that happen.

[artdolliewishes]

One thing I honestly disliked about Avatar Way of Water was Lo’ak and how his arc was about how he felt like an outcast and that nobody understood him. Because, while he is kind of the black sheep of his family, there’s another character who more closely fits with the themes of feeling like you don’t belong anywhere:

Spider “too Na’vi to be human, too human to be Na’vi” Socorro.

When you compare the two characters circumstances and what they both went through, it feels extremely hypocritical to say that Lo’ak is the “outcast” character in this film when Spider is literally right there. At least Lo’ak has a family that loves and accepts him as part of their family, no matter what shenanigans he gets himself up to; he’ll never not be their family.

Spider on the other hand…well I don’t think I need to explain how his “family” situation is not quite as pleasant.

But then I started thinking about why Lo’ak feels outcasted, more specifically I started thinking about why Lo’ak sees himself in Payakan and how that takes this arc from “hypocritical plot point” to “clever set up for future conflict and arcs.”

Think about it. Why are Lo’ak and Payakan considered outcasts? It’s because both of them make bad decisions which have drastic consequences.

In the first twenty minutes of the movie, we see Lo’ak go against his father’s direct orders and that leads to him and Neteyam nearly getting killed. Later on he chooses to lead himself, his best friend, and his two sisters into an unknown situation that ends up with them getting held hostage and Spider getting kidnapped. And finally his decision to go back for Spider ended up with Neteyam getting killed.

To be clear, I am NOT saying that Lo’ak is responsible for Neteyam’s death or that he’s a terrible brother or friend, just that things are complicated and he makes mistakes that have immense consequences.

Payakan is the same way. When the RDA killed his pod he made the decision to go after them, which led to the deaths of other Na’vi. I also don’t fully blame Payakan for this either, but it’s undeniable that the movie wants us to understand that there is some kind of tangible connection between someone’s misguided but well intentioned actions and the horrible consequences that come after.

This is different from the reason why Spider is outcasted, because Spider never did anything that earned him a bad reputation or tarnished others trust in him. The only reason why Spider is stuck in between worlds, not fully accepted by either, is because he’s a human on Pandora who grew up with Na’vi culture. He’s too much of either group to really fit in with the other.

However, as discussed before, Spider does end up making a well intentioned but misguided decision at the end of Way of Water: he saves Quaritch, and in the next few movies we will see the fallout of that decision and the consequences it’ll bring.

Now, obviously Lo’ak is going to be upset with Spider for this, I would be shocked if all of the Sullys weren’t upset with him for some time after they learn the truth, but Lo’ak’s arc in Way of Water is great setup for how he in particular will eventually come to understand and forgive Spider.

Remember what he said to Tsieryu about Payakan after their conversation with Tonowari?

“Does he have to pay for it[his sins] for the rest of his life?….He knows what he did was wrong and he would never do it again.”

Lo’ak’s arc about being outcasted isn’t focused on circumstances beyond one’s control outcasting someone unfairly, it’s about how people who make well intentioned mistakes and reap terrible consequences still deserve a chance to be better and earn forgiveness; they do not deserve to bare those sins forever if they understand that they were wrong.

My guess is that Spider is going to understand that he was wrong for saving Quaritch and have to deal with the consequences, and in doing so and trying to do better he will earn Lo’ak’s forgiveness and understanding.

Or at least, I hope they go this route or something similar lest all of this set up be for nothing.

[arandomnerd810]

personal TADC character analysis

uh warning this is long lol

autism time let’s go (/not in a negative way i have autism) stretches hands * I’ll go in order of the character episodes cause why not we have it (see below) i’ll put periods but it will just be to make it more readable not to be intimidating lolll

btw im completely open to interpretations of characters changing throughout the series this is just for fun

Gooseworx has said this series is mostly focused on characters rather than lore, and from what we know, i truly believe it. I don’t think any of the current characters will abstract because of this.

(I put a version of this in the glitch inn discord theory thing so if you recognize it that’s why)

Pomni: we already know her deal pretty well, as we’ve already had her episode. uuuh if anyone’s going to do something important lore wise it will probably be her as she’s the main character but can’t rlly tell what that may be. to review ep 2 though she’s an outcast who has felt like she was nothing and is a logical thinker.

(Kinger and Zooble will there their focus episode but i put it in order of who was revealed to be the ep 3 focus first)

Zooble: From their design (the entire motif is it can be changed at any time) and the fact she doesn’t know his gender, we’re dealing with some pretty clear identity issues. Friends with Gangle seems cool excited for next episode to learn more about them!

Kinger: One of the most interesting characters so far. I feel like we will get to learn more about abstraction though Queenie, the X-ed out door that looks like a female version of him. If i had to guess, since Gooseworx said they were not siblings, they were a couple. (Also judging by his age and the fact he could have been married, he may have been a father yeowch imagine that) I can see the common theory of the insect collection implying he was a coder before getting trapped, but i could also see him being some random guy who just likes bugs lol. He seems like really sweet guy behind his constant anxiety and disassociating.

 Gangle: (My faveorite human rn) Her mask design can be interpreted in a lot of ways but it’s clear that the happy mask isn’t her real personality. My take on it rn is she doesn’t wana bother people with her stuff so she pretends she’s happy? She seems easily embarrassed and def has self esteem lower than the last circle of hell. What’s interesting though is she’s willing to stand up for herself from time to time, even though she’s easily shot down after.

Ragatha: Waaaay too nice for her own good. Also probably has self esteem lower than the last circle of hell and bases her self worth of others approval.  Though she’s been here the second longest, she seems a lot more normal than Kinger. Makes me question how long apart their introductions have been. Probably copes via escapism.

Jax: I can see why everyone is very interested in him cause me too. He seems like the only fourth wall breaky guy (unless you count Caine cause of his intro at the pilot)which is rlly interesting how did he figure out more than everyone else? what’s with the keys? i have no clue lmao. He’s an asshole who makes the best of his situation by torturing everyone else. At the end of the day though, he’s a human and was sad at kaufmo’s abstraction but he probably isolates himself so it would probably be the same for anyone

but waAitTt a moment

that’s 6 humans but Gooseworx said we would look into 7 (cause of the “other” part) in her twitter post talking about the character focus timeline so we know our fav character won’t be left behind ⁉️⁉️⁉️ I hear you not asking well my dear hypothetical person, who better to fill the 7th character than Caine?

Why you did not ask? Too bad i’m info dumping. First, he’s the main antagonist and alongside Pomni, the commercial face (or lack their of haha teeth and eye joke) of the series. he’s an important character and loved by many. (and hated equally if not more aside the point lmaooo)

Yes, gooseworx can lie about stuff but I think she’s smarter than to lead this heavy into Caine depth/ angst territory if there wasn’t going to be anything On top of that, the entire purpose of the timeline post was so we know our faveorite characters weren’t getting treated poorly. It’s unlike for a character based show to suddenly drop such a major character for some random other guy were introduced to later or smth. i mean cmon there’s three episodes after all the humans at least one of them has to be focused on my boy.

Caine: I believe he really does have good intentions and wants to help but just does not understand people at all. This means he’s like an anxiety disorder; it wants to help, solves some issues but creates 500 more. Judging by the Tumblr post, loneliness may play a big part in what’s to come? I’ve always had a feeling his front was extremely fake and his VA saying “breaks keyfable” (an act that pretends it’s true) supports that theory. Episode two gives some insecurity vibes when Zooble didn’t want to go on the adventure. I find that pretty interesting cause he didn’t care at all if people went on the gloink adventure or not. Maybe he puts some adventures over others and he could have been proud of the candy adventure cause more time and care was put into it and he made a new AI. Why did he blue screen? i feel like he could have some blockages on what he can say built in though im not sure why he was blocked then if he even was. one of the biggest questions i have ab him currently tbh. what’s with him grabbing his cane like that in ep 2? if i had to guess simply be nervous = that? His VA also knows some depth to him even though his focus episode is likely going to be at least one of the last 3 episodes, which they have not gotten to recording yet. You know what this means Caine angst solidarity club? Sad Caine so more fan angst appetizers before the main cannon feast let’s friccin go‼️‼️⁉️⁉️

(try to guess my fav impossible /j)

[absolutebl]

Love your blog! Do you have any recs for people (me!) who liked: Tale of 1000 Stars, Unknown, Moonlight Chicken, Secret Crush on You, My Beautiful Man, Be My Favorite, Sing My Crush, and We Are (Cute), please? I disliked My Stand In, Love Sea, and Only Friends. I tend to like character driven instead of plot driven stories, and please, no silly misunderstandings or misguided noble morons who break up because a parent suggests it!

Do I detect... a challenge? *rubs hands together* we are playing my favorite game.

Okay, likes:

Tale of 1000 Stars

Unknown

Moonlight Chicken

Secret Crush on You

My Beautiful Man

Be My Favorite

Sing My Crush

We Are

I crossed out the ones that don't fit the trend (outliers) and congratz your wheelhouse is:

moody, atmospheric, angsty, tiny bit cerebral, bit gritty, higher production value, soft focus, lower heat levels but yearning, bit of domesticity, acting chops

Dislikes: My Stand In, Love Sea, Only Friends

Okay not too far into angst, no nasty characters, no dubious tropes or anti-heros, no mame, no high heat, university or older. CHECK! Got it.

Ready?

Right in your damn wheelhouse:

The 8th Sense

(20 points to whoever knew that would be my pull out the gate)

One of the longest BLs Korea has given us (like Blueming) and it feels more atmospheric gay coming of age romance than strictly BL. It’s got a bit of an age gap, country boy/city boy, stellar acting, complex characters, and leads with great chemistry and tension. It’s a bit chewy and sticky and less perfect than most KBLs (do I detect a touch of Taiwan?) This one deployed BL tropes (messy eater, shoulder sleep, protective seme, there’s even some hyung-slinging) but front loaded them with painful backstory and then a ton of angst to drive the 2nd half. This isn’t in the KBL bubble, there’s sharp edges and lots of triggers. For a BL the darkness of the content left me feeling unsettled (which is the only reason it didn't get a perfect score) but it does have a glorious ending and that counts for a lot.

I think you'd really love this one.

Trigger warnings - suicide, loss of a family member.

Blueming

It’s a tiny bit dark and a tiny bit bittersweet, almost too honest to a university experience and first love (for BL), but if you want your mind ever-so-slightly messed with and your intimacy hellishly sweet, this BL will do it for you in a coldly distant manner, while bitch slapping you with self worth issues. I wasn’t into it at first, but the leads are solid and by ep 5 it got really good, becoming a narrative about self discovery meets understanding and accepting others people’s flaws without hurting them. Ultimately, we witnessed two characters maturing because of each other and their mutual affection, without that affection becoming the conflict point. Instead, tension was built around other aspects of identity, popularity, and self-worth. While production values were a touch lower than usual for Korea, Blueming included decent kisses and beyond plus a satisfying ending and come judicious and very elegant use of tropes. It is, in the end, simply a great BL.

Also Bleuming paved the road for 8th Sense and other gritty KBL to follow.

Love For Love's Sake

Isekai-based KBL is about a man who must win a game by convincing a reserved teen outcast to fall in love with him. Of course, that teen represents himself and his own unhappiness. Like many queer narratives, this show is actually about self worth, trust, and found family, and it is VERY on the nose. But I don’t expect subtlety from my BL and I enjoyed it's truly lovely redemption arc and earnest performances. I personally found the narrative a touch disjointed with overworked filming angles and poorer than average captions, but the consistency of tone, script, and immersion is beyond the norm for BL. You will drown in this show and like it that way. The leads have fantastic chemistry and it's ultimately highly rewatchable and utterly charming, which counts for a lot.

Trigger warning - suicide.

Unintentional Love Story

OMG the plot! Uke forced into a totally understandable betrayal, falling in love despite himself, put into a corner he can't get out of, the AGONY, the PAIN in those gorgeous eyes. Gah. Okay, so: A boy loses his job due to trumped-up corruption charges accidentally discovers his ex-boss's favorite artist, now a recluse. Evil manager offers him his job back, if he can convince the artist to rejoin society. Instead, they fall in love. I found the artist a bit stiff and reserved but Gongchan (maknae of B1A4) is a fucking GIFT - he carried this show (which I do not expect from the idol element). He was luminous with extraordinarily expressive eyes, just drown in the emoting abyss. The external conflict, social tension and pressure is complex and beautifully executed, plus Korea gave us legit side dishes (NOT a love triangle, hally-fucking-luya).

My Personal Weatherman AKA Taikan Yoho

You mentioned My Beautiful Man so if you're feel like that energy, grown up, watch this. It's a style of live action yaoi really only works from Japan. Basically: boys who fell in love in college end up living together but both are so repressed they actually don't realize they're in love. It's higher heat than we usually get from Japan's HEA stuff, and that part is also very well done, but it leaned into the "why don't they just talk for fuck's sake?" trope which is only exacerbated into undiluted frustration by the fact that they're already fucking. However, that's angst for Japan. And you like angst. Honestly? It's great, but watching requires more patience than usual, even for Japan.

My Ride

Thai BL grew up with this pulp (the first ever to make my end of year top 10). It’s a truly lovely and special little show featuring the extremely rare pairing of sunshine/sunshine (AKA a cinnamon roll couple) plus mature explorations of relationships using one of the softest, sweetest and most innocent friends to lovers vehicles. Kindly, overworked doctor meets broken-hearted motorcycle taxi driver in an “other side of the tracks” slow burn romance. The support cast is excellent, making for great friendship groups and family dynamics. With honest queer rep that adds to, but doesn’t impede, the story, and genuine conversation about the nature of class, wealth, and classism, not to mention communication, honesty, and respect for boundaries, you can’t go wrong with this show. In other news, I am a sucker for a single dimple.

It won't have the production values you're used to but it is a great show.

A Breeze of Love

Tsundere insomniac grump reunited with his sunshine jock ex (human sleeping pill) who now hates him. Basketball is also involved. While the simplicity of a reunion plot makes this more cohesive than most KBLs, it is a tad stiff and slow, never managing to lift itself out of "pretty, angsty, and pretty enjoyable." I liked it more than I thought I would, and think about it more too. 

Jazz for Two

This was basically what I wanted from Given and didn’t get. So I’m pleased. A solid enemies to lovers BL, where the sins of brothers' past haunts the present. Great optics, decent chemistry, and a tidy script even if tsundere characterization went a bit extreme in some cases.

Trigger warning - suicide.

Like In The Movies AKA Gaya Sa Pelikula

Karl, a student living alone, runs short of funds and ends up becoming housemates with Vald an out and proud chaos gay. This leads Karl into an identity crisis and journey of self discovery. This kind of forced proximity trope is really common in BL, but what Gaya does is handle it in a messy honestly queer way. It includes Vlad’s attitude in response to Karl’s shaken behavior and the frustration many out queers feel. For that alone it has to be applauded.

DNA Says Love You

DNA deserves extra marks for an upbeat approach to a queer story arc that other shows have systemically mishandled with sadness (in the guise of realism). There is a twist, which I found predictable, but knowing what would happen didn't spoil this show. The leads are luminous and engaging, and it’s full of queer found family representation and an unexpected amount of domesticity, plus it’s Taiwan, so the kisses are great. The first few eps are rough going but PLEASE have patience, it's worth it I promise! The second half is really special and life/love affirming - and the end is big-grin charming.

My Tooth Your Love

Earnest dentist hottie with sad eyes who worries too much is smitten by an adorable sunshine neurotic bar owner with serious anxiety issues. They fall madly in love while courting each other with food, plushies, and naps. Then, shocker, talk about their feelings and try to actually sort out their problems so they can have an adult relationship. Bonus crumbs = 18 year old poor little rich kid in mad crush with a much older man. I really enjoyed this show, it had a unique premise, killer dialogue, there was a solid lead pair with charming chemistry, soft flirtation, delightful smiling kisses, and stinkingly cute domesticity. All that said, I wasn’t wild about some of the darker themes it explored, even though it did a good job with them. And while the sides were adorable, they were underused. In the land of May/December, baby boy kabedon is my kryptonite! Why so little of it? (Kabedon is My Kryptonite = also the name of my indie band’s first single.)

Trigger warning - parental abuse.

The Eclipse

GMMTV does gay Blacklist with a good boy/bad boy pairing. This is a good show but the cast is excellent and the leads are absolutely flawless, which elevates it beyond just good. We got a nuanced and multifaceted burgeoning relationship: philosophical (and socio-political) conflict contrasted to moments of empathy; flirtation contrasted to moments of genuine affection, plus plenty of angst. This narrative is less about love than it is about courage and tenderness. However, near the end the pacing was off and the plot frustrating. Still, this is an enjoyable watch, with a finale that features verbal consent and a fun blooper reel.

Never Let Me Go

Bodyguard romance where poor boy must watch over rich boy for family obligation reasons. Simple premise well executed with a few bumps that made it feel like it was trying to tackle too much (when it wasn’t). Still, an enjoyable show that benefited from being handed to PondPhuwin who did a stellar job with their roles and chemistry. Of GMMTV handing out new series to established pairs in 2023 this is one of the most successful IMHO. It's typically Thai in that it's a bit bloated and has a confusing plot, but at least it HAD a plot and the central relationship is solid and loyal. The Our Skyy 2 follow up is great too. And very much adds to the cannon in a fun way rather than feeling superfluous - making this show ultimately 14 eps rather than 12.

Some real oddball and sophisticated suggestions

Addicted (original)

When Chinese BL was good it was very dirty good and when it was bad it was censored. This is the model for that statement: rich kid falls madly for the genius poor kid in his class, starts an aggressive pursuit, includes kidnapping for love, obsession, stepbrother trope, plus some cheating. I love this BL because of what I could have been. Just stop watching it after The Sex Scene. Okay?

It might not be right in your wheelhouse but what even fans forget about is how stunning the atmosphere is with this show. I mean we can feel the cold and the grunge. When they living poor it's REAL poor. It's a super immersive show. Unforgettable.

Began Beginning

Childhood best friends must come to terms with their own identities and true feelings for each other when a new boy comes to town, putting them into conflict with their families and ultimately, each other. For the first half of this show there’s a lot of sitting across from each other and talking about life choices over yummy food and then going to tourist spots (mildly boring and not particularly important to the plot). It changed tone about 2/3 in to be way more of a coming out family drama about forced marriages and homophobia. And then at the very end it changed again, becoming a full on soap opera with kidnapping, crazy characterization shifts, and rescue missions. All in all? It was a wild raw creature to consume as a binge. No kisses since this is Myanmar, but a very romantic end, so I think maybe actually worth your time? I'm certainly glad I watched it.

Stay Still

What to say about this offering from Hong Kong? It’s different, a mix of early CBL, Taiwanese shorts, and Pinoy visuals. It felt like the story was 2 independent shorts that had been lengthen and then stuck together, and I wish they'd been approached as separate and tighter entities. Nevertheless, this was a complex little piece, interesting in a sweaty grungy way, with a certain aura of queer authenticity that made it simultaneously tense, unpredictable, and refreshing. I’m not sure I would necessarily call it BL, but any county’s early foray into the genre usually starts out this way, so perhaps nascent BL? Worth watching, especially if you enjoy stuff from the Philippines and Taiwan.

On the lighter end but probably still in your wheelhouse

I Cannot Reach You AKA Kimi ni wa Todokanai

Classic friends-to-lovers BL is everything Japan does best. Angsty. Emo. Aching. Driven by real thirst. Yamato is deeply in love with his childhood bestie, Kakeru, and has been for ages, unable to hide his ungainly damaging high school need. He wants Kakeru in every way possible and it oozes off of the screen. Kakeru is silly and a little simple, but not frenetic or overly camp about it. He is earnest, and genuinely wants to keep Yamato in his life which means giving a romance (and gayness) a fair chance. We watch him realize his affection and what form it can take in a truly authentic way. This show was impossibly kind to both of its lead characters and I felt almost honored that I got to watch something so lovely and rare play out on my screen.

To My Star

Hwang Da Seul directs this show about a neurotic actor (actual puppy) who takes refuge with a grumpy chef resulting in sparks, cooking lessons, and LOVE! It’s is a touch quirky to get into, but utterly charming once it hits its stride. This is the ultimate grumpy/sunshine pairing plus the most appealing light-filled kitchen of our dreams. I adore this show so much. Limited use of BL tropes makes this feel more of a sweet contemporary gay romance between an actor plagued by scandal and the grumpy chef who adopts him, but the gentleness will appeal to fans of the BL genre.

Old Fashion Cupcake

This show had me from the moment they broke the egg yolk with the chopsticks in the opening credits. It’s about a younger man with a long cherished crush on his boss (ten years older and going through a mid life crisis) who decides to save and seduce said boss with pancakes. It’s wholesome, comforting, sexy, and a very necessary narrative about still having hope, interests, and openness to affection at any age. It’s a stunningly filmed late-in-life comg of age/queerness story packaged in a subtle critique of expectations around masculinity, love, and loneliness... and it’s beautiful.

Cherry Magic (Thai remake) - this is my We Are & SCOY match pull

A soft charming warm hug of a show about crushes and mind reading and self worth that really worked for me. With no-fuss execution from a consummate team (at GMMTV) and an OG lead pair (proving why they remain eternal and deserve to grow up). Look, here’s the thing, Cherry Magic is a great Thai BL in its own right - not comparing it to any other iteration. But even when I do compare (and I've seen all the Cherries and read the manga) it stand strong. I, personally, like the Thai BL slightly better than the Japanese live action yaoi, but I think that’s because I just really enjoy Thai BL's style and I LOVE TayNew. Also all the kissing was both present and better in this version. As it should be from Thailand.

Make a Wish

A doctor who can see the dead strikes a bargain with a wish-granting irreverent tree angel - naturally they fall in love (from Sammon: Manner of Death & Triage). Stars Fluke Natouch opposite not Ohm, but who cares because Fluke has chemistry with everybody. Once again the Thai afterlife is incredibly bureaucratic but I enjoyed the premise and the unfolding of the story (it’s not predictable but still satisfying and with nice little twist). I like that the doctor is just gay AF - fag hag bestie and made of swagger. The cast is excellent but the comedic stylings are a bit overblown and tonally off. It has sad parts and did make me cry but is ultimately happy with a great sex scene, good smiley kisses, and all the agency.

I thought about it but I'm not sure

still you can put these on your "maybe" list

Until We Meet Again

I Feel You Linger in the Air

La Pluie

Restart After Come Back Home

His the movie

Life: Love on the Line

Perfect Propose

Tokyo in April is

Love is Better the Second Time Around

Ocean Likes Me

My Only 12%

After Sundown

I Told Sunset About You

These might be a bit too cerebral, dark, and/or plot-heavy for you. But are worth it if you feel in the mood for something very chewy.

Currently airing

It's set in high school but it scratches the Unknown itch:

The On1y One

Sirs not appearing on this list but if you follow my blog and ask me for tips it's kind of required watching:

Seven Days.

Because everyone should watch it no matter what your taste. So there.

(source)

[merwgue]

Lucien Vanserra: The True Victim of A Court of Thorns and Roses

Let’s get one thing straight: while everyone’s focused on the traumas of Feyre, Nesta, and Rhysand, Lucien Vanserra is quietly enduring some of the most heartbreaking and soul-crushing treatment in the entire A Court of Thorns and Roses series. This man is the definition of “forgotten hero,” a character shoved into the background while everyone else’s emotional baggage takes center stage. But when you really break down his journey, it becomes clear: Lucien is the true victim of the story. Abandoned, betrayed, rejected, and shunned—he’s lost more than anyone gives him credit for. And let’s not even get started on his non-existent support system.

This essay is for Lucien, the character who deserved more.

Tamlin: A Complicated Friendship

Okay, let’s ease up on Tamlin for a second. He’s not the villain in Lucien’s story, but it’s impossible to overlook the ways in which he’s failed Lucien as a friend. Sure, Tamlin saved Lucien’s life, and in the early books, their camaraderie seems genuine. Lucien is loyal to Tamlin, even to the point of defending his choices when everything in the Spring Court is falling apart. But here’s the thing—Tamlin is a terrible friend to Lucien in the long run. When Tamlin goes off the rails, obsessing over Feyre and becoming a controlling mess, Lucien gets stuck cleaning up after him.

Lucien is the one trying to hold the Spring Court together while Tamlin spirals, and what does he get for his trouble? Tamlin’s neglect and emotional distance. He stands by Tamlin because of loyalty and friendship, but let’s not pretend that Tamlin did the same for him. When Lucien finally helps Feyre escape Tamlin’s suffocating control, it’s less of a betrayal and more of Lucien doing the right thing. But Tamlin? He sees it as the ultimate backstab, and that’s where their relationship falls apart. Lucien, once again, is left out in the cold, torn between his sense of duty and doing what’s right. He deserves better, but Tamlin’s emotional instability makes sure that Lucien never really gets to be his own person.

The Autumn Court: The True Hellscape

If you think Lucien’s life in the Spring Court was bad, wait until you hear about his childhood. Born into the Vanserra family of the Autumn Court, Lucien was the outcast of a vicious, backstabbing dynasty. Beron, his father, is a tyrant who not only sees Lucien as an expendable pawn but actively wants him dead. His brothers? Equally charming. It’s clear from the start that Lucien never had a chance to thrive in the Autumn Court, a place where power is everything, and kindness is seen as weakness.

And let’s not forget the whole Jesminda tragedy. Lucien dared to fall in love with a lesser fae, a love that cost Jesminda her life when Lucien’s family decided that this romance didn’t fit their elitist ideals. Jesminda’s murder was a turning point for Lucien—he fled his home, knowing that if he stayed, his family would finish the job. He’s a fugitive in his own court, forever on the run from the very people who are supposed to protect him. The Autumn Court isn’t just abusive—it’s a prison. Lucien had to escape, and in doing so, he severed any ties he had to a place that was supposed to be his birthright. Now he’s left without a home, a family, or a sense of belonging.

Elain Archeron: The Ultimate Rejection

And now, onto Lucien’s “reward” for all his suffering—Elain Archeron. Because apparently, the universe decided that after all the abuse, loss, and betrayal, what Lucien really needed was to be rejected by his mate. Let’s be clear: the mating bond is supposed to be this magical, unbreakable connection, right? Wrong. In Lucien’s case, it’s a constant source of pain and rejection.

Elain doesn’t just ignore the bond—she actively refuses to even acknowledge Lucien’s existence. She treats him like an awkward acquaintance, if that. Lucien, being the respectful guy he is, gives her space and time, but let’s face it: Elain’s rejection isn’t just about needing time to adjust to being fae. She’s chosen to flat-out pretend like Lucien isn’t her mate, and that stings. For a man who’s lost everything—his home, his family, his friends—this bond should have been a light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, it’s another source of heartbreak.

Lucien doesn’t even have a chance to prove himself to Elain. She’s decided from the start that their bond doesn’t matter, that Lucien doesn’t matter. And while everyone is wrapped up in the Nesta-Cassian drama, Lucien’s quietly standing on the sidelines, feeling the weight of his mate’s rejection. It’s brutal, and the narrative never gives him the closure he so desperately needs.

The Night Court: The Perpetual Outsider

Lucien finally gets out of the toxic mess that is the Spring Court, but what does he find in Velaris? A new home? New friends? Ha! Not even close. Rhysand and his inner circle barely tolerate Lucien. Rhysand is too wrapped up in his own superiority complex to give Lucien a real chance. Let’s not forget that Rhysand, the Great High Lord, practically sneers at Lucien for his past alliances and treats him like an outsider.

Sure, Feyre brings Lucien to Velaris, but the rest of the inner circle doesn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat. Lucien is treated with suspicion, kept at arm’s length, and never fully integrated into their group. He’s just… there. Rhysand’s so busy being the “hero” that he doesn’t see Lucien for what he really is—a loyal ally who’s willing to sacrifice everything to protect the people he cares about.

And don’t even get me started on Amren. The self-proclaimed “second-in-command” spends most of her time glaring at Lucien, like he’s some kind of ticking time bomb. It’s almost laughable how little effort anyone makes to actually welcome him. Lucien’s loyalty to Feyre is the only reason he’s tolerated in Velaris, and even then, it’s clear that he doesn’t belong. He’s an outsider, floating through the courts, never truly accepted anywhere.

No Home, No Family, No Love

So where does that leave Lucien? He has no home—his family tried to kill him, his best friend fell apart, and the court that’s supposed to be his sanctuary treats him like a stray dog. He has no family—his father is a tyrant, his brothers are cutthroats, and his mate wants nothing to do with him. And he has no love—not from Elain, not from his friends, and certainly not from the universe that keeps throwing him into impossible situations.

Lucien’s story is one of relentless isolation, rejection, and pain. He’s been cast out of every place he’s ever called home, left with no real allies and no future. And yet, the narrative doesn’t even bother to give him the closure or redemption he deserves. While everyone else is busy finding their happily-ever-afters, Lucien is left wandering, a victim of fate, circumstance, and neglect.

Conclusion

Lucien Vanserra is the forgotten victim of A Court of Thorns and Roses. While Feyre, Rhysand, and the rest of the inner circle grapple with their various traumas, Lucien quietly endures some of the most heartbreaking experiences of the entire series. His loyalty is betrayed, his love rejected, and his place in the world shattered. He has no home, no family, no friends, and no love—just a never-ending cycle of loss and rejection.

If anyone deserves sympathy, it’s Lucien. The series may focus on the dramatic arcs of its other characters, but Lucien’s story is the true tragedy. He’s the character who’s been failed by everyone around him, and the one who truly deserves a happy ending—but likely won’t ever get one.

[periwinkla]

haha I’m back again haha-

If there was one thing you could change about the ace attorney story what would it be?

Personally it would be having the gap between where Phoenix and miles were in contact be a lot shorter. Because sometimes people forget Phoenix kinda stalked miles, they knew eachother for like a few months when they were 9 years old! So it is kinda creepy that Phoenix just stopped everything for him because he “looked sad.” The thing is we don’t even have confirmation that Phoenix tried contacting him. It would also make more sense if they were constantly talking to each other and it just stopped. Phoenix would have a better reason for the going into law school for a friend then “hE wAs sAd.” It’s honestly insane that nobody actually questions this for more than a minute! Like yeah, it’s the ace attorney universe. But are you telling me that no one thought “oh my god that is absolutely insane you need to talk to a therapist!” Anyways tell me what you think!

Haha hello again, anon :) (a few SOJ spoilers for the 1st paragraph) I don't think I would change any major event, but... I think I would change the way Trucy's relationship (or lack thereof) with some characters is depicted. Apart from the final SOJ scene with Edgeworth, it feels like Trucy doesn't have much of a relationship with the first trilogy's characters. In SOJ Maya doesn't mention her at all, even though it would make sense to have a dialogue with her asking Phoenix how his daughter was doing.... so maybe, if I were to change any part of the story, it would be for Edgeworth to notice she stuck in his suitcase a bit earlier so that she can take part in 6-5 at least. What she was even doing throughout the whole mayhem still baffles me... please don't tell me she was in the suitcase the whole time... I understand your point, although at least for me it just represents a character flaw & relationship flaw, and I find it interesting. I don't think it's something that's ever treated as a 'normal' decision in-game, either (Maya is flabbergasted when he tells her the reason he became a lawyer, for example). It shows how easily he gets attached to people and obsessed with saving them. It's an actual problem he has as a character. Also the class trial sells to me the narrative that Phoenix was a bit of an outcast in childhood (he had only Larry as a friend which is also mentioned to have had a not-so-good childhood).  And in such a circumstance there was this one person to stick out for him so vehemently. Then he sees that same person - someone he saw as a hero - in a newspaper depicted as a demon who would do anything for a guilty verdict, and he can’t accept it. Phoenix does this to an extreme degree, but he does everything in his life to extreme degrees, really. And it seems like to him, as long as he gets to save people, nothing is a big deal. Like ‘yeah this is just a thing I need to do to save that person’. It’s no biggie to change life paths to save someone, it’s no biggie to swallow a necklace, it’s no biggie crossing a bridge on fire, it’s no biggie adopting a kid at 26 when your life is in shambles. I like that Phoenix and Miles’s relationship is not an idyllic love story thing. Phoenix’s tendency to get too attached, obsessed, and fixated on saving people is one of his character flaws, which is something he needs to work on. Miles’s tendency to self-isolate and do everything by himself contrasts with that and they both need to learn from each other, really. Both are incredibly unhealthy. What drives this point home is 2-4 for me, because Phoenix makes Miles’s death all about himself, like it’s somehow his responsibility. When it really isn’t. Miles had to take some time for himself and figure himself out. It’s the way he did it that was wrong. They’re both wrong here.

By the way Phoenix confirms he tried to contact him, we just don't know the 'how'. I suspect he may have just phoned/sent something to the Prosecutor's office, but who knows. Miles didn't reply, regardless. Unless he sent like, dozens of stuff to the Prosecutor's office, I wouldn't define that as stalking; he also never even tries to be in his vicinity if not in the courtroom. By his logic, he only can get through to him via the law, after all. By showing him and reminding him what Miles himself taught him as children. That's why he became a defense attorney and not something like... I dunno, a detective? Would have been easier to talk to him if they worked together, no? But that wasn't the point. He wanted to inspire Miles to go back to being the person who inspired him when they were children. That's my understanding, anyway. (also I like to consider the fact that the whole Dahlia fiasco reminded him of the feeling of being accused, but I'd ramble so I'll stop here... there's a lot behind his decision to become a lawyer) I do think it would have been nice if they had at least a few more months together as children though. In the game it’s ambiguous when the class trial takes place (and the JP school year starts in April) so initially I had thought they were friends for something like 8ish months… but in the anime it’s set in September. To me this may imply that Phoenix didn’t have a nice childhood either; maybe it wasn't tragic, but he was lonely enough that he hanged on the memory of those 3-4ish months because those were his most precious ones. It’s… sad.

P.S. Sorry if I rambled too much anon, I tend to overanalyze stuff.

[therainscene]

Stranger Things is fundamentally a story about being an outcast: coming of age while using the healing power of love to deal with abuse and pressure to conform.

And these are all very queer themes. Stranger Things isn’t necessarily about queerness, per se, but its themes do happen to encapsulate the queer experience perfectly -- so it’s no coincidence that the boy who got the story rolling and whose coming of age will be a focus in S5 also happens to be gay. A satisfying ending for him will be a satisfying ending for the whole show.

So let’s examine Will’s arc without our shipping goggles on and ask ourselves:

What sort of outcome for Will would best fit the themes of Stranger Things?

If he dies, then all those times he was saved by the power of love will have gone to waste.

Perhaps you could argue that he’ll sacrifice himself in an act of love and gratitude for those friends who saved him in the past... but he's already done that, multiple times, and it never permanently solved the problems plaguing him or Hawkins. Will needs to try something new if he wants it to stick this time.

If he becomes a villain, then he’s giving in to the cycle of abuse.

That’s too out of character. Will is Henry’s narrative foil -- they have a lot in common, but their roles in this story fundamentally contrast one another. So even if Will allies with Vecna -- perhaps out of some well-meaning effort to sacrifice himself again -- that’s not going to be the end of his story.

If his defeated acceptance that queers like him never Get The Boy in the end is proven correct, then the narrative will be rewarding his conformity to homophobic ideals.

Yes, nobody is entitled to Get The Boy in real life... but nobody gets eaten by Demogorgons in real life either. This is a story, and its job is to explore ideas through metaphor, not to be a perfect mirror.

And yes, Stranger Things is set in the terrifyingly homophobic 80s and chooses to take a realistic approach in depicting queerness... but it’s still a modern story intended for a 2020s audience.

So why should we learn the lesson that the best ending a gay boy can hope for is bittersweet at best? That queer self-actualization is rooted in waiting to be accepted by straight people instead of forging your own queerness for yourself? How is any of this consistent with the theme of resisting forced conformity?

But if:

Will overcomes his internalized homophobia and openly admits his love for Mike, and Mike likewise shakes off the shackles of compulsory heterosexuality and admits he feels the same way...

...The joy of actually getting the romantic love he thought he never would inspires Will and gives him strength...

...To finally face Vecna, symbolically addressing the abuse and societal homophobia that almost prevented him from getting that romance in the first place?

We satisfyingly resolve all three themes in one tidy, self-contained swoop.

[videovamptramp]

love’s never been much to me (but i’ll come with you if you’re sure that’s what you need)

// wednesday hates the new girl. //

warnings: minor character death (not that important) wednesday being mean, wednesday being a jealous asshole, sensitive reader, crying, harsh words. angst but happy ending <3

when your parents first sent you and your sisters to a boarding school in vermont, you tried your hardest not to be upset about it. you understood your mothers death impacted your father in ways you couldn’t imagined. you were sure it impacted you in ways he could never fathom as well— but you couldn’t help but feel like an outcast on the first day. your older sister elise was fitting in great, as soon as she showed up. her high grades put her in honors classes, and her contagious smile along with that charming, intelligent intellect caused people to migrate to her quickly. your younger sister sabrina was no different, she was beautiful, and had the best style out of anyone you’ve ever met. it wasn’t hard for either for them to make friends.

you however, tugged at the longsleeves of your tight black cropped top, and you kept your eyes open and aware of your surroundings. everyone at the school looked like they were either rich, or smart as hell. “hey i really like your jeans.” a tall, dark haired brunette tells you as she approaches you. you smile, “thanks! i love your cardigan.” you compliment her, and she smiles back at you. “i’m yoko. i think your my new roommate.” she admits, and your eyes widen. “oh shit, seriously? i haven’t even gotten a chance to see my roommate yet. i just put my stuff on the empty bed… but the rooms nice. you’ve kept it clean!“ you begin to ramble, and yoko laughs. “you seem nice. i think we’re gonna get along great.” she proclaims, flashing you a grin.

yoko was your first friend at nevermore academy. she was bright, generous, gave great fashion advice, and was someone you knew you could trust right away. it didn’t take long for you both to become nearly inseparable. that’s when you begin getting close to enid, divina, and even bianca; some of yoko’s other close friends. you and enid have the most in common. you find yourself hanging out with the blonde whenever your roommate is busy with nightshade society. it isn’t until you and enid have plans for the mall one afternoon, that you end up in her room. that’s when you see her. wednesday addams. her long braided black hair, her long lashes, and that all black outfit. you had barely seen her in the halls, but had no classes with her at all.

“i hope you and your friend aren’t planning on staying here. i’m working on my novel.” wednesday states, barely looking up from her typewriter. you look at her with pure interest, “you’re a writer? what are you writing about?” you ask curiously, and she rolls her eyes. “things a peabrain like you wouldn’t understand.” she mutters, and you giggle at her cattiness. “ignore wednesday, she’s allergic to color and all things nice. let’s go y/n, the mall closes at 6 today.” enid says, as she grabs her coat. “okay! sabrina’s tagging along, she said she needs some new shoes.” you explain, and enid smiles, “that’s fine! i love her! i heard she has a crush on joey from physics.” enid admits, and you gag. “ew! he looks like one of those guys that doesn’t wash their ass.”

enid bursts into fits of laughter as you both make your way to the door, “bye wednesday, it was nice officially meeting you.” you wave at the raven haired girl, who doesn’t even spare you a glance. “i wish i could say the same.” she grumbles, and you can’t fight the smile that tugs on your lips as you and enid make your way out. as you two walk down the hall, and towards sabrina’s room, enid pipes up; “hey, don’t take anything wednesday says personally, she’s like that with everybody.” enid explains, and you shake your head. “oh it’s fine! she’s pretty cute.” you admit with a blush, and enid shakes her head in disbelief. “wednesday and cute don’t belong in the same category. maybe violent, or irritable; even sassy fits.” enid jokes and you laugh. “well, she’s still pretty. even if she doesn’t quite like me.” you say as you walk into your younger sisters room.

“who doesn’t like you?” sabrina asks, as she looks away from the mirror where she was fixing her make up in, and over to you and enid. “wednesday.” you say, and sabrina furrows her brows, “who?” she asks. “my roommate. she’s in our grade, super grumpy, wears all black.” enid explains bluntly as she takes a seat on sabrina’s bed. “is she short?” sabrina asks and enid nods eagerly. “yup that’s her!” the blonde exclaims. “oh god, y/n/n, you like her? she’s emo.” sabrina points out, and you pout, “what’s wrong with that?!! she’s totally cute!” you declare, and enid flashes you a pointed look. “and totally hates you.” she reminds you, and you blush sheepishly. “hate and love are two very similar things.” you joke causing enid to groan and throw a pillow your way.

you start seeing wednesday a lot more after that. you always go out of your way to say hi to her, or even talk to her. even though she never seems excited to talk to you, she doesn’t ignore you, and you take that as a good sign. sabrina and you have always been the closest out of your siblings; she was only a year younger than you, yet you two were more like best friends than sisters. that’s exactly why she’s the first person you confess to about having a crush on wednesday.

“you can’t be serious, y/n/n. she hates your guts!” sabrina points out as you two eat lunch under the old oak tree. you had just admitted it to her, and the brunette was staring at you as if you had three heads. “i know! but she’s so hot! and have you heard her voice? ugh… i got it bad, the other day i asked her if she came her often… to school!!” you groan, and she shakes her head, chuckling softly. “damn… i for sure would have thought you would’ve fell for yoko… or even enid. but wednesday? seriously? have you guys even had an actual conversation that didn’t involve you trying to awkwardly flirt with her?” sabrina asks, and you nod.

“i was talking to her about her novel the other day… she’s a smart ass, but she’s definitely smart. like probably smarter than elise.” you admit, and sabrina laughs. “damn, maybe you should ask elise how to tutor you in the art of being a bitch.” she jokes, and you giggle. “maybe. she’s definitely too busy with jake. have you seen the way she gets when he texts her?” you inquire as you eat a cookie off your sisters tray. “yeah, it’s disgusting.” the younger girl says after rolling her eyes. “she still hasn’t talked to me because i stained her flannel. i got her a new one and said i was sorry!” sabrina exclaims, and you laugh. “she’s taking it personal. you’re gonna have to gravel. or just buy her food after her debate club. she’s always hungry after arguing.” you retort, taking a sip of your chocolate milk.

“ugh, she was made for debate. i’m thinking about joining the soccer team.” she reveals, and your eyes widen. “awww that would be awesome! you’d be great!” you say honestly, and she flashes you a smile. “thanks y/n/n.” she says softly as she finishes her sandwich. “hey that reminds me! my friend xavier was saying something about a book club on thursday’s at the library. you should check it out!” she says as she opens her backpack and pulls out a flyer. she hands it to you, and you take it, skimming over it. your eyebrows raise slightly, “huh, i actually think i’m gonna check it out. i need new book ideas. i’m tired of re-reading ‘black house’.” you tell her and she beams. “i thought of you as soon as he showed me the flyer!“

unbeknownst to you and sabrina, wednesday also received the same flyer from xavier. that’s how the two of you both ended up in the library on tuesday. you’re a bit early, and so is she, along with a few other students. you take a seat right beside her, and she glances at you. “are you lost? this isn’t the romance novel book club. they meet on tuesday’s.” she cattily remarks, and you chuckle. “i didn’t even know they had a club for that.” you admit, ignoring her comment. wednesday can’t help but continuously glance at you; you’re wearing baggy jeans, a tight fitted top, along with a pair of gray converse. wednesday is wearing an oversized black knitted sweater, fishnets, and a pair of black doc marten boots. her hair is braided and she looks gorgeous as ever.

“i actually don’t enjoy romance novels. it makes me feel like i’m reading really cheesy fanfics. my little sister gave me the flyer for this club. i need new book recommendations.” you say simply, and wednesday purses her lips, “this is a book club for thriller and horror novels.” she points out, and you nod. “i know. i read the flyer, addams.” you joke, and she looks at you. “what’s your favorite book?” she asks, and you blush sheepishly as you reach into your bag and pull out your old copy of ‘black house’ by stephen king. “i know it’s a bit basic but he really does have wonderful novels. i really enjoyed ‘she’s gone’ by david bell as well. the ending was a plot twist. poor girl.” you ramble slightly, and you blush as you realize she’s staring at you. you tuck a strand of curly hair behind your ear, your eyes meet hers, “what’s your favorite book, wednesday?” you ask her, sounding genuinely curious.

“the original frankenstein book is unmatched. but i suppose the haunting of hill house is good as well.” she answers curtly and you smile at her as she avoids your sweet gaze. “i too carry a copy of frankenstein around because it’s my favorite.” she confesses, making you grin. “you’ll have to lend it to me sometime. if that’s okay of course.” you say so gently she nearly grimaces at how soft your voice is. she reaches into her backpack, and pulls out the old copy, before handing it to you. you reach for it, but she pulls it away abruptly. “black house. i’d like to read it.” she declares, taking you by slight surprise. you nod vigorously, “sure! here!” you say happily, as you shove the copy of your favorite book into her free hand. you gladly take the original ‘frankenstein’ copy, and flash her a smile that makes her nauseous.

“hello everyone. i see we have quite a few eager readers. i’ve picked out a few good reads, and we’ll all have a vote on which one you all wanna read this week.” one of the teachers you hardly know interrupts your moment with wednesday, as she sits down in front of the group. wednesday doesn’t say a word to you during the rest of the session. though, she cannot seem to stop thinking about you as she reads ‘black house’. the little side notes you wrote— the highlighted parts you thought were important. she finds herself enjoying the book, and she can’t believe someone like you actually has good taste. perhaps wednesday misjudged you.

she’s pulled out of her thoughts one evening by your giggling. you’re laughing at something sabrina and her friends were saying. that’s when wednesday sees you take a hit of one of their wax pens, blowing the smoke in your younger sisters face, and giggling wildly. she shakes her head, prying her eyes away from you. nope. you’re still an idiot, she thinks. an idiot who seems to be interested in good books. but that’s your only redeeming quality in wednesday’s opinion.

“hey wednesday, are you enjoying the book?“ you ask as you approach the raven haired girl. wednesday looks over at where you were just sitting with your group of annoying friends and little sister. they seemed to have scattered, and she hadn’t even noticed you making your way up to her. “it’s not terrible. i truly enjoy the way he doesn’t shy away from the gruesome details and thoughts.” she explains, and you nod in agreement as you sit next to her. she doesn’t tell you to get lost even though she should. your girly perfume fills her senses, and she sticks her nose in the air as she looks away from you. “yeah, stephen king is already not afraid to cross any lines, but peter straub is totally fucked in the head. i like it.” you confess in a dorky way that makes wednesday turn her head and stare at you for a second.

“what?“ you ask curiously, wondering what she was staring at. “how did i never notice how much of a dork you are?” she asks, and you roll your eyes, blushing deeply— you pull your knees up to your chest, and you stare at your shoes. “maybe because you’ve never bothered to get to know me.” you joke, before looking at her. the sunlight is hitting your hair, and the way your bangs falls just above your eyelashes— wednesday never noticed how brown your eyes are. they change in the sun and she’s never noticed that about anyone. “well, you are insufferable… but i suppose i don’t mind speaking to you.” wednesday mutters, and you smile widely. there’s that nauseating feeling again. she wants to kiss wipe that smile right off your face.

“oh! i finished frankenstein! it was so fucking good but so fucking sad— i almost don’t want to read ‘black phone’. i know i’m gonna end up crying again.” you admit, and wednesday shakes her head. “you cried? i understand frankenstein is tragic, but crying is a bit dramatic don’t you think?” she asks, and you shrug. “i’m a sensitive person. here’s your book, thanks for lending it to me. if you have any other book recommendations i’d really appreciate them.” you confess shyly, and wednesday takes note of the rosy pink blush coating your cheeks and nose. she doesn’t understand why you’re so adamant on getting to know her and talk to her. shouldn’t she have scared you off by now like she usually does with everyone else?

“thomas harris. silence of the lambs. i have a copy in my room, i’ll lend it to you tomorrow.” she states, and you smile widely. god she wishes you’d stop doing that.

wednesday begins to notice everything you do. the way you laugh, or mess with the holes in your jeans when you’re bored. you heart your ‘i’s’, and chew on your bottom lip when you’re nervous. you’re kind to everyone, and she hasn’t encountered a single person who has spoken badly about you. wednesday finds herself at a loss because she actually wants to talk to you, but she realizes she never wants to talk to anyone. she can’t for the life of her figure out what’s so different about you. or how she went from hating you, to thinking about you nearly every hour of the day. she even catches herself thinking about your giggle in the middle of class.

in december wednesday finds you sitting alone in the garden; a spot she enjoyed coming to be alone. just when she was about to tell you to get lost, she got closer, and heard the sniffling. “y/n?” wednesday’s voice causes you to jump a bit. you weren’t expecting anyone to be here and see you like this. you look up at her; those bambi eyes are red and full of tears, and your cheeks were stained, as if you had been crying for awhile now. wednesday forgets who she is and immediately feels concern wash over her. did somebody make you cry? was she going to have to commit murder? “what happened?“ she asks demandingly, before she takes a seat on the bench beside you. “i-it’s my moms birthday today…” you trail off, trying to hold back tears but failing miserably. “oh. did you call her?“ wednesday questions, and you shake your head, “she— she p-passed away last year.” you explain, and wednesday looks at you intensely.

“i’m sorry.” she sounds sincere, and it takes you by surprise as you stare at her with those vulnerable eyes. “she probably misses you as much as you miss her.” wednesday adds, and you feel your heart flutter in your chest. “y-you’re sweet. thanks for sitting with me.” you thank her gently, and she responds with an eye roll, “i’m not sweet, and if you tell anyone i sat with you, i’ll cut all your pretty hair off.” she threatens, and you sniffle as you blush, an inevitable smile creeping onto your face. “you think my hair is pretty?“ you ask, and for the first time since you met wednesday addams, the heat rises to her cheeks causing them to turn a shade of crimson red. “shut up, y/n.” she says warningly, shooting a murderous look your way. instead of lookinh terrified like anyone else would, you stare at her with an expression of pure adoration.

things change after your encounter with wednesday in the garden. you catch her staring more than she normally would, and whenever you approach her, you notice she doesn’t seem as annoyed as she used to. sure, she’s still as grumpy as ever, but your presence didn’t annoy her anymore, and that was strange. she normally gets irritated with everyone, but you somehow have become an exception. wednesday was not only okay with you coming up to her and talking her ear off, she was also looking forward to it. thoughts of you and even your voice would plague her mind. she thought of you before she fell asleep, and as soon as she awoke, there you were on her mind like clockwork.

it isn’t until wednesday sees you talking to aaron from botany, he seems to be staring at you with a glint in his eyes. you’re smiling at him in that way that always makes wednesday’s stomach flutter. but you’re directing it at him instead, and that nauseating feeling she usually gets, turns into a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach. suddenly she has never hated anyone more than aaron jeffery. she glares at him; she’s certain if he notices he’ll probably shit himself. but he doesn’t notice; you do. you turn your head, and your eyes lock with wednesday’s tenebrous orbs. you light up at the sight of her, and now your smile is directed at her. you wave cutely, “hey wednesday!” you greet her from across the courtyard before looking at aaron. “i’ll see you next period!” you exclaim, and he nods with a smile as you rush over to the raven haired girl.

“hi.” you giggle as you tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear. wednesday tenses up, “hi. what were you talking to jeffery’s about?” she asks, trying to sound as uninterested as possible. “we got assigned to be partners earlier this year in botany class, and we just sort of became friends that way.” you shrug, and wednesday has an uncomfortable knot in her stomach. “oh.” is all the shorter girl responds with, causing you to furrow your eyebrows. “is there a problem between you and aaron? like some sort of secret beef i don’t know about?” you ask half jokingly, and she shakes her head. “i don’t like him.” wednesday answers quickly. “he stares at you like he’s never seen a girl in his sorry little life. don’t get me started on the way he dresses.” wednesday rants a bit, and all of your confusion seems to dissipate as a wave of realization washes over you. wednesday addams is jealous of aaron, because she thinks he likes you.

“but aaron is crushing on stacey mathew’s.” you remind her and wednesday scowls. “i don’t care. since when does that stop boys?” she mutters, and you tilt your head to the side, like a confused puppy. “wen… are you jealous of him?” you ask her, and the way you’re smirking makes her shoot a murderous glare your way. she’s not an idiot. she’s completely aware she’s jealous of that tall boy and his kind smile that wednesday doesn’t have. but to admit she’s envious of him, would be to admit how she feels about you. wednesday would rather die before admitting that your voice is something she looks forward to hearing every single day. or even how every time she reads a stephen king book she thinks of you.

“jealousy is a feeling, y/n, and we both know i don’t do feelings.” she declares trying to sound serious. you raise your eyebrows, “then you wouldn’t care if i said he was cute?” you question, clearly just trying to get a rise out of her, and it obviously works because she glares at you. “he looks like a burnt chicken.” she hisses, and you giggle wildly. “no feelings my ass.” you retort sarcastically, and the raven haired girls expression stays firm. “i don’t have feelings, y/n! much less any regarding you and that fried roach.” she snaps in that usually harsh tone she always saves for other people, and never you. yet today her stare is harsh and it’s directed towards you. the trace of softness you usually see in her big brown-black orbs is gone; instead there’s something inscrutable in her gaze and you can’t quite figure out what it is.

you frown, “no feelings regarding me at all? is that your polite way of saying you don’t care about me whatsoever?” you ask uncertainly, and she rolls her eyes. “i don’t care about anybody. everybody at this school is a dimwitted, supernatural moron with no concept of reality or the real world. if that bothers you, maybe you should just go run along and follow aaron jeffery around everywhere like a lost, pathetic puppy. the same way you follow me around.” her tone is so cold, and so unlike whenever she speaks to you. she sounds the same way as when you first met her. you blink a few times, and then, something terrible happens to wednesday. not the good kind of terrible that she loves— no, the terrible that makes her stomach twist and churn… your bottom lip begins to tremble and the heart she’s been so intent on hiding from everyone, falls into the pit of her belly.

tears well up in your eyes, and suddenly she’s replaying every cruel word she just said. they were all because you were right. she was jealous of aaron. “you could’ve just said you didn’t want to hang out with me. or that you don’t like me… you don’t have to be so cruel just because you know how i feel about you.” you manage to say while your voice shakes and wednesday can see the look of hurt in those chocolate brown eyes. you turn around and rush off, leaving wednesday alone with her thoughts and unwanted emotions. that interaction hadn’t gone as she planned, but what could she do about it? chase you and beg for forgiveness? admit that what you said was not only true but spot on? she was jealous, and she did know about the way you feel about her. though you weren’t aware of what she was feeling for you. the more she got to know you, the more she realized she liked. even the things she was supposed to hate, she found made those dead butterflies in her stomach resurrect and flutter around with pure life.

she found herself having to pretend to dislike your presence, but it seemed as though you could see right through wednesday and her grumpiness. you even dealt with it just to hang out with her. though, there were undoubtable moments where you just knew wednesday returned all those feelings she claimed she didn’t have. you would ramble on and on about a book or show, and when you’d look up her eyes would be on you, taking in every word. even when she wasn’t looking at you, she was listening. you knew because she remembered every detail, down to the silliest thing. though it was never silly to you, it always made your heart skip a beat. almost everything wednesday did for you, made your heart rate pick up. you noticed everything when it came down to her; the way her gaze would soften up whenever looking at you, or how she let you hug her and hold her hand.

yet, wednesday’s words sounded so serious and cold. you couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, wednesday addams has hated you this whole time. maybe everything was in your head, and she really didn’t like you or anyone else at this school for that matter. maybe wednesday really was as heartless as she claims to be… but you don’t believe that. you can’t. there’s too many things she does that prove her wrong, yet if you ever called her out on them, she would most likely deny everything. if she didn’t want to like you, wasn’t that just as bad as not liking you? she knew she liked you, and she still didn’t want you. that hurt you more than anything else regarding your love life has.

when enid sees you crying she rushes in your direction, excusing herself from ajax and their mutual friends as she follows you towards your dorm. “y/n, what happened!?” she asks in pure concern as she follows you into yours and yoko’s shared bedroom. “did— did wednesday make you cry?” she asks cautiously, and you sniffle, nodding. enid feels a wave of nerves hit her. if wednesday was in a bad enough to mood to snap at you, maybe that meant everyone should stay clear from her today. there’s no telling what she’d do to people she actually hated. “what happened? did she say something to you?” the blonde asks patiently, and you look down at your converse. “dimwitted, supernatural moron… and a pathetic puppy. that’s what she thinks of me.” you whisper, and enid frowns.

“you’re none of those things, y/n. you’re a great friend and i know wednesday didn’t mean what she said. she’s just a grump.” enid points out and you shake your head. “i think she did, enid. i can’t keep trying so hard for her to like me. i should’ve taken the hint a long time ago and just left her alone.” you mutter, looking up and meeting enid’s eyes. her eyes are empathetic and sincere, “no, y/n, wednesday loves you! she just doesn’t want to admit it! she’s changed since she started hanging around you… she’s been nicer in her own little wednesday way. there’s less threats, and hate towards color or people. it’s because of you.” she insists, and you look at your fingers that you’re playing with nervously.

“i’ve seen the change, but until she apologizes or tells me how she feels herself, i think it’s best to keep my distance from wednesday…” you trail off, and enid can see the words hurt you to say. she frowns, but nods, “i understand and respect your decision, even it means i will have to deal with a very grumpy wednesday.” she murmurs and you flash her a sad smile. “sorry, enid…” you trail off, you thoughts immediate going to the raven haired girl you’re so helplessly in love with.

wednesday notices the change right away. it’s been a week since she said those mean things to you, and she couldn’t stop thinking about you. wednesday went from being the only person you’d seek out to talk to, to being the only person you’re avoiding. she feels like she’s been hit with the plague, because you won’t even look at her anymore. it drives her crazy when sees you and you don’t light up the way you used to, or even smile in her direction. she never thought silence (one of her favorite things), would drive her this mad when it was coming from you. she hated to admit she missed your voice, and all the things she thought she hated about you… like the way you talk too much, and practically shower in that girly perfume that tickles wednesday’s senses in the worst way. when she smells it in the halls her belly burns.

“she’s been miserable without you.” enid cuts into wednesday’s thoughts one lunch period, as she notices her roommate staring at you from the other side of cafeteria. you were sitting with elise and her friends today, looking absolutely miserable. it was no secret your older sister often was one of your biggest bullies, though it came from a place of love, the things she said still affected you. much like wednesday, she said things bluntly and honestly, not caring if she hurt anyones feelings. “she’s the one that decided to stop sitting here.” wednesday says back, her tone harsh and abrasive. enid rolls her eyes, “because you called her a dimwitted, supernatural moron, wednesday!” enid points out, causing everyone at the table to look at the two.

wednesday shoots daggers at the blonde, “i said it in regards towards everyone at this school!” wednesday hisses, and enid shakes her head in dismay. “it’s the same thing. not to mention you called her a ‘pathetic puppy’, don’t you have any idea how much your words hurt? especially to someone who has feelings for you.” she states sternly, and the raven haired girls careless expression falters. a trickle of silence passes, and wednesday speaks. “i didn’t mean it.” the shorter girl mutters, and enid raises a brow as she reaches for her fruit cup. “then why did you say it?“ the werewolf questions curiously, causing the short girl sitting beside her to sigh in frustration.

“because she was gushing over aaron jeffery!” wednesday snaps and enid raises both of her eyebrows in amusement. “and why did that bother you? i thought you and y/n were just friends; didn’t you say you hated the idea of love and romance because of your parents?” enid inquires, and wednesday grips the edge of the table so tightly her knuckles change in color. “this isn’t romance or love, i merely believe that y/n can do better than someone like that gross ogre.” she declares simply, and enid smirks, clearly not believing wednesday. “she can do better? as in someone like you?” enid asks with a shit-eating grin on her face, and wednesday glowers at her roommate.

“you may be my roommate, but i wouldn’t think twice about ripping your tongue out with my bare hands.” wednesday threatens the blonde, causing enid to giggle. “oh my god! you really do have feelings for y/n!” enid whisper/yells excitedly. “you have to tell her!” she exclaims, and wednesday keeps a straight face as she looks back down at her open book, deciding to simply ignore enid’s presence. “i mean, sure, you may have royally messed up by saying those things to the only person who’s genuinely not afraid of you, but she’s a sweetie. she’ll understand if you just tell her you were jealous.” enid rambles, and wednesday snaps her book shut, glaring at the blonde.

“call her a ‘sweetie’ again and i really will rip your tongue out.” she hisses as she stands up and walks out of cafeteria. enid gulps, and she looks over at you who’s watching wednesday walk away. wednesday’s head is plagued by thoughts of you. she goes to her room and tries to work on her novel, but she can’t concentrate long enough to get anything done. her homework got done later than usual because of how much she’s thinking about you. the raven haired girl sighs in frustration as she looks over at thing who’s sitting on the corner of her desk.

“i messed up.” she says aloud, making thing perk up at the sound of her voice. he makes his way towards her, and she looks at him with eyes of vulnerability. she’d never let anyone see her like this, but thinking about you and your face of hurt makes her feel enormously guilty. “what did you do?” thing taps, and wednesday purses her lips. “i… god this is embarrassing… i was jealous of aaron jeffery.” she says his name with disdain, curling her upper lip in disgust. “i know, i know. why should i, a superb young woman, who is by far the most amazing person at this awful place, be jealous of a burnt chicken like him? well, because y/n thinks he’s cute. can you believe that? she thinks he’s cute.” thing is silent while wednesday rants, finally allowing all of her feelings to come seeping out in her rushed words. “what was i supposed to tell her? that i think she has the most soul crushing smile on the planet and i would die to see it over and over again? that when she smiled at him it made me want to add him to the list of murders? she makes me sick every time she looks at me, like there’s a bunch of moths in my stomach that are about to fly out of my mouth. i can’t tell her any of that.” wednesday hisses, and thing taps, “you are in love.”

wednesday viscously glares at thing, “love is for morons!” she snaps, “you are a moron.” thing taps back, and wednesday goes silent. “yes. i suppose i am. i mean, i did let her get a way.” she whispers, and thing taps again. “talk to her. say sorry.” he insists, and wednesday purses her lips. “i’m not saying i’m going to, but hypothetically if i were to apologize, how would i do that?” she inquires curiously.

you rub your temples tiredly after you finish revising your essay for botany class. you had been doing homework all evening and were finally done. though, your homework was slightly prolonged due to the way your thoughts would trail off towards a certainly pig tailed addams. you would think about the way her eyes would pour into you, or the way her lips would twitch into the faintest of smiles as she would listen to you go on and on. yet, you can’t help but think about what she said. truthfully, you wouldn’t be so angry if she’d just apologize. sure, the words hurt, but you’d forgive her if she just said she’s sorry.

but she hasn’t even tried to speak to you, and that’s what hurts the worst.

*knock, knock*

the light knocks on your door cause your head to snap in its direction. an envelope flies under your door, and you furrow your eyebrows as you stand up and make your way towards it. you pick it up, your name is written on it and you recognize that handwriting anywhere. wednesday. you open the door, but there’s no one there; you can see thing thumping down the hall towards wednesday’s room. you can’t fight the smile that tugs at your lips as you open the envelope, and pull out the letter inside.

“y/n,

please excuse how late this is. i understand if you don’t read this, but if you do, would you do me the favor of coming to my room whenever you can? i wish to say a few things to you in regards of our last conversation. if you don’t come, that’s alright too. i’m deeply sorry for what i said. you were right, and i was jealous. you aren’t a moron, or pathetic. you aren’t like anyone at this school. — w.a”

your heart flutters in your chest as you read the letter. wednesday wants to apologize? was this some kind of trap to hurt your feelings again? you chuckle at the absurdity of this, but you can’t help but feel your cheeks heating up at the sincerity of the letter. you take a step out of your room, and close the door behind you. you hold the letter in your hand the entire way to wednesday’s room. when you knock the door flies open, and there’s wednesday standing in front of you with an unrecognizable look on her face. “you came.” she states observantly, had she really thought you wouldn’t? you were crazy about her after all. “you asked me to.” you respond softly, and there are those butterflies in her belly again

“i didn’t mean what i said. i’m sorry i hurt you.” she says, and her usual monotone is laced with vulnerability. your eyes often as you pull her in for a tight hug, “oh wednesday.” you gush as you squeeze her tightly, and she feels a wave of heat wash over her. she immediately feels okay as soon as you embrace her. “do you… forgive me?” the raven haired girl asks carefully, and you pull away, nodding eagerly. “of course! i… i guess a part of me knew you didn’t mean it. i know you’re not good with feelings, and that’s why i try my hardest to understand your reactions to everything i do. but i really hope from now on, you try your hardest to understand my feelings as well.” you explain timidly and she reaches for one of your hands cautiously. you gladly accept and interlock your fingers with hers.

“i promise i’ll do better. i’m barely starting to understand my own feelings for you, and they’re a bit overwhelming.” wednesday reveals, causing you to blush. “well, if you ever need help sorting them out, you know i’m here right?” you ask, and she looks at her for a moment. thing taps on the desk, “invite her in, moron!” and wednesday blinks as the back of her neck gets coated with a crimson blush. “would you like to come in right now and help me sort through them?” the goth asks smoothly, and now it’s your turn to blush. “i would like that.” you respond and she lights up as she steps aside, allowing you entrance into her shared bedroom. a wave of relief hits her, as she realizes you’re back and she doesn’t want to ever lose you again. that’s when wednesday realizes she may be in love with you, and that terrifies her.

though, losing you terrifies her even more… so if making you hers and keeping you by her side forever is what you need, then she’ll be content with doing so.

///////////////////////////////

a/n: this was my first fic on here!! i’ve never seen the netflix series so excuse me if i get anything wrong, i’m just crushing sooo hard on jenna ortega rn 😂

[intothedysphoria]

Stranger Things has a serious problem with the way it portrays working class men.

In Eddie Munson’s first real introduction in the show, he is established as intense, cynical and somewhat of a societal dropout. None of these characteristics are particularly new in the world of Stranger Things but one thing Eddie says really sticks in my mind.

“Forced conformity. That’s what’s killing the kids.”

In the Duffers eyes I’m sure that’s just a way to establish Eddie as an outcast but what he ends up eluding to is an extremely depoliticised explanation of cultural hegemony. Established by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, cultural hegemony is the ruling class dictating cultural ideology and behaviour via institutional and social messaging. (In this case, the media creating a Satanic Panic around Dungeons and Dragons and encouraging parents to force their children to conform.)

Ironic, seeing as the privately educated Duffer’s are dictating what they allow to be seen as working class culture but I digress.

The Duffer’s have an extremely rigid view of what a working class man acts like and despite a show that preaches about the right to be different, that right is ultimately only given to the middle class characters. Working class characters are always fulfilling some kind of classist stereotype.

Take four examples here. Billy, Eddie, Jonathan and Argyle. On the surface, four distinctive and different characters. But once you start noticing the similarities, it’s hard to stop.

All of them are either confirmed to be from an unconventional family unit or don’t have family at all. There’s nothing wrong with coming from a non nuclear family but the way the Duffers portray them, there is always something “wrong.”

Billy has an abusive father and his mother left him at a young age, Jonathan has an abusive father and his mother has mental health difficulties, Eddie is living with his uncle and it’s implied that his father is incarcerated, Argyles parents aren’t there at all. Notice how the middle class families rarely have this level of domestic discord (especially with the point the Duffers make about all working class fathers being shitty parents. The only exceptions seem to be Wayne and Hop and Hop REALLY has his moments.)

There’s also some stereotypical hegemonic working class male value that Billy, Eddie, Argyle and Jonathan hold that makes them either antagonist (either in the narrative or in the fandom) or isn’t a good trait to have. Billy is aggressive, all of them are addicts (which is also racist stereotyping in Argyles case), Jonathan and Billy are sexually deviant (never mind the distinction that Jonathan committed a sex crime and Billy was just groomed, the Duffers certainly don’t.)

It’s also important to note the distinct lack of working class male characters who aren’t white at this point, this show has zero understanding of intersectionality.

In some areas I’m almost glad the Duffers at least understand that working class men have a culture, because all of the working class women on the show have no real attempts to be assigned any working class female attributes. On the other hand, I already know it would just be fucking misogyny yet again.

Just like the shows blatant misogyny, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, ableism, abuse apologia and holocaust denialism, the Duffers show no real care about the discriminatory nature of the way they portray the working class. Or the classism that the wider fandom regularly espouses against working class people and culture.

If Billy, Eddie, Jonathan and Argyle had been from a show created by working class writers, I probably would have significantly less problems with the way their characters are handled. Both because the clunky, stereotypical characterisation would have been erased and also because it would have been portrayals of a real life working class experience. Abuse, addiction, racism and violence are all real problems in working class communities.

But the Duffers don’t give a shit about that. All they do is create an upper middle class view of working class values.

There’s obviously something deeper lurking under what is seemingly just a nostalgia bait sci fi show, something that speaks to the way the media industry as a whole reinforces these attitudes towards marginalised and lower class communities, but that’s a conversation that I don’t yet feel qualified enough to initiate. So, I’ll leave it at this for now.

The Duffer Brothers are absolute fucking wankers.

[mothmanssweetsucculentass]

Ok here’s my two cents that no one asked for on the current (sort of?) debate going on in the Creepypasta fandom on here rn.

For starters, I grew up with Creepypasta. I also grew up mentally ill. I am also autistic. So I know my way around good and bad mental health rep at this point. And to be honest? A lot of the original stories DID suck balls at representation or just horror writing in general.

However, nowadays I see other people on here, often mentally ill or any other social outcast, taking these characters and reshaping them as their own to fit their own feelings and experiences, and I don’t think anyone has the authority to criticize things like that. Cringe culture is supposed to be dead anyways, nevermind the fact it’s inherently ableist at its core.

We also need to take into account kids still exist in the fandom. Pre teens who got tired of shit like scooby doo and wanted something more “mature” or “edgy” to get into without fully going off the deep end into full blown horror movies. At least that’s how it was for me. Not everyone, especially someone who’s younger, is gonna be comfortable with the grit and gore a lot of Creepypasta “purists” are pushing for these days, and that’s okay! When a fandom gets popular it’s always inevitable and unavoidable to have the popular characters get two dimensionalized.

There’s also the whole mascot horror thing that I don’t wanna get into, but I’m 90% sure that also plays a part in the old favorites like Jeff and slenderman being brought up again. They were and still are recognizable characters. Recognizable characters aren’t a bad thing. Making horror more approachable for younger audiences isn’t a bad thing. People having their own interpretations based out of their own experiences isn’t a bad thing.

Some of us grew up and wanted the more edgy and reality based content, and that’s also not a bad thing! But neither side should be dictating or policing how the other enjoys content in this fandom. If you personally don’t like the way something is written, characterized, depicted, or drawn, no one’s forcing you to look at it. No one’s claiming it as canon. No one’s asking for you to accept it as the end all be all.

At the end of the day this fandom was built on OCs and personal depictions of stuff. I can’t name a single character or story in this community that was created by some outside party like a movie or TV studio FIRST (because I know some got so popular they breached the fandom and got their own shows/movies/comics/etc). Everything here was created by someone who wanted an outlet for their creativity, or their pain, or their coping, or whatever else.

Realism and dark headcanons aren’t bad, and neither are any of the headcanons out there who just wanna make a goofy found family of social rejects as a form of escapism.

A 13 year old drawing a fictional layout of a fictional mansion where these fictional characters live isn’t going to suddenly invalidate the horror, I promise, it’s not that deep and it never was.

A 22 year old making a dark comic on the realistic origins of Jeff who is a fictional character in a fictional world isn’t going to suddenly invalidate the more softhearted side of the fandom.

Sure, there can still be a split if people are so adamant about that, but as someone who personally enjoys both the brutal horror side and the “haha Jeff is 15 and gay” sides equally, y’all need to at least learn to be civil to anyone who has a different headcanon than you. And if that seems like too much still, the block button exists for a reason.

TL:DR this fandom is based entirely off OCs and headcanons and people can do whatever the fuck they want because none of it is real and horror comes in many shapes and sizes and intensities and no one should be bashing anyone on their headcanons or views or rewrites or whatever else.

EDIT:

Actually wait I think I have more to say-

Horror, like any genre, has NO AGE LIMIT. And by that I mean, if someone younger wants to delve into scary stuff, they should be allowed to do so without criticism. I personally grew up on “child friendly” horror media like Scooby-Doo, and the older I got the more horror I wanted to experience.

There’s no right or wrong way to “understand” horror, and I frankly think it’s ignorant and stupid to say if you don’t fully “understand” something, then you shouldn’t be involved in it at all. Horror isn’t always about gore and unspeakable violence and the eldritch entity that wants everyone’s skin inside out. That’s why horror has sub genres for fucks sake. Gut wrenching brutality against innocent people isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and that’s okay!

However, bashing anyone’s tamer headcanons, or calling anything anyone interprets differently than you “stupid”, that’s not okay. God, I feel like an exhausted parent giving this lecture to fellow adults, but this really needs to be said and stressed.

I am an adult. I like when stuff in the fandom takes a dark turn. But for nostalgia’s sake, I also love the fanon so much, because that’s what I was exposed to.

And for fucks sake if it comes down to picking sides, I would rather stick with the part of this fandom that gives zero shits how you see a character as long as you’re having fun.

You can have your serial killer 30 year old Jeff and your canon-accurate-to-that-one-image eyeless Jack, but don’t shit on other people if they don’t want the same thing. Your interpretation isn’t canon, and neither is anyone else’s for that matter.

Realistic, dark, gritty Creepypasta isn’t a new concept, and neither is “adult” Creepypasta. And by the way, Creepypasta was never stated to be for adults. That’s like saying kids and only kids can eat trix cereal. It sounds that stupid on paper.

Let people interpret things the way they wanna interpret. No one is infringing on YOUR character ideas. Creepypasta has no age limit, nor a set way the horror has to be presented. Those who do continue to claim that just sound like pretentious assholes.

Very small side note, I personally think it’s inappropriate and rude to keep using Toby as a “bad example” of mental health rep when the creator has stated multiple times the character is old, not researched, and not even in the fandom anymore. Leave the poor guy alone.

[lions-and-men-musical]

often, Paris killing Achilles is seen as a pivotal moment in Achilles’ storyline, I mean, of course, he literally dies, after all

but I haven’t seen anyone talk about it effects Paris

imagine: since your birth, you were destined to destroy your own city. You were outcast from your royal bloodline for the first 20~ years of your life, and when you finally are reunited with your estranged, they hate you.

After all, why shouldn’t they? You’ve plunged them into a war that will leave them either dead or traumatized. You’re a horrible soldier, a coward with too big a mouth.

but, after 9 years of fighting and dying and suffering that you caused, you see an opportunity. You can avenge yourself.

you see the greatest soldier of the other side, who has killed so many of your brethren and your friends,

you take aim

and you don’t miss.

so rarely do you not miss and yet.

this one time.

it worked

I wanted to talk about this in the myths generally, but from here on out it’ll be more specific to Lions & Men (my wip sci-fi retelling of the Trojan War)

Paris is a very multidimensional character hiding behind a 1-dimensional mask.

if he can just be stupid and pretty and incompetent, no one will expect anything else.

but he can’t just be that, some part of him would rather be good than be secure

no matter how safe he feels behind his mask, his moral compass (broken as it is) can’t bear standing back while others fight in a war that he ultimately caused (even if by accident)

he is so desperate to prove himself to hector, to show him he isn’t outstanding only in his looks, that he didn’t ’sleep his way to the top’ as hector suggests, but he can’t.

he can’t bear to shed the shell of Incompetent Bimbo™️ until it’s too late.

his brother, the most beloved man in all of Troy, is dead.

(it’s also worth noting that Helen had been making more and more remarks of Paris’s cowardice, and hadn’t been standing up for him as much as she used too)

so Paris, of course, is desperate, desperate to prove himself.

so he takes aim.

And the unbelievable happens.

[itsanotheridiot]

Alrightly as someone who owns LiS, BTS, LiS 2, and TC. I also had given the benefit of the doubt to DeckNine but after seeing multiple clips and leaked information about development from a confirmed ex employee of DN I am officially not buying double exposure.

For anyone in the unknown or don’t want to read my long rant. TLDR: Life is Strange felt victims to Corporation greed ruining game franchise and character alienation

Also side note I do have to be vague about specific of the leaked content due to post with it getting taken down. Also DO NOT HARASS THE VOICE ACTORS OR DEVELOPERS BLAME DECKNINE, SQUARE ENIX, NARRATIVE TEAM AND EXECUTIVES

First thing first the narrative team did not give a fuck about the game from the starts and didn’t do any research and never attempted to understand the characters or their stories so yup just bringing max back for one big old cashgrab and due to their egos of a executive producer and the lack of media analysis and literacy from the narrative team they decided to cut Chloe from the story all together but should we be surprised this is coming from the DN the company that had a controversy about one of their developers trying to sneak into racist symbols into the game and DN who fought against their team from having Alex be the first confirmed bi lead in LiS (saying this cause it’s obvious the male love interest Warren, Elliot ,and Finn was there to appeal to audience but their interest with the lead isn’t as flesh out as the women love interest Chloe, Rachel, and Cassidy)

Anyways How did they write Chloe out you may ask? They had Chloe tell max “she can’t move on so I has to go” and broke them up like that is the most OOC shit ever Chloe the girl who journal entries from 5 years in the form unsend letters to Max. Chloe who canonically in the comic waits 2 years for max to come back to her.

There is a reason they are called partners in time their relationship is crucial to the story and their characters arcs they are linked to take away one of them fundamentally breaks the story because the relationship is at the center of it all

Now I am aware some argue the sacrificing Bae is the moral choice but canonical max by the time of episode 5 wants the town to burn and everyone in it she doesn’t care anymore max is more fucked up then people allow her to be cause she is quiet but while we would sacrificed the bae. Max would never. And trust me this is from someone who also sacrificed Bae but I still understand how important Chloe is to Max’s character

These are a few canon max journals entries these ain’t even all the evidence max has dialogue expressing disgust and hatred for Acadia Bay.

While yes LiS handles heavy topics and tells stories about children with supernatural powers that’s what it is a story and what makes a good story is characters relationship that’s what we connect with not the that’s what makes these heavy topics more personal or easier to handle

LiS wouldn’t be what it is without Chloe and Max’s relationship

LiS 2 wouldn’t be a good story without the wolf brother relationship

BTS expanded the amberprice relationship to make the reveal in the original game hit harder

TC was a interesting case because Alex didn’t have any connects but throughout the story she builds some

LiS is about outcasts craving and finding connect in extreme situations chaos was happening but love still prevailed (romantic, platonic, familial) 

Now away from all the shipping stuff for the moment. The writing in DE from the footage I seen is something like the way they try to make the game seem mature is by making sexual jokes targeted at max but it feels like they are trying to be adult like it feels like jojo siwa’s rebrand the being super sexual because that’s adult like no that’s not (also I’m aware people who experience sexual violence could become hyper sexual due to the trauma but from what I seen in the leaked footage this ain’t it) The pacing is also wonky from what I seen stuff that needed time to set in didn’t get that or they breeze by quickly.

Like comparing DeckNine’s LiS games (BTS and TC) to DONTNOD (LiS and LiS2). BTS to me kinda feel like a fanfic they had a whole game to build off of and expanded on the complexities of the Amberprice relationship which I did really enjoy while having Rachel father be a DA was definitely a writing choice it was vague enough where we can ignore it and it didn’t break the base of LiS too much just made little plot holes Now TC I do think TC is a decent game but is also the blandest out of the LiS games there was a lot of missing potential I feel like they could have done but it does work enough and gave us some nice lore like explaining why Steph and Mike wasn’t in the original game they were out of town or wasn’t at the school. Nice little story moments without stepping on the original too much.

Making a sequel with a beloved character like was a super risky choice one they could have achieved if they had actually cared about the stories and characters. I genuinely thought DeckNine was just hiding Chloe and we was going to get the memorable detective duo again and we could have had a very interesting story about a traumatized max regretting her decision all those years ago and exploring different timelines to revalue if she made the right choice that could have been a good way to expand of how the OG story effect the characters while still respecting both ends but also respecting who the characters are at their core

My last point is also how disrespectful the oversexualized and axing of pricefield is. I would like to remind you that LiS came out in 2015 this was around the time female gaming and female characters in video games were started to be taken seriously JMax and Luc even revealed how at the time Square Enix who gave the game a chance with a female lead that looked like a normal teenage

Also because this game came out in 2015 It was a massive achievement for the LGBT+ community a video game with explicit queer content at the center of the story won 3 categories at the game awards. At the global game awards it won 2 categories and came in second for globe game of the year. life is strange won 6 awards at the golden joystick. That was massive process in 2015 especially since LiS came out January 30, 2015. Gay marriage wasn’t even legal then gay content was barely anywhere this was a important game to people at the time and still is. It’s hard to imagine that now considering how much progress and content we have now.

Double exposure had so much potential I feel like there was so many interesting ideas the fandom has only to learn the game never stood a chance from the start because of a bunch of greedy egocentric executives that would rather destroy the hearts of their story than make a good game

I guess the only bright side is that alternate universe exist in life is strange in a different universe we didn’t get this shit cash grab game we actually got a game that how real love and care put into it the characters weren’t alienated and the heart wasn’t torn out in alternate universe pricefield is thriving after everything romantic or not